Infected: Die Like Supernovas (The Outlaw Book 2) (24 page)

“I wish there was some way to know that he’s here,” she complained after half an hour of waiting, and she hit the steering wheel in frustration. Her speakers were LOUD and she was alternating between pop and country music. “What if he’s out already? Or gone for the weekend?”

“I’ll text him!”

“Good idea!”

“But…I don’t want to lie. I feel skeezy enough as it is,” I said.

“You’re not being skeezy, you’re just verifying that you’ve made a good investment of your time. Text him,” she ordered.

Hey Tank! Miss you! Hope you have a good Friday night. I’ve got plans, but I hope to see you soon. Are you doing anything fun?

“Hah! Nice. You’re telling him the truth, too!” she said. He didn’t reply immediately, which frustrated and saddened me. Chase always texted me back instantly. Well, almost always.

Hannah ordered us sandwiches and mochas and had them delivered directly to our car. I didn’t even know you could do that! She paid with her mom’s credit card. We ate in silence for the next ten minutes while I enviously wished my mother was rich.

“Hey,” I said around a bite of chicken salad sandwich. “Hey! I think that’s Natalie North!”

“Who?”

“The actress! I forgot this is her building too. She and Tank both have condos here. Right there!” I pointed with my pinky while holding the coffee. This was REALLY exciting! I loved Natalie North, and she even hugged me once. She and some guy walked into her building with their heads down.

“Oh right. Her. She’s not even pretty,” Hannah sniffed.

“You’re crazy. She’s the best. Do you think that’s her? She’s wearing that hoodie so no one recognizes her, I bet. Who do you think is with her? I can’t tell but he’s probably famous.”

“Who cares,” she groaned. “Calm down.”

Natalie and the guy quickly disappeared into the building. Ten long minutes later she emerged alone and walked westward. Hannah absolutely forbade me from chasing her down for a picture. She even locked the doors!

I was beginning to get angry when Tank texted.

>>…Nothing fun tonight. Business to take care of. Been in bed sick for about a week. Feeling better. Let’s do something fun soon. You pick, my treat.

I showed Hannah the message.

“Aw. That’s kind of sweet,” she said. “Maybe.”

“Right? A little. It’s hard to tell. Boys speak in caveman language, which is hard to decode.”

“Business. Business on a Friday night? What’s he talking about?” Hannah asked.

“I have no idea. I know very little about him.”

We stewed and plotted and giggled for the next thirty minutes, and then Hannah said, “Wait. Is that…isn’t that Tank right there?”

“Where??”

She pointed away from the building and towards the traffic light. “There. In the green Hummer. It looks like him. I think.”

“It is him! How’d he get past us?”

“I don’t know!” She started the car and violently swerved into the street. “Keep an eye on his truck so we don’t lose him.”

“Of course!” I said. “I know what happened. I bet his building has an underground garage. He didn’t exit through the doors, he exited through the garage.”

“You’re right. You’re so right,” she said and she gunned the engine to beat a red light.

Tank drove due south through the Fashion District and out of Downtown. Hannah was a pro, tailing him from two or three cars away. He snuck through a few traffic lights but she always caught up. We followed him through Huntington Park and into South Gate. We risked pulling up parallel to him once while I cowered in the passenger seat. Hannah paced him long enough to determine conclusively that he was alone before dropping back to a safe distance again. This was fun!

We left the towers and the money behind, and we entered neighborhoods. The closer we got to Compton the lower the value of the houses and businesses dropped. Gangs of guys lounged on porches or packed themselves around someone’s car. The groups were either entirely black or entirely hispanic.

“This place is disgusting,” Hannah sneered. She fished in the backseat for hats or something else for us to wear. She thought we looked too good.

“No it’s not. It’s just different.”

“Don’t be naive, sweetie. These people are trash.”

“They aren’t trash,” I scolded her. “They just don’t have as much as we do. It’s not their fault.”

“I’m sorry, Katie. I know you’re latin american, so you might empathize with them, but these people are nothing like you. They’re gross. They just suck up tax money.”

