He turned to Eve. “You need to make sure to stay out of my line of fire. Stay away from the front door and those two cans next to it, okay?”
“So you are going through with this? You are really not coming with us?”
“Yes, I’m staying behind.”
“I think that is a bad idea,” she said. “We can—”
“No, this is the only way I’m going to do this,” Jesse said.
She was just smart enough to keep her mouth shut this time. He did not want to argue with her further. While she might not agree, there was not much she could offer up to effect things either way. If she got in front of the shot, she would be hit. Simple as that. While he wasn’t sure he could fire on her directly, if she blocked the shot, he still had to be ready to pull the trigger.
“You’d just better keep clear,” he repeated.
She nodded, saying nothing.
Jesse turned to Cory. “Okay, we ready then?”
Cory adjusted the collar on his jacket and bobbed his head once. He handed the binoculars back to Jesse and started to crawl backward into the trees.
Jesse rested the front sight on the guy on the westernmost platform. The guy was wearing a camouflaged hat and vest with no shirt. His hairy belly hung down over his pants. He shifted to the next man. This guy was wearing an orange cap and a long-sleeved green shirt with tan patches on the shoulders. Jesse breathed out and kept his lungs empty. He set the crosshairs on the man’s ear and watched as the sight picture bobbed up and down, right and left. Calm and quiet, he told himself. Calm and quiet. He could feel his heart, and soon the crosshairs were barely moving.
Good to go.
Something snapped behind him. Damn Eve. She had stepped on a tree branch. The crosshairs began to bob and weave again. Calm and quiet, he repeated in his mind. But he couldn’t stop thinking of her. Were they circling to the right or to the left? Where would they step into the line of sight of those on the watchtowers? And how would those men react? Jesse had to be ready for any eventuality.
He settled in again, breathing in and out without hurry.
And that’s when he noticed the scent of someone new.
“Hold it right there,” a voice said from behind him, followed by an audible click.
He pivoted his neck slowly, deliberately, and saw a large caliber revolver, and it was pointed directly at his head. The gun stayed where it was as the man holding it stepped forward and shuffled to his left, turning all the way, keeping the front sight locked on Jesse as he moved closer. Someone else approached from the opposite direction, grabbed the rifle out of Jesse’s hands, and stepped on his shotgun with a booted foot. That same man crouched down and took the Beretta from Jesse’s hip.
Jesse rolled over, following the instructions of the man holding the big revolver on him. It had to have been a .357 Magnum. Colt, probably.
He spotted Cory about twenty feet away. A gun was pointed at his head too. Someone stood in front of him, bouncing the katana up and down in his hands before wrapping all ten fingers around it.
Jesse knew the guy. He pushed himself up from the ground, bringing his hands up and level with his shoulders. Eve stood in front of the man with silver-gray hair.
“Eve, my dear, so nice to see you again,” Noah said. “And…you brought your friends.”
-27-
NOT SO HAPPY REUNION
JESSE TUGGED AT the bonds holding him to the chair. Next to him stood a man holding a gun. Jesse could barely see the guy in his peripheral vision, but he knew he was there, and he knew the gun was loaded, and he knew there was nothing he could do other than just sitting and watching the man pacing back and forth in front of him. It was an all too not so friendly reminder of the beating he took at the hands of Cyrus not more than a week ago. He still felt the warmth of the tiny cuts that laced his cheeks.
Now he was about ready to be dealt even more pain.
His anger simmered just below the surface, but it had not heated up enough to boil over just yet. Cory sat in an identical chair next to him. The same handgun occasionally pointed at his head.
The man standing in front of him, pacing back and forth, was Noah. He was tan and handsome and had very white teeth, of which many were on display behind an easy grin. His silver hair was thick and slicked back, and his intense eyes were creased at the corners with symmetrical webs of fine wrinkles.
Noah stopped his pacing and stared straight at Jesse. First at his face. Then he ran through a careful up-and-down, side-to-side appraisal, and grunted.
Eve sat on a couch behind Noah. Her legs were crossed, and she had a hand on her knee. One foot was bouncing. When Jesse glanced at her, she looked away. He had been considering how he could strangle her with his bare hands.
“Did I do well?” she asked.
“Very well, my dear.” Noah said. “I knew you would come through for us.” He stopped in front of her, bent, and patted her on the cheek. “So, where is it?”
She said nothing. She shot a glance at her pack set on an oval table to her right. The contents had already been spilled out and searched. They had obviously not found what they were looking for.
“Where is it?” Noah asked.
She again said nothing.
“Eve, my dear, I’m a patient man. But I have my limits. I’m sure our friends have figured it all out by now.” He returned to Jesse and glared at him. “Yes, she always was a good girl. And she’s all mine. She does what she’s told quite well, don’t you think?”
Jesse saw an opportunity. He leaned forward onto the balls of his feet and shoved himself upward, aiming to head-butt Noah in the chin. But, as soon as he lunged, Noah simply stepped away, and Jesse found himself grabbed from both sides and his chair forced back down to the floor.
