The Pale Rider

by J B Trepagnier

  I remembered all the talk about some big, fancy border wall that would cost trillions of dollars and had so much controversy. There was undoubtedly a wall now. It looked like they crushed all the cars no one could use anymore and stacked them. There were military vehicles, school buses, and garbage trucks as far as I could see blocking the way in.

  I couldn’t see a single person, just stacked cars. Someone had turned the side of one of the garbage trucks into a door. A little slot slid open, and two eyes peered out.

  “Well, look who finally came back. I hope it was worth it. One of the gangs tried eating some Rage Heads they killed because they were hungry. You can imagine how that turned out. We send these patrols out to cut down on the Rage Head population, then these assholes go and eat their flesh.”

  “It was worth it. I have what Leif needs.”

  “Looks to me like all you did was pick yourself up a girlfriend.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Martinez. Leif needs her.”

  “She doesn’t look like any type of scientist to me. If Leif needed to get laid, he’s got plenty of options here.”

  “Okay, that’s offensive,” I growled. “What does a scientist look like, anyway?”

  “You look like the kind of girl who will beat my ass for checking you out and not a scientist.”

  “Oh, come on. A scientist would totally beat your ass for checking her out.”

  “She’s right, Martinez. You’re being a pig. Open the door.”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “And don’t get grabby with my girl. She will totally kick your ass.”

  “You’re no fun, Aeron.”

  The sliding panel on the side of the garbage truck slid open. Aeron backed Meremoth up, and we took a running start. Meremoth jumped inside, then skidded across the metal floor. Amazingly, he landed on all four hooves and didn’t throw us when he landed on the ground on the other side.

  “If the hot chick is important, do you want an escort to San Quintin?”

  “The hot chick has a name and doesn’t like to be called the hot chick,” I snapped.

  “Well, then be polite and introduce yourself if you don’t want me giving you a nickname.”

  This guy right here.

  “You can call me Speedy.”

  “Speedy doesn’t sound like a scientist’s name.”

  “You watch too many movies, Martinez. When has my word never been good enough for you? We need her. What does the road to San Quintin look like since I’ve been gone?”

  “Burned. There was some crossfire with a patrol and one of the gangs. They wasted good tequila throwing Molotov cocktails and started a huge fire. It raged out of control for several days before the rains finally came.”

  “So, my safe house is probably toast.”

  “And there will be stretches where you won’t find a replacement place to crash either.”

  “I’ve got a tent. Is there a suitable area to camp?”

  “Find the most burned-out area you can. Humans don’t go there anymore because there is nothing to steal, and there’s not a lot of Rage Heads because there are not a lot of humans to eat.”

  “Thanks, Martinez. We’ll be on our way.”

  Was Aeron really going to ignore the fact that we got offered an escort? If people were burning shit down, I wouldn’t mind more than the two of us to stop them from killing us. As soon as we were out of earshot of the piggish guard, I called Aeron on it.

  “Is there any reason you didn’t take him up on a guard for our journey?”

  “Too many guns and egos.”

  “Oh, there’s a raging ego, and it’s sitting behind me on this horse. How are you and your fucking ego going to stop an entire gang when they throw Molotov cocktails at our tent?”

  “The same way I dealt with the gangs at the gate. You heard Martinez. They have no reason to go back to a burned-out neighborhood. We’ll find an area with good cover and pitch a tent for the night. I only have two sleeping bags, and you know how cold it gets at night. You can either freeze or stop being stubborn and let me keep you warm.”

  “So, you’re back to being a dick to me?”

  “I’m being logical. I won’t deny that I want to hold you again, but the fact remains that the temperature drops at night, and we can’t light a fire. It’s cold cans and the snacks Mabel gave us for the road.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was there when you said you were bringing me back to my apartment?”

  “Because I knew seeing her face would help you remember better than me just mentioning it.”

  “I will be so mad if we manage to end this, and she’s gone when I get back.”

  “Mabel will be waiting for you when you get back. I can guarantee you that.”

  “She has to be in her nineties now. Can I help it if I want to spend every minute with her now?”

  “You will. We are just taking a detour to save the world.”

  We traveled through the street in silence. A few Rage Heads tried to bum rush us on the horse. I either got them with Smurfette or Aeron chopped their heads off with his sword. The Rage Heads here were a lot grosser than I’d seen in other states. These were burned to a crisp and stunk worse than the other.

  Rage Heads kind of made these squishing and popping noises when their rotting bodies moved, but the burned ones kind of crackled. It was like you could hear their skin splitting open, and all manner of nastiness oozed from the cracks.

  The fire had done a number on the landscape. It was pretty sad. It looked like this area might have escaped the bombs, but now everything was scorched and reduced to ash. This differed totally from the woods and ghost towns in Washington State and the community that had come together in California. This was people burning shit down for no reason.

  The temperature was starting to drop, and the sky was going from orange to gray. That was usually a sign we would stop for the night. Aeron had this route planned down to a T. I didn’t quite know what he was looking for until he pulled Meremoth up to a burned house with most of the brick structure still standing.

