Final Days: Escape

by Jasper T. Scott

  The bag was under dense brush, which everyone in the colony avoided at all costs. Its bloom was exceptionally colorful, but the sweet-smelling flowers were accompanied by piercing thorns. The irony wasn’t lost on him. It was a wonder Tony hadn’t diced his arm up stashing these.

  Roland slid his hand into his sleeve, carefully wrapping it through the pack’s strapping. He tugged it free as he struggled to see in the dark. One of the spikes sliced through his sleeve, drawing blood.

  Thunder boomed overhead, meaning they had to hurry.

  “What are you waiting for?” Eve asked.

  As someone that had been working for Morris, then Hound, Roland wasn’t sure how much he could trust Eve. “You could have helped.”

  “You were doing a fine job,” she said.

  He dropped the heavy sack to the forest bed and knelt over it, unzipping the bag. Weapons of all kinds were inside, and he smiled, remembering the full shelves they’d extracted the armaments from. He pulled out night-vision goggles and stuck them on his head, passing her a set.

  She reached for them, and Roland halted, not letting go. “How can I trust you?”

  Eve ran a hand through her short hair, her eyes no longer wild from the drugs. “It wasn’t my fault. You know that. Your own friends were there with me.”

  “But Hound…”

  “Look, Roland. You can say what you will, but some of us just need to survive. You and Kendra might hold yourselves to a higher standard or some bullshit, but at the end of the day, I had a choice. Be a slave, die, or join. And I’m still here, right?” She took the glasses as he let go.

  “Are you really with us?” he asked.

  She nodded, even adding a smile. “Nothing would give me more pleasure than getting the hell out of here. And if we can take revenge on Hound as we leave, I’ll be a very happy woman.”

  Roland grabbed a high-tech handgun. It was dull gray, with a black handle and a laser sight on top. It looked like a movie prop to him, but he shrugged, giving it over. “Will that do the trick?” he asked, and she reached into the bag, adding a second clip to her pocket.

  “Now it will.”

  He slung the pack over his shoulder, bringing it toward the camp. The lights were on near the main stations; huge floodlights had been added near the crops for the double shifts when they were first under the Saints’ control. Carrie had fired them up again, allowing the entire colony to work through the night.

  “Rollie, you got ‘em?” Tony arrived behind him, with Valeria at his side. She looked tired, and Roland peered into the distance, catching the light of the rover as it raced away from camp.

  “Weapons are a go. Did Andy make it out okay?” he asked.

  “He’s gone,” Val said quietly.

  Lightning raced overhead, and Roland hefted the bag, giving it to Tony. “Take this.”

  The teen accepted it without complaint. It was nice having someone to do his heavy lifting. Eve’s gaze darted around the camp as they wound their way toward the others. Kendra stood near a growing pile of supplies, and more were being added by the minute. The stack of folded bedding was beside the rest of the food containers. There had to be a good semi trailer’s worth of gear here, and Roland hoped these aliens were going to allow them to bring it on their spaceship.

  He still struggled to believe that their old water-logged vessel would operate with the new fuel cell, but he kept his reservations to himself. If their frog-like allies didn’t come through, it was over before it began. Hound would kill some of them, if not all.

  “Roland, can you give those to Kendra to allocate?” Carrie’s voice caught him off guard, and he jumped as he found her behind him.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Roland said.

  Kendra passed him a respirator and tried to smile. “Wear this. The storm’s coming. This place has a penchant for the dramatic, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s the plan?”

  Kendra pointed to Tony and Valeria. “You two go help Carrie and the others with the crates.”

  “We need a gun,” Val said, her stare unwavering.

  Kendra glanced at her sister, then over to Andrew’s daughter. “Fine.”

  Kendra gave the girl the smallest weapon in the bag, and Roland expected her to complain. Instead she dashed off with Tony as the first raindrops fell.

  “This is going to get messy.” Roland stepped aside as a few colonists began tarping the gear, attempting to keep the impending rain from damaging their supplies.

