The Crew guards had demanded to know what the broadcast meant as they’d beaten Jacob bloody. They went about their work with detached determination, taking care to deliver blows that would cause maximum pain without endangering his life. They’d promised to break his fingers and toes on the next round, and to cut his ears, nose, and more sensitive appendage off should he fail to tell them what he knew, but Jacob had resolved to continue pleading ignorance right up until the time he expired.
That he would die was a foregone conclusion. After spending five years under Crew rule, he had no doubt about that. He was far too familiar with their tactics to believe any promises of mercy – if he did tell them anything, they would simply increase the damage to him in order to see if he changed his story.
A door opened and the room flooded with fluorescent light. He blinked at the unexpected glare, and then his eyes focused on a small form lying in the corner in a fetal position, orange jumpsuit and white hair as distinctive as a fingerprint. Eddie’s eyes were frozen wide in death, his face gray and his mouth open in an expression of pained surprise. Jacob could make out his tongue, cyanotic and swollen, and looked away, the image an indecent violation of his friend’s eternal rest.
A man entered and Jacob’s heart sank. He recognized Kyle, one of Magnus’s especially mean-spirited lieutenants, and braced himself for what was to come. To Jacob’s surprise, the door remained open, and Kyle approached until he was only a few feet from Jacob – close enough for the scientist to make out a thin sheen of sweat on the network of tattoos that covered his face and head, the iconic Eye of Providence in the center of his forehead exactly like that of his master’s.
“Well, well. Seems you and your little friend have been very naughty boys, Doctor,” Kyle hissed, his voice raspy from an injury to his voice box in some prison fight. “Funny that we should find ourselves like this, isn’t it?”
Jacob had made no secret of how much he despised the man, and he now regretted his hubris. Kyle would take special delight in making Jacob’s final hours the most agonizing of his life, he knew.
“Why are you doing this?” Jacob managed between broken teeth and mangled lips.
“Oh, let’s not pretend. Your buddy there told us enough before he died. Little turd had a heart attack early on, but before he did, he confessed that you were his partner in crime. He told us it was he who made the broadcast we intercepted, and he told us what it meant. We need you to confirm he told us the truth.”
“You believed him? He hated me. Hated all the staff.”
Kyle smiled. “I don’t think so. He was very convincing, and my experience with those about to go to their graves is that they tend to find honesty in their last words.”
“He tricked you, and now he’s gotten what he wanted, obviously – to get rid of your lead scientist. Not very smart, are you? He played you, and you fell for it.”
Kyle sighed, as though fatigued. “You’re very good. Really, you are. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe you.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“I’ll save us all a little time, Doctor. I intend to hurt you in ways you never thought possible. I’m talking Biblical, Inquisition-level shit. You’ll be drowning in your own blood, begging for death by the time I’m done with you. But I’m in a hurry, so I’m going to give you a choice: a quick death or the drawn-out version.”
“Have you spoken with Whitely? There’s no way he’d allow me to be taken out of the game. We’re too close to a vaccine.”
“Whitely doesn’t matter. Magnus ordered it. You know what that means.”
Jacob’s heart skipped. He did indeed know what it meant: there was no possibility of relief.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he tried.
“I guess we’re going to do this the hard way. That’s fine.” Kyle turned to the open door. “Bring in the stuff.”
Two guards wheeled in a rolling mechanic’s table with an array of nightmare tools on it – wire cutters, saws, vices, surgical instruments. Kyle smiled at the sight of Jacob’s face and reached to select a thin, twelve-inch-long glass rod.
“You have no idea what this is going to feel like,” he said, eyeing Jacob’s genitals. “The hammer blow that shatters it inside you will feel like an angel’s kiss compared to what follows. You really don’t want to experience it, or so I’ve gathered from watching tougher men than you cry like baby kittens by the time I’m done.”
“I swear I have no idea what you want to know. You’re making the mistake of your life. You’ll never get the vaccine if you kill me, and Magnus will ultimately blame you for carrying out his orders. You know how that will work. You’ll be on the receiving end before you know it.”
Kyle studied the glass rod like it held the answer to a mystery, and then sighed again. “I was afraid of that.”
“What?”
“You’re ready to endure anything, aren’t you?”
“You’re mistaking not knowing anything with something else.”
Kyle nodded once. “I was right. I told them it wouldn’t work.”
Jacob felt a tremble of relief. Maybe he’d managed to save himself…?
“Don’t do this,” he whispered.
Kyle snapped his fingers and called to the doorway. “Bring her in.”
Two guards half-dragged a woman into the room, her eyes terrified. She screamed when she saw Jacob and dropped to her knees sobbing when the guards released her.
“Sarah!” Jacob screamed in a tortured voice.
“That’s right, smart guy,” Kyle snarled. “Your sister. You’re obviously willing to undergo just about anything, but let’s see how you feel about subjecting your sister to the punishment intended for you.”
“She’s innocent,” Jacob protested. Sarah was a technician at the Dallas facility. They must have run her over in a vehicle, using some of their precious fuel, to get her to Lubbock that quickly.
