Mendez's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Mendez drove another hour before he found a place that looked worth stopping. A half-collapsed building sat alone off the broken road, its walls cracked, one corner spilling brick into a ring of rubble. He killed the engine behind it, where the jeep would sit in shadow. He turned in his seat and looked at Emmy. She met his eyes without blinking. "Three rules," he said. "You stay between me and Riley. You don't speak unless we speak first. If I say down, you go flat and you don't move until I say up. Understand?" "Understand," Emmy said. Riley checked her rifle and slid out. "Kid's tougher than half the grown men I've met." "That's what worries me," Mendez said. Inside the ruin, the roof had caved on one end. Sunlight cut through the dust in white bars. Riley found the cache first, under a fallen shelf: four dented cans, a sealed bag of rice, two jugs of water. Not much. Enough to matter. Emmy crouched by the doorway and watched the road, exactly where Mendez had put her. "Load it fast," Mendez said. He was bent over the last jug when he heard the click behind him. Not Riley's rifle. Wrong sound. "Stand up slow," a voice said. "All three of you." Mendez stood. The man in the doorway was thin, sunburned, and holding a real pistol, not scrap. His eyes moved across Riley, across the cans, across Emmy, and stayed on Emmy a beat too long. "Easy," Mendez said. He set the jug down and showed his hands. "There's enough here to split. Take half. Walk away." "I'll take all of it," the scavenger said. "And the jeep. And whatever the girl's worth to somebody." Riley's knuckles went white on her rifle. Mendez shifted his weight, one boot forward, the movement small enough to look like nothing. "Fair," Mendez said. "Just let me set the rice down first." He crouched. The scavenger's pistol tracked him down. Mendez grabbed a brick from the rubble at his knee and threw it in one motion, hard, at the man's face. The pistol went off into the ceiling. Mendez came up under it and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. They hit the wall together. Mendez got a hand on the pistol, twisted, and put two rounds through the scavenger's ribs. The man slid down the wall. He was dead before he settled. Riley was already moving, sweeping the doorway, checking the road. "Clear." Mendez's hands were shaking again. He wiped them on his fatigues and looked at Emmy. She was still crouched by the doorway. She had not made a sound. "You okay?" he said. "Gunshots carry," Emmy said. "We should go." Mendez picked up the pistol and the supplies. She was right. The shot had gone up, and something in this wasteland was always listening.