The Survival Code, page 27
This is the first sensible thing the lady’s said all day. I’m hoping she’ll help me get Freckles turned around as I can’t see the horse taking that kind of direction from me. Instead, my mouth falls open in horror as Ramona urges her own horse forward.
Toward the gunfire.
“Get a move on it, girl!” she says.
I try to do what I saw her do. Pull up and down quickly on the reins. Freckles shakes her spotted head a couple of times and whinnies. Her body shimmies underneath me. It’s as if she’d like nothing better than to be rid of me and away from here. She doesn’t want to go either.
Smart horse.
This is going to be okay. Great even. Me and Freckles will just hang here.
When Ramona is midway between me and the store when she shouts back, “Aw. Come on now, Freckles!”
With one last snort, Freckles takes off at a pace slightly faster than Ramona’s horse. Ramona slides gracefully out of her saddle as I pass through the perimeter of red lanterns. She reaches out, stops Freckles and waits as I pretty much fall down, kicking up a cloud of dust. Ramona sighs as she leads both horses toward one of the red lanterns. There’s not really anywhere to tie the horses, so she stands there holding both sets of reins.
Ammon Carver’s mother glows completely red, like the sanctuary candle at church back home. I blink a few times. It’s almost like the old woman flickers.
She motions for me to follow her. “Have your weapon ready,” she says.
“What are you talking about?” I whisper, I step closer to her. Close enough that I can see her lips pressed in a thin, white line.
She moves into the shadows near the market wall. “Come on, now. Between your daddy and that Spanish fella who’s madly in love with you, I know one of them woulda set you up with a gun or something,” she says. “If ever there was a time to have one handy, this would be it.”
I have a knife.
I also have a phone.
Ramona kneels down to mess with a potted plant in the ground. She returns with a key, holding it up and out of the shadows. She nods toward the door. “Okay. You go in the back. I’ll go in the front and...”
Even though I approach the door, I’m already shaking my head. That’s a terrible idea. Not only is it an almost exact repeat of what Navarro and I already tried back at the Lone Wolf Diner, I’m not interested in charging into unfamiliar terrain with Annika Carver’s grandma. “No. No,” I say. “We’ll call my dad. He’ll know what to do.”
“There ain’t no cell phone service way out here, girl,” Ramona says, unable to keep the impatience out of her voice.
“I have a SAT phone.” I remove the phone from my jacket pocket. My index finger hovers over the menu button.
She moves back into the red light, a cold look settling over her face.
Both of us jump at the sound of another shot. A loud, close, higher-pitched shot.
The backdoor swings open, hitting me hard on the side and knocking me to the ground. The phone slides away from me and lands between two lanterns.
I roll onto my back and get my knife ready.
I’m facing a second large figure in a black hoodie.
Cold. Dark. Panic. Breathe.
My fingers reach into the jacket pocket and find the knife. I remove it from its holster.
But I needn’t have bothered.
The figure falls back against the wall and slumps over, tumbling to the ground.
DR. DOOMSDAY’S GUIDE TO ULTIMATE SURVIVAL
RULE THIRTEEN: PEOPLE WHO PANIC DON’T SURVIVE.
As I get my bearings, I find myself facing a guy about my age. Streaks of greasy brown hair poke out from the edges of his black hood. He’s on his knees, clutching his shoulder.
A terrified, lanky, bug-eyed boy.
He’s dropped something on the ground. It’s an old gun. Like it should be in a Wild West museum or something. It’s silver and perfectly suited to train robbery. I kick it away from the howling guy.
“He...shot me! That...stupid idiot...shot me!”
He gets these words out in between screeches and pants.
I want to run away and hide somewhere. I try to remember the drills. Try to think about what Dad would do. Only I can’t imagine my dad would be stuck in this stupid situation. I force myself not to shake and move a step closer. “Who...who shot you? Who are you with? The Opposition?” I say with as much confidence as I can gather.
