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  She didn’t think her old man was a dork, she thought he was sweet.

  “And I suppose he had a camera in his hand for every birthday, every holiday.”

  “He manned the movie camera. My mom snapped the photos.” Again with the toothy grin. “You should have seen the bookshelves full of photo albums in our family room. Each one had a typed list taped on the spine with the year and what was inside. My mom was a little anal about staying organized.”

  “Did you ever look through the books?”

  “Oh, yeah. Photo albums are addictive. You think you’re just going to flip through to find a particular picture. Next thing you know, you’re sitting on the floor, studying every photo. And you’re thinking, ‘I didn’t know Aunt Carmen had red hair when I was a baby.’” Her smile faded. “I suppose they’re all gone now. Burned up with their home.”

  Rick wondered if there were any pictures of his family in some old photo album somewhere. He couldn’t recall ever see one. As far as he knew, his dad didn’t own a camera. Hell, his mother never even wanted to pay for the packet of pictures the school took each year.

  * * *

  In Asheville, Sanchez slowed to check out a small traffic jam. Was she looking for a suitable vehicle? Surely not, after he’d insisted he was in too much pain to drive. He’d even staggered before he climbed into the passenger seat, pretending that whatever she’d given him had made him a little loopy. A true threat behind the wheel.

  At first, he wasn’t quite sure why he’d done that. But then he’d decided that all the bullshit about being on his own, the one-man road-trip, was just that—bullshit. He enjoyed having someone to talk to, even if it was Sanchez. And there was that whole safety-in-numbers thing to consider.

  But the Doc wasn’t feeling it.

  “We had pretty good luck finding a vehicle at a gas station last time,” she said. “Shall we try it again?”

  Shit. And just when she was starting to grow on him.

  “You’ve got plenty of time,” Rick said as he shifted his weight and winced in pain again. She bought it and kept on driving.

  “So, where exactly are you heading,” he asked. “Once you get your own car?”

  “West.” Her eyes blinked like she’d just let some deep, dark secret out of the bag.

  “Could you narrow down the locale just a little bit more for me,” he said. Was she worried he might try to follow her?

  After raking her teeth over her lips, and checking her rearview for cops a couple times, she finally told him she was going to Arizona.

  “Arizona?” Rick asked. “Jesus, Doc.”

  She tossed her hair back, and straightened in her seat. “I have a friend near Tucson.”

  “A friend?”

  “She and I went to UCLA together.”

  With that, she was off and running, telling him that she and her friend Mai roomed together their freshman year, then spent a summer in Indonesia after a tsunami hit. Mai stayed in Sumatra for a couple years and ended up with a nursing degree, but Sanchez came back to the States and got her degree in Epidemiology.

  She was up to Mai’s work in Chicago with displaced children when Rick squinted an eye shut. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were stalling, Doc. What’s the deal? Is Mai an old lover of yours?”

  “No!”

  “Well it seems to me that Arizona is a rather inhospitable place to hunker down. From what I hear, the air is so dry the inside of your nose cracks and bleeds in the summer. And when it does rain, it’s monsoons that wash everything away. Now if it was Texas—”

  Sanchez interrupted. “What difference does it make?”

  Oh-ho. He’d found a hot button.

  “What could there possibly be in Tucson—.”

  “She’s living in the Biosphere, okay? So have your fun now and get it over with.”

  “The Biosphere.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The colony in a bubble.”

  “Right.”

  Sanchez sighed and propped her elbow on the window ledge, waiting for him to rip the idea apart.

  Rick remembered hearing about the place years ago. It was some kind of experiment to see if people could live in an enclosure without any help from the outside. The place even recycled its own air and water. But hadn’t the project gone bust?

  “Are you sure she’s still there?” he asked.

  “She was two days ago.”

  “And why aren’t folks busting the door down to get in?”

  Taeya shrugged. “Mai didn’t sound worried. The place isn’t very well known. And it’s in the middle of the desert. It’s not like anyone’s going to just happen onto it.”

