Beyond The Fall (Book 1): Relentless Sons

by Guess, Joshua

  Tabby knew she was being threatened. Bobby and Jo made sure to be very overt about it, of which I was sort of proud. They weren’t like me, not really. At heart they preferred to deal with problems openly and without subterfuge. In Jo’s case I thought that had a little to do with her desire for her enemies to sweat, because she could be fucking scary that way. I supposed instilling fear could be a common feature of all girls in their late teens, but I was far from an expert on the subject.

  Knowing she was being threatened, pushed to explain herself, Tabby shook her head. “I need to hear what Smoke has to say. I need to know.”

  Bobby opened his mouth to protest but I put a hand on his knee. “Stop. Let Smoke talk.”

  Jo was eyeing Tabby anew. I got why. Putting knowing about her son above her own well-being said a lot about her.

  We all looked at Smoke, still laying on the floor of the van. I met his eyes. “So. Talk.”

  Smoke stared at the roof as he tried to find the words. Hard to blame him for that. How do you explain the sort of things he took part in? The things he himself ordered others to do? It would be an easy out to think of him as inhuman, purely a monstrous being incapable of guilt or remorse even as he committed atrocity.

  Life isn’t that simple. People are able to rationalize almost anything. We have the capacity to operate all the time under cognitive dissonance. Believing two separate things at once is the basis for having ideals but being pragmatic about them. Not that what the Relentless Sons were doing could be rationalized as anything but evil, at least for their victims.

  But the Sons were human beings, however vile. Some of them would have consciences. Many would be yoked into service as Tabby was—under threat to their children. In general I didn’t consider basic humanity a vulnerability, but in this context it created a whole constellation of weak points. And weaknesses can be exploited.

  “We thought you were dead,” Smoke said, his voice raspy. “When one of the parents of the...well, when one of the parents dies, we keep the kids. There’s always work to do. I don’t know how old your boy is—”

  “Ten,” Tabby said, a feverish look in her eyes. “Is that old enough to work?”

  Smoke nodded fractionally, all he could manage with the restraint tying him to the floor of the van. “We only take people with kids old enough to work and take care of themselves a little.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if unable to bear the idea of seeing our faces at this admission. It held a brutal sort of logic, which did nothing to slow the hot pulse of anger welling up inside me. “He’ll be alive. So long as they think you’re dead, they got no reason to use him against you.”

  I leaned over him. “How do you know for sure?”

  Smoke looked puzzled. “I went up to the main camp a few days ago. Seen him with my own eyes. The fellas from that camp she was in I took up there told the kid she was dead. Said a big fucker with scars all over him took her away and killed her. That’s what they told me you did. Said they found her body. Guess they didn’t want us knowing someone was out there who could lead you to us. Should have killed those bastards myself.”

  Smoke was good at this. He was giving information but nothing as concrete as real details. It was possible he was lying and that Logan was killed at once. I didn’t think so. The Sons struck me as a group that used every part of the buffalo, so to speak, and taking captives fit into that ethos perfectly.

  “That’s fine for now,” I said. “We’re definitely gonna circle back around to you in a little while. You’re going to give me verifiable information. Trust me on that.” I caught the slight widening of his eyes, the involuntary fear response, as he absorbed the casual certainty in the words.

  I looked at Tabby. “Now you. How long were you planning that?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t. Not really. At first I thought, you know, you escaped and took me with you. Figured I might be able to convince you to go after Logan. Then I saw how focused you got on the mission and I was afraid...”

  “You thought if you told me about him, I’d prioritize the mission over him,” I said.

  Tabby sighed. “Yeah. Was I wrong?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Can’t say for sure how I would have reacted then. But yeah, probably. I’d have made this my first goal in most circumstances. What changed?”

  “It just hit me as we were packing up,” Tabby said. “That I might be able to bargain you for him. It seemed like the best way. I was desperate. Not thinking clearly. I just wanted my son back. Can you understand that?”

