“A what?”
“They look like oil barrels. It's probably in the backyard somewhere.” He grabbed a pipe wrench from above the workbench and left the garage, pushing his way through the tall weeds behind the house until running into exactly what he was looking for.
“Over here,” he called to Cory.
Two white barrels lay partially hidden underneath a large tree. Rust had etched them, but the SUNOCO 110 labels on the sides were still readable.
“These guys with their muscle cars,” Jesse said. “Stupid government banned the fuel they need to run right, so these guys had to buy it special. Just hope it hasn't jelled.”
Cory nodded. “How do you know all this?”
Jesse shook his head but did not answer. He had been around cars most of his life but had never owned anything of value. His friends were always the ones with the nice cars. He'd often dreamed that one day he could buy something worthy of restoring.
Something just like this GTO.
He affixed the pipe wrench to the first barrel and began to pull, but the pain in his back and shoulder forced him to stop. He was not yet strong enough. He held the wrench in place and signaled to Cory. “I need you to open this, righty tight-y, lefty loose-y.”
Cory grabbed the wrench and pulled. Flakes of rust cracked off the plug, but it gave way with a jerk and easily unscrewed after that. Jesse sniffed the contents of the barrel. Seemed fine. Using a metal rod, he checked to see if the gas was still good. Silvery liquid ran smoothly between his fingers. He smiled at Cory. “Ha, ha, might just be our lucky day.”
Later that afternoon, after they had taken all they could find of value from the homes in the area, Jesse and Cory met up back at the car. Having a car and a way forward that was not on foot had done wonders to Jesse's mood.
He could almost tolerate Cory again.
“Can I see your map?” Cory asked.
“Sure.” Jesse hopped off the barrel and spread his map on the hood of the GTO. He was in such a good mood that he even helped map out how to get to where Cory wanted to go first. It would be slow going in a vehicle since all the highways were littered with wrecks, but at least they would not be walking for a while. Jesse still had a plan, though, so it didn't matter much where Cory thought they were going. Both paths led to the same place.
“So, you have changed your mind?” Cory asked.
Jesse pretended to think about it for a long second, then, “Yeah, yeah. This car changes everything. But I want your word that you will help me get Eve and Kate back when you are done.”
“If you get me where I need to go first, then yes.”
Jesse folded the map, picked up his canteen, and unscrewed the lid. He held it up. Cory unlaced his from his pack and did the same. They clinked their canteens together, and Jesse said, “Might take us a day or two to get to your bunker. You gonna be ready?”
Cory held his gaze without blinking. He nodded once.
“Good,” Jesse said. “I thought so. We better get going.”
He was not sure what he had seen in Cory. Was the guy really going to stick around? Or was Cory still planning on leaving? He didn't much like lying to the guy, but it seemed like that was the only way to keep him around. He'd just have to rely on him to do the right thing when the time came, as he had at Rose's. And, if he didn't, he had another plan for that, too.
Cory climbed into the passenger side of the GTO and closed the door. It made a satisfying clunk as it closed. Solid metal, not flimsy plastic and fuel-conserving, paper-thin steel. Jesse took one last look at the garage filled with muscle car memorabilia and quietly thanked whomever it was that had collected it all, and thanked providence for delivering him to the guy's doorstep.
The GTO started with a throaty roar and clunked when he shifted it into gear. He adjusted the mirrors and let the car idle down the long blacktop driveway. When reaching the street, he turned the wheel to line up with the direction of the road and braked to a stop.
“You ready?” he asked as he wrapped his hands on the steering wheel and scanned the instruments on the dashboard.
“Yeah,” Cory said.
“Check that,” he said, pointing to the glove box.
Cory opened it and dug inside. He came back with a square blue object and set it on the dashboard. He continued to dig around in the papers and pulled out two more of the square artifacts along with a pair of black Ray Ban sunglasses.
Cory grabbed the square blue object and held it up. “What's this?”
Jesse took the item and examined it knowingly. “That is what we old guys call an 8-track tape. Bet you've never seen one of these.” He stuck the tape into a fat slot on the dashboard radio. It snapped into place, and things began to click and whirl inside the radio.
