Drew went back into the apartment and gathered up all the food he had to spare. He returned to the door, opened it, and pointed the gun at the soldier in the hallway.
She held her hands up. “You know I could have you arrested for having a firearm?”
“You know I could have you executed for providing a civilian with information,” Drew replied as he dropped the food on the ground. “Why ruin our perfect relationship?”
She smiled back. “I agree. I’ll escort you to the Castle and get you in. What I need you to do is give this food to the female prisoner. Fair trade?”
Drew wanted to know why, but if she had wanted him to know that she would have told him. He returned the gun to the drawer, put the food in a bag, and locked the door behind him.
He followed the soldier out of his apartment and through the war-torn Mall. The grass where people used to watch summer movies was now full of parked military vehicles. Drew wondered if he was actually going to get out of this labor camp, or if James was now trapped for good.
He looked at the woman next to him, who had been his informant for the past few months, but the person who connected them made it clear they were never to know each other’s names. She was the closest thing he had to a friend. A friend he only talked to through a closed door and who only spoke when bribed. They didn’t speak the entire time they walked.
Eventually, they ended up outside the Castle, a large stone building built in the 1800s that had served as the information hub for all the Smithsonian museums once upon a time.
“Go with whatever I say,” she said as they knocked on the large wooden door.
The door opened, and a male soldier stood between Drew and the entrance.
“This is the guy I told you about. Lost his wife, just needs a release. Five minutes should do,” she said.
“I’ll give him three minutes. Don’t want to spoil our commodity. Just skip the foreplay and try not to leave any bruises,” the other soldier said. He fumbled with a key ring and pulled a key off. “This is the key to her cell.”
Drew gave him a nod and walked past with the food still cradled in his arms. Once he was inside, they closed the door behind him. There was a row of cages that ran down the middle of the long building. There were four people in the cages.
He went down a short set of stairs and there was James, staring at him but not saying anything. Drew took the bag of food to a small Asian woman, who was cowering against the bars away from him. He understood what his three minutes were for.
“I’m just delivering these from a mutual friend,” Drew said, passing the bag of food between the bars. She relaxed and took them without a word.
“James, I have three minutes,” Drew said, moving over to his cage.
“One Willard Avenue. Houghton, New York. Say it back,” James whispered.
“One Willard Avenue. Houghton, New York,” Drew whispered back.
“We’re being executed in seven days. If you choose to go there, let them know not to come for us. If you need a vehicle, ours is parked a mile north of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge.”
“There’s gotta be a way I can get you out of here,” Drew said.
“Your duty is to the kids. You need to leave tonight before anyone can suspect you are tied to us. I can’t risk you leading them back to my friends. Understood?”
“I’ll go straight to the kids. I know a guy who can get us out of the city. Then we’ll head to Houghton,” Drew said.
“Good.” James let his head hang, like it had been a burden to keep up this long. “Tell the kids I said hello.”
“I will.”
* * *
The cool March evening clung to John’s skin as he stalked through the dense woods surrounding Houghton College. He enjoyed seeing life coming back into the woods, which had been so desolate during the winter. Not that he had anything against pine trees, but seeing the bright leaves on the deciduous trees gave him hope that life would go on in the Primal Age.
He’d nocked an arrow into his compound bow as he scanned for movement. Everything about the task felt natural to him, unlike it had months ago when he had first joined Kade’s group. Back then he was jittery and nervous; now, he at least had composure when he was armed and hunting. During their fight with a paramilitary group that called themselves the Tribe, John had killed two men. That in itself had caused much of his maturation.
After the fight, not only John had changed. Their group had spent much of the winter making defensive upgrades to their home. The campus bridges were now either destroyed or blocked off. A zip line had been drawn from their primary dorm, Lambian, to the Paine Science Center, where a team slaved away to correct the human reaction to the Feline Flu vaccine, which had turned a majority of the population into mindless beasts that foamed blood at the mouth.
The foamers had become far more terrifying in appearance since they’d first turned. They had become unkempt with long matted hair, their nails had grown into claws, and the males had sprouted full beards—the men in his group had cut their hair short, just to make sure they weren’t mistaken for foamers. Despite all of this, Kade had decreed that no foamer was to be killed except in self-defense.
John’s ears perked as he heard the clomp of footsteps on the soggy ground. Perhaps he had found what he had been hunting. A roar followed, and John spun while drawing his bow string, but the large foamer—who wore a tattered jacket that had an A on it—was already upon him. The creature bounded off of all fours and came in under the bow, tackling John to the wet earth. With the bow pinned between them, John used his elbow to keep the bearded face from getting close enough to sink its snapping jaws into his neck. There was a long scar that stretched across the side of the foamer’s head from where a bullet had grazed him. The monster’s jaws pressed closer to his neck, the smell of death emanating from his breath. Red foam bubbled from the corners of the creature’s mouth. John recognized this foamer as the leader of the troop that lived in their area, the one they called Alpha.
The bow was proving to be John’s greatest enemy at the moment, allowing the foamer to keep him pinned without leverage. John’s free hand reached for an arrow in the quick quiver attached to the bow. His hope was the broad head of the arrow could be used as a weapon, if only he could free it.
