loose of the front brake and leaned over the handlebars as his bike sped up like a bull chasing red.
“Idiot,” Scout said, springing onto his motorbike.
Their small engines cried across the prairie, riding past dilapidated farmhouses surrounded by overgrown windbreaks. Scout hung twenty yards behind Hunter, who pushed the limit with a passenger, as the airstream whipped through Catherine’s golden hair.
An hour slipped away and the sun began fading into the west. Hunter’s speed and the fleeting light made choosing a safe path impossible. Even with the little headlights mounted on the motorbikes, the high grass and the meager washed-out trail were too extreme to travel this fast. Both were capable riders, but Scout was nervous about Hunter’s recklessness.
Scout tried catching up to tell Hunter to slow down, but the fool took it as a challenge and twisted his throttle harder. Hoping Hunter would ease up, Scout dropped back a hundred yards without any success. Hunter pushed his speed for over an hour as they closed within thirty miles of their destination.
Without thinking about it, Scout sent out a prayer. “Please Lord, let Hunter be safe. Don’t let anything happen to him or the little girl. Please, please make him slow down.”
He waited. A gleaming red light quickly washed over Scout in sudden brilliance. The light sailed off the ground and winked out. Catherine catapulted over Hunter. Her arc was incredibly high and the distance was even more stunning as she flew upwards and then plummeted on her return, disappearing in the darkness and tall grass. Hunter followed her over his handlebars, straight out like a human cannonball. The motorbike flipped after them, and Scout feared that the blunt impact of the wreckage would do more damage than their falls.
Scout’s stomach pitched from witnessing the devastation ahead. Every nerve in his body shrieked, leaving his arms and legs rigid. He almost buried his front wheel in the same depression that chucked Hunter and the little girl. He stopped his motorbike before he lost all control, and cut the engine. Vaulting off the seat, Scout allowed his bike to fall over and sprinted into the swirling cloud of dust.
Molly was bored. Outside her open window, where the summer breeze did little but shove the heat around, the city maintenance kids gathered around yet another pothole. Holes in roads happened frequently in Independents, and they were never repaired properly. How many slack-jawed kids would it take to fill a hole? Looked like about four.
She couldn’t believe she was trapped in the middle of downtown Independents for the rest of her life. Calling the place downtown was a joke. One block of two-story buildings, that’s about as urban as it got. Who could’ve lived here before the plague performed a mercy killing?
Molly was born in Dallas. Now that was a city. In the world that was, she’d be hitting her prime, starting her junior year of high school. Molly would be dating the captain of the football team, or the cutest guy in school. She’d definitely be dating someone with a really hot car.
The whole plague thing was so unfair. She hated that she would never attend a senior prom. She would have worn a beautiful, full-length evening gown that her daddy bought her from Nieman Marcus; low in the back and cut from chiffon or possibly silk. She’d have chosen teal blue to set off her eyes. If only she had grabbed her mother’s pearls before her twin brother made her leave home.
When the plague took her parents, Mark forced her into their mom’s Lincoln Navigator. He tied a wooden block under his shoe because he was too short to reach the pedals, and it was goodbye, Texas. The roads were horrible because of all the dead people in their wrecked cars strewn about everywhere. Going around the thousands of traffic jams was a huge inconvenience and did nothing but make a miserable trip worse. They drove up into Oklahoma and Molly begged Mark to drive faster. That place was so flat and ugly. She didn’t realize the further north they traveled the landscape became even more desolate. Eventually they joined up with a group of kids heading in their direction. That’s how they stumbled across the little refugee camp of Independents. Landing here was the worst possible thing that ever happened to her.
Molly was now the head seamstress, responsible for clothing the town. Being responsible for something was nice and all, but she’d rather be pampered. They mended worn out rags