Wanted (17 page)

He found Scholz’s body quickly enough, though it was only thanks to a pair of dog tags that he recognized the man. Further in he found other remains in varying states of disfigurement. Every one of them belonged to one of his soldiers. Marko scowled, remembering the sounds he had heard over the radio but still finding it difficult to believe that one man had butchered six of his men and escaped. He remembered the shed they had flown over then, and headed up to it. This was in marginally better condition, though the walls and roof had been peppered with fire from the chain gun. The dirt and rock on the ground in front of the door were wet as well. Judging by the lack of any smell, Marko guessed the liquid to be plain and simple water. Curious, he poked his head in and looked around.

His curiosity could only increase. He saw the remains of the indoor garden and found himself marveling at the survivalist’s ingenuity. The water tank, the lights, everything was impressive and not something he would have dreamed possible so far into the badlands from civilization. He shook his head and stepped in further, intent on finding Waters’ body.

He paused when he stood next to the fridge. It had been knocked over and the various supplies within it were either shattered or scattered across the floor. One vial, however, sat on a shelf next to the fridge near a used syinge. Marko picked it up and looked at it, reading the hand scrawled label aloud, “Anti-venom?”

Marko looked around nervously, wondering if the man had raised snakes as well. He slowly knelt down, looking under the hydroponics tables and hoping desperately to not find himself in the midst of a pit of vipers. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw nothing on the wet ground save the rubble, chewed up concrete and rock, and the remains of many tables that had collapsed under the rain of death from the helicopter’s cannon.

Marko searched through the greenhouse three times, growing increasingly upset with every pass. There were no other doors, no other ways out. He thought back, certain they had made a mistake, but was still certain that they had seen someone run from the house and into the shed. Yet there was no body to account for. How could he have survived and not been seen?

Marko paused, looking around and trying to determine where he could be. The only time they had lost sight of the shed and house had been when they turned to go and land. The Captain’s eyes widened in alarm. Had Waters made it through the destruction and found a way out? Was he now stalking Chavez and himself?

Hurrying back through the wreckage, Marko signaled his pilot over his radio and felt a loosening of fear in his gut when the man answered. “Fire it up, corporal, there’s nothing left here.”

“
No survivors?” Chavez asked him.

“
Negative,” Marko replied, not bothering to share that the mystery man that had killed his men was also unaccounted for.

“
Excelente
,” the pilot said, assuming that he had destroyed their opponent.

Marko said nothing. Instead he just made his way back as quickly as possible. He felt an itch between his shoulder blades, as though a crosshair was resting on it waiting for the stroke of a trigger to send a bullet into him. The search had to continue. The third missing body from the crash had been discovered, but Dustin and Tanya Kurkova, of all the people, had apparently walked away. They had to be found, but now Marko found himself more concerned with finding out just who Carl Waters was and why he made him so nervous.

Chapter 11

“
Carl! Carl, wake up!”

Carl groaned. He heard the words but could not fight his way up through the darkness.

“
Please! We need help… they took Jessie and Dustin!”

Carl pulled himself from the mud and water holding him down. His eyes opened in tiny slits and let in light bright enough to flash burn a forest. He groaned again and rolled over, feeling his body respond sluggishly.

“
What happened to you?” Tanya asked, staring down at him.

Carl tried to open his eyes again, squinting even more this time. He saw her face, blurry, and fought back the wave of dizziness that tried to knock him from lying flat on the ground to somewhere even flatter. His head collapsed back onto the ground and he mumbled something that made no sense to him or her.

“
What?” she asked.

Carl picked his head up out of the mud, but the attempt at making sense of what was happening proved more than he could handle. His head dropped back down with a wet splat and he faded back into darkness again.

* * * *

He awoke in the night, staring up at the starless sky and feeling his body racked with chills. He groaned, a pain in his stomach making him flinch. That awakened other pains in his body, pains he could not put a reason or a name to. He tried to shift to get more comfortable and to find some warmth. Instead he found someone behind him, someone who had wrapped his or her body onto his and was sharing comfort and warmth with it. Carl knew he should be concerned. He was alone… always. Nobody should be with him, not this close.

“
Not safe,” he muttered, trying to turn to face the stranger that held him so tightly.

He heard a hushing noise and felt the warm breath of a woman on his ear and neck. He relaxed a little, not out of relief but because there was something familiar in it, something he could not place, but nevertheless something he knew and was okay with. He settled down and fell asleep again.

* * * *

When Carl’s eyes opened next they blinked at the painful daylight, then became adjusted to it gradually. He saw Tanya sitting next to him, one of his metal bowls in her hand. She stirred it with a spoon and then turned and offered it to him. He sniffed at it and accepted the mouthful of stew. It was bland but edible.

Carefully and slowly, he sat up. His body ached and his foot felt swollen and half dead. His side and back were stiff, but something on his side felt different. It had been bandaged, he realized. “What happened?” he asked, his voice weak but still containing the undertones that meant he was not out of the fight.

“
I don’t know,” Tanya said to him, handing him the bowl and spoon. “I saw a stream of water when I came back. It ran down a gully, so I followed it up and found you hanging halfway out of bush. There was a tunnel it looked like you’d crawled out of.”

Carl nodded, caught up in the soup she had given him. She fell silent while he drank it down. “How long was I out?” he asked her after he had wiped the broth from his chin.

“
I found you yesterday morning. You’ve been in and out since then.”

