Chapter Text
They’d been walking for God only knew how long. Awsten’s legs were screaming for him to stop fucking walking already. Begging for a reprieve that was longer than a pitiful excuse for a meal or a handful of hours to sleep. But they couldn’t stop walking now. They had to get the fuck out of Texas before it literally killed them.
The water had started swallowing the land up ago, before his grandparents were even born. It was slow at first, until the dams started breaking and the storms–hurricanes, mostly–started to speed things up. By the time he’d come around, half of what was once the second biggest state in the U.S. was lost to the water, with millions dead. They’d learned that many died from pure stubbornness, refusing to acknowledge the truth of the situation. But more died purely due to bad luck. Being poor as the world crumbled around you was about as unlucky as one could get.
“Can we stop? I think I’ll fucking die if we keep walking.”
Geoff and Otto looked at him; Otto amused, Geoff not so much.
“I dunno man, we’re making good progress,” Geoff said, running a hand through his overgrown hair.
Otto just slung his hiking bag onto the ground. “We’ve been walking for three weeks. We’re making terrible progress.”
That was the other unlucky bullshit. When Texas started to, quite literally, go under, that meant they lost most of the country's domestic oil. And that meant they lost their fucking cars too. They were a luxury item for sure, but up until about five years ago, when the roads were no longer drivable, Awsten’s family had been lucky enough to have one. He bitterly lamented the loss of the beat to hell minivan that he’d always hated driving. Hindsight is 20/20 or whatever the fuck they say.
As Otto sat down on the gravel-grass mix on the side of the road, Geoff sighed, giving in and sinking to the ground beside him. Awsten smiled, relieved, falling haphazardly to the ground before laying his head on Otto’s thighs, soaking in the warmth of his body heat against his neck. The sky was a murky green above them, meaning another tornado wasn’t far off. They’d seen, if Awsten had to guess, twenty fucking thousand since they’d crossed into Tennessee. Hence why they’d stuck to highways, where there were bigger ditches to hide in. That and the fact that the highways were much easier to navigate.
Awsten could still remember the first one vividly. Lying on the tall, wet grass, the water seeping through his hoodie and chilling him to the bone as he grasped Otto’s hand as if it was the only thing that mattered. He remembered his eyes hurting from how hard he had squeezed them shut, as if it would ward off the funnel above them.
He bitterly shook the thought from his head. “Where the fuck are we even going?” Awsten muttered, his mood suddenly soured.
Geoff frowned. It was the question on everyone's mind. There wasn’t a single place left on Earth, let alone The States, that was really all that habitable. There were rumors that Iceland was doing okay for itself, but Awsten chalked that up to folklore. Communication between the continents was practically nonexistent these days, and leaving would be next to impossible even if it were true. But Texas only had maybe two decades left before it was drowned by the ocean, so they had to take their chances somewhere else.
California had started to fracture into pieces fifty years ago. The inlands might be fine, but given the remaining land mass had shrunk from fifty thousand miles to just over thirty, none of them felt like pressing their luck. New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada had dried up years ago; rumors of underground bunkers had interested Awsten, but it wasn’t worth the risk of dying in the desert to find out. Any mountainous part of the U.S. had succumbed to landslides and avalanches back in 2047, millions crushed to death, the land far too unstable to provide any real quality of life. The East Coast had faced the same fate as Texas, swallowed by the ocean, doomed to be forgotten by the next generation.
And Tennessee had fucking tornados and thunderstorms every other day, so fuck that.
“I heard there’s a train going from Nashville to Chicago,” Otto muttered, looking wistfully at the overgrown grass swallowing up an old, broken-down pickup truck.
“Trains don’t run anymore, Otto,” Geoff muttered, putting his head in his hands.
Otto just looked up at the sky in a way that told Awsten he was trying to stay levelheaded. “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, alright?”
The eldest of them picked angrily at the ground. “I just don’t want to get our hopes up, okay? Chicago started freezing over decades ago, anyway.”
Awsten winced at the thought. Trudging through snow every day didn’t sound appealing. But, if it meant no more tornadoes…
“You don’t think we should try?” He asked softly.
Geoff looked at him, his eyes glazed over. “I mean… Fuck,” he whispered, wiping at his teary eyes. “You wanna live in the fucking tundra?”
“You wanna keep hiding in ditches until we die?”
“Heard the sun’s set to explode any day now,” Otto smiled down at him, attempting to lighten the mood.
But, because it was Otto, it worked. So Awsten just rolled his eyes, reaching up to push the hair from his face. “You’ve been hearing a lot of shit.”
“Y’all never wanna go into the Stuff Stores with me,” he simply shrugged. “But seriously, Geoff,” Otto said, his voice dripping with hope. “Is Chicago the new Alaska? Yes. But the lakes dried up years ago, so there’s no flooding. It’s not hot-and-cold enough for tornadoes. No earthquakes, like, ever. In history. And it was built to be walkable, so we would be able to get essentials without walking for hours at a time. It’s the closest to a normal life we could get.”
“And we’d be popsicles.”
“But we’d be safer,” Otto argued, his voice steady and his eyes fiery.
Awsten usually tried not to take sides. He didn’t like to make Geoff feel like they were ganging up on him, and he hated going against Otto’s wants in general, given he rarely ever had any. But this felt too important not to speak on.
Sitting up slowly, Awsten pushed his bangs back. He’d have to ask Otto to cut his hair soon. “Geoff, I’m sorry, but he has a point. We’ve been trying to get out of Texas for years. And now that we’re out, it’s our best bet.”
