by Jim Heskett
Part of her wondered if she could even stop them if she wanted. Did she have enough power to force them not to kill each other? Would it be wiser to let the situation play out?
No. She had to exert her will, or the whole army would unravel. They had to respect her. There was no other way.
Nearby stood a covered bus stop. Alma hopped onto the bench and then launched herself on top of the enclosure.
“Stop!”
This time, they halted completely, and the one brandishing the knife lowered his blade.
“What do you want?” yelled someone at the edge of the circle.
“You will cease fighting this instant.”
“Who the hell are you?” said a teenage girl with a shaved head.
Alma’s jaw clenched so tightly she didn’t know if she could speak, but she tried to keep her calm. “I am Alma Castillo, and I am your general. You will do as I say.”
“Jarvis is our general,” the girl said.
Her eyes fell to George, who was standing nearby, arms crossed, eyes swiveling to take in the action, like someone watching a tennis match.
“He is no longer,” she said. “You report to me now, and this is an unsanctioned fight. No one spills blood in this army without my permission.”
One fighter in the circle shook his head. “Bullshit, lady. Why should we bow to you?”
Rage filled her. She tried to settle herself, but the cauldron bubbled over. Her brain went blank, and she only saw the need to establish dominance.
Alma jumped from the top of the bus stop and raced toward the circle. When she was close, she leaped toward a man on the periphery. He turned, but not quickly enough, and Alma placed a foot into his back, which knocked him over. Using him as a springboard, she launched into the air. Whipped her knife out and hoisted it to the sky.
As she approached the ground, she brought the knife down, slashing at the neck of the one who’d mouthed off to her. She drove the tip of the blade into the fleshy space under his collarbone. Jabbed it in deep as her weight landed on him.
They both collapsed to the ground, and she withdrew the blade, and then jabbed it into the man’s eye. With their bodies intermingled on the ground, blood drenched her coat and pants. But that was good. The people needed to see the severity of this action to understand.
She jumped up, her cheeks slick with cooling blood. Steam rose from her face, making the world hazy. Her mouth was dry, her shoulders pistoning up and down as she tried to catch her breath.
All around the circle, a hundred faces gazed at her in horror.
“My name is Alma Castillo, and I am your general. Now you know me, and you will do as I say, or you will suffer the same fate as this mutineer. Do you understand me?”
A few heads nodded, but most stared at the blood dripping onto the sidewalk from the point of her blade.
“Alma,” George said from behind her.
She spun. “What?”
George was standing next to a young man, a pained look on both of their faces. He walked the young man over to her and then leaned in to whisper into her ear.
“This one says he’s found the local leader. But that man has no interest in talking to you.”
Chapter 26
Kellen - Nederland
At the barricade on Canyon Road leading into Nederland, there were no guards. No heads hovering above the wall to check who was coming. The metal wall stretched from one end of the canyon to the other, and Kellen was used to seeing at least five or six people watching from atop it. At least one or two, never none. Never.
“That’s odd,” White said.
Dave and Isabelle left the back seat when they parked, and all four of them gazed at the unmanned wall in front of them. Isabelle quickly ducked back into the car and retrieved her pistols.
“You expecting border patrol?” she said as she checked the pistols’ magazines.
Kellen nodded. “Yes. This is the only accessible way into town, so there is always someone stationed here. All the mountain roads you can get to by vehicle are sealed off. Plus, there are landmines in the hills if you try to enter on foot. ”
“Nice security system,” Dave said.
“It’s kept this community safe for years,” Kellen said.
Until recently, the voice inside Kellen’s head whispered. You left these people, filling them with promises of returning with aid, and now you’re practically empty-handed. You signed their death warrant.
He couldn’t argue with the judge inside his brain. He and White had ventured off with the promise of bringing thousands and returned with only two people. By any metric, it was a shitty return on investment.
Dave walked toward the wall, staring up at the corrugated metal. “So how do we get in? Or, are we hosed?”
