Broken Worlds Super Boxset (29 page)

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The line of people at the Lubbock City Police Station in Texas stretched out the door. Dozens of armed Texans were holding the restraints of their Southwestern captives. Once inside the police doors, the former United States citizens fleeing from California, Arizona, and New Mexico were being readied to be sent back to the now exiled territories.

The officer working the front desk of the station was buried behind stacks of documents outlining the personal information of each immigrant trying to sneak across the Texas border, along with the accomplices helping them. Most of them were family members just trying to help get their kids, grandparents, cousins, uncles, or other loved ones out of the mess that was the Southwest.

The chaos of balancing the growing impatience of the line in front of her and the continued ringing of the phone was making her head spin.

“Chuck!” the officer called.

Her voice wasn’t able to penetrate the storm of voices from officers booking criminals, detectives interviewing suspects, and pleas of innocence from everyone who wasn’t wearing a badge. She stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth.

“CHUCK!”

A short-haired, mustached, pot-bellied detective with a mustard stain on his beige tie popped up from his desk with a piece of salami hanging out of his mouth.

“What?” Chuck asked.

“Got a bounty hunter here says he knows you.”

The bounty hunter wore a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat with a rattlesnake hide wrapped around the front. The heels of his alligator boots clicked against the laminate floor. He wore jeans with a knife sheath strapped to his right leg. A white t-shirt was hidden by his Rothco Soft Shell Tactical M-65 jacket.

The bounty hunter kept his head tilted low, only allowing the people around him to see the stubble running along his jawline and chin. The methodical clack of his boots ended once he arrived at Chuck’s desk.

“I want my money, Chuck.”

“Terry, listen. You got the reward money. It’s the same for everybody.”

With one fluid motion, Terry pulled a blade from the sheath on the side of his leg and slammed the tip into Chuck’s desk. The noise silenced the rest of the station and caused a few of the officers nearby to draw their pistols.

“Drop the knife!” the officers shouted.

Chuck started to tremble, and the fat under his chin wobbled along with the rest of him. He looked to his fellow officers and put his hands up. He gave a nervous grin.

“It’s okay, everyone. It’s just a joke. He’s joking,” Chuck said, laughing.

Terry released his grip on the knife, but the blade remained vertical. The officers around him slowly lowered their pistols. The conversation in the room started to pick back up.

“Keep your friend in line, Chuck,” one of the officers said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Chuck answered.

Chuck stood up, ushering Terry into an interrogation room where they could talk. The one-way glass wall was to the left of the entrance, and a small table with four chairs were the room’s only contents. Once Terry was inside, Chuck followed and closed the door behind him.

“Jesus H. Christ, are you crazy?” Chuck asked. “You can’t do that in the middle of a police station. Especially in a climate like this!”

“I brought in four illegals this morning. It’s one thousand dollars a head. The deposit in my account only registered two thousand. You’re two grand short, Chucky.”

“Look, since the Mexicans attacked the other day, funds are being shifted to military applications. They lowered the price of illegal bounties to five hundred this morning because of it. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t give me my money.”

Terry grabbed Chuck by the collar and slammed him against the wall. It was the first time Chuck got a good look at Terry’s eyes. They were dark green. More black than green.

“Look, I don’t have the money, but I did just get another notice for some fugitives that escaped border patrol during the Mexican attack,” Chuck said. “One of them was ex-military, which still gives a reward of five thousand, plus the extra five hundred from the girl he’s traveling with.”

Terry increased the pressure on Chuck’s throat until the cop’s cheeks turned a light shade of purple then released him. Chuck collapsed on all fours, gasping and hacking. Finally, after a few moments collecting himself on the ground, he rose and opened the door.

Chuck led Terry back to his desk and shuffled through the disorganized papers on top. He checked the drawers, then pulled out two sheets of paper and set them down for Terry to see.

“There. One female, aged thirty-seven, one male, aged thirty-three,” Chuck said.