  The van slowed, and Rick’s heart lurched. He quickly glanced out the windshield to see if she was pulling up next to a car. But they were cruising passed a high stone wall and a sign for the Biltmore Estate.

  “Hey, here it is.” Rick searched down the tree-lined road, but there was no mansion in sight. When he glanced back at Sanchez, she was hunched over, looking for the house, too.

  “Do you suppose it’s been looted?” she asked.

  “Oh, hell, yeah.”

  “Maybe some survivors will move in,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be something? Living in that castle?”

  “Too drafty.”

  A smile actually crossed her lips. Was he finally making some headway?

  “Just think of all the estates and villas and castles all over the world, sitting idle now.”

  “Yeah,” Rick nodded. “Hell, I could go live in the Playboy mansion.”

  “Yes, but you’d be alone,” she reminded him. “What about the White House?”

  “That would be a fitting end,” Rick snorted. “The White House full of homeless people.”

  Sanchez’ mouth turned into a frown. “Did a lot of the historical buildings burn in D.C.?”

  “You mean, like the Washington Monument?”

  “No.” She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t see the same flicker of anger like before. Maybe she was starting to get his humor. “I mean like all of those museums: The Smithsonian, the American History, the National Art Gallery.”

  “I never got down into the historical part of the city, so I can’t say. But sooner or later, somebody’s going to blow up the FBI building.”

  Rick was primed for a rant on the billions of dollars the government had spent over decades, scavenging dirt on people who were probably all dead now. But Sanchez had drifted off into her own private nightmare.

  “Think of all the priceless artifacts, the works of art, the historical documents.”

  “Yeah. All ripe for the picking. No alarms, no locks, no security. Anything can be taken.”

  Her mouth gaped as she sucked in a breath. “My God. The Mona Lisa.”

  “I’d bet that’s already gone. Or somebody has spray painted a moustache on her face.”

  He got the scowl. Witty banter goes just so far with chicks.

  “Think about Fort Knox,” he said. “All that gold.”

  “I hope St. Peter’s in Moscow doesn’t burn, or the Louvre.”

  “Or Buckingham Palace. Versailles.” He added a solemn click of the tongue to show how tragic those losses would be.

  She shot her hand out to stop him. “The Baseball Hall of Fame. I could get Babe Ruth’s baseball glove.”

  Rick groaned. “Or the Honus Wagner baseball card.” That one card alone was worth over a million. Or at least it was a few years ago.

  A giggle bubbled up out of Sanchez. “Maybe I’ll make a side trip to Roswell, New Mexico, and see if there really are aliens.”

  “Maybe they’ve just been biding their time, waiting for all of us to croak so they can take over the planet.”

  * * *

  The subject of Sanchez’ own transportation didn’t come up again, and before Rick knew it, they were skirting around Nashville on a side road that ran along a big reservoir. He saw a sign for a boat ramp and told Sanchez to take a left.


  “Let’s check it out. Maybe we can get some lunch and stretch our legs.”

  The neglected road wove through trees, opening up on a narrow boat launch and a couple of picnic tables. Sanchez drove through the grass along the perimeter while Rick searched for any signs of life. When she finally parked, she had the van nosed back up the road.

  “In case we need to get away fast.”

  Rick nodded like he’d been thinking the same thing. They made another reconnaissance on foot, then parked four guns and two knives on a picnic table.

  She told him he had lunch duty since she’d fixed breakfast. While Rick cooked, Sanchez sat on top of the picnic table, her feet on the bench, the map book in her lap. Instead of the page for Arizona, she was studying the highway grid for the entire United States.

  When the idea popped into his head, Rick thought for sure he’d lost his mind. But before he even had a chance to put on the brakes, the words were spewing out of his mouth.

  “Look, Doc.” He tapped on the page. “You’ve got to take I-40 right through Little Rock. Why don’t you come with me to Devin’s place? You can drop me off and take the van.”

  What did he just say?

