“It’s a good thing you were with us,” Patrick said. “Otherwise we would have driven right into Diego’s area.”
“Any suggestions as to where we should go now?” Max asked.
“Another block north of here is a major thoroughfare. I’m fairly sure you can get over the river, turn, and make your way south.”
“Then why did we stop?” Bianca asked.
“Because I have to go to an abandoned warehouse on the east side. There’s a guy meeting me there in thirty minutes. I can’t afford to miss him. Supposedly he has baby formula, diapers, that sort of thing. Donna needs those supplies, and I promised her I’d bring them back.”
“Where does he find the diapers?” Shelby asked. Her words came out thick and misshapen. She ran a finger over her top lip, which had swollen considerably. “And where did you get the MREs that you gave to Raven?”
She thought he might not answer, but he did. He walked next to her, rested his back against the Dodge, and she did the same.
“There are supplies to be had, Shelby. It’s a matter of knowing where they are. Think of everything that was in transit before the flare. It’s a lot of goods.”
“But who has them now?” Tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked them away. “How do you know the people…”
“How do I know the people who know the people who have the supplies? How can you know? You ask, you listen, you follow your instincts. That’s what it’s about now—listening to your instincts.”
Patrick nodded. “In the military, my CO said surviving was fifty percent training and fifty percent following your instincts.”
“In this situation, I’d weigh slightly more heavily on the instinct side. The point is that the people who recognized this quickly got a jump on the rest of us.” He scratched the side of his face, stuck his hand in his pocket, jiggled his car keys, and glanced in the direction of the sun. Then he looked directly at Shelby.
“I understand your desperation. I understand you would do anything for your son. But turning the only people who can help you into your enemies? That’s foolish.”
“Raven.”
What had she read in her devotional mere weeks ago? Ecclesiastes 3. It had reminded her of the hit song Turn! Turn! Turn! by the 1960s group the Byrds. She’d even laughed and showed it to Max. Everything had changed since that day three weeks ago. Except Scripture. God’s Word was timeless. What had she read? She squeezed her eyes shut, pictured it on the page. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build.
She’d confused the two.
“Yeah. Raven is one of the good guys…or gals. Her ways may be a little unorthodox, but she’s actually helping people. In this world…the new world…some of the people who look like you can trust them, you can’t. And some of the people that you would have passed by before, they’re the ones who can help you.”
He patted her clumsily on the shoulder, shook hands with the rest of the group, and climbed into his vehicle with an admonition. “Get off the streets before dark. If you haven’t reached the capitol square by then, find some place to lay low until early morning.”
He stuck his head out the window and made sure they were paying attention. “Early in the day, most of the punks are sleeping off whatever beer or drugs they’ve found. Early in the afternoon, they’re escaping the heat by lying low indoors. Anything in between…and you don’t want to be outside.”
And with those final words of wisdom, he was gone.
THIRTY-ONE
It felt odd travelling with just their two vehicles again.
Max led in the Dodge and Patrick followed. They drove north, like Bill told them to, and found the large crossroad—three lanes on each side, and a concrete median to separate them. Cars that had been abandoned had been pushed to the right of each side. The middle was open, and they crossed it with little trouble. Once they were on the far side of the park, they turned south. Now Shoal Creek was on their left and a string of retail establishments lined the road on their right—a movie theater, barbecue joints, music venues. All were either burned out or vandalized—shattered windows, busted doors, and graffiti, always graffiti.
It occurred to Max that there seemed to be no shortage of spray paint.
“This was the hip part of Austin,” he said to no one in particular.
“Now it just looks sad.” Shelby propped her elbow on the open window. “I didn’t realize how good Abney looks, practically untouched compared to Austin.”
“There was the gas explosion and before that the fire downtown,” Bhatti reminded her.
“But nothing like this.”
“Are you surprised?”
“A little. Yeah, I guess I am.”
A yellow school bus sat forlorn in the middle of a parking lot. Clothes, towels, and even sheets had been draped over the windows to block out the summer sun. From the look of those gathered around the bus, Shelby guessed that twenty-five, maybe thirty people were living in it.
Where did they bathe?
Or use the restroom?
Did they have any food to cook, and if they did, where did they cook it?
And behind those thoughts, looming in the back of her mind, were bigger questions. She didn’t realize she was going to say them aloud until she heard her own voice.
“Why are they still here? What are they waiting for?”
“They’re waiting for help,” Max said. “You have to remember these are the people who stood in line for lottery tickets every time the jackpot topped a million.”
“A bit of a stereotype.” Shelby turned to study Max.
He shrugged and grinned at her. “I’m not picking on any one ethnicity. I’m making an observation about twenty-first-century Homo sapiens, especially those living in an urban setting. They’ve grown up with the idea that someone will hand them a check, or answer when they dial 9-1-1, or fix whatever is broken.”
“The human mind is capable of tricking itself into seeing black where there’s white, substance where none exists, and rescue even if no one is coming.” Bhatti leaned forward between the seats. “Looks like we’re driving into trouble.”
