Surviving The End (Book 2): Fallen World

by Hamilton, Grace

  “Try it,” Mike replied. “I wouldn’t mind reclining on that rich Corinthian leather.”

  “Corinthian leather?” Owen said.

  “Never mind. Old reference. Long before your time.”

  “You mean the seats?” Owen opened the driver’s door and got in. “The leather seats are old and cracked. Not very comfortable.”

  “More comfortable than the plastic pedicab seat, I imagine.”

  “Yeah, a little bit,” Owen said.

  When he turned the ignition, nothing happened. He got the same result with the next car, and the next. Finally, he’d checked every vehicle in the lot, but of the few that had keys, none of them worked.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Mike said. “Why don’t you check inside the garage? Maybe they’ve got another vehicle or two in there.”

  “I’ll look around,” Owen replied. “Rest here for a minute, Uncle Mike.”

  “I can do that.”

  As Mike leaned his head back against the glass, Owen approached the garage doors, peering through the narrow, grimy windows. After checking each door, he walked around the side of the building. In the minute or so that he was out of sight, Mike fell asleep, arms crossed tightly over his aching chest.

  Soon, he felt himself being shaken awake again, and he blinked rapidly at the shadow moving back and forth in front of the sun. When he finally focused on the face towering over him, he saw Owen grinning.

  “Uncle Mike, you have to see this,” he said. “Around back. I found a car that runs, but it’s…well, it’s something. It doesn’t have fine Corinthian leather, but it’s super weird. Come on.”

  Mike’s short rest had given him enough energy to get to his feet on his own strength. He followed Owen around behind the shop, where a smaller parking lot was dominated by an enormous boat of a car. It was a massive Ford LTD that had been tricked out with lush red carpet on the inside, chrome hubcaps, and a tinted windshield.

  “Kid, this is a 70s pimp’s dream,” he said, leaning into the open driver side door. He caught a whiff of some pungent, lingering cologne. “Wow, check out the fringe around the back window. Did you say it runs?”

  “Yeah, the key was hanging on a pegboard inside the garage,” Owen said.

  Mike glanced at the back of the building and saw that one of the garage doors was open.

  “The only problem is the carburetor’s messed up,” Owen said, “but I think I can fix it.”

  “You can fix a carburetor?” Mike said.

  “Well, I took a shop class last year. We worked on a few cars, and one time we had to clean a carburetor.”

  “One time, huh? Well, okay, that’s one more time than me.” Mike patted the top of the car. It had a slick, almost-neon green paint job. Ugly as hell, but beautiful in its own way. “Let’s get it working.”

  As it turned out, the carburetor was quite filthy, but Owen seemed to know what he was doing. Working together, they found a bottle of carburetor cleaner and some rags in the garage and went to work on it. Removing it was the most difficult part of the job, but once they managed it, the cleaning went smoothly. They scrubbed away the caked-on gunk until it gleamed.

  “You could do this for a living,” Mike noted, as Owen reinstalled the carburetor. “Seriously, I would hire you as my mechanic if you opened a shop.”

  “Oh, man, Mom would never let me work on cars for a living,” Owen said. “It’s college or nothing for me. All the way to graduate school and beyond, that’s what she expects. You know that, Uncle Mike.”

  “STEM careers for all the McDonald kids,” Mike replied.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it’s your real-world skills that are saving the day at the moment,” Mike said. “Just you remember that.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  With the carburetor back in place, Owen shut the hood and got into the car. Mike opened the massive passenger door and sat down, sinking into the velvet cushions of the spacious seat. It took a bit of effort to get the heavy door shut.

  “Wow, this is some car,” he noted. “Our ride has been thoroughly pimped.”

  Owen didn’t seem to get the joke. He turned the ignition, but it took a bit for the engine to start.

  “No computer and no fuel injection on these old cars,” Mike said. “You have to give the pedal a good stomp or two to get it going.”

  “I know,” Owen said. “I pressed it. You don’t stomp it, Uncle Mike. You press it about halfway down to give it some gas.”

  “You know your stuff. Just don’t run down the battery trying to get it going.”

