He picked up his pace a little bit, hurrying toward the van. Opening the back door, he set their bags of supplies beside the food buckets. Corbin gave him a knowing smile that said, “See, I told you we’re fine.”
Just then, someone spoke from behind them.
“Hey, you there.”
The crisp command of a National Guardsman. Shane turned to find one of the guards from the front of the store approaching, a very stern African-American man with the brim of his ballcap pulled low to shade his eyes. He jabbed a finger in Shane’s direction.
“Hold up there a second,” he said.
“Sorry, can I help you?” Shane replied.
Corbin had been approaching the passenger door, but he came back, moving to one side of the guard, as if taking up a position for a flanking attack. The guard pointed at the back of the van. Shane tried his best to act casually, but he felt stomach-churning panic rising in him. How were they going to talk their way out of this? He couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. He was afraid if he drew attention to the Glock, he might get shot.
“Right there,” the guard said.
“Excuse me?” Shane replied.
“Your back tire, it’s low.”
Shane tracked what the man was pointing at and realized the back-right tire was indeed a little low. Though not flat, it was noticeable. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh, right,” he said, suppressing a crazed laugh. “Thanks. I’ll get that taken care of right away.”
“Just thought you should know,” the guard said.
“Thanks,” Corbin added. “We didn’t see it.”
The guard briefly touched the brim of his cap then turned and walked back toward the store. Shane and Corbin traded a look.
“You seemed like you were about to cry,” Corbin said with a smile. “Calm down, sir. Even if he’d come for the battery, we could’ve handled it.”
“I wasn’t about to cry,” Shane replied, kicking the back door of the van shut. “Let’s go.”
He walked to the driver side door, feeling like he’d just gotten away with robbing a bank. As he climbed in behind the wheel, he had a lingering sour taste in the back of his throat.
We have to avoid situations like this from now on, he told himself. Too many ways for things to go bad really quick.
11
“By my estimation, it’s May 2nd,” Mike said. “Time flies when you’re having the opposite of fun. You know what I mean, kid?”
Owen responded with a grunt. He had a half-eaten granola bar in one hand, the enormous red steering wheel of the LTD in the other. The sun was setting, and they’d cruised the back roads for hours, trying to find some trace of the kidnappers. Eventually, Mike convinced Owen to turn west, heading in the general direction of Macon. Mike had his window open, and he’d spent much of the time with his head outside, desperately looking for some evidence that they were on the right track.
We missed their trail somewhere, he thought. They must’ve taken a turn in one of these small towns. Maybe they’re hiding out somewhere.
It had gotten too dark. That was the problem. Mike was mostly gazing at a passing landscape of shifting shadows. Any of those shadows could have been a concealed motorcycle, and he wouldn’t have known. Though he mostly channeled his frustration into sarcastic comments, by the time the sun had set, he was falling into profound despair.
“They must have made a turn back behind us somewhere,” he said, finally. “It’s too dark to tell, and there’s only so much we can do at night.”
“Keep looking,” Owen said. “Maybe we should go back and check some of the other roads we passed. She’s out there, Uncle Mike.”
“I know. I know.” Mike turned and gazed back behind them as forested hills turned purple and black in the moonlight.
“Do we turn back?” Owen asked.
“It won’t make much difference.” Mike rolled up the window. “It’s too dark. We’re better off waiting until daylight.”
“Waiting all night?” Owen said. “That’s…I’m sorry, Uncle, that’s a terrible idea. We have to keep looking for her.”
“It sucks, I know” Mike replied. “Look, I hate it as much as you do, but I can’t flippin’ see anything out there. We could drive right past them, and I would never know. It’s not as if they’re going to light a beacon for us, you know. They’ll probably camp somewhere out of sight.”
“What if they keep going?” Owen said. “What if they reached the interstate and decided to just keep driving all night?”
