Desolation (Book 2): Into the Inferno

by Lucin, David

  “You,” Sophie said through the radio on Wilson’s belt. “Balding fella with the mask.”

  Jenn twisted her head in search of the Dodge but realized she wouldn’t see it. No way Sophie would have simply rolled up in the truck. More likely, she and Valeria were lying in the brush somewhere, Sophie observing with binoculars while Valeria peered through the scope of her rifle.

  Upon hearing the voice, O’Reilly dropped her respirator and aimed her weapon at Dylan, who didn’t flinch. Wilson removed his mask, too, revealing the weathered, gritty face of a man in his sixties. His cheeks were lean, and a layer of white stubble obscured the traces of a mustache.

  “Okay then,” Sophie said. “Good to see we’re getting somewhere.”

  His lips formed into a thin line, and he tapped his chin with the radio. “You should know, I have a dozen men out here right now, most of them not in uniform. They’ll find you.” Despite the threat, his voice sounded soft, almost grandfatherly. Jenn didn’t believe him, not for a second.

  “And you should know,” Sophie chirped, not missing a beat, “that one of my people has a high-powered rifle aimed at your chest, and she’s a damn good shot. Killed a dozen Brazilian soldiers in Colombia before she turned sixteen. So I think it’s in your best interest if we keep this civil and talk.”

  So Valeria was ex-military, too? No wonder she handled her firearm so confidently.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Wilson responded. “You’ve been attacking us, and now we have three of your people.”

  “I can see that,” Sophie said. “Remember that bit about me watching you?”

  Jenn wriggled her hands in the cuffs again. “We didn’t attack anyone.” She spoke mostly to O’Reilly next. “If you listened for five seconds without swinging that gun around, you’d figure it out.”

  Wilson arched a gray eyebrow. On the road, Carter squirmed and lifted his cheek off the pavement. “The bridge!” he said. “The people from the bridge!”

  “Quiet!” O’Reilly kicked him in the ribs a second time. Carter recoiled and let out a pained gasp. “One more word and the next one’ll be to your nose!”

  Seeing O’Reilly hurt Carter unleashed another bolt of adrenaline into Jenn’s bloodstream. In an instant, her vision sharpened and her thoughts became clear. She pulled her hands apart so hard the metal of the cuffs might have cut open her skin. “Leave him alone!” she shouted.

  Carter rolled onto his side and brought his knees close to his chest.

  Dylan, still relaxed, cleared his throat. “He’s right. Could have been them.”

  O’Reilly spun around to face him, but Wilson spoke first. “Wait,” he said, then pointed the radio’s antenna at Dylan. “What are you talking about?”

  “We ran into some trouble in Camp Verde,” Dylan said. “On the interstate. They fired on us.”

  A lie, but Jenn didn’t care. Anything to get them out of this mess and anything to stop O’Reilly from continuing to beat Carter.

  “So,” Sophie said from the radio, “how do we go about resolving this little disagreement we’re having?”

  Wilson made a popping sound with his lips. “You can start by telling me your name.”

  A short pause, then, “Sophie.”

  “I’m Sheriff Wilson,” the man said. “Sheriff Jordan Wilson.”

  Jenn almost laughed out loud. Sheriff. Not likely.

  She curled her fingers to touch the metal of the handcuffs and wondered if there was any way she could slip them off. They were tight, but if she angled her hands just right, she might be able to pull her thumb free, ideally without dislocating it.

  “So, Sheriff,” Sophie continued. “Let’s talk shop here.”

  Wilson ignored her and instead studied Jenn. His brow pinched together. “How old are you, young lady?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Well,” Wilson said, rapping his fingers on the radio, “my guess is that you can’t be older than twenty. Maybe twenty-one. Now, those raiders who came into our town and stole from us, from what we saw, none of them were even close to as young as you. And if I’m being frank, you don’t look much like a hardened criminal.”

  For some reason, that offended Jenn. Wilson had no idea what she’d done.

  He jerked the radio at Dylan. “And he is way too calm and relaxed. I’ve been doing this job for a long time, and that’s the face of a man who’s telling the truth. You didn’t attack us.”

