by Kyla Stone
“From what we’ve seen, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket,” Finn said. “Actually, I think it skipped the handbasket altogether.”
“Everyone needs protection,” Willow said. “What about the gangs?”
“We have protection.” Gonzales spoke in a clipped tone as he picked up his pace. “We’re a peaceful people. Here, we believe violence against man only begets violence. Other than a trip alarm to warn us of the occasional stray dog or various other wildlife, which we dispatch with bats or a bullet if required, we don’t need anything else.
“Besides, we’re naturally isolated,” Gonzales continued, a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “We’re back in the woods, with only the single dirt road entrance. Until the attacks, we’d buy and sell supplies with the town up the road. There’s seldom a need to travel to Macon or Atlanta. We aren’t bothered much. Most of the people we see now are the ones our scouts find and choose to invite here. Now, if there are no other questions, I’ll take you back to your quarters to wash up.”
Jericho allowed Gonzales to pull ahead of them. “I don’t like this. No defenses? No security perimeter or night watch? That doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you expect?” Horne sniffed. “These people choose to live like the last century never happened.”
“They said they’re a peaceful people,” Nadira said, glancing up at Gonzales. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I agree with Nadira,” Micah said. “Maybe we should take them at face value.”
Jericho’s brow creased. “We’ll be gone by tomorrow night, at any rate. Until then, be ready for anything.”
23
Gabriel
“Take me with you,” Gabriel said the next morning at dawn. He watched Jericho shoulder his rifle, then check his gun holster and the knife sheaths he’d hidden on various parts of his body.
Jericho insisted Gabriel sleep cuffed and bound within Jericho’s quarters. It was an uncomfortable night. Gabriel rubbed the aching muscles of his shoulders and lower back. “You know you can’t leave me,” he said again.
Jericho grimaced.
“This was your idea.” Though he hadn’t protested when Jericho told him to hide his identity. He’d hoped a day of freedom might quell that edgy, caught-in-a-trap feeling of captivity he despised—he was wrong.
Jericho glowered at him. “An idea I’m regretting.”
“It’s too late now. You can’t leave me unsupervised and free to wreak havoc while you’re gone.”
Jericho sprang in front of him. Gabriel hadn’t even seen him move. Jericho seized the front of his shirt and jerked him to his toes. “If you so much as sneeze the wrong way, so help me—”
Gabriel longed to shove him away, but he resisted. The derision seething in Jericho’s gaze matched his own. Don’t turn your back, he wanted to snarl. He hated being a prisoner. He hated the dread and self-loathing eating away at him. He’d been tempted to run more times than he could count yesterday. But deep inside, he knew he couldn’t. Not yet.
He still needed to say goodbye to his brother. The conversation they had yesterday disintegrated into frustration and anger. He needed to find a way to show Micah everything he couldn’t seem to say out loud. I love you. I’m sorry. Always.
He couldn’t leave while Amelia lay dying. Something—some last remaining thread connecting him to his old life, to his old feelings—wouldn’t let him. He could wait until she—until she died. It wouldn’t be long. He blinked at the pang that shot through him. “Scout’s honor.”
Jericho released him. “No weapons.”
Gabriel shrugged and followed him out the door. The sky faded to midnight blue, still salted with stars, the first fingers of dawn beginning to color the horizon. Last night, Jericho ordered Horne and Finn to stay back and keep an eye on things—like either of them would be any help if things went sideways.
Horne made a grand show of protesting, puffing out his chest and boasting of his skills, but he knew the truth as well as Gabriel. The real danger waited on the road. And Horne had no interest in real danger. He was like every other blathering, puffed-up elite—a coward at his core.
“Let’s roll,” Jericho said.
Micah, Silas, and Elise waited by the trucks, along with two Sweet Creek men: Gonzales and Russell, the white guy with the backward baseball cap and the sharp, shifty eyes. His gaze lingered on Gabriel, sizing him up. Gabriel disliked him instantly. He knew the type—a man familiar with cunning and violence.
