Wanted (29 page)

“
Carl,” Carl told him.

“
Your outfit got a name?”

“
Not an outfit,” Carl said. He had concocted a story already, but he saw no reason to volunteer it if it was not necessary.

“
Look Carl, we aren’t getting anywhere. You’re gonna have to show me some trust. I’m not the one who can’t lick his lips,” he said, reminding Carl that he had the upper hand.

Carl nodded slowly. He knew where he stood, he’d just hoped Harold wouldn’t pick up on it so quickly. “Were you a cop?”

Harold smiled. “Spent some time as a sheriff back east before Aggie and I moved out here and bought the campground.”

Carl turned and gestured to Jessie and Dustin. A moment later they emerged from their cover and made their way over, Jessie leaning heavily on the boy for assistance. “My sniper’s still out there,” Carl said as they approached

“
Carl, come on,” Harold said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter to you that I was a police officer?”

Carl shook his own head and smiled, “I’ve known my share of cops,” he said.

Harold laughed out loud, “Fair enough. So, who do we have here?”

“
Couple of lost souls we picked up a while back. Jessie and Darin,” Carl said, remembering the name Dustin had adopted while staying in Edland. “Brother and sister.”

“
And your sniper? Who’s he?”

“
That’s my daughter,” Carl said, continuing the lie.

“
Your daughter?” Aggie gasped in surprise. “Your daughter is your sniper?”

He nodded. “She dropped a mule deer from 400 yards in a cross breeze two days ago,” he said. “That was the last time we ate.”

“
That’s a good shot,” Harold said. “What’s she shooting?”

“
Colt M24, chambered for the .308 Winchester magnum.”

Harold whistled, impressed. He turned as Jessie and Dustin arrived and did a double take. Then he grinned and started laughing. A minute later he slapped his knee and pointed at Jessie. “Hot damn!” he said, turning to his wife. “You know who this is?”

Aggie stared at Jessie and then her mouth fell open too. “Oh my,” she said. “Oh my! What…how… oh dear, we’ve got to get you inside and let you sit down!”

Carl stared, shocked at the sudden change of attitude. Aggie rushed over to Jessie and helped carry the exhausted woman over to a dirty lawn chair that was being dragged by a couple of men Harold had snapped his fingers at. They put it under a faded umbrella that rose out of a round table and held it steady while Jessie was carefully allowed to sit in it.

“
Somebody get some water! You, Gene, go get Doc Allen!” Aggie said as soon as she had stepped away from Jessie.

“
Miss Banks, this is an honor! I never… well, I hope you’ll forgive us our rudeness, we had no idea! Are you filming a movie out here?”

“
Miss Banks?” Carl repeated to himself. He knew who she was, he just had no idea this was the sort of reception she would receive. He shook his head and saw Jessie meet his eyes briefly with her own. She smiled, flabbergasted as well, and returned to soaking up the attention.

Carl snapped out of his shock when Harold pressed a tall glass filled with water into his hand. “Drink up, friend,” he said with a smile. “Sorry about all that, but, you can’t be too careful these days.”

Carl looked at it and then was drinking, trying to take it slowly. It burned going down at first, but once the dust and dryness was washed away it tasted sweeter than the most sugared soda. He forced the glass away, half empty, and saw Harold admiring the actress, who was trying to fight Aggie for the water the woman kept pulling away from her after she took a few sips.

“
That’s one hell of a woman you got there,” Harold said.

Carl looked at him, surprised again. “Not my girl,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep her alive.”

Harold nodded, then seemed to hear what Carl had said. He turned to look at him. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

Carl shrugged. “Said she was an actress.”

Harold laughed and clapped Carl on the shoulder. “An actress? Well, yeah, she is. She’s our favorite, Aggie and me. Got every one of her movies too! Hey, if you guys stay long enough you’re welcome to come up and watch them!”

“
Thanks,” Carl muttered, not quite sure about the offer.

