“Had?”
“I, um, borrowed it from them,” he explained. “Got it hid in an arroyo a few miles from here. When we find your friends, we’ll see about borrowing a few more quads. Beats the heck out of walking everywhere.”
“How come these machines work? I thought the EMPs . . . ?”
“They blew out a lot of stuff, but not everything. I’ve been to places where people have cars—well, had cars. Gasoline wasn’t made to last more than a year or two, and by now it’s all bad. Only things still running are vehicles that used to run on ethanol. There are plenty of cornfields left. Saw a couple of junkers powered by hand-crank generators, solar panels, and even a few with little mini wind turbines. They only get up to about ten miles an hour, but that still beats walking.”
Lilah drove the machine around the big boulders a few times while Joe watched, nodding his approval. Grimm gave a single deep bark to show that he, too, was impressed.
Joe waved her to a stop and switched off the machine. “Okay, you’re good to go, and your bandages aren’t leaking, so that’s good too. I won’t ask if you feel fit enough to pull a trigger. Already know that answer.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to have to fight these people,” she said. “I want to find my friends and continue on our way.”
“Yeah, about that,” Joe said. “You never really told me why four teenagers are way the heck out in the Ruin. It’s not the place for a class trip.”
Lilah considered whether to tell him. She couldn’t see how the information could be used to hurt her or the others. So she told Joe about the jet. And about the plane she’d seen on the plateau.
“Hold on, hold on,” said Joe, suddenly excited. “You saw the transport?”
“What?”
“Big C-130J Super Hercules. Prop job, not a jet. You saw that plane somewhere out here?”
“I saw the jet and—”
Joe cut her off and explained the difference between a jumbo jet and a propeller-driven military transport plane. When he described the latter, she began nodding.
“Yes, that is what I found. It was on the plateau right by the cliff I fell off of. Where we fought the pigs.”
“Did you see any people? Pilots, crew? They’d be in uniforms. . . . ”
“There were three zoms there, hung up on posts.” She described the uniforms.
“Flight crew. Damn it. I knew those guys.” Joe made a pained face. “We’ve been looking for that plane for over a year. Nobody thought it was this close, though. With all the reapers around here, it’s probably been stripped clean. And that’s a real shame. Dr. Monica McReady was aboard that plane. Losing her was a damn hard setback.”
“Setback for whom?”
Joe said, “The human race. She was one of the best epidemiologists we had. One of only a handful who made it through First Night and the plague years. She was worth more than you and me and any five thousand people you can name, and that’s no joke.” He paused. “I guess we were all hoping she was alive somewhere. We kept expecting her to come banging on the door one of these days. I’ve got rangers out everywhere looking for her. The work she was doing . . . I can’t begin to tell you how important it is.”
“Try,” she said frankly.
Joe laughed. “Doc McReady set up the first lab during the outbreak and later moved it to North Carolina, which is where people are trying to build a new America. Lots of people there now, and they even have the lights back on. Later, after we got some reports of possible mutations to the plague in Oregon, Washington, and southern Canada, McReady took a field team up to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which is a few miles southwest of Tacoma. They had to clean up the base first, since everyone was zommed out. McReady established a research camp up there that she called Hope One. Sixty people—scientists, support staff, and a small platoon to guard them. And it was up there that McReady figured out what caused the plague.”