Hunted (Collapse Book 2)

by Riley Flynn

  “Did you get sick?” Joan raised her voice from the back of the car.

  “No, ma’am. Not many of us did. See, they was injecting us most days. Before our rounds. Didn’t see many soldiers get sick. Not really sick. Some minor stuff, but that was just reactions, they told us. Not sick like the civs were getting sick. So anyway, I got wary. Started not trusting people. Started telling people, hey, I’m not feeling too great today. We were always hanging round in tent city, in that hospital kind of place, so no one thinks twice about it. They know I’m injected.”

  “Who else was there?” Timmy asked. “Was it the government?”

  “Probably. Probably all sorts. They don’t tell us nothing, you know? But rumors spread fast in that kind of crowd. You want to keep a secret? You want to make sure a bit of gossip is quiet? Don’t tell an enlisted man. I tell you, you’ve never seen a rumor spread like you have in a barracks.”

  “What kind of rumors, man?”

  “All sorts. Most of it crap, you know? Conspiracies and everything. Most people keep their heads down. But it’s hard to ignore. The one I believe – wasn’t even really a rumor – is that we weren’t rounding up people to be treated, to be healed. It was more a quarantine. People weren’t coming back. People were just going there to die. Nice and easy for the government, they said, so they could study people as they got sick. Then give us the results with the daily injections.”

  “Woah. Really?” Timmy talked fast, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide with vindicated glee. “You believed that? Alex, did you hear that?”

  “I heard, Timmy.” Alex could only shake his head and listen. Other people’s tragedies were arriving thick and fast, weighing him down by the day.

  “Yeah… but… whoa. Carry on, man. Tell us.”

  As Cam sat and talked, Finn had laid his head across the man’s lap. With absentminded fingers, the former soldier stroked the dog’s ears. Joan, pressed up against the window, turned entirely in her seat to watch the story being told. As Alex looked in the mirror, he could see a mixture of disbelief and pity on her face.

  “Ain’t much more that needs to be said. I told you how it all went wrong. Sick folks got angry. Firefight. Only, I wasn’t going to be a part. Didn’t sign up for that. No, I waited for my moment and ducked out. The way the bodies were churned up there, they would never have found me. Plus, you know, I was telling people how sick I felt? Figured they’d think I just died in the woods or something.”

  “So. They think you’re dead?” Alex could hear the deductive cogs whirring in Joan’s mind. “Which means these people following us probably aren’t looking for you?”

  “Couldn’t say one way or another, ma’am. I never stop being worried about it though. Depends whether they believed what I did. Or what happened to them after the fight. Maybe they think I’m dead. Maybe not. The moment you stop considering it, that’s when they get you.”

  Cam’s story ended. As much as they asked him, all they could get was a mixture of ‘don’t know’ and ‘not sure’. Alex began to wonder whether the story was any clearer at all. He gripped the wheel tighter and drove on. Answers would come later.

  Chapter 28

  From the high road which curled around the hills, the car dipped down. The car crawled through the outskirts of Beckley, everyone terrified that they might venture too close to the hospital camp.

  But they were safe. As the sun set, they were already winding up the roads again, away from the town and toward the airport. Driving at night was a danger. As soon as the headlights were needed on the car, they became a target. Every day – shorter since the death of summer – the window for travel closed a little more. Tonight, they inched toward the airport as the last light left the day.

  Cam had been right. The airport was abandoned. Road signs and barriers blocked the way. That meant getting out, clearing the route, and then returning everything to normal. Leave no trace. No clue as to where they might be hiding for anyone driving past. Root and Byrne were out there somewhere, Alex knew.

  The airport was tiny. The individual buildings were silhouetted against the bright orange sky. Hangers and warehouses. Huge metal sheds without much inside. Hardly an international hub. A strip of straight track and a few places to store the planes. Not much else.

  Alex remembered the airport being mentioned in his youth, at least briefly. A president had visited once, the closest thing their town had come to mainstream representation. His dad had even talked about going. The entire place closed down a few years later. Maybe it was cursed.

