The Hunted (4 page)

Shy trailed Carmen, Marcus and Shoeshine as they moved through a roundabout called Windward Circle. He looked back. The man following them, Mason, motioned with his rifle for Shy to keep going.

He turned forward again and focused on what he could still see in the fading daylight. A decorative gondola in the middle of the roundabout was broken in half and burned, and there was a large red X painted on the concrete beside it. Shy wondered if that had something to do with people's zones, too. A van had crashed into the front gate of the postal annex, and there was mail scattered everywhere. Most of it was burned beyond recognition, but Shy reached down for one postcard that seemed oddly untouched.

Venice Beach
was written across the front, the words transposed over a perfect breaking wave that reminded Shy of the massive wall of water that had crashed into the cruise ship, sending them into this whole mess. He flipped over the postcard and read the message as he continued walking:

Grandpa Barry,

We finally made it to LA! It's so incredibly beautiful here, I wish you could see it for yourself. Hugs to everyone back home!

Love,

Chloe

Shy Frisbeed the card back onto the sea of burned ones. “Beautiful” LA was now a disaster zone where people threatened you with rifles. The girl who'd written the postcard had probably died in the earthquakes. Or the fires that came after. Or she'd been infected with Romero Disease.

“Take Grand up ahead,” Mason called out.

Another helicopter emerged in the distance, flying close to the shore. Shy peered down several quiet roads where most of the houses no longer stood. The air smelled of ash and decay. He spotted a group of dead rats near an overturned trash receptacle. Two dozen, maybe. Little empty holes where their eyes should have been. “Animals can get the disease, too?” he wondered out loud.

Carmen turned away from the rats, covering her mouth.

“Keep walking,” Mason called to them.

There were abandoned cars everywhere, some left in the middle of the street with their doors wide open or their windshields bashed in. Storefronts were boarded up and charred black. Shattered glass was strewn about the sidewalks so recklessly Shy had to be conscious of each step. Some buildings had been reduced to mounds of blackened rubble that spilled out into the street.

Even if they found a car that worked, Shy didn't see how they'd be able to maneuver it through all the crap in the way. Between that and everyone stressing out about their stupid zones, he wondered how he and Carmen would get even
close
to San Diego.

Mason called for them to stop near a street named Riviera. He coasted forward on his bike, stopping a good fifteen feet away and putting one foot on the ground for balance. “Keep east of this street and you'll be fine,” he told them through his mask. “North of Rose and south of Washington. You'll remember that, right?”

Shy nodded with everyone else.

Mason glanced at the destruction on the opposite side of the street. “Have you guys really been on a boat all this time?”

“Swear to God,” Marcus told him.

Shy motioned toward his own weathered face. “Can't you tell by looking at us?”

Mason tipped back his straw hat and lowered his mask past his chin. “You think we look any better?”

There was just enough sunlight left for Shy to see the details of the man's face. His cheeks sagged like he'd recently lost a lot of weight. There were bags under his eyes. His hair looked recently buzzed, but thick gray and black whiskers covered his face and neck.

“Watch yourselves out there,” Mason told them. “We're humanitarians compared to others you may run into. Those guys from the Suzuki Gang shoot first and ask questions later.”

“What's the Suzuki Gang?” Carmen asked.

“Group of vigilante types on motorcycles.” The man turned his handlebars back and forth, staring across the street.

Shy followed Mason's eyes to the other side of Riviera. A large chasm had opened up in the concrete between two collapsed buildings. Five feet wide at least, with a few cars sticking up out of the thing. A driver was still inside one of the cars, and he wasn't leaving anytime soon. Shy had to look away from the bloated, rotting corpse.

Mason turned his bike around like he was going to leave, but he just sat there, looking back toward his own zone. “And this disease going around…it's awful. The infected only survive a couple days, but when it's someone close to you…when it's your own
son
…it stays burned in your memory forever.”

“We're sorry for your loss,” Shoeshine said.

