Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island (7 page)

“I know.”

“I mean, I’m a singer, an artist. I’m sensitive to people. Like I know how hard you have to get to keep going after this Fallows guy. How you have to guard against becoming the same kind of guy he is. If you get to be just like him, then what good will it do Tim to rescue him. Right?” She turned away, kicked some dirt into the fire. “I tease you, but I know why you won’t sleep with me, even though I can tell there are times you want to. There’s a line you’ve drawn between what you have to do to survive, to get Tim back, and what you have to do to remain civilized, whatever that means. I’m part of that line. Touching a kid would be wrong and eighteen is still a kid. To you.”

Eric reached out both hands and grasped her shoulders, turning her to face him. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Not as much as before.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Eric glanced up at the Long Beach Halo. D.B.’s insight had surprised him. But she had not gone far enough, not recognized how far he had already gone toward being like Deena. Like Fallows. There had been many, many nights he had considered sneaking off in the darkness and leaving D.B. behind. This quest of revenge and rescue was no place for her, he’d rationalized, knowing all along that if he left her, her chances of survival were greatly reduced. And sometimes not caring. There were times, in fact, when he wasn’t sure if he wanted Fallows more for revenge than to free Tim.

There were different kinds of survival. Survival of the body. But of what use was that if the person you had spent your whole life becoming was lost in the process. That was a kind of suicide.

Seeing Deena panting after them last night, her one missing eye sealed over with scars like rubber zippers, her missing ear a puckered hole, she had seemed like a new species of animal. Attractive, yet marked. Her life of amorality had made him want to run to her. Sign up for the program. And that moment made Eric afraid. Had he pulled his trigger then, it would have been for the wrong reason: because of what she represented to him, what he feared in himself. He’d had to let her live, to prove when confronted with such choices, he could still make the right decision.

So far.

Eric picked up his crossbow and slung the quiver of bolts across his chest. “Let’s see if we can scavenge some better clothing than this before it cools down tonight.”

“Actually,” D.B. said lightly, “what we’re wearing looks a lot like what fashionable couples wear on the French Riviera. Not that I’ve been there, but I’ve seen pictures in
Cosmopolitan
.”

She chatted on as they hiked, discussing certain singers she liked or didn’t like, talking about her record collection, which before the quakes had occupied two entire walls of her bedroom, but after the quakes had occupied five 33-gallon garbage cans. Eric, as usual, was quiet, responding rarely. He found some prickly pears, peeled the sharp spines, and fed them both. He spotted some fresh rabbit tracks and traced them to a small pond. He filled the vinyl bag he’d made from the leftover seatcover with water.

They stayed away from any signs of people.

That night Eric made camp. While D.B. gathered firewood, he scouted ahead. A mile away he found a wide shallow grave. He dug up the bodies. Two women and four men were buried. The two women and three of the men had been shot. One man was dressed in camouflage fatigues and had a hole through his chest that looked like it had been made by an arrow. The bodies were almost completely decomposed.

Eric stared. The name stitched into the shirt of the fatigues was
Driscol
. Eric remembered the name, remembered the uniform.

It was the last time he’d seen Tim. Tim running toward Eric, gathering speed to leap the ravine and escape Fallows. Fallows squinting down the sights of his Walther at Tim. Firing. Tim’s leg kicking out from under him. Three of Fallows armed men rushing to his side, forcing Eric to flee. Fallows shouting, “He’s mine, Eric. My son now!” Eric diving for cover as the three men opened fire. But Fallows had called them each by name: Leyson, Rendall, Driscol.

Driscol.

It wasn’t hard to figure out. Fallows and his men had swept through here on their way to San Diego, found some people they could loot. Some ran, others fought. Those that fought died. But not before killing Driscol.

Eric stripped Driscol’s clothing off and those of the thinnest woman. He put Driscol’s clothes on, though they were tight around Eric’s muscular chest and arms. He returned to the camp where he’d left D.B. and tossed her the jeans and turtleneck sweater.

She didn’t ask where they’d come from. She just put them on.

She was learning.

The leaflets fluttered down from the sky.

“Here they come again,” D.B. said.

Eric shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up. The yellow leaflets drifted out of the cloudy thickness of the Long Beach Halo like some kind of snow flurry. If it weren’t for the faint buzz of the unseen planes above the Halo, it might seem as if some giant pillow in the sky had burst and these were the golden feathers spinning down to earth. The makings of fables, Eric thought. In the beginning, there were leaflets . . .

D.B. put her glasses on and ran to catch one as it swayed back and forth in the air, tossed by wind currents. She ran back and forth under it, arms reaching up, too impatient to wait for it to touch the ground.

Eric sat on the ground and waited. During the first months after the disaster, the U.S. government had dropped them once a week, then every month. Now they came sporadically, lumping together the news of the world during the past several months into half a page of brief updates. They always contained half a page of assurances at how hard the government was working to reverse the Long Beach Halo and rescue those still stranded on California. It also always contained bright red cautions about not trying to leave the island until they’ve completed their medical research on the effects. Anyone trying to pass through to the outside world, they warned, would be immediately terminated.

