Wanted (3 page)

As his words sank in Jessie closed her eyes and let twin tracks of tears fall down her face. Inside, she felt crushed. She needed something, a snort of syn, a joint, a shot— anything to help take her mind away from things. But there was nothing to distract her, nothing to numb her pain. She sat there shaking and trying to pull away into herself.

“
Fuck you!” she snapped after several silent minutes had passed. She spun about, the pistol he had given her in hand. She cocked the hammer and pointed it at his head.

“
Stop the fucking car!”

Carl glanced at her and held his fingers up on the steering wheel, a universal symbol of peace. “Settle down, I was just kidding about the blow job.”

The car came to a stop and he turned to look at her. He found himself staring into the quivering barrel of the nine millimeter. He nodded understandingly and asked, “Withdrawal?”

“
I could have taken care of you. We could have helped each other out,” she said, fighting back sniffles.

“
I don’t-“

“
No, you’re the one that doesn’t fucking listen!” she yelled. “I offered you something special. It helps me out and helps you out. Not just a quickie, we could have had a good thing! You just don’t get it!”

Carl met her gaze calmly. Her eyes jerked back and forth a little and the gun wavered even worse. He was worried about her shaking. If she jerked the trigger…

“
Jessie, my life’s not easy,” he said softly, trying to calm her down. “There’s no room for complications. Not out here.”

Her eyes narrowed angrily. “Complications? You son of a bitch! You don’t know the first fucking thing about me! About what I can offer! I’m not just some movie star slut!”

He moved, faster than she was ready for. The pistol went flying into the back seat, bouncing off the cracked leather and ending up on the floor behind her. He held her wrist for a moment then let it go to show he was not going to hurt her.

“
You’re right, I don’t know you,” he said, his voice more serious and less calm. He didn’t owe her a God-damned thing, but he still felt the urge to explain himself. “That’s why I-“

“
Get the fuck out!” she said, not caring that she was no longer armed or that he had taken the pistol from her so easily.

He opened the door and stepped out, grabbing his rifle to keep it from swinging or tripping him. He kept it pointed away from her and let go as soon as he was free. “Keep going straight till you hit the road, then turn left. You’re south of the ambush a dozen miles, so you won’t see it.”

“
Good luck,” he added.

“
Go to hell,” she snarled as she slid across the front seat. Carl could have easily shot her or slipped away, but instead he stayed and watched her.

Without another word she pulled the door shut and jammed on the accelerator, spitting rocks and dirt as the Buick lurched forward across the ground. Carl watched her go until he could not see her in the pre-dawn light. As annoying as her constant chatter had been, he realized he kind of missed it. The contact with another person had been a nice change of pace. Somebody other than the kind of people he had spent most of his adult life dealing with.

Carl shook his head to clear it and turned around to head back to his peace and quiet.

Chapter 3

Thirty minutes into the drive, Jessie’s tears had dried up. She had beaten the steering wheel more than a few times, cursing loudly at Carl, then lapsed into long moments of angry or depressed silence. He had rejected her. Her! She was a fucking movie star! The only movies anybody made any more and she was in her fair share of them. Mostly they never left her city, Mexicali, but that was where the movie industry had relocated after the bomb had gone off in Los Angeles. There were convoys that made the trip to the other remaining major cities, and as much as food, water, guns, and ammo were important, so was entertainment. It was increasingly rare, but sometimes flights came and went, too. They were usually military or international – passenger airfare had disappeared shortly after the troubles began.

A flare overhead caught her attention. The sun had just started to brighten the clouds on the eastern horizon but that had nothing to do with it. She looked up and saw what looked like a shooting star. She had not seen one of those since she was in the army in the Middle East, before… Jessie shook her head, refusing to think about it. She focused on the road, her teeth chattering with the need for something to take the edge off. That asshole Carl had emptied Andres’ car of their stash. She bet he kept it for his own personal use.

The flare in the sky brightened, causing her to look up again. She gasped when she realized it wasn’t a shooting star. It was an airplane. It was too dark to tell what kind, but she realized one of its wings was on fire and it was coming down. She slowed down on the road and watched it streak from left to right overhead. Low overhead. It hit the ground a few miles west of her, another flash lighting up the terrain. She stared at it, seeing the residual glow from the fires that had started, and wondered what, if anything, she should do.

A million thoughts entered her mind, from ignoring it and pretending it had never happened, to exploring it to see if anybody survived. She wondered where that thought came from; it was not her style to look out for others. She had enough trouble looking out for herself!

Carl would check it out, she realized. He would try to help anyone if they survived. Survive a plane crash? She almost laughed, then realized there might be something valuable. Besides, she had nothing better to do. Who flew these days except the extremely rich or the military. Either one would have something of worth she could salvage. Sure, she was young and on top of her game, but her looks would fade and even the fake boobs wouldn’t draw in much of an audience forever. A big score though, that could set her up for a while, maybe for life.

Decision made, Jessie turned the car off the road and started driving across the hard packed desert flats, running over the occasional juniper bush and dodging between saguaro and barrel cacti. She had to backtrack twice around gullies in the desert floor from washouts, but by the time another half an hour had passed she had managed to get as close as she could. Another washout separated her from the crash. This one had apparently caught the plane as it skidded along the ground, if the torn and blacked brush and ground were any indication. Pieces of metal were strewn about.

Jessie shut the car off, wondering briefly if she could hide it somehow, then realized how much work it would be gathering enough bushes to conceal it, not to mention how obvious it would be. She searched through the back seat until she found the pistol. She tucked it into the waist of her shorts before setting out across the strewn wreckage to look for something of worth.

