Austin’s heart kicked up a beat. He had to believe they’d find success on this, their third try. He couldn’t fail. He refused to fail, thinking of Savannah somewhere out there. He wanted to give her hope and a future she could look forward to.
“I’ll go in first,” Ennis said. “Cover me.”
Austin pulled his gun from his waistband, his eyes moving as he scanned the front of the building. Ennis pulled open the door and Austin moved behind him, ready to shoot if a threat emerged. The restaurant appeared empty, though, with only a few tables scattered about with dingy tablecloths draped over them.
Together, they moved towards the door that would likely lead to the kitchen. Austin imagined the bunker entrance would be hidden in the cooler or maybe under a prep table. Ennis pushed open the kitchen door then… and they came face to face with Zander, other members of the NWO scattered in the room beyond him. Austin cursed. Ennis didn’t move, staring at the man’s cold, dead eyes.
“Well, well, well,” Zander said with an evil grin.
Austin quickly evaluated the situation. He was still in the dining area. To his left were several tables that could provide minimal cover.
It was Harlen’s voice that cut through the silent stand-off, his deep baritone projected at Zander. “Don’t move.”
Zander laughed at him, looking straight at Austin. “You might want to tell your man you are outgunned and outmanned.”
Austin stared at him, doing his best to use telepathy to talk to Ennis. It had worked with Savannah. He hoped his brotherly bond was just as powerful.
“Why don’t we sit down and talk about what it is you want?” Austin suggested casually.
“I want you dead,” Zander replied dryly.
Austin smiled, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t think so. I think you want the information I have.”
“Oh, I want that, too, but I don’t think you’re the only one who can give it to me.”
“I have the USB,” Austin pointed out. “Or rather, I know where it is. No one else does.”
“That’s true,” Ennis replied.
“You don’t need the drive, Zander, you have me,” Wendell said, his voice cutting through loud and clear behind him.
“Ah, there’s my little buddy. You’ve done good,” Zander said with a small laugh.
The heat of the realization slammed into Austin. Zander meeting them at the computer center wasn’t a coincidence. All he had suspected had been real. Wendell was a traitor.
“You weasel,” Austin hissed even as he heard his brother cursing under his breath.
“See, Austin, I don’t need you. My buddy here has everything I need.”
“Your buddy doesn’t have what you want. I’m the only one who has that,” Austin shot back angrily.
Ennis very, very subtly moved to the side, just an inch or two. To anyone else, it looked like he was just shifting his weight, but Austin recognized it as a sign to initiate an escape.
“Let’s—” Zander started to say something, but Ennis used that moment to throw his body against Zander, giving Austin the split second he needed to draw his gun and fire at Zander.
His shot missed, but Zander and Ennis scuffling in the doorway was an effective plug to keep the soldiers lined up in the kitchen from spilling into the dining room. Ennis slammed his fist into the other man’s gut, fighting for his life in hand-to-hand combat. Austin knew there was no way they could win a true gun battle in the close quarters, and jumped to push a table towards the door.
“Ennis, back!” he ordered.
Ennis jumped backwards, leaving Zander on the ground and bloodied from Ennis’s thrashing. Before the men behind him could push through or do more than take aim, the two brothers pushed the table in front of the door, turning it so the width of the table lay across the door as shots fired into the other side. They pushed two more tables in front of it before rushing outside and away from Zander and his men.
Harlen aimed his gun at one soldier who’d apparently been sent to stand guard, but he froze instead of pulling the trigger. Austin took the shot for him, dropping the man where he stood. Sarah looked terrified, huddling against the outside restaurant wall. Wendell was nowhere to be found.
“We have to go, now!” Austin shouted.
Sarah stared at him, terror paralyzing her. He sprang forward, grabbing her arm at the same second that a flood of NWO soldiers came around the corner.
