End of Women: Part Two

Morning Of

06:00, Seminole Canyon National Park, TX

Degan woke to the sound of rolling wheels and grinding asphalt. As he sat up and placed his hand to his right he felt only the empty sleeping-sack beside him; Millie had gone, and so, by the sounds of it, had most of Nova Femen.

The air was hot and sticky inside the tent. Degan smacked his jaws together, trying to work out some of the sandy residue. When his eyes adjusted to the merciless desert light he saw a pair of tin cans sitting between the two flaps of the tent entrance, and sitting on top of those was a folded note.

Dear Degan, it read, and he heard it in Millie's voice;

You don't need to come with us. We could use you, sure, but its dangerous for a lot of reasons. After last night... I think I need to give you the chance to go back to Ekpow, if you want to. If you don't want to that's fine, but I guess we'll see.

We are going to Houston. There's a car with a full tank of gas left behind for you, some food and water and a glock if you need it. I had to fight the girls to let me do it. They think you'll turn us in. I don't think you will.

Millie

Degan read and re-read the note a few times. He wasn't sure what to feel. Maybe she was doing him a favour, and maybe in all the normal senses he should be grateful to her for giving him the chance. How she wasn't strung up by her own Femen militia just for thinking it, he had no idea. It was a big risk by a brave girl. 

The sun was coming up fast when he poked his head out of the tent. The sky was cloudless and the ground firm and arid. A few disturbed patches lay all around him where the Nova girls had packed up their tents, not even leaving so much as an empty sports drink bottle behind. No evidence. Clean cut. If anyone came by it would just look as though he were some kind of survivalist roughing it in the wilderness. The gore-tex uniform he wore and the black outfitted Jeep probably gave the game away, though. And what was the glock for, cougars?

Degan stood in the middle of the former ring of tents watching the sun rise over the great jagged rock to the West. He took a few deep breaths, scratching his chin through a short but dense beard. 

Without thinking it over any further Degan pulled down the tent, threw everything into the back of the car and jumped into the driver's seat. Sheilded from the sun, the interior was still cool. He hecked the back seats, imagining some militia bitch might jump up and strangle him. There was no-one there. Somehow now that he had shut the door, everything seemed way too silent. He flicked on the aircon just to make some noise.

As soon as the battery came to life he saw a real-time GPS display appear on the dashboard. 

'Where would you like to go?' asked the dispassionate female voice.

Drive to the nearest airport, dump the car, get on the first flight to anywhere near Ekpow and trek the rest of the way. 

He wrapped his hands around the cool faux-leather on the steering wheel, turned the key and let the engine roar to life, pulling out of neutral into first gear.

'Where would you like to go?' insisted the GPS.

'Houston.' said Degan.

07:30, Houston Magnolia, TX

The suite had been in lockdown overnight. Two armed marines guarded the only doorway in or out of the President's temporary residence, a grand series of high-ceilinged rooms and, so he had been told, new bulletproof windows. A reliable aide had told Hobart that, for any radicals to get their hands on him, he would have to walk out onto the balcony and paint a target on his head. As reassuring as that had been overnight, he was about to do just that.