by Keith Taylor
“OK, then,” Jack nodded. “You know where the diagram is?”
Cathy tapped her head. “Right up here. I’ve been working on that truck since I was sixteen. I know where everything goes. If we can just get down there without being seen I’m pretty sure I can get it moving.” She narrowed her eyes and pointed down to the parking lot. “The only problem is her.”
Down by the blue house Mrs. Parsons had returned to the kitchen. Jack guessed it was her job to keep tabs on Doug. Gabriela, though, was still lurking over by the picket fence in the yard, keeping watch over the motel. She had her radio clipped to her belt, and Jack knew that if she saw them skulking around the truck it would be game over. He didn’t want to find out what Parsons would do if he felt his hand was forced.
“How much time do you need to get the truck running?” he asked.
“If it's just the fuses? Couple of minutes, tops. I have spares in the glove compartment. What are you thinking?”
Jack pushed himself from the ground, brushed the pine needles from his trousers and grabbed Cathy’s gun from the ground. “I’m thinking I go back and eat some more pancakes,” he said, tucking the gun into the back of his pants and covering it with the tails of his shirt.
“Are you crazy?” Cathy stared at him in disbelief. “You want to go back in there?”
“No, not even a little bit, but right now as far as they know I have no idea anything's wrong, and I'm guessing they'll want to keep up the illusion as long as they can. I can use that to buy you some time.”
Jack had already started clumsily down the hill. Cathy came chasing after, grabbing his arm.
“Seriously, Jack, this is a really bad idea. Forget the truck. We can just do like you said and head over to the houses. It’s much less risky.”
Jack shook his head and pulled his arm from Cathy’s grasp. “It’s not about the truck,” he said, speeding his pace down the hill. “I’m not leaving a friend behind.”
Cathy tried to pull him back again, but Jack shrugged her away. “Damn it, Jack! Doug’s a grown man, and they don’t have any reason to hurt him. It’s not worth risking your life to save him.”
“Doug?” Jack paused and looked back at her. “Sure, I'll get him too, but I was talking about Boomer.”
΅
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
HEAT HAZE
A WAVE OF impotent fury crashed over Karen as she watched the Prius tear away from the bus, and it only grew stronger when she noticed that all three of the passengers sitting beside the bus just a moment ago had fled.
She couldn't believe it. They'd weighed up their chance of making it to the safe zone in the bus, and all three of them had decided their odds would be better if they screwed over the people who stopped to help. Not a single one had the decency to stop the others.
Valerie ran to join Karen, and as she saw the car shrink into the distance she hurled the jump leads in their direction and screamed at the top of her voice. “I hope you burn in Hell, you God damned parasites!”
Emily stirred in Karen’s arms, opening her eyes with a squinting frown. “Why’s everyone shouting, mommy?”
“It’s OK, pumpkin,” Karen assured her, setting her down in the shade of the bus. “You wait here a second. I just need to have a quick talk with Doctor Ramos and this nice lady.”
Emily looked up at Valerie, hurling an unbroken stream of expletives at the cloud of dust vanishing into the distance, then she looked back at her mom with a doubtful expression.
“Well, I’m sure she’s usually nice. Hang on a minute.” Karen hurried over to Valerie and whispered in her ear, and with a start Valerie turned to the little girl who’d just soaked up a dozen new curse words like a sponge.
“I’m so sorry, darling,” Valerie said, breathing heavily, trying to bring her anger under control, but she was almost vibrating with fury. She stalked back to the bus and kicked its side with a cry of “God damn it!”
Emily flinched at the sound of clanging steel, her lower lip wobbling as tears threatened to burst forth.
“OK,” Ramos said calmly, taking on the role of peacemaker, “I don’t think we’re going to achieve anything by kicking everything in sight. Val, is there any chance we could push start this thing?”
Valerie kicked at the dirt, her fists clenched. “No! We already tried it. Damn thing weighs about thirteen tons, so unless you have Captain America hiding behind you it’s not moving an inch.”
