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“You’re holding up great,” he encouraged her.

“Hang in just a little while longer.” He was used to giving pep talks to his men, but it was different with her.

He hated that she was out here suffering with him.

As she moved past him toward the barn, he held his arms out, and she turned into them gratefully.

She belonged in his embrace, her body plastered against his like this.

When, exactly, had they become a couple?

He’d been working alone when he met her, and she’d declared herself a lone wolf from day one.

Now that he thought back, from the moment he’d spotted her spotting him back in her rifle sight, they’d been irrevocably linked.

Stubborn, the two of them were. It had just taken a while for them to figure it out.

Jeez. He must be more dehydrated even than he realized if he was spinning off in these hyperboles of romantic reverie. They had work to do before they both keeled over. “I’d kiss you, but our lips would crack and bleed,” he murmured into her dusty hair.

“Thanks for the thought,” she mumbled back against his chest. “Kisses to you, too. Hot, sexy ones with tongue and bare skin and sweat and--.”

“I get the idea,” he chuckled. “And don’t distract me. Ready to get back to work?”

“No, but I’ll do it anyway,” she sighed. “I could use some help pulling out the battery. The leads are corroded and need cleaning. Then we have to pray the thing’s still got a little charge left in it.”

He smiled over at her as they walked back to the barn. Her voice had a note of new hope in it, as well. They might just make it out of this mess alive, after all. “I can always give Big Red a push down the road to get it turning over.”

“You? Push a tractor?” she exclaimed. “You know, the sad part is I wouldn’t put it past you.”

They traded smiles and stuck their heads into the guts of the disemboweled tractor together.

Once they’d wrestled the heavy battery out of the machine, he turned his newfound energy to building a distiller and starting a fire underneath it.

Carefully, he ladled the precious water into his apparatus and waited for clean water to start dripping out.

When he had about a half-cup of water collected in an empty tin can, he carried it over to Piper.

“Drink.”

“You drink it. You’re stronger than I am and more important to keep functional.

One of us has to make it out alive and tell people how to stop the virus,” she retorted.

So. She realized how close they both were to the end of their physical resources, too, huh?

He should have known he couldn’t fool her.

He responded, “You’re the one who knows how to fix our ride out of here, and there will be more water for me in a few minutes.”

She relented and downed the hot liquid.

They took turns drinking doses of the water as it emerged from his distiller.

And gradually, as they each put away upwards of a gallon of distilled water, they began to feel better.

Almost human. His headache diminished to a dull throbbing, and he noticed that Piper moved more quickly, with more precision, as she worked on overhauling the tractor.

For his part, he was able to pitch in and help with lifting the heavy parts and horsing them back into place as dawn approached and she finally started putting the engine back together.

Finally, the moment of truth was upon them. It was time to see if the tractor would run. “This may not work,” she warned as she climbed into the seat.

“If it doesn’t, we’ll hole up here today, distill a bunch of extra water, and head out at night fall.”

“Can we make love before we go?” she asked hopefully.

He laughed. “Honey, we can make love every night for the rest of our lives if you want.”

Her head snapped around as she stared at him.

The rest of their lives? Whoa. Was he ready to go there?

It was one thing to think the rest of their lives was going to be twenty-four hours.

But now that they’d found water, they could be talking decades.

Was he prepared to commit for a long, full lifetime? As in forever?

She turned the key in the ignition and the engine gave a mighty sputter. And went silent.

“Again,” he suggested.

She turned the key once more and the engine popped and smoked…and caught. It ran rougher than the desert outside, but it was by God running. She’d done it.

She announced, “I think if we give it a few minutes to burn the gunk out of it and get the good diesel fuel running through it, it’ll smooth out!”

He didn’t care. He would ride this sputtering, jerking wreck all the way to Khartoum if he had to. As long as they got out of this mess alive and together. He moved over to the big barn door and shoved it all the way open.

“Need a ride, sailor?” Piper called to him.

Grinning, he grabbed the backpack and the gallon jug of extra water he’d distilled earlier.

He climbed up and sat on the fender of one of the big tires beside her.

He had to duck as the tractor passed out of the barn, but the sky opened up overhead, the last stars of the night winking out of sight as they emerged from the barn.

They’d done it. They were going to live to see another day.

Piper guided the tractor down the long driveway and, as they approached an actual dirt road, called to Ian, “Which way?”

He pointed to the north. She turned the tractor onto the road and accelerated cautiously. She prayed her jerry rigs and taped together fuel lines would hold up long enough for this old wreck to reach a working telephone. And a shower. And a freaking walk-in freezer.

The temptation was great to shove the throttle to the forward stop, but she schooled herself to patience.

Every yard of road they put behind them was one less she and Ian had to walk.

She estimated they putt-putt-ed down the road at about eight miles per hour.

A hot, dusty breeze blew in her hair, and even though the morning sun was bright, she felt a lightness and freedom of spirit she hadn’t felt in as long as she could remember.

They were in a hurry and they needed to get out of the desert and find a phone, but she was with Ian, they’d found water, they had transportation after a fashion, and they were alive . After coming so close to death in the desert, that word held a whole new richness of meaning for her.

