by Tom Abrahams
“I’ve got an idea,” Jackie said. Nikki and Marie joined her, looking at the dung beetle of a human struggling to right herself onto her legs. “It’s up to you whether or not you live or die,” Jackie said.
The woman stopped struggling and lay there in the grass. She nodded. Her body trembled and her chest surged up and down as she tried to calm herself. Her pupils were dilated. Chances were the woman was still high on methamphetamines.
“All right,” Jackie said, “we’re going to let you go.”
“Wait,” said Nikki, “I’m not good with that.”
“Me neither,” said Marie. “I’m with Deep Six Shooter.”
Nikki scowled at Marie. “Not funny.”
“Listen to me,” said Jackie. “We’re going to let this woman go. And she is going to run as fast as she can away from this house and this neighborhood. If she doesn’t, she faces more than getting choked unconscious.”
Chris’s eyes widened with excitement. “You did the shutoff valve?”
Nikki shrugged.
“Ooh,” said Chris. “Wish I’d seen that.”
The woman on the ground was nodding her head, as if she was agreeing to the conditions. She was trying to talk.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Nikki. “She’ll come back. She’ll attack us when we aren’t looking.”
The woman on the ground shook her head vigorously, greasy strands of hair slapping her face.
“We don’t have another option,” said Jackie. “We can’t keep her here. We can’t kill her.”
Marie huffed. “We couldn’t, but Annie Get Your Gun could.”
Nikki finally snapped. “I saved your life, Marie. I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t have time to think through a list of nonlethal options.”
Marie rolled her eyes and walked away, into the house, shutting the door behind her with an angry bang.
Nikki turned back and caught Jackie’s stare. She looked at the ground. “Sorry, she’s your daughter. I shouldn’t have talked to her like that.”
“We have more important things on our plate right now. Are you good with this?”
Nikki looked down at the druggie and sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”
“All right then,” said Jackie. “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth and the binds from your legs. Then you’re going to run. You’ll have to figure out how to untie your hands.”
Nikki bent down over the woman. “Let me get the tape.” With a single instantaneous rip, she tore the wide strip of silver tape from the woman’s face.
The woman squealed and gritted what was left of her yellow teeth. She cursed and shook her head wildly. The tape left a red streak across her face and took with it the scabs on her cheeks and around her lips. Specks of blood bloomed across her face.
“That felt good,” Nikki said. She stepped back while Jackie worked the bungee around the woman’s thighs and ankles.
Once Jackie was finished, the woman sat up and scooted back across the grass. She struggled to find her balance and rolled onto her side.
Jackie pulled out her Glock and aimed it at the woman. The empathy was gone from her voice. “You can go now. Don’t come back here. If you do, I’ll kill you.”
The woman grumbled something, inched her way into the mulch, and used a rotting tree stump to right herself. She stood and stared blankly at Jackie for a moment, cackled, and ran toward the driveway. Jackie kept the gun trained on her until she disappeared down the cul-de-sac and her squealing laughter was no longer audible.
“What now?” asked Chris.
“We shore up the house, block the windows and doors, and make this place a home again,” Jackie replied. “Everybody sleeps in my room.”
The three of them stepped toward the door as Marie swung it open. The moody teenager stood at the threshold. “Mom, have you been in your bedroom?”
“No,” said Jackie, walking into the house. “Why?”
Marie stepped back and then led her mother toward the master bedroom. “You have to see it. I can’t really explain it.”
Jackie quickened her steps across the travertine to her bedroom. She gasped when she saw it and then nearly retched at the overwhelming stench.
The room looked as if wild animals had ravaged it. The mattress was half off the bed. The sheets were piled on the floor. The television was pulled from the wall and hanging by a couple of cords. One of the walls was smeared with a wide brown streak.
“It smells like an abandoned port-a-potty in the middle of the jungle,” said Marie, the back of her hand covering her nose. “And that’s not fair to jungle port-a-potties.”
