OK, I got it. No talking . . . at all. Except he knew they weren’t the only ones down here; he been hearing echoes of footsteps. There’d been a clanging slam of some sort of heavy door twenty minutes ago that could have been right next to them or a mile away in the tunnels. He knew Pavel had heard it, but he’d ignored it and hadn’t even paused to listen.
He tapped at his ears while Pavel still had his flashlight, or “torch” as he called it, pointed at him, then made a walking motion with his fingers. Pavel just nodded and tapped his own ears, and then pointed down the tunnel in the direction they’d been headed. Pavel bent over next to him. “She is close.”
“Which way?” Lisa whispered as quietly as she could. The tunnel they were in terminated at a T junction. Ben was just ahead of her, shining his flashlight at the massive steam pipes. There’d been a few at the previous junctions, that had been labeled with some sort of arcane system that she was sure made sense to the type of worker bees who put pipes together.
Ben’s flashlight paused, shone down the right-hand tunnel. “I think this way is west.”
“You said we were trying to get south.” She tried and failed to keep the frustration out of her voice.
Ben’s flashlight came back to the wall of concrete that blocked their current tunnel. “That isn’t an option anymore, is it?” He sounded pissed off too. They both knew they weren’t down here alone. Sound was the one thing that seemed to travel well down here. It wasn’t like it needed to see where it was going, and it didn’t care if it was lost.
“OK, let’s go right.”
She waited half a moment before following. She stepped on something hard and sharp, and tensed as she felt it push against, then pop through the pad of her right foot.
“Shit!” she cried out and slammed a hand over her mouth in time to stop what else had been forming on her tongue.
Ben was there in a second, a hand out, his palm ready to slam down against her face. “Put your damned shoes back on,” he hissed at her, his face inches away from her own.
For the briefest of moments, she was worried more about Ben than the people looking for her. Then he was up and moving. She pulled out the piece of broken beer bottle and forced her shoes back on. By the time she was moving, Ben was thirty feet ahead of her in the tunnel, but seemed to have stopped and was waiting on her.
Ray had just sent Elliot back topside to check in. The radios were worthless down here. Elliot had been gone a few minutes when he heard a women’s distinct cry of “shit.” It was close, close enough that he couldn’t tell which tunnel the voice had emanated from.
He looked down both tunnels from where he knelt, half leaning against a trio of large pipes. Neither of the yawning pits of blackness offered the slightest hint of a glow of light, and he couldn’t figure how anybody would even try to move down here without a flashlight. Then he saw it. His night vision goggles picked up some ambient light leaking out of the tunnel to his right. Just enough to frame the interior walls.
Gotcha . . . He brought up his assault rifle and waited as the glow slowly grew a little brighter. He could almost see the dark outlines of the pipes in the tunnel itself, but he had to wonder if it was his imagination, knowing the pipes were there. Minutes crept by, long enough that he was aware of wanting to move his legs, which were starting to tingle with sleep.
A door slammed somewhere in the building above him. Elliot! He almost screamed in frustration. The tunnel he’d been watching went back to pitch black. Whatever light had been approaching was now gone. He was down to his ears, listening for the slightest whisper of a footfall to make its way out of the pitch-black tunnel.
There was a nothing for a minute or more, and then he heard movement, like fabric moving with a body. He brought his gun to his shoulder and aimed into the darkness of the tunnel, willing the night vision goggles to see something. A supernova of light exploded in the tunnel and burned through his eyes, lancing into head before the goggles dampened their electronic irises. A bright glow was seared into his brain, and it was all he could do to stay upright and pull the trigger blindly. His senses overloaded; he was only peripherally aware that he wasn’t the only one shooting until several bullets slammed into him.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had started. She had been following Ben, hanging onto his belt in the pitch black, when he’d stopped and turned on his flashlight again. She caught a glimpse past Ben’s hip of someone kneeling thirty feet away, aiming a gun at them, before she let go and threw herself to the ground. Ben’s rifle fired on full automatic until she heard him grunt and the rifle clatter to the floor. The booming sound of the shots in the confined space was still bouncing around in her head. The echoes were loud enough that she couldn’t be sure the shooting had stopped until she opened her eyes and saw Ben’s flashlight lying on the floor, lighting up his unmoving body.
