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It took two days in their entirety to return to Walnut hill. Once we got there, we stayed for a day at the same campsite we had used on our previous visit. Over those two days, we rested, fished the lake for some fish and hunted small animals. For once, we had a meal with real meat, not MRE bullshit. Jericho also improved significantly over those two days. He put one more than a few pounds and soon was back up to full strength. He and Raf became inseparable as well. Everywhere that Raf went Jericho followed. Raf had admitted to me that it was just a little annoying.

On Thursday morning, I was awakened from a somewhat peaceful sleep by Jericho licking my face. At first I thought I was just twitching, but when my eyes cracked open, all I saw was his pink tongue.

"Get off of me boy", I said pushing him away. I sat up and Jericho pounced on me, his eyes large and happy.

"Get off dog", I said pushing him off, "go bother Raf."

I sat up and stepped outside the tent. The sky was a bright blue, winds were blowing and the calls of the birds were thick in the air. It felt like it was about 70 or so and if I didn't know any better, I'd say we were in the middle of spring. Really hope it stays like this. I walked over to the truck and got dressed as Raf crawled out of the tent.

"Jericho wake you up too?", Raf asked as he started getting dressed.

"Yep", I replied pulling on my jean jacket, "I told him to bother you."

Raf sighed, "I hate you."

I laughed, "Strike two. Say you hate me again and I will leave you behind."

"You won't leave me behind", Raf said, "you ain't got the guts."

"Try me", I laughed.

Raf just rolled his eyes and started brushing his teeth while I hauled out the stove. I had shot a wild boar yesterday when I was hunting, so for the first time in almost a month, that met fresh bacon. I had been careful when I was out to make sure it was a small one so nothing would go to waste. The second the bacon hit the pan, the sizzle started driving me crazy.

"Fresh, never frozen bacon", Raf said, "only $2.10 at your local Kroger."

"I never shopped at Kroger", I replied, "not in Texas and not in Maine, it was always Walmart for me."

"So you supported the Empire huh?", Raf asked.

"Walmart was not the evil Empire", I said, "they had lower prices than anything else and very few of the employees made minimum wage, everyone else made more."

Raf just smiled as if he'd won, which he hadn't. I just shrugged and pulled open a bag of puffy Cheetos while I cooked the bacon and an Eggs MRE. In less than ten minutes, breakfast was done and Raf and I sat down by the truck to eat. The eggs tasted like plastic bags, but the bacon was amazing. It was just crunchy enough and when you bit into it, all you got was juice that tasted amazing. That was probably the single best breakfast we'd had since the Agent Six shit-storm had started. Once breakfast was done, we cleaned up the stove and plates, packed up the tent and were once again on the road.

I drove from the campsite through the forested area and turned onto Little Lane and then onto the familiar Steele Creek Park Road. I followed it for about a mile or so and then turned onto Steele Creek Drive which led me back to Blountville Highway. I followed that for what was about three or four miles and then turned onto Meadow View Parkway. After following that for about fifteen minutes or so I was on State Rout 461, headed North. Need to reverse that as soon as possible. Or maybe just go home.

"Hey Cameron?", Raf asked.

"Yeah?", I asked.

"Why don't we just go home? Back to Maine?"

I sighed. To be honest, I had begun to question why we'd left Maine in the first place. I could have simply cleaned up the neighborhood and started building up the house and making it livable again. If I was honest with myself, Texas, the survivor colony, it may not even be there. It may just be my excuse to go home and reclaim the house I grew up in. I knew that it was still there, the way it was isolated. I wasn't sure what to tell him.

"Because we can't", I said.

"Why not?", Raf asked.

"We just can't alright?", I said sternly, "I promised Mom AND Dad that I would get you to safety. The only place that exists now is Texas, as they were hit the least by the virus. I may have to be wary of bandits, but that's a price I gotta pay if it means YOU get to be safe."

Raf didn't answer me after that. I wasn't sure that he knew how to. I drove for about an hour once we hit the freeway. Morning turned to late morning and late morning into afternoon as we headed for Bristol, which was a small town located on the borders of Tennessee and Kentucky. I took Exit 45 and drove on the down ramp into town.

