by Sam Sisavath
A new pair of footsteps approached before a familiar female voice (this time unmuffled) said, “He’s not wearing a uniform.”
The same woman who had ordered Tanner not to kill him through the radio. His savior. In the flesh, she had a just barely-there Hispanic accent.
“No, but that’s definitely one of our trucks,” Tanner said. “Goran and Paul took two of them out to track down that tank from yesterday.”
“Sunport?”
“Yeah.”
A brief moment of silence.
“We should finish them off,” Tanner said, slightly agitated. “Look at the blood inside. That’s not new. They killed Goran and Paul, and who knows how many, for their vehicle.”
The woman still didn’t say anything.
“We should—” Tanner pressed.
“No,” she cut him off.
“Why the fuck not?”
“If they came from Sunport, then they might know something about who’s launching these attacks,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in the tank. My guess is it’s run out of fuel and they had to commandeer Goran and Paul’s truck. Right now, we need intel more than we need two more dead bodies. Go and bring the truck over.”
“I’m telling you, Marcy, this is the wrong move—”
“And I said, go and bring the goddamn truck over,” Marcy snapped.
I guess we know who wears the pants in this family, Keo thought, wishing he could see the woman’s face.
Footsteps leaving. Tanner, huffing and puffing as he went, probably.
Dumb bastard. Pushed around by a girl.
“You got a name?” the woman asked.
Was she talking to him?
The crimp in his neck had lessened, the throbbing pain starting to numb, and he was finally able to turn his head slightly to the left, just enough to see a woman with curly black hair staring down at him. She was in her thirties, wearing a black uniform with a patch of Texas over one shoulder. The name “Marcy” was stenciled across a name tag, and a pair of binoculars hung loosely off a long neck.
Collaborators. Just my luck.
Brown eyes peered back at him. “Name. You got one?”
“Keo,” he said.
“Keo,” she repeated. “What kind of name is that?”
“José was taken.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Funny, you don’t look Hispanic.”
“It’s my disguise.”
Pale lips curved into a smile, but there was no genuine trace of humor. “All right, funny guy. Let’s find out what you know. Then I’ll decide if I’ll do you a favor and kill you and your friend fast, or take my time.”
*
THEY DIDN’T HAVE to carry him very far because the truck was parked nearby. He was put into the back, his ankles and arms zip tied, but at least they didn’t blindfold him, which allowed him to keep an eye on the amazingly bright sky. Of course, some of that great view was marred by a man in a black uniform manning a machine gun standing above him. The welding that connected the MG’s tripod to the cab looked rushed, which made him wonder if they had put the technical together only recently, possibly in response to Mercer’s attacks yesterday.
He turned his head until he could see Jordan’s unconscious body next to him. She was also bound, strays of short blonde hair matted to her forehead by small clumps of blood. She looked okay—or as okay as you could look after getting tossed off the road by a rocket strike, anyway.
The back of the truck closed with a bang!, and then they were back on the road.
The soldier manning the machine gun was alert, swiveling the weapon around as they moved. It looked like an older model squad automatic weapon, but even an aging piece was still dangerous when you could throw a few hundred rounds a minute downrange without having to reload.
Why was he so surprised the collaborators were all over the highway? Maybe he had expected them to remain around the towns to protect the inhabitants instead of spreading out into the countryside. How many other groups were out there between him and Gillian, waiting to ambush whoever was stupid enough (like us) to be driving out in the open?
Of course, he wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for Mercer. Hell, he’d probably be on the Trident right now, maybe even watching Bonnie and Carrie swimming in bikinis at the back of the anchored boat. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Coulda, woulda, but didn’ta, pal.
The soldier standing near his head shuffled his feet, the dried dirt caking his boots flaking off with every movement.
“Hey,” Keo said.
The man ignored him.
“Hey,” Keo said again.
The man looked down. He was wearing dark shades and Keo got a quick glimpse of himself in the reflective lens, lying on the truck bed. There was blood along the side of his face and in his hair, but he concluded that they looked worse than they actually were, since it certainly didn’t feel as if he was bleeding to death at the moment. Probably.
“What?” the man said.
“Where we going?”
“Base,” the man said, and returned his attention to the road.
“Angleton?”
“Angleton’s dead,” the man said. “Been dead for a year now.”
“So where’s base?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
Keo hadn’t been able to glimpse the man’s name tag, with the soldier’s back to him most of the entire time. “You got a name?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the man said.
Keo smiled. A man after his own heart. “I’m Keo.”
“Good for you. Now shut up.”
“Just trying to pass the time. Seen any tanks lately?”
That got the reaction Keo was looking for, and the soldier stared down at him for three very long seconds. “Keep it up. I got a shit-stained rag in my back pocket that’s looking for a mouth to call home.”
“Fair enough.”
Keo glanced at Jordan instead. “Jordan.”
