Chapter Twenty-One
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“WHAT DID YOU SEE, ZOE?” Amaros asked when Zoe snapped out of her trance. His tone and expression were expectant.
“I saw one of your warriors,” she replied. “He landed in one of the rivers next to Manhattan. I’m not sure which one it was.”
Amaros squeezed her wrist lightly in gratitude before releasing her. Grace was rubbing her back soothingly. Zoe didn’t think she even knew she was doing it. “Did he drown?” the knight asked in alarm.
“Nah, he surfaced and swam to shore,” she said. “A few idiots thought it would be a good idea to attack a huge naked dude who just climbed out of the river. I saw him take them down.”
Grace snickered and stepped away from her. “How huge is he?” she asked.
“Camriel is two inches taller than me and broader across the shoulders,” Amaros said.
“How do you know he’s the first to arrive?” Zoe asked.
“My second in command is always the first of my men to appear.”
“What does he look like?” Grace asked. She was excited to meet another Knight of Order.
“I only saw him from behind, but he’s blond and looks just as muscular as Amaros.” The warrior frowned at Zoe’s description. Was the flicker of jealousy in his eyes real, or just wishful thinking on Zoe’s part?
Grace’s eyes danced with wicked humor as she flicked a look at his groin. She wisely refrained from wondering if his second in command was just as well-endowed out loud. “When will we head to New York to pick him up?” she queried instead.
“That depends on the storm,” Amaros said, glancing out at the torrent. “The hail might make it treacherous to traverse back down the mountain.”
“Do you think it could trigger more landslides?” Zoe mused.
“It’s possible,” he said with a nod. “We should leave at dawn. I’ll have to drive slowly around the bends, just in case there are any new obstructions.”
Zoe figured driving at night in a storm like this would be suicide. He might get sent back to the Void and return in another five thousand years rather than dying, but she and Grace wouldn’t be so lucky.
The rain hammered down for hours, flooding the room where the roof was missing.
It was leaking in the rooms that had trees growing inside them as well, but not as badly.
The girls set up their cots and went to bed early.
Amaros did the same, but Zoe could hear him getting up to patrol every now and then.
The storm finally ended sometime after two and she drifted off. Amaros woke them up four hours later.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” he said. “I want to be on the road at first light.”
“Ugh,” Grace complained. “I hate dawn.”
Zoe wasn’t a fan of it either, but she got up anyway. Washing with bottled water, they ate cereal and powdered milk for breakfast and washed it down with water. They’d both kill for a shower, but that wasn’t on the cards.
Their precautions to cover the black truck with tarps had paid off. It didn’t even have any dents in it. The trees had taken the brunt of the storm. Plenty of branches had been broken off, but none had landed on the vehicle.
The women helped the knight to remove the tarps. He folded them up, then stuck them behind the back seat. They had spare fuel in case they needed it and had brought some provisions along.
“Buckle up,” Amaros ordered when Grace took her usual position in the back between their seats.
“I’m hard to kill,” she said with a pout, but obediently sat back and used the seatbelt.
“A crushed skull if the truck rolls can kill you easily enough,” Zoe told her, remembering how much it had hurt when her head had slammed into the window.
Crossing her arms, Grace looked more like a kid than ever as she sulked in silence.
“Try the radio,” Amaros requested, then reversed out from beneath the trees. The oversized tires bumped over the debris from the storm. The hail had melted, but the dents they’d left in the ground remained.
Zoe turned on the radio to the same station they’d tried before. Again, they heard the same man ranting.
“New York is an even filthier den of iniquity than it was before the Rapture,” he was saying.
“I had a dream last night that aliens from a dark, foggy planet will soon be arriving. They’ll turn people into their pawns and use us in an endless war while they plot to take over our world.
” He fell silent, so they must have caught the tail end of his speech.
“This guy sounds like an actual prophet,” Zoe said, disturbed at how close he was to the truth.
“He sounds like a raving lunatic,” Grace muttered.
“He might be both,” Amaros decided, then braked when he saw a new landslide. “I’m going to have to move the rubble out of the way,” he said, annoyed at the delay.
“We’ll help,” Zoe offered. It was a cold, clear morning. Her breath frosted when she got out of the truck. Grace was small, but far stronger than she looked. It only took them a few minutes to clear one of the lanes. They left the other lane obstructed for now.
“That will do,” Amaros said. He’d taken a watch from the sporting goods store and checked it. “Camriel will sense me once I get closer to New York. He’ll make his way to us, so hopefully we won’t have to travel to the heart of the city.”
“You have no idea just how big New York is,” Grace said as they climbed back into the truck.
“Manhattan is at the center. If your dude is there, it could take hours for him to make his way off the island and reach the Bronx. God only knows how bad the roads will be once we get closer to real civilization.”
“I guess we’ll see when we get there,” Zoe mused. “The Rapture happened in the middle of the night,” she went on. “The freeways might not be clogged. With luck, people returned home once they realized they didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“We can only hope,” Grace said skeptically.
“The people we’ve met so far have stayed in their towns, or fairly close by,” Zoe reminded her.
“Things aren’t so bad out in the sticks,” the teen argued. “It’ll be far worse in the cities. Would you want to hang around with crazed mobs roaming the streets?”
“Most people will realize their food will run out sooner or later,” Amaros said. “Finding supplies will be their first priority. Battles will be fought to gain control of supermarkets and other places where food and drinks are sold or stored.”
“The great food wars of the post apocalypse,” Zoe joked, but none of them laughed.
Amaros made better time once they reached the base of the mountain.
The freeway wasn’t as bad as they’d feared to begin with.
The knight had memorized the map. He managed to avoid the worst of the accidents by taking exits and using a different pathway.
The main route became completely blocked, so he finally exited from the freeway again.
They passed through smaller towns to see signs of anarchy everywhere.
Bodies littered the streets, sidewalks and front yards of both elegant and ramshackle houses.
Grace cracked her window as they neared the outskirts of New York.
“Ew, the stench is even worse than I’d expected,” she said, then gagged and shut the window again.
“Rotting flesh is never pleasant,” Amaros said. He’d slowed down and had to wend his way through the abandoned cars.
“It’s going to be like this all the way to the city,” Zoe figured. “It’ll get worse and worse until we can’t go any further.”
“Can your friend sense you from this far away?” Grace asked.
“No,” the knight said, shaking his head. “I need to get closer, but Zoe is right. It’s going to be difficult to drive much further.”
“How far away are we from Manhattan now?” Zoe asked.
“We’re still more than an hour away by vehicle,” he replied.
“So, it’ll take a few hours of walking before we’ll be within his range,” she calculated.
Amaros saw an open, empty garage and halted. He reversed the truck inside, then turned off the engine. “You two wait here,” he said. “I’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
“What if something happens to you?” Grace asked, unhappy with his plan. “How long should we wait for you to return?”
“We’ll be back within five hours,” he replied.
“There’s no way that’s going to happen,” Zoe said skeptically, taking the keys when he held them out to her.
“Knights of Order can move very fast when we need to,” he reminded her. “I’ll close the garage door. Use your guns if anyone tries to attack you.”
“We will,” she vowed, patting the pistol that was sitting on her lap. Pulling the garage door down manually, Amaros was lost to their sight. She sensed him rapidly moving away, then he vanished from her radar.