Since everyone was still recovering, he figured they would have to stay here for the night. According to the map, the road to the bunker would return them close to the territory those crazies they’d just spent hours getting away from controlled. Even though he’d left them hip deep in raptors, it would probably be best to be fully rested before attempting to get past.
Their final destination was a small trail leading off the main highway, or so Cory had indicated on the map. The trail wasn’t marked, nor were there any official indications of it, so Jesse wondered what would happen if they got there and it didn’t exist at all, or it was blocked. Still, a promise was a promise, even though he had his doubts about the whole story.
As he continued to watch Cory, he wondered if he should do something for the guy. Cory was still hunched over, groaning between heaves, but producing little for all his effort. Jesse considered helping him back to the room they had cleared and started to do so, but then he spotted Andrea limping out of the motel room on her own. She had a look of raw determination on her face.
“Better?” he asked as she stepped off a curb and onto the pebbly surface of the parking lot.
She started taking long steps with her left foot and short ones with her right. “Yes,” she said. “I could really use a goddamned drink. First time I’ve been shot, and it hurts like hell. I’ll be all right soon. Just need some rest.”
Jesse grunted in sympathy.
Kate and Eve came out soon after and caught up to Andrea. They grabbed her by the arms and tried to help her along.
“Stop that!” she said to them both. “I’m not some feeble old croon who needs help to get around.”
Kate let go first then Eve.
“That’s better,” Andrea said. She continued her limping gait until she stood toe to toe with Jesse. She looked up into his eyes. “You ready?” she asked. “Because, I sure the hell am.”
He indicated toward Cory, who was using both hands in an effort to push himself upright.
“Ready, for what?” he asked, still watching Cory and debating if he should help.
“To get the hell out of here,” she replied. “We can’t stick around. I think we have”—she glanced at the sky—“about two hours to find somewhere safe before this whole area is overrun with those damned things.”
Jesse shrugged. They actually had all day. The weather seemed fine—no clouds, bright sun—so, this place was as safe as any other.
“How long has it been since you’ve been outside on your own?” he asked.
She straightened, wincing and holding a hand to the small of her back where she’d been shot. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t been out in the wild for a long time. What’s it been? A year? Two? Things are different. Not so many raptors. Yeah, they’re still about. But not in the same numbers as before the last winter. I’m thinking that maybe the cold has finally started to get to them. Maybe starved them off.” He said all this while eyeing the drying blood covering much of the Humvee, knowing they weren’t completely gone, much as he kept trying to help the situation along.
“Well, we sure as hell can’t stay here long,” she added. Eve nodded beside her. Andrea took another step and almost fell over. “They’re going to find us,” she said emphatically. “We need to get somewhere safer.”
She faltered. Eve moved to stabilize her.
“How bad is it?” Jesse asked.
“It’s—” Andrea began, but couldn’t continue.
“She’ll survive,” Kate said in a whisper.
Jesse rubbed under his right eye with his thumb, clearing away something gritty. Then he winked at Kate with his left. “Really?” he said, a little surprised to hear her speak. “If Doc Kate says so, then I guess I’ll have to accept that.”
Andrea smiled, or tried to. “That girl has become quite the helper. She’s smart, focused, and her hands are steadier than mine.” She let go of Eve and took a few steps on her own in Cory’s direction. “He’s the one we need to watch out for. He shouldn’t be out here like this.”
Shrugging, Jesse said, “He insisted.”
“Yes,” she said appraisingly, then added, “but he’s not in the right frame of mind. He shouldn’t be on his feet like this. We need to get him on his back and resting, at least for a day or so. None of us are fit to travel far.”
“Then what’s wrong with staying here?” Jesse asked.
“We’ve got jack-shit for weapons, no food, half a goddamned bottle of drinkable water, one halfway decent room, and no goddamned safety,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong with this place.”
Jesse rubbed his jaw. “Let me worry about all that.”
“You must be exhausted. How are you even on your feet?” she asked.
Jesse shrugged again.
Cory was wobbling unsteadily on his feet, attempting to stand on his own using a metal pole for support. “We should keep going,” he said then stopped to wipe a string of drool from his lips.
“You should not be going anywhere. You should be resting,” she told him. “But again, he’s right. Here we have no food, no shelter. We should leave this place before it gets too late.”
Jesse held a hand up. “And go where? No, it’s not going to get much better than this. We’re staying. I’ll take care of it. I’ll get what we need. You help him get better.”
“And you, Jesse—goddamn it—you look beat to shit,” she said, “like you are going to drop dead at any moment.”
“I’ll be okay,” he said, waving her off. “I just need to move around a bit.”
“I’m coming with you,” Eve said.
“The hell you are,” he snapped. “You’re staying here.”
“But, I can help.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Take her with you,” Andrea said.
Jesse bit his bottom lip. He got the meaning from her tone, as did Eve, who turned away to look at something in the distance.
-12-
JUST WHAT WE NEEDED
“HOW ABOUT OVER there? That one,” Eve said, pointing.