A roar echoed from out of sight, and the foamer hesitated. When Alpha looked up, he was met full force by the shoulder of something far scarier than himself. The two opponents rolled across the ground like fighting wolves before their momentum separated them. The attacker reeled back on two feet and beat his chest as he roared again. Alpha stood on all fours like a cat waiting to strike, then, with a low grumble, relaxed and slinked off.
The attacker turned to John. He wore a blue-and-white ballistic mask that was painted to resemble a set of jagged teeth, like an angry jack-o’-lantern. Sticking up above his back was a katana. His right hand bore a set a blue rubber knuckles, and protruding from his hips were two Taurus Judge revolver pistols. This was not a man, but a living weapon. This was their leader. This was Kade.
Kade tipped the ballistic mask off his face, scanning John with his gray eyes. John could feel him probing for answers to questions he wasn’t asking aloud as he offered a hand down to John and hoisted him to his feet. John couldn’t believe how far Kade had taken his training. Since their battle with the Tribe, Kade had dedicated himself to becoming as deadly as possible.
“You know you shouldn’t be out here alone, kid,” Kade said as he picked up John’s bow and handed it to him.
“You’re easier to track now that the ground is wet,” John replied.
Kade put a hand on John’s back as they walked quietly through the underbrush. “And what are you tracking me for?”
“Xavier just got back from his grocery run and we wanted to get started on movie night, but I didn’t want to let them start without you,” John replied.
Kade rubbed John’s fuzzy head. “Thanks for looking out, kid.”
They t
rudged along in silence. Before the world had entered the Primal Age, John had been attending a prep school near the college campus he now called home. Family had only been a word to him until Kade took him in. Though Kade was his senior by a mere ten years, John saw him as a father figure. Kade had taken the time to teach John how to survive after the collapse of humanity, and had even forced him to continue studying. Kade claimed that the most valuable asset for the future would be knowledge. Living on a college campus that was renowned for its premed program left no lack of information to be gained.
“What do you do out here?” John asked.
“Do you know who Jane Goodall was?” Kade replied.
“The woman who lived with the gorillas? You’re studying the foamers’ behavior?”
“Exactly. Damian is up there in his mad scientist laboratory trying to figure out how to fix them; I spend time out here to understand them.”
They crept out of the woods and onto the road that led back to campus. Every twenty yards, in alternating lanes, a car was parked with its tires deflated. This setup would force an approaching vehicle to swerve and prevent an attacker from gaining speed.
“If you ever want a hand with your research, I’d happily come along,” John said.
The two of them stepped around a car, which blocked, broadside, the bridge that led to campus. On the other side of the bridge there was another car set up to complete their gate. These cars still had their tires inflated and were kept in neutral so they could be moved whenever a member of the cohort needed access.
“Stick to studying books for now. The foamers are becoming more accepting of me, but it still isn’t safe to be in such close proximity to them.” Kade pointed a finger at John. “Don’t tell Tiny I said it wasn’t safe.”
If Kade was John’s surrogate father, Tiny was his mother, and he was absolutely terrified of her. Few people in John’s life ever intimidated him the way she did. She was, for the most part, a loving person who would do anything to help people—except when it came to protecting the cohort. If she was in her protective mode, it was a bad idea to end up on the receiving end of her wrath. For as scary as John often found her, he had never been so impressed by anyone. She had been a combat medic before being medically discharged due to a knee injury suffered in the line of duty. By far she was the most dangerous person in their cohort, Kade included. All of that aside, the thing that John found most compelling about her was how deeply she loved Kade. In all of John’s life, he had never before witnessed a love like hers.
“I won’t tell her. Unless she asks me. Then I’ll have to tell her,” John replied, his voice shaky at even the idea of disobeying Tiny.
Crossing to the north side of campus toward Lambian, they stepped carefully around the dozens of solar-powered walkway lights they had arranged across campus to give them an advantage at night.
Coming upon the dorm, John pulled the walkie from his belt. “Knock, knock.”
As they closed the distance, a roll-out escape ladder clattered down from the middle third-floor window. Kade steadied the metal ladder while John climbed to their home.
Crawling through the window frame, John felt a pair of small but calloused hands grab him by the shoulders and help him through. Those tough hands belonged to Grace. She stood before him wearing a pair of overalls unhooked on the right side, with only a sports bra underneath. The overalls were streaked with dried grease, and her shoulder-length blonde hair was a few shades darker due to the lingering layer of dirt that perpetually stuck to her.
John had matured in many ways since he’d joined the cohort, but one of the areas in which he was still lacking—and which frustrated him immensely—was with girls. In the Old World, he would have had school dances and awkward first dates and any number of other ways to make an ass of himself. Here he didn’t have that learning curve. Without that period of trial and error, he knew he only had one real shot with Grace. If he missed his shot, the window would close.
Kade climbed through the window and pulled the ladder in behind him, one rung at a time.
“Any bad news for me?” Kade asked, glancing over his shoulder at Grace.
