Hollister eyed her. “What’s in the pack?”
“Heads up,” the man said, chucking it to the lieutenant.
Hollister caught it, went straight for her gun. He held it up by two fingers, as if intending to preserve her prints for evidence. “I don’t have time for this shit. Throw her in the truck.”
“Lieutenant—”
“I’ll figure out what to do with her on the way. Don’t take your gun off her for a second.”
“Sir.” The man grabbed her wrists, pushing her toward the truck. He grabbed her belt and hauled her over the metal lip. Done, he backed off and held the gun on her. “Same terms as before. You move, I airbrush your brains across this truck.”
She nodded. Some people would try to talk their way out, but she was thinking too hard. Hollister barked orders. Men climbed into the truck one by one, thumping into the seats arrayed around the truck. Feet clanked on the metal rungs welded to its side, then scrabbled over the roof, finding the turret. Alden leapt up on the tailgate, stopping and staring when he saw Tristan’s face.
“You’re coming with us?”
She smiled, jerked her elbow around to show the tie on her wrists. “Don’t have a choice.”
“Shut up,” warned the man with the guard. “Cadet Carter, do not speak with the prisoner.”
The engine idled, vibrating beneath Tristan’s folded legs. Hollister hauled himself inside a minute later. He walked behind Tristan. “Turn around.”
She wriggled to face him. “What now?”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“I had it buried outside of camp.”
“And you brought it back here. To get your brother?”
She kept her face blank. “I thought I heard a prowler.”
Hollister sniffed. “Would have shot any of us who tried to stop you, huh?”
“We’ll never know.”
“I think I do.” He gestured one of his men out of the chair nearest her. The man unbuckled, moved down to another seat. Hollister lowered himself to the vacated chair, resting his arms on his knees, pistol in hand. “And I think I know what to do about it.”
“Are you going to execute me?”
“What should we do with traitors?”
That settled it. Whatever had set off the alarm was plenty serious; nearly the entire barracks had piled into the U-Haul. Hollister wouldn’t want to waste one of them guarding her. He’d do it at the plant. Wait until Alden went inside, then shuffle her around the side of the truck and shoot her in the head. Tell Alden she’d been relocated to the plant jail to be judged by those who ran Hanford.
She wouldn’t push Hollister any further. She shrugged and lowered her eyes. She could feel his gaze lingering. If he was mad enough, he might not kill her right away. What he’d do instead would be even worse.
The last man piled in and pulled down the gate, locking the lever into place. Hollister pounded on the wall to the cab. After a minute, the engine grumbled up. The truck lurched forward. Hollister holstered his pistol and buckled in. Gravel popped under the tires. The truck turned right, pulling Tristan off-center. She sat up a few inches closer to the back door.
The floor of the truck was metal. Tristan slipped her hands under her butt. Every time the truck bounced on a dip or pothole, she dropped her weight as hard as she could. On the fourth bounce—the transition to the bridge, judging by the changing swish of the tires—the plastic zip tie broke.
She listened to the rhythm of the road, trying to anticipate the next bounce. When it came, she slammed her fist down on the gate latch and yanked the door up into the truck. Hollister shouted. She leapt off the back and did her best to roll, momentum tumbling her across the asphalt, scraping her knee, jarring her shoulder.
“Stop the truck!” Hollister screamed. “Stop this god damn thing!”
Brakes screeched. Tristan tried to find her feet but stumbled back to her knees. Hollister jumped from the tailgate, pistol in hand. She’d meant to sprint to the edge and fling herself into the river; she’d come back for Alden later. But Hollister already had his gun trained on her.
“This is the last bite of your bullshit I’m going to swallow!” His eyelids were puffy, nearly swollen shut. He must have taken something to get to sleep and another something to wake up for the alarm. “Now your brother gets to watch.”
Tristan rose, knee shaking. “Leave him out of this. Just get it over with.”
“Cadet Carter! Outside!”
Alden’s face swam above the tailgate. He lowered himself to the road, expression pinched, eyes darting.
