“Who’s the bad man?” Adam asked.
“The man who killed my mom and will lead all of the others to their deaths.”
“Richard?”
Jake nodded.
“He’s willing to sacrifice them all to get me back.”
VII
Salt Lake City
RICHARD STARED AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR, THE FLICKERING flames from the lantern accentuating the gashes on his cheeks. Tracing them with his fingertips, his anger swelled to a crescendo of rage. They would scar, there was no doubt about it. The edges had curled away from the scabbing stripes, creating thick shadows that made him look like a monster.
He roared and punched the mirror, large triangular shards cascading to the dresser top.
“You okay?” Garrett asked, bursting through the doorway from the hall.
Richard turned to face him, blood draining from his knuckles. The impact had left a starburst of crimson on the wall. He shook his stinging hand, spattering Garrett with droplets of blood, but the larger man didn’t even flinch.
“Are they ready?” Richard asked.
“Your hand… Are you all right?”
“I said are they ready?” Richard shouted, spittle spraying from his lips.
“Yeah,” Garrett said, wounded. “They’re down in the lobby waiting for you.”
Richard smiled and walked up to Garrett, placing both hands on the other man’s shoulders and giving them a solid squeeze. Garrett could feel the warmth of Richard’s blood soaking through his jacket and onto his skin.
“I’m counting on you, Garrett,” Richard said, his breath beginning to sound raspy, labored. “You’re my number one, you know.”
Garrett only nodded, unable to look away from Richard’s face.
“By the time I return, I expect this place to be a fortress able to withstand a nuclear assault.”
“You know it will be.”
“Of course,” Richard said, his features softening. “I wouldn’t doubt you for a second.”
He removed his hands from Garrett’s shoulders and clapped him on the back.
“You sure you don’t want to bandage that hand before you go?”
“I said I’m fine!” Richard shouted, but then lowered his voice. “We need to get that kid back before we come under attack. There’s no time to waste, especially to bandage my stupid hand.”
Garrett nodded and slipped back out into the hallway, leaving Richard alone to watch as the blood rolled from the ridges of his knuckles. Dabbing the tip of his left index finger into the mess of fluids, he drew a streak under each eye.
“War paint,” he said aloud, chuckling to himself as he headed down the hall and descended the stairs to the main level.
Six men waited for him in the lobby, bundled in multiple layers of clothing with scarves drawn across their faces so that only their eyes were visible. Each had either a rifle or shotgun slung over their shoulder and across their chests, the front pockets of their jackets bulging with square boxes of ammunition.
“We aren’t coming back without the child,” Richard said.
The men nodded solemnly, understanding the gravity of Richard’s words.
“We travel through the evening and night so that they won’t see us coming.” Richard donned the gear they had reserved for him as they waited patiently. By the time he was finished adding layer after layer of pants and snow pants, several jackets and a hooded sub-arctic coat, he felt like he was in a rotisserie. “If any of you have qualms about doing whatever it takes to free the boy, then you need to state so now. No hard feelings and no judgments. Just turn around and walk away.” He studied their firm expressions. “Good.”
He tugged a ski mask over his face and pulled on the faux fur-lined hood, making his final stop the row of tables buried under a display of firearms. Lifting a shotgun that appeared to be the right length, he sighted down the barrel. Content, he slung it over his shoulder and stuffed his outer pockets with boxes of shells. As he was turning away, something caught his eye. With a smile, he took the sheathed hunting knife from the table and gripped it by the hilt. With a snick he withdrew the blade and held it up to the light. The back edge was deeply serrated, the front designed to be sharp enough to cut a deer’s hide from the meat. Definitely sharp enough to slit a man’s throat with ease. Tucking it beneath the jacket and into the pouch of the pullover beneath so he could feel it against his belly, he led the men through the foyer where many of the others had gathered to see them off.
“We shall return!” Richard called back over his shoulder as he shoved through the front doors. Their cheers resonated in his ears long after he climbed into the passenger seat of the pickup truck. Two men clambered in through the driver’s side door, the truck shaking as the remainder bounded up into the bed behind.
The driver cranked the key and pinned the gas, urging the truck to life with a roar. Jamming the stick into reverse, the tires screamed on the ice before gaining traction and firing backwards. It slid sideways as the driver cranked the wheel and punched it into gear, sending the vehicle rocketing forward through the gap where the gate had been. Instead of turning to the left toward the highway, they veered to the right for several blocks before taking a left and driving back through the warehouse district until they saw what they were looking for.
Enclosed by a chain link fence capped with barbed wire was an enormous lot with several acres containing motor homes and trailers as far as the eye could see, but that wasn’t why they had come. The driver designated a section of fencing at random and launched the truck from the road, plowing right through. The wire gouged through the paint, but parted easily enough. High-end recreational vehicles passed to either side as they drove deeper into the lot, motor homes larger even than Richard’s first apartment. They became smaller in size the farther they worked away from the main road, until they came across the display they had been told would be there in front of the warehouse where they were stored.
