by Mark Kelly
“I will talk to the general and see if he will allow you to move to the lab.”
Saanvi’s face flashed with anger. “Professor Simmons already tried and the general said no. He said he couldn’t protect me at the lab, but he wasn’t able to protect me here either.”
Lucia’s throat tightened. Evil and ugliness had a way of finding the girl wherever she was.
“I will tell Tony and Mei and Emma to come and visit more often,” she said, “and I will tell the general to have someone stay with you.”
“A guard, like I’m in a prison,” Saanvi said, angrily.
Lucia didn’t disagree.
“Will you come visit too?” Saanvi asked.
Lucia lowered her head and sighed. She glanced down the street to where Baker stood patiently waiting for her. “I am leaving with Baker to find the man who caused the pandemic.”
Saanvi’s face paled. “Do you have to go now?”
Staying longer would only make leaving harder. Lucia nodded and said, “Soon.”
“Will you be long?”
She didn’t lie. “Yes—many months.”
“I’ll miss you,” Saanvi cried out and rushed forward. Lucia swept her into her arms and held her tight. After a moment, they separated and Saanvi’s jacket sleeve slid up, exposing a series of pink scars in the flesh of her lower arm.
“What is this?” Lucia asked, grabbing Saanvi’s arm.
Saanvi yanked her hand back and pulled her sleeve down. “Just a few scratches from when I was trimming the rosebushes.”
Lucia had seen cuts like the ones on Saanvi’s arm before—on the thigh of a girl her son Alejandro knew in New York City. They’re from my cat, the girl had told Lucia when she asked about the cuts. But the girl didn’t have a cat, just like Saanvi didn’t have a rosebush.
“You should go,” Saanvi said, tugging on her coat sleeve. “You have important things to do. I’ll be okay.”
Torn between what she wanted to do, and what she had to do, Lucia wavered. She wanted to stay and stop Saanvi from hurting herself, but she couldn’t. She had to find John Raine and make him pay for what he had done.
“I must leave now,” she said to Saanvi, “but promise me that you will stop this foolishness of cutting yourself.”
“I didn’t cut myself. I told you they’re from the rosebush,” Saanvi said, looking down.
Lucia gently placed a finger under Saanvi’s chin and lifted the girl’s head. “I will speak to Mei and Tony. I will tell them to come and visit you so you are not alone as much, okay?”
Saanvi’s eyes glistened as she nodded and Lucia felt herself starting to cry. “Take care of yourself, mi cielo.”
They hugged and Lucia forced herself to let go. She walked halfway down the street and then stopped to look back. Saanvi hadn’t moved. She was still standing by the side of the barren plot of earth that had once been a garden. Saanvi raised her hand and waved, her fingers fluttering in the air like leaves falling to the ground.
Lucia waved back and turned away.
“Are you okay?” Baker asked when she reached him.
“I’m fine,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Let’s go. We have much to do before we leave.”
Early the next day, they pulled off the road and drove up the long laneway to the front of the farmhouse. Lucia didn’t bother climbing off her motorcycle—there wasn’t any point.
Mei and the others were gone. They had already left for the lab, and all that remained from the six months they had spent living in the farmhouse was a patch of trampled grass and a few bits of paper lying on the ground. But even the scraps of paper would be gone with the first strong wind.
“I’m sorry,” Baker said over the din of the motorcycle engines. “I know you wanted to say goodbye and tell them about Saanvi. If you want, we can drive up to the lab and then leave tomorrow.”
Lucia debated it, but Mei and Tony would know to visit Saanvi, and another day’s delay meant one more day that Raine remained alive.
“No, let’s go,” she said, spinning her bike around and heading down the driveway to the road that would take them to John Raine.
5
A home on the road
It took two days to reach their first goal—the four-lane highway stretching between Toronto and Montreal. Lucia slowed as Baker brought his bike to a stop on the on-ramp. He notched the kickstand down and climbed off his motorcycle to fiddle with the trailer attached to the bike’s rear wheel.
While he fixed whatever needed fixing, she stared down the highway. The view was the same as far as she could see—miles upon miles of abandoned vehicles, most with their doors and trunks open and their weather-worn contents scattered on the pavement and in the ditches. She squinted expecting to see movement amidst the metal and glass but saw nothing. The highway was as empty of life as the country roads they had taken to reach it. But even empty, traveling on it would be impossible.
“The road is not passable,” she called out to Baker. “There is metal and broken glass everywhere. You will never be able to avoid it with the trailer behind you.”
He finished what he was doing and stood to look. “How about the median?” he said, pointing to the twenty-foot wide patch of overgrown grass separating the east and westbound lanes. “We’ll have to take it slow, but it looks doable. What do you think?”
She studied it for a moment and then nodded. They took a quick sip of water from their canteens and climbed back on their bikes. An hour later, Baker held his hand up, motioning her to stop. A trail of white smoke drifted into the air. The source, whatever it was, was on the far side of a long sloping hill.
“Let’s go check it out.”
They drove up the grassy incline to a spot just before the crest of the hill. Baker dismounted and waved at Lucia to do the same.
