Desolation (Book 2): Into the Inferno

by Lucin, David

  Tears threatened to well in Jenn’s eyes. The more time she spent around Carter, the more she struggled to see him as the man who tried to strike her with a metal pipe in Minute Tire. In fact, it was so hard that she’d started questioning her memory of the whole event. Was it actually Carter? Or was it someone else who looked like Carter? Everything had happened so fast then, and Jenn was confused and wound tight, so how could she be sure?

  “I see that,” she said. She considered reaching forward to squeeze Carter’s shoulder and telling him that she appreciated the sentiment more than he could ever know, but she stopped herself and changed the subject. “How are we looking up there?”

  Carter brought the binoculars up again. Then he bounced in his seat and swung an arm at Dylan. “Hey! I see someone.”

  Hand on her pistol, Jenn leaned left to see out the windshield. “Where?”

  He pointed, and she followed his finger. Two figures stood beneath a traffic light. Dylan hit the brakes. When he did, they darted away, down a side road, and vanished behind a tan-colored stone wall.

  The radio crackled to life. “What’d we got up there?” Sophie asked. “I see brake lights.”

  Jenn responded. “Two people up on the corner, but they disappeared. I don’t know where.”

  She tapped the radio’s antenna on her chin as she waited.

  “Let’s push ahead,” Sophie said. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Chief Navigator, there’s not a whole lot of alternate routes through this dump.”

  “Copy that. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.” Jenn set the radio down in her lap. “Boss wants us to stay the course,” she told Dylan.

  “Vladdy, lose the binos and watch the sidewalks.”

  Carter laid the binoculars on the dash. Jenn pulled the Glock from its holster, careful not to point it at Carter’s seat.

  To be safe, Dylan mounted the gravel median and drove down the westbound lanes. As they passed through the intersection, all eyes fixed on the spot where the figures had stood.

  Nothing. Just a narrow street lined with brown houses.

  A cramp in Jenn’s back released, but she gripped the gun tighter.

  “This is it,” she said a half-mile later. “Black Mountain Parkway.”

  The intersection was empty, the lights all dark. Dylan turned the Nissan onto Black Mountain, another four-lane road bisected by a median covered in stubby succulents and tall cacti. It bent right and into a neighborhood of walled-off townhouse complexes.

  Dylan peered into the rearview. In the reflection, Jenn saw him pause on her. “Didn’t Sophie say she was going to keep her distance?”

  When Jenn checked behind them, a truck came around the corner. It was smaller than the Dodge and had a sleeker front end. And it was a Chevy. Fifties, probably.

  “We got company,” Dylan said.

  Those people on the corner—were they lookouts? Had they stood there and waited for a vehicle to pass, then radioed it in to the Chevy?

  “Carter,” Dylan said, all business now. “Call the boss. Tell her we found trouble.” Jenn handed him the radio. “Jansen, get that map ready. We’re going for a detour.”

  He hit the gas. The Nissan growled and lurched forward, throwing Jenn deeper into her seat. Carter fumbled with the radio and dropped it onto the floor between his feet.

  She chanced another glance behind. The Chevy had matched Dylan’s pace.

  Who were these people? A branch of the same gang that stopped them in Camp Verde, or a different group entirely? What did they want? Theorizing about that was a waste of time, Jenn knew—they wanted anything and everything in the Nissan. They might even kill to get it.

  “Sophie!” Carter said into the radio. “We got trouble. We—”

  Dylan made a hard right. The Nissan’s wheels screeched beneath them. It felt like the truck was about to tip, giving Jenn a flashback of the accident outside Prescott. As a feeling of vertigo washed over her, Dylan jerked the wheel left and stabilized the vehicle.

  “Hold on,” he said, his voice even and composed. “Another turn coming up.”

  Jenn braced her free hand on the ceiling while Dylan flew around the corner.

  He gunned it on the straight stretch. “Jansen, gonna need you to tell me where to go.”

  With numb fingers, Jenn pinched the screen to zoom out. Blinking hard and struggling to focus, she followed Black Mountain south and found where Dylan had turned.

  “Crap,” she said.

  “What?”

