“Well, maybe you should,” Malin said. “We got pretty far on our own, pal.”
“Stop it,” Elna said, stepping in between them again. “Mark, I’m grateful for your help. We need you. Everyone is tired, and our nerves are on edge. Let’s not make rash decisions.” She turned and gave Malin her sharpest gaze, baring her teeth at him and widening her eyes. “Stop accusing each other. We don’t know what happened to the wine. Drop the subject.”
Malin stood his ground a moment longer, but Elna’s look finally seemed to break him. He hung his head, his shoulders slumped, and he took a step back.
“Okay, maybe I went too far,” he said. “Maybe I said some things I shouldn’t have.” He dragged his fingers through his beard, then furiously scratched his cheeks. Somehow, it seemed to help him calm down. “Who knows what happened to the Gold Label. Forget it. I won’t bring it up again. Sorry, Doc. Let’s just keep going. We’ll all get to the clinic at Manchester, get what we need, and then we can part ways. No need to be at each other’s throats.”
Mark gave Malin a look of frowning contempt, but then he flapped a hand in the air and said, “Fair enough. We’ll be more cautious with the supplies from now on. How’s that sound? Can we get going now?”
“Sure,” Malin replied.
Mark took a deep breath, turned, and grabbed the handles of the cart hard enough to rattle the whole thing. Raymond was sitting cross-legged, slumped over, his right hand idly rubbing his injured shoulder.
“It was my fault,” he said, softly.
“Drop it, Raymond,” Elna said. “We’re not trying to figure out who to blame for what. Please, don’t bring it up again.”
Mark resumed pushing the cart, hunched over the handles with his shoulders squared off. Elna felt the tension. It vibrated in the air around them like electricity. She tried to meet Malin’s gaze again, to send him another stern warning. The group was fragile. He needed to control himself. But he wouldn’t look at her. He had his eyes fixed firmly on the ground immediately in front of him.
Just let us get to the clinic, Elna thought, and then you can say whatever you want to say.
17
The small gas station had been absolutely ravaged, the aisles trashed, the shelves swept clean, but there were small piles of debris on the floor. Though he was doing his best to bottle up his emotions, Malin remained in a state of flesh-tingling frustration. He did not trust Mark. At best, their guide was neglectful and indifferent. At worst, he was up to something sneaky. Either way, Malin really wanted to punch him right between the eyes as hard as he could, but he recognized that this feeling wasn’t entirely rational, but then again, neither was the situation.
I don’t like the guy, he thought. There’s something up with him.
He excused himself as the others kept going, popping into the looted gas station.
“I’ll catch up,” he said.
There were numerous snack cakes and bags of chips that had been stomped into oblivion, but he wasn’t looking for food. Instead, he made his way to an overturned rack near the counter. A couple maps of California remained. He grabbed one, unfolded it to make sure it was still in good shape, then refolded and put it in his shirt pocket.
He hurried outside and saw the others moving down the road, weaving around the occasional stalled car as they followed the highway south. As he hurried to catch up to them, he cast his gaze northward, but the road behind them was empty. They hadn’t heard a peep from Tomek and their pursuers since chasing them into the abandoned storefront.
Once he caught up to Elna and Mark, he pulled the map out again and showed them.
“I thought I might see if I can locate us on a map,” he said. “See how far we have to go and if there’s a better option.”
“You don’t trust my sense of direction?” Mark said. “I’ve told you repeatedly we’re on track.”
Malin bit back his initial response and said, “Just confirming. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Very well,” Mark replied.
As they trudged onward, Malin kept expecting to reach the small town they’d spotted from the hilltop, but it proved to be farther than it seemed. It wasn’t until sometime in the afternoon that they finally crested a hill and saw it. A couple of dozen buildings around an intersection, what might once have been restaurants, a motel, a big church. He pulled out the map.
“What’s this town called?” he asked.
“Elk,” Mark replied.
