Exiled Omnibus (15 page)

Brooke had been idling in the cruiser for the past three minutes. Her eyes were fixated on the desert sand in front of her. It wasn’t until Eric waved his hand in front of her face that she snapped out of her trance.

“Hey, anybody home?” Eric asked.

“The tire tracks. Up ahead. What do you think they’re from?” Brooke asked.

“I’m going to go with some type of vehicle.”

John snorted, and Emily giggled.

“Hey, you two in the back. Don’t encourage him,” Brooke said.

“Brooke, I’m sure it’s fine,” Eric said.

“I haven’t had the best track record when it comes to crossing deserts this week.”

“Regardless of who it is, we still have to cross.”

Brooke looked back over to the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign on the left. The sun had worn most of the lettering off, but she could still see the state’s outline, which had once been proudly printed on the sign. Now the state of New Mexico was known mostly for death.

The races had started a few years back. They’d become wildly popular. Fire and blood drew in large crowds, and the large amounts of prize money kept contestants coming back every year. Brooke had watched a race on television once. She turned it off after the first ten minutes. The show was nothing more than perpetuated violence.

Now, with the region in exile, she was afraid what little law remained in the state had now vanished. The trek through New Mexico would be more than just a fight against the elements. Brooke shifted the cruiser into drive and rolled over the state line.

It was three hundred miles to Texas, and they had packed enough fuel to last them well into the Lone Star State. Eric suggested keeping to the north, stating that the security closer to Mexico would be stronger. Brooke planned it so that by the time they reached the Texas border, it would be nightfall. Crossing over during the daylight didn’t seem like a viable option.

Brooke kept the cruiser at a steady forty miles per hour. At the pace they were running, they’d make the crossing in roughly eight hours. That meant eight hours of watching the horizon for marauders, Mexican military, and the Mexican gangs that had worked their way slowly up to Albuquerque.

“You guys ever watch Bugs Bunny?” Eric asked.

“Who?” John replied.

Eric turned to look at Brooke, who had her eyebrow raised.

“I guess they wouldn’t get the Albuquerque joke,” he said.

“I think that was a little bit before their time,” Brooke answered.

“Such a shame.”

***

John’s head bobbled against his headrest. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when his mom slapped his leg.

“John, wake up,” Brooke said.

John rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked out the window. His jaw almost dropped. For miles, all he could see was white sand. For a moment, he thought he was at the beach.

“Where are we?” John asked.

“White Sands National Park, or at least it used to be,” Brooke said.

“Why is everything white, Mommy?” Emily asked.

“It’s because of the gypsum in the sand,” Brooke answered.

“It’s pretty,” Emily said.

John had never seen anything like it. If it wasn’t for the blazing heat, he could have thought they were driving through snow.

“Can we stop to look around?” John asked.

His mother didn’t say anything for a minute, then he felt the cruiser start to slow.

“Sure, it’s about dinner time anyway,” Brooke said.

John stepped his right foot out of the car and smiled when he hit the sand. He turned back around to Brooke and Eric, who were unbuckling their seatbelts.

“Cool,” he said.

He could hear Emily laughing, chasing after him as he ran up the side of one of the white dunes to get a better look at his surroundings. His jaw almost dropped from the view. Thousands of white, rolling dunes stretched further than he could imagine. He knelt down into the white powder and picked it up, letting it sift through his fingers. Emily finally made it to the top of the hill and fell to her knees next to him.

“It feels soft,” John said.

Emily scooped up a pile in her hands and rubbed it around in her fingers. “Yeah, it’s weird.”

John rubbed the tiny granules of sand off his fingertips. He touched the tip of Emily’s nose, leaving a small dab of white, and she giggled. Then she reciprocated by dropping some of the sand down the back of his shirt.

“Emily!” John yelled.

He chased after her down the hill and scooped her up. She was laughing, and while he was still mad at her, he couldn’t help but chuckle. He set her down, and she helped him wipe the sand off his back.

“Dad would have liked it here,” John said.

“What do you guys talk about?” Emily asked.

John pulled his shirt back down and turned around.

“What?” John asked.

“At night. I hear you talking to him.”

It was something John had done most nights since his father’s death. He had a lot of questions that he needed answers to. Questions that he didn’t want to talk to his mom about. They ranged from girls to guns to whether or not his dad was proud of him.

