by Emily Garnet
She moved some coats to reveal a gun safe. It didn’t take her long to open it, and she removed two rifles, handing one to each of them. She kept another for herself and handed a final one to Dean.
David muttered, and Jolene gave him a look only a mother could convey. “I warned you to finish your training course, but you kept putting it off. You don’t get a gun unless you know how to use it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked glum as he took a middle position in the group.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful that you have all these, but why do you have all these?” asked Ivy. She didn’t know any police officers, but she would’ve assumed most of them would be content with their service weapon.
“My ex-husband collected guns. Our divorce wasn’t the most pleasant, so I went after his collection. The judge gave me half. This is the first time I’ve had any use for them, but they’ve been kept clean and maintained. Right, Dean?” There was just a hint of doubt in her voice.
“Yes, Mom. I definitely kept up with that.”
“That was your job?” asked Ivy of Dean.
He nodded. “I knew how much the guns meant to Dad, so I asked Mom if I could keep them maintained. I kind of figured she wouldn’t actually use them, and they would just sit there and become useless.”
Jolene gave an uncomfortable laugh. “You’re probably right, Dean. That was back when I was still very angry with him.” She seemed done with the conversation as they reached the truck.
Somehow, Ivy found herself in the cab of the truck with Jolene, who was driving. Matt and the boys were in the back, and after ensuring they were secure, Jolene drove like they were being chased by a fire—which they could be if the wind shifted.
It was a little bit of a blur for the next few blocks as Jolene drove, trying to find a route that wasn’t affected by the fire. Clearly, the building materials around here were highly combustible, and the entire neighborhood seemed like it might go up in flames at any moment.
As they turned a corner, they came across a man and a woman who were limping along. The guy was providing more support for the woman, and even from the distance separating them, Ivy could see the serious burn on her leg. She wasn’t surprised when Jolene stopped, though she hated the delay. She couldn’t see leaving the people like that though and agreed with trying to help.
“Would you like a ride?” asked Jolene of the couple.
The man nodded as the woman with him just moaned.
“You’ll have to get in the back. And hold on, because we need to get away from the fires.”
He nodded. “Thank you for stopping.”
Jolene waited until they were on the truck and secure before she started driving again.
“It was the right thing to do to stop, but if things get as bad as I think they’re going to be, you need to make sure you’re watching out for you and your boys first,” said Ivy softly.
Jolene looked at her just briefly. “I’m a cop. I think I know how to handle situations.”
“Not like this, you don’t.” Ivy should probably just let it go, but she wanted to stress to Jolene how things had changed. She spent the next few minutes telling her what had happened, and what was coming, if Ivy was correct. She was completely convinced by now that she was, but she could see Jolene maintained some skepticism. That was perfectly normal and natural. She’d said her piece, and she hoped it gave Jolene and her boys an advantage.
It seemed to take forever to escape the fires, but finally they emerged into an area that wasn’t a cloud of smoke, or several degrees hotter due to all the flames. They could still see the fires burning in the distance, but this section of Vegas seemed to have been mostly spared. There was a burnt-out house in front of them, and it was almost down to the foundation by now. There was some singeing and scorch marks on the house beside it, but clearly someone had been fast enough with the water hose to put out the fire.
“I’m going to pull over and check on everyone.” Jolene inched a little farther down the street before parking against the curb. She opened her door to get out. Ivy released her seatbelt and was about to do the same when she heard the man telling them all to freeze.
She turned her head in time to see the man and his companion, who was clearly in agony from the burn, but still able to hold a gun, pointing handguns at Matt and the others. She reached for the holster on her waist before remembering it was empty. The rifle was between her legs, and while it wasn’t exactly discreet to make a move, it would be fine for quick action.
“You in the truck, get out too.”
Ivy did as he instructed, keeping the rifle wedged between her knees as she got out of the truck. She lifted one hand in the air, pretending to use the other one to brace herself on the frame. When she stepped out of the truck, she grabbed the rifle with her other hand and lifted it, pointing it back at him. “Put your guns down.”
“No way. We need this truck.”
Ivy shook her head. “If you hadn’t been so greedy, you could’ve come with us. Why do you want to steal it when you already had a ride?” Seeing he wasn’t too likely to relent, she changed her aim from him to the woman beside him. “You might be able to shoot me, but I’ll certainly shoot her at the same time. Is it worth it to you?”
“Gil, it really hurts.” The woman was clearly in pain, and her hand trembled before the gun clattered to her lap. “Get me to the hospital. Please.”
“Take us to a hospital,” said the man identified as Gil.
“We aren’t taking you anywhere after you tried to hijack us.” Jolene had drawn her service pistol while Ivy had the man distracted.
Facing her gun and Ivy’s, his hand relaxed. “I’m going to put away my gun, but will you please help us?”
“Put away your gun first,” said Ivy.
“Toss it over the truck,” said Jolene just a second behind her, “And your wife’s too.”
After a hesitation, Gil and the unnamed woman both surrendered their weapons, and he tossed them over the side of the truck. “Now you’ll help us?”
“No,” said Jolene.
