by L. B. Carter
He blinked. "Still hallucinating," he mumbled, but his voice was stronger than before. He closed his eyes again. "You're... not real."
She pinched his arm. "I'm as real as it gets, buddy boy."
He flinched then his brow furrowed.
She sighed, patted him on the shoulder, capped the drink, and hopped out of the car. She gazed at him for a long moment. "We'll space out the rest of this. And since you don't believe me, now's as good a time as ever to give you a first-hand look. Your carriage awaits, my princess." She bowed, then rethought. "Actually, I need you steering. Hop to, princess. Horses can't direct themselves." And she slammed the trunk.
◆◆◆
Making her way around front, she found the literal horse reins she stole from the Juarez's barn, not daring to ask what happened to the horses. She lifted it over her head and gripped the leather in her hands, which she braced against her shoulders. And then she leaned, pressing her whole bodyweight into her arms, tilting at an almost forty-five degree angle by the point that the Jeep began to roll forward. She took a few steps, then used her weight some more, gaining momentum. She shifted to the left a little, but the car continued straight.
Reed, I need you awake right now, dude, Val growled in her head.
Right when she'd strained forward enough that the Jeep was about to bypass the driveway they'd found the scavengers in, it veered, following her trajectory. Dipping off the tarmac onto the gravel gave it extra speed, and Val had to jog a bit, the tension in the reins slack as the car bore down on her.
"Don't get run over. Don't get run over," she chanted to herself. "My boobs have already flattened enough without food." That hadn't affected her ability to seduce her way into destroying the guys. She gave a shimmy, pleased with the responding jiggle.
The Jeep rolled to a slow stop in front of the hay bales. She could no longer see the dumbasses. There was a blood trail into some broken crisped corn stalks, so either they'd stumbled off to bleed out and weren't her problem anymore, or they'd left to die of dehydration elsewhere and weren't her problem anymore. Whichever it was, they were gone, leaving their treasures behind. Without worry, the first thing she did was swipe up the coffee kettle and chug it all.
She heard a car door pop open behind her. "You gonna share?"
Val paused long enough to say, "Nope," before downing the rest and wiping the back of her arm across her mouth. "Gotta care for your workhorse first and foremost. I already gave you most of the water."
"If you're the horse then does that mean I get to ride—" Yep, he was feeling better.
"No." She beelined for the house to see what else the scavengers were hoarding like magpies.
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," Reed rumbled.
"They already steal all the stores?" She turned to see Reed slowly slip out of the car like he'd aged overnight, moving no faster than Mrs. Juarez.
He shook his head, using the open door to pull himself up. "More like they left it stocked, but only full of rotten goods. And by goods, I mean bodies."
Val's nose wrinkled. "Yep, nope. I'm good. Not going in there." She sighed. "I could kill for some food though."
"Yeah, I think that's what happened."
She sat on one of the hay bales. "I can't believe they had a fire ...in a drought. Swear to God that's gotta be how the big one over there started. Maybe this part of the country isn't worth saving. No brains. Is that why the Scarecrow was the one asking the Wizard of Oz for a brain?"
Reed slowly shuffled to the circle, his eyes bright even if his body was slow to recuperate. "Well, if it helps, I don't think that guy is procreating after what you said you did to him, so at least, his line will die out."
Val snorted. "Gotta sacrifice the few to save the greater good. Humanity is in a precarious situation."
He kept going past her. She swiveled to follow his meander. "Is that why you left Mrs. Juarez? And stole her last water?" he asked her. There was a warning growl of blame in his accusation.
Whatever. She'd saved him. He couldn't hate her.
He kept going until Val was swiveled one-eighty with his baby and the smoldering embers at her back. He stopped below a small water tower next to the house, inspecting it.
She sat up tall. "It's not empty?"
"So said Tweedles Dum, Dee, and Dumber." He moved around, looking for a spigot or something.
Val stood abruptly at the wet noise of a stream of water splattering into the dirt. Amazing how that sound of liquid on solid was like heaven now and hell earlier when it had been Tio's piss. Maybe it hadn't been urine on the scavenger's boots. Had she known, she might've kissed his feet in exchange for that nourishment.
