by L. B. Carter
In his mind, there was a house just off the road to his left, panels of it juddering back and forth horizontally behind the heat haze like an image on a television with poor signal. And next to it was a tall water tower.
That was just cruel. He knew his mind conjured what it wanted to see, but it was like watching the Food Network while on Father's protein diet.
"Not real. Keep going." Reed chanted to himself, shutting his eyes against the vision. "Save the girl. Not real. Don't give up."
He heard laughter. Raucous, light-hearted laughter. In Hell.
Was it the devil?
No one could possibly be merry right now. Not there. Not while the sun scolded them all for existing.
A few voices rose in chatter, and laughter rang out once more.
Reed stopped plodding, swaying for a second at the sudden halt, and slowly pivoted toward the noise. Then he peeked again.
A group of guys, dusty but clearly less weary than Reed, sat on a ring of hay bales in front of the house. A bonfire that one of them was feeding with bits of cornstalk roared in their midst. Reed had an inclination how the wildfire started. No one had any respect anymore.
"Hey." It came out gruff and croaking. Reed blinked and breathed, wobbling in place. "Hey!"
The guys all turned, expressions of joviality morphing into surprise. At least, that's what it seemed through Reed's blurry vision. He wasn't sure his body contained enough water to keep the surface of his eyeballs moist.
If Jen were to analyze his biologic make-up right then, would he be less than the human norm of 97 percent water? Did that make him superhuman like Sirena? Or subhuman?
He stared blearily at the flickering flames, which reminded him. "It's hot. There's no water. You need to go. We should all go. There's a fire." His mumbling petered off as his vision warped, and with a looping of his balance, he tripped several steps toward them.
"This is our fire. You're not welcome here." The guy who'd been standing while he fed the flames came around to peer into Reed's face. Reed wobbled back and forth. The guy changed his tune. "Woah. Hey, man. You all right? Here, come sit." He helped Reed to the closest bale. Another guy vacated to make room.
Reed plopped down, his head lolling, hands open in his lap. The heat from the fire was too much. "Too hot," Reed mumbled, trying to pull back.
"No worries, man. Coffee's finished anyway."
Another guy across the circle pulled a camp kettle off the flames and started pouring into a mug in his other hand. A fourth guy stood, grabbed a bucket, and dumped water on the offending oven roasting Reed. It went out with a hiss and Reed took a breath as he relaxed. The scent of smoke and coffee wafted into his brain, jolting it like a shot of adrenaline to the heart.
He sat up, focusing on the drink. "You have water. Potable water." He eyed the bucket that was now empty in the other guy's hand. "Can...?" He swallowed, feeling like a ravenous dog placed in front of a pile of fresh meat without the command permitting him to start eating.
The first guy who'd helped Reed over realized he was thirsty. "Ahh, you want some? Hmmm. Well, we've only got what's left in that tower."
Reed's head swung on his neck until he took the structure all in. It wasn't a mirage? Or else this whole interaction was. That would make more sense. How did they afford coffee? How did they have an entire water tower. "How?"
The guy with the coffee shrugged, blew on his mug and took a sip. "Found it."
Reed understood. "Not your house." That's why they were outside and not inside, hidden from the sunshine. It was probably locked up.
A few of the men grinned and laughed. "Free for the taking." The first guy, who seemed to be a leader, corrected Reed. "Survival of the fittest, eh?" He shrugged. There was more laughter. "And what the owners were fit to do was donate their goods ... to us."
"Would've been better if they could've donated their beds, too." Coffee guy said, directing his sentence to bucket guy.
The guy scowled. "Bitches. The smell of their rotting bodies is everywhere." He chucked the bucket. Coffee spilled, and there was a scuffle.
When Reed wrenched his eyes open again, the leader was pushing the other two apart. "Hey. The smell's trapped inside. We got what we need outside. And looky. We might have won ourselves some more provisions. Focus."
Reed tried to focus. The next time he blinked his lids open, all pairs of eyes were on him. Pay attention to your opponents, the sun pelted onto Reed's burning scalp. Never let them see you in a weakened state.
Too late for that.