“Don’t know why we needed to get up at the butt-crack of dawn,” Silas grumbled. He glanced at Gabriel. “Nice face. You look like a like a piñata who lost a fight with a bat.”
He shrugged, refusing to let Silas get under his skin. “I’m clumsy.”
Silas smiled. Like Declan Black, his smiles never reached his eyes. They were just stretched skin and a vicious flash of teeth. “You ever have a day where you want to set someone’s face on fire and put it out with a fork?”
“What’s your deal, man? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?”
Silas’s smile widened, empty of any emotion but contempt. “The question is, how many times?”
“You’re insane.”
Silas slouched, shoving his fists into his pockets. “That’s a matter of perspective.”
“Enough.” Elise shot Silas a warning glance. “Today of all days, please.”
Silas leaned in close as he sauntered by, purposefully bumping Gabriel’s shoulder. “What doesn’t kill you, disappoints me.”
He gritted his teeth, reining in his anger. Silas just wanted to get a rise out of him. He wouldn’t give him the pleasure.
Gabriel climbed into the backseat of the cab with Jericho and Elise. Russell and Gonzales took the front, while Micah and Silas sat in the open truck bed on bales of hay. Gabriel’s fingers twitched. He longed for a weapon. As long as Jericho was around, he wasn’t likely to get his hands on one.
The first hour passed uneventfully. The truck bounced along an overgrown access road with weeds as high as Gabriel’s knees. Twice, they stopped and moved fallen branches.
They passed a few abandoned cars, but the truck maneuvered around them easily. The group lowered their masks and ate granola bars in silence before pulling them up over their mouths and noses again.
A few deer bounded across the road, chased by a sleek, distinctly feline shadow. “Was that—?” Gabriel gaped, peering at the spot where the creature vanished in the underbrush.
“If you were about to say a panther, you would be correct.” Russell snapped his gum. “The one upside of the apocalypse: the greatest hunting of your life.”
Gabriel wouldn’t want to stumble across an enormous cat like that alone in the woods. “Are they all modded?”
Russell shrugged. “Most.”
Fifteen minutes later, they turned onto a paved road. The vehicle carcasses were more numerous here. Gonzales drove off the shoulder several times to avoid hitting them. He slammed his brakes and Gabriel jolted against his seat belt.
“Dog pack.” Gonzales laid on the horn. Six dogs—most of them strays, one that looked like a collie, another a shaggy mutt but wearing a blue collar—slunk sullenly across the road. The collie paused in front of the truck and glared up at them, its ears laid flat, blood-foamed jowls twisted in a snarl.
Gonzales slammed the horn again. The dog moved unhurriedly, pausing on the shoulder to watch as they edged past. The hairs on Gabriel’s neck prickled. The same disquieting unease he felt in the warehouse rustled beneath his skin. “They have no fear.”
Micah poked his head through the opened back window. “How long before the virus kills them?”
“It doesn’t,” Russell said. “They’re some kind of reservoir host. The virus don’t kill ‘em; it only makes them mean. And deadly. We thought at first it was the starvation making ‘em aggressive. But it’s something more. It’s like rabies—the disease wants to spread itself, so it does somethin’ to the dogs’ brains, makes �
��em want to bite. Don’t know what, but it ain’t pretty.”
Gabriel repressed a shudder. Yet another manifestation of a world gone mad. He turned his gaze back to the road.
Soon they were passing stores and restaurants, all vacant, most with smashed windows. He thought of the infected dogs in the warehouse turning on their own. This is what Declan Black and his corrupt government minions had wrought. They’d turned on their own. The destruction of billions, of entire countries, the age-old story of a power grab gone terribly awry.
So much devastation, suffering, and death. The New Patriots tried to stop all this. The methods of their leaders were brutally violent, but the cause Gabriel believed in would’ve fought this with a righteous fury.
Were there any New Patriot factions left? Were they still fighting? Was there a government left to fight?
