“Thanks,” Sam said. “I’ll keep that in mind. You guys take care of yourselves. If you stick to the route we worked out, you should avoid any patrols Jacob might send out.”
“And you take care of yourselves too,” Malcolm said, holding out a hand and Sam shook it. “I’m not sure if I should say I hope to see you again or not.”
Sam laughed. “I know what you mean. Well, at least you know if you find yourselves in these parts again, you’ve got a safe place to come to.”
“We appreciate it,” Malcolm added and then nodded at Travis and Claudia. “Let’s load up and head home.”
Malcolm took the cooler from Claudia as they headed to the van, loading it in the front with Nas and Banks, who was at the wheel. They climbed in the back of the van, careful not to jostle Veronica who was stretched out on her stomach, her head resting in Jackson’s lap. Travis pulled the back doors closed and Banks started the engine. Sam stood in the driveway, waving to them as they started down the drive, gravel pinging against the bottom of the van.
Travis looked up at the house and spotted the women in the windows, waving at them as well. They might have been scared enough to want to stay away from them but there was still enough kindness inside them to wish them goodbye.
Travis hoped that Sam was right about Jacob and his group falling apart. Those kind of people didn’t deserve to survive. If those kind of people were in this world, they were going to have a hell of a time putting it back to rights.
Subject File #749
Subject: I don’t want him to go anymore. I can’t deal with him being away.
Administrator: Then you need to tell him. This isn’t the first time you’ve told me you felt this way. You can’t keep shoving it down. You need to be honest with him.
Subject: I don’t want to ask him to be someone he’s not.
Administrator: You aren’t. You’re only asking him to consider your feelings. That’s a crucial part of a healthy relationship.
Subject: But I knew going into our relationship that he was our general. I can’t ask him to stay off the battlefield for me. It would be asking him to be someone he’s not.
Kim stood at the end of the dock, impatient as she watched the boat approaching. She had been here for only twenty minutes but it felt like hours as she waited for the boat to appear on the horizon.
Javier had radioed in when he had picked them up but she wanted to be here to see them with her own eyes. So many things had gone wrong these past two days, she didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be something new crop up to delay them.
As the boat neared the island, Kim held up her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and she spotted Malcolm’s familiar shape at the prow. Her heart leapt at the sight of him.
Just like every other time he had gone to the mainland, she had refused to allow herself to think anything bad could happen to him but as time had passed, she hadn’t been able to fight back the intrusive thoughts. Hearing his voice over the radio had just made it worse, not better. Something awful had happened to them and as long as he was out there, he was still in danger.
He was finally back home, safe and sound. She could breathe again.
Javier steered towards the boathouse and Kim headed down the dock so she could meet them at the slip inside the boathouse. She was impatient as she waited for the boat to anchor in the slip and Malcolm had barely put his feet on the wooden planks when she threw herself into his arms, sudden tears pricking her eyes.
“God, it’s good to have you back,” she murmured, inhaling his familiar and reassuring scent.
“It’s good to be back,” he replied as he held her, a soothing hand running up and down her back. “You okay?”
“I am now.”
He gave her a gentle kiss and then looked back at the boat when Veronica let out a cry of pain.
She was hunched over, supported between Jackson and Claudia, who were trying to help her to the edge of the boat. Purple welts covered her face and a dark band of bruising wrapped around her neck. She had a sheet wrapped around her, tucked under her armpits and revealing bare bruised shoulders.
“What happened?” Kim asked.
“Long story, I’ll tell you later,” Malcolm said, as he held out his hands to help Veronica climb up to the dock. Veronica bit back another cry of pain as she made the big step but she made it up on the dock, Malcolm holding her at the elbow as she swayed slightly. “Where’s Quinton?”
“He’s at the clinic,” Kim said.
“No...clinic,” Veronica croaked out, her voice rough as sandpaper. “Girls...see...me.”
“I’ll take her back to our cabin,” Jackson said as he climbed up to the dock. “Tell Quinton to come see us.”
Claudia got out of the boat and went to Veronica’s other side and they led her down the dock to shore.
It was only when Veronica had shuffled by her that Kim got a view of the true damage that had been done. She could only see the back of Veronica’s shoulders above the sheet but the bloody gauze pads peeked out from the top of it and a strip of blood at her lower back had soaked through the white sheet.
“What the hell happened to her?” Kim demanded as she whirled back to Malcolm.
“Mendez, run to the clinic and get Quinton to their cabin,” Malcolm ordered before he faced Kim. “We were taken by another group at the hospital. They were led by this man, Jacob. He’s got them living in this fucked up communism style complex. One of the men tried to rape Veronica and when she fought back, he beat her with a belt.”
Her blood ran cold to hear it. She knew that fear, the fear all women had about what could be done to them by men who want to take and take.
“Tell me you killed the bastard.”
“She did and they tried to hang her for it.”
The marks on her neck. Oh God.
Wasn’t it enough that there were freaks out there trying to kill them? Why would people do these things?
“Jackson and the others stopped it. We lit one of their buildings on fire to get out.”