  “If Andrew pulls this off, and Belidar and his people hurry, we might not have to worry about Hound,” Kendra said hopefully.

  Carrie was still there, and she turned to Roland, coming close. “I have a job for you.”

  Didn’t they always? “Sure. Shoot.”

  “Eden Five.” She dropped a tablet and another device into his hand. “Search through his files, store everything you can on here.” She tapped the clear screen.

  “What do you expect me to find?”

  “We have some of the schematics for the colony, but without the Eden stations on a new planet, we’re going to be in for a tough start. We’ll need all the help we can get. See what he has there, and hopefully something is useful.” Carrie turned as a woman arrived, asking questions Roland could hardly hear over the blustering wind.

  He glanced to Hound’s lair, a creeping sensation rising through his spine. He remembered the night-vision goggles on his head, and he tossed them to Kendra. “You could probably use these more than me.”

  “Let’s pray I don’t,” she said, and he was off, jogging toward the one place in camp that none of them, other than Carrie, had been permitted to enter.

  The trip was quick, and he entered the Eden station. He’d watched enough of Hound through the camera lens Carrie had planted there for them to find it familiar, and he raced for the desk, bringing the sleeping screen to life.

  Everything was in another language, a series of strange symbols reminding him of hieroglyphics. “You got this, Rollie.” The words might not make sense, but computers were mainly a series of mathematical equations when you broke them down to the basics. He found how to move through the program’s material, scrolling through the menus. He entered a few, seeing what he interpreted as an error. There was some kind of a passcode needed. Hound had been particular, even in his own private residence.

  Roland peered through the windows above the desk, seeing distant sparks of light from the incoming storm. The mask hung around his neck, flopping against his chest, and he pulled it off, feeling like he was being choked by the current situation. “Come on. You can find a way in. They’re counting on you,” he muttered to himself, fingers soaring over the strange keypad.

  To his own surprise, he managed to convert the language to English in a list of over a hundred options, and he grinned. Now there was no stopping him. Soon he was working through the information, downloading every schematic he could, from the construction of Eden to the layout of the mess hall kitchen. There were schedules for crops, with a five-year to fifty-year implementation plan, so he took those, along with construction details for the residences, and what looked like an entire housing community.

  Roland stopped as he located the supply manifest from Eden Fifteen. He’d always been curious about what was inside. Some were labeled in yellow highlights, and he clicked one, seeing that it was considered dangerous. He dug deeper, and his curiosity spiked.

  The image of a rectangular device the size of an Eighties boombox appeared as he moved through the listings, and he stopped on it. It was a hard restart for the camp. From what he could discern, it would kill everything running on electrical currents for ten minutes, before rebooting. Reading on, Roland saw a notation linked, and he clicked it, finding a statement about a glitchy power supply Hound’s engineers had been afraid might cause issues in the coming years. This was a way to restore the entire camp, without doing permanent damage.

  Roland memorized the bin location. “Two three eight Bravo.” He said it a f
ew more times. If they were attacked, this might be their ticket to freedom.

  It had been too long. The others would be wondering what had happened to him. Another flash of light burst across the viewscreen behind the desk, and Roland closed his tablet, placing the respirator on his face. It was time to hit Eden Fifteen.

  * * *

  Andrew

  Boom. Lightning forked through the windows as the rover bumped along the fields.

  “Just what we needed: another storm,” Andrew muttered, leaning toward the windshield and peering up at the dark sky.

  “We brought respirators,” Keller said as he swerved down to the lakeshore. The pebbly beach roared beneath the wheels.

  “Good,” Andrew said.

  “What’s the plan when we arrive?” Keller asked. He nodded to the spherical device in Andrew’s lap. “Do you even know how to activate that thing?”

  Andrew rolled it in his hands to reveal a round, thumb-sized button built into it. “I’m guessing we press the button and run.”

  Keller snorted. “I hope we have enough time for the running part.”

