Jordan shouted something back, but Rob didn’t hear him.
“What happened?” said Aly frantically, as Rob threw open the door and raced through the house.
The keys were on the peg, hanging there just as he’d expected.
Rob grabbed them and raced back through the house, past Aly, without answering her.
He was already losing time. Every second he wasted, Jessica was being taken farther and farther away.
And it wasn’t like there’d be any way to track her once she was gone.
There were no police to call. There was no one to investigate.
Before the EMP, if someone was kidnapped, the proper government agencies got involved. They’d send out a network of advertisements, announcements, notifications, and surveillance. The toll gates on the highway captured license plates, and CCTV camera recorded faces and car makes and models. Credit and debit cards were tracked. It was hard for anyone to get away with anything.
But that was now all ancient history.
All those systems were gone.
The motorcycle guys could take her as far as their tanks of gas lasted. And as far as Rob knew, motorcycles got much better gas mileage than cars. Or station wagons for that matter.
The motorcycles could simply outdrive the Subaru in terms of distance.
And on top of them, if you added up all the different turns and corners, the possible routes were almost limitless.
He had to catch up to them.
Fast.
Rob threw himself into the Subaru’s driver seat. The wagon shook with his weight, the suspension sinking down and rocking.
“You’ve got to take me with you,” shouted Jordan, rushing around to the passenger side door.
Rob turned the key. The engine rumbled to life.
At the same time, Rob hit the automatic lock button.
Jordan grabbed the handle of the passenger door, but he couldn’t get the door open.
Jordan started banging on the window. “You said I needed to decide,” he yelled. “And I’m deciding to help! Let me in. You can’t do this on your own.”
Rob threw the Subaru into reverse.
He wasn’t used to driving stick, and it took him a couple moments to get it into gear.
He slammed the accelerator to the floor, and let out the clutch more jerkily than he’d intended.
The small engine whined and the Subaru leaped backwards with a jerk.
Jordan needed to stay with his niece, Aly, who couldn’t protect herself.
There wasn’t time to tell Jordan that. He’d have to figure it out for himself.
Rob was turned half around, struggling with his big frame and the back of the seat, facing the end of the driveway, and the Subaru’s engine was whining loudly as the tires kicked up dust from the gravel.
He didn’t know what was going to happen.
But he knew that he was going to find Jessica. No matter what.
He’d never done something so altruistic in his life.
But it wasn’t just Jessica’s life that was at stake.
It was his. It was Jim’s. It was all of theirs.
If they lost Jessica, they’d be more vulnerable.
Not that this thought was at the forefront of his mind.
All he was focusing on was driving.
The Subaru rocketed out of the driveway onto the road. Rob slammed on the brakes, shifted into first, and he was off, headed down the road in the direction that the motorcycles had disappeared down.
11
The water felt colder now than it had.
But Jim swam on.
His pants were dragging too much. He wished that he’d taken them off.
But it was too late.
He had to keep going.
Jim hadn’t even paused to look behind him, to see how far he’d come.
He just swam on.
It had been about thirty minutes, and he was already feeling it in his muscles. A burning sensation. A deep one.
He was using muscles he hadn’t used in years. And he was using them in ways that he hadn’t used them in years.
Ten minutes later, Jim was even more tired.
And he was beginning to think it was pointless.
Why did he think he could outswim a boat?
Why had he thought this was a good idea?
With the missing food, he was just wasting energy now. And it was energy that wasn’t going to be replaced easily.
With the supplies missing, they’d have to get creative in order to eat. And getting creative meant expending more energy.
It was just a tremendous spiral of energy loss. Thoughts of the second law of thermodynamics swirled through Jim’s head. Energy is always lost. The physicists called that entropy. Jim had studied it in school, and knew of it from his work with electronics, not that it had ever proved to be that useful, practically speaking.
But they weren’t useful thoughts.
He needed to concentrate.
So far, he hadn’t yet decided to turn back.
So the only option was to continue. Forward.
Just when he thought he couldn’t continue, just when he thought his burning, exhausted muscles might give out and he’d sink to the bottom of the lake, unable to rescue himself, he saw a flash of metal up ahead.
He paused in the water to get a better look. Treading water felt good compared to propelling himself forward constantly at an impossible pace.
This way, too, he could get his head higher out of the water, getting a better look.
Sure enough, there was a boat up ahead. He saw the sun glinting off its metal where the paint had worn off.
The boat was far off.
But not too far.
He could get there.
He just had to keep pushing.
At least the boat wasn’t lost. At least the fake cop hadn’t yet gotten to the shore.
All wasn’t lost.
Instinctively, Jim reached for his revolver in its holster. He didn’t draw it, but just felt the reassuring hardness of its handle as he wrapped his fingers around it.
The gun was his lifeline.
He didn’t waste much time treading water.
He’d been swimming freestyle, and he switched now to breaststroke. His thinking was that breaststroke wouldn’t create as much of a splash.
The competitive version of breaststroke had the swimmer moving up and down in the water quite a bit. The head bobbed up and dove back down again in an almost vicious way.
But Jim, instead, swam the more casual style.
He didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he had to.
He couldn’t make out, from where he’d been treading water, what kind of boat it was.
If it was a canoe, the fake cop would be facing forward.
Less chance for him to spot Jim as he approached.
Jim had to assume that he was armed.
If it was a rowboat, then Jim was in trouble. The fake cop would be facing exactly in Jim’s direction.
And it wasn’t like Jim could try to cut him off from the side. It would be too much swimming. Too long a route.
Jim already didn’t know how he’d managed to outpace a boat.
He’d been swimming as hard as he could, sure.
But the fake cop must have been paddling lazily. Either that or he was in terrible shape and had stopped, huffing and puffing, for a few breathers as the boat coasted, unpropelled, as slowly as a turtle for long periods.
It was ten more minutes before Jim was close enough to really see the boat.
It turned out it was two boats, rather than just one.
The fake cop was in a canoe, towing a rowboat.
Maybe that was what had slowed him down somewhat.
Jim’s plan was to get as close as he could, start treading water, and get off a single clean shot. All before the fake cop even spotted him.
It wasn’t exactly an honorable approach. Not like in the old cowboy movies, where the two dueling cowboys always faced each other, even perhaps exchanging pleasantries before the guns were fired.