Deep Shadows (46 page)

“Has anyone tried to breach it?” Shelby asked.

Max wasn't even a little surprised that she hadn't waited in the truck.

“Not yet. Our policy is to search folks for weapons before we allow them through, then someone escorts them to the south side of town. Once they're past the southern barrier, we return their weapons.”

“So the road isn't closed.” Shelby crossed her arms and tried to peer around the trucks to the road beyond.

“No. Being a direct route to Austin, Mayor Perkins doesn't want to stop legitimate folks from travelling if they have the means.”

“If they have the gasoline,” Max said.

“Exactly.”

“So you let everyone through?” Max asked.

“Not everyone. They have to surrender their weapons while they travel through town, otherwise they're turned away.”

Max hadn't heard about this, but then he'd missed the last city meeting. He'd decided helping to bury folks was more important, and besides—he wouldn't be in Abney for long, so what they decided seemed irrelevant to him. But confiscating weapons? Unless someone had suspended the Second Amendment, that was illegal.

Josh was yawning, having apparently pulled the night shift. He resettled the ball cap he wore and added, “We've had a few turn around and say they would find another way.”

“No altercations?”

Josh shrugged. “Two nights ago we had some rough-looking guys threaten us.”

“Bunch of drug addicts from the looks of them,” said Karen Schneider, who had walked over to join them. She was also patrolling the barricade. Max knew very little about her, only that she'd been a corrections officer at the women's prison in the town south of Abney. “Couldn't stop scratching and had the most awful smell.”

“Bad time to try and go clean,” Shelby said.

Karen shrugged. “Not much choice, I guess.”

“Other than that, it's been quiet.” Josh carried a rifle, which he switched from his right hand to his left. “The first few days, there were a lot of people going through. Lately it's been maybe one or two cars a shift. Not many.”

Max thought about the tank full of gas he'd managed to barter for. He'd traded most of the food left in his house because Farhan hadn't needed the canned goods. He was receiving rations from the city in exchange for his work at the nursing home and hospital.

More than anything else they carried, the gas in the truck made them vulnerable to thieves—but it was also their only way to get to High Fields. That worry was one of the reasons he'd wanted to leave early in the day.

“We're headed up to my parents' ranch.”

“Good luck,” Karen said. “I'll go tell the guys to move the barricades.”

Shelby had begun walking toward the truck when Josh reached for Max's arm and pulled him back. “I don't want to seem like an alarmist.”

“But—”

“There have been rumors about problems to the north of here.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Thugs, gangs, whatever you want to call them. They hide off the road in the brush and pull out when you're too close to stop. They take whatever they want, leaving you barely enough gas to get away. Word is they've even killed a few.”

“And you talked to someone who saw this with their own eyes?”

“Not exactly.” Josh again shifted the rifle. “I have heard it from three different people now. Each of them heard it from someone else.”

“Hearsay. Not exactly solid information.”

“Solid enough.”

“Wouldn't hold up in a court of law.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, this isn't a courtroom. And these people who told us were terrified. You know what I mean? They rode in groups, left early in the morning, made sure they had someone armed and visible in the front or bed of the vehicle.”

“All right.” Max rubbed at the pulsing in his temple. He knew what the pain meant—what would overtake him soon—but he pushed the thought away. He would get Shelby and Carter to High Fields.

“Watch for red bandanas.”

“Seriously?”

“I know. Sounds like something out of a B-rated Western, but apparently they cover up their faces so they can't be identified.”

“I'll keep an eye out. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Sure thing. Y'all take care.”

Josh again took up his position watching the road toward town, and Max jogged back to his truck. When he opened the door, the world tilted momentarily. He clutched the doorframe and waited for the sensation to pass. Fortunately, Shelby didn't notice. She was turned around and checking the backpack of medication. He pulled in a deep breath, climbed into the truck, and started the engine.

“What was that about?” Shelby asked. She nodded toward Josh.

Carter seemed to be asleep, but Max knew that could be an act. He shook his head, unwilling to add worry to what the boy had already endured, and drove forward.

S
EVENTY
-S
IX

I
t had been a couple of years since Carter had seen Max's parents, Georgia and Ted. When Max had first moved back to Abney, Carter had gone nearly every weekend to High Fields. Somewhere along the way life had become busy, and he always had to be somewhere else, doing something besides visiting them.

Not anymore. He had all the time in the world.

One part of his mind knew that he had to pull himself out of his pit of despair. He needed to be there for his mom.

Life wasn't fair.

He'd heard those words from every teacher he'd ever had, or so it seemed. Carter hadn't understood the truth of that statement until he'd held Kaitlyn's lifeless body in his arms.

Each time the memory passed through his mind, a ball of grief burned in his gut. He wondered why she had died but he had lived, and he regretted that he hadn't been able to save her. His thoughts were caught in a loop, and the round and round exhausted him. The effort required to eat or work or even speak seemed too much.

He'd agreed they should move to High Fields because his mother thought it was a good idea. She wouldn't have brought it up otherwise. There was something else going on with her, though—something she wasn't talking about yet.

Carter settled against the truck door, now that they were finally moving. The barricade at the edge of town had seemed totally lame. Anyone with a big rig could have busted through it. And what were they
protecting? There wasn't anything left in Abney—nothing in the grocery store, no money in the bank, no hope that things would improve. Abney was a great big zero, a total loss, something already in the past.

