The Last City Page 6

  “And?” Hughes said.

  “We want you to prove it,” Lucas said.

  “If the two of you were bit,” Roy said. “You should have scars.”

  These two were in no position to demand proof of anything, Hughes thought. Nor, if they were just two disinterested strangers, would it even occur to them to demand proof. They wanted proof not to satisfy some idle curiosity on their part. They wanted proof because it would change something they had already planned. Otherwise, why bother?

  That was obvious to Hughes, and it all but proved Annie was right. They had an agenda, and they weren’t going to junk it without evidence.

  “Annie?” Hughes said. “You okay showing them your scar?”

  She relaxed and nodded. “I’m okay with it.” She seemed to see things the same way Hughes did. Lucas and Roy were more likely to leave her alone if they knew the truth. “The scar is on my back. So I’m going to turn around and lift up my shirt.”

  Roy and Lucas looked at each other.

  Annie turned around, took off her jacket, laid it on the back of a chair, and pulled her sweatshirt up around her neck. Hughes could see the bite mark almost as well as he could when it was still fresh, right there on the back of her shoulder, just above her bra strap. It was the perfect shape of human teeth, top and bottom, slightly smaller than an egg.

  Roy and Lucas stepped forward to get a closer look.

  “Don’t touch me,” Annie said.

  Neither Lucas nor Roy answered, but they didn’t touch her either. Lucas traced the shape of her scar in the air with his finger.

  “Okay?” Hughes said.

  Roy nodded. So did Lucas.

  “Now him,” Roy said, meaning Parker.

  “My scar is less obviously a bite mark than hers,” Parker said. He unlaced and slipped off his boot, pulled down his sock, and rested his foot on one of the chairs, exposing a newer scar on his ankle. Parker was right. It was less obviously a bite mark. It could have been anything, really.

  “How’d you get bit on the ankle?” Lucas said.

  “Long story,” Parker said and pulled up his sock.

  Roy nodded. “Okay. So now what? You said you had a proposition for us.”

  “We do,” Hughes said. “We’d like you to lead us back to Atlanta.”

  Roy squinted, then nodded and stuck out his jaw. “We’ve been back and forth between Atlanta and Kansas City three times. There are some weird turns that wouldn’t make any sense to you, some of ‘em off-road. Can’t promise we can get you there in one piece.”

  “Why go back and forth?” Hughes said, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “Only effective way to scavenge for supplies is if we’re on the move,” Lucas said.

  “And like I said,” Roy said, “we like being on the road. Anyway, we take you to Atlanta, what do we get in return?”

  “In return?” Hughes said.

  Annie twisted up her face.

  Roy shook his head. “You misunderstand me, ma’am.”

  Annie relaxed a little, but only a little.

  “If he’s immune,” Roy said and gestured toward Parker, again with his thumb like a hitchhiker, “we want immunity too.”

  “It will only work,” Annie said, “if we have the same blood type.”

  Roy made a grunting sound. “Why’s that?”

  “Your body will have an allergic reaction,” Kyle said, “if you don’t.”

  “How many blood types are there?” Roy said.

  “Eight,” Annie said.

  Roy went stone-faced.

  “You don’t know yours,” Hughes said, “do you?”

  “I know mine,” Lucas said. “Type A positive.”

  “Same as mine,” Annie said.

  “Really?” Lucas said, beaming.

  Annie nodded. “Really. Kyle, we still have that needle kit in the truck?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Kyle can draw my blood,” Annie said, “and inject it into your arm. It’ll hurt because he’s not a professional, but he’s done it before and it works.”

  “What about me?” Roy said.

  “If you don’t know your blood type, it’s a shit idea,” Hughes said.

  Roy put his hands on his hips and turned to look out the window. “How can we figure out what it is?”

  “We can’t,” Hughes said. “But the doctors in Atlanta can. If you take us.”

  Roy looked at Hughes again, his face tightening. “And if we don’t have the same blood type?”

  “Then you’d better hope they can develop a cure after studying Annie,” Hughes said.

