by Lucin, David
From there, they entered the mountains. The road, with its blind corners, sharp banks, and rock faces, resembled the one between Flagstaff and Payson. Fortunately, there were no Ponderosas here, just short deciduous trees and desert brush, so the visibility was better. Even so, Jenn spent most of the past two hours leaning forward on the edge of her seat. As per Dylan’s suggestion, the Dodge stayed a mile or more behind, keeping an eye on their rear.
“All right,” Dylan said to Jenn. “How much farther?”
She checked the map in her lap. “Close. This runs in a straight line for a few miles east of Prescott.” Her family trips to Prescott returned to her. In those days, it was little more than a day trip from Phoenix. Now it felt like the other side of the country. “It should flatten out soon. The town’s kind of in a valley with mountains all around.”
“You’ve been there?” Dylan asked. “In Prescott?”
“Yeah. A few times.”
“Why?”
“Vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“Well, we couldn’t quite afford to visit Tahiti or France,” Jenn said. “I’m not from Arcadia.” Her mention of Sam’s old neighborhood made her wince. She had to stop defining the world by one-percenters and everyone else. Barbara and Kevin sleeping on cots in a rat-infested home was a testament to how the bombs had eroded that division. Survivors were survivors, no matter how fat their incomes or their homes had been before. “There’s lots of hiking around there.”
“I don’t like hiking,” Carter said.
Jenn almost jumped at the sound of his voice. Those were the first words he’d spoken to her.
“I’m with Vladdy,” Dylan mused. “What makes walking up a hill fun?”
“What, you didn’t go hiking when you were a kid?”
“You ever been to Red Deer?”
“I can’t even point it out on a map,” Jenn said. “And Red Deer? Really? It sounds made-up.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a stupid name. Anyway, not too many hills around there. All prairie. So no, no hiking for me.”
“Whatever. You should try it sometime. Getting out of the city for a bit was always nice.”
“Right.”
Jenn relayed the story about how she and her family ended up lost in the mountains outside of Prescott. Halfway through, she realized how silly it sounded. Dylan didn’t care. Why would he? She continued talking anyway. It was surprisingly easy to discuss her parents and brothers. There was no anger, no resentment. She just enjoyed telling someone about them, even if he was only feigning interest to be polite.
“How big is Prescott?” Dylan asked when she finished her story.
“Not sure. The size of Flagstaff, maybe? At least it was when I was a kid. It weathered the depression a bit better.” Jenn kicked the back of his seat. “You can thank rich tourists and their love of hiking for that.”
The road straightened and leveled off as it descended into a valley. The trees became sparser and the green bushes transitioned to yellow grasses. If not for the smoke, the air would’ve had that subtle herbal scent that Jenn could never explain. Now it felt like they were driving through fog, and it smelled as though the world was on fire.
Telephone poles zipped by on her left. Dylan had picked up speed but still drove under the limit. A few hundred yards ahead, a stalled pickup materialized in the smoke. He moved into the oncoming lane to avoid it.
“I’m hungry,” Carter said. “Is there anything to eat?”
Carter’s mention of food made Jenn’s stomach rumble. Hopefully Sophie had packed something other than cornbread. She craved a sandwich with real turkey on whole-wheat bread, the same as the ones her father used to pack in her lunch when she was in elementary school.
The pickup flew past. “We’ve got some protein bars,” Dylan started. “Jansen, pull out a couple for us.”
Jenn licked her lips. Those things tasted like the sole of a shoe, but after three days of eating nothing but cornbread, her mouth watered at the thought.
She flipped open the lid of the cooler beside her but stopped when a figure, his bottom half-obscured by tall grass, popped up on the right shoulder. Then something rolled across the road. Before she could tell what it was, her forehead and nose struck Carter’s seat. A stabbing sensation shot down her neck, and she tasted blood. Her guts twisted as her sense of balance disappeared. Through a blur, she noticed the horizon wobbling back and forth. A scraping sound came from beneath the truck.
In front of her, Carter yelled incoherently. Jenn blinked hard to force away the stars clouding her vision. Dylan jerked the wheel right, then left, and the Nissan tilted. Her seatbelt tightened across her chest and the road flipped. The whole world spun with it.
