Storm Front (Collapse Book 3)

by Riley Flynn

There was an uncertainty in the man’s voice Alex hadn’t heard before. A fear. The way he’d said the name, laden with dread.

  “Don’t remember.” The woman shared the worry. “With the others? You think we should?”

  “Can’t hurt. Maybe he doesn’t need to know about this. Maybe we’ll make it right.”

  Alex heard the feet moving, walking toward him. The man’s voice sounded from over his shoulder.

  “Now, listen here, buddy. I don’t want you messing with me. You’re good to me, I’m good to you. We’ll get along just fine.”

  Hands still flat against the barn, Alex just listened.

  “We’re going to take you to see some other people. Maybe they’re your friends. Maybe they’re not. But they’re all we got. So just keep quiet, all right?”

  It was the tiniest sliver of hope piercing through the dreadful dark.

  “And my dog?” Alex’s voice barely rose above a whisper. He could taste blood between his teeth.

  “Dog’s fine,” the gruff voice barked. “We’ve secured him.”

  Closing his eyes, Alex felt relief. It washed over him, cleansing him, scraping the pain away from his thoughts. As long as they weren’t lying, Finn was one less friend to worry about.

  “Nelson… are you sure?” The older woman had more doubts than her friend, Alex could tell.

  “Just help me out.”

  Two hands grabbed hold of Alex’s arms again. They pulled him back away from the barn, turning him around to face the courtyard. All together, they began to move.

  Alex wasn’t dragged this time, merely led. The two flanked him. The woman to his left, standing taller, and the man on his right, a few inches shorter than her but stockier and built. Both seemed strong. He wouldn’t be able to fight his way free.

  But if they were taking him to his friends, it didn’t matter.

  Other people were moving on the farm. Alex could hear them but he couldn’t see anyone else. They kept out of sight.

  Alex had expected to be shown the inside of the barn. Perhaps he was being taken to fetch the keys for the padlock, he thought. But instead, his captors marched him across the courtyard - the shambling, decaying version so different from his memories – and toward the stables.

  The family had never really kept horses. But it was a horse part of the world. Every farm for fifty miles around had a block of stables as a matter of course. In reality, they’d mostly held bits of old farm machinery. Plough blades and tractor tires. Anything that didn’t fit in the house. A dirt bike, at one time. Plenty of nothing. But never horses.

  That didn’t stop the stables looking like stables, though. The long building had been divided into separate rooms, each fitted with a single door which split in two and a half-cage at the back for holding hay. There’d been four of the individual blocks. Enough for four horses. Now, they functioned just as well as prison cells.

  The man on Alex’s right had stuck his pistol down the back of his pants and held his free hand over his face. Either protecting himself from contamination or nursing a broken nose. He’d received a pretty hefty kick to the face. No need to ask.

  The walk to the stables was short. Not enough time for Alex to ponder who was inside. It had to be his friends. He knew. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  But when Nelson released his grip, reached out and opened one of the stable doors, Alex had a moment of panic. Thrown in with the these ‘others’, whoever they were. Like being thrown to the lions.

  “Listen, buddy. Stay put this time. The big man’s going to want to talk to you real soon. Try to get out again and we won’t be so kind.”

  There was no ceremony. The two people pushed Alex in through the door and closed it behind him, their retreating footsteps heard right away.

  The room wasn’t pitch black.

  But it wasn’t light. There was a dim, dulled ambiance to the space. Alex needed his eyes to adjust.

  The air was still. It felt like a larger room. Even before seeing, he could tell the space was bigger than a single stable. The brick walls had been unartfully knocked through; he could see the shapes of things before he really adjusted to the light. All four stable blocks, it seemed, had been combined into one.

  And he was not alone.

  At the other end of the stables, Alex could sense people. They were moving. Not toward him. Just adjusting themselves in the same spot.

  “Hey!” he hopefully called out into the gloom. “It’s me!”

