by Stasia Black
The San Antonio river was only a narrow stream by the park, but as they slipped into it one by one and made their way downstream, it widened and deepened. The only tricky part was jumping over the dam the five feet down into the part of the river that went downtown to the Riverwalk. Not terribly dangerous but a little nerve-wracking all the same.
And the river itself—God, it was filthy. They all had goggles but they were effectively useless. Upstream they realized the best way to navigate without losing one another was to literally hold on to each other. There were only a few places where that was impractical because of debris or the river getting too narrow with overgrowth.
But they’d made it. They were in the Riverwalk itself and they’d swum along with the current down the streets they’d memorized.
In front of her, Drea felt Jonathan stop, holding onto the rocks and other debris piled at the bottom of the Riverwalk to halt his forward momentum. Drea did the same, and Garrett beside her.
She only popped her head above the surface when she got the signal from Jonathan, two taps on her shoulder. He was more familiar with the scuba gear so in this, she’d let him take the lead.
As she lifted her head the smallest bit out of the water, though, it was hard to tell what she was looking at, the rain was still coming down so hard. Garrett lifted his whole head out of the water beside her, not smoothly either. He made a big splash and God, he looked like a crazy walrus or something dressed in the scuba suit with that huge beard of his poking out.
She shook her head, about to grab his shoulder and shove him back under but Jonathan was emerging from the water too, grabbing the stone ledge of the sidewalk that edged the river. Drea guessed that meant it was all clear?
She grabbed hold of Garrett’s arm and hauled him toward the sidewalk. She handed him over to Jonathan and together they pushed/pulled him up onto the ledge.
Then Drea herself slipped on to the sidewalk and was up on her feet while Jonathan was still helping Garrett struggle up.
Garrett was many things but graceful in a scuba suit was not one of them. Drea pulled her face rebreather off and glanced around. Shit. They were so exposed. She helped Jonathan haul Garrett to his feet and together they scrambled into the shadows underneath a wide bridge over the river.
She took her first real deep breath once they were hidden deep back in the recesses under the bridge. There were many footbridges over the river, but this one was for an actual road so it was wider.
Still, they all stayed silent as they peeled off their scuba gear. Jonathan pulled off the waterproof backpack he’d been wearing in addition to his small oxygen tank and sat it on the ground, pulling out all of their clothing. Drea was happy to pull her jeans and shirt on and even happier to slide her gun holster into place at her hip.
She secured her switchblade in her boot and then stood up, the first ready. She snuck to peer out the other side of the bridge.
Jonathan hissed at her but she just held up a finger to quiet him.
There it was. Nix Hospital. It towered above the Riverwalk, a twenty-four story triangular building.
“What sort of house of horrors have you set up for yourself here, Thomas?” Drea whispered under her breath.
She shut her eyes and images of what Thomas had made of her beloved Nomansland flashed like the reel of a horror movie.
Women screamed at all hours of the day. One after another, Thomas tortured the women who were Drea’s roomates. They’d return after hours of rape and torture. More bloody. More bruised. More broken. Their eyes more and more bereft of life until one day they stopped coming back at all.
The whole while Thomas never laid a single finger on Drea herself.
The sadistic fuck knew he was delivering a torture far worse than if he broke her body.
He’d been trying to break her mind.
Her spirit.
Her soul.
Some nights, she couldn’t deny, he’d gotten close.
But in the end, she hadn’t let him. And now she was here. Ready to mete out vengeance and take him fucking down. To take back the lives he’d stolen. To be the bringer of life instead of death. For once. For fucking once.
When Jonathan tapped her on the shoulder, she all but jumped out of her skin she’d been so lost in her memories.
“Hey,” he whispered, voice gentle. “Are you okay? Because if you need to sit this one out, Garrett and I can—”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” she cut him off, voice cold.
She felt bad immediately afterwards for her curt tone but then she breathed out and shut her eyes briefly. No. Like Eric, it was best if Jonathan didn’t become too attached.
She opened her eyes, her gaze cutting back up to the hospital, to the top floor. The man Garrett had ‘interrogated’ said that was where Thomas stayed and it made sense. He always was particular about having the best, though he could rarely afford it back when she’d known him. Oh but how he’d moved up in the world. And how hard he would fall.
She was about to motion them forward when voices stopped her. The rain had lightened a slightly, otherwise she wouldn’t have heard them at all and would have blundered forward right into the path of two men lumbering down a set of stairs from the road above the bridge.
“—you believe this shit? Fuckin’ both of us still havin’ to make these fuckin’ rounds even in the middle of a goddamned flood? Shit’s bullshit, that’s what I’m sayin’.”
“Shut the fuck up about it already. You think your whining makes it any better? Fuck, the bitches upstairs ain’t as whiny as you when they’re on the fuckin’ rag and got half their faces broke up.”
“You wanna say that to my fuckin’ fist?”
“Jesus Christ, this sorta shit’s why you’re always on guard duty. Ever hear of takin’ it down a fuckin’ notch? Now let’s get outta this fuckin’ rain for a fuckin’ second.”
