Danny's clenched his jaw and shimmer with rage. "How far in are they?"
"Twenty, twenty-five minutes. They are just down from that waterfall on the river." Coy's face darkened and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "But Danny… you need to know something going in, and get your mind around it before we get there."
Danny didn't respond. He glared at Coy with dark rage burning in his eyes.
"They messed her up, bad. Her face, it's…" he trailed off and kicked at a rock in the road.
Danny didn’t react. He took three bottles of water out of the bed and placed them in different vest pockets. "Make sure you have plenty of magazines. And listen- when it goes down, I want these guys alive."
Coy shrugged his shoulders. "Come on, Danny. We don't want anybody taking unnecessary chances. I mean if it works out that way, great, but —"
Danny spun on him, aggressive and full of rage. "Alive, Coy!"
84
* * *
Commotion in the camp.
Tara jerked awake. It seemed every nerve ending in her body was on fire. She panicked because she couldn't move or see or breathe. Am I dead? She wondered.
Gunfire and men yelling.
Things slipped into focus. She could move, but her hands were tied at the wrists again. She touched her eyes with her fingertips; the surrounding skin was all wrong and puffy and tender.
Swollen shut. Great. Just what I need.
She put a finger to her nose and drew it back with a gasp. It was way too big and touching it shot off a bright red flare of pain. Metallic and salty blood and snot had flowed from her nose into her mouth; her lips were tacky with the dried fluids.
More gunfire, closer.
Angry curses, and then screams of pain.
Familiar voices.
The door to the cage rattled and she shrank back against the other side.
"Is that her? Jesus, what did they do to her?"
Footsteps coming near. She whimpered and turned her back, covering her head with her hands.
A hand on her shoulder. She screamed and flailed at it.
A woman's voice. "Don't grab at her, for God's sake. Tara, honey?"
"Run back to the truck and go tell Doc to get ready- we’re coming."
“Shouldn’t I stay and help watch for creepers?â€
“No. We have shooters, and if the dead show up we can toss them a rapist. That oughta keep them busy. But hurry and get back, we need the truck space. We’re taking back seven more than we left with.â€
A familiar voice, one that meant something to her, close by and soft. "Tara, you’re safe. I've got you now."
"Danny?"
A gentle hand cupped her cheek. "Yeah Tara. It's me. It's over now."
She sobbed, then forced herself to stop. Something else. Something important. "Danny." A statement this time, not a question.
"It's me. You're okay now."
"There's another guy on his way here."
"We got him, too. We followed him in."
She broke down sobbing and fell into his arms.
85
* * *
Tara leaned against Danny, letting him support her weight. He whispered a steady stream of words in her ear. She couldn't understand most of what he said, but his voice and his presence made her feel safe.
Willa hovered on her other side, grasping her hand and prattled profanely about men in general and men of the apocalypse specifically. Someone with heavy feet clunked up to them- for the first time in three days that sound didn't fill her with dread or fear. "We hogtied the four of them and left them on their bellies, and two guys with guns are standing over them. They're not going anywhere. There is one thing…†the man (she thought he may be Jobe) hesitated.
Danny's tone was impatient. "What? What is it?"
"One of them is bleeding badly. He may bleed out before we get them back to the quarry."
Danny shrugged and her head bobbed up and down on his shoulders. "Their lives aren't worth a cup of warm piss. I don't care if any of them make it back."
"Got it." The heavy footsteps stomped away.
Danny called out as he departed. "Jobe."
"Yeah, Danny?"
"If he dies, don't shoot him or stick him. Toss him aside and let him turn."
86
* * *
Gunfire sounded nearby; Tara blanched and grabbed Danny’s arms.
He pulled her close. "Shhh," he whispered in her ear. He held her and stroked the back of her neck.
Willa leaned around from her other side and gave him a concerned look. "Do you need to go help those guys?"
Danny gave her a half shrug. "They'll let me know if they need me."
Off in the field, Coy shouted something unintelligible; another spate of gunfire followed.
Willa took a ferocious drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth, away from Tara. "What is my role here? What do you want me to do?"
"If I go out there, you get her to one of the trucks and get her down. Don't open the door for anybody but me or Coy." He paused, drowned out by more shots. When there was a break in the firing, he continued. “If neither of us makes it back, drive her to the quarry and get her to the Doc."
Willa's mouth opened, then snapped shut. She considered a moment, then spoke. "Why are they using the guns instead of putting the creepers down by hand?"
"That's a good question. There was a miscommunication, a breakdown in discipline, or there are a whole lot of creepers out there." He listened to the shouts and the shooting absently, his mind somewhere else.
The gunfire wound down and then stopped. A minute later Coy strode through the camp and up to them. Sweat ran down his neck and chin in rivulets and blood dripped from a deep gash on his forearm.
"Did you get bit?" Danny asked
Coy jerked, startled. "No, why?â€
Danny pointed at the wound.
Coy peered at it. "Oh, that. I don't even know when I did that." He looked back up and clapped his hands together. "So what's the plan? We better get out here quick- the noise will draw more creepers."