  “And you didn’t answer my question,” Jenn said. Fighting to keep her arms still and her expression neutral, she worked her thumb against the handcuffs.

  He bobbed his head slowly. “You’re smart. Suspicious. Good. But shouldn’t you be in school?”

  Jenn spat a glob of blood to the side. There was some in her nose, too, and it was starting to dry. Every time she breathed, it tickled and made her want to sneeze. “Should be. Wish I was, but here I am.”

  Wilson seemed to consider that before he spoke into the radio: “All right, Sophie. You got a last name?”

  “That depends,” she said. “Is telling you going to help move this process along? Because to be honest, I don’t have a lot of time to spend dicking around with you. We were sent to contact Prescott. We did that. I didn’t expect it to happen with you launching an unprovoked attack on one of my trucks, but I suppose I shouldn’t blame you. You do what you gotta do to protect your town. I’m doing the same. So you give me my people, and we’ll leave. You’ll never see us again.”

  Deep lines formed in Wilson’s cheeks as he smiled. With a shake of his finger at Dylan, he said, “She’s quite the firecracker, isn’t she?”

  “You could say that.”

  Wilson spoke into the radio again. “I like to know who I’m negotiating with. You’ve got my last name, so let’s hear yours. Establish a little trust to get the ball rolling, right?”

  He tapped the toe of his boot as he waited for Sophie’s response. “Beaumont,” she finally said. “Sophie Beaumont. Now that we’re old friends, you ready to start talking about what it’s gonna cost for me to take my people back?”

  Wilson’s mouth hung open.

  “What?” O’Reilly narrowed her eyes at him. “What is it?”

  He laid his rifle down and retrieved a set of keys.

  O’Reilly adjusted the grip on her gun. “What are you doing?”

  Wilson knelt beside Jenn and undid her handcuffs. As soon as they were loose, she rubbed her wrists. Red marks creased her skin in several places. “The group that came through town a couple days ago,” he began. “You remember them?”

  “Sure,” O’Reilly said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with this.”

  Wilson hooked the cuffs onto his belt, made for Dylan, and knelt beside him. “That first crew was from Flagstaff,” he said, “and their leader was Edward Beaumont.”

  10

  Lights. Jenn couldn’t help but stare at them, even when they made her eyes water. The EMP happened less than a week ago, and already, electricity seemed like magic.

  “Backup solar power.” Sheriff Wilson gestured to the white LEDs on the ceiling. “Not plugged into the grid. Isn’t enough to run all the bells and whistles, but it’s saved dozens of lives so far.”

  Jenn sat on a bed in the Prescott hospital’s emergency room. Every time she shifted her rear, the paper-like sheets crunched beneath her. After speaking with Sophie, Sheriff Wilson apologized for the incident and insisted that Jenn, Carter, and Dylan receive medical treatment. That was the least he could do, he’d said, for almost killing them. He radioed for a car and offered to give them a ride, but Sophie objected and piled all five of her crew into the Dodge. Even now, in the hospital, Sophie stuck by their sides while Valeria guarded the truck outside.

  “Yeah,” Jenn said and rubbed the stars from her eyes. She didn’t know if they were the product of the headache or the LEDs. “I just haven’t seen lights since it happened.”

  A nurse passed, pushing a cart with an ancient-looking machine
that measured heart rate and blood pressure. A voice, muffled and barely intelligible, crackled through the intercom. Beeping noises came from all directions. Jenn thought she heard someone watching a movie on a tablet. In search of her phone, she touched her pocket to text Sam and Maria and tell them she was safely in Prescott. Of course, it wasn’t there; she left it at home. Even if she had it, cell towers and Internet would still be down.

  The doctor, a young Asian woman with fair skin and long hair, laid a cold hand on Jenn’s face, and she jumped.

  “Sorry,” the doctor said. “I just need to check your pupils.”

  Her accent sounded Chinese, but it was soft, so she’d likely immigrated to America when she was little. Not a defector, then.

