djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  “So there’s no one else?” Evony asked. “No other survivors?”

  Julia had bent down to retrieve her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. As she straightened up, the pleasant expression she’d been wearing abruptly disappeared. “There was a group of survivors down in Las Cruces. A couple hundred of them, from what they told us. They’d gathered there from the surrounding areas. We were talking with them on the ham radio, trying to set up a way that they could get up here safely and join us. And then…nothing.”

  A chill went over me, because I had a sinking feeling what that radio silence might have meant. “Nothing?”

  “We lost contact. No replies to our calls. We argued for a while about whether we should send a team to see what had happened, but we only had the one device at the time, and it wouldn’t have been safe.”

  By “device,” I figured she must have been talking about the little black box the man had been carrying when the Los Alamos team captured Jace. So did that mean they had more than one now? They must, or I had a feeling they wouldn’t have made their foray out to my house in Santa Fe. One to take with them to capture a djinn, and another to stay behind in Los Alamos and protect them from the rest of the vengeful elementals, the ones who hadn’t bothered with any foolishness about the “Chosen.”

  And I realized then what must have happened to the survivors in Las Cruces. They had no such protection, and the djinn must have wiped them out. Just another stop in their worldwide destruction tour.

  It looked as if Evony had come to the same conclusion, since her expression had turned fairly grim, for her. “Anyone besides that?”

  “We were in contact with two other groups — Colorado Springs and Flagstaff. They’ve both gone dark.” Julia’s full mouth tightened, and then she pulled a set of keys out of her purse, saying, “Come on. Let me show you where you’ll be living.”

  I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and I couldn’t blame her. Just the thought of those small groups out there, coming together, struggling for survival, only to be wiped out by the kind of enemy they couldn’t possibly fight, made my stomach clench. To those djinn, we humans weren’t worthy of any kind of consideration. Just insects to be wiped out so they could enjoy a pest-free world. It made me wonder why Jace and the rest of the Thousand were different, how it was that they could see humans were worth saving, that we deserved the same love and consideration they would show to members of their own race.

  Maybe I’d never know for sure. It could simply be a difference in temperament, an openness, a tolerance that the other djinn, the evil, destructive elementals, didn’t share.

  I hoped I’d someday have the chance to ask Jace.

  Evony and I followed Julia out of the office and to the elevator, which we took to the first floor. She waved at the receptionist there and led us through the rear entrance to the building, one which opened on a staff parking lot. Waiting there was a big black Suburban, the kind you tended to see in films and TV shows being used by government agents. Evony took shotgun, while I climbed into the back seat so Dutchie could sit beside me. I hoped Julia wouldn’t mind a bit of dog hair on the upholstery.

  As she backed out of her parking space, she said, “We’re closing in on five hundred people now. Los Alamos used to have a population of a little more than twelve thousand, so we’re far from full, but we’re not completely empty, either.”

  “Are you expecting more?” Evony asked.

  A pause, and then Julia replied, “After what happened in Las Cruces…I don’t know. Maybe stragglers who come in by ones and twos. I think anyplace people were gathering in a group, they attracted too much attention. But we’re still holding out some hope that there might be a few more who’ve been hiding as best they can.”

  There wasn’t much either of us could say in response to that, and so Evony and I were both silent as Julia drove us through the snow-plowed streets of Los Alamos. She turned off the main road and headed into a residential area of modest but well-kept homes. The sidewalks here also seemed mostly cleared, and some of the driveways had vehicles parked in them, more trucks and SUVs.

  “We’ll let you settle in tonight, but after that you’ll need to come back to the justice center and get your work assignments,” she went on.

  “Uh…work assignments?” I ventured. That didn’t sound like much fun.

  “Oh, yes…everyone works here.” She turned again, skirting the edge of a park, this one deserted, the playground equipment still dusted with snow. “We do our best to match you up with something you did…before…but we all have to pitch in. So what did you two do?”

  “I was a waitress,” Evony said.

  A little silence. Then Julia said, her tone almost too bright, “Well, that’ll be helpful. We’ve opened a couple of the restaurants here as gathering places, although we’re still working on getting them up to speed. Do you know anything about cooking?”

  “No.”

  Another pause. Julia gave a quick glance back over her shoulder at me before returning her attention to the road. “What about you, Jessica?”

  “I was getting my master’s in English, so I was a T.A. for a couple of lower-division courses.” In other words, completely useless.

  Julia didn’t seem to think so, however. “Oh, that’s great to hear. We have eight kids in Los Alamos now, ranging from nine to sixteen. We’ve been doing our best to keep up with their schooling, but none of the survivors here were teachers.”

  “Well, I wasn’t really a teacher, either,” I began, but she just shook her head.

  “More so than any of us. It would be a great help to have someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Maybe,” I said, my tone sounding reluctant even to me. “That is, I could help with English and history and that kind of thing, but please don’t expect me to teach them trig.”

  “No, we have Miles for that…if we can tear him away from the lab.”

  “Who’s Miles?” Evony asked.