“There is no need to get agitated,” Noah said casually. “We are all friends here. We have no desire to harm you. I only want Eve to give me what she was sent for.”
“Where is it?” he asked her forcefully.
Eve kept quiet. Her crossed leg began to bounce harder, and she folded her arms over her chest protectively.
“Last time, my dear, where is it?”
She continued to keep silent, looking at Noah, Jesse, and Cory in turn. She glanced at the two other men in the room. One man wore a knit cap, and the other had on a baseball hat with a frayed brim.
Eve’s face contorted into a grin and her back straightened.
“I have it,” she said.
“But it wasn’t in your bag,” Noah said. “So where is it? Does Adam have it? Did we miss him somewhere?”
“Adam’s dead,” she said.
The two men in the room chuckled, and the one in the knit cap hit the other on the shoulder.
“Aww, sorry,” Noah said. “I always did like him. How?”
She said nothing.
“Okay, so you wish to play games with me,” Noah said. “Fine. What is it you want?”
“Jenny,” Eve said, “I want her gone.”
Noah stared at her for a long moment, stepped closer to her, and backhanded her hard across the face. She fell onto her side on the couch, throwing her hands up protectively. Jesse tried to get up again, but was off balance, and his chair fell over onto its side.
“Pick him up,” Noah ordered.
Jesse’s chair was brought back onto all four legs and the man in the knit cap raised an open hand and threatened to slap Jesse with it. At that moment, Jesse didn’t know whom to hate most. The two assholes who kept him locked in the chair, Cory for doing nothing, Eve for betraying him, Noah for capturing and binding him, or himself for being stupid enough to have come along in the first place.
Eve rolled herself back to sitting. She touched her lip with her fingers. It was cut and bleeding. She glared back at Noah.
“I hid it. I hid it somewhere you will never find it. I should have destroyed it. Now you need me.”
Noah casually stepped over to her pack and sorted through a few of her items lying beside it. He located a
pair of her underwear and picked them up with his index finger. He dangled them in front of his nose and sniffed them. He closed his eyes and smiled a tight-lipped smile.
“And just what is it that you want from me?”
“I want you to get rid of Jenny,” Eve said.
“Hah, really?” Noah said, nodding. “My, my, you have become quite a brave girl as of late. Come here, girl.”
Eve rose from the sofa and approached him timidly. When she got close to him, he put one arm on her shoulder and squeezed. Then, without a hint of warning, he kneed her hard in the stomach.
She collapsed to the floor, her hands going to her stomach. She curled up into a fetal position, gasping desperately for breath. Again, Jesse scuffed his chair on the hardwood floor as he tried to get out of his restraints. But again, he was held back.
“Thanks for the help,” Jesse said, glancing at his companion in this misadventure.
Noah lorded over Eve. His feet were spread apart, and his hands were on his hips. “You do not get to want anything, girl,” he said down to her as she moaned. “You will only do what I tell you to do. You do not get to bargain with me. I am God’s merciful hand on this earth. I am His humble servant. And you will tell me where it is, or so help me God, I will send you to meet Him personally.”
Eve pushed herself up onto an elbow. She tried to spit blood at Noah, but it ended up dribbling down off her chin and forming a long string that slowly reached toward the floor.
“Eve, child,” Noah said, smiling wolfishly, head shaking back and forth. “What am I going to do with you? I have always attempted to make you see God’s greater love for us. We, who were blessed and chosen to live. We, who were put here to restart and rebuild. We, who will dwell as the most humble servants of God, in the new Garden of Eden, in the new world devoid of wickedness, in the world where computers and cell phones and video games and television sets are all banished relics of the past, no longer polluting our minds with their spewed forth filth.” He drew a long breath. “And why would you not want to be part of all that?”
“You have been to us lying all along,” Eve said, spitting it out between gasps. Blood from her bleeding lip trickled down her chin. She struggled to push herself upright until she was standing before him with her back straight.
“A truly just God would never allow a monster like you to exist,” she said.
Noah stared back at her with his cold, snakelike eyes. He raised a hand to strike her, and she did not cower away from it.
“I see,” he said. He patted her softly on the cheek.
“Pick one,” he said in a voice almost too quiet for Jesse to hear.
“What?” she asked.
“Pick one,” he repeated, louder.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m simply asking you to pick one, girl.” Noah pointed at Jesse and then at Cory.
“I won’t,” she said.
“Ah, my dear, you see, you don’t really have a choice. We could let God choose one if you would like.”
“No, I won’t,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Fine.” Noah pointed at Jesse. “Bring him. He seems to actually care about you, which I find rather…sweet.”
Ryan and Matt grabbed Jesse by the arms and dragged him closer, scooting the chair noisily across the floorboards.
“What are you going to do?” Eve asked.
“Only what is necessary,” Noah replied. “Unless, of course, you tell me where you hid it.”
Jesse didn’t much like the sound of that. He tugged against his bonds. They had loosened just a little. He pulled again, and to his surprise, one hand came free. But he quickly realized that it had come free because the rope holding it had been cut on that side of the chair leg. His arm was wrenched and forced out front of him and retied. The fingers of his right hand were the only things he could still move. He wiggled them, retesting his bonds. The ropes were already cutting off his circulation, and his fingers had swollen so hard it felt as if his skin would likely burst.