Another security man leaned out from the truck. “Lieutenant, the plant—”
“Fuck the plant!” Hollister composed himself. “Drive over. ASAP. I’ll catch up.”
“Lieutenant—”
“I said drive!”
The man mashed his lips together, then turned and yelled at the driver. The gate cranked closed. The U-Haul lumbered down the bridge. The river gleamed to either side. Steam rose from the power plant, but the pillars were patchy, interrupted.
Hollister stepped toward her, pistol black beneath the moonlight. “Cadet Carter.”
“Please, Lieutenant,” Alden said. “She’s my sister.”
“I don’t see a sister. I see a threat. To you. To the institution you belong to. To the safety of our entire community.”
“Lieutenant, no! She wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Wrong. She had every intention of doing just that. There are bad people in the world, Cadet Carter. Alden. Used to be they had an easy time hiding among us. Passing for us. But their true colors burn bright now that the rest of the world’s turned the color of shit.”
“She’s not bad,” Alden said. “She went to college. She helped my mom when our mom got sick.”
Hollister snorted. “Bad people wear good faces all the time, Alden. That’s what makes our job so vital. You have to learn to spot them. And once you’ve found them, to remove them.” He held the gun to the side of his body, keeping its barrel pointed at Tristan, gesturing at Alden to take it. “This is what you’ll have to learn, Cadet Carter. This is what it takes to make it. Can you do it?”
Alden shook his head, moisture flashing from his cheeks. “Don’t.”
Hollister held the pistol out to him a second time. Alden backed away. Hollister blinked at him, then sighed. Tristan tensed, preparing to sprint for the railing at the side of the bridge.
“Fine,” the lieutenant said. “Some learn by doing. Others learn by watching.”
He pointed the pistol at Tristan and shot her in the chest.
35
Roan strode down the concrete platform, gun steady in her hand. Condensation slicked the tunnel-length pipe. Warm liquid dribbled over the back of Ness’ hand. A singled red drop slid between the tendons of his index and middle fingers. He shook Shawn’s shoulder. His brother’s head lolled, spilling blood across the concrete.
“Don’t move,” Roan said. “Hands up. I will shoot.”
“A little late for that!” Kristin shrieked. “You shot him!”
“Sabotage of a nuclear power plant—”
“It’s about to melt down, okay? For all I know it already has. If you stop us, we all die.”
“Shawn?” Ness said.
The whisper of Roan’s footsteps ceased. “There is no meltdown.”
“Really?” Kristin said. “Did that Glock come with a diploma? Have you seen the core? It’s nearly dry, you fucking idiot.”
“Shawn,” Ness said.
“There would be alarms,” Roan said.
“Yeah, I turned those off when I figured out the only thing that could save us was to get to this pipe you won’t let us fix.” Kristin began to rise.
“Don’t move.” Roan’s gun clicked. “You. Get away from the body.”
“That body is his brother. Who you just shot.”
“I should let you all die,” Ness said to the floor.
“Very generous of you to keep your power
s in check,” Roan said. “Get up. Move.”
“You’re a crazy person,” Ness said. “You are actually insane. You just shot my brother and now you expect me to do what you say.”
“Wrong. I expect you to do what my gun says.”
As Shawn had fallen, his knee had trapped the alien pistol to the concrete. Ness turned slowly, supporting himself with his palms on the rough floor. “Has anyone ever told you no?”
Roan’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Not twice.”
Ness crawled a half step forward. He touched Shawn’s knee, then felt the smooth plastic. “Threats only work on those with something left to lose.”
She straightened her pistol, the end of its barrel a dark and unblinking eye. “Let me see your hands.”
“Goodbye,” Ness said, not knowing whether it was to Shawn or for Kristin.
He dove forward. Roan fired. The bullet cracked over his head, whining off the concrete wall. Ness clenched the buttons of the alien weapon. A blue beam lanced down the tunnel. He swung it across Roan’s ankles. Her jeans blackened; meat snapped and popped. Sweet smoke clouded the tunnel. She staggered, shins detaching from her feet, and toppled. She fired mid-fall. The bullet struck the wall and ricocheted away. She landed on her side with a gasp, eyes level with Ness. Smoke curled from her severed feet.
