The Hunted (24 page)

Shy drove in silence as Carmen slept in the seat beside him. He watched the sun slowly disappear in the rearview mirror, listening to hour after hour of DJ Dan on the radio. The man reported about the slew of new crusader groups flooding into California now that a cure for the disease had been found. One group offered food and water to the hungry just west of the border. Another offered religious services. A bus caravan had been established in the desert, taking passengers east every few hours, toward the border. A group of Catholic nuns had begun searching for orphans in downtown Los Angeles.

Just before ten at night, the DJ stopped the classical music he'd been playing and said, in an excited voice, that he had his most significant announcement since the earthquakes hit California.

Shy turned up the volume.

LasoTech, which had already produced a pill that was said to cure Romero Disease, had once again beaten out all other pharmaceutical companies. They'd now developed the first-ever
vaccine
against the disease. The president had just made the announcement in Washington. The press secretary was expecting a statement from LasoTech founder Jim Miller as soon as he returned from a crusader mission in the desert. If this vaccine proved effective, the DJ explained, the disaster would essentially be over and the country could finally begin picking up the pieces.

“Sweet,” Shy mumbled sarcastically. “Now they're vaccinating everyone, too. Who the fuck needs
us
?”

Shy turned off the radio.

He glanced at Carmen, but she was still asleep.

It hit him how truly exhausted he was, too. He rolled down his window and let the cool air beat against his face as he thought about their trip to Avondale. It was all but meaningless now. LasoTech had won. Shy and Carmen could still turn over the letter that connected LasoTech with the start of Romero Disease. But who were authorities more likely to believe, two Mexican kids trying to sneak across the Avondale border, or a company that had just saved the country?

And would anyone even care now?

When he got tired of the wind, Shy rolled up his window and listened to Carmen's quiet snoring. He crept them along the freeway in the dark, picturing Shoeshine laying himself onto the ancient figure scraped into the earth. And the kids lying dead inside the Skylark. And the corpses rotting in the valley. And Marcus and his mom and sis and nephew.

So many people lost.

And for what?

It was just after midnight when Shy finally came across a sign for the Hassayampa River—the one Shoeshine had told him to look for. He took the off-ramp and maneuvered the truck down to the mouth of the river and cut the engine. He grabbed the flashlight out of the center console and turned to Carmen. She was still asleep, though, so he opened the door quietly and walked to the edge of the river, where he peered down into the water. A blurry full moon danced across the surface.

The river itself was
disappointing—if
you could even call it a river. It was more like a creek. Or a glorified puddle. Shy figured if he got a running start he could probably leap right over the whole damn thing.

He took Shoeshine's journal out of the duffel and aimed his light on the beat-up leather cover, the metal lock. He stood there for several minutes, debating whether or not he should just toss it in the water. It was what Shoeshine wanted. And it was the right thing to do. But deep down Shy had always known he wouldn't be able to do it. Now that he had Shoeshine's key, he had access to the man's secrets. And how was Shy supposed to pass that up?

He glanced back at the truck, making sure Carmen was still asleep, then he sat down on a flat rock near the river's edge and brought the journal up to the black key Shoeshine had somehow transferred onto his neck.

To Shy's surprise, the lock was a fake.

The journal didn't need a key. All you had to do was open the thing like you'd open any other journal. Weird. Shy distinctly remembered Shoeshine reaching the journal up to his key every time he pulled it out of the duffel. Was he just messing with them? And if the heavy black key didn't open the journal, what
did
it open?

Shy shook his head.

Shoeshine seemed even stranger now that he was gone.

Shy flipped to the first page and shined his light on the simple two-word title. It seemed kind of odd for someone to title a journal. But then again, Shy had never kept a journal. What did
he
know about these things?

On the next page he found a loose map that showed their path to Arizona. He pulled it out and looked at it more closely. The double line drawn from Venice Beach, heading east, ended just outside of Blythe, exactly where Shoeshine had ended.

Shy then paged forward and read the first bit of actual text. His entire body went cold when he saw his own name in Shoeshine's neat handwriting.