The road in front of them was literally blocked with people—sitting in lawn chairs, sprawled on top of vehicles, and lying on the ground. They weren’t going anywhere, didn’t seem to be waiting for anything in particular, and barely gave them any notice.
Max made a right before they reached the edge of the crowd, even though it took them in the wrong direction.
Shelby let out a sigh of frustration and drummed her fingers against the door.
But Bhatti was still leaning forward, over the seat. He pointed to a black-and-white flatbed truck. “He’s going to ram you. Turn, turn, turn.”
The commercial truck looked to be over twenty feet long. Big enough to hold a 20,000-pound payload. Big enough to smash the Dodge.
Shelby screamed.
Bhatti sat back and refastened his seat belt.
And Max jerked the wheel to the right. He hit a curb, bounced over it, skidded against a street lamp, and landed on the side street facing the wrong direction, facing the flatbed truck.
“Turn us.” Bhatti had pulled Max’s rifle from where it was stored next to him, propped his hand on the open window, and steadied the barrel on his hand. “Forty-five-degree turn, please.”
“You can’t—”
“Do it, Max.”
He jerked the transmission into reverse, turned the wheel, hit the gas, and spun them so that they would now be broadsided by the oncoming flatbed.
Shelby fumbled for her handgun.
Max glanced in his rearview mirror and saw Patrick coming up behind them.
“Be ready to go.” Bhatti sighted in the truck.
He shot four times, and three of them hit the tanker—twice in the passenger side front tire and once in the windshield. Maybe it would be enough.
“Go, now.”
Max floored the accelerator. The tires squealed, and the engine roared, and then they we
re speeding west again.
He made a left, a right, and then another left. Ahead of them was the park, but he no longer knew if that was the direction he needed to go.
The shadows had lengthened, putting most of the street into a semidarkness as retail centers gave way to skyscrapers.
“Where are we?” Shelby’s voice shook as she squirmed to look behind them.
“All I see is Patrick,” Bhatti said. “We may have lost the flatbed.”
“Where are we?” she asked again, peering up at the street signs.
“Farther south, closer to the capitol buildings.”
“I don’t see them.”
“Because we’re still too far.” He sped by three children standing on a curb, prayed they wouldn’t step out in front of him.
“We need to pull over,” Bhatti said. “Figure out where we are and what we’re going to do.”
“But where?”
As if in answer a church rose up on the right, a giant, historic cathedral. Max glanced in his rearview mirror and tapped the brakes twice. Then he made a right into an alley adjacent to the church’s courtyard and parking area. Patrick pulled in behind them.
Max expected to see more homeless people, families living in tents, or even hoodlums using the church as their base. What he didn’t expect to see was parking lot attendants sporting Uzis.
They waved him to a stop. One kept a bead on them while the other jogged up to his window.
“Are you requesting refuge?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you requesting refuge?”
“Max, what are you doing?” Shelby unbuckled and turned to look behind them.
Max looked in his rearview mirror and saw Patrick’s Mustang, and behind that the flatbed. Its front windshield was shattered and one tire was making a whomp-whomp-whomp sound, but it continued to troll down the road. He heard the squeal of brakes and then saw the rear bumper of the truck as it backed up.
“We are,” Max said.
“You got to say it, man.”
“We are requesting refuge. Both cars—”
He motioned toward Patrick, but the guard had spotted the flatbed now. He whistled, the first guard moved a barricade, and they were waved through. The last thing that Max saw was the flatbed turning into the alley.
THIRTY-TWO
Carter had no intention of seeing Monica again that afternoon. He did his chores, washed up as best he could, and headed to the main house for dinner. Georgia made more than enough food for the three of them and asked Carter to take the extra over to the Markhams. She gave him specific instructions to stay and watch Tate eat, make sure he took the antibiotic she’d left that morning, and be back before dark.
It wasn’t a hardship to go. Actually, he rather liked driving the four-wheeler. It was exponentially cooler than the car he’d left behind in Abney, though he doubted it would be good for cruising the burger joint in town. But then who did that anymore? No one. They were all home, working on the family garden, on the latrines, on surviving.
So he’d strapped the containers of food onto the back of the four-wheeler with a bungee cord, visited the Markhams—Tate actually looked a little better than he had the night before—and headed back to High Fields.
It was just before the low water crossing that he spied Monica standing in the middle of a field next to a deer feeder.
He almost drove on by.
But he’d been feeling itchy since the meeting. He wasn’t ready to go home and go to bed early. And he couldn’t feign interest in another game of checkers. So he’d turned off the road and crossed the pasture to where she was standing, hands on hips, frowning at something on the ground.
“Come look at this.”
She acted as if she wasn’t surprised at all to see him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to drop by. Which was kind of nice. It made them feel like friends, even though they barely knew each other. He walked over to where she stood, just outside a short fence that encircled a tripod deer feeder.
“Tell me what you see.” She stepped back so he could take a closer look.
