“My name is Jerry and I’m a post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior.”
There was a buzz in the crowd as the people in front passed the information to the people in the back. There was recognition. They used the word librarian several times. They had heard of him. They knew he was a wanted man. He hoped they weren’t greedy.
There were no cries. The crowd grew silent until the man with the shotgun asked, “You really think this is going to get us into the castle?”
“No,” Jerry said. “We’re going to need one more thing.”
NINETEEN
They had marched the prisoners northeast for a couple of miles along an old state road. They stopped briefly near Boulder Gulch as more prisoners were brought to join the ranks. Those loyal to Elias had been found quickly, stripped of their weapons and brought to the line.
Their ranks doubled in size but brought the total number of prisoners to no more than thirty. It was evident that more were loyal to the kingdom than their king. Allegiances shifted quickly when faced with the idea of toiling in the mines.
The column was forced to march again. Road signs that had once advertised guided tours of the Old One Hundred Mine had been altered to let travelers know they were approaching the Five Peaks Mine and that all tourists would be executed.
The column passed another gulch and neared the mine. And the first sign of the mine came into view. High above the ground on the side of the cliff face sat a massive wooden lodging house.
They had marched in silence aside from Elias’s constant threats of revenge and mutterings of self-pity. Here was Erica’s first opportunity to change the subject. “Is that where the miners used to live?”
The king seemed happy that someone was finally acknowledging him, though he grumbled his answer. “They still live there. You’re looking at the kingdom’s prison. Our new home.”
“I thought they lived in town,” Erica said.
“Those criminals? I never let them near town without a guard.”
“Even the ones that volunteered? You’re despicable.”
The king laughed, but it was full of mockery. “No one volunteers for the mines.”
“But …”
“But, no one,” Elias said. “Even if they did, I’d never send an innocent person down there.”
“You must have a pretty lose definition of innocent,” Erica snapped.
“I think you’d be surprised how close it runs to yours, my dear.” The king looked up at the lodging house for a long moment. His face grew firm. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but don’t be fooled. It’s nothing but killers and criminals in there.”
“And now us.”
The king smiled. “You forget. You’re a killer.”
She didn’t want to talk to him after that. She marched in silence until they reached the mine’s entrance. The guards weren’t surprised to see the king in chains. The prince had obviously made his allegiances long before, and they smiled as the group passed.
“Welcome to hell, Your Majesty,” one of the guards said to great laughter.
“Et tu, Gerald? Et tu?”
“Yep. Me, too, Greg.” Gerald the guard tipped an imaginary cap and waved the column inside.
People had been digging in Galena Mountain for more than one hundred years. The most recent entrance was seventy years old and reinforced with concrete. Erica wondered how far in the modern technology went and how much farther Elias had his prisoners dig.
They were marched into the darkness past a placard noting the passageway as the American Tunnel. Tourist signs were still posted on the wall and Erica read them as she passed. She felt the breath leave her when she read that the American ran five miles into the earth. Her chest constricted and she was breathing heavier than necessary.
A string of electric lights lit the tunnel only enough to see the steps in front of her. Complete darkness may have been better. She listened for sounds, but there was nothing coming from beyond her sight. It was worse than the darkness.
The king must have felt it too. He spoke to her again, but his voice was warmer than before. He whispered, “What did you do? Back in Texas? What did you do that earned a price on your head?”
“I thought you knew everything,” she whispered back, but even that sounded loud in the silence. Their conversation could be heard by all and she didn’t care.
Elias shrugged. “Enemy of the state is such a broad brush.”
“We stood up for ourselves. Our people were the targets of terrorists and slavers. And when they came for us … we did what we had to. We did what was right.” She thought of New Hope and the family she had left behind. Her temper flared. Doing the right thing had gotten her here. In the dark. In the silence. She snapped, “We stood up to people like you. And for all that we had to run. For that I’m here in a hole in the ground.”
Elias sighed. “I was only trying to do what was right. I wanted nothing more than a place people could feel safe. I never thought it would turn out this way.”
“Yeah, who would have thought declaring yourself king could go so wrong.”
“I never declared myself king. The people asked it of me. People I knew and cared about turned to me. Maybe it was a silly reason. Maybe it was because they were used to it. But they asked me to keep them safe. What would you have said?”
Erica turned away. “I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”
Elias answered slowly. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“You were going to send me here. Because I defended myself against a man that tried to hurt me. You pretend you’re just and fair. And you have the nerve to stand there and say you were doing what was right. I’m sure you knew what a piece of shit Tommy was. But he was one of yours, so I would be here whether there was an uprising or not. Don’t try to make an ally out of me, Your Highness.”
Elias started to respond but thought better of it. He hung his head and marched as far ahead of her as the chains would allow.
They marched forever. The air grew hotter and thicker. Sweat began to build on her brow. It felt like she was choking on ash. Every breath was gritty and dry. After a half hour of walking, they veered to the right. The rails gave way to a dirt pathway and rafting timbers that appeared to be made of hope.
