At that moment, the door burst open and Darlene came in carrying two mugs, followed by the young deputy Clayton.
“Ah, there you are. You found my special coffee?”
“Sure, boss,” Darlene said.
Sheriff Cline push back the chair and took a mug from her, before handing it to Bobby and taking the other. “Well, best put you back in your cell while I send in my report. You might as well enjoy Nevada’s finest brew while you wait to be picked up.”
“But…”
“No point arguin’. I got my job to do.”
Bobby thought he saw a twinkle in the old man’s eye, and so he sighed resignedly and headed back to his cell.
Once they’d been left alone, he explained what had happened to Yuri and the two sat and sipped their coffee, waiting for the hand of fate to touch them on the shoulder.
#
It was the sun that woke him. Pink light crept into his consciousness, then he tried to open his eyes. But he couldn’t! He cried out, first in fear, then in pain as he pulled apart his eyelids with his fingers. More pain followed, this time lancing through his mind as it fought against the panic and to orient itself.
What?
Hadn’t he been here before?
No. This was different. This time it was dark. He was sitting upright but leaning back and seeing nothing.
Was he blind?
He jerked forward, his hands banging into something. A steering wheel. His heart thumped as he looked around, finally making out the faintest outline through what must be a windshield. He was in a car. He reached up and found an interior light switch. He pushed it, recoiling from the sudden light, then looked again to see his breath misting around it like the smoke outside a dragon’s lair.
He didn’t recognize the car. It wasn’t the Volvo. This was much more up-to-date, much bigger.
He looked across to the passenger seat. Yuri sat there, tilted to one side, mouth wide open. The interior light glinted off the layer of ice that had formed as Yuri’s breath had hit the window.
Bobby, his mind still sluggish, tried to bring his memory up to date, but it was no good. He remembered being in his cell with Yuri, drinking the coffee and speculating on what the sheriff would do with them. And then he was here.
He made a crinkling noise as he moved, then patted his chest to find he was wearing a different coat. It was warm and clean. Electing to leave Yuri where he was, he pushed at the car door. It wouldn’t open. Panicked, he squinted down at the central locking button, but it was off. He pulled at the handle again as he pushed against the door. It inched open and a blinding light flooded in from the gap at the top. It felt harder to push at the bottom so he twisted around and, through screwed up eyes, used his feet to slowly widen the gap. All he saw was white.
Finally, he’d made enough room to squeeze out, then slipped sideways to go sprawling in the freezing snow. It was broad daylight and he’d been left in a car he didn’t own which had gotten buried while he’d lain there asleep.
He stepped back to try to make out where he was, but all he could see was a white landscape surrounded by brooding mountains on the horizon. The snow was no longer falling, but nothing moved.
They’d been left in a pickup and he walked around the back, opening up the tailgate to find that the bed had a metal shuttered cover, and that there were packs in there, as well as a hunting rifle and a shovel. He walked a few yards along the road and swept snow from a sign that said Welcome to McGill, before going back to the pickup and climbing inside again, having swept his arm across the windshield.
The cold air he’d let in had brought Yuri around and Bobby answered his questions as he opened the pack that had been left on the seat between them. Inside, he found a thermos flask, a route map and his M9. He also found a note which he read while he unscrewed the lid of the flask and handed it to the Russian.
The note was written in childlike block capitals.
N.E. TO SLC. E TO DENVER. DO NOT TAKE I-70. HURRY.
CHECK TRUNK. GOOD LUCK. GODSPEED.
“It must have been the sheriff,” Bobby said.
“What in name of Lenin’s sainted balls is going on?”
Bobby took the thermos from him and swallowed a mouthful of the lukewarm chicken soup. They must have been here for hours.
“He’s given us a chance.”
“He drugged us. You know this?”
“That’s my guess. Probably figured it would be easier to make us disappear from the hospital than the jail.”
Yuri put his fingers around his throat and pulled at the necklace. “SD card. It is here.”
“Then we’d better make sure it’s delivered.”
“How far?”
Bobby unfolded the map. “This must be where we are. McGill, Nevada. And this is Denver. Six hundred miles. Seven hundred, maybe.”
Yuri searched through the pack and found an energy bar. “And you think it will be like this all the way?”
“Probably. But who knows?”
“Worse than Siberia. And they have chains on tires. Six hundred miles?”
“Or seven hundred.”
“We are crazy.”
Bobby glanced across at the Russian and thought he saw the ghost of a smile on his face. He knew he should have been worrying about whether Maria and Eve were safe, but he also knew there was nothing he could do to help them. Nothing other than to attempt a journey of hundreds of miles through an Antarctic wilderness in the hope that the information on Yuri’s SD card might hold an answer to at least some of their problems. He’d imagined that their biggest danger—in the short term, at least—was foreign invasion or civil war. Now it seemed the world was locked in a sudden ice age and he knew enough about prehistory to remember that humanity had barely survived the last one.
If his daughter—if his species—was to have any future, then it lay seven hundred miles away in the hands of the president of a fractured country that was disappearing beneath a shroud of ice.
