Glen hoped so. He really did miss his best friend. Particularly right now when Damien would probably be flying a helicopter and have some useful ideas for how to get Cash’s friend from a badly guarded fortress without anybody getting their tail feathers shot off.
“So we call your friend and what?” Cash asked when they were maybe half a mile from town.
“He’ll fly down, maybe bring my brother and some of his very helpful dogs, and we can come up with a plan. Right now there’s too many gorillas with guns and gas-powered jeeps for us to go in half-cocked without an escape plan. If nothing else, if Damien flies in from Cali, he can get a chopper from our friend Buddy and land in the town square. A chopper would be damned useful right now. He’s also ex-military, and we’re both weapons trained. Now that Tranquilo Paz knows you’re back with a friend, I don’t like our odds of going in unprepared.”
Cash grunted. “God, what a mess. Do you think we should call law enforcement?”
Glen grimaced. “Kid, how strong do you think that earthquake was?”
Cash shook his head. “How would I know?”
“Well, I spent some of my training time in San Diego, which is close enough to LA to give me an idea. I’d guess it was a solid seven-five. Which means Jalisco and Las Varas are going to be very preoccupied digging people out of rubble for a while. No, if we want to get her in the next forty-eight hours, Damien’s our best bet.”
“Rubble?” Cash sounded skeptical. “What do you mean, rub—” The dirt road they were on widened to the small, unpaved square of the town. “—ble.”
Glen tightened his jaw and took stock. The restaurant was on fire, and the feed store had crumbled. People had mostly succeeded in putting the fire out, using the well in the square. Hopefully it hadn’t spread beyond the town. Glen scanned the surrounding brush and forest and saw that the area behind the fire had been thoroughly soaked—not even a smolder—so that was reassuring. People living this far away from amenities had to know their shit.
A happy cry went up at that moment, and a man emerged from the feed store, crawling from under one of the downed wooden walls. He answered excited questions with a shake of his head, and Glen let out a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” he said, looking at the sky. People here were safe, and that would have been his first priority if they hadn’t been. As it was, night was falling, and he and Cash were going to need to find shelter and a place to charge his phone. “Let’s hit up the general store and see if Damien can bring some aid. I have the feeling they’ll be needing some nonperishable food and drinking water. Their well can’t have much left.”
The general store looked like it had been built in the sixties—right down to the small, almost empty ice cream freezer. But there was an end-cap refrigerator with cold bottled water and, thank God, what appeared to be a working computer—Apple.
Glen checked his phone and saw he had reception right before it went gray-screen and died. Well, shit.
He conversed rapidly with the older man behind the counter—in his sixties, maybe, with a face giving way to lines and a kindly air. He asked how much for a charge, and the shop owner, Enrique, hooked the phone up for free. The screen stayed black, and Glen cursed his luck. It might take all night attached to the computer for the thing to even get enough charge to text again. Damien had been on Glen’s ass for two years to get a new model. Damn him for being right.
Glen glanced outside and saw night hadn’t simply approached, it had clamped down. He looked around and said in Spanish, “I don’t suppose you have a hotel around here?”
Enrique laughed. “No. But I have two cots in back.” He opened a nearly hidden door, revealing a room that was maybe six-by-eight. It was almost a porch, though, and screens wrapped around the top third of the room. The cots were side by side, and while there wasn’t an electric light in the room, there was a ceiling fan, moving fast enough to make the air not horrible.
“It’ll work,” Glen said. “How much?”
“Is nothing.” Enrique waved his hand. “We let lost travelers stay here often. Now food—that you can buy.”
Glen thought regretfully of the restaurant and looked around the little space that sold flour, eggs, milk, and other staples. The bottled waters and ice cream were a nice touch, but this wasn’t a place you could find a microwave burrito. Except…. Glen sniffed the air and caught a familiar scent underneath the acrid smoke from the restaurant. He gave a happy little grunt.
“Tamales?” he asked hopefully.
“Sí.” The man gestured to a foil-lined bag that appeared to be nearly empty. “My wife makes them daily. We usually trade them to the restaurant so people can buy them for the evening meal, but….” He sighed. “Diego barely escaped. I helped at the beginning, but once the grounds around it were safe, they didn’t need me anymore.”
“Well, their loss is my gain,” Glen said, meaning it. “We really appreciate you being here and open. I’m assuming people will be coming for supplies and help if their homes were affected?”
Enrique nodded. “Sí. So far the houses are still standing—only the two buildings you see here collapsed. But it doesn’t always end with one quake, does it?”
Glen felt a foreboding in his stomach. “No, no it doesn’t. When my phone’s charged up, I’m calling my friend. He can come with supplies. Be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need, yes?”
Enrique’s face wrinkled a little and he gave a smile with a few missing teeth but all of his heart. “Sí.”
“Excellent.” Next to him Cash yawned. “I think we’ll take our tamales and some water now,” he said, pulling out the cash he’d brought with him. He gave the old man twice what the food was worth, because the kindness was so very appreciated.
He and Cash collapsed then, one to a cot, to eat their tamales gratefully and guzzle water.
“Not too fast, you’ll make yourself sick,” Glen warned.
“Thanks, Dad,” Cash retorted, and Glen winced.
“Not the bad guy, Cash.”
Cash closed his eyes and leaned back against the plywood wall. “I know,” he said. “You’re right. I’m being an asshole.”
“Won’t argue.” Glen took the corn husks used to wrap the tamales and rolled them into a ball and then folded his waste in the tattered cloth napkin Enrique had served him with. Enrique had closed up shop as they’d eaten, telling them to leave their trash on top of the little bedstand in the corner of the room. Cash watched him and then echoed his motions, making sure he’d eaten the very last bit of tamale from the wrapping.
The two of them washed using water that Enrique had pumped into a basin for them, and then had taken turns using the utilitarian toilet in the cubicle next door to the little porch room. Glen thought maybe it was the only one of its kind in the village; he had the feeling everybody else relied on outhouses beyond the perimeter. A place this small, this low-tech, there wasn’t much in the way of amenities.
After a moment, they were alone again in the dark, with only the light of an oversized moon through the window to see by, as clean and ready for bed as either would get. Glen took off his boots, and Cash did the same. Glen stripped down to his boxers, pulled the rough woolen cover up over his legs, and watched as Cash did the same.