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She dropped her bent arm from Saff’s bicep down to her wrist. Then she moved it lower, lacing their fingers together.
“What does—“ she paused mid-sentence as something wet hit her brow. And Saff must have felt it to because she came to a stop a moment later.
Then another drop hit her cheek, followed by another.
She heard someone, probably Josh, groan in the short distance ahead.
“Great,” he mumbled a moment later.
Saff loosed a small sigh, then began walking again. But within seconds, the random splatters had turned into a light sprinkle.
“Should we stop?” her mom called out.
“No,” both Josh and Saff answered at the same time.
“We can’t afford to get soaked,” her father’s gruff voice said ahead of her. “Not when we can’t risk lighting a fire tonight.”
Josh huffed. “We also can’t afford to lose a day. We don’t have enough food or water to last if we fall behind.”
Maddie brushed wetness from her forehead as the drops increased their frequency. “Are there trees around? Maybe we can stay beneath them and get shielded from the worst of it.”
Saff unlaced their hands, and Maddie felt her shifting beside her.Then she took her hand again. “That’s a good idea.”
“The visibility won’t be great,” her dad said. “We also need to be able to see our surroundings well enough and watch out for things.”
“I’d rather take that chance than wait it out,” Josh grumbled.
They were all quiet for a moment before Saff started moving again. “Come on. Let’s get under the trees.”
They continued on like that for a while, short bursts of rainfall dribbling onto her face every once in a whileasthey moved through patches without cover. But luckily, it wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had been when they’d been forced to stay in the abandoned house overnight.
And eventually, too slowly, the rain softened into a light trickle.
Then, somewhere far off, she heard it.
A muffled crack.
Saff froze, her fingers instantly tightening their grip around her hand.
“Was that..” her mother’s voice trailed off. And no one spoke the answer they all knew.
A gunshot.
It wasn’t loud enough to have been anywhere close by, but still, anything they could hear would be too close.
After a moment, it was her father’s voice that finally broke the silence. “Which direction did it come from?”
Saff answered immediately. “Northeast.”
Her father released a frustrated breath. “That’s where we need to go.”
She heard heavy crunching steps coming their way, then Josh’s voice. “That’s fine, right? Can’t we still go that way and—“
“No,” Saff cut him off, leaving no room to argue. “Even if we watch out for people, that one gunshot will attract any zombies in the area. It’d be too risky.”
She heard something drop to the ground, then a second later, the familiar sound of the map crinkling open.
“We could go farther to the left and enter the canyon from here,” her father said.