  “No thanks,” she replied.

  Now he knew he’d lost it, because a rational man would be grateful for the easy escape from his lunacy. But as soon as she refused him, he had a hundred reasons why she couldn’t.

  “Come on, you’ve got to show Judith how to give me the rabies shots. And how to change my bandages.”

  Sanchez made a little pooh-pooh face.

  “Doesn’t someone have to take the stitches out?” he asked.

  “I figured you could just chew them off when they started itching.”

  “Line drive, Doc. Right between my legs.” The woman was a sassy one. Bet she liked to get rough when she wrangled under the sheets.

  Digging his Swiss army knife out of his pocket, he opened the meal pouches. Beef and noodles slithered onto the foil trays.

  “Besides, what are we going to do with this big hog? Turn it into a chicken coop?”

  “I’m not taking the van,” she insisted.

  It was a red flag in his face. “Listen, we’ll get there in time for dinner. I bet they’ve got fresh tomatoes on the vine as big as my fist. Green beans. Summer squash. Wouldn’t you like some real food before you get back on the road tomorrow?”

  Sanchez got this dreamy look on her face. It wasn’t his good looks or boyish charm that won her over, it was a ripe tomato. Rick stabbed at a chunk of beef.

  “What?” she said. “Aren’t you going to say a blessing for this bountiful meal?”

  Rick smiled as he remembered Bobby Ray and Lily.

  “Those two were a trip, weren’t they?” Then before Rick blundered his way into another argument, he asked, “Are you into that whole religious thing?”

  “No.” Sanchez shook her head and smiled. “But I kind of liked that part about us being sent to help.” She took a bite of food and chewed. “My grandmother was very religious, so I tried it when I was younger. She had this conch shell her mother had given her. You know, the kind where you hold it to your ear and hear the ocean? Only my Abuela said it was angels whispering. She told me if I listened hard enough, I’d hear their message.

  “For years, I listened to that shell. But I never got any message. As I got older, I had a hard time understanding how God was this benevolent deity who had his eye on the sparrow. Why wasn’t it on sick children?”

  Relieved of prayer duty, Rick plowed into his own meal. “Remember that saying, ‘Drugs are for people who can’t handle reality’? That’s what I think of religion. Just another drug.”

  She nodded. More stuff in common. He tried to remember why he’d thought she was such a stuck-up bitch, but it was getting kind of fuzzy.

  Her head turned to take in the lake and trees. “People look at all this and they call it a miracle. I see millions of years of evolving protozoa and natural selection.”

  They were discussing near-death experiences and reincarnation when Rick pulled back onto the road heading west.

  “So, Sanchez. If you’d died back there at those dogs, do you think you’d have come back to haunt me?”

  She gave him a wicked smile. “Oh, definitely.”

  Then she went cosmic on him, questioning whether they really had died back at the attack, and now they were ghosts tooling around America.

  “I mean, you certainly don’t seem like the same man from the Medical Center. Perhaps we’ve stumbled into an alternate universe. You know, where everything is the exact opposite.”

  “No way,” Rick said. “If that had happened, you’d be this ugly crone with big fat hips and little bitty—” Oops.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rick was just about to talk his way out of another blunder when he caught movement in his rearview mirror. A pick-up truck had come up out of nowhere.

  “Oh, hell,” he mumbled.

  Sanchez glanced out of her own mirror. “That’s odd.”

  It was a lot worse than odd. What were the chances that some guy was driving along the same road as Rick? He tried to get a look at the driver, but the truck was hanging back.

  “Can they get us?” Sanchez asked.

  “No,” he snorted. “But they’ll probably try. I used to get chasers when I was making runs back in New York. Usually young punks who thought they were invincible.”

  Ahead, Rick scanned possible turn-offs. That’s when he spotted a second truck careening toward the van.

  “Damn!”

  The driver of the second truck hit his brakes and skidded sideways for a few feet before he got his truck turned around. Then he hit the gas, his tires smoking. He managed to stay ahead of the van, but not without laying down two black tracks on the pavement.

