Wanted

by Jason Halstead

  She nodded again, eyes wide. “Man, you got some real issues.”

  “Good thing I’m the only one,” he said, turning his back on her and tossing the metal plates back on the home built counter.

  He grabbed a jacket that Jessie recognized as genuine U.S. Army issue. “Who were you? You know, before?” she asked.

  “Nobody special,” he answered, grabbing up his assault rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. She saw it was an M4 carbine.

  “That got full auto on it?” Jessie asked, pointing at his gun.

  He looked at her then at the rifle. His eyes narrowed suspiciously but he nodded. “You know what this is?”

  “Sure, M4A1, replaced the M16 because the M16 was a piece of shit. Couldn’t keep it clean or keep it from jamming. Couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn from the inside with the doors shut neither, but the carbine’s not much better since it’s got a shorter barrel,” she said.

  He grunted. “Shoots straight enough,” he said. “Otherwise, you’d be dead.”

  She nodded, conceding his point. “So what were you, quartermaster or something? You got a lot of shit up here.”

  “Sergeant First Class,” he said, and offered nothing more.

  “What about your setup? Lots of loot. You raid a national guard depot or something?”

  “You ever shut up?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, then proceeded to prove herself wrong. “Look, you’ve got a nice hideout here. You’ve got power, I don’t know how. At least some clean water or you wouldn’t bother using plates and doing dishes. Space and guns. I’m just saying that maybe this place could use a woman’s touch. You know, I could help out. Take care of things. You took care of me, now I can.”

  “Shut up!” he snapped at her. “I’m not going to fuck you, okay? You don’t owe me a fucking thing! You keep talking and you’re going to make me wish I hadn’t shot that asshole until after he’d done you.”

  Eyes wide, Jessie fell silent. “I just thought-“

  “No, you didn’t think. You ain’t thinking at all! Listen. We’re going now, and you don’t know me and don’t know where this place is.”

  She nodded, and wisely for once, stayed quiet.

  “Know how to use this?” He asked, handing her an M9 that he pulled out from behind some clutter on a shelf near the door.

  She took it and pulled the slide back on the nine millimeter pistol. It seated a bullet into the chamber. She ejected the clip to insure it was full then slid it back home. It had been years since she had held a weapon, but her hands remembered thanks to countless exhausting drills.

  “You weren’t always a whore,” he observed.

  Jessie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a whore!” she spat out. “I’m an actress.”

  Carl snorted, and opened the door revealing the dark landscape of the rocky badlands. “Let’s go, Hollywood.”

  Jessie followed him out and looked around, trying to see anything recognizable. Home, for her, was a small town near what had once been the United States’ and Mexico’s borders. Nobody knew where the border was anymore, mostly because nobody really cared. She figured if they could walk back to the road, they were only a couple of hours north, near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

  Jessie followed the former sergeant for several miles. He moved at a brutal pace, and her body was still bruised and sore from the altercation the day before. What was worse was his familiarity with the terrain and the fact that he was in better shape than she was. That burned Jessie’s pride. She worked out several times a week, keeping herself in shape and in demand. Now this hillbilly was showing her up when she was the professional.

  She walked without complaint. His pace also demanded she walk without talking. She had tried to concentrate on looking out for threats, dredging up long suppressed memories of moving tactically. That stopped quickly when she realized she had to focus on just keeping up with him and not tripping or falling on the uneven ground. Besides, she noted that Carl was alert enough for both of them.

  Nearly an hour later they arrived at Andres’ car. Jessie, breathing hard, stared at it in surprise. “Where’s the road? How’d it get here?”

  “Keys were still in it,” he pointed out.

  “Oh, you drove…”

  Carl spared her his witty retort.

  “You carried me all the way from here?” She asked, beginning to catch her wind.

  Carl just shrugged. Jessie studied him again, impressed but not wanting him to see it. She still felt slighted that he had not accepted her offers. She wanted to prove herself to him.

  “How far from here?”

  “Half an hour or so to the road,” he told her. “Then you’re on your own.”

  She nodded, then started towards the car.

  “Wait!” Carl snapped, stepping in front of her and holding up his hand. Jessie stumbled as she tried to stop and ran into his hand, her right breast pressing against it.

  He gave her a gentle push back and turned to the car. He stepped up to it slowly and bent down to disarm some landmines he had placed around it.

  “You mined his car?” She asked, surprised.

  “Out here, a vehicle’s worth its weight in purified water,” he said. “Especially one that runs on biodiesel.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t they all? Not many electric cars left, no spare parts to fix them.”

  Carl shrugged. “I got no need of it, but that don’t mean somebody else wouldn’t want it.”

  “Well… thanks. Again,” she said, then sighed.

  “You make me feel like a real shit, you know that?” she said, crossing her arms angrily. “I don’t like owing people and I got nothing but favors from you and you won’t take a damn thing.”

  He nodded but she thought she saw a ghost of a smile in the pre-dawn light. The smug bastard knew he had her.

  “Get in,” he said, gesturing to the car. He opened the driver’s side door and sat down in the seat.

  “Last chance,” she told him as she sat down and pulled her door shut. “I never been turned down before. I don’t like it.”