She reached out and took his hand between her own. “Is anyone else hurt?”
“Travis took some hits trying to save Veronica,” Malcolm said. “He should go to the clinic and get Lorraine to check him over.”
“You’re okay?”
“I made it out fine,” he said, his tone turning bitter. “They treated me well since I had something they needed. They found my badge and wanted me to interrogate a prisoner. Jacob played it off like the guy had stolen from them but it was bullshit. He’d helped the women there escape. That place, they had these rules...you didn’t own anything, it all belonged to the group, even your body.”
The cold rage that filled her made Kim begin to tremble, as if she wasn’t strong enough to contain the emotions. She had never been a violent person but the need to kill all those men was nearly overwhelming. In a world full of monsters, they were the worst.
“How many of them did you kill?” she asked, the words hissing out between her clenched teeth.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “We set their fuel supply on fire and set off some grenades as distraction. It was chaos when we got out of there. A few in the crossfire, maybe. Not enough to make much of a difference. They had over eighty men there.”
That was a big group.
“Do they know where we are?”
Malcolm shook his head. “No one told them about the island.”
“Good, then we’re safe here.”
Malcolm frowned and Kim felt her heart drop. This wasn’t him. He was always the first to assure her if they were really safe. Any time he hesitated to voice it, it was because he had real doubts.
“We are, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. These people, they’re strong. They’ve got three times as many people as us. They have an armory stocked even better than ours.”
“But they don’t know where we are,” Kim said. “That’s our advantage. We’re a hard place to find.”
Malcolm nod
ded. “You’re right. As far as they knew, we were heading to Traverse City. Banks said they told them they were heading north. I kept an eye out to make sure we weren’t followed to the marina. There’s no way for them to know we’re out here.”
Now that he had managed to talk himself into it, the tension that had been in him eased. Now he just looked exhausted, bags under his eyes and his skin a dark grey instead of the normal deep black.
She noticed that the others were in the same shape as they hauled the packs out onto the dock.
Their troops were home from war and they needed some serious TLC.
“Leave the packs and weapons,” Kim told them. “Javier, get Trey down here to help you unload. The rest of you are coming to the lodge for a hot meal. Travis, we’ll have Lorraine check you out there and then it’s back to your cabins for some rest. We can worry about getting back on normal schedules tomorrow.”
“It’s fine, we can take care of this,” Malcolm tried to argue but Kim wasn’t having any of it.
“Nope, not listening. You do what I tell you or we’re going to have a problem and that goes for all of you.” She gave them all pointed looks and none of them were about to argue. “Alright, come on then.”
The men started to walk down the dock but then Malcolm paused and turned back. “Nas, grab the blue cooler. We need to get it to the fridge.”
“What’s in the cooler?”
“Milk and butter.”
She came to a stop and whirled around on him. “Now where the hell did you find milk and butter?”
“The man who saved the women, Sam. He and the women are living out on a farm. They’ve got a few cows so they gave it to us. They wanted the kids to have it.”
“That was nice of them,” Kim said.
In fact it was more than nice. Here they were, coming back from the outside world with Veronica brutalized by one group and a valuable gift from the victims of that same group. Despite what they had gone through, they could still be generous.
“They’re good people, even after what they’ve been through,” Malcolm said.
“So are we.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and they walked down the dock together.
Subject File #745
Subject: I wanna kill ‘em.
Administrator: You can’t. Going back there will only make things worse.
Subject: Yah, I already heard how that works out, so how ‘bout ya tell me how the hell I’m gonna get over wantin’ to do it?
Administrator: The standard answer would be to forgive them but I doubt that’s the answer you want.
Subject: Damn straight. Ain’t no forgiveness for those bastards.
Jackson couldn’t keep himself still and he paced a circuit around the main room of the cabin. Claudia was perched on the edge of the couch but she didn’t pay him any mind as he circled the room, lost in her own thoughts.
Quinton had banished both of them from the bedroom when he got there, telling them he didn’t need them hovering around as he stitched Veronica up.
Jackson hadn’t wanted to leave her but it wasn’t like pacing around the bedroom was going to help anyone. At least out here he had more room to move.
He hated this feeling of helplessness. It was the same when Hannah had first become sick and when they had waited for the sun to come up so they could go set the fire. It felt like it would never go away.
When the bedroom door opened, he whirled on a heel to face Quinton, who quietly shut the door behind him.
“She’s resting right now,” he said. “I gave her more morphine for the pain. She’ll be out for the next few hours.”
“She’s going to be okay?” Claudia asked in a small voice.
“She is,” he replied. “I stitched up the wounds that needed it. She’s going to have to stay in bed for a few days and not put any pressure on them until they start to heal. Her neck is bruised and swollen but there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage. She couldn’t say much so you need to tell me what the hell happened.”
Jackson let Claudia tell the story, unable to find the words to describe what Veronica had gone through.
He’d gotten the full story from Travis on the ride to the marina. It had torn him apart and had it not been the concern for Veronica’s immediate condition, he might have gone back to the Complex to make sure all those men were finished off. Hearing the story again from Claudia brought all those feelings rushing back to the surface.
