“You seen them in concert before?” he asked, then paused, remembering that she was once one of the biggest fucking celebrities on the planet… “Did you know them?”
“Uh huh, I knew them.” She looked away.
He cut her a glance. She had a huge grin on her face.
“Rebel.” He stepped close, crowding her against the side of the RV.
“It’s a nice bus, isn’t it? Are you driving Charlie’s or Mark’s bus?”
“I don’t know.”
“If the inside is all white, sleek and modern, it’s Mark’s. If it’s all dark with guitars everywhere, it’s Charlie’s bus.”
“I’m driving Charlie Hanson’s own private tour bus?”
“You are.”
Fucking cool. His eyes narrowed. “And how do you know what the inside of their tour buses look like?”
She pressed her hands against his chest. “Okay, I knew them, we were friends. I’m not naming names, but with one or two of them, we were close friends, very close friends. Maybe more than friends.”
“Rebel,” he warned, his arms going around her.
She shook her head. “Nope, I’m not speaking ill of the recently deceased. Not that this would be speaking ill, but I’d just like secrets to remain secrets.” She met his eyes boldly and lifted her chin. “What’s wrong with that?”
Oh yeah, she’d fucked members of Nickeltop, he was sure of it now. Shit, his Rebel was a firebrand. The more he knew of her, the more convinced he became that she was the right woman for him.
“Are you a fan?” he asked.
Her eyes flashed. “Hell, yeah,” she answered like it was a fucking given. “I loved their music. And I liked those guys, as people. We were good friends.”
“All right, then, it’s cool.”
“Cool? You sure?”
“As long as you promise to fuck me in the tour bus so your last memory there is of my cock sliding into you. Then yeah, I’m cool.”
She bit her lip and smiled. “I can do that.”
“Good.” He pushed away and grabbed her hand. “Then let’s get going.”
Rebel went back inside and checked on Justin again before they left, and felt better knowing his fever wasn’t as high as before and that he was heavily medicated and comfortable. He was still coughing up a lung and his sleep was fitful, but she knew he’d be okay for the trip. Trevor had already preplanned two different stops along the way in order to check on Justin while they traveled. So this was all completely doable.
And Trevor was outside with a damn Geiger counter, checking the radiation level of the area. He even had a notebook so he could write down his findings, which apparently, he’d been stopping and doing at intervals during his whole drive down here so he could report the data back to the group on his return.
“There are over four hundred nuclear power plants worldwide. If they go Chernobyl they’ll emit radioactive waste into the atmosphere. I’m trying to get a baseline measurement wherever I can so we can know if the radiation is increasing, because this is an enemy you can’t see.”
She couldn’t even stay with him while he did it. The clicking sound the counter made was setting her on edge. Too depressing. As if there weren’t enough things going wrong with the world, she couldn’t also handle worrying over nuclear power plants melting down worldwide and radiation falling down like acid rain on them all.
Later, not now. Her brain could only process one catastrophe at a time.
Most people on the entire planet were dead—her parents, her family, all of her friends. Everyone she’d ever known was dead. Pretty much the whole state of California was a super-sized graveyard.
And she was pregnant.
And her best friend was sick and he needed help.
She bit the inside of her cheek. Christ, what would she have done if she’d found Justin sick all by herself? What if she hadn’t been able to take care of him herself and something happened to him…?
She tried to shake off the dark thoughts. Those thoughts that told her in the blink of an eye she could’ve been alone. Alone and pregnant. Eventually going into labor all by herself.
She sat down on the bed next to Justin in the compact back bedroom of the RV. The room was small but comfortable, the walls light and the bedding varying shades of blue. She grabbed one of Justin’s large hands, held it in her own for a moment, his dark skin contrasting against her lighter skin, and took a deep calming breath and exhaled. Now wasn’t the time to slip into the apocalypse depression she’d only recently recovered from. She’d met a new survivor she was immediately bonding with and they were going to get help for Justin. This would all work out.
It had to.
“Ready?” a deep voice asked.
She turned around. A huge, handsome man with blazing tats and amazing blue eyes was staring at her intently. His large frame engulfed the entire doorway. She let go of Justin’s hand, stood and walked up to Trevor. She slid her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his wide chest, because God, she needed this. Just for a moment.
His arms went around her tightly, and his chin rested on the top of her head. She was giving him a chance. He’d been nothing but nice. Sex on a stick. All the good things. Maybe it was something he regretted. Maybe… She wanted to ask him about the tattoo on his neck, but she was also terrified of his answer. Scared to hear a response that would shatter their budding friendship like a rock through a window. Hopefully it was something he’d done in his misguided youth and deeply regretted. Maybe…
They both stood quiet like that for a moment.
“Ready,” she finally whispered.
“I’m going to leave the Mustang behind,” he announced.
“What?” She pulled back and looked up at his face.
It actually hadn’t been that hard for Trevor to talk her into taking the secondary car position. She’d always loved cars. Loved driving them, loved trying out different makes and models. Once it had been established that Trevor could easily drive an RV, she was fine with switching.