Shy recalled watching his grandma suffer at the hospital. Her eyes blood red as she tore at her skin. Back then hardly anyone knew about Romero Disease. The only cases on record were in Mexico and a few border cities on the American side, like where he and Carmen lived. It didn't spread north until after Shy started working for Paradise Cruise Lines.

“Isn't the government helping?” Carmen asked. “Or the Red Cross or someone?”

Mason pointed to the distant helicopter. “They make food and water drops near the big red Xs painted on some intersections. Other than that, we're on our own.”

Shy couldn't believe it. Any time he'd seen a disaster on the news, the government was there right away. How could they just abandon everyone?

Mason pulled his mask back over his face. “Like I said, keep east of Pacific. A couple of those guys back there…they really will shoot you.” He then kicked forward on his bike, started riding back the way they'd come.

“Wait!” Carmen called to him. “Are there trains or buses running?”

Mason gave a halfhearted wave with his rifle and continued pedaling.

After the man rounded the corner, out of sight, Shy turned to the others. But no one said anything right away. It was all too overwhelming. A sick thought crept into Shy's head: what if the government secretly
hoped
the entire population of California died off?

“We're screwed,” Marcus said, breaking the silence.

“Where we supposed to spend the night?” Carmen asked, squatting down in the middle of the street. “It's almost dark already.”

Shy looked across the road again, at the corpse inside the car. Then he turned to look back into the zone they'd just left. The colors hovering over the Pacific Ocean were beginning to slip away. Carmen was right, in ten or fifteen minutes they'd be wandering around in the dark.

Shy pointed at the duffel hanging from Shoeshine's shoulder. “Why didn't that guy back there take the syringes?”

“Can't take what you can't see,” Shoeshine answered.

Marcus set down his radio. “He was digging all through the bag, though.”

Shoeshine pulled the duffel off his shoulder and unzipped it. Shy watched him take out the shirts and the compass and the empty jug and his journal. When he held up the empty bag, the powerful bleach smell burned Shy's nose and eyes.

The syringes were gone.

So was the letter.

“Where the hell'd they go?” Marcus said.

Shoeshine pointed at a stitched area in the gut of the bag. “Sewed in a couple extra compartments while we were on the boat.”

Shy looked at Shoeshine in awe.

So did Carmen and Marcus.

How was it that this man saw everything before it happened? It had been that way since back on the island. Back on the cruise ship, even. Shy wondered if he would ever learn who Shoeshine really was. He knew the guy had been in the military. That he'd shined shoes on the ship. But there had to be something else, something beyond what Shoeshine was telling them.

“You know how to sew, too?” Marcus asked.

Shoeshine shrugged and looked up into the sky. “Best we start walking.”

A strange feeling came over Shy as he followed the man across the street. When tomorrow came and they went their separate ways, Shy, Carmen and Marcus would be even more lost than they were now. And more vulnerable. Because Shoeshine was the only one who knew the way. Shy could never be like that.

It grew darker with each passing minute.

Buildings and fallen trees went from clearly defined things to dull shapes that seemed to stagger across the road. Shy could no longer see well enough to avoid stepping on rocks or pieces of debris, and the soles of his raw feet burned.

There were no more helicopters, but stars began to reveal themselves in the sky, reminding Shy of all the cold nights he'd just spent on the sailboat. That was the one thing he could never forget. The stars. Distant pinpricks of light that followed the boat wherever it went. Followed
him.
He'd stare up at them for hours, aware that they'd been there millions of years before he was born and would be there a million more after he was gone. They proved how small he was. How insignificant. Which somehow made the idea of death less threatening.

They continued east, navigating their way around discarded cars in the near dark, random pieces of blackened furniture and downed power lines, which Shoeshine warned them away from. They passed gutted apartment buildings and half-crumbled houses. Shy occasionally felt eyes on his back, but whenever he spun around to check, he'd find no one.

