"This way," he whispered, heading off through the few bent and scraggly trees nearby before the course trail came into view. We waited there, listening for sounds in the buttoned up night. Something chirped in the grass a few meters away, but it was otherwise silent.
We jogged along the concrete trail, following the curve of it around a small berm. The walking trail opened up before us with a residential neighborhood just on the other side. Drake nearly collided into the fencing that was obscured under a severely overgrown bush. After launching ourselves into the heavily weeded backyard, we crept our way along the side of the stucco house until we reached the street. From there we walked quietly and quickly, stopping only to crane our necks and listen to the inhibited night.
Only a few minutes through the neighborhood I noticed a burnt smell that drifted in the breeze overwhelming my senses. My nose became raw from rubbing it, and the further east we walked, the stronger the smell was.
"What is that?" I whispered.
"I don't want to know," Drake answered. "There, see that building?" He pointed between two houses at the next block where several buildings stood tall and dark in the distance.
We pulled our scopes out and scanned the area, seeing no activity. "Is that the one?" I asked.
After jogging between the houses and scaling more fences and brick barriers, we crossed a major road before ending up in a parking lot. I stayed close to Drake as he led me toward one of the large, brick office buildings, dodging debris and blown out remnants of windows from the lowest levels. Once inside, we took the stairs up to the roof. After eight stories of taking two steps at a time, I was exhausted and ready for a nap, but once we stepped onto the roof and cool air slapped me across the face, my adrenaline kicked in.
"See that shiny building over there," he said just above a whisper.
I crouched down below the ledge to look at the building across the street, half the height of the one we were hiding on top of. "Yeah."
"That's where they usually camp out and keep an eye on the trail. There's another one just up there," he pointed east and I followed his hand further up the street where a similar building stood. It was hard to make it out in the darkness, but it was there.
"Is that where they were when they shot me?"
"Probably. They have the advantage there. It's not the highest viewpoint, but anyone passing by will be seen. If they're looking. Plus, if the first sentry doesn't have a good shot, the second one will. Now they only come here in pairs."
I grimaced at the buildings, as if it was their fault that this group of post-pandemic terrorists had staked their claim on the river passage. With our height advantage, I could see the entire roof area and with the scope, I could also make out a pair of camping chairs and a small chest set near the low ledge right in the center of the building. Facing the golf course.
"Why aren't they there now?"
"It's still early," Drake said, sliding down against the ledge. We had enough room to stand without necessarily being seen, but I slid below sight too, tugging my pack off my shoulders before leaning against the cool cement wall.
"What do we do now?" I asked, rifling through my pack, pretending to look for something.
"We wait," he answered with a shrug.
***
The first lookout didn't show up until midnight. I had gone through half a bottle of water and a granola bar waiting. Even though we popped out from our hiding spot every five minutes or so to look down at the building or the streets, it was the screech of a walkie-talkie we heard that let us know we weren't alone anymore.
The mechanical sound echoed down the street below and we both peered through our night vision scopes to see a dark shape walk into the closest glass building. Drake looked between the two structures, finally spotting the other lookout crossing the adjoining parking lot.
"Where'd they come from?" I asked quietly.
"Not sure," he paused, scanning the area around and below us. "I guess they're staying somewhere closer now. We might have walked right by their house."
A chill spread up my spine at his words. "Perfect."
He laughed softly and put the scope back up to his face. "Well, there's our boy."
It was definitely a man that paced the perimeter of the roof before settling into one of the chairs. He sat there for a good ten minutes before the other lookout appeared on the much larger roof of the next building. They sent a series of signals to each other with flashlights and then both appeared to settle into their chairs, riffles draped across their legs.
"So, we know they are still coming here," I said softly, "But the question is where will they go when they're done?"
Drake's arm brushed mine as he leaned against the wall, moving his scope from one building to the next. "That's what we're here to find out, right?"
***
"Where'd you do it?"
"Do what?"
"The two men you killed…where did it happen?" I asked.
"Oh. You really want to talk about this now?" He looked at me sideways, his brown eyebrow arched upward. I couldn't tell if he was interested or annoyed with me.
"What else are we going to talk about?"
He grunted before settling back against the ledge. It was almost dawn, with no sign of movement from the two lookouts or the relief pair that Drake said would show up soon. I had to pee, but for some reason was embarrassed to do so on the roof of a building.
"About a mile from here. South of the house," he said.
"In the neighborhood?"
"Yeah, why?" He handed me a baggy full of orange slices and I took it from him.
"What were they doing out there?" I sucked some juice from a slice of fruit while Drake fidgeted uncomfortably.
"I don't know. Scoping out the area, probably."
"What happened after? Did the others come looking for them?"
"I don't know, Riley. I just dragged their bodies into a nearby house and split. Like I said before, it was sort of unplanned, you know?"