Roan screamed and swung the pistol at his face. He lased off her hand halfway up the forearm. She pointed her stump straight at him, muscles twitching as she tried to command fingers that were no longer a part of her body. Ness rose into a low crouch and ran for her gun. She smacked at it with her blackened stump. He grabbed it, pulled it from her limp fingers, which were still curled around the grip, and threw her seared-off hand into her face.
She cried out and rolled away, raising her arms to block her face. Ness fired the laser past her head, scorching the cement.
“Look at that,” he said. “I missed.” He fired past her head again. She flinched away, the light of the laser shading her face an alien blue.
“Ness,” Kristin said. “Save it for the pipe.”
“I’m almost done.” He feinted at Roan. She covered her head with both arms. He burned off her left arm inches from the shoulder. It hung from a last shred of skin and flopped onto the concrete. Roan screamed. Ness stalked up to her and reached for her head. She waved her stumps. He grabbed her hair and pulled her into the culvert, rolling her down the hard slope. At the bottom, she banged into one of the metal arms holding up the pipe. Ness spit on her. “Think you can swim without any hands and feet?”
“Help me!” Roan flailed all four stumps, wallowing at the bottom of the dry canal. Her expression broke. “What did you do to me?”
Ness turned and walked back to the capped pipe. Shawn hadn’t moved and he never would again. Ness lifted the pistol. He stared at the pipe.
“Ness,” Kristin said.
“They don’t deserve to live,” Ness said. “They preserved this place through the fall, and what do they turn it into? A prison.”
“You realize we’re underground, right? Under the ground the reactor is going to melt into?”
He shook his head. “We deserve to die, too.”
“I don’t!” Kristin laughed, barking. “What did we do?”
“We didn’t stop them.” Ness lowered the laser. “Now we can.”
“Ness!” She grabbed his shoulders, eyes skipping between his. “Do you think this is what Shawn would want?”
He yanked away. “Don’t!”
“Ness—”
“Don’t you dare try to use him against me. He’s right there. You can see his—” He broke down, face crinkling, tears stinging his eyes.
Kristin didn’t reach for him again. “And this is what he died doing.”
His whole body shook. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Ness. Don’t let it be in vain.”
He closed his eyes. The last of what was left in him melted down, as out of reach as last year’s rain, as lost as his mother, as gone as that childhood sense, soft and yellow, that you would always be safe. Shawn’s eyes hung half open, vacant, pictures of the void.
Ness lifted the pistol and touched its buttons.
It took several seconds for the first drop of steel to sizzle to the floor. Water shot from the pipe in a line as straight as the laser, soaking Ness’ chest, filling his nostrils with the smell of the river. He moved to the side and turned the gun back on the pipe. Water hissed against the wall. Steam roiled from the pipe, painfully hot, clinging to the hairs on his arms in frostlike beads and dispersing the laser’s swift beam. He moved to the other side of the pipe and burned a new hole. He moved again, carving off a corner of the cap. Water sluiced into the culvert. He turned the beam on the top edge of the cut, extending it straight to the top of the pipe, then moved to the side and sliced away another hunk of steel. It clanged to the concrete and swept into the stream, spinning away.
Roan screamed. The gun warmed in his hand. Metal melted and globbed into the water, popping, spraying his pants with boiling water. The last of the cap peeled away with a dull clunk. A cataract of water spilled onto the sloped floor and gushed into the culvert.
Ness lowered the gun. “Is that it?”
“From here, it’ll drain back into the main system,” Kristin said. “That’s all we can do.”
“Then it’s time to find Daniel.”
He ran back down the tunnel. Roan floated facedown in the murky, turbid water, bumping against one of the struts holding up the main pipe. Ness’ feet echoed ahead of him, Kristin’s a half step behind.
“Left,” she murmured.
He turned down the fork. Down the tunnel, the stairwell door banged open. Daniel stumbled onto the concrete, arms and legs flailing. He saw Ness and grinned, lips peeling from his teeth, eyes aflame with a terrible sickness. Ness raised the laser.