  “This loops in a circle.” She glanced up from the tablet. Two-story homes. A left turn just ahead. “Left!” she cried. “Left here! Left!”

  Dylan swung the Nissan around the corner, then hit the gas again.

  “What’s next?” he said. On the steering wheel, his knuckles had gone white. Houses blew by in a blur of browns and grays while Carter barked something into the radio. Jenn concentrated on the map, but adrenaline and the motion of the vehicle turned the lines, symbols, and words into nonsense.

  “Jansen!”

  “I—” Panic set in. Her heart threatened to burst through her sternum. Each breath was shallower and more desperate than the last. In her hands, the tablet began to slip through clammy fingers. She froze, unable to speak, move, or do anything to help.

  “They’re coming!” Carter yelped, staring into the sideview mirror.

  The Chevy was gaining on them. Five or six houses away at most. Jenn felt the Nissan turn left. Ahead, the road ended in a cul-de-sac.

  Dylan cut the wheel right, down a route Jenn hadn’t seen.

  “They missed!” Carter whooped and slapped the dash. The Chevy flew by, toward the dead end.

  Jenn blew her cheeks and nearly melted into her seat. Three seconds in, hold, three seconds out. Her heart rate stabilized, but her fingers still shook when she planted them on the tablet. Blinking hard, she concentrated on the map. “Follow this around,” she told Dylan. “Take the next right. Then left, and left again. That gets us onto Black Mountain. We’ll double back to throw them off.”

  “Love it,” Dylan said. “Hang on.” He accelerated once more and followed Jenn’s route. She directed him through another copy-paste subdivision and, in the most roundabout way she could, to Black Mountain Parkway.

  There was no sign of the Chevy. Dylan’s eyes flicked between the windshield and the rearview as he sped south. When he tore through an intersection, Jenn said, “That was our turn for the hospital.”

  “Don’t care,” Dylan said. “Find me a place to park.”

  “What?” Carter exclaimed, the radio held close to his face. “Why aren’t we driving?”

  “Too risky. This truck is a huge target on the roads, especially in daylight. I think we lost our tail—for now—so let’s hide the vehicles and scout out the route to the hospital on foot, same as at the bridge. Once we know what we’re up against, we’ll wait it out until dark and then come back for the trucks and the drone.”

  On the map, Jenn found a turn and dropped her finger on it. “Next right.”

  They drove into a cul-de-sac surrounded by single-story homes with gravel lawns. Boards covered the doors and windows of all but one, and every driveway sat empty.

  Perfect.

  Dylan rolled up to a house with a red roof and a red door. A leafless tree stood in the front yard. After putting the vehicle in park, he reached for his rifle. As he did, he gave Jenn a wink. “Thought you were gonna screw us for a moment there, but you pulled it out of the fire.”

  Jenn tried to smile but couldn’t. How was Dylan always so calm? Maybe he could teach her his secret.

  “Give Jansen the radio,” he told Carter. “Jansen, you tell the boss where we are and how to get here.” He rolled up his window and opened the door. “Me and Vladdy will keep watch. Something tells me we’ve crossed into hostile territory.”

  16

  “How far’s our hike?” Sophie asked through a cloud of smoke.

  Jenn pressed the paper map against the driver’s side window
of the Dodge. “Probably a couple miles, assuming you want to stay off the main roads.”

  The cigarette dangled from Sophie’s lips as she said, “That I do.”

  “I was hoping you were going to say that.”

  Sophie slapped Jenn on the back so hard it nearly knocked the wind from her lungs. Then she wandered to Dylan and Carter, who stood at the Nissan. Carter held the tablet while Dylan leaned around him and explained how to operate the drone. “You got it?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Carter pressed his finger to the screen, and the machine sprung to life. A shiver ran down Jenn’s spine.

  “Good,” Dylan said. “The AI will do the rest. It knows you’re a friendly, so don’t be afraid of it. Just stay the hell out of its line of fire.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “You’ll be all right on your own?” Dylan asked him. “Guarding the trucks, I mean.”

  Carter tapped the tablet again, and the drone went to sleep. “Yeah,” he said through a childlike grin. “I’ll be fine. You think we should give it a name?”