The lull of the engine helped Carter to relax, and he felt himself slipping into a light sleep. He could hear Max talking to his mom about red bandanas and bandits and danger and rumors. He heard it all, but the words reached him like static on a radio. He opened his eyes once to see Max rubbing at his neck, holding it stiffly at an odd angle. His mom was staring straight ahead when her eyes widened in alarm.

“This place looks like a ghost town.”

Carter came fully awake, sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked around.

She was right. Townsen Mills had been a true one-light town. But now there was nothing. Carter didn't see a single person.

As they drove slowly past the gas station, Max pointed toward the broken windows in the front.

The café was simply closed, boards nailed over windows.

“What happened here?” he asked.

“I suppose it's a hard spot to protect.” Max gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “And there's no money to be made if you have no supplies to sell.”

“No upside to staying open.” His mom gawked out the window as they drove past the last building—an antique store that looked as if it had been emptied out.

Carter tried to process what he was seeing, attempting to understand how an entire town had disappeared. It was true that Townsen Mills wasn't much. Their kids came to school in Abney, but they were a town. Where had the people gone?

He was staring out his side window when he heard Max shout, “Hold on.”

Carter's attention swiveled to the front, and in a split second he saw half a dozen jacked-up trucks pulling out of the brush. Sporting oversized wheels, they belonged in a monster truck competition. Each had cranked up suspension for off-road driving. Hanging out the windows were guys wearing red bandanas and brandishing pistols.

S
EVENTY
-S
EVEN

M
ax slammed the brakes to the floor, sending the truck into a spin and throwing everyone against their restraints.

“Get down!” Max pushed on Shelby's head, but she was buckled into the seat and it did no more than bend her over. Maybe that was what he was trying to do.

She fought against Max and clawed at Carter's seat belt, attempting to hit the release button. “Hurry. You need to—”

They were now facing the direction they had come. Max had jerked the wheel and stopped their spin, but before he could accelerate, something hit the side-view mirror and shattered it. Carter guessed it was a bullet. Hands shaking, he unbuckled his seat belt and attempted to crouch in between the seat and dashboard, but he didn't fit in the floor space. He only succeeded in falling off the bench seat and lodging the lower half of himself between the glove compartment and the seat. His mom was trying to lie across the top of him—smothering him, cutting off his air supply, and causing his legs to cramp.

“Get off me. Just get off!”

He exploded up out of the floorboard as Max accelerated. The force knocked his mom across the seat. Carter steadied her, pushed her back toward Max, and raised up to see out the back window.

“They're not giving up,” he said.

“I see that.” Max glanced into the rearview window.

If he crouched down he could be killed in a collision, which they were
surely about to have. If he sat up and faced the front of the truck, he could be shot in the back of the head. Neither seemed like a good option.

His mom hollered at Max to be careful, as if he had a choice in the matter. They jostled left and right, Max driving like a crazy person intent on creating his own personal roller coaster. Carter tried to avoid the hail of gunfire that was sailing around them—popping like firecrackers on some nightmarish Independence Day celebration. A bullet popped against the top of the cab, ricocheting off it. Carter could hear pings on the tailgate, and then another bullet spidered the glass of his side-view mirror.

“They're either intentionally missing us or they're terrible shots,” he said.

“They only have to get lucky once.” Max was driving the truck so hard that the engine made a terrible, whining sound. “Find something to hold on to.”

Carter still hadn't decided whether to stay crouched in front of the seat or try and get back up on it.

At that moment, Max made a hard right.

Carter careened into his mother, and she fell into Max—who was clenching his jaw and wrestling with the steering wheel. They barreled onto a caliche road. He knew this because the ride had been smooth, but now they rattled over the rock.

The truck hit a low spot in the road, bouncing them all up and against the roof of the truck. His mom faced the front, and she braced her palms against the dash, motioning for Carter to do the same. He pushed himself back up onto the seat and again fastened his seat belt.

When they tore through the first cattle guard, Carter thought it would jostle the fillings out of his teeth.

“Tell me what you see, Carter.”

He couldn't see anything through the splintered glass of his side-view mirror, so he looked back over his shoulder. “Still coming. Three guys, or maybe four. Only two trucks now. Red bandanas and guns. Who are they?”

“Pad beople.” Max didn't appear to notice his speech was garbled. Instead, he grimaced and clutched the side of his head. The motion seemed painful, and his complexion had turned a ghastly white.

In that moment Carter understood. He remembered the time he was sixteen, when he and Max had gone to see a minor league baseball game over in Round Rock. He was looking at the same symptoms Max had
exhibited on that trip, which had ended with Max lying in the backseat, groaning as Carter drove them home.

“Let me or my mom drive.”

“No time thor fat.” He gripped the wheel harder. “We're turning again. Ret geady.”

It was like an awful game of pig latin.

Carter tightened the strap on his seat belt, then they sailed through another cattle guard and made an immediate right. His mom screamed as Max lost control of the truck. He overcorrected and they shot across the right side of the road into a cattle fence. Jerking the wheel back to the left, Max once more tromped on the accelerator.

Turning in his seat, Carter saw their pursuers had stopped at the cattle guard. “We lost them. They didn't even try—”