The Rage Colony (The Colony Book 2)

by Shanon Hunt

  Abder jumped up. “I’ll drive you.”

  “Great. And I’ll need to stop at a secondhand store on the way.” He was about to audition for the role of a lifetime. Gotta dress the part.

  34

  March 2024, California

  “Winner.” Nick lowered his binoculars. The first two letters of the license plate of the plain white Mercedes bus parked a block from the camp’s main entrance were DC, just like the van that had been in front of the Vitapura Wellness Center. He scanned the area. No sign of the driver, and by the looks of it, no passengers either.

  “What are you going to say?” Abder whispered, even though they were a quarter mile away.

  “I’m still working on that.”

  He’d considered attaching a magnetic GPS tracking device but rejected that idea. Even if he were able to follow the bus without being discovered, he’d still have to get into wherever it ended up. If the place was anything like Area 51, it would have not only a sophisticated anti-jamming security system he’d be unable to bypass but armed guards around the perimeter.

  No, the easiest way to infiltrate an organization was to be invited inside. Getting that invitation was the tricky part.

  How were the victims selected? Were they forced onto the bus like prisoners? Would they be drugged? Would the driver have a passenger roster?

  “Maybe you could just sneak on,” Abder said. “You know, like when the driver is distracted. That happened to my sister one time. She got onto a Greyhound bus. These two guys were fighting in the parking lot and the driver got out to break it up, and she just walked on. She made it all the way to San Francisco for free.”

  Abder’s nervous babbling was not helping.

  “I’m just going to have to wing it.” Nick snapped the binoculars shut and tucked them into his backpack. “Take good care of my things, will ya? I’ll be back for ‘em real soon.” It was the same promise he’d made to Darcy, but he’d been a lot more optimistic back then.

  “Okay.” Abder had the look of a kid on his first day of kindergarten.

  “And don’t mess with my surveillance stuff.” Nick gave the poor guy a wink.

  He walked along the perimeter of the fence, stopping at every person to ask for loose change. It was a strange thing to do, asking homeless people for money, but somehow he’d managed to collect a dollar and twelve cents by the time he got within twenty yards of the bus.

  He took a seat at a picnic table opposite a kid smoking a cigarette like his life depended on it. “Hey man, can I bum a smoke?”

  The kid gave Nick the once-over, then tossed him the pack and a lighter. “Bet.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Nick hadn’t smoked for ten years, and his hand shook as he flicked the lighter. He inhaled gently to keep from coughing and set the pack and the lighter on the table.

  The door of the bar across the street swung open, and a rowdy group of bikers burst into the parking lot with beers in plastic cups. The kid didn’t move to collect his smokes. He seemed mesmerized by the bikers. He also didn’t seem all that interested in conversation, so Nick kept to himself. He hated to admit he was enjoying the cigarette. Across the empty parking lot, the bus was still dark. Where was the driver? Why would they have parked the bus here so early? He’d assumed it would pull up like a Greyhound, load up, and go.

  The kid spoke, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Lowkey, I still can’t walk into a bar. I don’t know how all these people do it, like the virus never even happened.”

  The kid seemed too young to be so paranoid. He returned his gaze to Nick. “You here for the Colony?”

  “The what?”

  The kid nodded at the bus. “You going?”

  Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. Where is it, anyway?”

  The kid swung his legs over the bench to face him. “It’s out in the desert somewhere, like some science research center. They do experiments and shit like that. If you get invited, you get a chance for, like, special medicines you can’t get anywhere else.”

  “No shit.” He took another puff to hide the shock on his face. They were actually telling people about the medical experimentation? How was it possible this place hadn’t been exposed? Where the hell was the media? The cops? The FBI?

  “Yeah.” The kid reached out a hand. “Eddie.”

  Nick shook it. “N—Vic. Victor Beaumont.” Jesus, he’d almost nearly blown it. “So what’d you have to do to get a bus ticket?”