It was a description of Shy standing on the Honeymoon Deck back on the cruise ship. He was handing out bottles of water to passengers taking a break from some party going on inside. Shoeshine described a man who walked outside wearing a suit that was too small. And he described Shy walking up to that man, holding out a water bottle. And the two of them talking about vacation homes.

The comb-over man.

Shy slammed the journal closed.

It was too weird.

Just thinking about it messed up his stomach, like he was about to get sick. How could Shoeshine know what Shy and the comb-over man said that night?

Shy stood and opened the journal back up and reread the two-word title. He pulled out the loose map, folded it up and shoved it in his pocket. And then he did something that surprised even
him
. He chucked Shoeshine's journal right into the water.

He aimed his light so he could watch the thing sink out of sight, but what he saw instead was some kind of crazy witchcraft spectacle. The whole river lit up bright red and began furiously bubbling where the journal had sunk. And he heard human screams all around him, coming from every part of the desert. Or maybe it was the cry of animals. And the sand around his feet began to swirl furiously, pulling him down into the earth.

When he crouched and put his hands on the ground, it stopped.

The whole thing only lasted a few seconds, but it freaked him out so much he was left sucking in breaths and holding himself.

He rubbed his eyes and looked all around. It was like nothing had ever happened. The water was calm. The sand was still. The endless desert was eerily quiet.

Shy grabbed the duffel bag, hurried back over to the truck and climbed back inside the cab, glancing at Carmen, who was still asleep. He pushed the key inside the ignition and turned it, but the truck didn't start.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“You gotta be shittin' me,” he said, looking back toward the river. He half expected to see some kind of Loch Ness Monster climbing out of the water, charging the pickup. But there was nothing there.

Had he imagined everything?

Shy hopped out and grabbed the extra gas canister from the bed of the truck and poured it into the gas tank, then re-capped it and climbed back into the cab and tried the key again.

Still nothing.

Carmen woke up and rubbed her eyes. “What's going on?”

“Fuckin' thing won't start,” Shy said, pumping the gas pedal. He tried again, but the engine was no longer even turning over.

Shy climbed out of the truck again and slammed the door and kicked the front left tire and pounded the heel of his hand against the hood.

Carmen came around the front of the truck. “I don't know if I can walk all that way, Shy. My legs are done.”

Shy let his head fall against the driver's-side window. His legs were done, too. And if it turned out LasoTech's vaccine really worked, what was the point anyway?

He pictured the words in Shoeshine's journal again. It made him feel light-headed. Why would he write about
Shy
? It didn't make any sense.

It was Carmen's turn to slam a hand against the hood of their broken-down truck. “What are we gonna do?” she said.

Shy shook his head. It was the most defeated he'd felt since their sailboat hit land.

“We never should've come out here!” Carmen shouted. “Fuck Arizona. And fuck this fucking duffel bag.” Carmen lunged forward and kicked the bag right out of Shy's hands.

He hurried over and picked it up. He didn't even know why.

It went quiet between them for a few seconds. Then Carmen let out a heartbreaking sigh and repeated her question: “What are we supposed to do, Shy?”

He turned and met her gaze, but he couldn't even muster up enough energy to respond.

Shy led Carmen up a long, relentless hill, the early-morning sun just starting to peek its head out in the distance. His legs were numb and heavy. His feet were blistered. He was hungry and thirsty, and he couldn't stop thinking about those couple of lines he'd read in Shoeshine's journal. Lines about
him.
It didn't make any sense.

Carmen was in bad shape, too. She'd slowed down dramatically. And she hadn't spoken a word to Shy in hours.

Things would only be getting worse as the temperature rose with the sun. Shy had already shed his shirt and wrapped it around his head. He carried the rifle bag on his left shoulder. On his right shoulder he had the duffel bag. He'd considered ditching the duffel back by the truck, but it had been with him for so long. Since back when he and Addie found it in the middle of the ocean. How could he turn his back on it now when they'd come this far?

The freeway began leveling out, and Shy was finally able to see ahead of them. He spotted two large buses first. They were parked along the side of the freeway, near several large, colorful tents. A large group of people was gathered around the tent closest to the shoulder of the freeway. Far beyond the tents were hundreds of motor homes parked randomly on either side of the freeway.

