Lea’s eyes darted from side to side. “Can you hear that?”
I crouched and listened to a confusing mixture of faint noises coming from the direction we had driven. Smoke towered into the darkening late spring sky—Ron’s house probably burning to the ground. The breeze dropped. I picked out the sound of dogs barking, some muffled shouting, and the roar of engines.
“It sounds like Anthony or Jerry is organizing a hunt,” Jack said.
I glanced across to the closest bungalow. “Let’s get the Rover off the road.”
“Lea, you get in and steer, and we’ll push,” Jack said.
We both grunted as we shoved the vehicle across the road and down a driveway. The Rover gained momentum down a slight incline. Lea steered around a rusty red pickup onto a neatly trimmed lawn at the rear of the house; the grass had probably been cut a day or two before the activation.
Jack and I took a few moments. I leaned against the filthy white wooden boarding on the side of the house and sucked in oxygen.
The distant engine noises slowly grew louder. The dual tone suggested more than one vehicle, but they weren’t rapidly approaching. They didn’t know our exact location and were, ominously, taking their time to hunt us down.
“Stay back,” I said.
I peered around the corner wall. Jack looked over my shoulder. Voices became clearer, shouting over the noise of the engines. A man appeared on the road and aimed along the tracks on the opposite side. He swung around to face the houses. I edged back.
A minute later, a pickup truck rolled along the street, with two men aiming rifles out of the back. Five more armed, competent-looking guards, all dressed in black, swarmed around the truck, focusing on each side of the road.
I listened for any slight change in the engine tone or for approaching footsteps. One of the men raised his rifle to his shoulder and casually fired twice into the house next door. A window shattered. He continued after the truck.
The short procession rumbled away, and the noise gradually receded.
“Those guys look like they mean business,” Jack said. “Not like the clowns we met on our way here.”
“Why let us shoot Ron and escape, and then chase us?” I wondered aloud. “Lea, how many people did you say were on the payroll?”
“A couple thousand, but they could’ve been distributing the money to others. I transferred hundreds of thousands of bucks on a monthly basis.”
“Maybe we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg?” Jack said.
“If I can find Martina, I’ll get you more info.”
“Forget about that for now. Let’s concentrate on getting out of here,” I said.
The more I got to know about GA, the bigger the significance they seemed to take on. There was no way in the world that Ron and his goons ran the operation or even had a prominent role in the higher echelons. The events were too vast and far-reaching to be carried out by group of gun-toting amateurs. I had little doubt that we were dealing with the bottom feeders, but they still posed a significant threat.
“What do you think that gunfire earlier was all about?” I asked.
Jack shook his head. “No idea, but I’m pretty sure we’re not the only ones pissed off around here.”
I took a few paces forward and gazed along the road. The GA team rounded a bend about a half a mile away. “Looks like they’ve got a game plan now. Lea, is there a cross-country route to that big pile of cars?”
“Fields for a mile or two.” She pointed to her right. “Or we cut through that neighborhood to the South Dixie Highway.”
“Whichever,” Jack shrugged. “Let’s stay off the roads till we’re clear of Monroe.”
“Let’s stop talking and get moving before they seal the whole area off,” I said.
We could have followed our noses toward the jumble of cars that had greeted us on arrival at Monroe. A large pit lay next to the mangled, bloodstained wrecks, roughly the size of a football field, filled with corpses. A light southerly breeze gave us intermittent blasts of deathly decay, but for the time being, the stench acted as our homing beacon.
We wound our way around neat flower gardens, kiddie pools with dead bugs floating in the tepid water, and piles of children’s bicycles and swing sets; we stayed away from streets, jumping over wooden and metal garden fences. We were still a mile away from the South Dixie Highway, which led to the first cars in the group of abandoned vehicles.
Jack dived for cover behind a hedge. “Get down!”
Lea and I followed.
Three black Rovers roared along the South Dixie Highway in tight convoy. They stopped just short of their occupants’ self-constructed roadblock.
“That’s the rifle out of the window,” Jack said as he peered through the leaves. “We’ll never get past that lot without being spotted.”
I swept a branch to one side. A man exited the front Rover and swept the area through his rifle sights. “There’re plenty of good places to hide among those vehicles. If they park there, it’ll be the last place they’ll expect us to go.”
Lea hadn’t said a word since leaving the back of the house on Hull Road. She closed her eyes and clenched her hands tightly together.
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She groaned and rolled to face me. “I’m going back.”
“What?” Jack said.
“We’re not going back there, Lea—they’ll kill us,” I said. “You can’t have forgotten Jerry and Anthony already?”
“I’ll find Martina and explain. Ron was alive, and he would have kept her alive too; she was all he had.” She paused and waited for a reaction. I was speechless. “I’ll create a diversion in town to help you get away,” she said.
I looked back at the stationary Rovers. Six small figures jumped out of them and wandered across the tree line ahead of us—not in our direction, but if they carried on, our cover would be blown, and we’d be in range of a crack shot.
“We’ll get you back in later,” I said. “Give us chance to shake the immediate danger and regroup first.”
“You don’t have to risk your lives for me. When it’s safe, I’ll come and find you.”
“No way, Lea. I can’t allow it,” I said. “We know there’re other survivors in New York. If we can persuade them—”
She shook her head and looked despondent. “What if there’s a Second Activation? You can’t outrun the effects of the devices.”
“It’s not our priority at the moment, and I don’t think there’ll be one anytime soon. Not after what’s happened here.”
Jack tried to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Lea?”
She brushed it off and scowled at him. “Whatever. I’m coming.”
A roll of thunder echoed above. The guards continued along the tree line, almost level with our hedge. I found it hard to believe how Lea turned from titanium to putty when she thought she was in close proximity to Martina, and how she contemplated taking a suicidal chance to see her.
“Track back and cut across to the highway,” Jack said.
We moved at a crouching run over an open field. I glanced intermittently across to the men in the distance, who seemed preoccupied with something in the opposite direction. With this momentary diversion, I sped up, over a mixture of soft soil and grassed areas, until we came across a group of cows that appeared interested in our sudden appearance.
“Do they normally walk toward humans?” Jack asked.
Lea staggered by his side and dismissively waved her hand. “Some do, some don’t. Who cares?”
“Keep moving and hope they don’t start making any loud noises,” I said.
The closest cow stood in our path. I jumped to its side and gave its rump a powerful slap to move it along. The cow snorted and trotted away. I vaulted over a timber fence and landed with a squelch on the other side; then I paused to take a breather, obscured from the view of any prying GA eyes.