“Hey, Greg,” the guard’s voice boomed, but Erica couldn’t tell if he was shouting or not. “What do you think?”
The guard directed a flashlight at a sign posted to the wall before the entrance of another tunnel. It read Elias’s Vain.
The king read it and replied, “I think you misspelled vein.”
“No, we didn’t.” The guard’s white smile was brilliant in the low light. His laugh was unbearable.
The group was led down Elias’s vein. The timbers here looked tired, the lights were farther apart, and the heat was oppressive. Erica could barely breathe.
Finally, there was sound ahead. She’d hoped for voices—proof that life could exist this far under a mountain. But the only sound was the endless clanging of hand tools against rock. There was no rhythm to the miners’ work. There was no steady sound, just a cacophony of clanks and grunts.
This stopped as the new prisoners came into view of the inmates. For a moment it was deathly quiet again. Erica noted that she even missed the sound of wind, though she had never noticed it before. But there was nothing but the breathing of tired men.
Their escorts began removing the chains.
“Here you are, Your Highness,” the guard said as he undid the shackles around Elias’s wrists. “Enjoy your stay.”
The guards laughed and made their way back up the tunnel toward the surface.
The inmates began laughing, taunting and booing all at once. Spit flew in all directions as the miners hawked black phlegm at the knights and the king.
The whistles were directed at Erica.
“Holy shit! They finally sent us a girl!” A miner dropped his pick and rushed from his place at the rock towards Erica. Sweaty and panting from the heat, he reached
out his hands to grope the woman.
Elias dropped him with a single punch across the face and the miner collapsed to the ground and slid off into the darkness.
For a long moment, no one moved. Slowly the miners began swinging their tools gently from side to side. They tapped the heavy instruments across the palms of their hands until they built a steady beat. Then it stopped. The tension was thicker than the air.
“To me, my knights! Protect the lady.”
The miners rushed. Before any could reach her, the knights that had stayed loyal to the king surrounded Erica and formed a wall two thick between her and the prisoners.
Some of them fell. All of them fought back. And, in a matter of minutes, it was over. Erica was still within a wall of knights. Each now armed with a pickaxe or shovel taken from the miners.
The prisoners backed away to the wall but did not work. Several were dead from the skirmish. Others were wounded.
Five knights had fallen in the initial rush and the others were tending to them.
Elias thanked his men before checking to make sure Erica was all right. “Did they harm you?”
“This king thing is really who you are, isn’t it?”
Elias puffed out his chest. “There are worse things to be. As long as my men and I stand, we shall protect you.”
Erica nodded. “You wear it well. Anyway you can rule our way out of here?”
His chest deflated. “They’ll be waiting for us at the entrance with their damn guns. Any rush on the gate will be a disaster.”
“Is there any other way?” she asked and received nothing but a blank stare and an “I dunno” from the king. “There’s got to be another way,” she said.
One of the miners laughed. “If there was any way out of this hell, we would have found it long ago, you dumb bitch.”
Elias waved to a knight. “Sir Geoffrey, come here.”
The largest knight in the ranks stepped forward. “Yes, sire?”
Elias pointed to the prisoner that had made the comment. “Beat him.”
“Yes, sire.”
Erica sat against the wall as the king paced, stroked his beard and thought over the sound of the beating. She was exhausted. A ten-mile trek was nothing she wasn’t accustomed to, but here in the mines the heat took its toll. She closed her eyes and pictured a cool breeze in an open field with plenty of daylight and fell asleep.
TWENTY
The water station wasn’t far from the camp—a point Jerry made to reinforce the idea that the mountain men weren’t as hidden as they thought. Five of them moved down the hill using the trees for cover though there wasn’t much to hide from. The majority of the station crew was hiding from the cold inside a small cabin. White smoke fluttered out of the chimney and there was no telling how many men were crowded around the cabin’s stove.
Only one guard was outside and wasn’t so much patrolling the area as pacing quickly to keep his blood flowing. He stomped from one end of the cabin to the other keeping his chin down and hiding behind the large collar on his jacket.
The group moved behind a snowdrift at the tree line. Jerry peeked over the top for a moment and slid back down between the other four. “The guard just moved behind the cabin. Someone has to take him out.”
JJ was built thick and quick to volunteer for the raid team. He mumbled behind a thick brown beard as he climbed to the top of the drift. “I’ll do it.”
He took aim with the rifle.
Jerry grabbed JJ’s ankle and pulled him back down. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to take him out.”
“Not with the gun,” Jerry said. “They’ll hear you.”
“So I’ll shoot them, too.”
“No,” Jerry said. “We have to do this quietly.”
“Guns aren’t very quiet, man.”
“That’s why I’m saying don’t shoot him.”
JJ shook his head. “So why’d you even give me the gun?”
Jerry sighed. “Just go down there and knock him out.”
JJ frowned through the beard and started to climb the drift again. He stopped at the top. “Can I at least hit him with the gun?”
