by Shows, Greg
“The most important thing for me,” Sadie said, “is not breaking my ankles or smashing my face open. The first rule of survival is ‘don’t get injured.’”
“Oh,” Blakely sneered. He shrugged his pack higher onto his shoulders. Twenty minutes of hiking and he was already sick of this chick. “You’re gonna tell me about survival now.”
“If you’re going to act like an asswagon I am.”
After that, they walked in silence. Blakely scanned the girl’s tracks, looking out ahead to where they blended in with the gray dust. The road turned northward. Blakely pulled a map out of his windbreaker and studied it as they walked. Then he laughed.
“You know exactly where she’s headed,” he said.
Sadie shrugged. Blakely might not be just a military meathead after all.
And I might be Mother Theresa.
She needed to be careful, because she needed a plan to get away from Titman. That meant she needed Blakely unsuspicious.
Their boots crunched over the dust as they walked, and the tension built as Sadie let Blakely’s supposition hang between them, unanswered.
“Okay,” Blakely said. “I get it. You don’t trust me, and you sure as hell don’t trust those assholes. But did it ever occur to you that I don’t trust them either? Or like them?”
“Yeah,” Sadie said, “but you’re following their orders. And I didn’t see you protesting when…”
Sadie cut herself off. She’d felt an insistent, swelling balloon beginning to expand inside her chest—a mass of grief and shame that couldn’t be punctured or stopped.
Don’t cry! Not in front of him!
She thought about Mallick, and Getter, and what she was going to do to them if she got the chance—saw the multitool in her hand, the razor sharp knife blade extended, slicing through the goose-pimpled flesh of Mallick’s scrotum.
She heard his screams. His threats. His pleading.
She imagined herself merciless. Relentless. Remorseless.
As she relished his screams in her mind, the balloon in her chest deflated, and the tears that had formed at the corners of her eyes dripped harmlessly down her cheeks, hidden by the respirator from Blakely’s unwanted attention.
She noticed how sudden the division between Blakely and the other three had occurred. It had been almost instantaneous—once he’d made the remark about not liking or trusting her torturers. She was still angry at him for tackling her, for terrorizing her with a bag over her head. But her rage was no longer completely directed toward him.
Besides. He was handsome, in a filthy, ruthless military meathead kind of way.
“Just your hormones,” she whispered inside her respirator. “He’s one of them whether he admits or not.”
“What?” Blakely asked.
Sadie didn’t reply. She kept her respirator over face and maintained silence, refusing to look at the sergeant.
A long while later Sadie stopped in the middle of the road.
“What is it?” Blakely asked. The cop’s BMW bike had been parked in exactly the spot she was standing on. Now it was gone. What could have been Callie’s footprints were still there, though Sadie wouldn’t have bet money on the tracks being hers. The constantly shifting dust and gusts of heavy wind were effacing every track on the road.
“Good thing you know where she’s going,” Blakely said.
Sadie said nothing. She’d hoped the bike would be here, ready to be hotwired. She would’ve talked Blakely into taking it and they could have found Callie and the Geiger counter before noon. Then Sadie could’ve left the sociopaths behind.
Even though she still wanted to kill Titman and his men, she was already resigning herself to the reality that it probably wouldn’t happen. The risk involved in attempting it was too great. She might die if she went up against them. And no matter what she did to them, they could never be “even.”
Her two best option were to find Callie, get the Geiger counter for Blakely, and get as far away as she could, or to take out Blakely, lose the ankle monitor, and run.
“That’s my girl,” her grandfather’s voice sounded inside her head. “Don’t let what happened destroy you. Process it and feel it and let it go.”
“Hmmmm, that sounds remarkably like something I’d say,” Sadie mumbled in response to her grandfather’s voice. “Or a psych professor.”
“What?” Blakely asked, but Sadie said nothing. He was concerned that she was beginning to talk to herself. He’d seen a lot of PTSD victims do exactly that.