Ennis started shooting, holding them back as Sarah stumbled to her feet and Austin pulled her along until she was running beside him, and only then did he begin turning to fire at the soldiers as he ran. Harlen and Ennis were shooting at select targets, being strategic with the minimal ammunition they had. Austin ran after his brother, running more than two blocks before he stopped to look behind them. They hadn’t been followed, which was strange.
“Oh no,” he mumbled, realizing Sarah wasn’t with them.
“Where is she?” Harlen gasped, struggling to draw air after their escape.
“Where is she?” Austin screamed at Wendell, who’d for some reason joined in their fleeing the scene, having hid only long enough to escape immediate fighting.
Wendell looked wild-eyed. “He tried to shoot me,” he whined, grabbing his arm. Blood trickled down his forearm.
Austin glared at him, hating him more with each second. “Where is she?” he hissed.
“I don’t know. He shot me!”
“I don’t care!” Austin shouted, getting closer to the other man’s face and fighting the urge to shoot him now himself.
“He grabbed her. I tried to pull her with me and he shot me!” he wailed again.
“We have to go back!” Austin said, already moving towards the restaurant.
“We can’t,” Ennis said, reaching for his arm and pulling him to a stop. “We can’t go in there; the three of us are no match for them, not like this.”
Austin spun around, his eyes on Wendell as he took long strides towards him. He stopped in front of the shorter man, his chest bumping against his chin. “What did you do?” he demanded.
Wendell shook his head. “I didn’t know they’d take her. He was supposed to take me!”
“Why would he take you? You don’t have what he needs—she does!” Austin shouted, furious he’d been so stupid as to let Wendell get the upper hand.
Wendell looked scared. “I do. I have the codes.”
“What?” Ennis and Austin said at the same time.
Wendell gulped and looked at Ennis. “Sarah gave me the codes. It was supposed to be my bargaining chip. Zander was supposed to take me with him. We were going to stop everything.”
Ennis exhaled a whoosh of breath. “How long have you been working with him?”
“Not long,” Wendell whispered.
Austin faced his brother, ignoring the traitor in their midst for a moment. “He told them where we would be.”
Ennis looked like he’d be sick. “Why? Why would you do that to us? We’ve been nothing but good to you,” he said, staring at Wendell.
“I’m going to kill him,” Austin said, steel-voiced. “I’m absolutely going to kill him.”
“No!” Wendell screeched. “You can’t!”
“I can. What else have you told him?” Austin asked, grabbing Wendell’s injured arm.
Wendell whimpered in pain, trying to pull away and making Austin squeeze tighter. “I told him the plan. I told him Amanda would be in Cheyenne to launch the missiles.”
Austin cursed, and then jerked at his arm so that he screamed and his eyes went even wider. “Does he have Savannah?” he asked, his voice tight as he forced the words out.
Wendell looked from Ennis back to Austin. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He never said anything to me.”
“You’ve been talking to him?” Ennis questioned, the hurt and betrayal evident in his voice.
“He has to die,” Austin said firmly.
Ennis reached up and put a hand on Austin’s shoulder. “You can’t kill him.�
�
“Why not? He’s no good to us. I never want to see his face again!”
“You can’t kill him because you would never be able to live with yourself for killing such a pitiful man,” Ennis said.
Austin froze, and then stared at the man in front of him, hating everything he saw. The beady eyes, the pointed nose, and the man’s disgusting personality in general. He was a weasel.
“You can’t kill me. I know what Zander’s plan is,” Wendell blurted out.
Austin scoffed. “We all know what his plan is. He’s going to go after Amanda and stop her before she can launch those missiles.”
Wendell was shaking his head. “But I can help. I can pretend to feed him information. He trusts me!”
“Is that why he shot you?” Austin asked dryly.
That seemed to make the man pause. “I was in the way. I shouldn’t have been in the way.”
“You seem to be in the way everywhere you go,” Austin snapped.
“This isn’t helping,” Harlen said, finally getting over his shock and stepping in.