Danny put his mouth to Tara's ear. "We're going to move now, okay?"
She whimpered and burrowed in closer to him.
"It will be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you. But we have to get you home."
She didn't respond, but she relaxed and put an arm around his shoulder.
Danny caught Coy’s eye. "What condition are the other girls in?"
"Dehydration, they’re starving, infected bug bites, cuts and bruises on their feet. He marched them naked and barefoot for a fair piece. They are scared and sore and don’t trust anyone. None of them faced abuse anything like Tara’s, though.â€
“No permanent damage,†Tara muttered in a singsong voice.â€
Danny raised his shoulders; he and Coy exchanged helpless looks. He let out a long, shaky breath, then pinched his top lip with the thumb and index finger of his free hand and thought for a moment. "Willa, you take care of the others. They'll feel safer with a woman. Assure them we're taking them someplace where they can get food and medical care, and then we will try to get them home. If they don't want to go, don't make them. And for God's sake, keep them away from the slavers."
He stood and guided Tara to her feet beside him. "I'm going to pick you up. Please don't panic. I've got you." Without waiting for an answer he slipped his arms beneath her and lifted her effortlessly. He held her like a child, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her thighs. She turned to him and pressed her face into his chest. He nodded to Coy. "Lead the way to the truck."
87
* * *
Doc Joseph leaned against the big limestone arch over the entrance to tunnel five, the one that contained his office. As you entered tunnel five, you found a medium-sized anteroom to your immediate left. That anteroom held a suite of offices that once belonged
to a food brokerage company but now served as his medical center. It contained three exam rooms, a primitive laboratory, and his personal office. His office used to be the brokerage's executive meeting room, and he was pretty sure that inheriting it gave him the biggest and nicest workspace in the quarry.
If you walked into tunnel five and didn't turn left for the Doc’s office, you ran smack into Terrence's justice center. He took over space formerly occupied by the dispatchers and office staff for the company that owned the enormous frozen food warehouse further back in the tunnel. The Doc couldn’t gauge the square footage of that massive space (though he had no doubt he could ask Jiri and the ex-professor would either know the size off the top of his head or have it written down somewhere). But he walked its perimeter once, with a gas mask pulled tight over his head to filter out the stench of the thousands of varieties of processed foods that had thawed, rotted, and turned to jelly after the Underground lost its electricity. He counted thirteen blast freezers as he walked. Thirteen freezers that could each turn a cup of water into a block of ice in minutes, all working twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year to make sure Mr. and Mrs. Latchkey's children had a steady supply of frozen waffles.
Circumstances like these led him to wonder if the apocalypse wasn't really a gift from God rather than the work of Satan most other people saw it.
The justice center consisted of Terrence’s office, two well-appointed spaces he used as interview rooms and took complaints in, and three tiny workspaces he had converted into jail cells. There was a smaller, empty room next to his where he hoped to one day situate an assistant. The interview rooms were thus just for show. With only 150 adults to police, he refereed the occasional spat by getting the parties involved together and making them settle their differences. Men arguing over ownership of a piece of equipment or the love of a woman found a way to work things out in the bristling presence and malevolent stare of the bounty hunter. If the community grew like expected that would change. But for now, the rooms sat dusty and unused.
The jail cells, though, were a different matter. Doc looked over his shoulder at the little row of eight by ten-foot lockups. A variety of miscreants had occupied them over the previous four months. But if Jobe, who ran through the tunnels a few minutes ago delivering his message like an apocalyptic Paul Revere was correct, soon all three cells would be occupied at once for the first time since Terrence established the jail.
The boys had succeeded.
They'd traveled up the hill and found Tara, with no idea where she had gone and nothing to guide them toward where to look. It was an amazing thing, really. Jiri called it looking for a needle in a haystack, but it was more akin to looking for a particular needle in an enormous pile of needles.
And, being the natural God damned heroes they were, Tara wasn't the only person they found. They were bringing back a crew of bad guys and three other women the bad guys abducted.
Anytime now a line of trucks would carom across the bottom and his day we get busy. A rushed Jobe told him that Tara was in bad shape and the boys rescued three other victims healthy enough to be up and walking. And the brutes responsible for this mess were coming in with bullet wounds. Why they weren't lying dead in the countryside or shuffling down a street somewhere as creepers, he didn't know. Right now that question was above his pay scale. Now he wore his doctor’s coat, and his only concerns were medicating Tara's wounds and helping the other girls.
A big blue Ford truck rounded the curve and raced down the hill with three others close behind. Doc Joseph entered the tunnel and prepared to go to work.
88
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the Doc sat behind a burl oak desk in his expansive office, leaning forward with both elbows on the desktop. Will sprawled across from him in a high-back leather chair. The rancher's hair was an unruly mess and his face was tight and drawn. Bags under his eyes and a sallow cast to his normally ruddy complexion testified to his lack of quality sleep of late.
