Carla turned to face the nurse who’d been staring off into space. Obviously, her own demons were still torturing her.

  "Would you come with us, Betty?" Now that the clinic was gone, Carla doubted the woman had many options.

  "I don't know," Betty said after a long pause. She was stroking both arms which were folded across her chest, much like Maria’s had been when they laid her in the grave. "I've always considered San Antonio home. My place—it's not much, but it's all I've got. I have to believe that with the time I have left, I can still do some good."

  Betty had proven to be surprisingly strong-willed and resourceful in the little time Carla had known her. There wasn’t much Carla could say that might persuade her. She appreciated Betty's determination to do good and wished her nothing but success.

  "If it's any comfort, I think there's a good chance that any more of the thug soldiers will just come straight for me," Carla said, smiling. “You should be safe. Relatively so, but you do need allies…friends. Remember that.”

  "Thank you," Betty stated softly. "I will miss you, Carla Garcia." Despite their differences, she had developed strong feelings for the young woman. "You take good care of your family and yourself." She turned and began slowly walking away.

  Carla ran over before she had made it too far and passed her something. "I almost forgot. Thanks!" It was the old pistol. "I found one more bullet that fit. It was in a cup in the truck out there. Just one round left.”

  Betty knew the significance and actually appreciated the gesture. "Thank you, dear. I may just pick up one of those rifles out front, too. I always hated guns…they do so much …" she trailed off.

  Carla suddenly had horrific visions of the medical ward and knew what the woman meant. She patted her arm and nodded, then pulled her into a quick hug. “Stay safe, don’t die. The world needs you.”

  The rest of them were packed and ready to head out within the hour. Dawn was just breaking off to the east. They didn't carry much more than a change of clothes and a few family photos in their backpacks. Carla had also slipped the old SmartComms unit into hers. She’d never reached anyone but still tried every few days. "Get water, as much as you can carry," Carla ordered. That was one of the few things they had left in relative abundance. She saw Meredith pushing her teddy bear down into the boy's backpack. Their eyes met, and Carla noticed a surprising level of clarity in her sister. Maybe this will be a good thing for her.

  She took one final look up at the house that had been her home for the past seven years before turning away from it forever. Carla didn't dare turn back around and look at it again. She knew she'd never leave if she did.

  They, too, picked over the dead soldiers, retrieving weapons, ammo, and a few other items. It was obvious that others had come during the night to do a proper scavenge on the group.

  Carla no longer saw the bodies of the dead as people, they were just things. Things that had been determined to get in the way of her surviving. She knew she had become much of what she’d originally feared but it was not a bad thing. She was adapting.

  "Trucks are a no-go," Joshua said climbing out of the nearly antique vehicle they'd sheltered beside the night before. "The Jeeps, too. Motors are all shot to hell, battery packs are useless now."

  "By the way, Josh, how did you get to be such a good shot?" Carla asked, still having trouble believing how quickly he'd killed that soldier, and who knew how many more he’d downed in the skirmish?

  He shrugged. "When I was a kid, my father taught me how to hunt. He showed me all of the secrets. I just didn’t much like hunting, didn’t see the point, you know? Of course, I've never really needed those skills until now," Joshua responded.

  They shouldered the packs and started south. They barely made it fifty yards when Carla saw Rachel, Carson's daughter, sitting outside. She was watching her little brother, Ryan. Carla was clearly upset as they looked up. "Hi, Miss Carla," Rachel said as her tiny hand waved.

  Carla opened her lips to respond, but she was distracted by how thin and gaunt they looked. She hadn't seen the children in weeks. Chelsea had still seemed healthy enough yesterday, but the kids...damn.

  "Rachel, honey, you and Ryan stay where I can see you," their dad called out from his yard.

  Carla was surprised to see Carson, and she realized he'd not gone unscathed either. He was wearing a bloodied bandage around his arm. She wondered if it was from the soldiers or his wife's attack. Either was probably just as likely.

