Deserted Lands (Book 2): Straight Into Darkness Read online

  As the street headed up an incline, Lizzie left it for the cover of a strip mall. She crossed the brightly lit parking lot quickly and turned around the corner of a warehouse.

  Something black and solid slammed into her. She screamed, flailing her arms. The blackness screamed back, air whooshing from dozens of wings.

  Birds. They took wing, leaving her stunned, staring at a body on the snow in front of her. Male, button-down shirt undone. A bit of snow had blown up against his frozen limbs. His hands were grasping like stiffened claws; they lay at a strange angle against the chest, frozen and contorted as if they had been holding something when he died. His frozen flesh had been pecked apart by countless beaks, determined to get a meal from this meat popsicle. But the birds had not killed him. Neither had the plague. He’d been murdered.

  The back of his skull was blown away. The Quieting itself had gotten him—the lawlessness of too few survivors and too many of them thinking they were in charge. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.

  Lizzie stumbled back. Tire tracks led away in the packed snow. He’d been murdered and dumped here. Recently.

  Her own footprints were all over the scene like an admission of guilt. She spun a full circle, what if the killers were watching her now? Keep calm, Lizzie.

  She commandeered the lid off a garbage can and wiped out her footprints so they would not be identifiable. Her gloves kept her fingerprints off the lid.

  Lizzie walked backwards, carefully wiping the new footprints. When she got to the bare street, she gently tossed the garbage can lid on a snowdrift and tried to renew her focus on her mission, taking a breath and trying to cleanse away yet another gruesome image from her mind. It didn’t work, just like every other time she tried to forget.

  Further up the hill, a flash of light caught her eyes. The cop again? Or somebody else? Before she had time to react, headlights crested the hill and pinned her under their glare.

  “Dammit.”

  Lizzie ran again as fast as she could. She tried to lose her pursuer by crossing parking lots, hopping fences and skittering down icy alleys. She wasn’t a champion runner like Nev, but she had street smarts, not like some movie chick who ran down the middle of a straight road. Still, the headlights followed her.

  Her foot sank unexpectedly in the snow, and she sprawled forward, her face planting in the powder. Her ankle throbbed as she hobbled in between the houses and then diagonally across a yard. She rolled down behind a snow-flocked hedgerow. The lights splashed across the windows of a house across the street.

  Lizzie lay in her cushion of snow as still as possible, hot from her mad dash and the igloo effect of the impromptu snow cave she had nestled into the drift beside the hedge. Her heart pounded in her chest. No one could find her unless they found her tracks. Maybe she was safe.

  The quiet of the snow settled back around her. She waited, trying to hold back her breath from billowing out clouds of steam. The car must have gone on past by now.

  Lizzie crawled to her knees, peeking over the top of the hedge.

  Headlights flashed in her face.

  Zach sighed, staring at the cereal in his bowl rather than his girlfriend. “Lizzie will be back.”

  “She told Rachael to take care of Saj.” Neveah’s eyes implored him. “What if she meant permanently?”

  “Yeah, but—” He was worried, too. Lizzie could be impulsive like no one else, and she wasn’t happy being cooped up in The City. “All right. I’ll check out her apartment and Mannie’s place. She’s only been gone a day. Probably needed to get away.” At Nev’s expression he added, “Temporarily I mean. Burn off some steam; you know Lizzie.”

  “I better come with you.”

  “You’re supposed to be at work.” He didn’t want Nev to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. She would never do it on purpose, but that wouldn’t stop Lizzie from taking something the wrong way.

  Nev seemed to realize it, too. “Fine,” she said. “‘Cause it’s so damn important to count the number of every damned toilet paper roll you Collectors bring in.”

  “Right!” Zach said, kissing her forehead. “We need to take care of the future, and wiping our asses is part of that future.” He kept his expression neutral as Nev rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a shift until tomorrow. It’s nothing. I’ll find her.”

  “Fine,” Nev said, laughing and punching him in the arm. “I know you’re just trying to keep me away from your other girlfriend.” She winced. “I mean—I don’t know what I mean. Please. Call me when you know anything.”

