“No way!” Audrey exclaimed, yanking at Tabby’s hand.
“No way,” Tabby echoed, sounding the opposite of the other girl’s excitement.
Charity pulled the mystery man closer but spoke directly to Tabby. She acted as if Audrey and the man were props, rather than living people. “If you’ll notice, this man Dwight no longer has the unfortunate conditions he bore as when he went inside.”
“Thank you!” Dwight gushed. “Me and Poppy couldn’t take another second of the pain.”
“But he won’t get too comfortable,” Charity added. “It’s late in the evening. The day’s over. David will infect him again in the morning. He’ll spend tomorrow suffering with another dozen afflictions. Then, at dusk, he’ll cure him again.”
“Far out,” the man replied, seemingly high.
“You people are insane,” Tabby said, not sure if it would get anyone in trouble.
Charity flashed a crooked smile. For all her facial beauty and hourglass figure, her teeth were far from perfect. “The message here, Ms. Tabitha, is we have the power to make your friends’ lives absolutely miserable, just like I warned you. Your responsibility is doing as you’re asked with good cheer. If you aren’t going to play nice, David’s next meeting with you will be to show your two friends how many diseases can be inserted into a person’s gene structure at the same time.”
The man, Dwight, stared at various points in the room as if everyone was famous and he was touring the inside of the White House. If she didn’t know better, she would guess he’d emerged from the box stoned out of his mind. When he saw her studying his actions, his face lit up. He looked her square in the eye.
But he didn’t really see her.
“Poppy! That box is one far out trip! I died and came right back to you.”
CHAPTER 14
Wheatland, WY
“This is a nightmare that never ends,” Kyla remarked, still looking behind her. Most of the convoy continued south on the interstate, but a long line of flatbeds hauling construction vehicles exited at the same place Meechum tried to escape the flow of trucks. “They’re exiting here, too.”
“We do seem to have bad luck these days,” Meechum said in her understated way.
“What do we do?” Kyla asked. “It seriously looks like we’re leading this parade.”
Their black pickup truck threw up dust as they drove the gravel road away from the highway. Half a mile back, the lead vehicle, also a pickup truck, had its headlights on as it followed. There were more tractor-trailers than she could count, and they were still coming off the highway.
“We do have a bit of good news,” the Marine said dryly.
Kyla turned around to face the front, sure the other woman was about to sock her with bad news. Nothing seemed to rattle the fighter.
“I think we can lead this group to where they’re going. Doesn’t that look like the kind of out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere place a crew of construction guys might go?” Meechum pointed to three tall smokestacks peeking over the tops of the trees lining the creek.
“What do you make of it?”
The driver shrugged. “I’m a Marine, not a tour guide.”
“It might be a factory…or a powerplant.”
“I’d go with powerplant. Why would anyone put a factory way out here?”
Kyla thought about it for a few minutes. The trucks behind them weren’t in pursuit. No one would chase them with flatbed trailers full of tractors and cranes. The most likely scenario was they’d chosen an exit that corresponded to where some of the trucks were scheduled to exit. The three smokestacks had to be their target.
So we have to not be there.
“Meech, do you think you can lose those guys? We only have a few miles before we reach the stacks. If we get there, we might be asked to help out with whatever they’re doing. We’ve got to find my uncle, not put coal in a furnace, or build widgets.” She channeled her eighth-grade social studies teacher, who constantly talked about manufacturing widgets as part of his lessons about industrialization.
“I can lose anyone, trust me. I once had a guy hit on me at a bar. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I went to the bathroom, kicked out a boarded-up window, and got the hell out of there. Yeah, before you ask, the place was a dive.”
Kyla cracked up. “That’s not what I was going to ask. You’re a badass extraordinaire. Why didn’t you just beat him silly?”
“That was before my ass-kicking days. I was sixteen at the time.”
She waited to see if Meechum was kidding, but she remained fixed on the road. “Really? And you were at the bar?”
Taking one hand off the wheel, the Marine ran fingers through her short hair. “Yeah, my parents weren’t what you’d call overly concerned with their kids. I spent more time out of our house than in it, and often in places they never would have approved.”
Kyla didn’t know what to say. It made her complaints about not having a father around seem pretty tame. Her mom loved her and did the best she could, and they lived in a relatively safe part of New York City. More importantly, she grew up with good friends who never would have let her go off to a bar at sixteen, much less stand alone against an aggressive boy. Briefly, she wondered what happened to all her school friends, but then immediately closed the door on the thought.
Everyone she’d ever known back home was dead.
They came around a bend and the fence for their destination appeared a hundred feet ahead. She pointed to the sign. “Laramie River Station. It’s a powerplant.”
Meechum glanced over her shoulder, then she studied the creek to their right.
“Are you going to ditch the truck?” Kyla asked.
“There’s nowhere to go,” the driver replied.
Once they went through the front gate, the complex sprawled in all directions. Metal buildings stood in various places, purpose unknown. There were also numerous square ponds hundreds of yards long. She had no idea what those were for, either. The main building sat toward the back of the property. Its three tall smokestacks popped out the middle and rose hundreds of feet in the air. None of them had pollution billowing out, suggesting the power wasn’t on.
