DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 12, SECTION 4

I quickly surveyed our stunned, meager group. No one, it seemed, had been shot.

"Ah, shiz," Chris said. "What did I say about too many visitors . . . ?"

Ian glanced at me warily. What were we getting into?

Another burst of automatic gunfire erupted from behind the cabin.

"That's just his warning signal," Chris explained.

His warning signal?

"RUBEN!" Chris called out. "It's all good! It's me! It's Chris! Chris Trevino!"

Chris dismounted and jogged toward the cabin with his arms raised up in the air.

A large man emerged from the behind the cabin, holding an AK-47 pointed at the sky. He wore a faded bandana. A silver handlebar mustache covered his lips almost entirely. His sleeves looked like they'd been cut off decades earlier. His cargo pants pockets, bulging heavily, were filled with ammunition.

"Chris?" The man squinted.

"Yeah, man. It's Chris."

"Why didn't you say it was you, brother!" Ruben rushed forward and gave Chris a giant hug, lifting him off the ground in the process. "It's been months! You ready to blaze one, or what?"

Chris did his best to explain to Ruben why he'd brought four strangers and a three-year old to what was obviously a carefully concealed, off-the-grid property. But Ruben seemed so happy to see a few fellow human beings that he ended up inviting us all into his cabin for instant coffee and "some grub."

We tried to make space for ourselves amid a clutter of lawn chairs, empty tin cans, and, surprisingly, oil paintings, almost all of them depicting nothing but empty expanses of scrub pines. The guy was definitely isolated, and probably not entirely sane. It turned out that he didn't even know about the plague's existence, let alone that his cabin was now inside a National Guard quarantine zone.

"I knew this day was coming!" Ruben said prophetically as he slurped at a bowl of instant ramen. "Didn't I tell you something like this would happen?" he asked Chris triumphantly. "Martial law! What'd I tell you, brother?"

After we ate, we waited for Chris while he negotiated with Ruben for use of his seventies-era pickup. It had an extended cab with four doors, and attached to its hitch was an old camper trailer that looked like a giant silver pill. When Ruben finally shook Chris's hand, Ruben gave him a large Ziploc bag filled close to bursting with weed.

"Rocky Mountain Aurora." Ruben grinned. "Enjoy it, brother!"

"It's not really for me," Chris said reluctantly. "Not most of it anyway."

Ruben laughed and shrugged. "Spread the love! That's what I say!" Then he gave us all bear hugs as we left.

Shawn drove the pickup while Lindsay and Jake rode in the cab, leaving Ian, Chris and me to ride in the camper. We rattled over the rough fire trails away from Ruben's cabin.

"He's just giving you all this stuff?" I sat on the camper's narrow sofa while Ian eyed the weed lying on the swivel table.

"No, we traded." Chris shrugged. "Ruben doesn't exactly like to venture into civilization. He hasn't left his property for years. Can't exactly handle it psychologically any more. He used to have a guy who brought him groceries in exchange for pot, but that guy stopped showing up months ago. Probably a stage three by now. And I guess Ruben's almost out of food." Chris looked out the back window at the receding cabin." He gave me a grocery list. A long grocery list. So after we save the world, remind me that we have to go grocery shopping."    

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