After their ill-advised and prematurely aborted escape attempt, Adam had told the long gun shooter, Gabe, to help guard them. Now, Parker and Ava were simply digging. They dug through most of the day, growing weaker and wearier as they did. Parker’s body burned with fever as he fought his infection, and he frequently leaked blood.
Minutes after Gabe had fired his warning shot, Adam and Frank had emerged from the woods behind the clearing. They’d looked over the scene curiously, pissed and hungover. They seemed to have more than enough meth to get them through the day, however.
“What happened?” Adam had demanded.
“They tried to jump me,” Shitbird replied. “But I saw through their bullshit. You get the other one?”
Frank had shaken his head. “We saw some movement, but nothing we could work with. She’s probably hightailed it out of here by now. There’ll be others.” He’d grinned at Ava. “’Sides, this one looks strong enough to last for a while.”
Adam had wandered over to Parker then and promptly kicked his wounded leg. Parker had barked in surprise at the sudden pain and crumpled to the ground.
“Too bad I need a new shithole,” he’d told Parker. “Otherwise, I’d shoot you now.”
The sun was a bright red smear by the time the gunmen were satisfied with the excavation. Marched back into the convenience store, Parker and Ava were given a bottle of water and an energy bar each. They ate in silence, giving in to their hunger and thirst while their captors drank warm beers. As soon as he’d had enough calories to begin thinking clearly, Parker started considering their options. The other woman was dead. The hole was dug. He was probably lucky they hadn’t executed him on the spot back in the clearing, too. He was idly wondering why they hadn’t when he noticed how intently Shitbird was staring at Ava.
He cast about for anything to use as a weapon, but there was nothing in reach, and the gunman came to his decision before Parker could figure anything out. Mostly because there was nothing to figure out. They were almost completely helpless.
“I think you had a pretty good idea back in the clearing,” Shitbird told Ava. “I did miss out on my turn last night. I think it’s about time you made up for that.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Ava said.
“That’s what we have you for,” Adam reminded her.
Shitbird handed his weapon to Frank, who looked mildly surprised at the kid’s assertiveness. Then amused.
“I told you,” Shitbird yelled. “You call me, sir!”
Reaching down, he snatched Ava up by the arm and tried hauling her to her feet. Ava thrashed, shaking him loose. Parker was slow and awkward in getting up because of his leg, and Gabe and Adam began kicking him before he’d fully risen. Their boots thudded into his body in a savage staccato rhythm punctuated by their mocking calls.
Shitbird hauled Ava to her feet and punched her in the side of the head. Then he cocked back to punch her again, and Frank abruptly grabbed his wrist. Apparently, confused, Shitbird looked at the older man.
“Quiet!” Frank ordered.
The gunmen looked at him. Parker had heard it, too; the sound of an ATV engine.
“That’s our shit,” Adam snapped. He turned on Gabe. “You’re supposed to be on guard!” he yelled.
“I didn’t want to miss killing the nigger and getting some new pussy,” he protested.
Frank was already on the move. “Come on A-bomb,” he told Adam as he thrust Shitbird’s rifle back into his hands. “You two guard them.”
Adam and Frank ran out the front. Shitbird leveled his weapon at Parker and Ava even as Gabe stepped back from Parker and did the same. “If there’s real trouble,” Gabe said, “waste the nigger.”
The windows on the front doors exploded inward and Gabe dropped. In the next instant, the crack of the gunshot reverberated through the room. Parker lunged forward landing next to Gabe, screaming as his infected wound pulled open yet again and blood rushed out. Shitbird turned and brought the rifle to his shoulder. Ava swung her arm back and then rammed her fist into his crotch, dropping him instantly.
Gabe was down but not out, even with his side pumping far more blood than Parker’s leg, but his eyes gleamed red and glassy under the influence of the methamphetamine in his system. Rolling to his side, Parker grabbed the man’s weapon in one hand and threw a punch with his other.
