We tore through cabinets, through drawers, anything to avoid going back in the office. We couldn't find anything with a date on it. Nothing we found had anything that could tell us what the current year could be, we had to assume it had only been a year, two at the most, since the chips went bad.

"I've got it."

"What?" I looked up from a frozen food order form.

"The bathrooms."

"What about them?"

"The bathrooms should have a sheet that says who cleaned them and when. Maybe someone wrote the year on the top."

"Right." We went to the side of the gas station and wrestled with the bathroom door for a minute. It was locked tight and both the door and frame were metal – there was no way we would be able to kick it in.

"Okay, I give up. I can't even imagine what could have happened to us that would make us travel to the future."

"Maybe it's not the future – it could be an alternate dimension or something."

"That's still just as much like something out a bad sci-fi movie."

It was almost dark at that point and we were back to walking along the path of the telephone poles. It was almost time to settle down for the night. Even if we couldn't find shelter, we'd at least had something to eat. We felt a little bit safer now that we had the gun, too.

That's when we heard it. It was barely recognizable at first but once we realized we were hearing something, we stopped talking and stood still, barely even breathing.

"Water!" We tore through the trees, leaping over prickly bushes and low-lying vines, hoping we weren't wrong. We weren't. After running for a couple of minutes, we came upon a creek. The water was sparkling and clear, something neither of us had really expected. We dropped to our knees and cupped water in our hands, slurping loudly.

I splashed my face, took off my shirt and soaked it in the water, wringing it out. Luckily we'd brought a couple of bottles with us from the car, so we filled them up after drinking our fill.

"If I get Typhoid from this, I'm going to be pissed." We both chuckled, a little nervous about just that.

The next morning, we woke at seven, again, to begin our journey as we had the day before. By mid-day, we hadn't found any more signs of civilization, but we did come across some wild lettuce and berries, which we ate hastily.

We spent most of the afternoon walking in silence, neither of us wanting to discuss what was most likely on our minds. We could have been completely alone out there. We could have been the only humans for at least a hundred miles in any given direction and we had no way of getting back to our time. Our cellphones had died at some point during the night and there was absolutely no way to charge them, though we left them in the backpack. It made us feel better to hope that we may be able to use them, yet.

The day passed slowly, near dusk we were able to find what we assumed was the same creek, further upstream. We drank what we could, refilled our water bottles, used our shirts to clean ourselves off as much as we could and rinsed our shirts clean.

We were woken abruptly the following morning before sunrise by thunder rumbling in the distance. We quickly pulled our socks and shoes on, packed the backpack and started walking. Once the sun rose, we could clearly see the storm clouds approaching us from behind.

Over the next few hours, the wind got steadily stronger, the sky darker and for half an hour we could feel the mist from the rain, swirling in the wind all around us. We could hear the raindrops hitting the ground behind us and in an instant it seemed as though we were standing underneath a waterfall. We were soaked head to toe in a matter of minutes, trudging steadily through the wet grass and mud, sinking ankle-deep in some places.

We refilled our bottles from the rain but never stopped walking. We couldn't. There was no place that wasn't flooded for us to sit down and rest. If we sat down in the mud we could get any number of parasites, which was the last thing we wanted.

By nightfall, the rain still had not subsided. It was too dark to see very well so we stopped. We found a small tree with a few strong, low branches and sat down, resting. We waited for what seemed like hours before the rain finally stopped. The ground was still too wet and muddy to sleep on and we felt too precarious trying to lay on a tree branch, so we decided to continue walking.

Just as the clouds were adopting a pink hue, the first sign that the sun was about to rise, we came upon a hill. We slowly climbed the hill, exhausting from walking almost nonstop for twenty-four hours. We reached the crest and stopped. Our exhaustion was swept away and replaced by relief. We laughed uncontrollably for almost five minutes before doing anything, before saying anything.

On the other side of the hill, there was a large clearing. The hill sloped down to meet a small field of what looked to be corn stalks. On the far side of the field was a small, simple-looking wooden house. There was no sign of life except for a single candle, burning in the back window.