She grabbed the bucket and power-walked to Reed, trying to appear calm while her thirst raged like a monster in a cage with relief so close. Reed's arm shot out, halting her as she reached for the tap in front of him. She couldn't really reach it anyway. He'd have to do it. Damn tall male.
"We don't know if it's potable. We'll just be worse off if we drink it without caution. End up like Tio."
Val let loose a pout and moan, picking up where one of the Tweedle's toddler tantrums left off.
Reed grinned. "Maybe I will call you 'baby.' And not in a sexy way. Let's take back what we can, and we'll boil it. Just in case."
"With what? We don't have a working stove."
"Fire." Reed shrugged. "They must have left matches somewhere around here."
"Ugh." Valerie shoved the bucket into Reed's chest and clomped off. "You're just as bad as the scavengers. It's no wonder the Earth ended up as bad off as it is."
The sound of water filling the bucket also filled Val with irrational irritation. She was so thirsty. Vengefully, she pulled the water bottle from the Jeep and drank the last of the bottle. Ha. Now, they'd have to sterilize the water or else be completely suicidal.
"Good thinking, that way we can fill that bottle, too." Reed smirked at Val's eyebrow raise as she sauntered back. He knew she was hoping to annoy him, and instead, she was all the more annoyed that he wasn't.
But he was right, so she went back and rifled through his baby until Val had every container that could possibly hold water. And then she remembered. "Your Jeep. It's hydrogen fuel cell. It runs on water."
"Deionized water," he reminded her.
"How deionized?"
He gave her a face. Right. She was supposed to be a scientist with a university education, not a natural disaster director with none. Obviously, he meant pure, one-hundred-percent deionized. There probably wasn't a "partially deionized" option.
"I mean it'll run, right? For a short time? We might just destroy the engine."
His mouth gaped as he looked at her over his shoulder, filling the stockpile of containers she'd stacked on the ground next to him.
She used her shirt to smear dirt and sweat across her face. The sun was high and hot, which meant they didn't have too much longer before dark to get back. "It's no good to us not running anyway. If it—"
"She," Reed corrected, heatedly.
"—she has just one more trek in her, she can be a heroine. Think about it. Like the iron giant. ‘Suuupeeermaaaaan,’ she'll whisper as she dies to save us, getting us to our destination with all the water we need. Enough, even, for Mrs. Juarez."
"If she's survived."
Val waved a hand. "It's been barely half a day. She's fine. She probably hasn't even moved from the bed where I left her. The clean bed."
That raised Reed's brows, and he glanced over while switching out cartons. "You brought her upstairs?"
"Told you. Stronger than I look."
"Strong enough to pull us back home and save my baby some suffering?"
"I don't think we have time." Val turned away to check the horizon to scrutinize the fire plume. It was hard to see. Circling the water tower, she found the rungs that led up to the top. She didn't have to climb many to make out the daunting weather in the distance it was so expansive. "Sorry Lindy," she told the horizon. "The best
we can offer you is to bring water to your mom and hope you catch up to us. We ain't coming all the way out there for ya."
Then she stopped, her head tilting as she observed the dark color of the cloud. Earlier, it was a grey and white, which was how she'd confused it with a thunderstorm. Now, it looked more beige, dusty like everything else. As she watched, it moved, shifting visibly closer. Then the tail of it seemed to veer to the right like a straw chasing the last drop around the bottom of a cup.
"Oh, shit," Val breathed.
The fire was causing all sorts of weird air currents, and causing...
"No. No way. Toto, I think we are in Kansas." A spew of all the swear words she knew streamed from her mouth as she vented.
"If you want to be treated like a lady, you probably shouldn't swear so much," Reed admonished. "And I think we're farther north than Kansas." Val dropped off the structure and pushed into him. "What the hell?" he exclaimed as water gushed over him and he hurried to twist off the spigot to not waste any of the water. His face fell to match her expression, wariness schooling his irritation. "What?"
"That's not just a fire. There's a tornado forming. Well.” She squinted. “It seems to be more of a dust devil forming in the plume, and I think it's even picked up some of the fire."
