Hell's Fortress (13 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Eliza was leading her companions across a desolate salt plain when a dull rumbling disturbed the quiet. It was late on the first full day west of Cedar City. Shallow, briny ponds glittered across the flats, a sight that was unusual for this late in the year. The wind had been moaning over the desert most of the day, but had recently died, leaving an eerie quiet, disturbed only by the muffled steps of the horses. The sun glared overhead and the salt left lips chapped. Nobody talked.

The rumbling sounded at first like the roll of distant thunder, but the sky was clear and still. The ground shook. The horses pranced and snorted.

Grover had been half-dozing in the saddle and the first buck of his horse nearly sent him flying to the ground. He fought to control the animal. “What the devil?”

Eliza ignored him, looking skyward.

Three fighter planes roared overhead. Racing along a few thousand feet above the ground, they kept in formation as they approached the next range, then split as they climbed to clear the mountains. Something whooshed through the air after them. A missile, fired by some unseen foe.

There was a tremendous flash, followed several seconds later by a boom that rolled across the salt flats. Something spiraled out of the sky. Nobody saw where it landed.

Later that day they came upon a jet engine half-buried in the salt plain. A scorch mark stretched along the ground like a smudge of ash from a giant’s thumb. A hundred yards farther they found a section of fuselage.

Eliza suggested they look for the pilot, thinking he might have escaped.

Miriam narrowed her eyes. “No way are we wasting our water wandering the flats on some foolish search and rescue.”

“We have plenty of water,” Eliza said. “And there’s fresh water in the hills. We’re almost across—an hour or two, tops.”

“Then there’s food. And time. This pilot is probably our enemy anyway.”

“I hate to sound callous,” Trost said, “but Miriam has a point. What are we looking at, a hundred square miles? You really want to burn a day or two looking for this guy? Is he even alive? I didn’t see a parachute.”

Reluctantly, Eliza agreed to continue. It was hard to say why she wanted to help the pilot anyway. Maybe only to do something altruistic in a world that had turned red with blood. So much killing. So much suffering.

Or maybe she was harboring delusions that the pilot would help them. She would save his life, and he would in turn lead them to his Air Force base. The general would praise her for saving his best pilot, then radio his contacts. They would find Steve for her, would even fly her in a secret mission across enemy territory. There would be a joyful reunion. Then the Air Force would fly them home to Blister Creek and safety.

Ridiculous.

They escaped from the salt plains around dusk, then found a dirt road that led west over the mountains. When one of the horses almost broke its leg in a cattle guard, Eliza decided it was dark enough to find a camping spot to wait out the night. Dinner was the last of the dried peas stolen from Cedar City, together with a rattlesnake clubbed over the head, stripped of its skin, and roasted on a stick. It didn’t taste like chicken.

One of her traps caught a rabbit in the night. Not a cottontail, unfortunately, which were common in the foothills and pretty tasty, but a jackrabbit. By the time the others roused themselves, she’d skinned it, rubbed it with salt gathered the previous day on the flats, and cooked it in the coals. It was muscular, gamey, and frankly disgusting to eat for breakfast. Nobody complained.

When they’d broken camp, saddled the horses, and set off on the dirt road again, Trost caught up with her. The others were twenty or thirty yards back. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Happy thoughts, I hope. I’ve been dreaming about raspberry pie and homemade ice cream.”

A smile touched the corners of his mouth, breaking momentarily the pinched look the others—and Eliza supposed she, as well—had been wearing the past few days. “We’re in Nevada, right?”

“Crossed over yesterday, I think,” she said. “If not, we will be soon.”

“We can’t just hoof it across Nevada, then slog our way through Death Valley. I know we’ve been lucky on water, with how wet it’s been, but what about food?”

“What about it?”

“I’m hungry, and I know you are too. We all are. We’ve got maybe six ounces of powdered milk left and a handful of walnuts. Miriam was raiding a bare cupboard, if you know what I mean.”