Jesse walked to where she stood and followed her finger. He’d seen the building she was pointing at when they had first arrived, but it hadn’t really registered with him just what it was. It should have, he realized. Bars covered the broken glass windows. Those bars were intact, and the windows were small, much more so than you would normally find in a storefront window. There was also no lettering painted on the side visible from the motel, so no real way of telling what was inside the squat, cube-shaped building. But he knew what might be.
He absently patted Eve on the shoulder. “You got to be shitting me,” he said in wonder.
It was a gun shop. And when he got there, he found a battered down front door, broken glass, and bent steel rods, which had all once been there to protect the place. Boards and plywood panels had been kicked until they splintered, leaving behind a pile of rotting wood.
“You sure it is safe?” Eve asked from behind. That had been the third time she’d asked him in the past five minutes.
How the hell should I know? he wanted to say, but he held his tongue, much as he had become accustomed to on their trip south to find Cory. She annoyed the hell out of him. Tired as he was, he really didn’t want her coming along. In his head, he started a slow count to ten. He finished the count at four.
Raising a club he’d made from a two-by-four, he stepped across the threshold and into the dark interior of the gun shop. To his right and to his left were glass display cases. The glass had once been long smooth, clear sheets, probably covered by grimy fingerprints. Now it was all broken, and only silvery fragments remained.
Each step he took crunched noisily. Various bits shifted beneath his boots. On the floor were the footprints of others, far too many to count. They were varied in both size and shape, telling him that other scavengers had seen this shop the same way he had, thinking perhaps those who’d searched it before may have overlooked something. It was the constant drive
that kept a scavenger going, knowing that some great discovery could be hidden away just out of sight. But now that he was here, though, it was clear the place had been thoroughly cleaned out of anything remotely valuable. A few yellowed posters hung on the walls along with an old calendar, five years out of date. It featured a well-proportioned woman, dressed in skimpy camouflage shorts and matching shirt. She was holding a compound bow in a way that no one who ever shot a bow for real would think of holding it.
“Nothing here,” Eve said.
He turned to her. Grunted angrily.
“No need to be rude,” she said. “I had no choice, you know.”
He grunted again and stepped past the display cases, searching the ground for anything of value, a spare bullet, even a shell casing.
“I had to survive,” she said, as if it were an excuse.
He again twisted to stare at her. She would not look straight at him. She started to say something else, but he turned away, and continued past the display cases and down a narrow corridor leading to the rear of the building. To his right was a door hanging ajar on one hinge. Light filtering in through the front of the shop lit the room just enough to tell him it had once been the owner’s office. A broken computer monitor lay busted on the floor along with a few scattered papers spilling from an overturned filing cabinet. There was blood on the walls, long since dried to black.
“The things he was doing to others,” Eve said, coming up alongside him. “He was a monster.”
“Uh huh,” Jesse said.
“Do you know what he did to those he felt unworthy of being with him?”
“Yeah,” he said absently.
“If they were men, he’d kill them. If they were women, he’d rape them,” she said. “Then he’d turn them over to his men. That’s if he didn’t get them pregnant first. Then… Then he would tuck them away to keep them hidden from the others. He wanted every child to be his. He had some weird—fetish—about that. And, did you see those other women? The ones who were… Did you see what became of them? I couldn’t let myself end up like that. So I did what I had to do.”
Jesse held up a hand to silence her. He wanted to have this out with her, but not at this particular moment.
“He…raped me too, you know.”
“Shhh.”
“Don’t shhh me.”
Something moved. Just a flicker. He’d also heard a noise coming from the back room.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
She did then, and he pushed his way past her and into the back of the shop. Light shined through the windows and was broken up into a grid-like pattern by horizontal and vertical bars affixed to the outside of the building. A single workbench was set against the back wall, with a vise, and a peg-board above, now barren. Two other workbenches were in the center of the room, once probably covered with tools, now covered with dust and grit. A lone red toolbox with all its drawers pulled out rested against the left-hand wall.
This room had also been picked clean. It smelled musty, earthy. He quickly figured out why. A pile of hardened shit lay off in one corner, which appeared human, not raptor. Other survivors had used this room as a shelter once and had obviously been trapped in here for some time.
But, as for the rustling sound he had heard earlier, he heard nothing else.
“Rat,” Jesse said.
“Rats?” Eve asked. “Oh?”
“See if you can find it.”
“What? Why?”
“Lunch,” he said.
“I don’t like rats,” she said with disgust.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “So, tell me how Kate ended up with the doctor.”
“Kate? Well… She… It was the doctor. Andrea. She convinced Cyrus.”
“How?” Jesse asked. “How come she didn’t end up like you? With him.”
“I was special.”
“Special? What’s so special about you?”
She said nothing.
“So,” he continued, “what else do you know about Kate?”
“Nothing much, really. She was attacked once. Viciously. By a raptor. I even saw the scars. They were terrible. But there is something special about her. She’s smart. Scary smart. Like she’s been trained by someone. She’s really disciplined.”
