Patrick and Lanh burst back into the room.
“It’s all right,” Carter called out. “Just…bodies.”
“A man, woman, and child from the looks of it.”
Max had moved next to the bodies, but he didn’t want to get too close. He had no idea what kind of disease could spread from a corpse, or if that was even possible after so much time. Another question to ask Gabe once they’d settled for the night.
“We going to leave them like that?” Lanh asked.
Max knew that Lanh had seen worse in Austin, but he’d also become accustomed to the way of life at High Fields, basically secluded from the rest of the world. Or maybe death and destruction was something a person never grew used to seeing.
Patrick motioned toward some posters still hanging on the wall. The boys pulled them down and helped Max to cover the bodies, weighting down the corners of the posters with rocks that Carter fetched from outside.
Lanh pointed to the graffiti over the register—an X inside a circle. “Hugo did this?”
“Could be.” Patrick sounded as disgusted as Max felt.
What type of person killed a family in cold blood? And for what? Three lives ended for no better reason than they were hiding in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no justice in that, and the anger in Max threatened to explode. It had been simmering in him since the night their neighbor was gunned down for his car, through the hundreds needlessly killed in Austin, and right up to the fight with the Cavanaghs at their ranch. Its roots reached to a prelaw class at the University of Texas and his graduation with a law degree from Baylor. Their current state of anarchy was not something he’d ever be able to simply accept.
“You okay?” Patrick asked.
Max didn’t realize that the boys had trudged back outside.
He took in a deep breath.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to see worse than this.”
“I know we are.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”
“No. It doesn’t.” They followed the boys back outside into the waning light and the gale of a frigid wind that threatened to blow them over. The cold front had arrived, and the best they could do was hunker down until it passed.
FIFTEEN
They were able to create a windbreak for the person standing guard using metal and plywood ripped from the back of the store.
“We’ll take two-hour shifts,” Gabe said. “You notice anything—any movement, light, or sound—and you get on the radio. Don’t stop to figure it out. Clear?”
They all nodded. Any doubts Shelby had harbored about Gabe Thompson melted into the night. There was no question in her mind that he would take a bullet for them, and quite possibly he would help them avoid being caught in such a situation at all. The timid, quiet doctor she’d known in Abney, when he was pretending to be Farhan Bhatti, was gone. He was still a doctor—there was no doubt about that. But for the moment, he was a soldier first and foremost, and she was glad he was leading their group.
Patrick took the initial two-hour shift while the rest trooped back behind the building, where they’d made a circle of their vehicles. Camping in the middle, they were spared from the worst of the wind. They’d tossed around sleeping in the store.
“The rate of decomposition, as well as the lack of odor, indicates they’ve been dead some time,” Gabe said after checking out the corpses himself. “Because they didn’t die from disease, and they aren’t in contact with our drinking water, there’s no health risk.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to sleep in there,” Lanh admitted.
“I’d rather be back here where we can’t be seen from the road.” Patrick leaned against the front bumper of the Mustang.
“Then it’s decided.” Shelby adjusted her pack so she was lying on it rather than holding it up. The thing was beginning to remind her of a tortoise shell.
The second seat of the Hummer, the backseat of the Mustang, and the second seat of the Dodge had been cleared off. Three of them would sleep inside, and the other three would sleep outside, sheltered by the vehicles.
“You come off duty, you get two hours inside a vehicle.”
No one argued, mainly because they were exhausted and cold and didn’t have a better idea.
Shelby’s watch was from midnight to two. She relieved Patrick, who patted her clumsily on the shoulder and warned her to keep an eye out for snakes.
During the time Shelby had lived at High Fields, she’d only seen two snakes—one in the creek after sliding from a tree into a recess in the bank. The other had been in a woodpile and had taken a year off her life. She’d clobbered it with a piece of wood and kept slamming until Max came outside to see what all the noise was about.
“I think it’s dead,” was all he had said, but the smile on his face told her he was proud.
Later he’d said, “Smart thinking, using the wood instead of a bullet.”
“We need to conserve those.”
“Yeah, but Shelby, if you ever encounter another rattler and don’t have a piece of wood handy, shoot the thing. Okay?”
It had been a funny moment, though the look in his eyes had been intensely serious. She thought of that now as she stared out at a moonless sky overflowing with stars. It was amazing what you could see and hear in the dark if you sat still long enough, if you paid attention. A coyote called out. A calf bawled for its mother, and a fox passed close enough that she could have reached out a hand and touched it. Which didn’t say much for how she must smell if a wild animal would come that close.
Her shift passed quickly. She was surprised when Lanh gave two short whistles.
“Didn’t want you to shoot me.”
“That makes two of us.”
He settled into the scout position. Shelby was supposed to head back and kick someone out of their car bed. Instead, she stayed beside him and listened to the wind beat relentlessly against their blind. “Ever wish you’d stayed in Austin?”
“No.”