  Great. Rick hated organization. He’d take mindless chaos over a thought out plan any day. No doubt, these two were boxing Rick in, leading him to some big surprise up ahead. He hit the brakes just to see what happened. The trucks stopped and waited.

  Sanchez was watching them, too. “I suppose if you try to get around that guy, he’ll cut you off.”

  Rick began driving again, his hands twisting on the steering wheel, wondering what kind of options he had. No point racing to the showdown, whatever it was. He kept his speed at forty.

  “How many rounds you got in your gun?” he asked Sanchez.

  She snatched up her Beretta and checked. “Five.”

  “Better get another clip.” He jerked a thumb to the cabinet in the back.

  She was rummaging through the gun case, when Rick spotted the set-up just beyond a curve in the road. These hooligans had set up a roadblock with all kinds of crap: two beat-up cars, a tractor, a fully-loaded hay wagon, and a twenty-year-old pick-up with a sofa in the truck bed.

  “Shit!” He jerked his foot off the accelerator. “Get up here!”

  Off to the right, was a dirt road. It looked like those good ole boys were hoping to divert the van. The lead truck even pulled onto the side road to show Rick the way.

  “Take over,” he snapped at Sanchez. To her credit, she never missed a beat. He hopped out of the driver’s seat and she slipped right in.

  “Don’t stop,” he said. “Just take it slow, I need a minute.” As he dashed to the back, he shouted, “Whatever you do, don’t turn.”

  Once he found what he needed, Rick stacked two boxes on top of two boxes to give himself some stability. Then he unscrewed the hinges on the overhead hatch. He’d only used the hatch once, when he was washing the van. He remembered how tight the fit was. He’d barely been able to get his shoulders through the opening. This was going to have to go fast. The boys in the back no doubt had shotguns.

  Bending his knees to get some spring action going, Rick pushed up on the hatch, watched it fly off and heard it bang on the roof twice before it fell away. Raising the rocket launcher over his head, he squeezed his shoulders tight and rose up through the hole. Immediately, he propped hi
s elbows on the roof of the van and nestled the butt of the launcher against his shoulder.

  No time to think about the rednecks behind him taking aim at his head. He sited on the pick-up with the sofa and fired. A small rocket hissed as it shot ahead, the tail sparking as it flew straight into the truck.

  And then everything was quiet. The truck did not explode into a ball of fire. It didn’t even rock from the impact.

  A dud? A few choice words for the military sprang to mind, but before Rick could get them out, a bullet ricocheted off the back of the van. He dropped to his knees, scraping through the opening, and banged the rocket launcher on the rim as he ducked.

  Off balance, he tumbled off the boxes. The butt of launcher caught him in the ribs while the barrel whacked him in the face. Just as he rolled to his feet, the pick-up blew.

  Sanchez hit the brakes as metal fragments and cotton batting blew in all directions. Rick righted himself in time to see part of a truck door fall from the sky and hit the windshield. Thank God the glass held.

  Billowing smoke from the burning hay wagon hid the damage to the roadblock, but Rick had no choice.

  “Hit it!” he yelled.

  Sanchez aimed for the roiling black cloud. Rick’s gut twisted. If he’d blown a chunk out of the pavement, they drive right into it.

  The van took a quick lurch to the right just as part of the sofa crashed onto the road. Sanchez clipped one of the beat-up cars and set it spinning as she passed through the opening.

  From both sides, gunfire exploded, pinging off the metal shell of the van and leaving tiny pockmarks on the windows. Once Sanchez cleared the rubble, she floored it.

  Stumbling forward, Rick dropped into the passenger seat and check the rearview. First one pick-up and then the second burst through the flaming carnage, hot on their tail.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Half-rising from his seat, he asked Sanchez, “You want me to drive?”

  “What?” She even took her eyes off the road to glare at him. “You don’t think I can handle this?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “You’re implying that I can’t keep this van—”