“Hey!” a voice called out. “Stop or I shoot!”
Eve who, by now, had almost reached the door, froze. Bobby flattened himself against the window of a clothing store and watched as someone moved from around the corner, gun pointed at Eve.
“I’m sorry,” she said in an unfamiliar, petrified voice. “I must’ve gotten lost.”
Bobby and Linwood watched from the shadows as the soldier closed in on her, then shone a flashlight into her face. It was her, alright.
The logical thing to do would be to let the soldier take her away, then use his absence to sneak out of the camp. Beyond was the mall parking lot, and he was banking on being able to find a car with enough fuel to get them at least partway to Edwards.
And he might have done it. He might have let the soldier take her into custody. But then he heard the hunger in the man’s voice.
“Wow, you sure are a pretty one. Hey, Oscar!” he called over his shoulder, then listened for any answer. “What a pity he ain’t here, I was all fixin’ to share, but I guess you’re gonna be all mine.”
“No, please. I was just…”
“You was lookin’ for the way out. You ain’t the first, and you won’t be the last. And maybe if you’re real nice to me, I might just open the door for you. Maybe.”
They were thirty yards away across a polished floor in a large shopping mall, so surprise was not on the menu, so Bobby simply broke into a run. The soldier turned around and then yelled out as Eve’s foot appeared between his legs and kicked upwards. He folded onto the floor holding his crotch and moaning.
Bobby landed on top of him, grabbing both arms and rolling the soldier onto his front. Linwood picked up the carbine and dug the muzzle into the back of the soldier’s neck.
“Make another sound and it’ll be your last, son. I did two tours in Afghanistan and I’ve seen plenty of punks like you. Mighty tough when it comes to bullying women, ain’t you? Well, you just lie there nice and quiet while we decide what to do with you. If you’re real nice, we might even let you go. Capisce?”
By that time, Bobby had gotten to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“What the hell were you doing trying to sneak off without me?”
Bobby glanced over at Linwood, who was very obviously not looking in his direction.
“Your place is here with your husband and son.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she spat. “You don’t decide for me where my place is! You don’t; he doesn’t. I decide! Me!”
Bobby stepped back under the assault as Linwood got the soldier to his feet.
“What about Josh?”
She shook her head. “He’s with his father.”
“But…”
“But nothing. You don’t understand…”
“No, I don’t.”
She stepped forward and looked up at him. “Then trust me. This is the right thing for all of us. I can’t stay here. Let me help you.”
“Guys, we ain’t got time for this. We got to go now.”
Bobby turned to Linwood and nodded. “Take us to the exit,” he said, then followed them toward the service door and down the tunnel, led by the flashlight.
While Linwood covered the guard, Bobby took a piece of rag and tied it around his mouth, then took the guard’s belt off and used it to bind his wrists behind his back.
“That was a piece of luck,” Linwood said. “If we hadn’t come across this fella, we’d have found ourselves on the wrong side of a padlock.” He flourished the key he’d found in the guard’s pocket and the lock fell away.
“What do we do with him?” Eve asked, gesturing down at the floor where he lay on his front.
“We’ll leave him here,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t know where we’re headed and he only just came on duty, so they won’t look for him for a while. Should give us time to get away.”
Linwood spat on the floor. “Yeah, I suppose so. I guess maybe he’ll learn his lesson and treat women with respec’ in future. I doubt it, but it’s either that or bring him with us or kill him. I ain’t no murderer and I don’t particularly want his company neither. Here, I’ll just tie his feet together with his bootlaces. I reckon they won’t find him for at least six hours.”
Bobby pushed against the fire escape door and winced as it shrieked on its hinges, opening onto darkness. Opposite, he knew, was a multistory parking lot and he led them out, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the night. He didn’t dare use a flashlight here. So, he took Eve’s hand and they scampered over to the parking lot entrance.
“D’you want this, Bob?” Linwood said as they paused for breath and looked back at the top of the mall, the dim lights of cigarettes betraying where the guards patrolled.
Bobby took one look at the assault rifle and shook his head. “You keep it. I barely know one end from the other.”
“I got a spare magazine and this.”
“Thanks.” Bobby took the Swiss Army knife and tucked it in his pocket. He’d been forced to hand over most of the contents of his pack when he’d first arrived at the camp, so he had little enough for days on the road.
Bobby led them up the ramp. The exit barrier had been forced up, probably when the power went out after the deluge, but two cars had become stuck in the entrance. “We’ll have to get them out at ground level,” Bobby said, using his peripheral vision to make it through the landing where the elevators stood silent and closed and out on the first-floor lot. “We need to get away as fast as possible, so we’d better go in different directions. But stay on this floor. We’re looking for one with a working battery and fuel. If we can’t find one with an ignition key, then we’d better hope there’s something old enough for me to hotwire.”
“Wow, Bobby. I never had you down as a reprobate,” Linwood said, his remaining teeth flashing in the gloom.
As Eve went to move, Bobby took her arm. “Be careful. And stay within earshot, we may need to get out in a hurry.”
But it was Eve who came up trumps. “Nice!” Linwood said as he opened the driver’s door, activating the light.