“And there’s no way to, I don’t know, jump start it without another battery?”
Valerie shot Ramos a withering look.
“I’m guessing that’s a no. OK then, it looks like we have to do this on foot.”
“On foot?” Karen asked doubtfully, looking up at the cloudless sky. “Looks like it’s gonna be a hot day, Doc. How far do you think we could make it? Val, do you have any water on the bus?”
“No, there’s nothing left,” Valerie replied. “They only had enough for one bottle per passenger the last place we stopped, and those ungrateful pricks drank it all hours ago.”
“And do you have any clue where we are? We passed a little town about… what was it, Doc, maybe ten miles back? You think we could make it that far?”
Valerie shook her head, and without another word she climbed back into the bus and went straight for the driver’s seat.
“Hang on,” she called down. “The army guys at Vallejo were handing out maps to the safe zone.” Empty styrofoam cups and candy wrappers fell to the ground as Valerie pick through the mess beside her seat, and eventually she came up a single sheet of paper.
“Here we go,” she said, emerging from the bus brandishing the map. She dropped to her haunches in the shade and set it down on the asphalt. “OK, we’ve been sticking to the smaller roads, but I know we crossed route 65 not so far back. That’s the little town you saw. I think it was called…” she traced a finger down the map. “There. That was Wheatland. It looked abandoned to me, so I’m not sure heading in that direction would do us much good, but look at this.” She ran her finger along the county route until it hit a grayed out patch.
“This is Beale Air Force Base. I saw signs for it a few miles back. Can’t be more than five miles in that direction.”
Karen followed her finger, pointed ahead down the narrow, dusty road. In that direction she could see nothing but empty fields all the way to the horizon. There wasn’t a single building anywhere in sight. She sighed.
“Then I guess we have no choice. It’s either head for the base or stay here and die of thirst. What do you think, Doc?”
Ramos gave her a joyless smile. “Well, I’m a fan of water, to be honest. Never go a day without it, and I’m guessing the base has faucets.”
Karen nodded. “I’d think so, yeah. And maybe some food. That’s settled, then. Emily, honey, we’re going to go for a little walk.”
Emily sat with her back against the bus, her lip still quivering, and she leaned in towards Karen and whispered. “Not with the angry lady. I don’t want to go with her.”
“I’m sorry, pumpkin, but we have to all go together. We need to go get some water, and the angry lady needs some too, OK?” Karen turned to Valerie and gave her a reassuring smile. “No offense. We’ve met some pretty unpleasant people on the road. I guess she’s having some trust issues.”
Valerie shuffled in towards Emily, who backed away a little as she approached. “Hey, Emily,” she said, her voice soft and quiet. “I’m sorry if I scared you a little. I didn’t mean to yell. I’m not really a mean lady, I just got a little mad for a while.” She reached to her collar and tugged loose her bright red neck tie. “I’ll tell you what. If you let me come with you I’ll let you have this. Isn’t it pretty? What do you say?”
Emily looked at Karen and then back to Valerie, nodding uncertainly as Valerie draped it over her neck. “Oh my, that looks beautiful. You want to go for a walk now?”
Emily sniffed, then took Valerie’s outstretched hand and lifted herself from the ground.
“Do you like to ride the bus, Emily? Maybe when we get back home I could take you and your mom on a tour. You can have the whole wide bus all to yourself. What do you think about that?”
Emily nodded again, then looked back towards Karen. “Mommy, can we?”
Karen smiled. “Sure we can, honey, if Valerie says it’s OK.”
Emily grinned up at Valerie, her fear forgotten. “Mommy says we can!”
“Well that’s great! Hey, should we invite the doctor as well?”
“Yeah, he can come too,” Emily laughed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “He’s OK, I guess.”
“Yeah, I think so too.” Valerie started walking, and Emily followed beside her hand in hand. “Now, I want to hear aaaallll about you. Do you have a favorite teacher at school?”