  Eddie lit another cigarette. “I learned about it from a nurse at City Health Services. She said she’d recommend me if I wanted. She showed me this picture and—bro, I’m not shittin’ you—it was like heaven, like some high-class resort, with great big walls she said keeps the virus out. That was all I needed to hear. I signed up right away.”

  “Sounds great. Think they’ll take me if I ask? Gotta be better than this shithole, right?”

  “Facts, bro. Got nothin’ to lose.”

  “When do you go?” Nick didn’t want to remove his cell phone from its hiding place in his left boot, scuffed Timberlands two sizes too big, but it had to be after nine.

  Sirens wound up in the distance, and Eddie jerked in the direction of the lights. Nick wondered if the kid was running from something other than the virus.

  “I’m gonna go see what’s going on,” Nick said.

  He eased back toward the camp, out of the well-lit picnic area. Three black-and-whites had pulled in and were surrounding the parked bus. The sirens had silenced, but the red and blue lights continued to flash. Could it be a bust?

  A minute later, a second van rolled into the parking lot. In the strobe of the flashing lights, Nick could barely make out Los Angeles County Prisoner Transport on the side. The passenger door opened, and a brawny guy wearing a cowboy hat, khakis, and boots took his time climbing out of the van. He held a clipboard in one hand and surveyed the area before swaggering to the rear door.

  A dozen or so people filtered out of the back.

  “Holy fuck,” Nick whispered.

  By this time, Eddie had drifted across the parking lot, joined by some six others who presumably ventured over from the camp.

  “Gather round, my friends,” the man in the cowboy hat called in an unexpectedly high-pitched drawl that reminded Nick of the captain from Cool Hand Luke (“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”). “Let’s get in a single-file line.”

  He couldn’t hear what the captain said after that, but it was clear what was happening. One by one, he cross-checked the passengers’ IDs against his roster.

  Eddie fell to the back of the line and gestured animatedly at Nick to come. Nick shook his head. If they’d put out an APB on him back in Phoenix, one of these cops might recognize him. And if that shitbrain Victor Beaumont had reported his wallet stolen, that would be another red flag.

  Eddie waved again.

  He had stupidly assumed EGNX was quietly stealing people off the street—Come on, get on the bus, little girl, I have candy—but this was a full-blown police-endorsed operation. Once again, he massively underestimated his opponent. He had to abort. This wasn’t the right time for him to get onto the bus. He needed time to come up with a better plan, procure a proper fake ID and some slick body surveillance devices.

  He looked up at the line again. “Shit.”

  Now at the front of the line, Eddie was pointing to Nick. The captain’s cowboy hat rotated toward him and the man gave him the once-over, then put one hand on his weapon and strode toward Nick.

  He could’ve run. Even in his oversize Timberlands, he could’ve outrun a man in shitkickers. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even bother chasing him. But goddamn Uncle Jay jumped into his head: You gotta learn how to overcome your monkey brain—Jay’s expression for the brain stem. Your monkey brain will tell you to flee the scene, fight or flight. But you know who doesn’t look guilty? The curious guy walking toward the scene.

  “What’s your business here tonight?” the captain asked.

  “No business, just
seeing what all the commotion’s about.”

  “You have some ID?”

  Nick pulled out his wallet and handed over Victor’s driver’s license.

  The captain glanced between Nick’s face and the ID several times. “’Scuse me a moment.” He raised two fingers and gestured to one of the patrol officers.

  Damn. He hadn’t expected to be passing this ID to a cop. A bouncer or bus driver would barely have given it a cursory glance, but cops were trained to notice the details. He breathed through his nose to keep calm.

  “Can I get some backup? I got a ten sixty-six.”

  Nick didn’t know police codes, even after all these years of dodging local authorities. He assumed it had something to do with fraud or theft, because the patrol officer cuffed him and walked him to a patrol car.

  Time for a Hail Mary. “Why am I being arrested? What the fuck did I do? I was just hangin’ out. Ain’t no crime in that.”

  The officer shoved him into the back seat without a word.