"I can trade." Reed's voice came out like an insecure question, and he knew they wouldn't take the offer. "For your water. I've got a knife." He drew it, and the guys who had been crowding closer flinched back.
Reed stood, flicking it expertly. But as soon as he tried to toss it to his other hand to prove his ambidexterity, he realized any dexterity was gone, evaporated by the sun. The knife soared right past his palm, nicking the edge of his skin, and clattering onto the cracked earth.
Reed's vision wove around as laughter echoed in his ears, and he bent to pick up the knife, his brain swooping.
A heavy shove knocked into his side.
Once down, his body seemed to seep right into the ground. So, he was still some percent water. He knew he needed to get up and defend himself, but he was so tired. Too tired. Too hot.
He flopped onto his back. "Sorry," he told the sun and passed out.
Chapter Five
The vandals were so busy rifling through Reed's pockets to steal stupid trinkets that they didn't even look up when a whole freaking Jeep rolled up in front of their desperate little jerk circle. Egos too big to see past. She'd find out soon enough whether that was certainly the only thing above average in size when she castrated them for harming Reed. Reed was hers to harass.
Valerie even opened and closed the trunk, grabbing a massive tire wrench without them hearing over their stupid self-satisfied guffaws. Maybe Reed wasn't the most insufferable male.
She strolled over, her shoes crunching on the mud-cracked dirt. She wasn't dumb enough to call out some lame line to alert them to her presence like in the movies.
Without warning, Val knocked the one facing away from her, untying Reed's boots, on the back of the head, dropping him over Reed's legs with a whump.
The other two looked up.
"Hey. Who do you think you are?" One said, backing away, smoothly putting his so-called friend between them.
Val rolled her eyes. "All right. I guess we are doing the cliché small talk." She stopped, resting the wrench against her shoulder and cocking a hip. "That dumbass is mine to fondle. You gotta get your own."
Smooth talker grinned. "Kinda looks like we did." He tipped his head and flipped the knife Val had watched Reed place into a pocket before leaving.
"Sorry, he's taken." Val shook her head. "Finders keepers. I already have dibs on him." She shrugged. "And I'm not finished with him yet. You'll have to fish for sloppy seconds from someone else."
"Dibs?" He gave a lascivious leer. "You saying you licked him first? You're welcome to dibs me, too." He looked her up and down. "Finders keepers."
Val simpered. "I'm more of a biter than a licker." She tilted her head in feigned consideration. "I'm not sure you won’t just toss me aside when someone new comes along. Switching so quickly from him to me?” The wrench pointed at Reed’s body then tipped heavily into her chest. “You truly are a scavenger. Unsurprising." She smacked the wrench into her palm. "You definitely don't look like someone who gets first pickings ever."
His smirk fell into a glare. "Everyone's a scavenger living in this shithole. Why else are you here challenging us for this?" He kicked Reed in the side.
Val assumed he was referring to the wider area than his little ring, because she could smell the coffee from where she was standing. That was certainly not "living in a shithole." She was guessing they scavenged that, too. "Are we done with the Western showdown now?" she asked, pretending to look at a watch
on her naked wrist. "'Cause I've got things to do. And that doesn't include you, so don't even try that one." She held up a finger to stave off the dirtier double-meaning of that verb. Shaking her head, she ambled closer. "Men. You're all just in the mental gutter all the time. I don't know how you get anything done."
She waltzed right past the guy in the middle, who had yet to speak and thus wasn't Val's main concern. He skittered back, fearful, proving she'd chosen her next opponent correctly. He was also carrying a bucket. As far as weapons went, she was going to fixate on the guy with the knife first. She added a seductive sway to her hips and languidly slid the wrench down her cleavage, letting it catch on the neck of her shirt and pull it down a bit. "In fact, I bet you're thinking about what you want to do to me right now. Am I right?" She brazenly licked her lips. The effect was probably less attractive than intended with how dry and chapped they were. She had very little saliva to moisten them lasciviously.
The guy tilted his chin up. "Yeah, 'bout what damage I'm gonna do." He flipped the knife again, and his eyes narrowed, but not before she caught them slip to her chest.