  “We’ll set up the tent in there. The walls will give us cover if there are any humans that come by, and it’ll make it more difficult for the Rage Heads to get to us.”

  I could agree with that. Aeron left me to set up the tent like I’d been camping before. Honestly, I couldn’t remember if I had or hadn’t, but this tent didn’t have an instruction manual, and I was probably not the best person for this job. Whatever he was doing, we probably needed it, so I struggled to get this fucking tent together.

  I’d only managed to get half the tent up by the time Aeron had dismantled most of a burned car and strung up the pieces around the house. If anyone tried to come near our tent, we would hear them. Neat idea. If only I had contributed better with the tent. Aeron didn’t say a fucking thing about it either. He just came over and started helping me.

  We had the tent up in no time. Dinner was cold canned beans and homemade granola bars from Miss Mabel. God bless that woman because she was a mean cook, and if we weren’t rationing food, I would have eaten all of those granola bars.

  It was different sleeping in a tent. Not that I didn’t mind roughing it. We were sleeping on top of rubble and burned flooring. It was just the drastic temperature difference between night and day now. It was so fucking hot during the day you sweat buckets. Most of the time, it was days before you could get a shower. As soon as the sky turned gray, it was like this switch got flipped to arctic.

  We finished our dinner without talking much. We both knew what would happen next. I could either keep letting my lizard brain get in the way and freeze my ass off all night or get over my shit and share body heat with Aeron.

  I was tired of this. He swore he would tell me everything when I met all of his team, and I believed him. Sure, he omitted the truth like what really happened at the gate, and he kept trying to decide what I was ready to hear, but at the rate I was having shit flung at me, it might eventually get to be too much. May
be Aeron would answer one of my questions, and I would totally lose it. I mean, he’d told me some pretty fucked up shit so far. I needed to stop getting mad at him.

  “Want to use one sleeping bag as a mattress and the other as a blanket?”

  I only had to ask, and Aeron set to work, making it happen. There wasn’t room for pillows in the saddlebags, so we used rolled up shirts, but this could work. My entire body was frigid cold, and that sleeping bag looked warm. The one he spread out on the tent floor gave a little padding, but it would do. I yanked the other sleeping bag up to my neck and tried to get warm. I felt Aeron climb in behind me, but he kept his distance because I just told him I wasn’t ready for this.

  I was sure I was giving the man whiplash with my mood swings. I was expecting some snarky comments back.

  “Can you hold me?”

  Aeron spooned my back and nuzzled my neck.

  “I was hoping you would ask. I’ll always try to get you whatever you ask for.”

  And he had. Except for answers to some of my questions. I didn’t want to think about that. I just needed to accept that Aeron gave his word that I would eventually have all the answers. I turned in his arms and gazed into those silver eyes of his. Aeron had shaved his face with this massive pocket knife when we had water to spare, but right now, he had blond stubble on his chin. I caressed his cheek.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being a brat. I know you’re doing the best you can, it’s just really frustrating that I can’t remember. I remembered everything about Miss Mabel when I saw her face. I got bits and pieces in my apartment, but I still don’t remember why I painted those paintings or why they made me agree to meet with you.”

  “You trusted Leif and me by then. You hadn’t confided in us about what he did to you when you were a child, but we talked about everything else. Leif always says the first thing that pops into his head. He finally just told you that we knew who your father was and that he was up to something. It spooked you, and you disappeared for a week. You didn’t come to the chatroom, and you wouldn’t text or call. You called both of us on three-way a week later to say you were coming because you painted something confirming he was up to something big.”

  “And the sex painting in my bedroom?”

  “I had to get embarrassed when Mabel presented that to me after she beat me with her broom. She—”

  I interrupted him. I wanted to remember what we talked about so severely, and yes, I wanted to do this again ever since Aeron did it the first time. I tangled my hands in his silky hair and pulled him in for a kiss. Aeron let out a little growl and rolled me on my back. I dug my nails in his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist. Aeron was nibbling on my neck when we heard the jangle of hubcaps.

  Aeron buried his face in my neck.

  “To be continued,” he whispered.

  He placed his finger over my lips to be totally quiet. He didn’t need to tell me. It could either be torched Rage Heads or humans wanting to slit our throats out there. That was when I heard it. They weren’t even trying to be quiet. It was humans outside our tent.

  Aeron grabbed his sword and went charging out of the tent. I could hear him trying to talk to them, telling them we didn’t want any trouble. I didn’t care what he would say later, I grabbed Smurfette and joined him.

  There were five men wearing masks at the front of our tent. They didn’t speak English, and I only spoke a little Spanish. I got the gist of what they were saying. They would let Aeron keep his tent and supplies if he gave them me to play with. That wasn’t happening. I’d bash their brains in myself. It didn’t look like they had any flaming tequila bottles to throw at us. They had machetes and knives.

  Three of the men moved in on Aeron, and the other two tried to grab me. Bashing an unarmed Rage Head’s brains in was easy, but fighting two men with machetes was a little complicated. It turned out one of them spoke English.

  “Hello, sexy. Why don’t you put that bat down? I’d hate to scar up that pretty face.”