Leaving the motorcycles behind, they walked the rest of the way to the top. The further they got from the bikes, the more exposed she felt. Her eyes darted around and she looked back in the direction they had come from. Nothing had changed. Baker caught her frantic movements and raised an eyebrow. Not wanting him to know she was uneasy, she scowled and motioned at him to go ahead.
He lay on the ground with his rifle strapped to his back and began to crawl forward. Following his lead, she did the same. The grass was cold and damp. Clumps of gritty dirt and small rocks stuck to her knees and thighs and poked through her clothing.
They reached the top and looked down at the highway. A small campfire burned in the space between four cars that had been pushed together to form a rough enclosure. Two children sat on plastic crates beside the fire while a woman tended to whatever was cooking.
A distant figure, perhaps the children’s father, was much further down the road. He moved from one car to the next, searching each one with practiced efficiency. What little he found worth keeping, he threw into a knapsack draped over his shoulder.
Lucia studied the group down below, wondering where they had come from and where they were going. It was only after the woman left the campfire and climbed into the back of a transport truck trailer, returning with a blanket she wrapped around the children that Lucia realized the family weren’t roamers. This was their home. They were living here amongst the abandoned and broken-down vehicles.
Suddenly, one of the children, a girl, shouted a warning. She jumped up and waved her arms frantically in the direction where Lucia and Baker lay. The group erupted into well-oiled action.
The man, hearing the girl’s shrill cry, turned and bolted towards the campfire, while the woman ran to the transport truck and snatched a knapsack from the back of the truck’s trailer. She and the children scurried through the maze of cars towards the man who met them half-way.
Reunited as a group, they crossed the median into the eastbound lane and climbed the fence lining the side of the highway. In less than a minute they had disappeared.
This wasn’t the first time the family had run to escape unwanted visitors, Lucia thought.
&nb
sp; Baker lowered his binoculars. He smiled and said, “Are you hungry? Should we go see what’s for dinner?”
Lucia met his gaze, unsure if this was another one of his jokes. “It is early still and I am not hungry,” she said, “but if you are asking whether we should go down there and check things out, I think that we should.”
“Good idea,” he said with a bemused grin that annoyed her.
They drove down to the campsite, climbed off their bikes and walked to where the campfire burned. A skewered squirrel roasted over the coals. Baker lifted the half-cooked rodent out of the flames and winked at her.
“Good thing you weren’t hungry, but I’ll put it aside for them so it doesn’t burn. No sense letting good food go to waste.”
“How do you know they will come back?”
“That’s how.”
He pointed to the neatly organized pots and pans in the trunk of a nearby car. A pail of water and a plastic washtub sat on the pavement beside them. Washcloths and a dish towel hung from a rope strung between the car’s front and rear doors. The next car over was filled with books and board games and the one beside it with clothing. Lucia looked around. The entire campsite was organized like a house with each car serving a specific purpose.
She walked over and glanced in the back of a transport truck trailer. Four sleeping bags were rolled out on the floor next to tidy stacks of clothing. A child’s stuffed animal—a toy fox from a cartoon whose name she couldn’t remember—sat on a pillow waiting for its owner to return. She stared at the stuffed animal for a second. Her daughter Blanca had had one just like it.
“We should get going,” Baker said. “It will be dark in another couple of hours.” He glanced in the direction the family had disappeared and added, “They’ll be fine. They didn’t last this long out here on luck alone.”
He walked back to his bike and undid the straps on one of the saddlebags and searched through the side pockets until he found what he was looking for—two small chocolate bars. He placed one on each of the plastic crates.
“Abrams gave them to me. I was saving them, but I think the kids will enjoy them more. You okay with me giving them away?”
Lucia nodded. There hadn’t been chocolate in months. For the children, the chocolate bars would be a treat in what she imagined was an otherwise miserable life.
They climbed back on to their motorcycles. As they drove away, she took one final look into the trees by the side of the highway hoping to catch a glimpse of the children again. She saw nothing, and in a matter of minutes the campsite and the nearby forest were gone.
By dusk, they had covered another twenty miles. Baker brought his hand up, signaling her to stop. She pulled up beside him and he yelled to her over the noise of his engine.
“Let’s spend the night here,” he said, pointing to a field off to his left. “We’ll go a few hundred yards in to get away from the highway.”
Baker dismounted from his bike and pulled a pair of wire-cutters out of his saddlebags. With a few snips he cut a hole in the wire fence, and they drove the motorcycles deep into the field.
While she unpacked the tent, he set-up the perimeter alarm. The alarm, designed by Simmons after discussions with Baker, consisted of a series of wooden stakes with eyehooks screwed into them. Baker hammered the stakes into the ground forming a rough circle with the tent in the center. He then ran fishing line through the eyehooks and attached one end of the line to a mouse-trap fastened to a stake near their tent’s entrance.
The alarm was simple but effective. Even the slightest amount of pressure on the fishing line would trip the mousetrap, causing it to snap shut with enough noise to wake them. They knew it worked because on their first night on the road, Baker had set it, and she had triggered it when she woke up to go to the toilet. In the commotion that followed, Baker nearly shot her. The close call had scared them both and from then on they agreed to wake the other if they had to get up during the night.