“Yeah? Tell me about the scars,” he said, straightening.
“She has a scar across her chest and stomach,” Eve said, and then indicated the location with her thumb. “And worse, she’d been stitched up by… Well, she said her brother had done it. I don’t believe her. No one could have survived a wound like that. Maybe at a real hospital—”
“Her brother?” Jesse probed.
“Yes.”
He remembered back to when he had first found Kate and the man he’d found with her. She’d said they weren’t related. Guess that wasn’t the whole truth. But why would she lie?
“Anything else?” he asked.
“She’s worked out well with Andrea, I know that. Even Cyrus was happy with her…capabilities.”
Jesse considered this while finishing his search of the room. The thought of that bald-headed monster even coming close to touching Kate made his skin crawl.
Suddenly, he had a brief flash where he watched Cyrus die again, exiting bullet spraying blood on the wall. It was just enough to give him a good jolt. He jiggled his head and returned to where Eve was leaning against a workbench.
He slapped his fingers on top of the bench, indicating he wanted her to hop up and sit there. She did, adjusting the top buttons on her shirt and staring back.
“There are some things we need to get straight between us,” he said. “First of all, I don’t trust you. I wanted to leave you behind. But, here you are, so we are both going to have to figure this out and make the best of it.”
“You didn’t want—?” she started to say.
“Shhh. No, I didn’t. And, you need to hear this. You’ve been annoying the hell out of me ever since we met.”
There, he’d said it, and felt better for finally doing so. “Now, I’m not sure where we go from here. Whether you and I are going to get along, I don’t know yet, but you will listen to me and do whatever I say, when I say it. Got that?”
She nodded slowly. Then she reached down and started to unbutton her shirt.
He threw his hands up. “Whoa… What are you doing?”
“This is what you want, right? I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
He stepped back, stepped again. He bumped into something and felt pressure on his hand.
“How long has it been?” she asked softly. “Years, I’ll bet.”
Years, he repeated in his mind. He sucked in a breath then wiped the corner of his mouth. His hand came away red. He’d cut it on something.
“Damn it,” he said, flexing his fingers, looking at the gash he’d opened on the back of his hand. It was bleeding profusely.
“You’re hurt?” she asked.
“It’s nothing,” he said, bringing his wrist against his shirt to staunch the bleeding. It hadn’t started hurting yet, but he knew it would soon enough. The cut went deep and had probably nicked a vein, if not severed it.
Eve hopped off the bench and peeked at the wound. “Oh, that’s not good. You should be more careful.”
As he checked his hand, he restarted his count. This time he ended at eight.
“Hold it above your head for a second,” she said. “That’ll help stop the bleeding.”
She bent and tugged at something on the floor. Dust and small metal particles tumbled off. It could have once been a section from a discarded blanket, or some shop rags, or some other discarded piece of clothing. She pulled whatever it was taut, and it began to stretch. She tugged again, hard enough that the cloth ripped a little.
And in that moment, Jesse could swear he’d seen the floor move.
She tugged again, this time leaning back as she yanked.
A section of cloth ripped f
ree. Most of it came off in her hand and looked like the better part of a dark-green blanket. She shook the cloth and reversed it so the clean side was exposed. “Here,” she said and handed it to him.
He looked at her, looked at what she offered. Then he saw her efforts to remove the blanket had left a slight crack in the floor, barely visible in the dim light. He knelt to inspect the thin line more closely.
“Don’t you want it?” she asked, shaking the cloth in front of his face.
He waved it aside and hit the floor with the heel of his hand, and was rewarded when he heard a hollow echo. The floor was not entirely solid here. He stood and pressed the front of his boot into the narrow crack. He pried upward with his toes, and an edge of something lifted from the floor, just a little.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He snatched the blanket from her, tore off a strip, and quickly wrapped it around his bleeding hand. Circling the bench, he stopped on the other side to bump it with his hip. The bench scratched at the floor as it moved. He bumped it again.
“Help me,” he said, leaning and bumping against the bench again and again, scooting it away an inch at a time.
Together they swiveled the workbench out of the way. Jesse tightened the makeshift bandage around his hand. He kicked again at the corner of the newly exposed compartment in the floor. It lifted another half inch. He knew if he could get something long and thin, he could pry it up. He looked around. Nothing came to mind. So he tried his fingers, working them into the gap and lifting.
The lid didn’t budge.
“Why are you doing that?” Eve asked.
His mental count resumed as he worked—ten, eleven, twelve. His annoyance with her also lent him strength. He pried again, straining. This time the metal creaked, protesting noisily before suddenly lifting out of the floor, and sending him staggering backward.
He stepped forward, stabilizing himself. And when he saw what had been hidden away inside the compartment, he windmilled his arms, bumped up against Eve, and fell flat on his ass.
-13-
ALL ABOUT THE LOOT
Righteous Apostate: Raptor Apocalypse Book 3 Page 10