119
You spin around, hardly able to believe your eyes when you see Kate Norton waving at you from a gas station on the opposite side of the freeway. In a daze you run towards her, and she towards you, and together you meet in the centre of the deserted highway, locked in an embrace that melts away all memory of the ordeal you have endured over the past two days.
When at last the exhilaration of your unexpected reunion subsides, she tells you that the colony has already reached Tucson, and is safely encamped with the Tucson colony inside a stronghold they have established at the Davis-Monthan Air Force base. When you and the rest of Captain Frankland’s team failed to make the Deming rendezvous, the colony continued as planned, hoping that you would join them en route. Gradually, as they progressed further west, their hopes faded until they accepted that you must have perished during the raid on Ciudad Juarez. But Kate refused to abandon hope. When the convoy reached Benson she insisted that she wait here in case you had been unable to find transport and were heading for Tucson on foot. Reluctantly they agreed to her request, knowing full well that there was little they could do to prevent her from staying.
You ask if she has seen any clan activity during the twenty-four hours she has been here, and she says that there has been none. The freeway and the surrounding area have remained completely deserted.
‘It’s funny,’ she says, ‘but since we left Lordsburg it’s as if they lost interest in us.’
