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  “Water,” he croaked, and again the group bellowed out cheers.

  Racing to the truck cab, John came back with a bottle of water. Taeya raised Rick’s head so he could drink. And when he let out a contented sigh, everyone ahhhh-ed.

  “Jesus Christ.” His scratchy voice was barely above a whisper. “What’s with you people?”

  Taeya rained kisses on his cheeks, and forehead, and temples.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. His eyes rolled past hers, and for the first time he seemed to notice he was outside. “Where are we?”

  “Not in Arizona.” She squeezed his hand.

  Rick motioned for more water, and she gave him a longer drink this time.

  “I had this really weird dream,” he said. “You were trying to make me listen to the angels. You know, in your shell. But I didn’t want to. I called your name but you couldn’t hear me.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been calling your name, too. What made you decide to wake up?”

  His fingers absent-mindedly scratched his thighs, as though he was massaging the feeling back. “Somebody just said ‘wake up’.” He yawned and smacked his lips.

  Sitting on the side of the truck, Devin was just finishing his story about the renegades in the basement when a voice called out from the darkness, “Nobody move. I want to see everyone’s hands in the air.”

  Judith wheeled around, aiming her rifle at where the voice had come from. Rolling into the bed of the truck, Devin flattened himself between Rick’s mattress and the side. His hands gripped his rifle across his chest.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” called another man from opposite side of the road. “You best ease your finger off that trigger, honey, and lay the gun down.”

  Taeya squinted into the dark, but she couldn’t see anyone.

  “Now!” the man said when Judith didn’t immediately comply. “Or the Mexican chick gets it.”

  It took a supreme effort for Judith to lay that rifle on the pavement.

  “Hey, Flava-Flave,” another man called to Devin. “You, lying in the truck. I want to see two black hands reaching for the stars.”

  After handing his gun to Rick, Devin raised both hands.

  “Sit up nice and easy,” the man said.

  Once he did, the man spoke to all of them. “Everybody, up to the front of the truck. I want you standing in the headlight where I can keep an eye on you.”

  Holding her hands up, Taeya slowly turned toward the voice. “Look, we have a very sick man here. He’s already been shot once. All we want to do is get to some place safe–”

  At least three different men, scattered in the darkness, laughed.

  “Safe?” one man said. “They ain’t no place safe around here anymore. Now git outta that truck and join your friends. And pick up Tupac’s gun while you’re at it. He musta forgot it.”

  John and Kat were already standing in the beam of light, their hands held high. Judith was taking her time. Devin took one last look at Rick before he hurtled over the side of the truck.

  When Taeya reached for the gun, Rick shook his head no, but she took it from him anyway.

  Holding it sideways in her hands, she stood. “We don’t have any supplies. There’s nothing of value but our clothes. We’ve just been driven from our last—”

  “Can it, Carmelita. And get outta that truck.”

  Taeya tried one last time. “Please don’t take our—”

  “Get out of the goddamn truck! ” the man screamed.

  She looked down at Rick. “I love you.”

  He nodded. “I love you, too.”

  As she stepped to the back of the truck, she thought about raising that gun and shooting. But it all seemed so futile. She had no idea how many men were lurking out there, all with guns trained on her and the others. Her best bet was not to create any animosity. Hopefully, they would not jostle Rick too much when they dragged him out of the truck. Maybe they would even leave some water behind.

  Once she was out of the truck, one of the men instructed her to lay the gun down and join the others.

  Then the man called out, “Jason, check it out.”

  A man trotted out of the dark. He was not carrying a gun. First he checked the truck bed, and reported.

  “The guy definitely looks bad. I reckon she’s tellin’ the truth about him gettin’ shot.”

  Next, he climbed into the truck bed and patted Rick down, just to make sure he didn’t have a gun. Then he rummaged through duffle bags.

  Raising his head, Jason called out, “Right again. Nothing here but clothes.”

  Taeya heard a groan from out in the dark.

  “Check the cab.”