“Of course she is. That’s the whole point. We’ll see how your convictions hold up when she’s raped repeatedly in front of you – while you know you’re responsible for her misery and could save her at any time. Sodomy, rape, a good enthusiastic beating, and then we’ll start carving her face.” Kyle gave him a cold smirk. “You really want that?”
Jacob closed his eyes, willing himself dead. It was an impossible choice. Sell out and condemn his species to an existence of living hell under the rule of a demon; or betray his sister and watch her violated and tortured.
“You can’t do this,” he screamed, choking on the last word.
“Oh, Jacob, of course I can. And you will eventually tell me what I want to know. The only question is how much you’re willing to allow to happen to your flesh and blood before you do.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow and offered the grin of an unrepentant sadist. Jacob believed him. He would follow through, probably was aroused at the thought of the horror he was going to perpetrate, and was hoping Jacob would refuse to tell him what he asked.
“If I tell you, you’ll let her go?”
Kyle nodded. “You have my word.”
“How do I know I can believe you?”
“You don’t. Makes it more fun, don’t you think?”
Jacob took a deep breath. “The broadcast was arranging a rendezvous,” he began.
An hour later he was gagging on his own vomit after watching his sister systematically ruined, the lump of bleeding, burned flesh quivering on the floor in front of him unrecognizable as human.
Kyle closed the door behind him as Jacob’s strangled shriek reverberated off the walls, the rod broken. The real amusement was only about to begin.
Chapter 41
Lucas watered Tango from one of the plastic bottles, his eyes on the distant intersection of the sky with the plain, watching for any evidence of pursuit. He’d ridden from Lubbock and hadn’t stopped until noon other than to allow Tango to rest and to take an occasional bearing. Now, as the heat rose, he debated snatching a few hours of sleep – he’d established suff
icient lead and had left no trail to follow, so he was confident that nobody was tailing him.
He could go only so long without slumber, though, and then his senses would begin playing tricks on him. He’d miss some critical tell or, worse, misinterpret or invent one, which could be disastrous. And Tango, for all his fortitude, wasn’t a machine; pushed too hard, he would eventually misstep and hurt himself, which would leave them dead in the water.
Lucas spotted the remains of a maintenance building at the edge of one of the oil fields and led Tango to it on foot. The interior was in ruins, but there was shade to rest in and sufficient grass for the horse to feed. Lucas could see endless green stretching in all directions, so he’d be able to spot any riders from far away – although he hadn’t spied a single one all day and, given the heat and absence of any nearby destinations, didn’t expect to.
He decided to risk it and unfurled his bedroll and lay down inside the building after setting Tango loose to graze. He closed his eyes and was asleep within moments, his body in desperate need of recharging.
Lucas awoke to Tango nudging him with his nose. He rolled over and peered at the time, and then sat up. He’d been asleep for four hours – two longer than he’d planned. He swore at his carelessness as he rolled up his bedroll and, after setting his hat on his head, exited the building. A study of the horizon to the east with his binoculars revealed nothing new, and he relaxed a bit as he swept the remainder of the area, pivoting in a slow circle until he’d scanned everything.
He mounted up and Tango strode forward; the much-needed respite had done them both good. Lucas resolved to keep moving after dark to make up the time, the first twenty-four hours the most critical.
An hour after nightfall, he heard four riders galloping from the south. He estimated that they were no more than a half mile away, likely from Plains. He had to assume that the Crew also had night vision gear, so he couldn’t rely on the cover of darkness to avoid them, which left only two options: finding a hiding place or taking them on.
The old saying from his law enforcement days came back to him as he mulled over the choices: you can’t outrun a radio. Perhaps he was reading too much into the hoofbeats, but he couldn’t imagine a lot of reasons for hard riding at night.
Of course, they had no idea how much progress he might have made since departing Lubbock, so they were oblivious to his actual location. At least, that was his hope.
He raised the M4 and activated the scope, and then looked through it in the direction of the commotion. Lucas could barely make the riders out and adjusted his guess of a half mile away upward to more like a mile – good for him, as it bought more maneuvering time.
Lucas twisted in the saddle and eyed the towering shapes of the oil pumps that stretched westward, each roughly a quarter mile apart. He had earlier crossed the highway that ran northwest from Plains that the riders were following, which gave him another advantage: they were sticking to the road, so the further he could get from it, the likelier he was to evade them. He selected a pumping rig a half mile off the thoroughfare at random and urged Tango toward it. The big horse broke into a trot, and by the time the riders passed, he and Tango were concealed by the pump’s wide steel base.
He watched through the scope as the patrol moved beyond his position and absently smoothed the horse’s mane with his free hand.
“Easy, boy. We’ll get out of here in a few,” he whispered, and wished he had an apple or some other treat for Tango, who had performed thanklessly for weeks.
He would remedy that when he made it back to Artesia.
That he would, he didn’t question. Searching for a single rider on the plains, absent a spotter plane or helicopter, was looking for a needle in a haystack.
