Chosen by Christine Pope (best romantic novels in english .TXT) 📖

I pushed that thought out of my head. Two days ago, I was sure I’d be dead along with everyone else, and yet here I still was. Never say die.

That had been a favorite phrase of my mother’s. How woefully inappropriate.

Mouth tightening, I moved the flashlight I carried over the shelves once more to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The problem was, I didn’t get sick all that often, and even when I did, regular over-the-counter stuff worked just fine for me. I could be leaving something valuable behind here and wouldn’t even know it.

You can’t take everything, I told myself. Anyway, it was creepy in here, blundering around in the dark with only a single small flashlight to relieve the gloom. Better for me to just cut my losses and get out. It wasn’t as if there wouldn’t be more drugstores between here and…wherever I was going.

That thought reassured me somewhat, so I stepped out from behind the counter and made my way two aisles over, where the feminine products were located. I didn’t pay attention to brand or type, but just tossed boxes of tampons and packages of maxi pads into the cart until I was almost out of room. That should do me for a while, and I still needed to see if anything edible had been left behind.

I began walking toward the far left of the store, where I knew the food was located. Anything in the refrigerated case would be spoiled — and I was glad the doors were all shut, as otherwise the smell probably would have been nasty as hell — but there could still be chips and crackers and cookies, probably some beef jerky and other things of that ilk as well.

Not the healthiest of diets, but sometimes you had to take what you could get.

Figuring I should try to pick up some food for Dutchie as well, I stopped at the aisle where the drugstore usually stocked dog treats and a few brands of dry and canned food — not the stuff I would have chosen to feed her under ideal circumstances, but it would have been better than nothing. However, for some strange reason, those shelves were completely picked over. I even skidded on some scattered pellets of dry food before I regained my balance and glanced down to see that a big bag of Purina had been torn open, its contents scattered across the floor.

Muttering a curse, I left that aisle and went to the snack food section, which was in slightly better shape, and started gathering up what I could. By the time I’d dropped a couple of packets of beef jerky and a box of Ritz crackers on top of the pile in my basket, it was full, and I figured I needed to get going. It was almost noon, according to the watch I’d fished out of my nightstand and strapped on my wrist. A while back I’d almost stopped wearing watches, since I could just look at my phone, but now the watch was the only thing telling me what time it actually was. Yes, I had the clock in the Cherokee, but that only helped when I was driving.

I’d just passed the checkout counter — trying to quash my very real sensation of guilt over walking out with a bunch of stuff I hadn’t paid for — when a shadow filled the doorway. Almost without thinking, I reached back for the Glock tucked into my waistband. Yes, Chris Bowman was still dead and gone, but all sorts of predators could still be out there. Or at least as many as the Heat had allowed to survive.

Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw the shadow was that of a man, probably in his late forties, smiling at me nervously.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said, seeming to take note of how I remained rooted in the spot where I’d stopped by the checkout. “It’s just — I haven’t seen anyone else alive for two days. I thought I was the only one.”

“There are a couple of us, I think,” I responded. He looked pretty harmless, with his thinning dark hair and worried eyes, but I was still wary. “I never heard anything about the mortality rate. Everything went so…fast.”

He nodded, his gaze traveling to the cart in front of me and then back up to my face. I stiffened, worried I’d see the same sort of predatory stare that Chris Bowman had given me, but this stranger only seemed relieved that he wasn’t the only living person left in Albuquerque. “It was 99.8 percent. Or at least that was what the reports said.”

“Reports?” I asked. “What reports?”

“Not on the news,” he said. “I worked in the emergency-management bureau downtown. Those were the latest figures we got before everything just…stopped. By then there were only two of us left out of a team of twenty-seven, and Lydia died soon afterward. There was no way to let anyone know…not that there was anyone left to know, I suppose.”

“There were a few of us.” I had to stop then, the enormity of it threatening to overwhelm me. With a mortality rate like that, it meant there were maybe two thousand people left in Albuquerque. That sounded like a lot, until you realized there used to be almost a million people living in and around the city center. “But you’re right — I suppose it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. It’s not as if we could have stopped it.”

“No,” he agreed, his features drooping even more.

“So….” I went on, not sure where I was supposed to go from here. It was pretty clear that the voice meant for me to leave Albuquerque alone, but now that I’d met a survivor, could I simply leave him behind? He appeared to be harmless. “Do you live around here?”

The man gave a vague gesture over his shoulder, toward the west. “Off Chavez Road.”

That wasn’t too far from where we stood. No wonder he’d come foraging over here. “Your first time out and around…after?”

A nod. “I didn’t know if it would be safe, but I started to run out of things, and this was the closest store….”

“There’s plenty left,” I assured him. “The looters kind of tore the place up, but they didn’t steal all the Doritos. I’d probably go to a grocery store if you really want something decent to eat, though.”

“That was my plan after this, but I could walk here, so I figured I’d come here first.” For the first time his eyes took on a certain glint, one I wasn’t sure I liked. “That your Cherokee out there?”

There wasn’t any point in denying it. For all I knew, he’d seen me pull up and get out of the SUV. “Yes.”

“Leaving town?”

A flicker of unease went over me. “I was thinking about it,” I hedged.

To my surprise, he didn’t seem that put off by my reply. “That might be a good idea. It might be safer where there aren’t as many survivors. People are going to get desperate.”

They already have, I thought, recalling the way Chris Bowman had broken into my house. Then again, that was a special case of one highly obsessed nut job. The survivors in Albuquerque would probably be a lot more interested in getting supplies than getting into my pants.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation away from me and my plans.

“I’m not sure. I figured food was the first step. After that?” He shrugged, then offered me a faint smile. “Right now, it’s just kind of good to hear another voice.”

I almost agreed with him, except I had been hearing a man’s voice in my head for the past few days. So what if the jury was still out as to whether that voice was real or not?

“Well, I don’t want to leave my dog sitting in the car too long,” I said, since it seemed to me that the man wouldn’t mind standing here and chatting all day, if it meant he didn’t have to be by himself.

He looked startled by the non sequitur, but then nodded. “Oh, of course. It is starting to warm up. You have a good day.” The way he said it made it sound as if he wasn’t sure such a thing was possible anymore.

Since there wasn’t much else I could do, I smiled slightly, then moved toward the exit. For a second or two, I was worried he might put out an arm to stop me, but he only stepped out of the way and headed into the store.

I allowed myself a small sigh of relief before going to the Cherokee and unlocking it, then quickly unloading the loot from my cart into the rear cargo area. From the front seat, Dutchie whined, but I wasn’t sure why. It was a little warm in the car, but nothing too bad — I’d made sure to crack the windows before I locked up the vehicle.

When I turned around, though, I almost dropped the car key. The stranger was standing there, holding a pistol pointed straight at me. His expression was no longer mild, but greedy. Not the kind of greed I’d seen in Chris Bowman, though. This man’s gaze wasn’t fixed on me, but the SUV I’d just closed up.

Without blinking, he said, “Give me the key. Now.”

EIGHT