He glanced behind to see Yuri waving furiously at him from behind the windshield. He was gesturing to the back, and Bobby looked that way, running the back of his gloved hand over his eyes to clear them.
There, no more than two hundred yards behind them, shone bright lights and, moving between the beams, the figures of people moving behind the shapes of snow-buried vehicles.
And, as he watched them, he saw someone pointing at the tractor.
They’d been seen.
Chapter 2
Leaving
Ellie stood in line, pointedly focusing her attention on Jodi as she checked out the handwritten menu on the chalkboard.
Sadly, the Korean man behind them didn’t take the hint. “Take my advice,” he said, “forget about Edwards. Absolute mess.”
Ellie turned her head in his direction without taking her eyes off Jodi. “Yeah, you said. Thanks.”
“But you will go anyway, won’t you? Typical American women. Can’t tell you anything.”
“Look, Mister—”
“Lee.”
“Lee. I appreciate what you’re saying, but we’ll make our own decision.”
The man shrugged. “Your funeral.”
“Exactly.”
“Hey, Ellie, what are you having?”
Ellie turned her back on the man, though she could still hear him grumbling. She said, “Bacon sandwich. I make it a rule in places like this to only order food that can’t be messed up if I can’t see the kitchen.”
“You know what Uncle Pat would say about it?” She nodded toward the sizzling hotplate where a harassed-looking man in greasy whites flipped the meat.
“‘That ain’t bacon’,” Ellie said, putting on a deep voice and a Dick Van Dyke accent, “‘that’s nothing more than fried fat. Gor blimey, Mary Poppins and Lord, love a duck, what is the world coming to?’”
Jodi giggled. “Poor Uncle Pat!”
“Oh, I think he’d find it pretty amusing. And he’d remind me that he’s not ‘cockernee’, but a proud Northerner. Then he’d bore me with British geography.” She subsided as the line inched forward.
She and Jodi had gotten on well since they’d left Ragtown two days earlier, and their mutual affection for Patrick was the main thing they had in common. Both desperately wished that he was coming along—though for different reasons—and neither had wanted to leave him in a hospital bed. At least he’d been awake when they’d gone to say their farewells. It had broken Ellie’s heart to see the half-open, sunken eyes that had gazed up at her. Though he hid it, he didn’t want to be left alone and his eyes leaked as she leaned down and kissed him on his stubbly cheek.
Bobby’s lover, Eve, had promised to watch out for him, which was some comfort to Ellie and Jodi. Ellie had been wrong about the woman. She’d wanted to think of Eve as some sort of bimbo who’d woven a spell around both Bobby and Maria. Petite, blonde and pretty, the woman looked like a living Barbie—one that had been played with extensively and then abandoned in the bottom of a child’s toy drawer.
But, in truth, Ellie had begun to like her and, perhaps, to sympathize. Ellie detected a fault line within Eve that spoke of a fractured past. In Maria, Eve had found a focus for her love and it suited them all. And even Ellie wasn’t selfish enough to attempt to drive a wedge between them. In any case, it would have been futile.
Ellie pictured Maria in her mind. So like her father to look at. So like her mother in temperament. Maybe that was why she hadn't gotten as close as she’d hoped to her daughter over the years. Opposites repelling like two poles on a magnet.
But there was no question of Maria coming with her on this mission to find Jodi’s father. And that was what it truly was—the president might have sent them into California as spies, but they were actually going because Jodi’s father had returned from the dead and, having satisfied her own need to find her most important relative, Ellie was going to help Jodi do the same. She was also naturally nosy, so there was that. Something weird was occurring on the West Coast, and maybe it would turn out to be important.
They reached the front of the line and a harassed young woman looked up. “Yep?”
“Bacon and egg on white.”
Jodi rubbed her chin. “Have you got anything vegetarian?”
Ellie sighed as the server rolled her eyes. “We got bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, beans, that kinda thing.”
“I’ll have an egg banjo, then.”
“A what?”
“Egg sandwich.”
They moved along to where a man with a sawn-off shotgun stood beside a cash box. “Do you take Ragtown dollars?” Ellie asked.
“No paper money.”
“Ammunition?”
“Sure. What you got?”
“9mm.”
The man nodded. “Two meals, ten rounds.”
“Ten rounds? For a couple of slices of bacon, an egg and some bread?”
“You think bacon’s easy to come by these days? But suit yourself, I’ll cancel your order.”
Ellie shook her head and dug into her pack, pulling out a clip and removing ten rounds. Earl, who’d equipped them for their road trip, had been generous with ammunition, largely for exactly this situation, but to lose ten rounds for two sandwiches was a rip-off.
“Good doin’ business with you,” the man said, slipping the rounds into the metal box and waving them away.
They sat at a table by the window and Ellie did her best to clear away the grease and grime left by earlier eaters. This diner, at least, seemed to be doing well. Probably because it was the only place to eat along this stretch of Route 15, being just inside the border with California.
The Korean man who’d been behind them in the line had seated himself on the other side of the restaurant where he eyed them surreptitiously while devouring a bowl of ramen.
