The guy narrowed his eyes at me. “We play pool sometimes. Why?”
“Can you find him? Quickly?”
Another suspicious nod.
“When you leave here, go find him. Tell him— tell him everything, okay? And that Tai and Spider sent you to him. Tell him everything, he’s an ally.”
“He’s command.”
“Trust me, soldier. He’s an ally.”
“Then why haven’t you told him any of this?”
“Azzie asked for twenty-four hours radio silence. That ended about forty minutes ago. I could send him an email but…” I made a face at him like let’s not be fucking stupid, k?
He glanced around at his friends then shrugged. “Yeah, that makes sense. You said Tai and Spider? He’s going to know who you are?”
I nodded. “Tell him we’ll be in touch… eventually.”
“Hey, good luck out there,” the guy said. “Umm, my name’s Sean. Azzie— she’s important to us.”
The others nodded solemnly, eyeing me like I was both a threat and their salvation.
“Protect her,” an older guy growled, trying to intimidate me. I stared at him blankly until he looked away.
“As important as she is to you, she’s exponentially more important to us,” I warned them. “And you’re important to her. So read Will in, get out of this fucking place, and then do whatever Sev told you to so that she doesn’t lose anyone else. Got it?”
They nodded, and I was confident they’d do what they needed to. I only hoped that some of them survived.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Azzie
I was going to get them killed. It would be all my fault.
What was I doing? How could I think this was a good idea?
Kids were going to die because of me.
My classmates… Michael and Heather’s classmates… all those people.
The town was going to be a sepulcher again, a tomb.
I’d felt guilty for surviving before, but this time— this time it was all on me. My choice.
All their deaths were on my—
“Hey,” Sev hissed, grabbing my arm. “What’s going on? You sound like you’re hyperventilating—”
“I— I—”
“Fuck! Tai!” His hushed voice seemed to bounce off the narrow walls of the tunnel, rebounding back, and I imagined that someone could hear us, someone that would find us, report us—
“Azzie,” I realized the calm voice had been repeating my name, and a warm hand once again tucked my head down between my knees. “Azzie, sunshine, deep breaths—”
They were going to die because of me.
“Azzie!”
Everyone was going to die because of— “What the fuck!”
“You were having a panic attack,” Tai said calmly as I cleared water out of my eyes, glaring at him.
“So you dumped a bottle of water on my head?”
“Not the whole thing, just about half of it.”
“My mistake.”
“You okay now?”
“Well, I was panicking over the thought of getting you all killed, but now I’m thinking I can let one or two of you go without a problem.”
“Cold,” Sev shook his head at me, frowning. “So cold.”
“Got your shit together?” Spider asked, not at all put-off by my threats. “Or are you going to continue to be a delicate little flower?”
“Fuck!” I hissed, using the hem of my shirt to wipe my face and hair again. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Great. Let’s get moving.”
No fucking sympathy.
Somehow that made me feel so much better — and not because I really was viewing them as expendable, but because they just rolled with it. I felt… accepted. Flaws, and panic, and potentially leading them to their deaths, and all.
No “should we talk about it?” or coddling, just acknowledgment that shit might get heavy but we’ll keep going. Where sympathy and cuddles might have made me feel worse, now I felt in control again. I felt supported.
They knew the risks, and they were here anyway.
I got to my feet and kept walking.
We’d been in the tunnels for an hour or so, moving slowly.
I knew where we were going, but it had been a good year since I’d been down here. Last time… last time was with Mouse.
Mouse and I had closed the store down, waiting until everyone cleared out and pulling the shades. I wore the signal-blocking band that Greg had made for me, flipping the switch on the base station containing the fake tracking chip that we hid inside a resin dragon skull. I had another one just like it at Mouse’s cabin so I could go to the bunker undetected. I could even turn it off remotely, through an app on my phone if I forgot — Greg was a frickin’ genius with this kind of thing. Now I didn’t need to worry about it, Tai had cut that fucking chip right out of me.
We did this occasionally, go into the tunnels late at night. Mouse wanted to make sure I could find my way through them even in pitch black — with my fucked up eyesight, I had bouts of intermittent night-blindness, or really just straight-up can’t see in the dark for shit. I needed to be able to identify landmarks and hiding places even if I couldn’t see but a few feet in any direction.
She’d send me into the tunnels with a goal and a head-start, and I’d either get there or I’d end up bruised and covered in paintball-splatter because Mouse was a fucking bitch with night-vision goggles.
But she was my fucking bitch.
We stopped that game, like everything else, about a year ago. And I was struggling now.
Not with the path through the tunnels, that was burned into my brain, practically muscle memory. No, it was the memories. It was Mouse, and her absence, and all the things I was learning that she kept from me.
I was so angry with her, and I don’t know how I would ever get past it if she really was dead, if I never had a chance to ask her why.
Why didn’t she tell me the truth?
Why did she make so many plans around me dying, like it was just an inconvenience she’d have to get past?
What else was she hiding?
