wouldn’t get to ride tomorrow, safe inside a car, protected by all that steel and-as long as the gas held out-able to outrun the Beaters?
Down by her feet, Kyra turned over and sighed unconsciously. Sammi couldn’t believe anyone could sleep through this, and Sage was leaning all her weight against Sammi, and if she didn’t move soon both of Sammi’s legs were going to go to sleep. Carefully, slowly, she eased Sage off her and scooted down next to Kyra. Still neither of them woke up.
Sammi wanted to walk, to shake out her legs and work off some of this excess energy. The boys were down helping pile things up and load the vehicles; she wished she was with them. Helping out, keeping her mind off things. Or maybe going for a walk with Colton, one last trip around the island, just to say goodbye-although Colton had been acting weird for a few weeks, hanging around with Shane and that creeper Owen Mason, the guy who grew weed and taught them how to roll. Owen liked to get high, but he liked fires even more-the only useful thing he ever did was to tend the bonfires whenever there was a celebration. There were rumors that he liked fires too much. That he’d set the brush fires up on North Island.
Owen was the kind of guy who-and Sammi knew it was wrong even to think it-you wouldn’t mind if he’d died in the Siege. The kind of guy who made everyone nervous, even if he held a certain kind of fascination, at least for Colton and the other boys, with his personal stash of drug paraphernalia and weird martial-arts weapons and who knew what else.
Sammi hadn’t seen the boys at all since Phillip got locked up, come to think of it. And it made her uneasy, wondering if they were with Owen.
But she didn’t want to leave Sage and Kyra alone. She felt responsible. This was new, and Sammi wasn’t sure she liked it-feeling accountable for people. Her friends…and Ruthie, and Cass. It had been so much easier back when nobody expected much from her at all, when she was just an ordinary kid who was bratty to her parents and maybe a little spoiled, who loved soccer and listening to music and painting her nails and shopping, who wasn’t responsible for anything but keeping curfew and getting her homework done, and half the time she didn’t even manage that, but it never mattered back then.
Now it mattered, the things she did mattered. Or maybe they didn’t. In a couple of hours the sun would rise and they would all set out. It would be their last day on earth or it wouldn’t, and Sammi had watched enough people die to know that none of it was in her control anyway.
Sammi looked around one last time at everyone rushing around in the dark. She sighed and let her eyelids flutter closed, and thought about Jed, about the way they used to stay up talking until they were so tired they fell asleep in the middle of their sentences. After a few minutes she stretched out her legs to get more comfortable, and snuggled a little closer to Sage.
Just resting. Just for a few minutes.
It had been Zihna’s idea to wait until they heard the sound of engines turning over, of the procession starting out. This way, they’d avoid any more of the others’ logistical arguments on the way off the island. By then, presumably, everything would have been worked out-who was riding with whom, who was going to be left behind.
There was the matter of the two dead. Cass had told Red only that they had been trying to drown Smoke. Red was mystified about how an injured, unarmed man could kill two healthy ones, but Cass was not in a mood to talk. In fact, that was the last thing she’d said to him after they’d agreed that Smoke would ride with Ruthie on the trailer and the other three would take turns pulling it.
Red was a little concerned about that. He was in a lot better shape than he looked. He might not be able to erase the effects on his face from all those years on the road, but his body had certainly benefited from several years of his abstemious new life. No drinking or smoking even before the Siege, and the construction work he’d picked up to supplement his income had hardened him. On the island he kept busy. He and Zihna did yoga together, and she could make him break a sweat practicing the most innocuous-looking poses.
The thought made him smile. He and his lovely woman-they had a few surprises in them yet. But still, they were both in their late fifties. Roaming like a bunch of nomads with no camel probably wasn’t AMA-sanctioned exercise in their case.
But it would be what it would be. He had Zihna, he had Cass, he had his granddaughter-a
Red had taken a little nap earlier, but at the first sign of dawn, Zihna woke him. Smoke and Cass were napping on the trailer with the little girl between them. They’d moved the trailer to the space between the house and the detached garage, which was hidden from the path by a lattice covered with dead vines. If Craig and the rest came back-or anyone else, for that matter-their hiding place was far from perfect, but it beat waiting in the garage like lame ducks.
Zihna’d handed him a glass of water and reminded him to drink it all, and then she settled into the lawn chair he’d dragged in for her and immediately went to sleep with her hands folded over her stomach. It was one of her gifts, this ability to control her breathing and her worries; she’d been working on it since she started teaching yoga all the way back in the nineties.
Red was not nearly as good at serenity. He could feel his heart accelerating with anxiety as the sky started to lighten.
It wasn’t long before he heard the rumble of the first car. The rest followed, until the earth thrummed with the rhythm of the engines. Half a dozen vehicles, when you’d heard so few for so long, suddenly sounded like a busy interstate. Red was on his feet in seconds, remembering a motel he once crashed in for a few weeks in San Diego that backed up to the highway; night and day the earth reverberated with the traffic going by. It used to help him sleep, as a matter of fact, and when he moved on he missed it-but now the sound filled him with dread.
“Time to wake the women,” a low voice said behind him. Red turned quickly and realized that he’d momentarily forgotten about their cargo, his daughter’s injured lover. In the faint light of dawn, he found the man making his way to his feet painfully, slowly. But with his jaw-clenching determination, he did not look much like a victim today. He did not intend to be counted out.
Well. That was interesting.
“Yes, indeed, friend,” Red answered, offering a hand to help Smoke. He was not surprised when it was ignored. So he was not to be the only dog in this race, after all.
Red allowed himself the smallest of smiles. He’d had hundreds of friends through the years, though besides Carmy he couldn’t name a single one who stuck or who he missed when the road beckoned and he moved on. Aftertime had brought all kinds of interesting times Red’s way, forcing him to acknowledge things he’d fully expected to go to his grave without knowing.
He’d fully expected to protect these women all by himself. They’d hate the notion-Zihna would, at any rate, and he suspected that his daughter would too-and insist up and down that they could protect themselves just fine. But Red took his late-life transformation seriously and he was damn well going to be a man and take care of his own or go down trying.
He’d never anticipated that he’d have company. Surprisingly, the notion didn’t leave him completely cold.
He hid his smile and clapped Smoke on the shoulder-carefully, since the guy was still looking a little tender.
“Let’s get this show on the road.”
Chapter 24
CASS KNEW THAT Red-that her
