Zero Trilogy (Book 2): Day One (2 page)

Elle shuddered.

She would do what she had to in order to survive. She would head north. She would keep an eye out for her friends. She would hope. And that was all she could do.

Chapter Two

Elle stared at the front door of apartment 1 C. The C had fallen off, a brass letter on the carpeted floor. The hallway was dark, rays of gray light falling through slits in the roof. Elle held the Smith and Wesson in her hand, shivering in the cold
.

She pushed the door open. It was unlocked. A bad sign
.

A stab of regret shot through her chest as she surveyed the apartment. Familiar furniture had been overturned. Books were scattered across the floor. Glass cases had been smashed. Pictures had been torn from the walls. Anything of value had been stripped from the room
.

“Mom?” Elle whispered
.

Nobody answered
.

California was a primeval wasteland. The dead orchards stretched for miles, branches snapping, dust scattered into the air. Fog hung gray above Elle’s head, making the world around her look colorless and drained.

She followed California Highway 99, walking parallel to the road, concealed in the shadows, keeping an eye on everything around her. Listening for voices and footsteps. After months of living in the city, the empty quiet of the vast abandoned Central Valley was eerie. Unsettling.

I should have stayed with Aunt and Uncle at the ranch
, she thought.
I never should have gone back to Los Angeles to find my family. It was a mistake
.

She sighed.

It was all too late. There was no reset button.

Elle paused and opened her backpack, slipping a faded map into her hands. It showed the main highways and roads. She traced the route to Sacramento with her finger. It was a straight shot from here to the city if she could follow the road the entire way. About three hundred miles. On foot.

Elle put the map away and kept moving. At mid-afternoon, she stopped, dropped to her stomach. There was something up ahead. A flicker of movement, a flash of dim color in the gray. Her heart raced in her chest, fingers trembling. It was the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

Movement could mean people. And people almost always meant danger.

She saw the flicker again. It was a flash of orange. Up ahead, to the right of the freeway, a small rest stop sat parallel to an off-ramp. It was an old gas station, and several orange flags were mounted to the awning above the dirty gas pumps. They hung limp in the still air. Elle stared. A group of crows hopped across the awning, one of them pulling at the fabric of the flag.

Elle released a breath.

Stupid birds…

There was an old jeep parked next to the station. Beside it sat a dented blue pickup. They both looked like they’d been sitting there since the EMP.

Elle stood up. She wondered if there was any food or useful junk left inside the gas station store. She was running low on supplies and she was out of water. She had no choice but to look inside. She walked down the off-ramp, using what minimal cover she could find. She paused at the intersection, sinking into a crouch behind an abandoned VW bug. Above the door of the gas station store, a wooden pallet had been spray painted with the words:

TRADE DEPOT
WE BARTER GOODS AND SUPPLIES

It was so…cheesy. Elle blinked. Would someone actually be stupid enough to set up a store in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland? With the threat of bandits and looters hanging over their heads? Elle studied the building. Most of the windows had been covered with slats of wood. It was already dark outside, and she noticed strips of dull, orange light flickering through the cracks.

People. There are people here
.

Elle chewed on her bottom lip.

Stupid girl. You could have been killed!

She hated making mistakes. She needed to get back to the freeway, away from the store. And she needed to do it without being seen.

“All right, don’t move.”

Elle froze. She braced herself for a gunshot, a quick blow to the head.

“Turn around slowly and keep your hands in front of you where I can see them.” It was a woman’s voice. Raspy and demanding.

Elle turned around, heart beating in her throat.

The woman was tall and thin, sinewy. Greasy strands of gray-blonde hair hung down her shoulders, sticking to a loose tee. A long, oversized skirt billowed around her waist.

“That’s right,” she said. “Keep your hands right there.”

The woman grasped a shotgun. The weapon looked bigger than she was, the stock jammed into her bony shoulder, her finger hovering over the trigger.

“You here to barter?” the woman demanded.

Elle blinked. Her breath came shaky. She slowly nodded.

“What do you have?” she continued.

