Ground Zero (22 page)

“Try to eat this slowly, okay? It’s got a lot of calories in it, and it might make you sick if you eat it too fast. Maybe have half now, and wait a few minutes to eat the other half,” she suggested, though she wasn’t surprised when he just sank down onto his knees in the middle of the road and ate the whole thing.

“I can give you more, but you gotta wait. Seriously. It’ll make you sick otherwise, and you don’t want to be wasting your food right now.” He looked up at her then, and she noticed that he couldn’t be much older than she was, despite the lines his face had accumulated.  His silvery eyes caught hers, locking on and pulling her in. She could feel his misery beyond any empathetic reaction she’d experienced previously. Her lizard brain was fighting with her more evolved intellect, telling her that he was safe. She wasn’t dumb enough to trust that, however, having learned a few lessons from her mother’s mistakes. Cam needed time to trust someone, and this guy would be no different. She broke off eye contact and pulled a bottle of water from the bag.

“Here,” she said as she handed him the bottle. “I know there are a lot of lakes and rivers to drink from around here, but this water is safer. It’s been treated already, so you won’t get sick from it. Drink a little bit and I’ll give you another power bar, okay?” When he began to drink, she kneeled on the road facing him, just out of reach. She didn’t want to sit down, because that would make it more awkward for her to reach her gun if she needed it.

“What’s your name? Do you remember?” she asked. He sat there silently for a while, and she could tell he was thinking rather than ignoring her. Cam could also see that he was getting upset. Apparently he was having a hard time remembering who he was at the moment, so her question had agitated him. She decided to change the subject instead.

“I can probably help you, so that you don’t have to go hungry anymore,” she said. He looked at her in disbelief, despite the fact that she’d already given him food.

“We have a farm not too far from here. We grow our own food. There are lots of people there now, too, so you wouldn’t have to be alone anymore. You look like you’ve been alone for a long time. It must have been hard out here by yourself. Do you know what’s been happening?” She knew that would probably upset him, too, since it was a pretty unsettling topic, but she was hoping to get him to talk. He just kind of shrugged in response to her question, though, as if he wasn’t quite sure.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good time to talk about it. Have you seen any other people lately?” He shook his head, his expression sad and scared.

“Well, you have now,” she said as brightly as she could, though perkiness and optimism weren’t really her thing.

“Would you like to see more people? You could meet my mother and her husband. He’s got a son a bit younger than me, so I guess you could say he’s like a step-brother to me. A couple of my friends came to live on the farm. Kirk and Leigh are a lot of fun. We like to play video games when we have some time. We actually have electricity on the farm, because we put up a bunch of solar panels, so we can still do pretty much everything we did before the power grid went down,” she continued, trying to put him at ease with a constant stream of chatter. She knew somehow that he was a lot more scared than she was. Whether that made him safer or more dangerous, though, she didn’t know yet.

“Look, I was on my way to do something pretty important. I can leave this food here with you and then come back for you, if you want. Or maybe you can come with me. I don’t know you, so I don’t know if I can trust you, but I don’t want to leave you all alone either. What do you say? Are you willing to go in the car with me?”

He pointed at the bag with a questioning look on his face.

“Yeah, we’ll take that with us. You should be okay to have another power bar now if you want. Just dig through the bag and see what you like. You can have it all if you want. Just go slowly. Like I said, we’ve got food at the farm, so you don’t need to share any of that. This is just an emergency pack in case one of us runs into someone who needs some food. Like you, basically.”

He got into the passenger side of the BMW, his expression still wary. She had to wonder what kind of life he’d been forced to live over the last several months. Maybe she didn’t really want to know, either. Survival sometimes meant doing some pretty nasty things, and Cam didn’t want to imagine a lot of those things, but she knew she would do whatever it took for her own survival. Logically she couldn’t blame someone else for doing the same, but that didn’t mean she wanted to picture it in her head.