  “What? The LCD?”

  “Yeah,” Carter said. “Better than calling it a DLC or whatever. What about Rusty?” He indicated to a weathered segment of the drone’s abdomen.

  Dylan clapped him on the shoulder. “Rusty it is, then.”

  “You sure you don’t want to take it?” Carter held the tablet out to Dylan.

  “It’s a big target and can’t run or climb like we can,” Dylan said. “This sucker was built for heavy street fighting, not sneaking around and being stealthy. For what we’re trying to do, it’ll be more of a liability than an asset.”

  That seemed to make Carter happy. “Okay. Sounds good.”

  Beside Jenn, Valeria plucked a rifle from the bed of the truck. “You’ve ever used one before?” she asked.

  “No. Only my Glock.”

  Valeria held out the rifle for Jenn. “I’ll show you in case for emergency. It’s easier to actually shoot than a pistol.”

  She gave Jenn a crash course on operating an AR-15: where the magazine went, how to switch the safety on and off, the best way to hold it, and so on. Jenn was overwhelmed. The weapon was heavy and she couldn’t find a comfortable place for the butt to rest against the meaty part of her shoulder. She was relieved when Valeria took it away from her.

  “I wish we could practice,” Valeria said. “But we don’t have time. You can shoot it?”

  Jenn wasn’t sure she could. “I think so. Seems straightforward.”

  “Be careful to see what’s behind your target,” Valeria warned while wagging a finger. “It’s much more powerful than your handgun.”

  Valeria slung the rifle over her shoulder and began to leave, but Jenn stopped her. “Wait,” she said and held out her hand. “Is it true what Sophie said? That you killed a dozen Brazilians before you turned sixteen?”

  Her expression was stone serious. “No, Sophie was only frightening the sheriff.”

  Did that mean Valeria had killed fewer than a dozen or none at all? Did Jenn even want to know? What did it say about her if she’d taken a life and Valeria hadn’t? Two days ago, she might not have been able to stomach the notion. Today, strangely, it didn’t bother her so much.

  “Are you a soldier like Dylan?”

  Valeria actually laughed at that. After wagging another finger, she turned away without answering the question.

  She’s enjoying this, Jenn thought. She saw that this woman did indeed have a sense of humor. It was dry and nearly imperceptible, but it was there. Jenn could work with that. Andrew’s humor was similar, so she had plenty of practice. “So just a boring, sit-behind-a-desk bookmaker, then,” Jenn said, poking fun at Valeria’s mix-up in vocabulary at the motel. “Maybe Dylan should be giving me the firearms lessons from now on.”

  Valeria paused and faced her. She wore an almost exaggerated frown. For an instant, Jenn regretted the jest, but Valeria said, “Dylan? No. He can’t hit the flat side of the barn.”

  Jenn nearly corrected her to “broad side of a barn,” but then Valeria actually smiled, teeth and everything. Another joke, Jenn realized. She felt herself smiling, too.

  Sophie interrupted Jenn and Valeria’s banter. “Vladdy,” she called. “You all set?”

  A thumbs-up from Carter. “Dylan’s a good teacher.”

  “All right.” Sophie whistled and made a circle motion with her finger above her head. “Let’s move out.”

  Jenn in the lead, they left Carter, the drone—Rusty—and the trucks behind and approached the hospital. At Black Mountain Parkway, they darted across one at a time and took cover among a stand of trees on the far side. Map in hand, Jenn then walked them along a chain-link fence that divided a golf course fairway, its grass brown and unkempt, from tightly packed single-story homes, all with pools in the back yards. Most were bone dry, but a few were half-full or more. Despite the cool weather and the overcast, Jenn was tempted to jump in. She hadn’t gone swimming in years.

  “I feel like I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone out here,” Sophie said with a wave at the houses. Three or four in a row shared identical architecture and even the same shade of tan paint.

  “Twilight Zone?” Jenn asked.

  “Yeah. Old show from the 1960s. Garbage remake came out in the early twenties. You never heard of it?”

  Jenn shook her head.

  Sophie made a derisive sound with her nose. “I swear, your generation is the worst. No appreciation for the classics anymore.”

