“Mr. Reeves,” Griffin said, holstering his pistol. “I’m putting you in charge of gathering every firearm and every cartridge in this settlement. They now belong to me. You’re also going to gather half of all your food, water, and medicine. Those belong to me too.”
Reeves’ mouth opened, as though to object.
Griffin held up a finger. “Your cooperation is the price for your people’s lives. I’m sure it’s not too much to pay.”
Reeves blinked a few times, then shook his head. “No. No, it’s not too much.”
Griffin nodded. “I didn’t think it was. Please have the requested items loaded into my convoy within two hours. Lieutenant Paige will direct you where to put everything. We’re done here.”
***
“Twenty-four hours,” Jones said, sitting cross-legged with the rifle in his lap. “Sure. Yeah. Why not.”
As if to challenge the likelihood of that, a boom trembled the floor. A grenade. Sam wasn’t experienced enough with them to know if it were a flashbang or a fragmentation grenade. He only knew that it was close. Maybe a few streets over.
Jones, Marie, and Sam, all looked out at the afternoon light pouring in from the front of their hideout. Shadows already tilting away from the sun, but not fast enough. Lips were tensed and flat. Hearts were beating faster than necessary. Guts were watery. Palms clammy.
Time inched by at a painful pace.
“Lee says they’ll be in by nightfall,” Sam replied.
“So he hopes,” Jones commented. “And even if they get into Greeley, that doesn’t mean they find us by nightfall. And we can’t really start making our move until Lee hits anyways.”
“No. But we can sure as shit defend ourselves. And we will.”
Jones met his gaze, bereft of humor. “They’re frag and clearing. What? Two blocks over? How long you think it’s going to take them to get here?”
It wasn’t an actual question. Jones’s point was obvious in his tone: Not long.
“Heads up,” Marie said, rolling from her sitting position and bringing her rifle up to her shoulder.
Jones and Sam came up, stomachs in throats, but then immediately relaxed.
It was Evan.
“Knock knock,” Evan husked as he picked his way quickly into the building.
He stopped, not far from the entrance, his hands up.
Sam’s grip tightened on his rifle. “What’s up, Evan?”
Evan tossed his head behind him. “Got some people that want to come in.”
Jones shifted his body towards a nearby column, ready to spring for cover.
“Yeah?” Sam said, not daring to hope, only jumping to the worst possible conclusion. “Who?”
Evan made a grimace that Sam didn’t like. “I’m sorry Sam…”
Sam almost shot him right then and there. He raised his rifle to the point that the optic was just below his line of sight.
Evan recoiled. “Christ! Wait!” The next sentence tumbled out about as fast as you’d expect someone to speak when they knew their words were the only thing between them and a bullet. “I was apologizing because I was only able to convince two of the other squad leaders! My squad is outside, with the two other squads.”
Stillness.
Sam’s heart felt brittle and overworked. He nearly gasped as he lowered his rifle. “You fuck. Don’t do that to me.”
Evan winced. “God. You guys are high strung.”
“Yeah, you’re damn right we’re high strung,” Jones snapped. “You should be too. Your life’s on the line just as much as ours. You understand that, right?”
Evan nodded. “Yeah, I understand that. Can I signal them to come in?”
Sam stood up, hands still gripping his rifle, the muzzle pointed somewhere south of Evan’s feet. “Humor my paranoia for a second and don’t get offended. But if it’s anyone but who you say it is, you die first.”
Evan actually managed a smile. “Good thing I’m not lying. And you know what? I’m glad you’re a fucking hard ass, Sameer. I’d hate to throw my life on the line with a pushover.”
Sam nodded. “Go ahead and signal them. But stay right where you are.”
Evan turned. Craned his neck to the side a bit. Waved his hands like a stranded motorist.
Out of the abandoned building across the street emerged a figure. Then two. Then three. They sprinted across, one at a time, looking both ways down the road as they did and stumbling breathlessly into the dim tomb of the hideout.
They gathered silently around Evan as more continued to skitter across the street. Only nods of greeting, and then eyes on Sam and what remained of his crew. Watching them and waiting, as the rest of the dissidents scrambled in behind them.
Sam counted heads. Fifteen total. But none of them armed.
“Folks,” Evan said, once they’d all made it across. “This is Sameer, for those that haven’t met him before. He’s the one I told you about. Sameer, these are your new friends.”
