Kismet (6 page)

Chapter Five

“Are you going to ignore me forever?” I demand, beyond exasperated.

After our kisses Kris stays silent, only talking with hand gestures. Sure, I get the gist of what he was saying, but I don’t like having to mind read. His movements are stiff and angry. I watch him, however, and the more I see, the more I realize that Kris deliberately keeps himself stiff and angry. But why?

I know his head has to be killing him, but he doesn’t ask for more medicine. He won’t even let me change the dressing, instead pulling off the tape and gauze himself, then applying a fresh pressure bandage without using a mirror. The accuracy of his hand makes me wonder how many times he’s had to do this before, and I realize I don’t really want to know the answer.

I know his mind has to be focused on two things: his mission and his partner. I figure nowhere into that equation.

“I’m not ignoring you,” he replies over his shoulder.

“Oh really? Then slow down, for fuck’s sake!”

I am tall but he easily tops me by a good five or six inches. It’s not often that I have to practically run to keep pace with someone. We move along at a steady, brisk pace.

“Kris!” I repeat, exasperated.

He turns suddenly, and I almost run into him. He glares at me.

“What?” I ask. “I asked you to slow down. You chose to ignore me.”

I smile at him, conveying what I know to be my alluring femininity. Kris blinks, and his gaze lingers on my lips, so I know he’s not immune to my charms. But when I look into his eyes, I see a darkness that has nothing to do with his brown irises. Something has hurt this man; something has scarred him. My heart swells with compassion, and I want so much to take him into my arms and banish all his demons. But I know he won’t let me; at least, he won’t let me right now.

But just then I get a vision, and I must push aside the tenderness I feel growing toward Kris. I see a little girl, perhaps only nine or ten. She has long black hair and dirty clothes; she looks Latina from my vantage point. She walks in front of an older man with even dirtier clothes. They have a ragged look about them, a desperate, almost hungry air surrounding them. I know they are looking for food or for items that will help them survive. I just don’t understand why they would cling to a city with nothing in it. Why not leave here, go somewhere with the resources to keep children fed and to jumpstart a new life? I’ve seen migration a lot in the past six years. In the northern part of the country live mostly people who can prevail using their hunting and survival skills. Loners. Down South are people who are part of large communities, families who have banded together to eke out a living. And the East Coast has the cities where people have gathered for the protection and handouts the government provides. To me, the West Coast is nothing but a wasteland of once-great cities, something to read about in history books.

All those thoughts swirl around in my head as I watch the little girl come around a bend, her father pausing to look at something. I see the man with the sledgehammer creep to the spot where the girl walks, his sledgehammer gripped firmly and poised ready to strike. I see the girl round the corner, and I see the sledgehammer fall. Her head is bashed in, blood spurting in every direction, coating the evil man’s body in his obvious delight. He swings again as the father rushes forward, connecting with another deadly strike.

I stumble and then lean over as dry heaves rack my body as the picture of the now dead girl rolls through my mind again.

“Evie!” Kris growls in my ear. I can feel him holding me up even as my body slides down into shock and horror. How can someone do that to a little kid?

With considerable effort, I pull myself out of the trance, though I can’t stop the replay scrolling through my brain. Kris keeps hold of my arm as I start scanning the direction to go. My little spidey sense starts leading me, and I struggle against Kris’s hold.

“We have to go this way,” I say. I start off but come to an abrupt halt as Kris yanks my arm. “I got a vision.”

“The plan is to meet up with Hyde if we got separated.”

“No, we have to go this way,” I insist stubbornly, shaking off his grip.

“We meet up with Hyde first, and
then
we’ll go that way.” He emphasizes with a point northward.

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying.”

“Oh, I’m hearing you,” he tells me. “I’m just not listening to the bullshit.”

I let out a puff of exasperation. While he’s arguing with me, the premonition starts repeating like a broken recorder.
God, I hate this
! I grab his hand, and in my frustration, yank him hard enough to cause him to stumble.

“Fine!” I say with a snarl. “I don’t have time to stand here and fight like we’re in high school!”