“Then, quite frankly…” He hesitated to say it. “We’ll almost certainly never see them again. The bikes will be more maneuverable. This giant yacht will struggle to get past any and every roadblock. We couldn’t catch them on the interstate at night even if we knew exactly where they were.”
Owen slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “We wasted too much time siphoning gas at the stupid grocery store.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Mike reminded him. “If we hadn’t done that we’d have run out of gas long ago.”
“Then we should have gotten gas faster somehow,” Owen said. “I wanted to drive to the next town and find an open gas station. Pumping gas would have been faster than sucking it out of the tank with a garden hose!”
“Well, we did drive to the next town, and we didn’t find an open gas station, did we?”
Owen slammed the steering wheel again. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. We should have gone faster, that’s all I’m saying.”
“If we’d hit eighty-eight miles an hour, we could have gone back in time and stopped all of this from happening in the first place,” Mike muttered sourly.
Owen rounded on him, grimacing like he thought his uncle had gone insane. Clearly, he hadn’t understood the reference.
“Never mind, kid. Look, we did the best we could. We have to stop for the night. That’s all there is to it. We’re not going to find her in the dark, and if we keep driving, we’re liable to crash.”
He spotted a small shopping center up ahead. It looked like a gas station, possibly a diner, and some kind of small grocery store. He pointed at it.
“Pull in there,” he said. “We can rest until morning.”
“Rest? How are we going to rest?”
“We’re going to force ourselves to get some sleep,” Mike said, “so we’re not completely useless tomorrow. Then we’re going to leave the very second the sun comes up and start looking for your mom again.”
As they approached the entrance to the shopping center, Owen didn’t initially slow down, and Mike thought he was going to blaze right past it. He felt too weak and sickly to argue with the kid, so he slumped back in his seat. Then Owen muttered something under his breath—it might have been a curse word—and took a swift turn into the parking lot. The back tire squealed and hopped the curb.
“Careful with our 70s classic, kid,” Mike said, as the force of the turn caused the lap belt to dig into his side. “We’ll need it tomorrow.”
Owen drove the car around behind the gas station and parked in a dark spot near the back wall. Even in the low light, Mike could tell he was fuming. The kid wanted desperately to keep looking for his mom, and while Mike was increasingly convinced it was a lost cause, he knew he had to encourage him somehow.
“We’ll pick up the trail in the morning. Maybe we can question people along the way. Surely someone will have noticed a bunch of brand-new motorcycles pulling silver trailers. Maybe Jodi left us a clue somewhere. Maybe while the kidnappers weren’t looking, she made a mark on a tree or…or…I don’t know. She’s pretty darn clever. Don’t give up hope.”
“I think you might be too optimistic, Uncle Mike,” Owen said, killing the engine. “They could be a hundred miles away by tomorrow morning.”
“They have to steal fuel just like the rest of us,” Mike said. “That’ll slow them down. Plus, they’re troublemakers, so we’ll probably run into their victims. That’ll keep us pointed in the right d
irection.”
Owen seemed to consider this for a moment. “I hope you’re right,” he said finally. “I doubt I’ll sleep, but I’ll try.”
“That’s all you can do.”
Mike fumbled around on the side of his seat until he found the lever to recline it. He went as far back as it would go, impressed at just how much room that gave him. Owen followed suit, and soon they were lying in the dark, feeling the terrible weight of the day bearing down on them.
We’ll never see her again, Mike thought. You can’t admit it to the kid, but you damn well know it.
Despite this thought, their exhaustion soon overwhelmed them. Mike heard Owen’s breathing change and knew he was asleep. A few minutes later, he did the same.
His dreamless sleep seemed to pass in an instant. The seat in the LTD was soft and padded, quite possibly the most comfortable thing he’d lain on since this whole miserable situation began. It helped him sink beneath dreams. The experience was a little like his cancer surgery. He remembered lying in the hospital bed one moment, then opening his eyes in the recovery room the next, as if no time had passed in between.