When they came to the place where Sadie had left the road to camp out two nights before, Sadie stopped. She looked out into the gray field and saw the ashy mound that had been her campfire. To the right of it, what was left of the cop lay in a bloody, dusty heap.
Coyotes had been at him. And other things.
Three crows were next to him now.
Having paused in the middle of their meal, the crows stared at Blakely and Sadie, ready to take flight.
“I killed him,” Sadie said. Blakely remained silent. “Two days ago. He was going to…he was a threat.”
“Then fuck him,” Blakely said. “This is not a complicated world we live in now. It’s pretty damn simple. Somebody fucks with you, you kill them.”
“So I should kill the general and the ass wagon twins?”
Blakely paused. Maybe this girl was too smart for him. Maybe he’d better just shut his mouth and get his job done instead of trying to play good cop.
“You probably should,” he said. “If I’m being honest. But you’d have to kill me, since it’s my job to keep the general and the…”
He paused.
“Did you just call them the ‘ass wagon twins?’” he asked. “What the hell does that even mean?”
Sadie stared at him like he was stupid.
“Anyway,” Blakely said. “I’m supposed to keep the three of them alive.”
“I’ll remember that when the time comes,” she said, and took off again.
The eastern sky had already darkened when the leading edge of the storm arrived. They were still walking, having not spoken to each other for several hours. Thunder boomed, but neither looked back. Mud balls began to plop down on the dusty road, but they didn’t say a word.
They passed abandoned vehicles without inspecting them, and they passed abandoned barns and houses—including the one Sadie had seen bristle with shotguns and rifles two days earlier.
Those weapons were absent today, but Sadie didn’t want to go anywhere near that house. She didn’t bother telling Blakely about what she’d seen there. Instead she trudged onward through the darkening evening until she saw what she wanted—an old Ford pick-up, right in the middle of the road.
The old truck’s tires were flat, but the inside looked clean.
Best of all, it had a limited seating capacity.
Sadie shined a penlight over the bench seat before opening the door and climbing in.
“I’m done for the day,” she told Blakely, and pulled the door shut after her, shutting out his protestations.
“Goddamn, you’re a pain in the ass,” he yelled, but regretted it instantly. She had every right to behave as she was. Even if she was a spy, she hadn’t deserved what had happened to her.
He thought about apologizing. About telling her that Titman had ordered him out to patrol the neighborhood—and that he’d disobeyed the order and returned when one of his men reported what was happening.
He thought better of it.
She wouldn’t believe him. Why should she?
“I’m sorry I said that,” Blakely said to the locked door, though Sadie didn’t look at him. After a few seconds he shrugged and walked away.
Chapter 5
Blakely camped a Suburban that could have easily slept both of them—along with a herd of cattle and a marching band. The Suburban had been pulled onto the shoulder of the road and parked, and was twenty five feet in front of the old truck Sadie had claimed. Blakely climbed into the rear of the cab
mere minutes before the sky exploded and poured lightning strikes and millions of mud balls onto the land.
He hoped the girl didn’t decide to run in the middle of the night. He didn’t relish calling in Titman for assistance tracking her down.
While folding down a seat he found a children’s book and a broken McDonald’s toy and a few pieces of months-old cereal flakes and cookie crumbs. He also found a pink hair beret with several dark brown hairs tangled in it. He looked away from the beret and folded the last seat down over it.
The mudball onslaught picked up, and lightning flared, and thunder cracked. Then the sky really let loose, and a torrent of muddy rain came down, deafening him. Blakely tried to look through the Suburban’s rear windows but couldn’t see into the pick-up. If the girl ran, it would be later, after the storm had passed. That meant he shouldn’t sleep. Not at all. He should stand outside the truck she was in and guard her like a prisoner.
But he wouldn’t do that.
The storm could easily kill him and he was no longer willing to die for a government or a dream that no longer existed. He certainly wasn’t willing to die for Titman.