“Um.” Elle cleared her throat. She didn’t have anything of value. Nothing. “I’ve got food. And…well, that’s it.”

The woman stared at her. Elle stared back. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. Elle’s hands started to shake. Her gun was hidden just under her coat, holstered in her belt. She could reach it fast, if she had to. The katana on her back would not move quickly enough against the woman’s shotgun.

“You were watching us,” the woman said. “You planning to steal stuff?”

“I don’t steal other people’s stuff,” Elle replied. “I was just looking for supplies.”

The woman kept the shotgun trained at Elle’s chest.

“Please,” Elle said. “Just let me go.”

The woman’s arm began to shake from supporting the weight of the gun with her forearm. “If you’ve got goods to barter,” she said, lowering the barrel of the weapon, “you can come inside and look around. But then you’ve got to be on your way.”

Elle nodded.

The shotgun was now pointed at the ground, and Elle’s fingers twitched.

Grab your gun and make a run for it
, she thought.
Or…

The woman took several steps forward, limping. Ragged, muddy boots scraped the ground. “Come on,” the woman said. “We don’t have a lot, but it’s probably more than you got in your pack.”

She tromped past Elle, hauling the shotgun over her shoulder. Elle raised an eyebrow. Should she follow her? She thought of her empty canteen. Dehydration was deadlier than going hungry for a few days. Maybe she could barter for something valuable…

Elle cautiously followed the woman into the store. The woman opened the door and stepped inside, into the shadowy building. Elle paused at the threshold, taking a deep breath. A dark, slumped figure sat in a chair in the back, snoring loudly. Rows of shelving were stacked with produce boxes and plastic jugs of water.

Elle stepped inside.

“How do you stay alive?” Elle whispered. “Don’t people try to take this stuff from you?”

“Tried and failed,” the woman replied. She walked behind the main counter. About a dozen packs of cigarettes were beneath the protective glass. “If you know the right people, the wrong ones stay away and let you mind your own business.”

Whatever
that
means
.

“What about Omega?”

“Like I said, if you know the right people, you can do what you want.”

The store smelled of wet dirt and rotting feed. Odd, considering there were no animals in sight. Elle walked straight to a small aisle of metal shelving. There wasn’t much left here, except a few thin blankets and containers of sealed crackers.

“I need water,” Elle said.

“What have you
got
?”

The woman leaned over the counter, and it occurred to Elle then how young she actually was. She couldn’t be older than twenty. Her skin was pale, eyes sallow.

“I’ve got a map,” she shrugged.

“A map is useless to me,” the woman replied. “Got food? Bullets, maybe? Everybody wants bullets.”

Elle
had
bullets. A limited amount, and she wasn’t about to trade those for anything. Even water. Ammunition was almost more precious than food.

“No,” Elle said. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have anything I want, then,” the woman said. “You’d best be on your way.”

The snoring figure in the back of the store choked, coughed, and continued snoring again. Elle looked at the small jugs of water. Her parched throat and bloody, cracked lips wanted them so bad.

“Hey, you’re not one of those kids what got picked up by the Slavers, are you?” the woman asked. There was suddenly fear in her eyes. She backed up several feet from the counter.

“Slavers?” Elle narrowed her eyes. “I haven’t heard of them.”

“You’ve never heard of…” the woman trailed off, raising an eyebrow. “You come from the South?”

“Los Angeles,” Elle replied carefully.

“That would explain the clothes.” The woman gave Elle a once-over. “You should be careful, girly. They’re everywhere, looking for lone travelers. Picking them up, one by one.”

“Who?”

“The Slavers.”

“Who
are
the Slavers?”

“You’re from L.A. right?” the woman says. “You’ve got big gangs down there. We’ve got Slavers here. They round up the weak ones and take them off.”

“Where do they take them?”

“The desert.”

“Why?”

“How should I know?” she shrugs. “Why do people enslave each other to begin with? Power, I guess. There’s a rumor going around that there’s something big in the desert. Something the militias can’t stop.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Nobody really
knows
.” The woman shakes her head. “They’re dangerous though. Better be on the lookout for them. They dress like local militias, draw people in. And then they take you.”