That’s how it felt when he suddenly opened his eyes inside the LTD to bright sunlight and warm, muggy air. He tried to sit up, but his weak body resisted. Every limb cried out in defiance, and he felt sharp pain in his neck. Relenting, he flopped back onto his seat. From his reclined position, he could see the sun high in the sky. It was well past first light. Actually, it seemed dangerously close to noon.
“Oh no,” he croaked. “Owen, get up. We slept too long. Get up, kid.”
Mike fumbled for the door handle, got a firm hold, and used it to pull himself upright, sliding against the door for extra leverage. Then he raised the seat.
“Hey, Owen!”
Only then did he realize his nephew wasn’t in the car. Muttering a string of curses, Mike opened his door and pulled himself outside. It took a good thirty seconds to stand up. Even then, he had to lean against the car for a minute before he felt stable enough to start walking.
“Come on, kid,” he grumbled. “What are you doing to me?”
He looked around the shopping center. Where would he have gone? The grocery store, the gas station convenience store, or the diner? He saw no sign of the teen, and he dreaded the thought of searching through each of the buildings trying to find him. He just wasn’t up to it.
What if he doesn’t come back?
Mike had a glimpse of driving the huge car alone, looking for his disappearing family, and he found himself suddenly close to tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, and the nearness of it startled him. Beginning to panic, he tried to calm himself.
He’s in one of the buildings, dummy, he told himself. Don’t get carried away.
Something moved at the edge of his vision, and Mike spun around, suppressing an urge to scream. In the aftermath, he felt light-headed, and he pressed his hands to the top of the car to steady himself, feeling hot metal against his palms.
“Uncle Mike, are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Owen came from the direction of the gas station, lugging a couple of water bottles in his left hand and a crinkled paper bag in his right.
“I’m fine,” Mike said, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “You just startled me. I’m not quite awake yet.”
“We slept way too late,” Owen said, setting the water bottles and the paper bag on top of the car. “I didn’t want to wake you, so I figured I’d stand in sight of the road and see if maybe those bikers passed by.”
Mike was tempted to scold him for this. He was sure Jodi would have done so. How foolish was it for the boy to venture out on his own? While the kid’s initiative was admirable, he could have been quickly overwhelmed if he’d been unlucky enough to spot the bikers, or any other band of creeps for that matter. Still, as Owen produced a couple of oranges from the paper bag, he found himself grateful for his nephew’s thoughtfulness. He took the orange and began peeling it. He wasn’t back to his old self and, quite frankly, Mike was beginning to believe he never would be. The active fellow he’d been before his cancer diagnosis seemed to be gone forever.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Mike said, popping one of the orange segments in his mouth.
“Most of the food in the gas station store was gone, probably looted,” Owen said, peeling his orange. “Some of what was left was starting to rot. A whole bunch of egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches in a broken refrigerator had spoiled. They smelled like the devil’s vomit. But they had oranges in a display case near the cash register, so I grabbed them all.”
“What does the devil’s vomit smell like?” Mike said.
“Like rotting egg salad, apparently.”
Under normal circumstances, Mike would have found Owen’s rare display of humor amusing, but nothing seemed funny now. He finished his orange, discarded the peel, and grabbed one of the water bottles. He drank almost half of it in a single swig. For some reason, he was incredibly thirsty, and it only took two more gulps to finish the bottle. The weight of all that water made him realize he also had to pee.
“I don’t suppose they had usable restrooms in there,” Mike said.
Owen took the empty water bottle from him. “If they’re as bad as the rest of the building, I wouldn’t try. Why don’t I go get more water, and you can pee out here? They have a few more water bottles on the shelf, and we don’t really know when we’ll find clean water again. Be right back.”
As Owen returned to the gas station, Mike relieved himself at a corner of the building. Then he made his way back to the car and sat down, still light-headed but feeling slightly less weak. He shut the door and rolled down the window, leaning his head outside. Owen reappeared and climbed in behind the steering wheel.
