“You’re not part of a gang,” I pointed out.
“No, but I know who the gangs are, and I’ve made allies with communities all over the country. I help them, and they help me. Gabriel’s Haven is not the only place they have given me a home.”
“Maybe her community needs help.”
“More like her gang saw a man and a woman on a horse and wanted to steal the horse. I know most of the gangs, but I don’t know all of them. Humanity has gone to shit, Speedy. These people will kill us for our supplies and Meremoth, and that’s not the worst thing they could do.”
“I believe you, Aeron. So, what do we do? Go around them?”
“No, indeed. The successful gangs have booby-trapped the surrounding woods to cut down on the Rage Head population. That was another reason I went straight through Scooter’s territory instead of around.”
“Booby traps. It’s the fucking apocalypse; of course, there are booby traps. So, what exactly do we do?”
“Remember when you asked me if Meremoth was a normal horse?”
“Yes, and you said he wasn’t. You won’t tell me what he is, just that there are only four like him.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Are you about to do crazy shit where the horse starts murdering things, and I’m scared I will die?”
“You’ll never die when you’re riding Meremoth, Speedy. Meremoth will get us past that little trap alive.”
“Okay, then. Do it.”
“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” Aeron yelled loud enough for everyone to hear.
The woman ran to the center of the road and started frantically waving at us. I knew I should have recognized Aeron’s line from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember shit. As soon as he finished, Meremoth took off running. If I thought that horse ran fast before, that was nothing compared to what he was doing now. I flung myself across his neck as my surroundings became a blur.
We were headed straight for the woman in the middle of the road. I wondered what was going through her head as a petrified woman clutching a blue baseball bat and an insane man waving a sword and screaming like a cowboy came barreling at her at this pace. Was she going to move? Because I already knew Meremoth had no intention of stopping.
Aeron was right. She was the bait, and we were the prey. Her gang saw we had every intention of running her over with this huge horse going impossibly fast and started spilling into the street screaming at us. Most of them had knives, and I saw some machetes, but only a few of them had guns. I didn’t have to speak to know they didn’t want to waste ammo on us. They would have used the guns to threaten us, then killed us with one of their sharp things.
One of the men tackled the woman as we flew by them. Someone took a shot at us, but Meremoth was running so fucking fast, they were soon long past us. Meremoth slowed to a trot, and Aeron was laughing like a crazy person. He patted Meremoth’s neck fondly while I was still draped across it shaking like a leaf.
“He loves it when I let him do that.”
“I think you enjoyed that too, you crazy son of a bitch.”
“There’s nothing quite like riding Meremoth when he’s totally unleashed.”
“You’re insane,” I hissed.
“And you’re still alive, Speedy.”
Well, fuck. He had me there.
Chapter 19
T
he rest of our ride out of Washington State was pretty uneventful with Aeron as my guide. He had the apocalypse nailed down to a T. Our route was carefully planned for the most part. Aside from the town he found me in, we didn’t stop in any significant nasty gang territory, and when we stopped in a Rage Head infested town to sleep, Aeron had his own booby traps to keep us safe.
We had to make more supply runs as our stash from the supply closet was running low, but we worked well as a team. We didn’t luck into any more undiscovered closets, and we only snatched mystery cans after that. Aeron said the supplement hadn’t been added to the water supply in a long time, but it still wasn’t safe to risk taking a shower in some places we stopped at that still had running water.
Taking a shower became this huge luxury, even if the water was cold. I had precisely three pairs of panties to last me for the entire apocalypse, and I don’t even want to talk about how long I had to wear a pair before I got to wash them again. I had long abandoned the bra Aeron grabbed for me. It was the apocalypse, and I was saying I didn’t have to wear that awful thing.
As for Aeron, as much as I thought he was an asshole before, I liked him now. I could see why I made friends with him in that chatroom and agreed to follow him to Mexico. I still had no idea why I was disappearing to Mexico, but I could see why I liked the guy.
My memories were still coming in pieces, and they weren’t really pieces I could use. I knew that before all of this, I worked as a tattoo artist in this little shop in Los Angeles. My shop only did custom work, and some of my art won awards at tattoo conventions. I still had no idea why a tattoo artist was so crucial to the apocalypse.
My nightmare dreams were still coming. The man from my dreams who left me at the lab played a prominent role, but I could never see his face in my nightmares. I could tell that I loved him in the first dream, and I didn’t want him to leave me at that lab.
As much as my four-year-old self loved him in that dream, whenever he showed up in my dreams, I knew deep down that I hated this man. Aeron said the man was my father. All he would tell me about this man was that I grew up in New York and confirmed I hated him. Aeron said I ran away from him when I was fifteen. I ran as far as I could get. I hopped on a bus to California and had myself legally emancipated when I was sixteen.