“Eve,” Noah said, “it pains me to no end that you will not do as I ask. You come back to our home and insult me? And by extension God. Did you honestly think you could stand up against me? God’s chosen servant on this world. His prophet.”
“You are no prophet,” Eve said angrily. “You are just a lying sack of shit.” As she said this, she ducked before he could raise his hand to strike her.
Noah regained control of himself and straightened his shirttails then rolled up his shirtsleeves to his elbows. He slipped his belt off, slowly pulling it between the loops. Once it was free, he folded it in half and gripped it tightly in his fist. He cracked his neck to both sides and looked at Jesse, and then at Cory.
“Since you have decided, I think it is time we begin.”
Jesse wondered what Noah had in mind. Would it be any worse than what he faced at Cyrus’s hands? Maybe, maybe not. He was obviously going to be the target of the man’s wrath toward Eve. Much as he hated her betrayal, and how she had annoyed the hell out of him for so long, when he looked at her he was not upset. He no longer wanted to hurt her for what she had done. Something inside him made him want to forgive her, just as he’d forgiven her once before. Perhaps he was a fool for doing so, but so be it.
He steeled himself against the coming blow.
And that first blow came quickly in the form of a hard slap across the face with the leather belt. It stung, but it was no worse pain than what he’d been through before. Then another strike connected even harder. His lip split as it was crushed against his teeth. He tasted the blood that rapidly filled his mouth and lowered his head to wait for the coming pain. It came on quickly, making his entire body shudder. He drooped his head to one side to let the blood leak out and drip onto the floor.
“I have no malice against you, friend, and I don’t want to hurt you,” Noah said. “But Eve refuses to listen to reason. So, maybe you can convince her that she needs to do as I ask.”
Jesse chuckled, straightening his head and spraying blood in the process. His gaze eventually came back to level.
“No? I thought as much.” Noah slammed the belt down hard on Jesse’s thigh.
Jesse flinched, rising slightly from his chair.
“Stop it!” Eve shouted.
Jesse realized that was too easy. She broke quickly, as he had half-expected her to. The pain would be gone soon, and maybe, just maybe he’d have another opportunity to get free.
“So, you are ready to tell me now, girl?” Noah didn’t bother to wait for an answer. He struck Jesse again. The leather belt cracked loudly.
Eve winced, and Jesse’s head again came back to level.
“Stop it,” she said. Her nostrils expanded, and she gripped Noah’s wrist and belayed his hand. “Let him go or you will never know where it is.”
It was Noah’s turn to laugh. Jesse chuckled along with him, knowing things were about to get a whole lot worse.
He was right.
Noah struck him over and over again. Blows to the legs. Blows to the arms. To the shoulders. The leather belt cut through the fabric of his shirt and opened up fresh new gashes and left deep welts on his forearm.
“Stop,” Eve said, crying. He pushed her back toward the sofa and continued. She leapt up and grabbed him again. “Please, please. Why won’t you stop?”
When Noah finally did stop, he was breathing hard and fast. “Are you ready to tell me where it is?”
She said nothing, looking away.
“I want you to think long and hard about this. Once I’m done with him, I have one more left. I’m sure I can make it even worse for him. Would you like me to do that?”
“No,” she said sheepishly.
“Then I suggest you tell me, girl, because when I’m done with these two, you’re next.”
Eve swallowed hard. Jesse’s eyes were shutting from the swelling in his face, but he could still see she was defying him. Good. For the first time since meeting her, he had respect for her action
s.
Noah gripped the bloody belt in both hands. He pushed his hands together, causing the belt to separate in the middle. He quickly snapped it together. Eve flinched away from him. He waited, watching her closely.
Jesse’s vision blurred further as his own salty blood burned his eyes.
“Are you going to get rid of Jenny?” Eve asked.
“Jenny?” Noah said with surprise. “Really? This is all about Jenny? You sure you are not making this up?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Women,” Noah said to Jesse as if sharing some private joke. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand them.”
Jesse deflated. He had thought she’d been standing up to him for some other reason too. What, in his confused state, he could not recall. Was this all because of some other woman? Really? Through the pain, he fought to stay conscious. In partial amusement, he wondered what it was about Jenny that made Eve hate her so much. Woozily, he tried his right hand again, hoping it might move a little more. Maybe the bonds had come loose as they had the last time he’d been put in this situation. But they did not move, and he could not free himself.
“Okay, Eve,” Noah said. “You win.”
“You’ll get rid of Jenny then?”
“Sure. She means nothing to me. You know that.” He let the belt fall into his left hand and stroked her on the cheek with his right. “Just tell me where you hid it.”
“I don’t know why you want it so badly,” she said. “It’s not the virus like everyone has been talking about. It just some bottles of ink.”
Ink? Jesse thought through the blur. What had she stolen if not the virus?
“Ink?” Cory asked, breaking his silence.
Righteous Apostate: Raptor Apocalypse Book 3 Page 19