The Hunted (8 page)

Shy cowered when he heard a loud explosion.

He ducked behind an empty SUV, less than a block away from the DMV building, and stayed hidden there for several seconds, listening to the crackling fire and trying to think. It had sounded like a bomb, which made him flash back to when the LasoTech ship had launched a flurry of napalm missiles at Jones Island. But this couldn't have been an actual bomb.

He stuck his head out to study the dark plume of smoke lifting into the blue sky. The motor home gas tank must have blown. And last he'd seen, Shoeshine was right in front of the thing. Shy secured the hospital mask over his nose and mouth and took off running.

He'd only made it halfway around the DMV building when he was nearly run over by two gas-masked men racing away from the blast on a single motorcycle. One appeared to be badly injured. The driver looked directly at Shy through his gas mask but didn't stop.

Shy watched them speed away, then hurried around the building, toward the smoke and heat, where he saw Shoeshine and two bikers in a standoff. They were fifteen yards apart, the motor home behind them engulfed in flames. A handgun and rifle were aimed at Shoeshine, and Shoeshine moved a single handgun back and forth between the two gas-masked men.

“Put it down!” one of them demanded. “There's no way out!”

Shoeshine didn't answer. His hair had been singed in the explosion. His clothes, too. Shy saw that the jacket material up and down the man's left arm was glistening in the light of the fire.

Blood.

“Drop it!” the other man shouted in a familiar-sounding accent. He was Mexican. And Shy could tell he'd shown up later, because his gas mask was green instead of black. His leather jacket was torn at the right shoulder, like he'd been shot, too, though he was still using that arm to hold his gun. “Drop it or you're a dead man!”

“Which one will I take with me?” Shoeshine called out over the raging fire.

Shy searched the ground for a weapon.

There was another handgun lying in the grass, but it was too far away. He'd be spotted. And what if it was the one without bullets? Instead he lifted a chunk of cement from the crumbling base of the DMV and crouched there, sucking in breaths through his mask, sweat dripping in his eyes from the intense heat.

“You don't get it, do you?” the first biker shouted. “We're the only ones doing anything! No one on the other side cares if we live or die!”

Shoeshine moved the gun between the men in silence.

Shy cursed himself when he remembered he still had the duffel bag. The vaccine. He should've left it with Carmen and Marcus. He set down the chunk of cement, his whole body shaking, and pulled off the duffel and his backpack. He hid them behind the scorched bush he was using for cover.

He hadn't looked away for more than a second when he heard the guns suddenly go off in a chorus of loud pops. He looked up in time to see two bodies drop to the dead grass.

One of them was Shoeshine.

“Shoe!” he shouted.

The biker who remained standing glanced over his shoulder at Shy, beady eyes framed in his green mask, then set off toward Shoeshine, raising the barrel of his rifle.

Shy lifted his cement chunk and ran at the man, heaving it with every ounce of strength he had left. The cement spun in the air several times before cracking the man right in the back, just as his rifle discharged. The shot burrowed into the earth as the man stumbled to his knees.

Shy fell, too, tripping over a fallen motorcycle.

He gathered himself as quickly as he could and looked up. The biker was already on his feet again, marching toward Shy now, aiming his rifle.

Shy scanned the grass around him frantically, looking for some other form of defense. But there was nothing. He looked up into the barrel of the rifle and froze. Eyes bugged. Fear slicing cold through his veins.

He didn't want to die.

Not like this.

Not before he'd made it home to his family and given the ring in his pocket to Carmen.

The biker cocked the rifle, said: “You think the rules don't apply just 'cause you're a kid?” He was standing directly over Shy now, finger on the trigger, breathing loudly into his mask. “Huh? Answer me, boy!”

All Shy could do was shake his head no.

He glanced at Shoeshine, still on the ground behind him, cupping a hand over his upper thigh. Blood shining bright through his fingers. With his other hand he was reaching for the gun he'd just fired, but it was out of reach.

No one was going to save Shy this time.

The biker pushed down Shy's hospital mask with the barrel of his rifle, and Shy squeezed his eyes tight and held his breath, waiting for the sound that would end his life.

But all he heard was the crackling of fire…

And the whir of distant helicopters…

After a few long seconds Shy slowly opened his eyes and looked up.

The man was standing there wide-eyed, like he'd just seen a ghost. Shy watched him lower his rifle until it slipped from his grip and fell to the grass.

At first Shy thought maybe he
had
been shot.

Maybe this was death. You didn't even know it right away. But then he reached a hand up to his chest and found that he was still breathing.

The biker mumbled something through his mask and picked up his rifle and let off several rounds straight up into the sky, cursing in Spanish.

A sense of relief slowly came over Shy.

The man couldn't kill a kid.

It was too much for his conscience.

