Captives (22 page)

"About time something was easy," he muttered. He stooped and withdrew a paddle from the canoe's interior, weighing it in his hand.

"Don't," she said.

"I'm just getting a feel for it. Don't be so paranoid."

"Then don't bullshit me. I know we're not friends. Friends don't have to be coerced to help at the end of a loaded gun."

"Unless you're trying to get them to help you move." He jerked his chin at the canoe. "I suppose you want me to paddle."

She smiled humorlessly. "People with guns don't paddle."

"Okay, Tuco." He stepped into the beached end of the canoe, then climbed spider-like to the front, where he knelt, paddle in hand, and glanced over his shoulder. "All aboard."

She pushed the canoe further into the water and got in the back. Sitting felt wrong, so she shifted to her knees, holding the pistol on her lap. Walt lodged the paddle in the mud, grunted, and pushed off. His oar stirred the smell of cold, fresh water. He took them twenty yards from shore, then straightened toward the way they'd come in. Walt paddled steadily. Though Mia had virtually no experience with sneaking around in a canoe, it sounded like he was doing his best to be stealthy about it, too.

Stars shimmered on the water, wobbling as the boat's wake disturbed the surface. Within minutes, they reached the edge of the reservoir. A grille blocked the outlet to the canal. Walt beached the canoe and they portaged it around.

The canal was built to descend at a minimal angle and the current was sluggish, but the artificial waterway was straight and clear of obstructions besides the occasional fallen branch.

"This is like flying," Walt said once the lakes were behind them. "Which means you're a hijacker."

"I know you," she said. "From back when. And in dozens of stories since. You've got zero grounds to be claiming moral superiority."

His paddle stirred bubbles into the canal's algal water. "It was just a joke."

"Jokes should be funny. That's why they call them jokes."

Given the seating arrangement, the view of his back didn't tell her much about his reaction, but at least he shut up. The valley fell away to their left. It and the mountains across it were still dark and she thought they would remain that way for another two or three hours. They could probably risk traveling for another few hours after that—if Abyss tried to use dogs to track them, the animals could well dead-end at the bridge on the highway where Walt had convinced her to turn back—but eventually, the canal would end, and she didn't like the idea of following the highway during the day.

Sooner or later, she was going to have to sleep, too. She liked that idea even less.

After a few miles, her knees began to ache. Walt maneuvered to the edge of the canal, exiting stiffly, wincing and bending his legs back and forth. She did the same. Before they resumed, she got spare clothes from her bag and rolled them up to protect their knees.

Shortly before dawn, the canal sluiced into a weed-clogged grate and disappeared. Walt back-paddled, slowing, them brought them in to shore.

"If it's feeding in here, it must be feeding out somewhere over there." He gestured into the night, standing on one leg like a stork, knee flexed. "Downhill, I would hazard to guess."

"It could be a mile from here," Mia said. "Or ten. I'm not dragging a canoe behind me all that way."

"Please tell me that's not because you're expecting
me
to."

"We're at least ten miles from the lakes. It's time to quit worrying about where we're getting away from and start worrying about where we're getting to. Have you remembered where Raymond went?"

"About that," Walt said. "Not at all."

"If you're lying about what happened, it's time to fess up." She watched him, pistol hanging from her hand. "Otherwise, you're going to spend a long time on the wrong end of this gun. And the final result will be the same."

"I can't conjure up its name. But chances are a library could do it for me. Doubt we'll have to search far to find an intact one, either. They're about the last place most people would loot."

"Right. Because I'm sure when they need to learn how to treat a fever or set a bone, they just reinvent the internet and ask Dr. Google."

"Do you have a better idea?"

She didn't, so she set off to the east, crossing overland through dead farms. She'd been up and down the valley in her travels and knew there were cities a few miles east, hidden from the highway by dried-up orchards and vineyards. By the first touches of dawn, they'd reached a dusty little town that wasn't more than a gas station, a Taco Bell, a motel, and two blocks of shops.

"Motel," Mia said.

Walt stared dumbly, then nodded. "Good thinking. A motel's like a library for travelers."