Carl grunted, then started to check himself out. He was a mess, his clothing muddy and torn in many places. He had a hunch that some of the brown spots were dried blood, not mud. He slowly stripped off his shirt, ignoring the cool evening air, and gave himself a quick visual examination. Sure enough, there was a bandage on his back on the right side.

“
What happened here?” he asked her.

“
I don’t know,” she told him. “There was a piece of wood sticking in you. I pulled it out and did what I could to make sure there was nothing left behind.”

Carl frowned. It sounded like an infection waiting to happen. “I went through your house,” Tanya said, seeing his frown. “I found some alcohol and the supplies in your shed.”

He grunted, satisfied he might not die immediately. He would head up and survey the damage later. If she had found that much, the odds were good some of his other supplies had survived as well. He kept examining himself, finding multiple small cuts, scrapes, and bruises, but nothing life threatening. Finished, he stood up carefully, testing his foot and finding that it worked, though it felt as though it was padded with cotton in his boot.

Carl sat back down and untied his boots, then gently removed them, prepared for the worst. His right foot, just below the snake bite, was swollen and a little numb. The relief from the boot caused it to throb, but it improved circulation and soon it began to feel less wooden. He flexed his toes, satisfied, and stood up to remove his pants.

“
Okay, do you really need to do that?” Tanya asked, distraught at how Carl was getting naked right in front of her.

He paused and looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Out here the locker room is unisex,” he told her, then dropped his pants and proceeded to check things out.

Carl saw her blush and looked away. He also noticed when she kept glancing back. “Never seen a man naked before?” he asked her as he went about his business.

The gasp and parting of her lips answered for him. She looked away again, more embarrassed than ever. He might have chuckled at another time, but now his mood was anything but mirthful.

Carl sat down and examined his calf. The bite mark was still red and there was dried puss around the injury itself. The lack of any red lines gave him hope though, even though he expected he would have been dead by now had the anti-venom not worked in the first place. Satisfied that he might live long enough to put a bullet in the head of the son of a bitch that had blown up his home, he put his clothes back on but left the boot off his swollen foot.

“
So why’d you come back?” he asked her even as he did an inventory of what he still had with him. There was little in his pockets save for some sealed matches, wet paper and his trusty knife.

She shivered a little and her chin trembled. She looked away, then back at him and said, “They took them!”

Carl looked at her, wondering just what exactly she meant.

“
I had to pee, so I got up and left the campfire to find some privacy,” she explained, seeing his look. “I heard them come then, three men on horses. There was nothing Jessie or Dusty could do. They beat her and smacked him when he tried to help her.”

“
Who was they?” he asked her, trying to think who might have horses nearby.

“
I don’t know – I saw it and was going to try and shoot them when Jessie fought back,” Tanya said, tears running down her cheeks. “She grabbed the guy in front of her in the nuts, making him scream and drop to the ground. They backed away, but lowered their guns and were about to shoot her. She talked to them then, called them stupid and asked them if they had any idea what they were doing.”

“
What the fuck is wrong with her?” Carl growled, shaking his head.

“
No,” Tanya said, shaking her head at him. “It worked! They stopped and looked at her. I think they were surprised at first. Then one of them looked at her and started laughing. Jizzie Banks, he called her. Said he couldn’t believe it, but there she was.”

Carl groaned in spite of himself. What had to happen next was not going to be pretty.

“
You know who Jizzie Banks is?” Tanya asked him.

“
Jessie,” he confirmed.

“
But do you know who she is?” the gymnast persisted.

Carl shrugged. “Told me she was an actress. That was the name she went by. Sounds like a porn star to me.”

Tanya nodded, looking miserable. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked in a whisper.

Carl shrugged. “None of my business, none of yours.”

“
I think she made it our business!” Tanya spat out, looking like she wanted to punch him.

Carl just looked at her, then after the moment passed and she looked away he said, “What happened next?”

“
She lied to them. It came smooth and natural, just like when she talked to us,” Tanya said, her voice suddenly tired and flat. “She said Dustin was her brother, they were out scouting a new place and new ideas for a new movie.”

“
They buy it?”

Tanya shivered. “I don’t know. She said it was a sci-fi story about a girl who was stranded in the badlands with some friends, then her friends got kidnapped by some mutants. The girl escaped and had to try and find a way to save her friends. She said she was going to play the girl, but they were looking for a place to shoot and maybe some local talent.”

“
She lied,” Carl said, his voice betraying a grudge of respect for the porn queen. “You were the girl playing the role.”

Tanya nodded, fresh tears falling. “I know,” she whispered.

“
So what happened to them?”

She took a deep breath to center herself, then said, “They took them with them. Said maybe they could help, maybe not. Either way, Eddie would want to meet her. They told her that if she played her cards right, her and her brother just might have a chance to make that movie after all.”

“
Eddie?” Carl asked, finally having a name he had heard before.

Tanya nodded, sniffing back her tears. “That was two days ago. God knows what’s happened since then.”

“
I know who Eddie is. He used to run an army surplus up just this side of the Nevada border. He made more money smuggling Mexicans, guns, or drugs than he ever did running the PX though,” he said. “After the war, he found himself a clean stretch of land with some water and set himself up his own little kingdom.”

“
Drugs and guns?” Tanya asked rhetorically, her voice squeaking a little. “How can I get Dusty and Jessie back?”

Carl reached down and began to work his boot back onto his foot. It required some grimacing and stretching, but he finally managed to stuff it back in. “We’ll figure it out,” he said.