  Jason hopped down and crawled into the back seat. He let out a war-cry and jumped back out with Devin’s canvas bag full of marijuana. “Hot damn!! Wait’ll you see this.”

  He sprinted into the dark.

  There was some excited chatter before one of the men said, “Okay, okay, settle down. I need to find out what to do with that fella in the back.”

  Taeya heard the hiss of a two-way radio. “Hey, boss. We got a situation here.”

  A voice came through the radio. “What’s up, Lonny?”

  “We was followin’ a truck up Highway Five—nice duelly, quad-cab—anyways, they got some dude in the back, all shot up. We don’t know if we should take the truck.”

  “Shot up, huh?” the voice said.

  “Yeah, but get this. They got a suitcase full of marijuana tops. I never seen so much pot in my life.”

  “Pot? In a zipper bag?”

  “Yeah, one of them athletic bags, I guess you’d call it.”

  “No shit,” the voice said. “You see a big ole’ black dude? Could snap your neck like a toothpick?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Hey, Sanchez!” the voice yelled through the radio. “Don’t tell me that worthless boyfriend of yours got himself shot!”

  Taeya ran into the darkness, toward the sound of the radio. She startled the man so badly he dropped the radio. She snatched it off the ground and pressed the call button.

  “Eric?”

  For desperados, the men looked quite normal, more like farmers than thieves. There were five of them in a small Toyota pick-up. No wonder they were ogling the big Ram truck.

  Eric gave his team of thieves specific instructions to escort the truck to Laurel Valley. “If there’s any trouble, they’ll be hell to pay when you get back here.”

  * * *

  The sun had been up almost an hour when Taeya’s view from the back of the truck suddenly changed from endless green fields to gorgeous homes. Judith tooted the truck’s horn and banged on the side of the door. Was this Laurel Valley?

  How strange that they hadn’t come through the usual outskirts of a typical town: the old gas station converted to a used car lot, the crumbling mobile home park, the pawn shop with bars on the windows.

  Like Eric said, it was a fancy planned community with big box houses, and what at one time must have been lush green lawns. They had turned brown.

  Rick was sleeping, but when he felt the truck slow down, he woke up.

  “What’s going on?”

  Taeya gave him a big smile. “We’re here.”

  As Devin drove block after block, Taeya caught herself examining the houses. Which one would she and Rick take? The stone-front traditional, or the stucco with Spanish arches. She guessed some of the houses had four bedrooms. Dear God, would Rick expect to fill them all with children?

  The truck stopped, and Taeya leaned over the back of the truck to see where they were. Devin had been escorted into a parking lot at the town center. She saw all the stores and restaurants that the developers had centrally located for the townfolk, just like Eric said. Two men had been sitting in the shade of a café patio, but when the truck pulled to a stop, they ran into the restaurant.

  She heard the familiar voice bellow from inside. “For the love of God, how can you call yourselves security?”

  Eric bur
st out of the café with his rifle at the ready.

  “Bang! Bang!” Devin called from the cab.

  Lowering his rifle, Eric trotted over with a huge grin on his face. Devin and Judith hopped out of the truck for hugs and soul-brother handshakes. Taeya called the play-by-play action for Rick like a baseball announcer.

  “Judith tugs at Eric’s beard. And there’s a heavy fondle as Eric paws over Judith’s injured arm. Uh-oh, will the umpire toss him for that infraction?”

  Rick chuckled.

  Taeya swung around to peer into the back window of the truck cab. “Hang on, folks. There’s some action in the dugout.” She paused. “Yes, it’s Kat the Vamp, climbing out of the cab. Eric sneaks a quick peek, then checks for a signal from Judith. And he gets the go ahead. He’s moving closer. Kat and Eric are checking out each others’ piercings. Oh, she’s seen the snake tattoo on his arm. And she rubs her finger along the design. There’s a wicked smile.” Taeya threw her hands into the air. “It’s lust at first sight!”