I could feel it even now when I thought about my dreams. I loathed my father. Aeron wouldn’t confirm or deny, but I knew he wasn’t dead. He was pure evil if he let those people do those things to me as a child. He was probably alive and kicking. Evil people were like cockroaches and difficult to kill. He probably has his own gang like Scooter did and was raping and eating people. I couldn’t remember much about him, but I just got this vibe based on what I could remember that he’d resort to that and not feel bad about it at all.
Aeron looked so relieved when I remembered something. I think he wanted me to remember more than I did, and I wanted my memories back more than anything. He would get so excited and try to fill in what he could. He would start talking, then realize he might tell me too much and clam up.
Apparently, my memory loss was like Meremoth. It shouldn’t have been possible, and I’d never heard of anything like it before. All Aeron would confirm was that it wasn’t natural, and I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. My working theory was that someone had cross-bred a horse with some sort of weird DNA and created some kind of super horse like Meremoth. I was pretty sure someone brainwashed me before they put me in a coma, so I wouldn’t remember. Why Aeron couldn’t tell me that, I had no idea.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the Welcome to California sign. Aeron said I was born in New York, but it felt like I was coming home. Sure, the sign had been vandalized, but I was back. Aeron pointed to one of the symbols on the sign. It was a bloody eye.
“The Forsaken run California now. It’s a tight run ship. They’ve got people in every city. They’ve granted me access to the border, but we must present you as we did in Gabriel’s Haven. I know California is your home, but shit has changed. They don’t let anyone in that hasn’t been vetted now. California is one of the remaining states that survived, and it’s all because people came together to make it so. They have some pretty harsh policies here. If you aren’t contributing or you cause trouble, they banish you. They put a bag over your head, drive you out a way, and just leave you.”
“Remind me not to piss them off.”
“Just follow the rules. Don’t steal, don’t kill, and if they give you a job, do it without complaint. Everyone pitches in, and they look down on taking more than what you are given.”
Meremoth approached a wall that was simila
r to the one around Gabriel’s Haven. This one was even bigger. Did they build a wall around California? Just like Gabriel’s Haven, we were greeted by guns first. A head popped over and glared at us. Aeron wasn’t recognized on sight this time.
“What do you want?”
Aeron reached in his bag and pulled a white cloth with a red eye painted on it.
“I’ve been given access, but she hasn’t. She’s from Los Angeles. We are just passing through. We are hoping to stop by her old apartment, and then we will be on our way.”
“Supposing her apartment is now occupied. They might not want her in there, and we don’t like violence.”
“It’s not occupied. I worked that out directly with Jade.”
“Ooh, fancy. How do we know your friend doesn’t intend to cause trouble?”
“I’ll vouch for her. You can call Jade, and she’ll vouch for me. As I said, we are only passing through. We don’t intend to stay. I just need to get her to her old apartment.”
The man at the gate whipped out a satellite phone. I guess to call this mysterious Jade. Did Aeron have a satellite phone to call his team? I’d never seen him with one this entire time, but he said he’d spoken with them. Why would he hide a phone from me? Who was I going to call, anyway?
The man at the gate wrapped up his conversation, but he still looked at us like he trusted us about as far as he could throw us.
“Jade vouches for you. She says if your friend acts up, you’re banished.”
The gate swung open, and Meremoth took us through. California wasn’t like what I could barely remember. Bombs wholly destroyed some buildings. It looked like they were coming together and slowly rebuilding, but it was a process. I remembered the city I woke up in. All the grass was dead, and the landscape seemed barren. It looked like they were trying to change this because I could see some green peeking through all the brown.
Aeron told me gangs overran Los Angeles, but it sounded like just one gang, and they were doing their best to keep California running. There was almost no litter on the street like there was everyplace else we went, and if there had been broken glass, it was already cleaned up.
I could see some people were using cars, but most people on the street were using bicycles or rollerblades. I didn’t see a single person on horseback like we were, and Aeron’s crazy horse got some strange looks because that thing was enormous. I think Aeron enjoyed getting stared at, and so did the horse. I swear that fucking horse was preening under all the stare.
We were still a long way away from Los Angeles. I had no idea where we would sleep until Aeron pulled the horse up in front of a hotel. You could get a hotel room in California during the apocalypse? What the ever-loving fuck?
Aeron didn’t stop at the front desk. He led me straight down the hallway to a room. He pulled a keyring out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
“Um, Aeron? Why do you have a hotel room?”
“It was one of the first things the Forsaken started rebuilding when they took over. A lot of the living lost their homes, or the living conditions were so bad they couldn’t stay there. There aren’t enough skilled people to rebuild that many houses at once, so they focused on the hotels first. They gave the displaced rooms while they started on the houses. They are trying to do as many things as solar as they can, like this hotel. Be grateful we’ve got power while we are in California. You can take a hot shower.”
“And wash my clothes. I’ll bet I reek to high heaven right now.”
“I like your smell.”
“If that’s your way of flirting, my stink is not the way to my heart.”
“Go shower and wash your thongs. I’ll see if I can scrounge up something better than mystery cans for dinner.”
