I left the room and walked down the hall, my ears ringing. The hallway was spinning ever so slowly, and I pushed past the dozen or so guards and made my way to the doors that led outside. I thought I could hear Mary calling my name, but I kept going. The image of the guard was stuck in my mind, and the horrible way the hybrids used and discarded him made me despise their cause all the more. We had to stop them.
_____________
It was a couple of hours later that we were in the surveillance room, combing through anything with Leslie, Terrance, or Clendening from the past week. The AC was cranked as the hot sun blasted the brick building, creating an oven simulation, and we sat in the cool room hoping to find a sign of where they might have gone. But nothing they’d done was out of place, other than that one thing we’d already seen. Clendening’s room had brought up nothing of use, either.
Dalhousie had called Mary, and we filled her in. She asked them to have Skip and his team continue to look for leads while they left, and met up at the secret facility. I wasn’t sure how they expected it to actually be secret with a massive transport vessel sitting in the desert, but it wasn’t any of my business.
“Stop that one again, the screen second from the bottom,” Mary said to Louise, who promptly zoomed in and paused the other screens.
“It’s on a loop! Where is that?” Mary asked.
“That’s the loading dock. Where we get food and supplies delivered,” she responded. “I think you’re right about the loop. They did a good job, because the clock on the feed is still going, but there’s a clock on the wall.” She zoomed more, and we could see the second hand smoothly ticking by. After thirty seconds, it was back on the twelve and heading for the one.
“Get guards to the loading dock! We don’t know what time they actually left. That loop could be from any feed they hacked into. Maybe they couldn’t get out.” Skip rushed out of the room, and we followed him. I was eager to find them and get back to Magnus and Nat, and I missed Carey at that moment.
Once again, we were heading across the grounds, and there were no hybrids in sight. Skip had ordered them all to their rooms for the time being. If Leslie and Terrance were still there, they could be pretending to be someone else, and it wouldn’t be too hard, since they looked like a hundred other people.
The sun beat down on us from its high perch in the middle of the sky, and I could feel the sweat already soaking through the lower back of my shirt. The fact that I was nervous and excited that we might find the two outlaws didn’t help the perspiration.
The warehouse on the edge of the grounds wasn’t huge but was large enough to accept multiple pallets a day and store anything that came in for a while. I imagined trucks backing up before the semester started, unloading skids of textbooks newly revised for that year, and the smell of paper and forklift exhaust sailing through the air.
We entered the main doors, using keys from Skip’s belt. The other guards were standing there waiting for his word. As soon as the doors pushed open, they quietly ran in along the large room’s walls, guns raised, looking for the threats. Mary raised hers and started in, and I set my arm on hers, shaking my head. Instead, I waved her to follow me, and we hugged the wall of the building toward the fence. I wanted to see what was on the other side there.
The fence was chain-link there, about twelve feet tall, topped with that dangerous-looking wire you always see around prisons. No one was getting in or out with that stuff on the top of the fence. I looked to the left. There were multiple unlabeled white trucks, two backed up to loading docks, and one dock was open, with no truck in front of it.
We went back to the entrance. Skip was standing at the open loading dock, his hands sitting on top of his head in an exasperated gesture. “How the hell did we let this happen? Clendening didn’t have the keys to get in here.” He stared out the door, and we walked up to the tense man.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, Skip, but I think someone else here must have been in on it. Unless your dead guard stole the keys, or Terrance and Leslie did,” I said.
“Clendening never seemed smart enough to arrange something like this, but obviously I’ve been wrong before. Like when I thought no human would betray us all by catering to these damned hybrids.” He walked to the office area, and we followed him, Mae staying back after his last comment was dipped in venom.
Gun raised, Mary stepped in front of us and tested the handle. It was unlocked. Wait, no, it was broken. She didn’t even have to turn it. She pushed it instead, and it stopped short of opening. I saw her give it a heave; something pushed back, and the door closed again.
“What the hell is that? Get the lights,” Skip said.
He reached his arm into the dark room and turned them on. The door had a small glass window and he peered through it, turned to us, and vomited right at our feet, Mary and I both jumping back to avoid getting splashed. When he ducked, I could see what he’d seen: the bloated face of a hanged woman, swinging softly in the doorway.
The guards pushed past us, and soon she was cut down. It was evident she’d been hanged alive, as we saw the claw marks and boot scuffs on the inside of the door. The sadistic duo had really done a number here.
“Why put on all of this show for us? To make us mad? To throw us off?” Mary asked, her voice quiet.
Mae stepped toward us and said through pale lips, “To make you hate the hybrids. They hate us for giving in and not following through with killing everyone. They want to turn you against all of us and won’t stop until whatever they want is done.”
I hesitated, not sure I wanted to hear the answer to my question. “And what is it they want done?”
“What we were brainwashed to do: end humans,” she said. For a moment, I forgot she was our friend, the words came out so coldly.