At first, Eric had looked forward to the leaflets, rereading them over and over, looking for some sign of hope that the nightmare might soon be over. Order restored. But the encouraging words soon sounded hollow. The rhetoric about rescue, scientific research, the call for patience, faith, patriotism, all became just so much nonsense. Eric soon realized they weren’t ever going to do anything. The cost was too great to justify in Congress, the fear too great from the rest of the world. What kind of freaks would emerge to contaminate them?

“Gotcha!” D.B. said, snatching a leaflet from the air. It was one sheet folded into thirds and stapled together. Like an advertisement for a new Chinese restaurant. She slid her thumbnail under the staple and pried it loose. She unfolded the sheet as carefully and with as much anticipation as if she’d just discovered an ancient treasure map. While she eagerly read, Eric watched the enthusiasm drain from her face and sag into disappointment. She crumpled the leaflet and threw it to the ground. Another one fluttered down near her and she slapped it away with her backhand.

“Well?” Eric said.

“It ain’t Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” she said bitterly. “More like Litter from the Sky with Diarrhea.”

“Rescue imminent?”

“Right. Any day now. Just have patience.”

“And don’t leave the island.”

“Or
zap
, you’re terminated.” She fingered her choke collar. “Think they’ll ever get us out of here? Or get rid of the Halo?”

“Sure,” Eric said. “Any day now.”

“I’m serious.” She looked at him, forehead scrunched together in concentration, bunching all her freckles into a swarm. “Will it ever be like it was?”

“Yes,” Eric lied. “It will.”

“I never know whether to believe you or not.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“I can’t tell.”

He stood up. “Let’s get going. Another couple of hours and we’ll be in San Diego.”

“Swell.” She kicked aside a couple of leaflets and walked beside him.

They’d traveled mostly inland, avoiding the beach areas. Despite the tidal waves that had drowned the beach towns of Laguna, San Clemente, Oceanside, and all the others along the coast, crowds of people had returned to the beaches for the fishing. There were always crowds camped there, sleeping in their homemade boats, fighting off the pirates and scavengers.

Instead they’d come out of the Cleveland National forest and hiked south near San Juan Capistrano.

“Think the swallows will return here?” D.B. had asked as they’d walked by the outskirts of town.

“Yeah,” Eric had replied. “Only the people here will be waiting for them with knives and forks.”

They’d gone further inland, around Camp Pendleton, the old marine base. There was no telling who would be there now. Finally they’d traced the 15 freeway past Escondido, veered east along the 163, then headed south with the 5. That took them to the edge of San Diego.

“You hungry?” Eric asked.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether your remedy is more of those dumb prickly pears or bulrishes or insects.”

“What do you want?”

“Meat! I’ll eat it raw, cooked, I don’t care. I’m starting to feel like some carnivorous cavewoman.”

Eric laughed. “We haven’t seen much game in the past couple of days. I think they’ve been scared away, or killed off.”

“Please, Eric. Shoot an arrow in the air and maybe it’ll hit a bird. I’ll Kentucky Fry it myself, I swear.”

Eric looked out over the rubble of San Diego. Saw the ocean swirling around a few highrise buildings. “There is one place. Maybe.”

“Really? Fresh meat?”

“Maybe. There’s a chance that survivors were too afraid to risk going after them. If so, there should be plenty of meat.”

“Great. Where?”

Eric smiled. “The San Diego Zoo.”

“I feel funny,” D.B. said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The zoo, I guess.”

Eric looked at her. “You don’t like animals?”

“No, it’s not that. My parents used to bring me here as a kid. We’d walk around in the sun all day, point at the animals, eat ice cream at the snack stands. Then, as a treat, we’d stop in at the gift shop and they’d buy me a t-shirt with a panda on it or something else neat.”

“You rather not go?”

D.B. shook her head. “No. Just that I’ll feel funny eating the animals. Kinda like eating Bambi.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Eat Mr. Ed instead.”

“Mr. Ed? Who’s that?”

Eric laughed to himself. “Come on. It’s dark enough now.” He walked cautiously down the middle of the street, his crossbow cocked and ready. He thumbed the safety off.

In the dark, the middle-class houses that lined the streets leading to the zoo looked like piles of burned firewood. That’s all most of them were now. What the earthquakes hadn’t ripped apart, the ensuing fires had destroyed. Gas mains ruptured. Explosions followed. Whole cities and forests were wiped out.

As with most of the oceanside cities, the ocean had swept in to reclaim some of the land. At least half a mile of San Diego was under fifty feet of water, the tops of buildings poking out of the ocean surface like ice cubes in a cold drink. The water itself was scummy, sprinkled with floating debris, animal and human carcasses, an airtight VW bug.