“All right,” White growled. “That’s enough going over it. He knows the plan.” He turned to Adam. “Get going. The sooner you get to the bunker, the sooner this is all over with and we can go home.”
“Wait a minute,” Briggs said.
“Now what?” White barked.
“We’re not going to just send him off empty-handed,” Briggs said patiently.
“Of course we are,” White countered. “What, you think we should send him into government territory with a backpack full of supplies? They’re never going to believe his story about being a hapless victim if he’s loaded up with survival gear.”
“I’m not saying we overdo it,” Briggs said. “But we can give him a few things.” He opened his own bag. “Adam, I think there’s an old backpack under the seat beside you. It’s a little torn up, but in this case that’s a good thing.”
Adam fished around under the seat. Sure enough, the bag Briggs had described was there. It looked as if it had been through the wars.
“Hand me that,” Briggs said. Adam did so, and Briggs transferred a single water bottle and a handful of granola bars over from his own bag.
“You’re kidding,” White said, watching. “You can’t seriously think this is a good idea. We’ve been keeping him from eating all day, for God’s sake. As soon as he gets out of the car, he’s going to devour those granola bars.”
“No he won’t,” Briggs said. “You’re smarter than that, aren’t you, Adam?”
Adam nodded. If nothing else, he knew he had to make the supplies he was being given last as long as he could. It wasn’t clear to him how long it would take to walk to Omaha from here. He could be on the road for days, for all he knew.
I promised Ella I would only be gone for a few days. How long before she starts to worry about this?
He took the bag back from Briggs. “What about the pistol?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“Maybe I should bring it. It wouldn’t hurt to have a way to protect myself while I’m on the road. And you know I won’t be using it on you, which is what you were worried about.”
Briggs looked like he might be considering it, but White shook his head. “He can’t have any weapons,” he said. “The president’s men will view him as a threat if he walks up to the bunker with a gun.”
“It’s not like I’d brandish it at them,” Adam protested.
But Briggs was shaking his head. “Colonel White is right,” he said. “They’re going to search your bag, and if you’re armed, it could cause trouble for you. Better to go in empty-handed.”
The idea of being empty-handed in government-controlled territory didn’t sit at all well with Adam—what if Thompson wasn’t the only one with a massive weapon waiting in the wings? But on the other hand, he thought, if the president has bombs at his disposal, a little handgun isn’t going to do me any good.
“Okay,” he said, slinging the backpack over his shoulder. “Any last advice?”
“Try to look confident,” Briggs said.
“But not too confident,” White said. “You want them to think you’re desperate for help.”
“Right.” Adam got out of the car, drew a deep breath, and started walking up the road.
It was more freeing than he’d imagined it would be to put White and Briggs behind him. It felt as if he was walking away from everything horrible he had seen on the road so far. He was able to pack away his memories of the sobbing girls in the farmhouse and the gunshots that had ended their lives and leave them behind in the Humvee. Those memories would be waiting for him when he got back, he knew, but for now he felt able to take a break from dwelling on them.
Unfortunately, walking away from White and Briggs also felt like walking away from Ella.
They had been his only real link to her, he realized as the distance between himself and the Humvee grew. They had been a tie that connected him with the base, a reminder that she was still out there waiting for him. Now, all alone on the highway with nothing around him but rocks and trees, it was hard to feel any connection at all to the little life he and Ella had carved out together.
But that’s still there, too, he reminded himself fiercely. Ella’s waiting for me back at the base. This was part of the plan. I have to walk away from her, out onto this ledge. I have to risk everything. And if I do it well enough, I’ll be able to take her with me the next time I leave the base.
Nebraska was a barren place, and Adam expected to be walking along the empty highway for hours, so he was surprised when he came upon the remains of a little town. The buildings were crumbling. This place must have been dying long before the virus hit, Adam thought as he made his way down the town’s main street.
He lingered outside a glass-fronted building that had once been a restaurant, gazing in at the booths and remembering, as if from another life, the feeling of going into an establishment, sitting down, and waiting for food to be brought to you. What a world we lived in back then, he thought, and we all took it for granted. I could have a meal whenever I wanted it. I could choose three or four items off a menu and sit there eating until I never wanted to eat another bite of food as long as I lived. I could have endless refills of any drink I chose.
And for a moment, Adam was painfully nostalgic for those days. He knew, of course, that he would never get them back. They were gone forever. But what wouldn’t he give for just one more day like that!
He blinked.
There was a reflection of someone standing behind him.
And just as he registered the newcomer’s presence, a voice said, “Turn around. Slowly. No sudden moves. Put your hands in the air.”
Adam knew he should be feeling panicked, but there was something about the newcomer’s voice that just didn’t scare him. It sounded young and nervy, and Adam had the feeling he was dealing with a kid. Slowly, he pivoted, raising his hands above his head.
He had been right. The boy behind him couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old, and he was stringy, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His hair was thinning and he was missing a tooth. Adam’s heart ached. Before all this had started, this kid had probably just been a regular all-American high schooler.