Kellen nodded at White, and they approached one end of the barricade. “We have to leave the car here.” He and White stood on either side of a metal plate bolted to a piece of the wall and lowered themselves to push on it.
“You can’t move that,” Dave said. “Isn’t that bolted on?”
The metal screeched as it slid upward, revealing a small passage through the wall.
“Oh,” Dave said. “Guess not.”
Kellen ducked down and peered through the hole. From this distance, he could see the lake and the foothills, but not much in town. No one had scorched the earth. There weren’t heads on spikes lining the roads. So, no evidence of full-scale invasion, but that didn’t explain what had happened here. Didn’t explain the bodies they’d seen on the side of Canyon Road on the drive up.
Kellen pointed back to the car. “Get your gear and weapons, because we’re on foot from here on out. I have no idea what we’ll find on the other side.”
Once they’d gathered all their stuff, Kellen went through first while the rest fed him their supplies. On the other side of the wall, the windy road through the valley leading into town was just as barren as he’d expected. The lake was still. There were no early morning lights on in any of the houses. No smoke from chimney fires. Nederland was a ghost town.
“It’s a bit of a walk to the town center,” Kellen said when they were all present.
“Did they leave?” Isabelle asked. “Like, pick up and split?”
“I’m definitely getting a Roanoke sort of vibe here,” Dave said.
Kellen noted that there were no corpses lying around. There had been several of them along Canyon Road, but they hadn’t stopped to check them out.
Didn’t look like a raid, but they might have cleaned up after themselves. “Either that or killed. Before White and I left, Farrah and Quentin had apprehended a scout. He said more were coming. I wasn’t sure if I believed it then.”
Isabelle cleared her throat. “And now?”
“We haven’t been gone that long,” Kellen said, “and there were children and the elderly here. If they left, it wouldn’t be that easy for them to run away without leaving any trace.”
They pressed on, walking past the lake to reach the edge of town, where patches of snow and ice became the little hamlet’s paved streets. When they reached 1st, something darted between the buildings up ahead.
Kellen ducked. Bobcat, maybe, or a bear? If all the people were gone, bears would have no reason not to wander into town and try to break into all the houses for snacks.
“What was that?” Dave said.
Before Kellen could answer, gunshots sailed through the air all around them. Up ahead, two men on either side of the street with assault rifles continued blasting.
“There!” White said, pointing at a long-dead tractor sitting in a yard on the side of the road. All four raced right toward it, and they dove headfirst into the snowbank behind the tires.
Kellen checked around for blood on his clothes or in the surrounding snow. “Everyone okay? Anyone shot?”
Heads nodded as bullets plinked off the metal of the tractor. One sunk into the giant tire, making it hiss as air leaked out.
“Let’s think about this,”
Kellen said.
Isabelle snatched pistols from opposite holsters on her belt and jumped out into the street. Rolled to her left, squeezing off a few quick shots as her body twisted across the road. Up on her feet, she squeezed her triggers a half dozen more times.
The alley quieted.
She turned to them, panting. Smoke misting from the barrels of her guns as she limped back in their direction. “All clear.”
“Holy shit,” White said.
Dave nodded. “She can be a show off sometimes.”
Kellen waited another moment to make sure no additional gunshots would follow, and then he escorted the others out of the alley. They carefully eased along the street toward the bodies.
Both of the dead men were wearing black jackets, with numbers tattooed on their necks. Eighteeners.
“It was a raid,” White said. “And these stragglers they left behind.”
“We don’t know that,” Kellen said. But, it would explain the bodies in the canyon. They could’ve died trying to escape down into Boulder Valley.
“But,” Dave said, “if they raided the town, why does everything look so intact? There aren’t many blown out windows. They didn’t burn everything to the ground, and they didn’t set up shop here, or we would have been mowed down the second we walk in here. So what did they want?”