When the riders were out of sight, he mounted Tango and spurred him west, reconciled to riding most of the night. The more miles he could put between himself and the Crew, the greater his chances of survival, and he’d push until they were both ready to drop and then sleep when he could. Lucas knew the approximate location of the Crew’s checkpoints on the main highway from his inbound journey and would, as he had then, stick to open fields far from them. That Magnus’s goons believed anyone in their right mind would use roads was a relief to Lucas – it showed that they were approaching things from an urban perspective rather than with rural expertise that would be useful on the plains, another edge he would use to his advantage.
Lucas thought about Jacob and Eddie as he rode, trying to imagine what they had been put through, but flushed away the images that sprang to mind. Whatever they had endured, it was over by now. Lucas was no stranger to atrocity – the Mexican cartels, even back in the pre-collapse days, had been expert in torture and disfigurement, leaving mutilated corpses for discovery with messages of warning for their adversaries. It was no shock that the prison gangs who were now in control had adopted their brutal tactics – in times of flux, brutal tactics inevitably carried the day.
That his fellow man could be so loathsome was disheartening but unsurprising, and he again wondered that his species had managed to rule the planet without wiping each other out for as long as they had. The collapse was just a trip back in time to a period when roving hordes of conquering barbarians would descend on a target and slaughter all but the women. For all mankind’s pretense of having evolved past that point, the truth was far more disappointing: a despot like Magnus had far more historical precedent than not.
And history taught that the bad guys usually won.
“Maybe not this time,” he murmured, swaying in the saddle, his eyelids heavy. The trail spanning into the distance glowed white in the moonlight, the tall grass on either side of it wrinkled by the dry wind.
Chapter 42
Luis looked up as his radio operator entered his office and neared with a slip of paper. The bottle of tequila on his desk was halfway gone, as was Luis, his sorrows only somewhat drowned by the acrid liquor, though his rage was blunted.
“What is it?” he slurred.
The man set the paper in front of him. Luis groped at it with fingers that felt dead and then sat back, disgusted. “Read it,” he ordered.
“It’s for Cano. I thought you’d want to see it first.”
Luis nodded. “Okay. So read it.”
“Rendezvous planned for three days from now, sunset, Kola bar, Bitter Lake. Woman and child will be there.”
Luis digested the message and sat up straighter, the sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through his system sobering him somewhat. “Bitter Lake? That’s…where is that?”
“They said it’s by Roswell. In New Mexico.”
“The UFO place?”
The operator nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Shit. You have a map of the area?”
“I found an atlas. It’s three days’ hard ride. Maybe four.”
“Damn.” Luis did the math, his brain foggy from the alcohol. “We could make it, but just barely. Horses would be near dead by the time we got there.” Luis thought for a minute. “Why don’t they send a patrol from Lubbock?”
“Same distance. Guess they think Cano’s a better bet than whoever they have there.”
Luis pushed back from his desk and stood unsteadily. He glanced at the bottle and pushed it away. “Well, it was nice while it lasted,” he muttered, and held out his hand. “Give me the message.”
The operator did as instructed and left. Luis scowled at the note like it was a venomous snake. He considered delaying presenting it to Cano or just never telling him, but shook off the idea as soon as he had it. The truth would eventually come out, and then he’d be feeding the buzzards out by the latrine trenches. No, he had to alert the man and then be ready for three grueling days to follow.
Luis grunted to himself and walked to the door. The hotel where Cano had set up camp was only two blocks from the courthouse headquarters, and the walk might help him work off some of the booze. He already knew that they’d be riding all night and much of the following one – the math
required that they get in at least fifty-something miles per day, which would likely kill a few of the horses if they weren’t careful. They’d have to travel light and see if they could commandeer more animals on the way north.
But it was possible to do it.
They’d just all be about as beat as their steeds by the time they arrived.
Luis’s boots thumped against the dusty pavement as he walked, the stars slim illumination in the midnight sky. His head was clearing as he neared the hotel, but still, he nearly fell face forward when a voice called out from the darkness by the entry.
“Stop, or I blow your head off.”
“I’m here to see Cano. It’s Luis.”
“He’s asleep.”
“It’s important.”
A Crew thug stepped from the gloom, his eyes slits in a face that had taken a lifetime of punches, with a Kalashnikov in hand, its snout pointed at Luis. “He’s third room from the end on the lower floor. Better be an emergency, for your sake.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“It’s a promise.”
Luis followed the path along the peeling wall until he found the door. He rapped authoritatively and waited. Cano’s distinctive voice rang out. “Good way to get killed.”
“Cano, it’s Luis. We got a radio message from Houston. It’s important.”
The door opened. Cano stood shirtless in the darkness, his wounds now completely healed. Green ink snakes writhed along his abs, satanic symbols adorned his chest, and a stylized grim reaper grinned from one shoulder, scythe in one bony hand and a skeletal finger pointing with the other.
“Better be. What is it?”
“Something about a rendezvous at a lake north of here. The woman and girl.”
“What?” Cano exclaimed. “Give me the message.”
Luis fished in his vest and handed him the slip of paper. Cano read it twice by the moonlight and glowered at him.
“When did this come in?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
The Day After Never (Book 2): Purgatory Road Page 21