So he lay back and stared up, studying the Suburban’s ceiling in the flares of white light. He wondered what had happened to the family who owned this vehicle. Were they all dead? Were they hiding out, avoiding murderers and rapists and cannibals? Mostly he wondered what had happened to the little girl with dark hair.
Had she been snatched and sold into slavery?
That was a thing now.
He closed his eyes and tried not to see the mushroom cloud and shockwave pushing a wall of dust across the land.
But the funny thing about trying not to see something is that you always do.
Don’t want to see the face of the guy you killed in battle—you’ll see it every night.
Especially in your sleep.
So when the first coyote howl awakened him a few hours later he felt grateful to no longer be dreaming of the explosion that wiped out D.C. and ended the United States.
The next coyote howl was close—within thirty meters of the front of the Suburban, Blakely guessed. Seconds later, another howl sounded to the north.
Then he realized how quiet it was.
The storm had passed and he hadn’t noticed.
A spike of panic shot through him, but he took several quick breaths and told himself that although he might be living through a post-apocalyptic nightmare, he was a well-armed, well-trained badass—one of the few still on his feet.
It helped, but only a little. Something nagged at him, some uneasy feeling that wouldn’t leave and made the back of his neck prickle.
Blakely checked his watch and discovered it was barely eleven. He sat up and pulled out his pistol, then opened the passenger door and stepped into blackness.
There was no moon overhead, and no starlight. No lights moved over the land. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. He heard a growl and a yip off to the north, but then silence returned.
A flash of lightning to the south gave him a brief glimpse of his surroundings, but the lightning faded quickly. It was replaced by another strike to the east, this one much closer. Thunder rumbled in a way that would have once been considered ominous, but was now the status quo. Dust storms full of lightning were the new normal—no more remarkable than wind rustling dusty leaves.
Blakely climbed back into the Suburban and pulled his night vision goggles out of his pack. He put them on and examined the pick-up. It was a ghostly wreck, just as it had been when Sadie climbed inside it.
After tucking his pistol into his holster, he retrieved his pack and rifle. He left the door open and scanned the horizon. Three coyotes were moving off to the northeast, loping across a field and disappearing into a stand of trees. When he looked down the road behind him he saw the line of dusty cars, but no movement.
The stillness should have comforted him. Allowed him to sleep for awhile. But it didn’t. He walked to the Ford, the wet dust mushing beneath his feet. He brushed away the mud that had covered the driver’s side window in the hours since Sadie climbed inside. He expected to see an empty cab, but Sadie was there, lying on her back with her legs bent at the knees. Her face was pretty despite the smears of dirt and blood and the generally creepy appearance night vision equipment gave the human body.
Blakely remembered how he’d found her on the pool table and had to suppress his anger at Titman and his torturers as he backed away from the truck and pulled off his night vision goggles. He raised the respirator from his chest and slipped it over his face. Then he moved off the road and took up a position forty meters out, among a stand of dust-choked trees and shrubs. He dropped his pack and leaned his rifle against it, then sat with his legs crossed, his hands on his knees.
He wasn’t sure he was being tracked or watched, but the nagging feeling he’d awakened with wouldn’t go away. He’d learned a long time ago to listen to such feelings, so he hunkered down and waited, measuring the seconds each breath took, weighing heavily on the side of the exhales. He remained alert and ready, remembering what an old sergeant had once told him: “Ironically, your fate will be to spend most of your military career guarding the lives of people who don’t know or care about you, don’t respect your actions, and don’t appreciate that what you are doing is a sacrifice. They won’t even understand that your sacrifice is necessary.”
Blakely scanned the horizon, letting the flickering lightning show him the features of the landscape, and he soon lost track of time, entering a state of relaxation that allowed him to let go of stress and tension. He remained in his relaxed state until a single flash of light on the road brought him fully alert.
