Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5

by Morris, Kate

  They paused beside a vehicle parked near the laundromat. From the looks of the broken windows and open gas tank cover, it had been there for a while.

  “No tracks coming or going,” Roman observed of the pristine snow.

  “No footprints, either.”

  “Let’s see if we can get in.”

  She nodded and felt the nerves kick up as she rose and followed him. Jane wished she had one-tenth his confidence.

  Roman paused at the door, and she gave him a nod, trying to be more like him. He pulled, and it opened right up. A second later, and they were standing in the restaurant, which was clearly empty. Just a little moonlight spilled in, so he turned on his flashlight and covered the end with his palm. Jane raised her handgun to a two-handed grip down in front of her like her father taught her and followed.

  The building was quiet and cool. Not cold and damp like that bar across the street, but cool. It still felt a little warmer than outside.

  The menu was displayed above the check-out counter on a plastic board that probably illuminated at one time with the pictures of the food items available. Someone had broken much of the plastic, almost like they’d thrown things at it or hit it with something. The restaurant was small, likely more of a take-out situation, but there were about four tables and ten booths in case diners chose to eat there. Many of the chairs were knocked over. She wasn’t that familiar with this town because she and her father usually went camping when they spent time together. Abraham said this place closed down maybe three or four years ago, which was accurately represented by the amount of dust coating everything.

  Roman looked at her and whispered, “Ready?”

  She nodded and tightened her grip on the pistol as he pushed the swinging door into the kitchen slowly open. He turned right, and she moved in quickly and panned left. They were definitely in the kitchen. That girl was right. It did smell like the distinct residual aroma of Chinese food, even though the place had been closed for a while. And something else. There was a definite smell of something else lingering.

  Jane scanned the area, looked behind the stainless-steel dividing island only to discover metal ladles, a wok, and long forks on the tile floor.

  “What is that?” Roman whispered and joined her near the back door. “Hear it?”

  She paused a moment to strain. “Yeah. A motor running or something.”

  They stepped toward the backdoor, and Roman just barely cracked it open. The humming was louder there. He eased it closed again and turned the lock.

  “I think it’s a generator,” he disclosed.

  She nodded in agreement. Then it hit her what the other scent was. “Roman, I smell cigarette smoke.”

  He lowered his face mask for a second and inhaled. Then he nodded. “Let’s go through that door over there,” he indicated.

  They crept quietly, he still covering the flashlight’s bright beam, and pressed gently on the door. It pushed inward, and this time, she poked her head through first. It was a dark, windowless hallway with only a single lit bulb hanging down. She ducked back so he could look, and then Roman shut the door quietly again.

  “I think this must’ve connected the other businesses. Maybe they used this hall to move between the businesses or for deliveries or something,” he said.

  She peeked again, took in the dirty tile floor, the faint scent of laundry soap or softener, and the dingy appearance of the narrow space. There were three doors across the hallway at eight to twelve-foot intervals going toward the front of the building again. Suddenly, there was the sound of a snort, and she jumped back and closed the door softly.

  “What? What’d you see?”

  “Someone…snoring, I think,” she explained.

  Roman’s eyes narrowed, and he turned off the flashlight. “Think we can navigate without this?”

  “Yes, we should try to turn off that hallway light, too,” she whispered and began looking for the light switch as he cracked open the door again. She tried a few and got nothing.

  “Wait, do that again,” he whispered. She flicked the last one again. “Stop, that’s it. Leave it off.”

  They went back to the front window and aimed the flashlight out, clicking it on and off three times. Then they went to the back door again to let Abraham and Tristan in that way, which was a part of the plan.

  “Do you think it’s him over there? The man that kidnapped Remington?” she asked Roman while they waited for the others.

  “Not sure. Someone’s running a generator, which is weird to do in the middle of the town like this. That much noise should be drawing in those things.”

  “It sounded muffled, though,” she said. “Think there’s a basement?”

  “Hm, hadn’t thought of that. Good point, Jane,” he praised. “We definitely need to be careful over there. We know what that man is capable of, and we also know he has a lot of men working with him, not that we’ve seen them yet.”

  She shivered, and he cupped her shoulder gently to offer comfort. A few minutes later, that felt like an hour, Tristan and Abraham showed up. She noticed he locked the door behind him.

  “I’ll lead,” he said quietly after they revealed what they found so far. Then he pointed at her. “Jane, stay behind me. Abraham next. Roman last. Remember, this is just an intel mission, if possible.”

  They all nodded because Tristan was their fearless leader. Her? Not so much. She was scared of everything, but her anger at these men for what they did to a girl she hadn’t even been introduced to yet made Jane dig deep to find some courage.

  “This way,” Roman said and led them to the separating door to the hallway and took up his position at the rear. “We turned off the hall light.”

  “Good,” Tristan whispered and pried the door open silently.