She didn’t put her seatbelt on this time, keeping herself unfettered just in case he turned out to be violent. As she drove, she kept glancing over at him, relieved every time she saw that he was either digging through the bag for more food, or using his hands to eat what he found.

Cam parked the car in a driveway around the corner from the houses she planned to search, on the side opposite the direction Geraldine had come from when Cam had seen her meeting up with her dad. It wasn’t especially well-concealed, but she didn’t think it would stand out, sheltered under a maple tree as it was.

Being a ’98, Cam knew the central locking system wouldn’t automatically engage like some of the newer cars did. The stranger in the car would be free to leave if he wanted. She rolled all the windows down, anyway. Otherwise the black car would start to feel stifling in the afternoon heat, even in the shade. She wasn’t leaving it running with the air conditioning going, just in case he had a mind to take off in the car. Instead she pocketed the keys, and told him she would be back as soon as she had seen whether or not her dad was in one of the houses.

“I’m trying to find him right now to give him an important message, but I’m not really sure where he goes, so this could take me a little while. Half an hour maybe. Try to remember to take it slowly with that food. When I come back we can go to the farm I told you about, and then you can have some real food, like eggs and potatoes, that kind of thing, instead of that stuff with all the preservatives in it. See you soon,” she said, as cheerfully as she could, though it was strictly for his benefit. She wasn’t feeling the least bit cheerful.

As Cameron walked toward the first house, she wondered how the hell she was going to know if anyone was using a place. Then she started to think about the possibility that she might end up finding a bunch of bodies if she just started going into the houses. The only thing she could think to do for the moment was watch and listen.

Cam walked around to all the windows of the first place, carefully peeking in. When she didn’t see anything, she would press her ear against the glass. Eventually she went up and tried the door, but it was locked. Since there was no reason to continue locking a door, she thought maybe the house that her dad was using to meet with Geraldine might already be unlocked. They would want to be able to get in and out without dealing with keys, or going in through windows, so Cam moved on to the next house.

She was really starting to get tired by the time she circled the third house. She didn’t have much energy left after her lesson with Ian, and she was starting to feel foolish. She had no idea if her dad was in the area, and, even if he was, she knew he wasn’t going to listen to her. He never did. Still, it wasn’t in her to give up so easily, so she continued on to the fourth house, and then the fifth. This was the one that was closest to the place she’d seen them meeting, so it was the likeliest location.

Cameron went through a small gate at the front of the yard, and gradually circled to the back yard, checking each window as she went. She didn’t see or hear anything, and continued around the other side toward the front again. A loud rustling sound came from the bushes behind her. She spun around, her hand already going to the holster at her back, but the tail of her shirt had fallen over it again. She couldn’t get underneath it in time to pull out the gun. By then Geraldine had her own gun pointed directly at her face.

Cam lashed out with her hand, using what Ian had taught her earlier that day. The hit to Geraldine’s face obviously threw her a bit, but not enough to make her drop the gun. Instead of pulling her hand straight back, instinct had Cameron swinging her forearm over and down to connect with the hand holding the gun. It was enough to push her hand away and keep her from aiming directly at Cam, but it didn’t jar her arm enough to make her drop it.

Geraldine’s determination made her fierce, and Cam was weakened by her own fear. Hatred poured from Geraldine’s gaze. Hatred that gave a light of insanity to what had seemed such a nice face. Cam knew she couldn’t give up. There was no way this woman was going to let her walk away alive. She lunged into her, trying to use her body weight as a weapon. Turning sideways to free her right arm, while still pressing forward with her body, Cam attempted once more to free her Glock, but Geraldine shoved back at her, making her stumble and throw her arms out for balance.

She tried another hand-heel strike to buy herself some time. Geraldine lifted her chin up and away, so it merely glanced off her jaw. She only staggered back a little, still trying to bring up her hand to aim at Cam with the gun. Cameron kicked out at the weapon, and Geraldine jerked her arm back to avoid losing her grip on it. Cam was too far away to use her hand or elbow now, so she tried another kick, which had Geraldine skittering backward a couple of feet. Cam ran forward, knowing she needed to keep the woman within reach, or the last thing she would see would be Geraldine pulling the trigger.