  “No.”

  “Plenty of room in here,” she said, ignoring him. “Back seat works great, but I could always just stretch over the console here and give you some road head. It’s not much, but hey, that’s the least I owe ya.”

  Carl leaned his head back and let out a deep breath. Jessie took that as finally an acceptance and leaned forward with a grin on her face. In spite of that, some small spark of curiosity and hope died within her. Her hands reached for his pants but then he intercepted them with his own and pushed her gently back.

  “I don’t know shit about you,” he said, “but if you got nothing better to offer the world than a suck and fuck, I’m a scabber.”

  Jessie stared at him, realizing she had been rebuffed again. She turned away and stared out the side window, fuming silently. She wished he was a scabber, just because an asshole like him deserved to be covered in radiation burns.

  “You almost had me,” he admitted after he had started the car and was moving it through the sparse scrub along the desert floor.

  Jessie did not turn to look at him. Instead, she was biting her lip and blinking back the tears of frustration. He had rebuffed her again and again, and now the son of a bitch had even accused her of being worth nothing other than as a sex object. Twenty years ago she might have loved to have known him or been his daughter even. Now… now she knew better than to get her hopes up like that. It just led to pain and thoughts of suicide.

  “Mostly I figured it would give your mouth something to do to keep you quiet though,” he finished.

  As his words sank in Jessie closed her eyes and let twin tracks of tears fall down her face. Inside, she felt crushed. She needed something, a snort of syn, a joint, a shot— anything to help take her mind away from things. But there was nothing to distract her, nothing to numb her pain. She sat there shaking and trying to pull away into herself.

  “Fu
ck you!” she snapped after several silent minutes had passed. She spun about, the pistol he had given her in hand. She cocked the hammer and pointed it at his head.

  “Stop the fucking car!”

  Carl glanced at her and held his fingers up on the steering wheel, a universal symbol of peace. “Settle down, I was just kidding about the blow job.”

  The car came to a stop and he turned to look at her. He found himself staring into the quivering barrel of the nine millimeter. He nodded understandingly and asked, “Withdrawal?”

  “I could have taken care of you. We could have helped each other out,” she said, fighting back sniffles.

  “I don’t-“

  “No, you’re the one that doesn’t fucking listen!” she yelled. “I offered you something special. It helps me out and helps you out. Not just a quickie, we could have had a good thing! You just don’t get it!”

  Carl met her gaze calmly. Her eyes jerked back and forth a little and the gun wavered even worse. He was worried about her shaking. If she jerked the trigger…

  “Jessie, my life’s not easy,” he said softly, trying to calm her down. “There’s no room for complications. Not out here.”

  Her eyes narrowed angrily. “Complications? You son of a bitch! You don’t know the first fucking thing about me! About what I can offer! I’m not just some movie star slut!”

  He moved, faster than she was ready for. The pistol went flying into the back seat, bouncing off the cracked leather and ending up on the floor behind her. He held her wrist for a moment then let it go to show he was not going to hurt her.

  “You’re right, I don’t know you,” he said, his voice more serious and less calm. He didn’t owe her a God-damned thing, but he still felt the urge to explain himself. “That’s why I-“

  “Get the fuck out!” she said, not caring that she was no longer armed or that he had taken the pistol from her so easily.

  He opened the door and stepped out, grabbing his rifle to keep it from swinging or tripping him. He kept it pointed away from her and let go as soon as he was free. “Keep going straight till you hit the road, then turn left. You’re south of the ambush a dozen miles, so you won’t see it.”

  “Good luck,” he added.

  “Go to hell,” she snarled as she slid across the front seat. Carl could have easily shot her or slipped away, but instead he stayed and watched her.

  Without another word she pulled the door shut and jammed on the accelerator, spitting rocks and dirt as the Buick lurched forward across the ground. Carl watched her go until he could not see her in the pre-dawn light. As annoying as her constant chatter had been, he realized he kind of missed it. The contact with another person had been a nice change of pace. Somebody other than the kind of people he had spent most of his adult life dealing with.

  Carl shook his head to clear it and turned around to head back to his peace and quiet.

  Chapter 3

  Thirty minutes into the drive, Jessie’s tears had dried up. She had beaten the steering wheel more than a few times, cursing loudly at Carl, then lapsed into long moments of angry or depressed silence. He had rejected her. Her! She was a fucking movie star! The only movies anybody made any more and she was in her fair share of them. Mostly they never left her city, Mexicali, but that was where the movie industry had relocated after the bomb had gone off in Los Angeles. There were convoys that made the trip to the other remaining major cities, and as much as food, water, guns, and ammo were important, so was entertainment. It was increasingly rare, but sometimes flights came and went, too. They were usually military or international – passenger airfare had disappeared shortly after the troubles began.

  A flare overhead caught her attention. The sun had just started to brighten the clouds on the eastern horizon but that had nothing to do with it. She looked up and saw what looked like a shooting star. She had not seen one of those since she was in the army in the Middle East, before… Jessie shook her head, refusing to think about it. She focused on the road, her teeth chattering with the need for something to take the edge off. That asshole Carl had emptied Andres’ car of their stash. She bet he kept it for his own personal use.