"That's a very nerdy way to put that." She rubbed both eyes with the heels of her palms, then jerked them away. He smiled with half his mouth and rolled his eyes. She looked up and down the street. "Let's take a look. Be careful. Place like that might have had enough supplies to tempt someone to take it over. And some thoughtless asshole has left you unarmed."

She drew her gun and made him go in first. Inside, a pigeon flapped from a hanging light fixture and she nearly pulled the trigger. The dead lights swung back and forth, slowly coming to a stop. It was a small, two-story structure and a brief look around suggested no one had lived there for some time.

The front desk had a number of state and regional maps, all of them useless. Inside one of the three offices, however, a map was pinned across half of a wall, displaying California and I-5's path up through Oregon and Washington. Walt leaned in, tracing roads up from Los Angeles. Mia opened the venetian blinds. Two of the sun-bleached slats cracked, dangling from their threads.

"Oh shit." Walt tapped his finger against the coastline a ways north of L.A. "No wonder I had
Intervention
stuck in my head. That big bald guy who always talked like he'd just done a twelve-year bid in Hell. Man, if that guy survived the Panhandler, he'd be running the country right now."

"What are you blathering about?"

"His name. Jeff Von Vander-something." He poked the map again. "Vandenberg Air Force Base. That's where they went."

A prickle ran down her neck. "You're sure of this?"

"As sure as I can be about something that went down so long ago that if it were a kid, it would be in first grade now."

"Good job. Now get across the room." She waited for him to shuffle to the side, then moved up to the map. The base was on the coast roughly a hundred miles north of L.A. She set the tip of her thumb against the map's scale and plotted the distance from their current location in the inland valley. "A hundred miles down I-5, then another hundred or so across the mountains and down the coast. Hope you're ready for a long walk."

"I've done worse." He scratched his hairline with his thumbnail. "If we found bikes, we could be there in three-four days."

"You mean you could get twenty miles away before I knew you were missing."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Why would I run out on an old friend like you?"

"We go on foot," she said. "I've waited six years for this. I can wait another week."

She unpinned the map and folded it into her pack. They poked around the motel, but it had been looted clean years ago. Outside, the sun was up and beginning to scare away the morning chill. They were a few miles inland from I-5, but the road they were on ran parallel to it before turning dead south and reconnecting to it just a few miles above the turn into the mountains. Good way to distance their trail from the Abyss. Better chances for foraging, too. They started off, Walt walking ten feet in front of her.

Birds tweeped from the grass. After a few miles, the road slanted toward a patch of green that turned out to be the banks of a river. She stopped by it to pass water through her homemade filter into a sturdy gallon jug that had nearly gone empty. The sun climbed, glaring through the boughs. The acquisition of their destination had shot her through with adrenaline, temporarily wiping aside her exhaustion, but as she refilled the jug, it came crashing back on her, sparking a headache that worsened by the minute. She splashed cold water over her face and neck. The relief was purely temporary.

She brought them back to the road. Walt's eyes were starting to get puffy, too. At least for once he wasn't complaining. She knew her endurance ran deeper than she would once have ever imagined. During her wandering days, she'd once been chased by an insane man who seemed to be able to follow her every move. Over the span of sixty sleepless hours, she'd crossed fifty miles of highway. At the end, having finally lost him, she'd slept for a full day; her blisters were so bad she could hardly walk for a week.

And this trip was several times further than that delirious torture. Could easily take them a week. They would need to sleep. Repeatedly. Pushing herself too far would only expose her to mistakes.

She lasted two more hours. On the edge of a hamlet called Tranquility, she left the two-lane highway and traipsed past green fields to a farmhouse. Deserted. Windows and doors intact. She locked the doors.

As soon as they'd eaten, she stood, gun in hand. "Time to make sleeping arrangements. Hope you like linoleum."

He frowned. Pistol in hand, she gestured him into a windowless bathroom. She got a pair of handcuffs from her pack and lobbed them to him. He caught them reflexively.

"Towel rack." She pointed at the wall. "Give me your shoes."

As he considered his feet, deep layers of exasperation settled over his face. "What is it with you people and taking my shoes?"