  I studied her face. “No,” I finally said, and her expression fell. “I can’t understand because I’m not a parent. I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through. What I do understand is changing plans at the last minute. I understand the way a person thinks when their blood is up and everything is on the line. I know that fear of losing everything. I get why you did it, Tabby, even if I’ve never had the same motivation.”

  She nodded, eyes welling with tears. “I’m sorry. You might never believe that, but I am. I should have trusted you.”

  “Can’t disagree with you there,” I said. “Like I said, you’re probably right that I would have put the mission first. But I can tell you for damn sure what I would have done after that every single time.”

  “Yep,” Bobby said, a slow grin forming on his face.

  Jo nodded. “No doubt.”

  Tabby looked confused and a little hopeful.

  I glanced down at Smoke. “This sack of shit is going to give me what I need to know. We’re going to finish the last part of the job, go back to Haven and put together a plan, and then I’m going to personally get Logan and put him in your arms. That’s a fucking promise.”

  Bobby punched me in the shoulder. “You’re gonna save all the kids and you know it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But he’s my first priority once we get to that point.” I stood—well, crouched—and shuffled over to Tabby, then knelt in front of her. Our eyes locked. “I’m going to save your son or die trying. Do you believe that?”

  Through tears and rage and fear and doubt, Tabby smiled at me.

  26

  The next few hours were less than fun. Tabby was not to be alone with Smoke or speak to him without me, Bobby, or Jo. That condition she was happy to agree to. She seemed eager to cooperate, which made plenty of sense given the circumstances. She stayed away from the prisoner, who was allowed to use the bathroom, drink some water, and eat some food before being chained to the bed of the van with an armed pair of guards while Jo went to work on his shoulder.

  Bobby and I made our way from the camp, quite a distance away from the stretch of highway haunted by the Relentless Sons. Allen and Greg waited for us outside the circle of vehicles. Greg was patched up but wouldn’t be coming along for this part—the bandage on his head would stand out, but the slightly vague expression on his face and gently slurred speech told the tale much more deeply. A concussed scout isn’t a scout at all. He’s a body waiting to happen, and that’s if he doesn’t get his friends killed first.

  “Glad you’re okay. Or okay-ish, I guess,” I said, giving him a brief hug.

  Greg tried to point at the bandage with a sloppy grin on his face, but his coordination was off and he ended up poking the wad of cotton instead. “What, this? Just a scratch. I’m good, brother.”

  Even in the darkness I could see Allen roll his eyes. “Sure, had to glue a flap of scalp back down onto your skull, but you’re just dandy. Idiot.”

  I slapped Greg on the shoulder. “You did good work today, man. Go get something to eat. Just don’t fall asleep, you hear?”

  Greg mimed me squawking at him with his hand, opening and closing his fingers. “Yeah, dad, okay. You guys be safe. I’ll be right here when you get back.” He gave his brother a fast but fierce hug and slapped him lightly on the cheek before ambling off drunkenly.

  Allen’s eyes were inscrutable when he looked at me. “You ready for this?”

  I shrug
ged. “Not my first rodeo. You told everyone what’s up? This isn’t our normal thing. Volunteers only, and they need to know what we’re about to do.”

  Allen took a deep breath. “Bunch of ’em did volunteer. Some have to stay here. You know Jo said she’d go.”

  “God, no,” I said. “Even if we didn’t need her here to patch people up, this isn’t the sort of thing I want her getting used to. Maybe one day she won’t have any choice, but for now she has a chance to avoid this shit. How many want to go?”

  Allen jerked his head toward a clump of shadows slightly lighter than the deeper blacks shading the world around us. “Too many. I pared it down to just six of us. Seven, if you’re serious about taking the woman.”

  “Her name is Tabby,” I said with somewhat frayed patience. “She did what she did for her son. Give her a break.”

  Allen grimaced but waved a hand in agreement. “Fine, but I’m keeping an eye on her anyway.”

