The First City (The Dominion Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Sleep hadn’t come easily and when it did it brought melancholy dreams, as if she’d glimpsed something mysteriously beautiful only to have it slip away upon waking.

  Zoey casts off thoughts of the dreams. Even though she couldn’t fully remember them they still tinged the entire morning with a longing she doesn’t fully understand. But now, with the window down and the cold breeze pouring in on her, they are less substantial, papery things torn through by the harsh light of day.

  She reaches to the passenger seat and grasps the water jug there, drinking only two swallows before setting it down. There is barely a gallon left; soon she’ll have to find a clean source to refill the dwindling supply. But if the road continues unbroken and without hindrance, she thinks she’ll be close to Seattle by evening. It already feels as if she’s crossed into Washington State, some internal compass that reads the landscape and scent of the air. But she knows what it really is: the feeling of safety since the mountains can’t be too far off. Perhaps she’ll even see them by mid-afternoon.

  Her eyes flick from the rearview mirror, assuring her she’s still the sole occupant of the road, before traveling down to the gauges set in the dashboard. The gas tank is nearing the quarter-full mark. It’s emptied quickly from full the night before, and she chews on her lower lip, willing a fuel source to come into view around the next corner. When the next bend only reveals more unbroken landscape she sighs, settling back into the seat. At least the roads are clear of snow and the skies aren’t threatening any other type of weather that might slow her down. Though she knows when she reaches the mountains there may be plenty of problems with the passes—at least that’s what the others have told her about winter in the elevations.

  Her throat tightens at the thought of the group, and she allows herself an image of the last good moment she had with them, everyone gathered around the table eating in Riverbend, Merrill and Chelsea’s announcement, Eli saying one of his last jokes.

  Her vision blurs and she blinks into the wind, letting it dry her eyes. She supposes the small cuts the past opens are the retribution for what she’s caused. Never being able to see them again the punishment for being who she is.

  She presses the last of the tears away with her palm and glances into the rearview.

  A vehicle straddles the center of the road behind her.

  Zoey flinches, arms jerking the wheel dangerously to the right, the drop past the road’s shoulder opening up, eager for her to careen into its depths. She yanks the car back into the lane, turning in her seat to stare out the back window.

  The car behind her is large, sitting much higher than her own, on wide wheels that extend past the fenders. The grille is missing and the chrome bumper sits at a twisted angle, almost like a smile.

  And it is gaining on her.

  No.

  Zoey presses the accelerator down to the floor, hugging the inside curve of the road as she blasts around and up a slight rise before dropping down into a small valley. In the mirror the trailing car disappears for a long enough span for her to hope they gave up, but then it reappears, steel sparkling in the sunlight.

  The motor of her car whines and the entire vehicle shakes, coughing once before picking up speed again. No, no, no, not now, not now. She squeezes the steering wheel until her knuckles pop as she barely brakes at the next curve, the back wheels sliding sickeningly sideways before hooking in. She glances into the mirror again and her pulse escalates even higher. The car is close enough now to hear its throaty grumble, like the unabated thunder of an approaching storm.

  She has to get off the road. There will be no outrunning the superior vehicle and she doesn’t want to be traveling at high speed when it draws even with her. Images of it clipping her bumper and sending her off into the chasm careen through her mind and she shuts them out, focusing on keeping control of the car and herself. She scans the road ahead, searching for a turnoff, somewhere to make a stand if it comes to that, but there is nothing but the sweeping plains to her left and the sheer drop opposite.

  The car behind her closes the distance as they reach another straight stretch, a dark form in the driver’s seat becoming defined. She can make out wide shoulders and two white hands gripping the wheel, their brightness like fish bellies in the sun.

  On the left side a paved road appears, shooting straight away toward a gathering of houses in the distance, but she knows the driver will overtake her before she ever reaches any of the structures. Zoey blows past the turnoff at nearly eighty-five, tapping the brake too hard on the next curve so that something shrieks behind her. The smell of scorched rubber fills the interior of the car, so pungent she almost doesn’t notice the narrow dirt road coming up on the right.

  Without thinking she hammers the brake, noting that the car hasn’t yet appeared around the last corner.

  She twists the wheel, feeling that stomach-clenching slide of the tires on solid pavement, and aims at the side road.

  The rear end of the car skids and clips a road sign, jolting her so hard her teeth rattle. There is a loud bang and the wheel shakes in her hands as gravel kicks up, battering the undercarriage.

  The road shoots straight down at a steep angle and as soon as she sees the drooping guard cables lining the hairpin turn at the bottom, she knows she is going to crash.

  Her foot goes instinctively to the brake.

  The tires skid in the gravel, rumbling over a rough patch that slews her sideways into the cables.

  Then she’s airborne, drab rock and dust filling up the windshield’s view. The car hammers the ground, tips and straightens enough for her to catch a glimpse of the decline she’s on. It makes the side road she flew from seem flat. For a terrifying moment she’s sure she’ll simply blast face-first through the windshield, but her safety belt yanks her back before a towering rock fills up the right side of her vision.

  Steel screams and crumples.