Karen and Ramos followed ten steps behind as Emily launched into an enthusiastic story about Miss Jessop and her music class, and for a long while Karen just let her daughter’s voice wash over her as she walked. It was nice to forget for a moment about all that had happened. To forget the fact that the world behind them, the life they’d always known, sat in a pile of rubble and ash.
It was nice to just listen to Emily talk about normal life. The pictures she’d drawn in art class. The monkeys she’d seen when her dad took her to the zoo. The dog that lived next door, covered in white fur apart from two circles of black around its eyes that made it look like she was wearing glasses.
For a mile or so Karen let herself believe that when all this was over they could go back to that life. Back to the little house in the suburbs. Back to the school and Miss Jessop’s art class. Back to the cute little bespectacled dog. She didn’t have the energy to face up to the future just yet, and listening to Emily felt as relaxing as lowering herself into a hot bubble bath.
The bus was a dot behind them by the time Emily finally talked herself out, and in the silence Ramos finally gave an awkward cough.
“Listen,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I’m sorry for telling you to turn around. I guess we should have just kept on driving, huh?”
Karen took a moment to consider her reply. She could easily lay into him for the decision that led them to lose the car. She knew he wouldn’t punch back. She knew she could take out all her frustrations on him, whether or not it was fair, but eventually she shook her head.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Doc. You were right. We needed to do a good deed, and we did it. Yeah, we got burned, but I guess that’s a chance you have to take.”
She took a deep breath, looking ahead at Emily holding hands with Valerie. “If we’re going to go into the future every man for himself I don’t know if we deserve to survive, know what I mean? I don’t want Emily to have to grow up in a world where people don’t help each other.” She fell silent for a moment, and then a slight smile played across her lips. “Besides, it’s not all bad. Looks like you got to be the knight in shining armor.”
She turned to Ramos and noticed him blushing. He was looking ahead to Valerie. “So, she knows exactly which days you ride the bus, huh? That’s… oddly specific. You think she does that for all her passengers?”
Ramos’ cheeks were burning now. He looked down at his feet with an embarrassed smile.
“And you bake cookies for all your bus drivers?” She grinned, enjoying Ramos’ awkward silence, then leaned in and whispered in a sing song tone. “Cesar and Valerie, sittin’ in a tree, K.I.S—”
“OK, wise ass, that’s quite enough of that.”
“Oh come on, Doc, it’s not every day I get to see a love story play out against the backdrop of a nuclear holocaust. I’m guessing Hollywood has been flattened, so I have to take my entertainment where I can get it. So, you planning to ask her out? I bet she’d—”
“Hang on,” Ramos interrupted, peering out at the road ahead. “Do you see that?”
Karen followed his gaze towards the horizon, but she couldn’t see anything but the shimmering heat haze that made it look like the road ran straight into a lake about a mile up ahead. “What? What am I looking at?”
Ramos frowned and squinted. “It’s hard to see, but… doesn’t that look like a car to you?”
Karen looked again, squinting as if the rippling heat haze might lift if only she could focus hard enough. She couldn’t be sure, but there did seem to be something on the road ahead, a shimmering dark dot that seemed to drift in and out of sight.
“I see something, I think, but I couldn’t say if it was a car. Could just be a tree.”
“No,” Ramos shook his head, still staring. “No, that’s no tree.” He picked up his pace to catch up with Valerie, and Karen hurried after him. “Hey guys,” he said, taking Valerie by the shoulder, “you might want to drop back behind me. I think there’s a car up ahead.”
Karen smiled as Ramos forged on ahead, taking the lead in a transparent attempt to impress Valerie. Even if it was a car she couldn’t imagine it being any sort of threat to them, but she decided to play the role of wingwoman for a minute.
“Hold up a minute, Emily,” she said, taking her daughter by the hand. “Doctor Ramos is going on ahead to make sure it’s safe for us.”