  Finally, the engine started, though it ran rough for a few seconds. Owen pressed the accelerator again, and the engine roared like a beast. It was a deep, satisfying sound, and Mike couldn’t help tapping out a beat on the dashboard. It had been a long time since he’d ridden in a huge gas-guzzler like this.

  “How full is the tank?” he asked. “Are we ready to hit the road?”

  Owen tapped the glass over the gauges with his finger. “No, it’s really low. We’d better find a gas station.”

  “Well, I doubt there’s an open gas station in this town, so we’d better try to make for the next one. Are you good to drive this pimp-mobile?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’ll be fun. Let’s go get Mom.”

  And with that, he put it in reverse and backed out of the parking lot. Mike glanced at the pedicab and bicycle as they passed by.

  “It’s a shame to dump the bikes,” he said. “I’ll bet the pedicab would almost fit in the trunk if we folded it up.”

  “I’m sure the trunk is big,” Owen concurred, “but it’s not as big as the bed of a Silverado pickup. I think we just have to leave the bikes behind, Uncle Mike. I know it sucks. Seems like we lose everything we get our hands on, but what can we do?”

  “If this car breaks down, we’ll wish we had the bikes again,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Owen left it at that.

  Riding in the LTD felt a little like being in a tank, a huge hunk of metal that took up most of its lane. The air conditioner didn’t work, so Mike cracked his window a little. On a whim, he also decided to check the glove compartment, and he found a big pair of red, fuzzy dice nestled among decades of crumpled papers. He held them up.

  “That’s weird,” Owen said. “What’re those for.”

  “Just this,” Mike replied. He hung the dice from the rearview mirror. “The final pimp touch to make the look complete.”

  “You keep talking about pimps,” Owen said. “It’s kind of weird.”

  “I know. I’ll stop. The car just has that vibe. I’ve never seen a car like this in real life, only on TV shows when I was a little kid. They were already way out of date when I was in diapers.”

  There wasn’t much to the town. They passed through without seeing an open business, and soon they were back in the countryside, weaving along with no sign of the kidnappers. A few minutes later, however, they came upon a small gas station next to a grocery store, and Mike called for Owen to slow down. It didn’t appear to be open, and as they got closer, he spotted a sign taped to the door that said, “Store Closed. Pumps Not Working.”

  “Dang, no gas,” Owen said.

  “There’s gas,” Mike replied. “We just have to find a way to get it. Pull in.”

  “What are you suggesting, Uncle?”

  “Pull in. We’re going to try to get gas anyway.”

  Owen pulled into the station and stopped next to the first pump. Despite the sign, Mike tried pumping gas anyway, just in case it was wrong.

  “It’s no good,” Owen said. “Just like the sign says.”

  But Mike was determined. He searched the lot until he found the hatch that led to the underground gas storage tank. It took him a few seconds to get down on his knees next to the hatch. He could faintly smell gasoline. Owen knelt beside him.

  “Any luck?” he said.

  “There could be a thousand gallons of fuel in the underground storage tank,�
� Mike said, “but I don’t think we can get it out without a generator. It’s a shame.”

  “Well, to be fair, the owners tried to warn us before we pulled in,” Owen said.

  “Right. Right.”

  Mike needed Owen’s help to stand back up. They got back in the car and sat there for a moment. The fuel gauge hovered dangerously close to empty. Mike considered their predicament.

  “Well, now I know why the kidnappers stole the fuel from the Silverado,” he said. “Seems like it’s getting harder to come by.”

  “We might have enough to make it to the next town,” Owen said. “Maybe there will be another gas station.”

  But Mike was thinking about the kidnappers, seeing Talon slide the plastic tub of gasoline out from under the truck. An idea was beginning to form in his mind.

  “Uncle Mike? We probably shouldn’t sit here,” Owen said. “Mom will get farther ahead of us, and the trail will go cold.”

  Mike pointed at the grocery store next door. Like the gas station, it didn’t seem to be open, but there were a few cars in the parking lot. One of them had stalled right next to the exit, and the doors were wide open, as if it had been hastily abandoned.