My phone rang, and it was General Heart. I filled him in on what had transpired, and he said a helicopter was coming to bring us to the secret base. Skip sent out an APB on the missing truck, and said they had a GPS unit in it, but it appeared the password for the tracking app had been changed. They were bringing in an IT guru, former CIA, who said it wouldn’t be a problem to hack into.
The guards continued to search the whole campus for any signs of them, or more bodies, but came up empty. Leslie and Terrance were gone, and as the copter came down in the field, the sun was going down in the distance. I couldn’t help but feel we were leaving the camp in far worse shape than we had arrived in.
Skip approached us, bags heavy under his bloodshot eyes. “Catch those bastards. Catch them and make them pay,” was all he said before turning and walking away.
I’d be telling Dalhousie she might want to replace Skip as the man in charge of the camp. I imagined life for the hybrids would get worse before it got better, especially with Skip in charge.
Mae followed us in. For the first time, I noticed she had an extra bag with her. I made a mental note to ask her about that later, when things were less tense.
We left at dusk, with more questions than we’d had when we arrived.
EIGHT
“Dean, wake up,” Mary said through the headset, lightly nudging me with her hand.
If I couldn’t hear the whirring of the helicopter, I might have forgotten where I was. My head throbbed as I looked around the dim back seat; the soft lights of the pilot’s dash were the only source of ambiance, and I wanted to close my eyes and go back to my dreamless slumber.
“Dean, we’re landing for a refuel. Let’s get something to eat. The pilot said he would be a while, and that the food was good at the station. If my memory serves me right, I’ve been to this army base before. It’s in southwest Kentucky,” Mary said. “It was top secret, but I’m guessing that doesn’t matter anymore.”
At the thought of food, my stomach growled and wouldn’t stop.
It was close to one AM when we landed and were ushered to the base’s kitchen. It was quiet there, few people were out, probably all sleeping for an early rise, but I was surprised to see
the lights to the kitchen still on.
Mae hadn’t spoken since we’d left Long Island, and I was worried about her for more than one reason. I knew it was hard on her to think about what she was, feeling out of place among the humans when the rest of her kind were caged up like animals, set to menial tasks to keep their bodies occupied. Then the fact that two of them had escaped now, setting up assassinations and terrorist threats out in the real world. It was enough to drive me mad, so it could only be eating her up.
“Mae,” I said, holding back as Mary followed a private, sent to get us fed, through the kitchen doors. “I want you to know we’re here for you, and together we’ll find these two. Then we can rebuild the foundation of a long-term partnership between all of you and us.” I meant it, but she almost rolled her eyes as I said the words.
“Dean, do you really think it’s going to be that easy? Even if we do find them, which I doubt we will, the stigma was already against us. We were never going to be left to roam free amongst you. They only let me walk around because they can trust you two, and Dalhousie knows I’m important to you and Mary. Otherwise, I’d be in that fenced POW camp just like the rest of them. I’m here to keep you on their side, nothing more.”
Her words stung, and hard. I stood there outside, with nothing but a small lantern fixture on the wall by the door giving Mae a stern, shadow-covered face. Moths flitted around the light, casting even stranger shapes over her.
“I hope you’re wrong about that, but if you aren’t, we’re still here for you no matter what. You have my word.” It was all I could say, and she walked past me, eyes downcast, and entered the building. She would get better; it was just too soon.
The smells of camp rushed back to me, and that was all I could equate it to, since I’d never been in the military. The mixed scents of many different foods floated along the air, throughout the mess hall, and from the cook’s kitchen in the back. We walked down the center of the large room, tables and chairs lining the hall, all ready for the morning breakfasts.
The kitchen was immaculate, and Mary was chatting with the private. An alert cook smiled at us as we entered, whisking away in a stainless-steel bowl.
“Omelettes? I make them better than anyone here, and since I’m prepping for the morning, it’s what’s on the menu,” he said with a slight southern drawl.
“Sounds perfect to me,” I said, sitting down at the stools lined up before a metal table, which was covered in flour and bowls.
The smell of fresh brewing coffee wafted over and made me all the hungrier. I knew Mae had a newfound love of the roasted beans, so I got up and gathered a bunch of cups, asking the cook if I could help myself. He showed me where everything was, and soon we all sat with steaming cups of the good stuff in front of us.
Soon we were eating what might have been one of the best omelettes of my life. Mae was almost smiling at the private’s stories about growing up as a military brat, and Mary was on her third cup of java. For a moment, it felt like life was real and normal, and then my phone rang.
A New York number came up, and I slid the bar, answering it.
“Dean, we have some news.” Skip’s voice called through the phone’s speaker.
I muted it. “Guys, Skip’s on the phone. I’m going to speaker him.”
“The IT guy from the CIA has hacked in, and we now have a GPS reading on the hybrids. We have them halfway between Lexington and Nashville right now.” His voice carried through the kitchen, and I turned the volume down, not wanting the whole base to hear.
“That’s only an hour or so south of us. Maybe we can catch up to them,” Mary said, pushing herself off the stool. She looked so beautiful, hair tight in a ponytail, eyes alert. “Private Sama, can you point us to our transportation?”
