Huh? What did she mean by that? “It's okay,” he said. “You don't want to go now? You want to turn back?”
“No, it's not that. I have to find him. But—”
“But what?”
“I wanted to get Kate out because I didn't think we could trust you.”
“Didn't think you could trust me?”
“No. I mean, yes. I know, I know, I'm sorry. But, Kate reminds me of my little sister.”
Jesse fixed her with his gaze, trying to process what she was saying. She was hiding something, something about him.
Grunting, he chose to ignore her for now and turned for another look at the first place in the city he had called home. This building had been special. It was where he had initially found sanctuary within the city. It was also the first place Hannah had led him to. They'd spent many hours in quiet conversation here, and he'd shared with her his hopes and dreams for their future together. She would sit patiently and listen to everything he said, never commenting on any of it, never judging, always loving him no matter how much he ranted and raved about the unfairness of life. And on those nights he broke down, lost in a torrent of crushing despair, she'd kept him from blowing his brains out.
“Bye,” he said with an aching sadness. It was an odd feeling he had now, one deep within his gut. Suspicion told him he might never return to the city. Odder still, the thought of that happening no longer terrified him. He knew Hannah would be with him no matter where he went. She would always be with him.
“We'll press on until dark,” he said to Eve and Kate.
“We can rest then?” Eve asked.
He shot her a look that made her pale. “Oh, we gave up resting,” he said, shaking his head and heading for the exit. “We gave that up the minute we left my shelter.”
-12-
GOOD TO GO
JESSE RAISED THE binoculars to his eyes for the umpteenth time and scanned the compound in the distance. Thick concrete blocks stacked higher than a semi-truck trailer encircled what was once a brickyard. Sand-colored buildings inside the walls formed a U-shaped central courtyard, and in the midst of that, a single green tree stood unmoving in the windless air.
Since the sunrise, he had been lying prone on a sloped asphalt and gravel rooftop watching men going in and out of the buildings. So far, he had seen no signs of either Rose or Cory, but those inside were preparing for something. He just didn't know what it was yet.
Yawning, he shifted positions to relieve the nagging pressure on his elbows. Pea-gravel had become imbedded in the fabric of his thick flannel shirt. It required a good twist and brush at each elbow to knock away the annoying grit without affecting his injured shoulder.
“Anything?” Eve asked from behind.
“Nothing.”
“I have no idea how we are supposed to do this. Do we just go over there and knock? What's the proper way to—?”
“No,” he said. She had asked a good question, but going in blind and unprepared would likely get them killed.
“Have you seen Cory?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe he didn't come here. Maybe he got past without them noticing. Hey! What's that?”
Jesse flicked a hard gaze at Eve, wishing she'd shut the hell up. She was on the rooftop behind him, pointing at something. If anyone inside the compound happened to look where she was standing, they'd spot her in a second.
“Get down,” he snapped. Grumbling, he trained the binoculars again on the compound and tried to determine what she had seen. He'd spotted some men milling about earlier, but they were gone now.
“What did you see?”
She stooped lower on the rooftop, slightly behind where the two slopes of the roof met, but not low enough to hide the top of her head. He considered saying something else to her about getting lower. Something with a few more curse words in it, but a new rattling sound coming from somewhere inside the compound diverted his attention.
“That a truck?” Eve asked.
“Maybe,” he said, rising on his elbows.
Black smoke drifted above the buildings. Was it a generator? A vehicle? He could not immediately determine what the engine noise was coming from, so he shifted positions for a better view and waved at Eve to get lower.
“Anything?” she whispered.
Still peering through the binoculars, he sensed her settle onto her stomach next to him.
“Back up and give me a sec,” he said.
“Whatever,” she replied, then scooted away, crunching gravel as she went.
About a minute later, a roller-wheel gate on the eastern side of the compound clanked open, and a flatbed truck rolled through. The truck coughed and belched dark smoke from a pair of smokestacks mounted directly behind the cab. It came to a squealing stop outside the gate with its brakes sounding like someone playing a crushed bugle. In the bed of the truck, three men squatted on their heels and held onto the wood-slatted side rails. Two more sat up front in the cab. Along the side of the truck were at least a dozen long metal spears all pointing skyward.
Jesse adjusted the zoom on the binoculars to get a closer view. None of the men sitting in the bed of the truck appeared to be holding rifles. They would have been the first to be armed, considering they had the best field of fire. So, if they weren't armed, then maybe those inside the compound were not as well, or had very limited supplies of ammunition. He watched as the flatbed truck headed for the roadway, kicking up dust. The spears lashed to the sides waved unsteadily, and he listened to the clacking of them along with the rattle of the diesel engine. All that noise would draw raptors to them like flies to shit.
When the flatbed truck reached the blacktop of the roadway, it turned north, which seemed odd. He'd just come from the north, and there hadn't been many signs of raptors since leaving the city. Were they headed into the city? He puzzled over this for a moment, but he had a more pressing concern. He had the compound to consider. The last time he had been inside and met with Rose, he'd counted twelve men and one woman. With five guys now gone, that left approximately seven more to deal with.
“That all?” Eve asked. “Did you see him?”
