The Empty Land (A Hunter Kincaid Novel) - Page 54

“I’m going to help that crazy woman and the Sheriff.”

“I will go with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. We should leave, we are wasting time.”

Sam grinned as they hopped into the old pickup and pulled onto the pavement.

***

Hunter edged the steering wheel slightly left, then right so she could use the side mirrors to see beyond the tractor cab and check the sides of the chlorine tank. The hairs on her neck and forearms prickled. A dozen pencil-thin vapor trails of snake green chlorine gas flowed from the tank’s blackened belly. They had little time left.

She led the deadly rig onto the dirt roads, angling through the farmer’s fields that covered the area between the town’s homes and the river levee. Danny kept up with Hunter’s fast pace, and the rig stirred the fine dust into a boiling cloud behind it.

The rear view mirrors showed more green tendrils forming and combining together, making thick ropes of yellowish-green contrails behind the speeding truck. They mixed with the dust and formed a luminous green cloud that chilled Hunter to the marrow.

We’re not going to make it, Hunter thought, and her eyes brimmed. No tears dropped, but she felt the impending loss of her life so strongly that her chest ached and every intake of breath was an effort.

So many things she still wanted to do, so many sunrises to see, to have the chance of finding someone to love forever…She did not want to die. Hunter pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

The old packing shed was visible a mile ahead. No one had used it in ten years, but it was still intact, a building one hundred-fifty feet long by seventy-five feet wide, with adobe walls two-feet thick and fourteen feet high. A solid metal roof topped the structure.

It might work, she thought.

On either side of her, green fields of vegetables and golden cantaloupes flashed by the pickup. She took the last turn too fast and slid the pickup into a melon patch, scattering green vines and golden melons and dirt in a multicolored wave before fishtailing back onto the main road. She watched Danny gear down the rig behind her, and black smoke poured from the tall exhausts as he managed the turn without overturning the tank or sliding into the soft field.

Hunter made the last bend and focused on the road as she headed straight toward the building. When she saw the front of the shed, her heart froze.

The huge shed doors that had been open for years, were closed. She glanced in the rear view, green poison trailed in plumes from the tanker.

We’re out of time, she thought. There would be no way to open, and then close the doors after the truck was inside, and if they rammed the doors to get inside, the gas would escape anyway.

Two figures came around the side of the barn and ran to the doors. Sam and Miguel. Hunter felt a thread of hope so strong it was like her heart lifted out of her chest. She kept her speed and aimed the pickup for the doors.

She blinked in surprise when Sam ran from the door and disappeared around the corner of the shed, but then saw why. A chain was looped through the two door handles, and a large padlock held the chain ends together. “No!” Hunter yelled.

Sam appeared again, coming at a run around the corner, swinging a heavy pair of bolt cutters in one hand. He turned to look at the two vehicles flying toward them, trailing a hellish, glowing dust cloud backlit by the low sun, so close now that Sam wasn’t sure they could get out of the way.

Miguel said in a panicked voice, “The chain, Sam!”

Hunter yelled in her pickup, “Hurryhurryhurry!”

Sam couldn’t get the jaws of the bolt cutter open wide enough to go over the thick links. He brought it away from the chain and put one handle down on the ground, then placed his right boot on it as he pulled up on the remaining handle. The jaws opened another eighth of an inch.

Sam pushed the bolt cutter to the chain again and tried to slip the jaws on the edge of a link. It was so close. Sweat dripped into Sam’s eyes. He tried again, and this time Miguel helped, using his thumbs to push the link into the jaws.

Sam turned the bolt cutters so that one arm was against his chest and both his hands were on the other. He squeezed the handles together with all his strength and felt the link give, then snap in two. Miguel pulled the chain out with a loud rattle as Sam tossed the bolt cutters aside, grabbing one door as Miguel grabbed the other. They slid them open just as Hunter’s pickup roared into the shed with the rig right on her bumper.

Sam and Miguel shoved the doors together, coughing and feeling the pain of chlorine gas burns in their eyes, and on their skin.

Miguel pulled Sam out of the dissipating cloud and wheezed, “We must go to the other end for the other doors!” They wiped mucous and tears from

their faces as they sprinted around the corner, going all out for the back of the packing shed.

Hunter raced her pickup through the doors and was inside the long warehouse when she said, “Shit!”

The doors at the rear of the shed were closed. She and Danny were trapped inside. She slid the pickup to a stop and felt a hard, metallic crunch as the rig hit the rear of her pickup.

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