Gabe shrugged off that blow and two more after it. Struggling from his side position, Parker couldn’t get the leverage he needed to put some good English behind the strikes. Straining, he finally shoved himself into the man, trapping the weapon between them as they grappled. As frightened as he was and as desperate as the situation might be, Parker remained exhausted from fighting an infection while digging all day—the adrenaline wasn’t enough to counteract everything he’d been through. And he wasn’t Gabe’s equal in terms of strength. Gabe was well rested and fueled by speed; it was an uneven match. Suddenly, the man reached out and grabbed Parker by the back of his head and yanked him toward him. He struck out with his forehead as he did so, landing a headbutt on Parker that whacked him hard in the nose.
An explosion of pain electrified Parker and he went blind for a moment, stunned. Gabe used the momentary lapse to wrap one leg around Parker’s and then push with his other. The world spun as Parker struggled to focus through the dull shock of the blow. In the next instant, Gabe was on top and Parker beneath him.
A gunshot sounded close by, then another.
Parker screamed out a purely animal sound of frenzy and rage. His hand came up and clawed Gabe’s face. Hot blood soaked through his shirt as he scratched his nails across the man’s eyes. Gabe lolled sideways easily under Parker’s strike and slumped to the floor.
Parker rolled to his side and got to a knee, his chest heaving. Gabe’s eyes rolled and he gasped for breath, coughing up pink, frothy blood; a round had nicked his lung. Still breathing hard, Parker looked over at Ava.
She stood with her feet apart, the Glock in her hand. Shitbird was dead at her feet, blood spreading out in a pool from beneath his dead body. The gun exploded again in her hand and the muzzle flashed. Parker winced in surprise at the shot, half expecting it to strike him. Instead, Gabe’s head jerked like a ball on a tether and a scrambled egg mess of brain matter splattered the floor.
Parker looked back at Ava as she lowered the gun.
“We’ve got to get out of here and find Finn,” Parker told her.
Ava didn’t argue.
13
As Parker helped himself to the dead man’s weapon, the front door of the convenience store burst open and Frank rushed in.
“Bitch has a gun!” he yelled. Seeing the muzzles of Ava and Parker’s weapons, he finished, “Oh, shit.”
“Hey, Frank,” Parker said.
He and Ava opened fire. Ava’s pistol barked repeatedly in Parker’s ear as she unloaded on their shocked captor. Frank staggered backward before he could fire back, shuddering under the impact. Rounds passing close by, or those passing through him, shattered what was left of the glass in the door. He went over backward, blood soaking the front of his clothes even as he flopped down in the detritus and broken glass.
Parker, in pain and fighting the infection fever, but finally clear of his self-medications for the first time in a while, slackened his finger from the trigger. Across the room, Ava continued pulling her own trigger. The magazine in the pistol was empty, though, and her handgun dry-fired in a series of whispery, mechanical clicks.
“Ava,” he said.
She looked at him, blinked, and then dropped the empty pistol and bent to scoop up the blood-smeared rifle out of Shitbird’s dead hands. Outside, a pistol cracked several times, and was followed by answering fire.
Creeping forward and keeping low, Parker approached the door of the convenience store without silhouetting himself and tried to get a peek at what was going on outside. Adam, the AR-guy, cut loose with his aim on a drainage ditch across the road, where Parker guessed the other shooter had to be hidin
g. Fifty yards up the road, Parker could see three more men in civilian clothes with a motley assortment of weapons advancing forward from a knot of parked ATVs. Realizing the person pinned down in the ditch could only be Finn, Parker pushed himself to his feet, backing away from the door.
“Get to the left side of the door; don’t expose yourself,” he told Ava. “Use that rifle to fire at that Adam fucker from the diagonal angle. Use trigger control; you don’t need to hit him—only get his attention.”
“What are you doing?” Ava demanded. She still doubted him, Parker realized. He fought down the surge of frustrated anger that welled up inside him in reaction. She has reason, he admitted to himself mentally. Aloud, he said, “Flanking. So for God’s sake, when I yell, you stop firing in that direction.”