Reed's eyes bugged. "A dust devil filled with fire? Anything named ‘devil’ sounds bad."
"It is. Dust devils, or maybe this is becoming a fire devil aren’t jokes these days. I don’t know if you’ve seen one of those before, Mr. Northern guy, but it ain’t the light breeze we’ve been hoping for. And it's moving this way. Fast. Beating the fire itself."
Reed glanced west, his jaw muscles popping. It was impossible to see from the ground. He'd have to trust her.
Val bounced on the balls of her feet, shockingly eager to get away from there. "Looks like your baby is going to have to gargle whether she wants to swallow or not. No time for foreplay. We've gotta go. Now."
Chapter Six
Jen stood on top of his baby, dirtying her beautiful roof with messy boots. Then again, it was impossible to avoid dust out here. And frankly, the view of Jen's long legs disappearing into shorts that barely covered her ass as she paced was a pretty nice distraction from the nausea Reed was trying to tamp down. His recovery from heat stroke was taking its sweet time, and the disorientation lingered. He couldn't afford to throw up; he needed that water in his system. But Jen's anxiety was contagious.
Reed willed their newfound water to swirl faster down the funnel they'd rigged out of the abandoned bucket.
"How much longer?"
"If you ask me that one more time, I'm leaving you here," Reed replied in his best dad voice.
"You can't leave until it's full, smartass, which is what I'm asking." She gave him a glare then fixated on the horizon. She was doing that a lot. It wasn't helping his stress level. "Damnit. It's shifting. We don't have time. We need to go now!" Jen hopped onto the hood with a clang, making Reed wince. Still, he offered her a hand to help her down. She brutally shoved it aside and dropped into the dirt on her own. She gave a slight wince that told him that the descent had been harder on her weak knees than she'd planned, but no way was she going to accept his chivalry.
And yet, he'd fallen so low as to need her help. Needed it to save his life.
"Giddy-up, cowboy." She looped around him, heading for the passenger seat, knowing better than to try to relieve him of the chance to drive his baby even if he wasn't feeling in top form.
"Shouldn't I be saying that to you, Ms. Pony?" He turned off the spigot and tapped out the last of the water in the bucket before tossing it into the back seat with several containers of water. He hoped he'd gotten enough in his baby's fuel cell to facilitate the trip back to the Juarez's and back again. The water tower wasn't yet empty, but all of their containers were full. Unlike Lindy, they hadn't left that morning expecting to restock their water supply and hadn't come prepared.
Reed snorted to himself. Him? Unprepared.
"Laugh it up, but if I hadn't dragged your heavy-ass Jeep here, you'd have been killed several times over by sun stroke, malnutrition, vultures and dumbasses."
"Hey." Reed fixed Jen with a glare as he clambered into the driver's seat and slammed the door.
"I meant those dumbasses, not you. Though you were the one venturing out without hydration. They were quite well-equipped."
"That's not what I was arguing. My baby's ass is not heavy. She's perfect. We don't body shame here. What kind of feminist keeps other women down?" He shook his head in mock disappointment and held his breath while pushing the ignition button.
"I could offer her some tips on how to shed water weight. And fast."
Reed ignored Jen, listening astutely to his girl. She didn't like what he'd fed her, but his baby digested her water with shuddering gulps. He grinned.
"Hit it!" Jen shouted, stomping her foot down on the floor as though to will his toe down on the gas pedal.
"Oh, I intend to. But only after you apologize to my girl. She's just big enough." Reed laughed when Jen growled.
"Now is not the time for That's-what-she-said jokes. We have a tornado made of asphyxiating dirt and literal fire chasing us. You ever seen the movie Twister?"
"Don't they survive that?" Reed asked, but he reversed down the drive, skidding onto the road and cranking his baby into drive.
"The older mother's house collapses on her. You want to rescue Mrs. Juarez from the fate I left her in? Then drive."
With a jolt, they sped forward. Reed glanced in the rear-view mirror, panning for the spout. "I was hoping for a twister more akin to the Tasmanian Devil in Loony Tunes. The most he does is make people dizzy."
