At first I could only stand there, gaping at him. From the way he held the gun, a small .22, I could tell he didn’t have much experience. One part of my mind began to coolly calculate whether I was fast enough to get that Glock out of my waistband before he fired on me. My father had taken me to the indoor range many times, and shooting up in the hills around town even more, and he’d made me practice pulling the gun from a holster as well as the waistband of my pants. I knew I had far more experience than the man who faced me. But…was it enough?
Stalling for time, I stammered, “W-what?”
“You heard me.” He waved the pistol in what he probably thought was a threatening manner. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want the car.”
“But — ” I kept my hands out where he could see them, knowing that he was probably nervous enough just handling the gun that he might do something really stupid if I made any sudden movements. “There are plenty of abandoned vehicles all over the city. You don’t need mine.”
“Yes, I do.” His gaze shifted from the rear door of the Cherokee to my face, and I could see the desperation in his watery brown eyes. “I don’t have to hunt for the key, and it’s a four-wheel drive loaded with supplies. I doubt I’m going to find anything better.”
Well, when he put it that way…. “It needs gas, though. Do you know how to siphon gas?”
His bemused expression told me he didn’t.
“Look,” I went on, knowing there was no way in hell I was going to let him have my dad’s SUV, “it’s been a horrible week. I get that you feel desperate. But you don’t need to do this. There are plenty of alterna — ”
BLAM! The pistol went off — not pointed at me, thank God, but somewhere over my shoulder and just above the roof line of the Cherokee. Even so, I jumped enough that I could feel the backs of my thighs hit the SUV’s rear bumper.
“I’m not negotiating,” he said. The look on his face shifted from confused to crafty. “But maybe you could come along. You say you know how to siphon gas?”
I actually hadn’t said that I did, but the truth was, my father had showed me and Devin once, when Devin ran out of gas while driving Mom’s Escape. It wasn’t that difficult, really, as long as you selected a vehicle without a locking gas cap. In the back of the Cherokee, along with the rest of my supplies, was a long rubber tube I’d brought along for that very purpose. With the power out, it would simply be easier to siphon gas from abandoned vehicles rather than attempt to switch the pumps at a gas station over to manual.
“Maybe I do,” I hedged, my pulse beginning to escalate.
“You seem like you might be…useful,” the man said, and this time his watery gaze remained fixed on my face. It was clear his thoughts were beginning to run in other directions than merely stealing my car.
Dude, I could put you through a wall, I thought, but that inner remark was more bravado than anything else. Yes, he looked like the quintessential wimpy office worker. On the other hand, he’d still managed to sneak up on me, so I wasn’t about to underestimate him.
Since I couldn’t trust myself to speak without giving myself away, I only shrugged. At the same time, I let my hands drop to my sides, my right hand beginning to move slowly backward, toward the reassuring weight of the Glock in my waistband. Thank God the shirt I was wearing hung loosely enough that the man didn’t seem to have noticed he wasn’t the only armed person in this little convo.
He stepped closer. Now I could smell the stink of perspiration and fear on him. Maybe I hadn’t had a decent shower since before the Heat began, either, but at least I’d tried to wash up as best I could, and made sure to put on deodorant before I got dressed each morning. I couldn’t say the same for this useless specimen of humanity.
Were only the weak, the crazy, or the unscrupulous left? And if that was the case, what the hell did that say about me?
I decided I’d think about that later. In the meantime, I had bigger things to worry about. I needed to get away from this guy. Shooting him was not a particularly appealing prospect, but I would if I had to.
No wonder the voice had been urging me to get out of Albuquerque. I wished I hadn’t dragged my feet quite so much about that. If I’d left straight away, as he’d told me to do, I would never have run into Chris Bowman…wouldn’t be standing here now, with this milquetoast former bureaucrat holding his puny .22 on me and thinking he was Dirty Harry.
And where the hell was the voice? He had saved me from Chris the Creep twice, but was conspicuously absent at the moment. Did he think I could handle this guy on my own?
Time to find out, I supposed.
“Oh, I’m very useful,” I snapped, reaching the rest of the way so I could pull the Glock out of the waistband of my Levi’s and point it straight at the stranger’s face.
He blinked and took a step backward. The gun wavered in his hands, and then he tightened his grip. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Well, I kind of did, since you were holding a gun on me.” Unlike him, I didn’t move, didn’t blink. “By the way, my father was a police officer. He made sure I knew how to shoot this thing. So don’t think for a second that I’m holding this gun up for show, because I’m not. I know what I’m doing. The best thing you can do is back off and go find a car someplace else. There are thousands in the city up for grabs right now.”