Jackie pulled her shirt up over her nose and tried breathing through her mouth, surveying the damage. Next to the bed on the floor was a syringe and a wad of tinfoil. There were prescription bottles strewn across the room.
“We haven’t even been gone two days,” Jackie said in disbelief. She wandered into the bathroom, watching her step. She opened the door to the toilet and immediately closed it. Bile stung her throat and she tried to keep from vomiting.
The water she’d left in the bathtub was a murky greenish color and there was a thin film dotting the surface. It resembled pond scum. She pushed past the bathroom and into her master closet. She reached into her pack and pulled out the light. She thumbed it on, expecting the worst. At least there was some good news there.
Piled into a corner of the closet, partially obscured by clothing, was much of the food missing from the pantry. There was also some of the freezer meat, still packed in sealed plastic bags. It was likely no good, but at least now they had days more supplies of canned and boxed goods. If the gas was still working, she could boil water from the pool and cook with that.
Jackie called to the others, who reluctantly joined her in the closet. Each of them grabbed handfuls of what they could and carried it back to the kitchen. It took three trips.
Standing at the kitchen island, Jackie wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. She leaned on the granite, letting its cool seep into her palms.
“What do we do about the bedroom, Mom?” Marie asked.
Jackie shrugged. “We let your father deal with it when he gets home. Chris, go close the bedroom door. We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep.”
“I’ll get to work on the windows and doors,” Nikki said. “Once I’m finished, we should be okay for a while.”
“For a while,” Jackie said with a hint of sarcasm. “For a while.”
CHAPTER 22
MISSION ELAPSED TIME
76 DAYS, 03 HOURS, 01 MINUTE, 43 SECONDS
OKLAHOMA PANHANDLE
Through the ringing that resonated like white noise, Clayton could finally hear the hum of the engine above the annoying high-pitched din. Chandra and Sally were asleep in the backseats. As far as he knew, Sally hadn’t awoken since Bert’s surprise attack.
They’d stopped once to refuel and still had plenty of diesel in the back. The truck had moved at a comfortable clip, easily maneuvering off the highway shoulder to avoid abandoned vehicles. Since the sun had dropped beneath the horizon, Bert had slowed down. They were traveling at forty miles an hour, careful not to move at a speed too fast for the conditions.
Clayton reached up and pulled on his headset, adjusting the mic. “I dozed off for a second. Where are we?”
“Close to Boise City, Oklahoma.” Bert replied, thumping a rhythm atop the wheel as he drove. “We’re a few hours to Amarillo. I’m hoping to find some food there.”
“Yeah,” said Clayton, “we didn’t think this whole thing through, did we?”
Bert glanced at Clayton, his face aglow from the dashboard instruments. “Not really. No worries though. We’ll be fine.”
Clayton tugged on the seatbelt shoulder harness and sat up in his seat. Ahead, in the distance, were flashing red lights. He rubbed his eyes and leaned forward, putting his hands on the dash above the flat-panel monitor in front of his seat. The lights were still there, strobing varyi
ng degrees of red.
“You see that?” he asked Bert. “Those lights up there?”
“I see them. Guessing it’s a checkpoint.”
Clayton scratched his head. “In the middle of nowhere?”
“Certainly seems as though everywhere is the middle of nowhere right now.”
“Good point,” said Clayton. “What are you going to do?”
Bert shrugged. “I’ll stop. As far as they know, we’re soldiers. We’re headed to Amarillo.”
“That’s good,” said Clayton. “Tell them we’re headed to Rick Husband Airport. Part of it is a former Air Force base. Say we’ve got business there.”
“All right,” said Bert.
“What if they ask for ID?”
“We’ve got some.”
“What?”
Bert cleared his throat. “I took them from the…the bodies of the soldiers at the tank farm. I also took this.”
