“That isn’t your fault,” Adam said firmly, and both women looked up at him in surprise, as if they had forgotten he was there. “You can drive yourself crazy wondering if there’s anything you could have done, if there’s any way you could have stopped it. Trust me, I’ve been through it. I’ve lost people too.” He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering a few of the names and faces. “But you didn’t pull the trigger,” he said to Julie. “You’re not to blame.”
“It’s not always as simple as who pulled the trigger,” Julie whispered.
Adam remembered the story Ella had told him about her own father’s death. The man had been abusing their mother, high on drugs, and Julie had shot him in self-defense. No wonder she seemed so shaken. This was the second time she had lost a close family member to gun violence.
Ella squeezed her sister closer. “Sometimes it is about who pulled the trigger,” she said. “When it’s a man like William, who would never hurt anyone in his life, that’s what it’s about.”
Julie leaned her head on Ella’s shoulder. “I miss him so much,” she whispered.
Ella nodded. “I’m so sorry that happened,” she said quietly. “William was a good man, Julie. And I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m so glad you and I found each other again.”
Julie nodded. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, turning to embrace Ella once more.
“What about Matty?” Ella asked. “Where is he?”
Julie’s face seemed to age ten years as she answered. “I almost never see him,” she whispered. “I know he’s still on the base, but…he’s been assigned to one of these military units, and they’ve got him going through their drills and exercises with them.”
Ella looked revolted. “He’s seven. They’re making him a soldier?”
“Right now he’s more of a mascot, I think,” Julie said. “They’re not sending him into any kind of battle, but they’re training him alongside the real soldiers. I see him out there sometimes, marching with them, and he has no idea that these men murdered his father in cold blood.”
“So they aren’t letting you see him?” Ella asked.
“Only every once in a while,” Julie said. “Sometimes, when he asks for me. Never when I ask for him. And I think they do what they can to distract him from thinking about me too much.”
“Why?” Adam asked. “What’s the point to keeping you apart?”
Ella gave him a sharp look. “You haven’t figured it out?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They’re using Matty against Julie,” Ella said. “They want her to know they can hurt her. They want to reinforce that there’s still something they can take away. She probably gets to see Matty more if they’re happy with her work, and visits are withheld if they’re not. And if she refuses to work altogether—”
“Don’t say it,” Julie whispered, eyes closed once again. “Please, Ella, don’t say it.”
Ella nodded.
Adam found a chair against the wall and sank into it, pondering everything Julie had said.
It couldn’t be denied or escaped. Adam had been deeply, fundamentally wrong. He had wanted so badly to believe that they were finally safe, finally in a situation where they could relax. He had wanted to believe they were surrounded by people who were good at heart and who wanted to take care of each other.
But the violence Julie described…that was nothing that could have been carried out by good people. Those acts belonged to people who wanted to take the quickest path to what they wanted and who weren’t afraid to get their hands bloody.
Maybe even people who wanted to get their hands bloody.
This militia is the gang that committed all those terrible murders, he thought. They must be. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.
Because anyone who could do what Julie had described was a bad person, plain and simple.
And now he could see what Ella had been trying to tell him earlier, and how right she had been. The two of them had been abducted at gunpoint. They had been forced to come here. Adam didn’t know what would have happened if they had tried to refuse, but he didn’t imagine it would have been anything good.
It’s the same mistake I keep making, he thought. I wanted to believe that Cody could be redeemed, and instead he ended up murdering Artem. I wanted to believe that Chase McTerrell could kick his drug habit, and instead he framed me for stealing from Kathryn Birkin.
Every time I try to give someone the benefit of the doubt, it blows up in my face.
He felt something deep within him harden at the thought. Maybe it was the same thing that had hardened in Ella long ago. The way she looked at the world was suddenly making a lot of sense.
But what could they do about it? What could either of them do?
We’re stuck here, he thought hopelessly. We don’t have a chance of running away, not when we’re surrounded by thousands of soldiers with military-grade weapons. We had a hard enough time running away from the Birkin brothers, and they were just a couple of prep-school boys with their daddy’s rifle.
They were completely out of their depth.
Adam thought of Clay, waiting just outside the door. Was it possible he didn’t know what kind of organization he was a part of? Or was it all just an act?
Adam thought it was possible that Clay’s innocence might be sincere. And if that was the case, that would imply that there were other soldiers who were unaware of the tactics their superiors used, wouldn’t it?
And that would imply that it might be safe to stay here in the short term, that people could live on this base day to day without participating in or witnessing horrific acts of violence.
Maybe. Maybe they could stay here for a while, until they figured out what their next steps should be.
How much of what he had been told about this place could he trust? How much could he believe? He looked down at the can of peanuts in his hand, remembering how reluctant he had been even to believe in this smallest of miracles. Why did he always spend his doubt on things that didn’t matter, so that he didn’t have any left for the most important questions?