No response at first. His mouth opened and closed once, making him look like a fish on a hook. I got the distinct impression he didn’t know what he should do — shoot, or turn tail and flee. That made him all the more dangerous, in my eyes, because I really didn’t know how he was going to react. I doubted he was someone who’d been inclined toward criminal acts in his past life. But he’d been pushed to the limit by all the death he’d seen, and that made him volatile. Unpredictable.
“Please,” I said softly. “Just go.”
The gun shook in his hands. I remained motionless, the Glock still pointed directly at his face, my stance square and solid, just the way my father had taught me. Then I saw him twitch, and thought,
Oh, shit.
A bang, louder than I’d anticipated. Smoke puffed out from the chamber of the .22, and I knew the bullet was going to hit me. How could he miss at such close range?
Time slowed down, or possibly my thought processes sped up. I wasn’t quite sure, but it was almost as if I could see the silvery-gray shape of the bullet speeding toward me. My entire body clenched, waiting for the shock of impact. At the same time, my finger clenched on the trigger of the Glock, and it went off with a much more impressive bang than the one that had issued from the .22. My ears began to ring. That was the first time I’d ever shot a gun without wearing earplugs, and damn, it was louder than I’d expected.
Two things happened then — first, it seemed as if the air in front of me shimmered, and the bullet the stranger had fired at me bounced away as if it had hit a pane of bulletproof glass. He had no such protection, however, and the shot I’d fired hit him in the chest, sending him flying backward, blood beginning to run down the front of the sweat-stained dress shirt he wore.
His head hit the pavement with a sharp crack, and I winced. But even as I did so, I realized I was all right. It should have been me lying there on the ground with dark blood trickling from my chest, but it wasn’t.
Are you ready to leave now? the voice asked. For some reason, he sounded tired. Well, that made two of us.
I finally lowered the gun. “That was you?”
I told you I would protect you.
“Couldn’t you have stopped him before he fired at me?” It seemed the voice was falling down a bit in the omnipotence department.
I cannot see everything. Your fear called me to you, just as it called to me last night when that creature broke into your house. When I saw what was happening, I put up the barrier to keep the bullet from touching you.
Just like that. What kind of powers did the voice control, to be able to construct an invisible shield that would deflect a bullet?
Obviously something far, far beyond anything I’d ever heard of.
But then, I’d already sort of gathered that.
Pulling in a breath, I flipped the Glock’s safety back on, then stuck the gun into my waistband once again. After that, I looked over to where the stranger lay groaning on the asphalt. From the amount of blood that had pooled beneath him, I guessed he didn’t have much longer to live. Should I be feeling guilty for that? I didn’t know. At the moment, all I felt was a sort of bone-deep weariness…and the day wasn’t even half over yet.
I approached him, then crouched down near his head. His eyes flickered open and fixed on me, pleading and scared. “I didn’t want to do that,” I said quietly. “You should have just left me alone. There’s plenty in this city for everyone.”
A strangled sound came from his throat, possibly one of protest. I couldn’t tell for sure, since he was obviously beyond forming actual words.
Although I knew I’d acted in self-defense, hadn’t even squeezed the trigger until he’d shot at me, it was still hard to see him like this, knowing I couldn’t do anything for his pain. “I’m sorry,” I said at last, then straightened up and headed back to the Cherokee. The best thing I could do now was get the hell out of here.
I got in the car, shut the door, and pulled out of the parking space. As I drove away, I didn’t look back.
Head north, the voice said once I was a few blocks from the Walgreens. Get on the freeway.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, hands tight on the steering wheel. Right then, I wasn’t sure whether I had a death grip on the thing because of all the vehicles choking the roads, or because I was still shaking from that confrontation back in the parking lot. Maybe a little bit of both. “The freeway is going to be worse than the surface streets.”
No, it isn’t. Trust me.
Considering he’d just saved me from a speeding bullet, I decided to trust him.
The closest on-ramp was at Paseo del Norte, so I headed in that direction, keeping my speed below twenty-five miles an hour, and sometimes even slower than that, depending on how congested the street around me was. When I got to the on-ramp, I actually had to drive onto the shoulder to get around two vehicles that seemed to have crashed head-on into one another. Now it was impossible to tell whether they’d both been trying to get on the freeway at the same time, or whether the drivers had been so ill that they’d basically plowed into each other at the worst possible spot.
After that, though, the connector was clear enough, and I eased up onto I-25, keeping my speed down. The voice had been right, though — yes, there were still abandoned vehicles here, but they tended to have either crashed into the center divider or drifted over to the shoulder. The middle two lanes were fairly clear, although I still had to slow down from time to time to get around a car or truck that had stopped in the center of the highway.