John’s face flushed red slightly, embarrassed that Emily had heard him. The truth was his dad never answered back, which he was glad of. He couldn’t imagine having to tell some shrink that his dead father spoke to him from beyond the grave.

“It’s kind of a one-way conversation, Em,” John answered.

“I tried talking to him too, but he didn’t answer. Why do you keep trying?” Emily asked.

“Because I miss him. And, I don’t know, I guess it just makes me feel better.”

The father–son talks and trips and the moments that every other son would get to experience would never happen with him. He was going to have to figure things out on his own. He just hoped that he was smart enough to do it.

“I’m glad it makes you feel better,” Emily said.

John grabbed his sister’s hand, and the two of them walked back over to their mom and Eric, who were setting up lunch.

***

It could have been a picnic under any other circumstances. Brooke watched Eric and Emily try to build some militarized version of a sand castle. Eric kept telling Emily that while a princess may love a garden, setting one up outside the defensive walls wasn’t a good strategy.

“Why can’t we just put it behind the wall?” Eric asked.

“Because, a princess needs space to run around. She can’t just be cooped up inside the castle all day.”

“But wouldn’t it be safer for the princess to garden inside the castle? What if their enemies come storming through while she’s in the middle of planting some carrots?”

“She’ll fight them off.”

“All by herself?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think the princess should try going through basic training before she starts making such reckless decisions.”

Brooke chuckled to herself. She looked around for John but couldn’t find him. She panicked for a split second until she saw his feet through the space under the cruiser. She left Eric and Emily to work out the rest of their castle blueprints and joined her son.

John was holding the family picture he’d managed to salvage before they left. The glass had cracked in the frame, most likely either from the bumpy ride or the Mexican gunfire they had experienced yesterday.

“That was a good day,” Brooke said, gesturing to the photo.

“I don’t remember it,” John said.

“You don’t? Well, I do,” Brooke said, taking the photo from him. “It was the week after school let out of your seventh grade year. I’m pretty sure you had just gotten a shot of adolescence the day before because you were in a terrible mood.”

John rolled his eyes in response.

“Oh, looks like it’s kicking in again,” Brooke said, nudging him with her elbow.

“If I was in such a bad mood, why was it a good day?” John asked.

“Because your dad came home that day.”

“He did? I don’t remember that.”

“It was a surprise. He wasn’t supposed to be home for another week.”

“I’m sorry I’m difficult sometimes.”

John’s response threw her off a bit. He kept his head down when he said it, so she knew he was embarrassed. She tilted his head up by his chin.

“Hey. It’s all right. You’re not the only fourteen-year-old with raging hormones. Everybody goes through it,” Brooke said.

“Yeah. You should see some of the other kids at school.”

“Oh, I have.”

Brooke handed the picture back to John and kissed him on the cheek.

“Brooke!” Eric yelled.

She rushed around to the other side of the cruiser to the sight of Eric running toward the car with Emily in his arms. Behind them in the distance was a caravan of vehicles heading right for them.

***

The cruiser bounced violently along the sand dunes. Waves of white flew up from the traction of the tires.

Eric slammed a magazine into his AR-15. Brooke kept looking behind her, trying to see if the marauders were gaining on them. The gear loaded down in the back obstructed her view. She looked over to Eric, who was pulling his goggles down and tying a bandana around his mouth. He rolled the window down and pushed half his body outside.

“Eric, what are you doing?” Brooke asked, grabbing his belt to make sure he didn’t fall out.

Grains of sand flew past him and whipped into the car as the cruiser climbed up the side of one of the dunes. Brooke squinted her eyes and pursed her lips, trying to block the sand from entering her mouth. She held onto the wheel and Eric’s belt. She jerked the wheel to the left, sending Eric crashing back into his seat. Eric rolled up the window, pulling his goggles down along with the bandana.

“Seven cars. Two-seater buggies. They look like racers,” Eric said.

“How close are they?” Brooke asked.

“About four hundred yards back, but they’re gaining on us.”

They were still one hundred fifty miles from the Texas border. Brooke figured they were just looking for an easy score. The gang behind them would give up if they made it hard. Brooke just needed to give them a reason to turn around.

Brooke adjusted her course to head dead east. Eric noticed the shift.

“The border patrol is worse closer to the south,” Eric said.

“I know, and our friends behind us probably know that too,” Brooke said.