From where Gabriel stood, there didn’t seem to be much of anything left to fight for.
Russell checked the GPS on his SmartFlex and made another left. A car moved far down the road ahead of them. It likely carried an ill passenger as desperate as they were to find a treatment, to reach salvation.
“There.” Gabriel pointed as they crested a hill. In the distance, the FEMA regional medical facility rose above the horizon. It was an enormous white tent surrounded by a small city’s worth of smaller tents.
Gonzales pulled the truck behind an abandoned SUV parked half-off the road and handed Jericho, Elise, and Gabriel a pair of binoculars. “Take a look before we get too close.”
Gabriel stepped out of the truck and held the binoculars to his eyes. From their vantage point, he could see several armed military trucks beyond a checkpoint zooming with dozens of drones and cop-bots, along with several soldiers dressed in hazmat suits overlaid with combat gear. Beyond the guards, a blue crackling plasma fence offered an additional line of defense.
That didn’t make sense. This was a medical center, not a government facility or military base. Why so much security?
Three vehicles waited to enter the checkpoint. A man and a child of six or seven stood before the first vehicle. Even from a distance, he could see the girl was ill. She leaned limply against her father, her head down. A couple of soldiers spoke to them, swiping details into a holotablet.
Gabriel lowered the binoculars. “Something isn’t right.”
Jericho frowned in agreement.
“He’s right,” Micah said from the truck bed. “Why does it look like they’re trying to keep people out?”
“They aren’t.” The realization struck him like a punch to the gut. “They’re keeping people in.”
Elise shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would the government—?”
“You should know better than anyone what a government is capable of,” Gabriel snapped before he could help himself.
Elise’s face paled. She looked at him, her eyes beseeching, silently begging him. Silas gave him a baleful glare.
He’d kept their dirty little secret. But not for that woman or her son’s sake. And not for Declan Black, a traitor to his own country, his own people. For Amelia. For the terrible things he’d done to her that he could never take back.
He gave the slightest nod before turning away, his jaw clenched. He felt no pity for Elise. She was Declan Black’s wife, the epitome of the corrupt elite. Still, she was suffering. She was Amelia’s mother. For that, he would not make things worse for her.
“We didn’t care much for the thought of our loved ones sick and dyin’, locked up inside that place without even a hand to hold,” Russell said. “After they wouldn’t let Miss Harmony back in to see her grandson, we knew it wasn’t the place for us. Thought you should decide for yourselves before the choice gets taken from you.”
A shout echoed from the checkpoint. Gabriel raised the binoculars. One of the soldiers scanned the wrists of the man and girl. The second soldier stared at some sort of handheld scanner.
The first soldier gestured for the man to back up. The second soldier tugged the girl’s arm, leading her past the checkpoint. She swayed, almost collapsing, and cried out. The man reached for her, but the soldier blocked him.
The man yelled again, trying to get to the girl. The second soldier hurried her toward the enormous white tents of the FEMA regional medical center.
Sensing the elevated distress signals in the man’s voice and actions, four drones zoomed over, activating their pulse lasers and blaring a warning he couldn’t make out. The man stumbled back and fell to his knees, lifting his arms as if begging.
A great invisible hand seized Gabriel’s chest and squeezed. Rage filled him. How dare they separate a parent from their child? How could they be so heartless? What was this place? If he had a weapon, or even better, a tank, he’d storm in and shoot every soldier within sight. “That’s why they have heightened security.”
“Can’t we do anything?” Micah said.
Gabriel recognized the pain in his voice. Where Gabriel felt fury at this injustice, he knew his brother’s soft heart was bleeding like a wound. He resisted the urge to go to him like he would when they were kids. That time was long past. Now thoughts of his love for Micah brought only piercing pain—and a tidal wave of guilt.
Gabriel shook his head. “We can’t do a damn thing. Not unless you have a suicide wish,” he said between gritted teeth. Which, ironically, he did.