In fact, the going was easy enough that I thought it safe to risk opening one of the water bottles so I could get a drink. My throat was parched, and I drank half the contents of the bottle without even stopping. In the passenger seat, Dutchie cocked her head and looked at me.
“I’ll take care of you when we stop, girl,” I told her. Along with the camping gear, I’d stowed a set of collapsible dog dishes in the back of the Cherokee, relics of the times when we used to take Sadie on day trips with us. My father never got rid of anything — which was why none of our cars ever actually lived in the garage — and I’d found the dishes when I was scrounging some of the other stuff.
Dutchie wagged her tail, then sort of collapsed onto the seat, curling up in a smaller ball than I would have thought possible. Up until then, she’d been sitting up and looking out the window, but, truth be told, once you were on the freeway, the sights and smells really weren’t that interesting.
“So where are we going?” I asked of the general air around me. Judging by his delayed reaction to the man who’d assaulted me back at Walgreens, the voice wasn’t necessarily around at all times. In this case, since I was asking a direct question, I had to hope he was close enough that he would hear me and respond.
North.
“Besides that,” I snapped, irritated now. I’d done what he asked — Albuquerque was dropping farther and farther behind me, since I’d started out from the more northern end of the city sprawl anyway. At this point, I really couldn’t see the reason behind the continuing games of evasion. “It’s a little early for ski season.”
That is all you need to know for now. I will tell you when it is time to get off the freeway.
I might have growled. But since I knew there was no point in pressing the issue, I took another swig of water and kept my gaze focused on the road. I actually hadn’t been about to run out of gas; the tank was nearly full. I’d just hoped that lying about the gas situation would convince the stranger at Walgreens to choose some other prey. So much for that brilliant idea.
At any rate, I knew I wouldn’t have to stop for gas for some time. Maybe not at all, depending on how far I was going. What I had in the Cherokee right now was probably enough to get me to the Colorado border, although I sincerely hoped I wasn’t going quite that far.
So I continued to drive north on the freeway, pushing my speed closer to forty miles an hour as I left Albuquerque behind, and the vehicles littering the road gradually grew fewer and farther between. Not to say that the highway was completely empty, but it was open enough that I felt safe going a little faster. Wherever I was headed, I wanted to get there as quickly, albeit as safely, as I could.
An hour passed. Dutchie slept in the passenger seat, and I could feel my stomach begin to growl. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would’ve gotten some of the food out of the back and brought it up here with me, but shooting someone at point-blank range does tend to rattle your logic centers a bit. Ever since I’d left Albuquerque, I’d been telling myself that there was nothing else I could have done, that he’d shot at me first…but those kinds of reassurances only go so far when you’re trying to wrestle with the realization that you’d killed someone earlier that day.
It was not your fault. The voice was soothing, its earlier weariness apparently gone. I must have been really broadcasting my angst, because in general, the voice only answered direct questions and didn’t respond to my inner thoughts. He forced the issue. You should not blame yourself.
I knew that intellectually. But I also knew that killing, even in self-defense, carried its own weight of emotional consequences. When I was in high school, my father had shot someone while on duty — a drug dealer who’d drawn a .38 Special when he was pulled over for running a red light. My father didn’t have much choice but to shoot. Even so, he was in counseling for months after that, coming to terms with what he’d done. Taking a human life was not something to be dismissed lightly. And how much heavier was the burden of doing something like that when so few people were even left alive?
I wasn’t sure, but at the moment it felt pretty damn heavy.
The world has changed, the voice told me. So you must change with it.
“So I’m supposed to not care?” That didn’t sound right at all. What was the point of surviving all this, if the only way to do it was to become a person I didn’t like very much?
I did not say that. But there are certain realities you must face. There is nothing wrong with killing, if that is the only way for you to stay alive.
In other words, I shouldn’t feel bad about acting in self-defense. Maybe someday I’d get to that point, but at the moment I’d had too many shocks in too short a period of time. I really just wanted to curl up in a ball somewhere and pretend the world didn’t exist for a while.
Here, the voice told me. Take the turnoff for 84 north.
“Santa Fe?” I asked in some surprise. For some reason, I’d thought I’d be going much farther than that.
Yes, Santa Fe.
Well, thank God for small favors. I did as instructed and pulled onto the highway, which was more that in name than anything else, since in reality it was just a four-lane road cutting through town, with shops and schools on either side. Here I had to slow down again, as there was a good deal of stalled traffic once more. Not enough that I couldn’t get around it when necessary, even if I had to pull up onto the island at the center of the street, but it was still nerve-wracking.
