American Apocalypse IV - Chapter 13a - by Nova

Woof was cracking bones in the back and the noise he made was doing it was getting on my nerves.  I turned the radio up a little bit to drown him out, then opened the cab door and climbed into the back of the crew cab slamming the door behind me.

I started going through the contents of the back seat hoping for more goodies.  I found dirty laundry, a used condom which I left for Woof, a surplus .50 caliber ammo can that had boxes of 9mm and .223 ammo, a lot of MRE wrappers, and a laptop covered with dog slobber. 

"Can I turn down the radio G?"

"Yeah. Just tell your damn dog to chew his food a little quieter." 

The radio volume went down and so did Zanes window. "Hey Woof! Stopping making so much noise eating!"  I heard the window go back up and Zane told me "I don't think he is listening to me right now."

"Dogs are like that kid."  I handed him the laptop "Here. Put this upfront by your feet with their cell phones. Better yet. See if you get it to boot up."

I passed him the laptop and decided I had found everything that was anything.  I opened the cab door and tossed most of the trash and the dirty clothes out and climbed back into the drivers seat.  

I turned off the radio. It was annoying me. I reached across Zane and opened the glove compartment.  A miracle! An actual paper road map! And another handgun. This one was a Taurus 9mm. The rest of the papers were old inspection slips and the owners manual.  I had half halfheartedly hoped for something with some sugar in it but no such luck. 

"Any luck with the laptop?"

"No G. It's got a password when you start it up."

"Chuck it out the window."

"Really?"

"Truly. Plus toss them cell phones with it."

He looked at me, saw I wasn't kidding, rolled down his window, and started tossing stuff.   

I unfolded the map and liked what I saw.  We were a couple miles from Chenoweth and Chenoweth was nothing but a ramp on to I-71.  From there it looked like a straight shot down to Louisville and then west on I-64 for a bit. My guess was somewhere around here I would find the Horde or start picking up on their location.  Max had wanted to head this way to avoid the big cities and Zones. Then once he got past Louisville the Horde was going to head towards Springfield Missouri.  The country got a lot bigger from Springfield on acording to Max and the map he had shown me. Max told me St. Louis was considered the gateway to the West but we weren't going west. We were headed north and the terrain was supposed to be a lot easier, at least to the Great Plains.  That, from the way Max said it, was going to be the real bitch.  I had never seen this part of the world and I was looking forward to it.