“Oh good Lord, no,” Ramona says. “That’s just Derek Dinges. His folks have a place on the other side of Why.” She’s relaxed quite a bit and seems strangely at ease considering all the blood running out of the kid’s arm.
Oh God. More blood.
Don’t throw up.
“He shot me... Leelo...fu—” Dinges says again.
“Watch your language, boy,” a deep male voice says. An old man emerges from the back door and props it open with a potted plant. He stands next to Ramona.
“Howdy, Bill,” she says with a nod. This must be the store owner.
“Ma’am,” he says, tipping his cattleman hat.
“This is my great-niece Susan, visiting from Flagstaff,” Ramona says, pointing to me.
“My language?” Derek moans, disrupting these pleasantries. “Watch my goddamn language? Your dumbass clerk shot me!”
“That’s what you get,” Collins says. “You and your brother come in here, tryin’ to rob me. And look what happened. You got your ass shot. That’s what.”
“Stow your weapon, miss,” Collins tells me.
I put my knife away and get a better look at him. The deep lines in his face. The Wranglers. This guy probably sleeps in his cowboy hat.
Ramona tosses the horses’ reins to Collins, shrugs out of her flannel shirt and approaches Dinges, coming to kneel beside him.
“You...you...stay away from me, woman. I want...the doctor. Not some damn...damn witch tryinta take care of me,” he says.
“I have to stop the bleeding,” she tells him tersely.
“I want the damn doctor,” Dinges says again.
A second male voice responds. “What makes you think I want you?” It’s coming from around the corner. A second later, a tall, slim man rounds the side of the building. He too is clad in a felt cowboy hat and jeans.
“Ah. Doc Truman. Ain’t this convenient,” Ramona says.
I’m not sure if she means convenient because of Annika or because of Dinges.
“You know where to find me,” the doctor responds. “I’m here most nights. Typically, this fine establishment does manage to have some beer on hand.”
Collins snorts. “You been watchin’ the news same as me. Deliveries are delayed on account of all the roadblocks. And it ain’t my fault that anyone with a bit of cash in their pocket is hell-bent on hoarding supplies.”
“Would you mind tellin’ me who’s hoarding the beer?” the doctor asks.
Collins opens his mouth to answer but is cut off by another wail.
Dinges slumps down with his back to the store wall. “You gotta fix me up.”
“You need to go to the hospital, son,” Truman responds.
“In Ajo? Oh come on!” Dinges answers. He’s taking shallow breaths. I have to give it to the guy. His tolerance for pain must be high. Most people would be screaming their heads off or would have passed out by now. “It’s just a shoulder wound. Can’t you fix me up here?”
“Hell’s bells.” Truman puts his hands on his hips. “Just a shoulder wound? Just like on TV, right? Oh sure. I’ll dig out the bullet with my goddamn fingers, put your arm in a sling and we’ll all live happily ever after. Son, that ain’t real life. If you don’t get to a damn hospital within the next few hours or so, worst-case scenario is you’ll bleed to death, best-case scenario is you’ll lose the use of your right arm.”
“Will your brother come back for you?” Collins asks.
“Andy’ll wait for me over by where Gunn Loop breaks off into the trail,” Dinges says.
The doctor motions for Dinges to scoot into the light coming through the doorway. He takes the shirt from Ramona and kneels down beside the boy, being careful to stay out of the light. Dinges groans as Truman wraps the shirt tight around his arm. “Hard to tell just by looking whether or not the brachial artery’s been hit. You need a surgeon.”
I’m supposed to be getting supplies but, more than anything, right now, I want to get out of here.
“Aren’t you at least gonna call the cops?” Dinges asks through clenched teeth.
“What cops?” Collins growls. Freckles snorts and backs up. “Ain’t it such that the whole reason you felt so damn comfortable with the idea of helping yourself to the contents of my cash register is the fact that there’re no cops anywhere near here?”