“Well, the name bodes well for hunting,” Malin said.
He scanned the map with his finger until he found it. On the map, it seemed remarkably close to their destination, though he knew at their pace, it might take longer than it seemed. He showed the map to Elna, but she gave it little more than a glance and nodded. She’d been lost in thought since the argument.
Unfortunately, once they reached the town, it became clear that the whole place was abandoned just like the last town. Many of the buildings were burned out, blackness around the shattered windows and doors, a heavy, smoky smell lingering everywhere. Malin thought he saw charred bodies in some of the building, though he didn’t bother checking.
“Another empty town,” Elna grumbled. “No one to barter with.”
“We can survive another night,” Mark said. “We’ll eat what’s left of the meat, and drink sparingly.”
“You think that meat’s still good?” Malin asked. “It’s two days old and covered in gravel.”
“I’m sure it’s edible,” Elna replied.
Beyond the town, they encountered an enormous barricade that had been built across the highway. Comprised of whole tree trunks, drywall and siding from houses, a few vehicle parts, and a whole lot of scrap lumber, it was an imposing edifice.
“What’s that all about?” Malin asked.
“Let’s not find out,” Mark said. “There’s a way around it. A hiking trail nearby.”
“So, we’re leaving the road again?” Raymond asked.
“We could climb over it,” Malin suggested.
“They set these up so they can ambush people,” Mark said. “I don’t recommend approaching it or trying to climb over, but if you folks disagree, speak now.”
When no one said anything, he steered the cart to the left. Only then did Malin notice the small hiking trail that started nearby and wound off into the deep woods. Mark pushed the cart onto the trail, and the others had no choice but to follow.
Once again, they were moving at a crawl, meandering all over the place. After a few hours of this, they finally reached a large clearing and pulled off the trail to camp for the night. Raymond rose, moving far more carefully this time, and helped unroll the sleeping bags. Mark began unloading their supplies, setting them closer to the sleeping bags than before. He dug out the crate of wine and tucked it deep between the boxes. When he was done, he brushed his hands together and turned to the others.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said. Malin could hear the tension in his voice. Even though they had ostensibly patched things up, Mark was clearly still in a foul mood. “I’ll scout the area to make sure we haven’t been followed. Mostly, I just need to clear my head. I’m tired and cranky. We all are.”
He glanced at Malin, nodded, and headed off across the clearing. The area was a bit too small for Malin’s taste, the trees closing in about them. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but he had definitely grown to appreciate open sight lines.
“Hurry back,” Elna said.
Mark held up a hand, as if in response to this, then slipped through the trees and quickly disappeared. Once he was gone, Malin unrolled the map again and tried to determine their approximate location.
“Can you tell where we are?” Elna asked.
“Somewhere in the middle of the Jackson State Forest,” he said. He pointed to about where they started and tried to follow the trajectory they’ve taken since Mark began leading and he was troubled by how much time they’ve wasted traveling off the main road. “We could have been to Manchester by now
and be on our way back if we stuck to the highway.”
“You heard him. There was too much potential to be robbed if we stuck to the highway,” Elna said, casting a glance toward their supplies. “We have too much to lose if we don’t have anything to trade for the medicine at the clinic.”
As he refolded the map, he looked at Elna and said, quietly, “I suppose our guide knows what he’s doing. I just wish we weren’t traveling so far off the beaten path.”
“You shouldn’t have picked a fight with him,” Elna said, “even if there was a legitimate concern. It didn’t help our situation.”
“Yeah,” Malin said, feeling embarrassed. “I’ve just been in a bad mood. I don’t know why I was so suspicious. We’re all on edge. It seems obvious now that the wine fell off the cart at some point. Why would the doc have taken it, and where would he have hidden it? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ll apologize to him properly when he gets back.”