  I didn’t know the first thing about fighting someone with a machete, but I knew I wasn’t getting kidnapped and raped tonight. I swung hard at the man closest to me. I think I surprised him. He wasn’t expecting me to fight back. Smurfette connected with his hand, and his machete when clattering away.

  Now what? If I bashed his brains in, the other man with a machete could cut my fucking head off. I rather enjoyed having my head attached to my body. I held Smurfette up in a defensive position. The other guy with the machete was holding back, probably watching my fighting style. I needed to take the unarmed man out of the equation.

  I swung Smurfette at his knees. I heard a sickening crack as his knee broke. He fell over howling. I’d deal with him in a minute. I still had my eyes on that second machete. This guy didn’t speak a word of English, but I was pretty sure he put a curse on my first-born child. I know he called me a bitch.

  “That’s not very nice.”

  I decided to just go for it. He wasn’t a big guy; he only had a big fucking knife. And that big fucking knife was scary. I decided to be scary too. I raised Smurfette above my head and just ran at him. I used the guy with the broken knee to launch myself in the air with my bat above my head.

  The guy with the big scary knife cowered in fear as he tried to block me with his machete. I smashed the bat on his head and felt the machete slice my forearm. He fell over in a heap. I looked over, and Aeron had already beheaded the three men who came at him. I expected him to give me shit about not staying in the tent, but he didn’t. He just winked at me.

  “Not bad, Speedy. Finish them off so I can move the bodies. We need to get some sleep.”

  “You want to sleep after this?”

  “You’re bleeding,” Aeron said, dashing over.

  He drove his sword into the two men that attacked me and started checking my forearm.

  “I will have to stitch this up. I’ve got a bottle of antibiotics. Go in the tent and put pressure on it while I move the bodies far away from us. We can use them as Rage Head bait. Hopefully, they’ll be satisfied with these guys as their meal and leave us alone.

  My forearm was throbbing, and five gang members wanted to trade me for camping supplies. I was about to try to sleep with bleeding corpses nearby for Rage Heads to eat.

  I officially hated camping.

  Chapter 32

  I

  really liked where things were headed before Aeron and I were so rudely interrupted. Even if I wasn’t sitting here getting my arm stitched up in the dark and wondering how close those dead bodies were, we couldn’t recapture that mood. Stitches fucking hurt too. I was trying to shine Aeron’s flashlight on my arm while he tried not to mangle my arm further.

  “Your first apocalypse battle scar. How does it feel?”

  “Like I slammed my arm towards the end of a machete, and now you are sticking needle and thread through my arm.”

  “You’ve got a pretty extreme pain tolerance.”

  “Look at my arms. I wouldn’t have sat and gotten all this inked on me if I didn’t.”

  “Let me tie this off, and then I’m done. I’m almost out of ointment, but I’ve got some expired antibiotics for you to take. Leif will have what we need to keep this from getting infected when we get to San Quintin.”

  “And how did Leif end up with all the medical supplies in Mexico?”

  Aeron cut the thread and started rubbing his last remaining ointment in my arm.

  “It was just Leif and me at first. We weren’t just sitting around in Mexico, plotting to get close to you. We were networking. Before they fell, we had the ear of the Mexican government, and the military is still on our side. We helped them during the war. We were looking for you and trying to stop your father, but we were fighting just like everyone else was. They know Leif can help end this, so they go out and get him what he needs. It’s nice to have friends with good toys.”

  I just shrugged.

  “I feel like all I’m contributing is my fucked up blood and dr
awings that might not make sense.”

  Aeron grabbed my shoulders and made me look him in the eye.

  “Listen to me right now, Ariel. Your blood is not fucked up. Nothing about you is fucked up. You are exactly as you need to be. Stop focusing on how Isaiah polluted it for evil purposes and think about the fact that Leif will use it to stop this.”

  “There’s a reason I’m at the center of this, isn’t there? And you won’t tell me until your entire team is with you.”

  “Ariel, if you think shit is terrible now, it will only get worse. If you are focusing on the evil things that your father did with your blood instead of the marvelous things Leif can do with it, then you will need a support system when you get the full picture. That’s why I want my team there before I tell you everything.

  “We are all different. We can comfort you in distinct ways. You might need something I can’t give, as much as that kills me. We aren’t just roping you into this because of who you are and what your blood can do. Even after Leif gets your blood and figures out what to do with it, it’s our job to get you back to California, safe and sound. The only reason you are coming to Washington with us is so we can keep you safe while we stop your father. Then, I will bring you back to Mabel.”

  “And then?” I demanded.

  What was with his whole snuggling and stealing kisses? Why did he tell me we couldn’t have sex until I remembered him if he was just babysitting me until he could dump me back at home? Was this some plot to fuck with my head so I wouldn’t leave?

  Aeron just grinned at me.

  “Well, I was hoping that painting might come true like the rest of your paintings do.”

  I punched Aeron in the arm. He was back to being a dick, but I guess I could admit I liked it when he did.

  “So, what? We have an orgy in the Oval Office, and you dump me back at home, then we all go our separate ways?”