by Dees, Cindy
She groaned beside him. “How’s your shoulder?”
“It’ll be okay. Not high on the priority list at the moment.”
“We’re not going to make it out of here, are we?” she asked in a small voice.
He rolled onto his good shoulder and drew her close. Their breath mingled, and as their body heat did the same, he felt a little better. “I’m going to do my level best to get us out of this alive.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sighed. “It’s the best I can do and still be honest with you.”
She laid her palm against his cheek and leaned back enough in his arms to stare up at him in the near total darkness. “There’s no need to sugar coat it for me. How bad is our situation?”
“If we don’t’ find water tomorrow, we’re going to be in a world of hurt. And it’s not like we can just sit out here and hunker down to work at surviving. We’ve got to get to civilization and let the authorities know how to stop the virus. And tell them all to start looking for El Noor. That he—or she—is the mastermind.”
They were silent for a few minutes, resting in each other’s arms. She said reflectively, “If I have to die, I’m glad it’s with you, Mike.”
“We’re not going to die! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up. Not by a long stretch. I’d give anything to live to a ripe old age with you. I’m just saying. If we both have to die, I’m glad you’re here with me.”
The idea of growing old with her rolled over him like a tidal wave. Yeah, he’d have liked that, too. Having some kids. A passel of grandkids who invaded his home on holidays with noise and laughter and the happy chaos he’d grown up with. Piper would make a hell of a mother, he’d bet.
He pushed her hair off her face to stare down at her. “Only thing you have to do is live. For me. For us.”
She smiled up at him sadly. “I appreciate the pep talk. I really do. But I know the score. We’ve got about one more day, and then we’ll die of dehydration. And if that doesn’t get us, the virus will. This is the mission that was bigger than us. The one that got away. But hey. It was a good run. And I got to meet you before the end. ”
He would have cursed and raged and battered at her defeatist attitude if there was even the tiniest glimmer of hope that she was wrong. But as it was, he could only sigh and pull her closer to him. “You’re a hell of a woman, Piper Roth.”
“Thank you for not lying to me,” she whispered, her words slipping into the night on silent wings.
“I do love you,” she murmured low.
He absorbed the words into himself like healing water, cool and soothing to his soul. “I love you, too.”
She went very still. “It’s a hell of a note that we found each other now, huh?”
“Better late than never.”
“Amen.”
To have found Piper just in time to lose her, to lose his life, was hard to swallow with grace. But for her sake, he did his best. He wasn’t about to give up on getting both of them out of this mess alive. He had to stay focused. But he couldn’t resist repeating, “I love you.”
Damn, it felt good to say that. Now, if only it weren’t too late to act upon it.
* * *
Piper stared at Mike’s shadowed profile in awe. Who knew three such simple little words could carry such profound meaning? She stared at him, letting his quiet, intense declaration of love and all the emotion and loss and discovery behind it sink into her soul.
She loved him, too. More than herself. More than life. This love filling her and spilling over into him felt bigger than both of them. Eternal. Sacred.
They might have failed in their mission, might have lost everything and merely be biding time until the end, but at least they’d found each other. And it was enough. She could die in peace.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for everything.”
Twenty-One
Mike snatched at Piper’s arm as she staggered beside him. They’d walked through the pre-dawn hours and into the morning, taking shelter only when the temperature soared well over a hundred degrees and the sun climbed brutally overhead to beat down on them.
They’d each gotten about four ounces of water from their makeshift condensation still, but they needed thirty times that much to survive for long in this oven. He was starting to see things—lakes of water just ahead. People running towards them. Trees and birds where there could be none.
He knew hallucinations came with the latter stages of dehydration. Next up would be unconsciousness, and then, of course, death. If only he could find something, anything, that indicated where a trace of moisture could be found.
The gods might have given them last night together, but today, the gods were feeling cruel. There was no water. Anywhere.
He’d stopped worrying about the greater good of the residents of Las Vegas, and his entire world had narrowed down to just this moment. The two of them. Taking another step.
The sun finally set, and they moved out again. His muscles should have felt marginally rested after the break, but every hour the dehydration deepened, his feet and legs cramped more severely, and the pain in his head and eyeballs become more unbearable.
Every step was a herculean struggle to lift his foot and force it to slide forward. Piper wasn’t in any better shape. They were just about to the end of their ropes. He feared they’d missed Overton, shooting too far to one side or the other of the small town and continuing to walk out into the great desert of central Nevada.
He’d pretty much decided that it was time to sit down, get comfortable, and give up the ghost when he saw it. A square shape on the horizon that was not nature-made.
Another mirage?
He squinted at the low, black rectangle. “Do you see something?” he asked Piper cautiously.
She peered at where he was pointing feebly. “Is that a house?” she rasped.
He let out a breath of relief he didn’t know he’d been holding. He was not crazy, and he was not seeing things. Thank God. It was a building of some kind, tucked at the base of the ridge they’d been paralleling for the past hour. Odds were it was abandoned, but it meant shelter, at least, for the two of them.
