Parked beside a crossing near BP, with Woolworths a mere block away, Keneh, Robert and Delaney felt out of place. Despite being a textbook example of a town with an 'abandoned' feel, having had Qantas milestones going for it, some military value and very little else - giving it fantastic infrastructure and not that many people to use it - not even Cloncurry was signalling an oncoming apocalypse. It just seemed like a quiet, laid back town that didn't have that many worries.

Robert had fished out his laptop and was busy typing a wifi password the clerk at the petrol station had kindly parted with into the machine. They still had to a pick a destination from here onwards - personally, Robert was hoping to pass right through Mount Isa at the moment rather than pause there, and so some longer-term plans were best formed, including perhaps staying at a hotel for the night, for lack of any comfort in the car. Keneh was muttering something about mobile phones and tethering, and that it would make them a little more flexible if they didn't have to ask people for wifi passwords, but all that was doing right now was making Robert mistype the password a few times.

Two hotels practically flanked the petrol station. Judging by the activity level in Cloncurry, at least one of them ought to have a room for them. It was obvious by their placement that they were focussed entirely on people passing through, further emphasised by the detail that they seemed unsure whether to spell themselves with an 'h' or an 'm'. “Do you two want to check out the hotels while I dig out some Deiparous contacts?” Robert asks, dragging his knuckles across his forehead.

Delaney placed her hands in the small of her back and leant back until her spine made a series of unnerving popping noises. “Sure. Sleep sounds good. Much better than running off the road or trying to nap in the back.” It was hard to believe it had been less than a day since everything went to hell. It was much easier to believe it was twenty four hours since she'd seen a bed. Running for one's life was exhausting. Maybe that was why the military was always trying to recruit teenagers, because they had yet to outgrow that sort of 'sleep is actually necessary' thing.

While twisting her neck and shoulders to rid herself of the next batch of kinks, a thought struck her. “Hey Keneh, do you know if Mount Isa's airport is Queensland domestic only?” International was unlikely, but Indonesia may just be in range. But didn't Indonesia need a visa? That wouldn't work then. But even if they flew to Perth or Hobart that would be a good backup plan, and it surely it would be cheaper than driving across an entire continent.

“…no idea,” Keneh responds, the surprise in her voice betraying just how far she was lost in thought prior to the question. She shakes her head. “I'd expect it to have some routes out of the country. Um.” Her gaze catches Robert, seeing more of the laptop screen on his lap than his face given her place in the car. “Can you check that, too?”

“Yeah, sure,” Robert remarks, pinching at the bridge of his nose briefly.

“'cause if we can get out of this country after we get rid of this,” she comments, knocking on the sturdy surface of the suitcase she's had in her lap for most of the remaining journey to Cloncurry as if it were a pet. “That seems like the safest course of action.”

“And expensive,” Robert informs.

“And expensive,” Keneh concedes - but her shrug suggests it makes no difference to her. Granted, there was no immediate threat even here in Cloncurry and the further away they drifted from Townsville, the less glum their outlook became, but that didn't mean they couldn't try disappearing a little more effectively.

“Somewhere that doesn't need a visa,” she adds. “Because they take a couple of days to arrange and the first response to 'unknown incurable supervirus' is for everyone else to shut our borders. Madagascar has probably done so already.” Maybe if they were lucky everyone else would think it was a crazy hallucinogenic drug or something? Except that probably wouldn't be lucky, they needed every else to know exactly what the threat was and quarantine it appropriately. She just didn't want to be on the wrong side of fence when it happened.

Which was how you made people incredibly desperate and how the survivors died in every single zombie movie, she knew. That was human nature for you. If she was feeling altruistic she'd be taking over for Ethan and as good as dead, not running away.

Thought processes like that weren't helping. Delaney shook herself. “Right. Two rooms or a twin double?” she asked. “And are you staying or joining, Keneh?”

“Joining,” Keneh insists, withdrawing from the backs of the seats to stress the point. She could crawl out by climbing and wiggling to the front of the car, but that was hardly dignified - she was keeping that particular sequence of actions in mind for when she was otherwise trapped and desperate. Her mind appended: 'Which is to say “never”, just to make that very clear.' Either way, someone should probably let her out. That someone should probably be Delaney, given Robert's focus on internetting.

“Just for the record, if you want to disappear to a different country, I'm not coming along,” Robert tells them, briefly pausing to look across at Delaney. “My financial buffer doesn't cover 'international flight to a place where I have no assets'. But more power to you if you can pull it off.” Said, his attention slides back to the laptop.

Keneh seems to consider that a moment - not that Robert can see it. “I could maybe pitch in for you?” she offers, tentatively. Said, it didn't really sit right with her. As much as they owed much to Robert, she didn't know him well enough to warrant sharing her resources on quite that level.

“I'll take my chances,” Robert shrugs.

“Since I doubt Mount Isa has direct flights to New Zealand, it's not something we need to worry about,” she said firmly. “Let's try convincing someone competent to save our country first. Deiparous can fix their own mess and then pay to fix Townsville or rebuild Townsville elsewhere or something.”

Although she wasn't entirely sure a company that had screwed up on that level should be trusted to fix things. It probably depended on whether the initial release was a local breach in security that had caused a tragic accident or a sign of something more sinister. And she was slipping into action movie plots again. Time to let the Keneh out of the boot and find a resting place to pass out in.

“Are you leaving that here or bringing it?” she asked with a nod to the suitcase as the back door swing upwards.

Keneh regards the suitcase for a moment, paused in the middle of a motion of sliding out of the back and onto the pavement. Her gaze lingers, uncertain. “…leaving it,” she decides after a while. “Also this,” she comments in afterthought, fishing out the gun she'd been entrusted with and setting it down in the corner she'd been sitting in.

A moment later, she's standing beside the car, twisting her torso a little and letting a particularly exaggerated ripple travel down her arms, ending in wiggling fingers. For a moment, she almost convinces herself never to sit in the back of that car again - but it still only had two seats, they had to keep moving eventually, and she wasn't going to ask Delaney to take her place. Her hands slide in behind her neck for a moment and she leans her head back, staring up at the sky. Unbidden, a yawn escapes her. She shakes her head as if to clear it from haze, letting her arms drop again. “Ouff, I desperately need to be horizontal,” she observes. “Definitely time to find some surfaces for that.”

✘ IN PROGRESS