“Please, we need this truck.” Ms. Pollack stood between the man and the students standing with her on the road. Meanwhile, the other adults were closing in around the back of the truck.
“I’m afraid we can’t let you have it,” the man said. He leaned on the bat, using it as a kind of cane while he spoke. Something about his casual demeanor made Kayla more nervous than if he’d just been threatening them.
“Maybe you can come with us,” Ms. Pollack said. “We’re headed—”
“Doesn’t look like there’s enough room,” he said, eyeing the choir. “Come on. Get out.”
Kayla saw the defeat on her teacher’s face. Ms. Pollack looked at the students in the truck and nodded. They stood up and hopped off the back of the truck one by one. Once they were out, the adults started filing in.
The man with the bat jumped into the driver’s seat and leaned out the window. “Thank you kindly,” he said to the choir, and the people in the back chuckled. With that, the truck made a U-turn and drove back the way the choir had just come from.
They stood in the middle of the road for a bit, everyone stunned by what had happened. Just minutes ago they’d been well on their way home. And now their hopes were crushed. The distance they had to travel felt much longer, their situation much more hopeless.
Kayla broke the silence. “How far are we from home?”
Ms. Pollack was rubbing her temples and looking at the ground. “About a hundred and twenty miles,” she said flatly. “Give or take. It’s hard to tell exactly where we are on the map.”
“How long would it take us to walk?” Steph asked.
“Like three days,” Luke said.
“I don’t have enough food for three days,” one student said.
“Me neither,” Maddie said.
“Yeah,” another student added, “If I don’t—”
“We can’t stay here!” Ms. Pollack shouted. The rest of the students quickly stopped talking.
Kayla was surprised at her sudden outburst. She’d never seen Ms. Pollack like this. Kayla had always thought their choir director was incapable of losing her composure. She’d kept her cool through everything that happened, but losing the truck must have been the last straw.
Ms. Pollack continued, “We have to keep moving! If it takes us three days, it takes us three days, but we have to go. Now!” She walked around the cars that were blocking the road, and the students followed.
Just as they had when they left the airport, they walked in a loose cluster. They moved over one hill just to head for the next one. No one mentioned their food situation; nobody needed to. We all know what a disaster it will be if we don’t find some source of food soon, Kayla thought.
One boy grabbed some corn off a stalk in the field they were walking next to. He pulled the husk back and took a big bite, but quickly spit the kernels out. They were far too hard to eat. Some kids grabbed some anyway.
When dusk fell, they made camp in a barn that looked like it hadn’t been tended to in decades. Parts of the roof were gone, and there weren’t any doors. They ate some of the little food they had left, and Kayla fell into a restless sleep. When she woke the next morning, it felt as if she hadn’t slept at all.
They walked into the afternoon. The scenery never changed. The repetitive landscape made Kayla feel like she was walking on a treadmill. They may have been getting closer to home, but it never felt like they were making any progress. She took to looking at the ground as she walked.
Suddenly she bumped into Ms. Pollack’s back. The teacher had stopped moving, looking hard at the horizon.
“What’s up?” Kayla asked.
She didn’t answer, but her eyes narrowed, focusing harder on whatever she was looking at. The rest of the choir had stopped as well.
“What is that?” one of the students asked. Kayla still couldn’t see what they were talking about.
All at once, the teacher’s eyes went wide, and she darted to the side of the road. “It’s a truck!” she said. The fear in Ms. Pollack’s voice sent a chill up Kayla’s spine. “It’s coming this way—everyone hide!”