Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn
Page 4
Good, Pete thought. He really hadn’t known Pete was there. And it might give him just the amount of time he needed to actually get to Thomas before the man shot him.
Thomas, however, was quicker than Pete gave him credit for, and Pete was running wounded, his ribs choosing that minute to try to pierce their way into his lung. Thomas brought the rifle around, nose aimed right at Pete’s face, and Pete, giving in to the pain in those ribs, ducked and rolled as hard as he could, grunting at the impact and knowing that he was going to pay for it later.
The bullet went high, though, and hit the wall behind him, and he figured at least he’d be alive to pay for it, rather than dead—which was obviously what Thomas had intended.
Pete came out of the roll in another charge, and this time he was aimed right for the larger man’s midsection, thinking that he’d bum rush the guy and shove him back into the wall—while hoping that Thomas lost his grip on the gun in the process. Because Pete had his gun shoved into the back of his waistband, but it was well and truly out of reach, thanks to the way he’d started this battle.
Which meant that he hadn’t exactly come to a gunfight with a knife. No; he’d just come with a gun that he couldn’t reach.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he chanted, each word punctuated by a pounding footstep.
He’d just have to hope that Thomas dropped the gun when he hit him. And hope, further, that Pete himself could get his hands on it before Thomas did.
The door behind Thomas flew open before Pete got there, though, and suddenly, Jack the Mouth was back on the scene, his eyes flashing with panic, then settling on Thomas in front of him. He firmed his mouth, grabbed something from the table next to the door, and swung, aiming straight for Thomas’ head.
Thomas went down like a sack of potatoes, and Pete didn’t wait to see whether he got back up again. He swerved to the right and headed directly for the stairs, and Marie.
“Pick up those packs!” he snapped. “I have more bags in the kitchen. We get them and go, right now!”
To Marie’s credit—and to his shock—she didn’t even argue with him. She just ducked down, grabbed the packs, and darted down the steps toward them. Pete took her hand and whirled back toward the doorway, where Jack was standing and staring down at the man who’d probably been ordering him around for years, his mouth hanging open like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.
“Jack! Move!” Pete shouted. “We’re getting out of here, right now!”
Jack suddenly jerked into action, joining them in their sprint toward the kitchen.
They’d almost made it when they heard the laughter.
Pete whirled around to see Thomas sitting up again, the rifle pointed right at them. “You’ll never get away,” he muttered. “And even if you did, I don’t know where you think you’d go. There’s no way you’ll survive out there in the wilderness, and Anchorage doesn’t even have power. Society itself is over. Everyone is going to die except for us. We’ve been preparing for this for years, and the rest of you—”
Pete yanked the gun out of his belt, drew it up, and shot.
“Let’s go,” he muttered into the sudden and shocked silence. “Jack, you know this town better than Marie or me. Where the hell are we going?”
He turned and shoved them in front of him, toward the door, not trusting Thomas to stay down this time, either.
Because that hadn’t been a kill shot. Only the shoulder. But it had knocked Thomas out, and that was good enough. Pete was just going to have to hope the man stayed unconscious long enough for them to get out of this house and find something that looked like a working vehicle.
He wanted out of this village before anyone came around, wondering what all the shooting was about, and found Thomas bleeding out on the floor.
Chapter 7
They left the house at a run through the back door and found themselves in a sort of alley that seemed to run along behind the houses themselves—which was lucky, as Pete could already hear the shouts and feet pounding on the main street. The villagers had heard the sounds of the shots, then, and were on their way to Thomas’ house already.
“They must have still been up at the end of the street,” Marie huffed from his side. “You hear all that noise? Sounds like the entire village is on their way to his house.”
“The question is,” Pete answered, his breathing only slightly less labored. “What the hell was Thomas doing at home already? If everyone else was up at the end of the street, why the hell did he decide to come home?”
“Maybe he saw us cross the street from the jail,” she answered. “Our luck hasn’t been good lately, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Pete just grunted at that one, because he really couldn’t argue with her there.
Still.
“Where the hell were you?” he asked, slashing a look at Jack, who was running along on his other side. “I told you to look out for anyone coming!”
“I was in the alley, where you left me,” the large man said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Right. Obviously.
And since Thomas hadn’t come through the alley, Jack had never once thought to look around and see whether he might be coming from somewhere else.
Pete got to the end of the narrow alley then and skidded to a halt, putting out quick hands to stop the others as well. This looked like a cross street rather than an alley, and he didn’t want to go running across such an open area without at least seeing what was out there first.
Especially if the villagers were already looking for them.
He edged one eye around the corner, squinting into the darkness and trying to figure out whether he could see anything. There was a row of lights along the main street, but nothing here on the cross street, and all he saw was… blackness.