Her head struck her window, and a fresh wave of hot pain exploded in her temple. She coughed, feeling as though she’d inhaled water.
Everything went black.
When her eyes opened again, the pain, worse this time, throbbed with each beat of her heart. Her hair was falling the wrong way—toward the roof of the truck. Blood rushed to her brain. It warmed her cheeks and made her dizzy. The seat belt cut into her neck and waist. Every breath made her choke on something wet. The window on her right was shattered, and she saw nothing but pavement outside.
“Dy—” she tried, but only a groan came out. “Ca—”
Her door screeched. Working against gravity, she reached for her gun but found only her hip.
“Hold on,” Dylan said. It sounded like he was a mile away. “Grab her and lower her down.”
Thick hands pressed against her stomach and back. Then a clicking sound came from her seat belt, and the pressure on her neck eased. Another set of hands took her by the shoulders and lowered her to the ceiling of the Nissan.
Her vision blacked out again. Or she’d shut her eyes. She couldn’t tell. After a few moments, she found herself sitting up on the road, Dylan’s face level with hers. Using the sleeve of his shirt, he dabbed at the space above her lip. She pulled away and threw up a hand to block him.
“It’s okay,” Dylan said and swatted her arm. “You’re bleeding.”
She touched her nose, and her fingertips came back red. Dylan’s hat had disappeared. Orange hair matted with sweat stuck to his forehead, and a cut graced his cheekbone.
Behind him, Carter limped while walking in a circle, his eyes wide with fear.
Jenn wiped her bloody fingers on her shirt. “What happened?”
“We blew a tire,” Dylan said.
“Blew a tire?” She remembered seeing something before the truck flipped. What was it? Had an animal run onto the road and forced Dylan to swerve and avoid it? There were coyotes out here in the desert. When her father first drove her up to Flagstaff to attend NAU, they saw a dead one on the highway. Actually, when she thought harder, it probably wasn’t too far from Camp Verde. If a coyote hadn’t jumped out at them, it could have been a pronghorn or even an elk, but they usually lived farther north.
She planted a hand to push herself up but recoiled when a shard of glass cut into her skin. Dylan held her down by the shoulders, then snapped his fingers close to her face. “Hey, look at me.”
Two Dylans stared at her. She blinked hard and they merged into one.
“Do you know your name?” he asked her.
“My name?” A tickle formed in her throat, so she cleared it with a growl and spat out a glob of red.
“You might have a concussion,” Dylan said. “Tell me your name.”
“Concussion?”
Dylan snapped his fingers some more. “Hey, what’s your name?”
She stretched her jaw. “It’s Jenn.”
“What’s the date?” He pulled up her eyelid with a thumb and inspected her pupil.
“May . . .” May what? The bombs fell on April 28. Had a full week passed since then? Were there thirty days in April or thirty-one? Jenn could never remember. “The third?” she tried.
“Fourth, actually.” Dylan leaned past her, reached int
o the Nissan, and pulled out her gun and holster.
Behind the eyes, her head pounded. This was the worst headache she’d ever had. Even worse than New Year’s Day after a night of drinking cheap beer with Sam’s friends in his dorm, and that hangover lasted almost forty-eight hours.
Dylan, still crouching, squinted and eyed the road. Jenn craned her neck to follow his gaze, but hot pain laced up the base of her skull. The faint sunlight filtering through the smoky haze felt more like a high-powered spotlight being shined into her face.
Dylan had risen to his feet and was staring into the distance.
“What is it?” Jenn asked. “What are you doing?”
He held out his hand and took a step away from her. “Give me your gun.”
Why did he want her weapon? Where was his rifle?
“Gun,” Dylan ordered. “Now.” His concentration was still fixed on something Jenn couldn’t see. Why was he so agitated? Maybe they both had concussions.
Absentmindedly, she picked up the Glock, but it was too heavy. She swore that she’d deadlifted weights lighter than this pistol. “What are you looking for?” she asked, then brought a hand to shield her eyes from the relentless glow of the red sun. “Is Sophie back there?”