Bert reached under the seat and pulled out a nine-millimeter handgun. He pulled back the slide to chamber a round, then he put the pistol back. He glanced at Clayton.
“There’s one strapped under your seat too.”
Clayton looked over his shoulder at Sally. She was out. Her mouth was agape, her head leaning against the window, shaking with the vibration of the truck on the highway. He shifted the subject, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“We should tell them Sally is our prisoner,” he said. “She’s the reason we’re headed to Amarillo. Delivering her there?”
Bert nodded. They were approaching the checkpoint. An armed soldier stood in front of a pair of concrete Jersey barriers that blocked half of the highway. Another set of barriers was set back several feet, creating a serpentine path through the checkpoint.
The soldier raised his hand, palm out, ordering Bert to stop the JLTV. Bert downshifted and set the emergency brake. He rolled down his window and the soldier approached.
“Good evening,” said the soldier, both hands on his M4, which was aimed at the ground. “Where are you headed?”
“Amarillo,” Bert said. “We have a delivery at the airport.”
The soldier peeked into the window, eyeing the cab and all four people inside. He grunted and stepped back. “Where are you coming from?”
“Denver.”
“What’s the delivery?”
“The drugged woman in the back.”
The soldier’s stone face twitched. One eyebrow arched higher than the other. He took another step back and surveyed the JLTV’s exterior.
He stepped back to the window. “You have transport papers?”
Bert hesitated. He looked at the checkpoint and back at the guard at the window. He dropped his right hand from the wheel, easing to the spot where he’d hidden the pistol.
“We don’t need transport papers,” said Clayton, his voice laced with false offense. “Are you kidding me, soldier?”
The soldier’s eyes widened with surprise and he adjusted his grip on the M4. “Excuse me?”
“We’re in a state of emergency,” said Clayton. “We’ve got serious business in Amarillo. Strategic Command needs us there yesterday and you’re asking us for papers? What is this? Who is your commanding officer? I need to see someone with authority.”
The soldier leaned in, apparently unfazed. “I need to see some identification.”
Clayton reached between the seats to the stack of rectangular plastic Army identification cards. He leaned across Bert and offered them to the guard. When the guard reached for them, Clayton pulled them back.
“I need to see yours, soldier.”
The guard flashed his badge, holding it in front of Bert for a second, then motioned for Clayton to hand over his. Clayton obliged. The guard thumbed through them, studying each one. He’d given up his situational awareness to check the cards. Clayton reached under his seat, pried the pistol free of its Velcro binding, and silently chambered a round.
Holding the weapon at his side, hidden between his seat and the passenger-side door, he slid his finger inside the trigger guard and felt a slight protrusion that ran along the center of the trigger. It was the embedded trigger safety.
It was a Glock, like he had at home. He’d never used the weapon except for target practice. He didn’t want to use it now. He didn’t want to open fire on the kid doing his job. He hesitated but slid it back under the seat. Bert, however, had his in his hand. He was apparently ready, again, to do whatever needed doing.
The guard handed back the identifications. “Hard to tell who’s who now when you’ve got beards. But you’re good,” he said. “Be safe. Thanks for your patience. We’re not letting anyone through without cause.”
The guard stepped back and raised his arm above his head. He waved his hand in a circle, signaling the other soldiers to let the JLTV pass. Then he motioned for Bert to put the truck in drive.
Bert laid his Glock on the floorboard and accelerated, maneuvering to the right and then left, carefully working the truck through the serpentine barriers. When they moved past the last of them, Bert pressed on the gas and gunned the engine away from the checkpoint.
“That was close.” He exhaled. “I was ready for another firefight.”
Clayton sank back into his seat, releasing the uncomfortable tension in his neck and shoulders. He tugged on the seatbelt, adjusting it against his chest and hips, watching the headlights illuminate the white lane lines in the center of the highway.
“Speaking of firefight,” he said, “what happened back at the tank farm?”
Bert reached down for the Glock and slid it into his strap. “What do you mean?”