“We’re halfway there,” I whispered loudly over my shoulder, hoping the sound would carry or someone would pass the message on to Spider and Luka at the back. “There’s a place we can rest up ahead if you need it.” It had only been an hour, but it was so dark and scary to the kids who were already anxious and frightened before we’d even entered the tunnels, it wouldn’t hurt to take a break.
It had nothing to do with my own exhaustion, or how my legs felt like noodles. Nope, this was for the kids.
“Yes, please,” I heard Greg’s disembodied voice float up. Rachel wasn’t talking to me, at all. Not after I gave all her groceries to Pete and Sal for the evacuation.
Pretty sure she was glad not to be hauling it all right about now. Pretty sure she’d never admit to it though.
I led them to the T-junction that opened up the passage enough so we could sit facing each other and not in a straight line down the row, turning on my flashlight to show them where to sit before I peeled off my backpack straps and let myself slide down the wall. I had the lightest bag — my own — but possibly the most important because it had all the vax gun vials and barcodes, and my lotions and potions. Which is good because I swear Rachel packed fucking lead bricks in every other bag, and Tai and Spider had so many bags hanging off them, they were like reverse clown cars. Supposedly this is something they train for in the military, and Spider said as long as he didn’t have to run ten miles in 90% humidity, he’d be fine, but I was exhausted just looking at them.
I unzipped my pack enough to unearth the water bottle I’d tucked inside, ignoring Rachel’s bitch-face. Really wish she’d sat on the same side of the corridor as I did to make the glaring harder. Michael distracted her and I was so thankful for that kid.
“You okay?” Tai kept his voice pitched low. I’d told them this area was between buildings so no chance of being overheard, but it was
still best to keep our volume down.
I leaned against him, resting my head on his shoulder. “I’ll be fine. Just worn out.”
I was tired, but I wasn’t blind. I saw the look pass between Tai and Sev, just like I saw the look on Rachel’s face. I knew the guys were worried about my stamina, my ability to keep up once we were outside the walls, and I shared their concerns. I didn’t know what her look was about though, or why Greg made a face at her.
“I’ll be fine,” I repeated, giving Sev the angry eyes while I lightly pinched Tai. “It’s only like three more hours of walking before we can rest and then frantically pack up supplies before needing to walk for another ten hours or so. Easy-peasy.”
Tai snorted while Sev rolled his eyes at me. “We don’t need to leave right away,” Tai said, “if there’s someplace safe to crash. It might be better to get a night’s rest before—”
“We have twelve — no, eleven hours now to get as far away from here as we can,” I said, in a tone that suggested they not argue with me. “And that’s assuming no one notices I’m gone before Christine sounds the alarm. Sure, they’ll search the base first, buying us maybe four or five more hours? But we can’t count on that — they’re going to realize I had an exit strategy pretty quick, and that’s when they’ll start searching outside the walls and possibly calling in reinforcements before alerting the higher-ups. We need to get as much distance as possible.”
“If you want to be practical about it, sure,” Sev stuck his tongue out at me. “Maybe you can nap while we gather supplies?”
I chuckled to myself, picturing them trying to find anything in the bunker. “We’ll see,” I replied and Sev eyed me with a disgruntled pout.
“Stop placating me,” he hissed, grabbing my knee and squeezing. “It’s condescending and rude.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” I said soothingly, “just don’t worry your pretty little head about anything, I’ve got it all covered.”
“I fuckin’ hate you,” he growled, gripping my leg with both hands and dragging me toward him but Tai put a stop to his shenanigans.
“Let her rest.”
“Fine. Later then,” he promised, narrowing his eyes.
I may have touched my thumb to my nose and waggled my fingers at him, hiding against Tai’s substantial bicep.
“Saw that, sunshine. Behave yourself.”
I may have stuck my tongue out at him too. Pretty dark down here so who can say, really?
Way before I was ready to, I nudged Tai and lifted my chin in the universal time to get up gesture. For a big guy like him, he sure moved gracefully, and seconds later he was lifting me to my feet and sneaking a kiss while doing it. No complaints here.
While his face was still close to mine, I whispered “We’re coming up on an entrance from the grocery store. There might be people close by. Do I say anything or just hope everyone stays as quiet as they have been?”
“I got it,” he assured me with a peck on the forehead. “Thanks for the warning.”
Sev helped me get my pack settled in place as Tai let Greg, Rachel, and the kids know that they had to be especially careful until I told them it was all safe, and we’d be moving slower to make sure no one tripped or banged into anything. I kissed the edge of Sev’s jaw before he moved back into place behind Tai, and he grinned down at me. “Still gonna get you back for that later, honey b,” he whispered.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I tilted my chin up and looked away, haughty and aloof.
“You will be,” he replied gravely, “you will be.”
I sniffed at him, keeping up the facade, as my butterflies woke up and began to gyrate. Yoda references had never been so sexy.
It took almost two more hours until we reached the entrance from the railroad station, twice as long as I expected. Part of it was the kids needing another break — the kids needing another break — and part of it was slowdowns due to noises nearby. Nothing ended up coming from it, but every time we froze in place like bunny rabbits sighting a hawk, waiting until I couldn’t take the tension any longer and had to move on.