  She took a pencil-sized flashlight from her white lab coat and clicked it on. With Jenn’s eyelid held open, she shone the light in. When she pulled it away, Jenn saw a yellow orb hanging in her vision. After checking the other eye, the doctor asked Jenn about her age, her birthday, the date, and what she ate for dinner last night. Then came questions about if Jenn was dizzy, sick to the stomach, or suffering from any headaches. She answered yes to all three.

  “You likely have a mild concussion.” The doctor punched some notes into a tablet. “I’ll give you some acetaminophen to help with the pain. Beyond that, there’s very little we can do to treat it.”

  “Thanks.” Jenn took a small sip of water from a plastic cup.

  On the bed to her right, Carter yelped. The doctor lifted his black T-shirt and pressed her fingers against his ribs. “Does this hurt?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Carter said, fighting off tears. Splotches of purple ran up his side.

  Jenn dragged her fingernails over the paper sheets. On the highway, O’Reilly was out of line and out of control. Carter did nothing to deserve being kicked twice.

  She poked him again. “And here?”

  He sucked in air through his teeth.

  “You may have a bruised rib,” the doctor said.

  “Bruised rib!” Jenn blurted, mostly at Sheriff Wilson. “For what? Trying to explain that you had the wrong people?” One of her fingernails pierced the paper sheet.

  Wilson bowed his head. “I’m sorry about that. My daughter can be a bit”—he tapped his finger against his cheek—“hostile and quick to anger. I assure you, she gets it from her late mother.”

  “Your daughter?” Jenn asked. The tag on her uniform said “O’Reilly,” not “Wilson,” though she could have married and changed her name.

  The sheriff lowered himself into a chair at the end of Jenn’s bed. “That’s right. Her looks come from her mother’s side as well. Strong genes over there.”

  As the doctor made her way over to Dylan, Sophie spoke. “Okay, Sheriff Wilson, I think you owe us a—”

  “Please,” the sheriff interrupted. “Call me Jordan.”

  “Sure, Jordan,” Sophie continued. “As I was saying, time to spill the beans. My husband came through here, yes?”

  Sheriff Wilson—Jordan—leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “That’s right, but I didn’t see him myself. One of my deputies made contact outside of town and reported it to me later. As far as I know, he turned straight south. All we got was his name and where he was from.” He picked at the fabric on the arm of his chair. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. At the time, we weren’t in much of a position to be receiving guests.”

  “Why?” Jenn asked. “Because of those people who were attacking you?” A dozen other questions flooded her mouth. When she clamped it shut, they pushed harder and harder until they finally burst through. “Have you heard anything about Phoenix? Is there a refugee camp down there? Have any refugees from Las Vegas come through here, too? And why did you just attack us like that?”

  Jordan whistled and lifted a hand. “Easy there, young lady. One question at a time.”

  Jenn touched a welt on her lip. She didn’t know which was the most important. The one about Phoenix? Learning about the city was the main reason why the first expedition went down there. The refugees also mattered, because Flagstaff wouldn’t have enough food or supplies to take them all in. Why Jordan and his people attacked them mattered as well, because it might tell them something about the road to Phoenix. On top of all that, she wanted to find out if he had more information about the EMP and the bombs.

  “Let’s start with why you flipped our truck,” Dylan said as the doctor shone a flashlight in his eye.

  “I’m sorry again about that,” Jordan said. He’d already apologized a dozen times. “We were wound tight and just assumed anyone driving in off that road was hostile. Once we got everything settled after the bombs, a gang in trucks came from the interstate. Demanded that we hand over all our food and gave us twenty-four hours to get it all together. Well, we couldn’t do that, so we hunkered down and prepared for an attack. It happened the next night. A deputy of mine, Ryan, the one my daughter mentioned, died protecting our Go Market. A day later, those animals tried from the direction you drove in on. We managed to kill two before they turned around. After that, we set up spike strips and sentries on all the roads into town. I figured you were them coming to finish the job.”

  “Hate to disappoint you,” Sophie said. “If it means anything, it looks like they’re based out of Camp Verde. They’ve got the bridge locked down there, hence why we tried the northeast route and met you where we did.”

  “Any idea where they came from?” Jordan asked. “Camp Verde’s been a ghost town for years, and there aren’t gangs that organized up here. The city, maybe?”