“Is that a farm of some kind?” she asked.
“Hope so.”
“Do you think it has a phone?”
“Hell, I’ll be thrilled if it has a well.”
“Good point.” A pause. “How far away is it?”
He eyed the low shape, which had resolved into two structures, both long and low, one larger than the other. House and barn, maybe? “Half-mile,” he guesstimated. “Twenty minutes.” At full strength, they could make it in ten. But at the shambling pace they were managing now, not a chance.
That turned out to be a good estimate. And, indeed, a dilapidated house and a more dilapidated barn rose out of the desert grit. If nothing else, a pale ribbon of driveway wound in the other direction in the moonlight, presumably joining up with a road of some kind. They were close to civilization. Or at least, they knew how to find it, now.
“Looks abandoned,” Piper announced, sounding disappointed.
“It would be too easy if we just walked up to a house and were able to call for help,” he replied. No shitty mission like this ever caught a break like that.
The closer they got, the more abandoned the place looked. The window panes were cracked and the front door wasn’t hanging quite right. He knocked anyway, and shouted a hello. Only the blowing wind whispered back to him. He pushed the front door open.
Oh, yeah. It was abandoned. A few pieces of cobweb and dust covered furniture remained, but trash littered the floor along with plentiful rat droppings.
“Great,” Piper commented drolly. “If we don’t die of Yusef’s virus, we can catch Hantavirus from the rat poop in here and die from that, instead.”
He grinned over at her in the dark space and headed for the kitchen. If there was a phone or water to be had, that would be where they found both. An old rotary phone
did hang on the wall, but there was no dial tone. Not that he was surprised. He was more disappointed when a twist of the faucets on the sink yielded no water.
“Let’s try the barn,” he suggested.
They went back outside and headed for the other building. The faint moonlight made this place look even spookier than it already would have with its falling down fences and odd tumbleweed drifting through, ghostlike.
He put his good shoulder into shoving open the big sliding door and Piper slipped past him as he took a minute to gasp in pain.
“Bingo!” she crowed.
He stepped into the gloom. Sonofagun. A tractor. Old, rusty, and cobweb covered, but a tractor.
“Think it runs?” she asked.
“Highly doubtful,” he replied as she hoisted herself up onto the seat. She pushed and pulled at clutches and throttles, and turned the key, which was conveniently in the ignition. Nothing. He was not surprised.
He was surprised, however, when she jumped down and moved to the cowling at the side of the engine, lifted it in a cloud of dust, and pointed the flashlight from the backpack at the motor. “You know diesels?” he blurted.
“You’ve met my father, right? Of course, I do.”
He moved over to stare into the engine compartment. He knew a little about diesel engines, himself. “There are a bunch of tools over on the wall and the ones in the backpack. Think we might be able to get it running?” he asked.
“Worth a try. Riding it to town sounds a hell of a lot better than hiking. And this doesn’t look to be in that bad a shape. I think we’ll need to blow out the fuel lines and clean the distributor cap at a minimum. Help me turn this shaft manually to see if it has seized up.”
He grabbed the thick steel shaft she pointed at, and between the two of them they got it to move about a quarter-turn.
She nodded eagerly. “I think this may be salvageable.”
He poked around and found a lantern. A little kerosene sloshed around in the bottom of it and he got it going with help from the fire starter built into Harness Guy’s jackknife. That guy was going to be pissed to have lost this gear. But that’s what the bastard got for shoving them out of a damned helicopter.
“How about you start working on this while I go looking for water?” he said to Piper. Where there were people and animals, there was bound to be a water source of some kind.
She got to work pulling fuel lines and patching them up with a roll of duct tape she’d found, working by lantern light. He noticed Piper blinking hard from time to time like her vision was fuzzing out or she was fighting back severe head pain. They had to find water, soon, whether or not this tractor got running again. No telling if it had enough fuel in it to make it to the nearest town, and they couldn’t withstand another day in that killer heat without water.
He moved outside and spotted a broken down windmill. A rusty trough stood beside it. The windmill must turn a well pump for animal drinking water. He examined the windmill, and although most of the fan blades were destroyed, the rest of the apparatus looked relatively intact. Awkwardly, he climbed the old, wooden tower some thirty feet up in the air. It was awful having to use his shoulder like this, but what choice did he have? Piper needed water.
He gritted his teeth against the throbbing pain and pushed on. He grabbed a broken fan blade awkwardly and gave the thing a good tug. It gave a loud squeal and turned sluggishly. He grabbed a higher blade and pulled again, groaning aloud in his agony. Another quarter turn.
Slowly, slowly, he managed to get the wheel turning. It was risky poking his hands between the jagged ends of the blades to continue turning the windmill, but he ignored the splinters and cuts and got the thing spinning at a reasonable clip. Anybody’s guess if turning this thing would actually bring up some water to the trough. He figured he turned the windmill for upward of ten minutes—long enough for both of his shoulders to be screaming and for his resolve to be wavering badly when he heard another sound.