_____________
The clock on the dash read four AM as we raced down the 9002 toward I-65 south, which would lead us directly to Music City USA. I drove as Mary kept track on her borrowed tablet of Leslie and Terrance in their stolen delivery truck. Skip told us their models had a built-in governor, which wouldn’t allow the vehicles to go over sixty-five miles an hour. It was a safety feature they’d needed for insurance before the Event, apparently, and it was one we were thankful for. With those limitations, we could catch them shortly after they hit the city.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t alert the local authorities?” I asked, not sure we were equipped to take these dangerous hybrids down even if we did catch up to them.
“Dalhousie wants this under the radar. We can’t afford to have the link to the hybrids revealed, or else it will be pandemonium… and unfair to the rest of them.” Mary looked back at Mae, who was sitting in the back seat, eyes closed.
“Just where do you think they’re going? What’s in Nashville?” I asked.
Mary shrugged. “Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Maybe it’s just a city on their path to somewhere else.”
I thought about this, and then wondered at the convenience of them being on the same path as we were flying in the helicopter. Did they know where we were going? Were they trying to be obvious? Maybe they weren’t even in the truck but had swapped it out with a waiting vehicle.
“Where do you think that secret base is? It looked like desert, so if it’s in the States, I have to guess New Mexico or Arizona, which would put us on a straight line from New York to here, then to one of those states,” I said. “I wish they would just tell us, but I suppose that’s a risk if someone captures us.” I pictured the two dead bodies we’d just crossed paths with the day before and didn’t want to be on the receiving end of the two we were chasing.
“That’s the deal. Too many loose threads. I tried to text Nat but got nothing back. I’m guessing they have a block on the whole area, which I don’t blame them for,” Mae offered, finally talking. It was good to hear her voice without sadness laced through it. I smiled at her from the rear-view mirror, not sure if she could see it or not from where she was sitting.
“How much farther? I could use a coffee and a pit stop,” I said.
“We’re an hour out of Nashville but closing in on them. I’d say we catch them twenty miles before city limits, but we have time to stop really quickly, because I imagine we aren’t going to ram them off the road if we do find them.” Mary fidgeted with the tablet, zooming in on their location.
“They have to sleep just like us, so they might be taking turns, but if they’re heading to a big city like Nashville, I’d say they’re meeting someone,” Mae said from the backseat.
The dash lights dimly glowed against my face, and I remembered driving a Jeep on our journey a year ago. It had been a lot different, but somehow the tension and the adrenaline were now familiar to me; my days of counting beans for people’s small businesses in upstate New York felt like a lifetime ago.
We pulled over at a truck stop outside of a small town named Portland. It always struck me as amusing how we loved to recycle our town and city names, but then again, how many people in the world were named Dean? Or Mary? I shrugged it off and noticed the gas station lights weren’t on. We had enough fuel to get us to Nashville, but since we’d stopped, I wanted to take advantage of the lost time.
“Dean, I think the pumps are still on,” Mary called.
Turned out they hadn’t been turned off, and we could use our credit cards to pay for the gas. It was more than I expected from an old truck stop, but we were close to Nashville, and I imagined a lot of trucks came that way, judging by the volume of them sitting in the lot across the street. Most of them probably had sleeping truck drivers in them at that moment, and my eyes felt weary as I thought about it.
The lights came on in the attached diner, and the ladies went inside to use the restrooms and beg for some coffee to go. At that moment, I could hardly think of anything other than coffee.
My cell phone vibrated in my left front pocket and I pulled it out, wondering if Magnus had broken free and found service. The number said UNKNOWN, but there was a text message. Don’t trust h
er, was all it said. Don’t trust who? And who the hell was sending me a text an hour before the sun came up?
Care to elaborate? I sent back. By the time the ladies came back with cups of coffee, there still hadn’t been a reply. Mary was almost running to me, passing me a cup after nearly spilling it.
“I’ll never understand why some places don’t have those little cardboard slips to put around their cups. Seems like almost everyone buying one of these would prefer to not be burned.” She frowned at me, softening when she must have seen my off expression. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied and hated myself for it. I just needed to consider the obscure message before I said anything aloud about it. “Bathrooms out back?”
“Just inside to the left. The nice lady said we could use them even though they aren’t open for another thirty minutes,” Mary said, still giving me a sideways glace.
As I walked, the phone vibrated again, and I was anxious to see what the mysterious “helpful” stranger who was sending me cryptic five AM messages had to say. Once inside the doors, I reached for the phone, but stopped short as I saw the middle-aged woman waving at me. The restaurant had that classic Middle America feel to it, and I loved the way the booths lined the walls, and the four-seaters were huddled around the middle of it all. I longed to go sit at the barstools like my father and I used to do when we’d head into town to get something for the farm.
It started off as a benefit to helping my dad do errands and fix something, or do yard work after, but as I got older, we just started to make it our tradition. My mother would often be invited, but she would just shoo us away, knowing it was a special bond between father and son. That, to her, was priceless.
The Survivors Box Set Page 28