He had seen the slogan on the soldier’s helmet, he told himself furiously. No More Sanctuaries. And yet he had convinced himself that there must be some secret double meaning, some interpretation that he wasn’t understanding, because he had needed this new development to be a good one.
Ella hadn’t lied to herself like that. Ella had understood what they were facing from the beginning. She had tried to tell him, and he had resisted her.
God, he thought angrily. What was I waiting for? Did I want one of them to march up to me wearing a black hat?
Julie’s story left no more room for excuses. Her husband had been a civilian, an innocent man who had been minding his own business and trying to keep his family together. Unless Julie was leaving something out, he hadn’t even been armed.
And the military—acting under martial law—had shot him in order to compel his wife to come and work for them.
Maybe there were no safe places left in the world.
This so neatly reflected the series of events that had happened to Adam over and over since the virus had taken hold. He had thought he was safe on Cody’s yacht, only to watch as addiction, isolation, and survivor’s guilt slowly got the best of his traveling companions. He had thought he might be safe at the Santa Joaquina, but the feuding over resources and frantic competition between the two privileged families there had ended in a bloodbath.
He had never expected his journey up the highway with Ella to be safe, but neither had he expected to find violence and catastrophe at every turn.
And now, it seemed, the heart of the military was the most dangerous place of all.
That had to be what the graffito meant. There were no safe places left. There were no more sanctuaries.
And Adam no longer thought it might be a warning.
Now he thought it was probably a threat.
Chapter 4
The three of them sat in silence for a long time.
Something in the room was making noise, and Adam thought it must be a mechanical sound. It had been so long since he had heard noises like that that even though it was relatively quiet, it seemed deafening. What was going on here?
He looked up.
Ella held her sister in her arms. The two women were crying together, heads resting on each other’s shoulders. A part of Adam wanted to step outside the building and wait with Clay, to give them this time alone together. It had been so long since they had seen each other, he knew.
It must be such a relief for Ella, now, in the midst of all this horror, to find someone that she could trust implicitly. Adam thought he would have given anything to see the face of one of his family members. Even his mother would have been a relief. The two of them had had a rocky relationship throughout Adam’s life, but he knew that at the end of the day she would have been on his side no matter what. She wouldn’t have betrayed him when lives were at stake.
That was a certainty he missed, and he thought it must reflect what Ella and Julie were feeling right now.
But as he watched them, it occurred to him that he was beginning to feel that way about Ella. It was true that the two of them hadn’t known each other for very long, and God knew they’d had their struggles when it came to getting along with each other and agreeing on what course of action they needed to take. But she had had his back in some intense situations, and he felt that he could trust her.
You thought that before, he reminded himself. You thought you could trust Cody. You thought you could trust the Birkins and the McTerrells.
But he hadn’t really trusted any of those people, not at his core. He had always had his doubts about the families at the Santa Joaquina. And as for his friend…well, he had loved Cody like a brother, and he had wanted to put his faith in the guy, but at the same time, he had known that Cody was unreliable. He had always known that.
Ella was different.
Ella was the one who had believed him when the Birkins and the McTerrells had accused him of stealing from them. She had been the only one to take his side, and she had helped him escape the island.
Ella was the one he had journeyed along the highway with. They had stayed up and stood guard in turns, each watching while the other slept.
He had been able to sleep on her watch.
And now, here in the middle of this militia camp, surrounded by soldiers about whom they were beginning to learn frightening truths, Adam knew there was no one he would rather have had at his side.
God, he thought, with sudden anxiety. I’ve got to keep her safe. I’ve got to.
He had feared losing her already, of course. How could he not, after all the losses he had suffered? Adam didn’t imagine that he would ever be able to form a bond with anyone again without worrying that it might be severed by violence and death.
Almost everyone he had ever loved had been killed just in the first wave alone. The virus had left so few behind. Adam had never been the kind of person to depend on others, to form close friendships and family ties. But he had felt the lack of them almost from the very start of all this.
He had tried to make new families for himself, first on the yacht and then at the Santa Joaquina. Even at the country club, where everyone around him had been overprivileged and clearly had violent tendencies, he had allowed himself to care what happened to the people he was with.
And in both cases, he had lost everyone.
I’m not going to let that happen with Ella, he thought fiercely. I don’t care what I have to do to protect her. I’m not going to let anything like that happen again.
But at the same time, he shivered a little, knowing that that was a promise he couldn’t really keep. The circumstances that kept coming between him and other people were much bigger than he was, and Julie’s story only confirmed that what had happened to Adam was playing out with other people all over the world too.
She couldn’t hold on to her husband, he thought bleakly. Through no fault of her own, William was torn away from her family. And now she’s fighting to keep her child, but she’s losing him too, bit by bit, day by day.
