by Ric Beard
“Which faction?” Mikael asked.
Mikael has been talking to Blake.
“CorpKill,” she said. “He’s the brazen one. Labyrinth prefers a more passive approach, or he’d have us believe that.”
Mikael sighed. “In my old age and in this new world, I had hoped perhaps I could control my own destiny. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t quite this.” Mikael stood and walked to her. He took both her hands in his and leveled gray eyes on her own. “You have always served me well, Alexia Shaw.”
Lexi’s heart thumped a little. She felt a pang of guilt.
What would they think of me if the father and son knew I was manipulating them both?
“Thank you.” She looked over at Kara, whose smile was gleaming at her husband. She found it sweet, even if sweet usually made her want to puke.
“I think it’s time for us to switch it up, Lexi.”
Lexi felt the bite on the end of her line. She clutched the reel and pulled him in, nice and smooth. Give him a little room to pull, wait for him to tire a bit, then use his force against him.
“What do you mean?” Lexi furrowed her brows to appear confused.
“Take over my campaign security.”
Okay, so no reeling at all, he just jumped in the boat.
Lexi walked outside the penthouse apartment, took the elevator to the lobby, and walked out to the street. Looking up and down the sidewalk outside, she pulled out her Tab and tapped in a quick message.
He’s hooked. I’ll get him to the election in one piece. Hope you get this.
Part Eleven
The Badlands
Chapter Forty-Four
A Bit on the Thin Side
Day 6
Sunday, Mar 24, 2137
The Badlands
The scent of wet grass left by recent storms was replaced by the stench of baked asphalt as the sun bathed the interstate in the hours after Moss rendezvoused with Jenna’s crew. Jenna sat with her legs stretched out on a flat rock facing west, the bottoms of her bare feet absorbing the last heat of the setting sun before it slipped below the horizon. Days spent trudging through mud and puddles left them in a constant, frigid state, and she couldn’t be sure when she’d see the sun again. She brought one foot up to her waist and rubbed it, hoping to force some circulation to her toes.
“I have something for that,” a voice said from behind.
“Really?” Jenna said without turning. A smile played across her lips. “Do tell.”
A small canvas pack slapped against her shoulder. She glanced at it.
“No shit!” She pulled the ties on the pack and peeked inside. “Oh, my God, Moss, I love you right now.” Jenna scooted to one side and patted the rock. Moss settled next to her on the referenced spot and watched as she furiously shook the sack causing the rocks inside to rattle. Tossing the bag on the rock, she dropped the arches of her feet onto it and sighed. “Oh yeah, baby. Ooh. That’s glorious.”
“I bartered for them in Little Rock. A guy in The Third rotating in from OK City brought a box full. I bet he walked out of there with all kinds of good stuff, the way the weather’s been.”
Jenna closed her eyes and released a cleansing sigh as the heat from the stones radiated through her soles. The faces of Moss’s men flashed in her mind, but she continued on.
“Yeah, I bet he’s rich. As bad as my feet get doing recon, I imagine yours are worse, with all the trudging around you do.”
Moss shrugged. “You get used to it.”
She looked over and forced another smile at him.
“I don’t get used to it. The damn storms have been relentless. I feel like I’ve been wet for months.”
“You have been wet for months.”
“I feel like I’m constantly snapping at the guys, it’s been so irritating.”
“I’m sure they get it,” Moss said. “The rain probably pisses them off, too. They’re just tough guys, so they don’t talk about it. Be thankful you can at least step out of the muck and onto the asphalt.”
“Speaking of roughing it, Reagan and the kid check out. Minor cuts and bruises for the most part. Reagan was a tough nut. She tried to push all my attention to Lucy. Pretty much refused to let me check her out until I’d done a full workup on the kid.”
“She’s been through a lot.”
“No argument here. She finally let me look her over, and I almost cringed when I saw some of the scars on her back. I think she sensed it because she jerked her shirt down. A couple of them weren’t more than a few days old.”