Doc Joseph shook a Winston Light loose from its pack. He struck a wooden match and lit the cigarette, one of the two he allowed himself a day. He sucked fiercely and blew a cloud of bluish-gray smoke over the top of Will's head.
Will yawned and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, then lifted his chin in the Doc's direction. "All the time we spent together in meetings and shit, and I didn't know you smoked."
The Doc flicked a long ash into a heavy glass ashtray in the top left-hand drawer of his desk and shrugged. "It's a nasty habit and I hide it the best I can.†He chuckled, then grew somber. "You must have Danny in restraints. I kept expecting him to break down the door to get to Tara during my exam.â€
"Jiri and Coy are with him, making sure he doesn't head this way. Plus I've got three big, beefy guys in front of the tunnel with instructions to keep him out. Not that they'd slow him up much if he’s determined to get in, but the kid isn’t incorrigible. He can practice self-control when he needs to."
The Doc drew on his cigarette and cast a sideways glance at Will. "If that's the case, why do you need the guys?"
"Because Tara is in here, and so are the guys who put her here. Better safe than sorry." He blew out a long, ragged breath and raised his eyebrows. "So how is she?"
The Doc took one more drag and snuffed out the cigarette. "She could be worse, to be honest with you. She's beat to hell, has lots of cuts and abrasions. Both eyes are swollen shut and the bruising on her rib cage looks like a Canadian sunrise. But her ribs are just sore, not sprung; the swelling around her eyes will disappear and they didn't break her nose or knock out any teeth. She sprained an ankle and has bruises on her biceps and wrists, and her plumbing is raw and abraded. She'll have to use a tampon for a few days, but again, it could be worse. They stuck to vaginal rape and left her bunghole alone.
"It seems they took pains not to rough her up. Beyond holding her down and raping her, I mean." The Doc snorted and rolled his eyes. "Good Lord, that was a stupid-sounding statement," he said in an aside. "I'm doing a poor job of expressing myself. Their destination was a big human trafficking auction near St. Louis, and a woman like Tara brings top dollar at a place like that. The boss guy told his two employees, the ones who abused her, not to mark her up or do any permanent damage.
"But then she smarts off, pisses the one guy off, and he beats the shit out of her. Blacks her eyes, bruises her wrists, cuts her lips. I'm not saying what happened was her fault, or she brought it on herself. I'm trying to explain why her physical injuries are less severe than you might expect."
"What about her mental injuries?"
The Doc pursed his lips and eyed the desktop for a moment. "Not so good." He looked up and regarded Will. "She's a wreck, as you'd expect. I had her sister and Willa in the room to comfort her and provide familiar faces. She was weepy and jumpy- any loud noise sets her off. She's worried no one will ever want her once they find out what happened, and about STDs. Says it happened because she was careless and she should have been able to get away.â€
Will gave him a slow and troubled nod. "Is there anybody in particular that ought to be with her around her?"
"Why, Daniel, of course. And to a lesser extent Coy, Willa, and Jobe. But mostly Danny. He came riding in on the white horse to rescue her. He's her Sir Galahad, Prince Charming, security blanket, and attack dog all rolled into one."
"Did she say anything about the two of them being a couple?"
The Doc blinked in surprise. "Are they not?"
Will shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Hell, I don't know. I could tell he was sweet on her, but that doesn't mean anything. In the right conditions that boy can be sweet on a knotty pine tree. Then when she came a-missing, he lost his shit and acted like his wife had disappeared. He was going to look for her no matter what I or anybody else said. It surprised me, and I'm not used to being surprised."
"Whatever their romantic entanglement, right now Daniel is the sun, the moon, and the stars a
s far as Tara is concerned. So he's the one that needs to spend time with her and convince her she's the victim here and isn’t to blame in any way for her attack."
"Can you talk to him about what to expect, and what to say?"
"I was about to suggest that very thing. Let me get her squared away with the medicine and antibiotics she'll need. We'll build her a place of her own in tunnel three, so she can be alone when she wants. I’ll have Tess and Willa set her up down there. Can you get a couple of guys to keep a discreet eye on the entrance? They have to be discreet, though- they can't be hanging around out front."
"Absolutely. We’ll build her a little place of her own, too. That way she’ll have privacy. And you send word when you're ready to see Danny."
The Doc nodded. "Sounds good."
89
* * *
Terrence stood a few feet in front of his jail, glowering at the five men inside. Two of them ignored him. One was gutshot- he looked like he'd been dipped in blood from his chest to his thighs. He laid on the floor of the middle cell, holding both hands over his wound and writhing in pain. His cellmate, an older man with a slight build and a long, white Fu Manchu tended to the wounded man and ignored the ex-bounty hunter. The other three prisoners kept an eye on him and tried to hide their fear.
The man with Fu Manchu sat with his legs crossed and the wounded man's head in his lap; as he bled, his movements had slowed and he'd become pale as winter. Fu Manchu looked up at Terrence; the peace officer noticed he had striking green eyes that belied no emotion. He spoke in a calm tone devoid of emotion. "He’ll die if you don't do something quick."
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