Woody and June versus Two Guns by Robert J. McCarter

Author:Robert J. McCarter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941153659
Publisher: Little Hummingbird Publishing

CHAPTER FIVE

I’m an Arizona boy through and through. While I was born and raised in Phoenix, I spent a lot of time roaming the state with my father. Also, an Arizona boy. He was proud of his state and he knew it well. It was the kind of thing he liked to share with his sons.

So we had been to Meteor Crater when I was six and then poked through the ruins of Two Guns afterwards. I knew the history, how in the late 1800s the Apache had used Canyon Diablo as a hiding place to raid Navajo settlements. I knew that the Navajo found them, threw burning sagebrush into the cave they were hiding in, and shot any Apache trying to escape, killing forty-two of them.

Not surprising this was the location of Talia’s first clue in her “game.” It was a place of terrible violence.

I vaguely remember the cave and my father telling me the grim story under the hot sun. “They call this the Apache Death Cave, son,” he had started solemnly. He did love Arizona, but he didn’t hide from its darker side either.

I was six and antsy and uncomfortable but he insisted that we be there, in view of the cave, to tell me the story. My grasp of time was imprecise and I kept expecting an Apache Indian to come running out and I kept looking around for one of the Navajos to come with their burning sagebrush. The place ended up just freaking me out. But that was about twenty years ago and we have fifteen minutes to find it.

I had asked Talia for a one-on-one showdown and that was what she already had planned. She said she made the mistake of underestimating me and now she is testing me.

More than that, it’s clear she is trying to break me. Push me past my limits. Turn me into someone that June doesn’t trust, that June doesn’t want to be with.

Because this is all about June and Talia’s obsession with her. And I’m the person who took Talia’s place in June’s life, so she means to hurt me. Badly.

In the RV park, we don’t talk. We run to the truck and jump in. We tear out of the park, past the gas station and onto Old Route 66. Even before the zombies, this part of Route 66 was just a dirt road. Then it was a decent dirt road, now it’s a post-apocalyptic dirt road. And that means debris and erosion, but no washboarding. Not enough traffic for that.

The road is a straight shot for about three miles when it hits the Two Guns exit on I-40 and dips down to the south.

How do I explain Two Guns, Arizona?

Well, before the apocalypse, it looked like the apocalypse happened fifty years ago with the rocky ruins of the faux western town that had been built on this site in the twenties, and the husks of the more modern buildings constructed in the sixties. At various points there had been small zoos, restaurants, and several different gas stations.

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