“Then what?”
“Then you start firing at all of Adam’s friends coming right down the road.”
“Got it.”
Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Parker still checked for some sign of the girl that had gone catatonic and been firing blindly at a dead man, if only for seconds. Ava met his eyes with a look of defiance. Her fighting spirit wasn’t in question, he decided.
“Do it,” he said.
He turned as she went to her belly, using part of Frank’s body as cover. As he made his way out through the back door, he heard her open fire. He had to move quickly, and the stench of the open garbage hit him at the same time as the sun’s glare. He moved through the door, searching for any surprises. Not finding any, he briefly considered climbing to the roof to command the high ground, but decided he couldn’t trust his leg. Using the pain to keep him sharp, he moved quickly around the side of the building. The sound of the AR rattling off long chains of shots cracked and echoed as he got closer. The pain in his leg was making him nauseated and he had to slow his hobbling run and fall into a toe-heel cadence, his weapon up. Bent at the waist, he floated out from the edge of the corner—“slicing the pie,” instead of attempting to corner and snap aim.
Adam appeared in his sights, turned ninety degrees to him and returning fire on Ava. “On target!” Parker shouted as loud as he could.
He shot twice then, moved forward, shot twice more, moved forward, shot, and then came up next to the body and found cover. His five rounds from point-blank range punched into the man, scrambling organs and spilling blood in a high-velocity firestorm.
“He’s down!” Parker shouted.
He snatched up Adam’s AR and began firing toward the three gunmen advancing on the person pinned down in the ditch. The crack of the Armalite’s burning rounds in suppressive fire echoed sharply off the storefront. Sweeping the muzzle back and forth, Parker rode out the recoil, shell casings tumbling out in spinning arcs of brass to litter the ground at his feet.
On the road, the three men broke apart and sprinted for cover. Ava fired out the front of the store, adding her fire to his. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure crawl up out of the roadside ditch and start running toward them.
Finn.
“Finn on your left!” he yelled at Ava.
Down the road, two of the three men were huddled in the dubious protection of a stalled vehicle while the third peeled off and began running for the crest of a small hill. Finn made the parking lot of the convenience store and Parker peeled off from his position, collapsing back to the store.
“We’re coming in!” he shouted.
Ava stopped firing immediately. Moving in front of the door, he lifted the AR and fired twice back toward the road as Finn darted past him and into the store. Up the hill, the men returned fire, but their shots were far off target, skewed as they were by the adrenaline of the moment and the surprise of the sudden fire.
Parker came into the store and went to the floor to avoid stray rounds. “Nice to see you, Finn,” he wheezed out.
Finn was having none of it. “Why the hell did you wave me off back in the clearing?” she demanded. “I could have taken that guy. You still don’t trust me?”
Parker shook his head. “I didn’t know where the others were,” he said. “I thought they were maybe lying in wait or searching to see if you were still hanging around. I wanted to try and take our guard quietly.” He paused. “It didn’t work.”
Bullets struck the front of the store.
“They’re trying to maneuver in,” Ava said. She fired three times in a row.
“We have to get out of here,” Finn said.
“Out the back?” Ava suggested, not taking her eyes off the guys out front.
“We won’t be moving very fast with my leg,” Parker admitted, his voice grim. “Besides, a prolonged gun battle has every chance of alerting FEMA authorities.”
“Maybe that’s not bad,” Ava said. “At least they’d shoot these assholes for us.”
Parker looked at her, surprise on his face.
“What?” Ava demanded. Her voice sounded a little defensive. “I’m joking.”
“Joke or not,” he said, “that’s smart.”
“Uh, Parker,” Finn said, “FEMA forces are looking for us, too,” she pointed out.
“Maybe they won’t look if they think we’re dead.”
“Come again?” Ava asked.
“The meth lab these scumbags have set up.”
“What about it?” Finn asked.
