djinn wars 01 - chosen (15 page)

“There were a few of us.” I had to stop then, the enormity of it threatening to overwhelm me. With a mortality rate like that, it meant there were maybe two thousand people left in Albuquerque. That sounded like a lot, until you realized there used to be almost a million people living in and around the city center. “But you’re right — I suppose it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. It’s not as if we could have stopped it.”

“No,” he agreed, his features drooping even more.

“So….” I went on, not sure where I was supposed to go from here. It was pretty clear that the voice meant for me to leave Albuquerque alone, but now that I’d met a survivor, could I simply leave him behind? He appeared to be harmless. “Do you live around here?”

The man gave a vague gesture over his shoulder, toward the west. “Off Chavez Road.”

That wasn’t too far from where we stood. No wonder he’d come foraging over here. “Your first time out and around…after?”

A nod. “I didn’t know if it would be safe, but I started to run out of things, and this was the closest store….”

“There’s plenty left,” I assured him. “The looters kind of tore the place up, but they didn’t steal all the Doritos. I’d probably go to a grocery store if you really want something decent to eat, though.”

“That was my plan after this, but I could walk here, so I figured I’d come here first.” For the first time his eyes took on a certain glint, one I wasn’t sure I liked. “That your Cherokee out there?”

There wasn’t any point in denying it. For all I knew, he’d seen me pull up and get out of the SUV. “Yes.”

“Leaving town?”

A flicker of unease went over me. “I was thinking about it,” I hedged.

To my surprise, he didn’t seem that put off by my reply. “That might be a good idea. It might be safer where there aren’t as many survivors. People are going to get desperate.”

They already have,
I thought, recalling the way Chris Bowman had broken into my house. Then again, that was a special case of one highly obsessed nut job. The survivors in Albuquerque would probably be a lot more interested in getting supplies than getting into my pants.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation away from me and my plans.

“I’m not sure. I figured food was the first step. After that?” He shrugged, then offered me a faint smile. “Right now, it’s just kind of good to hear another voice.”

I almost agreed with him, except I had been hearing a man’s voice in my head for the past few days. So what if the jury was still out as to whether that voice was real or not?

“Well, I don’t want to leave my dog sitting in the car too long,” I said, since it seemed to me that the man wouldn’t mind standing here and chatting all day, if it meant he didn’t have to be by himself.

He looked startled by the
non sequitur,
but then nodded. “Oh, of course. It is starting to warm up. You have a good day.” The way he said it made it sound as if he wasn’t sure such a thing was possible anymore.

Since there wasn’t much else I could do, I smiled slightly, then moved toward the exit. For a second or two, I was worried he might put out an arm to stop me, but he only stepped out of the way and headed into the store.

I allowed myself a small sigh of relief before going to the Cherokee and unlocking it, then quickly unloading the loot from my cart into the rear cargo area. From the front seat, Dutchie whined, but I wasn’t sure why. It was a little warm in the car, but nothing too bad — I’d made sure to crack the windows before I locked up the vehicle.

When I turned around, though, I almost dropped the car key. The stranger was standing there, holding a pistol pointed straight at me. His expression was no longer mild, but greedy. Not the kind of greed I’d seen in Chris Bowman, though. This man’s gaze wasn’t fixed on me, but the SUV I’d just closed up.

Without blinking, he said, “Give me the key. Now.”

Chapter Eight

At first I could only stand there, gaping at him. From the way he held the gun, a small .22, I could tell he didn’t have much experience. One part of my mind began to coolly calculate whether I was fast enough to get that Glock out of my waistband before he fired on me. My father had taken me to the indoor range many times, and shooting up in the hills around town even more, and he’d made me practice pulling the gun from a holster as well as the waistband of my pants. I knew I had far more experience than the man who faced me. But…was it enough?

Stalling for time, I stammered, “W-what?”

“You heard me.” He waved the pistol in what he probably thought was a threatening manner. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want the car.”

“But — ” I kept my hands out where he could see them, knowing that he was probably nervous enough just handling the gun that he might do something really stupid if I made any sudden movements. “There are plenty of abandoned vehicles all over the city. You don’t need mine.”

“Yes, I do.” His gaze shifted from the rear door of the Cherokee to my face, and I could see the desperation in his watery brown eyes. “I don’t have to hunt for the key, and it’s a four-wheel drive loaded with supplies. I doubt I’m going to find anything better.”

Well, when he put it that way…. “It needs gas, though. Do you know how to siphon gas?”

His bemused expression told me he didn’t.

“Look,” I went on, knowing there was no way in hell I was going to let him have my dad’s SUV, “it’s been a horrible week. I get that you feel desperate. But you don’t need to do this. There are plenty of alterna — ”

BLAM!
The pistol went off — not pointed at me, thank God, but somewhere over my shoulder and just above the roof line of the Cherokee. Even so, I jumped enough that I could feel the backs of my thighs hit the SUV’s rear bumper.

“I’m not negotiating,” he said. The look on his face shifted from confused to crafty. “But maybe you could come along. You say you know how to siphon gas?”

I actually hadn’t said that I did, but the truth was, my father had showed me and Devin once, when Devin ran out of gas while driving Mom’s Escape. It wasn’t that difficult, really, as long as you selected a vehicle without a locking gas cap. In the back of the Cherokee, along with the rest of my supplies, was a long rubber tube I’d brought along for that very purpose. With the power out, it would simply be easier to siphon gas from abandoned vehicles rather than attempt to switch the pumps at a gas station over to manual.