Was it only a matter of time before Ella was taken away from Adam?
Maybe I’ll get lucky, he thought, filled suddenly with a burst of black humor. Maybe this time I’ll be the one to go.
It was a thought he would never articulate aloud. For one thing, he knew it would have hurt Ella to know that he was thinking this way, that he was considering her life more valuable than his own. For another, Artem would have belted him one for it.
Don’t you give up. That’s what Artem would have said. Once you give up, you’re finished.
Adam forced himself back to his feet, pushing away the despairing thoughts. One of the best ways he could help keep Ella going was to keep going himself, and that required moving forward, not getting swallowed up by the past. “We’re going to have to figure out a way to get out of here,” he said quietly.
Julie blinked. “You’re leaving?” she asked, and her voice cracked.
“All of us,” Ella said, shooting a look at Adam that told him he’d better not disagree. “He means all of us, Julie. You’re coming with us.”
She was already shaking her head. “I can’t go,” she said. “I can’t leave without Matty.”
“No,” Ella agreed. “Not without Matty. All four of us will leave together, okay?”
Julie’s face changed. For the first time, there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, and Adam could see that she must have been an attractive woman before her world had fallen apart around her. “Do you really think we can?” she asked.
Ella looked at Adam. It was clear what she needed from him. How could he do anything but give it to her?
“Of course we can,” he said. “Ella and I have gotten out of some tight situations before now. We can handle this.”
He smiled, trying to keep the stress off his own face. The idea of sneaking off the militia’s base had been intimidating enough when it had just been himself and Ella. Now, not only were they going to have to break out someone who appeared to be a high security prisoner, they were also going to have to recover the kid.
It was starting to seem impossible.
But we have time, he reminded himself. It’s not like they’re going to stand us up against a wall and shoot us or anything. We can take a few days—maybe even a few weeks—and figure it out.
In the meantime, he was going to have to start learning all he could about this strange and violent group of people he had fallen in with.
“Julie?”
She looked up at him, her shock at all the revelations of the past fifteen minutes still clearly etched on her face. “Yeah?”
“You’ve been here for how long?”
“A few weeks, I think.” She shook her head. “It all blends together. And then…I was pretty disoriented at first. I think I might have been in shock after what they did to William. I would have recovered faster if they had let me sleep, but they kept bringing me here and making me work.”
“This place is a nuclear power plant,” Adam mused.
“Julie is a nuclear engineer,” Ella said. “She was the smart one in the family.” She beamed at her sister. “Got a scholarship and put herself through college and everything.”
“You were plenty smart enough to get a scholarship if you’d wanted to,” Julie said, and Ella smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Of course, Adam remembered then. She probably would have gotten one, had Kathryn Birkin not stepped in the way.
Time to move this discussion on.
“So that’s why they wanted you,” he said to Julie. “That’s what you meant when you said they got your name from the university records.”
Julie nodded. “I had a research grant at the university where I got my doctorate,” she said. “I was studying particle physics. Of course, that all ended when the virus took over, but that’s how the
y got my name.”
“And that’s why they brought you here,” Adam said.
She nodded again.
“Julie…” he hesitated, looking around them at all the equipment that he didn’t understand. “What do they want you to do?”
Julie didn’t answer. She looked down at the ground and bit her lip.
“You can tell us,” Ella encouraged. “We’re not going to think badly of you for going along with them, Julie. We know they put you in an impossible position. You couldn’t do anything else, not with Matty in their hands.
But she shook her head. “I can’t,” she said unhappily. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” Ella asked.
Julie just shook her head again.
“Clay said that the nuclear plant didn’t generate power anymore,” Adam remembered. “Because of the EMP. It’s just one more dead thing. So then why would they need a nuclear engineer? What is there to do in this facility, when it’s all shut down?”
“He said some parts of it were still intact,” Ella said. “The rods and something else.”
“The core,” Julie said, her voice barely above a whisper. “The core and the fuel rods.”
“Right, those.”
“That’s right,” Adam said, recalling Clay’s boastful description of the facility. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he sounded like that was a big deal. Like it mattered that the core and the fuel rods were still there.”
“It does matter,” Julie said.
“Why?” Adam asked. “What are those pieces? What do they do?”
But Julie’s lips pressed together. She was shaking her head again, clearly unwilling to talk.
“What I don’t get,” Ella said, “is why they set up their base here in the first place. I mean, I get that it’s not a fully active nuclear power plant or anything, but if there are significant components that survived the EMP, it still seems like it might not be the safest place in the world. And with so many dead, it’s not like there’s any great competition for real estate, right? I think if it was my militia, I’d have wanted to make camp in a cornfield or something.”
Escape The Dark (Book 4): Caught In The Crossfire Page 3