by Lukens, Mark
Jo insisted that the doc sit in on the questioning, like Ray had requested Emma’s presence there. Josh had brought Emma. Luke was there, his pistol tucked away in his shoulder holster under his hoodie. Max was there, too—impatient to get started. Phil and another man, Hendricks, stood guard with guns.
One of the armed guards led the first Dark Angel out of the meeting room and then locked the door again. He remained guarding the door while Luke and Phil walked the man down the hall to the loading bay.
Ray watched the Dark Angel as he sat down in the lone chair without having to be told what to do. Phil cut the plastic tie binding the man’s wrists with a pair of snips. The Dark Angel rubbed his wrists, sitting back in the chair, but still tense.
The Dark Angel was at least five inches shorter than Ray and had a slight build. His hair was thinning, his skin pasty with red splotches on his cheeks. His pale skin made the DA symbol on his forehead seem darker. He looked to be in his late thirties.
Jo had suggested that Ray ask the questions. She thought it best to only have one person asking, to avoid any confusion. She had her own small spiral tablet and pen to jot down notes. She sat in one of the folding chairs between the doc and Emma. Luke, Josh, Phil, Max, and Gil stood guard.
Ray stood a few feet in front of the Dark Angel like a lawyer prosecuting a witness on the stand. “What’s your name?”
“Dawson.” He’d just gotten done shoveling down some of the food on the plate. He drank half of his bottle of water in a few swallows to chase the food down. “Thank you for the food and water.”
Ray nodded. “We’re not savages here.”
Dawson nodded, indicating that he already knew that.
“You’re surrendering yourself and your men to us?”
A hesitant nod. “Yes. Me and four others. The other four Dark Angels in that room aren’t with us. At least not yet.”
“But you and the other four, you worked together on this plan?”
“Yes. George, Bella, J.J., and Barry. That’s their names.”
Ray nodded. He could hear Jo jotting down notes, her pen scratching at the paper lightly.
“Why do you want to join us?”
“We can’t be with the Dragon anymore. He’s evil. At first he made things sound like they were going to be great, like he was helping everyone. But he isn’t. He wants total control over everything, over everybody.”
“And the Dragon never knew about your plans?” Ray asked, already suspicious. “He couldn’t see your plans in your thoughts? In your dreams?”
Dawson shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say for sure he doesn’t know. He never tried to stop us from leaving. I’m sure he’ll know something’s wrong when we don’t show back up.”
“Are there others like you there? Others who want to leave the Dragon?”
“Yes. A few others. A lot of the people in his town want out, but they’re scared to leave. There is no leaving. But things are beginning to break down. Some of the retrieval groups haven’t been coming back. Not too many in town know about that, but I do.”
“Why come here? If you were going to leave, why not strike out on your own?”
“Because the Dragon needs to be defeated before he gets more powerful. The Dark Angels need to be defeated. I came here because I thought you could help, thinking we could join forces.” Dawson was silent for a moment.
Ray waited—he could tell Dawson had something else to say.
“I think he’s afraid of you guys,” Dawson said.
“Afraid of us?”
“I don’t know why, but he is. He hasn’t come out and said it, but you can tell that he wants all of you very badly. He wants this store. It’s like he needs those things out of the way before he can continue with the rest of his plans. I don’t know—I just can feel that he’s afraid of you, or some of you. And anybody that makes him afraid, well, that’s the people I want to team up with.”
“How do we know this isn’t a setup to get you guys inside?”
“I guess you don’t. All I can do is ask you to believe me. To believe us.”
“How do you know the Dragon hasn’t already seen this plan of yours? Seen it in your thoughts. How do you know he hasn’t sent forces right behind you?”
“I don’t know any of that for sure, but I don’t think the Dragon can read everyone the same way. I think some are easier for him to read than others, and I think there might be some he can’t read at all.”
“I’ve wondered the same thing myself,” Jo said. “It’s like he’s a radio that can only tune in to certain stations.”
Ray looked at Emma.
“It can be that way,” Emma said like she knew Ray wanted to hear from her. But she didn’t say any more.
“What about Petra?” Max asked, taking a few steps forward, staring at Dawson. “You said she’s still okay, right?”
“As far as I know. At least the last time I saw her. He keeps her in the basement of the house he lives in.”
“The basement?”
“It used to be an apartment,” Dawson said quickly, picking up on Max’s horror. “The whole house used to be apartments. There’s a bed down there. A bathroom.”
“So . . . so he hasn’t hurt her? Cut off her fingers?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“The Dragon sent a drone here with a box,” Max said. “The drone dropped the box off in the back. There was a cell phone inside with a video of Petra eating dinner with the Dragon. A man named Jacob was filming it. In the box there was also a bag of severed fingers.”
“He cut the fingers off of a few of the servant girls, the ones that work in the kitchens and the laundry.”
“You saw this?” Ray asked.
Dawson nodded. “One of the servants, she was with us. He cut off two of her fingers, one from each hand. After that, she tried to help Petra escape.”
“He cut off her fingers for helping Petra escape?” Ray asked.
“No. Before that, before she helped her.”