  “Me too.”

  “I meant what I said to your daughter.” A roll of thunder punctuated that statement. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Yeah, likewise.”

  “We’re not so different, you and me,” Keller went on. “Both of us would do anything for our families. The only difference is you still have one.”

  Andrew glanced at Keller. “You killed a drunk driver out of revenge.”

  “And you killed the man who abducted your daughter,” Keller replied.

  “You knew about that?”

  Keller smiled and slowly nodded. Andrew wasn’t sure he liked the dark, deadly flicker in the other man’s eyes. Was that what people saw when they looked at him? A killer?

  “I’m not judging,” Keller clarified.

  Andrew averted his eyes, feeling the first twinges of guilt. “Maybe you should be.” He’d been so distracted by everything that had happened since Val went missing that he hadn’t allowed himself to slow down for even a moment to think about everything he’d done. He’d killed John in cold blood; likewise for the psycho who’d abducted Val and the others. If he’d been faced with the choice, he probably would have killed the reverend, too. “When we make it out of here, it needs to stop.”

  “What does?” Keller asked.

  “The killing.”

  “It never stops, Andy.”

  “Well, it better. We’ll end up extinct if we don’t value every single life we have left.”

  “Survival of the fittest.” Keller bobbed his head as another flicker of lightning stole through the rover. “I guess only time will tell whether or not we are.”

  They drove on in silence, listening to the thunderclaps and the roar of pebbles under the rover’s wheels. The flashes of lightning and their subsequent booms grew progressively closer together.

  “We’re driving into the storm,” Andrew said, leaning against his seat restraints.

  “Sounds that way,” Keller agreed. Ten minutes later he brought the rover to a halt. “This is it.” Keller climbed between their seats and retrieved a pack full of supplies from the rear of the vehicle. He zipped it open and tossed a respirator to Andrew.

  “Thanks.”

  They both put their masks on and picked up their rifles from the floor of the rover. Andrew kept a light hand on the explosive device from Belidar, being careful to mind the activation switch.

  “Ready?” Keller asked, his grip on the handle of one of the rear doors.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Andrew replied, his voice muffled by the mask.

  They threw their doors open and stepped out, rocks grinding underfoot as they walked the rest of the trip up the beach to the shadowy forest. “You remember how to get there?” Keller asked.

  Andrew nodded. “I hope so. Last time it took me all night to find the place.”

  A monstrous crack of thunder came in time to a blinding burst of light. Andrew winced and blinked his eyes to clear them. A torrent of rain gushed down, heavy drops splashing in his hair and on the ground.

  “Goddammit!” Keller muttered.

  “Let’s go!” Andrew added, dashing into the cover of the trees. But the cottony leaves melted away and fell in sodden clumps with the force of the rain. They were soaked to the bone in seconds.

  Mist swirled up from the forest floor, concealing everything but the nearest tree trunks. Keller dug through the pack he’d found in the rover and handed Andrew an angle-head flashlight. “Here!”

  They clipped on the lights, but the beams ended in a solid gray wall of moisture barely five feet from their faces. Andrew pushed on, battling through thick underbrush, soggy ground, mist and rain.

  “How can you tell where you’re going?” Keller called as Andrew forged ahead.

  “I can’t!”

  The storm raged on. They came to a curved depression in the ground. Andrew was halfway down the slope before he stopped cold. “You feel that?”

  “No, what?” Keller asked.

  The ground was shaking. Andrew turned his ear to listen, but couldn’t hear anything over the pouring rain and near-constant crashing of thunder. The vibrations were getting stronger.

  “Run!” Andrew said. He matched action to words, dashing ahead in what he could only hope was the right direction. They reached a matching slope and used their hands to climb faster, grabbing shrubs and fallen logs to pull themselves up. Andrew glanced back to see Keller struggling, gasping noisily through his respirator. In the next instant a raging black wall of mud and sticks tore a hole in the mist and sideswiped him from the waist down.

