No matter how often he repeated to himself that he shouldn’t care one way or another about this woman, he found that he did. He now knew for certain that he’d fallen for her. Fallen for a fallen woman—or so his mother would put it. His mind drifted to his parents. What sort of a son would not at least go and check on them? But Maria took priority, as she always had. She was the force within that kept him going; the light at the end of the tunnel; the guiding star that lay just out of reach over the next horizon.
He kept an eye on Eve’s petite form as she walked robotically through the night. He half expected her to slip away to find some rock to lean against and die poetically under the following day’s sun. And he didn’t want that—he knew at least that much.
The hollow clunk of Linwood’s prosthetic leg tapped out a rhythm as the miles slowly passed. Every now and again, they’d hear the sound of a vehicle on the road, and quickly shuffle to one side, caught between fear of attack and hope of rescue.
Randall, who walked ahead with his family, tried to flag them down, but, so far, they’d simply ignored him. The invisible passengers in the car were probably as frightened of attack as they were. If he were inside and riding in comfort along the highway, would he stop for strangers? Unlikely.
They walked until the mountains ahead became silhouettes on the eastern horizon, the red light of impending dawn illuminating a changing landscape. And, to one side of the road, what looked like an encampment out of Lawrence of Arabia.
Linwood drew his weapon and swept the scene looking for any signs of movement. Randall had stopped, so Bobby drew alongside him.
“What d’you think?” Randall said. “Should we slip on by?”
“Maybe they’ve got supplies? Water?”
Randall grunted. “And maybe they’ve got guns and they’ll take what little we’ve got left. No, I think we’ll carry on.”
“The sun’s coming up,” Bobby said, pointing at the eastern mountains.
“We’ll carry on for a while, then find somewhere to shelter until nightfall. The closer we get to Vegas before we stop for the day, the better.”
“How’s Molly doing?” Bobby nodded to where she stood with her head against her mother’s shoulder.
Randall shook his head. “Not good. That’s why we’ve got to push on.”
Bobby looked across to where Linwood was sitting on a boulder rubbing at his knee. Eve was staring along the road. “We’ll stay here, I think. We need the rest.” He offered his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Randall took it.
“Well, I’d be happier if you were coming with us. It’s good to have company on the road. But we’ve all got to make our own choices.”
Without another word, he turned and headed to where his wife waited. Moments later, they were trudging along the road. But one figure remained.
“I’ll stay with you guys, if that’s okay,” Myron said.
Bobby, who’d switched his gaze to the forlorn figure of Eve who was staring into the distance, swung around so fast he almost lost his footing.
Myron was a young man in his mid to late twenties. He had a double chin only accentuated by the pointed black goatee that was fighting a losing battle against a ragged beard. Bobby caught himself running his fingers over his own stubble. How long had it been since he’d shaved? Back in Santa Clarita?
Bobby shrugged. “Sure. You’ve got your own water?”
Nodding, Myron followed Bobby as he gathered the others and they headed toward the cluster of tents. It looked like the aftermath of an illegal rave with garbage scattered everywhere and fluttering in the breeze.
“Hard to believe this is America,” Linwood said, breathing heavily as he limped beside Bobby. “I mean, what are we? Less than a hundred miles outta Vegas? Jeez.”
Bobby took the lead, sweeping the barrel of his rifle from tent to tent. “Anyone here?” he called out. “We don’t mean any harm.” The sun had risen above the horizon and he could feel the air warming, so the sooner they were under cover, the better.
No answer.
The nearest tent was a red, single-man version, the kind that more or less erected itself, polyester flapping against two bent fiberglass poles that formed the roof. The entrance had partly collapsed, so Bobby pushed it apart with his rifle’s muzzle, leaning down to peek inside.
Immediately, he jerked up again, retching and coughing, trying to force the foul air out of his lungs. “Dead,” he croaked.
“Oh my God,” Eve said. Her first words in what felt like hours.
Linwood limped past Bobby and bent down to look inside the next tent. “Man and a woman,” he said. “Been dead for days.”
Five tents, gathered around the remains of a camp fire.
“How’d you figure they died?” Linwood asked.
Bobby shrugged. “Dehydration? Heat? I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan to look too closely.”
“They was shot,” Myron said.
They turned to see him reversing out of the first tent.
“Jeez, how can you stand it?”
He looked at Bobby and blinked, a look of surprise on his face. “It don’t bother me none. I’ve seen worse.”
“Shot? You’re sure, son?” Linwood said.
Myron nodded gravely. “I know what a bullet to the head does.” He walked over to the next tent and climbed inside. Bobby could see a pair of small stained sneakers.
“Same in here. Woman and a kid. Looks like she was holding the child to her chest when they were executed.”
“Executed?”
Myron shrugged. “Yeah, looks that way to me. Done slow and deliberate, I’d say.”
“So, more than one person. At least one to wait outside to stop them escaping while another went from tent to tent. Good God,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “They must have been terrified.”
“But, why would they do something so horrible?”
Myron looked at her. “I’m no detective, but all the water’s gone, and I guess if you look in their stuff you won’t find no money or jewelry.”
