by Sean Platt
No one had heard news on the mission yet—not surprising since Egan had said that communications in or around The Outback would be simple for The State to pick up, so the rescue team would be observing radio silence until after leaving the ancient city.
She heard clanging above as the heating system kicked on and warm air poured through the vents. Ana looked around the lab, reconsidering her earlier stance of wanting to leave when Liam returned. The Station was filled with safety, electricity, running water, food, and company—all luxuries in The Barrens, particularly in winter. Then again, she couldn’t see herself settling in another underground community led by one man, one man who decided all. Even if things seemed OK now, how long before they ran afoul of Egan? What was to stop Egan from becoming another Sutherland?
Oswald returned and thanked Ana again for giving blood.
She asked, “How is Egan to live with?”
“What do you mean?”
“After what happened at Hydrangea with that crazy bastard Sutherland, I’m a little leery of moving into some other underground installation run by one man. What is he like?”
“He’s as fair a man as I’ve ever worked with.”
Ana laughed, “That sounds . . . diplomatic. What is he really like?”
“He has a few issues.” Oswald shrugged. “But who doesn’t?”
“What kind of issues?”
Oswald pursed his lips. “I’m not comfortable discussing this, Ana.”
She leaned forward. “What do you mean? Should I be worried?”
“No,” Oswald said. “Trust me. If anyone’s safe here, it’s you.”
“But?” Ana waited for the doctor to color his silence.
The door opened behind her. She turned to see Calla, surprisingly alone.
Oswald asked, “Where’s Elijah?”
“I ditched him,” Calla said, smiling mischievously. “I wanted to see Ana.”
“What did I tell you about ditching Elijah?” Oswald asked sternly, pointing a metal finger at her. “Your father will be ticked.”
“I know. But I get soooo bored with Elijah always around. I’m a girl. I need privacy. Girl time. Ana understands, right, Ana?”
Ana smiled. “Yeah, boys can be totally annoying.”
“Thank you!” Calla nearly squealed. “Just the other day I was trying to read, and he kept talking to me, like nonstop. He wouldn’t shut up.”
“Maybe he likes you,” Ana said playfully.
“Gross!”
Oswald sighed, “OK, ladies, I think this is my cue to leave you two alone. Let me call your father and let him know where you are before he—”
A siren killed his thought.
His eyes went wide as a red light over the door started to spin, casting the room in a strobing red hue. Ana tensed, looking around. “What’s going on?”
Oswald said nothing as he scrambled back into the office where he’d taken her vials, then returned moments later with a pair of blasters.
“Can you use this?” Oswald handed Ana one of the guns.
“Of course.”
“Good, get in there.” He pointed to the adjoining office. “And wait.”
“What’s going on?” she asked as Oswald began shoving her and Calla toward the room with the vials.
Oswald didn’t answer until they were in the room, and he was on the other side of the sliding metal door.
“A zombie has infiltrated The Station. You protect Calla, understand?”
The door slid shut and locked before Ana could answer.
CHAPTER 25—SUTHERLAND
Sutherland stared at his cell door, seething.
He was surprised to see that Gallus had grown a pair. How, he had no idea. His Brussels sprouts had barely been peas while serving as Sutherland’s second.
How dare they take him into custody and lock him away; how dare they think they could do this to him; how dare they so arrogantly think he was powerless to stop them?
What made Sutherland angriest was the time it must have taken to plan the insurgence. It seemed as though it had come from nowhere. Gallus had apparently left the chamber so that Sutherland could take care of business. It was impossible to believe that his betrayal was born in that moment. Gallus had to have been nursing thoughts of treason before then. Maybe he was the one who had allowed that “King Shit” crap to happen.
Sutherland was plenty familiar with betrayal. The weak and petty hid like snakes in the grass, waiting to sink inferior fangs into superior strength, but in all his years and with all he’d given to Hydrangea, Sutherland had never been betrayed by his inner council. He’d been blind to trust someone so young as Gallus. In retrospect, he should’ve seen the man’s sycophantic behavior as a raw thirst for power. Such thirst could never be sated by serving one man, no matter how noble the cause.
As the hours ticked on, Sutherland’s hunger began to swell. He was starting to feel light-headed. He hadn’t been in this cell all that long, but he also hadn’t eaten since an early dinner the evening before. A night with plenty of brew and his favorite whore had left him empty. Morning started with the shit on his throne, then immediately moved into the traitor’s interrogation.
Sutherland stared down at his bed and the toilet, the dimly lit cell’s only two pieces of furniture. He wanted to kill someone. Many people. All deserving.
Soon, I will have my chance.
He kept repeating that to himself, because to think anything else would allow him to doubt he could get out of this jam. And doubt was one of your worst enemies when stuck in a cell. You needed to be strong and keep your resolve. His strength, he was certain, would give him an opportunity to strike back. He had to keep holding on.
The longer Sutherland sat, the more he was able to piece together the conspiracy’s puzzle.
The shit-covered throne was a catalyst designed to move him into action, get him to “break the law” so they could wag their crooked fingers between him and the ink marring The Patriot’s Constitution, a document they clearly did not understand. His opposition knew he would do what had to be done to keep Hydrangea safe. What cowards—to stage their coup while he was busy with the job they were all too yellow to do.