“Because he knew about their escape plan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What happened?” Max asked. “You said this woman tried to help Petra escape.”
“Audrey. Her name was Audrey. She tried to help Petra. Her and a Dark Angel named Scott. They got her out of the basement. They were supposed to get to an old pickup truck at a gas station outside of the town. A truck that ran. It had the keys in it.”
“But the Dragon caught them.”
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “I don’t know if someone ratted on them or if the Dragon just knew, but a Dark Angel got to the truck ahead of them and took the battery out.”
“And then?” Max asked.
“And then Jacob and some of us drove them to the fields in three trucks.”
“What’s the fields?”
“A big field where we built a wooden structure, just two large poles with a crossbeam with cables hanging down from the beam.”
“To hang them from?”
“Not hang them by their necks. By their wrists. Then they’re raised up into the air so that when the rippers come they can only get to their legs.”
“Jeez,” Josh said, swallowing hard.
“Jacob designed it,” Dawson said.
“That figures,” Luke said. “I used to work with him. He’s a sick bastard.”
Dawson glanced at Luke like he was horrified about the idea that Luke knew Jacob.
“We weren’t exactly friends,” Luke added.
“What about Petra?” Max asked, turning Dawson’s attention back to him again.
“We . . . we hung Audrey and Scott up, but not Petra. The Dragon didn’t want her to be executed, but he wanted her to watch, to see what she had done, as he had put it.”
Ray watched Dawson wince as he spoke, ducking his head a little as he talked, like he was ashamed, like he expected Max to pounce on him at any second.
“After they were hung—the traitors, as the Dragon called them—we
got Petra and everyone back into the trucks when the rippers came running from the woods. I was the only one in the back of the truck with Petra. I was told to hold her head still, to make her watch as the rippers ate Audrey and Scott as we drove away.” He looked up with tears in his eyes. “You see? That’s why I had to get away. Because of things like that. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“But Petra made it back okay?” Max said.
“Yeah. While we were in the back of the truck I whispered to her while I held her head still. I told her that I couldn’t help her escape, especially after what had just happened, but I told her I had a plan to get here to the store and to bring you back to help her, and to defeat the Dragon.”
“Yes,” Max said as if he’d been asked to go along right at that moment.
“You were here before?” Jo asked, the anger rising in her voice. “In the last attack?”
“Yes,” Dawson whispered.
“Two of your Dark Angels killed three of our people: Lance, Crystal, and Dale.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Dawson said quickly. “They were supposed to be for ransom, to get you out of the store. But . . . but they might have gotten different orders from the Dragon, or acted on their own. They might have panicked because so many rippers were coming. I can’t say for sure. But even though there are some who want to break away from the Dragon, there are still plenty of Dark Angels who are loyal to him, who believe in his power and his message. He tells them he was sent by God, that God wants us to start over, like after the flood in the Bible. And they believe him. And some of the others, they don’t know what to do; they’re just scared.”
“Three of our people were killed right out there in the parking lot,” Jo said. “And we know Petra is in Hell Town. What about Tamara, Tyrone, and Zak?”
“The ones who weren’t captured at the mole’s house were killed. Except Petra. She got away. But Jacob was sent to find her.”
“And he found her,” Luke said.
Dawson didn’t need to answer.
“But there’s another reason you wanted to leave,” Emma said.
Dawson stared at Emma. Ray could tell Dawson sensed something special about her, a power in her like the power he’d sensed in the Dragon.
“He made me do something,” Dawson said. “Before I even helped with Audrey and Scott’s execution. He was angry that we hadn’t taken your store, that the mole in here hadn’t accomplished his mission.” Dawson paused, like he wondered about the mole, like he wondered exactly what had happened inside the store that day.
No one offered an explanation about Jeff.
“We lined up in the town square,” Dawson continued. “Beside the wood platform he had built with the stocks on top.”
“Stocks?” Jo asked.
“Yeah. Wooden stocks. Like the ones they used to use in the old days in England and stuff. People would put their head and hands through the holes and be locked in place. He called me up to the stocks. I knew he wanted to make an example out of someone, and I was sure it was going to be me.”
“But you weren’t the example,” Emma said. It sounded like a question, but Ray knew it wasn’t.
“No. He made me pick one of my men. I picked a man named Lanier. I didn’t hate him. I didn’t particularly like him. I just picked him. They stripped him naked and locked him in the stocks. The Dragon told me to get my knife out and . . . and remove the brand from his forehead. He said he didn’t deserve to be a Dark Angel anymore.”
“And you did it,” Emma said.
“I had to,” Dawson answered, choking back a sob. “I didn’t have a choice.”
No one said anything.
“J.J. was there in the line,” Dawson finally said. “George too. Bella. They all saw what I’d been forced to do. I’d already been talking to George and Bella by then, and a few of the others. Forming plans to get Petra out, to overtake the Dragon.”
Ray picked up the maps of North and South Carolina along with the drawing tablet and pen. “Show us on the map where Hell Town is. And then I need you to draw a diagram of the town. Make it as detailed as you possibly can. Label the houses, the buildings, the streets, where the supplies and weapons are, where the Dragon lives.”
