by Ric Beard
All I have to do is survive.
Those men were coming back. When they did, there was going to be hell to pay. She’d spent enough time with Jenna to know that a practical look at life served any mission, but when it came down to her choices in this scenario…
What would Lexi do?
She peered over her shoulder, along the ridge leading back to the town. Then she swept her eyes down the long, winding road built by ancient people of another time.
She sighed, clicked her tongue once, and jerked the reins to the right.
Chapter Forty-Seven
KILLING PUPPIES
47
Jenna sat with her legs up on the bench, her wadded outer shirt crumpled and shoved between her head and the glass wall.
Prior to starting the project she’d dubbed Liberate in the MidEast, Lexi, Lucian, Sean, Nina, and Scruff had gathered for a round table. This was the process The Foundation had followed for decades; gather the three, decide what town or region needed their help most, and formulate a plan.
But they were no longer three. Their little council had doubled in size. Now she harkened back to the last meeting, the final tactical and logistical discussion before they left their homes again, for a potential years-long period, and undertook another mammoth task.
Now that this Ruby woman claimed someone had killed another lawkeeper, Jenna found herself wondering who might be undermining her work. When she thought assassination, her mind had one place to go.
Lexi.
Lexi’s vote had been predictable.
“Cut the head off the snake,” she’d suggested.
To Jenna’s surprise, it had been Sean who answered.
“I know I don’t get a vote here, but seems to me, if the neanderthals you’ve described to me have made a fifty-year history of building armies and going at the Triangle City walls, attacking expeditionary forces, and forcing the people down by taking their sons away and imposing violence upon dissenters, killing this Sampson character would just create a void for another one to fill.”
Jenna had agreed, and though Lexi had been on the other side of the argument, she’d acquiesced because her brother made sense. Lexi wasn’t the tactician, although she was totally capable. She was the infiltrator. For all intents, she’d already done her job by collecting intel and bringing back the big picture for The Foundation. She was much more than a spy though, and her work in Triangle City had been so successful, Jenna had found a new respect for the friend she called sister. She’d transitioned from a legacy of killing those who forced suffering on others to working within a system to bring down a tyrant in Triangle City, without firing a shot.
Or cutting a throat.
Lexi was a legend in the MidEast and on the Eastern Seaboard, though only The Foundation knew who she was. Around her middle age, Lucian and Jenna had endured a lot of Lexi’s anger and resentment at what had become of her world, and who could blame her? She’d lost her parents, gone into foster care, seen her new family murdered in front of her, and seen the world implode in turn, as men murdered each other over the most finite of resources.
Ironically, it had been Lexi’s aggressive drive that had saved many townships on the East Coast and in the MidEast, starting a couple of decades after the fall. She’d gone off on her own, left the compound and all they’d manage to build, and when she’d returned years later, the stories she towed along were astounding. Tyrants displaced by the blade gifted her by an uncle. Townships civilized with a few well-placed cuts. Lexi Shaw had become an assassin and given rise to a new enthusiasm at the compound that would drive them to make the world a better place. She’d proven just one person could make a difference, and though Jenna hadn’t necessarily loved her means, she couldn’t very well complain if she wasn’t willing to find another way to meet that one objective.
But the MidEast had turned out too big for her to do it alone.
After Lexi’s solo successes, The Foundation cleaned out the East Coast over thirty-seven years and left the townships connected to each other, communal. Later, connecting two cities had proven a new level of interaction with the violent world, and the constant raider attacks on Jenna’s crew had prompted her to send their resident infiltrator back into the MidEast from which her attackers had come, two years after the mission had ended.
And Lexi found out Sampson had instituted a new form of slavery.
Sean had instantly drawn a parallel to the way OK City treated its labor force. He ended up being the staunchest supporter of putting an end to Sampson’s reign while it was young, and finding a way to let the people choose their leader. Lexi’s eventual acquiescence had reminded her of how much her friend had evolved. There’d been a time she’d have just left in the middle of the night, hunted Sampson De Le Court down like a dog, and left a corpse behind.
She’s come so far.
So it was only appropriate that Jenna felt a pang of guilt at the glitch in her mind that allowed her to suspect Lexi of taking out the lawkeepers.
No, not a glitch. No!
Even though she’d progressed by an order of magnitudes, Lexi was still Lexi, and Lexi thrived in the role of operative. Jenna didn’t know if a person who’d tasted so much blood and sensed so much accomplishment as a result of her violence could ever deny herself her addiction. Her brain’s reward center had been tickled, and violence was the lone drug Jenna had ever known her friend to use.
The Black Widow who’d once before infiltrated the MidEast to clean it of people who would abuse others was alive and well. Was she reverting to her old ways to push Sampson into the ultimate action that would draw him forth, toward his demise?
Jenna wanted to give Lexi the benefit of the doubt. How ironic was it that the doubt was named Moss?
Another conundrum.
Moss had been like a partner out there on the interstate. They’d watched each other’s back. Moss’s crew cleared badlander outposts deploying attacks on Jenna’s team. She’d later figured out that the limited attacks were designed to slow the team’s progress until Horace could build up a presence in Nashville and stop them dead upon arrival.