“Animals.”
Jenna nodded in agreement.
“Did she ask you for a smoke?” Moss asked.
“She did. None of my guys smoke.”
“I told her the same thing.”
“Sucks to be her, I guess. I also noticed swelling around her knuckles. It wasn’t the kind you get from punching stuff either. Someone broke her fingers. At first I was surprised she could carry a weapon or do much of anything. But she explained to me that she was trained in field triage and managed to reset the bones herself.”
“Damn. Tough lady.”
Jenna shook her head. “I don’t think we know the half of it, Moss. Whipped, beaten, raped—they tortured her. She’s wearing a tough face right now, but something tells me there’s going to be hell to pay when the emotion she has bottled inside comes flooding out.”
She looked over at Moss and found a pained expression, his jaw tense.
“I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems, I didn’t give her state a second thought. Now that you mention it, she really is tough.” He looked down at his hands. “You know, I think she was giving her food to Lucy.”
“Reagan’s a bit on the thin side,” Jenna said with a nod. “I gave her a multi and a double ration. We’ll put a few pounds on her.” She put a hand on his back and rubbed in a circle.
“I’m sorry about the guys.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Not your fault.”
“Totally my fault. My responsibility.”
“So, you’re saying the guy on that hill was an average shot, gave you plenty of warning that he was there, and you just screwed it up. That makes sense to me.”
“Jenna, really. Let’s just not go there. They were my guys. Someone has to take responsibility for them.”
She rubbed one more circle on his back, patted a couple times, and pulled her hand away.
“That person is me.”
Moss’s eyes ticked up and widened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s easy to calculate, L.T.”
“What, because you did your job and called us in?” He thrust his hands out to each side, palm up. “That’s our job, Jenna. We all knew what we were doing and who we were doing it for, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to eat the shit sandwich. I’m the one who put them on that porch. Me!”
Jenna shrugged. “I think that’s bullshit, so let’s agree that we’ll let it be each of our faults and talk about it another time.”
This wasn’t the time. The wounds were too fresh. She looked down and rolled her feet back and forth over the hot pack of stones and thought the joy of feeling her feet again might bring tears, if the thoughts of Moss’s crew didn’t first.
She’d known Moss for almost three years now. They shared a goal, the joining of two cities and their people. He was the brother in which she could confide almost anything. He was a brother because that was the box in which she’d shoved him. No matter how he poked at her heart, Jenna couldn’t afford to be attached. It wasn’t fair to Moss.
Moss cleared his throat. “You said you would tell me about your girl.”
“What? Oh! Right. No sooner had we regrouped on the hill overlooking the cul-de-sac when she walked up and pulled a rifle on me. She’s a ninja-in-training. I’m baffled about how she actually got the drop on us.”
“No small feat.”
“Well, it was raining cats and dogs.”
&
nbsp; “Cats and dogs?”
“Never mind.”
Moss gave her a strange look. Jenna ignored it.
“I lowered my weapon, hoping she’d stay calm, but she pushed hers closer to my face. So, Scruff shot her.”
Moss burst into laughter.
“No shit?” He slapped his knee, leaned his head back and bellowed. “Woo! Fuckin’ Scruff, man!”
“Straight blue bolt right into her chest,” Jenna said, joining into the laughter. “I didn’t think it was funny at the time, but now that I know she’s okay…”
“Scruff’s one of a kind. He would kill for you on a whim. She was lucky he set the thing so it didn’t kill her. He doesn’t share our social rules and he could’ve blown her head off.”
“I think you underestimate my friend’s humanity.”
Moss shrugged. “That or you underestimate how far he would go to protect you.”
“Touché.”
“What kind of shape is the girl in?”
“I have no idea. She vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Yeah. She managed to escape her pod and left under cover of night. Even Scruff couldn’t track her. We don’t even know which direction she went. But she took her gun with her.”
“Boss!” A voice barked from their side.
