Accelerate

I put the car into gear and let it fly. It barely took a touch; she danced under my fingers like a lover, and I loved every inch of tire on the ground. She purred under me, and together, we took the ride into town.

It's the quiet that gets you worst. The city is what it is - too many malls and not enough gas stations. I'd made a list, but siphoning up was hard work and time was getting shorter. My credit card got me lucky sometimes, but finding a working pump computer was getting harder. Tech support wasn't answering. No one was.

But driving got me where I needed. Back home, I had a fat stack of survival. Food, water, solar panels. It was all worked out. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was finding reasons to panic. To move. To think. I needed something meaningful, and ever since I was a little girl, the roar of Dad's 'Vette was it and everything.

As I roared down the freeway doing 90, I had lots of thrills and surprises. New cars stalled out half inside a lane. The occasional trap set by thrillers. Jumper bones from overpasses. Cracks and potholes - the bitches, they weren't even special. My Dad's 'Vette laughed and rumbled, and we blazed aside and past it all, turning the big loop into our time trial.

Once a week. One day, the gas would end. Or worse, I'd find a problem I couldn't fix. On my fourteenth tire, my fifth spark plug. My second transmission, and the last one I'd found in months. So...once a week. That'd last a while, wouldn't it? I would be different. I'd be anxious...not like the wasters in their chairs, their beds, their offices.

The new world was supposed to be happy. Instead, the new world was satisified. We'd won. No depression. No anxiety. No one was lonely...but no one was hungry, either. Tired? Sick? Dying?

I hadn't felt lonely for two months. I maxxed out the engine and let fly. I could have died. And there it was, the ache to see another person, taste their skin, and eat them up like sweet candy, to never let them go.

But I've seen the lovers. They never wake up, rotting like pretzels in each other's arms. The new world wasn't happy; it was satisfied.

So I put her through her paces. And I was never satisfied. I never felt the wind fly through my hair like Daddy used to make it whip. But that need was enough.

I wasn't satisfied, but I was still alive. The new world hadn't found me yet; I was savagely unhappy, and I kept fighting. I'm a survivor. Me and the 'Vette, we'd go on 'til the gas ran out. And then the Colt in the glove box would do the rest.

Daddy always told me, "It's when you stop wanting that life kills you." I'm still here, Dad. I'm still here.