Redemption: Alchemy Series Book #4 (9 page)

I looked down at the map spread out in front of me. A red circle clearly marked the location of the canned food warehouse.

I folded and pocketed it, just in case Chip's wireless went on the fritz and made my way downstairs. Chip and Colleen were waiting for me at the door, dressed in camouflage as I was, even though I was ten minutes early. They smiled when they saw me and I wondered if I'd remembered to prep them on what we were actually going to do.

"Ready?"

"Beyond ready. We need to get the hell out of this sardine can," Colleen said.

I nodded in understanding.
Every day it seemed like there was less and less room and the tensions were escalating considerably.

We pushed outside, making tracks in the new snowfall. It had been snowing every
day for the last week and I pulled the jacket tight around me as we headed out.

"The tensions might ease up for you, Colleen, if you stopped getting into fights."

In spite of the shiner she was sporting on her left eye, Burrom had reported back to me that Colleen hadn't needed any help fighting Evan.

"He had it coming. And I did take pity on him. I could've finished him off
, but I let him live."

"I heard he begged for his life." The words caused bile in my mouth.

"A little." I heard the gloating in her voice and I wanted to shake some sense into her.

"There's nothing amusing about it." I grabbed her arm to get her attention. "And you aren't looking at the bigger picture. You think he's grateful now? Wait. That embarrassment is going to stew in his system until one day it poisons him with thoughts of revenge."

"I'm not worried. I can take him." Her bravado reminded me of my own youthful stupidity. I hoped she learned a little easier than I did.

"Only if you see him coming. And the ones you do see coming aren't usually the ones that bring you to your knees. It's the stuff that hits you out of left field that takes you down." I let her arm go, hoping for her sake
that she would wake up before she dug herself in too deep.

Neither of us said another word as we headed toward the truck we were taking. It was parked about five blocks away, right along the only clear path out of Vegas.

The truck was a huge neon blue semi and, for the first time, I really wondered if Colleen and Chip had been the best choice. I might have other things I wanted to accomplish, but we were also going to need to fill up that truck and none of us had much upper body strength.

I climbed up the steps and settled in. We'd already decided I'd do the first leg of the trip, then Colleen because she was a natural night owl. Chip would remain free to link into the satellites and bug out when we needed extra directional
instruction.

It only took about five minutes for the heat to start warming up and we settled in as we headed toward the California border and our boon of canned food.

I found a comfortable position behind the wheel and adjusted to driving the monstrosity. Hotel California played in the CD player, thanks to Chip's forethought. It was a slow go initially, swerving the big truck through the cars abandoned in the more suburban areas. By time we'd hit the highway, the sun was already setting.

"When's Cormac coming back?" Chip asked
, after we'd gone about a mile on the highway. Just like that, the cabin of the truck became my own little version of small talk purgatory. 

"I'm not sure. He'll be back soon." I was starting to wish I could just pin that statement to my shirt. 

"Where are the rippers?" Colleen wasn't looking at me but at the great expanse of snow covered desert. "It's getting dark and we're covering a lot of ground. I haven't seen one ripper."

I never expected talking about the rippers would be a pleasant topic of conversation but it beat out
"Cormac, Cormac, and where's Cormac?" The lack of rippers should have made us all happy, but any disturbance in the norm these days had a tendency to set people's nerves on edge, including mine.

"Maybe with a lack of humans to eat, they're dying off," I replied. It was an optimistic thought, which is probably exactly why I didn't believe it. Optimists were a dying breed these days, and even way back when, before everything fell apart, I'd never been part of the happy rainbow tribe.

Feeling their eyes on me, I turned to look at Colleen and Chip.

"What?"

"You hitting the swill again?" Chip asked, leaning in close enough to smell my breath.

I pulled away from him with a scowl. "I can have positive thoughts."

"Leave her alone, Chip."

"Thank you, Colleen," I said but spoke too soon.

"If she's drinking again, I think I like her better this way. Let's not discourage her."

"Fine. I'm not full of booze, I'm full of shit. It's freaking me out
, too." I pointed a free hand in their direction, "And, for the record, this is the last time I'm going to put out any effort for false optimism. It's a complete waste of energy if you two are going to refuse to drink the Kool-Aid."

I looked over at the two of them, hoping to see perfectly chastised faces. But they weren't looking at me. Their eyes were huge saucers
and they both let out blood curdling screams. I whipped my head around to see a huge twenty-foot tall man ahead of us, just before we drove into him.

I slammed on the breaks and jerked the wheel to the right, which was probably the worst thing I could've done. Hey, it's not like
I had truck driving experience. The trailer, even empty, added too much weight and kept pushing forward until the cab was jackknifed and the entire truck, with us in it, was thrown onto its side.

I'm not sure how long I was knocked out for
, but Colleen and Chip were still unconscious when I woke, piled underneath me like a lumpy bed. I was hoping they were only unconscious.

I took a deep breath and decided I should see if the giant was still there before I checked for pulses. If he was,
it might not matter if they were alive anyway.

One of them moaned as I moved off them. "Sorry," I said to their limp forms as I tried to avoid stepping on them any further. The window was closed but at least it had a manual window opener. I pulled myself up and took a look in the direction of where he had been. He was gone but I knew that all three of us hadn't been delusional. He'd been there.

One issue hopefully gone, at least right now, but three more took its place. I had two unconscious
changed
in the cab of an overturned truck which was now smoking.

Ducking back into the cab, I knelt as close as I could without stepping on limbs.

"Chip? Colleen?"