“I said I was sorry!” Dinges says. “Anyway. Leelo shot me!”
Collins pays no attention to this. “After what went down on the backroads today, what law enforcement we did have is either dead or laid up at County General.”
He’s talking about our wreck in the desert. I turn my face away.
“You can say hi to ’em when you get there.” Doc Truman stands up and takes a couple of steps back from the door.
Ramona rises as well and casts me an uneasy look. I wish she’d say something about the supplies. Or do something to move things along.
Dinges pleads with Collins. “On the radio, they’re sayin’ the banks might not reopen this week. Some people are sayin’ they might not reopen...at all.”
“They’ll fix the computers, son. The banks will reopen,” the doctor says.
He’s trying to be reassuring, but the combination of the odd shadows falling across his face and the fact that he has no idea what my dad has done to the bank computers makes my blood run even colder.
“I’ll get Leelo to ride you out to the trail,” Collins says.
“Susan? Susan?”
Ramona’s calling out this name. I snap to attention. “Um. Yeah? Yes?”
She’s holding out a couple of large canvas sacks for me to take. “Run inside and send Leelo out. Then pick up what we need.”
Desperate to get away from Derek Dinges, I don’t hang around.
The conversation continues as I walk into a small supply room. “I don’t want to go nowhere with Leelo,” Dinges says.
Ramona and Collins ignore him.
There are shelves on either side of me. Collins has extra toilet paper back here, along with bags of charcoal and supplies like toothpaste and mouthwash. There’s one whole shelf full of mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup bottles of various sizes, which strikes me as odd given the small size of the stockroom.
“I guess you’re robbin’ me too, huh?” Collins asks Ramona.
Her voice grows faint as I approach a doorway covered by a set of plastic strip curtains. “You know I’m good for it. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s gonna come as much of a shock that the free market economy has largely been suspended around here.”
I glance behind me to find I’ve left a set of dusty footprints on the concrete floor.
Collins chuckling softly is the last thing I hear before I duck through the plastic strips.
A typical minimart is on the opposite side of the plastic. Many of the shelves desperately need to be restocked. To my right, the wall is lined with a near-empty refrigerator. There’s one lone gallon of milk. The shelves underneath the BEER! sign are totally empty.
I creep around in between shelves half-full of Donettes and Twinkies and almost fall over when a voice says, “We’re closed.”
This must be Leelo.
Moving with more purpose, I follow the direction of the sound to a counter in the front where a guy sits cross-legged on top of an old-fashioned glass case full of cigarettes.
“We’re closed,” he repeats, not looking up from the Dirt Bike magazine he’s reading. He’s wearing a maroon T-shirt with the words PHILOSOPHIZE WITH A HAMMER printed in white block letters on it.
I spend a split second wondering what that statement could possibly even mean.
“We’re gonna start closing at dark,” he continues, reaching up to press a stray brown lock into place with the rest of his slicked back hair. “Until things get back to normal. By the way, you can’t just sneak in the back when the front door is locked.”
The guy is pretty calm considering he shot somebody about two minutes ago. “Are you Leelo?”
His eyes snap up. “I’m Lee. Lee. How many times do I have to tell that old coot cowboy I don’t go by Leelo anymore? Who are you?”
His intensity renews my nervousness. “I’m...uh. They told me that they need you outside. They need you to give some guy named Derek Dinges a ride.”
Lee hops off the counter. “Can’t Double Dee get home the same way he got here?”
“Well, you did shoot him.” I’m distracted by what looks like an e-tablet on the counter where Lee was seated. I approach cautiously.
“We have a stand-your-ground law in this state, you know.”
When I don’t answer, Lee adds, “This ain’t New York City. Where someone can rob you and then send you a bill for the gas for their getaway car. He had a gun, you know.”
I’m at the counter and I rest my arm on the e-tablet, the Southern Arizona Tribune displays on the screen. The main headline is about the bombs at the bank.