They both turned and simultaneously said, “Yeah?” Then they looked at each other and grinned.
It was Tyler.
“Top drones just rotated in from Little Rock and are back online! We got incoming!” he yelled. “Five clicks to the northeast!”
“Dust it off!” Jenna yelled in return, shoving her bare feet into her boots. “Warm ‘em up for incoming!”
Moss laced one of her boots while she worked on the other. Once they were secured on her feet, he threw out a hand and helped her up. They ran into the camp perimeter shouting orders and readying the depleted company for battle.
Chapter Forty-Five
Is He Still Talking?
Tyler ran away from them, shouting at the crew.
Two trucks filled with men roared in from an exit ramp to the east while a swarm of motorcycles came tearing down the grassy hill from the north.
“You as tired of this shit as me?” Jenna asked. She turned her head and was surprised to see Moss was smiling.
“This is an opportunity! I owe these fuckers a lot of payback.”
Jenna focused her eyes on his and wrapped her hand on his arm. “You good?”
Moss took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
A voice bellowed from the distance.
“WE’RE HERE FOR REAGAN AND THE GIRL.” The voice seemed amplified. “OUR FATHERS CLAIMED THIS LAND WHEN THE WAYS OF THE OLD WORLD, THE WAYS OF YOUR WORLD DIED. GO BACK TO YOUR CITIES, BE GLAD FOR WHAT YOU HAVE, AND YOU CAN GO IN PEACE.”
“Is that a riot box?” Jenna asked.
“It sure sounds like it. Takes balls to flaunt our technology at us.”
Jenna looked over at the trucks filled to the brim with armed men then back at the hill. “I’ve never seen this many.”
“Right. I wonder what changed.”
Jenna eyed the man standing on the hill and frowned.
“You can shoot him, if you like.” She pulled her goggles around her head and zoomed. The tall man was wearing an eye patch. Tangled, brown hair draped over his wide shoulders.
“Let’s hear what he has to say first.”
“He seems to fancy himself some sort of new world preacher.”
“You got a lot of experience with the religious?” Moss asked.
Jenna didn’t answer him.
“SEND THEM UP TO US AND YOU CAN GO IN PEACE…”
Moss lined his scope up on the speaker.
“What do you think? Should we go in peace?”
Jenna laughed nervously and looked across the horizon.
“…ALL WE WANT IS REAGAN AND LUCY,” the man continued. “JUST TELL THEM TO COME OUT, AND YOU CAN GO FREE.” His voice was calm, even though the riot box.
“Well, that just tells me he wants a fight. No way we’d give them up.”
“Maybe he thinks we’re like him.”
Jenna scanned the horizon and then looked over at her trucks.
Yup, that would about do it. All these years spent trying to save the world and here she was in the middle of nowhere, a seriously degraded crew count, only three soldiers with military experience left, and a load of marauders aimed at killing them all. She looked over at Patty the demolition rig and saw Ray waving at her. He motioned at the auto turret on the rig bed next to him and gave a thumbs-up. She returned it, and he jumped into Patty’s cab and lowered the rear window, pointing his rifle through the opening.
So, the auto turrets finally dried out. Maybe there’s hope yet.
“Moss, there are a lot of them. They’re spread out. They can take both flanks, and there isn’t much we can do about it. Turrets are up, though.”
“Then let’s keep it tight, Jen.”
Moss held up one finger and signaled over his left shoulder. Jenna heard Sanchez’s boots spit gravel as he hurried to take up the left flank. Moss held up two fingers, and she heard boots running to the right before he even made the signal in that direction. Jenna clipped a microphone around her throat.
“Keep the kid on lockdown.” Even if they fell to the badlander force, the bastards would have a hell of a time getting the pods open. She didn’t know if they would hold until reinforcements came, but if they did, each pod was packed with enough food and air reserves to hold out for weeks.
She zoomed with her goggles while the man droned on with some bullshit about protecting his father’s land. A man near him was holding what looked like a small radar dish, pointed in her direction.
