“To be honest, Cam, I don’t think I’d be able to stop from kicking his ass in that situation.”
Cameron stopped and shot an exaggerated look at Maya’s backside. “Yeah, well, I’m sure it’d happen to you every night with as ass like that.”
Maya playfully slapped at Cameron’s arm and the younger woman leaned on Maya for a moment as they kept walking.
Cameron stopped laughing, but then threw a wide smile at Maya. “Thanks.”
Maya huffed. “For what?”
“For protecting us. And for getting me out of that damn house.”
“It’s not like you gave me much choice on that.”
“True. But at least I gave you some interesting company.”
Maya grinned and nodded. She could almost forget this was the woman Gerald had wrecked their marriage over. The cheap stripper of a white-trash bitch who had stolen her husband. But, like many things in life, this seemed to be more complicated than what she had originally thought. Maya had seen another side of Cameron. Hell, this was the only side she’d seen.
They’d been chatting for so long that, when Maya looked ahead again, they had reached the top of the hill. She stopped. Cameron had been breathing heavy for the last several minutes, her legs getting sloppy again. Maya couldn’t carry the woman, and if Cameron passed out, she also wouldn’t be able to leave her behind.
“Hey, you wanna rest here for a few minutes?”
Cameron shook her head. “We don’t have to. I know you want to keep going.”
“It’s okay. We can sit here and eat, and then get—”
A faint voice came from around the bend, about fifty yards ahead. Maya glanced at Cameron, who kept slogging along.
“What?” Cameron asked, her head tilted and her eyes tight.
“You didn’t hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Maya put her finger to her lips, signaling for Cameron to be quiet. She stood still, her eyes closed. There it was again. She looked at Cameron, and saw that the woman’s eyes were big, her mouth open.
“People,” Cameron said with a breathy whisper.
She moved to begin hurrying toward the bend in the road, but Maya grabbed her arm to stop her. Cameron looked back and shrugged.
“What? Let’s go.”
“We need to be cautious. Yes, the people might be friendly, but they might not be. It’s a different world out here now.” Maya thought about the people they’d found in the old tunnels beneath Nashville, and then some of those who she and Reno had encountered at the warehouse, as well as the women held hostage at the school.
Maya put her finger to her lips again, then gestured to the bend as she headed for the shoulder of the road and the tree line. Cameron followed, both women silent and walking from heel to toe. When they came closer to the bend in the road, Maya turned and whispered to Cameron.
“Wait here.”
With that, Maya stepped over a guard rail and dashed from one tree to another until she was far enough around the bend to see the road, her body concealed by the trunk of a massive oak.
Several people stood in the middle of the highway about thirty yards away. They had lined up to face each other, every man wearing jeans and black leather jackets with black boots. They looked like a motorcycle gang having a club disagreement.
Maya turned and waved at Cameron. She followed Maya’s steps, keeping herself hidden from tree to tree.
“What’s going on?”
Maya shook her head. “I’m not sure. Looks like they’re about to fight.”
A man with the group on the left stepped forward. Although Maya couldn’t see much from this distance, she could see he had a long, white beard and matching ponytail. The sun sparkled off the black lenses of his sunglasses. He’d begun shoving his finger into the chest of a man with the group on the right. This guy had a red bandana over his face like a cowboy out of an old western. But he wasn’t saying anything—just standing there while Grey Beard continued yelling and thumping Bandana’s chest.
Maya saw Bandana fall a split second before she heard the sound of the pistol fire. Grey Beard had pulled a handgun, placed it on Bandana’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The men standing with Grey Beard drew weapons, and Maya could see the cold steel in the sunlight. The men who had been standing with Bandana put their hands in the air.
Cameron started to cry beside her, and Maya immediately reached over and covered her mouth with her hand.
Another round of gunfire erupted as Grey Beard’s men mowed down their rival crew even though they’d clearly raised their hands to surrender.
Maya tried to take a deep breath, but was distracted by the sobs rising from Cameron’s chest. The woman started to whimper and then broke into a good cry. Maya looked back at the scene of the massacre as Grey Beard’s crew hovered over their dead enemies, stripping them of anything valuable. They walked toward a collection of motorcycles and pickup trucks, and Maya felt her heart beating in her chest. She looked around, seeing only a few trees bordering a wide, open field.
“We have to move. Now.”
Maya turned away from the tree, grabbing onto Cameron’s shirt. The woman stood slowly as Maya pulled harder. The bikers revved their engines and then the first truck pulled onto the highway, heading toward them.
Holding Cameron’s hand, Maya ran. She saw a culvert near the guard rail and took two steps before diving into it, pulling Cameron along.
“Get low!” She put her hand on the top of Cameron’s head and shoved her down.
She didn’t move after that, hoping that the men wouldn’t see them when they drove past. She heard the men laughing and hollering as the vehicles raced by, but kept her hand on Cameron’s head as the woman sobbed into her own shirt.
When the sound of the engines faded, Maya lifted her head. She crawled out of the ditch and looked down the highway in the direction the gang had gone. They were out of sight, the highway empty for miles except for one car.
“Come on,” Maya said.
“Hold on.”
“What?”
“What if they come back?”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
Maya wasn’t. But she’d seen one car left, thinking it might have belonged to Bandana and his crew and Silver Beard hadn’t had enough men to take it.
“I’m not sure. But there’s a car down there, and I’m tired of walking.”
Cameron finally stood, shaking and wiping snot from her nose. Maya walked toward the grisly scene first, Cameron ten feet behind her.
“Don’t look down. Keep your eyes on the roof of that Civic.”
Death always tempted the eyes, but could never be unseen. As an EMT, Maya understood why people “rubbernecked” at car accidents; she also knew the emotional price they’d pay for doing so.
“Almost there.”
She could smell the gunpowder and the sickly smell of burnt flesh. Maya led Cameron around to the passenger side, trying to use her body to block the woman’s morbid curiosity. She ran around the front and stepped over the outstretched arm of a dead man before dropping into the driver’s seat and shutting the door as Cameron climbed into the other seat. Maya reached down and felt the steel carabiner which had at least 40 keys hanging from it, one still in the ignition. She closed her eyes, squeezed the head of the key, and turned.
The Honda’s engine fired right up.
Jackpot.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before,” Cameron said, staring straight ahead and toward the horizon. “It really smells here.”
Maya nodded, put the car in drive, and pulled out onto the long stretch of highway.
22
As dusk turned to night, Maya watched as the Civic’s headlights came on and the dashboard glowed. Although they hadn’t been on the road for long, they hadn’t come across anymore people, gangs, or aliens. The inside of the vehicle reeked of the pine-scented air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. She finally reached up and pulled it off the mirror, tossing it out the window.