Daniel retched. His spine bent. A tentacle burst from his mouth, showering the concrete with blood. The alien emerged from the doorway, feet clattering, lifting Daniel from his feet, a living puppet. The man’s arms and legs writhed and went slack. Sebastian flung him to the floor. The smell of guts and shit flooded the tunnel.
The alien’s tentacle danced. It shoved its pad in Ness’ face. “KILL ROAN”
Ness grabbed his rolled-up notepad from his pocket and unclipped the pen from its spiral binding. “She’s dead.”
It spread its tentacles like a gray sunburst. “GUTBROTHERS JOIN THE SAND”
“I’m glad we could avenge them,” Ness wrote. Dimly, he remembered the alien’s vengeance should have been brought down on him. “What now?”
“GUN MEN ABOVE”
“What’s it saying?” Kristin said.
“Security’s upstairs,” Ness said. “Is there another way out?”
“Next floor up. There’s another stairwell to the back. They might not have blocked it yet.”
Ness nodded and wrote on his wrinkled page, holding it for Sebastian. “Where are you going now?”
“RIVER MEET FRIENDS”
“Can I come with you? Away from here?”
Its tentacles stilled. “WITH ME WHY”
Ness bent to his notepad. “I’m done with this world.”
Sebastian paused, staring at him with its bulbous, unreadable eyes. It nodded.
“Let’s go,” Ness said.
Kristin took them up to the next landing, then led the way into another series of concrete tunnels. Valves jutted from the walls. A glass case of radiation suits waited by a door. Kristin jogged right past them. Ness didn’t know if she’d seen them; he didn’t care. The permeating rumble of the reactor carried on as always. Slightly lower in tone, maybe. Or maybe his ears were tricking him.
Kristin opened the door to another well-lit stairway. Ness went first, pistol ready, and stopped on the landing. He heard nothing but their breathing and the vibration of the core. Kristin headed upstairs, emerging into a stark room with a metal detector, a bench, and a security booth. She ran through,
detector beeping, and opened the door to a plain room with a heavy door. It fed them into a cold and noisy night.
A truck engine rattled from the other side of the building. Men shouted, half-muffled by the reactor. Ness stood outside a house-sized outpost a hundred yards from the control building. A single floodlight lit a white circle of dust. Sebastian skirted the light and scuttled toward the river.
Ness followed without looking back. They could shoot him if they liked. The land sloped gently toward the black water. Russian olives loomed from the shore, snagging his coat with finger-length thorns, clogging his nose with the bittersweet smell of their pollen. The alien ducked through them with disturbing grace. Two shots rang from the control building. Dogs barked madly. Through the gaps in the trees, he saw men silhouetted beside the high gray tower of the control station, gesturing as they shouted at each other, dogs trotting in confused circles, chains dangling from their necks.
“Where are we going?” Kristin whispered.
“Away,” Ness said.
“Should we take a truck? What about the dogs?”
“They won’t find us.”
“How do you know that? They look like they have noses to me.”
“Because they won’t.”
She was silent a moment. “Are you okay, Ness?”
“Come on.”
He trampled through the grass. His pants were already too soaked for the dew to make any difference. Sebastian kept glancing at the river and gesturing over his pad. The shouts and barks faded behind them. Lights blazed across the river, illuminating open fields and the long, shack-like housing where Ness had once lived. Downstream, light flashed from the middle of the bridge. A gunshot crackled over the river. Sebastian didn’t slow down. Seconds later, another shot rolled from the bridge. Screams. A final shot. Ness followed in the alien’s wake. The bridge went quiet.
Sebastian stopped a hundred yards from the foot of the bridge and stared into the dark water.
“Not a great place to stop,” Kristin said. “Look, maybe you and I should just go back. Explain what happened. They can’t arrest us for saving the whole damn site.”
“Sure they can,” Ness said. “They can do whatever they want to do. If they want to kill us, they’ll kill us. There is absolutely nothing to stop them.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 143