“I’m really okay with driving it. I was looking forward to it.”
“I don’t like the idea of us driving in two separate cars. Getting the Mustang back isn’t as important as keeping you safe.”
She was quiet because…fuck, that was so sweet. Rebel thought about it, her lips twisting. “No…I still want to drive the Mustang. I see what you’re saying, but it was totally fine on the drive over here from Carmel to this rest stop. I think it’ll be safe. Did you see anything on the way here that would mess us up on the way back if I were following you?”
“No,” he admitted. “It should be all clear.”
“Well…”
“Anything could happen. Things we aren’t thinking of.”
A trace of her old self, the enthusiastic, go-for-it side of Rebel Case, returned, familiar and comforting. It was what got her through filming in exotic locations, in every type of weather or hour of the night. Last minute script changes. Fight scenes, accents, bizarro costumes or make-up. She lifted her chin. “I can do it. It’s fine. I want to. That Mustang is important to you. I want you to have it.”
“You’re what’s important to me, not some fucking car.”
Oh God. He was too cute. Now she was definitely going to get that car back to his home for him.
Rebel slid onto the gleaming leather seat of the classic red Mustang and gripped the steering wheel, enjoying the masculine smell of the interior. The shiny chrome, the deep primary color, the badass-ness. This was Trevor’s car. Not some car he’d hotwired out of desperation, but one he’d carefully chosen. He’d sat here, touched these same instruments, his hands had been where hers were now, his ass right here. She smiled. It was nice, using what he’d used, being where he’d been.
“No one drives my Mustangs but me,” he said. “And now you.”
“How many Mustangs do you have?”
“Three, including this one.”
“Oh wow.” He was collecting car
s. That was kinda cool. “I get it. I like cars, too.”
He nodded. “Stay close. I’ll keep you in my rearview mirror at all times. If I stop, you stop, and vice versa. You got your gun?”
“Of course,” she snorted. This was the freaking apocalypse. Her gun had become an extension of herself. She tipped her head to the front seat, where her Glock was sitting in a place of honor.
He handed her a walkie-talkie. “Here, keep this ready and on your front seat, too, next to your gun so we can talk if we need to.”
“I will.”
“Good, let’s go,” he said.
She watched Trevor as he climbed aboard the RV, then she sat in the car and positioned her stuff, playing around with the walkie-talkie for a minute, making sure she understood which button was which. Then she heard the rumble of the engine and smelled diesel wafting in the morning breeze. She looked up. Trevor leaned out the driver’s window of the RV, looking back at her. That was her signal. She started the Mustang and reached down, ready to shift into drive, and her heart sank.
Oh shit. A clutch.
Trevor cupped his hands around his mouth. “You know how to drive a clutch, right?”
Her nostrils flared. Uh, yeah. Ten years ago, back when her mom taught her to drive using their old Corolla. But no one drove a clutch anymore. She exhaled. Shoot. She had to show him that she could do this.
“Yeah,” she yelled back. “I can drive a clutch.” She gave him a brilliant smile and a thumbs-up. He frowned, obviously seeing right through her bullshit.
Smart man.
Rebel wrestled with the gear shift, sweat beading on her forehead. “Like riding a bike. Like riding a bike,” she chanted out loud. Trevor watched her intently from his perch on high and winced as she struggled with the clutch, grinding the gears relentlessly before finally shoving it into first drive and lurching forward.
“Thank God,” she gasped quietly. She leaned out the window. “I’ve got it,” she yelled, waving her arm, trying to reassure him she would take care of his baby. “Go ahead.” She waved her hand. “I’ll follow.”
He shook his head. His jaw clenched into a hard line. “Be kind to that car, Rebel, you hear me?” he growled.
Jesus, he was hot when he got bossy. And yep, this car was definitely his baby. She’d treat it like gold. “I hear you,” she answered cheerfully, ready to follow him anywhere.
The giant RV rolled onto the dusty freeway. She hit the gas, smoothly exiting the parking lot like she’d been driving a clutch for years.
She could really like this guy.
Too bad it wouldn’t last.
Relationships never did.
Rebel spent the rest of the morning keeping her eye on the rear end of the RV as Trevor expertly maneuvered the massive vehicle around abandoned cars like a boss. Luckily, nothing completely blocked the roads they were navigating. That was a plus. They were able to make decent time on the road. It sucked when roads were blocked, which happened often. Back home, in Carmel and Monterey, some areas were so impassable she’d learned how to ride a scooter in order to get where she needed to go.
The windows were all up and the air conditioner helped. It was July and mid-morning, and already it was getting hot as hell outside. Carmel was usually foggy and mild. Even in the summer she had to wear a sweater at night. This Central Valley summer heat was hitting hard.
She tried the silent radio out of habit, only to happily discover a CD of Nickeltop’s greatest hits, which she was rocking out to while driving down the road. Thank God Trevor had seemed totally cool about her secret past with Nickeltop. She smiled to herself, nice memories of good times past flashing through her mind.