He scooted down from the apex of the building, shaking his head no. Kate was where he'd left her. She was sitting cross-legged by the ladder that led down from the rooftop. Her jacket was tented over her knees, and she was playing with a knife he'd given her the previous day. She glanced up at him with one eye squinted closed. He nodded in appreciation of her presence of mind to remain hidden, and to stay close by.
“So, what now?” Eve asked.
He removed the binoculars from around his neck and tucked them into the outside pocket of his knapsack. “I can't tell how many are left, but there are fewer now than when we got here. Probably not going to get any better.”
She shaded her eyes with her hand and stared at him. “You want us to stay here? On the roof?”
“No,” he said with conviction. He had decided earlier to keep Eve and Kate near him no matter what. “Best if you come along.”
“Okay. Come here then,” she said.
“Why?”
She touched his forehead with the back of her fingers. He pulled away with a jerk. “Yup,” she said. “Thought so. You're running a fever. Did you know that?”
“Just the sun,” he replied. “I'll be fine.”
“No. It's not the sun. You need rest. And I should check your shoulder.”
“There isn't time for that.”
“You want it to get infected?”
“I'll be okay.”
Eve didn't seem convinced, but she let the matter drop.
Then she went to Kate and reached for the knife. Kate spun away and pulled the knife along with her.
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” Jesse said to Eve in a calming tone. “Don't do that. Leave it. Leave it be.”
“But she'll hurt herself.”
“She's not the one I'd worry about getting hurt. Try that again, and she might decide to stick it in your leg.”
Eve did not seem to appreciate the comment. He didn't care. She'd been annoying him for the past two days. She needed to let Kate be Kate, and that meant she needed to leave her the hell alone.
Kate, to his pleasant surprise, was shaping up to be quite the companion, almost as if she were the perfect match for him. She never spoke, she was always watchful, and she seemed completely capable of fending for herself. He just needed to convince her to stop running off whenever she damn well felt like it.
He raised his face to the sun. The day was warm, and he was feeling better. His shoulder had regained much of its former mobility, but the damn thing was annoying him enough to make him want to find the first rough surface and rub up against it. Or, at the very least, remove all the crap covering the wound and let it breathe. Maybe that would stop the constant nagging, the constant, itch me, itch me, coming from it. He'd earlier considered giving Eve or Kate a fork and having them take turns stabbing him in the shoulder repeatedly.
But that was only wishful thinking.
A good soak in some warm soapy water and a couple of days rest was all he needed to get back up to snuff, and that wasn't about to happen until he got the job done here.
“Day's wasting,” he said to no one in particular. He gathered up his knapsack and stuck his arms through the straps. Then he put a hand on the rusty metal of the roof access ladder and climbed down. Eve and Kate followed.
The alleyway behind the former machine shop smelled of old grease, oil, and decay. Metal scraps and rusting car parts lay in bins or were stacked haphazardly on sagging wire mesh racks. Many of those racks had toppled over and scattered assorted car parts across the crumbling blacktop surface. He stepped through the strewn parts carefully, searching for a place to hide the guns and ammunition. He ultimately decided upon an overturned parts bin. Sitting on his heels, he pulled the Beretta from its holster. The automatic had a certain weight to it, a certain heft, as if he were to part with the gun. The loss would be like leaving behind a long lost friend he'd just become reacquainted with.
“Come on. Hurry up,” Eve said.
He glanced at her then back at the gun. He was already tired of her constant, useless chatter, and now this? With a sigh, he decided it was time to let go of the Beretta, for now. He'd return for it as soon as he could. Walking in to see Rose armed would only get them all killed. Guns were just too damn valuable and ammo even more so. He set it, along with his shotgun and all of his ammo, under the parts bin and messed the area around it up just enough to make it look as though everything belonged there.
He raised himself onto his toes and hopped over a water pump, a flywheel, a cylinder head, and something else he could not identify. He continued to step over parts until he returned to where Eve and Kate stood waiting for him.
“Listen,” he said. “When we get inside, let me do the talking. All of it. Okay?”
“But—”
“No buts.”
He walked over to the back of the shop where he had leaned a baseball bat against the wall. The bat was a thick Louisville Slugger made of oak. He picked it up and took a slow-motion practice swing with it. The bat felt good in his hands. He was also pleased that his shoulder gave him the range of motion he needed. Maybe it wasn't all that injured. Maybe it was just banged up. Maybe it was only pain. Pain was fine. He could deal with pain.
-13-
PAGING DR. BLAKELY
DR. ANDREA BLAKELY could swear she'd heard someone whispering a name in her ear. It was a familiar name, too. A name she had been tagged with as a child. She hated that name. Then again, there it was, and the name was appropriate. It fit her like a pair of well-worn leather shoes.
If those same shoes also stank of old cheese.
Then someone else called to her from far away in a different voice, making a different sound. No, not someone, she corrected herself, something. Was she dreaming? As if to answer, ugliness in the form of a muffled knock snatched her away from her slumber.
Her eyelids fluttered, and she shook her head. “What? What? Coming,” she mumbled.