Elle shuddered.

And then she thought of the overturned jeep and of Pix’s dead, bloody body. The haphazard golden star spray-painted across the chassis of the charred vehicle.
Militia, she’d thought
. Now…she wasn’t so sure of that.

“Where
exactly
do the Slavers take their prisoners?” Elle asked.

The woman pushed a greasy strand of hair behind her ear.

“You don’t want to go there,” she warned.

“I didn’t say I was going there.”

“I can tell.” The woman placed her hands on her hips, exhaling heavily. “Who are you looking for? It’s written all over your face, girly.”

Elle blinked. “I’m just asking a question.”

“The desert. San Jacinto Mountains,” the woman replied. “You know. By Palm Springs and all that. Pretty much abandoned, so I’ve heard. Slavers took it over. The real militia doesn’t have time to worry about
what’s going on in a dried-up area of California and Omega sure as hell don’t care, either. So it belongs to the Slavers.”

A bolt of electrified adrenaline shot through Elle’s body.

So that’s where Jay, Georgia and Flash had been taken. No wonder she’d lost their trail. They weren’t in Los Angeles. They weren’t in the Central Valley. They were in the desert.

“How far is it from here?” Elle asked.

“A few hundred miles, at least.” The woman raised an eyebrow. “Don’t go, girly. You’ll wind up dead.”

“Thanks, but I can handle myself.”

Elle swung her backpack around and dug down, reaching for her map. She pulled it out. It was a crude depiction of the California Central Valley and the highways running in and out of the southern area of the state.

“That won’t do you any good,” the woman said. “Here.”

She reached under the counter and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Elle took it. It was a bigger map – a detailed one.

“I don’t have anything to trade for it,” Elle replied.

“Just take it.” She smiled. “And the name’s Sienna, by the way.”

Elle nodded, but she didn’t offer her own name. It didn’t feel right.

Not yet, anyway.

“Thank you,” she said instead.

“That’s Bob,” Sienna continued, gesturing to the snoring figure in the back of the darkened store. “He doesn’t notice anything these days.”

Elle looked at Bob, the silhouette of a man slumped forward in a chair, surrounded by empty bottles of booze. “Husband?” Elle asked.

“Brother,” Sienna answered.

Elle opened the map and spread it across the floor, kneeling down to study it. Sienna was still behind the counter, watching. Elle felt a twinge of fear, being alone in a building with two people who could very well be plotting her death…but despite that fear, she stayed where she was. She had a gun
and
a katana. If something happened, she was well prepared for it and she could move faster than Sienna.

She would win any fight they brought to her.

Chapter Three

“So. You’re not a thief. You’re not a carjacker,” Elle said, smiling slightly over the flames of the small campfire. “What
are
you, Jay?”

Jay shrugged, dark eyes glimmering against dark skin
.

“Why do you have to keep it a secret?” Elle pressed
.

It was late. The night was cold. Georgia lay asleep next to Flash and Pix, a tangled mass of blond curls and long legs.
“Because,” Jay replied, “secrets are the only things I have left.”

Elle pressed her lips together
.

“You know,” she said, “my family was rich. Before all of this. Before Day Zero, when everything went insane.” She shook her head. “Didn’t do us any good. When the EMP hit, our bank account just stopped existing. There was nothing my parents could do to stop it. My dad and my older brother. They died in the first two weeks, trying to get
food
from a grocery store that was overrun with looters.” Elle leaned her chin against her knees, staring at the fire. “All of it – civilization, I
mean. It took five thousand years to build it and two weeks to tear it apart. It’s depressing when you think about it.”

Jay turned his gaze from the fire, looking at Elle
.

“It didn’t surprise me,” he said. “That’s what man is. We’re just as feral as any wild animal out in the forest. We just like to pretend we’re not. And when something happens to shatter the illusion, everyone acts so shocked.”

“So you believe people are inherently evil?”