FicWad

Gregory Walship wasn't a man of many words, but as the van came to a complicated and sputtering halt, he emitted a long string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush. Rubber scratching against metal reverberated throughout the jam-packed van and his knuckles turned white as his grasp on the tattered leather of the steering wheel grew tighter.

First, the van veered to the left, weaved to the right, and then tumbled head-on into an old, swinging sign. The sign cruelly toppled to its back beneath the shredded tires attached to his precious van, but this brief encounter stopped the hulking mass of metal altogether.

"What the fuck...?" Sally was hunched forward against the seatbelt that could've possibly saved her from an unwanted collision between her forehead and the dashboard.
"Gr-eeeg," his younger sister's voice erupted from the backseat and she entered his line of vision when she leaned against the console. "Where are we?"
One of the Jordan twins' voice piped up, "We're... somewhere... over here."

"You're holding that upside down," emitted a voice that resembled the first, "What street did you turn on, Greg?"
Gregory rubbed his temples in frustration, blatantly ignored the question and opened the door. One dirty-white tennis shoe after another, he was soon observing his surroundings: a barren, desolate, and isolated desert. The land was vast, as far as the eye could see, and not another living soul in sight, lest you count that circling buzzard in the sky. Other than that, there was nothing. He could see far-off mountains, rising as rigged monsters against the bloody sky.

"Where are we?"
Sally's voice made him jump, and he turned around. It was the same question he heard not too long ago, and wasn't too thrilled to hear it again.

"I don't know." She was sitting in the driver's seat with her long legs dangling off, her bare feet coming two inches above the ground. The dress rode up against her thighs, revealing the burn mark sported on bronzed flesh. The jagged blemish on her knee was the only thing that could be called ugly on her whole body; her red hair was tied up in a loose bun, emerald eyes glistening with a hint of childish curiosity.

"What are we going to do?"
Gregory shrugged absentmindedly as his eyes drifted away from her bare legs to the shredded tires. It was a symbol of hopelessness. It was quite improbable that all four tires would be out at the same time. He only had one spare tire tied to the back of the van, but that was it, and they certainly couldn't get away with just one functioning tire.

It appeared as if somebody had purposefully slashed them, but there was nobody around to perform this condescending act. "I don't know."
"Is that the only friggen' answer you can come up with? No... 'It'll be alright, Sal. Everything will be OK'? What kind of boyfriend doesn't soothe his girl in a time of trouble, such as this? Greg, we're..."

On and on she went until he shut her up with a gentle nudge on the shoulder. He massaged it reassuringly and planted a gentle peck on her cheek. His hand traveled up to sweep a thin strand of hair away from her gleaming forehead, but it just as soon fell back in place. "Everything will be alright, Sal. I promise."
"Get a room," Will said; he had evidently eluded the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cooped-up van and ventured outside, where far more action had taken place.

"Yeah," a voice followed. Marcus and William never left each other's sides, as twins were wont to cling to each other, "Like... a room far away from where I'm standing."
His younger sister approached them from behind the van, irritated.
"Gr-eeeeg," she complained, stomping her foot against the dirt-packed ground, "I'm hungry. It's been at least three hours since we stopped back at that burger joint. What's kickin'? Why aren't we in Nebraska yet? Wha-- Oh my God, where are we, limbo?"
Megan glanced around her as if she were on a foreign planet. "Is this still California, or am I dreaming?"
"The tires are shredded," Sally said, "We're going to have to walk."
"Where?" Megan said, "There's only desert, and if you think I'm leaving the van behind, you have another thing coming."

William crouched down to get a close-up on the damage, Marcus following suit.
Gregory ambled toward the knocked-over sign and surveyed the chiseled words, the concern that had nested in his blue eyes now completely vanishing.

"'Welcome to Barrensville," he read aloud, "'Population: 120'. Well, we now have a destination. Maybe they have a working phone there."

Megan's face lightened as if it had been struck by a match. "I have a cell phone!" She exclaimed, "In my purse!" Her petite frame disappeared for a moment's time before reappearing with a pink bag in her hand, and in the other, a small metal device.

She was staring at the face of the phone with a disappointed glare reflecting off of her blue eyes. "Not working," she said in a dismayed voice, "I'm not surprised. We're like... in the middle of nowhere. There's no service out here. I don't see any telephone poles, either, so I doubt that... Barrensville... has a phone. Gosh, are we like, in the eighteenth century or something?"

Finally, two other individuals shuffled from the van's sticky heat and came around to the driver's side, both of their visages contorted in confusion.
Anna and Logan were both around Gregory's age. Logan was a mute and Anna wasn't really attractive, but both of them made an exceptional couple. They weren't official yet, but they couldn't avoid the inevitable: they had known each other since the third grade. At least, that's what Anna claimed. Logan couldn't object.

He carried around a pen and notepad around everywhere with him because he was a young man and didn't know how to read body language. He was born with the inability to speak, was raised by a blind woman and a deaf man, so he had been quite accepting of his disability.
If anything, it had been a gift to him. It meant that he'd have to observe things more closely; it showed him that the world could be beautiful, even in times of turmoil.

A coyote howled in the distance. At least it was a sign that there was something living in this empty region.
Gregory sauntered along the dirt road. He felt Sally's presence tailing him, her sandals clapping loudly against the ground.

Megan's presence had been announced quite loudly, as she was singing something horribly off-tune. A hefty bag precariously oscillated against his shoulder.
They had left most of the supplies behind, but the essential belongings had been transported to a single black duffel bag. It contained at least three flashlights, seven crumpled bags of individually-wrapped snacks, a hunting knife (you could never be too safe), and some toilet paper.