She turned the music up and kept her eyes on the road.
Rebel hadn’t been across the San Joaquin Valley in so long she barely remembered it. The land was flat, flat, flat—long stretches of nothingness and clumps of small dead cities. The nothingness was fine, farmland dotted with the occasional rest stop or farmhouse—this was no big deal. The quiet in these areas she could handle. It was still creepy as hell seeing a shopping center she was sure had been buzzing with activity in her old life instead dotted with discarded cars and the dark shape of clothed skeletons.
But still, this did not compare to the terror she held for the cities. She was white-knuckled the entire time they made their way through Los Banos, a small city on either side of the highway on their way east across the valley.
The cities were fucking horror movies she avoided at all costs. All of them were now mausoleums to her old way of life. Being alive in a world with billions of decomposing bodies that couldn’t possibly be buried was traumatic. The dead bodies were everywhere. Every single time she stepped outside of the house she and Justin lived in and journeyed anywhere, she ran into a minimum of five dead bodies. They’d burned or buried the ones that had been in the house they’d moved into. Then they’d taken the time to do the same to the bodies that either littered the road or were obstacles in their way to town or on the footpaths they liked to walk, or on the beach. But still there were so many, it was impossible to discard them all. It had become an accepted part of Rebel’s life now, seeing corpses sprawled on the ground, tripping over them, or screaming as they unexpectedly fell out of an open door. This was why she didn’t live in the middle of a town. The smell, the gore and the destruction were overwhelming.
Once, Rebel had found a decomposing young woman clutching a dead baby to her chest on the steps of a large Catholic church outside of LA. The image had been so shattering she’d had to sit on the ground and cry about it for a good thirty minutes. And there were so many of those tragic tableaus scattered everywhere, in every city.
In order to retain her sanity despite the utter devastation and loss of life, she had to stay away from it. Her new motto: out of sight, out of mind. Because there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t possibly save the people who might be scattered around the world still alive and needing help. She couldn’t possibly let loose every single pet or animal on earth that was caged and starving. There were probably a million things around the world that were going to shit and causing more devastation because there was no human there to shut something off before the end. No one to press a button, open a door, shut a door, or unlock something… She was one person with only two arms and she just couldn’t help everyone… And if she thought about it too much, she’d be in that dark place again. That place that held no hope for the future and no hope for herself either.
So, after two hours driving east along one relatively peaceful freeway surrounded by farmland, and then west on another, while rocking out to Nickeltop, Rebel prepped her mind to accept that she was going to drive through Fresno, a massive city, and it would be bad.
Bad.
But it would be okay. In and out. And Trevor would be there with her.
This was what needed to be done in order to meet the new survivors and get help for Justin. She needed to get through and out the other side.
They finally reached the outer subdivisions of Fresno, and Trevor pulled the RV into the relatively empty parking lot of a half-built building. There were still golden empty spaces along the side of the road. Dense networks of buildings could be seen joining together in the distance.
Rebel stepped out of the Mustang and stretched as she watched Trevor walk straight toward her, staring at her intently.
His hand reached up and cupped her face. “You okay?” he asked.
She shivered with delight simply hearing his sexy voice and loving the touch of his hand and the look in his eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good.”
“I think I’ll use the restroom, though, and check on Justin.”
He nodded and looked around. “I saw something,” he said. “When we were pulling over.”
“Saw something?” she asked, puzzled. “Saw what, more dead bodies?”
“No… It’s probably nothing.” He let go of her. “You go and do your thing and check on Justin. I
’m going to grab the binoculars and look around some. Let me know if you need any help.”
This was the one good thing about this life—since everyone was dead, you didn’t have to worry so much when you stepped out the front door. With all the humans gone, life was pretty darn quiet. Too quiet. The most exciting thing she’d seen in the last two months in Carmel, besides dead bodies, was a herd of buffalo crossing the street.
Well, she could also hear dogs howling in the night. There were a lot more predators around than there used to be.
“Okay. Let me know if you find anything interesting,” she told him.
He grinned at her. “I’ll do that.”
Justin was still asleep and his a temperature was the same as before. This wasn’t good, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The solar panels she and Justin had rigged to the RV before they’d left were doing their job, though, providing enough electricity to power a small air conditioner and fan for Justin’s room in the back of the RV, so at least she knew he was comfortable despite the midday heat.
She stepped outside into the blast of hot air and slid on her sunglasses, looking for Trevor. She hadn’t heard a peep out of him in the last fifteen minutes.
“Trevor?”
“Over here.” He stood next to the Mustang, peering across the freeway with his binoculars.
She handed him two protein bars and a bottle of water.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You found something?”
He snorted. “Rhinos.”
“What?” she laughed. “No way.”
“No really, there’s a heard of rhinos over there. Look for yourself.”
She peered through the offered binoculars, feeling like she was on a safari. And yeah, there they were, a herd of gray rhinos, about five of them, lumbering across an open field. It was damn freaky.
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