She got to the flashlight on her knees and oriented it down the hallway. There was a figure there, slumped against a big pipe, not moving. She shook Ben’s body and let the beam travel up his torso. He didn’t even look like he’d been hit until she got to his head. The way he was lying, facing away from her, she could tell most of the top of his skull was missing.
She scrabbled through his vest for another magazine and then picked up his gun. She stopped what she was doing as her nerves got to her, and she shined the flashlight back up the tunnel. The enemy soldier was still there, and hadn’t moved any more than Ben had. She took a deep breath. Steven had shown her how to shoot and operate an assault rifle. He’d thought it was important, and she’d humored him, the whole time thinking that if it ever came to her defending herself, she had much better weapons to use than a gun. But not now—now she had to get out of this fucking tunnel!
She got the flashlight oriented along the barrel of the gun like she’d seen Ben do . . .
“Don’t move!” She felt something hard push into her back. She didn’t have to guess what it was.
“Throw the gun down and then turn around!”
She dropped the gun and flashlight. Flashlights behind her came on just as quickly. One was attached to a rifle inches from her face. Part of her was glad she’d been caught. If they’d just let her tell her side of the story, she could blame it all on Steven.
She turned around and was struck by the face looking back at her. It took a moment to process. Even with the harsh light in her face, she could tell it was just a kid, a teenager. She could almost make out the face of the person standing behind him, but the glare from the light at the end of the kid’s gun was too much.
“Well . . . aren’t you going to be the hero. You caught me.”
“We aren’t taking you prisoner.” The kid spoke slow, like he was trying to control his voice. The barrel of his gun came up and centered on her forehead, inches away. “My friend is dead because of you.”
“I’m sorry you think that, but we haven’t done anything but defend ourselves.”
“Pro . . .” A man’s voice spoke softly from behind the glare of light. “You do not need to do this.” The voice sounded strangely accented to her, but her ears were still ringing to the point she could barely hear at all. “This kind of justice is of the devil. I would save you these nightmares.”
“Listen to him. He’s right. I’m certain your colonel wants to hear my side of the story.” She was frozen in fear. The kid’s grip on his gun was something she could almost feel across the space between them. The end of the barrel was vibrating with tension in front of her face.
“I can’t,” the kid gritted out between clenched jaws.
A hand came around the teenager’s shoulder and slowly pushed the barrel down and away from her. “Is better this way. You are good person, Pro. A good soldier.”
Finally, somebody she could deal with. She was going to make it through this. She promised herself that these people would someday regret letting her live. She watched as the man stepped around the teenager. Her hope melted away in a panic as she took in his hard face and u
tterly remorseless eyes. The man crossed himself in some archaic gesture and then kissed his own fist. The cold eyes never left her own.
“My people have very old saying, from before the time of the tsars. ‘God understands.’”
“What . . .! What are you talking about?” Just what she needed, some religious nut.
“It means, I don’t have nightmares.”
The man casually brought a handgun up to her forehead . . .
*
Chapter 34
Rachel pulled back from looking through the window of the hospital room and smiled at him. Jason had missed that smile.
“You’re right.” She almost giggled. “He’s out cold. I would have thought he’d be out there helping Michelle.”
Jason shook his head. “He knows what he’s doing. The last thing these people need is an alliance shoved down their throats at gunpoint.”
Ten minutes earlier, Skirjanek had walked into an empty room, and collapsed on the bed. He hadn’t moved since. They’d all come to check on Ray. His body armor had stopped three rounds; his body had caught two. Dr. Vance had assured them that their friend was going to be fine once he woke up. Pro was still in there with him, waiting for him to wake up.
They’d found Dr. Vance and Josh Keynes waiting for them outside the hospital. The doctor had gone straight to work on the wounded. Josh had been delivered to Michelle by Skirjanek. The two of them were out on campus right now, trying to calm nerves and allay fears together.