“He’s right,” Ennis agreed. “We can use Wendell to feed Zander misinformation.”
Austin only looked at his brother, wondering if he’d been hit in the head. “He’s playing you—us. He’ll say anything to stay alive. He’ll tell Zander what we’re doing and betray us, again. You can’t trust him, Ennis. He’s a rat, a stinking rat that needs to be put down.”
“Wendell, you know Austin will kill you, and slowly, right?” Ennis demanded, looking at the man cringing before them.
Wendell nodded. “I swear, I won’t betray you again. I was afraid he’d kill me. He found me in the woods and threatened to kill all of you if I didn’t tell him what we were doing,” he squeaked out.
Austin knew he was lying. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s all we have, Austin. Do you want to get Sarah back? Do you want to do what we set out to do?” Ennis asked him.
“I know where the bunker is,” Wendell blurted out. “It’s not at the restaurant.”
That got Austin’s attention. “Where is it?”
Wendell seemed bolstered by Austin’s interest in his information. “I’ll show you. That means you need me alive.”
“I could just beat you until you told me,” Austin replied easily.
“Austin,” Ennis warned.
“Guys, we need to get out of here in case they come after us,” Harlen said.
Austin looked down the road in the direction they’d last seen the soldiers. “They don’t want us. They got Sarah and they think they got everything they needed,” he sneered, looking back at Wendell. “They didn’t, Wendell. They didn’t get it all.”
Austin fought the urge to touch the USB in his front pocket, carefully wrapped inside a sealed bag and stuffed inside the remaining protein bar he’d been carrying for over a week. Sarah had been suspicious early on, afraid something like this could happen. Thinking of it, he brushed against the messenger tucked in his other pocket. Over and over, he’d been tempted to turn it on to message Amanda, but he knew she wouldn’t get any messages until she turned hers on. They needed a plan to stop Zander before he got to Amanda.
Wendell was not to be trusted, though. He and Sarah had talked about that fact several times. He had to believe Sarah had given Wendell false codes.
“Harlen, watch him; keep your gun on him. If he moves or blinks, shoot him,” Ennis ordered before grabbing Austin’s arm and pulling him away.
They crossed the street, moving into the tall grass. Austin kept his eyes on Wendell the whole time, not trusting him to not try to run or overpower Harlen. Harlen was a big guy, but he was also inherently kind and would struggle to shoot a man at point blank range.
“Austin, you can’t kill him. I know you want to—and trust me, I want to, as well—I can’t believe he did this to us, but we aren’t like that. We don’t kill people unless we have to. It will weigh on you for the rest of your days,” Ennis said.
“He betrayed us. He sold us out. He sold out Amanda. Zander probably has a contingent of men already after her. They’ll kill her, Ennis,” Austin growled, feeling his fists clenching involuntarily at the thought of it.
“Give her some credit. She’s proven herself to be a worthy opponent. She isn’t going to go down without a fight, and we all know how important this mission is,” Ennis said, forcing him to look into his eyes.
Austin faced his older brother with the weight of everything that had happened making him rethink everything. “Is it worth it?” he demanded suddenly. “Is the mission really worth all of us dying? I should have gone after Savannah. I left my daughter with the idea I was going to save the world. I was arrogant, and now it might all be for nothing. I might die. You might die. All of us will probably die by Zander’s hand and our mission will have been a waste of time and life. We could have found somewhere to lie low. We could have found that island you talked about. We could have run away and left all of this to someone else to fix. Isn’t that what our military and our government are supposed to do? Why are we doing this? We both know we don’t have a shot at actually succeeding,” he said, his words falling heavy on his heart.