  “There’s a whole lot of gas right over there in that parking lot,” he said, “and none of it is being used.”

  “You want us to steal gas from people?” Owen said, gaping at him.

  “You can’t steal what people have abandoned,” Mike replied. “Those dead cars will never drive another inch, so we’re putting the gas to good use. If the vehicle owners were here, I’d offer to pay them back somehow, but the place is as empty as a ghost town.”

  “How are we going to get it out?” Owen asked.

  “We’re going to find a hose of some kind and siphon it,” Mike said. “I hate to admit it, but I’ve done this before. I was a wayward teen. Don’t ask for particulars. Come on. Let’s get it done. We have to hit the road again.”

  Though he still seemed uncomfortable with the plan, Owen pulled out of the gas station parking lot and headed to the grocery store. The enormous LTD had trouble getting past the stalled car at the entrance, and the back bumper wound up scratching the edge of the open driver’s door.

  “I’d tell you to leave your insurance information if we had any information to leave,” Mike said. “Park right in the middle of the lot where most of the cars are. We’ll get this done as quickly as possible.”

  In the end, they had to dig through the trunks of seven different vehicles before they found a large plastic jerrycan for fuel and a small garden hose.

  “We’re only borrowing the hose and gas can,” Mike told a scowling Owen, as he worked the end of the hose into the gas tank of the car near the grocery store exit. “We’ll return them as soon as the entire world goes back to normal. I promise.”

  Mike stuck the other end of the hose in his mouth.

  “You plan to suck out the gas like that?” Owen said.

  Mike nodded.

  “Is it safe?”

  Mike shook his head. “Not if I breathe it in. Last time I tried this, the fumes gave me a huge headache. I probably killed a few brain cells.” Actually, he already felt so weak he wasn’t sure how it would go. The smell of gasoline was already making him dizzy.

  “Be careful, Uncle Mike. Maybe this isn’t worth the risk.”

  The kid was right, and Mike hesitated. Finally, he looked up at Owen. “Oh, man, I hate to ask you this, kid, but…”

  “You want me to do it?” Owen asked.

  Mike nodded again. “I’m sorry. It’s just that…” He shrugged.

  “It’s fine. Tell me what to do.” Owen took the end of the garden hose from him.

  “Treat it like a giant straw, except instead of Coca-Cola, you’re drinking distilled liquid dinosaur. The second you taste gasoline, spit it out and put the hose in the can. It should keep flowing.”

  Owen put the hose in his mouth. As soon as he sucked in, he got a mouthful of gasoline. He quickly spit it out onto the pavement, but it got the gas flowing. He shoved the other end of the hose into the jerrycan.

  “How do you feel?” Mike asked.

  “Light-headed,” Owen replied.

  To fill the enormous tank of the LTD, they wound up siphoning fuel from three different cars. By the end, Owen seemed sick with the taste and smell of gasoline. Along the way, he insisted on snagging some supplies out of a few vehicles. He found grocery bags in the back of a van, and he grabbed some bottles of water and an open box of granola bars.

  “You didn’t want to steal the gas, but now you’re looting the place like a pro,” Mike said.

  “Well, we have to eat and drink,” Owen replied, tearing open the box of granola bars.

  “The whole world is morally gray now, kid. That’s all there is to it.”

  Owen tried to hand one of the bars to Mike, but Mike waved it off. He had no appetite whatsoever, but he accepted a bottle of water and used it to rinse the gas out of his mouth. They loaded up the rest of the nonperishable food and drinks in the back of the LTD and set out on the road again.

  So much time had been wasted. Mike didn’t see any sign of the kidnappers, and he wasn’t even sure they were headed in the right direction anymore. The road was taking them southward.

  How long do we go this way before we admit to ourselves that we’ll never catch up to them? Before we admit Jodi’s gone?

  It was a question he didn’t dare answer.

  9

  Jodi sank into a dark and hateful place, but the undercurrent was a bottomless well of stomach-churning fear. She knew what was coming. Talon hadn’t taken her because he wanted some polite company. As they drove through the countryside, he held her close, his thighs pressing against her hips, his arms encompassing her stomach as he gripped the handlebars. She wanted to shut her eyes and fold in on herself, but she thought it might be important to pay attention to the passing landscape. If she managed to get away from them, she would need to be able to find her way back.

