“Too many.”
“Exactly! You don’t get to dictate to me how I take my revenge! Fucking hypocrite!” She set her sights back on Silas.
Dominic extended his gun and shot him twice in the head, ending his suffering.
“No! You bastard!” Lerah raised the pistol and this time she looked like she just might use it.
Dominic dropped his weapons and extended his arms. “Go ahead. If that’s what it’s gonna take to make you whole, do it.”
“I was doing it! You took it from me! You bastard! That wasn’t your choice to make!”
“You don’t heal old wounds by creating new ones. I’ve walked that path, Lerah. It consumes you. I didn’t get you back just to lose you again.”
“I’m lost! Don’t you get it? I’m already lost! Silas and his men, they killed me! And every time I close my eyes, I see what they did and I die again! There is no coming back for me!” She struggled to catch her breath. The handgun wavered with each spasm of emotion.
“You’re right, darling. The scars will always be there. They’re permanent.” He touched his hand to the line of puckered tissue carving a path down his cheek. “But you can decide how you see them. When I look in the mirror and I see this scar, I don’t see everything I’ve suffered, I see everything I’ve overcome.”
Her arms fell to her sides, the gun hanging loose like some natural extension of her hand. She stood there, staring down at Silas’ body, with no emotion. The fight had been the only thing she had left. “I needed that to make me whole, Dominic. I needed that kill.”
“Peace is more than a few pounds of pressure and a bullet. All the bad shit, it doesn’t just go away because you pulled a trigger. The only thing you can do to get rid of the bad is overpower it with the good. Holding onto the good, that’s the real fight. When I met you, I was full up with bad shit. I was a black-hole. I was pulling the trigger for coin, stacking sin upon sin. But you became that good. I didn’t really know it until I lost you.” Lerah was staring at the ground, her tears pitter-pattering against the beach as he spoke. “I’ve gone through hell to find you, I’ve pulled the trigger hundreds of times to try to hold onto you, and I’d do it all again because you are my peace.”
She dropped the gun and stumbled into his arms.
He kissed the top of her head and held her to his chest. “You won’t be alone again, I promise you. The bastards will have to kill me next time.”
She pulled back, looking up at him as he held her face in his hands. “I’d kiss you, but my lips hurt.”
“It’s the thought that counts.”
Her eyes lit up and her hands clasped his arms as if she’d had a sudden revelation. “What’s going on in Genesis? Silas dispatched an army.”
Dominic’s stomach sank. He felt like he was back in the war, telling some poor widow how her husband had tried to stop a bullet with his head. “It’s not good, Lerah.”
“What happened? Tell me all of it!” Her grip grew tighter.
“I don’t know much. After you were taken, I was intercepted by Union boys. They took me back to Genesis. Hause had already learned about our run-in with Perkins. He was worried about the controversy it would cause if the people of Genesis found out that their Defense Minister’s daughter, and some Wastelander he hired, killed a bunch of their soldiers. He decided to bury it. He decided to bury us.”
“That bastard.”
“From what I could gather, your dad started a civil war to cover my escape. I guess he thought I was the best shot he had at getting you back.”
“Is he…”
Dominic shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. He was kicking when I left. But I don’t know what happened after that. I do know that they’re fractured and they’ve got the entire Rebel army bearing down on them; that doesn’t bode well.”
“We’ve got to get back there. We’ve got to help.” Lerah picked up her weapon and started marching for the mountains.
Dominic chased after her. “Wait! There’s nothing you can do, Lerah, especially in this condition!”
“You might be right, but I’m going to try.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.” He grabbed her wrist and halted her movement.
“Maybe I will!” She pulled away from him. “But that’s my father back there! That’s the good in my life! The peace you were talking about! Don’t stand there and ask me to just write him off!” There was no room for negotiation.
Dominic stood for a few seconds and watched her go.
Fuck it.
What was one more suicide mission?