  The passenger-side window explodes and Zoey squeezes her eyes shut, every person she’s ever cared about or killed blazing through her mind.

  She rocks back into her seat as the car shudders and rolls in reverse for a few feet before stopping. The motor rattles out a final effort to stay running and falls quiet. A hissing screech fills the air and for several seconds she thinks she’s the one making it before noticing the steam blasting from the rumpled right side of the hood. She lets out a long, shaky breath and takes inventory of herself.

  Her ears ring and her sprained wrist aches. She touches her face and head, sure her hands will come back sticky with blood, but they’re clean and dry. She moves her legs and feet. They work as well. She’s unharmed.

  A hole punches through the roof and the dashboard shatters. She has a moment to note that the bullet went directly through the gas gauge before she’s pulling the door handle, ready to dive out of the vehicle.

  The door squeals but doesn’t budge.

  Another shot thunks into the passenger seat and dust flies into the air.

  Zoey lunges hard against the stuck door with her shoulder. It groans but only travels several inches before rebounding.

  Two bullets punch into the hood and a third rips through her water jug, spattering her shoulder with moisture. She slams herself against the door again and it gives, spilling her onto the ground. Immediately she hears a voice yelling something, a jumble of words that don’t seem to go together. There’s a small pop and dust puffs up three feet to her left.

  She rolls toward the safety of the cliff, drawing her handgun as she gains her feet. Four more shots strafe the ground beside her, and there is the mad insect-whine of lead close to her ear. Then she’s in the shadowed safety of the canyon’s side, her back against solid rock, breath smoldering in her chest.

  “I know you have some!” the voice yells above her. It is tremulous and high. “You give me the spaghetti and the cheese! He’s hurt and he’s hungry, damn it! Aren’t you a person? Don’t you have a heart? He’s just a boy!” Two shots punctuate the end of the tirade, snapping harmles
sly into the ground six feet in front of her. Zoey turns her head, trying to see where the man is, but he’s hidden behind the sheer rise of the rock. It sounds as if he’s standing at the hairpin turn where she left the road to see if the car could fly.

  She nearly laughs then. She’s only learned to drive in the last few months and Merrill had warned her many times to take it slow. Speed works inversely to control, he’d said. The faster you go, the less control you have. She definitely understands now.

  “He needs it! He’s starving, you down there! You hear me. You have the ears and functions! Don’t lie to me. You probably have more than enough. Too much! Glutton! You eat while he starves!” A shot hits the rear tire of her car, and it deflates in a single whoosh, sinking the bumper almost to the soil. “We had chickens until the fox came and then nothing. Damn him! Damn that fox all to hell and back! The chickens had eggs and they were brown. Brown like the sand in the sandbox at the old house.”

  Zoey shuffles to one side and glances over a shoulder-high shelf of rock. The wall past it has eroded, leaving a wash of silt at its base. If she were to run that way she’d be exposed. In the other direction the overhang above extends like a jutting chin, but she can’t see what’s on the other side and might be an easy target if she goes that way as well. She’s pinned down.

  “The roof leaked but we had buckets. And the rain tasted like blood but we drank it anyway.” The voice lowers, becoming acidic. “You don’t know. You weren’t there in the dark when they came. Took the food and the water. And they knew we’d die but they didn’t care. Like you don’t care. You eat up the world and you don’t care at all. You’re just like them.”

  The man quiets and the silence is even more unsettling. The engine has quit hissing and only a slight breeze winds through the canyon. Zoey listens, trying to make out the sound of movement or the telltale shift of rock, but there is nothing. She tries not to breathe and presses herself harder against the wall, bracing her feet deeper in the dirt. She regrips her handgun with sweat-slicked fingers. Maybe she should run now. The last time he spoke he sounded somewhere off to her right. If she runs around the rock shelf, she should be too hard a target to hit. Plus, judging by the report of his gun, it sounds like a small caliber, maybe .22 or something close to it. She definitely has the advantage with the 9mm. She hopes it doesn’t come to that since the man doesn’t sound at all coherent. He’s most likely disturbed and simply—

  White-hot pain lances the side of her right foot and she has time to look down to see the hole in her shoe as the shot meets her ears. Blood spurts from the bullet hole in a dark ribbon, before she cries out and topples over.

  The rock scratches her back as she falls but she barely notices. Her foot is on fire, throbbing like a burning coal each time her heart beats. She brings her leg up, grasping her foot with both hands, the part of her mind screaming that she’s dropped her gun drowned out by the pain. Blood wells up out of the hole in her shoe and drips between her fingers. She presses hard on it, swallowing another cry that yearns to slip free.

  Rocks and sand slide down from above and sprinkle on the ground a dozen feet away.

  He’s coming.

  Zoey lets go of her foot, craning her neck around, searching frantically for the pistol.

  “Got you, thief!” the man yells. More dust billows down from where he’s gradually descending. “You’ll share. You’ll share if it kills you. He’s starving now and we ate the dog already.”

