by Angela White
“Now?” he asked.
“I’ve got half an hour.”
Marc started to grab a towel and follow her to their tent, but she slipped into the small hay room, waving her shadows to stand watch.
For just an instant, Marc lost the mood and gained a flash of Adrian that chilled him. She’d chosen a relief source.
That’s you, jackass, the inner man reminded bluntly. Get in there!
Marc had also chosen his, eased it into need and desire with a gentle touch, and his reward was almost at hand. In a half hour, they would both be pleased. When she came back from Little Rock, he intended to be satisfied.
The mood flared back, bright enough to burn, and Marc dropped his coat in the doorway. “Close those beautiful eyes, baby, and lean against the wall.”
Adrian continued on his rounds, pushing back the bitterness. She was happy. That was what mattered.
Adrian neared the vet setup, approving of the new animals. With the constant additions, the area resembled a small zoo now. Pens and corrals, and crates sat in carefully thought out correlation to form a winding circle, with Chris’s tent and metal table in the center.
Across the deserted two-lane street and through the moldy, surviving fields of wheat, the only building in sight was a weather-beaten nursing home. Adrian had sent a team to explore it as soon as they’d arrived. With the care facility sporting that kicked-in door they all now took as a clear sign that the draft had come through here, he had expected only a few boxes of supplies. Instead, he now had a new group of sheep. The entire third floor of the brick nursing home had survived–twenty eight more hungry souls who were instantly bonded to Safe Haven’s leader.
They hadn’t planned to come out of their barricaded level until all their food was gone, it was how they’d survived the looting after the war. When the Eagles had come through, thinking it was abandoned, the residents had tried to fight for their remaining rations. They’d quickly been persuaded to come along, but not before Kevin had earned a nasty cane mark across his arm and a new respect for the elderly.
“Oh, Marc!”
Angela’s passion-laced voice echoed through the trees.
Adrian’s stomach tightened, fists clenching. I have to get over this!
5
At dusk, the mission team rolled out.
Angela had been thrilled to be cleared for the run, but the sight of where they were going took that feeling away. In fact, there was a complete sense of doom riding the thick air over the Little Rock skyline. The clouds hung in an ugly gray that was the shade of old concrete, perfectly matching the color of the rubble below.
Adrian picked up the mike. “Radio silence, by 9.”
Angela automatically switched to channel 18.
Adrian started the engine, slid his sunglasses on, and got them moving.
As the mission team cleared the trees, Angela began to study the destruction with the powerful binoculars Adrian kept behind his seat. She could still hear that awful moan from the recording in her mind as she concentrated.
“We have movement behind the brown trailer,” Kenn reported on their private channel.
Adrian keyed the mike once to show he’d heard, but said nothing. He switched on the second CB system and put it on the channel where they’d first heard the kids.
As they neared the crumbled city, the mission team was reminded of how these scenes always appeared so unrealistic in cheap films. Except, with the windows down they could smell the bodies. Most were only skeletons, flesh gone to predators, and the team could hear the hordes of flies that circled and stopped, circled and stopped. This was no movie set.
The grass was dead too, replaced with thick mud from the water rising through and over the land. It should have drained, but a cluster of ships had been washed upriver by Hurricane Amanda, forming a thick blockade with the wreckage. As a result, the river had been backing up into nearly every city and town along it’s banks. It probably would only have taken a few hours, and a little dynamite to clear, but no one knew about it and few would have been able to do the job now. The war had changed everything.
“They think they’re ready,” Angela stated slowly, reading their enemy. “And they only expect to take one person from this city. The others they’re hunting are for fun or bait.”
“Who?”
“You.” Angela’s fog lifted and left worry. “Everyone in this dead city is on the watch for Adrian Mitchel Sr. All sightings will be reported. They’ve been well paid.”
“Who gave the order?”
“A Major, but I don’t have a name yet.”
“Garret,” Adrian muttered scornfully. “We end it this time.”
Angela didn’t ask what the sneering man in Adrian’s mind had done, instead concentrating on finding a weakness.
“He doesn’t have many,” Adrian shared reluctantly. “The only one I was able to use was how he’ll sometimes underestimate his prey. He’ll have the bases covered, and he’ll act fast. Don’t hesitate if you get the chance.”
Angela didn’t say anything, but inside, she was eager to be useful.
6
Three hours later, they had gotten 140 foot into the city and reached the street that Adrian had known was there. Obviously, this had been done after the war. The piles were too orderly to be random, but it wasn’t encouraging that there were no other signs of rebuilding. Likely, it had been someone trying to flee or someone determined to get in to find family.
“Gentlemen, start your engines!” Adrian encouraged them cheerfully, as if announcing the start of a race.
It drew tired snickers from the team, who understood they would be crawling along. There were cars in the way, along with buses, parts of buildings, and they could already make out the first place they would have to get the Cats out to clear. Part of a school was lying across most of the street, making a corner of bricks.
“Something up?” Adrian asked as they began to roll. He didn’t like how quiet she’d been.