“Get up!” the man shouted.

Shy got up.

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

“You been around anyone who was?”

Shy thought about Rodney and all the other sick people on the island. “No.”

The biker glanced at his men on the ground, unmoving, then barked at Shy: “You're going to the Sony lots, you hear me? Ask for Gregory Martinez.”

Shy glanced at Shoeshine. Still lying there, holding his thigh. Watching.

“That's where you're gonna stay until this thing's over,” the biker said. “Understand?”

Shy nodded, though he didn't understand anything at all. Except that his life had been spared. Which was all that mattered right now.

The biker scooped up the duffel bag from behind the bush, carried it toward the one motorcycle still standing.

“There's nothing in there!” Shy shouted.

He glanced at Shoeshine again, then lunged for the duffel. But the biker shoved him away easily and unzipped one of the pouches near the seat on his bike. Instead of stuffing the duffel inside the pouch, though, like Shy was expecting him to, he took a thick manila envelope out of the pouch and slipped it into the duffel. Then he zipped up both bags and tossed the duffel back to Shy.

Shy held it to his chest, watching the biker check the pulse of the man Shoeshine had just shot, then climb back on his bike and start the engine. He revved it a few times, staring down Shoeshine. “You were lucky this time.”

Shoeshine just sat there, staring back at him.

After a few uncomfortable seconds the biker turned to Shy and called out over the growl of his engine: “Who you asking for at the lots?”

Shy's mind was a blank.

“Gregory Martinez,” the biker told him again. “You gonna remember that?”

Shy nodded.

“Once you're inside, you stay there till it's over.” He touched around the rip in his shoulder, staring at Shy, then kicked his bike into gear and darted away.

Shy waited until the motorcycle was completely out of view before hurrying to Shoeshine. He dragged the man as far away from the enflamed motor home as he could, asking: “You hurt bad?”

Shoeshine shook his head.

The blood on his arm wasn't his. Shy could tell because there was no bullet hole. The blood seeping out of the man's thigh wound, though, was pulsing through his fingers. “Tell me what to do,” Shy pleaded. He sounded like a scared little kid. Because that's what he was. A boy. It's why he was still alive. “Can you make it to a hospital?”

Shoeshine grabbed Shy by his face and pulled him down so that their eyes were only inches apart. “What'd I tell you to do?”

“Me?” Shy's mind went blank again. “Lemme go, Shoe.”

“I said take the duffel and leave,” Shoeshine barked. “Don't look back.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And here you are,” Shoeshine said, pushing Shy's face away.

Shy retrieved the duffel bag and his backpack. He was still terrified from having a gun in his face. But now he was confused, too. He'd just saved Shoeshine's life. That had to count for something. But all the man seemed to care about was the stupid vaccine.

“Shit doesn't make any sense,” Shy said, keeping a few feet away from Shoeshine this time. He held up the duffel. “Why you willing to risk your life for this? You don't even like people.”

“Doesn't matter what I like or don't like,” the man answered. Some of the anger seemed to drain from his face.

“For once in your life,” Shy said, “could you just give me a straight answer? Seriously, why do you care so much?”

Shoeshine shook his head, his eyes burrowing into Shy's. “There
are
no answers, young fella. Let alone straight ones.” He took a breath and let it out slowly, his eyes still on Shy's. “This is the path I've found myself on, that's all. And I aim to see it through.”

It took Shy a few seconds to figure out he could use the hood of the minivan beneath him as leverage to boost Shoeshine. He glanced down at the steep stretch of freeway rubble once more, then squatted, positioning his right shoulder underneath the man's good leg. “Ready?”

Shoeshine gripped a thick metal stake protruding out of the concrete, and Shy came out of his crouch, lifting the man an inch at a time, up to the jagged ridge above them. It was their final hurdle in a long and torturous climb, though, and Shy had nothing left. His strength was tapped. And soon Shoeshine's weight was coming back down on him.

“Shit, hang on.” Shy paused in an awkward squatting position, staring down at the van, wondering how the hell he got here. Just weeks ago he was living a normal life, in a normal city, surrounded by normal people. Now he was carrying a mysterious old black man on his back over a fallen freeway.

Through the cracked windshield he could see the top of a woman's head. Long gray hair crusted with dried blood. He and Shoeshine had come across at least a dozen such corpses during the climb. Bodies twisted in the rubble. Bodies trapped in cars. Bodies flattened between massive chunks of concrete. All of them giving off the same nauseating smell of decay. He wasn't sure how much more he could take.

Shy took a deep breath and drove with his legs again, boosting Shoeshine back up near the lip of the ridge. This time the man was able to roll over the side, onto the flat, wide stretch they'd been working toward for more than an hour.

Shoeshine reached down for Shy's hand.

