Florida, I don’t know much about it but it’s one of the states I’ve always remembered, Florida, Texas, California, Kansas, Arizona, New york. The ones that have stayed in my mind no matter how many years passed. It’s sunny and is near a lot of water, there’s alligators and dolphins. People go there for vacations a lot. Right now it may be the only state with decent boats left. It’s been two days since we left that house, we came across a white truck outside of a police department yesterday and luckily found enough gas to bring us to Georgia where the truck broke down. Serafina says Florida isn’t far away, it’ll take us a few days to get there, but I don’t know if we have a few days, we’ll have to find food on the way there and hope we can survive off fish once we get a boat.

“How long have we been walking?” Zander asks.

Ally speaks, “Doesn’t matter, we won’t get anywhere without a car.”

And at that moment a car flew by, splashing the rainwater from a puddle in the road all over us. The car slows down then reverses. A man with long, brown hair and blue eyes with a scraggly beard that matches his voice a little too well, “What’re you kids doin’ here?”

“Probably the same thing as you.” I respond.

“Where are you going?”

“Florida.”

“So you’re looking for a boat?”

“How’d you know?”

“No one willingly goes to Florida in the apocalypse unless it’s for a boat.”

“Do you know if there’s any left?”

“Of course there’s ‘any’ left, it’s Florida for God’s sake, but I gotta warn you some shit’s goin’ on down there. Whole buildings full of groaners and tons of people on the street shooting at each other.”

“Through all of Florida?”

“The border, that’s all I know. I couldn’t make it past ‘em but you’ll know when you get there.”

He drives away. We don’t continue walking, instead we all stare.

“How can we know if he’s not just saying that to get us not to go to Florida for a boat?” Ria asks.

“I guess we’ll find out when we get there.” Eli replies.

***

“That a car?” I ask pointing at a grey car, parked outside a gas station.

“Seems kinda sketchy.” Serafina clarifies.

“It’s our best bet.” Zander walks toward the gas station, we follow.

Nothing happens, the car’s unlocked and the key’s are in the ignition but the gas tank’s empty.

Ria comes over to me and asks, “You wanna go in that gas station? We could get supplies.”

“Yeah, sure.”

We enter the gas station that’s alarmingly stocked and attempt to take what we need before two men and a woman reveal themselves from behind a counter. I reach from my gun and the woman shouts, “Don’t even think about it.” They jump over the counter, all three of them. Ria and I run away when they start shooting food off the shelves and planting holes in the walls. The glass door attached to the cold drink cabinet shatters onto the floor. I back myself into a wall when one of the men charges at me. He pushes me backward as Ria’s screams are muffled from across the room. I grasp the dagger in my shoe and strike him in the mouth, the blade goes through his cheek. He takes his hand and pushes down on my face, I reach for his eyes and try to scratch at them, he pulls my arm down and whispers, “You put up one hell of a fight boy.” I’m knocked out when he punches me.

***

I wake up on a cold, tile floor. Ria’s beside me.

“Where the fuck are we?” I ask.

“Locked in a bathroom. I hope they didn’t get the others.”

“We need to get out of here in case they did.”

“Good thing I got this.” She retrieves the dagger from her waistband and hands it to me.

“How the hell did you get it?”

“Well, it cost me a tooth but it’s worth us getting outta here.”

I stand up and slam the dagger against the wood around the handle. From outside the door a man growls, “Stop that.”

I continue to try to open the door, prying the blade in between the metal door handle and wooden door. After that doesn't work I try the little, square-shaped part locked into the hole in the wall, keeping the door shut. It unlocks but I don’t open it. My watch reads 5:42, I’m guessing in the afternoon.

“You got it?” Ria asks.

“Yeah.” I whisper. “That man outside won’t let us make it past him though, we’ll wait until he falls asleep.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“Maybe after they kill everyone. Think about them, April’s still out there… hopefully.”

“How do we know this guy’s the only one guarding the door?”

“Because I saw the woman go outside after I got away from that one dude, there’s two of us anyway. We can take these fuckers out.”

“Then let's do it. Anything in here we could use as a weapon?”

“Uh.” She looks around, “No, I don’t think so.”

I open the door, expecting the man to charge at us, to the right side of the door, he’s tied to a dark-brown, wooden chair. Blood gushes from his face but I can’t tell where from. The man that attacked me.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Ria asks.

He breathes heavily then gives a weak chuckle, “Some bitches came by, stole a bunch of shit…” he bows his head and raises his eyes to a farther side of the room. The other two scavengers are dead. “An old folk, strong too. Two girls in their twenties and a man that looks like your average”—he coughs—“a guy with brown eyes ‘n hair, he had a beard.”

“You see anyone else?” I ask?

