“Try the Food and Drug Administration or the Center for Disease Control website.” Mrs. Rodriquez’s knees popped when she pushed to her feet. “They may have a list of health care providers and directories that were opening.”
“I’m on it.”
“I’d best return to the Flatulent Fifteen.” The nurse shuffled to the back.
Good. This was good. They had a plan. Even if it did include stealing. Maybe Eddie would stop calling her Princess. “We’ll stop at the survivor’s station first and check the supplies the military left before we begin raiding stores and pharmacies.”
Because theft should be their last option.
“Sure thing, Princess.”
She swallowed the bile in her mouth. “I agreed to the plan.”
Heck, she’d even made it up.
“I found a few listed on the CDC website.” Eddie brushed her arm when he leaned forward and held the list of stores in front of her face. “Bonus! They’re on Eighty-seven.”
She peered over the top. Good thing they had the highway number on the address or she’d be lost. She frowned as they passed a mangled sign. Someone had spray painted over the ‘Welcome to Payson’ with the words ‘keep out.’ Was it a hold over from the Redaction’s quarantine measures? “That’s what the BeeLine Highway turns into, right? Eighty-seven?”
“Yeah, but—” Switching the computer to his left hand, Eddie pushed to his feet. “What the fuck!”
Her heart slammed to a stop and she snapped her attention to the road. Across the black asphalt, silver sparkled in a stray sunbeam. Rising up in her seat, she stomped on the brake.
Someone screamed. Others groaned. Things shifted and slid along the bus’s floor. Something knocked against her heel.
“Stop!” Eddie lurched from his seat.
“I’m trying!” But it was too late. The metal spikes bit into the front tires, chewing up the rubber. The wheel jerked out of her hands and the back fishtailed. She jerked her feet off the pedal and grabbed the steering wheel.
Eddie’s hands bracketed hers. “Turn into the skid, right.”
“Right!” She could handle this. Muscle burned as she cranked the wheel. Good Lord, this was much harder to drive than her Mini Coop. Rubber slapped the undercarriage of the bus.
Behind her, the other four buses in the caravan squealed.
She got the wheels on track just as the nose skidded off the road. The vibration traveled up her arms, rattling her teeth. A metallic taste flooded her mouth as the bus slammed into an embankment. Mud splattered the windshield.
She burped a laugh and pried her fingers from the wheel. “We did it.”
And they weren’t dead.
Yay!
Eddie stiffened.
The door burst inside. Glass sprayed the steps in glittering diamonds. Ice cold metal circled her temple. She looked down the double barrels of the shotgun to the tapered fingers holding it.
“Move and I’ll blow your brains out.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
David leaned forward in the Humvee’s driver’s seat. White snowflakes swirled in the breeze and collected in drifts along the side of the red-tinged asphalt road. The flakes melted when they hit the windshield and were quickly swept away by the wipers. Behind him, green and tan military vehicles linked brightly colored pick-up trucks hauling animal trailers in a convoy snaking through the hills near Strawberry.
“I think I have the last of the jurors, Ma’am.” Speaking from the front passenger seat, Lieutenant Sally Rogers handed her tablet to Mavis in the back. “She lost a sister about the same time and age as Trent’s second victim. The sister was raped and beaten to death before martial law was enforced.”
He rolled his shoulders and adjusted the heat vent to blow in the back. Green and brown needles danced as they fell off the towering pines. The hill rose sharply on his left and here and there among the forest, he picked out the shiny glass of unbroken windows. On the right, the ground dipped into empty meadow lands divided by barbed wire strung across wooden poles. Sheds listed to the side and snow dusted a faded totem pole. Loose boards slapped the sides of double wides. Blood red paint flaked off barns and vegetation choked the overgrown dirt drives.
Everything appeared abandoned, empty.
Still, his gut clenched.
It was too damn quiet. Maybe it was the hush of the snow. But he doubted it. Up ahead, the road dipped and curved. Plenty of places for an ambush or to hide an IED. David tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Whose stupid idea was it to put their leaders in the front of the caravan?
Mavis cleared her throat and handed the tablet back to the lieutenant. “Yes, I think she’ll be a wonderful juror. When you pass the names onto council, make certain you provide only the vital statistics they gave at registration. We don’t want any Big Brother paranoia.”
David scanned the road ahead. Right to left. Left to right. Up the hill; down in the meadow.
Lister removed his sidearm from his holster and closed his laptop. “This is an approved egress route, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Mavis set her hand on David’s seat and pulled herself forward. “And there aren’t any people.”
Did that mean he wasn’t paranoid if everyone else felt it too? Light winked at nine o’clock. There and gone before he could register it. “Did anyone else see that?”
Mavis shifted out of sight of his rearview mirror. “There’s a house back there. It could be anything.”
“I don’t like anything.” Lister thumbed off the safety but kept his weapon flat on his lap. “I like specific things.”
David nodded. Targets were good. “Someone want to hand me my rifle?”
Mavis rolled her eyes but unsnapped her seatbelt and leaned into the back. “Did it ever occur to you that the last soldiers through here evacuated everyone?”
“Sure.” And he’d believed in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus once too.
Mavis handed it forward.
The lieutenant intercepted it. “I’ll take this.” She caressed the barrel.
And he got to what—spit on the enemy? “With all due respect, Ma’am—”
“You can use my sidearm.” She pulled it out of her holster and handed him a shiny, black 9mm pistol. “That way you can drive and fire at the same time.”
He ground his teeth together. He could drive and shoot his M-4 at the same time. That baby had been with him for years. She wouldn’t like being handled by someone else. She definitely wouldn’t like being swapped out for a peashooter. Damn military regs. Steering with one hand, David accepted the pistol with the other. Such a fucking girlie weapon. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Oh don’t be such a baby.” Rogers checked the clip then the chamber. “I’ll take good care of it.”
“Her.” He corrected then wished he’d bit his tongue off instead.
Rogers nodded. “I’ll take good care of her.” Holding her weapon at the ready, but below the window. “How far off is she?”
David strangled the steering wheel. If the Marine lieutenant insulted his weapon, he’d rip if from her hands, officer or no. No one messed with a soldier’s weapons.
“Sergeant-Major?”
“Laser site is on target.” He’d compensated for that as soon as he’d been issued his baby. “Iron site is two degrees to the left.”
“Thanks.”
Her finger settled in the groove beside the trigger. The groove he created. His groove. The Humvee dipped low as it rounded a bend. “You should get on your jacket and helmet, Doc.”
Mavis lifted her jacket to show the Kevlar vest. “I always dress in layers during cold weather.”
His fingers tingled and he relaxed his grip on the wheel. He should have known she’d be a couple steps ahead of him. Except in one area. “Helmet.”