“They were bandits?”
“Looks that way,” Bobby said. “But whatever the story here, we can’t do anything about it. And we’ve still got to get out of the sun.”
Linwood pointed at a white tent. “You been inside there, son?”
“It’s clear,” Myron said.
“I reckon we could fit inside, in a pinch. What d’you say, Bob?”
Bobby glanced over at the tent. It looked like it was designed for two people, but they were out of options. “Sure. But I’m not leaving the dead where they are. They’ll just attract more people like us.”
“You don’t think it’s a trap, do you?” Eve asked.
Bobby shook his head. “No. The landscape’s too open. If one of us stays on watch they wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us anyway.”
“I’ll watch,” Myron said. “I’m not tired.”
Bobby glanced at Eve, but she was simply staring at one of the tents. Linwood looked doubtful, but he also looked exhausted.
“Great. Wake me up in a couple hours,” he said.
“The son of a b—” Linwood spat.
Bobby sucked in a lungful of warm, dry air and rolled over. “Wh…what?”
“You got your rifle?”
Bobby turned back to where he’d left it. “No!”
“The kid took my Ruger, too.”
Eve sat up like an extra in a zombie movie, then looked around, her eyes growing wider. “Where’s my water? Where’s Myron?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Bobby said, searching in his pack for the bottles he knew wouldn’t be there. In fact, just about everything useful had been taken including his clothes, food and knife. Then he stopped, looking out into the distance as he realized. “It’s a setup. He knew about this place. That’s how come he wasn’t afraid to go inside the tents. He’d been here before.”
Linwood shook his head. “That’s a helluva jump, Bob. Sun’s gettin’ to your brain.”
“Maybe. Suppose we should be grateful we didn’t end up like the others.”
“What do we do now?” Eve asked.
“It’s only just after noon. We can’t go out in this.”
Linwood settled back into the shade of the tent. “We ain’t gonna get very far without water anyway, day or night. I’ve never been so parched in my life.”
“I’ve found some!” Eve said, holding up a small bottle as if it were a bar of gold. “It was under me, so he missed it. Here.”
“You keep it for yerself, darlin’. I ain’t gonna take your water from you.”
Eve held it out again. “Please, Linwood.”
But the older man simply shook his head, smiled and settled down, facing into the side of the tent.
Bobby sat in the entrance of the tent staring past the one opposite—and its dreadful occupants—out over the scrubby desert to the low mountains. What chance did they have without water? None, if they stayed here. But they couldn’t move until the temperature dropped. He licked gritty lips and tasted salt, trying to keep his mind from imagining running rivers or ice-cold cans of soda.
The sun was behind them when Eve moved forward and sat beside him. She pushed her hand between his arm and side.
“You okay?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the shadows stretching across the mountains. “Well, as okay as it’s possible to be in the heat of a desert with no water and a hundred miles to walk.”
She chuckled nervously. “I guess it could be worse.”
“Really? Hard to imagine how.”
“He didn’t kill us.”
“That’s because he was the one outside the tent.”
“What?”
Bobby turned to her, looking into her tired, but eager eyes. “Call it a wild theory, if you like, but I think he stopped people escaping as an accomplice executed them all one by one.”
“No! I don’t believe it!”
Bobby shrugged. “It may just be the thirst talking, but I reckon he was here, then got separated from his accomplice—or maybe he was the accomplice—and headed west. Then he met Randall and tagged along with his family.”
“You don’t think Randall…?”
“Who knows? I thought it was odd he’d keep walking during the day, but maybe Myron’s catching up with him now, with our water.”
Eve sat silently for a few moments, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t want to think so.”
Bobby shrugged, but said nothing.
“What are we going to do? We can’t make it without water.”
“We just have to keep walking and hope.”
She leaned into him and whispered. “I don’t think Linwood can go much farther. Not even if I give him all my water.”
“You keep that water for yourself, you hear me? We’ll manage Linwood somehow.”
“We’re not leaving him behind, are we?”
“No. No one gets left,” he said as he added a silent prayer that this was one promise he wouldn’t break.
Bobby woke Linwood as soon as the sun dipped beneath the western horizon, and they crawled out of the tent to begin the long march again.
It took ten minutes to make it back to the highway, though every breath of the dry air seemed to desiccate Bobby more. He felt like a bag of bones, though when he looked down at his arm it seemed normal enough. He pulled the baseball cap down over his eyes and led them along the hot road surface in the direction of Vegas.
They passed fewer and fewer cars as they went on, and there was no sign of anyone on the road either ahead of them or behind though, within a couple of hours, they couldn’t see far in any case.
Bobby’s hopes rose when he saw a pair of lights coming toward them at speed, but the truck ignored them and, again, they were forced onto the side of the road to avoid being run down.
“I can’t go on no longer,” Linwood said when they paused among the window glass of a Toyota Corolla to take a breath. “I can’t feel my tongue and my head’s swimmin’.”
