Wanted (5 page)

“
Look, guys, there’s scary shit out here, okay?” she said, stepping closer to them so she could reach out to put a hand on each of their shoulders. Tanya pulled away a little, but did not break the connection.

“
Scary, yeah, but we’ll make it. I’ll get you back, I promise.”

“
Otherwise you don’t get your reward,” Tanya accused, looking at her with a fire in her eyes.

“
Enough with the reward, okay?” Jessie hissed. “Look, I could use a few bucks, who couldn’t? You going to blame me for that?”

She pushed on, convincing herself she was who she said she was easily. “I stopped because I figured everybody was dead. I ain’t gonna lie to you. I figured planes only have rich folks on ‘em - that or they’re military. I was hoping I’d get my hands on something I could use or sell.”

“
I didn’t expect to find nobody alive,” she admitted truthfully, in character or not. “But I did, and I made you guys a promise.”

“
Easier just to ditch us and run,” Tanya said suspiciously. “Unless you want the reward.”

Jessie looked to the hazy sky and let out a deep breath. She looked back at Tanya and said, “I’m trying to help you – both of you. You want to be a bitch, that’s fine, you can find your own way back. Dusty’s hurt and needs help. You don’t know your head from your ass out here, you think I’m going to let you get him killed?”

“
Hey, I can make it!” Dusty protested, standing a little straighter but wanting to defend his sister.

Jessie looked at him and smiled fondly. “Honey, you’re full of shit. I-I know what you feel like, I been hurt before. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, even if that means big sis and I need to roll around in the dirt and throw some punches.”

“
Look,” Jessie said to both of them but staring intently at Tanya, whose mouth was opened and ready to protest. “You can’t drink the water cuz you don’t know if it’s safe or not. You can’t trust what you eat to not be diseased, sick, or full of radiation poisoning. Been a few years since the bombs went off, but that don’t make it safe. It’s washed into the water and the ground, killing quiet-like.”

“
So it’s just us, got it? You and you and me. We look out for each other and I’ll get you back in one piece. Everybody else wants something, I figure if we can give something for nothing, maybe it’s a good place to start to bringing the world back to where it used to be.”

Jessie stood there, watching the two of them and wanted to slap herself on her back. It was the best performance she had ever given! Especially with her clothes on. She knew where the words came from, and as much as she wanted to spit at the thought of him, she almost wondered if maybe he had something. Maybe she was right – and maybe he had been right too.

“
Sis?” Dusty asked.

“
All right,” she said. As Dustin continued to stare at her she rolled her eyes and said, “Fine! I’m in, okay? I just don’t trust her. What makes her different from the guys that took her car? We don’t know shit about her!”

Dusty opened his mouth to respond, but glanced at Jessie briefly before doing so. Jessie beat him to the punch.

“
What do you want to know about me?” she asked. “We don’t have to be friends. I don’t expect an invitation to Christmas dinner. But I’m all you’ve got.”

“
And that way you get a nice happy reward,” Tanya said, pointing out what seemed obvious to her.

“
Fine!” Jessie snapped, rubbing the back of her neck in irritation. “Maybe that’s it! Maybe you’re just a fucking paycheck. At least that means I need to get you back safe and sound, don’t it? Either way, trust me or not, you get back okay and you never have to be bothered by me again.”

The moment of silence stretched out, tense and awkward. Jessie stared at Tanya, then occasionally glanced over at Dustin. He would look away quickly though, embarrassed by the argument. Finally the former gymnast relented, either seeing Jessie’s point or giving in to her brother’s obvious, if unspoken, request.

“
So where are we going? We can’t walk without food or water for that long.”

“
I know a guy, we can be there before the day is over,” Jessie said, hating her only option but knowing she had to take it.

“
Thought you said everybody wants something,” Tanya pointed out. “What’s he going to want?”

“
He’ll probably want to shoot me,” she admitted. “But he’ll help. He helped me before and got nothing for it.”