  “I will.” Zach pulled her back into his arms and held her. “I love you.”

  “Zach Riley. Be careful.”

  “So you want me not to drive on the wrong side of the street?” He slipped his winter coat on and grabbed his hat and gloves. She shoved him out the door. Outside the air felt too cold to snow. He unplugged the RAV from the charging line and climbed in, manually switching it to gas so it would warm up faster.

  He went to Lizzie’s place first, and let himself in. Crusts of pizza still lay in a box. Some things never changed, even if the world did. He resisted the urge to clean up, glancing around for a clue as to where she had gone. Her back-pack was missing from the closet, as were her hiking boots. So she planned to be gone for at least a couple days.

  In the bedroom, her laptop lay open on the bed. Zach thumbed the power button and got a weak, flashing yellow light. He shoved in the power cable to charge it and pushed the power button. While it came back from the dead, he wandered into the kitchen. Flipping through the cabinets, he found the cupboards were mostly empty, but that wasn’t weird. Everyone in The City was on rations.

  Lizzie’s art-pad lay open on the table. Random song lyrics and weird shapes adorned the page. In the upper corner was one word. ‘Glen.’ The computer beeped in the other room. Zach pulled out the phone Glen had programmed. The only one Glen accepted calls from. He thumbed through the contacts and dialed Glen as he walked back to the bedroom. Zach typed her password into the waiting laptop, Bu77$h!t, while he waited for Glen to pick up.

  “Zach? What’s up?

  “Where’s Lizzie, Glen?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “Would I be calling you?”

  “Sorry. Of course she didn’t tell you,” Glen said.

  The computer finished booting. Zach hit the history button on the internet and scanned through the list.

  “She’s doing me a favor.”

  Google maps. Zach pressed the screen. NSA Data Center. “You sent her to check out the Data Center?”

  “Yeah. If I’d known she wouldn’t tell you…”

  “You can pretty much trust Lizzie’s not going to tell anyone anything. Do me a favor, next time you send the pregnant mother of my child out on a secret mission. Drop me a fucking line!”

  “Ouch. Yeah. No problem.”

  Zach let the awkward silence hang for a moment, then said, “You all right, Glen? They treating you well? You seem to be in good spirits.”

  “Hell, they brought me Mountain Dew!” His tone grew serious. “You’re going to go get her, right?”

  “Yeah.” Zach took a deep breath. Chasing Lizzie was practically a full-time job. “If you don’t tell her I’m on to her, I will see what I can do about completing your mission.”

  “Deal!”

  “So tell me, Glen. How good are you at GPS tracking?”

  Chapter Two

  MANNIE GUERRERO PAUSED, HIS HAND on the cold metal knob of the door to the basement. He should go back, sit down and eat the tamales he had thawed. The knob turned in his hand and the door opened into empty space and darkness. He maneuvered down the rough wooden stairs. The spiral fluorescent bulb quivered to life. A couple flashes and then a steady glow.

  He remembered walking down stairs into basements doing clean up in Kandahar, Afghanistan, never knowing if he was going to find women and children or Taliban. Cabrón. Pinche cabrón. He gritted his teeth and clutched the stair rail.
/>   At the basement floor, Mannie glanced around the small space. The pile of blankets by the washing machine looked disturbingly like a woman’s body. He shook it off. Metal-framed shelving units lined the bare cinder block walls. He pulled out two of the gallon jugs of distilled water and set them on the ground. A plastic bottle of vodka sat lonely on the shelf. The clear liquid sloshed as he jerked it out, and twisted off the top. He took a strong big swallow. It burned going down. He needed the fuzziness that took the edge off the pain.

  His newest wound itched where the bullet had entered near his collarbone and throbbed where it left a bigger hole in his back.

  He didn’t know why he bothered to hide the bottle; the only person who cared about his drinking was him. Not even Lizzie. Though to be fair, she had bigger things to worry about.

  Isabel had cared—and she could always tell. Her sensitive palate made her a brilliant chef, and able to detect the liquor on his breath.