“I can’t get just one thought from the blur,” Angela complained. “There are more people here than we thought, a lot more.”
“Can you get them to come out?”
Her uneasy glance made his stomach shift.
“Even if I could get one, I’m not sure how to convince them they’ll be safe.”
“Yes, you are,” Adrian intoned. “Say it.”
Angela scowled deeply at not being allowed to lie. “We have to do it again. We have to eliminate these men.”
“Yes.” He waited for her to protest.
She didn’t.
Adrian was proud of her.
This would probably be the last time a mission would have only male teams. Within the next month, Adrian expected to have the rest of Angela’s rookies, minus Jennifer, out here toiling for the dream. Angela wasn’t a level Four yet, but she would lead them to glory. Of that, Adrian had no doubt. His private lessons with her, combined with the attention she was receiving from Marc and nearly every senior Eagle, would take care of that.
Adrian thought of the special training he’d been doing with her, the leadership lessons she’d soaked up like a sponge. The mental warning that he had to have a successor was one that had driven him to put those things in place so soon, and only for her, where he hadn’t for any of the others. She wasn’t as experienced, but she valued life more than any of his men, and that was something he couldn’t duplicate. He’d created an army of killers to protect his camp. Then, he’d chosen a pure soul to lead them. It was the perfect setup.
By 10 pm, they had made it more than a mile in, Adrian leading them through the destruction that was unlike anywhere else they’d been. Not a single building stood, most appearing as if the ground had been lifted up to spill them violently off their foundations.
Mile after mile of heartbreaking sights littered the view in every direction, every dark intersection they came to. Those were only identifiable by the lack of concrete cinders. Even with the medical salve under their noses, the ste
nch was awful. The worst of it was around the corner from the grocery store they’d cleared. A truck full of Christmas fruitcakes was rotting, and the sickly sweet mildew gave many Eagles a flash of the carnage at the rest stop. They also had to drive over cracks, sometimes putting metal plates down to drive across.
Adrian didn’t hesitate, never asked her or the Eagles which way. He took them straight to the park.
The team stared in surprise at the clear, undamaged city block that stood before them. The businesses and homes on either side of the street that still had parking meters and telephone poles standing, were dusty, neglected, abandoned, but intact. The convoy crossed into the area with expressions of surprise and longing.
The small city park had green trees, fading playground equipment, and weather-beaten picnic tables with little, ash-filled grills. Adrian’s mind went to his childhood as they pulled up in front of it. He and his mother had spent a lot of time here, long afternoons waiting for the fancy black car to pick him up.
He keyed his mike. “Team Two, perimeter. Team One, Point.”
Angela missed being with Kyle’s crew, but that wasn’t her job tonight. When Adrian lit a smoke and pulled his hood up before stepping out into the dank, chilly night air, she sent her mind back to the search. She had a good idea of how many, and she was getting their anger, their hate clearly, but she didn’t have the location yet. She pushed harder, forcing her mind through the thick levels of darkness and was rewarded with a light in the shadowy distance as a door swung open. One of their enemies was dreaming, and that was her line in.
She didn’t see Adrian wave two men over to guard each door of the truck she was in, but Angela felt it anyway.
7
Surrounded by molding trees that blocked the view of even the dark skyline of Little Rock, the pristine park gave off an unreliable feeling of seclusion and safety. Staring at it, Adrian’s mind took him to one of his most vivid memories of his mother.
“The car’s coming. Be good now, Adrian.”
“Yes, mother.”
Her arms were long and smooth, hard enough to hurt when she squeezed.
“Ouch, Mommy!”
Her soft chuckle floated down. “We’ll have to toughen you up, now that they’ve let you out.”
A long black car pulled up in front of them, and the hated driver rushed to open the passenger door. “Mr. Milton sends his regards.”
His mother blushed furiously and guided him into the car.
“Mind your manners, now. They don’t take just any student into this school.”
“Yes, mother.”
He slid into the cool car, noting the man on the opposite bench and the shining gun he wore.
Adrian politely acknowledged his father’s personal guard and his mother leaned down to buckle him in.
“You’re only five Adrian, but you’re not like other kids. You know that, don’t you?”
He took it in with that intent, nothing-else-allowed mindset that the scientists had found so fascinating. He absorbed one thing at a time, fully, until his understanding of it was exhausted.
“Yes, mother.”
“And do you understand why?”
Adrian glanced over at his father’s man, noticing the interest in not only the conversation, but also in his mother. “No.”
Satisfied, she kissed his cheek and her silken blonde hair brushed his hand. “Keep it that way. Such information is not for the likes of you.”
“Yes, mother.”
I’ve been chasing it ever since, Adrian thought, coming back from the past in a quick snap.
She’d intentionally triggered his genetic need to challenge the destiny that had been set, to discover why he was odd. The classes and forms of training he’d received as a child had created the man, but the mind that drove him had been given by his mother. Once she’d gotten him back from the Lab, nothing had come between them. She’d made certain that he had everything he needed for this very place in time. Until her murder when he was eleven, they’d been inseparable.
