Dana had no sooner nudged the trailer door open, the C4 briefcase in hand, when she heard gunfire. It was coming from the towers, and this time they weren’t firing in at the people of New Jamestown. They were firing at something outside the walls. But what? The answer came a second later when a Jeep Cherokee came crashing through the colony’s already damaged gate. Behind it, a long line of cars and trucks surged over the bridge, firing their guns as they came. Gripped in terror, Dana realized it could only mean on thing. The Wipers were finally here to finish them off.
Finn
Larry didn’t waste any time taking his prisoners into the sub’s missile control room. Wall-to-wall instrumentation along with consoles flickering to life. Wipers had AKs trained on Zhou, Kulik, and Callahan as they powered up the boat. Meanwhile, more Wipers outside detached the heavy cables that kept them moored to the dock. It was clear soon enough why Larry wanted Nikki and Aiden so badly. In the short term, with all of those memories locked deep within him, Aiden was the only one around who knew how to operate the sub. And if he could do that, then there was no telling what other uses his abilities could be put to.
Finn had hoped the tight quarters down here might present an opportunity to overpower one of Larry’s men, but these Wipers were no longer the same mindless savages he’s seen at the airport. They were trained and far more disciplined. And more immediately, they were glaring at Finn and Joanne as though they wanted nothing more than to cave their heads in with the butts of their rifles.
Donavan entered the missile room. “We’re detached,” he told Larry.
“Good. Now take these two up to the bridge,’ Larry said pointing to Kulik and Callahan. “And have them blow the ballast tanks.”
“Won’t that make us sink?” Donavan asked.
Larry smiled. “A few dozen meters at most. But how else will we launch these missiles?”
Kulik threw Finn a look that bore the hallmarks of someone who was about to do something crazy, but trying anything now would only mean suicide.
Donavan and a handful of men led Kulik and Callahan out.
Now Finn, Joanne, and Zhou were alone with Larry and a half dozen Wipers.
“We already have the launch codes,” Larry told them, “along with the keys from Zhou and Kulik required by the two-man rule. What we’re really missing to get this party started is targeting.”
He looked at Zhou. “And that’s where you come in.”
The commander shook his head. “That’s the weapons officer’s job.”
Larry slammed the pistol he was holding across Zhou’s face. “Well, now it’s your job.” He looked at Joanne. “Get her up.”
A Wiper came and hooked an arm around Joanne. Finn grabbed hold of her.
“Leave her out of this,” he told Larry. “You wanna use someone, use me.”
Larry buried the pistol in his armpit and clapped. “Touching. Now make him go to sleep.”
The Wiper let go of Joanne and brought his rifle down against the side of Finn’s head. The sound of the impact rang in his ears as the room blurred and became wavy. A second blow, and all he could hear was Joanne as she begged. “I’ll come, I’ll come. Just leave him alone.”
Finn’s hand went to the side of his head, trying to regain himself. Joanne was placed before Larry, a Wiper holding her arms behind her back.
“Now, Commander Zhou, lock the first warhead onto New Jamestown.”
“I will not,” Zhou replied, defiantly.
Larry cracked Joanne in the face with the handle of his pistol. She let out a squeal of pain and turned her head. Finn rushed to his feet, but was thrown back by the Wipers standing over him.
“Let’s try this again. Will you please target New Jamestown?”
Zhou paused before shaking his head.
Larry hit Joanne twice. She slumped forward, blood trickling from her mouth.
“You son of a bitch!” Finn cried. “I’m gonna kill you,” he told Larry. “I swear to God ... ”
Larry laughed. “Oh, leave God out of this, will you?” He turned back to Zhou. “I won’t ask you again.”
“Please,” Joanne said, her lips swollen and bloody.
Zhou looked on, and Larry wound up for another strike.
“OK, I’ll do it.” Zhou said at last.
Larry grinned, his teeth looking like tiny tombstones baked in the hot sun. “I knew you’d come around.”