Drea’s eyes widened as she and the guys backed up as fast as they could.
Right in time, too, because the next second, the two so-called guards stepped under the bridge, umbrella’s dripping. The bigger one dropped his to the ground and reached in his pocket, pulling out some matches.
Drea didn’t give him the opportunity to reach for the cigarettes. She already had her gun out and a bullet in his head.
Meanwhile Jonathan was braining the other with his oxygen tank. It was smart not to waste bullets.
But when he moaned and tried to stumble to his feet, Drea figured fuck it about the bullets and emptied a round into the back of his head.
Jonathan just barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid a face full of brains. He was a smart boy like that.
“Good Lord, was that really necessary?” he asked, still stumbling back and looking down at the guy she’d just dropped. “I had him. One more good conk to the head and it would’ve been lights out for the guy.”
Drea shrugged, reloading her Glock. Fifteen bullets. She shoved the magazine home and cocked the gun.
Garrett had been rifling through the pants of the two dead bikers at their feet and came up with two keycards.
Bingo. Time to party.
Drea took them and after Garrett and Jonathan dragged the two bodies into the darkest recess of the shadows under the bridge, she led the way, jogging swiftly toward the back entry door to the hospital along the Riverwalk.
She held the keycard to the door and a second later, after a little beep, she pushed it open. There were lights on inside, no surprise. Of course Thomas’s building would have electricity. They’d been banking on that.
She nodded at Jonathan and Garrett and they hurried into the building ahead of her. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed as the storm picked back up again. Drea spared one last quick glance outside to make sure no one had seen them, then closed the door quickly behind them, cutting off the noise of the driving rain.
After the surprise of the third blockade, they didn’t know how reliable the information Garrett had gotten from the biker back at the
outlet malls had been. He said that people didn’t go down to the basement often but then again, he hadn’t mentioned the guards outside, either. It was possible both had been new additional security measures taken in the last day because of the reports of their own Army approaching San Antonio. Or it was possible that Garrett had been in a rush and not done as thorough a job as he thought.
Still, as they crept through the basement—what looked like it once might have been a restaurant back when the Riverwalk was still a tourist attraction?—they didn’t run into anyone. And the stairwell that led both down to the sub-basement and up to the rest of the building was exactly where their unwilling informant had said they’d be.
They’d just started down the stairs to cut power to the building when suddenly—
The lights went out.
Drea froze, one hand shooting out to the rail and the other going to Jonathan, who’d been closer to her. She didn’t say a word but she heard and felt Jonathan fumbling. No doubt to put on his night vision goggles.
They only had one pair among them because David had needed the rest to equip his troops for the battle tonight. And it made sense for Jonathan to have them because he was the best shot. They’d planned for him to wear them after they cut the power.
But why the hell had the lights gone out before they’d even gotten to the fucking power line?
A moment later, Jonathan’s strong hand was on her arm, tugging her against the wall of the stairwell.
“It’s probably the storm,” Jonathan murmured in a voice so quiet it barely counted as a whisper.
“Probably?” Garrett whispered harshly. “And what if it’s not?”
“Shh,” Drea said, holding her breath for a long moment, just listening. She counted a full sixty seconds and she didn’t hear a thing. No boots on the stairs. No other voices. Not even the rain outside.
She let out her breath and reached out for Garrett, grasping when she felt his larger forearm. “It’s just the storm. You heard what it was like out there. Which means the power won’t be going back on anytime soon. No one will be out fixing anything in that storm.”
Quiet for a long moment. Then, “Okay, D. Whatever you think’s best.”
Any other time she’d be disturbed at how blindly Garrett trusted her, but they were too close. They just needed to get this done and over with. She needed to end Thomas once and for all. She was close she could taste it.
She wouldn’t let her women down. For once in her fucking life, she wouldn’t let down the people depending on her the most.
She pulled out her gun and switched off the safety, holding it low to the ground. Jonathan shifted in front of her, taking the lead.
“All clear,” he whispered. Good. The stairs must be as empty as they sounded.
They started up the stairs behind her and she was suddenly very aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a tactical vest this time. It would have weighted her down too much to be able to swim effectively in the scuba suits. Something she was acutely aware of every flight of stairs they climbed.
Her hand tightened on her gun, finger hovering over the trigger the further up the stairs they went. Every moment she expected one of the doors to open. It was twenty-two stories for God’s sake.
And they knew they hadn’t screwed with the breaker box in the basement but no one else did. Did they all just assume it was the storm? That was a pretty dumb assumption to make considering everything that was happening with the armies amassing.
Although earlier when they were planning Garrett had mentioned that he thought that Thomas would send most of the Black Skulls out to guard the city, believing himself invulnerable to the attack here deep in the heart of the city.
Thomas’s ego was big enough for him to assume nothing could touch him… but on the other hand, he was also smart and conniving. Hadn’t she learned one too many times that things were rarely what they seemed when it came to him?
