"How could your man possibly think it was okay to just leave them behind?" Fran Rollins demanded. She turned to her husband. "This is exactly why we shouldn't have split up!"
Eddie watched her carefully. He knew she wasn't just talking about yesterday. She hadn't been happy with Jonah and Danny going out a second time in town and had made her displeasure known then, as well as afterward. She'd also been one of the more vocal dissenters last night during Cheever's announcement of the sleeping arrangements.
But Eddie also suspected that she was referring to their decision to leave people behind in the bunker. He needed to talk to Harry to make sure she kept such thoughts to herself. He didn't need her further fracturing the group by sowing seeds of doubt. And he didn't want them talking at all about the bunker or their plan to get to the evacuation center. He didn't know what these people might do with such knowledge.
"I spoke with Ramsay last night after he came in," Cheever said. "He told me that Private Singh was behind him and assumed he still was when they reached the gate. By then, of course, it was too late to send anyone out to look for them. But Singh is a good man, and I have faith in his ability to make good decisions. He understands the desert and its perils, as well as how to survive in it. He spent a year on his own before arriving here, so I'm sure your man is just fine with him."
He removed a clipboard from beneath his arm and referred to it. "In the mean time, we have a few other things to deal with."
They were all sitting or standing inside an unused motor pool maintenance bay. Food had been delivered earlier, in keeping with their quarantine from the rest of the community. Jonathan, Nami, Jasmina and the baby, Jorge, were not in attendance. They'd been taken directly to the infirmary upon arrival and remained there under observation.
They all suffered from severe malnutrition and were being given intravenous fluids. Jonathan and the baby were also being given IV antibiotics for their lung infections. Despite Jonathan's objections, he was too weak to fight them. He did, however, refuse to take anything orally for his fever.
The dislocations Nami incurred to both his knee and shoulder during the Wraith attack were also being treated. Both had been splinted.
"Let's begin with an overview of base operations," Cheever said.
"Not until you promise us better arrangements now," Fran declared. "I refuse to spend another night separated from my family."
"Me, too," Hannah said, clinging to her father.
"As I said, strict adherence to procedure is essential for survival. Once you're cleared, we'll find permanent residence. Also, we'll need to assign each of you to your duties, which you will assume once you have been medically cleared."
"Screw this!" Harry cried, among a chorus of protest. "We didn't ask to be brought here!"
"We're fixing your bus," Cheever calmly replied. "We're feeding you, outfitting you, and giving you medical treatment. Nothing is free. Everyone carries their weight around here."
Harrison stepped forward. "Look, we appreciate the assistance, Captain. And we don't mind working to pay off our dues— No, wait, guys!" he said, quickly turning when the others started to gripe. "Just hold on a sec. We owe the captain and his men a debt of gratitude for rescuing our butts out there yesterday, let's not forget that."
He turned back to the captain. "But we do need some assurance from you that we'll be allowed to leave at the time of our choosing. Assuming, of course, that all reasonable reimbursement has been made."
Cheever lowered the clipboard and stepped up to face Harrison. "This is a refugee camp, Mister . . . ."
"Blakeley."
He checked his clipboard. "Yes, Mister Harrison Blakeley. We may run this place like a military compound, but it works well precisely because of the discipline and the commitment of its members. Every resident, whether soldier or not, is a vital contributor. What this place is not is a charity. Nor is it a prison. Each and every member of this community is free the leave at his or her will, as long as we deem that it doesn't create a new threat. Is that assurance enough?"
The door at the far end of the bay opened, letting in a flash of daylight and a man dressed in a white lab coat. The door slammed shut with a reverberating clang that echoed through the large space.
"And here is our medic," Cheever said. "He'll be asking you to answer some questions. He'll also be drawing your blood and checking your lungs, temperature, and blood pressure. Please give him your every consideration."
"Um, sir?" the medic said. He had stopped a good twenty feet away from the group. Cheever went over and the two exchanged a few words.
