3.
 They left the hummer where it stood, front wheels turned slightly to one side, just a meter away from where green mold made a border between the clean concrete and the inky looking water. She was fond of the car. Sam and the car had come together for her, about two years ago, after a couple of drifters had beat and raped her and left her for dead on the beach near Yuma. The car looked mean and tired and dusty, with its water tanks and rope gear and slot for .50 cal heavy machine gun. Reliable. She was fond of Sam too.
Taxi found some cans of soup and spam in the rear. Sam closed the metal plates down on the windows and padlocked them. They each wore a wide camp knife, a .45 relic, some ammo, and a web pack with compass, lighter, and hardtack.Laden with the food, a bag of water, a sack of ammo, and the tommy gun, they hopped over broken blocks of concrete, avoiding getting wet.
Sam was bearded, sandy-haired, tall, wiry, with brooding dark eyes. He liked to wear an old camo campaign cap whose rumpled edges further hooded and shadowed his gaze. He was an angry man, who could be quite violent, but he was very loyal to her, and besides she knew he was also hurting real bad inside from something he’d never told anyone, not even her; just she could rea the pain sometimes when he watched her, and she figured it must have been a woman.
Taxi was soft in the feminine places, but otherwise boyish, tough, with close-cut blond hair, a scar on her forehead. Her eyes were greenish-gray with gold flecks that sparkled when she was angry. Her fine, narrow nose let freckles sprawl in a galaxy over both full cheekbones. She kept a little chocolate-colored lipstick Sam got her at a market, that she wore on special occasions; it made her small mouth look a little more big and luscious. And that was it, except for the smokes rolled up in the sleeve of her t-shirt.
It was Fall, and the sun fell all too rapidly from high to low in the sky.
They trudged through reeds by the pond, later through tall grass, then through rough chapparal. They stopped often to listen, to scan around them for anyone listening.
Once, Taxi thought she heard a snap of twig nearby. Tommy gun in both hands, she advanced toward it, but it was a mystery lost in a deep copse of tangled ancient mesquite. Probably a small animal, hopefully.
They wandered about a mile from the car, to a cone-shaped hill of small bits of concrete rubble about 50 meters high. At the top were several chunks of what looked like patio slab, and on top of those were some round boulders. “Be good to hide in there,” Sam observed. “Little tight, but nobody’ll see us.”
“Guess we eat cold,” she said. No way they were going to light a fire and be seen for a mile around. They made short work of their food, for they were hungry. They still had sure water from L.A., so they rationed that for the night. Then they lit a pipe of tobacco and passed that back and forth; she doubted the smell would drift very far. For a while she whittled a stick with her knife while Sam opened up the opera glasses and scanned the neighborhood.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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