Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2)

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Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2) Page 25

by Barnes, Colin F.


  ‘You see that?’ Eva asked Marcus. ‘That’s the area you’ll need to get to. Given how many buildings there are here, it doesn’t seem likely they’d use more than one to keep prisoners in.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Marcus said, eyeing Bella warily. ‘There’s a kind of tunnel entrance down there below this cliff. I’ll head there now. When you hear the distraction, make your move on Gracefield, and be quick about it. Once it all goes off, we won’t have much time to get the hell out of here if things go bad.’

  ‘I could almost believe you’ve come to care about us,’ Eva said.

  Marcus’s face became serious then, his eyes boring into hers. Then in a flash, he leaned forward and kissed her hard and full before pulling back. ‘I’ve always cared,’ he said. He turned his back and ran off into the darkness.

  Bella whimpered and twitched her tail but stayed beside Eva, who stared with shock into the space Marcus had just occupied. She didn’t know how to feel about what had just happened. But now wasn’t the time to work it out.

  Wood was now grovelling and crying, holding her hands up to Gracefield. Begging. But the former president seemed not a bit moved by this. He lifted up the mic and said, ‘Islanders, my former friend Dillon Wood has come back to us. Maybe she has had a change of mind?’

  Wood was babbling now, an undignified mess of a human. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed over and over. ‘Please, I’ll do anything.’

  The two hooded figures who had removed Marvin and Victoria returned and stood behind the president’s old friend.

  ‘You hurt me,’ Gracefield said matter-of-factly. ‘You dared to question the way we do things, even though you were the driving force behind the project. You betrayed my trust, after all those years of my supporting you when no one else would. When the scientific community thought you were a crackpot, there was me, making sure you got to actualise your potential. I cannot tolerate that. I’m sorry, Dillon, it’s a step too far. You of all people were the one I thought I could trust, but, like Christ, I suppose I have to suffer my own Judas.’

  ‘Don’t do this!’ Dillon cried. ‘We can work something out, can’t we?’

  Gracefield remained silent. Wood thrashed against her restraints, then bellowed, ‘He’s mad – don’t you all see that? He didn’t kill the scientists at McKinley because they were a threat to us; he killed them because he was hiding the truth! The truth that it was he who—’

  Wood didn’t get the chance to finish her rant; the two figures aimed their rifles and fired a round each, cutting her off with twin explosions that reverberated around the valley as though the place were a giant kettle drum.

  Bella growled low in her throat. Wood’s body slumped to the ground.

  ‘Throw her body to the fish,’ Gracefield said. ‘Everyone get some rest; there’ll be much to do tomorrow.’

  With that, he turned his back and retreated to his cabin. The light on the balcony went out, then the floodlights, plunging the place back into darkness.

  Eva’s vision took a few moments to adjust to the sudden change, but when she could make out the edges and forms of the various buildings within the valley again, she stood up and moved quietly and deliberately around the west side of the clearing until she found a makeshift set of steps leading down into the valley proper.

  ‘Bella, stay,’ Eva whispered when she realised the dog had followed her.

  The poor mutt looked up at Eva with sad brown eyes, but Eva clicked her fingers and pointed to the ground. ‘Down,’ she said, giving the dog what few crumbs of food she had left. Bella obeyed, laying her head on her front paws with a small whine and sniffing at the crumbs. The last thing Eva needed when she was making a stealthy approach to Gracefield’s cabin was a dog getting under her feet.

  When she was confident Bella would stay, Eva set off quickly, sticking to the sheer rocky sides, keeping to a crouch. Within a minute she reached the first of the six cabins. A path to Gracefield’s building was about a hundred metres away.

  Somewhere over to the northeast, a cracking thud boomed out. A splash of light lit up the place like a lightning strike. Eva ducked into the shadows as two figures in the hut ahead of her ran out to see what the noise was, their voices alarmed.