Ian’s hand came to rest on her shoulder and she glanced up at him. He smiled down at her and then closed his eyes and threw his head back, lifting his face to the morning sun. He felt it, too. The special exultation of cheating death.

All the fear and doubt of the past few days fell away from her, leaving her feeling new.

Reborn. Vibrantly aware of everything. Of the salty smell of sweat.

The iron taste of the well water lingering on her tongue.

Of the air heating rapidly against her skin.

The vibration of the tractor through her feet.

Even the tiniest details registered in this hyperaware state of hers. It was intense. Almost sexual.

No wonder Ian liked living on the edge if this was the end result of his missions. She could see how it might become addictive.

“I see pavement,” Ian announced.

“Praise the lord.”

“We may still be a ways from a town.”

“But we at least made it to civilization. And a car will drive past eventually,” she replied.

“Assuming this area isn’t totally quarantined and that the cars here didn’t get zapped, also.”

She patted the tractor fender. “That’s okay. We’ve got Big Red. It’s too old to be affected by an EMP.”

“I swear. If we make it out of this alive, I’m taking this tractor back to Pennsylvania, buying me a piece of land, and settling down to farm it. And I’m never leaving it again.”

She blinked up at him. “Really? You’d walk away from being a super-commando?”

He shook his head. “I’ve had some rough missions in my day, but this one takes the cake. And we’re still not in the clear. We’ve got to get someplace cold and get our hands on some of that silver stuff of yours.”

He was right. Celebration now would be premature. They reached the sun-bleached ribbon of gray asphalt, and she turned the tractor in the direction Ian pointed. To the northeast. They’d gone no more than a mile when a green road sign announced that Overton was three miles ahead.

“Can we start celebrating now?” she asked.

Ian shook his head. “Not yet. Phone. Water. Power. Cold.”

“Shower. Food. Bed. Sex,” she added to his list.

“Roger that, baby.”

An intersection loomed ahead, and Piper ran the stop sign, afraid of what would happen if she stopped Big Red and then tried to get it moving again. Not to mention the gas gauge was reading dangerously low, the needle bumping off the peg below the E as the tractor lurched along.

In another five minutes, a building came into sight. And then more buildings. A town. Overton. She reached up and took Ian’s hand, squeezing it convulsively. Had they done it? Had they made it out of Hell for real?

No traffic moved on the main street as they rolled into town. Crap. Had the place been evacuated or something? Surely, people ought to be out driving around at this time of day. It was mid-morning.

A man stepped into the street ahead of them. Waved his arms over his head at them. Big Red drew close enough for Piper to see the guy was wearing a police uniform.

“Stop the tractor!” the man called.

Gladly . Piper stepped on the breaks, which gave a hideous squeal. She turned off the ignition, and Big Red belched a mighty cough of smoke and gave up the ghost.

“We’re under quarantine folks. You have to leave town now, or I’m gonna have to arrest you?—“

Ian jumped down off the tractor and turned to help Piper down. “Officer, we work for the government and need a telephone immediately. It’s a matter of national security. We may know how to stop the virus outbreak.”

The cop looked both startled and relieved. “Come on in the police department. We’ve got a phone working. This is a substation of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and we have a dedicated underground phone line to headquarters.”

“Power’s out in Overton?” Piper asked. That might explain why no one had been moving around town. The lights were out and people were hunkering down to ride out the electrical outage.

“Yup. Went out a couple days ago. Everyone who could leave the area did. Headed for places with air conditioning and refrigerators,” the cop answered.

“Are cars in the area running okay?” Ian asked urgently.

Piper winced. If her father’s EMP bomb had exploded successfully, all the modern cars in the region with their internal computers and electronic ignition would be inoperative. Only ancient vehicles like Big Red, with its pre-electronic everything would continue to operate.

The cop frowned. “Yeah. Cars are fine. Why?”

“Thank God,” Ian responded fervently. “Phone first. And then we’re going to need a car. And you’re going to need to round up everyone in town and get them to the closest place with a big, cold air conditioner.”

The three of them walked toward a plain one-story building with a sign out front announcing it to be a LVMPD substation.

“Nearest place with power would be LasVegas, sort of. They’ve got some back-up generators working around the city—the big casinos, hospital, airport, a few office buildings.

But with the quarantine in place, no one gets in or out of there.

Outside of Vegas, Caliente is the nearest town outside of the power outage zone, and it’s a couple hours north of here. ”

“Get your locals up there and stick them in the coldest possible place you can find for—“ Ian turned to her. “How long would it take to make the virus go dormant?”

She shrugged. “Ebola goes dormant in under four hours of sustained cold. I’d say to give it twenty-four hours for safety’s sake.”

Ian turned back to the sheriff. “You heard the lady.”

It turned out the CDC field agents who’d gone into Las Vegas to attempt to isolate and identify the virus that had struck the city had set up a command post in the city’s police department.

Piper took the phone receiver Ian passed her and urgently relayed what she and Ian knew of the virus, and what they’d surmised about how to stop it.

The CDC doctor was grateful and in a hurry to get off the phone totest the theories of external cold and internal colloidal silver.

She handed the receiver back to the cop.

“Uhh, Piper? We have a small problem.”

She turned around to face Ian. His nose was bleeding.