But then, the one-eyed asshole Wolf and his crows had shown up with equipment Jenna assumed they’d borrowed from the general and launched a full assault on her team. One of her ears still rang sometimes.
They’d survived a full assault that included a fusion cannon, and both of them lost their crews, minus Scruff—who now she might have lost anyway. Then, the man she’d called brother for all that time had shown up in Triangle City as one of the mysterious figures in black who Jenna and Sean had seen out on the road between Tennessee and Asheville when they were saved from an ambush. For the last couple years, she’d lain in bed thinking about Moss and the mysterious woman who saved Lucian in Statesville, wandering who they really were, and what they were up to.
Did I really know him at all?
There was plenty more irony to be had in that question. If Moss had infiltrated OK City in the same way she had, how was he any different from her?
Even if I didn’t tell him who I really was, I showed him my soul. Of course, I knew him. He’s still Moss. The remaining question though…is the tactical killer I knew out on the road, the one who saved women and children, the one who protected me with his killing expertise, also assassinating Sampson’s lawkeepers? Is he trying to sow discord? Instability? To what end?
The squeaking of the heavy metal wheel in the door evaporated her thoughts and she leaned forward so that crumpled shirt dropped behind her on the bench. Her eyes shifted to the wet pants she’d bunched in the corner, so as not to draw attention to them. The mother fucker—Augustus, Ruby had called him—wore the expression of an asshole who gets his rocks off by killing puppies. Gone was the scowl he’d worn throughout the last encounter, when Ruby had been in charge.
“I’m back!” He barked with an enthusiastic grunt.
Chapter Forty-Eight
UTTER DUMBFUCK
48
Jen
na’s response expressed less fervor. “I’m so excited.” She clapped her hands together and rubbed lackadaisically. “What game are we going to play now, Auggie?”
“No more games, Jenna. That’s the bad news. Seems the boss has decided you’re not worth keeping around anymore.”
Jenna considered his reaction to Ruby’s commands when she’d been in the room and showed Augustus her best smile.
“Which boss are we talking about? Ruby or Sampson?”
The degradation of his expression brought a light, airy feeling to her chest…she almost wanted to masturbate to complete the effect.
Oh, how I’d just love to set my fingertips on the creases in the back of your neck and push through the center of your throat with my thumbs, you sadistic mother fucker.
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, Jenna.”
“Not at all,” Jenna said. “I just think you’re an utter dumb fuck, redneck piece of shit, who wastes perfectly good oxygen with his trumped-up rantings.”
“Says the mysterious twat who doesn’t have the courage to face her enemies.” He stomped over to the chair, dragged it across the concrete floor and unfolded it.
“Oh yes, please sit for another spell, Auggie. I am so honored a twat like me can be enlightened by a sadistic hick.”
It was immature—not to mention an insult to hicks—but she might as well get her parting shots in.
“Who is killing the lawkeepers, Jenna?”
Jenna stood revealing her full form in her thin tank and panties to him to express how little she gave a shit, anymore.
“I am,” she said. “I’m killing them, and I’m loving it. Is that what you want to hear?”
He gave his hand a meandering twist. “Just looking for the truth. Who is killing the lawkeepers?”
“Asked and answered, counsellor.”
“Counsellor?”
“Ugh. Forget it.” Jenna raised her hands and slapped her knees. “Dude, are you planning on killing me, or what?”
“You’re that eager to die?”
“Eager? No. But if I’m going to die anyway, maybe I could spare myself the worst torture of all.”
Augustus laughed. “You know, I was afraid Ruby was going to take you from me. I thought she might actually let you go, or worse.”
“Worse?”
“That she might kill you herself.”
“Oh. Yes, that would’ve sucked, to rob you of your one real joy.”
Augustus stood and walked to the glass. His eyes drank her in from top to bottom. Jenna was too tired to care or cover herself.
“You have no idea what my pleasures are. Your company has been my pleasure from the moment I pushed you through that hole at the top of your cube. Watching your body as you swam, the sound of your voice, it’s all a pleasure for me, Jenna. It’s going to be a pleasure when I fuck your still-cooling corpse, too.”
Too far.
His face vanished and reappeared as the lights flickered. His attention went to the overheads and then to Jenna.
“Why don’t you come in here and fuck it while it’s still warm, Auggie? Too much woman for you? Afraid I’ll hurt you?”
“I like less resistance,” he said. “I’m gonna do things to you that you wouldn’t stand if you were alive. Then I’m going to leave my gift on you before I cut your body into—”
The lights flickered again. Augustus looked up.
“Someone else being tortured without you? Feeling left out?”
“The solar cells are on the fritz. Sometimes they don’t hold—”
The lights flickered again, blinked a final time, and then the room was washed in darkness.
“Well isn’t that just great timing.”
A few heartbeats passed before Jenna heard a loud click, and the room was dimly lit by red emergency lights. Augustus’s attention was still turned to the ceiling, as if waiting for the lights to return.
“Shit,” Augustus muttered.
Jenna smiled.