After a moment, the captain looked over at the group and told them to do as the medic instructed. "Mister Delacroix?" he called. "Will you come with me please?"
"Why?" Eddie said, stepping forward. He held a hand out, stopping anyone from leaving. "What do you want with Danny?"
"I just have a few questions to ask him in private." He stopped, seeing the grave looks on their faces. "One of my men is missing, as well as one of yours. I need information about what happened. It'll be easier to interview him separately, without distractions."
"It's okay," Danny told them. "I'll be fine."
There was a low rumble of displeasure from the group when the two men left. "What was that all about?" Harry demanded of the medic.
The man wouldn't say. He just began the examination by passing out forms and pencils.
But Eddie had heard their exchange perfectly well. A member of the scout team looking for Private Singh and Jonah had returned. He reported that they had gone to the refueling spot, and while there was no sign of either man, they did find the motorbike, as well as a massive patch of blood.
Billy and Luke turned out to be surprisingly good workers, toiling away without complaint in the hot sun, their shirts off and their backs burning as all six of them struggled to get the framing up for the new structure.
They were all business when they needed to be, but as soon as a break was called, their antics resumed right back where they'd left off. Finn and Bix learned soon enough to just play along, and the jokers eventually lost interest in teasing them.
There seemed to be some disagreement about what to call the building and its precise function. Billy insisted on calling it a barn, which caused Adrian to roll his eyes and shake his head. "That boy is as simple as they come."
"I thought it was to be a church," Finn said.
"It is. Billy just calls it a barn because that's what it looks like," Luke said.
"Because that's the only kind of buildin Adrian knows how to build," Jennifer told them. "Four walls and a big slidin door. Slap on a coupla sloped roofs and call it a church, but it's still a barn."
"Jesus may have been a skilled carpenter," Adrian said, "but the holy Father did not see fit to endow this son with the same abilities."
Everyone laughed.
The frames had already been assembled, and except for a quick break when a stack of sawed boards collapsed and left a gash on Adrian's forehead, which Jennifer quickly bandaged, they went up very quickly.
By lunchtime, the walls were all secured in place. The horses had been employed to help tilt them up. When they weren't being used, the animals simply grazed on the grass nearby.
Bix and Finn sat beneath the shade of a lone maple tree and looked out over the lake as they ate lunch. Bix lamented that they couldn't go swimming. Luke guffawed. "Not unless you wanna be fish food!"
"Itty bitty fish food pieces!" Billy added.
They started chasing each other, disturbing the horses and making Adrian shout at them to stay on the trails or in the clearing or else they'd end up being itty bitty fertilizer.
"We've buried mines in the forest, too," he told the boys.
"Why are you building this all the way out here?" Finn asked.
The clearing was nearly a half mile away from the house, along a well-marked path running through the wood parallel to the shore. Both the house and the animal barn were well out of sight and
earshot.
"The noise," Jennifer replied. She glanced meaningfully over at Adrian, and he shrugged.
"My sermons have been known to raise the roof."
Finn had been watching Billy and Luke sprinting through the woods. They seemed exceptionally nimble for their age. A sudden suspicion came over him. "You said you're trying to cure the Wraiths. Have you ever succeeded?"
As if sensing his thoughts, Adrian turned his own gaze to the boys. "Not entirely," he replied enigmatically. "We think we've come close."
A chill passed through Finn's body. He suddenly didn't want to be there.
Troubled, he stood up. The apple he'd been eating felt like a rock in his stomach. "Mind if I feed the rest of this to the horses?" he asked.
"Go right ahead."
After finishing their meal, the older adults excused themselves. "Regular chores ain't gonna do themselves," they said, urging the boys to rest a bit longer. "Not good fer the digestion to work so soon after eatin."
Bix chuckled from his seat at the base of the maple tree as he watched Father Adrian and Jennifer leave. "They make a cute couple," he said.