But he held a gun on Adam, and Adam didn’t dare make a move.
“Drop the bag,” the kid said, gesturing toward Adam’s backpack with his gun.
“All I’ve got is a couple of granola bars,” Adam said, not moving. “I’m happy to give you half.”
The kid laughed. It was a desperate sound. “I have a gun,” he said. “You don’t. Give me your damn bag.”
“Okay,” Adam said. “Okay. You got it. Can I keep the bag, though? I’ll give you everything inside, but I’d like to keep the bag.”
“Give me the bag!” The boy’s voice reached animal decibels, and he swung the gun at Adam, hitting him in the jaw.
As the gun made contact with Adam’s face, it went off.
Adam let out a howl and rolled away, assessing himself quickly to see what the damage was. His jaw was just starting to hurt, and he brought up his fingers to probe it anxiously. There would be a nasty bruise, he could tell, but he didn’t think anything was broken.
The bulk of the pain was in his shoulder, which felt as if it had been set on fire. He looked down and saw that the left half of his body had been soaked in blood. He shot me. That little bastard actually shot me. He felt dizzy and nauseated.
He shrugged off his backpack and tossed it at the boy, who looked just as spooked as Adam but was still brandishing his gun. The kid scooped up the bag and backed away, holding the gun on Adam for a few seconds longer, then turned and sprinted away up the street.
Adam struggled to his feet, exhausted, the pain really starting to set in now. I have to get out of this town, he thought. That kid had been acting like someone who knew he was surrounded by potential threats and enemies, and that probably meant that this wasn’t a safe place for Adam to linger.
He tried jogging down the street, but found
he had to stop quickly. Each step jarred his jaw, sending waves of pain through his arm.
His head swam, and he sat down. He had reached the highway again, and he wasn’t sure exactly when that had happened, but he was pleased to be here. It’s definitely better to be out of that town, he thought. That place was freaky.
Maybe this explains why White and Briggs were so trigger-happy on the way to Nebraska.
No. He wasn’t going to think like White and Briggs. He didn’t wish he’d shot that kid.
But what the hell was he going to do now? Could he really make it all the way to Omaha like this?
He tried to remove his shirt, to get a better look at the damage, but that was so painful that he cried out and had to stop.
He reached around with his right hand, trying to find an exit wound, gritting his teeth against the pain that even touching his injured arm brought. He couldn’t be sure. Maybe the bullet was still in there.
I need help, he thought, feeling desperate.
He hadn’t come very far yet. Maybe he should turn around and go back to White and Briggs. They wouldn’t be happy with him, of course, but wasn’t it in their best interests to clean up his wound and send him out again?
Maybe not, he thought, suddenly uneasy. Maybe they would think that being shot makes me more sympathetic, and therefore easier to trust. In which case I’d be wasting time by turning back, and the smartest thing to do would be to keep moving forward.
But could he keep moving forward? He was starting to feel dizzy, and he had a feeling that if he tried to stand up, he would just fall down.
Take a few minutes, he counseled himself. Get your wits about you. Then try again. You can’t just sit here on the side of the road forever.
God. What if he couldn’t get up? What if he died right here on the side of a highway in Nebraska?
Then Ella would never know what happened to me.
The thought of her was enough to spur him on. He got his feet under him and struggled upright.
He staggered. His vision was black around the edges.
“Hey. Hey, guy.”
“What?”
There was a hand on his back. Adam blinked. A face swam before him. There was a Humvee on the road. White and Briggs?
No. Not their car. Theirs was black. This one was green.
“What the hell happened to you?” the voice asked him.
“Got shot,” Adam said, his voice thick.
“Oh, he’s going down,” another voice chimed in, and the blackness swallowed up Adam’s vision as the ground rushed up to meet him.
Chapter 16
“Are you going to give him anything?”
“No. Don’t have any to spare for a procedure like this. He’s just going to have to grit his teeth and get through it.”
“Grit his teeth? Not likely! He’s not even conscious.”
“Yeah, well, you want to take bets on how long that’s going to be true?”
Adam blinked and opened his eyes. Slowly, the room around him came into focus.
He blinked again.
He was in a room.
He had been outdoors. He remembered that much. He had been walking along the highway. White and Briggs had dropped him off—
His left shoulder exploded with pain, bringing everything into sharp detail. Adam let out a howl.
“Whoa, easy there,” a voice said. “Look, I told you he’d come around when you started probing the wound. You okay, pal?”
A hand appeared in front of Adam’s face. Fingers snapped.
Adam blinked. “Where am I? What is this?”
“You’re kind of in the seat of government, actually.” The man stepped back, and Adam got a good look at him for the first time. He was in his mid-forties and paunchy. How in the world is anybody still paunchy?
Then again, the virus hadn’t hit that long ago. This man had probably always been overweight, Adam thought, and now he was slightly less overweight.
When he smiled, though, he put Adam at ease.