He turned the key, waited for the glow plug to warm up and then sighed with relief as the engine turned over.
“Come on my friend,” Yuri said. “America and Russia working together to save world.”
“What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter 21
Maria
Ellie sat beside Patrick’s bed, reading a book about a woman whose husband was accused of murder, but who, Ellie suspected had done the dirty deed herself. Utter trash, but beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers.
It was the third day since Patrick had been brought in and his treatment had been yet more evidence of how far her country had fallen from its pedestal. She thought she’d gotten used to the scale of the disaster during her weeks on Kujira, and then in Oklahoma, but since she’d arrived in Denver, things had seemed more normal. But now she realized this had just been a veneer covering up something rotten and unstable beneath. The doctors in the camp hospital had done their best, but it reminded her of something out of the Middle East rather than the most advanced country in the world.
Still, they’d confirmed that he had been poisoned by ethylene glycol, though they couldn’t explain why the damage had been quite so severe. One theory was that Patrick’s kidneys were in poor shape before the poisoning. Another doctor suggested there might have been more than one toxin in the lemon pie. Either way, he wasn’t recovering. At least not quickly.
He was conscious some of the time, but too exhausted to talk for long, let alone move about. His haggard skin drew in around his eyes, and his lips thinned.
He looked old. Only days before, she’d considered him a well-worn but attractive man, like a strong oak tree that had weathered many storms. Now, it was as if someone had taken an ax to him. And to think she’d harbored dreams of spending her future with him.
She looked up from her book as movement caught her eye. It was just a nurse carrying something to a patient a few beds across. No private rooms here, just bed after bed after bed. Three had died since Patrick had arr
ived. She wondered if he’d ever leave this place.
“Hey.”
Jodi appeared as if from out of nowhere. She looked fresh as a daisy, but her smile couldn’t cut through Ellie’s malaise.
“Any news?” Jodi asked, pulling a chair across from the next bed.
“Haven’t seen a doctor yet today. He’s woken up from time to time, but he’s so weak.”
Jodi looked up at him. “Looks like an old man, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. Well, he’s going through a lot.”
Jodi leaned forward. “I sent a message to Denver.”
“You did what?” Ellie hissed. “How?”
“Before we left, Ted gave me a list of contacts. In case we got into trouble, or when we needed to report. There’s a guy called Earl Sims, who runs a workshop for the Army. He’s on my list. So, I told them what had happened.”
Ellie shook her head in disbelief. “Why did Pope give the contacts to you?”
“We got to know each other a bit when I was in Hazleton with Buzz. He told me a few things I needed to hear and he trusts me.”
“What happens now?”
“He’s going to get the message through. He said to come back later. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll sit by Pat.”
Ellie slapped her hand over her mouth as she yawned. “Yeah, that’d be good. Is there anything else you need?”
Jodi shook her head as they swapped positions. “No, I’m okay. Got something to eat after I went to see my contact. I’m legit a spy now!”
“This is serious, Jodi!” Ellie said, leaning in as she gathered her stuff.
Jodi shrugged. “Maybe. But Pat’s all I care about right now. Sometimes I wish I were religious so I could pray for him.”
“Pray away,” Ellie said, squeezing her shoulder before leaving her there, sitting by Patrick’s bed and opening a tattered magazine.
Ellie woke up, snorting into her pillow. She immediately straightened, separating her lips from the sheets. She had no idea who’d used them before her, but she was sure they hadn’t been cleaned in a while.
She shook her head to wake up a little. She knew they’d been lucky to be given this room—an old janitor’s closet or something like it—but she couldn’t help but contrast it with what now seemed like a life of luxury on the boat and, later, the hotel in Denver. She even remembered her apartment in Clearwater with a yearning that was only dissipated as she remembered that it was now under three hundred feet of water.
A washing-up bowl, a jug of cold water and a bucket were the only facilities the room had, but the last thing Ellie wanted to do was use the communal showers and bathrooms, not until she absolutely had to. She checked her watch; good grief, she’d been asleep for hours. Soaking a towel in water from the jug, she wiped her face then cleaned her armpits before, with her jaws firmly clamped shut, she squatted over the bucket.
Ellie straightened up and caught her reflection in an old, cracked mirror. She laughed out loud: she wasn’t such a bad match for Patrick after all. He looked like an anemic Gandalf and she was the Wicked Witch of the West.
She found Jodi by Patrick’s bed, in the process of packing her magazine away. “Oh, thank God. I was just about to head off for…you know, my appointment.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ellie said. “Okay?”
“Sure. Pat’s been asleep for most of the afternoon. He won’t miss us.”
They marched along the corridors of the makeshift hospital and out into the main compound area. Ellie had barely been outside, and only then during the evening before curfew began. It was half past five and people were walking to and fro on missions of their own ahead of the cafeteria opening at six. The place had an air of organization while, at the same time, decrepitude. Even the uniforms of the soldiers varied. Some looked like antiques and others seemed to have mix-and-matched to come up with a combination that fit.