  None of the buildings were joined together. Walking between them meant stepping outside. Driving the length of the runway, they found the closest thing to a terminal they could and parked the car beside the entrance.

  Inside, anything of any value had been ransacked. The only things left had been nailed to the floor. Rows of lightly padded seats. A ten-foot coffee bar with stools. A row of glass windows watching over the runway. It meant they were able to see anyone approaching the building.

  A decent enough place to hide. A roof over their heads, useful as rain clouds were brewing overhead.

  * * *

  Setting up and resting inside the airport meant taking stock of their wounds. For Alex, that meant a bit of bruising. Nothing lasting.

  It was the others he worried about. Watching them unpack in the airport brought it all home. Everything done by the light of a gas lantern, the pallid glow thrown across their faces heightened his worries about their health.

  Alex watched Joan. She masterminded the operation, overseeing the arrangement of the terminal. Making sure everyone had everything they needed. Checking the cuts and scrapes and scratches everyone seemed to accumulate, dressing wounds and doing all of the quiet, unspoken work that they had been taking for granted.

  But she had to sit down every ten minutes. Always mindful of where the bathroom was in case she felt nausea. Not that they had running water anywhere these days. But it was one of society’s hangovers they were all struggling to shake, one which none of them talked about.

  Bringing a baby into this world. Or what was left of it. Every now and again, that was the first thing that entered Alex’s mind when he talked to Joan. But he drove the thought back. She managed to deal with it. She was dealing with the pregnancy by force of will alone.

  It was always there. The baby. A ticking time bomb. Alex hadn’t asked about due dates or anything else. But there was no ignoring the inevitability of it all. Especially with the lack of medical facilities. Nothing as simple or as elemental or as obvious as childbirth would slow Joan down, he knew. Hopefully, the kid was made of the same stuff.

  And then there was Timmy. Alex’s friend. Not nearly as strong as Joan. Sure, he could run rings around her with his words. She was smarter, sure, but trying to argue with Timmy was like trying to grab a cloud of steam. Every time you thought you were close, a gust of hot air blew in a different direction and you were left empty handed.

  The sickness had taken a lot out of him. The weight loss was the most obvious, along with that eye of his. Always a lithe man, he’d spent too long on a diet of army rations and medicine. It wasn’t enough to gain back the weight the virus had taken.

  Alex had spotted him, at times, swaying. Caught with a light head and dizzy. Maybe it was a stumble or a rubbing of the eyes, but he knew what Timmy was doing. He was weakened. Hurt. Operating well below his optimum level. But none of them would have been there without him.

  Timmy was a creature who thrived on comfort, though he would never admit it. Watching him push himself through the ugly end of this illness was tough. The only things which would be able to solve it were square meals and bed rest. Couldn’t get that till they hit the farm.

  That left Cam. Well, Cam and the dog. But Finn seemed the happiest of all. He was well fed, well exercised. He had four friends with him, each of them happy to pet and whisper to him at any hour of the day. Growing, eating, barking, and wagging his tail, Finn was having the time of his
life.

  Even when things had gotten exciting, when he had to get his teeth a bit bloody, the dog seemed happy enough. Every time they had a moment, Timmy was training him. Alex could hear ‘strike!’ being called out every few minutes, followed by the rustle and rumble of man wrestling beast. Finn seemed to be having the best time of any of them. He’d even saved the day a few times.

  So that left Cam.

  Try as he might, Alex couldn’t figure out Cam. There was something elusive about him, something ethereal. Even when the man had been at his most honest, at his most open, when he had told them stories from his past, there seemed to be something strange. Irregularities. Inconsistencies. Holes in the stories.

  Even the little things, like being so worried about that camp and all the history behind it, and then taking them so close to Beckley when he was navigating. He hadn’t even mentioned that risk. He’d just done it. It all seemed out of the ordinary.

