Desolation (Book 2): Into the Inferno

by Lucin, David

  “Decided to show up, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Jenn said. “Had nothing better to do.”

  Sophie made a noise with her nose. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “No boyfriend?” she asked.

  “Nope. I told him he needed to stay.”

  “Told him?”

  Jenn adjusted the strap on her shoulder.

  “Makes sense,” Sophie said. “You seem like the bossy type.”

  “Bossy?” Jenn scrunched up her face. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Trust me, Jansen, I mean that as the highest possible form of flattery.” She sucked on her smoke. “Shame, though. I would’ve liked an even number. You couldn’t convince Gary to come?”

  Jenn snorted. “He thinks you’re insane for going into Phoenix.”

  “You know what that makes you, right?” Sophie said, pointing with the glowing end of her cigarette.

  “Guess we’ve got something in common, after all.”

  Sophie hummed and tapped ash onto the floor. Jenn took that as a sign of agreement.

  An athletic Hispanic woman with long, curly dark hair stepped up to Sophie. She was in her early thirties, Jenn guessed, and wore makeup. Her fingernails were even painted with bright blues that stood out against the drab grays and browns of Minute Tire. Jenn held out her hand. “I’m Jenn,” she said, then cringed a little. That sounded stupid. Sophie had just introduced her to the room.

  The woman eyed Jenn, then wiped her hand on her pants and took Jenn’s. She said her name—well, Jenn assumed she did; she could hardly understand through the accent.

  Sophie translated: “Valeria Flores. Call her Val.”

  Palms clammy, Jenn said, “Nice to meet you.”

  With a grunting sound, Valeria turned her attention to Sophie and held up a radio, a clunky, box-shaped thing that could have been eighty years old. “You’re ready to test?” she asked.

  Sophie let her cigarette fall to the floor and kicked it aside. It left a black mark on the concrete. “Yeah. You got six?”

  “Yes,” Valeria said. “I’ve found more batteries also.”

  The women walked away, toward the Dodge, leaving Jenn alone in the shop.

  What was she supposed to be doing? Did they need help loading the trucks? Were they taking both? Jenn didn’t even know who was coming. Sophie mentioned an odd number. It couldn’t just be her, Valeria, and Sophie, could it?

  The big man propped open the Dodge’s hood and pulled out a long metal stick from the engine, then cleaned it off with a cloth, leaving behind a black streak. When he saw Jenn watching him, his eyes darted away.

  At the Nissan, Cardinals Hat dropped a box onto the tailgate. “Hey,” Jenn said. “I’m Jenn.”

  They shook hands. His grip was firm, confident, the skin rough and calloused. “I’ve heard,” he said. “So you’re the last-minute addition?”

  “I guess you could call me that.”

  “We’re happy to have the extra help.” The specks of white in his fresh stubble said he was in his mid-thirties, maybe older. So did the lines bracketing his mouth. Sweat stains caked the sides of his hat. At one point, it might have been black, but it had faded to a neutral gray. His nose was crooked, and a vertical slit in his left eyebrow betrayed the presence of a scar. “I’m Dylan, by the way. Dylan Baker.”

  His accent sounded funny—the inflection was all off, the vowels too short. “Cardinals fan?” Jenn gestured to his hat. “You must miss the NFL.”

  Dylan gazed at her as if she’d spoken Latin, then caught on and lowered the brim. He smiled at her, revealing a chipped front tooth. “You like that, eh?”

  “Eh?” Jenn mocked. “What, are you Canadian?”

  The smile gave way to a frown.

  “Sorry,” she stuttered. “I love Canadians. You guys, uh . . . make good beer?” That was a lie. Gary’s Canadian beer was the worst.

  “I’m just pulling your leg.” His grin returned. “But yes, you nailed it. Red Deer, born and raised.”

  Jenn felt herself making a face.

  “Alberta,” Dylan clarified.

  All Jenn knew about Alberta was that it had two NHL teams before the league folded during the depression. The Flames were one of them. What was the other? The Rebels? “Is that near Calgary?”

  “Sort of.” Dylan made for the shop’s waiting room and waved for Jenn to follow. “Between Calgary and Edmonton.”