Megan had her cell phone stashed in her own purse that accompanied a mess of irrelevant objects; Logan only needed his notepad and pen while the twins were indulged in their own world of music bursting from the earphones that clasped to their ears as if they were a second skin.
Anna's own purse was perched, like a forgotten trophy, on her shoulder as her eyes devoured the map held out before her.
"Have you determined where we are yet?" Sally inquired, peaking over the woman's shoulder nosily.
"Arizona," she provided with a curt nod, "We turned off Highway 7, I remember seeing the sign. Stopped at Joe's Burger Joint, which is just off of Route 23 off of that exit..." She pointed toward a line dashed across the white parchment, "And then... we ended up somewhere over here," Her finger drifted from the line to a more discreet one, barely visible. "This road isn't on the map, though. The road on the map is the one we had somehow strayed from. Barrensville... it doesn't seem to exist, as far as the map's concerned."

Greg's shoulders shifted as he sighed. They passed another sign that reminded them of their destination; it was small and he was sure that they would've missed it if they were rolling along in their van.

The words were scratched and weather worn, appearing ancient against the termite-eaten wood.
"How long have we been walking?" Megan whined from behind them.
Greg spared a sharp glance behind his shoulder and tripped, falling to the ground with a helpless grunt escaping his lips. It was a soft landing, however, as the corpse of a coyote caught his fall.

Sally shrieked. Anna stumbled back into Logan, who supported her weak and flailing body as she fainted at the sight of blood, even when it wasn't her own.
Megan, unaware of the situation, bumped smack into Sally and dropped the cell phone she had been fumbling with. The cell phone broke into a million little pieces, spewed over the ground as if a robot had regurgitated.
"My cell phone!"

The twins had both halted in their tracks, their music on pause as they watched Greg push himself away from the corpse in revulsion; Sally quickly went to his side and aided in his escape from the poignant-smelling body.

Anna awoke in Logan's arms and up righted herself, sweeping her hand across her sweating forehead while Logan expressed sympathy by enfolding his large hand around her left shoulder. With her opposite hand, she caressed his fingers, evidently soothed by this comforting gesture.
"A wolf," Megan said, nudging the remnants of her cell phone with the toe of her boot, "Looks like something killed it."
"It's too little to be a wolf," Sally pointed out, "It's a coyote. And yes, it looks like something just... really... indulged itself with its innards." She knelt to observe its mangled body.

Greg realized that she was more of a man than him, and in an attempt to protect his pride; he stood erect, harmlessly brushing the dust off the front of his jeans as if nothing had happened.

"Hon," he said, "It's a coyote. He probably died of hunger and heat, and was picked clean from buzzards. Let's go..."
Anna gulped as she spotted the blood staining the front of his white dress-shirt.
"Come on," Megan said, pushing past her blood-soaked brother and his persistent girlfriend, "The sooner we get to the town, the sooner we can get out of this dreadful heat."
Greg scooped the duffel bag into his arms and waited until Sally stepped over the sprawled carcass before continuing his stroll. The twins followed behind them, Logan bringing up the rear.

**

The town of Barrensville was as empty as the desert, it seemed. They drew nigh and halted in their steps, a bit disappointed at what they saw: ancient buildings, some stilted and some withering from age.

They entered from an old cobblestone path that weaved in between dead trees that had once been cultivated and, perhaps, fertile.
"Everything looks dead," Megan complained, "I don't like it, Greg. There's nobody here. Let's go back..." But even as she finished the sentence, they were entering an opening from the trees to a stretch of pavement closed in by buildings, save for the pathway that permitted their entrance.

"This way," Greg said, leading them out into the street that separated the two bordering buildings.
"How do you even know the way?" Sally asked, "Have you been here before?"

It all seemed oddly familiar to him, but instead of voicing these thoughts, he merely shook his head in the negative. Nobody said anything for quite some time; all of them were standing in the middle of the sand-infested street to contemplate their surroundings. There was one particular building that caught his eye; it looked like a towering prison with strong fortification, despite the years it had on it, standing strong against the rapid gusts of wind.
Greg stepped toward it, but a tug on his elbow stopped him in his tracks.

"Meg was right. There's nobody here." She was now beside him, so close that they were touching arm to arm; she was shivering, and he put an arm around her waist to soothe her; the duffle bag was hanging about his other shoulder.

"Now you guys can get your own room or something," Marcus said, having pocketed the CD player, "far away from me."
William shouldered his brother, who had pocketed his CD player as well, hinting to his younger brother that now was not a time.
Anna drilled him with a glare as Logan stood in a frozen gaze, looking toward an old theater. He withdrew the notepad and pen from his pocket and wrote 'This place really is dead. But at least there's a theater!'

He held it up to Anna, who read it aloud and allowed a faint chuckle to slip through her lips.
Logan smiled and pointed toward the theater. Everybody looked.

"Not too shabby," Anna said, "It could use some touching-ups, but it'll have to do."
"Do? Do for what?" Meg asked, "I'm not sleeping in there..."
"It's the only building that doesn't look like it's about to fall over. C'mon, guys." She pushed past the group and silently trotted toward the building.

Greg shrugged, Sally soon chased after her, and the twins looked at each other as if she'd lost her mind.
"It's better than staying out here," Marcus said as Logan ambled toward the solemn building. Megan watched them, open-mouthed, as if to suggest 'You're siding with them?'
First, Will followed, and then Marcus tailed just two inches from him.

Greg looked at her for a moment and shrugged again before following suit.
Not wanting to be abandoned, she rolled her eyes and started after them, her pink purse swinging on her shoulder.