The bright sunlight was particularly trying for her, and twice they’d had to rest up during the middle of the day then push on toward Los Angeles in the cool of the evening.
Water hadn’t been easy to find at first. Then they’d learned to break into empty houses and top up their bottles from the standing tanks in the roof. The water was brackish, layered with dust and dead flies, but it kept them going.
The morning that they found the school bus they’d woken early, packed up their tents and had a light meal of hi-concentrate food.
Jim had thought it was safe to light a fire against the dawn’s chill, using dry branches from a fallen sassafras. A thick column of pale smoke had risen into the still, cloudless sky.
It had brought them company.
Despite all of his survivalist training, Jim still got taken by surprise. He hadn’t thought it necessary to post any sort of watch.
The cold voice from the shadows warned him not to turn around.
“Both of you keep real still. Hands where we can see them. Stand up slow.”
There were three of them. Male. Two white and one black. The oldest was the speaker and he looked to be around eighteen.
They held small-caliber pistols, cheap, chromed little Saturday night specials. Inaccurate and unreliable weapons, but the .22-caliber automatics were still capable of taking anyone out at fifteen feet.
“You got food, old man?” The speaker had a sparsely stubbled foxy face, narrowed eyes and pinched mouth.
“No. Haven’t eaten in three days. You got anything you can share with us?”
Laughter, hateful, venomous laughter, was the answer.
“We got something we can share with the little lady there,” said the second boy, pushing a filthy baseball cap off his sloping forehead.
Jim was conscious of the weight of the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter in its holster, hidden under the coat. The realization came to him like a flash of lightning out of a clear summer sky. He was going to have to use the gun. If he didn’t, then he and Carrie would be soon dead.
She’d take her dying a good while longer and slower than him.
“Little lady’s got her period,” said Carrie.
The black youth smiled broadly. “Most houses got more’n one door, lady,” he said.
The leader of the trio grinned. “You’re right, Michael, my man.”
“Count ten, then faint,” whispered Jim, taking care not to move his lips, confident that the crackling of the fire would cover the sound.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her almost imperceptible nod of agreement.
“Might as well get to it,” said the second of the group.
“Why not?”
“We got food,” Jim blurted out, managing to sound guilty. He took a couple of nervous-looking steps to his left, distancing himself from Carrie. He flexed the fingers on his right hand, trying to ease some of the morning’s stiffness from them.
“Shit! That don’t make no fucking difference, old man, do it?”
Second Navigator Carrie Princip made a good job of it. She half screamed, hands flying to her face. The green eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she tottered sideways, away from Jim, before collapsing onto the dew-damp earth.
He didn’t pause to admire her performance.
Half turning, instinctively making himself into a smaller target, he whipped the long-barreled .44 from its greased holster.
The three teenagers had all been distracted by the skinny blond woman’s theatrical tumble.
The leader tried to draw a bead on Jim when he saw the big revolver appear in their victim’s fist, but the timing was not on his side anymore.
The shot took him in the upper chest, the large-caliber, full-metal-jacket round punching a hole out of his back the size of a dinner plate.
The black youth began to turn away, dropping his own pistol, mouth open. Jim put the second bullet a little lower, smashing ribs and tearing the heart to pulsing tatters of torn muscle.
Both of them were still on their feet as he shot the third.
There was the lighter snap of the .22, overlaid by the thunderous boom of the Ruger. A spray of dirt furrowed near Jim’s feet. But his shot had struck home, hitting the last of the murderous trio in the right shoulder, spinning him around, sending him staggering to his knees.