Dana
The cult members who, moments before, had been Dana’s biggest threat, were now all that stood between her and the Wipers here to destroy New Jamestown. She fled from the police trailer toward the cover of Tent City, the briefcase containing the explosives tightly in hand. Dana glanced back once before she slipped behind the medical tent, and what she saw chilled the very blood in her veins. Dozens, maybe hundreds of Wipers charging across the bridge, shouting in their guttural language. She knew now what it must have felt like during the sack of Rome by the Visigoths.
Dana was bolting past the last few tents when a hand reached out and pulled her inside. She struggled for a moment before realizing it was Lou. Tanner was there with him, and both men were armed with rifles they’d apparently taken from the bodies of dead cult members during the uprising.
Ethan was on a cot nearby, his eyes closed, drawing in shallow breaths.
“Grab your son and bring him to the battle wagon,” Dana shouted frantically.
“He ain’t looking good,” Lou said. “We can’t move him.”
“But you can’t stay.”
Lou shook his head. “I ain’t movin’ him, and that’s all there is to it.”
“You’ll be killed,” she pleaded.
“I’ve made up my mind. They’ll get to Ethan over my dead body.”
Dana looked over at Tanner, who grit his teeth.
“You, too?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Take my truck,” Lou said. “Keys are above the visor. We’ll hold ‘em off as long as we can.” He pulled the charging handle on his AR-15. “Go on and get before you lose your chance.”
Dana hugged him and then Tanner.
“Soon as we destroy that pulse generator we’re coming back for you.”
Lou winked. “Don’t hurry on our account.”
Dana swung her own rifle around and with the briefcase in hand, headed out. She no sooner reached the car park than a shot rang out, ricocheting off the roof of a nearby car. Dana saw a man about 30 yards away, standing beside a vehicle, taking aim with an AK-47. Even in the early morning hours, she recognized it was Jeffereys. He fired another volley and with her heart racing, Dana hit the ground for cover. The AK’s 7.62 round was a monster that could punch right through both ends of a car. Only the engine block gave her proper cover. She raised herself up onto one knee and took aim before squeezing the trigger. Her first shot passed over his shoulder. The second grazed the side of his head. Jeffereys dove behind a nearby tent.
The colony was in chaos. Wipers were swarming all over the place, firing their weapons at anything that moved. One group swung off the main body and entered the compound building. These Wipers were a far cry from the mindless killers who had attacked them two months before. Now they were trained and seemed to have arrived with a plan.
Jeffereys was still nowhere to be seen, so Dana broke into a run, reaching the battle wagon to find Bud, hanging out the driver-side door, picking off as many Wipers as he could.
Every dead Wiper was a good Wiper, but he risked drawing their attention. Dana hopped into the passenger seat and tucked the metal briefcase at her feet. Aiden and Nikki were hunkered down in the back.
“You kids OK?” she asked.
Aiden looked up at her. He was holding the .38 calibre Smith & Wesson Bodyguard she’d seen Zhou with before.
“Bud, if we don’t leave now, we won’t be leaving at all.”
He stopped firing, handed her his rifle and jumped in. Dana flipped the visor, and down came the keys.
“Hope those spark plugs ar
e in right,” he mumbled.
Bud turned the key, and the engine sputtered but didn’t start. He turned it again with a similar result. Glancing in the side mirror, Dana could see that a group of Wipers saw the back lights turn on.
“Keep trying,” she shouted, opening the door to engage them. Short bursts seemed to work best, and she felt the AR-15 kick against her shoulder with each shot fired. She circled behind the adjacent car to draw their fire away from the battle wagon while Bud wrestled with getting it started. Dana managed to drop three of them when Bud got out of the car and opened the hood.
“You’re kidding me,” she called out.
He held her with a ‘No, I’m dead serious’ kinda look. “Keep it up, you’re doing great.”