“And now…do you wish you stayed at High Fields?”
“No.”
She waited a few beats. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say any more, she called him on it. “I know you have more rattling around in your head than that.”
“I thought we were supposed to be quiet out here.”
“Like anyone could hear us over the wind.”
“Good point.”
“So?”
Lanh turned toward her, and though she couldn’t exactly see his expression, she knew he was wearing his customary lopsided grin. “You worried about me, Mrs. S?”
“Guilty.”
“Well, don’t. I’m glad I came to High Fields. I learned a lot of good stuff from Max’s parents.”
“Yeah, like how to domesticate those wild pigs Carter and Monica trapped.”
“Never thought I’d have bacon again.”
“It was kind of gamey.”
“It was delicious.”
Shelby reached out and mussed his hair. Sometime since bringing him to High Fields, Lanh had become the second son she never had.
She gathered up her weapon and backpack and was nearly out of the blind when he called her back.
“Think we’ll find them? The feds?”
“Maybe.”
“If we do…could be that they’d know something about what happened overseas.”
“I know you worry about your family.”
“Yeah, I do. But there are people with family just a few towns over who don’t know how they’re doing.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier.”
“We took so much for granted, but I think communication is what we didn’t fully appreciate…possibly more than any other thing.”
She understood what he was saying.
It was one thing to go hungry and learn to eat roots or nuts and berries. That was a problem you could solve with enough knowledge and a little luck. But not knowing…it was something that weighed on you constan
tly.
She squeezed his arm and started toward the camp.
The wind cut through her with a brutality that was startling.
Hadn’t they earlier that day passed fields of wildflowers?
But then this was Texas, and the weather always had been capricious.
She opened the door of the Dodge, forgetting who had fallen asleep in it.
Max sat up, rubbing his face.
Gabe had insisted they disable the interior lights so that they wouldn’t inadvertently come on and act like a beacon to their position should anyone be watching. A year ago she would have thought such measures extreme, but now she was glad he’d thought of it.
Max didn’t say anything. He yawned, stretched, and grabbed his pack and rifle, but as she stepped aside to let him by, he cupped the back of her neck with his hand, pulled her to him, and kissed her on the lips. He smelled exquisitely like Max, and she understood that she would know him anywhere—regardless of whether she could see or hear or touch him. Her other senses would always tell her the truth. His lips lingered on hers for a moment, and then he brushed past her to fall back asleep in one of the bedrolls on the ground.
Shelby curled onto the warm car seat, waiting for sleep to come, with the wind in her ears and Max’s kiss on her lips.
SIXTEEN
They woke to frost on the windshields and clouds obscuring the morning stars, but at least the wind had stopped. Max suspected the temperature was a full twenty degrees cooler than the day before. Springtime in Texas. They were lucky it hadn’t snowed.
Breakfast was instant coffee, granola bars, and dried fruit.
They followed the same procedure as the day before—stopping before the rise of each hill, scoping out the area in front of them, and deciding whether to forge on or backtrack. They ran into trouble on State Highway 114 and shots were exchanged. The instigators made only a halfhearted attempt at stopping their caravan, but there was evidence of more trouble ahead. A farmer’s wife hanging wash on the line confirmed that the highway between Jacksboro and Loving was basically closed with bandits.
“No one goes there now, not even with the horses. We go around by way of Throckmorton.”
The detour cost them most of the day, but they again found an abandoned building and set up camp. Though the temperatures hovered in the upper thirties, the wind had stopped howling. They circled up around a campfire, secure in the knowledge that their cars blocked the flames from sight.
“Someone could smell it, though,” Carter argued.
“True, but the smell of a campfire isn’t that unusual. Not anymore.” Patrick poured hot water into a mug holding instant coffee. “Even if someone was looking, they couldn’t find us in the dark. And if they do? We’ll hear them before they get within a quarter mile.”
Which was apparently what happened, because fifteen minutes later, Patrick returned dragging a guy by the collar of his coat. Max was on his feet, his gun in his hand before he realized he’d reached for it.
“Easy, folks.” The man apparently hadn’t shaved or bathed in weeks. He offered a lopsided smile as he reached up and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I meant no harm.”
“Found him creeping through the brush to the north, noisy as a toddler at a birthday party.”
Gabe moved in front of the man. “Name?”
“Dan. Dan the music man.”
Max noticed Shelby was also holding her weapon. It had somehow become second nature to them to reach for their firearm first and ask questions later.
“What’s in the guitar case, Dan?”
“Um…a guitar?”
“Check it, Patrick.”
Dan’s hands were still in the air, but he wiggled out of the strap holding the case to his back. He also carried a backpack, which he dropped to the ground.
Patrick laid the case in front of him on the ground and clicked open the fasteners. “Like the man says—a guitar.”
Five minutes later, they’d determined that Dan was exactly who he said he was.
“So you walk around and play music?” Lanh asked. “Aren’t you afraid that someone will kill you?”