  Roy started pacing back and forth. He would say yes. Hughes knew it. Anyone would. There was no good reason for even an apocalypse nut like Roy to say no. Still, the fact that he hesitated told Hughes everything he needed to know about the man’s character.

  “Come on, man,” Lucas said. “It’s totally worth it.”

  Any halfway decent person would agree to help Annie, not because there was anything in it for them, necessarily, but because she might save everyone. These two didn’t give a flying fork about anyone else.

  “There’s one thing you’re forgetting,” Roy said.

  “What’s that?” Hughes said.

  “They walled off Atlanta,” Roy said.

  “They’ll let her in,” Hughes said, “when they find out she’s immune. We’ll yell through a bullhorn if we have to.”

  “Where are we going to find a bullhorn?” Lucas said.

  “We’ll figure it out!” Hughes said. “You in or you out?”

  Roy took a deep breath and looked hard at Lucas for a long moment, then nodded. Lucas nodded back.

  “We’re in,” Roy said. “You can follow us in your vehicle.”

  Hughes almost said thanks but stopped himself. He nodded instead. “You need to do anything here before we head out?”

  Roy shook his head. “Long as the creek don’t rise, trip should take us four days. Normally we could do it in two, but we can’t go there straight, and we can’t go at night.”

  “Understood,” Hughes said. “And I need to make one thing clear. I’m only going to say this once, and I wish I didn’t have to say it at all. I’ll even apologize in advance for saying it.”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Roy said. Hughes imagined he did. “But go ahead and say it, so the air between us is clear.”

  “You raise a finger against any of us,” Hughes said, “and I’ll kill you both. I’ll shoot you first and then beat you to death.”

  Roy swallowed and nodded.

  “Kyle,” Hughes said. “Go get the blood draw kit out of the truck.”

  Kyle drew a full syringe of blood from Annie’s arm and plunged it into Lucas’s triceps. Lucas did not flinch and did not appear to be grateful. He just sat through the procedure as though it was nothing. Annie considered saying you’re welcome unprompted but decided against it.

  Lucas did, however, give her something in exchange—the set of lockpicks—on their way out of the diner. “You never know,” he said as he handed her the black leather pouch. “Might come in handy someday.”

  Annie doubted it, but she took the set anyway. She resisted the reflexive urge to say thanks and followed Hughes outside to the truck.

  She sulked in the Suburban, in her usual place in the back behind Hughes, as Roy climbed into the RV and started the engine. Her arm ached where Kyle had drawn her blood. Lucas was immune now, too, thanks to her. She’d feel better about that if she could convince herself that the world was a better place with him in it.

  Hughes followed Roy onto the road. Annie thought about rolling down the window on her side and dropping Lucas’s lockpicks but tossed them at her feet on the floor instead.

  “You okay?” Parker said. He was in his usual spot in the front passenger seat.

  “Good as I’m going to be,” Annie said, which she supposed was the truth. She wasn’t okay, though. Not in this world, not anymore, and especially not o
n a road trip with Roy.

  They would head south now, toward warmer weather, greener trees and grass, and more danger where the infected were less likely to freeze to death. She wished the Suburban were outfitted with a plow on the front and spikes on the sides.

  She took a last look at Riverton, Iowa, as they drove through it for a second and final time, past the plain white houses, a now-decrepit Max’s Mart with gas pumps in front, an appliance repair shop, and a brick house with a forlorn For Sale sign pounded into the dead-looking lawn.

  Parker paid close attention to the route they took out of Riverton. It started with a left turn, northward and away from the Missouri border, up and down Iowa’s rolling hills, past soggy fields dotted with empty farmhouses and grain silos, all the way to the outskirts of Council Bluffs across the river from Omaha.

  “How far north are we going?” Kyle said from the back seat.

  Hughes shook his head. “They’re retracing their steps. Not going to be any kind of a logical path, but that’s why we need them.”

  They eventually turned right, just before Interstate 80, and soon saw mileage signs to Des Moines.

