Captives (14 page)

"How are your legs feeling?" he said.

"Like we'd better get to the road before the sun does."

"You read my mind."

When the ground was flat and clear enough to do so, they jogged through the dirt, cutting through bushes, rows of vines, and orchards of twisted little trees doing their best to hang on now that the sprinklers had been taken away. Another hour brought them to the highway. Farms offset the road three or four times per mile. They kept their eyes out for bikes, but couldn't risk stopping for any kind of thorough search.

The eastern rim of the valley began to go gray.

"If they come for us, we should split up," Carrie said. "If they catch me, I'll act like I escaped on my own."

"Have movies taught you nothing? You never, ever split up."

"This isn't a movie. This is you and me against a gang of violent slavers that's terrified the whole valley into acting as their spy network."

"Is that all?"

"You should run." She kicked a rock, skittering it down the cracking asphalt; given her open-toed sandals, he didn't think it was intentional. "Because then you can come back and try again."

"Right now, the only place I'm going is down that service road," he pointed. "It's off the highway. Miles in the opposite direction of where they found my bike. They'll be clueless. Those idiots really should have broken your legs."

They turned off the highway down a two-lane road whose hundreds of cracks had been half-assedly patched with tar. A few pines grew along the shoulders. The east was growing lighter by the minute. Another ten or fifteen minutes and they'd be visible from afar; fifteen after that, and if they'd been vampires, they'd be crisped to ash. The silver lining of this was that they could see, too: and a quarter mile ahead, past nothing and a bunch more nothing, a structure was set off from the road. The trees clustered around it suggested it was a home.

It was. Better yet, it was a home with broken windows and a kicked-in front door. Deserted, then. The friendliest sight a traveler could see. By the time they got to it, the blue light of pre-dawn oozed through the windows. A mummified body lay in the foyer amid dingy, spent brass. Whatever rifle had expelled the cases had been looted after the man's death. Along with anything else of use in the home, presumably, but that didn't bother Walt in the slightest. All the two of them needed was somewhere to bunker down until the following night.

After a brief argument about where to sleep—he favored the basement, while she wanted somewhere with a good field of fire and multiple escape routes—they settled on an upstairs bedroom on the back side of the house. He propped saucepans against the front and back doors to provide makeshift alarms while Carrie knotted sheets together and tied the resulting rope to the bed frame, providing a way out the window in case the stairs were taken.

Given the circumstances, Walt would have preferred to sleep wholly clothed, but he was so dusty and riddled with cheat grass seeds he stripped down to his underwear. With the fog of his breath hanging in the air, he dived under the musty comforter. Carrie did the same.

"You smell terrible," he said.

"You're free to sleep on the couch."

"Who said I was complaining?"

"Common sense?"

"Well, it beats the hell out of smelling myself." He rolled from his back to press against her. Direct sunlight hadn't hit the room yet, but the chairs and dressers were easy to resolve in the blue-gray light. "Where should we go?"

"I know it's crazy," she said, her voice vibrating against him, "but I was thinking 'home.'"

"We can't stay. Not when they know where we live."

"Could do the mountains. There's nothing but hiding spots in the mountains."

"That's because they're cold and full of bears."

"Then a jungle mountain. Peru."

"Hot and full of snakes."

"Then I guess we're out of luck." Her voice was already growing scratchy. "Unless you want to give
Waterworld
a shot."

"Sailing around wouldn't be the world's worst idea." He was tired but in no hurry to sleep. They wouldn't be going anywhere until dusk. "Maybe we should try to find somewhere to join."

"I thought you hated other people."

"Turns out I hate having my wife kidnapped even more."

"Your wife? When did that happen?"

"Girlfriend. Sexy disaster-partner. Whatever you prefer." He shuffled his feet to tighten the covers around them. "The building I jumped onto in San Jose, it's all owned by one group."

"You told me."

"They're in the middle of a
city
. Not even trying to hide. Because there's too many of them for anyone to fuck with."

