She noticed that he still wore that terrible smile, like the Joker from the Batman comic books. A cosmetic procedure gone terribly wrong.
“I suppose you’re wondering what’s going on,” he said.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and stared at the floor. She did it deliberately and slowly, because she wanted him to think that she was frightened. A scared little lamb. It wasn’t that she didn’t think he was dangerous. Oh no. Miles Chadwick was probably the most dangerous man who had ever lived. A million Adolf Hitlers rolled into one. It was just that she had forgotten that he was still just a man.
A man who could be killed.
“You’re very special,” he said. “Very special indeed.”
“Thank you,” she said demurely. She wanted him to feel in charge. Now was not the time to show aggression. It was time to play a little bit possum, a little bit geisha.
“Well, you’re all special,” he said. “You and your friends.”
As he spoke, he drew closer to her.
“But I must confess,” he said. Now he was uncomfortably close, and the metallic stink of his body odor hit her in the face. It must have been days since he’d bathed.
“I find you a little more special than the others.”
Her eyes watered from the stench, and it took every ounce of willpower not to gag right there in front of him. He reached out and brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with a thumb.
“No need to cry, my darling,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
She looked up at him and smiled her biggest smile.
He gestured toward the couch, inviting her to sit down.
“May I pour you a drink?”
“Sure,” she said.
He went to the bar and fixed two scotches. As he made the drinks, she took a seat on the far edge of the couch and took in more of the residence. There was a small kitchenette opposite her, and she wondered how many knives he might have tucked away in its cheap prefabricated drawers. A portrait of a strange-looking older man hung over a gas fireplace. His wiry gray hair seemed to explode from his head, and his narrow features made him look like a wild-eyed bird; his cold blue eyes were empty of life. A small brass plate mounted at the base of the portrait read Leon Gruber, Father of The Citadel.
She tugged her eyes away from the portrait as Chadwick came up on her. He handed her the tumbler and sat down next to her. She took a long drink of the scotch, an alcohol she’d never tasted. It felt hot, like drain cleaner, and it scorched its way down her throat. Her gaze kept drifting back to the portrait, which seemed to be staring at her.
“I’ve brought you here because I’ve been so terribly rude to you,” he said.
Another soft smile as she looked away. The shy little schoolgirl.
“I don’t feel like you’ve been rude.”
He flashed his own smile.
“You’re too kind,” he said. “But having you over there with the others, packed in like cattle. It’s unacceptable, and for that I apologize.”
“We have a warm place to sleep,” she replied. “We have food, fresh water. Things could be worse. A lot worse.”
“Again, you flatter me,” he said. “And that might be fine for the others. But not for you.”
A shiver ran up her spine, as though Chadwick had run a shard of ice along the bare skin, along each one of her vertebrae.
“The others, you see, they’re just a means to an end.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You, on the other hand.”
“What about me?”
“You’re part of the Citadel’s future. Part of my future.”
She paused, processing what he was telling her. She didn’t like where this was headed at all. Bunking in with the ladies might not have been ideal, but it sure beat the hell out of this debutante role he seemed to have in mind for her.
“It’s a big empty country out there,” he said. “And it’s waiting for us. We’re not going to be inside these walls forever. If we’re going to rebuild this world, we’re going to have to spread our wings. A new world. With you as its queen.”
Her head rocked back at this. She was growing more uncomfortable by the minute, but she had to hold it together. She had to make him think that she was broken. Because that was the point of all this, right? To break them?
“I want you to take your place at my side,” he said. “Together, we can make the Citadel everything that the old world never was. A perfect world.”
Jesus.
“You really think that’s possible?”
“I do,” he said. “I really do.”
“Is that why this all happened in the first place?” she asked. She bit her lip and waited for an eruption.
“My dear, this happened because it was meant to be.”
“It was?”
“I know that’s hard to understand,” he said. “Do you believe in God?”
She had, once upon a time. When they first moved to San Diego, her mom had taken her to church every Sunday, when it was just the two of them, before Jerry. They went to a nice little Methodist church where things didn’t seem as religious as she thought they would, and for a while she considered herself one of the faithful. But then she started learning about science and math and evolution. And she couldn’t reconcile one with the other, and so when it had come down to it, she had chosen the one that could be proven empirically. Then the plague had hit, and it seemed biblical in nature, a terrible judgment for man, if you believed in that. But she didn’t. And she was right. This wasn’t God’s judgment. This was the work of man. As evil as anything that man had wrought, by his own free will.
“No.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I appreciate your honesty. It’s very rare. Very rare indeed.”
He took a long drink from his scotch.
“We lived in an evil world, Rachel. I hesitate to even call it a sinful world, because I think that sugarcoats it too much. Sin. It’s such a pathetic little word. Thou shalt not steal? Well, you pop a grape in your mouth at the supermarket before paying for it, that’s sin right there. And the idea you could just repent at the end, and it would all be okay, well that didn’t seem right to me. You could blow up a commuter bus or molest little children or, uh, murder a young wife at an ATM machine and all would be forgiven if you just accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior? Does that seem right to you?”
