Escape The Dark (Book 4): Caught In The Crossfire

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Adam blinked. “There are children here?”

  “Of course,” Knight said. “When we left Washington for Omaha, every ranking member of government above a certain level was invited to come along and to bring their families. It isn’t just politicians here, it’s husbands and wives and daughters and sons.”

  “Actual families,” Adam marveled.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “It’s just that I haven’t really seen any intact families since…” he paused, thinking of the Birkins and the McTerrells feuding at the Santa Joaquina. They had been families, yes. But they had been coming apart at the seams. There had been nothing healthy about any of those relationships.

  Now he thought about what it must be like to be a child here in this bunker. It would be a sad, bleak existence, yes…but when he thought about what was happening to children on the surface—the piles of bodies he’d seen…

  The children here had lives. They had a playroom, for God’s sake. They must also have friends they liked to play with, the minor but dramatic-feeling childhood dramas about who was whose best friend and whether one child was on the outs socially. Normal problems.

  And every day, after they played, Adam imagined they went home to their parents and babbled away as children did about the events of the day.

  Kids adapt. That was something he knew. It was something he remembered from his time in Hollywood. Even kids who were TV stars found time to be normal kids. They found ways to socialize that were normal.

  “Are you ready to move on?” Knight asked, interrupting Adam’s thoughts.

  “Oh.” Adam hurried away from the playroom. But the image stuck in his mind. Children playing together. What a strange thing to find in the midst of all this chaos and horror. How bizarre to realize that something so normal was still going on somewhere.

  How bizarre, and how wonderful.

  This is going to be destroyed if General Thompson sets off that nuke, he realized. This isn’t just about a power struggle between Thompson and Knight. It’s not even just about the deaths of dozens of soldiers. There are families here. What Knight keeps saying about the future is absolutely true. There are children in this bunker, and they represent a future for humanity.

  And General Thompson was willing to give that up just to make a point.

  Suddenly, Adam felt outraged. This is what Knight must have felt at the suggestion that he should give in to Thompson’s demands, he thought. Of course we can’t give in. Of course we have to take a stand against him.

  He heard the pronoun in his thoughts. So I guess we’re “we” now. I guess I’ve pretty thoroughly joined his side. He felt vaguely nauseous at the thought.

  God, he wanted to believe that Knight was a good man. There had to be goodness somewhere in the world, didn’t there? The law of averages suggested that eventually Adam would run across someone who was worth knowing.

  On the other hand, maybe I’ve had more than my share of good luck. I found Ella, after all, and together we found Julie. And I haven’t been killed yet.

  Things could definitely be worse.

  The idea that there had to be somewhere left that was good and safe… He shook his head. He knew exactly what Ella would say if he presented her with that hypothesis. “You’re dreaming. You want there to be guaranteed safety somewhere. But that wasn’t even true before the virus happened. It was only true for some people. It was only true for people like you.”

  Wealthy people, in other words. The kind of people the world looked after by default.

  Ella had never belonged to that club.

  Ella had been the child of drug addicts. When she had finally gotten off on her own, she had been hired by the Birkins, who had sabotaged her ambitions of higher education. Every good thing that had happened to her in her life was something she had gotten for herself. Nothing good had ever just happened to Ella.

  Of course she didn’t believe in a world where good things simply existed.

  But Adam knew that that world was real. At least, it had been. It was possible to live a life where things fell your way more often than not, where the people around you liked you and wanted you to thrive. It was possible to find a place where you didn’t feel like you were fighting all the time just to stand still.

  What he didn’t know was whether any of that was possible in this new world.

  Were those privileges among the many things that had been stripped from humanity by the virus and the aftermath?

  Maybe Adam was crazy. Maybe this was his particular brand of denial about what was really happening in the world. He was clinging to a reality in which good things had been the norm for him, and he had failed to adapt.

  Is that what Artem would say if he could see me now? Adam wondered. Would he tell me to be realistic?

  Adam didn’t think so, somehow.

  He had been extremely lucky to have Artem as a companion during those first difficult weeks. It had been Artem who had given them all their regular reality checks while they were on the yacht, making sure they were constantly aware of what was really going on and how they needed to face it.

  Artem had also been the one who had told Adam to have hope. He was the one who had constantly reminded Adam that it wasn’t enough to simply stay alive. You needed to have something worth living for. Otherwise, you were just running out the clock until something eventually caught up with you and killed you.

  That’s why I keep trying to trust someone, Adam thought. That’s why I keep hoping I’ve found a place, a group of people, that I can rely on. That’s why I want to believe the best of everyone I come across. It’s not just sheer insanity. I want to live in a world that’s actually worth being alive in.

  Deep down, he suspected, Ella probably wanted the same thing. But her desire for it must be buried so much deeper than his was. She had been trying to survive throughout her entire life. The idea that she might be able to simply relax and enjoy her life must be terrifying to her.

