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    In the morning, we dropped the kids off and drove north, looking to take the highway as far as we could. One of the things I put in place as president was the clearing of the major highways. Up to certain points, the roads had been cleared of abandoned and infected cars. We didn’t do anything special. We just pushed them to the side of the road and tipped them on their sides. It had the effect of creating a barrier and in the northern states, a snowdrift fence. There were crews still out there clearing roads. That was their job, and they did it well. Crews rotated in and out to keep things from going crazy, and all of us had taken a turn at road clearing. For reasons too numerous to list, Duncan was no longer allowed near heavy machinery unsupervised.
    Across the river was the small town of Utica, and we had cleared it of zombies years ago. However, the town was uninhabited, as a lot of towns were, and it was slowly starting to fade. Trees and grass grew where ordinarily they would have been removed, and a broken window allowed the weather to work on the inside of a building. A couple of homes had collapsed roofs, and several detached garages had been blown over. At some point, we would probably have to fire the town, but it didn’t bother us enough yet to work on destroying it.
    A quick ride up the hills and we turned onto the highway. The on-ramp was a little tricky, since there were some cracks in the concrete from the effects of winter, but once we got onto I-80 it was smooth going.

 
    Chapter 10
     
    Once upon a time, this interstate was crowded with cars and ghouls, people fleeing from destruction only to have it waiting for them down the road. The lucky few who lived away from the major cities managed to do just fine by staying put and hunkering down. The smaller towns out of the way but along the corridor of the interstates got hit with the virus when people carrying it got off the highway looking for refuge.
    Out in the far fields, we could see some farms returning to life. Several of the people who had fled the country to the relative safety of the communities were returning to the land, much as their ancestors did after a war.
    The vehicles were nothing to attract attention, and nothing that would sustain a zombie assault. Once we figured out they were more of a false sense of security than anything else; we had moved away from those types of things. I was driving the pickup truck that held our supplies and spare gasoline. Charlie was driving the van behind me, and he had the rest of the supplies and the spare ammo.
    One of the lessons of the Upheaval was never to put all of your supplies in one place. Too often, people found themselves away from their gear and wound up dehydrating or starving because the zombies surrounded them away from their weapons.
    We drove for a couple of hours, and it was nice to see a few other cars and trucks on the road as well. Gas was still in short supply, but it was getting better once we discovered an oil rig still manned in the Gulf of Mexico. After that, it was a lot of research to get the refinery running, and even more research to figure out how to distribute the gas.
    With gas relatively scarce, other modes of travel had been explored. Lots of people rode bikes, some returned to the horse, and others just walked. Travel that took hours once now was calculated in days.
    We decided to stop in a small town off the main highway. I had no idea what the town was, since the sign announcing it had been hit by something and was just a couple of metal poles in the ground. The town was a one of the thousands that had been hit by the plague. The buildings were weather-beaten and in many cases, broken and falling apart. Old signs of struggles were easily seen if you knew what you were looking for. Over there was a stain on a protected part of a wall. Over here was a small pile of brass casings. The odd bone here and there told the story pretty well, too.
    I stopped the truck and