Two of the soldiers—the man in charge and Lieutenant Briggs—followed them in and sat opposite them. A moment later, the engine rumbled to life and the vehicle started down the road.
“How do you have power?” Adam asked. “How do you have working cars?”
The soldier in charge frowned. “I can’t answer any questions,” he said.
“You can’t seriously think we’re a threat to you?”
“No,” the man admitted. “Now that we’ve got your guns and got you away from that house, I can’t imagine there’s any danger in you. But Colonel White will definitely want to interrogate you before we decide what to do with you, and I can’t do anything without his approval.”
Ella looked nervous. “Interrogate?”
“Just question,” the man amended. “We don’t use brutal tactics.”
Adam wasn’t prepared to take his word for it. He didn’t think these were the men he’d seen at the Ocean View, the men who had so badly frightened Tucker. But they were men in uniform. They might be just as bad, for all Adam knew. They might even be worse. Until he understood exactly who they were and what they wanted, he wasn’t going to relax in their presence.
Chapter 19
Colonel White turned out to be a big, barrel-chested man, probably in his mid-fifties, with steel-gray hair and a scar across his cheek. He smiled, though, when Adam and Ella were shown into his tent and gestured that they should take seats in two of the folding chairs that had been set up there.
It was bizarre to be escorted into an office, even a pop-up one like this, after everything that had happened. Adam felt as if he’d been airlifted out of the apocalypse and deposited in another world, a world where no one had heard of the nanobots. He felt as if he was being interviewed for a job.
“So you were up at the cabin in the woods,” Colonel White said, steepling his fingers below his chin and gazing at them. “Captain Rios tells me you claimed to be looking for a missing family member.”
“My sister,” Ella confirmed. “That was her house. Before everything. I don’t know where she is now. But—” She took a breath and seemed to be steadied by it. “But I know she doesn’t have anything to do with whoever did those terrible things. Whoever killed all those people back at that house. Julie would never hurt anyone.”
That was stretching the truth, Adam knew. Julie had killed their father, after all. But shooting an abusive parent in self-defense was a hell of a lot different from the grotesque murders and mutilations they’d seen today. Ella was right to make the distinction, and Adam would protect her secret. There was no point in confusing the issue.
“Do you know who’s responsible for what happened up at that house?” Adam asked. The way Colonel White was talking about it, it sounded like he had been up there before, possibly more than once. Adam already had his doubts about these so-called soldiers. Tucker had killed himself to avoid interacting with soldiers. Was it possible that these men were the very ones who had committed the violent murders they’d seen?
Adam didn’t know. But he did know that he couldn’t trust anyone. It’s me and Ella against the world, he thought wearily. Nobody else is safe.
“We’ve had our eye on that place for a while,” Colonel White said. “We know some pretty shady characters are holed up there, but every time we make an expedition this way to try and roust them out, they’re away. We thought we’d finally scored today. We thought you were the ones.”
“No,” Adam said. “We’d never been there before today. We came up from past Salt Cove.”
Colonel White sighed. “We really hoped we’d finally caught them,” he said. “They’ve been wreaking havoc on the Napa Bay area. And we’re going to have to go back to base to resupply tonight.”
“Who are you guys, anyway?” Adam asked. “You’re not Army, are you? That can’t still be in operation.”
“I’m ex-Army, myself,” Colonel White said. “That’s not true of everyone here, of course. You met Lieutenant Briggs, I think—we just promoted him a couple of weeks ago.”
“You mean he’s not originally military?” Ella asked. “How did he join up with the rest of you?”
“Well, we needed a sizable fighting force after the population got thinned out by the virus,” Colonel White said. “For a while there, we were taking all comers.”
Adam thought about what Tucker had told them about military and escaped prisoners being in league with one another. This had to be what he was talking about.
Still, he could see sense in what Colonel White was saying. They did need a military they could count on in times like the this, and with so many dead, it wasn’t as if they could afford to be picky. And just because someone had been in prison didn’t mean he was worthless. Adam knew as well as anybody that people could get past the worst things they’d done and make a fresh start.
Ella looked less certain, however. “How do you know you can trust people if they’re not original military?” she asked. “How do you know they’re really working for you? Don’t you ever doubt their loyalty?”
“Not really,” Colonel White said with a smile. “We’ve got the food, after all, and these people want to eat. If they turn on us they know we’ll stop feeding them. That’s not a chance anyone really wants to take.”
Adam had fixated on one part of that statement. “You’ve got food?” he said.
Colonel White laughed. “Sure we have food,” he said. “I’ll bet you two are pretty hungry.”
“Yes, sir,” Adam said gratefully. “Thirsty, too.”
“Let’s get you down to the mess.” The colonel stood and led them from his tent. “I think they’re making spaghetti tonight. Well, who am I kidding. It’s spaghetti most nights around here. Not much else you can cook when you’re camped out. Back at base we’ve got some better meals, so don’t you worry about that. But food is food. Am I right?”
