Night Whispers: ShadowLands, Book 1 (23 page)

“I am sorry.” Erik was staring away from her. “You have had a hard life, Jules, and I fear I have done nothing but make it harder.”

Despite the fact that she’d been pissed at him not long ago, the self-flagellation in his voice pained her. He had saved her. Yeah, he’d left her, but he’d saved her life first. “Friend.”

His eyelashes shuttered his eyes. “Sleep, Jules.”

Best idea ever. She let her breathing go even and regular.

James’s first night on the road had been terrifying, but at least he’d known exactly where his endgame was.

Now? He was becoming increasingly fearful he was on a wild-goose chase.

He’d played Eeny Meeny and decided to continue along the road Jules’d been on.

A train leaves Albuquerque at 4 a.m. and another leaves Buffalo at 7 a.m.…

He’d fucking owned those word problems back in grade school.

Based on when she’d stopped driving, with a variable of how long she might have stopped for rest, he’d figured out roughly how far she could have potentially gotten by this time. He’d passed that point about five miles ago.

He rubbed his head as the numbers ran through his mind. Perhaps if he went a little farther. A little farther and he’d find her. No one knew better than he that sometimes analysts got stuff wrong. Like all the senior analysts way back when who had forecasted that no country would be stupid enough to release a worldwide epidemic? Wrong.

If only it wasn’t dark. For all she knew she could be on the side of the road, huddled in a ditch, and he wouldn’t be able to see her.

Or you went the wrong way at some point.

If there was any sign of life down this country dirt road, it had been muffled by the overgrown fields on either side. It was like someone had tossed asphalt down, and the weeds had swallowed civilization whole as quickly as possible.

Just when he felt the chill of defeat weighing down his soul, James’s remaining headlight caught on the outline of a house not far away. He slowed to a stop in front of the ramshackle one-story home. It was set back from the road by a long driveway. The windows were boarded up, so he couldn’t tell if lights shown inside of it or not. It was the first sign of civilization that he’d come across since he’d left Jules’s vehicle.

More importantly, it was situated not far from where his calculations had predicted he would overtake Jules—if she had come this way.

All he had to do was get outside the car and investigate. He took a deep breath to brace himself and reached for his door handle. The song and dance required to motivate him out of the car was getting, thank God, far easier.

He heard the crash of his window before the crack of the gunshot. Glass showered on him.

He was being freaking
shot
at?

The second whine past his ear made it quite clear that whoever the shooter was, he was really fucking serious.

James ducked and shoved his seat back so he could crouch on the floorboard. An unnatural urge to laugh came over him when he glanced up at the gaping opening of his window. To think, he’d been OCD about covering the tiny hole he’d made yesterday.

He winced when another volley of bullets pinged against the car. Gabriel was so going to kill him. “Don’t shoot,” he yelled, and grabbed for the gun he’d kept in reach on the center console. He drew it close, its weight comforting to him. He didn’t try to take a shot. Christ, what if it was Jules, or whoever had Jules, firing at him? He couldn’t take the risk that he’d hurt her by returning fire. Yet he could die if he remained here.

“If you’re thinking to suck me dry, I will make certain you think again!” The other voice sounded older and thready. Was this who had taken Jules?

Words were his only safe weapon right now, so he opted for the diplomatic approach first. “I don’t want to suck you at all. I’m not here to hurt you.”

The man spoke after a beat, still suspicious. “The last zombies only grunted. They couldn’t talk at all.”

“Listen, sir, I swear I’m not a zombie. My name is James Bennett. I’m looking for someone. I’m human.”

There was a murmur, as if the man was conferring with someone. James prayed it was someone with a cooler head. A second later, the man’s voice rang out again. “Okay, boy. Get out and stand up with your hands where I can see them.”

He hesitated. If Jules was being held captive here, he’d be foolish to surrender as well. Still, until he knew more of what was going on, it seemed equally foolish to remain in the car, waiting for an unlucky bullet. Not when the unknown gunman might have an unlimited supply of ammunition and knowledge of the immediate area.

He tucked the gun into the back waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt over it to hide the bulge. Then he opened the car door and clambered out to stand on the street.

His chest automatically tightened at the feel of something other than recycled air all around him. He waited to feel a bullet riddling into his body, its fiery path tunneling through flesh and bone.

Instead, a bright light blinded him. The suddenness of it almost had his twitchy hands reaching for his gun.

The light switched away from him, and a single bulb lit up over the front porch. A man stepped outside the front door, a shotgun pointed at James. He was whipcord lean, in his sixties, and had an expression on his face that would have been at home in an old Clint Eastwood movie. “You’re human, I guess,” said the man, but with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm. “So I guess I’ll do you the courtesy of not shooting you in the brain.”

“Thanks.”

“Now you can get in your car and get the hell out of here. Or I can still shoot you in the brain.”

“Um. I’ll do the first thing.”

“Smart boy.”

James took a deep breath, still ready to go for his gun. “As long as you’ll let me search this place first.”

The old man gave him a Dirty Harry squint. “Are you serious?”

James swallowed. “As I said, I’m looking for someone, and I want to make sure she isn’t here.”

“No one you’re looking for is here.”

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to confirm that on my own.”

“You—”

“You’re looking for a girl?” A small, plump woman popped out behind the man. Her graying hair was in ringlets. She looked like everyone’s grandma.

“Get back inside, Rose,” the man barked, but Rose ignored him, even inching farther outside the door.

“Can I put my arms down, sir? This is starting to ache.”

The old man scowled. “No.”