“I figure we’ll scavenge our way across.”

“Seriously?”

“What, rabbits and rattlesnakes aren’t doing it for you?”

“You got lucky this morning, if you can call eating an oversized jumping rat lucky. And that snake last night wasn’t more than a bony mouthful. I’m not putting down your ability to forage, but it’s limited.”

She felt a little defensive at this and nudged her horse forward. “The Paiute could survive out here. It can be done. My ancestors—”

“Yeah, mine were settlers too. Go back a hundred and fifty years and we’re talking about the same people. They knew how to live off the land. But we’re not Paiute, and we’re not pioneers. Second, we’re not staying put long enough to do serious foraging. It’s whatever we catch on the run.”

“What I’m hoping is to spot a deer or find an abandoned flock of sheep,” Eliza said. “One shot, a couple hours butchering and cooking and curing with salt, and we’ll have all the meat we need.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

Eliza shifted in the saddle to meet his gaze as he caught up again. “I take it you have a suggestion.”

“Las Vegas.”

“It’s a war zone.”

“I know.”

“Babylon. It is doomed to destruction.”

“Eventually, maybe,” he said. “Right now it has thousands of refugees, two armies, people coming and going. Total chaos. It’s a good place to resupply.”

“It’s a good place to get killed. That’s what ‘total chaos’ means.”

“We don’t have to enter the city itself. We only have to join the refugees and take what we need.”

“Now you’re sounding like Miriam,” Eliza said.

“So are you, with that Babylon stuff.”

“Touché.”

“And maybe she’s right,” he said. “You have to admit, she got us out of Cedar City. Horses, guns, food. So, Las Vegas?”

Eliza glanced over her shoulder. Miriam and Grover were catching up on their horses, and she didn’t want Miriam to jump in on this conversation. This was Eliza’s decision to make, not her sister-in-law’s.

“I’ll think about it. We don’t need to decide until we hit Highway 93. Probably tomorrow.”

She eyed the next distant, shimmering range, and wondered if they could reach it by sundown, then spurred her horse so she could ride ahead for a stretch, alone in her thoughts.

Eliza was tired, and let the miles drift by as she slumped in the saddle. It was hard to maintain attention for hour after hour, day after day. And Gibson and his thugs in Cedar City might be angry, but they’d clearly given up the chase.

They were traveling in the open, right down the highway, and figured that four armed riders would deter casual banditry. And what were the odds of running into the army way out here in the boondocks?

Eliza was hungry. She’d been hungry since Joe Kemp shoved them out of the school bus. At first it wasn’t much different than fasting. The first Sunday of the month, members of the church would go without food for twenty-four hours as a spiritual exercise. Accompanied by prayer and scripture study, it was supposed to bring one closer to the spirit.

It never worked for Eliza, not from the time she was baptized at eight and forced to begin fasting with the adults. For those twenty-four hours every month she would obsess over food and feel resentful. Sometimes, as a child, she’d sneak into the pantry when nobody was looking. In a house filled with two dozen kids, that was no easy task. And later, if fast Sunday came during her period, she would grow irritable, her blood sugar low and her energy flagging. This was like that, only day after day.

They had a little bit of food, and it was enough to keep her going, if not to cut the incessant gnawing in her belly. But since trapping the jackrabbit the previous day, she had eaten six prickly pear fruits, a toasted scorpion, and a single bite from a kangaroo rat Grover had dug out of its burrow and roasted on a stick.

Kemp had thrown them from his bus on May 28. It was now the third of June. Hunger was a constant companion. What she wouldn’t give for a nice venison steak. But they saw no deer. No sheep. Not even a jackrabbit. Not that she’d fire the deer rifle at a rabbit. In this quiet, thin air, the sound would travel for miles. She’d only risk that for real game.

It was hunger that finally drove her to accept Trost’s plan to approach Las Vegas. Miriam was all too happy to agree. Theft? Preying on refugees? Why not?