Raymond had carefully laid out the sleeping bags, leaning heavily on his walking stick the whole time. Malin just happened to be looking at him when his eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back in his head. Raymond managed to take a single step away from the cart before collapsing in a heap, as Malin tossed the map aside and went to him.
“Hey there, buddy,” Malin said, grabbing Raymond by the shoulders and helping him sit up. “Are you okay? Look at me. Come on.”
Raymond’s eyes rolled around for a few seconds before locking onto Malin. He tried to say something, but it came out as unintelligible noise.
“You took a tumble,” Malin said. “Be a little more careful. You’re already broken.”
“We’d better take a look at that wound,” Elna said, as she began gently removing his raincoat.
Anytime they moved his arm even so much as a half an inch, he grimaced and sucked in his breath. Still, as Malin braced him, Elna managed to get the coat off, rolling back the ripped sleeve and peeling off his crusty bandage to reveal the wound above his elbow. It looked worse than ever. The skin around it was bright red and puckered, and Elna pointed out some long red lines running from the wound up his arm.
“Infected,” Malin noted.
“Yeah,” Elna said. She pressed the back of her hand against Raymond’s cheek, then his forehead, then his neck. “And he’s feverish.”
“What do we do for him?” Malin said.
Elna always had a solution. Surely, she would suggest something now. But she only gave him a helpless, sad shrug. They heard footsteps in the underbrush. Malin tried to reach for the bow, but he didn’t want to let go of Raymond. When he turned, Malin saw Mark stepping out of the woods.
“I think we’re in the clear,” he said. “I don’t see any sign of our pursuers.”
“That’s good to know,” Malin said. “Doc, you’ve got to help Raymond.”
Mark motioned toward the sleeping bags. “Lay him here, and I’ll take a look.”
Working together, Elna and Malin managed to drag Raymond onto the nearest sleeping bag, and Mark squatted down beside him. As he examined the wound, Malin went for his medic kit and brought it to him. Mark cleaned the wound with antiseptic gel and wrapped it in a fresh bandage.
“It’s definitely infected,” Mark said. “Badly.”
“Isn’t there something you can do to fight the infection?” Malin said.
“He needs medicine I do not have,” Mark replied. “We have to find this clinic tomorrow, or Raymond won’t be able to travel. He needs a comfortable bed away from the cold and damp.”
Malin heard something crashing through the underbrush then. It took a second to realize he was hearing multiple people, all coming from slightly different directions. He just managed to grab the bow and pull an arrow from the quiver when they burst out of the woods. Tomek came from straight ahead, others from the left and right.
Tomek was dustier and dirtier than ever, his ragged black t-shirt so stained that it seemed to have melded with his body. Moving with purpose, they rushed at the stack of supplies beside the cart. Malin tracked him with the bow and drew the bowstring. He released, and the arrow went sailing over Tomek’s head, impaling itself in a tree.
“Damn,” Malin muttered.
He rose and rushed at Tomek, but their pursuer had already reached the supplies. With one wild sweep of his arm, Tomek knocked over the stack, sending boxes flying. A second man came from the west, an even wilder and dirtier creature in a muddy old trench coat. He swooped down and caught the crate, dragging two bottles of Gold Label out of their compartments.
Seeing this, Malin tried to change course, but his feet got tangled up beneath him. He fell, landed hard on his chest, and lost his breath. Mark lurched toward the thief, lumbering after him. Elna came to Malin’s side and helped him up.
“Let them go,” she said. “Just forget it. We can’t keep fighting people over the stupid wine.”
Still struggling to catch his breath, Malin picked up the compound bow. Tomek had already disappeared into the woods, but the thief with the wine bottle was still running away. Seething and in pain, Malin ripped another arrow out of the quiver, nocked it, and aimed at the man’s receding back.
“No, don’t,” Elna said.
Just then, Mark inadvertently stepped in the way.
“Mark, get out of the way,” Malin shouted.
