“Riley?” Martina said, hardly believing her eyes.
Her friend’s head jerked back in surprise. When her eyes focused on Martina, she said, “Water?”
“What? Oh, sure. No problem.” Martina was still carrying the glass she’d been taking to her parents’ room. She rushed it over, and raised it to her friend’s lips. “Here.”
Riley took a few sips, then coughed. Martina yanked the glass away.
“No,” Riley said. “More.”
By the time she had enough, the glass was half empty.
Martina grabbed the blanket off the couch and draped it around Riley’s shoulders.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like crap.”
Riley may have felt like crap, but Martina could see that it was several levels above the point of no return she’d been hovering around most of the night.
“Maybe you should lie back down,” Martina suggested.
“Need to go to the bathroom.”
“You have to throw up?”
Riley looked annoyed. “No. I didn’t say that.”
Putting an arm around her friend’s waist, Martina helped Riley walk to the bathroom.
“You need help?” she asked once she got her inside.
“I think I’m okay.”
Martina closed the door partway and waited nearby. After a while, the toilet flushed and water began running into the sink. When she heard the unmistakable yet surprising sound of Riley brushing her teeth, Martina pushed the door open again.
Riley looked over, the brush still in her mouth. “What?” she said, toothpaste foaming on her lips.
“Nothing. I…uh, I thought you were almost done.”
“I am.” Riley spit into the sink. “My mouth just felt like…yuck.”
If possible, Riley seemed even better than she had been a few minutes before.
When she was seated back on the couch, she asked, “How’s everyone else?”
“Asleep,” Martina said. She was afraid if she told her friend the truth, it might have an adverse effect on her recovery. “You want something to eat?”
“No. Maybe just a…maybe a nap.”
“Sure.”
Riley, moving slowly, stretched out once more on the sofa. Within moments, she was asleep.
For ten minutes, Martina sat on the floor next to her, worried that Riley would slip back to the near-death state she’d been in earlier, but her breathing remained strong, and the color that had returned to her cheeks was showing no signs of retreating. When Riley started snoring, Martina began to think her friend might actually live.
This realization caused her to wonder about something she thought she’d never think about again — the future. What should they do now? She decided to check the radio again to find out what was happening in the rest of the world.
As she walked to the car, she saw dark clouds beginning to gather over the mountains again, and knew more snow would soon be on the way. Since they had no tire chains for the Webers’ car, even just a few more inches would be enough to snow them in until the roads cleared again. How long would that be? A week? A month? All winter?
She climbed into the car and flipped the key. When the radio came on, all she heard was static. That was odd. When she’d last turned it off, she’d made sure to leave it tuned to a station out of Bakersfield. It was the strongest signal she’d found.
She scanned the AM band, slowing in the areas she’d found stations before, but she didn’t even pick up the hint of a voice. She tried FM, but there was nothing there, either.
Worried, she got out of the car and looked at the sky again. The clouds now covered three quarters of the sky and had grown even darker. Snow coming for sure, in the next hour or two at most.
Even though it was only the two of them now, Martina was sure they didn’t have enough food to last an entire winter. If they were snowed in and the flu didn’t kill them, starvation would do the trick.
Riley and I are alive, she told herself. It’s my job to keep us that way.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Martina ran back into the house. She spent three minutes in the kitchen throwing food into two bags, then grabbed a case of water and carried everything out to the car.
As she went back inside, she knew there was one other thing she should take. With reluctance, she reentered her parents’ room, and retrieved her father’s rifle and the two boxes of extra shells he’d kept in his bag. She hoped she didn’t need the weapon, but she had no idea what they would find once they were off the mountains.
She kissed her father’s forehead, and then her mother’s. “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” she said, sure they would understand. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. I love you.”
Wiping tears from her eyes, she returned to the living room and knelt down next her brother. She kissed him on the cheek, said, “I need to borrow this,” and grabbed his backpack.
She removed the contents, set them next to Donny, and put the gun and ammunition into the bag.
“Riley, get up,” she said, moving over to the couch. She gave her friend’s shoulder a shake. “Riley, come on.”
The girl stirred and opened her eyes only wide enough to see. “What is it?”
“We need to go.”
Martina slipped an arm under her friend and started to lift her up.
“Go where?”
“Don’t worry about it. You can sleep in the car.”
“The car? The others are there?”
Martina forced a smile. “No. It’s just you and me.”
“What about them?”
“Come on.” Martina pulled Riley to her feet and walked her to the front door.
“I don’t…understand,” Riley said as they stepped outside.
“I’ll explain later. Right now we’ve got to go.”
She helped Riley into the back and told her to lie down. Her friend still looked confused, but stretched out across the seat. Martina ran back into the house, grabbed a couple blankets, two pillows, and their sleeping bags, just in case.
At the car, she slipped one of the pillows under Riley’s head, covered her with the blankets, stuffed everything else into the front passenger seat, and climbed in behind the wheel.
The engine, not happy with the cold, ran rough for nearly a minute before it warmed up. As Martina shifted into Reverse, she took one last look at the house.
“I’ll be back,” she whispered. “I promise.”
She took her foot off the brake, backed up a dozen feet, and dropped the car into Drive.
Right before they reached the main road, a snowflake hit the windshield.
15
Josie was waiting by the large door to the Bunker’s emergency tunnel as the latest search party returned.
She had spent the entire night in the chair next to her father’s bed, sleeping, her hand on his. When she woke that morning, he was still unconscious, but Dr. Gardiner had told her his vital signs were continuing to improve.
She hadn’t wanted to leave, but the doctor needed to examine her dad’s wounds, and said it would be easier if she wasn’t there. He’d suggested she go get something to eat. Though she still wasn’t hungry, she went down to the kitchen anyway. A man was having breakfast at one of the tables, a walkie-talkie sitting near his plate. As Josie was asking Bobbie for a glass of orange juice, the radio had squawked to life, announcing that Brandon’s search party was on its way back inside. That sent her racing down the hall to the tunnel.
She shifted from one foot to the other as she waited, hopeful. But when the searchers finally appeared, she could see from the looks on their faces that they had once again been unsuccessful.