“Will you tell a bit more?” Angela yawned as she joined him, estimating it had to be around midnight. Even with the extra lights that Kevin’s team had brought, it was shadowy. The full moon gave them a baleful glow, covered in layers of an unnatural orange fog that made Angela think of nuclear tests and Stephen King stories where monsters came out of the mist.
“If you tell me something.”
Adrian’s answer was spoken lowly enough to make her come closer.
Angela stopped within a foot of him, rubbing her chilly shoulders. “What do you want to know?”
Adrian’s hands slid into his pockets. “When she died, I was sent to a school in Arizona. I escaped.”
“Escaped?”
Adrian thought of the high-towered school and the guards, and the hundreds of other children like him. “They were gathering us. It was killing me not to know why. If she hadn’t triggered that, I would have stayed.”
“Because you were with others like yourself?” she guessed.
“Yes. It hurt to leave them behind.”
Angela waited, hoping she wouldn’t have to ask again, that he trusted her enough to share a few more of his own ghosts. He was so good at healing others and so bad at doing it for himself.
“I was given a clue during a visit from my father. He explained that he was a descendant of powerful old blood, that he and his line were destined to lead.”
“What was it you were being brought together to do?”
“We were trained as weapons to keep his…my bloodline in power. They kept a stock of us.”
“What did they have you do?”
Adrian’s response revealed a layer of his personal torment. “Can’t you guess? Children make perfect assassins. No one ever suspects the eleven-year-old standing out in plain sight, or the twelve-year-old in the shade of a brick alleyway. Or the fifteen-year-old in the hotel kitchen.”
“I thought you escaped!” she exclaimed, almost brought to tears at the images of the things he’d been forced to do.
“Which time?” Adrian spun into the darkness, clearly done.
He was almost out of view before she remembered their deal. “What was it that you wanted me to tell you?”
Adrian stopped. He needed to know. “Would you trade my Eagles for another child?”
“Yes,” she gasped immediately, thrown back into her nightmare. The death of her baby was something she didn’t think she’d ever fully recover from.
“Marc will give that to you.”
“Yes.”
When she didn’t add more, just stood there staring back with that tempting blush, Adrian couldn’t stop himself. “Are you working on it? Ten months is a long time for your team to be without a leader.”
Angela was both embarrassed and angry at the personal question. “I haven’t asked for it.”
It was amazing how quickly he felt better knowing that. The noises and shadows were Marc slowly working his way up to the finale. Adrian applauded the brilliant strategy even as he loathed it.
Adrian went to his truck. Once inside the cold interior, he flipped on the CB. Marc knew better than to break radio silence, but Adrian could at least let them know everything was okay. He had no doubt some of the camp would be listening by now, worried and giving the wolfman shit because he wasn’t their true guardian.
“This is Eagle. We’re still clearing. Everything is 5-by.”
The static cleared instantly with a brief sound of a small crowd cheering in relief.
Following instinct, Adrian adjusted the second set to a less used frequency. It was a shipping channel that he’d taught a special boy to use a long time ago.
“This is Eagle. We are in the city. Hang on. We’re coming.”
He didn’t hang up the mike, instinctively knowing there would be a response.
“You have to hurry!”
It was a low whisper, and Adrian keyed the mike, not recognizing the voice. “Be ready. It will happen fast.”
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“But you don’t even know where we are!” the child moaned.
“Be ready,” Adrian insisted. “We’re close, and we make a lot of noise.”
There was no answer, and he switched the radio off, knowing other people were likely monitoring the channels. If the hunters got to the kids first, there was no way it would end well.
8
The very thin boy stared at the large group with longing and fury. His dad was finally here.
Conner pulled his ragged clothes closer, ignoring the cold and the nasty muck soaking into his duct-taped shoes. Desperate, his intent stare never left the large group of new people.
Even if Conner hadn’t recognized the man from pictures, he could have picked out the leader by the way he cared for his people and by the respect he was given. It was almost a dream for the teenager, seeing that walk and the blue eyes that so perfectly matched his own.
Conner swayed lightly on his feet, almost unable to believe Adrian had come. The men with him convinced the boy he wasn’t hallucinating. There was no mistaking that style of protection.
Instead of the relief he could now allow himself to feel, or even anger at how long it had taken, there was only fear in Conner’s mind. He was terrified of making the wrong choice and getting his kids killed, but his heart was already yearning to be a protected member of his father’s camp instead of leading his own.
9
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
Embry came to glance over his team leader’s shoulder, as if he didn’t believe him.
Hudson didn’t get offended. They were all wired that way. The Major’s men liked knowing things for themselves.
The scouts watched the new people on the screen that was static-layered, but at least working. It was one of a dozen tracking devices they were using to monitor those living here. There wasn’t a lot of technology left that worked, but what did, the Major was great at ferreting out.
They’d known where Conner and the kids were hiding since almost the beginning of this run, but the Major didn’t need that gifted, marked child for anything but bait. The government reward was for his father.