The kids had found a small trailer in the shed and hooked it to the hitch on the back of the jeep. They had filled the trailer with gas canisters. The few supplies that they had scavenged in the city remained in their backpacks.
The jeep itself was only built to hold four people, but Pix and Flash were small, and they were able to cram three people in the backseat instead of two. Elle crawled into the front passenger seat, next to Jay, who sat behind the wheel. He was happy to be in control of the vehicle.
“So were you a car thief?” Elle inquired slyly.
Jay only grinned. “Why do you say that?”
“You seem to be an expert in hotwiring cars.”
Jay laughed, his white teeth a flash against the early morning darkness.
“I’m not an expert,” he replied. “I’m just… I have a wide range of skills, let’s put it that way.”
Elle wasn’t buying it. She plopped her backpack down at her feet. Georgia, Pix and Flash hopped into the backseat. The trailer was secured and they had enough gas to get them to Sacramento. They shouldn’t have a problem.
The thought excited Elle.
“I haven’t been in a car in ages,” Georgia drawled, chewing on a piece of gum. “Not since I was arrested, and the ride in the back of the cop car sucked.”
“That’s what you get for being a criminal,” Elle commented.
Georgia stuck her tongue out at Elle, and she laughed.
“The engine seems to be in good condition,” Flash said, adopting his teacher voice. “Pix and I haven’t found any problems with it, other than the fact that the battery is low.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Georgia replied, making a face. “Can you please can the child-genius comments for just an hour. Please?”
Flash folded his arms across his chest, insulted. Pix patted his shoulder.
They couldn’t help being smart. They just were.
“Are we ready?” Elle asked, looking over her shoulder.
“Yes,” Georgia answered. “But I want to know why you get to sit in the front. I’m one of the oldest ones here.”
“How do you know I’m not the oldest one here?” Elle pointed out.
Georgia blew a bubble.
“Oh? How old are you, Tinkerbell?
“Fifteen and a half.”
“Ha. I’m seventeen. You’re a mere child.”
Elle rolled her eyes.
“Let’s just go, okay?” Jay sighed. “Everybody in? Good. Say goodbye to the ranch.”
He slowly shifted gears and pulled away from the house. The gravel driveway crunched under the Suzuki’s tires. Elle refused to look at the ranch house. She just watched the shadow of the building fade into the rearview mirror as Jay eased the jeep and the trailer down the mountain road.
She hoped her Aunt and Uncle were safe, wherever they were.
She hoped Sacramento was all that they hoped it would be.
She hoped that they would all survive this road trip.
Chapter Twelve
Elle knelt next to Pix, touching her forehead. The girl’s skin was on fire. Her face was drained of color and her breathing was heavy, labored. It was raining. Everyone was cold and wet. Flash’s face was pinched. He held his glasses in his hand, teary-eyed. Georgia was standing next to the jeep, taking a nervous drag on a cigarette. The girl was rattled.
“What do we do?” Flash whispered.
Pix was lying across the backseat, semiconscious. She had been sick for two days, and it had slowed down their progress. They were stopped on the side of the road, past Bakersfield, California, near the Kern River. Interstate 5 stretched north and south as far as the eye could see, paralleling the golden coastal mountains on one side and the Central Valley on the other.
“We’ve got to get her medicine,” Jay said. His fingers curled into fists. “She’s dying.”
“We don’t have medicine,” Flash said, choked up. “We’ve got nothing.”
Elle continued to hold Pix’s limp, sweaty hand.
Georgia was silent, wordless. She was angry that their journey to Sacramento, to safe haven, had been stopped by something as seemingly petty as Flash being sick.
Elle wished she’d grow up. Everyone wanted to get to Sacramento.
If Pix was sick, that wasn’t her fault.
“We’re close to a rest stop,” Elle pointed out. She had spent a lot of time studying the maps from Aunt and Uncle’s ranch house. “There’s a community a few miles from here, and there’s probably a pharmacy in town. We can search it and look for something that might help her.”
“I thought we were supposed to avoid towns,” Georgia snapped.
“We were,” Jay replied, his tone sharp. “But Pix’s sick. We don’t have a choice.”
Georgia closed her mouth, throwing her cigarette to the ground.
“Jay and I will go into town,” Elle said. “Georgia, you stay with Pix and Flash. Keep them safe.”
How did this happen? Just two days ago, they had left the ranch house in the Tehachapi hills full of high hopes. They had a car, gas, supplies and a map. They were on their way to Sacramento, the rumored safe haven for wartime survivors and militia fighters.
Nothing ever went as planned.
2 Days Earlier
Elle could smell the blood. Georgia leaned over the side of the Suzuki and puked. Pix and Flash gripped the door handles tightly. Jay stopped the jeep and they sat there, staring at the huge expanse of freeway that curved down the last stretch of the Tehachapi hills — the Grapevine.
Parts of the highway had been blown apart. Chunks of concrete was scattered throughout the hills. Dead bodies were strewn through patches of dry grass. The air stank of rotting flesh and there were spots in the soil where the rain had mixed with blood, creating red rivers in the mud.
“What happened here?” Georgia breathed, shaking.
Elle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the scene again.
“This was a battle,” she said. “Omega versus somebody else.”
“Who was the ‘somebody else?’” Jay said.
“Us,” Pix replied automatically. “Look at the dead. They’re Omega. They’re mostly Chinese, too. I see some National Guard uniforms out there, though.”
“So this was a fight between the National Guard and Omega,” Jay said. “Unbelievable. They just left the dead here to rot?”
“This was pretty recent,” Flash observed.
“Should we go back?” Pix asked.
“No. There’s nothing for us down south,” Jay replied.
“We can’t drive on the road the whole way. So much of it has been blown to pieces.”
“We’ll use the side roads.”
“I don’t see any signs of Omega,” Georgia added. “And I don’t see any signs of the United States military, either.”
Elle’s heart sank.
She had been hoping that they would run across the United States military, somehow, and that they would be protected. Surely the National Guard would take care of survivors. That’s why they were going to Sacramento, after all.
But that wasn’t happening. Not today.
“We need to get out of here,” Elle said. “They could come back.”
“This battle is over,” Jay replied, clenching his fist. “We have to keep going.”
No one argued. They didn’t want to go back to the city, and the only way to escape was to keep heading north. So they did. Jay navigated side roads, trying to keep the trailer from getting rocked too much. The gasoline was too valuable to lose.
It took hours to get down the mountain.