Terry snatched the papers up and examined them with those dark-green eyes. He flipped through the pages, taking in every detail he could. Once finished, he tossed the papers back onto the desk and collected his knife.

Some of the officers kept eyeballing him on his way out, and once Terry was out the front door, Chuck practically fainted into his chair.

One of the other detectives leaned over to him. “Who the hell was that?”

“That was two hundred pounds of vicious, bloodhound, tracking terror,” Chuck answered.

“Bounty hunter?”

“Yeah.”

“God, those bastards have been coming out of the woodwork since the government started offering those rewards to catch folks trying to sneak over the border.”

“Yeah, well, this guy has been doing it for a long time. I feel sorry for these two.”

Chuck looked at Brooke and Eric’s pictures, provided by the DMV’s photos from their driver’s licenses.

“Terry always gets his mark,” Chuck said.

The sunlight reflecting against the skyscrapers of Dallas beggared relief. A trail of footsteps followed Brooke in the Texas sand. Each step forward sank her boots a quarter inch deep. The weight of her backpack straps pressed hard against her shoulders. She could feel the heat of the sun baking her through the shemagh wrapped around her head.

Once she had awoken earlier that morning, she knew the closest town was Dallas. And if there were a good place to run out of fuel, this would be it. The drought had drained most of Texas’s economy. The cattle industry plummeted, and farmland become desolate fields of dust as the water levels slowly dissipated. However, the state of Texas had found riches in one of its oldest traditions: oil.

Oil reserves once hidden underneath pockets of fresh groundwater were now exposed. Since there was no longer the threat of damaging an underwater ecosystem that didn’t exist, Texas witnessed a massive resurgence in the oil drilling and refining industries.

Upon entering the streets of Dallas, Brooke made sure to adjust the shemagh concealing her face. She couldn’t be sure if the authorities were looking for her or how far their reach would go, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

Lines of cars clogged the streets of downtown as Brooke weaved through the hordes of people walking along the suit-ridden sidewalks. With resources being shifted to protect the water supply, standards had dropped for air quality.

Before she started looking for fuel, she needed to make a call. She entered a small store and purchased a bottle of water with cash, giving her enough change to use the pay phone outside. She slid the coins into the slot and dialed her sister’s number. The phone rang, and Brooke prayed that Amy would pick up.

“Hello?” Amy asked.

“Amy! It’s Brooke.”

“Thank God. Are you okay? Where are you? What happened?”

“I’m fine. Me and the kids are fine. I’m in Dallas right now.”

“Dallas?”

“Yeah, we’re refueling, and then we’re going to head east.”

“Brooke, they’re arresting anyone that tries to come across. It’s been all over the news. Police officers, bounty hunters, people just trying to make a quick buck for the reward money are going nuts. It’s bad.”

“I know. I’m being careful. Look, can you talk to Daniel? See if there is anything he can do?”

“Of course. Should I call you?”

“No. If the authorities are watching things that closely, they’ll be looking at my phone records. I don’t want anything to get traced back to you. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, let you know where we’re at.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Brooke set the receiver down, and the change inside the pay phone clunked to the bottom. She readjusted her shemagh and continued down the busy Dallas streets. It felt like the entire population of Texas was in the city, which was one of the reasons Brooke had come alone. She wanted to avoid bringing the cruiser here to fuel up. It was her best bet for staying below police radar. Now that she was in the largest fuel capital in the United States, the question wasn’t finding gas but how to bring enough of it back to the cruiser.

The din of jackhammers filled the air. Road construction had slowed the traffic to a crawl, and the massive tankers filled with fuel formed clusters from the east. One of the truckers became caught behind the slowing traffic and stopped adjacent to Brooke. She waved at him through his open passenger window. When she caught his attention, she only pulled the shemagh down to expose her mouth. Nothing more.

“Hey! Where do you guys fuel up?” Brooke asked.

“Forty-Ninth Street. Ten blocks behind me.”

