The Sole Survivors' Club

Chapter 1

PART ONE: SAN ANTONIO

Five years later...

Truck tires screeched behind Monica, and she tensed her shoulders as she stopped walking.

Years of listening to car accidents had trained her well. The sound of tires slipping over pavement had barely begun, but already she could tell what kind of vehicle was sliding, and even which direction the vehicle was moving. The steady squeal of the truck tires indicated a straight slide, as though the driver had been forced to make a sudden stop.

In her mind, Monica saw a small truck with the tail bed raised off the leaf spring suspension and the cab angled until the front bumper skimmed the road.

Flicking her head around, Monica cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. She didn’t expect to be hit, but she was still waiting for the explosive sound of metal folding metal, or of glass and plastic shattering on impact.

The squeal died, not followed by the sounds of a crash. One block away, a black Nissan truck drove around a mint green Pinto hatchback stalled in the middle of the road. The driver of the Nissan leaned out of his window to flip off the Pinto driver, almost hitting another car in the process before he turned his head and stepped off the accelerator in time.

Monica watched the truck until it was a speck before she let go of her breath. But she couldn’t relax until she got to work. The truck driver had avoided the crash, and so the accident was still coming.

Monica knew it because she could hear a voice in her head. It prepared her for every crash, and when the voice told her, Get ready, all she could do was wait for the inevitable.

But this time there had been no warning to look around. There was no feeling of cold on her shoulder, which she always felt before a crash.

Even if she did not feel it, she had to resist the urge to touch her right shoulder, just to be sure. Returning her gaze to the sidewalk in front of her, she started walking again.

She tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, as her former Tai Chi instructor had suggested. She wasn’t sure if it helped to clean up her chi, but it did slow down her pulse.

Her pace was quick, though she had plenty of time to spare for her walk to the Denny’s where she worked. Her apartment was eight blocks from the diner, and she always reported to work with ten or fifteen minutes to spare.

It was not an attempt to be punctual. She just preferred to be inside buildings and away from cars.

As she crossed the parking lot of the diner, Monica spotted another of the night shift waitresses, Camilla Rodriguez.

Camilla hung out at the front entrance to smoke a cigarette before the shift began. Like Monica, she was already dressed in her drab brown uniform, a one-piece dress that would have been ugly and unflattering no matter who wore it.

But while Monica could earn tips just by smiling and looking pretty, Camilla had to resort to charm. She had charm in abundance, but the days of her youth and beauty were three decades behind her.

Pudgy and short, Camilla wore her black hair in a perm that made her head look like a globe. Her upturned nose had looked cute in her youth, when she was slim. But with pounds and wrinkles added by the savageries of time, her nose became porcine. The quality was augmented by her small brown eyes, and the padded roundness of her face made them seem to be set too close together.

Camilla spotted Monica and smirked, offering a wave that left behind a trail of smoke. “See any accidents on your walk today?”

“No, just a near miss this time.” Monica gestured at the highway. “The accident will probably be on the highway tonight, or maybe the access road.”