Eve of Redemption (34 page)

Burke and Martinez completed the small group.

“All right, let’s get this thing going,” Tiny said. “Josiah, open us in prayer. We need Jesus’s input on this, and we want to welcome him to our meeting.”

Josiah hesitated a moment, then said, “Maybe Mr. Martinez should pray over our meeting. He seems to be a man of God.”

Raquel spun toward Josiah, her face darkening. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again and turned away. The little man deftly avoided her gaze.

Tiny nodded at Martinez. “Go on, then.”

Martinez took a deep breath and bowed his head. “Holy Father, we praise you and ask for your wisdom in our discussion. Please guide us and give us the discernment to hear your voice, as well as the strength to follow where you lead. Watch over this group of men and women as we all strive to serve you. We ask this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

“Amen,” answered everyone in the room.

“That was good,” Tiny said. “Kind of short, at least by Josiah’s standards, but adequate, I think.”

Josiah turned red at the comment and pretended to be engrossed with something on one of his hands.

“All right,” Tiny continued, “we’re all familiar with our new friends’ story. We have also all agreed that we, at least mostly, believe them.”

“
Mostly
is an overstatement,” Raquel muttered.

Tiny glared at her through his bushy eyebrows. “It’s a strange story, that’s for sure, but we’ve seen our share of strange over the years.” Josiah and Scribe nodded their agreement. “On top of that, Josiah’s spoken with the angel Burke brought along with him.”

“I don’t know that I’d call her an angel,” Burke said.

“Oh, she is that, for certain,” Josiah said. “She comes from God to lead you to your little girl. You may want to apologize to her, though. Yelling at her wasn’t a nice thing to do.”

Burke felt his temper rise. “She isn’t helping me. She’s using me for her own purposes.”

“Isn’t that what girls do?” Raquel asked, directing a knowing look at Josiah.

“That’s enough.” The edge in Tiny’s voice silenced the room. “My apologies, Burke, but if Josiah says she’s an angel, she’s an angel. He knows about these things.”

Josiah looked down at his feet. “You may want to ask Mr. Martinez about angels. He probably knows more about them.”

Again, Raquel shot Josiah a glare. Burke wondered what was between those two. He also wondered why Josiah was deferring to Martinez, but he suspected that Red had something to do with it. She spread trouble wherever she went.

“Maybe I will,” Tiny said. “But for now, we’re supposed to be planning our next move.” He gave the group a fierce stare. “Josiah says we go east. I think we all know how dangerous the barren lands have become. There’s nothing out there but sand, rock, and people who get real nasty when strangers come around.”

“Has it really gotten that bad?” Martinez asked.

Raquel snorted. “Don’t get out much, do you?”

“Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, outside the major cities there’s nothing out there anymore,” Josiah said. “Wasn’t much out there to begin with, mostly small towns along the freeways, but they’ve dried up.”

“Still some gas stations for the big trucks, got to keep them moving,” Tiny said. “But beyond that, folks can’t afford to be driving out here in the middle of nowhere. Gas is too expensive and the electric cars can’t make the distances. We’ve got connections, but they’re becoming fewer and further between. The desert lands are not a good place to be.”

“They like meat out there,” Raquel said. “Not much around, though.” She shook her thick hair from her face and gave Burke a hard look. “You’re pretty scrawny, but the big guy there’s got lots of meat on him.”

Tiny gave her a withering look but said nothing to discount her comment. Burke swallowed hard. Had the country really fallen so far? Had he been so absorbed in his own misery not to notice the rest of the world sinking?

“I’ll take any risk to find my daughter.”

“Well now, let’s just make sure we know what those risks are,” Tiny said. “We know about the desert lands, but we don’t know who is after you. Again, we come back to your story. Who’s following you?”

Burke sighed. He really wished he knew. “Red showed up just before someone tried to set me up for murder. She keeps calling him the other, whatever that means. She didn’t really seem to know herself.” He turned to Josiah. “Another reason I’m not going for the angel thing. She doesn’t seem to know much more than I do. I would think an angel would be all-knowing.”

Josiah opened his mouth to speak, but Martinez beat him to it. “Not necessarily. Angels are servants of God, not equal to him. I would think they would know what he wants them to know, but that might not be everything.” He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe to keep from interfering with human free will, they have to stick to some kind of rules.”

Burke thought about how Red had said she didn’t know Katrina would die like she did, but he kept silent, not yet ready to explain that to Martinez. “Like I said, whatever it takes.”

Tiny smiled beneath his massive beard. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that. I’ve been itching to do some real head bashing for Christ.” The Rebels in the room laughed at that, even Raquel. She pulled out a vicious blade and began cleaning beneath her fingernails, as though daring someone to try her.

“Don’t think Christ really wants us busting heads for him,” Martinez said, though he was smiling too.

“Call it righteous indignation if you’re so inclined.” Josiah stepped up to Raquel and gave her a slap on the behind. Burke thought for sure she would slit his throat, but, instead, she affectionately rubbed the top of his bald head.

“What’s our route, Scribe?” Tiny wasted no time getting the group back on track.

Scribe didn’t bother to consult a map. “We’ll be taking Interstate 40 out of California. That’ll be easy enough, and we’re plenty familiar with it. There’ve been rumors of a new gang hitting travelers just inside the Arizona border since we last passed that way, but I haven’t heard anything about them messing with other gangs. We should be good through Phoenix, but after that things could get hairy. We don’t have any allies out in that territory, so it’s pretty much an unknown.”