I can’t stop myself from snorting. “That old Colt. I doubt that thing even works. It belongs in a museum.”
He squints at me the way you do at someone you think you ought to recognize. It occurs to me that this guy might have seen my face on the news.
I should have stayed by the Twinkies.
And kept my mouth shut.
I decide to cut my losses. “Well. Anyway. They want you outside.”
“Right.” He gives me a skeptical glance and heads toward the plastic curtain.
“Wait,” I say. Something inside me makes me stop him. Everything is such an unresolved mess. Maybe I can figure out one thing. Just one.
“Your shirt. What does it mean?”
He freezes in the doorway. “It’s a quote. By Nietzsche,” he says with finality. As if this pronouncement not only has explained his shirt but somehow also unlocked all the secrets of the universe.
I frown. “Okay...”
Lee drops the piece of the plastic curtain he’s holding and faces me, getting an even better look at my face. “We need to be both intelligent and brutal. Like Caesar. Or Napoleon. The world should be a meritocracy dominated by those who can control it.” He sighs. “To put it in a way you can understand, it’s the idea that you need to be brainy and brawny. Because only the strong will survive.”
This guy hasn’t spent his entire life with the world’s foremost expert on disaster drilling. Otherwise he’d know that’s not how things work.
God. I can’t even get one small victory. Even this one thing can’t be explained. Whatever the hell that quote means, I’m pretty sure Lee’s monologue has nothing to do with it. “Napoleon was defeated by the Duke of Wellington. Caesar was assassinated and caused a civil war. My mom says no one really understands Nietzsche.”
Lee’s cheeks flush pink. “Your mom is wrong.”
He turns to leave again.
“If you think only the strong should survive, why go out there?” I ask, making one last desperate attempt to get a straight answer. “That guy isn’t strong. He came in to rob a store with a weapon that barely works, got himself shot and can’t make it to a hospital. But you’re going to help him?”
There’s a pause. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Just like that, my rage is gone. Replaced again by cold panic. “Who?” I’ve probably wasted so much time with this guy that he’s recognized me.
“Them. You’re for Rosenthal,” he says with a scowl.
“Everyone’s for Rosenthal,” I say out of habit.
Lee’s already on the other side of the curtain when he says, “No, we’re not.”
That conversation was a mistake.
It gave too much away. Made me too memorable.
I really have to get going.
Given that we need supplies now more than we did before, I start collecting what I can. Ramona is right. It doesn’t look like there was ever much of a selection, but even what was there is mostly gone. I pack one bag full of all the sundries I can. I’m able to get a couple of boxes of tampons, a jar of face lotion, three plain lip balms and a couple sticks of male deodorant. Dad always says to get whatever medicine you can find which, in this case, is a bottle of cough syrup, a few of rolls of antacids and tube of hydrocortisone cream.
I move on to the food, going for things that have a long shelf life and don’t need to be refrigerated. I end up with a bunch of beef jerky, cereal bars, semi-stale cookies and as many bags of salted pretzels as I can fit in the large burlap sack. The minimart is totally out of bottled water, so I’ll have to hope that Dad has that covered with enough canteens to get by.
As I pass back through the plastic curtain, traces of a hushed conversation drift in from outside. Ramona is speaking in a tone barely above a whisper, and I catch only a few phrases. Generic things like, “you know what” and “too many years” and “he doesn’t know.”
I glance around the shelves in the stockroom for anything useful but don’t find much beyond condiments and paper products. Then it hits me.
Nobody is answering Ramona.
I pat the pockets of my windbreaker.
I dropped the phone and didn’t pick it up.
The overhead lightbulb flickers.
Without taking another breath, I hustle out the back door.
Ramona Healy is alone, cradling the SAT phone face-down in her left hand.
But the darkness the of desert night gives her away.
The phone’s screen gives her away.
Her palm glows orange from its lit screen.