“The bunker,” Kellen said, and he knew it had to be true. Also, that if Quentin and Farrah were dead, then the Eighteeners had also killed the only two people in the world who knew how to gain access to the bunker.
Chapter 27
Quentin - Boulder
At the edge of the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, Quentin caught his breath. Behind him, his wife Farrah, their ten-year-old son Willam, and council member Coyle paused with him.
Quentin gazed over the ruins of the campus, mostly brick and glass. What was left of it, anyway. There were a couple of buildings still standing that might provide shelter, since they’d been discovered at the last place, the house halfway down the canyon.
The escape had been chaotic. The four of them and a dozen residents of Nederland had ducked inside a house next to the creek to escape the Eighteeners in pursuit. Down Canyon Road, thousands of townspeople ran while gunmen cut many of them down.
Their attempt at hiding had almost worked until a passing Eighteener saw Quentin in a window and had sent five men inside to root them out like squirrels in a crawlspace. By the time they’d fended off the attack, Canyon Road had been emptied. Had their people gone into the side canyons, back up the road, or down toward Boulder?
If they’d fled to Boulder, they were nowhere to be found. Quentin, Farrah, Willam, and Coyle had spent the last few days looking.
Going into that house saved his family’s lives, but Quentin couldn’t stop thinking about the townspeople. That he should have stayed with them on Canyon Road. That he’d had a responsibility to them and he’d blown it.
“Dad?” Willam said, pointing.
Quentin looked down at his arm. The bandage over the bullet wound had come off, and his shirt was drenched in blood. He gripped it to stop the flow down his forearm. “It’s okay, Dub. I’m okay.”
Coyle, panting, pulled even with Quentin. “We need to get inside somewhere, now. Smells like snow is coming. If we don’t get a roof over our heads, it’s going to be a long, rough night.”
Farrah and Quentin both tilted their noses to the sky and sniffed. That familiar cow-smell was thick in the air. With no tents and not enough clothes to withstand sleeping outdoors, they had no choice.
Quentin studied the buildings to find one with most of its windows, which was a dangerous proposition. A building in good shape was likely to be a popular destination. Anywhere outside of the comforts of Nederland could be occupied by Eighteeners. They’d already evaded several of them since arriving in Boulder earlier this morning.
And going back to Nederland wasn’t an option if the gang banger army was still there.
Coyle nodded at the building at the end of Quentin’s gaze. “That one looks good to me. I know what you’re thinking, but we’re not any more exposed in there than we are out here.” Coyle pulled a 9mm from his pocket and checked the magazine. “Come on, let’s go.”
Farrah touched Quentin’s arm, and he met her eyes.
“I love you,” she said.
He nodded. “I love you, too. This is going to be okay.”
Farrah and Willam pulled up their hoods as they crossed the street. Snow trickled from the sky. They made it inside the building without anyone seeing them, as far as Quentin could tell.
With the door shut and clouds obscuring the sky, once inside the building, the afternoon seemed almost as dark as night. Farrah removed a flashlight, but Coyle placed a hand on top of it. Shook his head. “Not until we know who else is here,” he whispered.
“Dad,” Willam said. “When can we go home?”
Quentin knelt and put hands on each of his son’s shoulders. As scared as the kid was, he’d done an amazing job of pushing through and doing what needed to be done. If Quentin had possessed the mental energy, he would have welled over with pride. Instead, he was focusing entirely on keeping them all alive. Pride could come later.
“It’s not safe yet. Soon, though.” Even as Quentin said the words, he knew it was probably a lie. There might not be any home to return to.
Coyle ventured a few steps into the hallway and beckoned them all to follow him. It was fine with Quentin if Coyle wanted to take the lead.