“Tell us where Jacob is, too,” Luke said.
Dawson took the tablet and the maps, but he didn’t start drawing yet. He looked at Luke. “Jacob lives in the same house the Dragon does, the one where Petra is.” He looked back at Ray. “The food stores are in some of the basements under the homes, locked away with fortified doors. That way if rippers ever got into the houses, at least the food and supplies would be safe.”
Ray gestured at Dawson to get going with the maps.
Dawson hesitated, staring at Ray. “I just have one request.”
“What?”
“Is there any way you can separate my people from the other Dark Angels? I don’t know if they’ll go with us, if they’ll help us take down the Dragon. I don’t know how true they still are to the Dragon. I can vouch for mine, but not them. I’m afraid they may try to attack us while we’re sleeping.”
Ray looked at Jo.
“Yeah,” Jo said. “We can do something about that.”
CHAPTER 19
Jo
Night had come. The kids were with Kate and Rebecca. Tiger was still hanging around the kids, enjoying the attention. Everything was quiet. Lisa and Wade were on the roof, on watch.
After questioning the Dark Angels, Jo had kept her promise to Dawson and split his group from the other four Dark Angels. She kept Dawson and his four locked in the meeting room with one armed guard at the door. She set the other four up in the men’s room at the front of the store with an armed guard always on duty. She left Dawson and his crew unbound, but she kept the other four Dark Angels’ hands bound in front of them with the plastic zip ties because there was no way to lock them in the men’s room.
They would be bound for tonight, at least until they could figure out what to do with them.
Jo had jotted down notes while questioning the Dark Angels, comparing their stories. The gang of five’s stories seemed to measure up pretty well against each other’s. She found all of them believable . . . well, except maybe Barry—the oldest one; he set Jo on edge just a little for some reason she couldn’t explain, like he’d go along with anything or anyone just to save his own skin.
The other four Dark Angels’ stories were pretty similar to each other. They didn’t know Dawson and the others were going to ambush them. The plan had been to ram the gate and then blow the back doors to get inside.
“Blow the doors with what?” Luke had asked one of the Dark Angels during the interrogation.
“C-4,” the man answered. “It’s in the back of one of the Humvees. It’s wired to a simple trigger detonator.”
Luke wanted to know how much C-4 they had at Hell Town.
None of the four Dark Angels claimed to know.
Luke wanted to know who had taught them how to use the C-4 and who had wired the device for them. He suspected that Jacob had shown them, or maybe they had an ex-military expert among their ranks. Someone had prepared the bomb for them and told them how to use it.
Again the four Dark Angels claimed not to know anything.
Jo wanted to know what they had planned on doing once they’d gotten inside the store. Kill everyone? Kill every man, woman, and child?
The Dark Angels kept their mouths shut, like they’d been trained in interrogation tactics. But Jo didn’t need to hear their answers; she already knew what they had planned to do to everyone in the store. Maybe a few would have been spared, taken prisoner, the few that Dawson said scared the Dragon: Emma, for sure; probably Luke and Ray; maybe even Josh and Max, Kate and Brooke. Maybe even herself. Whatever the Dark Angels had been planning, it hadn’t been good. They’d come with assault rifles, plenty of ammo, and explosives. They’d obviously meant to tie some of them up because they had a bag of zip ties in one of the Humvees, and Luke had us
ed those on the four Dark Angels now being housed in the men’s room at the front of the store.
Joe didn’t feel too bad about those four spending the night in the cold men’s room, their hands bound, huddled in the dark together, not when she knew the death and destruction they’d been planning.
“We were only following orders,” one of the Dark Angels had said, a kid who couldn’t have been even twenty years old yet.
Jo told the kid that he had a choice—everyone did. Dawson and the others had made a choice, they had made a stand, and he could too.
But Jo realized pretty quickly that rationalizing with the four Dark Angels wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
Now Jo sat at the tables that had been set up near the long deli counters where big glass cases were mostly empty, cases that used to display meats, cheeses, salads, hot and cold food. It was quiet and colder in the store. Max sat at the table with her. Gil was with her too—he always seemed to stay close to her. Three lanterns on the table gave them a sphere of light to work in. Ray had the maps unfolded on the table and the map of Hell Town that Dawson had drawn.
“We need to get Petra,” Max said, glancing around at the others. Then he corrected himself. “I’m going to get her.”
Jo was sure Max would. All he had needed was the location of Hell Town; he had that now.
Max looked at Luke and Phil, like he was making sure they were still willing to go with him.
Luke held Max’s gaze for a moment, then he looked at Ray, then at Jo. “We need to attack the Dragon soon. We need to strike before he knows what’s happened here, that some of his men have flipped on him. If we wait too long, he’ll send another group here. A bigger group. More weapons.”
“He may already know,” Emma said.
“You sure?”
“I can’t be sure, but he must have a link with at least one of these men, like the link he had with Rose back at the cabin.”
“With all of us here now, we could pick off the Dark Angels if they came,” Jo said. “We have more people now, and more weapons.”