Come On

The news hasn’t done it justice. None of that felt real compared to seeing it in reality.

If there was any doubt left in her that the world was ending, that sadly got washed away by the sight of these places further out from her town and, eventually, nearer to the coast. Earthquakes were only becoming more and more common- it wasn’t difficult to find overturned rides, signs, and buildings wherever you went. It was treated as little more than a mundane nuisance, really. Conspiracy theorists were already doing their best to explain the phenomenon, but their wildest ideas never could pin down the disaster approaching all of humanity. She felt almost like the protagonist of a dystopian novel. Even as one of the cab services she took offered a rafting route through one of the lower areas of a city that had begun to drown, it was only her that knew the reason.

Nighttime had become strangely colorful. Never black, always bluish-orange, like day wouldn’t quite stay asleep. In any other circumstance, she might’ve thought it beautiful, and indeed, many people she saw did. It only served to unnerve her.

Hitchhiking was unnerving to begin with. It wasn’t long before she took a ride she had to bail out on early. She might’ve just been paranoid. The driver did let her out, after all. On one hand, she wondered if she even had the time to be this discerning. At this rate, she’d be doubling or even tripling the time it would take to reach her sister. But soon, she was passing up any ride that looked the slightest bit suspicious. Even though nothing bad happened during that trip, she acted like it could at any moment. She’d later wonder if she was just trying to prolong the inevitable, just trying to run from Katie as much as she’d essentially run from home.

Each day ended in a stay at a shitty motel, each one worse than the last. Cheryl called her often, but she resisted the urge to pick up. She needed sleep, and she told herself she’d just see her when she got home. She was running from her, too.

At home, the parents convinced themselves they were proud of Frankie. They knew she’d return, somehow- with their eldest daughter next to her. Then it could all be okay, for just awhile longer.

Every night, Frankie prayed this exact same thing would happen before she slept, delving into increasingly horrible nightmares each and every time, only to awaken to the one nightmare she couldn’t leave- the one surrounding her at every waking moment.

“Come on.” She told herself every morning.

And still, she pushed on, trekking through the country on foot.