As they shuffled down the darkened corridor, all of them as quiet as possible, Quentin couldn’t tell if they were in a classroom building or dorms. Maybe even an administrative building. Carpet covered the floor, which seemed to suggest a place where people lived, but maybe not. He didn’t know the CU campus at all. When he and Farrah had moved here from Chicago—escaped, to be honest—they had gone straight into the mountains to seek something remote and secure. At that time, Colorado hadn’t been overrun with gangs, but it wasn’t a safe place, either. The Eighteeners hadn’t spread like a virus until after LaVey and Anders had died at the airport.
Coyle held up a hand, and they all stopped. He pointed a finger at the ceiling and jabbed it upwards, and it took Quentin a second to realize he meant they were near a set of stairs.
“Okay,” Quentin whispered. “We’re ready.”
He lifted his foot, barely able to see anything. A sliver of outside light came in from the windows, most of which had been painted black. After they ascended one set and rounded the bend, Coyle paused again. Whispers drifted down the stairs from up above. At least two voices, maybe three.
Coyle readied his pistol, and Farrah passed Quentin a pistol over his shoulder. Quentin checked the safety and wrapped his fingers around the grip. Went through his ritual of closing his eyes and visualizing himself pulling the trigger. He didn’t want to shoot anyone, of course, but the greater fear was not pulling the trigger when doing so could have saved lives.
Quentin made eye contact with his son, to let him know not to be scared. Everything would be okay. It’s not as if Willam was a stranger to violence, but he’d been relatively safe in Nederland. In the old world, Willam would have been ready for a lifetime of therapy after all he’d seen in the last few days.
Quentin nodded at Coyle, and they made their way up the stairs. Light spilled over the top, and in a moment, Quentin saw a face. A young face.
Only children.
He relaxed and stood up to climb the last few steps. Huddled around a crank LED lantern were six kids, looking anywhere from ages eight to about thirteen. Hard to say, though, because their ruddy faces were covered with dirt, and they were all concealed under several layers of clothes. Somewhere, an open or busted window was blowing a blustery cold breeze onto this floor.
One kid at the edge of the group noticed Quentin. He gasped and jumped to his feet. A little girl, probably the youngest in the group, started crying. She buried her face into the lap of the girl next to her, wh
o was only a year or two older.
“It’s okay,” Quentin said as he hid his gun. “We’re not here to harm you.”
“Bullshit,” said the kid on his feet, one of the older ones. Maybe twelve years old. He drew a pistol, looking comically large in his hands. The child’s eyes burned with intensity.
Coyle raised his gun.
Quentin held out his hands, blocking Farrah with one hand and Coyle with the other. “Look at me,” he said to the gun-wielding child.
But the boy kept his gaze on Coyle, who was still holding the pistol. They were locked in some child-old man stalemate, and neither one of them seemed willing to give any ground.
“Hey,” Willam said. “You can put the gun away. We’re not bad guys.”
Farrah rose another step, leaning forward into the scant light. “What’s your name? Are you hungry? We have food.”
The armed child ping-ponged his head back and forth between them. Said nothing.
Quentin cleared his throat. “We have meat. When was the last time you had meat? I’m happy to share it with you if you’d like some. But we will not get anywhere if you keep pointing that thing at my friend so why don’t you put the gun away?”
The kid sniffed.
“No,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 28
Kellen - Boulder
Kellen, White, Dave and Isabelle had found not a single commune survivor in Nederland. Only a few bodies and some Eighteener stragglers rooting through buildings and the pockets of the dead. Kellen and his crew avoided the Eighteeners since they hadn’t wanted to engage and alert the rest of them.
It seemed increasingly likely that the majority of town residents had been driven from their homes. Hopefully, they hadn’t fled up into the hills, to meet their end over the landmines. Kellen didn’t see pockets of exploded earth up there, so he didn’t think so.
No sign of where Quentin, Farrah, and the rest had gone, though. But Kellen had to believe they were alive, maybe escaped to Denver or Golden or somewhere else. The number of bodies they’d found strewn along the sides of the road seemed to indicate at least some of them had tried to flee down the canyon into Boulder Valley.