“Definitely,” Adam agreed. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Colonel White, whether he was ready to invest any trust in the man. But he was sure enough about this. Food was food, and Adam was ready to eat.
The mess tent was at the center of the camp, long and low and full of other soldiers. There were no chairs here—everyone just sat around eating on the ground.
Colonel White clapped Adam on the back. “Grab some plates and join the others,” he said. “I’m sure everyone will be glad to have a couple of newbies around. And don’t worry—we’ll take care of you as long as you’re with us. You’re plenty safe here.”
There was something ominous about those words, and they rang in Adam’s ears as he and Ella went through the food line. A soldier in fatigues dispassionately loaded up their plates with piles of spaghetti and handed them each a bottle of water.
“They’re cold,” Adam murmured to Ella, feeling the condensation sweating off his bottle. He hadn’t had a cold drink in so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like. “How did they get them cold?”
“Same way they got those Humvees working, I’d guess,” she said, keeping her voice low. Which was wise, in Adam’s opinion. It was almost certainly for the best if these men didn’t realize Adam and Ella were asking questions about them. He supposed they were used to bringing in newcomers, and he suspected the newcomers who had the most success here were the ones who accepted the group’s way of life without thinking about it too much.
Adam sort of wished that was something he was able to do. After all, everything seemed so good here. This was, on the surface, the best situation he’d been in since he’d left home. Someone else was in charge, for one thing, and that was such a relief that Adam was honestly having trouble not just giving in to the pleasure of it. He didn’t have to do anything. He didn’t have to make any decisions, or protect these people from anything. That was somebody else’s job.
And that meant that somebody else—Colonel White?—would bear the emotional weight that came along with lives lost. Adam wouldn’t miss that one bit.
And yet, there was something a
bout this situation that he couldn’t quite allow himself to relax and trust. Maybe he had just been looking out for himself too long to let anybody else make decisions for him now. It was nice not to hold anyone’s life in his hands, but Adam had grown used to being responsible for his own life. Could he trust Colonel White and his army to have his best interests in mind?
He wasn’t sure.
After all, there was the caravan they’d seen outside the Ocean View to consider. Adam knew he would be a fool to allow himself to forget about that. Tucker had thought they’d be coming to kill him, and from the looks of things, he had been right.
Were Colonel White’s forces affiliated with the group that had come for Tucker? If so, it would be a mistake to trust them.
Adam didn’t know what to think.
He would have to talk to Ella about it before making a decision, he thought. No matter what, he was going to stick with her. He had already settled on that much.
The two of them took their plates over to a corner of the tent and settled down to eat. The pasta had been prepared with a delicious-smelling red sauce on top, and Adam thought it seemed like the sort of thing he might have ordered in a restaurant back before everything had gone to hell.
Beside him, Ella began to tuck into her meal with vigor. Adam forced himself to eat slowly, knowing that the food would go down more easily if he did, but it was difficult. It had been so long since he’d had a decent meal, and he had stopped noticing just how hungry he was. Now, though, surrounded by the warm smell of pasta with sauce, with a bottle of water in his hand that he was allowed to finish, and with the friendly sound of conversation in his ears, it was all he could do not to lose himself entirely in the meal before him.
It’s like coming home, he thought. It’s like I’ve been on a long, horrible trip, and now I’m finally home.
God, it was going to be so easy to let himself get soft if they stayed here. He never would have imagined that a military encampment would be the place that would make him soft. By rights it should have toughened him up, the way Artem had. But if they were going to keep giving him these full plates of food and make him feel like someone was looking out for him…
You don’t know that anyone is looking out for you, he told himself firmly. Just because Colonel White said that doesn’t make it true.
Ella twisted the cap off her water bottle and took a long drink. Her plate was almost empty already.
“What do you think?” Adam asked her.
She had clearly been expecting the question. “No way,” she said. “We can’t trust them.”
“No?”
“Who do you think did that to Julie’s house?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “It’s not like their story about it doesn’t make sense. They’re probably trying to figure out what happened too.”
“You can’t seriously believe that. They’re an army, and they’re camped out here, and they haven’t figured it out yet?”
“We don’t know how long they’ve been trying.”
“You just want to make excuses for them,” Ella said. “You want to believe they’re safe for us because you want so badly to belong to a group. That’s what this is.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Adam protested, even though he knew she was at least partly right. He did want Colonel White and his army to turn out to be a safe haven. But wasn’t that a logical thing to hope for? Why wouldn’t he hope that these were the good guys? It had to beat the alternative.
He turned away from Ella to survey his surroundings. The men and women in the mess tent certainly seemed like normal and decent people. They were talking and laughing over their spaghetti, most of them with smiles on their faces, as if they were friends. As if they liked each other and had managed to hang on to some semblance of mental and emotional stability. The few who weren’t engaged in conversation were reading books as they ate, looking calm and at peace with their circumstances.