“I don’t see anything, other than…well, dirt.”
“You don’t see anything? Do those look like deer tracks to you?”
“Um. No?”
“No! They do not.” She’d somehow managed to stuff all of her hair under a baseball cap. Now she pulled it off, and the hair fell back to her waist.
“Pigs. They’re eating what little corn we have, and we have precious little thanks to the stupid flare. Now we won’t even have deer meat.”
“Why don’t you eat the pig meat?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard it before. But they’re hard to catch. They come out in the middle of the night, whereas a deer will usually approach a feeder at sunrise and sunset.”
Carter backed up until he was against the front fender of the four-wheeler. It felt good to stand there in the last of the afternoon’s heat and talk about pigs. Felt almost normal. Much more normal than checking on gunshot victims.
“You’re thinking something,” Monica said. “I can almost hear the gears turning.”
“Roy has brought up the subject of pigs a time or two. Mind you, I haven’t been at High Fields all that long, but already he’s mentioned them—”
“Did he say how much he hates them? How they’re eating all his corn and wrecking his chance to survive the winter?”
“Nah. Nothing like that.” Carter glanced at her and tried to keep from laughing.
“What?”
“You have…” He leaned forward and pulled a few pieces of hay out of her hair.
She slapped the cap against her leg, and then jerked it back onto her head. “Barn work,” she muttered. “Stay focused. What did Roy say about the pigs?”
“He called them feral pigs. He said that at one point there must have been a pig farmer somewhere around here, and his pigs got out, and then they had piglets, and so the cycle began.”
“Roy said all that? He doesn’t strike me as much of a talker.”
“He can be if it’s anything regarding High Fields.”
“Huh.”
“Anyway, his idea was that we could trap and domesticate them.”
“Why would we do that?”
“For one, they’d stop tearing up the area around your deer stand and eating all of your corn.”
Monica plopped down in the driver’s seat of the four-wheeler, ran her hand over the top of the steering wheel, and finally glanced up at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “But then I’d have one more thing to feed and clean up after.”
“True, but you’d also have bacon.”
“I miss bacon.”
“I miss burgers.”
“And French fries.”
“Chocolate shakes.”
“Low shot, Sparks. Even mentioning chocolate is cruel.”
She was smiling outright now. Carter was amazed that they could talk about the things of their past, anything from before, and laugh about it. But then you couldn’t be sad all the time. His mother had said once that each person had a finite capacity for sadness…or maybe that was a line in one of her books, not that he’d read more than a few pages here and there.
He wasn’t sure if he believed that. It seemed that his capacity for sadness was limitless. It seemed that bad things would keep happening, and he would feel worse and worse until one day he simply stopped existing. That’s the way it had seemed, but now…well, now was different. They were laughing about burgers and French fries.
The silence stretched between them.
It didn’t seem to bother Monica. She sat, staring at the tripod stand and tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. Finally, she turned and asked, “So did Roy have a plan? For domesticating pigs?”
“Not exactly.”
“But—”
“But I might.”
THIRTY-THREE
Shelby recognized the big church the minute they’d pulled into
the alley. She’d once toured Saint Mary Cathedral while researching a book she was writing. It was strange to her how her life seemed to be coming full circle, returning to places she never thought she’d visit again.
They’d been led through a back door, which was also guarded, and then down a long room.
“Fellowship hall?” Bianca asked.
“Close. This is the Bishops Hall.”
Max looked at her strangely. Bhatti and Patrick were walking a few steps ahead, no doubt making sure this wasn’t a trap. But it was simply a hall where people gathered to fellowship—or, in this case, eat. Long tables had been set up end to end, and it looked as if a large number of people had been eating. But most of them were finished. They were cleaning their plates into a slop bucket, not that there was much to clean. As they followed their guard to the food line, Shelby glanced over at the line of folks dropping off their plates and utensils. Most of the plates she saw looked as if they’d been licked clean.
“The line closes in fifteen minutes,” the guard said, before turning and hustling back to his post.
As one they turned and stared at the scene.
Plates in one tub.
Silverware in another.
One group of people—men and women and teens—were wiping down the long tables. Half a dozen people were working in the kitchen, which she could see through an opening in the wall, through which meals could be served.
“Smells delicious in here,” Bianca said.
“Who can think about eating?” Patrick motioned toward a corner of the room, and they all traipsed after him.
Shelby would have rather checked out the kitchen. Whatever they were cooking smelled heavenly, much better than the granola bar she’d had for lunch.
Patrick barely waited for them to form a semicircle before he began launching questions.
“What are we doing here? Why did we agree to leave our weapons in the cars? What are we going to do about that flatbed?”
No one spoke for a moment. Shelby wanted to hug him. Those very same questions had been churning in her stomach since the moment they pulled into the church parking lot.
“It’s seven thirty,” Max said, ticking his answers off on each finger. “Bill warned us to get off the streets, and we are. We agreed to leave our guns because that was the only way to get in.”
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