Val stopped out of lunging distance, having maneuvered herself between the knife and Reed's unconscious body. "Oh, you like it rough? I can work with that." She smiled with teeth. "I must remind you I'm a bit of a biter." She dipped a few teeth into her bottom lip. "But don't worry. I'll save that for round two. Round one is like you said." She lowered the wrench, then tipped onto her knees, gravel pressing painfully into her bare kneecaps. She slid her hands forward, crawling the last few feet, keeping a wary eye on the knife while trying to maintain eye contact.
His fingers gripped the knife handle tighter. However, he made no move to direct the blade at her. It seemed more likely that most of his muscles were involuntarily clenching, watching her approach.
Once she reached his dusty boots that had evidence of droplet splatters on the toes, she sat back on her heels. Well, it wouldn't be the first time recently that Val was faced with piss that day.
Then she looked up through her lashes, quirking her lips. "It's rough, this dry spell, isn't it?"
He didn't answer, just watched, waiting to see what she'd do. The knife was jittery. Too much coffee or restrained interest?
Val slid her hands up his legs, feeling how thick they were. He hadn't been starving. This leech had been siphoning food from innocent people. Lots of them, she'd guess.
His Adam's apple bobbed.
"Hey, what about me?" The guy behind piped up, sounding very much like the toddler who didn't get a cookie at snack time from the teacher.
"You deal with him." The leader snapped his order, nodding over Val at Reed, eager to be alone with his newest treasure.
"How come I get the guy and you get the girl? You always promise I get it next time."
Val watched the man's nostrils flare from below, agitated that he was being questioned, and decided the argument actually saved her some acting that could go farther than she was comfortable faking. While he was staring down his minion into subservience, she head-butted him in the balls. Quickly, she threw herself backward so that when he instinctively went to cup his beloved bits, the dagger swiped safely past her face, and he stuck himself instead like meatballs and a sausage on a skewer.
As hungry as the metaphor made her, she was glad she hadn't had to resort to teeth.
The scream sent the minion scurrying over, dropping his bucket. He was in such a panicked state, he didn't notice Val's leg sweep out, and he tripped right over it, eye slamming into the handle sticking out of his leader's crotch.
They both went down, rolling in agony, and Val decided not to stay to see the outcome. If her stomach weren't so empty, she'd be hurling at the gore, preferably on the leader's feet.
Val scooted back, and her palm slapped onto something that seared with heat. She bit her lip against the scream and yanked it off. Rolling around, she spied a still-smoldering and -steaming fire pit. Dumbasses. It was idiots like this that probably started the other wildfire.
She scrambled up and trotted over to Reed, flipping him onto his back. He was still breathing, thank Jesus. She followed her nose to the coffee kettle sitting on a bale of hay. Goddamn idiots, placing hot metal on dry grass. They'd doubly almost started another wildfire. This hellhole was way more deadly with imbeciles like these guys running amok. It wasn't all on nature.
She snagged the bucket on her way back, ignoring the two guys beating each other up with varying states of pre-existing damage. She slopped some of the liquid into the bucket and lifted that to her mouth, testing its temperature on her lips. Lukewarm. She'd better taste-test, too. Just in case her lips had lost feeling along with their smoothness. Confirmed lukewarm. But oh-so-delicious.
Val let out a relieved groan. "God, that's good. Pucker up," she told Reed's upturned face. "This is going to be a jolt to your system. I'll get you regular water after." Coffee was a dehydrator. The dumbasses really were dumbasses. But it would work as a short term reprieve to reinvigorate Reed. He was way too big of a guy for her to hoist back to the Jeep by herself even with his weight loss.
Val massaged his jaw open and poured the liquid in, trickle by trickle. She rubbed her thumb over his throat, trying to encourage him to swallow the way a vet coerced unwilling pets to ingest medicine.