His fingers curled, beckoning for her weapon. “We hit a spike strip.”
A fresh pulse of searing-hot pain detonated between her ears as her stomach threatened to void itself. “Spike strip?” Her mind wandered to videos she’d watched on the news of high-speed police chases in Phoenix. “Like what cops use?”
Dylan reached for Jenn’s Glock, but he froze when Carter spoke up. “Uh, guys,” he said. Clutching his right knee, he stood in front of two figures with rifles raised. Respirators covered their faces. One wore black pants and a tan-brown button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Patches adorned the shirt’s shoulders, and a badge was pinned above the left breast pocket.
The radio inside the Nissan crackled to life. “Dylan!” Sophie barked. “Vladdy! You there? Jansen? Come in!”
9
“Drop it!” the man in the brown shirt commanded, his voice distorted through the mask. His hair was thin, and what little remained had turned gray. “Hands up! Now!”
Throbbing pains stabbed at Jenn’s temples, and her stomach churned. Both Dylan and Carter had taken to their knees. Dylan interlocked his fingers behind his head while Carter raised his arms high into the air. He was pleading, saying he didn’t do anything wrong, but the thundering headache made the words difficult to understand.
“Drop it!” the man barked again.
The other figure—a woman—leveled her rifle at Jenn’s chest. Her shoulders were wide, the arms thick, and her hair was cut short. She also wore black pants and a tan-colored shirt. There was an embroidered nametag above her breast pocket. It blurred in and out of focus, but eventually, Jenn made out the word: “O’REILLY.” The man’s, she thought, said “WILSON.”
Sheriff’s uniforms? Why would sheriffs attack them for no reason? Were O’Reilly and Wilson even their real names?
“You! With the gun!” the woman—O’Reilly, maybe—called in a muffled voice. “Flinch and I’ll put two in your face.”
The Glock! It was still in Jenn’s hand. In a panic, the rifle aimed at the space between her eyes, she dropped it beside her.
“Why did you attack us?” Jenn asked. In her daze, the words sounded casual, almost nonchalant. She didn’t mean them that way.
“Roll over,” O’Reilly commanded. She tucked the gun into her belt. “Onto your stomach.”
“What?” Jenn droned. “Why?”
O’Reilly jabbed the rifle at her.
“Fine, fine.” Jenn complied and lay on the pavement. A shard of glass poked into her cheek. Beneath her, the world rocked like the deck of a ship in choppy seas. Everything in her body told her to shut her eyes and go to sleep. Every time she blinked, her eyelids threatened to stay closed.
Rough hands touched her ankles, legs, butt, and hips. Then cold metal slapped onto her wrists and dug into her skin. Her shoulder popped as she was jerked up and set against the truck.
Finished with Jenn, O’Reilly marched toward Carter.
“We didn’t do nothing!” he wailed. “We’re from Flagstaff. We were—”
A foot to the midsection sent Carter falling to his side.
“Hey!” Jenn shouted. She fought to stand, but her bound hands made it difficult. “Leave him alone!”
“Quiet!” O’Reilly pulled a second set of handcuffs from her belt and proceeded to strap them onto Carter’s wrists. When she finished, she trained her rifle on Dylan while the man—Wilson, according to his nametag—cuffed him as well.
“Check the truck,” he said to his colleague.
Were these two with the gang in Camp Verde? Had they somehow gotten around the Dodge and Nissan and set up an ambush with spike strips? Jenn blinked away the stars in her vision. No, that didn’t make sense, though the group at Camp Verde could have sent word to these people, telling them about the incoming vehicles. But how? Did they have working cell phones? Jenn doubted that radios could work across that kind of distance.
Faint sunlight glistened off the badge on the man’s shirt. “You killed them,” Jenn said. O’Reilly bent down to look through the shattered rear passenger window of the Nissan. She found the radio and tossed it to the man. “The sheriffs. You killed them and took their uniforms.”
