Her voice cracked at the end and she squeezed her eyes shut. Go away. Just go away for a minute or ten. Why couldn’t she have quit last year? A montage of faces played on her lids. If she’d broken her teaching contract, she would see them as they had been: annoying, condescending and alive.
Alive forever.
“Audra,” her mother snapped. “We’re waiting.”
She scrubbed a hand down her face then stared at her mother. Not even the wind dared free a strand of hair from Jacqueline’s tidy bun. The older Silvestre didn’t carry a weapon—good manners and breeding apparently could stop anything. Good manners and breeding meant Audra had to lead.
“You two stand guard here.” She pointed to her mom and Tina, then at the asphalt. “We’ll go check out Burgers in a Basket.”
Eddie nodded and raised his shotgun at the glass front of the fast food joint.
“What about me?” Mrs. Rodriguez pounded down the steps and handed Audra her walkie-talkie. White swirled through the black curls on her head. She pulled two machetes from the black belt wrapped around her pink mumu. “Where do you want me?”
Using her flashlight, Audra pointed across the restaurant’s parking lot to the boarded up gas station. Universal emblems of male and female marked the two white closed doors. “Find out if those are serviceable then peek under the boards to see if there’s anything left in the convenience store.”
“Will do.” The machetes sliced the air as she twirled her wrist. “I’ll take Deputy Pecos as backup.”
As if hearing himself mentioned, the man in khaki pants separated from Principal Dunn and waited for the older woman.
Hitching the walkie to her belt loop, Audra opened the line and exhaled slowly. Seven adults outside. Seven. Add the requirement to keep an adult on the bus at all times, and that meant they were down to thirteen total. There had been fifty-seven last night.
Most of them had seemed to be getting better.
What in the world was going on?
Eddie hunched over his weapon and stepped onto the sidewalk surrounding the fast food joint. “Coming?”
Audra swallowed the wad of fear in her throat. “Yes, of course.”
Digging her fingers into the metal casing of the flashlight, she waded through her memories until she dragged her courses on combato self defense to the fore. Smash the assailant upside the head with the flash light. Thrust the heel of her hand into a nose. Rubbery legs carried her to the side entrance behind Eddie.
He tugged on the metal handle. The door moved half an inch; the lock kept it from moving farther. He raised the butt of the gun.
“Don’t!” She grabbed the muzzle and held on, preventing him from hitting the glass. “What if it accidentally goes off?”
He tugged on the weapon. “It won’t.”
How could he know? He had to be shown how to pull the trigger and that had been during Casa Grande when his brother had been executed. “You’ll not only waste shells but you’ll let those bad guys know where we are.”
His hazel eyes narrowed above the respirator. “Then how are we going to get inside, Princess? Say open sesame?”
“You could or we could check the drive-in window.” She jerked her head to the side where the drive through lay. “Since it says it is open twenty-four hours, the window might not have a lock on it.”
“Fine.” He stalked off. His boots pounded the blacktop. “And if that isn’t open?”
“Then we smash it.” Audra hefted her flashlight. Damaging it wouldn’t be a big loss since it was dead. The important thing was that the gun couldn’t discharge and kill someone. Or get them all killed.
His humph swirled around his respirator.
“I’ll let you do the smashing.” That should make him happy and get rid of some of his anger.
“Fine.”
Thousands of words in the English language and Eddie barely used a hundred of them in the six months since she’d met him.
He paused by the window and slapped his palm flat against the glass.
“Wait.” She hustled to his side. “You have the gun. Let me open the window, while you aim.”
He rolled his eyes and stepped aside.
“Oh Princess A.” Tina jogged to the edge of the building.
Audra gritted her teeth. Great, now even her best friend was calling her by that odious name.
Tina tapped her bat on the ground. “Mrs. R says the gas station has four clean toilets but no running water.”
No water. She shuddered. The piles would just keep climbing toward the ceiling. She’d rather use the slops pot. “Do they have tanks?”
“Yep and they’re full.”
Thank God for small favors. They would get a flush out of each before the tank emptied and they could use the slops to gravity-force some more down. “What about the interior?”
Please, please, let there be batteries.
“Empty but also clean. I guess they didn’t get too far in the reopening plans.”
Her sigh stirred her long bangs. Fudge. “Tell Deputy Pecos and Principal Dunn to begin laying out the dead. Then have bus seven-nine line up to use the facilities. Everyone goes.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” After curtseying, Tina pivoted on the heel of her sneakers.
Audra reached for the window then paused. If the building was cleaned… “Tina?”
She stopped and glanced over her bat. One eyebrow raised.
“Once they enter the building have them check the storeroom. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe we will.” Whistling, Tina jogged back to the group.
Hushed murmurs and giggles floated on the air as the children streamed from bus seventy-nine. Mrs. Rodriguez ushered them in two lines to the bathrooms. Principal Dunn wrestled a wheelbarrow from Mom’s bus while Deputy Pecos cut behind the evacuating bus, heading for the emergency exit.
“Anytime now.” Eddie waved to the window with the shotgun.
“You have a date?” Tucking the flashlight between her thighs, she flattened both palms against the tinted glass.
“Yeah.” He set the stock against his shoulder. “If the toilets are clean, I plan to be the first one to take a shit.”
Nice. Her damp hands slid across the glass; she tightened her grip. The window eased open. Ha! She’d done it. Smiling, she bit back the gloating. Once the window was fully seated, she tucked her head inside. Geometric shadows melted into darkness in the cooking area. A tiled wall prevented her from seeing into the seating area. Stale, greasy air hit her in the face. “Hello?”
Eddie snorted. “You expecting anyone to answer?”
“You never know. Give me a knee.”
“Shouldn’t I go first? I have the gun.”
Was that a serious question? With him, it was hard to tell. She measured the window’s opening with her hands then held her spread hands near his chest. An inch of flesh overlapped each side. “Can you suck it in?”
A vein throbbed at his temple.
Guess that was a no. “I’ll enter and open the side door for you.”
“How are you going to see?” He propped the shotgun against the brick building, bent one knee and offered his hand.
“I worked for Burgers while attending college.” She didn’t mention that her father owned ten of them. A Silvestre didn’t flaunt her wealth when there was so many other subtle ways to show it off. “They’re all laid out identically.”
Wedging the flashlight on the corner of the window sill, she set her left foot on his thigh, placed one hand in his and grabbed hold of the opening with the other. “On three.”
He nodded.
She bent her knee, pictured herself going through the window, landing on the tiled floor on the other side. “ One. Two.”