A mournful wind was picking up, ripping through his shirt. “Very well. See, her name is Jules…”

“…and now I have no idea where she is.” James also had no idea how he’d come to be sitting at the kitchen table of his reluctant hosts after he’d talked enough that they’d allowed him to quickly search their two-bedroom house. The man, who he’d learned was Ben, was sitting there with him, his shotgun leaning against his leg. His wife, Rose, was leaning against his side, her eyes looking decidedly misty.

“So you haven’t left this fortress you live in since this Illness started, but you left to find this girl? Even though you had no idea what kind of danger she was in?”

It was hardly as romantic as she made it sound. “Yes, ma’am.”

She sighed and shook her head. “So sweet. I’m so sorry, honey, but no one human has come this way for almost a year.”

She’d already said as much, but James couldn’t extinguish the hope. “Are you certain?”

She laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Ben and I sleep some during the day, but we don’t need as much as we used to, so we keep pretty good watch. We have a couple of alarms set on our land to warn us when or if intruders approach. I’m absolutely certain.”

He nodded. “Then if you could maybe give me an idea of where else she might be?” He pulled out his thin GPS unit from his pants pocket, careful to keep his gun covered. No need to spook the couple into a standoff again. Ben accepted the unit.

Rose gestured to the table. “Have another cookie, please.”

“No thank you.” Not that they weren’t good. He’d eaten one, but it sat like a lump in his belly. Every bite had made him feel guilty. One, because he hated to take food from their rations, and two, because he was fairly certain that Jules was probably not eating fresh-baked cookies, wherever she was.

“Do you want something more hearty? Ben brought down some caribou day before yesterday.”

What the hell was a caribou? “Um, no, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? The meat’s fresh and delicious.”

Oh, an animal then. Lord knew what kind of creatures were in this wilderness. The closest he’d ever come to hunting was tracking down this woman. “I’m not very hungry.”

Ben gave a frustrated sigh and tossed down James’s GPS unit. “I hate these things.” He went to the built-in bookshelf in the corner and removed a bound atlas. “Paper can’t fail you.”

James had never cared much for digital-versus-paper pissing matches, probably because he loved both mediums equally. He studied the map the older man stretched out. “Her car was stranded here.” He tapped a spot on the map.

“Yeah. You took this route.” Ben pointed. “Which, if she’d stayed in the car, might have been the way she went.”

“What would you do if you were on foot in the middle of nowhere?”

He had meant for that to be a rhetorical question, but Ben answered. “I would head for the place most likely to have once had a big population.”

“Yeah.” James touched his finger on the small print. “What do you know about this town, Bounty?”

Rose chuckled. “That used to be a running joke, that that place was wrongly named. It’s been a ghost town for a long time. Way before the Illness hit. Unlikely that she would find any good shelter there.”

“But unless a person was from the area, they wouldn’t know that,” he muttered. “They would do what we’re doing, which is looking at the map and making assumptions.” James’s mind automatically calculated the scale and the distance from her car toward the town. “So if my calculations are correct,” he said softly, “and I assume she went in that direction…” a mighty big assumption, that second one, “…then that would place her right about here at sundown. Or here if she was still walking.” He placed his finger on the map in two different points.

They studied his fingers. “How do you know that?” Rose asked.

“Just some math.”

“Are you a math genius then?”

“Me? Oh no. I was an analyst before the Illness. I kind of still am.”

“What does an analyst do?”

“I sit in a room. Watch, direct, gather information, analyze what other people are seeing and doing.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing amazing.”

Ben nodded at James’s hand. “It’s pretty impressive you can figure that out.”

He gave a short laugh. “It’s only impressive if I find her there. Thank you for your help, both of you.” He stood, already trying to figure out where to go and how fast it would take him to get there.

“You can’t travel now. At night!” Rose exclaimed.

“I don’t really have much of a choice.”

“I’m not much of a thinker, like you,” Ben spoke. “But if you’re really trying to find this girl, wouldn’t it be better to search during the day, when you can actually see past your one headlight?”

James rubbed his eyes. “That would be ideal. But the longer she’s out there alone, the greater the chances she’ll be dead when I finally find her.”

“Or she could be dying on the side of the road, and you’ll drive right past her because you can’t see.”

It was no less then he’d told himself. He tried not to wince at the imagery.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, you look awfully tired. How long has it been since you slept?” Rose said.

“A while. But I don’t need a lot of sleep.”

“Nonsense. Everyone needs sleep. You rest here for a few hours at least.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Ben forestalled him. “You also won’t be much help to your woman if you wrap your car around a tree,” he said gruffly.

They had a point. He hesitated. “You’re right.”

“So you’ll stay?” Rose inquired.

He tried to think of what Jules would do in this situation. Her tough outer layer of cynicism might suspect the elderly couple of being serial killers. But she’d surely find this plain old-fashioned niceness genuine. Maybe because he’d never been one for much interaction, but his instincts about people were rarely wrong. “For a few hours. I’ll need to wake up in time to get back to her car by dawn and reassess the situation by the light of day.”

“Excellent.” Rose clapped her hands. “Let me show you to the bedroom.”

“I don’t want to take your bed…”

“Oh, no, honey. Ben wasn’t kidding when he said we stay awake for the night. You won’t be taking our bed at all.”

He nodded. “Okay, thank you. So much, for everything.”

“It’s our pleasure.” A dimple creased her plump cheek. “It’s not like I get to practice my hospitality very often. This way, please.”

He followed her down the hallway. Ben brought up the rear. James felt a spark of respect for the man. Ben might trust him, but he still wasn’t about to leave his woman alone with a new guy.