“
Why not head to Vegas? That’s closer – or even Lake Havasu?” Dustin asked, thinking hard about geography and momentarily distracting himself from his pain.

“
Vegas was a shit-hole full of people aching to bleed you dry before. Imagine what it’s like now,” Jessie said. “Besides, I heard they had one of the first and biggest dirty bombs.”

“
What about Lake Havasu?” Tanya asked, remembering seeing it from the window of the airplane as the flew overhead. “That place used to be nice, didn’t it?”

Jessie thought it over and shrugged. She had partied there a few times before the bombs, it was a great place. “Okay, maybe. This guy I know, he’s closer though. If he won’t help us we can head there.”

“
Okay, you got us,” Tanya told her. “Lead the way.”

Jessie smiled, then pointed to the North and East. “Let’s go, we’ll have to help Dusty up like before.”

She made her way to a niche in the wall of the wash and climbed up. She sat down on the edge and waited for Dustin to get in place. He worked his way up, grunting along the way, and grabbed onto Jessie’s hands while Tanya pushed from behind. He made it up, coming into close contact with Jessie again and enjoying it in spite of the pain he felt. Jessie just smiled encouragingly at him and made sure he was all right before offering Tanya her hand. Tanya ignored it, easily climbing up the wall on her own with muscles that were trained to bounce and jump.

They set out, Jessie leading with her gun then slipping it back into her pants so that she could help Dustin. He moved a little quicker that way, and clearly enjoyed the close contact with the starlet pretending to be a courier.

“
How…did…you….get hurt?” he asked between steps that made him wince and drove the breath from him.

Tanya walked beside them, watching carefully and listening intently. Jessie knew what she was doing and found it annoying and touching, how she was so worried about her brother.

“
It was… a long time ago,” Jessie said. “I was in the Army, back when the world just started turning to shit. I was in Iran in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“
What happened?” Tanya asked, sparing Dustin the breath and effort.

Jessie almost shrugged, but didn’t want to hurt the kid clinging to her. “Wrong place; wrong time. I got hurt. Got me fixed up, sent home, and out of the Army. End of story.”

There was a lot more to it, but Jessie didn’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it. It was bad enough she lived through it night after night in her dreams.

“
That what happened to your hand?” Tanya asked.

Jessie clenched the three fingers on her right hand into a fist subconsciously. Fortunately for Dustin, he was on her left side. “Yes,” she admitted.

“
Oh, I’m, um, sorry,” Tanya said.

“
I knew it,” Dusty whispered, so quiet that only Jessie could hear him. He turned to glance at her, his eyes wide and a smile on his lips.

Suddenly nervous, Jessie glanced around and then looked to Tanya. “Tanya, help your brother, I need to scout ahead a little.”

Seeing the suspicion in the gymnast’s eyes, Jessie sighed. “You’ll be able to see me the entire time, just be ready to get down or move faster to me if I motion for it, okay?”

Tanya nodded and made her way over to help Dustin. Jessie handed him off then moved ahead, pulling out her pistol again and making sure that they did not catch up to her. She looked around as she walked, but found herself paying attention to nothing. Her words kept going over and over in her mind, reminding her of what had happened. She shook her head a few times, but found she could not focus.

Nauseas again, she found herself bending over a dusty rock and dry heaving little more than phlegm and bile onto the hard backed ground. She was glad to see she had digested her breakfast, at least.

On her way back to her feet Tanya and Dustin were suddenly at her side. “Are you okay?” one or the other asked. Or perhaps both did, she was not sure.

She nodded. “Ate something bad,” she lied. “Coming back to haunt me.”

“
You’re soaked,” Tanya said, seeing the sweat that had drenched Jessie’s top and was running down her body.

“
Fuck!” Jessie spat out, tasting her vomit and wishing she had a beer to drink. “Come on, we’re fucked if we’re stuck out here at night.”

“
Why?” Tanya asked her as she started to walk away.