If she wasn’t busy fending off these Wipers, she’d have given him a piece of her mind. What she hadn’t noticed was the Wiper creeping up in her blind spot behind the battle wagon. He charged in at her, emptying his pistol as he ran. Suddenly, the wagon’s back door swung in the Wiper’s face, stopping him dead. Then came the sound of three shots as the attacker crumpled to the ground. Dana ran back to the wagon and saw Aiden, sitting in the back with the pistol in his hand, Nikki beside him, plugging her ears.
Another bang, and this time it was Bud slamming the hood. He got in and turned the key. The engine purred and then roared to life.
“Used a little spit on the ends.” Then came that wink again, totally oblivious that Aiden had just saved her life.
Dana leaned into the back seat and pushed the gun in Aiden’s hand down. “Nice shooting. Now put that thing away and buckle up.”
He smiled.
“Next stop, Montana,” Bud yipped as he kicked the wagon into reverse, hit the gas, and then spun the wheel, until they were facing the front gate.
Sparks flew off the hood. Someone was shooting at them. Looking out Bud’s window, Dana spotted Jeffereys firing from the parking lot, shouting at others to stop them from getting away. Had he seen Aiden in the back seat? Or was he simply trying to kill her once and for all?
Bud floored the accelerator, the battle wagon’s engine growled. As they reached the trailers, Dana saw Jeffereys in the rearview, running toward the car he’d popped out of earlier. He was going to give chase.
“He’s not giving up easy,” Dana mumbled to herself, hoping they could outrun him.
Jeffereys
Dana and Bud were trying to whisk the kids away, and there was no way Jeffereys was gonna let that happen. It was following that first exchange of gunfire Jeffereys had with her, where he was forced to duck into what the colonists called Tent City, that he discovered what was happening. He’d found a woman named Holly and her daughter, Tamara, trying to hide under their beds. Jeffereys had asked them very nicely where Aiden and Nikki were, and it was only when he got forceful that the truth finally emerged. She’d told him Dana and Bud were taking them away in Lou’s battle wagon. They were heading to Montana and a place called Chief Mountain.
That was when Jeffereys had popped back out of the tent and seen the kid gun down one of his men from the back seat. Soon after that, they had sped down the dirt road, knocking aside his troops like bowling pins as they fled.
No sooner had Jeffereys stopped firing than he jumped behind the wheel of a Trans Am and gave chase, stopping for only seconds to round up three other cars with men to join him. New Jamestown could go to hell for all he cared. It was the children that his boss, Larry, wanted, and he intended to do just that.
Rocketing over the bridge Jeffereys fingered the button on the Iridium satellite phone.
“Larry, come in. Over.”
He dropped it in his lap and clamped both hands on the steering wheel in order to make a sharp right hand turn. Ahead of him were the distant tail lights from Dana’s truck. The sun was also starting to come up, which would make it even easier to stay close and hopefully intercept them.
The satellite phone came to life. “Tell me you have them,” Larry said sternly.
“They broke out of our noose, but we’re on their tail. Don’t worry, I think I know where they’re headed.”
“You better,” came Larry’s reply. “Your life depends on it.”
Nikki
They’d been driving for hours when Chief Mountain in Montana finally came into view. It rose up from the desert like the remnants of an ancient stone wall weathered over the eons. The ground built slowly up around it, so that the 9,000-foot peak dominated the entire valley below. It was at the base of this mountain that Simon said the Rainbowites would gather during the summer solstice, but as Abigail’s notebook showed them, it was the convergence of ley lines and not the mountain that made this place special. For Nikki, Bud, and everyone else suffering from continued memory loss, the secret facility hidden presumably beneath this slab of rock was the key to setting the world right again.
Dana glanced back from the front seat, scanning over Nikki’s shoulder at the road behind them. “Do you think they’re still following us?” she asked Bud, who was driving.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I think we lost them back near the state line.”
Dana didn’t seem convinced since there was another problem none of them had considered up until this point. Getting to Chief Mountain in Montana had always appeared to be the biggest challenge, but finding the entrance into the underground facility once they arrived might be something else entirely.