He pulled them off and tossed them to her. They did not smell pleasant. He attached one bracelet to the rack, then snapped the other around his left wrist. She closed the door. Inside, his sigh reverberated against the tile. The handcuffs clinked, muffled by the door. He said something she couldn't parse. She waited a minute, then went to the kitchen and found a tall glass. It had been in a cabinet all this time, but it was dingy and greasy. She walked softly back to the closed bathroom. After standing in silence for five minutes, she set the glass on the doorknob, leaned its rim against the frame, and withdrew her hand.

She went down the hall to the living room, confirmed the front door was locked, then set the pistol on the coffee table and curled up on the couch.

Hours later, she was yanked from sleep by the crash of shattering glass. She scrabbled for the pistol and ran for the bathroom. The door hung open. Walt stood inside, hand on the knob, gazing at the shards of glass scattered across the tile floor.

He looked up, mouth hanging halfway open. "Just looking for the bathroom."

"How'd you get out of the handcuffs?"

"Asked them nicely. You'd be amazed how far a little politeness can get you."

She shifted her aim from his chest to his crotch.

He sighed through his nose, then worked his mouth and spat. A small dark object spun through the air, landing with a metallic tinkle. The bobby pin came to rest in a shaft of sunlight, saliva gleaming from its ridges.

"Been carrying that around for two weeks," he said.

"Any other holes I need to search?"

He shook his head. "Help yourself. But I'm no Christopher Walken."

She motioned to the handcuffs dangling from the towel rack. "Back to bed."

Walt didn't move. "This isn't really fair, you know."

"What isn't fair? The plague? The invasion? The fact you have to deal with the same shit everyone else does?"

"Something like that." He reentered the bathroom, moved to the towel rack, snapped the bracelet around his wrist, and sat, arm dangling awkwardly above him. "See you soon."

She shut the door and went to the kitchen to replace the water glass, leaving the pieces of the broken one on the floor. It was close to noon, but she felt like she could sleep another eight hours. She settled for three. Her eyes felt sticky, her head thick. The glass remained on the doorknob. She used a towel to sweep away the broken pieces of the first glass and opened the door. Inside, Walt's head snapped up. He scowled. She threw the key in his lap.

They got on the road. The afternoon sun was warm enough for her to shed her coat.

Walt rubbed his wrist more than seemed necessary. "So that sucked. Next time, do you think you could lock me in a trunk instead?"

"Don't worry," she said. "You'll only have to tough it out for a few more days."

"And then what?"

"That depends on what we find."

He gazed across the fields to a column of smoke pluming from the eastern mountains. "She could be dead by now, you know. Or being taken past the point where I can find her."

Mia laughed. "Then I hope for her sake you're telling the truth."

"I am," he said. "But what if we get there and there's no sign of him?"

"We'll see."

"I mean, this was
years
ago. Who knows if he ever made it to Vandenberg? Even if he did, what, you think he left a note? 'Dear wife who I watched get blown to smithereens: if you're magically resurrected years later, and your trip into the afterlife hasn't caused you to abandon all earthly concerns, including your love of me, you can find me at 123 Daffodil Lane, Santa Fe—"

"Shut the
fuck
up." Her pistol leapt up and took aim at his face. "Before I drop you right here."

He glanced away, squinting at the descending sun, trudging over the broken gray road. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'll never find Carrie, and it turns out being furious and scared shitless turns me into a less than perfect travel companion." He shifted his pack. "Chances are we'll get there and find out the trail's dead. Kill me, if that puts a smile on your face. But I'm telling the truth. Because I figure that's my best shot to ever see her again."

Mia lowered the gun. She didn't trust herself to talk. She gestured down the road. Walt started walking.

The landscape was the same to all sides. Farms, largely reclaimed by the arid land. Mostly out of season, but they found just enough underripe fruit and vegetables to not have to hunt, fish, or forage the towns for canned goods. At dawn, they slept in a gas station and she handcuffed him in the bathroom again. This time, he made no effort to escape. When she woke, she felt better. They hit 145 and began the march south.