A sign said
QUARTZSITE, ARIZONA
.

“Please tell me we can stop here,” Carmen said. She kneeled down on the freeway and rested her hands on the concrete.

“I think I heard about this on the radio,” Shy said, feeling a glimmer of hope. “They're crusaders who bus people east. I had no idea we were this close.”

“You really think they could take us the rest of the way?” Carmen was looking up at Shy with pure desperation. They needed a lucky break in the worst way.

“I hope so.” Shy held his hand out to her. “Come on.”

As they moved closer, though, Shy noticed something else. Two helicopters sat on a flat stretch of land behind the tents. He stopped and pointed to them, more than a little concerned. “I know those could just be regular government choppers,” he said. “But they could also be…” He looked at Carmen, waiting for her response.

She just stared in the distance with a face of
disappointment.

Shy scanned the entire scene in front of them again. The buses and tents and helicopters. The people milling around. And then he noticed a small group of people sitting at a picnic table about a hundred feet to the right of the tents. They had an umbrella set up to protect them from the sun. And there was a Jeep parked next to them.

“Maybe we can go get a feel for things from those guys,” Shy said, pointing them out.

Carmen shrugged and started walking.

Shy pulled his shirt off his head, slipped it over his shoulders and followed her.

Turned out it was a group of four old men. They were sitting around a rusted picnic table, playing cards, their faces half hidden under baseball caps. “Excuse me,” Carmen called out to them as she and Shy approached. “We don't mean to bother you, but can you tell us what's going on with those buses?”

The men looked up from their cards. “I suggest you get yourselves down there pronto,” a man in a Yankees cap said. “They're vaccinating people and taking them east, to Avondale.”

“But it's first come, first served,” a guy in a Cubs hat added. “So I'd get a move on.”

“They have the vaccine already?” Shy asked. “I thought it was gonna take a while to circulate it.” When Carmen shot him a confused look, Shy realized she didn't know about the vaccine yet. She'd been sleeping when he heard it on the radio.

“They brought the very first batch here to Quartzsite,” the Yankees guy said, pushing up his shirtsleeve to show Shy and Carmen a Band-Aid.

“The people running the bus line are connected to the drug company everyone's talking about,” another man said. He had a bushy gray beard and a generic blue cap. “That's why we were lucky enough to get it first.”

LasoTech,
Shy mouthed to Carmen.

“Where'd you all just come from?” the Yankees guy asked.

“Over by Blythe,” Shy told him.

“You
walked
?” The Cubs fan shot a frown at all his buddies before turning back to Shy. “I'd get on over there now. They're giving out food and water, too. They'll take care of you.”

Shy and Carmen thanked the old men, then cautiously moved closer to the buses to get a better look. They ducked behind an abandoned tractor-trailer, and Shy crouched next to Carmen, with no idea what to do next. He assumed anyone affiliated with LasoTech would know what he and Carmen looked like. But then again, maybe the lower-level employees wouldn't. And it's not like they could go dig up disguises. How were they going to get on that air-conditioned bus without getting caught?

Shy focused on one girl who was carrying a cooler toward the second bus. Blond ponytail swinging back and forth. Long, tan legs shooting out of a pair of jean cutoffs.

She was far enough away that it could've been anyone, but Shy turned to Carmen, his stomach filling with butterflies.

“Is that who I think it is?” Carmen asked.

He swallowed hard. “I don't see how.”

Carmen's eyes filled with rage. She climbed to her feet without another word and started walking toward the bus.

Shy grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. “Hang on,” he said. “We need to figure things out first.”

“Lemme go, Shy. It's that fucking Addie chick and you know it.”

“There's no way.” Shy studied the girl for a few seconds. It really did look like her, though. And then he realized something that made him feel incredibly guilty. He
wanted
it to be her. He wanted to look in her eyes again. And talk to her again. Because maybe she had absolutely nothing to do with her dad's company.

“Let go, Shy,” Carmen said again.

“Just…” He studied the girl for a few more seconds, then turned back to Carmen. “Just hang on. We have to be smart.”