“Any villagers with pitchforks out there?” Marie whispered. “Carrying buckets of tar and feathers?”
He almost turned, pushed her up against the wall, and gave her a piece of his mind about her always cracking jokes in these types of situations. He wanted to shout at her about her inability to take anything seriously, even when they were literally on the edge of death.
In fact, if you came right down to it, he had a whole list of things he’d like to shout at her about. Starting with the things she’d done back in Mueller and moving right along to bringing those stupid journals with them, which had led to all of this trouble.
Then he remembered the way his stomach had dropped out of his body and hit the floor rolling when he realized that Thomas might shoot her.
Dammit. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten attached to the girl. And he hadn’t even seen it when it happened.
That didn’t mean he was ever going to get used to the smartass lines when they were in the middle of a dramatic situation.
“Marie, if you don’t have something useful to add, how about you keep your mouth shut?” he rumbled back.
He heard the soft huff of laughter that said she’d heard him, and that she probably knew exactly how much she was annoying him. Then, though, she came up with one of her other lines. The smart ones. The ones that said she probably had about twice as many brain cells as he did.
“And now what?” she whispered. “We can’t just stand here hiding all night. I’m already starting to lose feeling in my feet, and those villagers are going to find Thomas and freak the fuck out. Personally, I don’t want to experience Hilda pointing a gun at me and threatening to shoot me again. Where are we going and what are we doing? Jack, this is what we brought you along for. If you ever wanted to be brilliant in your entire life, now is the time to do it.”
Pete, having decided that the street in front of them was empty—or, if it wasn’t, he wasn’t going to be able to see whatever was out there—turned around to face his compatriots.
“I second that. Jack, where are we going? I’ve got a rib problem and Marie has an ankle problem. Our best bet is going to be an actual vehicle. What have you got for us?”
He also started to feel a whole lot better about the situation. Even more when he heard what Jack had to say.
“We have an entire warehouse full of trucks,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Will that do?”
“You happen to know how to hotwire them?” Pete asked. “Because that’s a skill I’ve never picked up. And we’ll need them actually working.”
Jack grabbed them both and started running again, his eyes on the continuing alleyway in front of them. They got across the street and hit the narrow darkness again, the three of them running abreast, Marie’s arm across Pete’s shoulders as he helped her along.
“Better than that,” Jack hissed in the darkness. “I know where they keep the keys.”
Chapter 8
It took them less than five minutes to get to the end of town—which, Pete guessed, was probably one of the perks of living in a town this small. You could literally get from one end to the other in ten minutes. If you were so inclined.
Also, if you were running like the entire town might be on your ass any minute now, courtesy of you having slowed down long enough to shoot their Dear Leader.
Pete increased his pace at the thought, forcing the others to keep up with him. He didn’t want to have to shoot any more of the townspeople. He didn’t like them, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kill them.
He just didn’t want to join them.
Jack came to a quick halt at the final building on the alley’s route, and leaned his hands against the wall, bending over to breathe heavily for a moment.
“Why are you so out of breath?” Marie asked sharply, leaning heavily on Pete—who really wished she’d stop, as his ribs were hurting him more with every breath. “Aren’t you out in the wilderness doing wilderness-like things every day? You should be in great shape.”
Jack gave her an extremely jaded look, though his lips curled up at the corners. “We are indeed doing wilderness-like things every day. But you would be surprised at how rarely that includes sprinting down the alleys of the city in the dark while potentially being chased by the people you thought were your friends about an hour ago.”
Marie tipped her head. “You thought they were your friends? They were awfully quick to lock you up and throw away the key, and they were definitely going to let Thomas shoot you if he decided he wanted to. I don’t think I’d want friends like that.”
“And I don’t think we have time to be standing around discussing whether the good citizens of Clearview are friendly or not,” Pete cut in. “Those good citizens are currently out for our heads. In case you two forgot.”
Marie jerked—as did Jack.
“Right,” Jack said. “Well, this is the place. The trucks are all inside.”
Pete looked up at the building they’d come to, and then ducked around the corner and looked down the length of it. The thing was a whole lot bigger than the barn had been, but didn’t have multiple stories. Instead, it was long and low. It was made up of storage containers, just like the rest of town, but he was willing to bet the walls had been cut out of these ones to make a very, very large…
“Is this whole thing a storage space?” he asked, surprised.
“You betcha,” Jack answered quickly. “We had a lot of things to store. Needed a big area for them. Come on.”
He slipped to the side, away from Main Street, and within moments had come to a door. When he turned the knob, the door was open.
“Of course it is,” Pete muttered. “Because no one in this town seems to consider the fact that they should actually lock their doors.”
Jack cast him a quick, shadowed look over his shoulder. “Why would we lock the doors when everyone in this town is an ally?”