A splash.
“Piper!” he yelled. “Quick. Bring the tarp!”
She came running and stopped in shock when she spotted him high off the ground.
“Catch the water!” he called down to her.
She darted forward, draping their plastic tarp under the spigot that was trickling water into the trough. “It’s nasty,” she announced.
“Pipes are probably rusted. Iron won’t kill us, and we can filter it before we drink it.”
“Do you need me to come up there and help?” she offered.
“No!” he replied sharply.
Working together, him turning the blades and her holding up the cupped tarp, they captured several gallons of red, ugly water. But it was water. And he was trained in all kinds of methods for making water safe to consume.
Exhausted, he climbed down the scaffolding. Piper pointed the flashlight at the water and he grinned broadly. “That’s just flakes of rust. If we give it an hour or two, the sediment will settle to the bottom, and we can skim the clean water off the top.”
“You’re assuming the water has no bacteria in it that would kill us or make us deathly ill,” she replied. “Not that I care at this point.”
“I think I can set up a distilling apparatus with the junk in the barn. In a few hours, we’ll have drinkable water.”
Piper made a sound suspiciously close to a sob.
“You’re holding up great,” he encouraged her. “Hang in just a little while longer.” He was used to giving pep talks to his men, but it was different with her. He genuinely meant the words. He hated that she was out here suffering with him. As she moved past him toward the barn, he held his arms out, and she turned into them gratefully. She belonged in his embrace, her body plastered against his like this.
When, exactly, had they become a couple? He’d been working alone when he met her, and she’d declared herself a lone wolf from day one. Now that he thought back, from the moment he’d spotted her spotting him back in her rifle sight, they’d been irrevocably linked. Stubborn, the two of them were. It had just taken a while for them to figure it out.
Jeez. He must be more dehydrated even than he realized if he was spinning off in these hyperboles of romantic reverie. They had work to do before they both keeled over. “I’d kiss you, but our lips would crack and bleed,” he murmured into her dusty hair.
“Thanks for the thought,” she mumbled back against his chest. “Kisses to you, too. Hot, sexy ones with tongue and bare skin and sweat and—.”
“I get the idea,” he chuckled. “And don’t distract me. Ready to get back to work?”
“No, but I’ll do it anyway,” she sighed. “I could use some help pulling out the battery. The leads are corroded and need cleaning. Then we have to pray the thing’s still got a little charge left in it.”
He smiled over at her as they walked back to the barn. Her voice had a note of new hope in it, as well. They might just make it out of this mess alive, after all. “I can always give Big Red a push down the road to get it turning over.”
“You? Push a tractor?” she exclaimed. “You know, the sad part is I wouldn’t put it past you to do it.”
They traded smiles and stuck their heads into the guts of the disemboweled tractor together.
Once they’d wrestled the heavy battery out of the machine, he turned his newfound energy to building a distiller and starting a fire underneath it. Carefully, he ladled the precious water into his apparatus and waited for clean water to start dripping out. When he had about a half-cup of water collected in an empty tin can, he carried it over to Piper.
“Drink.”
“You drink it. You’re stronger than I am and more important to keep functional. One of us has to make it out alive and tell people how to stop the virus,” she retorted. So. She realized how close they both were to the end of their physical resources, too, huh? He should have known he couldn’t fool her.
He responded, “You’re the one who knows how to fix our ride out of here, and there will be more water
for me in a few minutes.”
She relented and downed the hot liquid.
They took turns drinking doses of the water as it emerged from his distiller. And gradually, as they each put away upwards of a gallon of distilled water, they began to feel better. Almost human. His headache diminished to a dull throbbing, and he noticed that Piper moved more quickly, with more precision, as she worked on overhauling the tractor. For his part, he was able to pitch in and help with lifting the heavy parts and horsing them back into place as dawn approached and she finally started putting the engine back together.
Finally, the moment of truth was upon them. It was time to see if the tractor would run. “This may not work,” she warned as she climbed into the seat.
“If it doesn’t, we’ll hole up here today, distill a bunch of extra water, and head out at night fall.”
“Can we make love before we go?” she asked hopefully.
He laughed. “Honey, we can make love every night for the rest of our lives if you want.”
Her head snapped around as she stared at him. The rest of their lives? Whoa. Was he ready to go there? It was one thing to think the rest of their lives was going to be twenty-four hours. But now that they’d found water, they could be talking decades. Was he prepared to commit for a long, full lifetime? As in forever?
She turned the key in the ignition and the engine gave a mighty sputter. And went silent.
“Again,” he suggested.
She turned the key once more and the engine popped and smoked…and caught. It ran rougher than the desert outside, but it was by God running. She’d done it.
She announced, “I think if we give it a few minutes to burn the gunk out of it and get the good diesel fuel running through it, it’ll smooth out!”
He didn’t care. He’d ride this sputtering, jerking wreck all the way to Khartoum if he had to. As long as they got out of this mess alive and together. He moved over to the big barn door and shoved it all the way open.