Read Reaper's Run - Plague Wars Series Book 1 Page 27

  -9-

  “What are we going to do for money?” Python asked as they neared St. Joseph, Missouri.

  Jill handed him a roll of bills the size of a packet of candy mints. “Three hundred. Should get us a tank of gas and some food.”

  “Where the hell did you hide this?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know.” Jill chuckled.

  “We’re pretty ratty looking, too,” Python went on. “We need some new clothes.” It was true; even discounting the dirt from crawling all over and under Iowa, they’d been wearing more or less the same few outfits for months.

  “Truck stops see all kinds. We need to pick up the interstate while it’s still dark.”

  “Right. I-29 South it is.”

  “There’s irony for you,” Jill said. “We’ll pass within ten miles of Fort Leavenworth.”

  Python didn’t respond, just slumped down in his seat. Then after a while he said, “I’m not going back.”

  “Of course not.” She spotted a sign and turned the Humvee onto the on-ramp for the interstate.

  “No, I mean it,” he said, turning haunted eyes toward Jill. “I’m done with prisons, even wimp-ass prisons like Camp 240.”

  “I’m with you, Keith.”

  “No, look, Reap, you’re not getting me. Dammit, what’s your real name, anyway?”

  She took a breath. “It’s Jill.”

  “Thanks, Jill. But listen to me good. I am not going back in. Whatever it takes. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “You can’t think that way. No matter what happens, we have to survive. Now that we can live to a thousand, so they say, we can wait the normals out.”

  Python snorted. “Or they can just torture us for a longer time.”

  Jill glanced at him, saw the resolve and determination in his eyes, and for the next half hour she worried silently.

  “Truck stop.” Python pointed.

  “Right.” Jill took the exit. “You go in and pay for the diesel, and pick up two sets of clothes, sweats or something. I should fit anything you do, except shoes. I wear a women’s nine, man’s eight. Don’t forget socks, and a couple of ball caps. And get a couple of shower tokens.” Soon she pulled up at a pump in the truck section, away from the cars where the Humvee and their mismatched appearance would draw more stares.

  Once she had pumped the vehicle full, she parked behind some semis, gathered her belongings, and met Python inside.

  The hot shower felt incredible; water in the camp had never been more than warm, and was often barely above freezing. Ten minutes later she rejoined her partner in matching outfits of cheap sweats and hoodies. Their next stop was the burger joint inside, where they ordered eight meals in go boxes. They wolfed down two each while bagging the other ones for later, another decided contrast to the bad, bland camp food.

  Thus fortified, they headed out to the Humvee.

  Jill grabbed Python’s elbow and steered him off at an angle when she saw what waited where she parked. Two SS vehicles sat next to their stolen truck, and several uniformed troops milled about.

  “We’re blown,” she said as they walked across the tarmac toward the on-ramp where the semis made their long runs up to cruising speed. “We have to get out of here right away, before they lock the place down.”

  “Gonna hop a truck?” he asked.

  “Exactly. Flatbed with something on it would be perfect.” They walked quickly into the bushes that lined the on-ramp, out of sight of any onlookers, or the drivers. Jill was sure the truckers were wise to unwanted riders, but she also knew they would not expect hers and Python’s physical capabilities. Probably as soon as they had achieved fifteen or twenty miles an hour they would be watching the road, not their mirrors.

  She let five or ten trucks pass in the next couple of minutes, getting a feel for the right place to get on, and crept through the bushes to set up.

  “Lowboy,” Jill said as a heavy hauler revved through its first few gears. It carried a large earth mover, chained down but not covered. Fortunately it was a standard load size, without an attendant safety vehicle. “This is it.”

  As it came past them, they dashed out of the undergrowth and ran up on the trailer from directly behind, to minimize their exposure to the driver’s vision. Then it was a simple thing to sprint up and climb aboard, even carrying a sack each. Soon they had settled in the lee of the airstream behind the behemoth’s steel treads.

  “You sleep,” Jill told Python, hooking a leg over him to make sure he did not roll with the sway of the trailer. “I’ll wake you up later.”

  He didn’t argue, but pillowed his head on his sack and went out like a broken bulb.