It’s fine, Adam reassured himself. Everything is fine here. There’s nothing to worry about.
A man came into the tent. He must have just returned from a mission of some sort, because in addition to his fatigues, he was strapped with an assault weapon and was wearing a helmet. As Adam watched, the man removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm.
And Adam was able to catch a glimpse of three words painted across the front in bright orange.
No More Sanctuaries.
A chill ran down his spine. There it was again—the phrase that seemed to have haunted them throughout their journey. Was Ella right, then? If these soldiers were the once who had painted the words No More Sanctuaries beside the pile of bodies on the highway and the strung-up man near the Ocean View hotel, it stood to reason that the soldiers were the ones responsible for committing those acts of violence.
There still might be an explanation, Adam thought desperately. But he was kidding himself, and he knew it. What explanation could there be? That those people deserved to die? Children didn’t deserve to die, no matter what they had done. And the hanged man…these soldiers had guns, for God’s sake. They shouldn’t have to resort to measures like that, and the fact that they had done so was a sinister thing indeed.
And if they had killed those people…
Could they have killed the people at Julie’s house?
Those killings went beyond murder. What had happened there was torture. It was mutilation. Whoever had done that had taken pleasure in it. Adam was sickened at the very thought of it. But he had to consider the fact that he might at this very moment be breaking bread with the people responsible.
Who are these people? he asked himself again. What’s their endgame? And how do Ella and I figure into it?
“Okay,” he said quietly, careful to make sure that his voice wouldn’t carry to any of the soldiers around them. “I think you might be right. I don’t think we should trust them. Not yet, anyway.”
Ella nodded as if she had expected that. She probably had, Adam decided. She had been sure from the moment they’d been taken that their captors were no good. It was only Adam who had allowed himself to be swayed by the offer of hot food and cold drinks, by the fact that these people had power somehow, and by the fact that there were so many of them. He had let himself believe that the trappings of safety meant that he was safe.
God, he wanted to be safe.
But now that he thought about it, there was more to fear here than to trust. How did they have power? If it wasn’t nefarious, wouldn’t Colonel White have just told him? He might even have wanted to brag about it a little—it was certainly something to be proud of, in these times. Unless it wasn’t. Unless Colonel White had done something shady to guarantee power for himself.
The EMP must have been set off by the military in the first place, Adam thought. Maybe they only did it because they knew they’d be able to access power after it was done. Maybe the military has had power the whole time.
And maybe they had decided not to share.
Nobody shared their resources anymore. That wasn’t strange. But the military was supposed to be a force for good, a force to take care of civilians. That was how Adam had been thinking of them. But what if that wasn’t who these people were at all?
We’ve all been through a lot. It’s affected everyone. Everyone’s come out changed.
Even if they were good guys—soldiers—at one time, that didn’t mean they were now.
What if he was looking at an army of Rhett Birkins? Violent opportunists who wouldn’t hesitate to pull a trigger on any perceived threat, who gloried in the idea of violence?
Then they wouldn’t be an army, would they? They would be a gang.
They would be exactly what Tucker said they were.
Which meant that he and Ella needed to get out of here.
But God, Adam didn’t want to go. There would be more meals like this, he was almost sure. There would probably be a bed with a clean, dry blanket, and there would be fresh clothes every day. There would be cold
water that he was allowed to drink as much of as he wanted. And those guns, the guns the soldiers had been pointing at his head earlier today, they would be pointed away from him. They would be dedicated to keeping him safe.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Maybe it didn’t matter that these soldiers were clearly up to no good. Maybe it didn’t matter that their slogan was no more sanctuaries. Maybe this place could be a sanctuary to them. God, there were books here. There was electricity. There would be lights at night. There would be heat in the winter.
Wasn’t this exactly what Adam had wanted? Wasn’t this what he had described to Ella, when they had talked about what they might find on the mainland? A society of people that they could join?
We knew it wasn’t going to look exactly like any society we had seen before. We always knew that. We were ready for that. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stay.
No. That didn’t mean they shouldn’t stay.
But there was something Colonel White had said, something he hadn’t even tried to hide, that had scared Adam more than anything else about this place.
We needed a sizable fighting force, he said. For a while there, we were taking all comers.
He hadn’t actually said anything about conscripts, but Adam could imagine easily enough how those conversations had gone. You can stay with us. We have all the food. We have the only electricity left in the world. We can give you shelter and comfort and safety. And in return, all you have to do is join our army.
Adam had been fighting for his life for months now. He wouldn’t hesitate to continue to do it. Joining an army would have been no deal-breaker at all for him.
But this wasn’t an army.
This was a mob.
And he wasn’t going to participate in the kind of violence he’d seen on the way here. He wasn’t going murder children. He wouldn’t string people up or crucify them or mutilate their bodies.
I don’t care if that’s what kills me, he thought. My life isn’t worth that.
And he thought of Tucker, who had hidden away. Who had refused to be taken.
Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins Page 15