She didn’t move.
“Jordan,” he said again, louder this time.
She finally opened her eyes and grimaced up at the sun for a moment.
“Over here,” he said.
She turned her head slowly and blinked at him. There was a cut along her right temple, but it looked minor next to the contusion in the middle of her forehead. “This is not good,” she said, her words slightly slurred.
“Hey, we’ve been in worse situations. Remember Santa Marie Island? Or yesterday? Or all of this week?’
“I’m trying not to,” she frowned.
“How’s your head?”
“Like someone’s hitting me with a sledgehammer. Repeatedly.” Her eyes darted upward, toward the collaborator hovering over them. Then, after a moment, “Is there something sitting on my forehead?”
“Looks like you hit it on something during the crash.”
“I don’t know how that’s possible. That seat belt almost cut me in half.”
“We flipped.”
“We flipped?”
“The truck. It flipped.”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“They hit us with a LAW,” he said.
“Law?”
“Light Anti-Tank Weapon. I guess they came fully prepared to take out a tank. Can’t say I blame them.”
“Oh.”
“We’re lucky,” he said.
She frowned again. “One of these days we need to sit down and have a really long talk about your definition of lucky, Keo.”
*
THEY DROVE FOR another ten minutes or so before the vehicle abandoned the smooth, paved highway and turned right onto a dirt road. Dust enveloped the truck, making him cough. The machine gunner, well-prepared for this part of the trip, pulled a handkerchief that was wrapped around his neck over the lower half of his face. Keo could only close his mouth and try not to breathe in the swirling dust. Jordan did the same next to him, squinting her eyes like she was gagging.
; The loud squeal of brakes as the truck, and the ones behind and in front of it, stopped. Doors squeaked open and heavy boots pounded the ground.
The soldier behind the machine gun pulled off his handkerchief and looked down at Keo. “Welcome to base.”
“I call first dibs on the Jacuzzi,” Keo said.
The man grinned, but said nothing. He stepped over Keo, and the truck dipped slightly before rising again as he leaped down the back without bothering with the tailgate.
Keo turned his head and found Jordan looking back at him.
“Another opportunity for that golden tongue of yours to get us out of trouble,” she said. “Start wagging.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Don’t let me down.”
“When have I ever?”
She sighed. “God, you’re going to get us both killed.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
*
BUT THEY DIDN’T give him a chance to talk his way out of it. Instead, a pair of armed men led Jordan and Keo from the truck and across the large front yard of a farmhouse. They were surrounded by technicals, and armed men stood guard on the rooftops of a two-story white house on one side and the bright red barn in front of them. The highway was somewhere to his right, but Keo couldn’t spy even a tiny glimpse of it at the moment.
The farm was surrounded by vast fields of sun-bleached land, and if something had been growing out there once upon a time, they were long dead, replaced by empty stretches of brown earth. He could probably scream all day and no one would hear, or care, if they heard.
The zip ties around their legs had been removed so they could walk, but the ones around their wrists remained in place. Not that Keo had any intentions of making a run for it. There were too many men in black uniforms with guns, and the ones on top of the barn were watching them like hawks. There were no signs of Marcy, the obvious leader of the pack, and the men walking them didn’t seem interested in conversation.
Keo spotted a dozen vehicles, including the three that had returned from the ambush, before they were escorted through the barn’s open doors and his entire universe suddenly boiled down to rotting wood and the aroma of stale feed and hay, overlapped with old urine and manure stains.
Jordan made a face. “Jesus…”
“Never been inside a barn before?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“Once or twice.”
“Do they all smell like this?”
“This one’s special. A year’s worth of abandonment.”
“I feel so privileged.”
There was no one inside the barn but them, which he guessed made sense; who wanted to spend all their time in here, with the smells? Their escorts led them to their destination: a metal cage at the back. It looked like some kind of kennel, about ten feet high and just as wide.
One of the men used a key on the cage’s padlock, then pulled the door open. “Inside.”
Keo and Jordan stepped through, crunching year-old hay (and other things he’d rather not think too much about) as they did so. The door clanged shut and the collaborator slipped the lock back through the latch, snapped it closed, then pocketed the key.
“Hands,” the man said.
Keo squeezed his bound hands through the bars, and the man took out a pair of pliers and snipped the restraints. He did the same to Jordan’s zip ties.
“We could use some medical attention too,” Keo said, rubbing at his wrists.
“Tough nuts,” the man said.
“Maybe later, but just the medical attention for now.”
The man grunted. “If it was up to me, I’d keep the both of you hog-tied and rolling around in there.” Then he turned and walked off.
Keo leaned against the cage, feeling like a prisoner in a bad movie, and watched his guards leave. They didn’t go far, though, and stood guard in front of the open barn doors underneath the bright sun. Well, it was bright for now, but it wasn’t going to last forever, which was the problem.