She moved quickly, thankful for the still-cool morning air. She had been freezing earlier in the car, now it kept her from sweating as she moved as quickly as she could between the small fires on the torn up ground. As sparsely populated as it was in the badlands outside of most cities, she knew there were survivors who would be curious as well. Scavengers and treasure hunters alike, and perhaps other people with more sinister goals in mind. So far, she was the first but she knew she would not be the last.

Aside from bent bits and pieces of metal, she found next to nothing for the first fifteen minutes or so. She even searched through a portion of the fuselage that had been broken off by the ditch the plane had crossed, and she had hurried away from it with her hand over her mouth. There were bodies in there, three of them she thought. It was hard to tell since they were not entirely connected to one another. Their clothes looked nice though, so that gave her the courage to keep searching.

The forward part of the fuselage held a different story-more people, dead, but in better condition. Broken necks and bodies, some open wounds, but she was happy to see nobody had been torn into pieces. She had enough of that haunting her dreams and memories, she did not need any more of it.

Steeling herself, Jessie even started to go through the pockets of the corpses and took off jewelry-watches, rings, necklaces. She knew they might not be worth much, but where she had come from, a little bit could mean the difference between life and death.

A groan made her scream. She stumbled back, away from the small pile of bodies and tripped on a seat that had been torn out. She fell and hit her shoulder, then bruised her lower back on the pistol tucked against her spine. Spitting out curses, she hauled herself up and pulled out her pistol. She advanced again and pushed a body she knew was dead out of the way. Underneath it she saw the source of the groan.

“
Shit,” she said, immediately kneeling down and setting the gun on the floor. It was a boy. Not a man, just a kid. A big kid, sure, probably in his mid-teens, but still a kid.

And beneath him, tucked against a bulkhead, was a girl that Jessie recognized. She was a kid too, but a kid that a lot of people knew. Tanya Kurkova, Olympic hopeful that had suffered a training accident a couple of years back. Her spine had been shattered in a couple of places when the uneven parallel bars she was practicing on worked loose and she fell.

Her fifteen minutes of fame came and went, but then she resurfaced when her father, an international businessman and billionaire, arranged for some experimental therapy on her. Jessie didn’t know what it was, no one really did, but pictures had shown her walking again, then the successes kept coming and there were even stories of her starting up training again.

And now here she was, unconscious and one of the only two survivors of a plane crash.

The boy groaned again. Jessie checked him over carefully, seeing no obviously broken bones, and decided that she had to risk moving him. A billionaire heiress would be worth a fortune, after all. She dragged the boy out and away from the fuselage, then went back in and did the same triage check on Tanya. Her first aid skills were rusty, at best, but she had no other options. Fortunately, she had help.

The gymnast woke up as Jessie was struggling to pull her out. She gasped and fought for a minute, surprising Jessie and sending her crashing to her ass once again. She got up, rubbing it and fuming, then turned to Tanya.

“
You don’t know me, that’s cool, don’t worry. Your plane crashed – we have to get out of here before anybody shows up.”

“
Wait – what? My mom? Where’s she at?” Tanya said, confused and having trouble making sense of everything. She was holding her head as though she had a killer headache, which did not surprise Jessie at all. Jessie had mashed her head into a car door and the butt of a pistol, Tanya had cracked hers up against a crashing airplane.

“
Um, outside, I think,” Jessie lied. “I pulled some other people out already.”

With her supporting and guiding her, Jessie managed to get the gymnast out of the wreckage and brought her, half walking and half stumbling, over next to the boy. Tanya saw him and smiled thinly. She looked around, shielding her eyes as though the hazy morning light that broke through the perpetual cloud cover hurt. “Mom?” she asked softly.

The boy groaned again and his eyes opened. He tried to sit up, wincing at the bruises and internal injuries Jessie could not see. Tanya turned away from the ruined plane and knelt down next to the boy.

“
Dusty, are you okay?” she asked.

Dustin Kurkova. The name worked through Jessie’s frazzled brain and she thought it sounded familiar. Nothing special, just a minor celebrity thanks to his two year older gymnast sister. Two billionaire heirs. Jessie had to fight to keep from smiling.

“
No,” he groaned. “It hurts!”

“
What hurts?” Jessie asked, kneeling down on the other side of him.

“
Are you a doctor or something?” Tanya asked, turning to face her.

Jessie shook her head, “No, but maybe I can help a little. Can you feel everything? Your arms and feet?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he gasped. “It’s my chest… hurts to talk…to breathe.”

“
Ribs,” Jessie said, sounding convincing. “Cracked or broken.”

“
Ouch,” Tanya echoed, looking as though she understood.

“
You’re lucky I found you guys first,” Jessie said, glancing around. “I know you’re hurting Dusty, but we really need to move before anybody else finds us.”

“
Anybody else? Like who, a search party? Where are we anyhow? Who are you?” Tanya badgered her, things clearing up a little as she focused on Jessie for the first time.

“
My name is Jessie,” she told her, smiling casually and trying to draw on her acting skills to calm them down. “We’re a long ways away from Mexicali,” she said. “I was heading back there after visiting somebody when I saw your plane come down. I hurried over, hoping to find survivors.”

“
Survivors,” Tanya said, trailing off. Her gaze went to the wreckage. “The others. Mario? Mom? Juan? Becca? Did you find them?”

Jessie took a deep breath, bit her lip, then shook her head. “I… I don’t know, okay? I found a lot of bodies. You guys were the only ones still alive.”

“
Oh god,” Tanya whispered, moisture gathering in her eyes.

“
Mom?” Dusty asked, drawing his sister’s gaze quickly back to him. Her hand went and held his, squeezing it tightly.

“
She was in the bathroom, near the tail…”