Chapter 18 #2
There are a few cars abandoned at the entrance, and Wyatt checks them all for supplies, finding nothing useful except a tire iron and a packet of sunflower seeds that he can’t even eat.
He’d have to plant these to use them at all.
He sighs, pocketing them anyway, before he stands at the very edge of where the light shifts into pitch-black darkness.
The temperature drops near the shadow. His skin prickles and his nerves vibrate.
His toes brush the line between light and dark while he considers turning around.
There have to be more Jeeps elsewhere in Sedona, except he didn’t see a single one on his way here, and that’s more than unusual.
Not even those hideous pink ones that used to dot this landscape like vermin are anywhere to be found.
Someone has gathered them or fled the area in them. Could go either way.
Neither option sits well.
He raises his hand as if to bang on a car hood to alert waiting rotters, but thinks better of it.
He’s on a steep road with no way out except running in the opposite direction, and he’s so damn tired he isn’t sure he’s got enough cardio left in him to do that.
His lungs still feel scorched from days in the heat.
Carefully, he takes light steps into the cavernous opening, holding up the tire iron he pilfered from the back of a truck, in case anything decides to jump out at him as he traverses a sea of dead vehicles.
His boots crunch over broken glass. The sound ricochets around him, amplified by concrete.
Every exhale feels like he may as well be yelling out his location to whatever might listen.
The car graveyard begins to give way to military trucks.
All empty and looted, their crates on their sides, and blood coating the ground where drivers must have been dragged off and eaten.
And that’s when the growls start to filter into the silence, closer and closer, the sound echoing off the tunnel walls and soaking right up into the concrete like they were never there at all.
The growls multiply and layer, bouncing off the curved walls, impossible to place.
Wyatt hops up into the cab of the nearest military truck, nearly losing his jugular to a rotter still strapped into the passenger side.
Blood coats his face in a horrific splash as he smashes the tire iron into a soft skull, but the noise has already alerted the others, and soon he’s surrounded by the dead.
Hands slap against metal, fingernails drag down the doors, and teeth snap inches from the glass.
The truck rocks back and forth with the weight of the herd, and for a moment, Wyatt assumes this is the end of the road for him. That whatever chance he had of getting back to Addison evaporated the moment he entered this tunnel.
One wrong choice is all it takes out here. The wasteland offers grace to no one. Not even a man on a journey to reunite with the other half of his heart.
He can almost see her face if he lets himself imagine it.
Giving up was never his strong suit. He is nothing if not stubborn. So he pats down the man beside him, finding a lighter in his pants pocket and a fucking hand grenade in his vest. His fingers hesitate for half a second over the metal. This is reckless in more ways than one.
If he thinks about it too long, he’ll falter, so he snatches the soldier’s gloves off his hands and shoves them into his own, pulls the pin from the grenade, and leans through the door far enough to force it directly into a rotter’s gaping mouth.
For one suspended second, the creature just stares at him. Confused. Almost curious, as if there might be something left ticking inside its peeling skull.
Then he kicks it backward and takes cover inside the truck while the world trembles.
The explosion is deafening. A concussive wave punches the air from his lungs and folds metal like tissue paper. Heat lashes across his side. Shrapnel rattles against the truck, and something heavy slams into the ceiling above him.
The whole thing rocks and folds, and for a second, Wyatt loses whatever ability he once had to stay conscious. Darkness consumes him along with a burning flame roping up his hip. His last thought is of Addison and how she’ll assume he left her like everyone else.
He should have told her that he loved her before he was dragged away, audience be damned.
* * *
He is face-first into a steering wheel, and he’s lost his leg.
No, that’s not true. He still has all four limbs, it only feels like he’s lost a leg because of the flames from the grenade that licked across his skin when he leaned away. The pain sharpens him back to reality against his will.
Wyatt flexes his arms and his neck and slides haphazardly onto the ground within the tunnel, the smoke from the explosion still coating his already aching lungs.
Ash drifts down like dirty snow. It highlights the burned rubber he tastes with every breath.
There’s a lone rotter caught under a pile of metal, reaching bony hands in his direction, and he grants it a mercy that no one else will have the option of doing, slamming his tire iron into its head.
There’s anger in his movements now that has little to do with the poor bastard below him and everything to do with how badly he wants to get through all this bullshit and back home.
He hits it again just to be sure. Then one more time, for good measure.
One foot in front of the other is all he has left to offer. Wyatt limps toward the exit, letting out a slightly manic laugh when he realizes he’s quite literally walking into the light at the end of the tunnel.
The way it echoes only makes him sound even more unhinged.
Soon, the darkness gives way to a blinding view of the red rocks, welcoming him with golden sunlight as if he hadn’t almost died a moment ago.
The heat hits his burned hip, and he hisses through his teeth.