"Just a feeling I get, but I'm not so sure they are," Finn answered.
He gathered up the loose wrappers and uneaten food. It was a strange thing for him to see leftovers. Nothing had ever gone to waste in the bunker.
"You know, I think I could live here forever," Bix said, sighing. He patted his stomach and yawned.
"You've already forgotten about your father?"
"I'll send for him. They can all come here. This place is large enough, don't you think? And no silly rules. It'd be like one of those hippy communes."
"My father made those rules. Remember?"
"Not what I meant."
"So we'll all just sleep in tents and sing kumbaya."
"Chillax, bro. Just enjoy the moment."
Finn shook his head. He didn't agree at all with Bix, but he kept his mouth shut. On the surface, the ranch did seem like an improvement over the bunker. They were outdoors again, protected, eating fresh food. But they were still trapped, still living in fear. The lake and the fields were mined, the barrier surrounding the compound was electrified.
And unlike the bunker, there were Wraiths inside the walls.
How many?
Billy and Luke eventually ceased their adolescent antics and resumed work. They seemed to know instinctively what needed to be done, as if they'd done it all before. They showed the boys how to apply plywood over the studs, then they worked on framing the roof.
Once more, they used the horses to help lift the materials to the tops of the walls using a series of pulleys and booms that Billy rigged up. The men were quite adept with the tools, and their muscles rippled with the exertion and glistened with sweat. Their faces contorted in concentration.
It struck Finn as odd how both Billy and Luke seemed to have two polar opposite modes, like they had switches inside their heads.
By late that afternoon, the building began to resemble something functional.
They were all beyond tired when Luke abruptly announced that it was time to stop, as if the switch in his head had been flipped off. They were right in the middle of nailing the last set of roof supports into place. They balanced precariously on the walls, and the possibility that it might fall didn't seem to have crossed his mind.
He and Billy climbed down a hastily-constructed wooden ladder, then challenged the boys to a race back to the house.
"Last ones back hasta clean the pig pen!" Billy shouted, and they took off running.
Finn rolled his eyes. "Those two make me feel like an old man."
"You are an old man," Bix replied. "Compared to me, anyway."
"Gee, thanks."
"Do you think we're supposed to bring the horses back?"
Finn looked over. "I don't know."
The animals had wandered over by the water's edge, where an old dock jutted out over the still lake. The sun was still hovering above the horizon, silhouetting the animals' heads. Crane flies and gnats swarmed over the reeds. Dragonflies buzzed the water, dipping their tails in to lay their eggs and creating the illusion of a light rain.
Bix flashed him a mischievous grin. "Come on."
"We're not going in the water!"
"No, dummy. You want to be mucking out the pig pen? We'll ride those horses back to the house and beat those losers."
"But they're not saddled!"
"They got reins!"
Bix helped him up onto the back of one of the horses, then used a paint bucket to mount the other. "Clamp your legs onto the horse's sides. Hold onto the mane. Let's go."
"This is just one big game to you, isn't it?" Finn said.
"Less yakking and more riding. I'm not slopping pig crap!"
The horses seemed to know exactly where to go. They immediately turned down the path, picking up their pace, as if they were eager to get back to the barn. Pretty soon, they were trotting along at a decent clip.
Finn tried to tell Bix that the others were probably already back, but he bit his tongue on an especially hard jolt and tasted blood.
"Hold on!" Bix shouted, and leaned over, digging his heels into his horse's sides. In a flash, he was gone. Not wanting to be left behind, Finn's horse followed suit.
The trees flashed past. Finn gritted his teeth, afraid of being thrown off, and held on for dear life.
The horses raced up the path until it forked. Bix expected to turn left and leaned into the curve. With a shout of surprise, the horse went right.
"I'm slipping!" Finn cried.
"Hold on!"
"This is the wrong way!"
"I know! I'm trying to steer, but this damn horse is stubborn!"