So the higher they climbed, the tighter her chest wound. What if the informant gave Garrett all bad info? What if they were in the completely wrong building? Garrett had seemed convinced the man was telling the truth but—
A door crashed open two stories above them, light spilling into the darkness. Jonathan’s arm immediately came across Drea’s chest as he pulled her back against the wall and out of the line of sight of the middle of the stairwell.
He pushed the goggles up to his forehead and Garrett moved back, too. Drea could make out their dim outlines from the light of the flashlights above. Of the three of them, Garrett was the only one who was breathing hard from all the stairs, but he was good about doing it as quietly as possible.
“You hear that storm out there? Man, I hate tall buildings. Don’t see why we gotta stay locked up here twenty stories off the ground never able to fuckin’ breathe just cause the boss has a hard on for—”
“Shut the fuck up,” said a second man.
“What?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Maybe if you’d stop fucking jabbering, you’d hear it.”
Drea looked over at Garrett who had a hand over his nose and mouth. Did he just sneeze? It looked like he was fighting back another one. Shit.
Drea glared at him and he shoved his second hand to cover the first. Then his whole body shook as he sneezed again. This time, only the barest noise came out.
Drea swung her head back in the direction of the voices.
“Man, you’re fucking paranoid. Let’s just go get this done and then get back upstairs. That Monica chick is getting trained on giving BJs this week and I don’t wanna deprive her of her chance to practice, if ya know what I mean.”
“Aw man, she’s a goddamned hoover. Boss’ll be able to sell her for a thousand, easy.”
The noise of feet on the stairs sounded right above them and light bounced off the walls.
Jonathan kept trying to tug her back tighter against the wall.
But Drea couldn’t take in any of it. She heard only three words echoing until they were a scream in her head.
Monica.
Trained.
BJs.
Monica. She’d known a Monica. Monica had been a shy, modest girl, barely sixteen when Drea had first taken her in and given her shelter at Nomansland. So shy she’d barely spoken to any of the other women for nearly three months. And here these men were…
And finally, right as the footsteps and flashlights rounded the bend right above them, another thought intruded, clear as a bell.
Kill them.
So even though she felt Jonathan’s urgent tug, she tightened her grip on the handle of her Glock and stepped out into the landing, right in the men’s path.
“Hello boys,” she said, smiling because she knew it would be the last thing they ever saw on this earth.
And then she lifted her gun and shot them between the eyes, one and then the other, bang, bang, before they could even pull their weapons.
Well, more like thud, thud because of the silencer, but Drea had to admit she took more than a little satisfaction from the crash of their bodies as they tumbled down the last half staircase to land at her feet.
Jonathan swore a few times behind her but Garrett just grabbed one body, hefted it up, and slid it over the railing of the center hole between the stairwells. Then he dropped it and repeated the action with the second body. Drea ignored the dull thud of the bodies hitting the concrete floor at the bottom, instead continuing her way up the stairs. Those guys were no loss to humanity.
She was even more on edge now, but they didn’t encounter another person the rest of the way up.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Drea.
Before they switched off the men’s flashlight’s, Garrett’s eyes brightened and he grinned so wide he flashed all his teeth when he noticing an old fireman’s ax that was miraculously still in its glass case on the wall.
A situation he quickly remedied, using the back end of the flashlight to break the glass
and grab the ax.
Jonathan rolled his eyes but Drea was all for out of the box thinking when it came to taking down murderous, rapist motherfuckers. They switched off the men’s flashlights—they didn’t want to give anything away in case anyone else showed up in the stairwell too—and then up they continued upwards, bound for the top floor.
Even Drea was winded after taking the last ten stories at a jog. She and Jonathan paused at the top for a couple of minutes to give Garrett a chance to catch up. He’d fallen behind a few stories ago.
She wanted to ask Jonathan what he saw now that they were at the top floor. Was it just like the blank white door she’d briefly seen in the light of the biker’s flashlights before they’d turned them off? Or was it something grander? She waited, her gun at the ready, and then waited some more after Garrett finally got there and caught his breath.
“Shit,” he whispered, but Drea clamped her hand over his mouth.
They needed to be silent as the grave until the very last moment. Thomas could be on the other side of that door. At least if the intel Garrett had gotten out of their prisoner had been right—something she was beginning to doubt very much.
She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt off.
Way off.
“Stay back, guns up,” Jonathan whispered under his breath. “I’m trying the door knob.”
Drea held her breath.
“It’s locked,” Jonathan breathed out. “Okay, taking it out.”
Yeah. Duh, what did he expect? Doorway to evil bastard’s secret layer? Pretty sure it was supposed to be locked.
“In three,” Jonathan started the countdown. “Two.”
It was still pitch black as Jonathan blew the lock off the door. Screams erupted as soon as Jonathan shoved through the door. Female screams.
Drea tried to get through the entrance but Garrett blocked her way. She still couldn’t see a damn thing. “Garrett, move!”
But he stood there like a damn redwood in her way. Goddamn him.
“Jonathan,” she called. “What do you see?”
“Jesus,” was all he said, swearing under his breath. “Garrett, turn the flashlight on. Help me get them down.”