Stars Of Our Lives

Go On A Road Trip, They Said

We stayed on the road for five months after that day. 

Five months of what I like to call 'organized chaos'. Varvatos's plans were more or less Plan B of our parents idea, which meant getting us out of the country ASAP. Our first tries were Mexico and Canada, which both happened to be building walls to keep the infected citizens in their own country.

We tried the coasts next, seeing if there was some kind of boat we could get on. But the security was overwhelming. It wasn't just about leaving the US, it was about getting the approval of the next place over to come. And the only way to do that would be to come out of hiding to try and get a green card. Which, for us, was impossible.

After that, our priorities became finding Mama and Papa and staying hidden. And that took us all over. I made Krel fix up a polaroid camera just so I could take pictures of all three of us in front of every city we visited.

Varvatos would stop as often as he could at motels, often very crummy and always in the middle of nowhere. That way, the three of us would have running water at least a few days out of the week.

Other than that, Varvatos only agreed to stop twice a day, usually at some hole in the wall diner to grab us something to eat. And then one stop a night if he hadn't gotten a motel to squat in, to let me and Krel stretch out our legs.

We only ever left the car at night, unless absolutely necessary. And whenever we did, Varvatos had us up and moving. Whether it was racing along an abandoned road, seeing who could climb a tree the fastest, or straight up wrestling each other in the middle of a field.

"Your muscles are deteriorating in the back of that car!" He said. "You've got to get them moving some time!"

It wasn't until he started making us run alongside the car that I realized it wasn't just about keeping our muscles working. It was about teaching us how to run, as in, run away. Krel realized the day after I did, and even though Varvatos knew both of us knew, no one said anything about it. No one wanted to.

By the end of the first week, Krel just about lost his mind from being cut off from the internet. "It's our only connection to the outside world," He said. "If we're gonna be driving all over this country we need to know what's going on in it. That's just common sense."

So the next time we stopped, Varvatos brought Krel a laptop. It was old and used, since we were only using whatever cash Varvatos could grab from the house. But after replacing just a few parts, rewiring the system, and some rebooting, Krel had it working good as knew.

We were parked behind a dumpster, me in the driver's seat and Krel in the passenger while Varvatos was across the street getting our dinner. "I tried researching Mama and Papa's case," He said. "But there's almost nothing on it."

"You found their case?" I leaned over to see. There were two images taking up half the screen, one of our mother, one of our father. They were driver's license photos.

"In the archives."

"You hacked the pentagon?"

Krel snorted. "It's not the pentagon - that would've taken me way longer. It's just the local Akiridion-5 base. That's where they would keep all federal cases that happened within the area. Mama and Papa's case exists, it's just . . . really small."

"It that . . . good?"

"Not for us," He replied. "The more information we have the better chance we have at finding them. But all it says here is the name of their offense and that they were arrested."

"Arrested?" I perked up. "Like prison? Can't we track them through that?"

"Not really," Krel said. "It says 'arrested' not 'convicted'."