  Her gun lies three feet away leaning against a stone, the grip upturned to the sky. Zoey slides to it as the man makes an oof sound. He’s on the canyon floor. “Gonna get him food and then he’ll be better. You’ll see. She didn’t believe me but that’s okay because she’s gone now. I promised I’d save him but she went away. Good riddance.”

  Zoey pushes forward with her feet, gritting her teeth against the pain as she snags the handgun.

  “Hey, stop that.” A shot comes from so close by she’s sure she’s dead. Something tugs at her shirtsleeve and then she has the handgun and is rolling over, yanking the trigger three times at the figure standing a few steps away.

  The booms of her weapon are so loud she’s unaware she’s screaming until the reports fade away, bouncing off every rock and stone so that it sounds as if she fired a thousand times.

  The man stumbles back, the rifle in his hands tipping up and discharging again as he trips and falls to his side. His legs kick and he coughs wetly. Zoey sits up, her shaking weapon still trained on the fallen man. He groans long and painfully, a sound that turns her stomach and seems to go on forever. Maybe she only wounded him. Maybe she can save him.

  She starts to pull herself to her feet as the man’s groan trails off and his legs spasm and fall still. She waits, counting to thirty in case it’s a trick, before hoisting herself upright, the cold stone biting into her hand. Her foot fills with stunning pain as she puts weight on it, and the world goes gray in the distance. She takes a few steadying breaths before taking a step. This isn’t the worst pain. Not even close. She runs through the other injuries she’s had, ranking them from the most severe to insubstantial just to get her mind off the burning each time she steps. But with every movement her foot insists that it’s suffered the gravest damage in memory.

  Zoey nears the man’s boots and she notes the rifle is out of reach, several feet away, before examining him closer. He’s garbed in filthy clothing, the pants and jacket a matching drab green or brown, she can’t be sure. His hands are even whiter than when she first saw them in her rearview mirror and they’re balled into loose fists. His face is a tangled nest of shockingly red hair and beard, his mouth open, revealing graying teeth and holes where many have fallen out.

  She hobbles around him and kicks the rifle farther away before nudging his shoulder with her wounded foot. He doesn’t move but three blossoms of red, much darker than his hair and beard, continue to grow in the center of his chest.

  A clatter of rocks comes from above and she snaps the gun up, nearly pulling the trigger again. A small cascade of sand rains down, a stone unsettled by the man’s passage dropping to the ground several paces away. She waits in case she was wrong before limping away from the body back to her car.

  After gathering the backpack out of the rear seat, she empties the remaining dregs of water from the destroyed jug into the one that’s still whole and zips it into the pack. She gazes up at the sky; the sun, now dimmed by a layer of thin clouds, has fallen from its pinnacle to the west. In a few hours it will be dusk and much colder.

  Around the opposite corner of the rock shelf is a tumble of large stones that lead up to a washout beside the side road. Wincing at the steady beat of pain in her foot, Zoey climbs. Some rocks shift beneath her careful step and cause her to put more weight on her injury. Blood oozes from the hole in her shoe, but at least it’s no longer gushing. She makes the road and trudges up it, the man’s big car coming into sight after only a minute of walking. It’s parked half on, half off the main road, engine quiet.

  She draws her gun again and approaches the vehicle quietly and as low as her wound allows her. There is no one in the torn front seats that she can see and only a bundle of blankets in the back. She lets out a sigh of relief and straightens, but it’s only then that she notices the shoes poking from the bottom portion of the blankets in the rear seat. Keeping her gun pointed at the bundle, she speaks.

  “Don’t move. I have a gun.”

  The shoes remain still.

  Working her way around the back of the car, she stops on the opposite side, checking again to make sure the person hasn’t moved. With one motion she yanks the door open and pulls the blanket free.

  The boy lies molded into the rear seat, arms crossed lovingly over his chest as if he’s hugging himself. She guesses he was perhaps fifteen when he died but that was many, many months ago. His skin is papery and mottled brown and purple. She can see the outlines of his finger bones in his hands and the gaunt shape of his skull where his hair has fallen
out. His eyes are mercifully closed and a small stuffed bear is tucked in beside him against the seat.

  She looks at the starved boy, and leans against the car’s cool steel. For a long time she can only think of the man’s words, his final ravings about feeding a son who has been gone for months, taking his father’s sanity with him.

  The dead grass whispers, urging her to get moving but she can’t. A small puddle of blood surrounds her foot, its mirror shine giving her a crimson reflection of her face. She twists her heel, smearing her visage away and straightens. With gentle movements she draws the boy’s blanket back over his form.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and closes the door. In the front of the car she sees nothing but scraps of the seat’s stuffing strewn across the console and floorboards. One larger chunk has half-moon shapes missing from it and it takes her several seconds to realize they are bite marks.

  Zoey steps away from the vehicle, the urge to climb back down to the canyon floor and give the man a proper burial nearly turning her in that direction. But she has nothing to dig with except her hands and she’s wounded. She has to find shelter somewhere and attend to her foot before it becomes infected. How far back was the grouping of homes? A mile? Two? She can’t recall, but even if she were able to walk there, because she’ll never be able to get herself to climb behind the wheel of the big car, she has no idea if the houses are inhabited.