Gallus!
Sutherland hated that he’d been so blind, trusting when he shouldn’t have. He wondered how long they would make him wait to stand trial. Would they seek to hang him or merely send him out into The Barrens to fend for himself? They might think the latter a harsher punishment, but it would be their undoing. Sutherland could survive the winter and return in the spring, then burn Hydrangea to nothing.
The thought of Gallus and the other traitors sitting in his new throne room, commanding his officers, gorging their fat faces on his delicate food, sleeping in his chambers, screwing his whores—was a blade in his gut, and every hour twisted it deeper.
These people weren’t leaders. They were usurpers, taking advantage of a situation, of Sutherland’s leniency following Ana, Liam, and Katrina’s escape. And, of course, Oswald after that. He realized now that he should have come down harder, perhaps sealed the base like a drum. He was weak for not going further. That weakness had landed him in this cell while another ass sat on his throne. He should have held everyone responsible for helping the traitors flee . . . and stuck a handful of heads on pikes in the dining hall to keep the rest from their whispers. Instead he was forced to sit in this cell like a rat in a hole, waiting for his chance to run.
But his first and second round of interrogations after Oswald fled had produced nothing, so Sutherland had quit searching, assuming the rot had stopped with Oswald.
Clearly, it hadn’t.
I should have eliminated every cancerous cell.
There was no way they’d get away with this. He wondered if that old fool Jeffries knew about the coup, if he hadn’t somehow orchestrated it from Sagebrush. Whatever the case, neither he, nor Gallus, nor anyone else appointed could hope to run Hydrangea or keep it from devolving into chaos. Nor would they know what
to do with the potential zombie solution Oswald had been working on. Sutherland wasn’t a praying man, but he hoped they wouldn’t discover the canisters of weaponized zombie virus before he could reclaim his position as leader. If knowledge of the canisters got back to Gallus or Jeffries, things could get ugly. The Council of Patriots would never approve of his plans to attack the remaining Cities.
Following the deaths in City 1, the other leaders had lost their backbones, second-guessing themselves and believing that maybe they’d made a mistake. They had ordered Sutherland to surrender his remaining canisters, which they had supposedly destroyed.
But Sutherland hadn’t gotten to this position by listening to others. Little did they know he had squirreled away enough to end every City three times over.
Sutherland wasn’t sure how long it had been—maybe four hours, though it could’ve been twice that—before the door finally opened and Horrance the ogre shuffled in with a plate.
“Horrance!” Sutherland said, happy to see him—assuming Horrance wasn’t also a traitor.
“Hello, Sir. I have your dinner.”
Behind Horrance, Sutherland noticed a second guard standing by, palm to the butt of his rifle.
Of course they wouldn’t trust Horrance alone.
Bastards.
Sutherland took the tray and looked down to see two slices of bread, a piece of overcooked meat, half an ear of old-looking corn, and a tin cup of water. He licked his lips, imagining the metallic taste as the sight of food stirred his appetite hard enough to raise a growl. He hated himself for being so weak but felt grateful it was only Horrance.
Good ole Horrance won’t judge me for being hungry, for being stupid enough to land in a cell.
“Thank you,” Sutherland said. He stared past the giant to glare at the other guard as he took the tray from Horrance’s massive paws. “You need two guards to keep me in line now, is that it?”
The guard said nothing but didn’t flinch.
Sutherland pictured himself slicing the guard’s throat. If they’d given him utensils, he might have tried.
They left without a word. Sutherland thought to call after Horrance, You’ve betrayed me too? but chose not to as the giant might still be on his side. The last thing he wanted to do was out a loyalist with access to his cell.
Sutherland lifted the meat for a bite when he saw a piece of brown paper folded beneath it. He dropped his meat to the plate, grabbed and unfolded the paper, then read the message.
TONIGHT WE WILL RIGHT THE WRONG.
Sutherland stared at the awkward scrawl, unsure if it was a threat from his captors or a sign from his supporters that help was on its way.
As Sutherland wolfed down his food, he tried not to worry that he could be chewing his final meal. All he needed was a little help, a small nudge, and he could easily tend to the rest. Surely there would be people out there who knew which side was right, men—or women—willing to stand up for what was true in this world.
It was impossible for Sutherland to believe that traitors had infiltrated every level of his council, or that every guard was a turncoat. Perhaps Horrance was gathering troops as Sutherland ate his long day’s first meal. He laughed at the irony. When things went bad, the most loyal man in the camp might be Horrance the Slow.
Good ole dumb Horrance.
At least Sutherland had been smart enough to keep the canisters from everyone else.
As Sutherland stared at the empty plate he realized that not only had Horrance brought him a meal and a message, he’d also hand delivered a weapon.
He picked up the plate then let it fall to the ground and shatter. He looked down, found the sharpest, longest piece, grabbed it with a smile, and shoved his new shiv under his pillow just as his cell door opened.
Piggy, the guard he’d dressed down outside the throne room, peered inside.