Tank’s journey started getting exceedingly strange. He would park near a corner and do…nothing. No one came to meet him. He didn’t get out of his Hummer. And then he’d drive on. We tailed him from a block behind or from a parallel street, always precisely within our line-of-sight limit. He spent five minutes in one place before moving a mile farther south and did it again. Over and over. He started to zigzag, heading east for several miles, and then back west again. I monitored our progress using the map on my phone as we drove deeper into Compton.

“It’s like he’s searching for something and wants to cover as much ground as possible,” I observed.

“But what’s he looking for,” Hannah yawned. We’d been on his trail for two hours now, and it was almost nine o’clock. We weren’t tired as much as we were bored. Nothing was happening. “I don’t think he’s cheating on you, babe. I don’t know what the guy is doing in this part of town but he didn’t drive straight to some girl’s house.”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“He’s got a lot of income property, right? Maybe he’s just…checking up on his houses? He told us he needed to take care of business.”

“Maybe, but…this feels like a scavenger hunt or a search. Looking for something or someone or…I don’t know.” I’d said that exact sentence several times during the previous hour. He was parked fifty yards ahead of us near a dimly lit gas station. His brake lights were on and so was his interior dome light. Hannah needed gas but she wasn’t about to stop around here. She’d run it down to empty and then have us towed before she got out of the car. “Let’s go home.”

“Really? You want to?” Hannah asked.

“Yeah. Get us out of here. I’m not convinced he’s worth all this work in the first place,” I said. It was true; I’d been thinking about Chase half the night.

“You got it. We are gone.”

She pulled onto the Harbor Freeway and we left the scary neighborhoods behind, safe in our warm and cozy luxury sports car. I was glad my mother had gone to college and become a teacher. Our neighborhood was much nicer, even if we were the poorest family there. I didn’t blame these people for revolting against a new law that would make their lives even more difficult.

“This is ridiculous,” Hannah shouted. I shook out of my reverie and looked up. We were deadlocked in a sudden traffic jam. “All these stupid eighteen-wheelers came out of nowhere. We’re at the turnoff to 105 and I was going to exit, but ugh. Now we’re stuck.”

“Must be an accident ahead.” Our view was cut off. A giant tractor-trailer sat idling in front of us. Another one was beside us. Both were oil tankers. I could see a city bus parked in the mirror.

“This sucks,” Hannah complained and she hit the steering wheel. She did that a lot. “We have like…one gallon of gas left. We’re so close to the ramp.”

“But look. Interstate 105 is completely gridlocked too. Look at all the stalled cars. Exiting would do us no good.”

“Both 110 and 105? Priceless. Just perfect. Exactly what I need.”

So we sat. And we sat. Idly I texted Chase but he didn’t answer. And then we sat some more.

We were still sitting three hours later. She’d turned the car off to conserve gas and we were cold. We hadn’t spoken in forty-five minutes and I detected through minor clues that she blamed me for this. The trip had been her idea, though, so I didn’t feel bad. But I was cold and tired.

Pedestrians began streaming by my window a little after midnight. First a handful of people walked past and then more joined. Soon an entire river of humanity flowed by. They seemed…scared.

“What’s going on?” I was growing alarmed.

“I don’t know,” Hannah sighed. She was busy on her phone. “I hate this place so much.”

“Hannah,” I said urgently. “Hannah look.”

A man had approached our car from the rear and now he stood in the brilliant glow of our headlights, examining us. A bandana was tied over his hair. He also wore some sort of mask that covered his mouth…oh gosh. He was dressed in a poor imitation of the Outlaw. That can’t be good. Worst of all he carried a pickax! Why did he have a pickax??

“Seriously,” Hannah said contemptuously. “This is just ridiculous.”

Someone knocked on our window. We both screamed. A man bent down to yell through the window. “He wants you to get out of the car!”

“In his dreams!” Hannah yelled back.

I rolled down the window and asked, “Why?”

“Dunno, lady. But I’d get out if I were you.” He indicated the man with his head and then he kept going. The scary man shrugged and walked out of our headlights towards the tanker. He hefted the weapon over his shoulder and swung with all his might. The tool clanged off the curved side of the big oil drum.

“Oh god,” Hannah groaned. “What is this idiot doing?”

He swung again, further denting the metal. The next blow pierced the outer shell.

“Hannah, we need to go,” I urged.

