Blaine tossed her a crooked grin. Sandra was probably the whitest person he knew, but she liked to throw in some Español every now and then for his benefit. Not that she knew more than a few words.
“We’d be done by now if this asshole would hurry up,” Blaine said.
Deeks grunted and rolled the spare tire over, his face glistening with sweat. He stood back to catch his breath. Deeks was only about fifty years old, but those were hard, city years. His eyes drooped, and Blaine sometimes wondered how much longer the old man would last out here.
“Where are we?” Sandra asked, looking around them.
“About ten miles out of Lancing,” Blaine said.
“What’s in Lancing?”
“Hell if I know. We’ll grab whatever supplies we can, then keep on trucking down south.”
“‘Keep on trucking?’”
“What, you don’t think a Mexican knows what ‘keep on trucking’ means?”
“Half-Mexican,” she corrected him.
He grinned. That was technically true, but he had the dark complexion, and one look at him and all anyone ever saw was “Mexican.” He never corrected them, because it didn’t matter. Blaine was always good about taking what God gave him and running with it. Like the end of the world. While people were getting turned and eaten, Blaine was surviving. He was good at that, too.
“Correctamundo,” Blaine said.
“That’s definitely not proper Spanish.”
“Close enough.”
Blaine was halfway to putting the lug nuts back into place over the spare tire when he felt the road underneath him tremble slightly. It came from behind them, back up the highway. Approaching vehicles.
Blaine quickly spun the fifth lug nut into place and tossed the crank into the back of the Jeep, then unwound the jack. When all four of the Jeep’s tires were touching the asphalt road again, Blaine stood up and unslung the Mossberg.
Deeks glanced over. “What is it?”
“Cars coming down the road,” Blaine said.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You can’t feel them?”
“No.”
“Damn, you’re old.”
Deeks grunted back.
“I hear them,” Sandra said.
She walked over to stand beside Blaine. She was a foot shorter than him, even in boots that gave her an extra three or four inches. But then, most people were short next to Blaine. Sandra wore a gun holster with a.32 Smith and Wesson in it. She put her hand on the handle of the revolver now, her body stiffening noticeably, the way it always did when she was scared.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
She looked over at him and tried to smile, but it came out badly.
“It’ll be fine,” he said again.
“What’s happening?” Deeks said, nervously unslinging his Mossberg.
Three vehicles, little more than black dots, materialized out of thin air down the flat road behind them.
Blaine quickly went over his options.
They could take off now in the fixed Jeep, try to outrun them. But if they decided to pursue, then what? Sooner or later, they would have to stop and seek shelter for the night. That was the problem. Sooner or later, they always had to stop for the night…
Blaine glanced at his watch: 4:16 p.m.
They were cutting it too close. It was June, and summer in Texas meant 8:15 p.m. sunsets. That was four hours away. Usually that was more than enough time to look for shelter, but the flat tire had thrown his schedule out of whack.
“Who are they?” Sandra asked.
“I don’t know,” Blaine said.
“What do we do?” Deeks asked anxiously.
“Jeep’s fixed,” Sandra said. “Maybe we should go before they reach us?”
Blaine shook his head. “They’ve already seen us. They’d just follow.”
“So just stand here and say hi?”
“Maybe they’re friendlies,” Deeks said.
Like the last three groups we ran into? Blaine thought, but said instead, “Maybe. But grab the rifles anyway, just to be safe.”
Deeks came back with two AR-15 assault rifles. He tossed one rifle and a spare magazine across the Jeep to Blaine. Blaine stuffed the extra mag into one of his cargo pants pockets.
“Do you really think we’re going to need those?” Sandra asked.
“Just to be safe,” Blaine said.
“Never hurts to show them we have firepower, darling,” Deeks said.
“I know, but still,” Sandra said. “It might give them the wrong impression.”
“Deeks is right,” Blaine said. “Show of force.”
Blaine watched the vehicles get larger as they drew closer. The road was a four-lane highway, flat and low to the ground. A thick wall of trees separated the north and southbound lanes, and there was green wherever you looked, with woods to both the east and the west. It was a long, flat corridor, with the road extending north-south for miles.
Out of the blue, Blaine caught a whiff of Sandra’s perfume settling in the air next to him. Chanel something that had been sitting around in an expensive mall in Kilgore. They had found a lot of useful stuff there, which was why both Sandra and Deeks had hated to leave.
Blaine could make out a Jeep moving up the road. It looked similar to the one they were driving, moving at the front of what looked like a mini caravan. A GMC SUV and a Ford F-150 truck trailed the Jeep. Blaine would know those vehicles anywhere. Gas guzzlers. He hoped the people driving them at least had hand cranks for siphoning gas, because they probably had to do a lot of gassing up on a regular basis to keep those two monsters on the road.
But he hadn’t seen anything yet. Coming up behind the first three vehicles was the towering cab of a big rig, pulling a large trailer behind it.
Jesus, where do they find the diesel to run that monster?
He felt Sandra tightening up next to him. He reached over and squeezed her hand. She smiled back, putting on a brave face he easily saw through. Sandra didn’t scare easy, but she was scared now.
“It’ll be okay,” Blaine said. “Just follow my lead.”
“Okay.”
“Deeks,” Blaine called.
The older man glanced back at him. “Yeah?”
“Get back here.”
Deeks had absent-mindedly wandered twenty yards up the road, and he quickly jogged back to the Jeep. By the time he reached them, he was huffing and puffing, his cheeks flushed red, sweat caking his forehead.
“Go to the front of the Jeep,” Blaine said.
Deeks nodded and hurried over to stand behind the hood of the Jeep.
“Shouldn’t we get back there, too?” Sandra said.
“You should. I’ll stay here. I don’t want to give them the impression we’re afraid of them.”
“But we are.”
“They don’t have to know that, babe.”
Blaine listened to the sound of Sandra’s cowboy boots as she hurried back down the length of the Jeep. Blaine remained standing where he was, near the rear tire. He unslung the Mossberg and put it on top of the Jeep, making sure the handle was turned toward him for an easy grab. Shoot-outs weren’t something Blaine knew a lot about, but he wasn’t a total idiot.
He spent the next few seconds checking the AR-15’s magazine. If shit hit the fan, he would unload with the rifle, then switch over to the Mossberg as a last resort. He wasn’t exactly the best shot in the world, but the simple red dot sight on top of the rifle helped with accuracy. Mostly. If all else failed, he would make up in quantity what he lacked in quality.
The three vehicles were fifty yards away now, and Blaine could just make out two men in the front seat of the Jeep. His initial instincts about the Jeep had been correct — it was an older, more beat-up model of theirs. Blaine looked past the Jeep at the GMC. The front windshield was tinted, and so was the F-150’s. He was sure there was more than one person in both trucks. Counting the two in the Jeep, that made at least six people.