  Keller cried out as the flood yanked him away, sucking him under in the blink of an eye.

  “Keller!” Andrew stood at the edge of the racing torrent, the beam of his flashlight vanishing into the murky night. A black river gushed by, as fast as any car.

  There was no sign of Eric Keller anywhere.

  “Keller!” he called again.

  This time, he caught a glimpse of movement, but it wasn’t Keller’s head breaching the surface. It was a pair of yellow eyes and a sleek black form creeping out of the mist, crouching low. Andrew yanked his rifle up and fired a single warning shot into the nearest tree. “Get!” he cried.

  The wolf froze, glancing at the splintered trunk beside it.

  “Did you hear me?” Andrew stepped toward it and hiked his rifle up higher on his shoulder. “Next bullet goes between your eyes!”

  The wolf retreated slightly.

  “Andrew! I’m down here! My hands are slipping!” Keller’s voice distracted Andrew as he searched for the source of it, but he was nowhere in sight. Visibility was too poor. Realizing he’d taken his eyes off that wolf for too long, Andrew’s skin prickled with warning. He spun around to face the creature.

  But it was gone. A mixture of rain and sweat dripped into his eyes, and he blinked furiously to clear them, his head on a swivel as he combed the forest.

  “Andrew!” Keller cried.

  “I’ll be right—”

  A dark blurry shape leapt out of the mist and fell on him. Andrew tumbled hard, throwing his arms up to shield his face. Sharp teeth sank into his forearm instead of his throat, and he cried out as hot spears dug through his flesh. He gritted his teeth against the pain as powerful jaws ground against his bones, threatening to snap him like a twig. Struggling under the weight of the massive creature, Andrew tried to bring his rifle up, but the wolf had him pinned. He pulled the trigger anyway, and the weapon roared, bullets zipping out and crunching into trees.

  The creature released his arm, giving him a brief respite. He saw a gleam of yellow eyes peering over him; a massive mouth grinned, full of long, needle-sharp teeth smeared with his own blood. Andrew’s left arm felt numb now, a bad sign.

  He struggled with his right to bring the rifle to bear, but one of the wolf’s paws was planted firmly on his biceps. Yellow eyes darted to his other arm, a
nd a big purple tongue snaked out to lick the blood from its teeth.

  He saw the devilish gleam in the creature’s eyes as it lunged for his other arm.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Val

  “We need those crates, too!” Carrie shouted down to them from the growing stacks of supply containers in the center of camp. Lights from the Eden stations and construction floodlights illuminated the camp, making it possible to see what they were doing.

  “We’re on it!” Tony replied, and sprinted across the sloping fields to the crops.

  Val followed him, with Eve and Thomas Hartford, to a stack of supply crates between the tomatoes and spinach. These were full of agricultural supplies, and they were heavy.

  “I’ll take one end, the doc will take the other,” Eve said as they reached the nearest of a dozen different boxes sitting in the packed dirt beside the rows of tomato plants. “You kids grab the sides,” she added. They each took a handle on their side. “On three,” Eve said, “One, two—lift!”

  They raised the box simultaneously and carried it up the hill. As they went, thunder rolled, and lightning flashed from the other side of the lake. Val hoped her dad was okay. The storm had to be directly over their heads right now.

  Tony caught her eye and smiled reassuringly as if he could tell what she was thinking. “Don’t worry. He’ll be okay.”

  Val didn’t reply. They’d each escaped death more than a few times now. How long before their luck ran out?

  As they reached the growing pile of supplies in the center of the camp, Val heard another roll of thunder, and felt fat raindrops landing in her hair.

  She observed the sky, her gaze tracking warily across the clouds. “We’re about to get rained out.” Even as she said that the rain pelted harder, washing away a long day’s worth of dried sweat and grime.

  “All right, everybody!” Carrie called, clapping her hands for attention. “If you’re not carrying a gun, you need to get inside Eden One and take shelter!”