  Eva smiled, knowing that Marcus was on the case. He’d done his job. Now she had to do hers: deal with Gracefield.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Amid the chaos caused by Marcus’s actions, Eva slipped through the shadows to Gracefield’s cabin. It was raised off the rocky ground by a couple of metres, supported by wooden beams, which provided the perfect cover for her to make her way to the rear of the building without being seen. She hid behind one of the posts and looked out towards the clearing in the middle of the valley. Dozens of men and women were running to the huts on the east side. Eva hoped Marcus had got the others free in time. So far, there were no gunshots; she took that as a good sign.

  Above her, she heard footsteps, presumably Gracefield moving around in his cabin. The footsteps stopped at the far side to her left. Eva took this opportunity to dash through the dark underside. When she reached the back of the building, she jumped up, grabbed a pair of wooden struts, and hauled herself up and over onto a veranda running around the rear and sides.

  Walking across the boards with care, Eva came to the east corner of the building. A small window looked out to the north. It was open a crack. From within, Gracefield’s angry, urgent words undulated on the breeze.

  ‘I don’t care what you do; just make sure they’re found immediately. Yes, lethal force if necessary. Don’t make me regret my decisions, Yolandie.’ Then silence.

  Eva realised Gracefield must have a radio system that wasn’t affected by the static in order to communicate with his flock. This gave her an idea. It was risky, but she had few other options.

  She opened the window as far as it would go and slipped inside the dark cabin. It smelled of damp dirt – probably brought in from the small farm area at the base of the valley – and salt, the scent of old boats, the scent of the flotilla. Her heart ached in that moment as she thought about all those back in the place she called home. It startled her how much she felt for the place, while all the time she’d been living on it she had wished she could be anywhere else. There was an insight forming about the importance of home, but Eva pushed her thoughts back and concentrated on her job at hand. The cabin was separated into two sections with a door between them. In this section, the room was gloomy to the point of almost utter darkness. The only thing she could make out were a number of crates stacked to one side, and another door leading out to the balcony.

  Eva stepped carefully across the room, making sure her footsteps didn’t give her away, and stood close to the door, her ear against the surface. From the other side, Eva could hear Gracefield tapping on a keyboard and mumbling something under his breath. She peered through the considerable gap between the door and the ill-fitting frame. Gracefield was sitting at a desk, a laptop in front of him, an overhead light shining down on him. There was a pistol on the desk next to the laptop.

  Eva retrieved hers from the holster on her belt and quietly checked her ammo: just two rounds. She’d have to make them count. Gazing around the room, she saw no other way in. This wasn’t ideal. She could probably shoot him before he had a chance to react, but ideally she wanted a bit more time to question him – especially about the Project. Although killing him would take him out of the equation quickly, it meant that she’d have no chance to enact her plan: a way to get the island residents onside, or at the very least split up.

  This is it, she thought. This could be my last play.

  She thought of Danny and the other children back at the flotilla. They deserved a future, deserved a fair chance at life. So what if she had to die for that? At least it was a cause worth dying for.

  Eva closed her eyes and counted to three. On three, she pushed the handle, opened the door, and stepped inside with her pistol raised.

  Gracefield’s hand flashed away from the l
aptop’s keyboard, grabbed the pistol, and fired without stopping to aim.

  Eva fired too; the dual cracks were almost simultaneous.

  She flung herself down and forward, even as her finger was still on the trigger. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard a grunt, followed by a heavy thud. Eva jumped to her feet and stared over the desk, her heart beating double-time against her chest.

  Gracefield crawled on the floor, his face tracking along the wooden boards, pain twisting his features. A line of blood showed through the split in his suit at his left shoulder. It didn’t look like a fatal hit; she had only grazed him.

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ he said between gritted teeth, sweat pouring out of his skin and dampening his hair, making it stick to his forehead as he continued to crawl towards her, using his uninjured arm to pull himself forward. ‘Who – are you?’