“Meth labs are basically IEDs,” Parker said. “We blow the store, it calls down any FEMA forces for miles, which’ll either decimate or scatter the guys after us, and everyone thinks we’re dead.”
“That’s not a guarantee,” Finn said. “Who says they’ll even realize we were here?”
“No,” Parker agreed, “but it’s possible.”
“Meanwhile, what do we do?” Finn asked. “If FEMA forces swarm the area, the roads are going to be crawling with them.”
Parker shook his head. “We’re done with roads. We cut out the back and hump it over land to the Ohio River. We wait until nightfall there and then slip in and float away. We get lucky, we find a boat we can use and we ride the river all the way down to where we want to go, traveling at night.”
“I know it’s not winter,” Ava said, “but won’t we get cold if we’re in the water all night? What if we don’t find a boat?”
“There’s absolutely every chance we’ll find a boat or canoe or kayak, given the population along the river. If we don’t, we’ll make floats. We’re moving as the crow flies by following the river, and at a higher rate of speed with the current than we could have on foot since the bikes are gone. As for being cold…” Parker stopped. “I’ll think of something.”
“You’ll think of something…” Ava said. She didn’t sound convinced.
Several bullets struck the building near the door, and one round passed through the opening, traveling over their heads. The men outside were finding their ranges.
“Better idea?” he asked. “Time is a factor here.”
“I like the part about blowing up the meth lab,” Ava said. “It’s the river I’m not sold on.”
“So, let’s cross one bridge at a time,” Parker suggested.
Ava studied him. Finally, she nodded.
“Good,” Parker said. He handed the AR to Finn. “You two keep them busy, but try not to burn through all of our ammo.” He turned then and crawled toward the storeroom where Ava had suspected the crew kept their cooking set- up. He turned back. “Tell me if they manage to close more than half the distance,” he told them.
Ava and Finn cut loose with a short salvo. “Burning daylight, Parker,” Ava said.
“We got this,” Finn said.
The AR looked ridiculously oversized in her small hands, but she was handling it with lethal determination. Parker nodded, more to himself than to the girls.
“Yeah, you do,” he said.
Turning, he put the gunfight to his back and entered the storeroom.
14
As a part of joint narcotics task forces, Parker had taken meth familiarization courses. He knew the set-up for
cooking meth might as well be a bomb-making factory, and because of their utilizing a technique known as the Cold Method, cookers hadn’t been at all slowed down by the EMP.
As Parker well knew when he was being honest with himself, addiction hadn’t stopped with the Event. Addicts went right on being addicts, and the tighter the control the substance held, the more of a top priority securing sources became. It looked like this crew had prioritized meth right to the top of their proverbial to-do list. Everything was here: red phosphorus, hypophosphorous acid, lithium metal compounds, acetone…everything an aspiring pyromaniac could hope for. There were even a dozen propane tanks left over from the days before the EMP.
There was also a lot of meth.
Three large Pyrex casserole dishes filled with uncut crystal sat on a counter next to a HEPA mask. Next to the uncut crystal, he saw three glass pipes he knew were charmingly referred to on the street as “glass dicks.” Next to these was a complete set of lighters in every color—except, of course, the one superstitious addicts avoided: white.
“Too easy,” he said. “About goddamn time I caught even one break.”
He hobbled over toward the propane tanks, passing by the table where a mound of pink, crystalline powder lay.
“No,” he said aloud.
He hesitated, though, assessing the uncut amphetamine, and then his hand shook as he reached for some of the powder. He stopped. He blinked back the sting building behind his eyes. Shame tasted like ash on his tongue. He moved his hand to the casserole dish and used his nail to break off a tiny shard. He looked at it.
Slowly, he brought it to his mouth, and swallowed. Defeated, he felt it go down.
“Oh my god,” Finn said.
Startled, guilty, Parker swung around. His hip bumped the table and sent the powdered meth spilling to the floor.
“Finn—”
“Save it.” Her eyes were dark as she glared at him. “The guys outside? They’re pushing forward. Now would be a good time for us to do our disappearing act.”
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