“
Hey, your daughter? Better get in here if she’s as bad off as you guys are.”

Carl nodded and looked away, surprised he had forgotten about Tanya in the wake up all that was happening. He gestured and she hopped down from the top of the trailer she had somehow managed to climb up on, then jogged her way in. “This is my daughter, Tanya,” Carl said loudly as she approached so that she would hear and understand.

Carl reached out and shook her hand, instantly surprised by the strength of her return handshake. He yelled over to one of the men and a glass of water was handed to her as well. She drank eagerly from it, and then stopped when she saw Carl’s was only half empty.

“
Nothing wrong with it,” Carl assured her. “Just taking my time. Drink too fast and you’ll get sick.”

She nodded, smiled a little, and took another prolonged sip.

“
Jizzy Banks, here in my campground,” Harold mused, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it.”

“
My life’s been full of surprises since she showed up too,” Carl said meaningfully. He saw Tanya smirk out of the corner of his eye but Harold was too spellbound by the actress turned dust bunny to notice.

Chapter 17

“
Carl, what say you and I take a walk,” Harold said after Jessie had been sufficiently fawned over and they all drank their fill.

Carl nodded. He had expected something like this. “Tanya, keep an eye on those two for me, I’ll be right back,” he said. She nodded and forced her way in through the crowd to be closer to her brother and Jessie.

Carl’s eyes caught Jessie’s again. She was smiling and trying to be friendly but he could see the strain in her expression. He smirked at her, then shook his head and turned to walk away. “Carl! Wait!”

He turned back, surprised at the urgent tone in her voice. She tried to get up but she was promptly reminded to not move by the doctor, a quirky and fiery woman by the name of Tempest Allen. “I’ll be back,” he told her.

In spite of his reassurance, Jessie looked almost frantic. She looked around quickly at the people surrounding her. Her eyes fell on Tanya and Dustin, also near her, and she looked back at Carl. He could see the way her eyes looked at him suspiciously. “I’ll be back,” he said again, emphasizing it to reassure her.

Carl turned and walked with Harold, who had watched the entire exchange but said nothing. The older man led him towards the house, but veered to the north of it and said nothing until they were out of earshot and eyesight of the others.

“
Pretty girl, Miss Banks,” Harold observed.

Carl fought the urge to snort in derision or agree with him; instead he stayed quiet and let Harold wonder.

“
I know Jessie was in the army,” he continued when Carl refused to take the bait. “What about you?”

“
You seem to know a lot about her,” Carl observed.

“
My wife and I are big fans,” Harold admitted with a chuckle. “We’ve got everything she’s ever done – thanks to the Internet, when we still had it. We even got our hands on the recruiting videos she made.”

Carl grunted, surprised. “Cops make the best stalkers.”

Harold laughed again. “I like you, Carl! So how about it, what’s your story? I’m not prying, see, just need to make sure we haven’t let a wolf into my flock of sheep. We got enough problems to deal with, don’t need a new one.”

“
I spent some time in the army,” Carl offered after a moment. “Did some private work after that. Came back here after I’d had enough.”

Harold stopped and surveyed the distant barb wire fence. “Here’s the rub, Carl. I think I like you, you seem like my kind of guy. I can’t blame you for not opening up, can’t say I’d be too quick to do it in your shoes. I need more though. You keeping Miss Banks safe earns you some points, but I’ve got an active imagination. Aggie calls me paranoid,” he said, chuckling. “We’re still alive though, considering what’s out there, so that ought to mean something.”

“
What’s out there?” Carl asked before he could stop himself.

Harold looked at him for a long moment before he said anything. “You know what happened here?”

Carl shook his head, wondering how much of this he was going to put up with. He had never been known for his skills at diplomacy.

“
The fallout from LA wasn’t too bad. Made a few people sick but mostly it either passed over us or fell short,” Harold explained. “When Vegas got hit, it wasn’t clean. It was one of them dirty bombs, not much damage but tons of radiation. That was just a distraction though; the real target was the Hoover Damn.”