  The air didn’t move. Alex’s eyes fought for focus.

  “Joan? Timmy? Cam?” The hope in his voice was wavering. “It’s Alex.”

  The people didn’t move. Maybe they weren’t his friends. Alex could feel a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “God damn it.” A familiar squeaky voice, piping up like a hiss of steam from a whistle. “We wait all this time for him to save us and he’s already been locked up.”

  Timmy’s voice.

  Alex began to run down the other end of the room, through the broken stable dividers.

  “Timmy!” he shouted ahead, still struggling to make out his friend’s features.

  There they were. All three of them, rising to their feet. Now, Alex could see, they were smiling.

  Every muscle in his face convulsed, spreading wide into a relieved smile.

  “What the hell happened?” Alex cursed the fact that he had nothing clever to say. “What happened to you guys?”

  Timmy had grabbed Alex into a hug.

  “We thought you were dead, man. Dead as hell.”

  Cam took hold of Alex’s shoulder, shook it hard.

  “Guess this means you got away, my friend.”

  Alex grinned relentlessly at them both. He had too much to say. Too much to tell them.

  “Alex Early.” Joan’s words were slow and careful. She’d sat back down, one hand lazily resting on her belly, the other beckoning him toward her. “About time you got here. I’ve been stuck in this room for too long. Too long with Timmy. He talks.”

  Alex leant down toward her, taking her shoulders in one arm and holding her tight. With a free hand she pressed something into his palm. Something cold and metal. The ring. Sammy’s ring.

  “Here,” Joan whispered. “Another ghost for your collection.”

  Before Alex could respond, she had leaned back, leaving him with a knowing glance and a wry smile. He placed the ring in his pocket, no time to think about the item or its past.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, man, tell us what happened.”

  “What, now?” Alex looked over his shoulder, back at the door. “They said someone was coming to talk to me. To us? Anyway, first you’ve got to tell me what happened to you.”

  Cam walked back to a wall. The stable was almost entirely empty except for a few crates, a couple of bare mattresses covered in blankets, and crumpled food wrappers. Alex watched as his friend sat on one of the crates.

  “You’re going to learn,” Cam told him in that languid voice, “that nothing much gets done round here, even when they say so. Trust me, we’ve done nothing but sit around and mourn our poor fortune for days. We’re well beyond every tiny detail, we need new information. Tell us.”

  “Yeah, man. They say they’re going to do something, don’t happen for hours. For days.”

  Alex’s eyes were fully adjusted now. He could see his friends. Joan, her due date more evident than ever, sat on one of the mattresses that littered the floor, her glasses still perched on her nose and her short forehead always ready to crease in consternation. The big day had to be closer now, Alex thought. A month? A few weeks? He wasn’t a doctor.

  Cam had sat up on the crate and began to pick at his fingernails with his teeth. His darker skin helped him blend into the scenery but no one could sit still like Cam. He could fade into the background in half a heartbeat. Like being invisible. The man’s beard had taken on a life of its own.

  And then there was Timmy. Still stick-thin, he did seem healthier. An old stable was
hardly the Mayo clinic but being cooped up in a single room must have meant he was getting plenty of rest. That had to be good for his recovery. Hair still a tangle, Alex watched the low light dapple across his best friend’s gray eye. The mark of the survivor. The same mark he shared with Joan.

  “You look well,” Alex told his friend. “Jail agrees with you. How long have you been here?”

  “Been on the farm or been in here?” Timmy was bouncing around the room. “I mean, that’s pretty much the same, I guess. Three days, I would say. About three days, right, Joanie?”

  She nodded.

  “They locked you up for three days? What, just as soon as you arrived?”

  “Pretty much.” Cam paused in biting in nails. “They saw us coming. We was on foot, see. Had a car, it broke down some way out. Couldn’t find another. So we walked the last part. Half a day on foot, all the way up that winding road. I tell you, from a distance, it looked great. Perfect place, we was all saying how clever this plan was. And worried about you, of course. Anyway, we was wrapped up in our own selves so much. They must have seen us coming a mile off. Were waiting with guns when we got here.”