Karen didn’t want to voice her hope for fear that she might jinx it, but a little part of her believed that the guys who stole the Prius might have had a sudden attack of conscience. Maybe they’d realized after a mile or so that stranding people by the side of the road was a crappy thing to do. Maybe, just maybe, they were thinking about turning back to pick them up.
She kept her fingers crossed as she followed a few dozen yards behind Ramos, striding ahead with purpose, and Karen couldn’t help but notice that his show of bravado seemed to be working. Valerie looked to be impressed by the Doc taking the lead.
Through the haze up ahead the shimmering dot became a shape, and it wasn’t long before Karen realized it really was a car. It didn’t seem to be moving, though. From this distance it looked like it was stopped by the side of the road, and after a few dozen more steps Karen began to feel a touch of apprehension.
“Hey, Doc?” she called ahead. “That’s our Prius, right?”
Ramos began to slow. Unless there just happened to be another silver Prius on this isolated country road it was theirs, but even from a hundred yards away it was clear it wasn’t just parked. The car was half off the road on the dusty verge, stopped at an angle as if it had come to a sudden, screeching halt.
“Stay back, girls,” Ramos called out. “I’m gonna go… umm, check it out.”
It looked as if the Doc's desire to impress Valerie was coming up against his fear, and the bravado was only just winning out. He moved forward at a slow shuffle, as if the Prius might rear up and attack at any moment. He approached the car cautiously, moving in a wide arc around the side, and when he finally came within a dozen steps of it he suddenly stopped.
“Oh, God!” he gasped, turning back to the women and waving them away. “Stay there!”
“What is it?” Karen called out, her voiced edged with tension. “What’s wrong?”
Ramos didn’t answer. He just held out a staying hand and began to approach the car, even more cautiously now.
“Cesar, what is it?” demanded Valerie.
Ramos drew level with the car now, hunched down and ready to run if something happened. He reached out to the driver’s door, but thought better of pulling the handle.
“They’re dead,” he called out, taking a step back. “They’re all dead.”
Karen grabbed Emily by the hand and held it tight as Valerie hurried towards the car, and when she reached it she stopped short and held her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she gasped, staring at what was left of the Prius.
Karen approached now, driven forward by morbid curiosity. These guys had been alive just a half hour ago, and despite her fear she needed to know what had happened to them. She came as close as she dared, holding Emily in place behind her so she was shielded from the sight, and she gasped as she saw w
hat remained of the car.
The front windshield was completely shattered. Bullet holes peppered the hood, and the front tires were flat. Inside the car the driver and passengers were…
She turned away, sickened by the sight.
“Who could have done this?” Valerie asked, tears in her eyes.
A few dozen steps behind them Karen lifted Emily from the ground and turned her away from the car, carefully shielding her from the sight as she approached. “Don’t look, honey,” she warned, skirting around the wrecked Prius as far away as possible. She scanned the road ahead and the farmland that surrounded them, searching for movement, but there was nothing. There wasn’t even a breeze to trouble the crops. Wherever the attackers had come from they hadn’t stuck around for long.
“What is it, mommy?” Emily pestered, trying to sneak a look at the car.
Karen held her daughter’s head against her shoulder, pulling her a little too tight, but she didn’t want this image burned into Emily’s memory. “It’s nothing, honey, just don’t look. Doc, what are you doing?” she demanded, her voice shrill with fear.
Ramos had taken another step towards the car, and very slowly he reached out and opened the driver’s door. The driver was slumped against it, and as the door swung open his body began to fall out.
“Doc! Leave it alone!”
“Mommy, what’s he doing?” Emily tried to turn her head, but Karen just held on tighter.
Ramos lifted the driver’s body back into the seat like a sack of potatoes, keeping his hands clear of the blood plastered across the front of his shirt from several chest wounds.
“Hang on, I just need to…” He leaned across the driver, stretching to reach something tucked into a cubby between the front seats, but just as his fingers got a grip on it he lurched, jumping so high that his head hit the ceiling of the car, and he scrambled backwards and fell on his ass in the middle of the road.