“Thanks,” Ellie said as their sandwiches appeared on the table.
Jodi immediately took a bite before pulling a face.
“Not as good as Ragtown?” Ellie asked.
“No way.”
“Shall I ask for our money back?”
Jodi smiled. “Let’s just eat and get out of here.”
But, as she was getting to her feet, she looked up to see the Korean man standing beside her. “I have to talk to you,” he said. “Please.”
Ellie sighed, but sat back down. “Look, we’ve got to get moving.”
He pulled a chair in close, sending a cloud smelling of tobacco across the table. “You are going to Edwards?”
“We told you that. You said we shouldn’t.”
“But you are still going?”
“Yes.”
The man leaned forward. “I was there. It was not a nice experience.”
“So you said.”
The man looked around nervously. “Why are you going there?”
“We come from LA.”
He looked relieved. “So, you have a residency permit?”
“A what?”
“When were you last in the city? Before the flood?”
Ellie nodded. “I was away on business.”
“You are taking a big risk, then. They will interrogate you. They interrogate everyone who comes in. Not so much those going out. Don’t you understand? Edwards is one of the border posts. We’re two countries now, not one.”
Jodi said, “What happened to you, Mr… Sorry, I’ve forgotten.”
“Lee. I also once lived in LA. I had family there, and I was told my cousin’s house might be above water, so I wanted to go there and check. They took me into custody and interrogated me; asked me to tell them everything about the Mountain States. They treated me like some kind of spy. I told them, I just wanted to see my cousin’s house, but they said if he had died, then the house belongs to the Pacific Coast States. They kept me there for another night and then forced me out. They did this to me.”
He rolled up his sleeve, again checking that no one else was watching. A circle with a cross through it had been tattooed into
the skin of his forearm. “This is how they mark people they don’t want. If I’m found on the other side of the border with this on my arm, I’ll be shot.”
Ellie gasped. “Are you serious? This is the USA, not some ex-Soviet country.”
“No, this is not the USA anymore. We are two, perhaps three, countries. The Pacific Coast States, the Mountain States and whatever is happening to the east of the Rockies. I found that out the hard way, and I’m warning you, so you don’t have to. But maybe you’ll be luckier than me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I am a Korean American.” As he got up to leave, he said, “I’ve warned you, so my conscience is clear.”
Jodi watched him go. “I guess we could try going around Edwards?”
“It’s not worth the risk. We’ve got to get close to your dad, and that means getting close to…you know…his friend,” she said, glancing around. “He could be inside a security cordon and if we get caught without ID, we probably won’t get near Joel.”
Cold hit them as soon as they went through the swing doors.
“Hey! Get away from my car!” Ellie accelerated toward a pair of young men, one armed with a crowbar.
If she’d had any sense, Ellie would have pulled the gun from inside her jacket, but all the frustration and rage of the past couple of days burst like a volcano. She’d driven across a wrecked country whose people were now at each other’s throats. And the bacon sandwich had been vile.
One of the youths ran off as she approached, but the one with the crowbar lifted it, intending to be threatening as he held it like a baseball bat. When he realized she wasn’t going to stop, he took a swing, but his lack of conviction was mirrored by Ellie’s wrath as she kicked him viciously between the legs, sending him sprawling onto the cracked concrete of the parking lot. She aimed another swing at him, but Jodi finally caught up with her and grabbed her arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, turning the key in the lock, opening the car and forcing Ellie into the driver’s seat.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me,” Ellie snapped as she put her foot down, barely missing the youth as he squirmed on his back.
“What if he’s got a crew?” Jodi said.
“Then I’d kick them all in the nuts,” Ellie said as they made their way out of the parking lot and back to the interstate.
#
“Good grief, are we going to spend all day in lines?” Ellie groaned as she put the car in park. They’d hit the end of the queue of vehicles half a mile outside Edwards. Despite the warnings of Mr. Lee, they’d been feeling quite positive as they’d traveled west, the climate becoming less and less extreme as they went. The landscape here was flat in all directions, with low, dry bushes interrupting the sand. Frost glinted beneath the bushes, and the peaks of the distant mountains were white, but other than that, the scene looked relatively normal, though the thermometer on her dashboard told Ellie that she’d feel the drop in temperature when she got out of the car.
“Now what do we do?” Jodi said.
Ellie shrugged. “Wait. At least it’s warm in here. We’ve got plenty of gas so we can keep the engine running.”
Two hours later, they’d just made it into the entrance of the base. Ellie had been forced to adopt emergency measures involving a bottle to prevent her bladder exploding and both of them had spent the time getting increasingly nervous about what was ahead of them.
Twice, Jodi had suggested they go back to Ragtown, that finding her father wasn’t that urgent, but Ellie’s mind had been made up as soon as they’d joined the back of the queue. It wasn’t just about Joel Baxter—in fact, for her it wasn’t about him at all. But Ellie had become increasingly unsettled as they’d driven across the country. She’d seen many upsetting things in the months since the flood, but she’d somehow imagined that, in the end, people would pull together and build something new out of the disaster. In Denver, she’d been insulated from what was happening outside, and even Ragtown had been well-organized for what was, in essence, a refugee camp. But the journey here had bothered her.