Nikki voiced her concerns to Dana, the whole while watching Chief Mountain draw closer and closer.
“You’ve seen Aiden’s memories,” Dana said. “Do you remember seeing any landmarks, leading into Tevatron’s lab?”
Nikki shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then take another look.”
“It doesn’t work that way, I already told you.”
Dana drew in a deep breath. “Well, it’s gonna have to. We’re running low on options right now ... ”
Dana’s eyes were staring off at a point over Nikki’s shoulder. She turned and saw a plume of dust rising about a mile behind them. Nikki turned. “Is that Jeffereys?” she whispered.
“You’ve got to hurry,” Dana said, ignoring the question.
Aiden held out his hands, and Nikki took them. Right away, she was struck by an avalanche of memories flickering past her at lightning speed. So fast she felt as though she were flying through space. Faces, locations, a child blowing out candles on a cake, an old man staring listlessly out a bedroom window, a young couple stealing secret kisses during a family outing. Finding specific memories in all this mess was like spinning a globe and hoping when it stopped your finger landed on New York City. From somewhere far away, Nikki could hear Dana’s voice urging her on.
Then Nikki thought of something she hadn’t tried before. If she held the image of the man she’d seen in Aiden’s head earlier, the one who entered the side of the mountain, maybe she could find him in all this mess and tease out more details.
A mass of flickering images, and soon a figure began to take shape before her. He was wearing a white lab coat, hurrying down a hallway. This was the right person, but she’d somehow skipped past the part when he arrived. The entrance to the facility was what she needed, not this. Clenching her brother’s hands, she struggled to rewind the movie playing in her head, roll it backward to the part when he arrived. Suddenly, she saw the man’s feet moving in reverse, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Soon, he was backing out a giant metal door into a valley at the base of the mountain. Behind her were two other peaks.
Her eyes snapped open as the battle wagon nearly swerved off the road. Nikki and Aiden were thrown from side to side.
The muffled sounds of shots from outside. Nikki was going to look when Dana pushed her head down. “Keep low, Jeffereys has caught up. They’re trying to shoot our tires out.”
Looking over the dashboard, Nikki saw Chief Mountain and the two smaller peaks nestled behind it.
“There’s a valley on the other side,” she said. “The
entrance to the facility is there.”
Bud was still swerving all over the road, his foot pushed all the way to the floorboard. “I don’t know if we can outrun them,” he said.
Dana unlocked her door and pulled the charging handle on her AR-15. With her free hand, she coiled the seat belt around her right arm.
“The hell you doing?” Bud shouted.
“Trying to save our asses. Now hold onto my belt.”
Bud grabbed hold as Dana opened the door and leaned out, her rifle aiming at the half dozen cars giving chase behind them. She squeezed the trigger as Bud cut left, bringing them all within sight. The gun kicked in a hand already aching from trying to keep the sights leveled. Her other hand was wrapped in her seatbelt to ensure she didn’t fall to her death. Dana squeezed off another six rounds. Most of them missed entirely, but one went through the windshield of a Dodge Caravan filled with Wipers, spooking the driver and sending the car skidding off the road and flipping upside down.
They were parallel to Chief Mountain now as Jeffereys’ men began to return fire.
“Dana, get in here,” Bud shouted at her.
Bullets shattered the window beside her, spraying glass into the side of her face. Dana continued firing until her magazine ran empty.
Swearing, Bud pulled her inside, blood running from the tiny cuts on her face. He struggled to drive with one hand, while wiping the shards out with the other.
Nikki glanced out the window and saw a narrow valley below them, filled with low brush. It seemed as though the road they were on descended gradually in that direction.
Then Jeffereys’ car swung up on their right, and unloaded. The popping sound from their burst tire echoed loudly and all at once Bud lost control of the car.
“Hold on,” he cried as the battle wagon cut left and smashed through the guard rail, rocking down the embankment like a kid on a runaway toboggan. Shrubs and brush smacked the windshield as they sped out of control.
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 29