She laughed sleepily. "You said they don't let their people in and out without double-special permission. You wouldn't last two days doing that."

"This is true," he said. "Unless we dug a secret tunnel." He gazed at the back of her head, the hair tucked behind her ear. "Yeah, that place would suck. But I bet there are others that don't."

"If nothing else, searching would be a good excuse to travel."

She was clearly exhausted. He let her be. Within another minute, she was snoring. His body wanted rest, but his traitorous mind wasn't ready. Tucked into bed beside Carrie, it felt safe enough, but the same had been true of the night before she'd been stolen. He wanted a better plan than "walk until arrival."

He woke with a vague feeling of regret. The sun was high and the room had warmed several degrees. Carrie was still asleep beside him. He pushed the comforter away, leaving himself beneath a single sheet, and managed to fall back asleep. The next time he got up, warm air wafted through an open window. His eyes were itchy and he was alone in the bed.

His heart lurched. Down the hall, a drawer closed with a low whoosh. He lay back in the sheets. Outside, a crow cawed three times, paused, then repeated. He stayed in bed until his bladder delivered an ultimatum he had no choice but to accept.

He risked a trip outside, but didn't leave the back porch. Early afternoon light poured through the trees. He spotted one other house in the distance. Otherwise, there was nothing but hardy trees and semi-arid fields.

Inside, Carrie was going through the clothes for a suitable replacement for her pink uniform.

"Seen anything?" Walt said.

She shook her head. "Totally quiet."

He leaned against the doorframe. "I'll check the garage and the barn out back. Try to rustle up some bikes."

Carrie unrolled a pair of jeans, turning them back and forth to examine the knees and seat. "Already did that. No bikes. A couple ATVs, but the engines won't turn over."

"Good. The way those things squall, they'd summon the bad guys like Donald Sutherland in
Body Snatchers
."

"I found a map in the glove box. I don't see a road through the mountains until Coalinga. That's a good seventy, eighty miles south of here."

"Well, we can't backtrack. By now, they know you're gone. They'll be searching both sides of the road."

She decided her jeans were adequate and stepped into them. As her coast-tanned legs disappeared inside the denim, Walt sighed inwardly.

She zipped up, frowning at the looseness of the waist. "How much food and water do we have? Three days?"

"If that. And we'll be burning a lot of calories." He moved to the bedroom window and considered the road leading back to the highway. "So do we take the scenic route to Coalinga and then all the way back to Monterey? Or shortcut through the mountains?"

"It only looks like a shortcut because you can't see that they're thousands of feet tall and proverbial for being an impediment to travel. They may only be thirty miles wide as the crow flies, but without a road, it might not be any faster than taking the highway."

"Yeah." He rubbed gunk from his eyes. "There's another option, you know. Forget Coalinga and just keep walking. All the way to the Yucatan. It's as hot as an actual fire that will burn you to death, but it's not so bad by the coast. And I've got an in with the locals."

"When was the last time you took that route?"

"A year ago? Year and a half? Ran into some gangs, and also an alien's living room. But all that means is we know where to detour, right?"

Carrie laughed; at first it was wry, but it soon became warm. "I guess that's true. Gear up along the way?"

"Why not? All these farms, there's got to be
something
edible around here. We've got shoes, coats, and a laser. What more do we need?"

"A car? Train service? A portable time machine and a cure for the Panhandler?"

"Well, now you're just getting greedy."

She extracted a brown leather belt from the closet. "You're right. There's nothing back home we can't replace. If you want to try the Yucatan, then let's go try the Yucatan."

It was a ways from night, so they killed time executing a thorough search of the house. Carrie swapped out her sandals for tennis shoes. From the kitchen, they took three small knives, a can opener, a small pot, and two metal bowls. As usual, there was none of what they
really
needed—compasses, lighters, MREs, water purification tablets, antibiotics, and so forth. Walt was well beyond the point of being exasperated by this pervasive lack of basic survival gear. It had been a different world. One where most people had, reasonably enough, banked on
not
being wiped out by a virus and then also an invasion, given that it had never happened before. With the arguable exception of the Cold War, America's existence as a civilization hadn't been threatened since Roanoke. Four hundred years and twenty generations ago. The crazy thing would have been to prepare for the end.