“You went all Rambo,” said Clayton. “How did you even know how to operate that cannon on top of the truck?”
“It isn’t a cannon,” Bert said. “It’s a thirty-millimeter chain gun.”
“A chain gun.”
Bert chuckled. “Actually, I guess it is a cannon. I know how to use it because I fired something similar before. I’m former Australian military, Tactical Assault Group. We hunted terrorists. That’s where I got my security training.”
Clayton was speechless. He’d met plenty of ex and former military. The astronaut corps was riddled with them. Bert had never struck Clayton as military. That wasn’t a good or bad thing, it just was.
Bert rubbed the week-old beard on his neck. “I haven’t had this much hair on my face since Afghanistan.”
“I didn’t know,” Clayton mustered.
“I don’t talk about it much. It seems like a long time ago, even longer since the world went to hell.”
“I didn’t mean to judge,” Clayton tried to apologize, “or seem flippant.”
“No worries,” said Bert. “If I’m honest, it wasn’t my finest moment back there. I didn’t have anything smaller. That thirty cal was a bit of an overkill. It tore people apart.”
Bert stared into the V-shaped path of light ahead of them on the highway. The ex-Special Forces operator chuckled to himself nervously. He wiped his forehead and then ran his hands along the steering wheel. “What about you?” asked Bert. “You’re an astronaut, right?”
Clayton’s eyes drifted to the horizon and then up to the black sky. The milky red aurora was gone. “I was,” he said. “Until I crashed back to Earth.”
“What happened up there?”
Clayton sucked in a deep breath and exhaled through puffed cheeks. He shifted in his seat and leaned his elbow against the door. “That’s a short question with a really long answer,” he replied.
“We’ve got time,” said Bert. “If we’re going all the way to Houston, the odometer tells me we have another seven hundred miles at least.”
Clayton leaned back and closed his eyes. Seven hundred miles was nothing. It was easy. ten hours under normal driving conditions, not more than fifteen or sixteen hours as things stood. Soon enough he’d be home. He’d start the next chapter of his life, the one where his family was the focus and the center of everything he did. Their survival and happines
s would trump his own. He was about to speak when his seat jerked forward and something hit him from behind. There was pressure at his throat, something sharp rubbing against his skin. A voice snarling at his ear threatened to kill him, her hot breath uncomfortable on his neck. Sally was awake.
“Stop the truck,” she growled. “Pull over now and stop the truck.”
Clayton struggled against the hold, but her leverage was just so that as he moved, she tightened her suffocating wrap and pressed her pocketknife forcefully against his neck. Instead of fighting her, he dropped his hands to his sides, his right one finding the Glock. When he tried to grab it, she jerked him to one side and he lost his grip. He was struggling to breathe. It was all happening so fast.
Bert momentarily took his hand off the wheel in surrender and decelerated quickly. “All right,” he said. “I’m pulling over.”
The truck slowed and Bert applied the brake, turning the engine off. He was parked straddling the line that separated the shoulder from the slow lane. Clayton tried reaching for the gun, his right arm twisting to reach it. He couldn’t find it.
“Leave the keys in the ignition and get out,” Sally demanded.
Bert hesitated. He shifted his body to look at her. She kicked the back of his seat with her left foot.
“Get out!” she screamed.
Bert fumbled for the door handle, tumbled out of the truck, and slid clumsily onto the highway. He backed away from the truck, his right hand in front of his face, begging Sally to stay calm. He’d left the door open, the window still down from the checkpoint. When he was clear of the truck, Sally loosened her grip on Clayton.
“You,” she said, “spaceman. You get out too.” She shoved the back of his head and freed him from her hold.
Clayton fell forward onto the floorboard. He reached up and grabbed the door handle, swung it open, and climbed out onto the shoulder. He stumbled back on the uneven edge of asphalt but kept his balance enough not to fall into the grassy embankment aside the highway.