  Maybe Cam wasn’t ready to tell the whole truth. But there was an innate honesty to the man, one which manifested in his actions rather than his words. Alex had seen it, right after the first time they’d hidden from Root and Byrne. They’d tucked in behind the wrecked Jeep, Cam’s face as white as a sheet and the fear almost dripping from him. A moment of pure honesty, impossible to fabricate.

  Even if everything else happened to be a lie, Alex knew he could trust that moment of fear. Evidence of the demons which raged inside. Probably best they stay locked up.

  But the demons weren’t always locked up. They got out sometimes. Ever since they’d started taking watch duties between them, Alex had noticed the trouble Cam had with sleeping. Most of the time it was just twitching or wrestling as he slept. But occasionally, in the darkest hours of the night, he’d become more animated. Writhing and wrestling with himself. Mumbling sometimes. Drenched in sweat. There was something inside that head that scared him. It came out at night.

  Alex watched his friends setting up for the night in the airport. They’d get to the farm soon, he promised himself. He was taking first watch.

  * * *

  The troublesome clouds on the horizon had turned into miserable rain. Before everyone settled down to sleep, just before Alex left for his watch, Timmy smiled and stopped him.

  “Hey, man,” he said, with a hand in one of the bags. “I got something for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Timmy’s hand came out of the bag and, in one smooth movement, he began to throw an object towards Alex. With a rifle in one hand, it was a struggle to catch it. But a single finger found itself hooked on a strap.

  Alex looked at it. A set of night vision goggles.

  “I forgot about these. They might have been useful.”

  The goggles were heavy, made from thick plastic. Timmy’s hands moved around, delicately flicking switches. The kind of care and lavish attention used to handle saintly artefacts.

  “I know, man. These are the cheap ones though, not much good at movement. But if you’re sitting still, they can light up everything. They don’t have a huge battery on them, though, but I figure we’re close enough to the farm now that it won’t matter. Right?”

  Alex smiled, feeling like an idiot for not remembering them sooner.

  “Worth a try.”

  Taking the goggles and the rifle and the dog, Alex stepped out into the rain and left his friends behind. He didn’t want to watch from inside. Opposite the terminal was a smaller hangar which gave excellent views in every direction. If anyone was approaching, he would be able to see them before they came close.

  With the hangar doors just ajar, Alex slipped in and looked around. Nothing inside. Old crates, for the most part. He pulled one into position beside the door and parked himself on top.

  Alex sat there, six hours ahead of him, watching over the darkened building.

  He tried the goggles, familiarizing himself with the buttons. A neat gadget. Seemed to work. Occasionally, he heard sounds in the distance. Bending trees or rummaging animals, he told himself. No drones, no helicopters. Just the rain pattering against the roof.

  The worst thing about the watch, he thought, was the boredom. Every now and then, he caught himself wishing that something – anything – would happen. It didn’t take long to chase those thoughts from his mind.

  When the six hours were almost up, he began to walk back toward the terminal. He took the goggles with him, watching the world through an eerie green lens. Movement made the lines blur, melding shapes and surfaces into one another. As the rain eased off, he examined the other buildings and the perimeter, a casual check which brought him right back to where he’d started.

  He could see in through the window. There were the others, their skin lit up bright through the googles. Timmy and Joan seemed still enough. But Cam tossed and turned. Alex tried to read the pain in the struggles, the grunts and the half shouts now audible through the window. Ghosts chasing him through his dreams. They grew louder. Alex paused.

  Footsteps, somewhere in the night. Coming closer. Beckoning Finn to come close, Alex adjusted his goggles. He could still hear the footsteps. Coming toward him. But rather than scared, he felt curious. He had the goggles. An advantage. Time to hide.

  Chapter 29

  Grunting turned into shouting as Cam’s dreams worsened. With the world colored various shades of green, Alex crouched and watched and listened. Even from the outside, the sounds were loud enough to draw people closer.

  The shape of a man crept along beneath the window, listening in.