I was used to being in the tunnels really late at night, when the most we’d hear is a car passing by overhead. Being down here when people were awake and sometimes close enough that I could hear their conversations, was disconcerting. I felt so exposed, like they already knew we were here and it was a setup, luring me into a false sense of safety.
The last time we stopped, when I became paralyzed at the clear conversation going on just beyond the vent to my left, I swore I could hear the heartbeats and breaths of every person behind me in the tunnel, I swore the walls were vibrating with every beat, breath whooshing like bellows. How could they not hear us?
I had to force myself to keep moving. I had to will my leg to stretch forward, my foot to find purchase on the metal grid beneath us. I shifted forward, moving so my hips centered over that foot, letting my other leg swing forward, my other foot to settle in place. All the while, my ears rang with the cacophony, the sounds of life surrounding me. Sounds that could be silenced, snuffed out so easily.
All of the hearts that would stop beating because of me. All those lives that would end on my leaving, on my whim.
The people outside of here, the vulnerable masses, they were just theoretical. They had no faces, no names. The people here, those I’d lived with for the last four years, seeing them every day, they were real. I was condemning them, to death or a half-life outside these walls.
What was I doing?
And then Tai reached over my shoulder and held his satellite phone in front of my eyes, swiping through picture after picture of children — babies, toddlers, little kids running down empty streets, older kids playing baseball, shooting squirt guns — twenty, thirty, fifty pictures, one after another. “This is who you saved,” he whispered harshly, forcing me to see them. “One box of vaccine, this is who you saved.”
I kept walking, not stopping again until I saw “Witch’s Hat” stenciled on the heavy door in front of me. I punched in the code on the keypad and opened the door.
We followed the railroad tracks through the woods.
I know it didn’t mean anything, they could have come a different way altogether, but I kept looking for signs that Sasha had walked these same tracks. I looked for displaced rocks, broken sticks… anything. I was surveying it all so closely that I almost missed the splitter completely, continuing on the northern set of tracks as if this was all that was left of the world, just one line of tracks cutting through the forest, never-ending.
Sev brought me back to myself twenty feet down the line, asking where the other set of tracks led, and I about had a heart attack, doubling back to point at the tracks where they split. “Sorry, we were supposed to turn here, I was— I was looking for signs of Sasha and the others. But they could have come a different way, I didn’t— this wasn’t the only way they could have gotten to the cabin.”
Sev and Luka didn’t flinch, they didn’t blink. They stood in front of me impassively, Sev giving a small nod. I straightened my back, nodding in return.
“We’re going to cut through the woods here,” I said louder, to the group. “If we can stay fairly straight, there shouldn’t be any cameras nearby on the road. Don’t leave the woods. When we see the road, make sure you stay back in the trees until I say it’s safe to go, okay? That means you too, Michael, no running ahead.” I knocked his shoulder and he gave me a tired smile; we’d been walking for almost five hours at this point. “Good news is, we’re about fifteen minutes from the cabin, and then it’s just a little farther from there, okay?”
I debated whether we should take another rest but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit there without knowing whether Sasha, Jason, Ryan, and the Viper Twins had made it to the cabin, I couldn’t handle any other delays.
No one was looking for them. There was no reason to think they weren’t safe.
They were fine. They’d just gone through the woods instead, not by the tracks. No cam
eras picked them up. No drones.
I skipped down the ridge that the tracks sat on, a six foot or so raised mound of loose rocks completely grown over with scrub and vines covered with a soft fuzz of tiny, jagged hooks that scraped and left splinters like the most weathered lumber, and dark leaves that sprang back up looking untouched as if they hadn’t just been crushed underfoot. I hated it. Sure it hid our passage, but it also hid theirs.
Twenty minutes later, we were approaching the cabin.
The lights were on, just like I left them, but I couldn’t see any signs of movement.
It was getting dark, we weren’t going to have time to stick around to wait for them. We weren’t going to be able to go looking, not after dark, not when we couldn’t see.
Maybe Sasha was at the bunker? Maybe he left them, and he was there waiting for us, and I’d feel bad about Jason and Ryan Callis but I’d live with it as long as Sasha—
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sev
“I’d be jealous right now if I wasn’t so relieved,” Luka muttered as Azzie took a running leap at Sasha. He’d stepped out onto the cabin porch as we got closer, and she made this cry like a wounded bird, running to him like she had all the energy in the world. He caught her up and spun her around as the others ducked out from the doorway behind them.
“I was so fucking scared,” she sobbed, wrapping around him like a spider monkey. “I didn’t know if you’d be able to find it again, or if those bitches would cause trouble and you’d get caught—”
“HEY!”
“Oh, shut up, Gemma,” Ryan spat at her. “You’re a total bitch and a pain in the ass, and if it was my choice—”
“Oh, hey, who is this?” Jason interrupted, looking at the kids hiding beside their parents, watching the whole thing play out with big eyes.
Book of the Damned: A-E5L1-01-00: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 2) Page 23