“Allies that locked you up the first time you did something wrong,” Marie reminded him. “And also, allies who just had to fight off invaders. Which means not everyone in this area is an ally.” She fished in her pocket for something, and came up with a flashlight.
“Where the hell did you get that?” Pete asked.
“Lifted it from Thomas’ house,” she said quickly. “Where the hell did you get the gun you magicked into existence in the jail?”
“Lifted it from the armory while we were in there,” he answered just as quickly. “Didn’t see the need to mention it at the time.”
Marie didn’t answer, but he heard her chuckle.
He very carefully didn’t think about what that chuckle of approval did to the muscles deep inside his body. Because this was definitely not the time to start getting a crush on the woman who might be killed at any moment—or might get him killed with one of her stupid-ass ideas.
The woman in question turned the flashlight on and stuck it through the door, swinging the beam around the room, illuminating one foot at a time. Then she paused and swung the beam around again.
“Jack,” she said slowly. “There have to be something like twenty Humvees in here.”
Pete walked up to the first one, just as surprised as Marie, and laid a hand on its hood. “Not only that. These are military-issue. These aren’t the kind the rich guys used to buy to drive on the freeway. These are the real deal.”
“Course they are,” Jack chirped. “We stole them from the military convoys that got too close.”
Pete swung around and stared at him, taking in the casual demeanor and the pride in his voice. “And let me guess,” he said. “You helped.”
Jack shrugged. “Course I did. Thomas always said I was the most valuable because I was willing to take the biggest risks.”
Pete just shook his head, unsure how to even answer that. Because it was becoming quite clear to him that Thomas might have said he had the people’s best interests at heart. But he’d definitely been willing to use them for his own purposes—including putting their lives at risk when he deemed it necessary.
At that moment, though, he started to hear something. Something loud, like white noise building up. Like the ocean in the distance.
He knew that sound. It was the sound of people shouting. And it was getting closer.
“Shit,” he muttered. “They’re coming. We’ve got to move. Where are the keys?”
Jack nodded quickly. “In the office. You two stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He turned and melted into the darkness before Marie or Pete could say anything, leaving them standing by the first Hummer like they were considering buying it or something.
“Think he’ll be back?” Marie asked, her voice shaking a bit.
“He better be,” Pete answered. “Because I don’t want to think about what’ll happen to us if he sells us out now.”
He was about to say something else when they heard the sound of a scuffle coming from the direction in which Jack had gone, combined with muffled cursing and then a loud thwack. That was followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground.
Pete drew the gun up sharply in front of him, staring into the darkness and trying to figure out what the hell was going on out there. Had that been Jack hitting the ground? Who was in here with them? And were they friend or foe?
Did they have a gun? Where he and Marie about to get shot?
He pointed the gun in the direction the sounds had come from, steadying himself to take the shot, and when a body came sliding across the concrete, its feet skidding on the ground in its hurry, his finger twitched on the trigger.
“Don’t shoot!” hissed Jack. “They had a guard on the cars, but I knocked him out. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in here, though. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
His hand moved and a set of keys came flying right at Pete’s face.
“You drive,” Jack snapped. “I’m no good at it.”
Pete’s hand shot up instinctively to catch the keys right before they hit
him, and a moment later he was darting toward the truck in question, his eyes on the vehicle while he listened to the banging of many hands on the walls outside.
How the hell had the villagers known they were coming for the trucks? How had they gotten here so quickly?
Was Thomas dead?
And how the hell were they supposed to get out of this God-forsaken building? He’d only seen people-sized doorways. Was he going to have to bust through the fucking wall?
Because he’d do it without thinking twice. But he needed some warning, first.
Chapter 9
They were in the truck, the keys already in the ignition, before Marie brought up the next problem from the passenger seat, where she was busy strapping herself in.
“Is this even going to work?” she snapped. “I thought that weather event killed all the electronics. I might not be a gear head, but I know enough to know that cars usually need things like computers and electronics to run.”
Shit. In the hurry, Pete hadn’t even thought of that, but she was right. If their phones and lights didn’t work, then a car sure as hell wasn’t going to. They might have just made the wrong fucking call, and put their lives in danger doing it.
Jack just laughed, though.
“Course it’ll work. This warehouse is where we keep all the things we needed to protect. The whole thing is one of those cages.”
It took three seconds for Pete to figure out what he was talking about, and when he did, he grabbed the flashlight from Marie’s hand and turned it on, running it over the wall in front of them.
The entire thing was covered in metal.
He shone the flashlight to the left and then the right, just to make sure. But the whole wall was definitely coated in something. He couldn’t see well enough to figure out what it was, but it wasn’t what you’d expect to find inside a storage container.
“You made this entire warehouse a Faraday Cage?” he asked, shocked.