Eve reached in her bag, but he waved her away. “No. I said I don’t want your water. You drink it. You lovebirds just leave me here by this cheap pile of Japanese junk. Come back for me if you find help, but…but I just can’t go…on no…longer…”
Bobby was just in time to grab his arm as he fell backward, easing him onto the back seat.
Running round the other side, Eve unscrewed the bottle, but Bobby put out his hand.
“Are you serious?” she said.
Bobby sighed. “He told you to keep it for yourself.”
“But if doesn’t get water, he’ll die!”
“And so will you.”
Eve pushed his hand aside. “Now you just listen to me, Bobby Rodriguez, you aren’t the boss of me. I’ve had quite enough of men who think they know what’s best for me.”
He bit back his response. Something along the lines of how she had only been saying yesterday that Michael had had her best interests at heart. This was not the time to be a pedant.
So, instead, he smiled and moved back a little. In the darkness, he heard the seductive slurping of water.
An hour later, they were shuffling along again. Linwood had woken up and cursed something dreadful when he realized what Eve had done. But he didn’t have the energy to get too mad and put one foot in front of the other, so he gave in and simply exchanged a knowing glance with Bobby.
By two hours after midnight, they were shivering. Linwood had fallen behind, and the others were forced to repeatedly stop and wait for him. “I told you. Leave me.”
But it was too late for that now. The road ran straight here and headed between two mountains, heading a little upward. Bobby pushed forward, knowing that if they took their rest at the highest point, they’d have a view stretching for miles once it became light enough. A view that might give them some hope.
So, once they’d finished their march, they sat among the rocks by the roadside and waited for the sun to rise.
And, when it did, it crushed them.
Chapter 9
Kip's Bay
“They’ve found us!” Buzz said. He colored the air with expletives. “Just when we’ve made the breakthrough.”
“What do we do? Make a run for it?”
“Where? We’re on an island!” Buzz yelled.
“Okay, okay. I’m trying to think!”
Buzz took in a deep breath and turned to Jodi. “I’ll go out to them. Maybe they’re just here to talk. I want you to hide yourself.”
“No!”
“Look, the entire point of this place is for you to be safe!”
The roof vibrated as the helicopter’s rotors neared the ground and then began slowing. “They’re down,” Buzz said.
“I’ve got to go. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt on my account!”
“Hide the Pi while I delay them.”
She nodded, and was going to peck him on the cheek, but he was gone.
Buzz ran, heart pounding through the infirmary, peering through the half-open door at the helicopter squatting like a carrion crow on the open ground beyond the farmhouse. He could see the figures of milling children and, as he emerged into the doorway, Anna and Jo trying to herd them back into the house. To his right, Tom was crouching among the cattle in the barn, the barrel of his rifle visible over the fence. In the farmhouse door, Dom stood holding a handgun uncertainly in the direction of the helicopter as its blades came to a stop. Buzz felt a surge of pride as the two men came to the defense of the compound. Pride, and regret that he’d always resented them.
As the rotors slowed, four figures in black combat uniforms with Kevlar armor sprang outside as a long door slid open. Immediately, they spotted Tom, and two of them crouched, assault rifles trained on him.
Time to end this.
He looked around for Jodi, but she was nowhere to be seen and, taking a deep breath, raised his hands and stepped out into the light.
Immediately the other two figures aimed at him
as two others, this time in dark suits, climbed rather less effortlessly from the helicopter and began walking toward the farmhouse.
“It’s okay, Tom,” Buzz called out. “Lower your weapon. And you, Dom.”
He could now see that the leading figure was a man. He had a shape that looked as though it had once been athletic, but was now past its prime. A couple of paces behind him walked the tallest woman Buzz had ever seen.
“If you have any other shooters, I suggest you stand them down,” the large man said as he closed in on Buzz. “Doctor Baxter, I presume?”
“Yes,” Buzz said, stopping ten yards or so from the man, who also halted. “Who are you and what are you doing here? This is private property.”
The man’s eyes widened with surprise. “Private property? Interesting concept when half the country’s under water. I am Special Agent Pope, and this is my colleague Special Agent Delmont. We are here to escort you to the headquarters of the federal government.”
This was a surprise. Buzz had expected it to be SaPIEnT who came after him first. He knew they had their own security team and that they were based in Denver, well away from the flood damage. “Surely DC is below the water?”
“It is. May we assume that you will cooperate, so we can discuss this like civilized people? We are not here to kidnap you.”
“Really? It feels like it to me.”
“Would a kidnapper give you time to pack your belongings?” Pope said, arms open wide like a favorite uncle, reasonable and friendly. But Buzz knew where he stood. He was effectively in their custody right now, but by playing along, he could make the whole episode less traumatic for the watchers, including Jo.
Pope looked back at the agents covering him and waved them away, moving to join Buzz as he walked back to the farmhouse.
“What’s going on?” was the question everyone asked him as he went inside. He shrugged at them, only stopping to put his arm around Jo for a moment, trying to be reassuring.
They sat down in the living room and cleared everyone out. Pope nodded to the door and his colleague went outside, returning a few moments later with Jo.
Survivors: Deluge Book 3: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 7