  Parker understood why Roy and Lucas spooked Annie. He’d be wary of them too if he were a woman, but they bothered Parker for a different reason. Roy’s creepy-ass philosophy about the universe killing itself was dark even for Parker. Even when he was at his worst back in Wyoming, when he feared the virus had permanently rewired his brain, it hadn’t occurred to him that the entire universe was turning on itself. What must that kind of worldview do to a person’s sense of morality? Nothing good.

  Parker’s own sense of morality was limping along now at best. No, he wasn’t afraid anymore that he’d snap and sink his teeth into somebody’s throat, but his behavior had been generally terrible for a long time and wouldn’t get better if he refused to admit it. He had to get it together, partly because he was sick of wallowing in self-loathing, but mostly so that his friends wouldn’t abandon him if they ever finished this mission. He didn’t deserve Hughes, didn’t deserve Kyle, and especially didn’t deserve Annie, but they were all he had anymore.

  The Suburban slowed and brought Parker’s attention back to his surroundings. Roy’s RV had its turn signal on, indicating a right onto a gravel road leading up a gentle rise between two fields to a stately farmhouse amid a cluster of bare trees.

  “We’re turning?” Annie said, an edge in her voice. “In the middle of nowhere?”

  Parker pictured it now. Roy leading them to an armed camp, a sex-starved militia surrounding the Suburban, taking Annie by force, and murdering everyone else.

  “We could be going around something,” Hughes said. “Something they know is up ahead.”

  The RV turned onto the gravel road, and Hughes followed.

  “We see anybody else up there,” Parker said, “and we hightail it.”

  “Of course,” Hughes said. “Watch the trees.”

  Parker did, but he saw only the house, a traditional red barn, a John Deere tractor, and a rusted blue pickup truck. Parker realized he was holding his breath.

  The road ended at the barn, and Roy continued driving on the grass behind it. Parker saw faint tire tracks there. Someone had been through recently.

  “The fuck are we doing?” Parker said. He powered down his window and held his Glock two-handed in front of him and ready to fire.

  They drove past the barn and still saw nobody on foot. After another hundred feet or so, they came to a wire fence. A twenty-foot-wide section had been flattened down. Faint tire tracks in the grass continued beyond it.

  Hughes followed Roy over the fence.

  A few hundred feet later, another farmhouse appeared.

  Parker sat forward in his seat again and scanned for anything out of the ordinary in every direction. Again, he saw nothing but a house, and beyond it, another paved road.

  “Shortcut,” Kyle said.

  “Work-around,” Hughes said.

  Tension unspooled from Parker’s body.

  “Well,” Hughes said. “They seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing,” Annie said from the back.

  They camped that night on the outskirts of the small city of Burlington, Iowa, in the parking lot of a Sinclair gas station, a chain Kyle had never heard of before with a green brontosaurus as part of its logo. He found the sign mildly amusing, as oil and gasoline were supposedly made from dead dinosaurs.

  Contact with Lucas and Roy was blessedly minimal. Just a heads-up from Roy that they were heading south tomorrow and that with a little luck they’d make it as far as Mark Twain National Forest down in Missouri and into Arkansas the following day. He did not say good night before climbing back inside the RV and closing it up for the evening.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Kyle said. Figured he might as well since he wasn’t tired and would just sit awake in his seat for the first couple of hours anyway. Besides, first watch and last watch were better than second or third. At the price of staying up late or getting up early, he could sleep uninterrupted.

  Even so, he found staying awake challenging after full dark. Nights were far longer in winter than the eight hours of sleep a person needed, and the complete lack of artificial light could make alertness elusive. Two hours after sunset, though, the moon rose and lit up Roy’s RV clearly enough to put it under easy surveillance.

  Staring at the RV like it was a sleeping dragon that might rear up at any moment was hardly necessary, so Kyle spent a long time looking at Annie instead. She was right next to him in the back, her head resting against the window on her side, her faced bathed in moonlight. She was so beautiful, so close, and Kyle sensed she might be more open to him now than she had been before. She’d avoided him for a while—didn’t want to talk to him and at times would not even look at him after things went south between him and Parker—but she got past it when Kyle and Parker got past it.