He bit into his orange slice just as the sky paled in the east. The sun was coming. When I couldn't hold it any longer, I mentioned I had to use the restroom and Drake gave me directions to the closest bathroom on the level below us. Most of the floor was pitch black, since the windows of the office building didn't reach the inner rooms. Thankfully, the bathroom was unlocked. After shining my light around the small space, I used the first stall and rushed back up the stairs to the roof just in time to see that part of the sky and a handful of clouds were dyed with a lavender coloring.
"Oh wow, that's beautiful," I said.
"Quiet!" Drake hissed, and I immediately dropped to the ground, afraid I had blown our cover in some way.
After crawling through the loose gravel to where he was flattened against the ledge, I reached into my pack and pulled out my pocket scope. I didn't hear anything - no voices or walkie-talkies or birds or insects. Just air as it flew over my head, nearly one hundred feet above the ground.
"Look," he said, pointing to the second lookout's rooftop, "I saw another guy over there, but not sure where he went."
"So there's three of them?"
"Hold on a second…do you see that?"
I shoved the scope against my eye and followed his line of sight in between the two glass buildings until I saw movement on the trail. There was definitely someone walking alongside the golf course. Neither of the lookouts seemed alarmed, but both stood with their rifles, glancing up and down the riverbed.
"They're looking for something," I said quietly.
"Yeah, but what?"
"Or who."
We watched until the man was out of our view, following the curve of the land below to the west. He was also armed, but it was hard to tell what he looked like beneath a bundled up coat and thickly lined bomber hat.
Nearly an hour passed and the sun was fully awake by the time the same man returned, but this time he came up the streets, walking an almost identical path as the one we had taken. He entered the f
irst glass building and Drake snatched his bag off the ground and crawled toward the door.
"Come on, we have to get off the roof," he said over his shoulder.
"Is something wrong?" I crawled behind him, my pack slung over only one shoulder so it dragged along the gravel.
"The windows downstairs are tinted, now that it's daytime, the roof is too exposed."
Once we were inside the stairwell, Drake ran down the steps to the same floor with the bathroom I had just used, practically running down the narrow hallway to the south facing offices with windows. He found one that seemed to be just below where we were on the roof and pulled a desk up against the window. After some rearranging, he had two chairs in front of the desk, both raised to their highest points.
"There," he said. With a thump, he tossed his pack onto the table and sat in the chair, resting his boots on the desk and hooking his fingers behind his head.
"Okay, now what?" I sat stiffly in the empty chair beside him, too uneasy to get comfortable.
"Now we wait again to see who goes and who stays."
"For how long?" I wiggled in the chair, my behind glad for the cushioning.
"For as long as it takes or until one of them is on his own."
I turned to look at his profile. His rugged face was almost perfectly shaped. He had a straight nose, with a slightly rounded end, a square jaw that evoked a kind of strength, thick eyebrows, and lips that seemed to have been stenciled on his mouth. He was the kind of handsome most women would swoon over only to have their hearts broken, but when I looked at him, I wanted to see Connor's blue eyes staring back at me, not Drake's hazel-green ones.
With a gulp, I swallowed the lump in my throat before speaking. "And if one of them heads off on his own…then what?"
He finally turned to look at me, his eyes cold and hard with determination. My body betrayed my mind and I had to force myself not to look away from him even as my cheeks flushed at the way he stared me down.
"Then we strike."
CHAPTER nineteen
We got lucky.
The year I turned twenty my cat jumped out of our second story apartment after the kitchen window was left open. She pushed the screen off and dropped to the ground like a stone, landing on all fours as a cat should, but the momentum smashed her face into the concrete, chipping three teeth and scraping her chin. She was otherwise unscathed. A week later, I was still picking gravel out of her skin. I swore that she cashed in at least one of her nine lives that day. Luck had been on her side. Sometimes luck is funny that way.
When the night watchmen left their glass towers an hour after daylight arrived, they headed off in the same direction, going north toward where Drake said the warehouse was, instead of east or west where the houses fanned out toward the horizon. This left only one lookout. It was the opportunity we hoped for.
It took nearly a minute to sprint across the parking lot of our building, cross the street and rush into the lobby of the glass structure. We ran straight up the stairs, stopping at the top only to catch our breath. The door to the roof was propped open with a medical book of some kind, thicker than any book really needed to be, letting in a spray of sunshine against the staircase. The air from outside was warm and dry and if our adrenaline wasn't coursing through our veins like a drug, we might have noticed it was too quiet on the roof.
Armed with our knives in hand, we eased outside and stepped onto the roof. Quickly sliding around the wall to the right in an attempt to dart behind the small roof access door, but instead we came face to face with the man we were trying to sneak up on. Drake was immediately knocked backwards into me, the force slamming us both against the wall.
With a grunt, Drake brought his fist up into the shorter man's jaw, forcing him back a step. The glint of metal reflected off the bright white flooring of the roof as the man lifted his sniper rifle up with one hand and grabbed at his bleeding mouth with the other. We both rushed him at the same time, Drake from the front, me from the side. The collision nearly toppled all three of us to the ground. The man fought back but Drake was larger, stronger and angrier, and slammed the rifle into the stunned lookout's face, simultaneously breaking his nose with a sickening crunch and splitting an eyebrow open. At the same time, I thrust my knife into the man's side, twisting it under his ribs before jerking upwards.