  They moved slowly, even though her feet wanted to sprint, but that was mostly to spring out of the building back to the truck and then back home. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and she had to remind herself to take a calm, steadying breath. Tristan stepped out first into the hallway and raised his small, compact rifle. She raised her pistol but kept it out to her side so that she wasn’t pointing it at Tristan’s back. She wished now that she’d brought the modified M16 her father had customized with a shorter barrel. He’d gone into detail explaining it, but Jane got a little lost. All she needed to know was how to load it, fire it, and reload it in a panic situation. It felt like a better choice tonight, but she was stuck with the pistol, which also held a lot of rounds just in case.

  Tristan moved down the hall to the first door and tried it. Surprisingly, the door opened, but the hinge squeaked just slightly. Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness, but this new space had some light coming in from rows of windows at the top of the back wall above a long countertop that must’ve spanned forty feet. The windows were up high, so they hadn’t bothered to board them up. Ahead of their group were racks and racks of dry-cleaned items of clothing that seemed to go on forever. It was a maze, and they wouldn’t see if someone decided to sneak up on them or were hiding in the clothing hanging down.

  Tristan turned and sent a sharp wave out to his left. The boys moved that way and followed parallel with them now. She scooted out a few feet to occupy the space between Abraham and Tristan. Together they moved out slowly, each person staying in the formation as they wove in and around round racks and suspended rows of clothing hanging down from some sort of movable mechanism built into the building’s ceiling.

  She froze in mid-step. A man was lying on an old sofa about twenty feet ahead of her under the suspended clothing. She inhaled a little too loudly, which alerted Abraham, whose eyes grew large as he, too, spotted the sleeper. He managed to get Roman’s attention. He froze, also. Jane tried to warn Tristan, but he didn’t see her. Instead, she had to break out of the line and hurry to him, where he finally looked down at her. With no choice, she pointed in lieu of speaking. Then the man snored loudly, which would’ve been helpful a minute ago.

  Tristan no
dded and indicated with his hand that she should wait where she stood. He removed a nasty looking dagger from his belt and holstered his pistol. Then he looked around and grabbed something off the table nearest him. It was a small hand towel. She didn’t question but watched silently.

  He crept over to where the man was sleeping and clubbed him hard over the head. He woke up startled and cried out slightly before Tristan did it again with the hilt of his wicked knife. The man slumped, and Tristan ushered them over.

  “Get me something to tie his hands. A long-sleeve shirt or something. Get me two,” he ordered the boys.

  She watched over him as he worked, shoving the end of the towel into the man’s mouth. Abraham returned with a shirt.

  “Cut off the sleeves. Quickly, Abraham.”

  He did so with Tristan’s knife and handed them to him. Tristan used the one sleeve to hold the gag in place by tying it around his head. Then he used the other to bind his hands very tightly behind his back. Roman returned and handed him some women’s hosiery. Tristan nodded and wound them around the man’s ankles a few times. By the time he was done, the man was hog-tied and left on his side on the floor next to the sofa. Blood pooled on the ground near his head. Maybe he would die from the assault. She was not sure. Tristan removed some clothing from their hangars and tossed them on top of the man’s body to conceal it, which she wouldn’t have thought to do.

  He indicated over his shoulder that they should keep moving, to which they all followed in the same staggered manner until they came to the end of the long room. Tristan motioned for them to stay put and went toward the front. He came back a moment later.

  “Clear,” he whispered and pointed two fingers to a door near the back wall closest to Abraham.

  Tristan went first again, and this time she was surprised that it led downstairs. A basement was under a business like this? It seemed odd and was also very dark, so he lit his flashlight and held it over his pistol in front of him like she’d seen cops on detectives shows on t.v. do. Jane tried hard to study his movements and how he handled himself so that she could learn from a professional. Tomorrow with Tristan was not guaranteed. He could be killed tonight, and they were a long way off from knowing everything he did about survival.

  The basement was basically a long, narrow hallway that went on for probably the same length as the rectangular laundromat and dry-cleaning operation above them. There were doors, some open, others closed that were on either side of the hallway, but no lights were on that she could tell. It was spooky, damp, and colder than the top floor.

  Tristan paused when they came to two open doors going in opposite directions in the corridor. He motioned for Abraham to come forward. His small flashlight was on, too. Tristan indicated she should check the room to her right while he went left through another doorway. Abraham followed her, but there wasn’t anything to see except for a card table and a few tipped over chairs. Someone left it all in the middle of a game of poker, but they hadn’t been here in a while because everything was covered in dust. They returned to the hallway with the glazed tile walls and grimy linoleum floor. She had to step over a discarded beer can.

  They followed in the same single row behind Tristan again. She tried not to make a sound, tried not to breathe as they checked each room one by one. Most were empty, but some held dry-cleaning supplies or stacks of clothing that probably nobody ever claimed. Then they came to the last room on the right, which was not mirrored by a room across from it. Tristan turned the knob and pushed it inward as she raised her gun a little higher, fully expecting a night crawler to come tearing out after them. Nothing did. This wasn’t a horror flick. It was real life, and sometimes it was actually scarier.

  “Jesus,” Roman said and brushed past her into the room. He shined his light on the wall. “This is where they were holding them.”

  “Bastards,” Tristan swore as he, too, regarded the handcuffs hanging empty from the pipes in the walls just like that girl had told Avery. There were buckets on the other side of the wall, which as she drew nearer, became clear as to their purpose. They were used as toilets. It made Jane want to wretch because of such sickening conditions. So did the smell. “C’mon. We’ve got some questioning to do.”

