Takiko woke up with a start and froze immediately, concentrating hard to blend out her thumping heartbeat and listen to any sounds indicating that she was not alone this morning. It had happened often enough, but this time, she was lucky. With a sigh, she sat up and glanced around. As usual, even the sleep that she got didn't seem to be able to do anything about the fatigue that had settled in her bones. She had managed a few days before, to get herself a car again. It wasn't her first one, she had had a few over the last few weeks, but it was the first van she had found with an almost full fuel tank. And until now, at least, she had managed to find enough other easily accessible cars to get more fuel from. That wasn't a given, since a lot of cars one found where completely empty, driven until they couldn't go on any longer, and Takiko had yet to find out how to actually get fuel out of a gas station without electricity.

The inside of the back of the van was lit up with dim light, sunlight that was filtering through the curtain she had put up behind the front seats. The back windows she had covered with some kind of black plastic sheets and a whole lot of tape, both of which she'd found on her way, after waking up in the morning once to find one of the creatures staring at her through the window. Not exactly the best way to start a day, with a heart attack. So she'd made sure it wouldn't happen again.

She crawled out of the sleeping bag she was using and rolled it up, folding it as much as possible, wrapping it up with some thread and securing it to her backpack. She had already lost about half of her things once because she had needed to flee in a hurry, without any time to pack up what was lying around. Again, something you didn't do twice. When that was done, she turned around to the provisions, which were stacked in a laundry-basket at the side of the van. She had made sure to pack a good deal of those as well, of course, but big water bottles and cans of food weren't things she could lug around easily if she needed to be fast. She grabbed one of the smaller cans now and quickly opened it with her knife. She was glad she had something to eat that would actually fill her empty stomach, but every morning she kept thinking about hot showers and bread and scrambled eggs and even though it always made the taste of the canned food, which mostly wasn't really that bad, fade, she couldn't stop the thoughts from resurfacing in her mind all the time. 

A shower, she knew, was wishful thinking. A hot one even more so. But a bath... that was possible. She'd already done it several times, heading out of the city and finding herself some creek or lake or whatever that looked clean enough, or at least cleaner than she herself, to get a bath and scrub herself clean for once. In those part it was unlikely to meet any of the creatures, sicne there wasn't anything to lure them there. And she was sick of always running around full of dirt and sweat. It had been worse the first weeks after all of this had started, but she had grown kind of used to it by now. And she wasn't actually meeting any people anyway. And those one might meet didn't care, either because they were kind of dead or because they were in the same situation. 

But a bath was in order now, she decided, and pulled a map out of her bag, searching her current location, in between bites, a small town a few miles from the suburbs of Chicago. It wouldn't take long to get to the city anymore, but then again, she wasn't sure whether she could just drive right in. It was a big city and the last bigger one she had seen had streets clogged up with left behind cars. And once inside, the chances of getting that bath would be shoved far away for a long while, she guessed. She stared at the map. She had not expected to come back here like this. She had always wished to come back someday, but after that huge fight with her parents over the choice she'd made concerning university, she had sworn herself not to come back until they apologized and accepted it. And now she was back to search for them. To see whether they were even still alive. 

Takiko wasn't sure what she was expecting to find. The first few days, when electricity had still worked remotely properly, she had managed to call them a few times. Later they had send messages from time to time. The last time she had heard of them had been weeks, probably months ago, though. It was likely they had moved somewhere else, but they had never told her about any plans of the kind, so she decided to go where she was most likely to find some hints as to their whereabouts. More than once it had crossed her mind how unlikely it was that they were still alive and waiting for her somewhere, but she wouldn't give up until she had proof.

Finishing her breakfast, she got up, peeking through the curtains to make sure the street was clean of creatures, before taking up the drivers seat and starting the car. The map was lying on the passengers seat, folded so tha she could see the exact way she had to drive to the little forest she was heading for. It had a small lake marked in it and wasn't too out of her way, so she really hoped it would be usable and spare her a longer drive that might make her need to get some more fuel. After another glance outside and into the mirrors, she started the car, backed out of the parking lot she had used and got on her way.