The flash was weak. Barely there. But in a landscape devoid of artificial light, it stood out like a neon sign.
Blakely stood and moved behind a tree. He pulled the respirator away from his face and slipped the night vision goggles over his eyes.
In the area where the light had appeared, a lone figure was moving along the road. He had his own night vision goggles strapped to his head, though occasionally he would stop to pull up his goggles and look down at something glowing in his hand.
Blakely reached for his rifle, fully intending to shoot the intruder, but then he considered the possibility it could be one of his own men. Instead of going into “kill mode,” he pulled his pack around behind the tree and slipped it on. Then he slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled his pistol and crouched down.
Moving during the intruder’s pauses, Blakely crouched and moved forward, covering ten to fifteen feet at a time. He kept low, dropping to his belly before the intruder could get his goggles back on and scan his surroundings.
Five minutes later Blakely was crouched down behind an abandoned Toyota, waiting for the intruder to arrive. He was glad the intruder didn’t have the latest night vision optics or he wouldn’t be pausing to check whatever he was looking at—a hand-held device, probably a tablet or phone.
Blakely didn’t have to wait long. The intruder passed his position without pausing. Despite the half mask the intruder was wearing, Blakely recognized Getter. He was dressed in gray camo and a black jacket.
Blakely stood up and pointed a pistol at Getter’s back and watched him walk the last thirty feet to the pickup.
“Here, pussy, pussy, pussy,” Getter said softly as he stared down at Sadie. “Come and get your treat!”
Getter chuckled some more, and tucked the glowing device into his jacket pocket. He tried the truck’s door handle, and when it wouldn’t open Blakely said, “Any reason I shouldn’t just put you down now?”
Getter froze, then turned to face Blakely, his hands in the air.
“Oh come on,” he said. “The general would have your ass.”
“The general wants the package more than he wants you raping civilians.”
“Now, now,” Getter said. “No reason he can’t get both.”
“Walk toward me,” Blakely said. “Slowly.�
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“Sure,” Getter said. “Just remember the general’s the reason I’m out here. He wanted to make sure the tracker’s still working.”
“Is it?” Blakely asked.
“Good as can be expected,” he said. “Pretty limited range.”
“Now you know,” Blakely said. “So get lost.”
Getter smiled behind the half mask.
“All right, Rambo,” he said. “You keep that pussy for yourself, for now.”
Blakely, not trusting himself to speak, stood silent for a few seconds before saying, “Move on.”
“Okay,” Getter sneered as he walked toward Blakely. “But you better watch it. Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your little soldier boys.”
“In a fight between you and my soldier boys,” Blakely said as he stepped back to let Getter pass, “I’m gonna go with the soldier boys every time.”
“Ooooh,” Getter said over his shoulder. “Blind loyalty is sooo sexy. I bet Little Miss Hot Pussy loves that.”
Blakely remained silent as Getter kept up a one-sided conversation.
“Yessiree, boy. She’s almost as kinky as little Melinda Forchet was. What a mynx that little thing was. You should’ve heard her moan when we played “This Little Piggie!’ with her toes. I’ve got video if you want it.”
“Keep talking,” Blakely muttered, keeping his voice flat and fighting the urge to kill Getter. “Just do it somewhere else.”
Getter chuckled and moved off, waiting until he was fifty meters out before trying to radio Titman.
“This is Raging Hard-on” he said. “Raging Hard-on calling Snatch Stuffer. Over?”
These guys were unbelievable, Blakely thought. What the hell had they been doing before the Crisis?
Blakely followed Getter with a hundred meter lag between them, and he trailed him nearly half a mile. When he was sure Getter was really leaving, he stopped and stood next to a UPS delivery truck. The back doors were hanging open and the cargo had been emptied. Why it had been abandoned was one of those mysteries that would never be solved. It was the only vehicle pointing west toward Shanksborough. All the rest of the traffic had been heading east.