  “He’s a scientist at the lab. The only scientist now, unfortunately.” Julia fell silent for a few seconds, as if deciding how much she really wanted to tell us. “You’ll meet him eventually, I suppose, although he doesn’t socialize much.”

  If this Miles was the person I’d seen holding the black box, then I could understand him not getting out too often. He had the appearance of someone who only seemed marginally aware that a world existed around him. And if he was the only surviving scientist from the government labs here, then that meant he had to be the person who’d invented those djinn-damaging boxes. How, I had no idea, but who knows what they’d been working on up at that facility….

  My musings were interrupted by Julia pulling into the driveway of a small freshly painted one-story house. I couldn’t help gaping, simply because sitting in that driveway was my Cherokee, sans horse trailer, goats, and, presumably, chickens.

  I must have looked pretty gobsmacked, because Julia laughed and said, “When I told Hannah I was bringing you here, she radioed the men who were taking your goats over to the horse facility and let them know where they could drop off your car. You look surprised…did you think we were going to keep it?”

  Somehow I remembered to shut my mouth. “Um, well….”

  “It’s okay. We’ve commandeered a lot of similar vehicles over the past few months, but never anything that actually belonged to someone. Anyway, let me show you your new place.”

  She got out of the Suburban. Evony and I followed suit, bringing our meager luggage with us, Dutchie in the rear, tail wagging at the prospect of exploring someplace new and exciting. The front walk was a little icy, but I managed to keep my footing as we made our way to the front door. Julia produced a key from her purse and let us in. It was very cold, and she went at once to the thermostat and pushed it up.

  “All-electric house,” she explained. “We’re trying to stay out of the ones with gas heating because we haven’t gotten the natural-gas lines working yet.”

 
I paused in the living room and surveyed my surroundings as Evony went on to the dining room and set her weekender bag on the table there. The carpet looked a little worn, but it was clean, and the furniture was the sort of simple stuff you’d see being sold in inexpensive groupings at your local big-box store. After the luxury of the house Jace had found for me in Santa Fe, it didn’t look like much. But it was definitely better than nothing.

  I let Dutchie off her leash, and she started sniffing around. Luckily, I knew she was very well-behaved and would wait until I took her for a walk or let her out in the backyard before going potty, no matter what kinds of interesting smells she might find in the house.

  One thing I did notice was that there didn’t seem to be any personal touches anywhere — no family photographs sitting on the mantel of the brick fireplace, or houseplants, or anything like that. I raised an inquiring eyebrow at Julia.

  She seemed to understand my question, saying, “We try to go through the houses and remove any personal items that belonged to the former owners — photographs, legal documents, that kind of thing. We need the housing, but we don’t want to be intrusive, if you know what I mean.”

  I did. Yes, the people who’d once lived here certainly didn’t need the place anymore, but that shouldn’t give us survivors the right or permission to go pawing through their things.

  “The clothing is taken to the local Goodwill, which we use for pretty much the same purpose — sorting items and then displaying them so they can be reused. We don’t charge anything for them, though.”

  “You don’t?” Evony asked, coming back into the living room. “How…socialist…of you.”

  This time, Julia didn’t smile. “Well, we’re not too worried about money right now. Captain Margolis and I are working out a barter system, or at least a system of hours worked in exchange for certain items, but it’s still in the preliminary stages. There are plenty of clothes to go around right now, though. With food, everyone gets a certain ration. I’ll explain all of that when you come by tomorrow for your formal work assignments.”

  That was so not what I’d thought I was signing up for when I formulated my plan to come here, and I got the same impression from Evony, judging by the eye roll she gave me. I had to hope Julia wouldn’t notice it. If she did, she showed no reaction that I could see. But then again, I didn’t know her at all, so I had no way of knowing how good she was at hiding her feelings.

  “You’ll probably get a bit more in the way of rations, just because you contributed your goats and chickens, and that’s going to help everyone. In the meantime, though, you should probably come down to Pajarito’s. I’ll get you settled with some dinner.”

  “Pajarito’s?” I asked.

  “It’s one of the local restaurants.” She shook her head, as if correcting herself, and went on, “That is, it used to be one of the restaurants here in town. We’ve sort of resurrected it as a hangout because it’s centrally located and looks nice, and when we’re in there, well….” It wasn’t quite a sigh, but she let out a little breath, looking wistful. “Well, I guess we sort of pretend that nothing has changed. There are a couple of people who like to cook and prepare different things every night, depending on what’s available. I just thought you might like to eat there tonight, meet a few people, especially since there really isn’t any food in the house yet except some dry cereal. You can get some regular supplies later, including anything you need for your dog.”

  This Pajarito’s place sounded like it could be…well, maybe not precisely fun, but at least a place where Evony and I could meet some more of the locals and get a better feel for exactly what was going on here. With Julia as our guide, it should be fairly safe.

  “Okay,” I said. “That sounds like fun. What time?”

  “I’m off shift at six. Pajarito’s is on Trinity Road — here, let me draw you a map.” She pulled a small notepad out of her purse and swiftly drew in the major streets, and then traced a line from the house to the restaurant. I must have raised an eyebrow at her or showed some other sign of surprise, because she said, “I’ve been doing this for most of the new arrivals, so I’ve gotten familiar with the town pretty quickly.”