“Maybe I do,” I hedged, my pulse beginning to escalate.

“You seem like you might be…useful,” the man said, and this time his watery gaze remained fixed on my face. It was clear his thoughts were beginning to run in other directions than merely stealing my car.

Dude, I could put you through a wall,
I thought, but that inner remark was more bravado than anything else. Yes, he looked like the quintessential wimpy office worker. On the other hand, he’d still managed to sneak up on me, so I wasn’t about to underestimate him.

Since I couldn’t trust myself to speak without giving myself away, I only shrugged. At the same time, I let my hands drop to my sides, my right hand beginning to move slowly backward, toward the reassuring weight of the Glock in my waistband. Thank God the shirt I was wearing hung loosely enough that the man didn’t seem to have noticed he wasn’t the only armed person in this little convo.

He stepped closer. Now I could smell the stink of perspiration and fear on him. Maybe I hadn’t had a decent shower since before the Heat began, either, but at least I’d tried to wash up as best I could, and made sure to put on deodorant before I got dressed each morning. I couldn’t say the same for this useless specimen of humanity.

Were only the weak, the crazy, or the unscrupulous left? And if that was the case, what the hell did that say about me?

I decided I’d think about that later. In the meantime, I had bigger things to worry about. I needed to get away from this guy. Shooting him was not a particularly appealing prospect, but I would if I had to.

No wonder the voice had been urging me to get out of Albuquerque. I wished I hadn’t dragged my feet quite so much about that. If I’d left straight away, as he’d told me to do, I would never have run into Chris Bowman…wouldn’t be standing here now, with this milquetoast former bureaucrat holding his puny .22 on me and thinking he was Dirty Harry.

And where the hell was the voice? He had saved me from Chris the Creep twice, but was conspicuously absent at the moment. Did he think I could handle this guy on my own?

Time to find out, I supposed.

“Oh, I’m very useful,” I snapped, reaching the rest of the way so I could pull the Glock out of the waistband of my Levi’s and point it straight at the stranger’s face.

He blinked and took a step backward. The gun wavered in his hands, and then he tightened his grip. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Well, I kind of did, since you were holding a gun on me.” Unlike him, I didn’t move, didn’t blink. “By the way, my father was a police officer. He made sure I knew how to shoot this thing. So don’t think for a second that I’m holding this gun up for show, because I’m not. I know what I’m doing. The best thing you can do is back off and go find a car someplace else. There are thousands in the city up for grabs right now.”

No response at first. His mouth opened and closed once, making him look like a fish on a hook. I got the distinct impression he didn’t know what he should do — shoot, or turn tail and flee. That made him all the more dangerous, in my eyes, because I really didn’t know how he was going to react. I doubted he was someone who’d been inclined toward criminal acts in his past life. But he’d been pushed to the limit by all the death he’d seen, and that made him volatile. Unpredictable.

“Please,” I said softly. “Just go.”

The gun shook in his hands. I remained motionless, the Glock still pointed directly at his face, my stance square and solid, just the way my father had taught me. Then I saw him twitch, and thought,

Oh, shit.

A bang, louder than I’d anticipated. Smoke puffed out from the chamber of the .22, and I knew the bullet was going to hit me. How could he miss at such close range?

Time slowed down, or possibly my thought processes sped up. I wasn’t quite sure, but it was almost as if I could see the silvery-gray shape of the bullet speeding toward me. My entire body clenched, waiting for the shock of impact. At the same time, my finger clenched on the trigger of the Glock, and it went off with a much more impressive
bang
than the one that had issued from the .22. My ears began to ring. That was the first time I’d ever shot a gun without wearing earplugs, and damn, it was louder than I’d expected.

Two things happened then — first, it seemed as if the air in front of me shimmered, and the bullet the stranger had fired at me bounced away as if it had hit a pane of bulletproof glass. He had no such protection, however, and the shot I’d fired hit him in the chest, sending him flying backward, blood beginning to run down the front of the sweat-stained dress shirt he wore.

His head hit the pavement with a sharp
crack,
and I winced. But even as I did so, I realized I was all right. It should have been me lying there on the ground with dark blood trickling from my chest, but it wasn’t.

Are you ready to leave now?
the voice asked. For some reason, he sounded tired. Well, that made two of us.

I finally lowered the gun. “That was you?”

I told you I would protect you.

“Couldn’t you have stopped him before he fired at me?” It seemed the voice was falling down a bit in the omnipotence department.

I cannot see everything. Your fear called me to you, just as it called to me last night when that creature broke into your house. When I saw what was happening, I put up the barrier to keep the bullet from touching you.

Just like that. What kind of powers did the voice control, to be able to construct an invisible shield that would deflect a bullet?

Obviously something far, far beyond anything I’d ever heard of.

But then, I’d already sort of gathered that.

Pulling in a breath, I flipped the Glock’s safety back on, then stuck the gun into my waistband once again. After that, I looked over to where the stranger lay groaning on the asphalt. From the amount of blood that had pooled beneath him, I guessed he didn’t have much longer to live. Should I be feeling guilty for that? I didn’t know. At the moment, all I felt was a sort of bone-deep weariness…and the day wasn’t even half over yet.

I approached him, then crouched down near his head. His eyes flickered open and fixed on me, pleading and scared. “I didn’t want to do that,” I said quietly. “You should have just left me alone. There’s plenty in this city for everyone.”

A strangled sound came from his throat, possibly one of protest. I couldn’t tell for sure, since he was obviously beyond forming actual words.