She pounded the nightstand beside her cot, feeling around in the dark for her glasses. Her hands shook as she lifted them to her face and slid on the thick, plastic frames. The heavy lenses did not match her necessary prescription, nor did the frames fit her as well as they should have, but they were the best pair she'd been able to locate after the world had completely gone to shit.
The ventilation hole above her murmured out hushed whispers of fresh air, which she tried to inhale. Banks of solar cells on the hillside outside powered the underground complex and provided barely enough electricity to run the major systems during the day. She hated that, but things were getting better than they had been. And, at least it wasn't nighttime. The air at night always tasted stuffy and stale, as if she were breathing it through a sock.
All she wanted to do was stay where she was under the covers and wait for the pounding in her head to subside and her limbs to stop trembling. The cheap hooch she'd downed hours ago barely passed as palatable. It probably would have been put to better use as an industrial solvent. She wished, oh dear Lord how she wished, she could stop consuming it with such reckless abandon. Often, when she'd wake from one of her benders, she'd spend the first few minutes marveling over how she'd not gone blind in the night, or died from acute alcohol poisoning. But given what she'd seen over the past few years, blindness would be a divine mercy, a strong proof that God did—in fact—exist.
After smacking her lips, she ran her tongue over her teeth and detected the sour hints of gingivitis flavored by a pinch of halitosis.
Then the knock sounded again. Louder, more insistent.
Go away! she thought at the door. She just wanted to sleep for another few hours. She wanted the blackness. She wanted to feel numb. But she felt sick instead. It was a familiar sick. She embraced it and pulled the covers over her head.
This time the knock turned to a loud bang that rattled the solid door in its frame.
Those cretins outside the door were not going to let her have what she most wanted. Holding her head in her hands, she pushed her legs off the edge of the small military issue cot that served as her bed and let the wrinkled flesh of her feet plop onto the stark coldness of the concrete floor. Being cooped up like a factory chicken kept in darkness did not suit her well. But there was also a certain irony to it. She was now so pale, so sickly, that she actively avoided mirrors or anything else that could display a reflection. She did not think she could stand looking at herself now.
“What is it?” she cried out to the intruders on her sleep. She pressed her palms against her temples.
From outside her cramped cell came a stern voice. “There's been an accident, ma'am.”
She pinched the skin at the bridge of her nose wondering why she had consumed so much of that swill. Please, dear Lord, make it stop, she thought, but knew better than to ask for a boon from someone so cruel.
She adjusted her glasses and clicked on the reading lamp above her bed. The sudden rush of light caused her to flinch as if she were avoiding a flame.
The knock came again with a military-like precision. “Ma'am, we have to go now.”
“Hold on, will you?” she mumbled. “I don't move like I used to.”
Her actions came at a cost, but soon her tired old bones began to click together as they should, and she ambled her way over to the sink next to a stainless steel toilet. The room was not much larger than a jail cell, which was precisely where she thought she belonged.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Ma'am, you all right?”
At the sink, she cupped her hands under the running water and splashed the precious liquid on her face. The stark chill felt good against her flushed cheeks.
“Yes, I'm coming,” she finally replied to the door.
Now slightly more awake and a tad less ill, she pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a sand-colored T-shirt, ruffled her hair into shape, and stumbled through the few feet of privacy she was
allotted. She then pulled open the metal door separating her from the world outside.
Two men waited for her in the corridor. Large men. Serious men. She was sure she must have appeared to them as Gollum would have appeared after exiting his dark cave for the first time in years, or maybe Gollum's uglier half-sister, who not even Tolkien dared to write about.
“Follow us,” one of the men said. His name was Tony or Tommy or something like that. He was one of the new ones brought in to replace the last group of thugs. She hadn't bothered to learn his name or ask about him yet. She glanced at him and wondered if she ever would get the chance to, or would need to. Though, she made a mental note to ask about him later. He might prove useful for something she had planned.
They led her through the North Portal and outside into the sunshine. The bright stabbing pain of the morning sun pushed her down to her knees. She groaned and wished that the world would stop spinning.
Strong arms cupped her under the armpits, lifted her, and carried her the remaining distance to a waiting Jeep. She nodded to the driver and shut her eyes, praying the ride would be short.
She arrived a few minutes later in front of a warehouse at the bottom of the hillside. There, she was led through a metal roll-up door and into the voluminous interior. The change from bright sunshine to shade was a welcome relief.
Then her eyes adjusted.
She cringed.
It was all so horrible. Blood was everywhere. The smell was strong enough to overpower her morning breath. It filled her aching head. If she were not careful, she'd lose what little she had left in her stomach. But as her mind reeled and caught up, she decided that not vomiting on the Jeep ride was enough of a torment to prove that she'd now be strong enough to take whatever sweet new blessings God could throw at her.
Living with death so near, she'd grown used to the fetor of unwashed bodies, blood, and most bodily fluids. She'd had to. She didn't have a choice. She was the only doctor at the complex still alive. There were others trained as medics, but most of them did not have the temperament to saw through muscle, tendons, and bone with a carpenter's saw.
Red Asphalt: Raptor Apocalypse Book 2 Page 8