I put my fingertips to Chip's throat first and felt a steady pulse. Colleen, much smaller than him, had unfortunately fallen onto the bottom of the heap, but had a steady pulse as well. She was sporting and egg sized bump on her forehead that was going to hurt like a son of a bitch when she eventually woke.

"Chip!" I tugged at his arm, trying to pull him off Colleen's chest in the crowded space.

Relief filled me as he groaned and I saw his eyelids start to flutter open. I tugged again and repeatedly called his name, trying to startle him out of his stupor.

"What the hell happened?" he said as he came to, groggily.

"We've got to get out of this truck. It's smoking."

I could see those words wipe the last of the haze from his expression.

"Shit," he said as he got a grip on our situation.

I pulled myself up and sat on the side of the open window, my legs dangling through the opening. "Can you lift Colleen and hand her to me?"

He stood awkwardly in the small space, his feet on the opposite door near Colleen's head. "You aren't supposed to move people who've been hurt. She might have a spinal injury."

"Chip, I need a little common sense right now. If this truck blows, she won't have anything. PICK. HER. UP." I looked at the smoke, now a dirty grey and thicker, coming from where the engine was.

He grabbed her and lifted her toward me. I repositioned myself, more dragging her out of the window, than lifting. Once Chip pulled himself out of the window, he tossed Colleen over his shoulder and we ran until there was a good fifty feet between us and the truck.

"You think this is far enough?" He started lowering Colleen to the ground, his breathing labored.

"I think
-" My last words were muffled by the explosion of the truck. I yanked Chip down beside me as I crouched myself over Colleen, trying to block any shrapnel that might hit her. When nothing did, I looked at Chip. "Yeah, we're far enough."

"Is she okay?" Chip kneeled down next to where I was bent over Colleen.

"Colleen?" I lifted her head, and looked for blood.

"Am I dead?" she finally spoke.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Like I wish I was dead because someone's pounding a hammer on my skull." She reached out a hand behind her, seeking leverage to sit up. Chip moved forward and grasped her shoulder as I supported her back.

"What was that thing?" she asked, opening her eyes as she sat up.

"I don't know, but the truck's gone." The choking smell of the burning fuel drifted over to us
, making it unpleasant to breathe deeply.

"Say it ain't so? Please?" She turned her head toward me where I was sure she could see the flames were still burning bright at my back. "Fuck. My. Life."

"I'm really sorry." And I was. It was biting cold out. Chip looked like a wreck and I wasn't even sure if Colleen was going to be able to walk on her own. Her leg looked like it was bent at a very unusual angle compared to the normal way of things.

She leaned forward and shrugged. "Not your fault. I mean, when there's a big giant hanging in the road, what's a girl to do?"

"Now what?" Chip asked, looking at me as Colleen did the same.

"I don't think you are going to be able to walk," I said to Colleen. With all the stress of the moment, I wasn't sure she even knew how messed up her leg was, the adrenaline probably dulling the pain.

Her eyes watered as she looked down and saw the mangled looking mess that was now her knee.

I took point and moved down to her ankle, pulled the knife from my boot and slit her pant leg up to the knee. Nothing was bleeding or protruding through the skin but I had a horrible suspicion that if she stood up, her shin would be doing little more than dangling.

"It's just dislocated." I looked at her, trying to remain calm though I didn't feel it in the least. "It's not a big deal." Or wouldn't have been, when we had doctors and ambulances and all that other good stuff that used to exist. Now? It might be a big deal but I couldn't risk an emotional breakdown in the middle of the Vegas tundra.

I looked up from Colleen's malformed knee joint to her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks in earnest. 

"You're going to have to leave me here." She sniffed and ran her arm across her nose. "I get it. It's okay."

I wasn't sure if she was crying over the state of her leg or the nearing
possible abandonment.

"We aren't leaving you here." We might all freeze with her
, but we'd freeze together.

Chip was hunched down behind her shoulder, his face out of Colleen's view, which I was grateful for since his eyebrows were raised in disbelief of my words.

"Right, Chip?" I asked, forcing him to agree.

"Yeah. We're going to stay together."

I was glad Colleen couldn't see him roll his eyes and mouth a string of curses.

I looked around,
seeing nothing but snow covered desert plains, and Colleen lying in a good ten inches of snow.

"We've got to get you up." I grabbed her one arm and motioned for Chip to take the other. "Sitting in the snow is going to make you lose body temperature quicker. I think."  Between the two of us, we managed to get her up on her good foot
, but she was grimacing. "Chip, plug in and tell us where the nearest structure is?"

"It's not exactly plugging in, it's more along
the lines of-"

"Just do whatever it is you do?"

While his eyes glazed and his expression dulled, I took a look around. We were stranded out in the middle of nowhere and one of us was down a functioning leg. I pulled my funny phone out of my pocket but I already knew it was a waste of time. The phone lines were set up only in and around Vegas strip. Cormac's people hadn't gotten any type of towers erected this far. I'd taken over the situation after he left, so I knew exact distance away from the castle I could go, to the nearest block, before I would lose a signal. And getting a signal here would be akin to a miracle.

On the bright side, the giant was nowhere to be seen. Dark side, it looked like a small herd of rippers was heading our way, which wasn't going to do much for morale.

It wasn't alarming in the sense that any of the three of us were in danger. We all had enough magic coursing through us to be unappealing, as far as their menu went. But when those grey scaly bodies floated near, their eyes glowing yellow, it wasn't a really pleasant experience and not something you ever got used to.