After camp was set-up, they ate a meal of smoked sausage and dried apples. Night came quickly as the sun dipped below the horizon. Exhausted after ten hours on the motorcycle, Lucia mindlessly chewed her food while she stared at the ground, shivering.
“I’m sorry,” Baker said.
She glanced at him. “About what?”
“That we can’t have a fire. We’re too close to the highway.”
She nodded and swallowed, now aware of how cold she was. The temperature had dropped quickly and it was close to freezing. They finished their meal in silence.
Finally, tired of being cold and with nothing else to do, she got up and stretched. “I’m going to sleep.”
Baker nodded and climbed to his feet. He checked the alarm and followed her into the tent. In a few short minutes, they were both sound asleep.
The throaty rumble of motorcycle engines woke her. Instantly alert, Lucia sat up, straining to listen over the pounding of her heart.
“Stay here,” Baker commanded. He was already up and part-way out of the tent. In the faint moonlight, she saw the outline of his rifle in his hand and heard the snap of the mousetrap as he triggered the alarm.
Ignoring his request to stay in the tent, she grabbed her Colt 1911 from its holster by the side of her sleeping bag and followed him outside. When he heard the sound of her footsteps, he turned and motioned frantically at her to get down. She squatted next to him and peered through the top of the tall field grass. Five motorcycle headlights danced in the dark down below as the bikes made their way up the highway.
“Bikers on Harleys—And they’re in a hurry.”
“How do you know they are in a hurry?”
“They’re traveling at night with their headlights on. Even in a group that size, it’s risky. Two men with rifles equipped with night scopes could take them all out before they knew what hit them. I’ve seen it done.”
Seen it done or done it himself? Lucia wondered. “Where are they going?”
“No idea, but wherever it is, I hope they get there tonight. I’d rather not meet up with them on the road tomorrow.”
She knew he wasn’t speaking out of fear, but caution. She had come to learn Baker was a careful man.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he said when the motorcycles had disappeared. “We have another long day ahead of us. I think we’re still about two days away from crossing the river.”
They returned to the tent and climbed back into their sleeping bags. Unable to relax, she lay awake listening to the sound of Baker’s breath and thought about the family they had seen earlier, wondering if they were safe. She hoped so. Family was everything.
When she woke the next morning, Baker’s sleeping bag was empty. She concentrated, listening for sounds of his presence.
Click…Click…Click
“Come on, damn you—start!”
Click…Click…Click
He was outside trying to start the camp stove. She smiled and exhaled, watching her breath condense into tiny ice crystals that disappeared as the stream of warm moist air from her lungs cooled. It would be cold today, perhaps even below freezing.
She stared at the tent ceiling and tried to judge the time from the dull light that shone through the thin fabric. A little after 6:30 a.m. she guessed and checked her watch—6:37 a.m. Pleased with herself, she wiggled out of her warm cocoon and rolled the sleeping bags into tight bundles.
“Morning,” Baker said with a smile when she crawled out of the tent. “Breakfast will be ready in five.”
Unable to understand how he could be cheerful this early in the morning, Lucia groaned as she stood and stretched to work the kinks out of her cramped muscles. Even with the thin mat and sleeping bag to shield her, the cold had seeped into her body, robbing her of her flexibility.
She looked out over the field they were camped in. The waist-high grass was covered in a thin layer of grayish-white frost. A trampled path from the highway to their campsite was clearly visible and was a giant sign announcing their presence. If the Bikers had se
en it last night, they would have had visitors for sure.
“My mistake. I’ll have to be more careful,” Baker said, noticing what she was looking at.
Our mistake, she thought, not willing to let him take responsibility for her own safety.
She turned away and began to tear down the tent. By the time she had finished packing everything away in the trailer, breakfast was ready.
Baker handed her a bowl of hot porridge. She slurped from it, letting its heat warm her from the inside out. Baker called the porridge grits, but it reminded her of atole, the thick breakfast liquid she drank as a child in El Salvador. She finished it and he offered her seconds. Noticing that he had only taken a small serving for himself, she ignored her hunger pangs and shook her head. He hesitated for a second before scraping the rest into his own bowl.
“We have rations for three weeks—four if we eat less,” he said. “After that, we’ll scavenge and trade…live off the land if we have to.”
The sight of the charred squirrel with its beady black eyes popped into her head. Disgusting or not, food was food, she reminded herself.
They finished breakfast and Baker checked his watch. When he climbed to his feet, she knew it was a few minutes before 7:15 a.m.
Every morning at the same time, he turned on the satellite phone and waited. If Leduc had anything to report, he would call, and if Baker had news for the general, he would do the same. Baker glanced at the phone and frowned.
“Damn it. The battery isn’t holding its charge. I don’t want to slow down, but in the next day or two we will have to stop somewhere and charge it.”
Lucia knew charging the phone wasn’t the problem; they had brought a solar-powered charger with them. The real problem was it used a thin blanket of solar cells about the size of a beach towel, and Baker assumed it could only be used when they were stopped.