I didn’t care if it was hot. I hadn’t showered in four days, and I didn’t want to talk about how long I’d been wearing my last clean pair of panties. I went running towards the shower like I was dying of thirst in the desert. Who knew when I would get to shower again?
Chapter 20
I
’ll say this for the Forsaken. They were running California pretty smoothly, given everything that was going on. Aeron was able to negotiate no one getting assigned my old apartment and getting hotel rooms in all the cities he had asked for in exchange for the advice he had given Jade, the leader of the Forsaken. Aeron was spreading the word about the bottled water among the survivors. He told me Leif thought people with AB negative blood were somehow immune to the mutations that the supplement caused, but he hadn’t been able to study prolonged exposure to it among AB negative people.
I had to ask about Jade. She was running a pretty tight ship here. What they had built in California was nothing short of amazing.
“Jade? That was her stage name. She used to be an exotic dancer, and she saw some shit before all this went down. She’s a little badass. She’s probably ninety pounds soaking wet, and all of California fears her. She’s a pussycat if she likes you.”
I let out this little growl. Was I jealous of Jade? Did I even have any right to be? Aeron and I only knew each other online before. We’d only kissed once this entire time and snuggled when we slept. I had zero claims over him, but it seriously bothered me that while I was in a coma, he possibly flirted with this woman to get all these perks in California.
Aeron just smirked at me like he could read me like an open book. He was totally getting off on this. I wanted to punch that smile right off his cute, arrogant face.
“Jade is a lesbian, Speedy. She’d probably cut my balls off with a rusty knife if I even hinted at having sex with her. And I don’t want to have sex with her. You’re cute when you’re jealous.”
“Shut up,” I said, throwing the pillow at his face.
“No, seriously. The greatest shortstop of girl’s fastpitch softball on the West Coast is jealous over little old me. A guy could get an ego.”
“I think you had a fat head way before we met in that chatroom.”
Aeron threw the pillow back at me.
“Yeah, I totally did. I will hit the shower. Answer the door when there’s a knock. It’s dinner.”
Room service during the fucking apocalypse? Why were we leaving California again? Couldn’t we just hole up here instead of going to murder someone? Even if the president was the major shareholder of Armilus, how was killing him going to make any of this better? There were walking corpses and a desolate landscape. Canada and Mexico were no more and got swallowed by the United States. He was running all three now. What more could he possibly want?
Aeron had those answers, and I wasn’t sure he would tell me. I tried to focus on remembering. I needed to put together the pieces of what I remembered for a bigger picture. I had all these memories of a faceless father that I hated, but I never saw my mother once.
Big question. Why did I end up at two research facilities in my life? I knew the second time, it was to keep me hidden in a coma. Why not kill me if I was somehow involved in all this? What was the purpose of all the tests when I was a child, and why did they need me terrorized to do them?
I couldn’t remember much about those tests to know how long they were done. All I could remember was the night I ran. I remembered that night in a dream back in Washington State. My adrenaline was pumping, and I had planned the entire thing. My father kept me locked in my bedroom at night. I could only ever leave the house to go to the exclusive all girl’s private school he had me enrolled in, and I had to come straight home.
I spent two years planning my escape, but I made it to the bus station with the money I stole. I ran all the way to California and didn’t stop looking over my shoulder for two years. Even after I became legally emancipated from him, it scared me he would kidnap me and bring me back.
The only person I could think of that would kidnap me from California and keep me in a coma during the apocalypse instead of killing me was him. If I would be killing the president with Aeron and his friends and someone found out, they would have just put a bullet in m
y head.
Those people that staffed the research facility and watched over me wouldn’t have stayed if they weren’t being given something in return. Someone probably went in with a Rage Head bite because they feared losing whatever perks were being offered for keeping me alive too.
My stomach sunk to my feet. I was important because my father was somehow involved in all this. I had a feeling all those tests that were done on me was to prepare for all of this.
Was my father now the President of the United States? Was that Aeron’s big secret, and why he only ever referred to him as Isaiah? Was that why I was so important to all of this?
I knew I hated him. I could feel it in my bones. I wanted him dead, but how would killing him fix any of this?
Chapter 21
I
had every intention of demanding answers from Aeron when he got out the shower, and then he had to go and stroll out the bedroom, dripping wet, wearing nothing but a towel. I could see the defined V at his hips, and that towel looked like it would fall off at any minute. My throat went dry. Damn. He was one beautiful asshole. He had this grin on his face like he knew what I would ask and came out in that towel just to distract me.
I just blurted it out before I said something stupid or ripped that towel off and ran my tongue down that delicious V on his hips.
“Is my father the president, Aeron?”
“Did you have another memory?”
“No, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Aeron sighed and sat on the foot of the bed.
“Yes, Ariel. Isaiah Nahum is your father. You might think you know how evil he is, but you have no idea.”
“Did all those tests on me have anything to do with the supplement in the water that turned people into Rage Heads?”
Aeron refused to look at me.
“Are you sure you want the answer to that, Speedy?”
The Pale Rider Page 9