“No way,” she scoffed.

He hit the tank again and again with loud bangs and finally the sharp point buried itself deeply and oil or gas or whatever burst forth. The liquid spray soaked him as he yanked free his pickax from the shower. He turned and calmly walked to the other tanker. The pungent smell of gasoline wafted through the open window.

“Hannah, now!” I yelled. I pushed open the door and climbed out. “This is dangerous, let’s go!”

“No!” she shouted. “I’m not leaving my car and walking into Compton! Look at those people!”

“Hannah!” I screamed but the crush of people surged me away from her Audi. “Hannah come on!!” The last time I saw her she was frowning and shaking her head at her phone.

There were other men dressed like the Outlaw ghosting through headlight cones. Their masks were wrong and none of them got the costume exactly correct but their intent was obvious. Dozens of Outlaws were walking through the traffic and directing travelers out of their cars. They had axes and shovels and were punching holes in all the gas tanks. We walked through streams of the gasoline.

We were herded away from the headlights and forced to climb over the interstate’s security railing. We stumbled like cattle down a poorly lit grassy hill and into a city intersection. There, however, strangely enough the Outlaw imposters forgot about us. Scary men with flashlights were ordering us down the hill, away from the interstate and into the heart of Compton, but then the crowd was allowed to go where it pleased. Most of my fellow castaways were obviously trying to get through to the police on their phones. It was midnight, the streets were mostly deserted, and we’d been forced to abandon our cars. Couldn’t get much worse!

I yanked out my phone as I stumbled along with the crowd flow.

Hannah!! Please! This is scary and they have guns. You’re sitting in a RIVER of gas. Come find me! We’ll stay together!!

Just then, Chase texted me from an unknown number!

>>Hi Katie! It’s your handsomest friend, Chase Jackson! My other phone is broken but you can text me at this number. Hope you had a good Friday!

I dialed the strange number frantically but I got a weird busy signal. I tried again. Still busy.

On the third time he answered. “Hi there! You’re up late. How’s it going?”

“Chase, I’m in trouble,” I said, trying not to cry. I was standing on the sidewalk beside a closed car detail shop. This was the closest spot I could find near the interstate. I could still see Hannah’s car on the raised Freeway. “A lot of us are.”

“What?” he asked and his voice turned hard, almost scary. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure yet, but…” I screamed. Out of nowhere, one of the masked men put a gun to my temple. I tensed and shuddered but he didn’t pull the trigger.

“Come with me,” he ordered. I didn’t argue. He shoved the gun against my head and pushed me into the street. I looked around desperately but a lot of my fellow displaced travelers had guns to their heads too. Twenty of us had apparently not been walking fast enough and we were being pressed into the middle of an intersection towards a waiting city bus. The bus had been parked underneath a blinking yellow traffic light. It was empty until we were forced to climb aboard. This was madness! What was happening?? Why was no one helping us??

A man in a mask with an assault rifle came aboard too. We sat very still in our seats. We were all cold, and wet with gas, and terrified. The bus was dark.

“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t cause trouble. You won’t be hurt.” Then he left and forcibly closed the bus doors. Trapped. Someone behind me wailed.

My phone rang. Chase!

“Chase,” I cried into the phone. “Chase I’m so scared.”

“Tell me exactly where you are,” he said.

“I don’t know! Not exactly.”

“What’s happening?”

“Men in Outlaw masks started pulling people out of their cars. Hannah is still in hers,” I sniffed.

“Are you in Glendale?”

“No,” I laughed bitterly, wiping my nose. “I’m in Compton.”

“Compton?!” he shouted. “Why are…never mind. Just tell me where.”

“In a bus,” I said, trying to think straight. “Where 105 and 110 meet. Harbor Freeway.”

“Okay.”

“Something big is happening, Chase.” Tears poured down my face and I was shivering. “We’ve been stuck for hours and I haven’t seen any police, even though everyone’s been calling. And these guys have guns.”

“Alright. I’m coming to get you.”

“No, don’t,” I sobbed. My sweet Chase. “Traffic is backed up for miles, Chase, and they put me on a bus. I’m trapped. It’s no use trying to get here.”

“I’m on the way. I will tear this city apart to find you.”