"Yeah, sure. Let's hope for that," Jen placated, opening the window and lifting herself to perch her ass on the door frame. Her body hung outside the Jeep, enabling her to get a better view behind them.
"What the hell are you doing?" Reed was pushing his girl to high speeds to escape the oncoming vortex ... and also because he wasn't sure at what point she'd choke on all the particulates in the water she consumed.
"Keeping an eye on it. These things can change direction at any second."
"Then shouldn't you stay inside so you don't get suddenly sucked out of the window like a vacuum hose held up to a mouse hole?" he said, angry at her callousness.
She ducked her head in to look at Reed, catching his eye as he glanced over. "That is the weirdest metaphor. Did you suck innocent little mice into vacuum cleaners often as a kid?" Her head tilted. "Was it a torture thing? Do I need to be wary of some deep dark serial killer streak that leaves you uncomfortably too kinky for normalcy? Or was it part of the training of this Father character I hear about who may or may not be tracking us on top of our beloved BSTU? Oh, or maybe it's all part of some eco-friendly shit where you vow not to ever kill pests but to remove them safely and then set them free! Whatever. Whichever issue you're packing, I've got news for you, bub. I'm not sure that, even if they were alive, letting loose a mouse that had just been inhaled by a human machine is all that okay."
He grinned. "Want to see how kinky I get? To test out which one it is?"
She shook her head and poked back outside the car.
"I think you're overthinking this, anyway." He shouted so she could hear him over the wind whipping through her open window. His baby was admittedly grumblier than her usual hushed whirr, too, which worried him. "You're letting in all the dust."
"Deal with it." Then she swore.
Reed tried to peer in the rear-view, but given how tall the corn stalks were, he couldn't see over them out the back window. "Did it shift again? Should I go through the corn? If so, you really gotta get back inside."
He wasn't sure she heard his request, but she did drop back onto the passenger seat and send the window back into place. In the relative quiet, she explained. "Want the bad news or the shit news?"
"Neither."
"Okay, the bad news is that it's moving fast and you gotta go, l
ike, Fast and Furious with this bitch right now." She craned to look out the back window at the sky.
Reed pushed his foot closer to the floor, disliking some of the noises coughing from his baby. He had made it farther from the Juarez's than he'd thought in his earlier trudge. No wonder he'd passed out. He glanced at Jen who'd somehow made the same distance while pulling a car. "And the shit news?"
"We've got company."
"Like the-lovely-couple-next-door-is-coming-over-with-fresh-homemade-cookies kind of company? Or vandals-taking-advantage-of-good-guys kind of company?"
"Neither." She stole his word. "Like BSTU kind of company."
Reed swore. "Drones again? I might be down for that. I gotta be honest; you're pretty hot when you're wielding a bat."
Jen rolled her eyes at him. "I wish. That would get out a lot of my pent-up aggression over being stuck here, saving your sorry ass."
"I think you mean tension. Sexual tension."
"Here's some tension to distract you from your blue balls: we've got a chopper inbound. Looks like it's heading the same direction we are."
"To the Juarez's house?"
Jen didn't answer. She didn't have to.
Reed pushed the pedal harder, seeing the hanging mailbox blur into view in the blistering heat waves. It was waving around wildly, pulling on the single chain that linked it to its wooden post. Reed had felt the wind trying to shove his baby around, but with his grip on the wheel, she hadn't relented. Watching the mailbox shift, he knew they didn't have much time.
"We can only hope that the BSTU chopper becomes the mouse in your analogy," Jen said as Reed's baby drifted as if they were in a movie just like she asked, hydroplaning sideways to fishtail onto the dirt driveway that was way too fucking long.
The air inside the car began to fog, making the turns in the drive harder to see, and Reed thought for a moment Jen was hyperventilating and steaming up the windows. He'd prefer he had a say in causing that reaction from her. But when Jen cried out, flipping off the air-conditioning that had been doing as great of a job at reviving him as when Jen poured coffee into his mouth, he realized it was sand and silt, creeping in through the vents. Forced to skid to a stop when his vision became too impaired, he listened to the howl of the wind climb as it began to shove at the Jeep.