Ennis grinned darkly at him, and then shook his head. “Austin, you are arrogant. You always have been, but that’s what makes you who you are. You have never given up. You have never listened to people when they told you it was too dangerous, or you shouldn’t go into a war zone to get a story. You did it because you were compelled to and that’s what you are doing now. You don’t quit. This mission is absolutely a Hail Mary, yeah, but there’s the slightest chance we can pull it off. You’ve convinced me of that, and you can’t give up on this now. You can’t. If you do, you will never be able to live with yourself,” Ennis stated simply. “We’ve got a chance to make all of this worth the fight. We need to take it.”
Austin let the words sink in. He knew his brother was right. If he was forced to retreat to some hideaway and live out the rest of his days, he’d never be able to rest easy. He would always think back to the moment he’d quit. He couldn’t walk away—not yet, at least. It wasn’t in his DNA.
“What do we do?” he asked his big brother. “We both know Wendell disappeared while we were running, and then he was with us again. What if he was talking to Zander or his men during that time? What if he’s still working with them, on something new?”
“It doesn’t matter, Austin. Our plan is the same, and we’re not going to let Wendell bring it down. We get to that computer center and give Amanda the best shot at success of shooting down those satellites,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips.
“You make it sound so easy,” Austin muttered.
“I said you couldn’t kill Wendell, but I didn’t say you couldn’t knock him around a bit until he gives you the location of the bunker the NWO is hiding out in,” he said with a wink.
Austin nodded, staring at Wendell across the road. He loathed the man, but suspected he did know more than he’d already told them, regardless of when he’d learned it. Just looking at him turned his stomach. “I think we should check the restaurant first. Wendell could be trying to throw us off.”
“I agree. Let’s go. I don’t want Sarah in his hands for long. We saw what his men did to Nash.”
Austin felt a pang of guilt, followed by grief at the reminder of Nash’s death. He’d dragged Sarah into this mess kicking and screaming, and he was going to do whatever he needed to get her out of it.
30
It was early the morning after Amanda and her crew had delivered the antibiotics to Robin. She estimated they were about a day behind schedule, which worried her. They’d been too exhausted to travel anymore last night. She felt too exhausted to travel now, but they had to move. They had to make up for lost time. The thought of running part of the way did not appeal to her. In fact, she realized it could be dangerous to do so in the high heat. She was only grateful the humidity was relatively nonexistent—that at least offered some
small consolation to her tired body.
They had crashed out in one of the empty houses in the small town. Hank had been kind enough to offer to stay up with the sick people all night while Robin had gotten a few hours of sleep. Now, Amanda got up and quietly walked out of the house. The fresh morning air helped to waken her senses. She couldn’t believe the difference between the small town and the city when it came to cleanliness. A little care went a long way. There were too many people in the city, and too many of them didn’t care about what they were doing. It wouldn’t be long before disease ran rampant through all cities.
She took care of personal business before going back into the house to rouse her people. Her wake-up calls weren’t met with excitement, but nobody begged for more sleep. All of them knew how important their journey was, so it only took ten minutes before everyone was up and ready to move.
“We’ve got to move fast, guys,” Amanda said as they all waved goodbye to Hank and Robin on their way out of town.
“How fast?” Tonya mumbled.
“I think we might need to actually jog intermittently. We’re behind schedule.”
She set the pace, her arms swinging as she moved over the highway, envisioning herself eating up the miles. The group kept up with her, though there was a lot of heavy breathing as they walked.
“Truck!” Ezra shouted, moving off the roadway.
Amanda followed him, her eyes moving as she looked up and down the highway in search of what he’d seen. “Where?” she hissed.
Everyone else already lay stretched out on the ground. “Up ahead. It’s sitting off to the side of the road a little.”
Amanda popped her head back up, identifying the truck that looked like so many of the other vehicles they’d passed along the way. “What about it? Did you see someone?”
“No, but it’s off the road, like it was going around the stalled cars. That means it came after the other vehicles stalled,” he explained.
She thought back to the Hummer she and Austin had happened upon, and wondered if it was the same situation. There could be more soldiers lying in wait.
Small Town EMP (Book 3): Survive The Conflict Page 22