  EPILOGUE

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  The last place Rick expected to find Kat was at the laundromat. As he rode his bicycle along Central Avenue, he passed sheets flapping in the wind. Pant legs danced, shirt sleeves waved. How many post holes had the guys dug, how many miles of rope had they strung before the womenfolk decided they had enough clothesline?

  Once he got past the dryers, Rick spotted Kat squatting over a washtub, gently swirling and squeezing her clothes. Her hair was now brighter red than Eric’s, and still spiked. Where did she find the goop to keep a ‘do like that?

  Rising to her feet, or in this case, platform sandals with laces that criss-crossed all the way up to her knees, Kat pulled out a shirt and dropped it into the squeegee.

  That little contraption had been Rick’s idea. He remembered those bright yellow mop buckets school custodians used, with the squeegee mounted on the side to wring out their string mops. Kat pressed the handle forward and squeezed out the water, then dropped the shirt into her plastic laundry basket.

  Farther down, two women were dumping buckets of water from a trough into the pot they had heating over a fire. The trough had been John’s idea. When they first arrived in Laurel Valley, the women were washing their clothes in the creek. But no matter how hard they tried not to stir up the bottom, they still got silt in everything.

  John suggested they filter the water first. So they rigged a hand-cranked paddle wheel to get the water out of the creek. And they built a sluice for the water to run through. Once they spread a few tee shirts in the bottom of the trough to catch the silt, clean water drizzled out the far end.

  Evidently, Katie was doing a cold-water wash for her fine delicates. Sure enough, when she hauled her basket to the drying lines, the first thing she hung was a leopard-print thong.

  Rick nodded at one of the sentries guarding the laundry area as he strolled over to Kat.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. “What time did Eric and his team leave this morning?”

  “How should I know?” Kat gave him her usual eye roll. “I was still asleep.”

  He hoped the men had gotten an early start. They had quite a list of supplies to look for, especially for the hospital. Taeya was in need of gauze for bandages, antibiotics, and most importantly, a new defibrillator.

  Plus, whenever a team went foraging, they took a list of standard items to look for, like canning jars, batteries, ammunition, flashlights and candles, any kind of medications.

  Trouping passed Kat, Rick came to his own wash and squeezed the pant leg on a pair of his jeans. They felt dry. He was just folding them into his laundry basket when he heard gunshots.

  The north outpost. Rick dropped his jeans and ran for his bicycle. Another man who was helping a woman with a broken arm dropped the basket he was holding and sprinted to his own bike.

  It would take them seven minutes to ride up to County Line Road. Rick’s legs pumped. The man behind him puffed as he tried to keep up. Six more men on bikes wheeled out in front of Rick at Thompson Street. Devin was in the gaggle. They must have been at the football field. A woman joined their ranks at Deckard Boulevard.

  Once he hit Laurel Valley Parkway, Rick opened it up, standing to get the maximum speed. The others did the same, racing to get to the outpost as fast as they could.

  Anyone who’d been around more than four months knew about the south outpost attack. Rick thought about it every time he answered a call.

  Devin had just gotten some of the men organized. He had two sentries posted with walkies at each intersection leading to town. But the sentries at the south outpost were attacked before they even got a call off. Rick had been at the high school when he heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. By the time he got to the intersection, the two sentries were dead. They’d been sitting ducks.

  After the attack, guard towers were erected on stilts at all four posts to give the sentries more advanced warning, and some protection from hostile fire.

  Ahead, Rick spotted the familiar tower. Volunteers were already swarming around a horse-drawn cart. It was one of those green John Deere hay wagons. The two men in the tower had their rifles trained on the action.

  The sound of wailing cut through the quiet morning, and as Rick rode closer, he saw a woman in the back of the wagon hunched over a man, her shoulders jerking as she sobbed. Blood has splattered across her face and down her arms.

  The man she was crying over looked like he’d taken several hits. His shirt was soaked with blood. Taeya was going to have her hands full with this one; if he was still alive.

