End of the World, Start of My Empire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Strangers

At a pumping station Nolan lights the first lamp in months while the women decide whether to stay; a scout drone circles overhead.

"Who the hell are you?" the redhead asked again.

"Nolan Greer," I said. "I used to fix power lines."

"Well, Nolan Greer, you just broke a truck with your face."

"With my arm."

"Fine. Congratulations to the arm."

The two riders who could still walk had already backed off to the washout.

I raised my hand, and every key they were holding flew out of their pockets and landed in the dirt at my feet.

"Walk," I said. "Tell your boss I'm not coming for the Yard yet."

They walked fast.

The captain lay face down in the dust, groaning, and I took my peaches and my copper wire out of his saddlebag.

I took the antibiotics out of his vest.

I took his boots too, because mine were gone and he had no more use for them.

The tall woman climbed down from the cage last.

She had a long dark braid and a steady, unhurried way of moving.

She looked at my face, then at my nose.

"Your nose was broken," she said.

"It was."

"It isn't now."

"I noticed."

"I have a lot of questions, and you have about ten minutes before the riders come." She held out a hand.

"Hallie Weatherwax. I was an Army medic. That's Bria Harlan, and that's Tova Kingsborough."

Bria waved with two fingers, her other hand still pressed against her side.

Tova did not wave.

She was the broad-shouldered one with short black hair and a scar through her left eyebrow.

She was already checking the rifles the riders had dropped.

"They hit our convoy on the interstate," Hallie said. "They kept the three they wanted and left the rest on the road."

"What did they want you for?"

"Me, because I can stitch. Bria, because she can fix a radio. Tova, because she used to be somebody."

Tova racked a bolt and said nothing.

"I know a place," I said. "The old water district pumping station on the river. I worked there before the Fall."

"It has a roof, a well, and a door that locks."

"Does it have a generator?" Bria asked.

"It has a generator that hasn't run in a year."

"Then it has a generator I can fix."

"Maybe I'll fix it," I said, and tilted my arm so the blue light showed.

Bria's whole face changed.

She looked at the cuff.

"I'm going to take that apart," she said.

"You can't take it apart. It's stuck to my arm."

"I said I'm going to take it apart. I didn't say you'd be using it afterward."

Hallie snorted.

Even Tova's mouth twitched.

I started the Tax truck with a thought, and Tova looked at the cab, and then at me.

"If I get in that truck, I'm not your prisoner," she said. "And I don't take orders from a man I met eight minutes ago."

"I'm not giving orders."

"Good. Then I'll drive."

She drove.

I rode in the cage in the back, because there was no other seat, with Hallie across from me and Bria beside me.

The wind came through the bars and the desert slid past, flat and bone white, dotted with the black shells of burned trucks.

"Did it hurt?" Hallie asked finally.

"When it went on? Yes."

"And now?"

"Now I feel like I could carry the truck."

"Don't," she said. "Not until I've seen what it does to you."

It was a medic's warning, and I took it as one.

The pumping station was a squat cinderblock building by the river, half buried in tumbleweed, with a rusted fence and a rolling steel door.

I opened the door with a thought, and the hinges screamed.

Inside, the dust lay thick over the pump housing and the old control board and the generator in the back room.

Bria went straight to the generator and put her hand flat on it.

"Diesel," she said. "Seized injector, cracked fuel line, and some rodent has been living in the air filter."

"Can you fix it?"

"In three days."

"I can fix it now," I said.

I laid my palm on the housing.

The blue light ran down my arm and into the metal, and the generator shuddered and coughed and roared to life.

The overhead bulb flickered, buzzed, and came on.

It was the first electric light I had seen in fourteen months.

Nobody said anything.

Hallie put a hand over her mouth.

Bria stood very still with her arm against her ribs, and when I looked at her she was blinking fast.

Then she wiped her nose on the back of her wrist, laughed once, and said, "Okay, that was really good."

"You okay?" I asked.

"I'm great. I'm standing in a lit room."

Tova stood the rifles in a row against the wall.

"You can't stay here," she said. "Haskell has thirty riders and four hundred people who owe him water. He'll find you by tomorrow."

"I know."

"Then why are you smiling?"

I hadn't realized I was.

"Because tomorrow he can try," I said.

Hallie washed her hands in the first running water we had seen in weeks and looked at me over her shoulder.

"I'm staying," she said.

"Me too," said Bria, from under the generator.

"Fine," Tova said. "Someone has to keep you alive."

From the roof hatch, a high thin whine drifted down.

Bria dragged herself out and scrambled up the ladder faster than I could follow.

She looked up at the sky and swore.

"Nolan," she called down. "There's a drone, and it's been circling since we got here."

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