  He stared up at her as she approached, her pistol trained on him. She had just one round left. ‘To think I nearly voted for you,’ Eva said. ‘But I never bought into your bullshit.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Me either,’ Eva replied, searching around for his weapon and not seeing it immediately. It wasn’t in his hands; she could see that much. ‘You and I are going to get to understand each other,’ she said. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t move a damned inch, unless you want to end it right here, right now.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, gasping for air. He lay on his front, arms spread, his face pressed against the wooden boards, one eye looking up at her as he tried to understand what was going on. He rolled onto his back and collected himself.

  Even now, Eva realised, he was managing to keep his cool. It made her skin shiver.

  She stalked closer to him, the gun trained on his forehead. She glanced round, located his gun – close to the edge of the desk a foot or so away from him – and stepped towards it to kick it out of reach.

  He thrust out his right arm, grabbing her by the ankle, taking her by surprise. She tried to readjust her position, but he yanked her leg towards him and butted her in the stomach. The sudden force unbalanced her, sending her falling backwards. She struck the floor hard, the back of her head cracking against the boards, her vision exploding into a firework display.

  When her vision cleared, she saw him standing over her. He stepped on her wrist, making her yelp, while with his left arm he raised her pistol to point at her chest. The bastard smiled, slipping into charismatic president mode. Eva saw right through it, saw that he was a complete sociopath.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ he said as she continued to squirm beneath him. ‘I’ll make it q—’

  The door to the room slammed against the frame and the air shifted.

  Gracefield’s attention went to something above and behind her. A dark shape flew over her, crashing into the former president. The movement freed Eva’s wrist. She struggled backwards away from the melee. She got to her knees and saw it was Bella.

  The dog was standing on Gracefield’s chest, snapping and growling at his face as he tried to push the animal from him.

  ‘Bella!’ Eva said, shaking her head to get rid of the dizziness.

  The dog turned to look at Eva; her hackles were up.

  Eva lurched forward and grabbed Gracefield’s pistol, still on the floor by the desk, and smashed it once against his temple, knocking him out. Bella relaxed and stepped off Gracefield’s body, nuzzling up against Eva’s leg.

  ‘Good girl!’ Eva said, hugging the dog.

  Bella licked Eva’s face and yipped a quiet bark.

  ‘Okay, let’s get you clear. We need to tie this bastard up. Buy us some time.’

  Bella let Eva lead her to the side and lay down when Eva commanded her. Eva dragged Gracefield’s unconscious body onto the chair and used the power cable from the laptop to bind his legs and arms together. He was already coming round, blinking, moving his lips but unable to form words.

  Not confident the power cable would be enough, Eva searched the office for something else, found a necktie in a drawer, and spotted the leather belt around Gracefield’s waist. She took both of these to secure him more firmly to the chair. He drifted in and out of consciousness as she did this, making her work quickly.

  She searched around and found the radio handset he had been using earlier. The PA microphone was on the desk. This was how she was going to get the rest of the islanders on her side . . . she hoped.

  First she took the radio handset and dialled the volume all the way down. Then, using some rubber bands she found in one of the desk drawers, she made sure the transmitter button was permanently depressed. She placed the radio on the desk, behind a stack of old books, and set a heavy title over the PA mic transmit button, so that it too was on and broadcasting.

  Outside, through the small, grubby window, she saw a large group of islanders running from cabin to cabin with buckets of water. The explosions had caused a couple of the buildings to catch fire.

  There was a group of twenty or so in the middle, around Dillon’s body, arguing with each other, some pointing to her body, then up to Gracefield’s cabin. The two figures whom Marvin had addressed were also down there now, remonstrating with some others.

  This is good, she thought. They could work with this.

  Satisfied that everything was ready to go, she slapped Gracefield gently until he fully woke. It took him a few moments to remember what had happened; he stared around the cabin, saw Bella, then Eva, and then it all came back to him.