The trees ended abruptly, and they entered a new clearing. In the center of it was another barn, although its walls were crumbling.
"Whoa!" Bix said, pulling back on his reins. The horse trotted over to the structure and stopped.
Finn's kept on going around the corner, where he finally fell off. Thankfully, the ground was covered in grass.
"Told you this place is huge," Bix said, lowering himself off his horse. "You could build a whole other house on this clearing big enough for three families."
"Wonder if this is Adrian's old church."
This side of the barn had crumpled into itself, and the roof had partially fallen. Finn made his way over the rotting timber, drawn by a low buzzing sound.
"What'd you find?" Bix asked.
Finn turned back, covering his mouth. He wanted to run away, but Bix pushed past him.
"What's that noise— Oh, crap!"
Three of the walls were still standing, and the insides were splashed with blood. More stained the straw strewn on the ground. Chains dangled from the rafters over a large metal cage made of chain link.
The humming came from a dark mound at the far end of the barn, partially buried beneath the collapsed fourth wall.
"Jesus Christ," Bix whispered, throwing his hand over his mouth. "What the fu—"
"You boys shouldn't be here," Jennifer said. She emerged from the darkness inside the barn carrying a small blue box. "You shouldn't be wanderin about."
"The h-horses," Finn stammered. "We couldn't stop them. They brought us here."
"What happened to this place?" Bix asked.
"The roof collapsed during an experiment." She shook her head. "All but two ferals died."
"You worked on them here?"
She nodded. "Kept them and treated them."
"And what's all that equipment?"
Jennifer flicked on a flashlight and swung the beam into the depths of the barn. It came to rest on a portable generator. The bright yellow of its diesel tank shone in the gloom. Thick cables extended out of it, branching like giant veins. Some reached up into the rafters, where several lights had been strung, while others snaked across the ground toward a cart piled high with electrical devices of one sort or another.
"This is where we're trying
to find a cure." She shut off the flashlight and turned back to the boys. "Now take them horses back to the other barn and get yourselves ready for dinner. Supper's gettin cold."
Bix was considerably quieter that evening at dinner than he had been all day, and his mood did not improve by the next morning. But if any of the others besides Finn noticed his gloominess, they did not remark on it, despite ample opportunities to do so.
The rest of the next day passed without much conversation. The boys finished nailing on the plywood panels, then spread dry straw onto the ground so it wouldn't get muddy.
Luke and Billy continued bracing the roof, although they left it open for light. Not once did any of them bring up the ruined barn or the corpses the boys had found within it the night before.
Finn tried a few times to get Bix to talk, when he could get his friend alone, but he wasn't very responsive. Finn couldn't tell if he was merely distracted or if he was feeling somehow betrayed.
A few hours after lunch, Finn noticed that Billy and Luke were gone with the horses. They reappeared twenty minutes later with the cart piled high with the equipment from the ruined barn, as well as several rolls of unused eight-foot chain link fencing. They circled the clearing, finishing with the cart situated just outside the opening that would become the new barn's door.
Adrian clapped his hands in excitement, though to the boys it felt forced. "I hadn't dared to hope to get this much done so soon," he exclaimed. "Figured it'd take another week before we even got the roof on. You two boys did the work of four! Ain't that right, darlin?"
Jennifer nodded.
He pulled the tarp away and began to unload. "I ain't got no idea what half this stuff was meant for before the Flense. Some we picked up along the way. Some was brought to us by others to test. But these here devices have a definite effect on the ferals, so maybe it was meant fer us to find, like us runnin into y'all out there on the road, somethin of a blessin, like the good Lord was lookin out fer us."
They unloaded the equipment, and Jennifer began to arrange it on a bench they had previously installed along the back wall. With Finn's and Luke's help, Adrian erected the chain link inside the building, employing the four center posts as corner braces and installing a heavy locking gate.
Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) Page 10