Jerry put his face in his hands and nodded as JJ climbed the snowdrift and slid down the other side. He pulled his hands away from his face and found the other three men from the team staring at him.
A man named Kyle was a little older than JJ and not nearly as thick. He acknowledged the frustration in Jerry’s expression. “Nobody really likes him because …”
There was a crack and thump and an, “I got him!”
Jerry closed his eyes tight and said, “Shit,” under his breath. When he opened his eyes, Kyle was still staring at him.
“… He’s kind of stupid.”
Jerry led the team over the drift and down towards the cabin as five men rushed out into the snow. They were unarmed and not expecting an attack. The mountain men made short work of the crew without firing a shot.
The men from the woods fought hard. They were hungry for revenge. There were years of frustration behind every punch, every tackle and every kick at the unconscious guards. Jerry let them have only a couple before instructing the men to bring the crew back into the cabin.
They bound the men and found a rack of keys hanging on a nail on the wall. “Someone grab those keys and open the carriage house.”
Kyle grabbed the keys and the men followed him outside. Jerry looked around the spartan office. He had expected the illusion of castles and kings to end at the castle walls, but even here he found no guns and little technology aside from a two-way radio and an electric light.
He was about to go after the team when the radio crackled to life. “Water station. This is engine nine. We’re on schedule and about twenty minutes out. We’ll be needing to top off the tanks.”
Jerry picked up the transceiver and pressed the button to speak. “That’s good to hear, engine nine. We’ll be waiting for you.”
Jerry set down the mic and stepped outside. The carriage house doors were already open and Jerry walked along the spur into the building. The team was standing around their target with their mouths hanging open.
Jerry looked at the train car and smiled. “That’s the one that we’re looking for.”
Kyle patted Jerry on the back. “Good plan. Good plan.”
“Thank you, Kyle.”
The car impressed JJ as well, but his thinking got the best of him. “Some plan. This thing won’t push itself. Where are you going to get a train?”
Jerry looked at his watch. “It will be here in eighteen minutes.”
TWENTY-ONE
Erica awoke with a start. She gasped and jerked and hit her head on the wall of the mine. She choked on the air and remembered where she was. She began to panic. How long had she been asleep? How could she have even fallen asleep? She wasn’t safe here.
She looked around the tunnel. Nothing had changed since she passed out. The knight’s still held the tools as weapons and the miners were lined against the wall. They made no move toward the king or his men.
The beating had stopped. The miner that had lunged for her was curled up with his back to the group. She could see his back move as he took in deep breaths, so she knew they hadn’t killed him.
She noticed bruises on several other prisoners but could not remember if they were there before she fell asleep. Had there been another struggle? Had the king’s men beaten them? Or was it just a matter of life in the mines?
She could hear Elias speaking but she could not make out the words.
Erica stood and stretched out the kinks that came with sleeping on the floor of a mineshaft. She nodded to the knights that took notice and made her way towards the king’s voice.
The lights provided enough light to work by but were also a reminder of how impossibly dark it was deep in the earth. She moved from the cast of one bulb to the next, speeding through the shadows in between.
The king and five of his men were at the end of the t
unnel drawing in the dirt with a stick. They spoke in hushed tones but she could hear the ebb and flow of a debate. Once she stepped closer, she realized they were making a plan to retake the kingdom.
The king was the first of the group to see her. “Ah, there’s our Sleeping Beauty. Are you feeling better, my dear?”
Erica nodded and wondered if the king could see her roll her eyes in the dark. “Thank you, Elias.”
The king nodded. “Call me Greg.”
“Thank you, Greg.” She looked at the scrawling in the dirt. “Making plans?”
“Yes, we’re pretty certain we can retake the town with minimal force if we can just kill that son of a bitch Robert.”
“Your son?”
Elias shook his head. “That’s not … he’s not …” he sighed. “I’m done playing make believe. Things will be different from here on out. But first we have to kill the prince. And we don’t think that will be a problem.” He stepped back to give her a full view of the map on the floor. “Once we get to the town’s wall, we enter through a secret passage known only to me. If we go in the dead of the night, we can remain unnoticed as we move throughout town. We’ve identified those loyal to Robert and those whose loyalty is a matter of convenience. Once his true soldiers are taken out, and he’s killed, there should be no trouble retaking the throne.”
“Which—” one of the knights prompted.
“Which,” Elias continued, “I will then abdicate to a democratically elected ruler.”
“Sounds like a great plan, Greg.” Erica didn’t care that the king had learned a lesson. She didn’t care he was growing as a person. She just wanted outside. “So how do we get out of the mine?”
Knights of legend were known for their stoicism. They would face death or dragons in the eye and never flinch, never frown. Erica realized only now how easily stoicism could be confused for dumb looks. Every man in the circle looked at her with a blank expression.
She rolled her eyes again. “Sounds like a great plan, Greg.”
Knights of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Series Book 2) Page 17