In one intersection he spotted a pile of bodies in the street that gave off a powerful smell of bleach and rot. Carmen and Marcus quickly turned away, but Shy stared. There was something he wasn't grasping. Some deeper meaning or truth to it all. An answer.

When would it sink in?

As they passed an empty schoolyard Shy tripped over something in the street. He squatted down to study it. A single high-top. He held the shoe up to his face and inspected it more closely. No holes in the sole. Seemed sturdy enough. But the other one was nowhere to be found.

Carmen turned around, hissing: “Come on.”

“I'm coming.” Shy slipped his foot into the high-top and laced up. He glanced into the schoolyard as he started after Carmen, Marcus and Shoeshine. He spotted a lonely swing vibrating in the subtle wind, and for some reason he imagined his nephew climbing onto it. Imagined him kicking himself as high as he could. Jumping off into the thick sand and turning to see if Shy had been watching.

“I saw it,” Shy mumbled as he caught up with the others.

Carmen glanced at him, but he didn't meet her eyes.

Long after they passed the playground, Shy was still picturing his nephew on that swing.

When they turned onto a wide street named Lincoln Boulevard, Shy spotted a small group of middle-aged women climbing out of the busted front window of what had once been a convenience store. “Look,” he whispered, motioning for the others to stop.

Shoeshine kneeled down to watch the women.

Even in the dark Shy could see they were extremely thin, just wisps of human beings wearing soiled sweatshirts and loose jeans. Hospital masks covering their noses and mouths.

“Let's go talk to them,” Marcus whispered.

“Now?” Carmen whispered back.

Shoeshine placed his hand on Marcus's arm. “Best leave them be.”

Marcus turned to look at the man. “Why?”

“We have our business, they have theirs.”

Shy could see that the women's hands were full. They were carrying things out of the store. But he agreed with Shoeshine: they should be left alone. There was something wild about the way they were slinking around in silence.

One of the women looked up suddenly and saw that she was being watched. She clicked her tongue at the others, who all looked up, too, and froze in their tracks. The smallest was still halfway in the window.

“We're not sick!” Marcus called out.

None of the women answered.

Shy heard a motorcycle far off in the distance, but when he turned his ear toward it, the sound disappeared.

Carmen took a small step toward the women, holding up her empty hands as if to show she was unarmed. They immediately scurried away from the store, down the middle of the road, cutting into the remains of a fallen hotel.

“What the hell?” Carmen said, turning to Shoeshine. “I didn't even do anything.”

Shy and Marcus cautiously followed the women and peered into the wreckage, but they were gone. Or they were hiding. Shy couldn't see far enough into the maze of rubble to know which.

“Everyone thinks we got the disease,” Marcus said. “We have to tell the truth. Or else no one's gonna help.”

Shoeshine was beside them now, holding a flashlight. “What truth?” he asked Marcus.

Marcus turned to the man and opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.

“Where'd you get that?” Shy asked, pointing at Shoeshine's flashlight.

“Under a Dumpster a few blocks back.”

Shy didn't remember Shoeshine near any Dumpster.

“Does it work?” Carmen asked.

Shoeshine shined the light on the ground in front of them, then quickly cut it off. “Come on,” he said, and he started walking ahead.

Shy heard the sound of the distant motorcycle again. They needed to get off the streets as soon as possible.

“What the hell we supposed to be doing, anyways?” Carmen said. “Just wandering around aimlessly?”

“Getting supplies,” Marcus said. “Then me, you and Shy are going home.”

“And Shoe's going to Arizona,” Shy added.

“I know
that,
” Carmen snapped. “I'm talking about
now.
Right this second.”

No one answered.

As Carmen and Marcus followed Shoeshine, Shy reached down for a half-rotted potato that one of the women had dropped. He turned it over in his hands, studying the small craters in its thick, wrinkled skin. It had been a little more than a month since the earthquakes hit, and already people were desperate enough to loot rotting potatoes.