"Come on, come on," she muttered. "We need to go." She'd been watching the smoke cloud's progress from on top of Reed's Jeep—the second floor windows were too dirty, and she had nothing with which to clear them. The fire was acomin'. They didn't have time to find Lindy. After a few anxious hours, she'd taken off after him even though she hated being the desperate chaser. She was a leader. "Don't make me dig a grave next to Tio. You can't die before I kill you for leaving me behind with a useless old blind lady, you son of a bitch."
Finally, he coughed, sputtered, and blinked his green eyes open, and she pulled up the bucket. Reed peered up at her blearily. "Jen?"
Val let out a massive breath. "Thank God." She took a celebratory gulp of the coffee.
"Am I dead?"
"Not on my watch, buddy boy."
"Then how am I looking at an angel?"
Val let out a laugh, relief still churning through her with the same speed the caffeine was energizing her. "Still full of lines, even on your deathbed?" she marveled. "The last guy who tried a line on me got a dagger to the dick," she warned.
He didn't reply. Reed had faded out again.
"Shit, no. Stay with me. I'm gonna get you to the car, out of the sun. Up you get." She shoved herself under him, burrowing until she could push him into a sitting position by pressing their backs together. "On my knees again," she grumbled to no one in particular. "I'm regressing women centuries of progress."
He groaned and tried to stand by himself, waving her away. Once vertical, he immediately started to tip.
Val rushed to support him. "And I thought you were just trying to get me on my back. Turns out you prefer to be the prone one, huh?" She continued her inane joking en-route to the car to distract them from how far away it seemed under his weight. It was ten times farther for him, running on no fuel.
Once there, she thrust him against the car while she opened the trunk and then womanhandled him in, laying him where she had lain when they first met.
"Remember our first date?" she asked him, but he was still out of it, so she reminded him. "It was a blind date. Well, on my side. I woke up and threw water bottles at your head from this very trunk while you drove, thinking this stranger was kidnapping me. Then you chased me into the woods, and I crunched you in the balls with one of the water bottles."
She smiled, digging out the water bottle she'd brought with her. The one he'd been saving for Mrs. Juarez. "Who'd'a thunk we'd be here again, bonding over a water bottle and crunched man-goods. Although, lucky you. This time it's that guy." She nodded her head even though Reed wasn't really conscious. It was helping her nerves, which were pinging like fireworks with the coffee.
Reed was too
pale, his lips almost white given how leeched the pink was. His defined jaw and cheekbones looked like they were trying to jut through his skin.
Her hands shook, and she couldn't get the cap off the bottle. "Classic. The lady can't get the jar open. If I hadn't just saved your butt from a bunch of other burly dudes, I'd have to give up my feminist card," she informed Reed. "Dishonorably discharged.” Finally, the seal snapped, the cap twisting off, and she dribbled bit by bit into Reed's gaping mouth.
After a while, she climbed in next to him and spaced out her pours. He didn't respond, but he did swallow.
"Now who's a swallower." She chuckled. "Good boy."
"You're..." he replied, sending Val jerking upright and leaning over him. His voice burbled off.
She put her ear to his lips. "What?"
"You're... bad girl." He said that like it was a good thing, and she snorted. Then his lips grazed her ear lobe, teeth skating over her flesh, and she jerked back, spilling some of their precious sustenance, her heart pounding.
He was delirious. He didn't do that intentionally.
Val held her tongue, but she did allow herself a sip. She was going to give him the whole thing, but if his mind was working enough to make sexual comments, he was going to live.
"My baby?"
"Okay, that's enough. I gave you some leniency for the dehydration delusions, but I am not your baby."
His head tipped to the side, lids blinking slowly, one following the other by half a beat. "Baby... Jeep," he breathed, moving his mouth infinitesimally.
Oh. Val refused to be embarrassed. "Yes, she's here. You're welcome for bringing you your baby."
"How?"
She grinned. "I'm stronger than you think. Pulled it here, like a freaking horse. Reins and all." She didn’t mention that she’d chugged a hoarded bottle of water hidden in Lindy’s underwear drawer and used up most of the protein powder to produce the necessary energy boost. He should forgive her for that given that she was his heroine. But she knew he wouldn’t see it that way. He was too honorary to know that sometimes you had to go against intuition and make selfish decisions to achieve an important goal.