  Edmonton. That was it. The Oilers used to play there, not the Rebels. They were in Regina. “You must be a hockey fan, then.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Dylan pulled a duffel bag off the front desk. The smell of rubber made Jenn think of the crowd outside the door, every face white with the fear of imaginary radiation. “Honestly, I’m more of a baseball guy.”

  Jenn perked up. “Really? Blue Jays, right? Or Expos? It was so cool when they moved back to Montreal. They had no business staying in Tampa for as long as they did.”

  “Nah,” Dylan droned. “Twins, actually. That’s the closest team to home for me.”

  Bag in hand, he returned to the shop. Following, she said, “No way. Twins? American League champs two years in a row.”

  “Damn right.” Dylan laid the duffel bag onto the Nissan’s open tailgate.

  “So, what, you moved down here for the weather? Not enough hundred-and-twenty-degree days up in Canada?”

  “Weather? No, not really. Can’t say I miss minus forty in the winter, though.” He wiped the edge of his lips with a thumb. “Sorry, I don’t know how cold that is in Fahrenheit.”

  “The same,” Jenn said. “That’s where the scales meet.”

  “Huh,” Dylan said with a shrug. “How about that?” He started for the waiting room again.

  “So why, then?” Jenn asked, a few steps behind. She felt like a lost puppy and equally as pathetic, but shadowing Dylan was better than standing by herself or being left with Sophie’s thug. “Why here? Why Flagstaff?”

  With a snap, Dylan indicated a cardboard box on the floor. Inside were masks similar to the one she wore yesterday. She picked it up while Dylan slipped a backpack on his shoulder.

  “Work,” he said plainly. “The depression hit Alberta hard—and early. The electric vehicle revolution was not kind to a province that survived on exporting oil. I tried heading out to Vancouver first, then skipped across the border to Seattle and then down to San Fran. Nothing. I ended up in modular housing in Los Angeles and heard things were better in Phoenix. Anyway, they weren’t, so I came up here. Sophie and Ed offered me a bed and two square meals a day in return for me working for them. Been here for”—he counted on his hand—“four years now. Almost five.”

  “Ed,” Jenn started. “Sophie’s husband?”

  Dylan took off his hat and rustled his orange hair. “Yeah.”

  “You worked for him?”

  He threw the duffel bag into the truck and reached for the box in Jenn’s arms. “I did,” he said with a sense of finality.

  The air between them suddenly grew thick. Dylan clearly didn’t want to talk about Ed, at least not to Jenn, a stranger. She changed the subject. “What do you do for Sophie?”

  “Work on the farm,” Dylan said. The shortness from his voice was gone. “I help out around the shop once or twice a month if it’s busy, but I kind of like being outside.”

  Stifling a laugh, Jenn pictured Sophie pulling weeds on her hands and knees. “Sophie has a farm?”

  “Potato farm, actually. Well, mostly potatoes. There’s a greenhouse, too, but the heat in that sucker kills me.”

  They returned to the waiting room. This time, Dylan pointed to a blue plastic bin full of water bottles. As Jenn carried it to the Nissan, she wondered if Dylan still had family in Canada. Had Red Deer been bombed? She had no idea how large it was. What about Calgary and Edmonton? They were big enough to have NHL teams, so they might have been targeted. Or maybe Canada wasn’t attacked at all. Everybody loved Canadians, right? She wished it were true, that Canada was safe, but she didn’t believe herself
. It was an American ally and had forces in Europe and Asia, not to mention ships helping blockade Brazil. Gary said Canada also produced a lot of the food that helped keep India’s population from starving. If a desert wasteland like Phoenix was hit, a port city such as Vancouver was certainly hit as well.

  “So,” Dylan said as she set her box onto the tailgate. “How do you fit into the picture?”

  “Picture?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t seen you around before. Where’d you meet Sophie?”

  Should she tell him the truth? No, a lie was easier and would raise fewer uncomfortable questions. Had she wanted to be honest with Dylan, where would she start? By telling him that she and Sophie almost came to blows and that Sophie tried to tie her up? “My boyfriend gets his brakes done here,” she said.

  “Just like that?” Dylan laughed from the bottom of his gut. “And she just asked you to tag along? That’s not Sophie, man. You must bring something to the table. What is it?”