The man's face paled instantly and his last exhale of air was full of bloodied bubbles before he fell to his knees. With an almost comically slow lean, he went down on his left side, arms and head limp. Seconds. It only took seconds to kill an armed man and took even less time for him to die. My first thought was how lucky we were. Mentally I ticked off how many lives I would have left if I were a cat. No doubt I had used up half of them just in the last year.
"Jesus," I rasped. I was terrified, but unable to look away from the dead man's face. My pulse throbbed in my ears, making a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound that reminded me of a helicopter that you know is nearby but can't quite find in the sky before the sound is gone.
"See, nothing to it," Drake said. Large beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as he blew out a loud breath, kicking the man's leg. "He's a goner."
"Obviously," I said, trying my hardest not to sway. I will not faint, I will not faint, I will NOT faint. I had to say it in my head over and over until I was certain I would stay conscious. It was not the first time I took a life but it was the first time I took a life in cold blood. It wasn't really cold blood though, not really, because I knew it was that man's job to shoot down anyone he saw. He could have very well been the one that put two bullets in me just a few weeks before.
Even though I tried to convince the darkest part of my being that he deserved it, all I saw when I looked down at him was a man. A Hispanic man with short brown hair and pale eyes. He was dressed in jeans a size too big, his thin frame practically swallowed up in layered shirts. Nothing about his face seemed menacing or dangerous. Plus, he couldn't have been over twenty-five.
And then my eyes settled on the rifle near his hand, the same one he pointed at Drake just moments before. The one he would have used on me, given the chance. That dark corner inside my heart grew a teeny bit bigger and I forced myself to look away with dry eyes. It was done. It was over. This was what I wanted, wasn't it? To make them pay.
"We should move him, dump him in a room downstairs or something," Drake said, picking up the rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. He'd obviously handled one before.
"Why bother? The next guy to come up here is going to see the blood right away," I said with a sigh.
"No body will mean questions. Right now we don't want the rest of them out looking for us, not if you want to follow the next pair back to their lair," he said sarcastically, bending down to hoist the dead man's shoulders off the ground. "Grab his feet, it won't take long."
The man's ankles were still warm when I wrapped my fingers around his legs, lifting when Drake did. Dead weight was heavy and though the guy wasn't much taller than I was, it was still a struggle to get him down the first flight of stairs without dropping his corpse every foot or so. His coat held most of the blood from his side, but a few drops still decorated the steps and hall. Drake shoved the body into a closet on the fourth floor and used a rag to wipe off the stairs leading to the roof.
He shrugged at my confused look. "This buys us a little time. The others won't know what happened, at least not right away."
As we hurried down the rest of the stairs with our packs bumping against our tailbones, I got a whiff of something antiseptic in the staircase. Just short of the first floor, I stopped on the steps and inhaled deeply.
"Drake, wait," I warned, "Do you smell that?"
Two steps from the bottom, he stopped and turned to look up at me, "What?"
"It smells like medicine in here."
"It's a damn medical office building. Why does that surprise you?"
"Because this smell…it wasn't here before." Even after waving the air around my face, the odor didn't fade.
"Riley, let's go," he said impatiently. He slapped his palm against the wall in irritation, lowering his foot down one more step. From where he stood, he was able to see out the door into the lobby.
"Drake, wait-"
The glass from the lobby door blew inward and showered down around him. With a startled cry, I fell backwards on the step, landing hard on my ass as Drake dove to the ground and flattened himself onto the tile. Another series of short bursts ripped through the door and it took me a second to register the fact that we were being shot at from at least one person in the lobby.
"Stay there!" I shouted down to Drake, who had nowhere to go but into a narrow corner. He filled the small space at the bottom of the steps with his frame, his boots skidding and squeaking along the tile as he pushed his body as far into the wall as it would go. He sat on the ground, legs drawn up, grabbing for his knife.
I scrambled up the top steps and around the turn point of the railing, fumbling with my pack zipper the whole time. Once open, I thrust a hand in, pushing aside granola bar wrappers and water bottles until my fingers settled on the cool grip of my loaded pistol.
With my finger pressed to my lips, I signaled for Drake to stay quiet. Eventually whoever was in the lobby was going to get close enough to the door to open it and when he did, I'd have a straight shot down the stair case to his head. All I had to do was wait.
Seconds ticked by. Minutes passed. Hours could have come and gone before we heard the crunch of a shoe on broken glass. I held my breath with one shaky hand pointed at the door. Drake nodded from below, still pinned in the corner at the bottom of the stairs, unable to see into the lobby area. I stretched out on my stomach, exposing only my head and arms and saw the first peek of a tennis shoe come into view before quickly vanishing with a squeak.
"Romero, come in," a high-pitched male voice boomed below us. The sound of static from a walkie-talkie answered him.
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