There was a line of snowmobiles in front of the metal platforms that held the premiere models aloft so they would be seen first. The truck coasted to a halt right in front of them, the freezing men in back hopping out of the bed and into the accumulation before the pickup even stopped. Richard opened his door and joined them as they marveled at the sleek machinery.
“I still say we could move faster in the truck,” the driver said, rounding the hood to stand beside the others.
“There would be too many variables outside of our control,” Richard said, noting that the keys hung from the ignition of each of the speeders as he had hoped. “We could always slide off the road and get stuck in a snow bank. And since by now they have to know that we’re coming for the boy, they could already have set up roadblocks or any number of traps. In one vehicle, we’d be an easy target. On several with the capabilities of fast maneuvering and off-road evasion, they’ll have a much harder time trying to account for all of us at once.”
“But it will take twice as long, if not longer.”
“Were you not listening?”
The man fell quiet, knowing that any further protests would be summarily dismissed.
“I want these things gassed and ready to go in under half an hour. Find spare gas cans and load four onto each. Strap them to the backs and take care of whatever other business you may have,” Richard said, walking away from them.
“Where are you going?” one of them called after him.
“If there’s a repair shop, there will be vending machines. If you guys are even half as hungry as I am, then we’ll need all of the food we can carry.”
He crossed the lot toward a shiny glass building with enormous RVs all around it. Raising his right boot, he simply kicked through the glass and sauntered inside. At the back of the showroom, he could see a pair of bathrooms with an unmarked door between, surely the break room where he would find whatever food they stocked, but it was what he saw behind the sales counter to his left that piqued his curiosity.
There was a
display of road hazard gear. Flashlights and blinking emergency beacons. Flat tire foam and triangular wheel blocks. The item at the far end of the top shelf drew his eye.
A flare gun.
Stepping behind the counter, he pulled it down and set it beside the register just long enough to unzip his winter parka. He shoved it into the pocket of his interior jacket with the knife and took the remaining reload canisters as well. One could never predict when a towering blaze just might come in handy.
VIII
Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Western Colorado
THEY WERE ON THE MOVE BEFORE THE SUN EVEN SET. WITH THE STORM clouds and the blizzard adding to the already thick haze overhead, the sun vanished long before it officially set. Given the unexpected extra hours, they might even be able to reach the suburbs of Salt Lake City before the sun again graced the day. If all went according to the revised plan, not only would they be able to lay siege to those occupying the hotel the following night, they would be able to advance upon the others on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, those the master saw as the true threat.
Thunder raced up the slope, flames licking at its bony heels. When it crested the hill, it brought its legs to its chest and soared with its momentum, fire streaking across the sky like exhaust from a jet, before landing in stride, the earth quivering beneath its stomping hooves. War rode low on its back, tugging on its mane of long sharpened spines to spur it even faster. The skeletal beast was inexhaustible, like the Swarm sprinting behind it, hurdling boulders and slaloming between trees with sinuous agility. They used their claws to gain leverage, propelling them forward to alight on legs that ran with such long, fluid strides that they appeared not to touch the ground at all.
Frozen streams passed beneath, cleared in effortless leaps; gullies and rivers proving to be of no consequence. Only the sheer faces of stone slowed them, forcing War to stick to the paths cut by what had once been deer and mountain goats, but were now something else entirely, something that knew better than to be out in the open when War’s armada passed through. The Swarm, however, could scale even the steepest formations, latching their sharp claws into the smallest imperfections in the stone to ascend vertically like geckos, arriving on War’s heels so as not to delay their progress longer than absolutely necessary. They bled from the wounds inflicted by their brethren, who scrabbled over each other in the chaos, jockeying for position and their master’s favor, but they were oblivious to the pain and the pasty white sludge that slopped to the snow from the gashes.
They hissed from behind him with their mounting bloodlust, spurring War to drive them that much harder. Thrilling in the hunt, he barely noticed the scenery flying past to either side as the ground leveled off and the trees grew farther apart. The snow and ice covering the hidden lakes melted under the intense heat of his stallion’s thundering hooves, sending dozens of those reptilian creatures splashing into the bitterly cold water to sink like so many stones to their deaths, the shock of the subzero temperatures overwhelming their central nervous systems, which only resumed command of their physical forms after inhaling that fatal lungful of water. It didn’t matter, though. His army numbered in the tens of thousands, more than enough to make swift work of the remainder of man. Soon enough they would learn from watching their kind fall through the ice and avoid traveling directly behind him. If indeed they were actually capable of such higher thought, as many still raced along behind him in the flames, their flesh cooking until they just collapsed forward into the snow to be overcome, every iota of meat picked from the bones left to sink into the snow. They were the perfect mindless killing machines, save that one with the scar across its eye and the dewlap to match the crimson of War’s armor. It maintained some semblance of sentience, even after its rebirth into the minions of the damned, its eyes burning with a fire that transcended even death.