  Mannie willed himself to dump the bottle down the round grate in the floor, but he hesitated, then upended the fiery liquid into his mouth again. It sucked the oxygen from his lungs and he took a moment to recover. He slammed the bottle back on the shelf and replaced the water bottle camouflage before heading back upstairs with heavy feet.

  At the kitchen table, he dug into the tamales. Even freezer-burned on the ends they were tasty, but not as good as Isabel’s. Zach had found them in a freezer on one of his Collections into Salt Lake City. It was good to have a taste of home in this strange new place, even if it came with its own kind of loneliness.

  By the time he had finished eating, the buzz from the vodka was a pleasant hum at the back of his mind. He tossed the corn husks in the compost bin, washed the dishes and placed them in the drainer.

  He had managed to parlay his ‘expertise’ as a Park Ranger into the job he wanted, producing vegetables next year using The City’s park lands. It was mostly busy work right now, with a thick blanket of snow on the ground, but a lot better than sorting and filing.

  He pulled his Ranger jacket over his flannel and plopped the comfortable “Smokey the Bear” hat on his head, before heading out the front door. He wore it for work because he got a kick out of the fact that the Forest Service patch said Department of Agriculture. The nearest park, the one he thought of as his, was mostly a kids’ playground with a large jungle gym. He had rows marked out, ready for digging in the spring as soon as the ground thawed. He already had plans for the old swing-set, as the perfect support for pole beans.

  He checked to make sure all the lines were still tied to their stakes, and wondered if he could start some digging if he got an excavator. The lack of real work was only going to make the bottle in his basement more attractive.

  As he rounded the corner of the park bathrooms, closed for the winter and most likely permanently, a small coyote squared on him, growling, and protecting his dinner. Mannie clapped his hands together. “Shoo, Yote!” The coyote hesitated and then loped off sideways. They were getting less and less fearful of the two-legged predators.

  He inspected the dinner, a cat, with too much skin. He should pick it up—he was willing to live and let live in the back country, but he preferred to discourage predators from hanging out where humans would be working. Wild Kingdom had become the norm. Eat or be eaten. The next few years would be interesting to watch from a naturalist perspective, but dangerous.

  “Hey, Mannie!”

  Mannie froze. Not even an encounter with a coyote could compare with the adrenaline rush he felt at the sound of that voice—Jess, Lizzie’s best friend.

  The glaring lights pinned Lizzie to the spot. Then they snapped off and she recognized the white mini-SUV.

  “Fuck you. Zach,” Lizzie muttered to herself, clutching her racing heart.

  Zach stepped out from behind the door. “Where you going in such a hurry?”

  “Fuck you, Zach! You scared the living shit out of me.”

  “Good,” Zach said, pulling a knit hat over his reddish-orange hair. His voice had that edge of anger she’d grown so used to. “Well, it would be good if it did any good.”

  Lizzie walked to the electric RAV, jerked the door open and slumped in the passenger seat.

  Zach got back in, avoiding eye contact. He turned the RAV around and drove in the wrong direction.

  “Where are you taking me? Provo’s that way.”

  “Wherever you want to go.” Zach’s jaw tightened. “As long as you’re not going alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’ve got me, myself and my baby.” She pulled her gloves off and sat on her cold hands. “How did you find me?”

  A hiss of breath escaped from Zach that had nothing to do with the chill of the weather.

  “My baby, too, Lizzie.” Zach drove over the hill. “I checked out the history on your computer.”

  Lizzie stared straight ahead.

  “Well?” He just couldn’t leave it alone. He had to pick at her like his favorite zit.

  She kept her mouth shut.

  “When were you going to tell me?” He jammed on the brakes and the silent vehicle scraped to a stop. “You remember what you said in the hospital room, not long before you told me I was going to be a father? You remember?”

  “I’m not fucking stupid. It was a month ago.”

  “You promised me you wouldn’t go off on your own.” He let out an exasperated sigh, and punched the steering wheel. The horn blared briefly and Lizzie jumped.

  ”Easy,” she said, looking out the rear window. “You don’t have to alert every cop and Independent to our position.”

  “Jesus, Lizzie. What the Hell? I am the baby’s father—I can’t be yours too.”

