Brainiac held up his hand. “We did it! They’ll give us a medal for this, don’t you think?”
“Sure, B. A bright shiny medal.” Papa Rose high-fived him. Using his free hand, he pulled one side of the chain link gate closed. “Now let’s get on the road.”
Brainiac closed the other one but the bent metal didn’t quite line up. He looped the chain through it and pinched the lock closed. “We’re going to leave them be?”
Guess the squid really had been angry at his and Falcon’s hazing.
Falcon backed slowly toward the driver’s side door. “We’ll circle round the neighborhood and come at them from the field.”
“I’m sure we can find a horse trail or something that will take us right by it.” Papa Rose kept the house in his peripheral vision as he walked to the passenger side.
Brainiac rounded the edge of the fence. But instead of turning toward the truck, he faced the house.
“B!” Papa Rose yanked over the side door. “What the fuck!”
The first bullet smashed into the ground near the squid’s right shoe.
“Shit!” Ducking behind the open door, Papa Rose raised his weapon. No head popped above the hedges. “Where is the shooter?”
The second bullet ripped through Brainiac’s shoulder, twisting his upper torso. Light glinted around the left corner of the house.
“Got you!” Papa fired off two rounds.
The M-4 spat bullets. Bits of foliage exploded. A cry rang out.
Another bullet hit Brainiac in the chest and exploded out the back of his peacoat. The squid collapsed in slow motion—heels rose up, knees bent, and his hands dropped to his sides.
Falcon opened up the M-4, strafing first one side of the double wide then the other. “Get B!”
Firing his weapon at any twinkle of light, Papa Rose rushed forward. He grabbed the squid’s collar and he hit the dirt, dragging him behind the well’s pot-bellied pump, generator and drum of gasoline. He collapsed on the ground next to the squid.
Blood trickled from Brainiac’s mouth and foamed with bubbles when he coughed. The trail was dark against the brown mud. “We’re heroes, aren’t we, Papa Rose?”
“Sure, B.” Papa Rose applied pressure to the hole over the squid’s chest. Warm blood seeped through is fingers, more oozed in a growing puddle around his. Please, no. Not the squid. Please.
“I always wanted to be a hero.” Brainiac coughed. His brown eyes clouded. “I…”
The squid’s head lolled to the side and life slipped silently out of him.
Papa Rose pounded on Brainiac’s chest. “No you don’t.” His corpse convulsed with each hit. “You have to live to get that stupid medal.”
The generator cut out then continued with determination. Water rushed into the ditch.
“Dammit, B!” Papa Rose hit him again. Brainiac’s lifeless hand brushed his thigh. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t.”
Firing nonstop at the house, Falcon sprinted toward them. When the clip emptied, he slid the rest of the way on his knees. “How bad is it?”
Papa Rose scraped the blood from his hand and tried to pour it back into Brainiac. It didn’t work. Nothing would. He tugged the dog tags off and dropped them in his pocket. This ended now. He ejected the clip from his Sig. The new one nearly slipped out of his grip before he rammed it home. Rage hammered through him and he raised his gaze. “No mercy.”
Falcon swiped at his eyes and inserted a fresh clip. “No prisoners.”
He counted down on three fingers then charged the house.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Good Lord. Even the Redaction hadn’t smelled like this cesspit. Audra leaned over in the driver’s seat. Fresh air from the open window combed through her hair and filled her lungs. Maybe she should have let Stuart and his sick people stay like he’d demanded in his predawn meeting. She yawned and rubbed the grit from her eyes. As soon as she reached the soldiers, she’d get a good night’s sleep.
“You should have your mask on if you’re gonna breathe the outside air.” Eddie scooted over to the edge of his seat. “Anthrax is everywhere.”
His voice was muffled behind his gas mask.
Lucky duck. Those filters on the side probably made the air smell like petunias. Sighing, she adjusted her handkerchief over her nose and mouth. The malingering odor of fecal matter quickly seeped inside. She tried breathing through her mouth but practically tasted the emissions. There was only one cure for it. She turned her face in the breeze. “Happy now?”
Eddie winked at her. “Nope.”
Tough. She was driving the toilet on wheels and the windows stayed down. Anthrax be damned.
“Princess A.” Using the tops of the bus seats as handholds, Mrs. Rodriquez worked her way down the aisle. Chunks of brown smeared the Hibiscus print of her mumu. They rained to the floor when she stopped next to Eddie. “I’m out of saline.”
“There should be another supply station outside of Payson.” Audra tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Water puddled along the sides of the ribbon of blacktop winding through the hills. Dark clouds huddled on the northern horizon. They were heading straight for the storm with a busload of sick people. “Can we wait until then?”
Mrs. Rodriquez scratched her scalp. Steel-gray curls swirled around her fingers. “I was a school nurse. Until the Redaction hit, the worst I had to deal with was sniffles, lice and boo-boos.”
Audra steered the bus half onto the shoulder to get around an abandoned SUV. “You did great.”
“Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Rodriquez glanced over her shoulder. “The truth is, I don’t know if the IVs are doing any good.”
“It would help if we knew what made them sick.” And if they’d found the soldiers who had people to deal with this. Soon, Audra promised herself. By tonight they should reach the military convoy and Stuart and his sick followers would be someone else’s problem.
“I think I know.” Grabbing hold of the silver bar by the door, the nurse lowered herself onto the front seat opposite Audra. “It was the bread.”
“B-bread?” No. Not the stuff, she’d picked up at Burgers in a Basket. Audra braked as a coyote ran across the Beeline Highway. The animal’s eyes glowed yellow in the weak morning sunshine as it disappeared into the desert. A cactus wren poked its head out of a hole in a towering saguaro.
“Yep. They all ate it.”
“Ha!” Eddie set the laptop he’d pilfered from the Army base on his knees.
“Did you get that thing to work?” Audra took her eyes off the road for a moment. There was no doubt about it; her new head of security was very talented at acquiring things. Had that led to his incarceration? She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. The past didn’t matter.
“Uh-huh.” He tapped on the keys. “It just needed the battery recharged.”
“And that’s where these things come in, right?” She flicked the cellophane-like paper stuck to the dashboard. A brown cord ran down to the step and attached to a box with wires and D-batteries inside.
“Yep. It’s a solar charger.”
“We’ll have light tonight.” Not that they would need the flashlights. Unless something untoward happened, they should reach the soldiers in four hours. No, they would reach the soldiers in four hours.
“How are you getting anything on that, anyway?” Mrs. Rodriquez peered over Eddie’s shoulder.
“The CDC computers are still up and this thing is connected to them through a satellite.”
Excitement coursed through her veins and she wiggled on the hard seat. “Does it tell you how far ahead of us the soldiers are?”
Maybe they could join them by lunchtime and she’d escape the flatulence symphony behind her.