Even so, staring at their meager lootables, it was something of a bummer that more people hadn't been more paranoid.

They set off at the tail end of twilight, the sun lost behind the western ridges, diffused light touching the road. There were virtually no houses along this part of the highway and he began to despair of finding bikes. The wind abated for a moment. Miles away, the bark of a dog carried through the night, mournful and yearning.

The next house they came to showed no signs of cultivation or upkeep and they made a quick, fruitless search for bicycles. A few minutes later, a home stood in the trees, but a lantern glowed from its upper floor, and an orderly field lay behind it. They hurried past. Beyond it, a third house held one bike. Part of one, anyway. Someone had taken the tires. Walt had half a mind to try to jury-rig replacements from another vehicle in the shed until he noticed the chains were missing, too.

Back outside, a whole pack of dogs was barking and yelping, closer than before. Walt glanced back the way they came. "I swear, the aliens need to quit worrying about us and start fighting stray dogs. They're doing a lot better than we are."

"Those aren't strays."

He swung to face her. The moonlight made her face look drawn and pale. The back of his neck tingled. "What do you mean?"

"Listen," she said. "Those are hounds."

"What do you suppose are the chances that's
not
for us?"

"I knew they had dogs at the reservoir, but they sounded different there. They weren't on the hunt."

"Dogs." Walt laughed, feeling sick. "Man's best friend my ass!"

She stared down the road. "You have to run."

"Right. We'll figure it out on the move."

"I mean
you
have to run. They might only have my scent. They might not even know you're here."

The barking grew louder, more frantic. A half mile up the road, a lantern flashed, strobing as it passed among the trees lining the shoulders.

Walt glared at her. "It isn't hopeless yet. Could be we wind up stealing a car. Finding a bike. Looting a forty-pound bag of cayenne pepper and dragging it behind us until their beagles' noses are as swollen as a hamster's balls. We don't know what's down the road, do we? The only way to find out is to move."

She wrestled for control of her expression. "The only thing down the road is a one in a hundred chance we both make it out. I don't know what kind of odds you'll have on your own, but I guarantee they're better than that."

"Guess we'll never find out," he said. "I'm staying. Because if I let you go, I don't think I'll ever see you again."

Carrie balled her fist, as if to knock him out and drag him into the bushes, then laughed and pressed her hand over her eyes. "You fucking idiot. Let's go."

They ran together down the highway, the dogs and their handlers pursuing their scent. For a while, they opened ground on the men from Abyss. Enough to make a quick sweep of the next two farmhouses they passed. Walt didn't know if it was bad luck or lack of imagination, but he saw nothing that might help them hide their scent. As he was rooting through the kitchen cabinets for pepper or spices that he wasn't actually certain would do anything to disrupt the dogs' sense of smell, Carrie opened the back door for a look at the outbuilding they'd seen as they'd approached the house.

She reentered two seconds later, slamming the door and pressing her back to it. "Oh shit.
Shit
."

Walt jerked up, bonking his head into the side of a cabinet. He swore, clutching his scalp. "What's the matter?"

Outside, a man's voice cut across the stillness. "She's here! We got her!"

"They sent a scout," she said. "He was right out in the yard. This is it."

"Have you seen any guns around? This is a farm. They must have something to shoot old dogs with around here
somewhere
."

She moved to the living room and parted the curtains, staring into the night for several seconds. "I suppose we should block the doors."

He wasn't sure how much it would help, what with the glass windows, but there was no reason not to. They bolted the front door and dragged a couch across it. The dining room table went against the back door, reinforced by a tangle of chairs. As Walt checked the other doors for weapons, secret tunnels, or
Star Trek
teleporters, he found a staircase leading down to a musty basement.