“
Cold,” Jessie said. She grimaced as a pain shot through her stomach, either from the contortions caused by vomiting or something else she could not be sure. “We’ll freeze to death.”

“
It doesn’t get that cold,” she protested.

“
Dry, high 30’s or low 40’s, without clothing it gets cold.”

“
We’re not naked,” Tanya protested.

Jessie looked down at herself and did a double take. She really was drenched with sweat. Cold because of it too, even though it had to be near ten or eleven in the morning and it should be getting uncomfortably warm out. She was glad her top was dark blue instead of white, but even still her nipples were making obvious dents in the wet fabric. “You want to loan me a jacket then?” she asked.

“
Oh, good point,” Tanya said.

“
So let’s go,” Jessie said gruffly, and started out again.

Tanya and Dustin looked to one another, both thinking many thoughts but neither willing to voice them. After a brief moment, he nodded towards his sister. With a nervous smile, Tanya nodded back and they started after their erstwhile rescuer. Dustin was almost certain he knew who she was, but her acting was just good enough to leave him unconvinced. Besides, she looked a mess. Beautiful, sure; but a sweaty and dirty mess. All the movies he’d seen starring Jizzy Banks she was wearing makeup, had her hair styled, and was drop dead gorgeous. Jessie looked a lot like her, but she acted different. She talked a lot, unlike the one he’d seen in the movies. He’d heard a rumor that she’d lost a finger in an accident, but he had never once seen one of her movies that showed it.

Still, that shadow of doubt kept his lips sealed. That, and he figured the longer he kept silent, the better his chances of seeing more of her and being closer to her.

With the sun rising through the red haze overhead, they trudged onward through what had once been the California desert.

Chapter 4

A chirp woke Carl up from the light doze he had finally settled into after his walk back. He looked over, instantly focusing on what he knew the problem to be. One of the three windows on his monitor displaying live video feeds showed movement. He rose up from his chair and looked closer at it, focusing on the small figures. Three bodies, he counted, at least two of them wounded.

The dust in the air and on his lens made identification impossible. He made a note to clean his lens again, he had to do it at least once a week. That could wait. First he had to deal with the trespassers. They were a lot closer to his hideout than he was comfortable with. He stared a moment longer, gathering what intel he could, then shrugged at the tiny figures he was about to kill. More scavengers better off dead anyhow, he figured.

Carl grabbed his jacket and slipped it over his worn army combat uniform. He opened a cabinet and looked at the different weapons contained within. He glanced at the monitor, the screen facing away from him, and decided to go with his M24. He loaded it full of five .300 Winchester rounds and was already thinking of where he was going to set up his sniper stand to intercept them. They were moving slow so he had time.

On his way out he slung his handy M4 over his shoulder, just in case. He took a different path than the roundabout circuit he had led the drugged out whore through earlier. He had led her all over the place to be sure she’d never find her way back. Truth was he’d parked her car to the east of his hideout a few hundred yards then driven her further east and south before heading back west when she flipped out on him. He sighed at how far people had fallen. Then again, this is what they deserved for decades of thinking only of themselves.

He chuckled bitterly while he walked. He was no different from anybody else and he knew it. If he really wanted to make a difference, he wouldn’t be out here living the life of a hermit. He climbed up a small ridge and found a niche in the shadow of a boulder. Before laying in it he made sure there were no surprises waiting for him in the shadows of the rocks or under the loose pieces of shale. Last thing he needed would be to lay down on a scorpion, spider, or a rattlesnake.

Set up finally, Carl pulled out his ranging scope and took a few measurements. Firing the .300 Winchester round he had a maximum range of around 1300 yards, about three quarters of a mile. They’d never even hear the shots by the time they were bleeding out onto the ground. He saw them in the distance of his scope, blurry through the haze of dust and dirt that kept being kicked up by the dry weather and hot winds. At the rate they were moving he figured he had a good fifteen minutes or more before they’d be in range.