  “Here,” Knight said, stopping in front of a door. “This is the barracks. You can take any empty bed, okay?”

  Adam looked inside. It wasn’t very different from the tent in which he and Ella had slept at General Thompson’s camp, really, except that it was a bit smaller and more crowded. He could see where families had grouped up, dragging cots out of their neat rows and into more chaotic clusters.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Knight took the canteen from him. “I’d better hang on to this for tonight,” he said. “We don’t want it in there with all those people. I’ll give it back to you in the morning before you leave.”

  “Okay.”

  “In the meantime, try to get some sleep, all right?” Knight said. “That bullet wound will heal much more quickly if you get some rest.”

  Adam nodded, then made his way between the rows of cots. He found an empty one with nobody too nearby and dropped his body down on it, feeling like nothing so much as a splitting sack of oats. The exhaustion and the pain were starting to hit him now, the adrenaline that had kept him going receding from his body. He wished he had gotten some kind of painkiller. His arm throbbed.

  White and Briggs are going to have some questions about that, he thought, glancing down at the bandage that had been wrapped around his bicep.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the soft murmurs of the people around him. Was it his imagination, or was everything here much more gentle than it was back at the militia camp? The sounds in the tent there had seemed ominous and threatening. Here, Adam thought, the voices around him seemed friendly and soothing, like a half-forgotten memory of listening to his parents talking to each other as he’d drifted off to sleep as a child. Here, the voices were a reminder that the world was okay and that people were continuing to live when Adam closed his eyes.

  It’s because they’re families, he thought. That’s why it sounds like that. General Thompson has soldiers, and he has random people he found wandering around California and decided to keep instead of kill.
But these people…they’re just parents and children. They’re not talking about the things they’re afraid of. They’re not talking about the horrors they’ve seen. They’re just talking about how much they love each other.

  How long had it been since Adam had heard anyone talk about anything like that?

  He closed his eyes and drank in the sounds of their voices. I want to stay here, he thought. I want this to be our new home.

  But what would Ella say?

  He knew what she would say. She was so disinclined to trust. She would tell him that he couldn’t possibly expect her to put her fate, and the fate of her family, in the hands of President Knight. She would point out that he’d wanted to stay with General Thompson at first too, and that he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  And she would be right about that.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong this time.

  Would she be able to understand that Adam had to keep trying? Would it make sense to her if he explained that he couldn’t give up on the idea that there was a home for them somewhere?

  Adam had no idea.

  And how would Julie react? Adam knew that Julie’s response to the idea of staying here would affect Ella’s answer greatly. Ella wanted nothing more than to stay with her sister, and Adam couldn’t blame her for that.

  Julie could contribute so much here. Knight said they needed a scientist. And she would be making good things, useful things. Not weapons.

  But would she agree to do it after having seen her husband killed so that Thompson could take advantage of her scientific knowledge? Or would she simply refuse to serve anyone ever again?

  Then again, Adam knew, it was possible that Ella and Julie wouldn’t want to stay here for reasons that were completely valid. Ella would be absolutely right to point out that Adam had misjudged General Thompson. Adam had developed a pattern of misjudging people. So maybe there was something more to the situation here, something he wasn’t seeing. Maybe Ella would be able to point it out to him.

  I’ll listen to her, he promised himself now. Whatever she says when she gets here and sees this place, I’ll hear her out. We’ll make a decision together.

  But he was jumping the gun. Before they could make any kind of decision, he would have to get her here. And before he could do that, he would have to get some sleep.

  If all goes well, he thought to himself, we’ll get that nuke disarmed a couple of days from now. Thompson will be dead. Maybe some of the soldiers will defect and come back here with us—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But we’ll be able to free Julie’s son, and I’ll bring all three of them back here with me.

  If all goes well.

  He rolled over onto his good shoulder and closed his eyes, trying not to let himself think about just how many things could go wrong.

  Chapter 20

  Adam lay awake for a long time after he woke, putting off getting up. He lost track of how long he had been lying there. It might have been ten minutes. It might have been an hour.

  Eventually, though, he willed himself upright. There’s no getting out of it now, he thought. This is the only way I get Ella back. This is the only path to any kind of safety for us.

  Chances of survival seemed extremely slim.

  But I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to keep my focus where it should be today—on what I need to be doing from moment to moment.

  He found the president in his office. Knight was on his feet going through a stack of papers, but he looked up when Adam entered the room. “Ready to go?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  Knight nodded and picked up the canteen from his desk. “Be careful with this,” he said. “Never let it touch your hands, or any part of your body. Don’t even inhale it.”

  “It’s that toxic?”

  “Breathing the fumes probably won’t kill you, but it might make you unwell,” Knight said. “It’s pretty concentrated in there. Not that you’d be able to smell it, of course. It’s completely odorless, colorless, tasteless. Thompson won’t know you’ve done a thing unless he turns around and catches you in the act.”

