After I stopped crying from burying Rob, we headed to a gas station. We raided everything. There was a slush machine, so we got huge cups and got a ton of sugar. Ernest went hyper! I took a gum and some chips. Dylan opened his backpack and shoved everything he could into it. 

“Chill!” Wyatt said.

“Who knows what happens next? What if we need this to survive?” he said back.

“I’m pretty sure we are not going to need a billion Tic Tacs for survival,” I reasoned.

“I have more than that! I also have some cheese sticks,” he said jokingly (at least I thought he was joking, or we would be dead soon). 

“Whatever you guys are doing, hurry up! What if soldiers come? I have had enough of them!” Mary said, actually thinking. I snuck a peek at Dylan. He was trying to calm Ernest down. At the same time, he was having a fun conversation with Wyatt. 

“What ya’ looking at Ava?” asked Mary.

“Uh, nothing!” I said.

“I know you looked at him,” Mary whispered. To change the subject, I looked randomly everywhere. I stopped looking around when I saw Finn. He was silent the whole time. He looked really sad. I figured he was sad that Rob died. Ernest saw him and stopped going hyper. He offered Finn a coke. 

Finn declined and ran to the bathroom yelling, “I don’t feel so good!” We heard Finn vomiting in the bathroom. 

“You, ok?” Dylan asked. I hoped Dylan and Finn were friends again.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, but I didn’t think he was actually ok. He walked out of the bathroom, covered in vomit. After that, he fainted and fell to the floor.

“This better not be the gas from those soldiers! We’ve all seen what that gas can do!” Ernest said, dragging Finn onto a bench in. Impressive, He can actually drag something other than his fat physics books.

“If this is the gas, what do we do with him?” Dylan asked.

“We have to check first,” said Wyatt, reasoning. 

“Check his pulse,” said Ernest. Dylan did what Ernest said.

“He is alive,” said Dylan.

“Let me check,” said Wyatt as he walked towards Finn. 

“He seems to have fainted by shock,” said Wyatt.

Mary freaked out, all of a sudden. She ran around knocking chips down. When she was done running, she fainted, too.

“Great, now Finn can’t carry Mary and she can’t carry Finn,” said Wyatt.

“I’ll carry Mary,” I said.

“Well, I have no choice. I have to carry Finn because Wyatt and Ernest are puny and skinny.”

“Hey! I am not puny! I just can’t lift  pounds,” said Ernest, defending himself.

“That is considered puny, Ernest,” Dylan said. 

“Well, I already know I’m skinny,” Wyatt said.

“Just hurry up!” I said, speeding up the process.

“Where will we go next?” asked Wyatt.

“Well obviously to find an antidote, just in case, and it would come in handy,” I said.

“Don’t think ahead of yourself. If it was the gas, then Finn would be dead by now. He is obviously alive. We checked his pulse and everything. We proved that he fainted from shock.”

“First of all, the gas turns people into zombie-like creatures,” I said.

“Well, there are different gases. In World War II, there was a gas that killed millions. Also, the ‘zombies’ we saw were gray and had rotten skin,” Dylan said back.

“Like I said, it can come in handy,” I said.

“Where are we going to find an antidote anyway?” he asked. 

“I saw a camp full of soldiers when we were traveling on the bus,” I explained.

“You didn’t tell us this until now?” Wyatt asked. 

“Sorry, but I didn’t think it was important because no one was coming out of the camp,” I said.

“Are you serious? You could’ve killed us all!” Dylan yelled at me.

“Well, we didn’t die! We are standing here right now!” I yelled back.

“Shut up, both of you!” Ernest exclaimed.

“Where was the camp exactly?” Wyatt asked. Dylan didn’t do anything. He just looked away.

“Back on Main Street, ” I said.

“That’s not far,” Ernest said.

“We gotta run for it! Just in case, Finn was infected by the gas,” I said. We ran off to the camp in the forest by Main Street. Soldiers were guarding all perimeters. We couldn’t sneak past them with Mary and Finn unconscious, so we dropped them off in a car and tried to sneak in. 

All of a sudden, Ernest and Wyatt started to complain about going. They refused to go in. They were scared they would get caught, so it was just me and Dylan. I remembered he was mad at me, so it probably wasn’t going to go well or smoothly. I saw Wyatt and Ernest laugh at Dylan as they got in the car.

The soldiers walked in some sort of pattern. We had to go at the right time while they were in the right formation, or they would see us and that would be the end of us. While they were all looking away, we snuck in. 

First, we found a room full of new weapons. There were crates everywhere. One of the crates was opened. We opened it to see if there were antidotes, but there was nothing. We heard German accents talking down the hall, getting closer. There was nowhere to hide. I looked at the crate. It could fit two people, but it would be a tight fit. 

There wasn’t much time, so Dylan and I hopped in. It was very cramped. We held our knees against our chests with in a position where we were face-to-face. Our faces were about a foot apart and it was awkward. The talking stopped, so we got out and went down the hall. We found another room that looked like the nurse’s office at a school.

“This has to be the place where we find an antidote,” I thought. We checked everywhere and found a jar labeled antidote. We looked through it and found lots of small test tubes each labeled by different gases. We didn’t know what to take, so we grabbed a handful of them.We ran out when no one was watching. We got into the car Ernest and Wyatt were in. We read the different gas names and chose a random test tube. We had Finn swallow the antidote. He shifted his position, but stayed unconscious.

“Let’s look for some food,” I said.

“Where?” asked Ernest.

“I dunno, any place with food we can find. Let’s see if there is a store or something out there.”

We soon found a Kroger, where we ate bread and deli meat that had some mold. However, it tasted better than everything else we ate lately.

I sat with Mary and Dylan and talked to them. I bet Ernest, Wyatt, and Finn were talking about me and Dylan. They (mostly Ernest and Wyatt) always did that when Dylan and I weren’t there.

“Tell me about it,” I agreed. We kept talking about how annoying everyone else was. Ernest and Wyatt kept making glances at us to see what was happening.