Tiny slapped his hands together, excited like a little boy who just got his favorite toy for his birthday. “All right then. Let’s get ourselves to Phoenix. We’ll plan the rest from there.”

THEY SET OUT early the next morning—Burke and Martinez in the car they had arrived in, surrounded by fifteen roaring Harleys. The mood had been somber as Martinez paid his last respects at Katrina’s grave. They had come as three and were leaving as seventeen, but the departure felt lonely. Burke would forever remember the sacrifice Katrina had made to help him find his daughter. Someday, he planned to tell Sara the story.

Now, as they traveled Interstate 40, heading east into the early morning sunrise, Burke felt excitement at being on the road. For so long he had allowed himself to wallow in his misery, letting his own life slip away in mourning. The simple act of doing
something
brought long-forgotten energy to his being. He watched the side of the road pass by without really paying any attention as his mind drifted back over the events of the past days. He came to the part where the mysterious light shot out of his hands to end the horrifying incident of the animated corpses.

“Hey Dave,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something, but I’m still not sure if it’s the right time or not.”

Martinez shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “I’d say with all that’s going on, we need to ask the questions we have.”

“The other night when things got weird—you know, the dogs and everything…”

“When something made the bodies walk?”

“Yeah. Let me know if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Martinez’s face was set in stone. “That wasn’t Trinny we saw. It was her body, but she wasn’t there.”

“You ever hear of anything like that before?”

“Nope. Been pouring through my Bible for anything similar. Haven’t found much. Raising the dead, yes, but not while they’re still dead. And that light that shot out of your hands? Would have been pretty cool under different circumstances.”

“I don’t have any idea what that was,” Burke said. “At first I was horrified by what was going on, but then I started getting mad. That something would do that to Katrina set me off. Then it was like all the anger flowed from every part of my body to my hands. But when it got there, I just went cold all through, like all my body heat went with the anger. I remember pointing my hands at the bodies, but nothing after that.”

“Both bodies dropped like rocks.” Martinez couldn’t keep the hitch from his voice. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Whatever was controlling them didn’t like that light at all.”

Burke rubbed his weary face with one hand. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept well. Adrenaline kept him going in the early morning hours, but now in the monotony of an eight-hour drive, he’d hit a wall. “I’m beat. I’m gonna try to catch a nap. Wake me when you need a break, all right?”

Martinez nodded, lost in his own thoughts.

Burke woke sometime later to the jostling of the car. “Where are we?”

“Old truck stop. Not many of these left out here.”

Burke looked out the front windshield at what might have once been a thriving business. He counted ten two-sided pumps for cars and could see a line of others on the side of the building for the truckers. He doubted more than two or three of the pumps still worked. A huge sign read GAS. On the opposite side of the truck stop sat a jumble of rusted old cars, abandoned to the forces of nature.

The building had suffered the same decrepit fate. The overhang that covered the pumps sagged at the far end, and one of the support poles was bent at an odd angle, the victim of some careless driver, no doubt. The building itself had not been painted in years. Scrub and other desert grasses grew up around its edges and through cracks in the concrete. A group of motorcycles—not all Harleys, Burke noticed—rested in a neat line in front.

Martinez parked the car a short distance from the main building as the Lord’s Rebels lined their bikes up alongside the others. “I count nine bikes. Place seems awful quiet for that many people,” Martinez said.

Burke squinted, looking for any movement through the dirty windows that covered most of the front of the building. “Between the grime and the glare, I can’t see anything in there.”

Martinez shut off the engine and opened his door. “Might as well go in. If Tiny and his gang wanted to do us any harm, they wouldn’t have needed to come for reinforcements to do it.” The two men crossed the parking lot and joined the group of Rebels as they climbed off their bikes.

“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Tiny asked.

“Nope,” Martinez said. Burke shook his head.

“Good. It’s not supposed to.” Tiny motioned for them to follow him as he made his way to the main door. A bell jingled overhead, announcing their presence. The sagging overhang outside blocked the midday sun. Most of the light in the dim interior came from the walls of coolers, which were stocked with a wide assortment of cool drinks and food. Several people loitered around the narrow aisles, and Burke thought it would be hard to tell just how many people were inside without intentionally stopping and counting them. He also noticed that they all kept a close eye on the newcomers.

Tiny went to the counter for a hushed conversation with the man behind it. After some tense words, Tiny left the counter and returned to the two men. “Gypsy’s none too happy with me for bringing you here, but he trusts me enough to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

Martinez nodded. “I counted nine bikes out front but only a few people in here.”

Tiny smiled. “Observant, aren’t ya? Bet you was a pretty good cop.”

Martinez shrugged.

“Anyway, I think I told you before that we have a decent network out here. We help each other out. Watch each other’s backs. The Bones run these parts. They don’t love Jesus like we do, but they love their country and don’t like the mess it’s in.” Tiny’s teeth shone through the mass of hair on his face. “They’ll love Jesus by the time I’m done with them, though.” The burly biker led them to the back of the store. A doublewide doorway with the word RESTROOMS painted in large black letters above it led them into an alcove with the men’s room on the right and the ladies’ on the left. Straight ahead lay a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Tiny opened it and stepped through.