  “Jane, you may want to stay out of the room when I do it,” Tristan warned.

  “Are you kidding? You might want to.”

  He nodded with a grimace as if he understood her desire to hurt something right now.

  They walked more quickly back up out of the musty, damp basement and found the man wriggling and squirming to be free.

  “Cut his feet free. Leave his hands tied,” Tristan said to Abraham, who produced a dagger like Tristan’s and sliced the man’s restraints lightning fast.

  Tristan and Roman lifted and slammed him against the back of the couch in a somewhat seated position. Jane noticed a cigarette still burning in an ashtray on the stand next to them.

  “Are you the only one here?” he asked the portly man, shining the flashlight right into his face. He squinted but nodded vigorously. “I’m removing your gag. You scream out, I slice your throat. Got me?”

  The sweaty man nodded again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Glen,” he answered quickly.

  She hung back and let Tristan handle this since he obviously had a lot more experience than they did.

  “Where are your friends?”

  “Not here. It’s just me.”

  “Why?”

  He attempted to not look at the light, but Tristan poked his shoulder with the pistol. The man coughed, which sounded wet and sickly. She pinched the clip of her face mask a little tighter. He could have the infection.

  “Why?” he asked more insistently.

  “I’m supposed to stay here.”

  “Why, and you better start telling me a lot more, or I’ll show you what tricks I know with this knife.”

  “H-he told me to stay and guard the place, ya’ know?”

  “No. Explain.”

  “On account of maybe bringing more girls here in a few days.”

  “To sell?”

  His eyes jumped to Jane a moment before flicking back to Tristan with a twitch working in his left. He nodded.

  “Who runs this shit?”

  “Mr. Dice.”

  “First and last, asshole.”

  The man hung his head a moment.

  “Gag him,” Tristan ordered Roman, who immediately did.

  The man started protesting through the gag, but it only came off as muffled garbling. Jane also couldn’t understand why Tristan wanted the gag back in, but she also didn’t question his tactics or authority. His next move explained his actions a little too well. He pulled out his dagger in a motion so fast she barely saw it and stabbed the man’s thigh. He tried to scream, but the gag held. For some strange reason, Tristan left the knife embedded in his leg.

  “You see here, Glen?” he started, although she’d already forgotten his name. “I am trained by the U.S. Army and the CIA in every aspect of torture, interrogation, spying, and all other kinds of nasty shit you could never handle knowing. When I take out the gag, you’d better start singing like a Southern Baptist choir on Sunday morning service as if Jesus himself just descended. Ya’ got me?”

  He nodded, tears streaming down his face now either from fear or pain. Jane found she didn’t care. The bloody gore seeping out of his leg didn’t bother her, either.

  “Now,” Tristan said and removed the gag. “Sing, bitch.”

  “Okay, okay, mister. Please. Don’t hurt me anymore. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “See?” Tristan said in a cheery tone she’d never heard from him. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Would you look at that? Seems like we’re going to let you go when we’re done here after all!”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Roman

  They didn’t let him go. Tristan didn’t let him go at all. There was no happy ending for that man. He’d died weak, bloody, an
d exhausted from what Tristan had done to him. Roman had taken Jane to the other room to look for materials they could use upon Tristan’s orders, but Roman knew it was because he wanted her out of there. Abraham stayed. If she thought it was strange that they were gathering soap and other laundry supplies instead of staying in the room, she didn’t voice her opinion. Then he’d helped them carry the dead man’s body and toss it over the cement retaining wall behind the building.

  Now they were back in the Chinese restaurant, and the buildings were all quiet again.

  “Found the generator. Good thing is that it’s on wheels,” Tristan told them. “We’ll use the truck so we can load some stuff. This place will be great for clothes. I think we’re going to need them.”

  He was just talking as if his hands didn’t still have the remnants of another man’s death on them.

  “What’d he tell you?” Roman asked him.

  “Who this guy is, where he lives, everything I needed,” he answered. “Also, that they aren’t coming back here for a few days.”

  Jane asked, “What now?”

  Tristan paused a long moment before replying, “I don’t want those girls to be there any longer than they have to be, or the ones he sold, but I’m not too sure about the four of us going to this asshole’s compound, which is what it sounds like.”

  “Where is it?” Jane inquired.

  “About three miles outside town,” Abraham answered this time. “I know where. It used to belong to the man who was the government liaison for the oil companies. It’s a big place. Fancy. When it was built for him like ten years ago or something, a lot of people drove past to get an eyeful from what I’ve heard from local gossip. We drove by it, too, but not for that reason. We were just going that way to go to a strawberry picking patch.”

  “What do you mean a compound?” Roman asked next.

  “The government was supposedly afraid that the protestors were going to do even more than they did, so they built a mini-embassy and stuck some government prick in it to keep the peace, make deals with the locals for their community on behalf of the oil companies, and offer his assistance working out new policies. I never met him,” Tristan explained to them. “I knew of him, of the place, but he had his own security team.”