  He’d been a huge help last night. Probably saved my life, she thought. Carson was always good in a crisis. He was a man of action—probably one of the things that had attracted her to him. She knew they were done, but still, a fire inside her just wanted to feel his embrace, to feel his lips on her one last time. Closure would have been nice, but it wasn’t to be.

  "You're leaving?" Carson asked.

  Carla gave a slow nod, and that was all the proof he needed. Carla had hoped for closure after everything they had been through together. At the very least, the two should have a proper goodbye. Her opinion of him as a husband, a father, and even as a lover had run the gamut over the last month. Now she saw him from a different vantage point. He had a job to do, to keep those kids alive.

  "Do you want to come along with us?" she asked, despite the fact that she already knew the answer.

  "I can't," Carson said. His tone was one of total defeat. "I've got to stay for the kids."

  "You know there's nothing around here for you," Joshua argued. "You should come with us, man. Not that I know where we’re headed, but it has to be better."

  "That may be true, but I have a family to care for. After all that last night, I'm surprised they even came outside. They don't want to leave their home. Therefore, I'm here."

  “They don’t look so good, Carson.” Joshua whispered. Carla was glad he’d said what she was thinking. Did the basket of food even get to them?

  Carson nodded, his eyes filling with tears. “We’ll be okay. Good luck, guys.” He hugged Carla tightly. “Find love…always.”

  That was the end of it. There was nothing else to say. The time for words was over, fate seemed to hold their future, not emotion, or logic. Carson looked longingly at Carla, his eyes going watery. He reached a hand up to gently touch the bandage on her neck wound, then slowly took Rachel's hand in his and led her and Ryan back inside.

  Carla was worried about Chelsea's instability, Carson, and the children as well. It gnawed at her very soul that she could do nothing more to help them. She desperately wanted to believe they'd make it, but she couldn't deny the very real feeling that this was the last time she'd probably ever see them. Meredith met her gaze and gave a slow nod as if to confirm that feeling.

  “You can’t change their destiny,” Meredith said softly.

  “Do I even want to know what it is?” Carla asked. She’d slowly come to terms with how hateful Chelsea had been toward her sister, and apparently it had been going on long before the war started.

  Meredith shook her head. “I’m sorry.” She looked at the sunrise and offered a small, bitter smile. “That woman is caustic, Carla. Her hatred of herself will infect and destroy everything around her. She’s going to take the kids and leave.”

  “What will happen to them? What about Carson?” Carla asked, anxious for any sliver of the truth. She didn’t know exactly when she’d become a believer, but there was something to her sister’s visions.

  Meredith shook her head. “It won’t be good. Chelsea won’t be the only monster out here.”

  "Miss Carla?" Jackson asked, thankfully distracting her from the unpleasant discussion. She noticed he used the same name Carson’s kids always had for her. "Where are we going now?"

  Carla dried tears from her own eyes before answering. She wasn't sure. “Just somewhere away from here.” Maybe there was an aid camp somewhere. Not Vineland, but somewhere official. Over by the Lackland Space Base might be an option. Then she recalled the sounds of battle that had come from that direction the night they’d escaped Lehigh…

  "How about to Anna's?" Jackson asked. "They were really nice to us."

  It wasn't a bad idea, and one she'd already considered, but hated being a burden to them. The man had agreed to a trade deal, not taking in refugees. Showing up unannounced was a bold move. But hell, every move felt like a gamble. Carla had earned Tom's trust, so perhaps he would be willing to return the favor.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Carla loved San Antonio, the downtown, the Riverwalk, all the trendy bars and cool eateries. Now it was all gone; no one would be living in this pile of steel and concrete anytime soon, maybe never.

  “You see that building?” she asked Joshua as they quietly walked beside each other.

  Joshua turned and glanced across the clutter of roads and wreckage to where she pointed. “The Apex tower?” he asked. It had been a towering symbol of the city for over a decade. The turquoise glass wall reflecting the rest of the city from every angle. The rumor was apartments went for over 150 million.

