Yeah, yeah. Right. I know.
It doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it makes me feel like a naïve schoolgirl, blurting my feelings out to him while he’s remained tight and constrained this whole time. Well, somewhat tight. I guess the kissing and hugging and comforting words should be a sign that he cares about me.
Quit being naïve, I think. You’re twenty years old, not fifteen. Chris loves you. You know that. He’ll say it when he’s ready to say it. Just let it go.
I open my eyes.
“Okay, then,” I say.
Angela gives me a weird look.
“Sorry,” I shrug.
Nothing like an internal pep talk to perk up the morning.
As the first hour drags by, I find the original nervous edge I’ve been carrying all morning beginning to wear off. It turns into mere impatience and boredom. It takes hours longer than it should to get where we need to be because we can’t take a direct route on the interstate. As far as we know, Omega has been using the old highways to move their convoys throughout the state when they can, so we want to avoid them.
Several hours later, we roll into Bakersfield.
An eerie sense of “I’ve been here before” hits me. Because yeah. I’ve been here before. And the last time I came through was a year ago with Chris. We were on foot, the city had been turned into a concentration and death camp, and we only escaped with our lives because an old man named Walter Lewis showed us a secret passage out of the city.
We drive through the remote areas, avoiding the freeways. Unlike the last time I was here, Omega is absent. Buildings are burned, blasted, destroyed, vacant. Intel has reported that the POW camp that was here last year is gone. We take a turn on a big boulevard behind a rest stop by the freeway. The remains of barbed wire and metal fencing is scattered around an abandoned parking lot. The burnt carcasses of trucks and trailers sit on the asphalt.
Was this the death camp we saw?
I don’t know. It looks so different. What happened to it?
“Militia,” Chris says simply. He doesn’t even have to look at me to know what I’m thinking. “Militia did this. Somebody like us.”
I wonder what happened to Walter Lewis. I’d like to find his apartment building and see if he’s still alive. But I’m not in charge, and we have no time for that. We’re on a schedule.
We’re trying to save what’s left of the world here.
Sorry, Walter. Next time. I promise.
“Bakersfield isn’t far from the Chokepoint,” I say.
The Chokepoint is what we’ve been calling our destination.
Chris nods. He’s been staying in communication with the other Humvees via encrypted radio, big black boxes that look like cell phones from the nineties. But hey. It’s better than the alternative. We could be using smoke signals or two tin cans and a string. Because honestly, that’s where we were without radios.
After a bit more time elapses, I see it. Without urban pollution, the Tehachapi Mountains are tall and clear against the afternoon sky. I stifle a shudder, thinking of the fear and confusion I felt when Chris and I were fleeing Los Angeles through those hills.
“We’re here,” I breathe.
Nobody replies. Nobody needs to.
This is where we make our last stand.
Laval Road. I remember this place. A huge rest stop on the side of the interstate, surrounded by fast food restaurants and gas stations. I stopped here with my father on our way to and from our cabin in the mountains. Summer vacations.
Last time I was here, there were a lot of dead bodies. Blood on the road. Omega had rolled in and executed innocent people. At the time, Chris and I didn’t know who Omega was, or that they were even here. We just knew something was wrong.
Now we know what.
And Laval Road isn’t looking so bad today. No dead bodies. No blood. Everything is abandoned, but hey. It makes for a good rest stop for the convoy. We need to refuel. What better place to do it than here?
Our convoy rolls to a halt in front of an empty restaurant. The Iron Skillet, the sign says. The windows aren’t broken, miraculously. The front door is cracked, halfway open. Our driver kills the engine and Angela, Chris and myself exit the vehicle. I stretch my stiff legs. The air is heavy and hot. Not even the slightest hint of a breeze.
“This is just creepy,” I mutter.
Chris shrugs off his jacket and throws it in the front seat of the Humvee.
“Looks different than the last time we came through, doesn’t it?” he asks.
“Where did all the dead bodies go, I wonder?” I say.
“Either they rotted into oblivion or somebody cleaned them up and buried them. Or burned them.” Vera stands at the rear of our vehicle, arms crossed. “Ever smelled burning flesh, Hart? The scent is sickly sweet.”
I level my gaze.
“You’re sick, Vera,” I state. “Keep it to yourself.”
And my temper is in full force today.
She squares her jaw, knowing better than to push me right now. In front of everybody. Especially in front of Chris, who is just out of earshot at the front door of the restaurant. I join him, searching the convoys for familiar faces. All of our heavy artillery is in tow — you can’t rush the heavy stuff. And according to Colonel Rivera, we should have air support out here by tonight. That should be awesome. Helicopters, jets — courtesy of the air force.
The militia begins exiting their vehicles, the transports dumping our troops onto the asphalt. Procedural searches of the area begin. Vera finds her mother and the two converse for a moment. It strikes me then how odd it is that Angela seems like such a levelheaded, decent human being while her daughter is a complete idiot.
Just an observation.
Inside, the restaurant is covered in a fine layer of ashes. The booths and tables and chairs are ghostly white with a grayish tint. It smells like something died in here, too. I wrinkle my nose.
“Can we please wait inside a different building?” I say. “This is dirty.”
“No. This restaurant’s got a good view of the rest of the area,” Chris replies, offering a crooked grin. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to the smell.”
“Joy.”
He pats my shoulder and continues through the building. I follow him into the kitchen. It’s empty. Lonely. Forgotten. Never to be used again.
It makes you wonder what happened to the employees and owners when the EMP went down. When Omega rolled in and started their systemic executions. We may never know, because all of the witnesses are dead.
“Puts a chill in the bones, doesn’t it?”
Colonel Rivera marches through the kitchen door, his eternally present cigar wedged between his teeth. He kicks the door on a fridge open. A heinous smell wafts out of it. I barely manage to avoid gagging all over the Colonel’s boots.
“You were here just a couple of days after the EMP hit, weren’t you?” he asks, looking at me. “At least, I know Young was.”
“I was with him,” I nod.
“And?”
“And it was a graveyard, sir. Dead bodies everywhere.”
He rubs his chin, deep in thought about something.
“You ever wonder how they got here so fast?” he asks, shifting his gaze to Chris. “How were they mobilized and ready to kill everybody on the whole damn planet within just forty-eight hours after the EMP hit?”
“They were planted here ahead of time,” I say.
“But how?”
“They were hiding,” Vera states, crossing her arms.
“Right, right.” Colonel Rivera casts a curious glance at Chris, who’s standing near the door with a concerned expression on his face. “But who was letting them hide here? Because you and I both know something this big had to go down with a whole lot of inside help.”