Shy pushed off a warped guardrail, slowly pulling himself up. He managed to hook a leg onto the ridge and hoist himself over the edge, where he rolled onto his back and lay still for several seconds, pulling in deep breaths, the duffel bag safe by his side.

He closed his eyes, picturing the scene back at the motor home again. It still didn't make any sense. Why had he and Shoeshine been spared? Was it simply that the man in the green gas mask had a conscience? That he took pity on them? Because Shy couldn't come up with anything else.

He sat up, adjusting the hospital mask around his neck.

They were surrounded by dozens of empty cars, some with the driver's-side doors left wide open. Shy looked out over the fallen city from above. A surreal sight of collapsed buildings, far as the eye could see. Cars flipped on their hoods or crushed by debris. Wide chasms where the earth had been ripped open at the seams. Entire neighborhoods torched by fire.

In the bright blue sky, two birds chased each other playfully, seemingly unaware of the destruction. Shy watched them, understanding that the life he'd once known was gone for good. All those mellow days at school. The pretty girls moving through the halls, sometimes stopping at his locker to flirt. All those never-ending Sunday hoop sessions at the Otay Mesa Y with his boys. And when he got back to his apartment, how he'd find his mom sitting at the kitchen table doing bills, her news program playing quietly on the radio behind her.

All that was in the past.

It didn't exist anymore.

“You see it, don't you, young fella?”

Shy turned to Shoeshine, surprised to find him sitting up with a slight grin on his face. The man had been in bad shape during the climb. He'd lost all his “old-man strength,” and his partially burned clothes were soaked with blood and sweat.

“See what?” Shy asked.

Shoeshine thrust his strangely untouched chin beard out toward the view. “Cities like this are built so that we can pretend to understand the logic of things. So we can pretend meaning and order and authority. But it's all a fiction.”

Shy looked out over the city again, confused. Shoeshine rarely gave opinions, and when he did, they came out in riddles that made Shy feel ignorant, like he needed to read more books.

Shoeshine wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist and went on. “But sometimes we're given a glimpse behind the curtain. Like now. Here is your inconsequence, she is telling us. Here is your eternal solitude.”

Shy nodded, thinking how this wasn't the best time for some deep philosophical discussion about natural disasters. They still had to get back down the other side. And Shy was the one who'd have to do all the work.

“Let me ask you, though,” Shoeshine said. “What happens when the ground you stand on begins to shift?” He waved a hand at the view. “Who will open their eyes to it? Who is humble enough to look beyond his own flesh?”

Shy shook his head, starting to feel a little weirded out. Shoeshine sounded like he was high or something. And his eyes were locked on Shy's with an intensity Shy had never experienced, like the man was searching for something important, something pure. And now that Shy thought about it, hadn't Shoeshine
always
paid special attention to him?

But why?

He was just a regular kid.

Shy wished he could tell the man to quit wasting his time. But he didn't know how to put it. And what if he was wrong? What if Shoeshine searched everyone he met in this same way?

Instead, Shy turned away, telling the man: “I don't even know what you're saying anymore.”

“Not in here, maybe,” Shoeshine said, tapping the side of Shy's head. “But in
here
you do.” He jabbed a finger into Shy's chest. “There are two kinds of people in this world, young fella. Those who can sit in the loneliness of existence and those who turn away. Long before that first wave hit our ship, I knew which you were. I've been watching all along, son.”

Shy shook his head, dismissing him. What did Shoeshine mean about sitting in loneliness? It didn't even make sense. And why had he called Shy “son”? Nah, they were both just tired and hungry. That was all. And they were scared. Or maybe this was the kind of crap people always wanted to talk about after getting shot in the leg.

But soon Shy found himself picturing something. Back when he was floating alone in the middle of the ocean. Minutes after their cruise ship went down. He remembered the feeling of nausea he'd had staring out over the immensity of what he could see. Nothing but water and more water. And how it whispered to him as he floated there, lost. No idea what swam beneath his feet or how he might survive.

Maybe that was what Shoeshine meant.

The nausea.

How overwhelming the world could seem when you were thrust into the guts of it. How little power you realized human beings actually had compared with the earth.

“Come on,” Shy said, climbing to his feet and slinging the duffel over his shoulder. He held out his hand and helped the man up. “We gotta find someone who can help with that leg.”

Shoeshine shook his head. “Just get me some supplies. I can take care of it myself.”

Shy glanced down at the man's blood-caked pant leg. “We'll see,” he said, knowing Shoeshine needed an actual doctor.

Before they started toward the other side, Shy studied the view of the ruined city one last time, trying to see it like Shoeshine. As something more than what it was. A part of him genuinely wanted to be the person Shoeshine believed him to be. But all Shy saw was an endless stretch of unfathomable damage, same as before.