  The flare in the sky brightened, causing her to look up again. She gasped when she realized it wasn’t a shooting star. It was an airplane. It was too dark to tell what kind, but she realized one of its wings was on fire and it was coming down. She slowed down on the road and watched it streak from left to right overhead. Low overhead. It hit the ground a few miles west of her, another flash lighting up the terrain. She stared at it, seeing the residual glow from the fires that had started, and wondered what, if anything, she should do.

  A million thoughts entered her mind, from ignoring it and pretending it had never happened, to exploring it to see if anybody survived. She wondered where that thought came from; it was not her style to look out for others. She had enough trouble looking out for herself!

  Carl would check it out, she realized. He would try to help anyone if they survived. Survive a plane crash? She almost laughed, then realized there might be something valuable. Besides, she had nothing better to do. Who flew these days except the extremely rich or the military. Either one would have something of worth she could salvage. Sure, she was young and on top of her game, but her looks would fade and even the fake boobs wouldn’t draw in much of an audience forever. A big score though, that could set her up for a while, maybe for life.

  Decision made, Jessie turned the car off the road and started driving across the hard packed desert flats, running over the occasional juniper bush and dodging between saguaro and barrel cacti. She had to backtrack twice around gullies in the desert floor from washouts, but by the time another half an hour had passed she had managed to get as close as she could. Another washout separated her from the crash. This one had apparently caught the plane as it skidded along the ground, if the torn and blacked brush and ground were any indication. Pieces of metal were strewn about.

  Jessie shut the car off, wondering briefly if she could hide it somehow, then realized how much work it would be gathering enough bushes to conceal it, not to mention how obvious it would be. She searched through the back seat until she found the pistol. She tucked it into the waist of her shorts before setting out across the strewn wreckage to look for something of worth.

  She moved quickly, thankful for the still-cool morning air. She had been freezing earlier in the car, now it kept her from sweating as she moved as quickly as she could between the small fires on the torn up ground. As sparsely populated as it was in the badlands outside of most cities, she knew there were survivors who would be curious as well. Scavengers and treasure hunters alike, and perhaps other people with more sinister goals in mind. So far, she was the first but she knew she would not be the last.

  Aside from bent bits and pieces of metal, she found next to nothing for the first fifteen minutes or so. She even searched through a portion of the fuselage that had been broken off by the ditch the plane had crossed, and she had hurried away from it with her hand over her mouth. There were bodies in there, three of them she thought. It was hard to tell since they were not entirely connected to one another. Their clothes looked nice though, so that gave her the courage to keep searching.

  The forward part of the fuselage held a different story-more people, dead, but in better condition. Broken necks and bodies, some open wounds, but she was happy to see nobody had been torn into pieces. She had enough of that haunting her dreams and memories, she did not need any more of it.

  Steeling herself, Jessie even started to go through the pockets of the corpses and took off jewelry-watches, rings, necklaces. She knew they might not be worth much, but where she had come from, a little bit could mean the difference between life and death.

  A groan made her scream. She stumbled back, away from the small pile of bodies and tripped on a seat that had been torn out. She fell and hit her shoulder, then bruised her lower back on the pistol tucked against her spine. Spitting out curses, she ha
uled herself up and pulled out her pistol. She advanced again and pushed a body she knew was dead out of the way. Underneath it she saw the source of the groan.

  “Shit,” she said, immediately kneeling down and setting the gun on the floor. It was a boy. Not a man, just a kid. A big kid, sure, probably in his mid-teens, but still a kid.

  And beneath him, tucked against a bulkhead, was a girl that Jessie recognized. She was a kid too, but a kid that a lot of people knew. Tanya Kurkova, Olympic hopeful that had suffered a training accident a couple of years back. Her spine had been shattered in a couple of places when the uneven parallel bars she was practicing on worked loose and she fell.

  Her fifteen minutes of fame came and went, but then she resurfaced when her father, an international businessman and billionaire, arranged for some experimental therapy on her. Jessie didn’t know what it was, no one really did, but pictures had shown her walking again, then the successes kept coming and there were even stories of her starting up training again.

  And now here she was, unconscious and one of the only two survivors of a plane crash.

  The boy groaned again. Jessie checked him over carefully, seeing no obviously broken bones, and decided that she had to risk moving him. A billionaire heiress would be worth a fortune, after all. She dragged the boy out and away from the fuselage, then went back in and did the same triage check on Tanya. Her first aid skills were rusty, at best, but she had no other options. Fortunately, she had help.

  The gymnast woke up as Jessie was struggling to pull her out. She gasped and fought for a minute, surprising Jessie and sending her crashing to her ass once again. She got up, rubbing it and fuming, then turned to Tanya.

  “You don’t know me, that’s cool, don’t worry. Your plane crashed – we have to get out of here before anybody shows up.”

  “Wait – what? My mom? Where’s she at?” Tanya said, confused and having trouble making sense of everything. She was holding her head as though she had a killer headache, which did not surprise Jessie at all. Jessie had mashed her head into a car door and the butt of a pistol, Tanya had cracked hers up against a crashing airplane.