Stars Of Our Lives

Blood // Water feat. Sabrina Carpenter

We made it three days on our own. Three. Damn. Days.

We were living off of what we could salvage from abandoned grocery stores, since we didn't have a hundred year-old veteran to order food for us anymore. We did fine on food and water, and we only ran into squatters once. They weren't too territorial so we just booked it for the truck and managed to drive away.

But on the third day away from Varvatos, we crashed. We were driving on an old back road in West Virginia when some jackass rear ended us. We swerved a few times before they scraped against us again, forcing us off the road and directly into a telephone pole. Then they sped off.

My chest was crushed against the wheel, knocking the wind out of me and giving me a colorful bruise. Krel managed to smack his face into the floor from where we was laying down in the back, nearly smashing his nose. But no broken bones. No internal bleeding. We were lucky.

The engine, not so much.

The crumpled hood broke off as we tried to lift it, revealing what was left of the engine. I got Krel the tool box from the bed of the truck, but after a few hours of listening to him hammer away, I knew it was useless.

"I can't fix it," His head was bowed, tears on his cheeks. "I - I can't -"

"It's okay, Krel," I brushed his tears away and pulled him away from the hood. "We'll just walk to the next town and get another car there."

"There's nothing but woods for miles."

"This road has to go somewhere," I said. "We'll just follow it until we find something. Easy."

He looked back at the truck. "We barely have any water left."

"We've done the impossible before," I said. "We can do this."

I did my best to keep the fear from my voice. We were both exhausted, and now battered and bruised from the crash. We were low on water. Our car was useless. And the late summer sun was boiling over us.

But we couldn't stay here out in the open.

Krel sat against the dented-in hood while I packed what we could into our bags. Krel's laptop and the nine millimeter was first, then all the polaroids I'd taken, then the first aid and burn kit, and some water purifying tablets Varvatos had gotten for us. Those made me pause for a second, just holding them and thinking about when he'd pushed them into my hands. How he'd thought of everything we would ever need.

I shook off the memory and shoved the tablets in my pack.

We had three of the plastic water bottles left, a few cans of chili, and a box of granola bars. It wasn't much, but there wasn't much else we could take anyway. Besides, by the look of the road, it would only be a few days at most. We could do that.

"Krel," I laid his backpack beside him, kneeling down. "It's time to go."

He didn't answer. He just looked so tired. I was tired too.

"Krel, come on," My voice broke. I don't know why. "We need to go."

Nothing.

I pinned my lips together, tears pouring down my face. I knew he was ready to give up. And honestly, so was I. We'd come so far only to lose so much. Moving forward seemed so pointless against the inevitable.

I shuddered.

"Aja?"

I looked up at him. "What?"

"I'm tired."

"Me too."

"I'm tired of all of this," He said. "I'm tired of running and hiding. I'm tired of losing."