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Justin winced. “There isn’t anything I can say to make this better, is there?”
“No.”
Justin nodded. Perhaps it was better she be hurt sooner than later, when she might have let those feelings grow.
The silence was painful.
Justin glanced over at Carly. She stared straight ahead over the handlebars of her bike, her face set in a cold, stony expression that was somehow worse than tears. On her necklace, the soda can tab glimmered dully in the pallid light that strained through the gathering storm clouds.
They’d have to stop soon, before the storm began. He opened his mouth to tell her, but closed it again, unsure of how to proceed. But he had to say something. The tension was driving him crazy. “Carly, can I at least apologize to you?”
“Sure.” She nodded. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
Justin inwardly winced, but she was right. It didn’t change anything. “We’d better stop before it starts to—”
Before he could finish the sentence, the sky opened up and rain came down in dreary sheets. Within moments, they were soaked, chilled, and miserable.
“Let’s stop and put up the tent,” Justin said. Thunder rumbled overhead. “It’s not a good idea to ride in this kind of weather.”
“You said last night we’d reach Toad River today. I want to keep going.” She didn’t look in his direction as she spoke, and her voice was flat, without inflection.
Justin hesitated for a moment before he agreed. The idea of sitting side by side in the tent, silent and grim, was unappealing, to say the least. He told himself they’d stop if he saw any lightning and went back to pedaling in silence, trying to think of something he could say to restore their easy camaraderie.
Poor Sam seemed as miserable as the humans. He paused every so often to give his fur a vigorous shake. Shadowfax was the sole member of their group who didn’t seem to mind the rain. She followed along at a leisurely pace, pausing now and then to take a bite of a tasty plant.
They ate a cold lunch, holding one of the tarps over their heads with one hand. Justin cursed himself a dozen times that day for forgetting to get them rain gear. Carly looked miserable. Her hair hung down her back in wet ropes, and her hands trembled with cold, but she insisted she didn’t want to stop.
Late that afternoon, they saw a faux-log building beside the highway, and both let out simultaneous sighs of relief. It was something they once would have laughed at, but Carly looked away and pedaled faster toward the building. Justin accelerated as well and managed to catch hold of her arm before she opened the door. “Let me check it out first,” he said. After a moment, she nodded and stepped aside for him to pass through the door.
Like many service stops in Canada, it offered multiple amenities. There was a store with a restaurant, and a post office was located on one side of the building with a separate entrance. Behind the main building, there were motel rooms and small cabins.
Carly walked down to the post office doorway, and she and Sam huddled under its shelter to wait.
The door to the store was locked, and Justin was too impatient to pick it. He selected a rock from the handy ornamental pile in front of the door and used it to smash the glass panel on the door before reaching inside to unlock it.
The store was silent. Justin waited for a moment until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and then crept silently through the building. His senses and instincts told him there was no one inside—no one living, anyway— but he was cautious just the same.
The store was small and charming, paneled in yellow pine and filled with a large variety of souvenirs. There was a little dining area with soda refrigerators and a cappuccino machine, and he wished he could find a way to turn it on for on for Carly, who’d spoken longingly of cappuccinos one morning.
Baseball caps covered the entire ceiling, some with signatures on the bills. A dry erase board over a doorway announced they had over seven thousand of them. Justin wondered about the reason behind it as he headed to the counter to look for keys to the motel rooms and cabins behind the store. He supposed it was like the Sign Post Forest, travelers leaving their mark there, and he was surprised at the sadness the thought brought with it. He shook his head with a rueful smile as he walked back to the front door. Carly was having a greater influence on him than he’d thought.
She was sitting with her back against the door, Sam lying beside her. They looked up at him with identical expressions of cool indifference, and Justin inwardly winced. “It’s fine. There are some dry clothes in there. Why don’t you go in and change while I check out the rooms?”
“Get two,” Carly said. Her voice was short, and she didn’t look at him as she brushed by and headed toward the back of the store.
“I won’t crowd you, Carly, but I don’t want to leave you alone, either. We’re getting closer to more populated areas and—”
“Fine.” She didn’t pause in her stride. Sam followed right at her heels, but not before giving Justin a glare that said he knew just who to blame for his human’s bad mood.
He was glad Carly had relented since there was only one cabin that wasn’t occupied by victims of the Infection. Justin wondered what had happened to their cars since the parking lot was empty. He wheeled his bicycle and the wagon around to the back of their cabin, where it would be hidden from the road.
He went back into the store and heard Carly’s voice from the back of the room, where clothing hung from the walls on sloping pegs. Sam gave a soft whine. He was sniffing at a group of wolf pelts hanging from a hook. Carly grimaced.
“Sorry, Sam,” she said. “I understand if you’re creeped out by it. I’d freak if I saw a bunch of human pelts on the wall, too.”
Carly found an umbrella on the coat rack in the restaurant and opened it over her head as they stepped out of the gift shop and crossed the parking lot. She politely offered Justin shelter beneath it, but he waved it away. He led her to a small, wood-sided cabin behind a high privacy fence.
“There’s plenty of room,” Justin said. “I won’t crowd you, Carly.”