Cory blew dust off the sunglasses and put them on. He rolled down the side window and rested his arm on the windowsill.
Another series of small clicks came from the deck as it took up the slack in the tape and selected the correct position for the play head. Seconds of hissing warble filled the car. The warbling soon morphed into a steady hiss that came from speakers mounted in the doors and under the rear window. The speakers then barked to life with the sound of a crunching guitar, which was joined by a simple, solid drumbeat with not a single embellishment. A few beats later, the first line of gravelly vocals blared out from the speakers.
“Living easy, living free. Season ticket on a one-way ride.”
The corner of Jesse's mouth twitched into a half-smile as he took his foot off the brake and let the GTO roll on down the road.
-27-
ROADBLOCK
CORY SAT IN the passenger seat of the GTO, casually rolling the crowbar between his flattened fingers. Jesse drummed his own fingers on the steering wheel and kept the car traveling down a long ribbon of two-lane pavement. They had spent almost three weeks together on the road after leaving behind Cory's childhood home. Much of that time had been spent helping Jesse with his recovery. The slow progress was wearing thin on Cory, and the frustrations were mounting. Breakdowns, overcast weather, bad luck, setbacks, food, shelter, all seem determined to keep him from his goal.
Now they were less than a fifty miles northwest of Bunker 12. They had backtracked and gone around an area Jesse had claimed was controlled by the local gangs. Now they were trying a less traveled route through the foothills. The road was clear and the sun had just begun to shine in the sky. The morning air was still cold, much colder than it had been over the past few days. This high up, even the spring weather was unpredictable. One day it might be hot and sweltering by late afternoon. Another it might be near freezing. Today, it was somewhere in between.
Cory continued to stare forward, making the occasional glance out the side window. The verdant growth on both sides of the roadway produced mixed shadows of dark green and black. In each new patch of tall grass, he pictured lurking raptors poised and ready to attack, as if all they lacked was the opportunity to do so. To cope with his idleness, he rested the crowbar against his right leg and popped his knuckles against the dashboard, one by one. Jesse glanced over without comment and then resumed his blank stare out through the windshield.
The car droned ever onward.
Ten minutes later, they rounded a corner, and Jesse slowed the GTO. A bridge lay about a hundred feet ahead. It was an old bridge, made of crisscrossing metal, slate gray with age and dull paint. The car coasted to a stop. Jesse leaned forward and peered ahead while tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Saying nothing, he let the car creep forward again. Cory sensed the bump as the pavement changed from smooth roadway to cracked and battered asphalt. Dark shadows, cast by the metal girders above, flickered across the windshield. At the far end of the bridge was the wreck of a small four-door sedan. The car had been rolled over onto its side and shoved up against the railing.
Jesse brought GTO to a full stop next to the wreck.
A tricycle rested on its side in a pile of cast-off debris. The white front wheel o
f the child's toy was streaked with rust. One side was missing a pedal. Cory chewed on his inner cheek and sucked it between his teeth, massaging the soft flesh with his tongue. People had died here, and he hated how easily he could form mental pictures of them, seeing their vague shapes with no detail, all gray and amorphous. Had the little owner of the tricycle been a girl, or a boy? Had she or he fled in terror, running until stumbling and falling from exhaustion, only to be pounced on and gutted while still alive? Who was it he or she screamed for the loudest? Was it mommy? Or was it daddy? He just knew that they were dead, and how, and why, and who was ultimately responsible for their deaths.
He hated that person.
Jesse let up on the brakes. The car continued across the bridge. Further ahead on the roadway were the first traces of civilization Cory had seen in miles. A blackened metal sign hung defiantly on twin steel posts, advertising a McDonalds, a Taco Bell, and a Shell Gas station ten miles ahead. Green growth partially obscured the sign, reclaiming it for Mother Nature. Through the trees, he saw houses in the distance. Most had been burnt to charred sticks, jutting up like stalagmites waiting to be worn down by wind and weather.