  She searched for a lie but found nothing. When she began to explain, Dylan’s attention wandered away from her. Sophie slid past them on her way to the bay doors. Outside, a van pulled up. Its brakes squealed as it stopped. The driver was a male police officer Jenn didn’t recognize. The passenger, a woman aged around sixty, wore a black pantsuit. Her short-cut hair was silvery gray, and she carried extra weight in her thighs and cheeks.

  Mayor Andrews.

  Jenn wrinkled her nose in disgust. This person ordered Liam to turn away a hundred refugees, a move that would have probably condemned them to death. Flagstaff might have been low on supplies, but Jenn would happily eat one fewer cornbread patty every few days if it meant feeding these people. She hoped someone would do the same for her parents, if it came to that.

  Mayor Andrews adjusted her blazer and held out a hand to Sophie, who ignored it and stormed toward the rear of the van. Jenn had only seen the mayor once in person, during a speech outside Emerald City last year when she went on and on about students being Flagstaff’s greatest resource. Gary didn’t like her; he mostly complained about how she continued reducing the city’s police budget and all but eliminated public transit. More than once Maria encouraged him to run against Andrews in the next election. He hadn’t said no.

  “What’s she doing here?” Jenn asked Dylan.

  “Sophie made a deal,” he said. “Before checking out Phoenix, we make contact with Prescott. A diplomatic mission, I guess you could call it. In return, the City of Flagstaff helps finance the trip. Food, water, that kind of stuff.” With a thumb, he indicated the Dodge. “That bad boy? It belongs to city hall. Been off the road for longer than you’ve been alive, I’m guessing, but Sophie’s got it purring like a kitten.”

  Prescott? Sophie hadn’t mentioned a detour. It wasn’t far out of the way—less than an hour’s drive west of the interstate—but that could wind up adding a day or more to this expedition. Yet contacting Prescott made sense. The two towns could work together and share resources, and Jenn wondered how Flagstaff’s neighbors had fared since the attack.

  “What about the Nissan?” Jenn asked. “That yours?”

  “Mine?” Dylan pointed at his chest. “I wish. It’s Sophie and Ed’s.”

  “That was my next guess.” Jenn flicked her eyes at the big man, who’d moved on to testing the Dodge’s turn signals. “And who’s that?”

  “The giant?” Dylan said too loudly. “That’s Carter. Carter Petrovski. Most of us just call him Vladdy.” He elbowed Jenn in the arm. “Get it? Because his last name’s Russian or Polish, maybe.”

  “Funny,” Jenn said. “And he’s coming, too?”

  “Yep. Me and you are riding with him in the Nissan. Sophie and Val are in the Dodge.”

  Jenn gulped. Why couldn’t she ride with Sophie? She nearly objected but envisioned how it would come off. Already she was ten years younger than anyone else on the team. The last thing she needed was Dylan and the others thinking she was a whiny college girl.

  At the van, the police officer opened the rear cargo doors. Sophie reached in and took out two red jerry cans. “Is that gasoline?” Jenn asked.

  “Sure is.”

  Smart. Jenn could have used a hybrid and a gallon of gas in Payson. With those, she never would have gone to the golf course and she never would have killed that man.

  “That’s not all,” Dylan said. “Look.” He pointed at Sophie, who clutched a black assault rifle in each hand. Valeria carried metal boxes, presumably full of ammunition.

  Had Jenn ever seen a weapon that large in person? The biggest before today might have been the shotgun in Liam’s squad car.

  “Saddle up!” Sophie barked into the shop. She tossed a gun to Dylan. “We’re leaving in ten!”

  6

  The smoke thickened as the Nissan and the Dodge descended the mountains. Normally, the view from the interstate was spectacular—desert hills stretching toward an expansive blue sky smeared with white clouds. Today, though, Jenn couldn’t see more than a few hundred yards in any direction; a curtain of gray tinged orange by the morning sun obscured her entire world.

  She sat behind the passenger seat on the rear bench of the Nissan, which took the lead on the road south. Dylan drove slowly and paid close attention to the stalled vehicles. Several times, one appeared in the smoke without warning, forcing him to hit the brakes or swerve to avoid it. This relic had no autodrive, of course, but so far, Dylan was managing well on manual. Better than Sam or Nicole had, anyway.