“Look, the train must have been arriving when the attack happened.” Meechum pointed to a derailed train to their left. Dozens of full coal cars had tipped over, along with three engines, but another fifty cars remained on the track behind them.
They drove past the wreck, past the ponds, and next to the giant building.
“You have a plan?” Kyla finally asked, realizing they were traveling in a straight line.
“They’re going to come in behind us and assume we’re checking the place out. It’s what I’d think, if someone was scouting ahead for us. All we have to do is make sure they don’t see us again.”
She sped past a massive pile of coal, which was probably where the train was heading before it lost its way. Once they’d cleared it, they drove down a short embankment, crossed a narrow field of dandelions and grass, then went into another tree-filled creek bed. Meechum drove the truck deep into a patch of reeds and seemed to want to keep going, but the tires lost their grip. “This is the end of the line.”
“We’re walking?” Kyla replied with surprise. “I figured we’d drive into the night.”
“I wish we could. If they put the pieces together and figure out we didn’t belong here, they’re going to be on the lookout for a black pickup truck with two hotties in it.” She flashed a wry smile. “I’d rather take my chances on foot, find a different vehicle, and avoid the inquisition.”
“Won’t they have sniffer dogs?” She really thought it would have been better to drive as far as possible.
Meechum pointed down the creek. “We’ll stay in the water. Oldest trick in the book. We’ll leave the doors open and…” She reached inside the neckline of her shirt for a moment, then brought out a bloody hand. While Kyla sat there in shock, the Marine rubbed the top of the steering wheel to bloody it up. “With a little luck
, they’ll think two of their own people were in here and had an accident. Maybe it will make them less likely to break out the big guns for us.”
“Wow,” was all Kyla could say. Almost without thinking, she rubbed the bandage on her neck, wondering if she had what it took to rub her wound and add to the carnage. Since the Marine didn’t ask her to, she didn’t volunteer. Instead, she gathered the weapons and put on the heavy pack, rather than give it away.
“Carrying this is the least I can do,” she said, meeting Meechum in the shallow water. “You can carry the extra rifle, but I’ll also carry the extra shotgun.”
Meechum nodded approval. “I would have driven farther if I thought it was safe, Dudette. Night is coming. We’ll slip away. There are a billion cars free for the taking. This will delay us getting to your uncle, but it satisfies the other half of my mission, which is keeping you safe. I hope you understand.”
“I do.” She took a few steps downstream. “We’re going this way, correct?”
The Marine gave her a casual salute. “Oorah!”
Fort Collins, CO
Ted didn’t look back, though he’d never been more curious to watch something happen in his entire life. He and Emily ran the sidewalk of the cross-street, desperate to put some distance between himself and the impending explosion.
“Keep—”
His voice went hoarse as the air left his lungs. An instant later, a concussive shockwave pushed them both down, face-first. The accompanying roar was worse than a thunderclap dogfighting a jet engine. Then came the heat…
He needed to check behind for half a second, basically to estimate how much time was left to live. The truck had plowed into the side of the nearest flatbed trailer, sending it and the tanker up and over the target. They’d slid into the middle of the loading zone before detonating, sending fiery fuel onto every truck in the row, and many to the rear.
“Get up!” he croaked. Emily was already trying to get to her feet, but he realized there was a nauseating wave of fumes surrounding them, as if the fuel had mixed with the technology of those robots and created a new biohazard. Whatever it was, it made him lightheaded.
Working together to stay upright, they got back to a slow jog. Secondary explosions rocked the city blocks behind them, often shoving stiff winds at their backsides from the shockwaves.
“Faster!” he urged.
They ran for a full block, maybe a quarter of a mile, before he thought it was safe to rest. He ran under a beautiful decorative tree next to the sidewalk, then turned back to see the industrial disaster from a safer vantage point. “Unbelievable.”
It was impossible to see the entire line of trucks in the convoy; the buildings shielded them. However, the big parking lots next to the intersection gave them a clear view the central part of the disaster.
Emily coughed a few times before speaking. “God bless that man for fighting back. And thank you, God, for letting us get away from it.”
“Amen,” he replied.
The suicidal driver must have known where to strike to do the most damage. In the miasma of the fumes, and under the threat of a fiery death, Ted only observed how the tanker blew up inside the line of trucks. However, with the benefit of distance, he realized the real target had been the cranes. Of the twenty or so lined up along the street, only the one closest to the rear stood up straight. A few were canted at precarious angles. The rest were tipped over and warped, with their cabs on fire.
Ted gave Emily a once-over. Her brown hair, which was already a frizzy mess from days of hard travel, had come unraveled to the point she could have been mistaken for a mad scientist. The front and sides of her uniform were covered in gray dust from her fall. Seeing the opportunity to help, he reached over and brushed back some of her loose hair, sticking it behind an ear.
She reached up and held his hand. “Thank you for saving my life. I would have never seen that truck coming from behind me.”