  She watched the afternoon light fade with a mounting sense of disgust. Sometime after they set up camp, the attack would happen. She knew that. Her arm was in tremendous pain. It hurt all the way from her wrist to her neck. How could she possibly fend him off in her current condition?

  But I will fight, she thought. I will. He’ll have to kill me before I let him have his way with me.

  It wouldn’t be much of a fight, but she could at least leave him with a scar to remember her by.

  They passed through a series of small towns, following a southern course to no place in particular, as far as she could tell. It certainly wasn’t taking them to Macon.

  Poor Shane. Poor Violet. Poor Kaylee. She didn’t like to think of how they would take the news. It was almost worse than the dread of what would happen to her.

  Finally, as it crept close to evening, the lead bike, driven by the rail-thin fellow named Pike, slowed down and pulled into a dirt lot in front of an old industrial-size aluminum shed. The others followed, circling in behind him, their silver trailers thumping over the rough ground. Talon shut off his engine and rose, finally taking the weight off Jodi’s back. She felt like she’d been released from a sealed coffin.

  “This’ll do,” Talon said, yanking the mirrored sunglasses off his face and tucking them into the breast pocket of his camo jacket. “Set up the tents and get the camp stove going.”

  For a few seconds, none of the men seemed to be looking at her. Though they were out in the open, the big aluminum building was only a few feet away. Jodi traced a possible escape route with her eyes: alongside the building, around the back corner, and into the forest beyond. It was worth a try. If they caught her, her fate wouldn’t be any worse than if she remained passive.

  Wolf, Gunner, and Pike opened their motorcycle trailers and began emptying them onto the ground as Talon watched. Jodi took a deep breath, held it, then stepped off the bike. Nervous energy coursed through her body. But as soon as she took the first step, her knee buckl
ed and she went down with a huff.

  “Watch yourself, Treasure,” Talon said, walking around the bike to loom over her. The gray whiskers on his cheeks, neck, and chin made him seem like a werewolf in mid-transformation. “It’s been a long ride. Being on a bike is kind of like riding a horse—you feel it in the thighs. We’re the cowboys of the apocalypse.”

  He reached down and snagged her under the armpit, pulling her to her feet. Then he brought her over to a spot near where the men were setting up tents and pushed her to the ground.

  “Rest a spell,” he said. “Take a load off.”

  Now she had men on all sides, the motorcycles lined up behind her like a wall, and nowhere to go. She sat miserably and watched as Wolf and Pike set up the tents, staking them into the ground. Gunner brought out a small camp stove, but instead of setting it up, he thrust it at Jodi. Hesitantly, she took it.

  “What do you expect me to do with this?” she said.

  He pulled an aluminum can out of a trailer and tossed it at her. She didn’t bother trying to catch it, and the can hit the ground, rolling until it bumped up against one of the tent stakes.

  “I expect you to make dinner,” Gunner said, scratching his weedy face with ragged fingernails. “Can’t you see the cowboys are hungry?”

  Cooking dinner was better than what she’d expected, so she didn’t argue with him. Reaching over, she picked up the can and set the camp stove on the ground in front of her. The camp stove was a small propane tank with a single burner on top at the end of the long neck. It had three plastic legs that folded up against the body and a small electric lighter on the side. She unfolded the legs and lit the burner. The can, which proved to be some generic brand of “three-alarm” chili, was severely dented. She was just considering how to open the thing when Gunner tossed a can opener onto her lap.

  Maybe they just want a domestic servant, she thought. Maybe that’s all they want.

  But then she made the mistake of glancing up at Talon. He was staring at her from under the brim of his hat, and he had that look in his eyes. Jodi quickly averted her gaze, focusing her efforts on opening the can. She’d been given nothing to cook the chili in, nor did she want to talk to her captors, if at all possible, so she peeled the label off the can and set the can on the burner. As it was cooking, three more cans landed on the ground beside her.