I let go of his arm and stomp away in the direction my vision is leading me. At this point, I don’t really care if he follows me or not. Stupid, arrogant, obstinate man! Does he think I made this up for my own amusement? That I came to Los Angeles for the fucking scenery? I don’t need this aggravation; I have a little girl to save.

Though I manage to tune him out while I wind my way down broken streets, I know he is trailing after me. The vision begins to spin faster, and I start to run because it’s only a matter of time. Kris’s boots pound behind me, and he pulls on my arm, stopping me in midstride, and the momentum swings me around so I trip into him.

“What are you doing?” I bark, yanking my arm free. I turn to resume my run, but he grabs the back of my shirt, leaving me flailing like a helpless rabbit. I open my mouth to cuss him like a professional sailor, but Kris holds up a hand, and his attention is fixed on a spot too far for me to see. He hauls me down behind some rubble, pointing, and then holds up two fingers. Ah, I finally get it. Two people are up ahead.

“She’s a hunter, the one who led the raid last night that ambushed me and Hyde,” he replies rather harshly, holding up a pair of small binoculars to look through. Where had those come from? “It’s why we split up.”

I reach over and pluck the binoculars from his hand and look through them, seeing the redheaded woman from yesterday. This time she sits on a dirt bike. “I’ve seen her before, when I first got here. She’s talking on a walkie-talkie.”

Kris plucks his binoculars back from my hands and looks through them. “Mm,” he replies. The sound of the dirt bike revving up reaches us.

“Let me see,” I demand. I hold out my hand and wait. He turns away from the hunters long enough to give me this disbelieving look, like I’m going to wait around while he makes his observations and ignores me?

I see this twisted little grimace on his face before he hands them to me with obvious reluctance. I refocus on the two people we’re avoiding. Today it is just her and one other man, a very muscular man with a sledgehammer over his shoulder. And just as I suspected, he is the man in my vision. His arms are draped around his weapon like a prop, but he has a firm grip on the handle, ready to swing it.

I mean, really? A sledgehammer?

I watch the redhead tell him something, and then she gets on a motorbike and leaves.

By this point my head is ready to explode. I bring my elbow back sharply and clip him in the nose. He lets me loose with a curse as he stumbles back, and I take off running. My concentration is fixed firmly on that overgrown hammer, and even from this distance, I can see the faded bloodstains trailing down the wooden handle. I wonder abstractly how many people it has killed.

My vision starts to play in real time, real life, the man and little girl oblivious. It’s exactly as I saw the events unfolding. Yet right behind that thought is the fact that I will never make it in time to save the girl; Kris has made me waste too much time. I stop my frantic run and drop to one knee. Some distant part of my brain is cursing the fact that I left my bow behind, because my gun is going to make one motherfucker of a bang.

In one smooth motion I flip the safety off and line him up. I focus all my attention on the asshole at the end of my sight, and just as he swings up that sledgehammer, I fire. Immediately, another gun fires off to my left, and I know this is Kris acting as my backup. I watch as the bad guy falls back, both bullets finding their marks. I see the older man throw himself over the little girl and try to find some type of cover, but already I am sprinting forward.

“It’s all right!” I call out. “I won’t hurt you! I saw him; I saw that man try to hurt her, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

The man poked his head out from his protective shell. “
Por favor no, nos lastimes! No tenemos dinero! No tenemos nada
!”

“
No deseamos su dinero
,” I reply, holding my hands up in a friendly manner. “
Estamos aquí para ayudarle
.”

“What did he say?”

I look at Kris in surprise. “You can’t speak Spanish? But the majority of people in LA are, you know, Hispanic.”

“Your point?”

“I just assumed they would put men who can speak the native language into the areas where that would come in handy.”

“It’s not like there’s an overwhelming abundance of soldiers tailor made for each mission,” he answers, slightly testy. “I can’t speak Spanish but I can speak German and French.”

I don’t point out that accomplishment doesn’t really help us, and I let the matter drop. We have other important things right now. “He wanted us to know he didn’t have any money, and I assured him we didn’t want any. We don’t want any, do we?”