34
Hause was charging down the stairs, taking them two at a time. His heart was pounding, not from the exertion, but from knowing what Dan was going to do. Dan would never risk letting Genesis fall to the Rebels. He’d do anything to prevent that from happening, even if it meant setting off the nuke. Unlike Dan, Hause had faith. He believed in his men. He believed in the people of Genesis. They’d fight until their last breath. They’d kick, and punch, and scratch until the last drop of blood was drawn from their veins. Hause knew his people. He knew the power of their will. If he were to line them up and let them choose between standing their ground and drinking the poison punch, they’d choose to stand, every single time. But Dan wouldn’t give them that choice; he’d force the punch on them and pinch their noses until they swallowed.
As Hause continued to descend, he began to recall the many talks he’d had with Dan over the years about mutually assured destruction and pre-emptive strikes; Dan was a big fan of both doctrines. In Dan’s mind, it was better to start from a blank slate than to let the enemy get a foothold. Hause didn’t overtly disagree. He could see a bit of the logic in it if he sat back and pondered long enough. But this wasn’t an occasion that called for such extreme measures. They could hold back the Rebels. Yes, they were outnumbered, but they had the high-ground. They had cover and supplies. They had time and the elements on their side. It was worth the stretch.
“Lord Marshal.” A coverall wearing, grease-monkey from Mechanical held a hand up to stop him.
“Move! Get out of the way!” Hause elbowed him aside and kept going. Two more floors passed by in a blur of metal and rust.
“Sir, if I may?”
“Not now, Todd!” Hause rolled around the slender soldier.
He should have been recruiting men to help him on his mission, men younger and much more agile than he was. But that would mean letting others in on the secret of the monster that slept in the dungeon; he couldn’t risk that. It would die with Dan. It would die with him. He saw no need for something so horrific to be passed down any further. Let it rest, for good.
As he rounded the next bend, Amanda appeared before him. He had to plant his heels and yank back on the railing to keep from plowing into her.
“Oh, how convenient, I was just on my way up to see you, Lord Marshal,” she spat his title as if it were a piece of undercooked meat.
“Amanda, I’m not in the mood, move!” he panted.
Her eyes were narrow. Her teeth were clenched. Her hair hung across the front of her face in unwashed clumps. It was obvious that she was looking for a fight. “Oh, I see! Treating me just like you do your soldiers! Just like you did my husband! You used him! You used me! Expendable, that’s what all of us are to you!”
“Stupid bitch, I don’t have time—” He went to reach for her throat, but before he could get a hold, something cold and hard pressed against his belly. He knew what it was. She’d just killed him.
She pulled the trigger on the little snub-nose three times.
Hause jumped as each bullet sank its claws into his gut. Instinctively, he pressed his hand to the wounds, knowing full well that it would do no good. As he stumbled back against the railing, Amanda raised the snub-nose, intent on emptying the rest of the six-round cylinder into his chest. But his men had heard the shots and arrived before she could. They didn’t bother with commands. They opened up on her. Her lower-back slammed agai
nst the outside railing as dozens of roses bloomed across her chest. A final bullet hit her in the forehead. She wobbled against the railing for a few seconds, groaning, eyes rolling, then she fell away, tipping heels over head into the darkness below.
Hause watched her blurry figure disappear as he slid to his butt and tipped to his side. The stairs were cold. Or maybe it was him. He was shivering. How suitable, yet ironic, that it was Amanda who brought about his demise. The death of Perkins and his men had been the personification of his failed policies. He’d been slain by his own ambition. As he spiraled back towards earth, wings aflame, he thought about the turns he’d taken and the choices he’d made. Every man had a path he walked through life. Every path had an end. He never imagined his would involve being gut-shot by one of his soldier’s widows, curled up dying in the stairwell a few floors below his office. The future he’d seen for himself had involved a retirement party and, at worst, some mild form of cancer; something that would take him away painlessly in his sleep.