Three miles to the Sedona Resort and Spa is what the sign tells him. He can do three miles. Sure. Why not? Easy. Only a walk in the post-apocalyptic park that takes hours because he’s losing steam, and he can’t quite feel his feet anymore.
The road tilts upward more than it looks like it should. Each step sends a dull vibration up his spine. His shirt sticks to his back, and his vision fuzzes at the edges more than once.
It could be worse. Could also be a hell of a lot better.
He almost trips twice. Doesn’t remember the last stretch of pavement at all. When he finally rounds the corner of a thin mountain road and the rocks give way to his destination, Wyatt stops in his tracks, wondering if he might be hallucinating and the dehydration has finally gotten to him.
The Sedona Resort and Spa has plenty of Jeeps. In fact, it might have all of them.
They curl up the winding road nose to ass in a careful line. It should be a relief to suddenly be spoiled for choice, but Wyatt is distracted from his original target, his lips parting in surprise before they lift into a smug, self-assured smile.
The helicopter waiting on its pad, surrounded by guards, may not have wings, but he can damn sure still fly it. And flying beats driving every single time.
As far as plans go, this one is cobbled together at best and a death wish at worst.
Wyatt needs to get inside that chopper.
The chopper is surrounded by whatever group claimed this area.
They look far more organized than he would expect of Vincent’s cult, and they are most definitely armed and fed. That’s three points in their favor that Wyatt currently lacks. They’re not desperate yet. Desperate men make mistakes, and he really, really needs them to make a few mistakes.
The last thing Wyatt trusts is his own charm to get him what he wants.
Introducing himself and asking to take a ride in that helicopter is out of the question unless he aims to eat a bullet.
The world doesn’t work like that anymore.
Anything worth having comes at a price, and no one accepts legal tender these days.
He’ll need a distraction. Thankfully, the line of Jeeps sweeping up the road offers him a possibility.
There’s enough cover from the surrounding brush that he’s able to creep up to the last parked vehicle and shift the gear into neutral. The elevation helps it slide easily, and Wyatt has just enough time to do the same to three other pink Jeeps, letting them careen off the edge of the cliff side.
The first one tips slowly, suspended for a few heavy moments before gravity claims it.
The crash below is violent. Metal shrieks, and an explosion of dust rises from the canyon floor.
It offers him a small window of time to make his next move as the guards rush out to see what the commotion is about.
There’s cursing and yelling as they fight amongst themselves about who forgot to apply the emergency brakes, and all the while, Wyatt is scaling the side of the property directly underneath the helicopter landing pad.
He hears one of them laugh nervously. Another blames someone inside the building. Good. Let them turn on each other.
He ain’t much of a rock climber to begin with.
He’s sore from the crash, though he can feel his toes a little better now, which he assumes is the adrenaline.
The closest he’s ever come to free soloing a cliff is traipsing across his roof to repair a broken shingle.
Even that was touch and go, but it’s funny what motivation will do to propel him forward when he thought it otherwise impossible.
The rock crumbles once under his weight, and he nearly peels backward off the mountain. His heart slams so hard it drowns out the shouting above.
He thinks of Addison as he begins the short but vertical climb. Of her beautiful smile and how fucking annoyed he would get at her constant questions until he started to look forward to them instead.
He thinks of how badly he wants to taste her lips and hold her in his arms, even one last time.
He thinks of the promise he made to her, that he has every intention of keeping, and that’s what pushes him up the side of a mountain, grabbing sketchy handholds and listening to rocks dislodged under his feet.
One arm above the next, one foot over the other, don’t forget to breathe…
that last one is a challenge all in its own.
He’s never been afraid of heights, but he’s been in control of the time he spent in the air.
There is nothing between him and the ground below now except willpower and luck.
He fears he might be running low on the second.
His burned hip screams when he stretches too far. His fingers slip once, twice, three times as one of his nails cracks in the middle. He presses his cheek against hot stone and forces the tremors to still.
When he finally crests the top and flings himself over the fence, he lands with a thud, inhaling deep and wasting no time before dragging himself up to his feet and limping toward the helicopter.
Voices are coming back toward the pad. The distraction window is closing. He either leaves in the sky or off the side of the cliff.
He slides into the pilot’s seat, and for one horrifying second, his vision doubles unless he blinks aggressively to clear it. The gas tank is half full. He’ll need to stop for fuel eventually.
It’ll still put him a hell of a closer to home that he would be otherwise, so he starts waking up his temporary ride, flicking all the right dials and buttons and smiling through the pain of his injuries as it lifts smoothly off the ground.
The blades whine before catching. The machine vibrates beneath him, drowning out the shouts below and gunshots that miss their target to hit the clouds instead.
The ground drops away. The guards shrink. All those Jeeps become nothing more than toys.
He is going home.