The roads were littered with cars, some had both doors open, some had been burned while still others were just sitting there, looking as if they were getting ready to turn. I could just see shadowy remains inside them, there former owners no doubt. Some of the buildings were razed, nothing but charred skeletons where they'd once stood. It could have been the wildfires that had plagued the country because of the drought, or it may have been the food riots which had come so hard and so quickly all over the world. I suspected the latter. There was an autogarage, a Shell-Clean Diesel station and a Wallgreens close to the ramp. We needed diesel so I pulled into the Shell station and killed the truck.

"Get out and stretch little bro", I said undoing my seatbelt.

"Don't need to tell me twice", Raf said grabbing his AK and sliding out of the truck.

I opened my door and stepped out. It was noticeably warmer now, which negated the need for my jacket. I set it in the back of the truck and then checked the pumps, which, to my relief, were still on. I pulled the nozzle from the pump and started pumping the gas. I figured I was at about 75% of a tank when the power to the pumps died. I tried to restart it a few times, but to no avail.

"Well of luck's finally dry", I said to myself as I placed the nozzle in it's place. I pulled one of the gas cans from the back of the truck, filling the tank the rest of the way and draining the can down to about 25% full. As I was sticking the can in the bed of the truck, a thought came to mind and I grabbed the map, beginning to study the route through the forest. I measured the road out at 20 centimeters and since each centimeter was 30 miles, I had a 600 mile drive. I figured that at 70 miles an hour, my travel time was five hours. At 70 miles an hour my truck got exactly 25 miles a gallon and the truck carried 20 gallons. I figured I'd need to refuel a couple of times. Once I was done planing I went looking for Raf.

They weren't inside the Shell store. For a split second, I worried that maybe something had happened. I brought myself under control and grabbed my vest and my AR from my truck and then walked across the street to the Wallgreens. The windows were boarded up and there was "Open", painted on it in black letters. It was dark inside the store, but I could hear something going on inside. I figured it was Raf and Jericho, but I didn't dare call out to them on the off chance that it wasn't. I shouldered my AR and walked quietly inside, taking great care not to kick any of the many empty bottles and cans that lay strewn on the floor. I walked to the back of the store and in what little sunlight there was, I saw that it was Raf and Jericho. They had a small pile of canned goods and were still actively searching.

"Hey Raf?", I said.

Raf turned around, training his AK right at me.

"Wow easy killer", I said, "I'm on your side."

Raf lowered his gun, "you scared me Cameron."

"Sorry", I replied, "tank's full, let's get going, long drive."

I helped Raf grab his ill gotten booty and soon we were back on the road again. Jericho was chilling in the back seat, Raf was playing my PS Vita and I was passing the drive by listening to Magnum 1's Battleship in their "Molten Metal" album, one of the heaviest ones they ever did. Noon turned to afternoon as I drove through Bristol and got onto 421 which led into the forested, smoky Cherokee Forest.

The scenery was unlike any other since we'd started this trip. The sun peaked through the tall, leafy trees and the rays reflected off the little drops of water that drifted lazily in the air. Because the air was very humid, I rolled up the windows and turned on the AC. The cab chilled pretty quickly, but we were comfortable.

The time past quickly. 1, 2, 3, now it was four PM. We had stopped to refuel only once since I engaged Front Wheel Drive, which saved gas, despite how much I hated it. The sun was beginning to turn that orange, gold and pink color and as pretty as it was, it was annoying as hell because it was right in my eyes. Even with sunglasses on it was hard to see. It was shortly past four thirty when I saw a sign reading

"Mountain City City Limits. Population: 2,234."

"There's a town up here", Raf said.

"Good", I said, "we can make a pit stop for gas and snacks and I can ditch this lousy front wheel drive for rear wheel drive."

"Why you always hating on Front Wheel Drive?", Raf asked.

"Because it sucks", I said in reply, "simple as that."