They stood in silence until Augustus sat in the metal chair, his silhouette painted in the low red light. He stared at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she cleared her mind, evened out her breathing, and waited.
“C’mon Bobs, switch it over already. Jesus, I gotta do everything around here.” He stepped toward the door. “Excuse me, Jenna. I’ll be back to finish things up in a few minutes.”
“I can’t wait.”
He turned to look back at her and froze. The red lighting was so dim she had to focus to see he was rigid, his spine straight. He raised a finger and pointed.
“What the fuck is that?”
Jenna didn’t have to follow the finger to know what he was indicating, but she turned her eyes anyway. The flashing red light of the tracker Scruff had sewn into the pants was easily visible beneath the wadded cloth on the smooth surface, considering the darkness surrounding it.
“Oh!” Jenna said. “That’s a personnel tracker. See, I have this friend. His name is Lucian. Lucian is what we call anal about watching out for his people. He and this guy we call Daddy Don, back at the compound, they developed this tracking system based on OK City tech. We track all kinds of shit with it. Some of the trackers are even digitally camouflaged. Pretty neat. But that’s one of the little ones.” She pointed her own finger. “That’s the one that’s going to allow my friends to piss on your dead skull when they arrive and find you’ve killed me.”
“We’ll see about that, bitch.”
Her captor turned, pulled open the door, and froze again.
“What the—”
It was too dark in the hallways for her to see what was happening, but when Augustus took a lumbering step backward and fell to his ass, Jenna began to yell.
“Hey! Let me the fuck out of here!”
Chapter Forty-Nine
SELF DEFENSE
49
His nostrils barely hovered above the liquid covering his left eye. As he squinted, he felt something snagging the skin around his temple on the side of his face that wasn’t immersed
Dried blood. My other side’s soaked. How long was I out?
Though his head pounded hard, he lay still as he realized the sound that woke him was someone wading in the stagnant water. The dark room was lit only by the hallway light flowing through a wide window, but his eyes were adjusting and he flicked them in the direction of the noise. In a display of the worst possible timing ever, his stomach growled.
Shit. Quiet!
A narrow beam of light penetrated the lugubrious, cold darkness. The splashing continued, and the ripples of water threatened to splash the eye that wasn’t submerged. His shoulders burned like he’d been flinging tires: his biceps taut like he’d been curling weapons cases. The raging jolts he’d experienced as they’d electrified the water three or four times—he couldn’t remember how many—caused him to tremble even beyond the shivers of the cold water as he reminded himself of his perilous situation. Maybe the electricity surging through his body explained why he was so sore, why his head pounded in random spikes in his ears, his jaw, his eyes. It was like a rabid rat was trying to escape his skull.
“He’s over here,” a squeaky voice, the kind of voice Scruff thought better be wielding a weapon if he wanted to see tomorrow. “I’m telling you, there’s no way he survived that much jolt. You could probably eat him, like a giant chicken.”
The water swished as boots drew closer. A narrow penlight danced and bobbed in the obsidian blackness as if punched through a hole in the fabric barrier separating his from another universe. He traced the movement of the circle of light as it touched the waving surface and swam in his direction.
After driving the air from the deep bottom of his lungs, Scruff inhaled deeply, squaring off against the sore chest muscles contradicting the effort. He tilted his face into the water just as the beam reached him and painted the water beneath the surface a mucky green.
“Yeah, if the current didn’t get him, the water drowned him. Big sack
of shit is deader ’n hell.”
Scruff squeezed his eyes closed tight as pressure on his shoulder forced him onto his back when one of the men pushed with the sole of his boot.
“Yeah, get over here, and let’s drag him out. Hope two of us is enough. Big sumbitch, this one.”
His breath trickled out a little bit at a time as the second approached. The water pushed into both his ears and tickled both cheeks as the sloshing became more prevalent with the joining of the second enforcer. Something dull jabbed at the top of his head.
Boots.
“Ahhh!” Scruff bellowed as his eyes shot open, and he swung a fist up across his body and rammed it into the first man’s knee cap. A sickening pop! signaled its ejection from the seating in his leg. Swinging a leg up and over his head, Scruff connected with the belly of the man behind him, forcing him to double over. As the man with the busted knee fought and failed to balance on one leg and tumbled, Scruff’s eyes met with the other’s. Horror filled the enforcer’s face as Scruff grabbed both sides of the doubled-over man’s head and kicked his legs into the air for leverage.
“Ahhh!”
Yanking down and across his body, Scruff swung his legs down and slammed his enemy face-first into the water.
Rolling to get to his feet, the giant pivoted on one knee in the water and launched himself at the first man as he tried to regain his feet with a hobbled knee. The back of the man’s head smashed into a wall behind him with a hollow thunk! He crumpled to the water. He swung around, both arms thrust out wide, poised to tear off limbs, but the room was black.
Silent.
Void.
Splashing in the water at his feet, he ripped the rifle out from beneath the man sitting against the wall and shook it violently to purge any watery remnants. Immersed in blackness, his fingers found the stringy hair atop the dead man’s head and tapped their way down his forehead. When he grazed their rims, Scruff yanked the glasses off the dead man’s face.