“Anybody have weapons?” was the first words out of Sam’s mouth.
Glances traded around.
“Knives,” one of the guys said, to a general nod of agreement.
Sam almost laughed. “Well. Guess that’s better than nothing.”
One of the others that Sam recognized as a squad leader took a hesitant step forward. “We saw the signs. Shit, I think everyone saw the signs.” He shook his head as though bewildered. “Y’all done pissed ‘em off, dintcha?”
Sam nodded, his grip on his rifle relaxing. “Well, it got you here, didn’t it?”
“Is it true?” a woman asked, shouldering around Evan. “Is Lee Harden really coming?”
“Yeah,” Sam answered. “He’s coming.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-four hours. Little less now.”
The woman blanched. “Twenty-four hours is a long time.”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s better than twenty-five.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
─▬▬▬─
TIDES
The light was failing now.
Lee glanced westward and saw only an orange smudge where the sun had been. The clouds still hung onto its light, creating a diffused amber glow across the landscape.
Only twelve hours now.
One more sleepless night.
There was no rise in the land. No hill. No high vantage on which to look out at his objective. All was flat. All was desolate. But there was nothing between him and Greeley anymore, except for twenty miles of road.
The horizon to the north showed nothing. No sign of the city he had his sights on. Not a glow of electric light. Not a pall of smog. Nothing. Lee could almost imagine that it didn’t actually exist.
And yet, knowing that there was nothing in his way, that twenty miles might as well have been nothing. The lack of barriers made the distance insignificant.
He worked the fingers of his damaged left hand. The ache had gotten stronger. Something to do with the weather, he assumed. Or maybe it was the tension and the lack of sleep.
He put his hands on his hips and stared at that horizon line, picturing his objective, his desires, his strategy, his hopes, his anxieties, every bad thing that might happen, and the distant glimmer of what he could possibly accomplish, all overlaid on top of one another in a jumble of blood and loss and spectral victory, troop movements, chess pieces, areas of operations, and a broad, poisonous sense of rage that coalesced around an image of what Briggs would look like when Lee finally kicked down his door.
That twenty miles might as well have been nothing.
Lee was on the doorstep.
Only twelve hours left.
One more sleepless night.
***
Far to the south, in the full dark of the freshly fallen night, the Alpha did not have to wait any longer.
The tide that had been building was now rushing through them, like the wind that thrashes the trees ahead of a storm, carrying with it destruction.
The Alpha had no pack any longer. Th
ey were all his pack. So many of them that the clear, cold light of the moon across their bare shoulders created a landscape of its own that stretched in all directions, as far as the Alpha could see.
This territory was dead. That was what the Alpha understood, in his own vestigial way. The Easy Prey had left, and so the Alpha and all of his packmates, and all of the Omegas, and all of the Strange Ones that led them, knew that they had to pursue.
The Easy Prey had fled to the place where the sun touches the earth.
And where the prey go, the predator must follow.
The scent was heavy on them now, communicating far more than the grunts and cries with which they conversed. It told the Alpha that their time had come. Their hunger had been sated—for now. Their numbers had swelled. Their strength had been built back from the lean months following the rutting and the mating. The Omegas, every one, had begun to grow new life in their bellies.
The scent told them that they must follow their prey or be destroyed.
It seized the Alpha with an urgency that seemed to come out of his bones. The need to move. To cross great distances. To sniff out the places where the Easy Prey would be. To go to any lengths to preserve the many that were his packmates now, and the many more that would arrive very soon.
They had to go. And the time was now.
A single Omega, only a few body lengths from the Alpha, let out a quiet hoot, and began to move forward.
And the rest followed with her.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D.J. Molles is the New York Times bestselling author of The Remaining series, which was originally self-published in 2012 and quickly became an internet bestseller, and is the basis for his hit Lee Harden series. He is also the author of Wolves, a 2016 winner in the Horror category for the Foreword INDIES Book Awards. His other works include the Grower's War series, and the Audible original, Johnny. When he's not writing, he's taking care of his property in North Carolina, and training to be at least half as hard to kill as Lee Harden. He also enjoys playing his guitar and drums, drawing, painting, and lots of other artsy fartsy stuff.
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Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed Page 40