They Left Me to Burn, Now I Own the Last Water2 / 3

Chapter 2 The Wrong Trucks

The trucks skidded to a stop in a half circle around me.

Dust rolled over me in a hot cloud. I coughed and held my ledger like a shield.

For one stupid second, I thought I was saved.

Then the doors opened.

The men who climbed out weren't wearing uniforms. They wore dirty bandanas over their faces and work boots that didn't fit. One had a fresh bullet hole in his sleeve, still red.

"Well, look at that," said the biggest one. Shaved head. Gold front tooth. "Desert's giving out gifts today."

"These aren't your trucks," I said.

It came out before I could stop it.

Gold Tooth laughed. "Smart mouth."

"The plates are still Ashcroft fleet numbers. You didn't even swap them." I took a step back. "You robbed a water convoy."

"And now we're gonna rob you." He looked me up and down. "Girl like you, alive and healthy, trades for two hundred gallons at the Cutter camp."

My stomach dropped.

I knew about the camps. Everyone did. People traded for water now. People traded people.

"I'm not healthy," I said. "I've got heatstroke. I'll be dead by tonight. Bad trade."

"Then we'll trade fast."

He grabbed my arm.

I swung the ledger.

Three years of hardcover notebook cracked across his nose. He howled and staggered back, blood running through his fingers.

I ran.

Not toward the road. Toward the station.

Behind me someone fired. The bullet sparked off the old pump island, and I threw myself through the broken door and hit the floor in a shower of glass.

Inside, it was dark and smelled like rot and hot plastic. Empty shelves. A cash register lying on the floor.

And a woman.

She was in her sixties, small and brown and furious, crouched behind the counter with a pump-action shotgun.

She pointed it at my face.

"Who are you?"

"June," I gasped. "They're..."

"I know who they are." She racked the shotgun. "Get behind me."

Gold Tooth kicked the door open.

The woman fired over his head. The blast was deafening. Plaster rained down, and he dove back outside, swearing.

"This is Lupe Ortiz's station!" she yelled. "Next one goes lower!"

Silence outside. Then muttering. An engine started.

They weren't leaving. They were waiting.

Lupe sank down next to me, breathing hard.

"I've got four shells left," she said. "And no water. My tank went dry a week ago. You picked a bad place to run, mija."

I was already looking up at the ceiling.

Rusted vents. And on the roof, I had seen it from outside, a big metal box on legs.

"Your swamp cooler," I said. "When did you last run it?"

She frowned. "Two months ago. Power's been out."

"It has a holding pan and a float tank. Old units never drain all the way." I got to my feet, dizzy. "Where's the service ladder?"

She stared at me. "How do you know that?"

"I'm a water analyst. I know every place water hides."

The ladder was out back. I climbed onto the roof with the sun cooking my neck and a wrench from Lupe's toolbox.

The cooler panel was rusted shut. I hit it with the wrench until it popped.

Inside was green, foul-smelling water. Sitting at the bottom of the tank. At least fifteen gallons.

I almost cried.

"It's dirty!" Lupe called up.

"Dirty I can fix."

We boiled it on her camp stove and strained it through coffee filters and an old T-shirt. It tasted like metal and dust.

It was the best thing I had ever drunk.

Lupe watched me finish my second cup.

"Who left you out here?"

"My family."

She said nothing for a while. Then she spat on the floor.

"That's not family."

The scavengers stayed all night. We heard them laughing by their trucks and saw the orange dots of their cigarettes. They were waiting for us to get thirsty enough to come out.

They didn't know we had water now.

That was my first win. Small. Ugly. Mine.

At dawn, the ground started shaking.

Lupe and I crept to the window.

Six more trucks were coming down Highway 87. Huge. Armored. Matte black, with the same blue drop on the doors. A helicopter thumped above them.

The scavengers scattered like cockroaches. Gold Tooth jumped into a truck and floored it, and the lead armored truck swung across the road and rammed him into the ditch.

Men in gray tactical gear poured out. In two minutes, every scavenger was face down in the dirt.

Then the back door of the middle truck opened.

A man stepped out.

Tall. Dark suit, in this heat. White shirt open at the throat. No hat, no sunglasses, no sweat, like the desert wasn't allowed to touch him.

He looked at the stolen trucks. Then at the station.

Then at me in the doorway.

Something in me snapped. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was a whole night of listening to men laugh about selling me.

I grabbed a tire iron off the floor and walked out.

"Ma'am, drop it!" a guard shouted.

I didn't. I walked straight to Gold Tooth, lying in the dirt, and raised the iron.

A hand caught my wrist.

Hard. Cold. Like steel.