  As Cam spoke with his slow, Southern drawl, Alex tried to picture the scene. The people attacking his friends, throwing them in this dark room. The image hurt, bringing with it all the guilt and blame. This was his home. Coming here had been his plan.

  “Guys,” he started, his voice dropping down low. “I’m sorry I brought us here. I didn’t know-”

  “Forget about it.” Timmy cut across him sharply. “How about you, man? When’d you get here? What the hell happened with the CIA? Where’s the dog?”

  Staggered by the blunting of his apology, Alex tried to think about the time he’d been back on his farm. It seemed like seconds. It could have been minutes, hours, days. He didn’t really know. Too many blows to the head. Too many surprises.

  “Couple of hours, I’d say.” He played it safe. “They locked me up in one of the old sheds. I got out but they caught me again. When I asked to see my friends, they put me here. They told me Finn was fine. But I don’t know…”

  “Well, aren’t you lucky?” Joan had laid back on the mattress now, staring at the rafters. “And I suppose you already have a plan for our next adventure? Because this last one is going so well…”

  Even as he smiled, Alex noticed how much the words stung. Joan seemed to be joking. It was the last little thing he could cling to, knowing her dry sense of humor. But the truth in the statement hurt.

  Timmy, noticing his friend’s mouth hanging open, spluttered into conversation.

  “You already broke out once? Cool. We’re doing it again?”

  Alex hadn’t thought about it. Shaking his head, trying to wipe away his thoughts, he stared at his friends. He’d only wanted to find them. He hadn’t planned much beyond that. But now, as Timmy watched him fervently, he realized he didn’t have much choice.

  “Of course. We have to. They said they were coming back with whoever is in charge. That doesn’t give us much time.”

  “How’d you do it in the last place?”

  “In the shed? Used a nail and a stone to break open the old, rotten wood.”

  Timmy darted around the room, searching the floor.

  “So, we need some tools then? Great.”

  “Not in here.” Alex told Timmy, who stopped in his tracks. “This building’s made of bricks. Won’t do much good.”

  “Ah. Crap.”

  “Alex?” Joan spoke up from her mattress. “Why the rush?”

  The adrenaline was coursing through Alex’s veins. He didn’t want to stop. Forward motion. Momentum. Even looking at Joan sapped away his energy. Her voice was tired. She was too damn smart for all of this.

  “I don’t want to wait around to see what these strangers have to say. I want to get out. I want to take back control. They said someone was coming.”

  “They say a lot of things.”

  “They seemed serious. They’re the bad guys. Why would we let them dictate terms?”

  A moment of quiet in the stable. Alex noted it.

  “You don’t want to break out of here?”

  “It’s not that I don’t.” Joan eased around the issue with a slow sentence. “But… rather… you’ve just come flying in here, turned everything on its head. You’ve barely told us anything, barely listened. And now you’re on the go again.”

  She was right, Alex knew. But so was he.

  “I just don’t know how much time we have.”

  “Yes, but what does it matter?”

  “I want to be out before they’re back.”

  “But why?”

  “Because…” Alex’s mind was racing. “Because this is a window. An opportunity. They’re not expecting it.”

  “Neither were we.”

  “You’re not ready?”

  Again, there was that awkward pause. Everyone in the room noticed it. Timmy rushed to fill it in.

  “No, man. We’re ready. I’m ready. We can do this. We can get out.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alex slowed down. “You don’t want to escape?”

  “I do, man.”

  “I’m sure Timmy does,” Joan kept a hand over her face while she talked. “Maybe Cam too. I’m just asking for a moment. A pause. A reflection. The world is not one big rush. I mean, should we even be trying to get out? What if they catch us and punish us?”

  Alex stopped. He paused. He thought for a moment with his eyes closed. She was right. Well, maybe not right. But he owed it to them to talk it through, at least.

