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Joe climbs a tree, and Cleo watches from the bottom. The birds are silent, as is the wind. Everything is still.
"The fog's coming closer," Joe says, when he hops back down.
"Yeah, no shit," Cleo scoffs.
She gets up anyway, hands Joe the last of the berries she'd plucked from the nearest bush. She'd washed them in the same pond a deer'd been lapping at. It had stared at her, eyes wide, and then nuzzled her palm, picking berries right out her hand. Cleo supposes she can't really blame it. They're probably the first humans to trek this deep in a long, long while.
Cleo tells Joe all this, as they make their way back to the car. Joe doesn't look up. His hand, mouth, tongue is stained red. "It sounds young," he says, licking a stripe up his hand, through the juice. "I hope it's doing alright."
"It wouldn't walk into the fog," Cleo says. "I think it'll do fine. It's lived this long."
Joe hums. They're at the car now, and Joe wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before slipping into the driver's seat. Cleo gets in opposite him, leans their head against the window and watches the trees outside slowly melt into a steady blur.
::
They stop when the sun starts to dip below the horizon. The highway's still surrounded by towering trees, but they're sparse enough that the last rays of sunlight slip in between.
Overhead, the stars peek out one by one. Cleo switches places with Joe. She puts her foot on the accelerator and speeds off again.
::
By the time the road widens and the trees thin out, Joe's snoring lightly. Cleo pulls the car off to the side and kills the engine. It's too open for headlights.
Cleo gets out of the car, leaves Joe to toss and turn. Perches on the hood, counts the stars. They've never bothered to learn the constellations; the city's always been too bright for it. Out here, there are more stars than any lights in the city. She connects them in her mind, drawing a square, a crab, a star made of stars.
The wind howls. It kicks up the sand, the leaves. Cleo shivers and pulls her sweater tight.
::
Joe stirs as the first dredges of sun spills over the horizon. He stretches, yawns, bumps his head on the roof of the car and startles into consciousness. Cleo snickers at him; Joe sticks his tongue out.
Granola bars for breakfast again. They're running out of food. Cleo scarfs one down. Splits the next in half with Joe, who nibbles at it. He perks up a little more when Cleo hands him water, but his face is still pale. Regardless, he gets back in the driver's seat. It needles at Cleo a little, but she's too tired to offer a hand. Instead, she curls up in the backseat, drifts off to sleep.
::
"Gas station," Joe says, voice hoarse, and Cleo jerks awake.
In the distance, sticking out of the desert sand like a sore thumb, is a tiny gas station. Four pumps, and what's barely a convenience store. Lights off. The sign's peeling, so it reads " as s on" instead of gas station. Joe huffs when Cleo points this out, but they can see his mouth twitch like he's trying not to laugh.
Cleo stays outside to fill the tank while Joe heads in to get food. She's tried teaching Joe how to siphon gas with the pump they've scavenged from some dead guy's car, but after the fourth time he'd spilled fuel all over the concrete, they'd both decided he'd be better off doing the food runs.
Joe comes back with his arms full of chips and bottled water and even more granola bars. Cleo wrinkles their nose at him, but the colour's returned to his cheeks, so they don't protest much. They finish filling the tank, help Joe arrange the food in the trunk. Joe passes them a thin bar of chocolate, and it melts in their hands when they rip open the packaging. They share it between them, the sticky sweetness dripping down their fingers.
::
Cleo drives all through the afternoon. There's nothing here, now, other than rocks and sand and the occasional tumbleweed rolling past.
They pass by a sign. 700 miles, it reads, and at the bottom someone's scribbled out the city's name and replaced it with SAFE ZONE in sharpie.
The clouds roll by. 600 miles, the next sign reads, when they stop to eat, sharing a cup of instant noodles between them. 500 when the clouds starts to gather, and 400 as the first drops of rain start to fall. It drums on the roof of the car, a steady patter. Cleo turns on the wipers. They squeak with each turn, and it's loud enough that Joe startles awake.