If she could convince a trucker to drive out with one of those tankers, then not only would she be able to fill the cruiser, but she could get a free ride home. As she walked, a gust of wind blew pieces of a newspaper against her leg. Before she tossed it into the trash, her eye caught the front page. “The War with Mexico,” was the headline.

According to the article, Congress was planning an emergency session to prepare a declaration of war later that afternoon. The president would also be giving a speech to address the nation. Brooke crumpled the newspaper in her fist. She’d heard enough of the president’s speeches.

Just below the lead story on the war, another article caught her eye. It highlighted the problem of thieves hijacking tankers. More than twenty thefts had been reported in the last month.

The closer Brooke moved to Forty-Ninth Street, the thicker the soot became. Plumes of smoke poisoned the sky above and cast a light rain of black over the city. Tanker truck tires rolled their imprints across the roads, cutting paths along the black pollutants lining the asphalt. Each of those tankers carried fuel that would be shipped to every corner of the country.

Brooke wondered how long the oil boom in Texas would last. Once there was no more water to keep the rest of the country alive, the black sludge extracted from the earth would do little but seep back down into the depths from which it had come.

Brooke made it to the chain-link fence of the fueling station. Her fingers poked through the patterned diamond spaces between metal wires. She leaned forward, the fence bending as she took in the semi-trucks being loaded down with cylindrical tanks of fuel.

A group of truckers stood in front of their rigs. Most of them sipped coffee, each of their faces smudged in grease and dirt. Their clothes were soiled, and those that didn’t wear hats had tangled and matted hair, all the attributes of someone Brooke would have normally avoided.

Brooke pinched her fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that broke up whatever trucker stories the men were telling. They all turned and stared at the woman with her face concealed standing on the other side of the fence.

The truckers pointed to each other, shrugged, trying to figure out what she wanted. Eventually, one of them meandered over. Brooke thought he looked too thin to be a trucker. The rest of them were a little wide around the midsection, but he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. He took one last drag of the cigarette in his mouth and flicked it to the ground.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I need fuel,” Brooke answered.

“There’s a station just down the road.”

“I know. But I need a lot of it and a way to transport it. My car broke down outside the city.”

“Then call a wrecker.” The trucker spat on the ground and turned on his heel to leave.

“I can pay you,” Brooke said.

The trucker stopped. He walked over to the fence. This time he came nose to nose with Brooke and poked his own fingers through. Dirt and grime consumed his nails both underneath and on top. He gave a grin, flashing his yellow-stained teeth.

“How much?” he asked.

“Three hundred now. Another three hundred when we get to the vehicle.”

“A grand.”

“What? I don’t have that much money.”

“Then you’re shit out of luck, sweetheart.”

The trucker pursed his lips and kissed the air between them. Brooke recoiled as the trucker’s weight buckled the metal back toward her. He laughed and then started to walk back. She could try another refinery, but she didn’t want to waste more time. Every second spent idling was one more for the police to catch up with her. She rubbed her hand nervously and then felt the small bump under her glove.

“Wait!” Brooke said. “I don’t have a thousand in cash, but I have this.”

Brooke poked her hand through the fence, pinching her wedding ring. The sunlight caught the diamond, and it shimmered. The trucker’s face changed as he walked back over to her. When his hand went out to grab the ring, she pulled it back through her side of the fence.

“Three hundred now, and then you get the ring once we’re there,” Brooke said.

“All right. I leave in twenty minutes. I’ll pick you up on that street corner there when I come out,” he said then disappeared.

A thin circle of pale flesh was now exposed on her left ring finger. The small, circular golden band resting in Brooke’s palm felt foreign to her. Of all the memories that could have flooded her mind—from her wedding day or when Jason had asked her to marry him to their first date together—the only one that came to mind was Jason’s funeral. The sound of the guns firing. The lowering of the casket. Emily and John crying. The finely pressed uniforms. All of it came rushing back to her, and she felt disgusted with herself. She felt disgusted with the trucker, with the city surrounding her, with everything. This was what the world would cost her now. She had to give up pieces of her life that she would never get back.