She shook her head. “No, I suppose not.”
“Of course not,” he said, swirling the tumbler of scotch now. “It was a story we told ourselves to minimize the impact that these terrible acts had on us. To protect us from the idea that there was true evil in the world, evil that no God could ever stop. The truth is that we are the gods of our own existence. We can control what happens. Which is why the plague had to happen.”
“But won’t you have evil in this new world? People will still do bad things.”
“We’re going to do it correctly this time.”
“What about the people out there? Beyond the walls?”
He smiled and placed his hand on her knee. She wanted to chop his fingers off. For a moment, she considered shattering her tumbler and stabbing him in the neck with a shard of glass, but she dismissed the idea as quickly as it had occurred to her.
“All in good time,” he said. “All in good time.”
You’re goddamn right about that, she thought.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
It took every bit of willpower Adam had, but he was finally able to convince himself of the old adage that time spent on reconnaissance was never wasted. They needed to watch the place, study the activity, look for patterns, get a sense of its rhythms. Nadia’s tale of this place was proof enough that caution should be their watchword.
And so that was what they had done. They retreated from their position, back across the highway, and surveilled the compound with their field glasses. In the first day on watch, Adam worried the place would remain a cipher, a mystery, that it would never
disclose any of its secrets, and they would have to launch a blind assault on the place, the type of frontal attack that would almost certainly end in disaster. But eventually, a bit of useful intelligence revealed itself. At nine a.m. on the second day, the gate opened, and a dark red pickup truck emerged from the interior. It rolled along the access road and then turned west along the main highway. The windows were dark, but not completely tinted, and Adam could make out two figures inside the cab. The bed of the pickup looked empty. As the truck zoomed out of sight, Adam made a note of the time and resumed watching the compound.
At ten o’clock, they split a meager breakfast. Then Adam dozed while Mike kept the watch. He didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep, but sure enough, he’d been out as soon as he closed his eyes. When he woke, it was nearly noon. He was cold but refreshed, and he had to pee. He crept deeper into the grasses for some privacy, away from the compound. As he began to relieve himself, he heard Mike hissing for him.
“Adam! The truck’s back!”
Of course.
Mid-stream, and something important happens. As he prepared to zip up and leave himself with a half-empty bladder, he primed his ears and sliced through the aural clutter, focusing on the sound of an engine. He did hear it, a throaty whine, and he reminded himself that sounds carried a lot farther than they used to, and he told himself to finish. He couldn’t panic about every little thing. If he wanted his body to perform at its peak, he needed to let it do what it needed to do. He waited until his bladder was empty, and then he zipped up and resumed his post with a clear mind. A small but important sign he was evolving.
He glassed the horizon and spotted the pickup on its inbound trip. When it was within about two hundred yards, he lowered the binoculars. The truck slowed as it neared the intersection with the access road, and then it turned north toward the gate. Adam checked his watch as the gate slid open and the truck disappeared inside the compound. It was noon on the nose. It paused long enough for Adam to note that it was carrying cargo. The tarp was stretched out across the top of the pick-up bed, the load secured with bungee cords.
Out at nine. Back at noon.
The tedium of the stakeout built through the early afternoon. He looked for signs of activity near the wall but saw none. At three o’clock, again, squarely at the top of the hour, the pickup truck headed back out for another sortie. Again, it was gone three hours, returning at six o’clock. Again, there was cargo in the bed area, tucked away under the beige-colored tarp, its corner flapping in the wind.
The pattern repeated itself the next day, and by the third day, the outline of a plan had formed in Adam’s mind. There would be a very small window of time in which to execute the plan, almost impossibly small, but there really weren’t any other options. They had to get inside the compound, and the main gate seemed like the only way in.
It was a dank day, chilly. The clouds hung low in the sky, a thick, gray blanket over the world. Around five-thirty, about ten minutes before launch, it began to rain heavily, in sheets, relentless and pounding. With the world so quiet, with nothing to absorb the sound, the rain roared across the plains, washing across the roadway in waves, as though the world was trying to clean itself of some hidden shame.
At twenty to six, they made their move. They stayed low, knifing through the grasses like jungle cats. Their packs were light, relieved of all their contents but the bare essentials. The closer they got to the wall, the tighter Adam’s throat felt, as though the place had a psychic grip on his windpipe.
It took ten minutes to cover the two hundred yards, but they made it with a little time to spare. They took cover in the grasses about ten yards from the main gate. At three minutes past six, the tardiness owing perhaps to the terrible weather conditions, the pickup truck made the turn for home. A creepy gray darkness had fallen, and the truck’s headlights shined like UFOs floating in the ether.
“This isn’t going to work,” Mike said. “We can’t both do it. We’ll be spotted.”
Adam grunted through clenched teeth, pained to admit that Mike was correct. The entire operation was dancing on a razor’s edge as it was. Getting one of them inside the gates, at least the way they’d mapped it out, was going to be hard enough; completing the feat in duplicate would be expecting to win the lottery two weeks in a row. It was a terrible tactical blunder.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Mike said. “Stay low.”
“Wait, what?”