“What about him?” Rachel pointed to the room across the hall where “General” Steven Marks lay, with IV tubes hanging above him and his head wrapped.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s going to be up to the people here. We know he wasn’t party to shooting his own people. I can’t imagine they’d worry about healing him up to just run him out of town.”
“The guy tried to infect you all.”
Kyle looked at her and shook his head. “I know what I’d vote for, probably Skirjanek as well,” he pointed down the hall to where the man had pretty much collapsed from exhaustion. “But we can’t tell these people it’s up to them and then make an exception for their General, who in his defense, was locked up by Cooper.” Josh Keynes had seemed concerned enough over Marks’s condition that Jason was willing to bet the former military man would find some forgiveness here. As far as Jason was concerned, the man could and should have dealt with Cooper himself. But as Skirjanek had pointed out to him, civilian control of the military wasn’t any type of insurance that the civilian side wasn’t going to go astray.
“And you, Captain Larsen?” Rachel danced back in front of him. “What does your future hold?”
“Well, I’ve got a teenager in there who’s going to join the Marine Corps once things settle down. I’ve already told Skirjanek I’m heading back up to Potomac. I guess I’ll take it from there to see what’s next.”
“You’re not going to sign up with the Colonel and disappear?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m not sure how to break this to you, but I’ve got someone waiting for me at home. I’ve heard from her, and she’s even managed to get us a house that I haven’t even seen yet.”
“You’re certain she’ll take you back?” Rachel faced him, her face glowing. “I’d heard you almost abandoned the poor girl.”
“A misunderstanding.” He shook his head. “I’d been a coward, but I think she forgave me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He leaned down, kissed her, and held her tight. Suddenly, everything was alright. No virus, no fighting. It was just the two of them. He pulled back and smiled. “She seemed very accepting of my apology . . . enthusiastic even.”
Rachel smiled and laid her head against his chest. “I love you, Jason.”
“I love you too.” They held each other for a long time in the quiet of the hallway.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Your earlier apology, and my enthusiasm, as you put it . . .”
He pulled back and smiled at her. “This hospital is almost empty. What say we find a room upstairs? I’d love to apologize again.”
She patted his chest and smiled up at him. “That sounds nice, but I’ve asked for an appointment with Dr. Vance. Did you know she was trained as an obstetrician?”
***
Some notes –
As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this story. If you have, please leave a review on Amazon. Reviews go a long way in determining the success of an individual book or the continuation of a series – and to be clear, publishing for Amazon or any modern publishing platform is working for an algorithm that eats reviews in order to survive. To the reader in Australia who sent me a glowing e-mail; when I mentioned that I would send my kids to his house to wash his car if he left the same review on Amazon – I did not know he was in Australia. The same goes for a recent reader in Texas. I really need to stop farming the kids out. Reviews are truly appreciated.
I set out writing “End of Summer” with the intent of producing something my wife would enjoy, and she likes post-apocalyptic stories. By the time I finished the book, I had a vision for a series that would follow Jason, Rachel and Pro into the future and I still do, albeit with a few more central characters added. The response to “End of Summer” has been beyond anything I could have imagined. I certainly didn’t write the book knowing the world be soon be facing COVID-19. To those who think I was trying to somehow game our real pandemic, I’d suggest they check the publication date (August 2019).
As always you can sign up for my mailing list for future releases at www.smanderson-author.com -OR- you can follow me on www.facebook.com/SMAndersonauthor/ .
I won’t apologize for not updating my web page or posting on Facebook as often as I probably should. My free time can only be spent once and I’d prefer to be writing (and yes, there will be a book 3 in this series). To be honest, I think social media is a mixed bag. It’s as cool as it is absolutely, and horrifically inane. That said, I write books and I’ve been convinced of its necessity. What I do enjoy about social media. is meeting and talking to readers. Please feel free to drop me a line, I will answer. Best regards, Scott.
Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow Page 35