When I got into Mountain City, the sight was unbelievable. Everything had been annihilated. The roads were a mess of still smoldering cars. Buildings had been razed, windows broken, everything was just destroyed. The smell of gunpowder was hanging in the air and the sun gleamed off of more brass than I cared to guess about, but let's just say my traction went from paved road to almost gravel, there were that many fired bullets in the road. I could also see a lot of AR-15 magazines laying around. There was also smoke, lots of it, lofting around. I depressed the clutch and changed to All Wheel Drive, while the truck was still running, which my Dad had warned me I could only do once or twice before I screwed something up, but at the moment, I was more worried about getting away, the truck could always get a new clutch from any Ford Mustang we ran across.

"What the hell?", Raf whispered quietly.

"I could ask the same", I said getting out. The smoke hit me like a wall. Raf too. We both covered our faces and started looking around, picking up the magazines as we went. I wasn't sure what we were expecting to find. Maybe the people who did this. Of course, I wasn't sure what I was expecting to do. There was so much brass on the ground that there had to have been a HUGE firefight here, recently.

At the edge of town, there was a train station with a passenger train sitting there. There was a US Flag flying from it and a Marine Flag right below that, telling me there was still a strong sense of America left here, up until a few minutes ago, at the most. As I walked in the train station, the first thing that caught me, was a Marine, in full combat gear, laying on the ground in a puddle of her own blood with a little boy on top of her. Both of them were riddled with bullet holes and the two were holding one another's hands. Mother and son, an execution? I don't know...there must be more. I knelt down beside her and took her dog tags.

"Sargent Taylor Mitchel, B Negative, 3347890231."

"Rest in peace sister", I said placing the tags in my drop pouch, "you didn't deserve this, neither did your boy."

I stood up, shouldered my rifle and entered the train car. There had definitely been people living here. There were bean bags, suitcases, curtains on the windows, fans, laptops, tablets and phones, some of which still held open programs or games of Pinball or Minesweeper. There were a bunch of clothes up in the racks and there was music playing, ACDC in fact. In the next car over, the dining car, there was still warm food on plates. Signs of a struggle were everywhere my eyes glanced. Knocked over computers, broken vases, food on the floor and a few spent shot shells. I've got a dead Marine and her son in the train station, signs of a good number of people in here and more spent brass than I've ever seen in one place in the streets, so...what in the name of God is outside?

With my M4 ready, I opened the other door of the train car. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. I don't care who you are, no amount of combat experience prepares you for what I was looking at, because it's just something that doesn't happen and even if it does, it doesn't happen like his.

Mass execution...couldn't even begin to describe it. For a split second, I wondered if I was in a Nazi death camp. Nearly 200 dead, right in front of me. The bodies were lined up against a cinder block wall which was riddled with bullet holes and splattered with blood. There were people hanging by their necks from the trees, most of which were little kids, no older than five or six. Most of the older kids and the adults looked like they'd been machine gunned. In fact they had, there were links and spent 308 everywhere. An M60? Mark 48?, no MaDuece, there'd be no bodies, and I don't see any 50BMG around. As if the sight of the people lined up and shot wasn't bad enough, to my right, were the Marines.

There were sixty of them. They'd been lined up against the train, their backs facing their attackers, and machine gunned. Their hands were tied behind their backs, their feet were tied and they'd been blindfolded and gagged. Some of them had been impaled, while others were tied against trees with arrows in their necks. I could only imagine what must have gone on here. The blood was still fresh, we'd just missed this massacre, I was surprised I didn't hear it from the truck. For two seconds, my mind came back long enough for me to yell for Raf to get to me.

As I looked around more, I saw ATV tracks headed out, in the same direction we were headed. Not fucking good, not good at all. When Raf and Jericho came around the corner, Raf puked. The sight was way too much for him to take. I ran over to him.

"Cameron?", he asked wiping off his mouth, "what happened here."

Now's not the time for lies, "There was a mass murder buddy", I said, "we just missed it, by maybe ten minutes."

Raf didn't speak, "what happens if they come back?"

"Won't matter cause we won't be here", I said, "let's go."

Raf and I ran back to the truck. I put it in drive and soon we were doing 85 down the Highway, trying to put as much distance as possible between us and Mountain City.