Immediately she tried to regain her feet, but was felled at once by a lance of pain. Sharply she drew in a breath, and let it out with a whispered curse.
No alarms had been set off when Radcliffe and June went out through the window; no one seemed to have heard the light scrambling sound and sudden fall, the muttered curses. The day of broiling sunlight surrounded them with its quiet.
Their one chance, and they had screwed it up… but the small noise the two of them made in collapsing to the ground seemed to have gone unnoticed. The bright sun glared down like a merciless spotlight. Surely at any moment now someone would come out into the yard and see them, raise a general alarm…
But no one did.
'Come on!' Radcliffe whispered fiercely. With their lives at stake, he was going to be as tough as he had to be, on her and on himself.
June, gritting her teeth and clinging to her husband for support, tried bravely once again. But one second of frantic experimentation, groaning and swearing, was enough to make it plain that she couldn't walk on the injury.
Sure, he could carry her. But not for very far, or at any effective rate of speed.
In a desperate whisper June urged Phil to go on alone. 'You're sure as hell not doing me any good by staying here. Will you get going?'
He glared at her as if he hated her. 'Just sit there, against the building, and don't move. Maybe I can steal a car.'
She started to argue and then thought better of it. She slumped back against the building, rocking, fighting to keep the pain inaudible, nursing her injury.
Still no one saw or heard them. By some heaven-sent chance, Graves's breathing helpers were all occupied with other jobs. Or one or two who had been up all night were sleeping their own exhausted sleep.
June held her breath as she watched Philip's figure recede from her in a swift walk. Hunched over to make himself shorter, less conspicuous, he was moving toward the nearest vehicle. From somewhere in the other mobile home a woman's voice was raised, as if for emphasis in some debate. Maybe June could have understood the words, but right now she couldn't seem to think coherently.
Their luck was still holding, at the minimum necessary for survival. But for how long?
There were two parked vehicles currently in sight, and Phil discovered, to his frustration, that neither of them had been left unlocked.
So far, unbelievably, the disturbance he and June had made in getting out had failed to draw the attention of any of their guardians.
He was going to have to get away on foot, or not at all. He waved and shrugged at June, and she waved at him, and made fierce shooing motions with both arms.
The silent message was plain enough:
Before finally heading out, he ran back to where June was sitting, to get the plastic bottle of water they had brought with them from the kitchen. Had there been any time, he would have stuffed some food in his pockets—but there was no time for food. He knew enough about the desert to realize that water meant life and death.
He clutched her hand once more, exchanged with her a silent pledge of fierce intensity, and then was gone.
Watching, sitting huddled against the building, still clutching her ankle, June held her breath, her whole being tensed against the impact of an alarm that had not yet sounded.
* * *
Philip was on his way, running in a crouch at first, bending low until he'd put a rise of ground between himself and the mobile homes. Still there was no alarm.
He could get his overall bearings by the sun, but as he wasn't sure in which direction they had been driven to reach this place, knowing north from south was not immediately helpful.
Keeping to low-lying land as much as possible, he clung fiercely to the few remembered clues he had to determine by what road or route, from which direction, the van had approached the house on the night he was brought here. But the effort seemed hopeless.
Every few minutes he had to fight down a wave of frantic emotion, in which he wanted desperately to turn back, at all costs not to leave his wife alone. But each time he reminded himself savagely, with all the conviction he could muster, that the course he was following was the only sensible one. The only chance he had of doing June any good at all.
He trudged on across country. There was only one visible road, no more than a pair of ruts dead-ending at the front yard of the mobile homes, and he kept it intermittently in sight. But for the time being he avoided getting too close to the road. Any travelers on it might very well be some of Graves's people.
Before Phil Radcliffe had walked or trotted more than a mile, his heart gave a jump at the sight of a pickup truck approaching. Still almost a mile away, he could see the vehicle only by faint plume of dust raised by its passage in the hot dry air. The driver might, of course, be Graves himself. Well, he'd have to take that chance.
Long minutes passed before Phil thought he might be close enough to signal. Though he tried frantically waving his arms, the truck failed to stop for him, or even slow down. He thought he might not have been close enough for the occupants to see him. Anyway, who was going to stop in the middle of nowhere for a lunatic thrashing his arms about? Next time he'd make one simple, appealing gesture.
Philip trudged on, expecting at any moment to see signs of pursuit from the collection of mad people he had left behind.
The sun was already merciless, his hat was already saving his life, and his single bottle of water was not going to last him for many hours. Maybe it was just as well there weren't two people sharing it.
The good news was that no signs of pursuit had yet appeared. He trudged on, trying to turn up his speed a notch.
The fugitive consumed a little of the water he had brought with him. He tried to remember whether it was supposed to be better to drink your water freely or ration it out.
Soon he was close enough to the real road to see it quite plainly as a distant, whitish streak, marking the course of some kind of commerce between ranches or farms, he supposed.
More little plumes of whitish dust came into being, showing the presence of vehicles. First one plume, then ten or fifteen minutes later another, creeping in the opposite direction. Hiking that road, he wasn't going to have to worry about getting run over in the traffic. He wondered whether he should turn right or left (north or south?) when he reached it. Even getting within shouting distance of potential traffic seemed to take hours. With every sloping of the land, the road disappeared and then rose again above the western-movie vegetation.
At last he felt he was so close to the road that the occupants of the next passing vehicle could not fail to see him.
But it turned out that seeing him and stopping for him were two different things. On the first try, and the second, waving and yelling did no good.
His heart leaped when the second or third vehicle he tried to flag down, what looked like a converted school bus, repainted in military-looking camouflage, did stop for him, pulling an impulsive U-turn in the sand to do so.
A long-haired young man, dressed in baggy pants and a reversed baseball cap, opened the door and politely asked if he could offer him a ride. Three or four other faces looked out through a variety of windows.
'You can. You sure as hell can.'
At first glance the people in the bus looked a little rough, perhaps, but at least none of them were wearing masks. They seemed reassuringly normal after Graves and his companions.
He got in with a great sensation of relief, slammed the door, looked at the expectant faces around him, and asked to be taken to the nearest phone because he had to call the police. 'God, have I got a story to tell.'
'Sorry, we don't have a phone in the bus. But we'll take you to a place where you can call.'
Someone else said: 'And we'd sure like to listen to your story.' To emphasize his point, he was gesturing with a very real-looking automatic pistol.
And only then did Radcliffe notice all the weapons.