  Up front, a man and a teenage boy sat on a makeshift bench. The boy’s hands shook as he held the reins to a single horse. The man next to him had a hand over his bicep, blood oozing between his fingers and down his tattered shirt.

  The horse wheezed and stomped as though it had run a great distance. His haunches glistened with sweat, and foam drooled from his mouth.

  A woman in camouflage shorts trotted up to Devin. “We got a Winchester, a hunting bow, couple of handguns. Some knives.” She nodded at the cache on ground.

  “You look under the wagon?” Devin asked.

  “Yes sir. Nothing. Got a wounded man in the bed. He looks pretty shot up. Another dead. The driver took a hit but it’s superficial.”

  Devin pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt. “Hey, Doc.”

  Taeya came back a few seconds later. “What’s up?”

  “A gunshot wound up on County Line Road.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  Devin and Rick rode their bikes alongside the wagon as the kid drove into town.

  “What can you tell me about the folks who attacked you?” Devin asked.

  “They jumped us as we came through Altamont Pass,” the kid said. “Must have been six or seven of them.”

  Just hearing about the attack made the woman in the back of the wagon wail again. “Can’t you go any faster?” she cried.

  Rick asked if the woman and the kid were related.

  “No, sir,” the kid replied. “They joined us yesterday when they heard we were coming to Laurel Valley.”

  The wagon pulled up to the elementary school, now the hospital and recovery center. Taeya had moved from her small clinic the same day John and his crew rerouted power from the windmill farm to the town’s central grid. The school was one of the few buildings with power twenty-four hours a day.

  Taeya was waiting with a gurney. She had her groupies with her, two men and a woman—interns on her medical staff. They followed her around all day while she fixed breaks, stitched up cuts, tended to folks’ aches and complaints.

  Once Taeya made an initial assessment, the two men got the injured man onto the gurney and wheeled him into the front door. The woman intern helped the wounded driver down. Rick escorted the crying woman and the teen as far as the double doors to the school cafeteria. Through the glass windows, Rick saw the white curtains that hung in two circles: Taeya’s surgical bays. One was lit.

  Backin
g out of the swinging kitchen door, Taeya held her gloved hands up. She backed into the curtains, and as they parted, Rick saw the gunshot victim already on the surgical table. Two of Taeya’s assistants were hard at work cleaning away blood, prepping him for surgery. The curtain flap closed.

  The driver of the wagon sat on a second gurney while an intern swabbed the wound on his arm.

  “Not much you can do now but wait,” Rick told the distraught woman. He nodded at the girls’ bathroom across the hall. “We’ll wait if you want to get cleaned up.”

  The woman numbly pushed open the door and went in. When she came back out, she looked like she’d been crying again, but at least the blood had been rinsed off her face and arms.

  “Why don’t I show you the rest of our facility,” Rick said. Usually, he offered encouragement and bragged on Taeya’s abilities, but he figured that guy in surgery was a long shot at best. No reason for the woman to get her hopes up.

  Down the hallway, he opened the door to the school’s media center. Some of Taeya’s recovering patients sat in wheelchairs, or lounged on gurneys. John sat perched on a bar stool, reading a poem.

  He stopped when he saw Rick and the two others.

  “Good morning, professor,” Rick said.

  “Good morning, Richard.”

  “What are we studying today?” Rick asked.

  “George Eliot. I just finished Count That Day Lost.”

  “Ah,” Rick nodded like he knew the poem. Maybe one day he would.

  The teen cocked his head to the side as he stared at John.

  “You recognize his voice?” Rick asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “John’s on the shortwave radio a lot. You must have heard him.”

  Every morning John spent a good hour calling around to get information. His last bit of good news was about some men up in Washington that were trying to get the power up at the Grand Coulee Dam.

  He chatted with folks in a community similar to theirs up in Eugene, Oregon—hard workers who just wanted to be left alone. Another colony was thriving down by the San Luis Reservoir, and John had just made contact with a man who was settling with a group of twelve near the lakes east of Modesto.