  Dylan snickered.

  Sand crunched beneath their feet as they walked along the fence. A path led them onto a road, which they followed as it meandered, ostensibly without direction, through a neighborhood of brown houses and gravel yards decorated with bushes and cacti.

  “I swear we’re going in circles,” Sophie complained. “Jansen, you sure you’re reading that map—”

  From around a curve in the road ahead, a truck appeared. Jenn shot a glance at Dylan, expecting him to open fire on whoever this was, but his rifle remained low.

  Sophie spewed a curse word, then gripped Jenn’s arm and pulled her toward the sidewalk. Dylan in the lead, the group dashed between two houses and laid their backs against a stucco wall.

  Jenn’s heart was racing, but her breathing was steady. When she took out her weapon, she expected her hand to shake, but it didn’t.

  Was this the same truck that chased her, Dylan, and Carter? She didn’t get a good enough look to tell for sure. It was about the same size, though. Had they been made already? The possibility that they’d never make it to their destination crossed her mind. Maybe this plan was hopeless. What was Jenn thinking when she suggested that they raid the hospital for supplies? A group of soldiers was attacked and probably killed while trying to do the exact thing she and her team were trying to do now. If the U.S. military couldn’t pull it off, how could she?

  A few moments of silence passed before she heard a thud, thud, thud.

  “Willis!” came a sharp male voice. “Willis, open up! I know you’re in there! I’ll give you to the count of five to let us in! One!”

  Thud, thud, thud.

  “Two!”

  Dylan, his rear still tight to the wall, peeked around the corner of the house.

  “What’d you see?” Sophie whispered over the man yelling, “Three!”

  “Four of them.” Dylan risked another glance. “Yeah, four. One’s banging on the door. The rest of them are standing on the sidewalk.”

  “Armed?”

  Dylan’s face tensed.

  “Same truck that chased us?” Jenn asked.

  A shake of the head from Dylan. At first, it made her feel better. Then she realized the implications: more than one vehicle was patrolling the roads between here and the hospital.

  She almost suggested that they return to the trucks, wait until dark, and then drive back to the camp, but the voice yelled, “Five! That’s it. I’m com—”

  The man paused. Another voice joi
ned the first, but the exchange was too quiet for Jenn to hear.

  Sophie nudged her and gestured to the map.

  Jenn got the hint and searched for a new route, initially one that led to the trucks. She shook the idea away. To the hospital, she told herself. If they cut through these yards, they could reach a road that would take them south. After that, they could hang a right and—

  “I don’t have it!” someone shrieked. Not the first voice. The second. It also belonged to a man. He sounded terrified.

  “Don’t have it?” the first voice mocked. “You expect the Major to keep you safe for free? You know the rules. As of Wednesday, this neighborhood’s subject to a tax. We gave you two days to scrounge up what you owe. You think this whole end-of-the-world business means you’re off the hook to pay your dues? Death and taxes, my dude. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying.”

  Major? Did he mean the military rank? No way these thugs were military, right? Could they have deserted? She doubted it. It was probably just a ploy to scare people. Hopefully.

  “No,” the other man cried. “Please! I have a family. My daughter, she’s only four and hungry. Please, tomorrow. I promise tomorrow I’ll—” He bellowed a scream that made Jenn’s blood run cold.

  When the screaming subsided, replaced by sobbing, the first voice warned, “Next time, I’m breaking more than a pinky. We’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  Nausea swirled in Jenn’s stomach. What the hell was this? Some kind of shakedown? If this person broke someone’s finger over so-called taxes, how would he respond to seeing a group of armed travelers wandering the streets?

  They should leave. Dylan was right: this was hostile territory. How could they be a match for what Jenn suspected was an organized gang led by this Major? There was only four of them. Well, three. How much help could Jenn be with her Glock against people wielding assault rifles?

  She studied her map again, searching for the fastest route to the trucks, but Sophie tugged at her shirt.

  Dylan was signaling for the group to move away from the road and toward the house’s back yard, which comprised weathered stone slabs and an empty pool. The patio door was shut, the glass still intact, but Jenn saw no furniture inside.