THE RED WAKE

Chapter 29/Chapter 30/Chapter 31 (Pt 1)

CHAPTER 30

The young woman was walking up the center lane of the dark highway. Jimmy pressed his foot down to accelerate past her. After the crazy man back in Illinois, they'd grown leery of meeting strangers on the road.

The woman turned and stared at them as they passed her on the left. Jenny had time to notice the boots on the woman's feet. They were army issue, black, with heavy treads on the soles. Jenny thought they looked much to big for the slender young woman.

As she looked back at the woman fading in the distance, Jenny felt a sudden, inexplicable desire to stop.

"Let's help her, Jimmy," she said.

Jimmy was lost in thought. The Daimler was running low on fuel, and his own arthritis was kicking up. His knuckles felt like someone had cracked them with a ruler.

"What?" he said. "Jenny, we can't stop every time we stumble across some nut who..."

"Jimmy, oh, she's just a girl, Jimmy," Jenny said. She was growing more adamant the further away from the woman they drove. "Maybe she's hurt."

"Jenny..."

"It's our duty as decent Christians to try and drag some hope out of this mess somehow, James Montague. We can start right here, with that girl."

Jimmy grumbled, unconvinced that Christian charity was the proper response to global conquest by alien invaders.

"Hell, if she's one of those things you think she cares about "decent Christians?" Or Muslims? Or Jews? Maybe she eats Episcopalians for breakfast."

"Oh stop being ridiculous," she chided.

In the end he relented, as he knew he must.

"All right," he groused. "But the minute her head spins around..."

"Jimmy..."

"...or she pulls out one of those Death Rays..."

"Oh, kiss me, you old hound," Jenny said.

She was grinning from ear to ear as he turned the Daimler around and headed back.

*

The woman was exhausted and hungry. She managed to climb in next to Jenny, squeezing the older woman so tightly that the two-seater suddenly became much less comfortable. Jenny and the young woman were sharing the passenger seat.

"Thank God this old girl is bigger than the modern two-seaters, Jimmy said too loudly. "We could never have made room in one of those flashy Japanese jobs."

Ignoring him, Jenny looked at the young woman.

"Where you headed, honey?" she asked.

The girl looked at the old couple for a moment before she spoke. Her voice, when it came, was heavy with exhaustion. Jimmy had to lean in to hear her.

"That way," she said, pointing in the direction of the setting sun. Jenny studied the girl carefully. Her strange manner and stilted, almost robotic speech pattern gave the older woman the impression that she was in shock.

Hell, you could say the same thing about everybody, Jenny thought.

"You got people out that way, dear? Family? Someone we could take you to?"