“I thought you were going to talk us out of this?” Jordan said.
“I didn’t exactly get an opportunity.”
“Excuses.”
“Maybe when Marcy shows up…”
“Who’s Marcy?”
“The one running the show.”
“When did you two become buddies?”
“While you were unconscious.”
“Figures,” Jordan said. “I close my eyes for one moment, and you’re already chatting up a new girl.”
Sunlight streamed in around them, through the holes and boards that made up the barn’s walls, and Keo’s eyes were drawn to the ceiling, where he could hear the slight creak each time one of the two collaborators up there moved around, which was about once every thirty seconds or so.
Nervous in the service, boys?
He focused on the bars, then gripped them and tried pulling. They didn’t budge, of course, especially with one end buried in concrete. The individual metal rods themselves were too close together to slide through and he could just barely get his entire arm out, never mind the rest of him.
“What is this thing?” Jordan asked, pulling on the bars on another side of the cage.
“Probably a kennel for wild animals,” Keo said. “Or two innocent travelers, in this case.”
“Innocent, huh?”
“Innocent-ish.” He glanced at the sentries above them again. “Looks like they’re on high alert.”
“Mercer.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen nine technicals in the same place before. Combine that with the LAWs, and it looks like we just stumbled into the middle of a full-fledged war. What they have going on out here with Mercer’s people is going to make what you and Tobias had to deal with back at T18 look like child’s play.”
“Wow, why is it every time you open your mouth, I feel less and less like we’re going to survive this?”
“Sorry.”
Jordan leaned against the bars next to him and tried to get a better look at the open doors to their left. “How’s your leg?”
“Still attached.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s fine.”
“Is that you being a tough guy?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, tough guy, so what do we do now?”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“They kept us alive to find out what we know. Marcy’s deduced that we’re a part of Gregson’s tank crew, trying to go incognito.”
“‘Deduced’?” Jordan said with a wry smile.
“She figured,” he shrugged.
“So, what do we know?”
“Hopefully enough to convince them to keep us alive, at least long enough to make our play.”
“Which would be?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That doesn’t sound very reassuring.” She walked to the back of the cage and sat down on a pile of old hay. “I should have taken Lara’s offer. The Trident’s looking pretty good right about now.”
He smiled to himself. How many times had he said that in the last few weeks?
“I don’t want to say I told you so,” he said, “but I told you so.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She was suddenly very quiet, and Keo looked back at her. “Jordan…”
“What?” she said.
“Jordan,” he said again.
She looked up and stared back at him. “What, Keo?”
“We’ll be okay.”
“Bullshit.”
“I promise.”
She didn’t say anything, and he wasn’t sure if she believed him. Hell, he wasn’t certain if he believed him.
“Okay,” she finally said, and leaned back against the bars and closed her eyes.
He turned back around and glanced toward the open barn doors, wondering how exactly he was going to make good on that promise.
CHAPTER 22
GABY
DIDN’T WE J
UST do this?
Nate sat across from her in the pitch darkness, Danny’s still form to her right. The ex-Army Ranger was asleep and snoring lightly, his head tilted to one side, the carbine he had gotten from Taylor’s stash lying across his lap. Nate was wide awake and looking back at her. Or she thought he was, anyway. It was hard to tell, because she couldn’t quite make out the blue of his eyes despite there only being five feet or so of open space between them.
It wasn’t fear that moved through her at the moment. Or, at least, not the familiar paralyzing effects that usually accompanied the onset of terror. She could breathe just fine, clench and unclench her fingers against her rifle without difficulty, and she had no problems feeling the slight vibrations that ran through the rotting wooden floor underneath the stained carpet as they moved around below her.
Tap-tap-tap.
Nate had heard it too, because his outline went suddenly rigid.
Tap-tap-tap.
They were traveling across the same places she, Nate, and Danny had less than an hour ago. There was no mistaking the patter of their bare feet moving over dirt-stained slate tiles, the clicks and clacks as they randomly bumped into items hanging off shelves or that had toppled in the year since customers stopped coming.
She slid one hand along the length of her AR-15 and slipped her forefinger into the trigger guard. The weapon felt overly bulky, but she knew that was only because she wasn’t used to it yet.
There wasn’t a lot of space in the attic, and most of it was already taken up with crates of plumbing fixtures, empty water cooler bottles, and unopened boxes of cheap plastic Christmas trees. The only thing they had found to be any use when they had searched it earlier, back when there was still enough light to see with, were two stacks of duct tape. And you could never have too much duct tape—
Concentrate!
The creatures were smart, but they could be fooled. Which was why they had parked Taylor’s truck six buildings down the street, then walked to the hardware store and climbed up to its attic. She would never have known the room existed if Danny hadn’t remembered it from all those months ago when he had raided the place for supplies with Will.