Carl had heard most of this over the years, but he listened intently. Harold, it seemed, had firsthand knowledge of it.

“
Flooded this whole area pretty good. We’re far enough away here we didn’t get any, but after the first floods came through, what was left behind was dirty water,” he continued. “You know about dirty water?”

“
All the fallout carried by the water, in this case,” Carl answered.

“
Yes, sir,” Harold said, nodding his head appreciatively. “Poisoned a lot of folks and killed off all the fish in the Colorado. Soon enough it killed off most of the vegetation around here too. We want water now, we got to go and get it.”

That explained the drums in the back of the truck they had seen earlier. “Clean water source up north somewhere?” he asked.

Harold closed his mouth and looked at Carl suspiciously. He had been about to continue before Carl had spoken.

“
We saw the blue truck full of water drums and followed it here,” Carl told him. “We were north a bit, cut over from I-40 to see what we could find in the houses here, if we couldn’t find anybody.”

Harold nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, there’s a spring up there. Limestone cave, actually, found it a couple years back – must be the tremors from the explosions in LA or Vegas opened it up.”

“
So,” Carl said, steering him away from talking about their water source. He did not want Harold to think he was probing him for information. “If the Colorado’s killed everything off, why was your man pointing that .50 cal in the back of the truck into Needles?”

Harold sighed. “The trees and flowers and cacti were killed off, lots of the animals too. A fair amount of people, either radiation or the fever. But enough were left behind. Some of them came here, the rest… well… the rest are still in there.”

“
Trouble?” Carl guessed.

Harold barked out a laugh. “You could say that. We’ve been calling them vamps for a while now. They mostly come out at night and lay low during the day. Lots of them have radiation poisoning from living down in the areas that was flooded. Every now and then they’d come test us, trying to get in and take whatever we got. Lately they been getting braver.”

“
That explains the fence,” Carl said, looking at it and realizing how pointless it would be except as a means of slowing somebody down.

“
Yeah, we put that up a while back. Mostly a deterrent though.”

“
Got any more coils of wire?” Carl asked.

Harold looked at him and nodded, “Lots. A while back they kept cutting it and we had to keep replacing it. Got plenty of spools of it in our garage back there.”

“
Why they keep trying to come in here? What do you guys have that they want?” Carl asked after he finished approximating how much barb wire it would take to do what he was going to recommend.

“
Food,” Harold said without preamble. “They’ve killed all the stray dogs and cats by now and don’t seem too interested in hunting. We scrounged all the canned food we could get out of there, but they got some too. Now they’re running low.”

“
You can’t be doing much better,” Carl observed.

Harold shrugged. “Not great, but we send out teams hunting when we need to. Don’t have the water to grow any crops, but we’ve been experimenting with some up near our water source. We rotate a crew up there to stay around the clock and keep it guarded though.”

“
Good idea,” Carl said. “But there’s something you’re not telling me. There’s a big stink over all this and so far I ain’t heard a thing that smells as bad as you’re making it out to.”

“
It’s the food,” Harold said, staring off into the distance. The sun, a hazy red ball, was nearing the horizon. “I don’t know if they prefer it or not, but when there’s nothing else at hand… well, they’re cannibals.”

Carl’s head whipped around and he stared at Harold to see if he was making a bad joke. Harold turned to look at him and shrugged. “We are their food, or so they think,” he added.

Carl let out a deep breath and turned to stare at the barb wire again. “We need steel if you’ve got it, wood if you don’t.”

“
What? Why?”

“
Need to make some spikes, take four sections of wood or steel about four feet long and fasten them in the middle. Like two ‘X’s leaning against each other,” Carl explained, squatting down to draw a picture in the dirt with his finger. “You hook the barb wire up at the end of each piece and maybe another in the middle, gives you a barrier nobody’s going through without spending a lot of time on it. It’ll stop anything short of a treaded vehicle too.”