“Dodge semi,” Bobby said, smiling at Eve.
“No key, though.”
Bobby nodded. “That’s okay. This wouldn’t be the first Dodge I’ve hot-wired. It’s obviously got life in the battery. You and Linwood get in and I’ll see if I can do it. Let me have the flashlight, will you?”
Bobby got onto his knees and stripped the ignition wires with his new Victorinox while Eve held the flashlight for him. “The trick is to make sure you send power to the fuel solenoid as well as the starter. Otherwise, the engine will turn over but it won’t start. That is the mark of the amateur car thief.”
“You almost sound proud of your illicit knowledge,” Eve said.
Bobby chuckled. “I’ve always believed in doing my best in every situation. I always knew it was worth paying attention to Benny the Fink.”
“Was he the master car thief?”
“You could say that.”
Eve moved the beam of the flashlight as Bobby began twisting wires together. “What happened to him?”
“Died in a B and E on a mom-and-pop store. Turned out Pop was a former sheriff who was handy with a pump-action shotgun.”
With a grunt, he gave the bundle a final twist, then cut and trimmed one in a red sheath before leaning back and touching the exposed end. Momentary sparks lit up the darkness and the starter motor began turning over reluctantly. Bobby pushed down on the gas with his spare hand and, with a roar, the engine fired.
He jumped up and slid into the seat as Eve moved into the middle. “Well, if anyone’s paying attention, they sure heard that,” he said as he reversed the car, then straightened up.
“You can’t drive without lights on!” Eve said.
“I’ll have to. If they didn’t hear the car start up, I don’t want to advertise where we are.”
He leaned forward as he maneuvered the car along the lane. Then he bumped it over the sidewalk and, with a cr
unch, bounced it over a small wall that crumbled under them and onto the street.
Looking up, he could see the little cigarette lights moving toward the nearest wall.
Something flashed.
“They’re shooting!” Eve said.
With a sound like a tin can being used as a drum, they felt something hit the back of the car, then a second, then they were gone, winding their way through the dark streets of what remained of Santa Clarita.
“Woo-hoo! I’d forgotten just how alive it makes you feel when you come under fire. Just as well they was amateurs too lazy to spend any time on the range.” Linwood cried out.
Once he was out of sight of the shopping mall, Bobby flicked on the lights of the Frontier, and took them along the highway toward Route 14 and the road northeast toward Edwards.
Chapter 21
Secrets
For the hundredth time, Ellie swore as she sheltered in the burned-out saloon, the rain pelting down as if the boat were being strafed by a dive bomber. She’d only managed to siphon a few gallons into one of the fuel cans before the downpour had begun, but she was now so frustrated she decided to pour it into the tank and start up the engine.
She made her way back to the saloon and flicked the light switch. There. If anyone was looking out on this horrific night, she’d draw them to her like a lighthouse. Let them come. She knew she should play it safe and lay low until the storm passed, but her sanity was at least as important and the lights gave her a tiny sense of normality and the strength to fight back at the madness.
After listening to the rain and thunder for a while, she idly wondered if anyone was in trouble on the sea, and got halfway across to the radio before she remembered that Arkansas didn’t have a Coast Guard base. She paused for a moment in the middle of the saloon then, rather than going back to her seat and looking out on the rain, she carried on. The engine was running, she had power, so the radio was working. What did she have to lose?
She sat at the radio and switched it on, twisting the channel down as far as it would go so she could move up one at a time. Static. She wasn’t surprised—she wouldn’t expect any success at the extremes of the spectrum, but as she turned the dial the static only continued, interrupted occasionally by the crack of lightning.
Then she heard a voice. Faint and desperate. She turned up the volume and listened as the rain beat down and thunder rumbled.
“…anyone hear me? I’m trying on this channel because I can’t get any response from the state government. We got sick people here. Can anyone help? We’re in Amarillo. We can trade food, or—”
Ellie turned the dial. She couldn’t help whoever it was and the last thing she needed was to burden herself with someone else’s problems. She had enough of her own.
Static on the next bank of channels, then a clear voice:
“—food stocks are low, and there is disease in the city. Those central districts that are above water are secure, but all incomers should report to the reception center at Tinker Air Force Base. Be advised that if you wish to travel east, then there is no access from here.
Should you choose to enter the city, be advised that martial law has been imposed and freedom of movement is limited. Help us to survive and recover by staying away.
This is the office of the Mayor of Oklahoma City. God bless all Americans.”
Ellie listened to the message from the beginning and then switched off the radio. So, at least part of Oklahoma City was above the waterline. But that was about the limit of the good news. They had sickness there, probably the same that had afflicted Jodi and the others. And they weren’t exactly welcoming people, though she reckoned they weren’t expecting many from the east.
But at least she knew now. Oklahoma City was on I-40 which, after a thousand miles or so, would get her within spitting distance of Las Vegas, which was where she would begin looking for Maria.
She sat in the half-light for a few more minutes, imagining the journey in her mind’s eye before turning the radio on again and scanning through the channels.
