Joe twisted his neck and winced again. “I’ll protect you every time I can.”
Peter was shocked to realize he trusted that. Expected it. Somewhere between the hell of Austin and the hell of Ames, Iowa, he’d put his faith in Joe’s hands. Joe wasn’t Momma or Dad — Peter would never have that again. No one could replace what he’d lost. He didn’t even want that. But he had an adult he could trust to care for him. He would never take that for granted again.
TWENTY-TWO
Joe needed twice as long as normal to walk the last few miles. He could blame it on the slushy, melting snow or his aching back and head where something had hit him during the tornado, but if he were honest, he’d admit it was because he was so tired he could barely stand. It didn’t matter. Medicine was in Ames, so that’s where he needed to be.
Except Ames didn’t look like a place where they’d find medicine, or anything else useful.
It had people — more than they’d seen in Dallas or Purcell or that cruddy O’Klansas town with the restaurant. More than all the tents at the makeshift Maze-On city.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Peter asked.
“I double-checked.”
“But these people...” Peter trailed off like he didn’t know what else to say.
Joe understood. He wasn’t sure what to say, either. People of indeterminate ages staggered about dressed in rags, their hair unwashed, their feet bare. With dim, glassy eyes, they watched Joe and Peter as they passed. Every so often a pack of cyclists, better dressed and groomed, would whiz past.
Joe clutched the rifle tighter. He chose what he thought was an old man, grizzled, maybe nearing thirty, who sat on a low concrete slab and was at least lucid enough to be wearing shoes. Keeping a safe distance, he asked, “Can you tell me where the university is?”
The man regarded him with a lazy, toothless sneer. A dribble of pus from a sore on his cheek snaked toward his chin. “Who’n wants to know?”
“My friend got hurt and —”
“You’re one of them Fed pricks, ain’t you?”
Joe glanced at Peter, who shook his head. “No, sir. I just need to get some medicine —”
“Fed pricks,” the man yelled. “Fucking Fed pricks gone to take all our pills. You nasty, white-assed dome whore, we need those pills!”
Joe grabbed Peter’s arm and backed them both up as the man continued to rave nonsense. A crowd began to gather, twenty, thirty people with listless eyes and bared teeth. They looked from the old man to Joe and Peter, and Joe searched their faces, trying to find one that seemed sane.
Something solid smacked his thigh, and pain shot through his leg. A rock as big as a baseball.
“Monster!” a woman shouted. She picked up another rock and took aim. “Dome-whore monster! Haven’t you taken enough? Stay away from our drugs!”
“We’re not —” Peter shouted, but the woman threw her rock, and his words were cut off by Joe jerking him out of the way.
Joe leveled the rifle and swept it in an arc all around. “Stay back.”
The crowd shuffled, and latent awareness seemed to make its way into some of their eyes. Too many, though, seemed not to know or care about what the rifle could do, and Joe wasn’t willing to kill strangers when he had a sinking feeling they were as much wronged by New America as he was.
A childish ding-ding-ding cut through the air, and the crowd parted to admit two men on bicycles. One trilled the silver-domed bell attached to his handlebars while the other swerved to a stop in front of Joe.
The man eyed Joe’s body and flashed a broad smile. “Hop on, dome daddy, before the masses rip you apart and suck on your bones.”
Joe scanned the man. He didn’t smell. Had clean, sil-fab clothes like Devin had. Like people with money had. He had all his teeth. His sandy-blond hair was held back in a ponytail, but wisps had broken free and curled around his ears. He could be a student.
Another rock hit Joe, this time in the bruised part of his back.
Joe motioned to Peter, then gripped the man’s shoulders and perched his feet on the pegs attached to the bike’s rear axle. As soon as his second foot hit the peg, the man pushed off the pavement and sped away. The obnoxious bell of the second bike came close, and Joe caught Peter’s wide-eyed terror as he clung to the bell-ringer’s shirt.
“Yeah! Hang on, babe,” the man in front of him on the bike said at the crest of a hill. He cranked the pedals hard, then as momentum carried them down so fast it felt like falling, he flung his legs and arms out to the side so only his ass touched the bike.
Joe swallowed hard and gripped the man’s hips with his knees. If he had to, he could jump and roll. It’d hurt, but whatever crash this maniac might get into would hurt worse.
Peter screamed beside him, and Joe saw the bell-ringer mimicking his friend. Peter scrabbled at the man’s clothes and hair, finally settling into a crouching bear hug. Joe laughed and was horrified at himself for doing it.
“Oh yeah, you like the rush, huh, sugar baby?” the man tossed over his shoulder, wind whipping his hair back so it sprinkled like the rain over Joe’s face.
“Yes.” And Joe did. His brain flipped off, and he was a runner again. He loved the thrill of the chase, the mad surge of adrenaline in living on the edge, the spike of heat in his belly and groin that before Devin only vibrated inside him during times of speed and fear.
His dick plumped, and the only thing that kept him from grinding up against the body in front of him was that the neck was all wrong. This neck was slender, almost