His men gathered around him, shouting his name, shouting for help. Their faces were round blobs, changing color and position, like oil on water. He’d accepted his fate, but he hadn’t accepted theirs. He reached for their arms, trying to pull them down so he could deliver the message about Dan and the monster ticking in the dungeon.
“Sir, help is coming. Just hang on,” the soldier’s voice was a distant echo.
Stop Dan or you’re all going to die! He couldn’t push the words through the cluster of blood and pain. He was shaking from the effort, a cold sweat breaking across his brow. Soon, it’d all be over. Not just for him. For all of them. There’d be a flash, a blast of heat, and Genesis would be no more.
35
Dan was taking a slow sip from a bottle of warm water when he heard the first chorus of gunfire. He knew the Rebels had come. Too many had witnessed the outbreak of the battle in Genesis, word was bound to spread. Out there, in the Outland, that sort of information went for a pretty penny. Some caravan rider had made a half-year’s pay passing that news down to the Rebel army. Genesis would fall. It was inevitable. They were outmanned and outgunned. Their morale was non-existent. The Rebels would break through. They’d kill the men, rape the women, and take the children as slaves. They’d establish a foothold in the Towers, where they’d reign for a thousand years. The Union would be erased. Dan couldn’t let that happen. If the Union was going to fall, they were going to take the Rebels with them.
Mutually assured destruction, his last duty as a Union soldier.
He pulled himself up to his good leg, using an empty rifle as a cane, and began hobbling across the lobby towards the entrance to the dungeon. He could no longer feel his mangled leg, but he’d managed to minimize the bleeding. Now, instead of leaving a thick trail of gore in his wake, he was only leaving clusters of droplets every few paces; his sprint towards death’s door had become a slow jog.
He was through the door and standing at the top of the dungeon stairwell when he heard the sound of gunfire in the lobby; probably some Union boys attempting to hold back the Rebels. He had to hurry; there was no telling how long that dam would hold. He moved the rifle to brace himself, slipped, and tumbled down the first flight of stairs, coming to rest face-up on the landing. The fall knocked the breath out of him and he was struggling to find it again.
He ditched the rifle, rolled to his stomach, and started crawling down, clinging to each step and pulling. His bad leg bumped along behind him. He did his best not to cry out, but halfway down, the pain became too much to bear. Somewhere along the way, the tourniquet he’d fastened had busted loose, and the wound was, once again, leaking like a sieve. It was fine. His mission didn’t require hours, just minutes. He rolled off the last step and laid there, his chest pumping up and down, a buzzing in his ears.
Can’t stop now. Can’t quit. Union soldiers don’t quit.
He was slowing down. The pain was taking fresh ground. He wanted to roll back against the cool iron of a cell door and just float away on the wings of blood-loss induced delirium. But every time he came close to stopping, more gunshots echoed down from upstairs. The sounds of chaos worked like a pin-prick in the ass, producing just enough adrenaline to keep him moving. As he dragged his failing body through the darkness of the cold, damp, narrow hall, he recalled the battles he’d fought, the things he’d seen…the things he’d done. He was reminded that he’d been through worse situations, where death would have been a welcome alternative. This was nothing. He could take the pain. He could make the stretch. Unlike the other wars he’d fought, there was a finish line in sight; it was about fifty yards in front of him, on the other side of an iron door. But there was also doubt. It was creeping there on the peripheral, threatening to stop him in his tracks: images of the men, women, and children he’d sworn to protect, turned to ash by his hand. The burden weighed heavy. But other images were creeping on his peripheral as well: men on pikes, women being ravaged again and again by slobbering Rebel scum, children in chains, those images were the ones that spurred him on.
“Mister, let me up outta here,” the disembodied voice came floating down from one of the small cell door windows.
“C’mon, boss, give us a chance. We ain’t eaten in so long. Chester started chewing on his goddamn leg.”