"It's not thundering," Cleo tells him, by way of greeting.
Joe glances behind them. "The fog's rolling in fast," he says.
Cleo keeps her eyes trained on the road and her foot trained on the gas. "Don't tell me that."
"Sorry," Joe mumbles. Drums his fingers on the dashboard, to the beat of the wipers. "It is close, though. Like, really close."
"I know, Joe," Cleo grits out. "I can't do anything about it."
Joe sighs. He taps the dashboard. Once, twice, again. Almost like a lullaby. "Drive faster," he mumbles, no real heat behind the words, and Cleo does.
::
There's a flickering light in the distance. It's far enough from the road, deep in the desert, that Cleo doesn't take a detour. She pulls over instead, leaves the engine running. It's hard to make out through the rain, but it looks like a campsite.
"People?" Joe asks, and Cleo nods.
The fog's thicker that side of the desert. Shadowy, blurry figures walk past the light, past the tents, into the fog. One by one, they disappear into the murky grey.
"Let's go, Cleo," Joe says. His voice is shaking slightly.
Cleo doesn't move. They stare right at the spot where the last person'd vanished.
"Cleo," Joe repeats, voice pitching higher.
She snaps out of it and begins to drive.
::
It's dark out when the rain finally stops. No stars, because the clouds are hiding them all. Cleo and Joe switch quick, and then they're off again.
"Do you know the constellations?" Cleo asks.
Joe glances at her, then back on the road. "Mhm."
"Tell me about them," Cleo says. Leans back and looks out at the night sky, the sprawling canvas of black and blue.
"I'm driving," Joe tells them warningly, but he slows the car down to a crawl.
"Tell me," Cleo repeats.
There's a lightness to Joe's words when he responds. "Okay! So, you see those stars, like, sort of to the left? The ones that look like a guy shooting a bow upwards? Well, a really long time ago…"
Cleo loses herself in his words, in the stars. Her eyes slip shut.
::
She dreams of taking Joe's hand and stepping into the cool embrace of fog.
::
When she wakes, it's bright outside. She blinks sleep from her eyes and looks behind; the fog is nowhere to be seen.
"You should've woken me up," Cleo says, and takes the granola bar Joe offers her.
"You needed the rest," Joe tells her.
Cleo bites into the bar instead of answering. Chews, swallows. "Still."
200 miles. Have they really gotten this far?
Cleo glances outside. Desert bleeds into grass into trees, and they let themself relax at the familiar shade.
Joe pulls over. They get out of the car, duffel bags in hand, and wander into the woods. Here, the birds sing songs of life, and the leaves rustle, and each step they take is accompanied by the crunch of fallen leaves.
Further, deeper. Joe brushes his hand against trees. Cleo stops to poke a snail. The sound of rushing water builds to a crescendo, until they emerge into a clearing with the cleanest river water they've seen.
There's a deer ankle-deep in the water, head bent to lap it up. It turns to look directly at Cleo, then bounds away into the trees.
::
By the time they've scrubbed the muck and grime off their bodies and redressed, the sun's high in the sky. They trek back to the car, Joe lamenting all the while about how he never got a good look at the deer, and Cleo letting out hmms and yeahs at the appropriate intervals.
They eat lunch by the car, baked beans and tuna. Little squirrels come up to them, chittering away, until Cleo relents and feeds them a couple beans. Joe's too busy cooing over them to do anything, anyway.
The deer comes back as they're finishing up. It nudges Joe's side, much to his delight, and then nuzzles Cleo's outstretched palm. Cleo watches, as Joe gets back into the driver's seat, when the deer slips back into the forest. It's a long while before she finally gets back into the car.
::
100 miles, now. Joe's humming along to some song Cleo doesn't know, blasting out of his phone's tinny speakers. His fingers drum against the steering wheel.
Cleo looks out the window. Snow's starting to fall, soft and slow, settling on the tips of trees. They dot the windshield as well, specks of white against the rapidly moving landscape.
The sun's starting to set. In the distance, the moon crests the horizon.