"Where to now, Ruth?" Noah asked as he took her by the hand and began to lead her to the truck.
"Hold on," interrupted Adam. Claire had sensed that something was troubling him. "I don't get it. What's thepoint of calling ourselves anything at all? I mean, in two days Jonah found Ruth, Noah and I found them, and now we've found Claire. I don't think things are as bad as you think they are. I think only the south east US was wiped out and the rest of the world is still out there. You guys are getting way ahead of yourselves."
Noah shook his head, "Adam," he said softly, "Remember."
"Remember what?"
"Yesterday, the day before that, and...."
Jonah cut in, "Look in the sky Adam. What do you see?"
Adam looked up, looked all around, trying to figure out the riddle, "Clouds, sun."
"What else do you see?" asked Noah. "More importantly what don't you see? What's missing? What haven't we seen in days?"
"Sky lines," Adam sighed.
"No airplanes," whispered Ruth.
"That's right," answered Noah. "And remember the radio?" Noah nudged Adam to the army vehicle and opened the doors on the drivers side. Claire gazed at amazement at all the equipment and dials and stuff she couldn't name on the dashboard. "What is all that for?" he asked, pointing at various equipment.
"Don't know," mumbled Adam.
"You do know, man," blurted Jonah, "you know they work, there's just nobody on the other end. No electricity either.
Noah explained to Claire, "When we found this thing, first thing we did was try out all the equipment, see what worked, what didn't. It has computer, GPS, satellite, you name it, oh even an old fashioned HAM radio. Everything works fine, Adam is a techie, he knows all this stuff. Anyway we didn't so much as get static on any of the channels. Adam," Noah turned towards him and laid a hand gently on his shoulder, "There might be a few others out there, might be, but life as we knew it was over a long time ago. We band together and call ourselves a tribe because it gives us hope. It gives us a purpose. We can't randomly wander in search of civilization because, like or not, we're it."
Adam slowly leaned his head onto Noah's shoulder and heaved a long sigh and let loose a stream of tears he had probably been holding in for a very long time. Claire, who had such compassion for him began to cry, then Ruth, and then finally followed by Jonah who tried to hide his tears by stepping toward Adam giving him a bear hug.
A couple minutes later, Jonah broke the silence, "Okay, so we're officially a family, or tribe, or whatever. Are we going to sit here all day or what? Time's a-wastin' and I'm hungry."
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