“Why?” He laughs, “Your people? Unless you’re looking for those menaces then nah, I ain’t seen a thing.”

Ria starts to walk away, I follow and with a quiet voice she mumbles, “They’re still out there.”

“Wait!” the man grumbles.

I turn around in place. He motions to my dagger with his eyes, “Kill me.”

“What?”

“Mercy kill, kid. My legs won’t work, my face is a mess. I feel like shit. Just a quick jab to the head should do it.”

It’s brutal but I wouldn’t want to rot and turn into a intestine-eating monster alone. He just saw his friends die and if I don’t do this he’ll meet the same fate, staring right at them. I step toward him.

“Nitro, we don’t have time for this.” Ria urges.

I ignore her. When the tip of my blade meets his skull he closes his eyes. I pause, realizing what I’m about to do, but go through with it and dig the knife into his head that loses balance and falls back, hitting the wall, smearing blood on it.

“Lets go.” I say walking through the door with Ria behind me.

The car along with the others is gone, the only thing left behind being tire tracks that look like the result of a sharp turn through the parking lot to the back of the gas station. We notice the tracks simultaneously and make our way around to the back where the car is found. Serafina practically throws herself out of the car without closing the door behind her and hugs me.

“We need to stop doing shit like that.” Zander says, shutting the driver’s door behind him.

“Like what?” Ria asks.

“Splitting up, we aren’t doing that anymore. You two could’ve died, we could’ve died. We need to stay together from now on.”

***

Florida, the guy wasn’t wrong. You know when you get there. Minutes after we passed the sign saying 'Welcome to Florida The Sunshine State' we had to get off the highway, cars tilted over, fires, lots of monsters and, not a lot but faint yelling. We didn't see any real people until we passed by a mall and saw two people fighting on the ground beside a white pickup.

Three days later, hungry, without a car and having made the way without conflict with other people; we came across a dock. No boats, an empty dock. I sit down on the edge, exhausted, we made it this far, crossed so many states and lost so many people, all for there to be nothing for us, no reward, nothing. April sits next to me and rests her head against my arm, “I thought there would be something.”

“Everyone took the boats and left long before we got here.”

“Could we try somewhere else?”

“Maybe it’d be best to look for something that isn’t a boat, like a house.”

“Like Red Easton?”

“I never said that. There’s not much we can do.”

April lays back and throws her elbows in the air, hands on her face, “We’re gonna die.” she groans.

“Hold that thought.” Zander says. He squints his eyes. A boat far away from us in the middle of the water, it looks blue in the fading sun. It looks pretty beat up as well.

“You are not thinking what you’re thinking.” Ally says.

“Better than thin ice.” He jumps into the water then turns around and smiles, “It’s like a pool.”

“Infested with biters.” April adds.

“Forgot about that. Anyone wanna help me hotwire this thing?”

“You can’t hotwire a boat.” Ria sighs.

“Sure you can.” He starts swimming toward the boat, when he makes it he climbs up the side and pulls himself on. An hour or two later he figures out how to start it and the boat’s before our eyes, looking a little more messed up than it did in the distance but hey, it works.

Zander hops off and he doesn’t look as happy as he did before.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I… I don’t know if imma go with you guys, sorry.”

Eli lowers his eyebrows at Zander, “What the hell do you mean?”

“The boat’s kinda small and we aren’t all gonna fit.”

“Bullshit, thing’s half the size of a house.”

“Look I just.” he avoids eye contact and continues, “Since everything that’s happened we lost Sophie, a small child, my sister, Julia and now, Logan. I love you guys and honestly we’re all gonna fucking die but I can’t let myself see you guys die too. It’d be better for, you know, chances of survival anyway. Less people to deal with.”

“If Zander doesn’t wanna go then I don’t either, and I agree, I can’t watch more people die.” Ally implies.

“Ria?” Serafina mumbles.

“Yeah, uh.” Ria chuckles, “I’m gonna sit this one out too. I’ve always liked being alone and… I care about you guys too much. Leaving sounds like an asshole move and believe me, it is, but who knows, maybe in the future things will change and we can have phones again and send letters ‘n shit.” She looks at Eli, “I still have your number memorized, and I won’t forget it.”

Ria bends down to pull up her pant leg and slips a red, fluffy hair tie off her ankle. She hands it to Ally, “And I should return this to you.”

Zander finally smiles again and says, “Looks like we’re gonna live until we can’t anymore.”

***

“You were nervous back there.” Serafina says leaning against the railing, facing the calm, almost grey water.

“They all left.”

“Did you think Eli was gonna leave too?”

“No.

This doesn’t feel like the right thing.”

“Maybe it isn’t, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“They could all be dead. Should we have stopped them?”

“No clue. But hey, what matters is, in the end, we made it somewhere, together.”