“My pleasure,” he said, catching himself breathing fast from all the adrenaline.
“It looks like our friends made it.” She pointed to the crash site. The camera team filmed from behind an overturned car on the parking lot beyond the loading zone. Darla, the woman in the red dress, was on the ground, possibly injured, but Todd kept his camera panning the devastation.
“I hope they got me on live TV,” she replied.
“Yeah, what was that all about? You took off your bandana.” It remained off. She’d loosened it so it was around her neck.
“It occurred to me if I dropped my disguise while across the street, our intel guys and gals would see me in the background. I would be identified as still alive.”
“Hmm. I guess that would work. I think we can safely say lots of people are going to be picking apart this video feed to figure out what happened.” After he’d said it, he hoped it didn’t instill panic in Emily. David’s people would almost certainly pick her out and know she was in Colorado, fighting back. No one would believe Emily just happened to be at the same spot as an attack of such magnitude.
She laughed a bit. “I hope we learn who the driver was. He deserves a medal.”
“How did he survive the initial attack on America?” he wondered aloud. “Was he with anyone?”
“All I know is we better clear out of here before their version of the police show up. Everyone is going to get interrogated. Like you said, it’s what the Secret Service would do if the attack had been on me.”
He realized she was right. Their ruse was about to be exposed.
“To the truck!” he said with enthusiasm. It was still parked on the street behind the other SUVs and the TV crew’s van. However, in his own limited panic, he’d run them past those vehicles to get clear of the blast zone. Now they had to go back a few hundred yards.
While on the run, it occurred to him there were no sirens. No firetrucks arriving. He laughed when he figured out why. “Those dumbasses go around burning things, like we saw back in North Dakota. I bet they never thought they’d need to put out any fires. The fire station has everything they need, but no one knows how to operate it.”
They reached their truck without further delay. He climbed into the driver’s seat, sure the fire was going to burn for a long time, and probably spread. Injured drivers and other mercenaries crawled out of the wreckage, much to his grim satisfaction. Smaller explosions continued to rock the area; the fuel tanks of the other big rigs caught fire, too. However, his humor was doused when he started the engine.
“Uh oh.”
Emily climbed in. “What is it?”
He pointed across the street to Todd. His camera was pointed directly at them.
“I think we’re about to be famous.”
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
Dwight had never experienced such confusion in his entire life. After coming out of the white light, it really seemed as if he’d been reborn. A pretty young girl in a blue outfit had been waiting for him, and a redheaded angel in a white swimsuit had given him comfort. As beautiful as they were, however, his real joy was at seeing Poppy. He was positive she’d been flying around the stage, above the women, and his heart soared with her. Now, in his cell, the bird was gone again.
The confusing part was he knew why she wasn’t there.
“They killed you in the white fire,” he said to himself.
A man spoke up. “You’ve been cured of all that ails you.”
“I hear you but don’t see you,” he replied.
“I’m over here,” the guy said in monotone, sounding like he was outside the door.
Dwight got up and strode to the front of the sparse office. The cage door allowed him to see into the hall, where he vaguely remembered the girl in the blue costume residing, but a man held out his arm from a diagonal office. He then got a good look at his face.
“Hey! I know you!” It was Jacob, from the warehouse in San Francisco. He was of Asian descent, for sure, though he didn’t have a buzz cut the last time they’d met. For a moment, Dwig
ht was ecstatic. Until he remembered where he was. “Wait. Why are you here?”
“I have you to thank. You killed the team in Folsom, didn’t you? David’s intelligence people traced your path back to my welcome center, and they figured out I was the one who let you infiltrate our ranks.”
“Infiltrate? I was a penniless drunk who only wanted one of your spiffy outfits. I never meant for any of this to happen.” His memory of days ago was picture-perfect, free of the fog of alcohol that normally hung over his brain. However, his memories of the last day or two were scrambled. If he’d started out in San Francisco like he thought, he drew a blank on what had gotten him into the jail cell. Something about a fake bird and a disease. It made no sense.
“They think you’re an agent of the old United States. They’ll keep making you sick and healing you until you tell them every detail of your mission. It’s what David does here in his pit, apparently.”
Dwight leaned against the door, looking to the sides and wondering if he could make Poppy reappear. When she didn’t, he continued speaking to Jacob. “What have they done to you? I can’t recall if I’ve seen you here before now.”
“Stunted memories are a side effect of the healing process. It does it to a lesser degree when they infect you, but they like you to remember the pain. Those of us who were once part of the Legion know exactly what to expect. It’s in our long-term memory. I was in the same line as you this morning. You just don’t remember me.”
He sighed. Jacob was nice to him back at the beginning. “I’m sorry, man. I never meant for you to get hurt. This has all been a terrible misunderstanding. That’s what I’ll tell them when they get me the next time.”
“Good luck with that.” Jacob left his door.
The woman in blue wasn’t in her entry opposite his. In fact, of all the cage doors visible to him in the hallway, no one held their arms out where he could see them. And Poppy, imaginary or not, wasn’t around anymore either. Somehow, her absence hurt him the most.
“I want to go home.”
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 79