  Which could very well happen. But Adam wasn’t going to think about that. Focus on your next step. Don’t look too far ahead.

  He took the canteen and tucked it away in his duffel bag. “Okay,” he said. “You’ll have troops on the road following me?”

  “We’ll stay a few miles back,” Knight said. “So don’t worry when you don’t see us. Trust that we’re there.”

  Trust.

  Once again, he was being asked to put his faith in someone he wasn’t sure was on his side.

  Once again, he was going to do it.

  He shouldered his bag. “Which way do I go?”

  “Take the highway west,” Knight said. “You’ll be able to tell by the road signs. It’s a straight shot from here to the town where you were picked up. Once you get that far, you’ll be able to figure out how to get back in the hands of Thompson’s people?”

  Adam nodded. “I think so,” he said. “I didn’t take a complicated route. And they weren’t too far from there anyway.”

  “Good,” Knight said, extending his hand. Adam shook it. “With luck, then, we’ll see you back here in a few days.”

  With luck. It was going to take more than just luck. It was going to require every single card falling in Adam’s favor from here to California, and a hell of a lot of nerve on his part once he got there.

  Don’t think too far ahead, he reminded himself sternly. Think about what you need to do next.

  Knight walked him up to the surface in silence, and Adam blinked as the light hit his eyes. He had gotten used to the relative darkness of the bunker.

  He hesitated for a moment, wanting to say something, wanting to tell Knight that he would do his best to see this through. But there seemed to be nothing to say. Eventually he just gave the president a nod, turned, and walked off in the direction he’d been told to go.

  The road signs reassured him that he was indeed traveling west, but Adam couldn’t help feeling a little nervous. What if it’s the wrong way? he wondered. What if Knight sent me off in the wrong direction?

  Of course, that didn’t make sense. There was no reason to do that. A failure to reappear on Adam’s part would only provoke Thompson. He wants me to get back, Adam reminded himself. Besides, I’m going west. California is west of Nebraska. It’s the right way.

  It was hard to remain confident, though. It felt as though he had been walking for hours, and the scenery around him didn’t seem to change very much. If only I had been alert for this part, he thought. If only I could be sure that I’d been this way before.

  The sun was bright overhead. Adam glanced up at it, wondering what time it was. Wondering when was the last time he had actually known what time it was. Telling the time was one of those luxuries that had been left behind in the old world. He thought of the children in the bunker and realized with a strange combination of amusement and sadness that they would likely grow up with a completely different understanding of the hours of the day. Their parents would reference things like nine o’clock the same way Adam’s parents had once talked about 8-track tapes.

  What are they going to be like when they grow up?

  It occurred to him that he was taking it for granted that those kids would grow up at all.

  Until he had met Knight, he hadn’t realized that there was anyone left alive with such a dedicated vision of the future. Back on the yacht, Artem had known it was important to be forward-thinking, but Adam didn’t know if he’d ever managed to do it. But President Knight had never stopped thinking about what the world could be. He had never gotten sucked into the despair and obsession of focusing on what was.

  If we’re going to make it, Adam thought, if we’re going to make it through this as a civilization, as a species, we’re going to need a good leader. And President Knight is the first person I’ve come across who just might fit the bill.

  Go
d, he hoped Ella would feel the same way. He hoped she wouldn’t pull him aside and hiss that Knight was just as bad as Thompson, and that Adam was obviously out of his mind for trusting the man.

  After what felt like an eternity, Adam found himself amid surroundings that looked familiar. This was the town where he’d been shot. This time, he would be more careful. Whoever that kid had been, Adam was prepared to believe he was still around here somewhere, and one experience at the business end of a bullet was more than enough for Adam’s liking.

  He passed through the town without incident, and now he was on a familiar stretch of road. Funny, he thought. All these Nebraska highways look the same, and I doubt I would have been able to tell the difference between them before all this happened. But everything’s different now. He was more alert to his surroundings than he had ever been in his life. There was the yellow car he had noticed when he was going the other way. And over by the shoulder, the pile of bones he had tried not to look to hard at.

  Which means I’m almost back, he thought. I should be seeing White and Briggs any time now.

  Assuming they hadn’t decided to go back to California without him.

  They couldn’t. Thompson would kill them for that.

  But that wasn’t quite right. Thompson wouldn’t kill them if he thought they had come back without Adam because Adam had failed in his mission. In fact, it was possible that White and Briggs themselves had come to that conclusion. Adam realized that he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He had assumed it was only a few hours, but he couldn’t be sure.

  I shouldn’t have stayed the night at the bunker, he realized belatedly. I should have told Knight I needed to get going right away, that I would be missed if I didn’t come back.

  What would he do if White and Briggs had left him?

  Could he turn around and go back to the bunker? Would the president understand?