“My playing isn’t that bad.”
Max exchanged glances with Shelby.
“When I was writing romance novels, if I’d written stuff this weird, my editor would have made me rewrite it. No one would believe it.”
“Where are you from, Dan?” Bianca had offered the man one of their MREs, which he’d eaten with surprisingly good manners.
“Around. Texas, of course. Grew up out west, near San Angelo, but it’s gone now.”
“Gone?” Gabe leaned forward, suddenly alert to what Dan was saying. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Just that—gone. No water. No reason to stay. No way to stay. Scattered to the wind.”
Dan reached for his guitar and began to strum lightly. Max had never been a musician or an artist of any kind, other than some minor doodling. Art was Shelby’s territory. But he’d always enjoyed listening. Before the flare, he’d even begun rebuilding his collection of vinyl. The first chord from Dan’s guitar sent a shiver through his soul.
Dan apparently had eclectic taste. His voice was soft but stirring as he picked the old Beatles’ tune “Hey Jude,” Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” He strummed “America the Beautiful.” Max attempted to sing along with the rest of their group, but the lyrics stuck in his throat as he was overwhelmed with love for his country, which teetered on the brink of collapse. It was one of the few times Dan looked up from his guitar, as though he sensed the surge of patriotism that had swept through each person sitting around the campfire.
Nodding once, he tapped the body of the guitar three times and began to pick a contemporary country tune that had been popular on the radio the week before the flare, transitioned straight into Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” and ended with “Amazing Grace,” each person in the circle softly singing along. Max reached for Shelby’s hand as they whispered the last stanza, the final chord bleeding off into the night.
“Gracias,” Bianca said softly.
“You’re welcome.” Without another word, he pulled a thin bedroll out of his backpack, shook it out, and crawled inside, his back to the fire.
The music stayed with Max as he crept into his own bedroll. Some might think that a gift like that was useless in their apocalyptic world, but Max realized moments before he drifted off to sleep how much he had longed for music. It lifted the heart and fed the soul.
Dan was still asleep when Max woke for his shift, but he was gone before sunrise.
They traveled on, settling into a rhythm.
Their world was the road, their destination, each other, and anything standing in their way.
They made progress.
And maybe they grew a little overconfident.
SEVENTEEN
They were fifty miles south of Wichita Falls and waiting for Patrick and Max to scope out the area when Gabe whistled twice, calling them into a group.
“Someone’s following us.”
Max immediately popped his head around the Dodge, but Gabe pulled him back down. The afternoon sun was taking on a westerly slant. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was a few minutes past four in the afternoon, which meant they had another two hours of light.
“Two horses, mostly they stay in the brush, but I’ve caught sight of them three times now.”
“We’re a long way from Hamilton, but that sounds like Hugo. Should we hold up until tomorrow? Find a place to bed down?”
“Not with them on our tail,” Patrick said. “They’d wait until the middle of the night and make their move.”
Gabe nodded. “Right now they don’t know that we know they’re following us.”
“What’s your plan?” Carter asked, which was pretty much the same thing Max was wondering.
“There’s a crossroads a mile and a half from here.”
Shelby frowned at her hiking boots.
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting, but it’s bound to slow us down.”
“I’m suggesting we take the offensive.”
“Though we probably could outrun them if we tried.”
“Unless they have people in front of and behind us, which is what I expect.” Patrick shrugged. “It’s what I would do.”
Gabe glanced around the group. “We need to take care of this. Are we agreed?”
Everyone nodded.
“When we reach the crossroads, I’m going to peel off and head west.”
“I’m not sure we should go separate directions,” Bianca said.
She was no doubt thinking of what had happened in Austin when they broke up. Max and Shelby had to walk six miles in a storm, and Shelby was nearly killed by a lowlife who wanted to rob her. The episode had ended in an old barn, where they’d first come in contact with the Remnant, but Max didn’t hold out much hope that they would stumble upon them twice in their moment of need.
“If this is Hugo, and I suspect it is, we know he typically sends his scouts on horses and then follows them in trucks. I suggest we try to take out the two on horseback and to do that…” He glanced at Bianca. “We have to separate initially.”
“Better that we pick the spot than wait for them to,” Patrick said. “And I agree that it’s best for us to take the offensive.”
“You’re sure they’re out there?” Shelby corralled her black curls with a rubber band and squashed a hat on top of her head.
“I’ve caught a glimpse of horses three times now. Each time we stop to scope out the next section, they stop to scope out us.”
“All right,” Bianca said. “I’m in. Let’s meet whoever this is on our terms rather than theirs.”
Shelby, Carter, and Lanh nodded in agreement, and Max said, “Tell us what to do.”
The plan was simple. They’d divide at the crossroads. Whoever was following them would have to choose which direction to take. Once they were sure, the group not being followed would circle back and come in behind.
“And then what?” Carter asked.
“Depends on what we find.”
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