  “Pshh, you and everyone else,” I grumbled. “You think I’m not watching her like a hawk? I’m not stupid. And yeah, she’s coming. That ankle is splinted, but getting her there is going to take a while. Let’s have a chat with the kids and get on with it.”

  Allen and I joined the rest of the team. Scott and Kara stood next to each other. Tabby was slightly away from the rest. The other two were scouts I didn’t know well, Brendan and Alice. Every face was a mask.

  “No stirring speeches,” I said in a low voice. “I won’t try to convince you this is noble or right. What we’re about to do is pure wet work. You can still leave and no one holds it against you. We never bring it up, period.”

  I looked at the shadowed faces, searching for any sign of doubt. There was none. I would have worried at that willingness to kill so freely but for the fact none of them showed a hint of excitement. That was good. No one in their right mind should look forward to what we were about to do.

  “No takers? Okay. Let’s go.”

  When camp two broke off and scurried away from Smoke and the rest of the Relentless Sons, we weren’t caught unprepared. It was a known possibility. Which was why a couple of my people spent a good deal of time mapping the paths and side roads around the highway. We knew that in any potential fleeing scenario, my captors could only go north or south. They went north.

  In the dark it wasn’t hard for a scout on a motorcycle to follow them, laying down slashes of paint on the road every few hundred yards. Knowing what side roads could be taken helped. We had someone waiting at each possible exit from the warren of blocked roads.

  And now here we were. I was moments away from keeping my promise. I was glad Tabby was here to see it—and only to see, not to participate—because I very much needed her to understand the stakes, the costs, and the consequences of my work.

  There are three kinds of war, in my view. There’s the sort that lets you have some distance from the act, like firing missiles from a ship. Which isn’t to say the consequences of pushing that button don’t sit and fester in the darker regions of your mind and soul. I’m sure they do. You’re worse for it, I think, because the horror is slower and more insidious.

  There’s ground combat. Man to man fighting, or in vehicles. Deep in the shit. Maybe even fighter pilots fall into this category, though I tend to think of it in terms of being able to see the person you’re killing. The overlap and different exceptions like snipers are obvious if you dig. These are generalities I’m talking about, after all.

  The third and last is what I specialize in. Which by even a generous definition could charitably be called necessary murder. You don’t have to like it. I don’t. But every society for as long as human beings have clumped together into groups of three or more has had it. The people willing to keep the peace or just achieve larger goals not by fighting a man when he threatens you and you can see the whites of his eyes, but by whatever means gets the job done.

  Tempted as I was to rationalize or even make it out to be some kind of higher calling, I didn’t. My commanding officers when I was a SEAL spanned the spectrum in that regard. Some raised up what we did as almost an art. Others never let us forget the harsh reality. It was my adherence to the latter that made the CIA interested in me and a couple other guys I knew.

  Killers with remorse, but not so much we couldn’t keep doing the job. A rare breed.

  I raised a hand and motioned for the others to split off, leaving me with Tabby. The distance between our camp and the refugee Sons was only about half a mile, so helping her get here wasn’t terribly exhausting. The rest of the day had done that. This was more of a cool down exercise. It wasn’t like I was going to be doing any fighting, after all.

  “Wait here,” I said to her, so close my lips almost touched her ear. “Stay low and don’t move from this spot. Okay?”

  She nodded, her eyes gleaming in the faint starlight. There was no youthful innocence in them. She’s seen as much shit as anyone. That was the world now; no blushing virgins when it came to death.

  The others moved in with more grace than I had in me at the moment. Instead I chose to go slowly. Measuring each footfall to be sure I wouldn’t break an unseen branch or scrape a piece of loose gravel across the blacktop. The refugees had predictably circled up their vehicles, but not directly on the highway this time. That much made sense; the other Sons would be looking for them. Instead they’d camped at a huge truck stop just off a state highway. We were about a hundred miles from the fights and explosions we left behind, but it felt like another world.