“Of course not,” Kris replies, falling in step beside me. “Tell him I’m Sergeant Kristian Seek with the Western Division Ground Troop 281. And that we need to get him and his daughter to safety. The sound of our guns is bound to attract attention.”

I translate and wait. The man hesitates for only a moment before he starts talking rapidly in Spanish. He points behind him, gesturing urgently, and I hold up my hands in order to get him to calm down.

“
Hable despacio, por favor
!” I understand Spanish, but not rapid-fire, out-of-breath Spanish. Luckily, the man obligingly obeys me.

“What’s he saying?" Kris asks me.

“He’s part of an underground hideout, located at Pershing Square,” I reply, trying to listen to the man with one ear as I translate. “It’s actually in the metro system…
Cuál metro
? Ah”—I nod—“the subway.”

Kris looks around our parameter. “If my GPS was working, I could lead us there in minutes.”

“
Qué camino vamos
?” I ask the man.

He leads us, taking his daughter’s hand and heading west of our current position. Kris and I take up the rear behind them, our guns drawn with safeties off. Our gazes constantly wander all around making sure the redheaded bitch and her minions aren’t ambushing us. It would be easier to slink around in the shadows as we hightail the few blocks to the hideout, but there simply isn’t any way to do that. The rubble prevents anything even remotely stealthy.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Kris asks in low tone.

“Louisiana,” I answer, equally quiet. “My stepdad liked hunting, and he liked taking potshots at me, until I decided it was time to take potshots back at him. And then he didn’t mess with me too much.”

“Jesus,” Kris mutters.

“Listen,” I say evenly. I’ve seen pity in many people’s eyes, and each time it’s like a kick in the guts. “I had a shitty childhood, but I have a great life. I survived the virus, and I have a gift to help people.” I shrug. “There is nothing I would ever trade.”

He doesn’t say anything more, and we make it to the blocked entrance of the subway system. I stand there with my mouth twisted as I bite the inside of my cheek, looking for a door or a hole or something that screams “entrance,” but nothing jumps out at me.

“
Este camino
,” the man says to me, and the little girl pulls my hand. They lead us away from the very obvious blocked-off entrance into the underside of a nearby building. The first two levels still remain intact, but the top half is completely gone. The man beckons, and we duck into the dark, gloomy interior and follow him down an even darker and gloomier hallway. Surprisingly, it’s clear of any rubble or debris. At the end of the hallway, there’s a bolted door, and the man stops to knock three times. At this point I'm wondering when I entered the Twilight Zone and if now was a good time to turn tail and hike it back to the outside world. But the door swings inward, and two guards stand at the threshold with matching AR-15s. Not my weapon of choice, but I have to wonder if these people even have choices. The man starts talking rapidly again, way too fast for me to keep up.

After what I assume has been a tale of how he met us, he grabs his daughter’s hand, and in a blink of an eye, disappears. I suppose if you live like rats long enough, then you learn how to move like one. Creepy.

“You’ll have to see the commander,” one of the sentries warned.

Kris nods. “All right,” he agrees. We both still hold our nines, but I’m betting there’s a helluva lot more firepower aimed at us. And it’s no surprise when the sentry takes our weapons.

Another guard appears and beckons us, so we follow down a long flight of stairs into a dimly lit corridor. I look around and see long florescent lights lining the top of the tunnel, some burned out and some spots empty of bulbs altogether. Briefly I wonder how there is electricity, but soon my attention is caught by a tall, beautiful black woman, hair cropped short, and wide almond eyes staring somberly down her M-16 rifle. The only thought going through my mind at this point is where the hell she got a hold of a fully automatic rifle in this dredge of a city.

“Who are you two?” she asks us in a surprisingly singsong voice, though her tone warns us to be honest.

“I’m Sergeant Kristian Seek, Western Ground division 281 of the newly reassembled military,” he introduces himself. “The United States government is processing people from this disaster area to Wyoming, for relocation throughout America.”

“Really,” she states, obviously unimpressed. “Relocation? We have no use for the US government anymore.”

“I must insist on evacuation,” he stubbornly monotones back to her. “It’s in your best interest.”