“No, sir. Everything is tip-top,” Grace replied.
Grace had been the youngest sibling in a family of contractors. At seventeen years old, she had been their jack of all trades. They’d relied on her for plumbing, electrical, and construction.
“Glad to hear it—and knock that sir shit off,” Kade said.
“Yes, sir.”
Kade smirked and shook his head. “You’ve got a spot of clean on you.”
“You’ve got a spot of blood on you,” Grace returned.
Kade noticed the dark red spot on his shirt. “Not a word of this to Tiny.”
Brushing past Grace, Kade went into the hallway.
John’s tongue lapped around his mouth like a tired dog, trying to formulate words, but none came and he stood there with a blank look on his face. He only hoped that, since the top of her head only reached his chest, she couldn’t see how dumb his face felt.
“Excited for the movie?” Grace asked as they went into the hallway side by side.
“It’ll be good to relax after being jumped by a foamer,” John said, hoping to earn some pity points.
“Are you okay?” Grace searched him over for wounds.
John nodded. “Just my pride. I should be better than that.”
“You are better than that, but we all slip up sometimes,” she reassured him as they climbed the steps to the fifth floor, where their utility rooms were set up. In the six floors of the dorm, the first two were blocked off, the third floor was used for their entrances, they lived on the fourth floor, and the fifth was where they stored all of their supplies and had their designated rooms. They kept the sixth floor empty to be used as a protected vantage point.
“I just was lucky Kade was there to go Donkey Kong on the little bastard,” John said.
They approached a door marked with three strips of duct tape that had been written on with a Sharpie:
The Theaterre
at the
End of the World
They pushed the door open and entered the room, which was set up with beds lining the perimeter, mattresses filling in the floor, and a high-def TV mounted to the wall. Grace had run a wire connecting it to the next room, where the solar batteries were stored.
In the far corner of the room, Ashton lay back between Xavier’s legs, resting her head on his chest. Xavier was wearing what he always seemed to be wearing—a pair of blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and his trademark black cowboy hat. John considered X a renegade, but he still had an appreciation for him, much as he did for everyone in his new family. John didn’t even mind the way X treated him with a cool distance since he treated just about everyone that way—with the exception of Ashton.
Ashton was a redheaded firecracker who took great pleasure in tormenting John. He figured that, since she was the little sister of Kade and Damian, she’d probably never had anyone to pass her frustrations down to, but that didn’t make him any more accepting of the sibling-like abuse.
John deliberately cleared his throat. “You changed my sign again.”
“Improved,” Ashton responded, beaming a toothy smile.
“Well, it isn’t. It’s not. It’s not better,” John said, setting his bow against the wall and kicking off his shoes.
“Shush it and sit down,” Ashton said, dismissing him with a wave. The freckles on her face matched the shade of her auburn hair, which made them stark against her pale skin.
John, figuring it was better not to start a verbal fight he didn’t have the skill to win, went and took a seat beside Grace, who had already made herself comfortable on one of the beds.
The door opened, and Kade strolled in with Tiny behind him, who was producing a constant flow of reasons he’d been careless, which Kade didn’t respond to as he crossed the room and took a seat between the two groups already on the beds.
Tiny’s vol
ley came to a close with, “You can’t take these chances with your life for nothing. There’s people depending on you.”
“I didn’t tell her,” John quickly blurted, and even more quickly covered his mouth, wishing he could pull the words back.
Tiny’s head snapped toward John, whipping her black hair across her face like a horse’s tail. “Tell me what?”
Her brown eyes bore into John, and he wished he could find something to shield himself from the wrath he had just provoked.
“Tell me what?” she repeated.
John knew pain would be imminent if he didn’t tell her something. He broke eye contact with Tiny long enough to gauge Kade, who gave him a single nod.
“Kade’s been fighting foamers bare-handed to study them,” John said.
“Snitch!” Ashton yelled.
“You’ve been doing what?” Tiny growled as she turned her piercing eyes back to Kade. Her usual milky face was flushed red.
Kade’s hand rocketed forward, grabbing a handful of Tiny’s long black hair, and pulled her face to his. She returned the kiss and dug her nails into his biceps. John had no idea if they were still fighting or making up.
In a whisper so low John could hardly hear, Kade said, “Trust me.”
Their lookout’s voice chimed through the walkie on Kade’s belt. “I think Jem and Mick are back. There’s a Humvee at the bridge.”
“Tiny,” Kade said, and she left the room in a hurry. John couldn’t grasp how the two of them communicated as efficiently as they did. John had seen this frequently and had expended a good deal of effort trying to decode it to see if it had to do with pitch or inflection. Perhaps it was simply their bond.
“Everyone, arm up and be ready. John, grab your bow and let’s go,” Kade ordered.
“What’s the big deal if it’s just our guys?” John asked.
“Protocol is we call in on approach. Jem and Mick don’t break protocol,” Grace said.
Feeling stupid for being corrected by his paramour, John grabbed his bow and followed Kade to the exit. They climbed down the ladder and mounted an ATV. They came to a halt on the opposite side of the bridge from the Humvee.
Strays Page 2