  “So you’re not from here?” Evony asked, leaning past me to look down at the sketch Julia had just made.

  “No, Albuquerque.” She didn’t seem to want to elaborate, so I didn’t press her on the subject. If I were lucky, maybe she’d open up later. I’d really like to hear her story, how she’d gotten out of the city. When I was making my escape, I really hadn’t seen anyone else. Then again, Albuquerque was a big place, and of course I had no idea how long she’d stayed there before beginning her own trek northward.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I’ve got to get back to the office. If you need anything, well, you’ll need to stop by to ask for it, since the phones aren’t working, but I think you should be set. There are clean linens in the hall closet, and the water is on, and if something does come up, let me know when you see me in a few hours.”

  “We will,” I promised, and she smiled and said goodbye, then let herself out.

  The door shut, leaving Evony and Dutchie and me alone in our new home. Temporary home, of course. I was only planning to be here long enough to find out where Jace and Natila were being kept, then come up with a plan to get them out. After that, well, I supposed it would be back to Taos. I ached to go back to Santa Fe, to the home Jasreel and I had made together, but returning there would be foolish. The chances of being recaptured were far too high. We would have to depend on the safety in numbers that Taos promised.

  “Home sweet home,” Evony remarked, looking around.

  “It’s fine,” I said, my tone a little more severe than I’d intended, most likely because I’d been unfavorably comparing the place to the Santa Fe house, which wasn’t fair. Before the Dying, I would have killed to have a house like this, instead of that tiny apartment over my parents’ garage where I’d been living.

  “Oh, I know,” she replied. “I mean, I was living in a shitty duplex before. I can’t complain. So let’s go check out the bedrooms and fight over who gets the master.”

  We ended up flipping a coin for it — I still had some change in my wallet, money that would probably never get spent — and I lost. To her credit, Evony didn’t crow too much, but I could tell she was feeling a bit satisfied that things didn’t always go my way.

  Right then I wasn’t sure they really did. True, I’d been getting more attention than she had since we came to town, but some of it — namely from Captain Margolis — I could have done without. And it seemed as if she was content to let me take the lead in things, so how else did she expect it all to shake out? Maybe that was uncharitable. I really didn’t know her all that well, except I could tell that she’d had a pretty tough time before the Heat came along. Losing Natila just when it probably seemed as if life was finally going her way had to have been a terrible blow for Evony.

  In the meantime, the secondary bedroom that had ended up as mine was small but clean, with a double bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and not much else. I hung up my sparse wardrobe in the closet or put it away in drawers, depending on what it was, then took my cosmetic bag and set it under the sink in the hall bathroom.

  Not that I didn’t take Julia’s word for it, but I went ahead and turned the tap on and off, just to be sure. Yes, the water really worked, and had decent pressure, too. Showers shouldn’t be a problem. All the comforts of civilized living, really, and I knew I should be grateful for them. It was a lot easier to think straight when you were clean and warm and well-fed.

  Speaking of which….

  I got out the bag with Dutchie’s things, including her supply of dog food, and headed into the kitchen. It was small but, like everything else in the house, clean. Someone seemed to have put a little more love into this room rather than the rest of the house; the countertops were tile, the floor laminate, and the cabinets appeared to have a fresh coat of varnish on them. It looked to me as if
the previous owners had planned to spruce up the place and had started with the kitchen.

  Thinking about that, about who those people might have been, only saddened me, though. They were gone, along with so many others, and I didn’t know if anyone would ever finish putting this house together. I supposed the supplies to do so were still out there in the stores, if anyone could get past the basics of survival to worry about such things, but….

  Dutchie came padding into the kitchen then, and I was glad of the distraction, glad that I could pet her and tell her what a good girl she was, and then get some bowls out of one of the cupboards so I could pour her some fresh water and feed her. It was a little early, since by then it wasn’t even five o’clock, but she’d never had her lunch.

  “And then we’ll go for a walk, okay?” I told her, and she lifted her head from her bowl long enough to wag her tail and show me she thought that was a great idea.

  “Really?” Evony said, appearing in the doorway. Her hair was brushed and her lipstick freshened, so I could tell what she’d been doing to occupy her time. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Why not? We’ve got to get to know the neighborhood sometime, don’t we?”

  “I suppose. I just didn’t think you were going to go all suburbia on me.”

  I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. “I’m not. But we have to blend in and act normal, right? So walking the dog seems like something people would do in a new house.”

  There was a window over the kitchen sink, so I pushed the curtains out of the way and peered out. Immediately outside was the side yard, with some dormant rosebushes in a brick planter, and just beyond the roses a wooden fence. A slightly larger, two-story house stood next door, but from this vantage point I couldn’t tell whether it was occupied or not. The blinds were shut, and no smoke rose from the chimney. It would make our lives a lot easier if it turned out the houses on either side of us were empty, but I couldn’t count on that.

  Since Evony still didn’t look all that convinced, I said, “Think of it as reconnoitering. But you don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”