  He reevaluated the situation while he waited for someone to return to the car. He’d be identified the moment they booked and fingerprinted him or gave him the ol’ cheek swab. Once his identity was out, they’d connect the dots and figure out exactly what he’d been doing at the pickup site. They’d also see there was a warrant out on him for arson by explosion.

  His only hope was to get a break on wrongful arrest. He twisted his hands to loosen the cuffs against his wrists. Keeping his body as relaxed as possible and his eye on the cops, he slowly and painfully worked his right hand free from the cuff.

  It wasn’t his first rodeo. Make fists and pull away just a little, like you’re pissed off, right when they cuff you. The cuff will lock around the fat meaty part of your hand, then open and close your hands until they get good and sweaty.

  He fished his phone from his boot and hit the audio record button. He cradled the phone between his knees and shoved both arms behind him, just as the driver door opened.

  The captain fell into the car, wedging himself between the seat back and the steering wheel and glaring at Nick through the cage from the rearview mirror. He didn’t speak for a good thirty seconds. “I see a lot of scumbags during my workday. A lot. This cesspool of a city is overflowin’ with scum. So when I catch a scumbag crossing the border, coming into my state, into my city, it makes me wanna tie ’em to my trailer hitch and drag ’em back to where they came from.”

  Ouch. Nice visual.

  “Unfortunately, that option isn’t available to me anymore.” He inhaled loudly through his nose. Must’ve learned that in anger management class. “I could take you down to my station and book you. Drunk and disorderly, assault. And this time, your lawyer daddy can’t buy off the prosecutor.”

  Lawyer daddy. Victor’s father, protecting his good-for-nothing son. That sure did explain the thuggery.

  “But I don’t think he would even if he could,” the captain continued. “I’ll betcha he already realized what a piece of shit you are and stopped throwing money at you to get you off his porch. That’s why you’re hiding out in my town with a three-inch thick rap sheet, isn’t that right?”

  He could play this off. “I’m not drunk or disorderly, and I haven’t assaulted anyone.”

  “That’s not what my report will read.”

  “Let me guess: Unless I want to buy a coupla tickets to the policeman’s ball?”

  The captain’s silence was answer enough. And if Nick hadn’t left every last dollar he had back at Jordan’s lab, he would’ve handed it over, with pleasure. Come on, Nick, work it out. He was the son of an attorney. And an arrogant douchebag.

  He scooted forward on the seat and held the man’s stare. “You’re detaining me for no reason whatsoever, and you haven’t read me my rights. I realize the world has changed, but the basics of our constitution are still in place. Furthermore, despite what you think, my father will be more than happy to fly out on his private jet to sit at my table in the courtroom. He eats dirty cops for lunch.”

  He was walking a fine line between antagonizing the man enough to say something stupid and enraging him to the point that he would shoot Nick in the back of the head.

  The captain pulled his firearm from the holster and laid it on the dashboard. “Forty-five hundred people die of violent crimes in this city every year, especially in this kind of neighborhood. I don’t take kindly to threats.”

  Bingo. He kept his shoulders as rigid as possible and slid his right hand to his lap. He dropped his head as if thinking, while his thumb raced over his phone screen. He raised his eyes back to the rearview mirror. “And I don’t take kindly to a shakedown. My dad taught me that a good negotiator looks for smart trade-offs.” He lifted the phone so that the captain could hear the whoosh and see a message being sent with an attachment. “Our little conversation here may not be admissible in court, but this is exactly the kind of thing the liberal media eats up these days. Police intimidation. Harassment. I’m willing to bet you don’t want that kind of negative publicity, not after being hit so hard with the virus.”

  The captain snatched up his gun.

  It wasn’t until that moment that the solution came to him. A goddamned stroke of much needed good luck. “You can put a bullet in my head if you want, create a whole cover-up problem for yourself and your men. But I have a much simpler solution. Put me on that bus with all those other people. My friend over there said it’s a pretty nice place. I wouldn’t mind seeing it for myself.”