  By my estimates, this group wasn’t far off from running out of fuel. Maybe they hid their circle behind the truck stop in some vain hope of finding gas. I doubted it. They had to know any old fuel not recently distilled would be useless. I figured they were just using the spot to blend in. There were other cars here, after all.

  Cut off from their former allies and their seemingly endless supply of gas, this batch was on the verge of becoming vulnerable.

  They weren’t actually close to becoming anything new other than corpses, but I can’t help but note all the details.

  We wore black, which seemed appropriate for the occasion. Every scout worth their salt had an outfit like it. Allen briefly put on his night vision goggles and scanned the area before giving us the thumbs-up. The sheer volume of leftover military hardware, from personal use gear to artillery, gave us a tremendous advantage. So long as the other guys didn’t have the same. Allen was telling us there were no visible sentries. No one watching that he could spot.

  It seemed suspicious to me for about five seconds. Then I realized the best way to hide from people searching for you was to do just that. Don’t light any fires. Don’t sit someone up on the roof of your truck to keep an eye out. At most you’d pop your head up now and then from behind the safety of a window just to make sure there weren’t any lights coming your way.

  Even so, moving toward the vehicles was risky. The moon was only a crescent and even that blocked by clouds, but my heart still hammered against my sternum as we approached. All it would take was one unlucky break and the six of us would be caught in open terrain by enemies who outnumbered us. Out gunned us.

  We moved slowly. Painfully so. Allen and I moved right next to each other the whole time and never so much as scraped a boot on the pavement. Mainly because our boots had black socks stretched over them much as the dark balaclavas hugged our faces.

  I’d be lying if I said we weren’t phenomenally lucky. We were. Maybe my captors were exhausted from adrenaline. Maybe they were scared to even move as they curled fearfully inside their vehicles. It’s possible they just thought they were safe. Hell, I only knew what vehicles to look for because I’d memorized the careful list maintained by my people.

  Whatever the source of our fortune, they never saw us coming. They never saw us go.

  “Did something go wrong?” Tabby whispered, barely audible, when we reached her again.

  “No,” I said. “Went smoothly. We’re ready.”

  I glanced at
the rest of the team, who each took a knee in a broad semicircle on the low bank overlooking the parking lot. Too short to be called a hill, it made the asphalt the bottom of a shallow bowl. One by one they raised rifles, balancing elbows on knees as comfortably as any soldier I’d seen. It was a body mechanic familiar to anyone who shot in real-world scenarios. It had been so long since I relied on guns regularly that I didn’t even think I would look so natural doing the same.

  Each of them gave a nod when they were sighted in.

  When I spoke, it wasn’t for their benefit. Partly it was for Tabby’s, so she had something to focus on when the memories of this night blinked into existence at random to haunt her. I wanted to give her mind something to anchor on when the sleep wouldn’t come and her brain refused to stop replaying this moment over and over again. It was also for me. I needed to hear myself say the words.

  “If we let them go, then tomorrow these animals would start all over again. They’d hunt down innocents and kill them without mercy just to take what isn’t theirs. But even if that weren’t true, they’ve earned this for what they’ve already done.”

  I briefly wondered how many of the former Sons below were victims of the kidnapping scheme. This was a thought I forced on myself. Something I repeated like a mantra. This was in line with my habit of constantly forcing myself to see the people I killed as people. Not numbers, not empty monsters. Human beings. It hurt. It always hurt. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t damage me. But it kept me from slowly becoming something monstrous myself.

  Well, more monstrous, anyway, I thought as I picked up the clacker and pushed it three times in rapid succession.

  An ungodly thunder filled the night, accompanied by rapid light flashes as the six antipersonnel mines arrayed in a wide half circle around the enemy vehicles activated at once. Each contained explosives seated behind seven hundred steel balls that would deform into the shape of .22 bullets from the force of the blast. The man who designed the weapon didn’t realize that would happen. How many deadly advancements in human history were the result of a mistake or unintended consequence? Probably a large number. Good things happened by chance far less often.