Then turn here, on Cerrillo.
So we were heading into the heart of the town? I knew Santa Fe, although not intimately; my family had come here from time to time, mainly when my mother was tired of camping and hiking, and wanted us to get some culture. And I’d visited the town with Elena and Tori a couple of times, generally when Elena borrowed her parents’ timeshare so we could get out of Albuquerque and let our hair down for a few days. Even then, though, I hadn’t been the one driving. We always took Elena’s car, because she had a Porsche Cayenne, which was a lot more impressive than my eight-year-old Honda or Tori’s Ford pickup.
But I did know enough to realize if I stayed on my current route, I’d be heading toward the old town square and the touristy areas around it. Sort of a strange choice, if the voice was really that intent on keeping me out of population centers.
I slowed even more, as the road was getting narrower, and I knew I was about to enter the maze of one-way streets that twisted around Santa Fe’s central square. Oddly, there weren’t as many abandoned vehicles here. But this was a touristy area — maybe everyone had bugged out for home as soon as the infection began to spread.
And now down Alameda.
“So I’m not going to the center of town?”
No.
“Is it far?”
Not that far.
Good, because I knew I was going to need a bathroom fairly soon. I just had to hope that my destination included those sorts of civilized comforts, even if I wouldn’t be able to flush after the first time.
I angled the Cherokee down Alameda, stopping every so often to go up on the curb to avoid yet another abandoned car. Luckily, the south side of the road ran along an open greenbelt, so there were no businesses located there, which meant no parked cars, either. To either side, the trees were brave with fluttering leaves of yellow and orange, but no one was around to admire their autumn finery, and I was too focused on my route to give them more than a passing glance.
The street continued in this way for some time, until I was out of the downtown area and in a more residential district, still heading steadily eastward. Since the voice had given me no further commands, I kept going.
And right here, it said, just when I thought I was going to be on Alameda forever.
I turned as instructed, moving onto Canyon Road. As I did so, I couldn’t help wondering just where the heck I was going. This was still a residential area, but with the houses spaced farther apart. The upside was that I didn’t have nearly as many stray cars to maneuver around.
Follow the curve, the voice said then.
Veering off to the left, I found myself now on Upper Canyon Road. It narrowed further, but even in my current focused state, I couldn’t help being impressed by some of the compounds I passed. They had high adobe walls that seemed to stretch on for a full block. Just the kind of thing for people with fat wallets and a serious need for privacy.
The road wound on and on, steadily rising. It became more rutted, littered with gravel. I slowed down, although I didn’t think it was quite time to engage the four-wheel drive. There was still pavement under my tires, albeit pavement that hadn’t been very well maintained.
Eventually, though, even that rutted and gravelly pavement disappeared, and the road turned to dirt. I brought the Cherokee to a crawl, put it in neutral, and then engaged the four-wheel drive. After I felt it catch, I sped up again, but cautiously, knowing I should keep it around twenty-five for safety’s sake.
Even up here there were scattered home sites, and I wondered if I would be told to turn off at one of them. But then the voice said, This road, indicating a dirt track that branched off from Upper Canyon, heading even farther into the hills.
I slowed down a little bit more, jolting and bouncing along the unpaved surface, which now was only wide enough to allow a single car through. Good thing I probably didn’t have to worry about someone coming this way from the other direction.
Dutchie, who’d been dozing for the past hour or more, blinked and got to her feet, pressing her nose to the window. She left quite a smudge, and I winced. Even though I knew my father was far past caring about what happened to the Cherokee, I still couldn’t help experiencing some discomfort at knowing the SUV wouldn’t exactly be in showroom condition by the time I got to my destination…whatever the hell that might be, out here in the middle of nowhere.
The track kept snaking farther and farther back into the hills. At least I’d had some experience driving off-road, so the rocky, rutted surface beneath the car didn’t bother me too much. What did bother me was how far away from civilization this place must be. Had the voice lured me out here to….
To what? I asked myself with some scorn. If he wanted to kill you or do anything else, he could have done it already. What would be the point in sending you out to the back of beyond like this?
No point at all that I could tell.
Which didn’t mean much.
At least the voice couldn’t seem to hear my interior monologue. A minute or so later, it said, Here.
Another dirt track, even narrower than this one. It split off from the main road — if you could call it that — and wound up the side of a hill. Around the crest of that hill, I thought I spied a flash of shimmering gold leaves. Aspen trees?
I turned where the voice had directed, crawling along. Nothing about this hill seemed all that different from all the others I had passed. It was studded with juniper trees and yucca, with dry yellow grass in between. Yes, there was something of a road, but leading to what?
