Melissa la Cruz - Frozen

Nat hummed along for a while then said, “Well, at least she’s with a family; it’s more than many of us get or can hope for.”

“That what you were? Orphan?”

“You had me checked out,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

He shrugged. “Standard procedure.”

“Then you should know my story.”

“Not much of it.”

“What happened to ‘no questions asked,’” she said.

“I did say that, didn’t I? No big deal, just making conversation.” He didn’t push. One day at a time, he thought.

He would be patient.

The garbage-strewn border gave way to a graveyard of ships and trucks that had been washed inland by the floodwaters over a hundred years ago. Monstrous steel hulls, skeletons of cruise ships and navy carriers loomed over the snowy terrain; dark, thick vines sprouted from the dead machines, weaving through the carcasses. Winter branches, they were called, some sort of plant that thrived in the tundra. Wes stared at them. He could have sworn the branches were iridescent, almost glittering, sparkling. But he was just seeing things, wasn’t he? When he looked again, the branches were the same dull color, reaching toward the heavens, weaving a tangled web of rusted metal, along with trailer homes and tumbled-over cars on the snow-covered desert floor. The Black Flood had carried the junk almost as far as Vegas before receding. As they moved closer to the coast, they could see the failed levees and makeshift dams that the military and a few desperate civilians had erected in an attempt to stop the rising waters.

It was their second day on the road and Shakes was back on driving duty, with Zedric acting as navigator. Wes and Nat shared the middle seat, and each clung to the opposite corner, as far away from the other as possible. In the back, the boys were awake, jostling and teasing; an annoyed Daran had pushed Farouk’s cap down low over his eyes.

“They’d lock that door once they saw you coming—” Farouk was laughing and hiccupping. “A year’s share of marital-day passes in a week! That must have been a record!”

“Daran likes the ladies,” Wes explained to Nat, as Daran looked smug and made a rude gesture with his hands.

“No doubt the ladies like him,” she said with a smirk. Daran was pretty hot, with his sharp cheekbones and glossy dark hair.

Wes laughed, although for a moment his face twisted at her words. There were two kinds of marriages these days—day passes for temporary unions—so that you could rent a room at one of the love hotels—and real ones from chapel. Day passes kept the population clean of disease. No sexual activity without a license. There was a license for everything. In his experience, it took a lot of the romance out of the equation, standing in line at the bureau, checking the little boxes, waiting for the result of the blood test before you could do so much as kiss a girl.

“So you like Daran, eh?” he asked.

“I didn’t say that,” she huffed.

“You ever filled ’em out?” he asked, looking at her sideways.

“What—forms for a marital pass?” She looked offended.

“Sure, why not? What’s the problem, no offers?” he teased.

“Exactly the opposite, my friend,” she said archly. “Too many to mention.”

“That’s what worries me.” He grinned wickedly and she tossed a wadded paper napkin at his face.

“You should be so lucky,” she huffed.

“I should,” he said, still smiling as he batted it away.

“Don’t worry, I turned them all down,” she told him.

“All of them?”

“Shut up!” She laughed. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

She wasn’t the only one being teased about it. Farouk was giving Daran a hard time in the back.

“It’s a miracle you passed the STD monitors—not with those girls from Ho Ho City!” he said, while Zedric chimed in from the front, “Yeah, bro, you’re so twisted I swear the last one was a freaking drau!” Daran pummeled Farouk and threatened his brother, and finally Wes yelled at the three of them to shut up, they were giving him a headache.

“Hold up! Hold up! What’s that?” Farouk suddenly yelled, underneath Daran’s fists.

“What’s what?” Wes asked, studying the black metal forest, looking through the tangle of vines. Then he saw it. There were shapes moving through the devastated landscape, and even the vines seemed to be moving. The figures multiplied in the distance.

“Thrillers,” he cursed. “Let’s hope we don’t come closer to any.” He took the binoculars for a closer look. The creatures were dressed in ragged clothing, stumbling and staggering with jerky, strange movements, some of them as small as children, and a few tall, wraith-like apparitions with hair the color of straw. And he wasn’t losing his mind—the vines were moving, swaying of their own volition.

“Thrillers?” asked Farouk.

Shakes began to hum a tune. “You know, that old song . . . ‘Thriller, thriller night.’” He began shaking his head and waving his arms while he sang. The Slaine brothers watched and laughed.

“All right, knock it off,” Wes grumbled.

“The lights that glow at night—are they from them?” Farouk asked.

Wes didn’t answer for a long time. “No one knows. Maybe.”

“But what made them that way?” Farouk asked, as the team stared at the strange, frightening creatures in the distance.

After a long silence, Wes finally answered. “Military does a bunch of chemical testing out here, could be they’re victims of the fallout, but the government won’t say or confirm any of the theories. I know one thing, though, they scare the hell out of anyone unlucky enough to run into them. Word is that’s why the army sent out nanobots in the first place; the thrillers were freaking out too many men. That’s why there’re very few seekers out here.”

He explained that the official explanation for the retreat from Garbage Country was toxin-induced schizophrenia. The chemicals that remained from the toxic floods were said to have driven the men to insanity. But there was no official mention of the shambling, horrific creatures roaming in the garbage. A few years later, the army developed the bot-based defense system. Exploding bombs and robots didn’t get nightmares and didn’t scream at the sight of a thriller.

“Bad news, boss,” Shakes said, looking up from the dashboard. “Looks like we’ve got a gas leak. Bullet must have grazed the tank. We’re not going to make it to the coast with what we’ve got left in the cans.”

They had been lucky to even get this far with what they had, Wes knew. “How much we got left?”

“A few miles at most.”

Wes sighed. “All right, I wasn’t planning to, but we’ll have to make a detour to one of the tent cities for supplies. K-Town isn’t too far, we’ll go there.”

“Whoop, whoop! K-Town!” Zedric yelled, throwing up his gun and catching it.

“What’s in K-Town?” Nat asked.

Wes smiled. So there were some places she hadn’t been. “You’ll see. You think New Vegas is the bomb, wait till you see the fireworks in K-Town.”

TO GET TO K-TOWN THEY WOULD HAVE TO CUT through what was once Los Angeles. The formerly sun-drenched city had been one of the hardest hit by the Flood, the waters submerging it almost completely. The truck had to make its way through the hilly, snowy terrain above the waterline. Zedric cranked up the stereo hooked to Daran’s player, and a loud dub-reggae hybrid, the Bob Marley Death-Metal Experience, throbbed inside the truck.

The music was angry and violent, in contrast to the gentle lyrics. Could you be loved?

It was a good question, Nat thought. Could you? Could she ? Her gaze landed on Wes and she looked away. For a moment she had seen the two of them filling out day-pass forms, giggling, teasing each other, anticipating a night alone together. She shook the image from her head, annoyed that her thoughts kept turning back to him. Besides, she felt nothing for him, and never could. She’d only been flirting with him because maybe if he liked her he would think twice before tossing her overboard.