Ivy was actually a little startled by her answer. She felt it was the right choice, but after the conversation she’d had with Jolene, she’d expected her to act from compassion instead of logic.
“You’re only a few blocks from North Vista Hospital. You can make it. We would’ve dropped you off if you hadn’t tried to rob us, but don’t expect help from people whom you would’ve hurt.”
“We weren’t going to hurt anyone,” said Gil with a whine in his voice. “We just needed the truck.”
“Off,” said Matt as he lifted his rifle, pointing it at them.
Apparently, Gil realized he wasn’t going to get the help he desired due to his own actions, so he carefully stepped off the truck and got down before helping his wife. He lifted her into his arms and glared at all of them. “How can you leave us like this?”
“You brought it on yourself,” said Dean. He seemed hardened already, but Ivy suspected that wasn’t a byproduct of tonight’s events. He’d probably had to grow up faster than he’d wanted after his parents’ acrimonious divorce. It was a rough lot, but it might serve him well in the new world that was coming.
This time, Ivy climbed into the back of the truck with Matt and directed the boys to get upfront. “We’ll keep watch in case anybody tries to take the truck,” she said to Jolene.
Jolene nodded and got back into the cab behind the wheel. They headed out a few seconds later, and Ivy looked away from Gil and his wife as they turned away from the truck and started walking with him carrying her.
She suppressed a twinge of conscience. If the woman hadn’t had a gun too and been on board with the plan, she would’ve felt a lot worse leaving them behind. She wasn’t too likely to die as long as she got to the hospital soon and got treatment for her burn. She was actually lucky to still have those resources available, because hospitals and other services would break down in a matter of days.
“Oh,
no.”
Matt’s exclamation caught her attention. “What?”
He shook his head. “I never got my handgun back from Jolene.” He patted his empty holster for emphasis.
She grimaced, knowing the weapon and ammo would have come in handy. “At least you have the rifle.” He seemed more adept with it anyway.
He nodded, and they subsided into silence as they both kept watch on each side of the truck, anticipating an attack Ivy hoped wouldn’t come. The drive was relatively uneventful for a while, as Jolene took side roads and maneuvered around stalled cars and the people who tried to flag them down. Ivy remained on her guard, and she could see Matt was as well, but no one seemed intent on ambushing them.
That changed as they approached Jerry’s Nugget. She couldn’t see from where it came, but a gunshot slammed into the truck with a noticeable thunking sound, and the engine started groaning. Jolene seemed to be having trouble controlling the vehicle, and it swerved to the side before slamming into a cement retainer wall.
Ivy screamed at the jolt as the truck collided with the cement and exacerbated the pain in her back. She clung to the side of the truck, managing to stay in as it shuddered to a halt. Being thrown from the vehicle would’ve led to even worse injury, and she wasn’t certain her body could handle another one just then.
Matt had stayed inside the truck bed as well, though it seemed to have pained him just as much. They spent a moment breathing deeply and gathering their wits before she remembered somebody had fired at them. She crouched down behind the wall of the truck and peered over as Matt joined her on that side. Shots came again, this time whistling by them and not hitting the truck. They slammed into the trees behind them instead.
It allowed them to identify from where the shots came, and Ivy was surprised to find she was still a fairly good shot despite her lack of practice. She fired in the direction and heard a cry before one of the three forms slumped to the ground. It was hard to see the other two, because they were hidden behind the sign and foliage, but she was able to pick off one more of them. The third one apparently decided to abandon the endeavor, because she saw him crouching and slipping away. He was in her sights, and she fired the bullet with only a small hesitation.
As he fell to the ground, face forward, Matt gasped. “He was running away. You didn’t have to shoot him.”
Ivy shrugged. “If he would rob us, he’d rob someone else.”
Matt still looked concerned. “But he was running away. You could go to jail for that. It wasn’t self-defense any longer.”
Ivy let out a weary sigh. “It’s not going to matter now. Jails, police…all that is going to be gone. People just don’t realize it yet, but it’s already fading fast. We can only rely on ourselves now, Matt, and if we can keep someone else from being hurt by a person like that, I believe we should.”
She didn’t wait for his response. Instead, she stood up slowly and worked her way over the side of the truck. She winced when her feet hit pavement, sending a jolt through her, but the pain wasn’t as bad as it had been a few minutes ago.
She hurried over to Jolene’s side and opened the door. The three of them were unconscious, and Ivy was shocked they weren’t wearing their seatbelts. There wasn’t a middle seat belt for Dean, but David and Jolene should’ve been wearing them. She let the thought go as Matt struggled to open the passenger door, finally managing to do so with a screech of metal. She looked up at him. “How’s David?”
“He’s bleeding from the shoulder, and he has a head wound.”
She flinched. “Gun shot?”
Matt tipped his head gently. “I think he hit it against the window, which is webbed with cracks. It doesn’t look like deep enough to be a bullet.”
She breathed a sigh of relief before saying, “Jolene and Dean are both out too. It looks like they slammed into the dashboard, though I guess Jolene might’ve hit her head on the steering wheel. They weren’t wearing seatbelts, which was so irresponsible...” She shook her head before realizing she sounded like a public service announcement. She rolled her eyes at herself. “They clearly need medical help.”