Before Adam could blink, Mike burst out of the grasses, his arms waving over his head like a driver stranded by the side of the road.
Goddammit!
Panic flooded Adam’s insides like water overcoming a sinking boat, and he froze, wondering what the fuck had possessed Mike to reveal himself like this. The truck rolled to a stop as the driver waited for the gate to slide open. As it idled there, the rain plinked the truck’s rooftop, adding a strange hollow twang to the deluge. Mike approached the driver and banged on the window.
“How ya doing?” he yelled out over the rain, loud enough for Adam to hear. To Adam’s right, the gate began to open, sliding from left to right, revealing the interior of the compound like some game-show door prize.
Muffled voices from the cab.
“I’m lost, can you guys help me?”
From his vantage point, Adam saw Mike blanch and turn his body away, but it wasn’t fast enough. The gunshot roared over the rain, and Mike collapsed to the ground. The men emerged from the vehicle and tossed Mike’s lifeless body under the tarp; then they climbed back in the cab.
The man’s sacrifice galvanized Adam; he stayed low, shuffling from the cover of the grasses onto the roadway, praying the driver’s blind spot was big enough to hide him long enough to do what he had to do. He stayed low, right at the muffler, the stench of the exhaust blistering his nostrils, even in the rain. The truck continued to idle, and there was no indication he’d been spotted. Yet.
The timing would have to be perfect.
The gate thudded home as it finished sliding into its groove. Adam remained crouched, his muscles burning as he kept them coiled, ready to pounce. When the truck shifted back into gear, Adam leapt, grabbing the edge of the tailgate, and rolling over its edge as the truck began moving. He could only hope that Mike’s diversion and the truck’s acceleration had masked the subtle shift in the payload, surreptitiously increased by about one hundred and seventy pounds. He eased himself down into the truck bed and covered himself with the tarp.
#
Shockwaves of grief rippled through Adam as the truck motored its way inside the compound. Adam wanted to smack Mike’s blank face for his stupid, selfless act.
Later, he thought.
There would be time to grieve later.
Don’t piss away what Mike just did for you.
Behind him, Adam could hear the gate grinding along its track again, slamming home with a hollow thud. The truck continued to roll; he had to move now, before the truck picked up too much speed.
He poked his head out from under the tarp and quickly scanned the area as the truck turned right onto a narrow access road. A drainage ditch ran parallel to the road and a line of pine trees just beyond. No other signs of life, vehicular or otherwise. The rain was easing up but changing over to snow.
Now, he told himself.
It had to be now.
He touched Mike’s cheek one last time. Then he grabbed the lip of the truck bed and pulled himself up from the cover of the tarp. Without taking a breath, he pitched his weight toward the back edge of the liftgate and waited for it to happen. For a moment, he felt weightless, like a feather caught on a breeze, and then the ground came up on him all at once. His left flank hit first, the impact with the ground stealing his breath away, and then he was rolling, rolling, rolling.
His ankle became caught up underneath his spinning body, and he felt it wrench in the wrong direction. The pain shot from foot to waist, but there was nothing he could do
but wait until his body came to rest.
A body in motion…
Finally, friction and gravity won out, and he lay in a heap at the side of the road. The truck trundled along, blissfully ignorant of its now-unloaded stowaway. He remained still as the truck’s taillights faded into the snow, curling out of view as the road turned north. He wasn’t far from the ditch, and so he crawled to its edge and rolled down into it. From his hiding spot, he scanned his new surroundings.
The place seemed even bigger from the inside than it had from beyond the wall. To the northwest, maybe a hundred yards clear of the opposite shoulder, Adam saw a large tract of undeveloped land, marked off by wire fencing; it was barren, but it bore a certain kind of symmetry. He swung his gaze northeast, where he saw the faint glimmer of light. But for the hoot of a snow owl, the place was silent.
He could scarcely believe it. He’d made it.
That stupid bastard Mike had pushed him over the goal line, giving all he had to give, just so Adam would have a chance to find Rachel. His bravery, his total lack of hesitation was almost more than Adam could believe. The mission was all but doomed, that much was clear, so he had done the only thing he could do, no matter the price.
Despite the fact that Adam was in more peril than ever, or perhaps because of it, it seemed important to acknowledge how far he’d come. He thought about all they’d seen and lived through in their nearly five months on the road. All to bring him to this point. Just to give him a chance to rescue his daughter. He thought about something Sarah had said, not long after they’d met. That she’d be doing something and forget that the world hadn’t always been this way. But as the days had cascaded along like tumbleweed, stretching into weeks and months, that seemed less and less apropos.
A strange sense of the familiar had begun to pervade his life. From the constant scavenging for supplies to ensuring the water was safe to drink to burying his own waste, it had all become routine. This was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It simply just was. Perhaps the key to all this had been simply finding a way through, a way that, after a while, simply became the new normal. The less time spent looking slack-jawed at yet another urban ghost town, stopping to look at each cluster of corpses that dotted the landscape, reliving the past, the better. And it had become clear that he wasn’t trying to find Rachel because she was his past. He was trying to find her because she was his future.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 46