Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

Kath touched her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

Melanie practically fell into the back seat, and Dennis started the motor and pulled away. Kath rode in the front passenger seat. Literally shotgun. That had stopped being clever a while back. She kept the window rolled halfway down and listened for the sound of approaching engines.

“You did great,” Dennis said, glancing at his assistant in the rearview mirror. “You should have asked them to name the baby after you.”

“No, that’s okay. What’d they give you?” She went through the bag, to the sound of cans knocking together. “Eh, not bad. A couple boxes of nails. We can always trade that back out. Canned peaches.” She paused, looked quizzical, and drew out a glass jar. “Capers. There’s a jar of capers in here. They’re organic.”

“Organic capers,” Dennis snorted. “We’re saved.”

Dennis kept the headlights dimmed to save the battery. If there’d been enough moonlight, he’d have shut off the lights entirely. But the roads had gotten too hazardous, full of potholes and debris, to risk going entirely dark. Still, the doctor didn’t see the three kids standing in their path.

“Stop!” Kath screamed when she realized those shapes weren’t odd shadows but children, one older gripping the hands of two little ones, there in the middle of the road, unmoving. Like they intended to get run over.

The car lurched to a stop, skidded a few feet. The bag of loot fell clattering to the floor, and Melanie braced herself on the seat. Kath was already out the door, with Dennis calling after her.

The kids stared back at her quietly. Their eyes were sunken, their cheeks hollow. It could have just been odd shadows cast by the dim headlights, but Kath didn’t think so. They were hungry, starving. She scanned around for an adult, maybe a caravan they might have wandered off from. But they seemed so purposeful, the way they looked back at her, their eyes round and shining. They didn’t seem lost.

“Hey, what’re you guys doing here? Are you okay?” She tucked the shotgun under her arm, muzzle down, and approached them.

The older child looked like a girl, stringy brown hair in a loose braid, her eyes big and unblinking. Kath thought she was around eight, then revised up—ten, and malnourished. The other two might have been anywhere from two to five. Upright, but still uncertain in their movements. They clung to the older girl, gripping each hand and hugging her legs. All three wore t-shirts and loose pants. Only the oldest had shoes, dirty sneakers, toes poking through holes.

Kath inched closer, trying to look friendly and harmless even with a gun under her arm, but she stopped short of reaching out. Both Dennis and Melanie had left the car as well.

“It’s okay,” Kath said softly. “We’re not going to hurt you, I just want to find out what’s wrong.”

The oldest child licked her lips. “She told us to stand here. She told us to wait for the doctor to come and then go with him to the clinic. She said you’d take care of us.”

“Who? Who said?”

Her lips pursed, the girl didn’t answer. Kath thought she was about to cry, but she just kept staring, any kind of emotion, any response, locked up.

Kath tried again. “Where’d you come from? From the camp back there? From somewhere else?” It had to be the camp, to know that they’d be driving back this way.

“She just said to wait here. She said you’d take care of us.”

How did they know that? How could they be sure? Could have been anyone that came along the road here, and the girl seemed to know it. She was trying to be firm, to be confident. But her lip trembled, and her grip on the little kids’ hands was white-knuckled. She might have known just how dangerous this was, trusting in the good will of strangers.

Dennis had gotten out a flashlight and panned it around, scanning broken-down buildings and debris-strewn streets in all directions. No movement, nobody watching, nothing. Whoever had abandoned the kids here had fled.

“We need to get moving,” Kath said. She was the guard on this run, but Dennis was in charge. It was his call.

“Jesus Christ. Okay, fine. Everybody in the car.”

The littlest one started crying. At what in particular, Kath couldn’t say. Maybe it was just general exhaustion. She could understand that.

“What’s your name?” Kath asked.

“Chloë. These are Tom and Dakota.” She sounded relieved. Her shoulders had lowered a notch.

“I’m Kath. Let’s go.”

The two little ones fell asleep as soon as the car doors closed, and Kath marveled. How trusting, to climb into a car with strangers and somehow feel safer. This was a different set of rules than what she grew up with. The girl, Chloë, sat in the middle of the back seat, arms draped over both little ones, staring straight ahead.

Dennis drove with both hands on the wheel, clenched. Melanie also fell asleep, not looking at all peaceful. She was going to have a good cry later, Kath was sure.

“Where would you be now?” Dennis asked after a long stretch of silence. His profile was shadow.

“Hm,” Kath said. “College. Maybe I’d be at a party. Getting drunk? I dunno.”

His smile brightened his voice. “Getting in trouble. Sounds good. I approve.”

“Maybe I’d be studying for a test. Would it be exam time right about now?”

“Naw, you should go to the party. Have some fun.”

“Where would you be?” she asked in turn.

“Palm Springs. The back nine at Indian Wells. With a Corona in the cup holder of my cart.”

“Golfing in the middle of the night?”

“Well, no, not golfing right this minute. But I guess that’s where I’d rather be. I suppose that’s cliché, the doctor who’d rather be golfing.”

“You think it’s still there? The golf course?”

He shook his head, a scrap of movement in the otherwise still night. “Even if the grass hasn’t all died it wouldn’t be getting groomed.”

They drove on a little while, tires crunching on pitted asphalt.

“I wish you’d had the chance to go to college,” he said. “Even just a year or two. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, because it was what she always said. The entire concept of college was becoming abstract.

Her older brother Eddie had gone to college. He’d gone back east, and that’s where he’d been when it all fell apart. She wondered what happened to him. Would always wonder, and it was maddening, not having any way to find out. Maybe even now, five years after his last call, before the power went out, he was still trying to make his way across the country like he said he would. Maybe he’d made it as far as, say, Colorado. Gotten caught in the mountains in winter. Maybe he was just resting. Maybe he’d found a safe place to stay, like the clinic here. Maybe they needed him, so he stayed. How long did it take someone to walk three thousand miles, anyway? She didn’t have any idea.

She left a note for him back at the house. Stuck it to the door, covered it with packing tape so it would survive wind and weather. Maybe he’d find it someday. Maybe he’d find her.

They rolled back to the clinic at dawn, when the sky was gray and chilled. Jim was keeping watch on the north side this shift, rifle tucked under his arm, perched on one of the derelict trucks that made up the barricade around the compound. Kath sat up on the edge of the open window and waved an arm high, giving him plenty of time to spot and ID her and the Tesla. She could see him shade his eyes to look out. He waved back and started to open the gate.

The car’s charge was just about finished. Eighty miles round trip was at the far end of its range these days; its battery didn’t hold as much as it used to. They might need to start rethinking trips like this. Or figure out how to bring solar panels along for a recharge.