Hirstie

Hilary left Havana before the mobs started. Water prices were skyrocketing and she had been stocking up on supplies for months. She knew that society would break at any moment, like a badly built levee during a tsunami. Her neighbors had noticed her stockpiling and she knew they would come.

            Luckily for her, she had been moving things out of the city to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere as soon as she had started stockpiling. Her family and friends were supposed to be on their way, they had made their contributions as well, mostly monetary.

            As she drove north, the heat stifling her, she reached behind the backseat on the passenger side and felt around for the case of water bottles she had hid under a tarp. She felt nothing but glass. Slowing to a halt and looking back, she saw the back window on the passenger side broken open from the outside. Her stock pile of water and food for the trip were gone. She was lucky they hadn’t just taken the whole car. Hell, she was lucky no one had gotten into the car and forced her to drive them around.

            Resting her head against the steering wheel, Hilary tried to think of how long she would be driving without food and water. She wondered if she would be able to make it. After all, she was going to be cooking herself, even with the windows open, she would just be getting gusts of hot air. And then she remembered the five gallons of water in her trunk and knew she would have to keep driving before she would be able to open it to even check if it was still there.

            The people on the roads were already starting to drive cars that belonged in the Mad Max movies. Black and red spray paint, spikes on the wheels, doors missing, and some people had even started carrying guns around without worrying about repercussions. The cops weren’t really around anyway, they had their own families to protect.

As Hilary got back on the road, she saw a few of the new Apocalypse Cars and sped up. Not everyone was trying to go north, and not everyone was trying to go south. A lot of people had just given up on life and shot themselves as soon as they realized that water was becoming a rare commodity, like a real four leaf clover. This meant that the roads were empty and that Hilary just had to stay away from the Apocalypse Cars, which were easy to point out from five miles away.

After several hours of driving, she felt as though her throat was made of sandpaper and her body felt like it was turning into a puddle, she pulled over into some bushes and popped the trunk. The last thing she saw was a flash of light before she was knocked on her back and staring up at the orange sky as the sun started setting. A man stepped out from the trunk, soaked in what Hilary could only guess was the water from her trunk.

“Man, I thought you were just driving back home! Didn’t know you were leaving town. That mean your stash ain’t here? Damn, that would have been a nice haul.” The man shook the water from his head like a dog and pulled one of the jugs of water out of the trunk. He then put it into the passenger seat and closed the trunk. Looking down at Hilary, he wiggled his fingers in a, ‘ta-ta’ sort of way and got into the car and drive off. Hilary was just grateful that she had left the keys in the ignition, she didn’t want that man’s hands on her.

Hearing the man drive off in her car, Hilary felt as though she were released. She knew that she wouldn’t have survived for long in this new world. No amount of planning could allow for her and her friends and family to survive. They would have most likely turned to cannibalism or done some sort of suicide pact. This new dry Earth looked like an abyss of heat and blood in Hilary’s eyes, and she was happy to leave it.