Jared turned and gave John a questioning look.
“Don’t forget where I came from, junior,” John said with a toothy smile.
John had learned a great many things about living on the run in not only a foreign country, but at home as well. In fact, his training came in the form of a school in Colorado. He and several other classmates were dropped several states away and made to return to the school undetected and with no support. Before this exercise, John was taught valuable lessons like where to find a pay phone in a time when they were all but extinct. He also learned how to locate firearms, which were far easier to find and steal in the United States than in most other countries. Now, these lessons would hopefully pay off, John hoped.
Chapter 23
Jared thought about all the times he’d ridden Caltrain to and from San Jose, which had been numerous times for work-related meetings with other companies up and down the west side of the San Francisco Bay. He couldn’t definitively say he ever saw a pay phone in any of the Caltrain stops he’d used along the way. Most of the stops were simply a glass enclosure designed to keep riders out of the rain as they waited for the next train. Other than the covering and a bench, there usually wasn’t much else as far as Jared could remember.
He did remember going to a San Jose Sharks game the year before the solar flare. He used Caltrain to meet a co-worker who had the tickets. The two met at a Caltrain station not more than a block from what was known by hockey fans as the Shark Tank. This station was different than the others in that it was much larger and had quite a few amenities not offered at most of the other Caltrain stations. Jared hadn’t been looking for a pay phone at the time, and truthfully now, he didn’t even remember seeing one.
Based on the size of the station, Jared was sure there was at least one pay phone since that spot was a fairly major hub for the train. Not many people before the event lacked a cellular phone, but there were a few, and Jared was confident Caltrain management had seen a need to have at the very least one pay phone option at that Caltrain station. The problem with this was the ironworks shop was in the northeast part of San Jose, while the Shark Tank was pretty far south from their current location. This meant they would have to traverse miles of potentially hostile city streets in order to reach a place that might not even have what they were looking for.
“No public places, we search homes till we find one. There are a million phone books sent out every year and, yeah, most people probably tossed them, but going on a wild-goose chase with the ladies here is a bad idea,” Jared said, looking straight at John with a look that told John that Jared wanted his approval.
Dwight and Barry remained mute on the subject, not having anything or any expertise to add. They glanced at one another, but said nothing while the women’s eyes darted back and forth between Jared and John.
Stephani was confused with the hierarchy of this group of men. John seemed like the guy who should be in charge based on how he carried himself. He was a spectacular specimen of physical prowess; however, he and the Jared character seemed to give and take in the leadership role.
Jared was no physical presence like John, but he had an ease to him, a refined presence that John lacked. She wasn’t uncomfortable being around John, but Jared projected an air of harmlessness she knew wasn’t completely accurate based on the manner in which he maneuvered with the rifle. She was by far no expert in guns nor the men who carried them, but she knew when a person looked relaxed using a tool that took some level of competence, they were usually proficient with whatever the tool was.
John ran his tongue between his lower teeth and lip as he thought about what Jared just suggested. “Jared’s right, we can’t go dragging this size group all over the city looking for a phone book. If we go that route, I’m sure we’re going to get ourselves into trouble. Trouble means one of us may get hurt or killed, so I vote for house searches. We move back towards our place so we’re killing two birds with one stone, and we search houses along our route. We enter any house through the back so we can hopefully see if the place is occupied. If a place is occupied, we move on. We’re not here to take anything from anyone or get into a fight with a scared homeowner,” John declared by way of agreeing with Jared and laying out their operational plan all in the same breath.
Jared silently concurred with a dip of his chin as both he and John searched the eyes of everyone in the ironworks shop. There appeared to be no opposition to Jared’s apparent cancelation of searching for a pay phone and the addition of John’s plan of searching homes for the coveted information they would find inside a phone book.
“We still need weapons for me and Claire,” Stephani reminded the group.
“You need to be trained so one of us isn’t the one you shoot when things get a little sideways,” Jared said in a serious yet kind voice.
John stepped up and unslung his pack. “I think after what these two women went through, we can make an exception. I mean, we’ve all been through some bullshit, but nothing like—”
Stephani cut him off with an irritated look. “First off, you don’t know what we went through,” Stephani chastised, stopping John dead in his tracks. “You have no idea what Claire and I went through, so don’t ever assume you know our