They’d hooked south on Highway 93, which slid down to Route 317, and then on to Las Vegas. Sagebrush and hillocks blackened with volcanic tuff stretched on either side of the highway. It wasn’t great terrain for deer, but food was all she could think about, so she kept scanning the terrain. She was certainly not thinking about security.

Something glinted from one of the ridges ahead of them. It came from straight down the highway several hundred yards, then off to the right maybe a hundred feet. A mirror? A shiny bit of wreckage?

Eliza turned to Miriam. “See that glinting thing? What is that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Right there, on that rise.” Eliza lifted her arm to point.

“Sniper!” Miriam screamed. “Everyone off the road.”

Even as she said this, the former FBI agent was drawing her rifle with one hand, sliding from the saddle, and diving for the runoff ditch on the side of the highway opposite the hill with the sniper. Eliza had the presence of mind to grab her own rifle before she dropped from the saddle. She shielded herself with her horse as she scrambled after Miriam.

Both Trost and Grover were on the move too, with the older man slightly slower in his reaction. Grover got down and came after the two women. A gunshot split the air.

A horse screamed. It was Trost’s, and he’d yet to dismount. He pitched forward over the animal’s head as it lurched to its knees and landed awkwardly on the road with his left forearm extended. Eliza and Grover reached up from the ditch and grabbed his ankle, then dragged him back. A bullet slammed into the pavement, then ricocheted over Eliza’s head. Just above them, Trost’s horse was bleeding from one shoulder and struggled to its feet before running off after the other three animals.

The four companions crouched in the brush, where the raised roadbed shielded them from the sniper. It was quiet.

“Dammit,” Trost groaned.

He slumped against the gravel embankment leading up to the shoulder of the highway. His face was pale, and he clutched his left forearm. Eliza crawled over and unbuttoned his shirt at the wrist, then rolled it up. One of the bones between his elbow and wrist bulged out, almost, but not quite breaking the skin.

“Your arm is broken,” Grover said.

Trost spoke through clenched teeth. “Thank you, I never would have noticed.” He pulled away from Eliza. “Worry about that sniper. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Time enough later.” He swallowed hard. “Not much of a shot, was he?”

“We have no way of knowing,” Miriam said. “He was probably waiting for us to get up that rise. The ground is flatter, with nowhere to hide. He could have picked us off one by one as we ran for cover.” She looked at Grover. “Where’s your shotgun?”

“On the saddle. I didn’t have a chance to grab it.”

“Oh, that’s nice. And there’s your horse over there, halfway to the hills. What else have we got?”

“I’ve got the Glock,” Trost said.

He leaned to show the pistol Miriam had lifted from one of Gibson’s guards, which was still holstered to his side. Miriam reached over and unbuckled the holster, then put it on herself.

Eliza showed her rifle. “It’s loaded.”

“Mine is too,” Miriam said. “That leaves us a dozen shells and a dozen more bullets in the pistol.”

“Not much for a shootout,” Eliza said.

“No. I wish we knew what we were dealing with.”

Grover pulled something out of the dirt. “Does this help?”

It was a bullet, presumably the one that had ricocheted off the pavement from the sniper’s second shot. It was impressive that he’d spotted it among the bits of broken glass, lead wheel weights, and plastic drink rings that had collected in the brush off the side of the road.

“Nice job, Grover,” Miriam said. “I knew there was a reason we didn’t eat you when the food ran low. Let me see that.”

The boy still looked shaken, and his hand trembled as he held out the bullet. Miriam turned it over, then held it up to her eye. Calm and steady. Eliza felt her racing heart slowing.

“It’s a 7.62,” Miriam said. “Most likely a sniper rifle. Lovely.”

“So he’s with the army,” Trost said. “What’s he doing out here?”

“He’s got a military rifle,” Miriam said. “That’s not necessarily the same thing. But these days, I wouldn’t rule it out either. Lone sniper might be all they can afford to guard this road.”