  Carter tapped the touchscreen on the dash. Jenn guessed that he was in his late thirties, a few years older than Dylan. Thick stubble covered his round cheeks, and his hair was cut short, almost to the scalp. He was bigger, both in height and girth, than she remembered. So far, he hadn’t said much to Jenn—nothing, actually, besides the odd grunt, even when she’d worked up the courage to introduce herself at the shop. Maybe he was embarrassed about what happened between them.

  After a few more minutes of fiddling with the touchscreen, he adjusted the position of his seat, which slid back. It was almost touching Jenn’s knees. One more inch and it’d crush her legs.

  As she went to move them aside, the seat moved again and hit her.

  “Watch it!” she barked.

  Carter pulled his chair forward, giving her more room than before, but he still didn’t say anything or even turn around to face her.

  What was this guy’s problem? He blew her off at the shop, and now he was acting with as much maturity as a jealous middle-school girl. She almost told him so, but they had a long drive ahead of them and the awkwardness was suffocating. Just in case, she tucked the insult away for later.

  “It’s not working,” he said to Dylan.

  Had he already forgotten that he nearly crushed Jenn’s knees with his seat? He was behaving like the incident never happened. The frustration boiled inside her, so she told herself to calm down.

  Again, Carter tapped at the touchscreen, which displayed a message that read “NO SIGNAL.” The Nissan’s GPS was attempting to connect to satellites that hadn’t existed for five years. He must have known that since he worked at Minute Tire. Why was he even trying?

  “Playing with it won’t help,” Dylan said.

  He touched the brakes and navigated around a stalled semi truck jackknifed across both lanes. The monstrous eighteen-wheeler had a sleek front end, and both doors were closed. Jenn doubted it ever had a driver. That made the scene appear a little less awful.

  Except for Carter’s persistent nose whistle, silence smothered the Nissan again. It was unbearable. Maybe some small talk or banter would encourage the big man to loosen up. Hell, at this point, she would be happy just talking to Dylan. She never considered herself an extrovert—far from it, actually—but road trips with her family always involved lots of chatter. So did bus rides for softball. This was the furthest thing from a road trip, of course, but anything would be better than sitting here awkwardly and not speaking. She had to get to know these people somehow.

&nb
sp; “Fun fact,” she started, leaning to her left so she could speak to both men up front. “Well, it’s not really fun, but it’s a fact. It’s even kind of interesting.”

  Dylan bit. “What’s that?”

  “There’s a high enough concentration of debris from wrecked satellites flying around in orbit that we probably won’t be able to send anything into space for the next thirty years. In six months, we created thousands of times as much junk as the previous century combined.”

  Dylan dipped his head politely. “Is that so?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Jenn said. “There’s an almost one-hundred-percent chance that anything going up will get hit by something. A fleck of paint traveling at orbital velocities could punch a hole straight through a rocket.”

  That thought, of all things, depressed her a little. The world might have blown itself to pieces, but even if it recovered, would she ever see another probe launched to Mars, Jupiter, or wherever else? NASA’s funding had all but evaporated thanks to the depression and then the war, but she held out hope that the organization would be relevant again someday.

  Her curiosity was first sparked last summer, when Halley’s Comet was visible with the naked eye for the first time in seventy-five years. Then, as a freshman at NAU, she took an astronomy course, and it fascinated her. After that, she read about every new discovery. The James Webb telescope, launched in the early 2020s, survived the onslaught at the beginning of the war and continued studying the heavens. About a year ago, it discovered an Earth-sized planet with signs of stable oxygen and methane in its atmosphere, potential indicators of an alien biosphere. It was so exciting and groundbreaking that when she told Sam, she could hardly form coherent sentences. His response? “Don’t cows fart methane?” She almost broke up with him then and there.

  Dylan cleared his throat. Carter cycled through the menus on the computer.

  Jenn’s sweat glands kicked into overdrive. Space, apparently, was not the hot topic of conversation in the Nissan. Maybe a direct question would get Dylan or Carter talking. “Who went with Ed on the first expedition?”