“Which way should we go?” he asked. “Maybe we should double back and make sure we didn’t miss any clues.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mike replied. “Keep heading west toward Macon. It’s a crapshoot any way we go, but at least we’ll be getting closer to home.”
“We’re not going to find her,” Owen muttered, starting the car. “That’s what you think.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know you didn’t,” Owen said, “but you seem to have given up on finding her.”
“I just think if we’re going to pick a direction, we might as well head west,” Mike said.
“Well, I don’t want to go west to Macon,” he said. “I want to head south, the way the kidnappers were going when they left us.”
Mike didn’t want to argue with him, so he merely shrugged. The water bottles and the remaining oranges were added to the stash of groceries in the back seat. Owen drove around the gas station and got back on the road. He headed east until he found the original road they’d been following, then he turned south.
Mike sank into a daze, half-asleep, when Owen suddenly cried out. It startled him so badly that he thrashed in his seat, his heart leaping into his throat. His nephew was pointing frantically at something in the distance, but Mike couldn’t tell if he was excited or terrified.
“What? What is it, kid? What’s happening? Who died?”
He saw a large storage shed beside a dirt parking lot. Nothing seemed particularly unusual about it, but Owen slowed down as he approached. Then sunlight glinted off chrome, which drew his attention to the row of tents in the middle of the lot. Something metallic behind the tents had caught the late morning sun. Owen brought the LTD to a gravel-churning stop in front of the tents.
“At least park out of sight of the road,” Mike said, “so no one can sneak up on us.”
Owen pulled the car across the lot to a stand of trees in the field beyond and parked behind them. As soon as the car was in park, he shouldered his door open and practically leapt outside. It took Mike a minute to follow him, as he rose on shaky legs and shuffled toward the tents. Owen grabbed one of the tents and pulled it aside, ripping the stakes out of the ground, to reveal the
row of motorcycles lying on their sides behind it. Three Indian Scouts, tires completely flat, and two small silver motorcycle trailers. Sunlight glinted off a chrome exhaust pipe, shining brightly like a beacon.
Mike felt a flutter of anxiety and began looking around wildly. Were the men somewhere nearby? Were they hiding inside the big shed, waiting to spring upon any hapless passersby? It seemed unlikely that they would have simply abandoned the bikes and trailers, even with the flat tires.
If he felt the same, Owen didn’t show it. He began searching the camp, kicking over a small camp stove and tossing it aside, heading for the next tent. Mike knelt beside the nearest bike and examined the flat tire. The stab mark was obvious. Someone had punctured it on purpose. What could have happened?
“This is strange,” Mike said. “Something bad happened here.”
Owen was peeking into the third tent. Mike shuffled over to join him, approaching the fourth and final tent in the row. The tent flap was unzipped, and he grabbed the edge. Just before he pulled it back, he caught a whiff of something both stomach-churning and familiar.
Blood.
He drew the tent flap aside and saw the body inside. Talon lay on his side, his arms spread at strange angles, his legs curled in front of him. He was lying on an unfolded sleeping bag, and an enormous amount of blood had soaked into the padded cloth around his head and shoulders. Mike dared to lean in a little farther, and he saw the wound in the side of the man’s neck. A gruesome gouge that must have sliced through jugular, carotid, and windpipe all in one fell swoop. His eyes were open, unfocused and lifeless, and his tongue was poking out.
“Oh, gosh, that’s nice,” Mike said, grabbing his stomach and backing out of the tent. “He must’ve died choking on his own blood.”
He bumped into Owen, who was gazing at the corpse over his shoulder.
“Could Mom have done it?” he asked.
“You think it’s possible she overpowered four fully grown burly men and killed their leader?” Mike said. “Isn’t it more likely that some other gang happened on the campsite and attacked them?”
Surviving The End (Book 2): Fallen World Page 10