The collapse of currency outside of the camps and major cities had driven home how far they’d fallen. But it was the little things that bothered her the most. The shuttered towns that lined the highway; restaurants and bars closed; gangs on the street; garbage drifting across the highway.
The only way she could see any hope for the future—for her daughter—was in uniting the country again. And that could only happen if everyone accepted one person’s authority. She’d like it to be Buchanan, but she didn’t care that much. Except that whoever it was couldn’t be in the pocket of a foreign power. Because then they wouldn’t have unity, they’d have occupation.
A helmeted figure approached. Ellie could see that it wore a uniform beneath the non-regulation long black coat that it gathered around itself. Something in the way it moved spoke of exhaustion.
She rolled down the window and looked into the face of a middle-aged man with dark rings around his eyes and breath smelling of mints.
“Pass?”
“I don’t have one. We’re new here.”
The man’s expression didn’t change. “Come from west or east?”
“East.”
This time the eyebrows lifted. “Where?”
“Denver, via Ragtown.”
“And your business here?”
“We’re from LA, looking for our family.”
The guard rubbed his stubble as he examined the inside of the car, eyes traveling over the two women. “Took your time, didn’t you? Flood was months ago.”
Ellie tried to keep a lid on her temper. “It hasn’t been easy to get back here.”
“Going to be tough to find family after all this time.”
“We’d like to try.”
Again, the man seemed to consider her response. With a sudden movement, he straightened up and all Ellie could see was his waist, tarnished belt buckle poking between the two halves of his coat. “Hey, Muhammed!”
Ellie watched as another man made his way between the waiting vehicles.
“Escort these two to the security compound and deliver them to whoever’s in charge over there.”
“What’d they do?”
“Easterners. You know the standing orders.”
“Right.”
The first face appeared at the window again. “Private Amir will escort you.”
There was no point arguing, so Ellie just nodded as the rear passenger door opened and the car rocked. “Head out of the line and to the left.”
They drove past the rest of the line and through the residential part of the base, then toward the far end where chain-link fence guarded the military buildings. Amir guided them through the checkpoint and into an inner fenced area which, more than anything, resembled a prison. Figures in orange wandered aimlessly back and forth on the far side of another fence.
“What is this place?” Ellie asked him.
“It’s the base prison.”
Jodi swung around to look at him. “We’re not criminals!”
Amir shrugged. “That’s for the border officers to decide. We regulars handle people with permits. Undocs need to go through the process. Don’t worry, good-looking white girls like you will do okay. If I’d driven in with no papers, though…”
He got out of the car and escorted them to the front door of the building where they were met by a pair of guards. Unlike the scruffy Amir, these were immaculately turned out and regarded him with obvious disdain.
“Well?” one of them said.
“They came from out east. No papers. Standing orders…”
“I know what standing orders say. Why aren’t they properly restrained?”
Amir glanced at Ellie and Jodi, then back again. “I…I didn’t think…”
“No, exactly. You didn’t think. Orders are that all prisoners are to be restrained before being handed over.”
“Prisoners?” Ellie burst out.
The guard sn
apped, “Be quiet,” before turning back to Amir, who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. “Leave them with us. But I will be in touch with your section leader. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Amir turned on his heels and marched briskly away, obviously relieved to be out of the firing line.
The second soldier said to the first, “Shall I cuff them, Sarge?”
“No, they’re just a couple of women. You girls won’t cause us any trouble, will you?”
Just give me half a chance, Ellie thought. “No, not at all, Sergeant.”
“Tyler, take them through to the interview room,” the sergeant said before following them inside. Ellie could feel his eyes on her—or was he looking at Jodi? Perhaps she was being paranoid, she told herself, but she’d been around creeps enough times to have developed a sixth sense.
They were led into a small room with white-painted cinder blocks and a small rectangular table. Ellie sat down beside Jodi on one side of the table while the sergeant sat on the other. His subordinate, at a whispered word from him, left them there.
“Now, let’s start with some basics while we wait for the L.T.”
Jodi stuck her hand in the air. “Could I use the bathroom first? I’m pretty desperate.”
“And me,” Ellie added. “We’ve been stuck in a car for hours.”
The sergeant, whose name was Sheppard according to his patch, shook his head. “You’ll have to wait.”
“But I can’t! I’m going to pee myself!” Jodi said.
Sheppard sighed and put his pen down. “Get up. You know there’s no way out of this compound, don’t you? No point running.”
“I just want to use the bathroom!” Jodi said, half-sobbing.
“Okay, okay!” he opened the door and led them along the corridor to a bathroom. “You got two minutes, or I’ll send someone after you.”
Jodi’s tears subsided the moment the door was shut behind them. “He’s totally mental,” she said, heading for a cubicle.
A minute later, they stood at the sinks.
Lost: Deluge Book 5: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 2