A few of the buggies leapt over the top of one of the dunes and landed wildly halfway down the hill. As fast and tough as Brooke’s cruiser was, it wouldn’t be able to outrun race buggies. The desert was their element, and while the cruiser was able to handle the desert, the buggies were built for no other landscape but this one.

Emily started crying in the back. Eric pulled his goggles off his eyes and looked back at her.

“What’s wrong? You’re not scared, are you?” Eric asked, knocking the sand off his spare magazines.

Emily nodded her head.

“Hey, there’s no reason to be scared, all right? Remember, princesses always beat the bad guys,” Eric said.

Emily wiped her eyes. “Like when we protect our garden?”

“Exactly. Those guys back there aren’t any match for you. In fact, you should probably be the one carrying this,” Eric said, lifting up the rifle. “Here, you hold on to this for me.”

“Eric!” Brooke cut in.

Eric pulled the rifle back into his lap. “Your mom’s right. You don’t even need a gun. You’re tough enough without one. But do you think you could let me borrow it for a while?”

“Okay,” Emily answered.

“Thanks.”

Brooke checked the side mirror again. The marauders were only three hundred yards out now. She wasn’t going to make it to the border, not unless she could slow the racers down somehow.

“We need a distraction,” Brooke said.

Eric reached down into his bag. Brooke watched him pull out one of his MK3A2 offensive grenades. With eight ounces of TNT, it had more explosive power than a frag grenade. Brooke figured that would work just fine.

“Did you ever watch
Dukes of Hazzard
?” Eric asked.

“No,” Brooke answered.

“Well, it’ll be something new for you, then.”

Outside, the white sands were shifting to shades of orange. They were almost out of the national park.

“The time delay’s six seconds,” Eric said.

“They’re still about one hundred yards behind us,” Brooke said. “You’ll have to wait at least two seconds before you toss it.”

Eric pulled his goggles back down over his eyes and retied the bandana. He turned around to John and Emily in the back seat, and through the muffled bandana he yelled, “If you want a cool profile picture, I’d take out your cameras now.”

Eric rolled down the window and pulled the pin on the grenade. He released the safety lever, which stroked the primer, causing a flash of heat that ignited the delay timer inside. Two seconds later, he threw the MK3A2 and watched the long cylinder clunk into the sand. Two seconds after impact in the sand, the delay fuse struck the detonator, igniting the eight ounces of TNT. The explosion, which had a blast radius of three hundred feet, created a crater in the sand.

“WHOOOOA!” Emily and John said simultaneously.

While the explosion disoriented the buggies and slowed them down for a minute, they corrected their course and were back in pursuit. Eric pulled another grenade from his bag. Just then, the cruiser dipped into a trench, causing Eric to slam into the dashboard. His grip on the grenade loosened, causing the safety lever to be released, and it rolled to the floor.

“SHIT!” Eric said.

Three seconds passed before Eric grabbed the cylinder with his fingertips and tossed it out the cruiser’s window. The explosion that blasted behind them jerked the cruiser. Brooke strained against the steering wheel, struggling to keep them from swerving into a spin.

A solid ringing pierced Brooke’s ears. She managed to keep her foot on the gas, and she looked back to John and Emily, who were both covering their ears in the back seat. When she opened her mouth to check if they were okay, she couldn’t hear herself. Eric shook her shoulder, trying to tell her something, but all she could see was the movement of his lips.

“What?” Brooke asked.

The ringing waned. The words from Eric’s lips grew louder.

“Are you okay?”

Brooke nodded. Her grip on the wheel tightened. She checked the rearview mirror. The bandits were only forty yards behind now. Gunshots blasted, and Brooke could hear the distinct thump of bullets hitting the back of the cruiser.

Eric grabbed another MK3A2 and pulled the pin. He held the safety lever down. One of the buggies was coming up on the left. Just before they were in range, he released the safety lever and chucked the grenade right at their pursuers. The buggy tried to swerve out of the way, but it was too late. An eruption of metal, glass, and fire burst into the air as one of the bandits’ vehicles was destroyed.

When Brooke checked the mirror again, she saw that the rest of the gang had slowed. John, Emily, and Eric cheered. Eric and John exchanged high fives. Brooke let out a noise that was more relief than celebration.

“We’ll keep east to make sure they don’t try and make another run,” Brooke said.

“It’s always good to err on the side of caution,” Eric said.

“Caution? This is coming from the man who almost blew us sky high?”

“Hey, I wore the proper safety equipment,” he said, pointing to his goggles.