  He thrashed in his chair, howling with the pain of the wound in his right shoulder. He let out a string of expletives, the spittle spraying from his mouth. ‘You fucking bitch, you whore! I’ll have you burned! I’ll flay the skin from your back with my bare hands!’

  Eva sat casually on the edge of the desk, the pistol resting on her legs.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, quietly but urgently, as she guessed she didn’t have much time. ‘What would happen if I deleted that program that’s currently running on this laptop?’ She spun it round so the screen faced him.

  A black terminal window showed a line of statuses flowing up the screen. A second terminal window indicated that the system was fully functional to ninety-eight per cent efficiency.

  ‘What is all this?’ she asked. ‘I’m assuming something to do with the Banshee Project?’

  ‘You know nothing of it.’ He then screamed for help, called for Yolandie, Betrand, and other people she didn’t know.

  Eva clubbed the pistol against his mouth, splitting his lip.

  ‘There’s no one to save you,’ she said, bluffing, knowing that at any moment someone could come rushing through the door. She just needed enough time. ‘So let’s start with this software. I’m no expert, but it seems to be communicating or controlling this project of yours. But look at that – there’s not just one, is there? There’s a network.’

  Eva moved the terminal windows around with the touchpad and found seven others. It seemed as though there was indeed a network of these devices.

  ‘They’re still online, the damned things that caused the drowning?’ she asked. ‘I know about the scientists at the weather station. I know they proved this project of yours was the catalyst. Alternative energy source, isn’t it? What exactly is it? Nuclear, perhaps? Some kind of quantum machine?’

  ‘This is all pointless,’ Gracefield said, regaining some of his composure. ‘You wouldn’t even understand. It’s too late now, anyway. This is the new world, and we’re better off adapting to it. The justice you seek is long gone – it doesn’t exist here anymore. It’s my law now. You must see that.’

  ‘I see it,’ Eva said, peering over her shoulder. ‘Sure, it’s too late for the world to know what you did, what your project is capable of, but right here, right now, I can hold someone responsible. I can show the remaining survivors that the one supposedly in charge is the one who instigated all this. You, William Gracefield, can be brought to their justice.’

  Gracefield snorted with derision. �
�You really think one man is capable of all this?’

  ‘No. I know you had help from Miss Wood. And it seems you had private investors too. I’m sure a man in your position would have been able to cobble together a team and enough funds to do almost anything you wanted – and you did, didn’t you?’

  He smiled then. A shit-eating smile born of pride and privilege. The conceited bastard, after all that had happened, was still impressed with himself, his ‘achievements’.

  It made her sick to her stomach and she had to resist not killing him there and then. She glanced out of the window, saw that most of the islanders were now still, all standing in the middle of the clearing, looking towards the cabin. They could, of course, hear every word over the PA.

  The former president shifted in his chair, seemingly having given up hope of escaping.

  He was getting comfortable, Eva thought. Confident. He thought he was in control, and that was just fine with her.

  ‘So tell me,’ Eva said, occasionally looking out through the window to make sure no one was approaching. ‘This change to the world – you’re suggesting it’s natural? Had nothing to do with this project of yours. Just the effects of solar flares and a once-in-a-planet’s-lifetime set of circumstances.’

  ‘Sure. That’s as good an explanation as any. Believe that, if you wish. It doesn’t matter now,’ Gracefield said as though it was of no concern. Eva saw otherwise. A muscle below his right eye twitched, making the top of his cheek ripple ever so slightly. The thought that he’d had no hand in it bothered him.

  ‘I know about your involvement with Wood and whatever she was working on,’ Eva said. ‘I’ve seen files, from the NSA and the FBI. You see, you might have deleted the scientists’ data, but you didn’t know Victoria found backups on the Pentagon’s servers. Do the islanders realise you lied and failed them? Do they know you had the crew of the USS Utah murdered to keep your secrets?’

 

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