Unable to inform them that soon their suffering would be at an end, he kept on crawling.
“Sonofabitch! You come back, now! You come back! You hear me? You sonofabitch!”
The door was within arm’s reach and was still cracked open from when he brought Caldwell down to show him the weapon. He wondered if Caldwell would approve. If seeing the Rebel army approaching would have changed his mind. Dan had heard it said that only fools and dead men didn’t change their minds. Caldwell was no fool, but he was dead. He pulled himself through the door, across the floor, to the back wall of the room.
Eight up. Three left. Two down.
Dan pushed himself up on one shaky arm and punched the magic brick. As the floor rattled and hummed, he fell to his face to catch his breath. There was shouting in the hallway and a single gunshot.
“The Rebels are here!” one of the prisoners shouted. “We’re free, boys! The Rebs have come for us!”
No time to rest. No time to catch his breath. He didn’t have a torch, but he knew the keypad well. He slid over and reached down into the darkness of the three-foot hole. He found the smooth plastic of the keypad and slid his hand around until he found the 4—second row down, far left. It was the first number in the sequence. Pressing it also lit up the rest of the keys. He no longer needed a torch.
There was running in the hall, two sets of footsteps growing rapidly closer.
435698#
Five-minutes appeared on the display screen and began counting down.
4:59
4:58
There was no turning back, not unless you knew the code.
4:55
Two men came through the door, aiming their rifles and shouting over each other. They saw the glow coming up from the floor.
“What the fuck is it?” one of them yelled at Dan as the other took it upon himself to investigate.
“It’s a fuckin’ nuke, man! It’s a fuckin’ nuke and it’s armed!”
“How do we turn it off!” he poked Dan in the forehead with the muzzle of his rifle.
Dan looked up at him and presented a bloody-toothed smile; he’d won.
“Sonofabitch!” He kicked Dan in the face. “How do we turn the damn thing off?”
“Careful, man! If you knock his ass out, he can’t tell us shit!” The man’s voice shook as he watched the final moments of his life tick away.
3:20
3:19
3:18
“All of you are going to die,” Dan wheezed.
The Rebel raised his gun as if he intended to pull the trigger, but quickly thought better of it. He growled in frustration and ran to the nuke. He jumped down into the hole and began searching for some way to disarm it
.
2:30
Dan tried to keep his eyes open. He wanted to see. There was satisfaction in watching them scramble. Their panic was at a fever pitch.
“Any wires?”
“No, there aren’t any goddamn wires!”
“There’s gotta be wires somewhere!”
“I’m not prying this motherfucker open!”
“You don’t and we die!”
“What if I do and it goes off?”
“It’s gonna go off anyway!”
“Then you get down here and do it!”
Dan would have laughed if he’d had the energy. It was his last hurrah. Taking the fight to the Rebels one last time.
1:15
1:14
It was a strange irony, using the sins of the past to atone for the sins of the present. How many times would the board have to be wiped before man got it right? He never thought he’d be the one holding the eraser. But that was what it meant to be a soldier. You took an oath and you followed your duty, no matter where it led.
“Let’s go man! Let’s get out of here!”
“There’s no fuckin’ way we can outrun this thing!”
“I’m not sitting here and waiting to die, fuck you!” As the Rebel turned to run from the room, he was shot in the back.
“Fuckin’ traitor!” The Rebel standing in the hole was shouting and waving his rifle.
:11
:10
:09
Forgive me, Lerah.
Dan closed his eyes and waited for the light.
36
The flash lit up the distant horizon, far beyond the mountain range. A cloud rolled towards the sky, wrapped in clusters of lightning. The sound of the explosion reached them as a low rumble, causing the ground to quake beneath their feet. Lerah stumbled back against Dominic, her hands cupped over her mouth in shock. The women of the Rebel army began to emerge from their tents, young ones in tow, their eyes glued to the sky.
The Glass Mountains: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 2 Page 25