  “I never asked you to, Zach. Maybe you shouldn’t have saved me back in Bellingham. If you had let the pills do their work I wouldn’t be an inconvenience to your wonderful new life.”

  Zach was silent. Lizzie sat back heavily in her seat and stared out the window, not sure if she really meant what she said.

  “Well, I didn’t. And now we’re here aren’t we?” he said, finally. “Yeah, things are sure as shit awkward, but Nev and I want to make this work—we even like having you around.”

  Lizzie puffed in disbelief.

  “Who do you think wanted me to come out here and make sure you were okay? Nev is still your friend, Lizzie.”

  He took a deep breath, popped the RAV back into gear, and flipped on the GPS. “If you’d told me, we could’ve done this on my day off. Without stressing me out.”

  “You’re taking me there?”

  “Hey, I owe Glen, too. Woulda been nice if you’d let me help.”

  Lizzie thought about it as the streetlights whizzed by, then she said softly, “I don’t get to do anything. Go anywhere. Just sleep, eat and attend childbirth classes. I get so freaking bored hanging out with a bunch of pregnant women. You couldn’t possibly understand. You get to be a badass Collector and leave whenever you want.”

  He shrugged. “No—but Nev might understand. Give her a chance.”

  Lizzie stared at her hands. It wasn’t that she was having the baby of her friend’s fiancé that bothered her—they didn’t even know Nev was alive when it happened, and it was all a huge end of the world mistake. But despite nobody cheating on anybody and despite the fact she had never had any romantic feelings for Zach, she still couldn’t talk to Nev the same way anymore. That killed her.

  “Lizzie—”

  “Please, Zach. Let me get this out. In this brave fucking new world, I’m an adult and that should mean I get to make my own choices. Having a kid scares the shit out of me. And being treated like I don’t get a say about my own life or my body makes me want to run.” Lizzie jerked her gloves off and held her fingers together, trying not to let them fidget with each other. She needed Zach to take her seriously—she couldn’t fall back into Crazy Lizzie stuff.

  “I understand,” Zach said.

  “I won’t jump off a cliff, but I might run away.” Lizzie stared at him. He had
tears in his eyes. “Sheeze, Zach. I don’t want to hurt you. And I won’t hurt the baby. It’s just the way I am.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He sighed and his foot lightened on the pedal. “Things didn’t work out the way any of us wanted.”

  “You’ve got Nev. You wanted that.” Lizzie regretted how much jealousy she felt at those words. “I’m happy for you guys—I just wish I knew what I wanted.”

  Mannie turned slowly to Jess. “Hey. How’s it going down at the dog pound?”

  “It’s an Animal Shelter and Hospital, not the dog pound.” She cocked her head slightly when she corrected him, then bent to look at what he’d been examining. Her face was a little green when she turned back to him. “Coyote? Or dog?”

  “Coyote. Caught him in the act. Right out in the open.”

  “It’s still steaming.” Jess turned to him. “Shouldn’t we clean it up?”

  Mannie sighed. “Yeah. I s’pose. I’ll go find a shovel.”

  “I’ll come with you. I can help.”

  “Fine,” Mannie agreed, walking away. He pulled out his keys, opened the tool shed. He had everything laid out like he wanted it. He put his hand on the first two shovels and pulled them out together. He turned to hand one to Jess and nearly hit her in the face with the handle.

  She shrunk back, wide-eyed. “Just wanted to see what it was like in here.”

  “Be careful!” Mannie said. “Looks like a tool shed.” He reached over her shoulder and flipped the light switch. “Look all you want.”

  Why couldn’t Jess find herself some young farmer boy and make him a good wife? She was the same age as his daughter, much too young to be waiting around for him. It wasn’t right. But he couldn’t help appreciating the gentle curve of her smile. He recalled all those nights on the road, when they were making the run from Texas to Washington to find Lizzie. All those nights she spent listening to an old man ramble. She had a spark of genuine kindness in her that reminded him of Isabel. He turned away to inspect the sharpness of a pair of clippers until he could blink away his tears.