Jodi led her through the courtyard, along an alley and out into an open area that ended with a door. She took her pass out and waved it at the guard, and again at the ancient man on the reception desk.
At the end of a corridor, she found Earl leaning over a bench with a soldering iron in his hand. “Just give me a moment. Delicate operation.”
Ellie watched the old man as he finished what he was doing and then stiffly straightened up. “Shorthanded, you see. Say, neither of you are engineers, are you?”
“’fraid not,” Ellie said. “I almost got married to one, but…”
Earl pulled off his magnifying goggles and put them on the table. “Sorry to hear that. We’re short of folks who can handle a screwdriver. And I don’t mean the alcoholic kind, neither, miss.”
Jodi sniggered.
“But anyways, I guess I know why you’re here,” he said, looking directly at Jodi. “And it’s okay…?”
Jodi nodded. “Yeah, you can speak in front of her.”
Earl’s face darkened as he pulled a sheet of paper from his coverall pocket and unfolded it. “Here’s the reply. Don’t reckon you’re gonna like it much.”
Jodi unfolded as Ellie looked over her shoulder, skipping the gobbledygook and focusing on the message contents.
Mission priority remains critical. Proceed immediately to original destination and report. Missing unit not necessary for success, but all remaining units must be in position within three days.
Repeat. Mission CRITICAL. Do not delay.
“Missing unit not necessary? I guess they mean Patrick? Nice,” Ellie said.
Earl nodded. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Listen, I don’t know what your mission is, but Jodi’s authorization came from the top.”
“I wouldn’t care if it came from Darth Vader himself,” Jodi snapped. “They’re saying we have to leave Patrick here! But he was picked. He’s an actor.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” Earl said. “But listen, these are desperate times. The flood was more than enough, but folks are turning on each other and if we aren’t careful, everything will fall apart. We’ve all got to do things we don’t want. I mean, look at me, an old man running this entire department, me and a bunch of people who barely know one end of a wrench from the other.
“My best engineer’s disappeared off the face of the planet and the scuttlebutt says he’s gone rogue with a commie Russian.”
The old man shook his head as Ellie and Jodie read and re-read the message, looking for any kind of escape clause.
“I mean, he always was apt to follow his own course, but I can’t believe he’s any kind of traitor. Not Bobby.”
Ellie snapped up like a jack-in-the-box. “What did you say?”
Earl looked confused. “Sorry, I was rambling a little.”
“You mentioned Bobby.” She knew it was a common enough name, but still her heart was beating at twice its normal rate.
“Uh-huh. He worked with me, till he went AWOL.”
“Bobby Rodriguez?”
Earl’s eyes looked as though they’d pop out of his head. “What in the name…? You know him?”
“He’s the engineer I was talking about. The one I almost married.”
Earl’s mouth opened and shut, and Ellie could see the cogs in his mind turning as his eyes swiveled between the two women. “But…but…you’re dead.”
“Apparently not,” Ellie said. She knew it was unreasonable of her to be angry at Bobby for assuming she’d drowned in the initial wave, but she couldn’t help herself.
“He said you were in Florida. Ellie? That’s your name?”
She grabbed on to Jodi’s shoulder as a wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm her. For so long she’d assumed he was dead. She thought she’d left any feelings she’d once had for him back in the distant past, years before the flood.
“Yeah, she’s Ellie,” Jodi said.
“I remembered the name because it’s so close to Eve…” He covered his mouth as if it had spoken without permission.
“Eve?” Ellie managed. The name sounded familiar.
Earl�
�s eyes stopped flitting about and he seemed to get a grip on himself. Then he froze. “My God, you’re Maria’s mom!”
And now it felt as though all the blood was gushing out through her boots, leaving her head swimming as she desperately grabbed at Jodi who put her arm out and pulled Ellie into a hug.
“What…what happened to her?” Ellie said, barely able to get the words out.
For a moment, Earl looked confused by her response. Then he gripped her shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Why, nothing. Bobby found her. She’s here.”
#
Ellie followed Earl through the compound and out into the shanty town where long-term residents—including the families of serving soldiers—lived. She haunted his footsteps, urging him to move more quickly and yet her heart was filled with dread.
Was this old man telling the truth, or could he possibly be mistaken? How could Maria be alive?
And how would Maria feel about a mother who’d moved to the other side of the country and only saw her twice a year?
All thoughts of her mission, all thoughts of Patrick had vanished from her mind. The only things that mattered were to be sure it was her daughter, that she was alive and well, and that Maria didn’t hate her on sight.
Finally, they arrived outside one of a long line of shipping containers that had been converted into quarters.
“I’d better go in first,” Earl said, knocking on the door.
Ellie nodded, but then, as soon as the door opened, she pushed past the small blonde woman standing there and into the little room.
There, sitting at the table, pencil raised over a sheet of paper, was Maria.
They both froze, each looking at the other. Ellie could see Maria’s eyes narrowing in recognition, but her mind, in that moment of utter surprise, struggling to place her exactly.
Ice: Deluge Book 4: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 18