A few minutes later, I had my answer. Almost hidden until you came upon it, a compound of some sort was built just below the top of the hill. From what I could see, there was a main building and several smaller structures clumped around it. A high adobe wall appeared to circle the entire property. There was a metal gate with, of all things, the same Zia sun symbols as seen on the New Mexico flag adorning its four quadrants. At the moment, that gate stood wide open.
I brought the Cherokee to a stop. The voice said, It is all right. There is no one here.
“Why is the gate open?”
I opened it for you.
Not sure what I should do about that particular statement, I swallowed, then nudged the gas. The SUV moved forward slowly, and in a few more seconds, I was inside the compound. Almost as soon as the rear bumper had cleared the gate, it closed behind me.
“You again?” I asked, hoping I’d kept most of the worry out of my voice.
Yes.
Since there was nothing else to do, I took a quick survey of my surroundings. There seemed to be a large house, built in the typical Santa Fe style with sheer walls of thick adobe and a flat roof. Aspen trees surrounded it, their golden leaves fluttering in the afternoon breeze. Just past the house was an outbuilding that appeared to be a large garage with four bays, and beyond that something that looked like an extensive greenhouse.
Everything was very tidy, very neat, except for some fallen aspen leaves on the ground. Here, the driveway was crushed gravel, which crunched under the wheels of the Cherokee as I slowly inched it toward the garage. When I approached, the door to the bay farthest on the left rolled up and out of the way.
This time it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I still felt the skin along the back of my neck prickle as I pulled into the garage. The bay was quite wide, almost big enough for two cars, so I had plenty of room to park and then climb out. It was scrupulously clean, the walls finished. Overhead, a light bulb glowed.
I blinked at it, wondering if I was imagining things. Or maybe that was just more of the voice flexing its power. “Is that you?” I asked.
No. Look out, past the house.
I did as instructed, ignoring Dutchie’s whines to be let out. She could hang on a minute longer. As I paused at the entrance to the garage, I saw that the property was very large, probably at least four or five acres, all enclosed within that high adobe wall. The other structure I’d glimpsed was in fact a greenhouse, but beyond that was a small solar farm, and beyond that still I spied a windmill whirling away.
“There’s power here?” I had to fight the words past the lump in my throat; crazy how the mere thought of having electricity could get me so worked up.
That, and so much more. Come — let me show you.
I nodded, but then hurried over to open the passenger door. Dutchie sprang out, tail wagging, and promptly christened the place by squatting down on a patch of grass next to the garage. Despite everything, I couldn’t help grinning and shaking my head.
But then I turned away from her so I could follow the flagstone path that led from the garage to the front door of the house. It was painted blue, and shaded by a long colonnaded façade, with heavy wood beams supporting the roof. Again, typical New Mexico architecture, but it looked heavy and solid. Safe.
I put my hand on the latch. The door was unlocked, and swung inward.
It was all I could do not to let out a gasp. The house was, as Elena might have put it, amazeballs.
Red tiled floors. Wooden viga ceilings overhead. A kiva fireplace in one corner. Big, heavy ranch-style furniture. Navajo rugs.
I stepped inside, Dutchie on my heels, then carefully closed the door behind me. My footsteps echoed off the shining floor as I moved farther into the house. It was the sort of place I might have seen in a magazine, with doorways of sculpted adobe, Mexican star lights made of pierced tin hanging in the entry, every piece seemingly selected for one particular spot and that spot only, unique and beautiful.
“What is this place?” I breathed, after I’d recovered myself enough to move from the living room into the dining room, which was dominated by a copper-topped table big enough for twelve and sturdy chairs of dark wood with leather seats and nail-head accents. Landscapes of the area around Santa Fe hung on the walls.
It was built by a real estate developer from Phoenix who wanted to make sure he would survive the end of the world in comfort. Unfortunately, his plans did not take disease into account, only war and civil unrest.
What was I supposed to say to that?
Shaking my head, I went into the kitchen, which was roughly twice the size of my little over-the-garage apartment. I heard a faint humming noise and wondered what it might be, then realized it was the refrigerator. Strange how only a few days without those sorts of background noises could render them unfamiliar, alien.
I had to know. I walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. Inside, it was stocked with items that wouldn’t spoil easily — cheese, sausage, lunch meats. A six-pack of Kilt Lifter ale sat on the bottom shelf. When I peeked inside the freezer section, it seemed as if it was full of other similar “guy food” sorts of items: frozen pizza, tamales, taquitos. A box of Hot Pockets. A couple of bags of frozen chicken breasts from Trader Joe’s.
Dutchie cocked her head,