  They talked. They talked and talked.

  He told them the story about the CIA agents, who he’d led up to Tinker Cliffs and fought against the backdrop of the setting sun.

  How they’d nearly killed him, desperate to steal his blood and sell it to the highest bidder as a possible cure for the Eko virus.

  How he might be immune to the disease, along with all the other names stored on the encrypted flash drives they’d stolen.

  How he’d driven across the state, hopping from one car to the other until he drove up the road to his family home, knocked on the door, and was thrown into a cell.

  His friends listened. Their mouths hung open. They laughed and they gasped in all the right places. When he told them how Finn had leapt out at the last second and saved his life, Timmy had cheered. When he told them about the possible immunity, Joan had snipped at him with her driest, most sarcastic tone. Well, she’d said, that much was obvious. For the briefest moment, before Alex remembered they were still locked up, he almost felt like he was having fun.

  Once they were caught up, their energy aligned and primed, Alex floated the idea of escape once again.

  “So, we can get out of here now. We can confront these people on our terms and find out what the hell is going on. We’ve travelled so far to get to this farm, I don’t want us to fall down on the doorstep.”

  As rallying speeches went, Alex wasn’t impressed with himself. He knew he wasn’t ready to lead anyone to war. Still broken, bruised, and battered, he couldn’t imagine what a sight he must have been to his friends. All black eyes and dried blood. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror in ages. Even in the car he’d been afraid to look.

  It was strange, being able to feel how rusty and hollowed out his own thoughts had become. The stress and the anxiety, the anger and the dread, it all added up. The emotional maelstrom he’d been through in the past few days, it was beginning to take its toll. He couldn’t think straight. He was making mistakes. Dumb mistakes. But he had to get this right. They were depending on him.

  But they hung on his every word. It was unfair. Why should he be the one to do all the thinking? Well, a little voice in his head reminded him, you were the one who dragged them all here. You should fix it.

  “Alex, man.” Timmy had raised in voice in solidarity with his best friend. “You’re right. We got to get out of here. I’m sick of this place.”

  Nods and m
umbles of agreement. Alex appreciated the extra moment to collect himself. The gears in his mind began to whir again.

  “We’ve been locked up for days, man. We need to do something.”

  Timmy was on his feet, waving his arms.

  “What’s the plan, then?” Timmy turned to Alex, his eyes full of hope.

  “I think,” Alex smiled, “I’ve got an idea.”

  4

  The stables were cold. A breeze snuck in through the rafters. With the individual stalls knocked through into one big room, the wind had plenty of space to whip itself into a frenzy before blowing out through those same, unseen holes, whistling as it went.

  Alex sat on the mattress, his friends around him, talking over the finer points of his plan, putting the pieces together. The others wrapped blankets over their shoulders, shivered, and listened.

  “How often do they come and check on you?” he asked. “When are you fed? What if you want something?”

  “They’re pretty good about it. They bring us food in the morning and it’s meant to last. Timmy eats most of his by lunch time, obviously.”

  “I’m a growing boy, Joanie, I need to eat.”

  “Right. And we can knock on the door and they’ll come, eventually.”

  “What does ‘eventually’ mean?”

  “They want to wear their masks and get backup. If one of us needs the restroom or whatever, they arrive in pairs and march us to an outhouse. It’s all very dignified.”

  “Right, right.”

  Alex made notes in his head. He had a vague idea, the bare bones of a plan. But he wasn’t sure it would work.

  “So, if – and I’m just spit-balling here – you were to ask them for help, they’d open the door and come in?”

  Joan looked down the length of the stables.

  “They usually make us wait down this end before they enter.”

  “How do they check?”

  “I don’t know. They just tell us to do it.”

  “Honor system, man. Guess we didn’t think of just lying.”

  “Cam—” Alex looked up to the man sitting on the crate. “—you see any flaws in their system? Anything we can take advantage of?”