The car rolled on.
As they approached a small row of squat buildings, they came upon the melted hulk of an overturned tanker truck that blocked the entire roadway. The round tank had flipped onto its side. Much of its dull gray aluminum had liquefied on the asphalt, leaving behind a glassy slick of smooth asphalt and melted metal.
Jesse slowed and let the GTO idle closer to the truck.
“Can we get around?” Cory asked, breaking the silence that had lasted between them since dawn.
“Yeah.” Jesse indicated the route by raising a finger from the steering wheel and pointing.
Cory rolled down his window and leaned out to get a better view. Tire tracks went off into the weeds to the right and curved around the overturned tanker. It was a narrow path, but it had been traversed before, probably as recently as a week or less. Which meant there were others in the area. He assumed Jesse had noticed the same thing.
The GTO idled steadily, a low, throaty burble. Then the brakes squealed, and the car rolled forward again. Jesse steered it into the narrow tracks. The embankment began to tilt to the right, and the car increasingly matched the new angle. Each foot they traveled, the incline steepened, and the big V8 began to spin the wheels freely, gaining traction, and then losing it again.
Something clunked, and the car dropped a foot, bouncing Cory up against the roof liner, where he banged his head on a beam underneath.
The engine revved twice after that, but the car did not move.
Cory rubbed the top of his head. He had bumped it close to the healing wound on the side. Fortunately, it had not opened up again. Jesse shifted into reverse and revved the motor then shifted back into drive and tried again. The car rocked in place, but did not move forward or backward more than a foot.
“Stuck,” Jesse finally said.
Mouthing “no shit,” Cory eyed the greenery to his right, thinking he had seen movement there. He again leaned out, sniffed, and then rolled the window closed. Other than the wet green weeds covered in morning dew, he smelled nothing to alert him to danger.
Jesse pushed open the driver's side door and climbed out.
“Stay here,” he said.
Cory glanced again out through the side window then at Jesse. He pushed his own door open against the weeds and got out, crowbar gripped in his right hand. Nothing stirred, not even a breeze. But there was a taint lingering in the static air that he had not noticed before. He exchanged a questioning look with Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “I smell it, too. Something dead. Or a lot of somethings. Raptors, probably.”
“Checking,” Cory said. He did not wait for a response before scrambling up the embankment to the roadway. He stopped there and watched Jesse circle to the rear of the GTO.
“Hey,” Jesse called to him, opening the trunk. “Try to find a board or shovel or something.”
Cory acknowledged with a grunt and made his way toward a line of wrecked vehicles twenty feet ahead. First up was a van lying on its side. The sliding door was jacked partway open, and various silver cans had fallen out. Paint cans by the look of them. The labels had all been blown off, leaving behind the rust-spotted containers. He approached the van with the crowbar raised and pulled the lever on one of the side doors. That door creaked open on rusty hinges and followed gravity downward with a tired groan. Bending at the waist, he peered inside, crowbar even with his shoulders, expecting trouble.
Nothing.
He pulled the door open further and peeked inside. A pair of fibrous nests filled most of the cargo area. Bits of torn clothing, old bones, and dried grasses had been piled together to form six medium-sized raptor nests. From the look of them, they had long been abandoned. A few egg fragments remained. He counted at least a dozen in each nest.
He heard someone approaching from behind.
Jesse stepped up next to him and stomped his boots against the pavement, throwing off chunks of mud. The clods broke apart and scattered across the blacktop.
“Not seeing any fresh signs,” he said.
Cory nodded and resumed his search. A Mazda sedan sat in the middle of the roadway two car lengths ahead of him. Its tires had gone flat and all four doors were hanging wide open. He approached it and checked inside.
Nothing.
Then he heard a shuffling noise coming from the trunk. He swung around to investigate and rapped on the trunk lid twice with his knuckles.
Something moved inside.
“Hey,” he said, trying to get Jesse's attention.
Jesse was bent next to the driver's side and working on something near the front seat. He did not look up.
Cory's mind suddenly screamed in warning.