Crossing the border into Utah as the mountains obscured the setting sun, the world falling under the blanket of darkness, their eyes cast an eerie light across the fields of snow, the smoke from Thunder’s fiery advance hovering over it like a Scottish moor. There was but a single mountain range left to ford, rising like a wolf’s teeth against the horizon of night, and they would easily clear it before that celestial orb was a glimmer on the horizon behind.
Little did mankind know that the coming sunrise would be its last, that when it rose again in little more than a day and a half, the few rays that permeated the dreary sky would shine only upon the chalk of their shattered bones, ground beneath War’s heel.
Chapter 5
I
Mormon Tears
THEY WERE ALL GOING TO HAVE TO LABOR THROUGH THE NIGHT IF THEY had any hope of being ready in time. It had been Adam’s idea to work in shifts. Each and every one of them would expend maximum energy for two straight hours, pushing their bodies to their limits before earning the luxury of passing out from exhaustion, only to throw themselves back into the work again. There would be plenty of time to rest when all was said and done. Either they’d miraculously survive the assault and thrill in the prospect of once again sleeping with both eyes closed, reveling in the promise of being able to sleep through the night without being slaughtered, or they would fall, and eternal rest would be theirs. At the moment, both options held a certain appeal.
It had taken nearly an hour by itself, but they had managed to back the semi-trailer sideways into the passage through the mountains after unloading its cargo, abutting the mound of sand so that it could be shoveled against the trailer to reinforce it. Using it as the foundation, the construction had begun on the vertical wall above it, using two-by-fours like pickets to build rows of fencing, one atop the other until it stood nearly as tall as the mountains to either side. It shuddered with each stiff gust of wind, but it would only have to hold for so long. Besides, it was only a deterrent. Considering they’d siphoned the last of the gas from the semi to douse it when the time came, they didn’t need it to stand so much as they needed it to burn.
Evelyn’s project, on the other hand, required more careful planning and implementation. Time was of the essence. The kelp was starting to look as though it was past resurrection, but she simply couldn’t allow it to die without a fight. She’d been working straight through the night, and now, only hours from sunrise, she was finally ready to put her design to the test. They had dug a large hole in the sand twenty feet from the frozen shoreline. It was only four feet in diameter and maybe five feet deep, but the true challenge had been in hauling the rocks from where they had been embedded in the ice over to the pit and stacking them on top of each other, packing them into the dirt walls to give it the small measure of structural integrity they needed. For all intents and purposes, it looked like an old well that couldn’t possibly hold water, but they didn’t need it to. All it had to do was keep the sand from collapsing down upon the coal.
They’d carved several long trenches leading away from the pit to the edge of the lake, and then broken through the ice to clear a ten foot square patch. Using the PVC piping from the semi, they’d fashioned four long, straight tubes using four eight foot sections of piping and coupling them together. At one end of each was a ninety degree bend and a four-foot straight length coming out the other side. All four had been lowered into the trenches in parallel so that the tubing hung over the edge of the rocks above the center of the hole, while the other end stretched all the way out into the water where they were able to balance the ends between rocks so that the four-foot sections pointed straight up from the water into the sky like so many smokestacks. Now that the pipes were buried and packed into the earth and they had finished creating a lid, leaving a single four-inch square hole in the center, it was finally time to either save the plants or give up the ghost.
“Is that enough?” Mare asked. Both he and Darren were covered with black dust from lugging load after load of coal out of the cavern.
“At least for now…I think,” Evelyn said. She couldn’t think of a time in her life when she’d been this nervous. �
�Maybe just a few—”
“We’re ready!” Mare shouted back to the cave, cutting Evelyn off mid-sentence. She’d already sent them back two more times than necessary and his shift had been over for ten minutes already. He’d be damned if he didn’t at least get to see if his labor bore fruit.
Jill was waiting in the cave with a burning wooden post, out of the wind and snow, waiting for her summons. She knew that once she ran out into the elements that the flame would extinguish, but they were planning on the embers rekindling the flames just enough to ignite the coal. At the sound of his voice, she shielded the fire with her body and dashed out into the night, using their tracks as a guide. She didn’t even slow when she reached the hole in the ground, the elevated lip around it ringed with rocks like a campfire, launching the makeshift torch down to the bottom.
Its end was little more than smoldering black charcoal, but the occasional golden ember winked with life. Thin tufts of smoke twirled up out of the pit to be tossed aside by the wind. None of them dared to so much as breathe for fear of creating that one fateful current of air that would kill the hopes of rekindling the fire. They could always start again with a new torch or somehow carry out an already burning coal, but they’d invested so much time into getting to this point that none of them could stand the prospect of waiting a second longer.
With a crackle, one of the dim embers sparked, a small flame wavering in its stead, growing incrementally larger until another sprung up beside it, the two of them joining to begin consuming the wood anew. Characteristic deep black smoke billowed from the coal beneath, making them cough even as the wind wished it away.
“Just a little more,” Evelyn said, raising the lid in preparation of dropping it over the pit.
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