Pulling his knees to his chest, Geoff rested his forehead on his knees. After a moment of silence, he turned his head to meet Otto’s eyes. “When does the train leave?”
Smiling, Otto lunged at Geoff, a smile plastered on his face as they hit the ground hard, making them laugh. “Oh my God, Geoff! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Shut up,” Geoff managed through a laugh, shoving him off. “Just fucking hope and pray we manage to find some fucking heavy coats on the way.”
As they walked, Otto told them everything he knew. At a Stuff Store, about two days back, the store clerk told him about a train leaving from Nashville in a week's time. Which meant they had five days. Even if they walked straight there, they were still two days out from Nashville. But factoring in breaks to eat, sleep, and avoid dying from some fucked up natural disaster, they’d just barely make it. If they even did.
But they had no other choice.
After another ten hours of walking, Geoff threw his bag on the ground, watching as it rolled down the steep slope of the ditch where they’d be camping, God forbid a tornado form while they slept. “We gotta call it a night.” He looked down at his watch, sighing. “It’s almost one.”
Awsten didn’t argue. Placing his old oversized gym bag down, he stretched before kicking it so that it followed suit with Geoff’s bag, the collision making a dull thudding noise. “It’s at least gonna be dry tonight,” he smiled, looking down at the grassy, sunken median. There was enough room where they’d stopped that he and Otto might even be able to lie down next to each other.
“Where’s this optimism coming from?” Otto teased, his backpack still weighing heavily on his shoulders. Awsten wished he’d let him help carry some of the heavier supplies, but Otto always refused his attempts to help.
He just shrugged, walking awkwardly down the patch of grass. “Got stuff to look forward to now.”
He could practically feel Geoff’s eyeroll, but was rewarded with one of Otto’s smiles. “That so?”
"We gotta set up the tarp,” Awsten deflected, nudging him with his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah. I know the drill,” Otto brushed him off, already throwing his backpack to the ground.
Finally at the flattest part of the median, the boys set to work on the respective roles of their night-time routine. Geoff unrolled the thin tarp and passed it to Awsten as Otto grabbed the old, rust-covered camping stakes from his bag to hold in place so Awsten could stomp them into the ground. When one side was held firmly in place, they crossed the narrow median to secure the other side, a makeshift, low-hanging roof to ward off any rain they might encounter that night. It wasn’t entirely foolproof. Anything beyond a light shower would flood the ditch no matter what they did, but given that rain in some capacity was a given, it didn’t hurt to try.
Geoff laid out their second, somehow thinner, tarp as the other boys worked. Once it was flat on the ground, he then set to work laying out the three worn to hell sleeping bags, placing two next side by side, his own set so that the foot box butted up against that of Otto and Awsten’s. Finally, he grabbed three hoodies, shoving them into each sleeping bag's pillow pocket in a lame attempt to provide some semblance of cushion. Once that was done, he dragged all three bags to rest beside his sleeping bag, looping the carabiners attached to each of them into the three makeshift slots Geoff had cut into the tarp to keep them secure through the night.
Given that this had been the routine since they'd encountered their first tornado, the whole production only took about fifteen minutes. Luckily, rain had been light that day, by their fucked up standards anyway, so the camping stakes were holding firmly. Awsten breathed out a sigh of relief at the lack of sag in their ‘roof,’ not wanting to spend another night with the tarp brushing against his nose every time the wind blew.
Shimmying their way into their shelter for the night, Awsten climbed clumsily into his sleeping bag. As he did every night, he thanked whatever was out there that Otto’s parents had an affinity for camping. God only knew their excursion would’ve been ten times more miserable without some type of shelter every night, no matter how shitty it was.
Geoff was already in bed by the time Awsten and Otto had finished setting up. He quickly bid them goodnight before Awsten heard and felt the thin fabric beneath them shift. Sitting up, as far as he could anyway, he saw that Geoff had turned onto his side, an arm under his head. Turning back to Otto, who was just now climbing in to join them, he whispered, “Do you think his arm goes numb? Sleeping like that?”
Otto stole a quick glance before chuckling softly. “You of all people should know there’s no comfortable way to sleep on the side of the highway.” He rolled up his sleeping bag before tapping Awsten’s temple.
Wordlessly, Awsten lifted his head, feeling the polyester brush against his ear. “I do know that,” he mumbled, scooting over so that Otto could slot himself into the limited space of his sleeping bag. “I just think it must be uncomfortable.”
“I can hear you,” Geoff said, his voice light.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, his tone tinted with some light teasing, but still genuine enough to let Awsten know that he meant it. “I like the background noise.”
Otto let out a genuine laugh. “Okay, we’re done now. Good night, Geoffrey.”
Geoff sighed, kicking weakly at Otto but catching Awsten’s foot instead. “Ow!” Awsten protested, despite it not actually hurting. Geoff said nothing in return, kicking once more for good measure.
After a few minutes of silence, Otto touched Awsten’s hair, his fingers nearly floating over the strands. “You need a haircut,” he murmured, his nose less than an inch from Awsten’s.
“You need to cut my hair,” he shot back quietly, letting his eyes fall shut as Otto playfully tugged a lock of his hair.
Otto moved his arm to rest on the outside of the bag, draping it over his friend’s waist. “I can in the morning. Before Geoff wakes up.”
The younger boy nodded, resting his forehead against Otto’s chin. “‘Kay,” he slurred, his eyes suddenly heavy with exhaustion. “Night, Otto.”
He felt Otto’s head dip slightly, his lips pressing to ghost the crown of his head. “Night, Awsten.”