Matt nodded and came to join her on her side. “I cut my leg pretty badly.” He looked down, showing her a deep gash. “It happened when I was opening the passenger door. It’s warped, and it opened at a different angle than I expected. I’m not able to walk very far until I get it stitched up. Jolene said something about North Vista Hospital being close.” As he spoke, he pulled out his phone, clearly looking at the map. He touched something on the screen, and then he turned the phone to her so she could see the route. “Can you make it?”
She nodded, knowing it was the only chance Jolene and her boys had, and also that Matt needed to be stitched up as well. She didn’t have any choice. She’d just have to make it and somehow convince medical people to come back with her to the crash site, because she doubted there’d be any ambulances available.
With a quick hug for Matt, she lifted her rifle, holding it in a semi-ready position, where it was at her side but with her finger on the trigger guard, and she could shoot within a second if necessary. Without looking back, she ran as fast as she could handle with her assorted aches and pains and soon disappeared into the darkness surrounding them. She resisted the urge to look back as she rushed down the street, maintaining the fastest pace she could with her myriad injuries.
Chapter Nine
Matt hated to send Ivy for help alone, but they couldn’t leave the Haskins family or the truck, and he would just slow her down with a gash on his leg. Since the area appeared clear for a moment, he used the opportunity to rip a piece of material off the bottom of his shirt and tie it around the wound in his leg. The heather-gray material soon soaked red with blood, and he was certain he was going to need stitches as well.
His head also still ached fiercely, and he reached up to touch the wound, not surprised to find it was bleeding again, though not nearly as profusely. The butterfly bandages weren’t holding the gash in his head together well enough to endure the crash.
Knowing he couldn’t afford to get distracted or worried too much about his wounds, he stood guard with the rifle Jolene had given him. Hers and Dean’s were in the cab of the truck, and he retrieved them and put them closer, in case he needed more ammo than what was in his rifle. Once more, he cursed the loss of his handgun.
The seconds seemed to pass slowly, and he was tense and on guard. He flinched when he heard someone call out behind him, “Hey, mister.”
Slowly, he turned, keeping his back against the open driver’s door. It wouldn’t be much protection, but it felt like something. “Yeah?”
The person who was talking to him was a skinny kid, probably not much older than Dean or David. He was with a few other teenagers around his age, which put Matt on edge. He knew how cocky and hotheaded a group of teenage boys could be, though there were some girls in the mix as well. He eyed the five of them with what he hoped was a stony expression.
“Can we buy the truck?” asked the same kid. “We have seven hundred between us.”
Matt grimaced. “Sorry, guys, but in case you haven’t noticed, our friends are in there. We’re waiting for help from the hospital, and we aren’t done using the truck.”
The kid’s face fell. “Okay, can we buy it when they’re out of there? We can go as high as eight hundred, but that’s absolutely all the money we have.”
Matt let out a long sigh. “I can’t sell you guys the truck, but I can give you some free advice. Don’t go around telling strangers how much money you have, especially right now. It seems to be a free-for-all out here. If you guys can get out of Vegas with your families, you really should, at least until all this madness is over.”
“I told you he wouldn’t sell,” said one of the two girls in the group. She glared at Matt. “He’s selfish, just like all adults.”
Matt struggled not to grin, remembering himself as a teenager, and how self-centered he’d been. He just shrugged a shoulder. “I hope you k
ids find a safe way out of Vegas.”
With some mutterings among themselves, they soon moved on. He watched them go until they disappeared in the deepening gloom. Without streetlights or neon lights, it was downright spooky around here.
It was another five minutes before he heard scraping sounds in the darkness. It sounded like the scuffle of shoes, but he couldn’t tell if it was someone who was clumsy, or someone who was trying to be stealthy and failed. He swung in the direction of the sounds, raising his gun in a defensive fashion. He heard a few more scraping sounds, and then two people emerged out of the shadows, getting close enough for him to see them with the moonlight and the fainter glow from the casino’s lights nearby. They must have a generator keeping basic lights on, but all their neon had gone out.
The newcomers were a petite Asian woman holding a taller Caucasian man around the waist. The scuffing sound was from the man dragging his ankle. Matt remained on his guard, knowing it could be a trap to lull him into a false sense of security. As they got closer, he relaxed marginally, simply because he could see the swelling of the man’s ankle. He still didn’t lower the gun though.
“Can you help us?” asked the woman. “I don’t think I can get Bryce much farther on my own.”
Matt didn’t glance at the cab, but he jerked his head in that direction. “I’m sorry, but I’m watching over my friends while we wait for medical help.”
She got closer, and he could see her eyes light up. “You have an ambulance coming? I’ve been trying to call nine-one-one forever, and I can’t get any response. It keeps telling me all circuits are busy.”
“My friend went to get help at North Vista Hospital. She should be back soon.” Assuming everything went to plan, and she didn’t run into anyone who tried to harm her. He winced again, imagining Ivy out there alone in this chaos. He should’ve found a way to go with her.
“Do you mind if we wait with you? Maybe they can help my fiancé?”