  Nick could tell by the man’s grin that he knew it was a one-way ticket to hell. “Wanna get on the bus, do ya?”

  He shrugged. “Nothin’ else to do around here.”

  He stopped talking. A good negotiator lets the other guy think he’s won.

  The captain didn’t respond. He stepped out of the car, said a couple of words to the officer, and moseyed back to the prisoner transport van.

  The door flew open just as Nick tucked his phone back into his boot. “Let’s go.”

  With each step across the parking lot, Nick expected to be shot in the back, but he was still standing by the time they reached the bus.

  The officer removed the dangling cuff and held out a hand. “I’ll need your phone.”

  Nick’s shoulders dropped. He reluctantly removed it from his left boot and handed it over, then climbed onto the bus.

  Had he really done it? Was he officially undercover, on his way to EGNX? A fluttery sensation swept through his gut.

  He was welcomed by the friendliest smile he’d ever seen. “Hey there. My name’s Michael, and I’ll be your chauffeur. Please help yourself to a sandwich and some fruit, and take a seat wherever you like.”

  Nick eyed the twenty or so faces staring at him. God, they looked so young. He eased down the aisle feeling like the field trip dad and took the seat next to Eddie.

  Eddie greeted him like they’d been best friends for years. “Sick. You made it!” He fist-bumped Nick’s limp hand.

  The door closed, and the bus started moving. Buzzing with nervous excitement, Eddie launched into a story that seemed as if it would never end. Nick was too tense to pretend to be friendly. He was itching to unlace his right boot and retrieve the spare burner phone he’d stashed there. He wanted to power it on, to be ready for anything.

  “…walk into this, like, group therapy thing, and the guy who’s leading it is rippin’ a dab pen. I’m like, bruh, what? Then—I’m not shitting you—he passes it around the circle, but I know I gotta get on the bus tonight. Didn’t know if they’d make us do a piss test…”

  Nick tried to get his bearings as Michael followed the flashing lights of their police escort. Were they headed south? Maybe east?

  When they reached the city limits, the police lights fell away and the bus’s windows went black. A video screen behind the driver lit up, and the passengers hushed as a radiant face filled the video screen. The woman’s hair was pulled back tightly, and she wore soft makeup.

  Nick leaned forward and sq
uinted to get a clearer look. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Welcome to the most exclusive club on Earth,” she said with a warm smile.

  Allison Stevens.

  35

  October 2022, Mexico

  God, I’m so hungry.

  Where am I? Which direction is the damn cafeteria? A cool breeze blows my hair off my neck, and I shiver. I shouldn’t be outside in the dark without a coat. It must be forty degrees.

  The fetus in my belly kicks hard as if reminding me that we’re starving to death.

  I listen to the crunch of gravel as I leave the stone path and follow the fragrant scent of spices wafting through the air, whetting my appetite even more. I still don’t see the cafeteria, and I’m not even sure I’m headed the right direction. I should turn back, but I’m practically mad with hunger.

  I arrive at the source of the scent, and I understand: I’m at the fields. All our vegetables, fruit, and herbs are grown here. I pass by lush rosemary bushes nearly as tall as me. It makes me laugh every time I see them. We couldn’t use this much rosemary in a lifetime. I move between potatoes and carrots, past squash. Every planted row is labeled with signs on thin wooden sticks, lit with solar lights to be visible even in the winter months when darkness falls before the dinner rush. Might need to send a lackey out for more rosemary in case of a last-minute run on roasted potatoes. God forbid we run out of rosemary potatoes.

  I move through the rows quickly now, as if my very survival depended on finding immediate sustenance. I cross a wide dirt road, unwrap the chain holding the wooden gate closed, and walk toward a barn, the smell of manure and urine getting more pungent with each step. Giddiness tickles my insides. It reminds me of the way I felt when I’d glimpse James before we were together. Brother James, I used to call him, looking up at him all doe-eyed and dopey.