  Carla nodded and gave a furtive glance at the lower levels as they passed. “I talked to one of the officers down at the precinct. He said no one got out of their alive.”

  “Holy shit, how can that be? There were thousands of residents in that building.”

  “And ten times that working in the offices and retail space. When the power went out, they were all sealed inside. The air stopped circulating, water, too. All the elevators stopped wherever they were at. That was bad enough, but the guy said the fire doors, you know, big heavy ones they must put on every few floors in high-rises, well, they all slammed shut and locked. No one could get them open.”

  “Come on,” Joshua said. “There had to be other ways out.”

  She shook her head. “The exterior cladding is all Armorglass, unbreakable. There was no way out. At least for the top few floors above that final set of fire doors.” She pointed to several darkened spots around the base of the building.

  Joshua saw the blackened lumpy stains around the building and the street. “No!”

  “Yeah, after a while they gave up and jumped.”

  The officials, or whomever was left in charge at that point, just wrote them off. Faster to get to the twenty percent, Carla thought morbidly.

  They walked for hours through the rest of the city's wreckage until they’d left civilization far behind. They saw a few people obviously scavenging for whatever they could find, but the survivors seemed to be dwindling faster now.

  “We’re not going that way, are we?”

  Carla looked where Joshua was pointing. Toward Vineland and much farther on, Lehigh. “No, we need to bypass all that. But we will have to get closer.” In the distance, she could just make out the edges of the place they’d taken shelter after being attacked in Vineland. She wondered how the highwaymen were functioning now with the mayor no longer calling the shots.

  “This is as close as I want to get to that place,” she said a few hours later. Using the zoom feature on her nearly useless SmartComm’s camera, she zeroed in on the highwaymen’s barricade. It appeared unmanned for a change and also seemed to be scattered across the road in pieces.

  She swept the view toward the forest to either side of the road and was shocked to see no people moving about. No cooking fires, nothing to indicate all the refugees that were there just a few weeks earlier. “Something’s changed,” she whispered. “I don’t see any people.” Something flashed through the screen, silver and small.

  “Should we…you know, check it out?” Joshua asked, unable to hide the trepidation in his words.

  A sound coming somewhere behind them spooked them into moving quicker. Carla had no intention of Vineland’s fate becoming theirs.

  She readjusted the straps on Jackson’s pack. She knew it had to be getting heavy, but the kid didn’t complain once. He was tough; they all would have to be even tougher to survive out here. That reminded her again of the previous night. She turned to her sister. “What about your…your followers?”

  “What about them?”

  Carla wasn’t sure how to say what she was thinking. “Won’t they miss you? I mean…what will they do if you aren’t around?”

  Meredith didn’t seem concerned, or maybe she just wasn’t accepting the fact that she had left them behind. Carla still wasn’t sure of how Meredith was from moment to moment but, she was determined to accept her as she was.

  “They’ll be fine,” Meredith said. “All I could do was point the way for them. It’s up to each of them to do what is needed.”

  “They really helped us last night. Some of them didn’t make it,” Carla said. “We owe them …everything, including our lives.”

  Meredith nodded. “They were faithful believers. Sadly, others will fall, but some…some will be around.”

  “I do need to tell you something else, Meredith. Where we are going...” Carla found herself suddenly tongue-tied.

  “It’s going to look like what was in my vision. I know, Sis,” Meredith said with an eery calm.

  Carla let it go. An hour later, they were into the first of the growing fields. Carla saw the lack of any beauty in the area. When she was younger, she often ventured out here to enjoy a place untouched by the rest of the world. These had not remained untouched, though. There were signs of a battle, a recent one. Not the destruction from the terrorist attack. But the burned-out vehicles mixed in with rusting Agrobots and more of the decaying dead was enough to make them avoid this area as well. This hadn't been the path Carla had used the previous day; she'd wanted to see the city once more and felt like this way might be safer. Now she was second guessing those decisions.

