“There’s a grocery store between the east and west ends. We stopped to check it out.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Someone’s there.”
“Martina?”
“Not Martina.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
“We’ve seen two people, but there’s got to be more,” Riley said. “They’ve got a pickup truck and at least two motorcycles. And they don’t look friendly.”
Immediately, the memory of the guy who had shot at them in the hills a few days earlier came back to Noreen. “They haven’t seen you, have they?”
“Uh-uh. We parked our bikes on Main Street and snuck up the hill. Hiding behind a delivery van someone left here.”
“Enough talking,” Craig broke in. “They’re going to hear us.”
“You guys should get out of there,” Noreen said. “We don’t need to make any new friends.”
“We’re okay here,” Riley said. “They can’t — oh, God.”
“What is it?”
“Shhh,” either Riley or Craig whispered.
Noreen killed the engine to her motorcycle and wheeled it onto a side road, parking it at the curb.
“What’s going on?” she said.
She heard nothing, not even static.
“Hello? Are you there?”
She looked at the radio to make sure she hadn’t accidentally switched the channel. The power light was off.
What the…
Crap.
The CB was a handheld model with a charging cradle that, with the help of an instruction manual, they had wired into the bike’s electrical system. She snatched the radio out and switched it from external power source to battery.
“…there? Noreen?”
“I’m here. I’m here. What’s going on?”
“Hide! Now!”
Noreen looked toward Main Street, almost expecting to see a horde of the undead staggering toward her.
“What’s going on?”
Nothing for a second, then Riley said between rapid breaths, “One of them saw us. He…ran back inside to get his friends…and we took off.”
“Where are you?”
“No place to hide…getting on our bikes…”
In the distance, Noreen heard their motorcycles roar to life. Then, as their engines idled a bit, a bang.
“What was that?”
“It’s okay…we’re all right,” Craig said.
“Were they shooting at you?”
“Missed us,” Riley said.
Hearing motorcycles roar down Main Street, Noreen shot a look at the intersection and was just in time to see Riley and Craig race by. As the sound of their engines began to fade, she heard more bikes coming from the direction of the market.
“They’re following you,” she said.
Knowing she couldn’t be standing there when the other bikes came by, Noreen ducked around the rear of the nearby shop and crouched behind a Dumpster. She could hear three motorcycles race past back on Main Street. A few moments later, a vehicle she guessed was a truck followed.
What was wrong with these people? Why did they care about Riley and Craig?
Staying hidden, she spent the next ten minutes trying to reach her friends.
Finally, Riley answered. “We’re okay.”
“What happened?”
“We cut up a hill into a residential area. They must have thought Craig had taken the highway north. They sped off that way. We watched them for a few minutes, but can’t see them anymore.”
“Why did they chase you?” Noreen asked.
“Maybe because we were spying on them?” Craig suggested.
“I guess, but why shoot at you?”
The only reply was silence, but Noreen suspected she already knew the answer.
The rules of life they’d grown up with no longer applied.
Ben Bowerman had checked everyplace he thought Martina might be.
When he had arrived in her hometown two nights before, his intention had been to head straight to her house. He had been there only once and that had been the previous summer, so he had just a vague idea of its location. If Martina had lived in one of the housing tracts within the city limits, he was sure he’d have no trouble finding her house. But the Gables’ home was down a dirt road west of town, where everyone had his or her own few acres of desert.
It turned out there were a lot of dirt roads in that direction, and Ben’s search wasn’t helped by the sun going down. It took him until almost ten that night before he finally found the house, recognizing it by the large, detached three-car garage with asymmetrical sloped roof.
He felt a rush of hope when he saw Martina’s Toyota Corolla parked out front. He jumped out of his car and ran to the front door of the house. It was locked.
“Martina, it’s me!” he yelled, knocking loudly.
Nothing. Not even the creak of a floorboard.
He raced around to the back door, but it was also locked.
“Martina! Are you in there?”
He looked up at the darkened second-floor windows but sensed no movement beyond them.
He remembered Martina had said her family kept a spare key in the garage, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall where. So he grabbed a log off the firewood pile on the side of the house and smashed it through the window next to the rear door.
“Sorry!” he yelled through the opening just in case someone was there. “It’s me. Ben Bowerman. Martina’s boyfriend.”
He reached inside, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
“Hello?” he called. “Anyone home?”
No answer.
Reluctantly, he stuck his head a few inches inside and sniffed the air. Stale, but no smell of death. Relieved, he stepped all the way inside.
The house was quiet, the same kind of undisturbed silence he’d experienced pretty much everywhere he’d been the last several days. He felt along the wall until he found a light switch and flicked it up. Nothing. He hadn’t really expected it to work. He had seen no lights on anywhere else in town. So he returned to his car and retrieved a flashlight from the bag of things he’d been collecting to replace the stuff he’d lost when Iris Carlson stole his Jeep.
Back inside, he methodically worked his way through the house, hoping to find a note or some other indication of where Martina went. It was clear from the open drawers and closets in the bedrooms that the Gable family had left in a hurry, but he discovered no clue about their destination.
He slumped down on Martina’s bed, tired and frustrated and depressed. He had been so sure he’d find her here that he hadn’t considered what to do if he didn’t.
He hadn’t intended on falling asleep right there in her room, but that’s where he found himself late the next morning when he woke. Still unsure what he’d do, he headed downstairs to see if there was any food left in the kitchen. As he crossed through the living room, he looked out the row of east-facing windows. In the distance, he could see the hill with the large white B painted on it.
B Mountain, Martina had called it. The B standing for Burroughs High School. While the high school was in town, the mountain was located within the confines of the China Lake naval base.
The navy, he thought.
Surely the military had taken some action to try to save people. Maybe it had set up a safety zone within the base. Though Martina’s dad was a civilian, he worked for the navy. Wouldn’t the navy’s first priority be to save its own? Would that include civilian employees and their families?
Yeah. That has to be it.
With renewed purpose, he drove through town toward the base and found the entrance without too much trouble. The guardhouse was unmanned. That was to be expected. If there was a flu-free zone inside, any personnel would most likely be consolidated near it. They’d probably be jumpy, he thought. To be safe, he kept his speed down so he wouldn’t look threatening.