2
Hours later, Adrian groaned as he lowered his 6'1" 230 lb, sore body to the dark bank of Duchesne Creek, not caring that mud was soaking into his dusty jeans. Both his knees popped, head aching from the fumes of all the cars they'd stripped, tanks they'd emptied. It had been a 20 hour day for him already, and it wasn't over, but this area was ugly, full of death, and devoid of normal life. Even the mutating ants wouldn't live here, and that frightened him. Would spending a day or two on this ground make his people sick?
Adrian sighed. They had to have a break soon, but not tomorrow or the next day. He had settled for making camp under the retractable awning of an apple orchard (long since stripped, with the owners body rotting on the front walk), and after seeing that Kenn knew how he wanted things, Adrian had come here to steal a few minutes alone in the darkness, worrying.
Inhaling softly, the tired leader tensed at a ripple from the slow-moving water that said something was still alive in that reeking liquid. He tried to take hope from it, moving his hand away from his gun. They were only about fifteen miles from Roosevelt, Utah, and he was very aware that horrible, unspeakable things had happened there. It was bad enough to make him consider backtracking despite all the extra miles it would add.
This land was broken, rotting and muddy. The roads were unbelievable, impassable without the tow trucks. Bridges were gone, fallen and washed away. Nearly every street was crammed full of vehicles, most empty of their drivers, and Adrian assumed that was from people fleeing California and Washington. They had watched entire, distant hillsides of mud collapse in the last few days, the thick, reddish ooze swallowing homes and highways, and the weather was the cause. It rained each morning now, and the saturated ground simply couldn't hold any more. Barely above freezing most nights, the cold sleet was the color of ashes, and added more weight to the muddy hills…more chemicals to the land.
He had people wearing extra layers to avoid contact with the precipitation, sure it was full of toxins, but Adrian was almost positive they were on the very edge of some type of ground zero here. Besides the possible danger, the views were hard to ignore, and impossible not to feel. Twisted, burned metal, crushed cars and building walls lay over the ground like grave markers. There were charred shoes, flattened fire hydrants, and of course, bones. Human and animal mixed together and scattered across the sagebrush land like a huge jigsaw puzzle that had been shoved off a table.