“Sorry,” Sutherland said, “slippery fingers.”
Piggy looked him up and down, then called for another guard. A second man appeared in the doorway, tall with a monobrow and iron jaw, whom Sutherland didn’t recognize. He wondered if his old guards had been replaced, and if so, how they had failed to get rid of Horrance.
Maybe because Horrance betrayed you too.
Piggy scowled. “You’ll pay for that.” He yanked the shock stick from his holster, aimed at Sutherland, then fired a blast at Hydrangea’s true leader before Sutherland could move to defend himself.
Sutherland fell back into bed, pain chewing through his cells, unable to move save for his twitching.
Piggy came toward him, smiling like he’d just found a table full of fat. “Oh, yeah, I thought of a funny joke, King Shit. You’re gonna love this one.”
He shoved the shock stick into Sutherland’s chest and delivered another arc of pure electricity.
Sutherland tried to fight it and stay conscious but couldn’t do either.
CHAPTER 26—ADAM LOVECRAFT
They’d walked for about an hour when Adam noticed the shrinking buildings on either side of the long road, three and four stories tall now rather than 10 and 15. Doors and windows on the nearest buildings were boarded shut—the first time he’d seen anything like that since fleeing the arena and entering the old, broken city at a sprint.
He wondered if the structures were now hovels, homes to bandits, maybe even homes to the devils driving the coach that dragged him behind it. Adam tried to see if he could spy movement in the dark spaces nested in the sliced recesses between planks, but he saw nothing: no blinking residents or sympathetic souls to take mercy on and help them, not even another prisoner like himself, staring out from his own boarded cell while waiting to die.
Adam heard one of the horses whinny, then the one beside it did the same. The carriage came to a stop.
His heart beat hard against his chest as he looked ahead and saw the road blocked by a large cargo truck. It was huge, its rust peeking out from the blanket of snow. Its bulk swallowed much of the alley, leaving barely enough room to squeeze by on foot.
Adam looked closer, peering to notice that the road’s debris wasn’t just the normal garbage they’d seen strewn through the city. The taste of copper coated his tongue as his eyes tried to make sense of what they didn’t want to see—hundreds of bones and mounds of bloodstained clothes poking through the snow.
How many others have they brought here?
Black Hat stood atop the carriage and surveyed the road like a baron. Appearing satisfied, he grunted, then reached down and picked up a pair of lead pipes each about two feet long. He turned to Adam and the woman.
“OK, folks. End of the line.”
He loudly clanged the pipes, one against the other. The sound echoed, then bounced off the alley walls and rolled with the wind for who knew how many miles.
Black Hat began to mimic Kirk Kirkman’s familiar voice: “Hear ye, hear ye, residents of The Outback! It’s time for another edition of The Outback Games! Let’s see if these lazy City folk—who look down their noses at us—can last one round in a genuine game of skill!”
Black Hat threw the pipes to the snow and got louder.
“If you can fend off the zombies for five minutes, I’ll sound the disruptor and send them off. Let you go on your merry ways.”
Adam scanned the windows and doors, still seeing no one. He wondered if there were in fact an audience beyond Black Hat and his unmerry bandits.
Suddenly, Adam spied subtle movement further down the alley, coming out of the doors and windows that hadn’t been boarded. At first a few crept out, then dozens.
He realized then that the bandits must’ve boarded the buildings closest to them to keep players from escaping even if they somehow broke their chains. It probably also allowed them to funnel all the zombies toward the other end of the alley, making escape that way impossible too. The only way out was to fight and kill them all.
Dozens of undead groaned in chorus as they ambled out into the freezing wind and toward their waiting dinner.
Adam gr
abbed the nearest pipe and watched as the woman shakily grabbed hers. Rather than prepare for the zombies, though, she decided to do something stupid: beg for mercy from men who clearly had none.
“Please, you don’t have to do this. Please! I’m a mother.”
The man’s smile was blacker than his hat. “Sorry, nothing personal, lady. But just so ya know, I didn’t care too much for my mama.” He thought about it for a minute. “Maybe it is a bit personal.”
Black Hat crossed his arms and watched, smiling at what was unfolding below like a man surveying a row of arcade stalls.
Adam saw men peering through the dirty curtained windows of the upper stories. Their faces were shrouded, but Adam imagined their smiles, grinning from front row balcony seats, waiting for the show.
He stared back at the horde—then down at his measly pipe. There was no way he could bash them all to death before one managed to rip into his flesh. He could only hope that they attacked the woman first, so he could maybe pick them off one at a time before they turned on him.
Something crossed Adam’s mind: a wicked, merciless thought.
If I hit the woman and knock the pipe from her hand, the zombies are sure to focus on her first.
Adam stared at her as she stupidly screamed, “Go away!” and swung her pipe at the first of the undead, as if they would listen or she might be able to reach them from 30 feet away. The woman was paying Adam no mind. He could easily do it. He could knock her out. And, maybe, buy himself time.
He hated himself for losing his mercy. He’d risked his life to save the girl who reminded him so much of his sister. And now, maybe an hour later, he was willing to kill the one who said she was a mother.