She looked at Moss, tapped her throat and whispered. “You plugged in?”
“Roger,” he whispered. She heard it loud and clear in her ear implant.
“They’ve got ears on, team. Keep it low.”
Several affirmative replies.
“They usually come burning in,” Moss said. “They asked for Reagan and the kid. They’re Crows, not Horace’s guys.”
“Crows?”
“The ones who held Reagan.”
“Is that bad?”
“I have no idea. But it explains why they brought so many. They aren’t here for us.”
Jenna shrugged.
“Scruff, Ty said we have drones up. See if you can tap the stringer line to OK City.”
A grunt came in reply.
“Moss, what do you think?”
“This is your show, boss. I’m just along for the ride.”
“I’m pretty sure when you’re in camp, you have the con, sir.”
Tyler rang in.
“If neither of you wants to make the call, let me know, I’ll be glad to—”
“Shut it, RD,” Jenna said. Though he chose a snake for his call sign, Tyler’s unofficial handle was Rabid Dog, earned when he went mono a mono with a thick-necked badlander whose Adam’s apple he had extracted with his teeth after having his knife fumble to the ground.
“Roger,” Tyler replied.
“…stand down, leave your weapons on the ground, and start following the highway west,” the man standing in the tall grass to the north was saying.
“Is he still talking?” Moss asked.
Reagan came sliding in the dirt and settled between them. She raised the pulse rifle they’d confiscated from the badlanders at the gazebo the day before and started working a lever back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Jenna whispered.
Reagan looked up.
“The fuck you think I’m doing?” She pointed at the hill. “That’s Wolfe. That’s Lucy’s father. That’s the son of a bitch who assaulted me for the last two years.”
Jenna looked past Reagan at Moss. Moss returned her gaze. Jenna looked back at Reagan.
“I guess the shot is yours, soldier.”
Reagan raised the corner of her mouth and settle
d the rifle for a stable shot.
“We’ll hit the flanks with the mortar,” Jenna whispered, waving her hand and smiling at the bastard on the hill. “Ready check.”
“Mortar 1, ready.”
“Mortar 2, ready.”
“M79 ready.” This was an old-school grenade launcher for which Jenna held a particular fondness.
“Unit 1, ready.”
“Unit 2, ready.”
Moss said, “We’re ready, boss.”
Someone snickered over the line, but Jenna couldn’t tell who.
“Fire,” Jenna said.
The countryside surrounding Old Interstate-40 became hell’s symphony with an accompanying light show. The hillside and camp below were bathed in orange and neon blue as pulse tracers pinged like bells and raced through the air to their targets. A man in the first truck introduced harsh percussion into the arrangement when he unleashed the fury of a shoulder-fired rocket into the center of the camp, blowing two pods off their anchors. The whistling crescendo of a falling mortar round resolved into a tympanic explosion that echoed across the valley as it blew badlanders off their motorcycles. Screams became a cacophony as limbs evaporated, heads exploded, and bodies were launched high into the air.
Jenna’s team was adeptly picking the riders off their motorcycles, turning the bikes into shards of exploding metal. Then another rocket screamed from the back of the second truck, and one of the pods was struck broad side, sending it rolling fifty feet but somehow not penetrating its structure.
Jenna saw Wolfe riding away on his bike and heard Reagan curse as she stole a look over her shoulder. Jenna took a moment to glance with her. Lucy was standing outside her pod, crying as pulse lights flew all around her. Reagan launched out of cover.
“Shit!” Jenna screamed. She turned and continued firing at the incoming riders, hoping Reagan and the child wouldn’t be hit.
Chapter Forty-Six
Lucy
Reagan charged toward Lucy, her rifle slapping against her back as she pumped her legs. A pulse flew by her head and she ducked away instinctively after it had passed, the light illuminating the ground beneath. She pushed herself. Her legs burned. Closer now. She would reach her in a few seconds.