A confusing mass of claws and teeth burst out of the trunk. He spun to his right, and a raptor slammed into his chest, knocking him off balance. The crowbar slipped from his grip. His arms shot up to protect his face. The raptor thrashed at him, clawing viciously. The creature's hooked talons sought flesh, but the only flesh available was the dead leather of his jacket. The creature bounced off him and landed sideways on the pavement. It tried to right itself. Before it could, he stepped on the thing's tail and kicked its head then shifted positions and pinned the thing's neck against the asphalt. The raptor fought to bring its claws up, wailing and screeching.
With his battered, cardboard-filled, duct-taped, size thirteen Nikes, he stomped on the creature's bony forearms first, crushing each limb in turn. He pivoted again and prepared to cave in its head from the side.
Then his shoe slipped on something.
He landed on his hip, trapping the raptor underneath him. Hooked rear claws flailed at him, raking against his jacket. One errant swipe caught him by surprise. His jacket ripped open, leaving his T-shirt as the only protection against the thing's wild swings. A swipe nearly got him. Another followed and caught on his shirt, tearing the fabric. He arched his back and drew away from the spasming thing. Rolling, he shifted onto his side and used his body weight to keep the raptor pinned against the ground. He wrapped his hands around its neck and squeezed. The thing's tongue went erect in its mouth and its eyeballs twitched violently, madly, left, right, left, up, down.
He pressed harder.
Fully in control now, he pulled the raptor out from underneath him and held its snapping jaws at arm's length. Its broken forearms hung uselessly, quivering. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jesse coming around the car, shotgun ready.
Cory spoke through clenched teeth. “I have it…under…control.”
The raptor squirmed and writhed in his grip. It kept flipping between wanting to attack and wanting to escape, screeching in pain, but he held fast and drove his fingers into the cords of its neck until he felt the fragile bones beneath.
With a quick jerk, he wrenched sideways and killed it.
Setting it to one side, he rolle
d onto his butt and looked up at Jesse.
“You okay?” Jesse asked. “Sorry, I—” He stopped and bent over, putting his free hand out.
Cory ignored the apology and accepted the outstretched hand. He let Jesse pull him to standing.
“Stronger?”
“A bit,” Jesse said as he walked away.
Cory had been keeping track of Jesse's recovery. It seemed the guy was back to normal, or close to it. He stooped to collect the crowbar and then readjusted his sunglasses. He checked under his torn T-shirt.
Not a scratch.
One thing was clear now, he definitely needed to be on his own. He needed to leave the cowboy behind for good.
Jesse got down on one knee next to the dead raptor. He rolled it over with the butt of his shotgun. “It's been awhile since I've seen one this small out and on its own. Seems a little odd to me. What do you think?”
Ignoring him, Cory turned the opposite direction and moved to the next car down the line. A cursory search turned up nothing of use there, either. Being that he was still a little shaky, he found a clear spot where he could lean against the front fender, have a smoke, and keep an eye on Jesse.
Jesse drew his hunting knife and straddled the raptor's corpse. He plunged the blade into the creature's belly and slit it open then lifted it by its tail and neck and shook until the thing's guts hung out. Holding it steady with one hand, he ran his knife up and inside the hole he had made in its abdomen. The thing's innards plopped out one piece at a time and splatted on the asphalt. Tiny tendrils of steam rose from the red pile. With the raptor hanging from his bloodied hands, Jesse walked alongside Cory and tossed the carcass on the hood.
“Dinner,” he said.
Cory backed away and continued to smoke. Jesse again plunged the knife into the raptor's flesh and cut with deftness and precision, slicing through joints and disassembling the thing like he had been doing it all his life. Looking at Jesse, Cory realized he still had mixed feelings about the man. One on hand, the guy knew how to live in the world as it was. He was a survivor. He was smart, resourceful and not out to stab people in the back and take all their stuff. That counted for something, probably everything, really. But the guy also missed things. He did not always think things through as well as he should. That made him dangerous to be around.
Red Asphalt: Raptor Apocalypse Book 2 Page 22