Keep your guard up, Adam reminded himself. Don’t make the mistakes you did with Thompson and the militia. Don’t trust anyone until you’re absolutely sure.
“You were lucky,” the man said. “Looks like the bullet went right through your arm. Didn’t hit the bone or mess anything up too badly. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any painkillers, because we have to save those for real emergencies, but I can give you a belt of whiskey before I stitch you up if you’d like.”
Adam shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m an alcoholic.”
“Really?” the man asked, lifting his eyebrows. “Even now?”
“It’s not the kind of thing that goes away in the event of a national crisis.”
“Well, that takes some dedication, I have to admit.” The man held out a hand. “Doctor Chuck Courmier.”
“Adam Parkhead,” Adam replied, then hissed as Courmier began to clean his wound. “What happened? I don’t remember getting here.”
“Yeah, you were passed out when we found you, or close to it,” Courmier said. “We do routine patrols on the highway to see if anyone is in the area, and we found you. Looks like some renegade robbed you and left you for dead. You’re lucky we found you when we did.”
Adam nodded. “Thanks for that.”
“Feeling a little better now?”
“A little bit. You said this was the seat of government?” Could he have been lucky enough to have been brought to the very place he was trying to go?
Courmier nodded. “What’s left of the government, anyway. We came here from Washington when the virus hit. It’s a safe house that other world leaders don’t know about, and at the time there were some who were still worried about the threat of terrorist attack.”
“Plus, I guess, you wanted to protect the president from the virus,” Adam suggested.
“That’s right,” Courmier agreed, but Adam thought there was something uncomfortable about the way he said it.
“Are you finished in here, doctor?” a new voice spoke.
Adam looked toward the door. The speaker was a steely-gray-haired man who could have been any age between forty and sixty. He wore a suit that looked as if it might have been ironed within the past month or so, which was enough to impress Adam.
“We’re done,” Courmier said, affixing a bandage to Adam’s arm. “We should check him for signs of infection every few hours, but it was a clean wound, and I think he’s going to be fine.
The newcomer nodded. “Leave us, then.”
When Courmier had left, Adam got to his feet. “Hello, Mr. Vice President.”
“You recognized me?”
“Of course.” Adam hadn’t voted for President Riddick and his running mate, Vice President Knight, but it had been impossible to ignore their campaign—their faces had been plastered everywhere. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”
“And who are you, exactly?”
“I’m Adam Parkhead.” Adam closed his eyes, realizing what he was going to have to do. “You might have heard of me too, actually. I used to be an actor as a kid.”
Knight angled his head slowly, clearly assessing Adam, and then shrugged. “I never watched much television,” he confessed. “So what brings you to Omaha?”
“To tell you the truth…” Adam steeled himself. Now came the hard part. “I was sent here as a messenger. I was asked to seek an audience with the president.”
“Asked by whom?” Knight’s body tensed.
Adam hesitated.
“You’ll never get in to see the president if you don’t tell me the truth now,” Knight said. “I can promise you that.”
That was probably true. “I was picked up a few days ago by a General Thompson,” he said. “I’m not affiliated with him, but he forced me to come here to carry a message. He thought you and the president would be more likely to listen to an outsider like me than to one of his people.”
“You’re here on behalf of Thompson?” Knight asked. His whole demea
nor had changed. He fell back a step from Adam, his expression somewhere between fear and fury.
“But I’m not a part of his group,” Adam said quickly. “He’s been holding me and my friend prisoner—”
“I can’t trust that. You can’t expect me to trust that. Officers!”
Instantly, two more men were in the room, both of them in uniform. Adam looked from one to the other, startled. “Am I…what’s happening? You’re not arresting me, are you?”
“We’re not doing anything yet,” Knight said. “My guards are going to debrief you and decide whether it’s safe for me to speak with you personally. You entered this bunker under false pretenses, so we’re not off to a good start.”
“I never meant to deceive you,” Adam said.
“That doesn't matter,” Knight said. “I can’t take chances. You must understand that.”
“Can’t I give you General Thompson’s message? I’ll leave if you let me, and then you won’t have to worry about whether or not I’m trustworthy.”
“I can’t let you do that,” Knight said.
“Can’t let me give you a message?”
“Can’t let you leave,” Knight said. “I can’t let you go back to him until I know what this is all about. I may not be able to let you go back at all.”
“But I have to go back!” Adam protested.
“I’m sorry,” Knight said. “But if you’ve met General Thompson, then you’ll understand why I can’t deliver an asset back into his hands.” He turned toward the door. “Debrief him, and come for me when you’ve determined whether or not he can be trusted enough for me to have a conversation with him.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said.
Adam sat back down as the vice president left the room. “This really isn’t that big a deal,” he said.
“We’ll be the judges of what’s a big deal and what isn’t,” one of the guards said. He had sandy-colored hair, cropped short. “You say General Thompson sent you to us?”
Escape The Dark (Book 4): Caught In The Crossfire Page 12