They ignored her accusation. Behind the truck, O’Reilly flipped open the lid to a can of ammunition. A trail of debris—MREs, a rifle, and jugs of water—stretched down the road. Two jerry cans lay on their sides. The cap of one had come loose, and gasoline spilled onto the street. Jenn could smell it through the smoke.
What would these people do with her, Dylan, and Carter? Take their supplies and leave them here? Put bullets in their heads and bury them in the desert? If the car thieves on the way to Payson had tried to kill her and Sam, these two in sheriff’s uniforms would do the same. No witnesses.
Jenn zeroed in on her Glock tucked into O’Reilly’s belt. Dylan was closest to the gun, but with his wrists bound like Jenn’s, he wouldn’t be able to swipe it away.
Where were Sophie and the Dodge? They were only a mile behind, so they should have caught up. Had they seen the wreck and kept their distance? She and Valeria were the only hope of escape now, but the radio had gone silent.
“What’d you see?” Wilson asked O’Reilly.
She kicked aside an empty cardboard box. “None of it looks like ours.”
Ours? Why would there be anything of theirs in the Nissan?
“Officers,” Dylan said, his voice calm and respectful.
Jenn almost snorted. Officers. If these people were police, she was Galileo.
She searched the road for Sophie but found nothing.
The sudden urge to run washed over her, but she doubted she could make it a dozen yards before being gunned down.
“Mayor Andrews sent us,” Dylan continued. “From Flagstaff.”
“Who was that on your radio?” Wilson wiggled the device in front of him. “The one with the smoker’s voice.”
The corner of Dylan’s mouth twitched. “She put this expedition together.”
Jenn hissed and made a face, hoping it told him to keep quiet about Sophie. He tilted his head in confusion. She thought to gesture with her hands but couldn’t. Screw these handcuffs.
“The smoker,” Wilson continued. “She’s your leader?”
“That’s right.”
Jenn made another face, but Dylan wasn’t paying attention. Why was he telling them all this? He didn’t think they were real police, did he? Maybe he was playing some sort of mind game with them.
Wilson’s rifle fell a few inches. “How many of you are there?”
A tsk-tsk sound came from Dylan. “Nice try, Sherriff.” A humorless smile creased his face. “I will tell you, though”—he gestured around by rotating his shoulders—“that it’s more than the three of us.”<
br />
“You killed one of our people the last time you passed through,” O’Reilly sneered, her voice shrill behind the respirator.
“Killed?” Carter shrieked. Tears filled his eyes. “We didn’t hurt anybody. We—”
O’Reilly stomped toward him and drove a boot into his ribs. He cried out and toppled over.
“Stop it!” Jenn shouted. “Leave him alone!” She jerked her arms, trying to break free of the handcuffs, but they cut into her skin. The headache faded as more adrenaline mixed with the rage blooming in her veins. She imagined planting the barrel of her Glock on this woman’s temple, sliding her finger to the trigger, and—
“You want to know his name?” O’Reilly lowered her face to Carter’s. “It was Ryan. Ryan Vogel. He had a wife and two kids, you piece of sh—”
“Deputy!” Wilson interrupted.
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry. “But we should just put these animals down. They don’t deserve anything else.”
“We?” Jenn countered. Dylan threw her a sideways glance. Calm down, it implored, but she ignored it. “You’re the ones who shot at us by the bridge and attacked us for no reason. You should be put down.” She didn’t know if that was true; the gang in Camp Verde could be unrelated to O’Reilly and Wilson. Saying it felt good, though, like she was doing something, anything, to stand up for herself and Carter.
She spat a wad of bloody saliva for emphasis.
The gesture appalled O’Reilly. When she swung her rifle around to point it at Jenn, Wilson cut in. “Deputy! Lower your weapon.”
“But this little—”
“Breathe.” Wilson patted the air. “Just like we talked about.”
Jenn’s heart stopped. Briefly, she thought Deputy O’Reilly, if she was actually a deputy, might shoot her, then Dylan and Carter, in a misguided attempt to avenge this Ryan person.
O’Reilly’s rifle fell, and she tore off her respirator. Her features were smooth, and she had round cheeks. Jenn judged her as early thirties at most. Full lips pursed, she blew out a long breath through her nose.