Most were static, but, from time to time, she stumbled upon voices, most talking in desperation, looking for help that would never come.
When she reached the top of the range, she switched it off again and went back into the saloon, slumping down on the remains of the banquette, and found herself looking up at the TV hanging on the wall. For lack of anything else to do, she padded over to the junk drawer, pulled out the remote and sat down again. It occurred to her that, unlike to the east, the infrastructure in the west might still be working. She didn’t imagine she’d be able to catch up with a Modern Family rerun, but maybe there’d be some government communication.
She set the TV to search the digital frequencies, but only a handful of channels showed up. Pressing the up button on the remote, the first thing she saw was a man in a dark suit with a serious expression. He was sitting behind a desk staring into the camera, but what caught her eye was the pair of flags sticking out at a forty-five-degree angle. They reminded her of the stars and stripes, but as if they’d gone on a diet. And rather than being the normal rectangular shape, they were on their side. And there were only 8 stars.
In the lower third, she saw the man’s name and position fade in: Rep. Lorne Simmons, Union of the Mountain States.
“…I repeat. We are not seceding from the United States; this is a temporary arrangement during the current emergency. We seek to cooperate with the federal government and our friends in the Pacific Coast States, and to provide aid where possible to our fellow Americans, but the people of the mountain states are our priority. Together we will survive, together we will rebuild.
“I will now read this evening’s list of announcements and summarize the current ordinances.”
Ellie sat open-mouthed as the man read from a sheaf of papers. He reiterated the basic responsibilities of all citizens and talked of the importance of complying with the rationing orders until the government could secure new supplies. Then he went state by state, starting in Idaho, making local announcements that were a mix of the apocalyptic and the seemingly trivial. He reported outbreaks of disease in many towns and cities, and the steps being taken to control looting and violence. The National Guard was being combined with standing units based in the eight states to create a permanent army whose official purpose was to provide security, but whose very existence would have been unthinkable just a few weeks before.
She knew that those states wouldn’t have been inundated, so they’d had the longest to get their act together, but even given that, their leaders had acted with breathtaking speed. They had seen the incapacity of the fractured federal government and its agencies, and had taken matters into their own hands.
As the glow of the TV painted colored patterns over her face, she finally began to grasp—to truly grasp—the enormity of what had happened on a global scale. She’d spent the past couple of weeks in a struggle to stay alive from day to day, and to fulfill the promise she’d made to look after and deliver Jodi. Now that it was done, she was going after Maria, but the wider canvas through which she would have to travel was of a country, a world, a civilization, a species on its knees. Shattered.
She grabbed Jodi’s rough map and laid it across her knees. The country was now divided into three. To the east of the Rockies, the land fell gently into the sea, the northeastern and southern states almost entirely underwater with only the Blue Ridge Mountains forming an archipelago surrounded by hundreds of miles of open water. The midwest states were largely inundated, with only parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, along with the western fraction of Oklahoma surviving. The Corn Belt and the Wheat Belt had almost entirely gone. And hundreds of millions had drowned.
Another flash of lightning and, a few seconds later, a roll of thunder she could feel through the floor. She’d seen enough. She turned off the TV and then the engine. Once she’d found her way back to the saloon, she turned off the lights and watched the storm rage through the window.
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It was no longer enough to think about surviving merely to find Maria. The country—the world—was fundamentally and permanently changed. If her daughter was to have any future, then Ellie would have to carve one out. There was no point waiting for the emergency to pass and life to return to normal. Finally, the last fragment of resistance in her mind crumbled and she accepted that the past would never return. Her task now was to navigate an uncertain future toward a semblance of safety for her daughter, once she’d found her. And, as she watched the sheet lightning ignite the sky, making silhouettes of the trees dancing in the wind, she realized that she knew of nowhere safer than where she was right now.
So she sat and thought about Buzz. She didn’t like the man: there was a coldness to him despite the love he apparently had for his niece, and Ellie couldn’t get a fix on what his role had been in the disaster or what it would be in the future. She didn’t like him, but she needed him and his community. And she hated having to make friends with someone she didn’t like. It felt like manipulation. She’d done it many times, but she doubted her particular charms would work on him and, for all her faults, she didn’t like faking it. She either liked someone or she didn’t. The problem was that she didn’t like the man she was going to have to rely upon. And, even worse, he didn’t like her.
#
Patrick almost fell off his bedside chair as the room lit up for an instant, leaving a monochrome afterimage he tried to rub out of his eyes. As the thunder followed a couple of seconds later, the door burst open and there, framed against another, more distant, flash stood Doctor Frankenstein.
Jeez, he needed some sleep. Even by his own standards, his imagination was getting the better of him.
“It’s okay, he’s alive,” Buzz said, without a trace of a Transylvanian accent. “I took as little blood as possible. He needs to rest now, but he should be able to rise again tomorrow.”
Patrick sighed. “You’re not funny, you know. Crazy, but not funny.”
Shrugging, Buzz made his way across to Jo’s bedside. “Well, you have to admit this storm is pretty atmospheric. Now, my dear, let’s see if this is going to work.”
Phage: Deluge Book 2: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 17