  When it was time to shake Hughes awake for his shift, Kyle wished so hard that he could reach over and shake Annie instead that it hurt.

  Parker jerked awake in the passenger seat to the sound of an incoming vehicle.

  His mind was fogged by sleep inertia, and the dry air needled his eyes, but he managed to find the Glock at his feet without any trouble. Hughes snored in the driver’s seat, but Kyle and Annie were already awake in the back.

  “Hey,” Parker said and shoved Hughes in the shoulder. “Somebody’s coming.”

  Hughes blinked himself awake and squinted at the RV parked in front of them.

  “Somebody on the road. We need to get down.”

  Parker turned in his seat and looked out the back window. A stand of trees blocked his line of sight to most of the road. Whoever was coming was still a healthy distance away, but sound carried far in a world gone quiet.

  He and the others crouched down. As long as Lucas or Roy didn’t bumble outside, whoever was coming wouldn’t see anything. The RV and the Suburban would appear as just two more abandoned vehicles out of literally millions.

  The approaching sound drew closer, and Parker could tell now that there were two vehicles, not one, and they sounded like SUVs or trucks. They slowed and then stopped in the road, barely fifty feet away.

  Parker stared at his feet. Shit, he thought. If whoever was in those trucks got out and looked around, things could get ugly.

  One of the truck doors opened. Parker did not hear it close. He just heard the engines rumbling in the street. He thought he heard a boot crunching road grit.

  “What do we do?” Annie whispered from the back seat.

  “Don’t move,” Hughes said quietly. “Don’t even breathe.”

  Parker had no idea who was out there, yet he was afraid of them. Afraid of them for stopping. Afraid of them for getting out. Afraid of them for existing. He imagined them first as rough men in their forties with jailhouse tats on their arms and bats in their hands. Then he pictured them as twenty-something wildlings, roving around on joy
rides during the day and drinking themselves stupid at night. He wasn’t sure which group in his mind was more dangerous.

  No matter. He was entirely wrong about who was out there.

  “Is that them?” A woman’s voice, with a hint of anger and impatience.

  “Yeah.” Another woman’s voice, louder and closer. She must have been the one who’d stepped out of the truck.

  Then a barrage of semiautomatic rifle fire shattered the morning. Parker heard what sounded like baseballs punch through the side of Roy’s RV.

  “God!” Annie shouted from the floor of the back seat as a hole the size of a grapefruit blew out the side window over her head and exited the window over Kyle’s. Another round exploded through the door next to Parker’s face and embedded itself somewhere below the dashboard. A third ripped through the passenger-side door in the back and went God-only-knew where. Several hit the gas station and at least one smacked into a fuel pump.

  Parker held his head in his hands and braced himself for an impact that never came. All was quiet.

  “Annie?” Hughes whispered.

  “I’m okay,” Annie said in a low voice. “I think.”

  “Me too,” Kyle said.

  Parker heard Kyle rustling around back there, perhaps patting himself down for holes.

  Then the truck door slammed shut, and both vehicles hauled ass toward Burlington.

  “Fuck me,” Parker said and sucked in air as if surfacing from deep in the ocean.

  Annie and Kyle sat up in back.

  “Stay down!” Hughes said.

  “They’re gone,” Kyle said.

  Parker sat up. His head swam with dizziness, and he thought for a moment that he might pass out. He patted his chest, his abdomen, and even his neck. He didn’t have any holes in him. “Everybody okay?”

  Hughes sat up. “Yeah. At least we are.”

  Parker couldn’t believe they’d just been shot at by women.

  “Who do those bitches think we are?” Parker said.

  “No,” Hughes said. “Who do they think Lucas and Roy are?”

  Roy stepped out of the RV. Hughes powered down the window. “You and Lucas alright?”