  Alex knew how dark the airport had become. Only he could see with any clarity. This invader, this new arrival, there was no way they would be able to see him approach. Finn stalked along, his shoulders low to the ground.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Alex circled around the figure, using the groans and shouts from inside the building to cover his footsteps. Finally, a real reason to be wearing sneakers.

  At last, he arrived behind the person, who had crouched beneath the window right in front of the sleeping people. The figure raised a wrist to his mouth and began to talk.

  “Byrne, I’m in position.” Alex recognized Root’s voice. “I’m at-”

  The stock of the rifle hit hard against the back of his head. He fell to the floor, rolled, and tried to reach inside his jacket. He wore his left arm in a medical sling. Alex pressed a foot into the bandage. Root squirmed.

  “Get up.” Alex aimed the rifle at the agent’s face. “You’re coming with me.”

  Take him inside, a little voice inside Alex’s mind was shouting. Tell the others. But no. For the first time, he was ahead of these men. He’d outflanked them. Outwitted them. Now, he had an opportunity to drill down into what they wanted. Who they were. Why they were chasing him.

  Alex didn’t want distractions. He didn’t want to worry his friends with what he might do. He didn’t want to handle this out in the open. He didn’t want other people to watch, to judge him for what he might do.

  They walked through the dark, leaving behind the nightmare shouts and the demons which plagued the sleeping. Alex, wearing the goggles, followed behind and guided the pair of them out beyond the airport, to the edge of the flat ground. As they stepped in among the trees, the ground sloped downward. He could see just enough through the dark so as not to trip.

  As the forest became thicker and trickier to navigate, Root slowed down. Even with the night vision, it was difficult to see every object and obstacle on the path.

  Root tripped and hit the ground, falling on his injured arm. As Alex stepped forward, he could see him wincing, visible pain in the man’s face.

  When Alex bent down to help, Root tried to grab the rifle with his uninjured hand. He could only raise his arm so far, his eyes tightening with the pain.

  Alex kicked the grabbing fingers out of the way. He bent down, weighed a foot on the sling, and ripped the man’s shirt, tearing off a strip of khaki fabric, just enough so he could bind Root’s wrists together.<
br />
  As the knot grew tighter, Alex could feel him shuddering and squirming. The one wrist was sore, probably injured back in Charleston. Worth remembering. He finished the knot anyway, making sure it was tight. Finn stood next to the man’s head, showing just enough teeth. How did he know this man was a threat? Alex asked himself. Who taught him that?

  Pulling Root to his feet, pushing him along the path in the dark, Alex marched his prisoner forward. They walked for ten minutes – a stumbling, slow ten minutes – until they arrived at a place where the path turned a corner. As it continued down the hill, there was a rock formation at the bend. An overhanging tree acted as a roof, the steep stone walls providing a nice backdrop.

  Leaning Root against this wall, Alex stepped back. Despite the throbbing green shades of the night vision goggles, it was quite obviously the same man who had been following them for days. That same set of fatigues, with the Kevlar layer on top. The twirled wire hung over the ear.

  Alex leaned down and plucked the wire out of the man’s ear. A pair of eyes looked up at him. In the green hues, they were a bright white. Almost empty. Unhuman. Probably best that this man saw as little as possible. Removing the goggles, Alex turned off the power and placed them over the agent’s head. An expensive blindfold.

  “So,” Alex asked as he searched through the man’s pockets. “How did you hurt your arm?”

  A light pistol in a shoulder holster. Must have been what he was reaching for when Alex kicked him.

  “No answer? Does it still hurt?”

  No ID cards or documents in any of the pockets. Just a gun. They’d learned. Alex leaned into the man’s injured arm as he patted the jacket down. Root tensed but stayed silent.

  “If you’re Root, where’s Byrne? Is that who you were talking to when I found you?”

  Picking up the agent’s wrist, Alex tried to examine the cuff of the jacket for a button or a mic. Anything. Too dark to see.