  "What do you think this is?" Jackson asked as he moved up between Carla and Joshua. He was bent down looking at the ground. The boy touched his fingers to the blackened soil then rubbed them in front of his face. "It's purple."

  It took Carla a minute to see what he saw, but then she noticed it everywhere. It was all around them. A thin layer of dust or pollen, but it was the wrong time of year for that. Also, it wasn't purple, it was more of a violet color. Lovely, but so alien. "I don't know, Jax."

  The boy smiled up at her, "My mom used to call me that."

  She knelt down beside him. "I'd love to hear all about your mom and your dad whenever you are ready to talk. I know they raised a very smart little boy.”

  He grinned and ran ahead a few feet, and she looked up to catch Joshua looking at her.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," he said, smiling.

  The abandoned battlefield faded, and soon Carla found herself on more familiar ground. The countryside was dotted with fields and fences that stretched on for miles. "We're getting close."

  "What do you know about these people?" Meredith asked. Carla had already told her that Tom had been to some of her services.

  “Not people, not really, just a man and his young daughter. Honestly, I don’t know much, the man is a farmer, I knew his older child from school. The wife is gone, youngest daughter is about Jackson's age. They are quiet, peaceful, but determined. I get the feeling they are good people."

  "You don't think they will just turn us away?" Joshua asked.

  Carla had been considering that possibility. It was front and center all morning, in fact. "They may, but I hope not. I know they need help to run the farm. You know, now that all the machinery is dead."

  "We aren't farmers," Joshua added.

  "Then we will learn," Carla snapped back. She wasn't sure Joshua had come to understand how completely the world had changed. We have to adapt to it, not the other way around.

  “We could be bringing the threat to them,” Meredith said casually.

  Carla knew what she meant. Part of her, a very big part, wanted to sneak into Lehigh to see what was happening in the aftermath of Cleveland’s death and the botched raid last night. He and Kincaid didn’t have an unlimited number of enforcers. She hoped it was chaos, but she thought again of all the supplies and equipment they had stored there. It really was the best of what old San Antonio had to offer before it succumbed.

  “Did you see that?” Joshua pointed ahead.

  Jackson had dropped to the dirt as he’d been ranging a good fifty feet ahead of the rest of them. Carla only saw a vague shadow that looked strange. It was inside a narrow band of trees bordering the field they were traversing.

  “What is it?” she asked, belly crawling up to Joshua.

  “I have no idea.” He was looking through the scope of his rifle. “Really hard to make it out. A man, I think, but it doesn’t look right.”

  Carla assumed it was one of Cleveland’s men. Maybe they’d been tracking them. She almost told Josh to shoot it, but what if it was Tom or simply another innocent trying to escape the gangs back toward town?

  She heard her friend click the gun’s safety off. Then watched as the barrel moved side to side in increasing arcs.

  “Shit!” he said. “It’s gone.”

  “Huh?” She looked back, and sure enough, whatever had been there in the shadows a minute ago was absent. Now it was just scrub brush and pines.

  They rose as a group and cautiously began working their way across the field.

  “I’m going to go check it out,” Joshua said before veering off to where the man had been.

  The others watched as he crouched low, his gun raised to high alert position looking for targets. He moved forward in ten-foot increments before dropping and scanning. Finally, he was at the spot. Carla saw he was staring down at the ground. His gun now held loosely. She started to go over, but he held a hand and stopped her. Whatever he was looking at he didn’t want the rest of them to see it.

  She watched as he knelt down and picked at something out of sight. Tall grass blocked most of her view, but she felt her pulse rising again. They weren’t out of danger.

  Joshua rejoined them minutes later and hurriedly got them moving away.

  “What was it? Was it a man?” Carla whispered.

  He didn’t answer her, and she asked him again, noticing that the color had drained from his face. Joshua was scared.