  “Probably,” Dylan said. “Bet they busted out of some modular housing complex. Coulda taken out a police unit in the process. That would explain the firepower.”

  Jordan crossed his legs. “Maybe.”

  “Next question,” Jenn said and held up a finger. For a moment, it blurred into two, so she blinked it into one. “Has anybody come up from Phoenix? Any refugees?”

  “No,” Jordan said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. We’d know if there were.”

  His words hollowed Jenn out. What did she expect? That Jordan would say, “Yes, Jenn, we did get refugees and we found your parents and they’re all well and good and waiting to see you?”

  “Any from Las Vegas?” Dylan asked while the doctor pecked away at her tablet.

  “None from anywhere. Why? You seeing some from the west?”

  Jenn heard the awful hacking noises the refugees made as they approached the roadblock. “Yeah,” she said. “About a hundred. We’re putting them up.”

  “Interesting.” Jordan tapped the arm of his chair.

  “What’s interesting?” Jenn asked.

  “That you’d see them from Las Vegas but not Phoenix.”

  “That’s what I said!” she agreed, almost in a shout. “There’s gotta be a relief camp down there. Have you heard anything?”

  “Young lady, you are the first people we’ve met from out of town who haven’t shot at us. If I knew about a camp, rest assured, I’d tell you.”

  “Then what do you know?” Jenn said. The impatience in her voice was clear. “You must know something.”

  Leaning forward, Jordan checked around for eavesdroppers. “How much news have you folks gotten about what happened?”

  “Almost nothing,” Dylan said from his bed. “Bombs over Phoenix, refugees from Vegas, gangs from the city coming up north. That’s it, really.”

  Jordan interlaced his fingers and lowered his voice. “So an old fella in town, real prepper type, he’s got one of them ham radios.”

  “Ham radio?” Jenn asked. The thought made her hungry. “Like H-A-M, ham?”

  “Something along those lines,” Jordan said. “A homemade thing. Bounces signals off the ionosphere or whatnot, so it’s got a long range. Anyway, this fella’s talking with others who’re running similar gizmos all over North America. Word is, every city in the country with more than a few hundred thousand people wa
s hit.”

  The room began to spin. Jenn planted her hands on the bed to keep herself from falling off. Almost ninety percent of Americans lived in cities now, she’d learned in geography class, and the United States had a population of nearly half a billion. As she started to do the math and calculate casualty figures, sickness flooded her guts. She told herself it was the concussion.

  “Who did it?” Dylan asked. “China?”

  Jordan brought a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Don’t know, though that’s what we suspect. Rumor is they were the ones who launched the EMP.” He paused, but after a nod of understanding from Jenn and Sophie, he continued. “So we fired at least one in retaliation. Probably two. After that, nobody knows what happened, but I think it’s safe to assume that all major players were involved: China, Russia, Europe, Brazil. I’d be willing to bet pretty well anything that Beijing, Shanghai, Rio, London, Berlin, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and every big city in between is gone.”

  Jenn’s stomach churned. Those countries had urbanization rates close to that of the United States. If they were hit as hard as Jordan thought they were, then . . .

  Her mouth began to water, and sweat burst through on her forehead. She could almost feel herself going green.

  “Doc,” Dylan said. “I think she’s gonna chuck.”

  The doctor handed a garbage pail to Jenn, who vomited into it.

  She heard the crinkle of a cigarette package. When she removed her head from the pail, the wrinkles flanking Sophie’s eyes looked deeper than they had a minute ago, and her cheeks had gone pale. “Okay,” she said around an unlit cigarette. “On that positive note, I have a message for you from Mayor Andrews: Flagstaff still exists, obviously, and we look forward to cooperating with you until relief from state or federal governments comes.”

  Jordan laughed out loud at that. “Not much for words, your mayor, is she?”

  “Nobody ever accused her of being charismatic.” Sophie turned the cigarette over in her fingers. “Never got my vote and never will.”

  “I look forward to cooperating with Flagstaff as well”—Jordan slapped his knee—“since I’m not confident we’ll see this help Mayor Andrews thinks is coming.”