He saw those same feelings mirrored in Quinton, though he stood as still as a statue, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his hands at his hips.
“We need to go back there,” Quinton hissed out between his clenched teeth. “We need to go back there and kill every last one of those motherfuckers.”
Now he was speaking his language.
“The van we brought back has enough gas to get us there. We head out at sun up and we’ll be there ‘fore noon. I know a way to get us inside that they don’t know ‘bout.”
“You think any of the others would come?”
“Travis would,” Jackson said. “Banks too. They were just as pissed.”
Claudia shot to her feet. “You two can’t be serious. We barely made it out of there alive. You aren’t going back there.”
“We can’t just let them get away with this,” Quinton said. “Look what they did to her. They hanged her, for christsakes! You think we should just let them get away with it? Let them think they can do this to us and suffer no consequences?”
“They didn’t do anything to you!” Claudia’s face was twisted up in anger as she glared at her brother. “They did it to Veronica. She’s the one they tried to rape. She’s the one they beat and tried to hang. Stop being so damn self-involved. This didn’t happen to you, it happened to her!”
She spun on her heel to glare at Jackson. “How do you think she’s going to feel when she finds out that you’ve left, huh? All she wanted last night was you beside her. You were the only thing that made her feel better and now you want to leave her to go get revenge. For what? So you can feel better. That’s fucking selfish and I expect better from you. From both of you.”
Jackson’s head fell, his chin touching his chest as Claudia’s words shamed him. He couldn’t leave Veronica alone again. She needed him here with her.
“We done with the revenge fantasies now?” Claudia asked and Jackson nodded along with Quinton. “Good. Now, I’ll stay here with Veronica in case she wakes up. Jackson, you should go see the girls. They’re going to be wondering where you and Veronica are.”
His immediate concern for Veronica had pushed his worry for Hannah to the back of his mind. “Hannah doin’ okay?”
“She’s good,” Quinton replied. “The meds are working like a charm. She was eating lunch when I came here. Come on, I’ll go with you to the clinic.”
Jackson looked back at the bedroom door but Claudia shooed him away, telling him it would be fine. She was right. They were home and it was safe here.
“I’ll be back in a bit, bring ya some lunch,” Jackson said before he left with Quinton.
“Anybody else end up sick?” Jackson asked as they took the path to the clinic.
“No, we were lucky we kept it contained,” Quinton replied. “The rest of them are on the mend now and we’ve got plenty of meds left over just in case.”
“Nothing bad happened here while we were gone?”
Quinton shook his head. “Just a lot of tension. Audrey had a tough time with it but she pushed through. She’s a strong kid.”
“She is,” Jackson said. “Don’t know if she was just born that way or what she’s been through made her that way.”
“I don’t think the how matters,” Quinton said. “All that matters is she’s got the right stuff to survive. Especially if there are people out there like them.”
Jackson didn’t even want to think about what Eddie and the others could do to a girl like Audrey. If he did, there would be nothing that would stop him from going
over there to kill every last one of them.
“Far as I’m concerned, I ain’t ever lettin’ her leave the island,” Jackson said.
“I don’t think any of us should anymore,” Quinton said. “We either get sick or attacked. I’ll be glad when winter gets here and we’re snowed in.”
“Yeah, not lotta people are gonna be willin’ to brave the water durin’ a blizzard,” Jackson said. “Only crazies would do it. Though not sure that’s a positive.”
“Probably not, but we can keep our fingers crossed that their boat sinks,” Quinton said, “And, hey, maybe the freaks will freeze to death over the winter.”
That sounded like a dream. “Ya think that could happen?”
Quinton shrugged. “Maybe. It can get real cold up here. If they aren’t careful, it’ll be easy for them to get hypothermia. We might be looking at a freak-free spring.”
“Wouldn’t hear me complain if that happened,” Jackson said as they reached the clinic.
Hannah was sitting up in her bed, propped up with several pillows, and a grin nearly split her face when she saw him walk in the door.
“Jackson!”
Audrey hopped out of the chair beside Hannah’s bed and ran over to hug him. “You’re back!”
He hugged her, feeling her narrow shoulders trembling and he ran his hand over her ponytail, giving it a tug like Veronica always did. “Course I’m back. Just took a bit longer than we expected, that’s all.”
He kept an arm around Audrey’s shoulders as he went over to the bed and ruffled Hannah’s hair. “Ya feelin’ better, Squirt?”
She nodded. “I ate some soup and crackers and I haven’t puked them up.”
“That’s a good sign,” Quinton said, giving Hannah a thumb’s up. “You’ll be back on your feet any day.”
“Good,” Hannah said and then wrinkled up her nose. “It stinks in here. Craig keeps farting.”
“You promised you wouldn’t tell,” Craig called out from his bed on the other side of the room.
“I’m sorry but they are too stinky,” Hannah said, pinching her nose and waving her hand in front of her face.
The Complex (The Omega Protocol Chronicles Book 3) Page 45