Earthblood

The eyes had turned to follow them all the way down the winding road.

“Maybe we could…” began Kyle Lynch, looking out of the open window.

“No,” said Steve. “We’ve already seen enough dead and dying to know we can’t stop. You don’t know what’s waiting behind the kid. Could be a handful of rednecks with 10-gauge shotguns.”

THE TRUCK ROLLED to a halt, its six wheels crackling over the dusty tarmac.

“We still have the best part of two hundred miles between us and Aspen,” said Kyle, looking at the dog-eared Rand McNally they’d found in the jumbled sleeping quarters behind the driver’s cab.

Steve pulled on the hand brake, opened his door and jumped down into the cool air. “Two hundred. Manage twenty or thirty a day if the feet hold up. Still be two weeks to get there.”

“Right.” Kyle climbed slowly down. “You get so damn used to cruising the country in a powerful automobile, with the air-conditioning on high and the new ripped rock tape up full. Then one day you get up, and it’s all gone. Jesus, man, you realize that it’s all gone forever?”

“Sure. Here we are, on the third day of October in the year of Our Lord, 2040. Rain coming in from the west there. I want to…” For a moment his voice broke, and he looked away.

“You all right, Steve?”

“Sure, thanks. Sure. Just got to wondering about Sly. Where’s the kid now, right this moment? Think he’s still alive, Kyle?”

“Look, you worry about things you don’t know about, you’ll go crazy, man.”

“But he’s only eighteen. And up there in Colorado, with… I don’t know.”

“Few days more, and we should be able to find out.”

“Maybe we can pick up another truck or some kind of transport.”

“We were lucky to find what we did. No point in looking anywhere near towns or main highways. Others’ll have got there before us.”

The metal of the Volvo’s engine was cooling, the contracting metal making faint creaking, settling sounds. Far overhead they saw a lone hawk riding a thermal, wings spread, holding itself almost motionless against the cloudy sky.

“Hey! Maybe we should search the cab properly before we leave it. Could be they left some chocolate or some liquor there. I’ll look.”

Steve climbed back inside the truck, vanishing into the rear part behind the driver’s seat. Kyle remained out on the side of the road, leaning against the front wheels, his pack by his feet.

He never saw the men approaching, just heard the sneering voice and the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked.

“Look what we got here. A nigger, all on his ownsome, with a big shiny truck.”

Chapter Nineteen

The Kawasaki started to play up when they were close to Memphis, fifteen hundred miles and seven days into their transcontinental odyssey.

The 500 cc Norton was at least sixty years old, yet it continued to purr, day after day, never giving a moment’s trouble, eating up the long miles eastward.

Pete Turner had picked the 350 cc twin Kawasaki and was already regretting it.

“Someone never looked after this baby properly,” he moaned.

“Told you that old was best.” Henderson McGill grinned.

The first of the eight to actually leave the base had been Jeff Thomas and Jed Herne, heading for San Francisco. Kyle Lynch and Steve Romero had gone next, Colorado bound. Jim Hilton and Carrie Princip had elected to travel together, on the shortest journey for any of them—to his home high up on Tahoe Drive in Hollywood.

Before Pete and Mac had left them, facing the longest trek, Jim had given them some considered advice, counsel that the first two pairs eventually learned from experience.

“Likely the best place to get any food or guns or transport is way off the beaten tracks. Cities are going to be boneyards. Towns will have been decimated. Smaller places won’t welcome strangers. So look for isolated trails and hidden cabins. And don’t put your trust in anyone.”

Like many of the things Jim Hilton said, it had turned out to be good advice.

The first couple of days had been arduous. Pete’s problems from the blow to the testicles made walking slow and difficult. Urinating was still painful, and he tried to drink as little water as possible. The result, predictably, was that he soon became dangerously dehydrated.

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