“Let’s go.” Silas touched the holster at his side. Gabriel noticed a tremor in his fingers. Since they arrived, Silas had gone from sardonic and taunting to silent and sullen.
Gonzales tapped his unlit cigarette against his chin. “One of those drones could detect our body heat.”
Jericho turned toward the truck. “We’re out of their sensor range, but we should still bug out.”
Elise seized his arm. “We can’t leave. What about Amelia?”
“You saw the same thing we did.” A part of him wanted to soften the blow, but there was no point. All these pampered elites needed to recognize the world for what it was—a cold, brutal place devoid of justice. There was nothing fair in this world. There hadn’t been for a long, long time. “You want to leave her there? You might never see her again.”
Her expression contorted. “What about the treatment?”
“Mother,” Silas said sharply. “There’s no way in hell we’re leaving her here. You know that.”
“But she’ll die otherwise.” Micah’s bronze skin went ashen.
Gabriel cleared his throat. A thought niggled in the back of his brain, one that wouldn’t go away. But he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. “There’s something else about this place, something that’s bothering me.”
“It gives me the heebie jeebies,” Russell said.
“More than that.” Gabriel gazed down the road at the carcass of a red sports car. All the doors were opened. The seats were slashed, the stuffing spilled onto the floorboards. “If we’re gonna even consider leaving one of our own here, we need to know exactly what this place is.”
Elise turned her pleading gaze on Jericho. “Please.”
Jericho cracked his knuckles. “All right. We’ll do some recon. But no promises.”
24
Willow
Willow blinked back the tears as she hugged her brother for the first time in nine days. It felt strange through the bulky personal protection suit she wore—like her whole body from head to toe was encased in a silicone glove—but she would take whatever she could get.
Benjie squeezed her back fiercely.
Her heart swelled. “Oof! Don’t break my ribs. You’re getting too strong for your own good.” She pulled away so she could get a good look at his face.
“Sorry, Lo Lo.” He gave her a goofy, lopsided grin that made her heart ache. His eyes were bright. His light brown skin wasn’t discolored or burning with fever. He sat cross-legged on his bed, alert and wide-awake, his worn playing cards in his hands, his hair a tousled mess as usual. He seemed okay.
They were in a white tent set
up inside a small room, with an airlock in front of the door and a HEPA air filtration system. The walls of the tent seemed to be breathing, distending and deflating as the stale air was sucked out and fresh air filtered inside.
Inside the tent, plastic covered the floor. There was the bed Benjie sat on, a sink with several biohazard bins beneath it, a small nightstand, and a single blue plastic chair.
“Have you eaten?” Willow asked Benjie. “Do you want me to bring you something? They have real butter here. Can you believe it?” Earlier in the morning, she actually helped to churn that butter with the little girl, Gracie, and Anna, the woman who ran the kitchen. She’d mucked out some stalls and fed the chickens, then spent the afternoon training by herself. Silas and Jericho were still scouting that FEMA place.
A pang of guilt stabbed through her at the thought of Silas. He’d been quieter ever since Amelia got sick, but even more hostile, if that was possible. He was an asshole, but he cared for his sister. Amelia was unconscious with a fever of one hundred and six in the next room, while Benjie was bright-eyed and healthy.
She pushed the thoughts away. She’d lost too much already. She refused to feel guilty because her brother wasn’t sick yet. She’d trade anyone’s life in a heartbeat for Benjie’s.
Benjie pointed at the empty plate on the nightstand next to the bed. “Miss Harmony brought me eggs and cinnamon bread. I ate three whole pieces, and she said I could have more when she comes back!”
Willow raised her eyebrows. “Harmony visited you?”
“Yep.” He thrust a handful of face-down cards at her. “Pick a card, any card. Mister Finn couldn’t even figure it out, and he’s super smart.”
“Eh, he’s marginally intelligent,” she said, unable to stop smiling.
Benjie made a face at her. “I bet you five dollars you’ll pick the ace.”
“You don’t even have five dollars.”
He shrugged. “Finn will lend me some, I bet.”