Mark glanced over his shoulder, saw the bow, and stumbled to one side. The thief had just reached the underbrush. As he pushed through, Malin drew the bow and released the arrow. His hands were shaking, and the arrow went just a little to the left. It disappeared into the bushes. A fraction of a second later, Malin heard a dull thud that he was pretty sure was the bullet-point arrowhead hitting some part of its target. But the retreating footsteps only faltered for a second.
He started to follow, but Elna thrust an arm in front of him.
“Let them have it,” she said.
“I think I hit him,” he said. The pain and adrenaline had become a potent mix, making his whole body quake.
Mark came back then, shaking his head, his mouth twisted in a look of disgust. “You barely clipped him. That’s all. They got the wine, and so be it.”
“Exactly,” Elna said with a sigh. “We can’t chase them through the woods.”
Malin realized he was still aiming the bow toward the woods. He’d lost another arrow. He set the bow back on the cart and went for the arrow stuck in the tree. That put him down to two. “We can’t shake these guys. They’re like cockroaches. They just keep coming back.” He worked the arrow out of the tree trunk and slid it back into the quiver. “It doesn’t help that they’re making better time than we are.”
“Enough! They got what they were after,” Elna said. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone now.”
Malin went to Raymond and helped him sit up.
“Don’t count on it,” he said.
“Well, either way, we can’t camp here,” Elna said. “We have to keep moving. It doesn’t matter if we’re pushing through the dead of night. We have to go.”
Malin looked at Mark, expecting some kind of resistance. “I’ll trade places with you on the cart, if you’re sick of pushing it.”
Mark was staring off in the direction of the thief, as if expecting him to return. Finally, he turned, scowling darkly, and approached the cart.
“No, I’ll keep pushing,” he said. “It gives me something to do. If we stick with this trail, it’ll lead us back to the highway well south of that barricade, but we’ll need the flashlight, even if we use up the battery.”
Mark stooped down and began stacking their supplies back on the cart. Malin went to help him.
No rest tonight. He tried not to think about what a long night it was going to be.
18
It was the dead of night. Elna had followed the flickering flashlight beam for hours, but the hiking trail did not readily accommodate the flatbed cart. Mark managed to push it over pits and potholes, over rocks and up inclines. A few times, Malin had to help him lift the th
ing to get it up crude steps that had been built into the trail. Still, they could hardly have been going slower if they’d been sitting still.
Her mind was a fog. She’d never found it so hard to latch on to a single thought. The positive was that she couldn’t think clearly enough to regret the loss of the wine. The damn Gold Label had become a curse.
We should have traded it the first chance we got, she thought. Better yet, we never should have brought it to begin with.
Finally, after an interminable amount of time, they topped a rise and got a view of treetops spreading away to the south and west. Somewhere beyond the trees, she saw a hint of faint red lights, as of campfires.
“Is that it? Is that Manchester?”
“I think so,” Mark said. He sounded like he was on the verge of collapse.
“How much farther?” Elna asked. “If you had to guess.”
“Maybe a dozen miles,” he replied, leaning heavily against the handles of the cart. “We’re almost back to the road, but it won’t make much of a difference. Pushing this damned dead weight is slowing us down so much, a dozen miles will feel like a hundred. Even I have my limits.”
This time, Malin didn’t offer to trade places with him, and when Elna glanced at him, she saw Malin hunched over, arms crossed. He seemed half-asleep.
“We’ll move a hell of a lot faster if we find a place to leave this one,” Mark said, gesturing at the curled form of Raymond on the cart. Elna was on the verge of angrily protesting when he added, “Somewhere safe, of course. Out of the way. We leave him, rush to the clinic, get what we need, and hurry back. I’m telling you, we’ll move so much faster, the risk of leaving him is far lower than the risk of wasting another day on the road.”
Elna didn’t know what to say to this. She tried to work through their options. Was it really riskier to keep trudging along at a snail’s pace? Raymond was in big trouble. In fact, she was worried it might be too late.
Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 42