Both women were panting and gasping with their efforts. Despite being younger, Cameron had started out the struggle already tired, and with no food to give her any energy. Geraldine might have been psychotic, but she was older than Cam. She was closer to Cam’s mother’s age, which meant she didn’t have the automatic benefit of youth and agility. She didn’t look like she was out of shape, but age still had an effect.

Cameron kicked out once more, missing, despite the speed and ferocity brought on by panic and desperation. Her next kick connected, hitting Geraldine in the knee, but it didn’t stop the motion of her arm as she finally managed to move the gun into position. Cam instinctively brought her arm up to shield her face and head. She turned a little, ducking her head slightly just as she heard the gun go off.

She felt nothing at first, which made her think she hadn’t been hit. Then a cold burning sensation turned to fire and her whole forearm exploded with pain. Cam dropped to her knees in shock, which jarred her arm and sent white-hot shards of agony through her bicep, into her shoulder, and even across her chest. She wanted to cradle it protectively, but even the idea of touching it was unbearable, so it dangled at her side. Looking at it was out of the question. Cam felt sick just imagining what she would see.

Her hand was completely useless. Even if she were able to move it, she figured the pain would make her pass out if she tried to do so. Her brain insisted on showing her mental pictures of a hand and wrist dangling from a small scrap of flesh, and she wondered vaguely if she was going to lose her hand. Physical shock, in addition to the emotional, began to creep through her, chilling every part of her body except for her right arm. When her body started shaking, it reverberated through her injured flesh. She wanted to gnash her teeth against the pain, but was incapable of anything beyond incoherent whimpers. When Geraldine spoke to her, Cam could only stare up at her in bemused misery.

“There, that’s better. I’m glad I didn’t have to kill you outright. After all, you’ve caused me more pain than you can possibly imagine, and I’ve had to live with that pain for months now. You stole the only thing that ever mattered to me, and for that you’re going to pay dearly. First with pain, and then with your life. I knew there was more to the story than what that cop told us, and it turned out I was right, though I doubt any of you told us the full truth. After all, that cop was a friend of your mother’s. He would have told us anything she wanted him to.

“Of course, I needed to make you suffer like I did, and the only way to do that was to take away someone that
you
love. Someone like your dad.” She paused, apparently waiting for her words to sink in.

“You have no idea how unbearable it was to let him touch me, though it was a necessary step in my plan to draw you away from that farm. I figured once you knew about us you would eventually go looking for him, and then I would have my chance at you. He was stubborn, though. Refused to tell you about me, even though I pretended I wanted to meet his daughter, and that I was hurt he wouldn’t introduce me to his family.

“Such a disgusting little man, only interested in having something to stick his dick in. He had to pay for the privilege, and so he did. If you had only looked in that one last window, you would have seen how he paid,” Geraldine said, her tone sickeningly sweet. Cameron’s stomach lurched as she tried to concentrate, to understand the meaning behind her words.

“Of course, I kept a record of it. I keep records of all the important memories of my life, and I had a few pictures left in my old Polaroid camera. See for yourself,” she invited, and tossed a picture on the ground. Cameron gazed at it with horror, incapable of comprehending what she was seeing. Whatever that was in the image, it couldn’t possibly be her dad. She should be able to recognize him, shouldn’t she? All she could see was what looked like a mass of bloody meat. She shook her head at it.

“Trying to deny it, aren’t you? I’m sure you don’t want to believe that he’s dead because of you. I’m sure this close-up will convince you, though,” Geraldine sneered, and tossed down another image. This time Cam could see human features. Hazel eyes, though one looked as though it had been sliced through, matted brown hair that looked nearly black with all the blood soaked into it, and a brown goatee streaked through with silver and smeared with more blood. Beyond that he was unrecognizable as her dad, but she knew deep down that it was him. Her body went numb, and her heart froze.