“Hey…”
She looked at Vinnie. He was rubbing his thumbs and forefingers over and over again in circles, performing some sort of self-soothing motion.
He whispered in her ear. “Since this is the end of the road for all of us and they may split us up once we get to Denver, I need to get something off my chest.”
When he paused before continuing, Cheryl imagined he was about to apologize about his cowardice in the middle of the horde or all the whining he did while they were jailed in Quimera. She had no idea what else he could be about to confess.
He put a hand on her thigh which immediately caused her to tense. Oh no…
“I…” Vinnie began.
She looked up at Aidan. Was he witnessing this? No. His eye was closed again. Good. Oh God…please don’t let Vinnie tell me he’s fallen in love with me. I just couldn’t—
“I’m responsible for what happened back in Sabre at Divine Sundaes.”
Her eyes opened wider, and she leaned closer to him. Had she heard right?
“It was my fault.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. If anyone was to blame for the disaster there, it was her. She didn’t get Cassie back inside fast enough. It was her fault that Jeremiah and Hannah were now dead as well.
“I brought Erik there, and I knew he was looking for Jeremiah, because O.N.E. had put a reward out for him.”
“Water under the bridge,” she said with a sigh. That revelation wasn’t surprising. Vinnie had only tried to save his own skin. Saints were hard to come by in a post-apocalyptic world.
“That’s not all,” Vinnie said. “Let me back up. Things didn’t go down in Sedona exactly the way I told you. After the armory blew, I wasn’t rescued by Erik. I was picked up by some of the O.N.E. guards and imprisoned with a few other members of the RT.”
He wasn’t whispering anymore. The soldiers weren’t paying attention, but Zach and Diego were all ears. Even Aidan was listening. His green eye stared at Vinnie as if it was boring a hold through him with a laser.
Vinnie continued, seeming aware of his audience and not caring. “I joined the RT back there, because I thought it was the right thing to do. The Resistance was going to take things back, put the Beasts into graves where they belong and give the power back to good people. We had a nice little coup, didn’t we? It set O.N.E. back a bit.” His eyes narrowed and his mouth formed a tight grimace. “And then…you know what happens after you poke a bear in the eye? It gets mad—mad like it never was before. It just makes him more determined to get revenge and make you wish you’d never messed with him in the first place. Paige was lucky to have died when she did, because the others members of the RT that were captives with me didn’t fare so well. They chained them up and let the Beasts pick them apart one piece at a time.”
Cheryl gasped, covering her mouth. From the somber look in his eyes, Vinnie wasn’t exaggerating. If she and Aidan hadn’t gotten out of Sedona when they did, they could have met the same fate.
“It’s no accident that I didn’t end up like them. Before they murdered my friends, they beat us and tried to get us to reveal where to find the other members of the RT. I cut a deal to save my life. I told them where to find you and Aidan.”
She remembered what a boisterous entrance he’d made at Divine Sundaes and how he’d told them what a cool guy Erik was to have “rescued” him when Sedona was overrun by Beasts. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she fought back the urge to slap him. “After all we went through together in Sedona. How could you?”
“Please don’t be mad at me. In my situation, you would have done the same thing. One of the RT members they killed…his name was Nick. Our kids went to grade school together.” After a long sigh, he said, “They took an ax and started chopping pieces off of him, starting with his fingers. When there was little left of him but a torso and a head, they threw them into the pit of Beasts. Now…you tell me if you wouldn’t have been willing to cut a deal at that point.”
Cheryl stared at her muddy feet. Would she have done the same thing? Betray her buddies to save her own life? In that situation, she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have. She was about to offer some measure of forgiveness when Vinnie opened his mouth again.
“Now, I have to tell you the worst.” He bit onto his lower lip and grimaced before continuing.
“Erik was may have been my escort to Sabre, but the O.N.E. troops in Quimera and these guys…” he said, motioning to the O.N.E. soldiers next to them “…found us because they were tracking me.” He held out his left hand. In the fleshy part between the index finger and thumb, there was a thin cylindrical lump just under the skin. “It’s a microchip with GPS. I was forced to accept it. It was either that or die, because they didn’t trust that I was telling them the truth about where you were.”
Now, she wanted to kill him.
All the time they’d been on the road since leaving Sabre and when they were imprisoned by Camacho and the sheriff in Quimera, they’d never even had a chance of escaping. O.N.E. knew their whereabouts the entire time…because of Vinnie.
“Say something…” he said, his dark brown eyes imploring for mercy.
She said what she figured she and Aidan were both thinking. “Why didn’t you cut it out?”
“Cut it out of my hand? I couldn’t. They told me it would inject poison if I tried. I believed them, especially after they demonstrated the poison on one of my friends. Just a pin prick of it sent him into convulsions and an agonizing—”
Diego leapt up and circled Vinnie’s throat with his hands. Unable to scream, his mouth gaped wide and his eyes bulged as his face reddened. The O.N.E. soldiers didn’t intervene. They stared impassively like the commotion was of little interest.
“Stop!” Cheryl yelled, trying to pull Diego off of him. “There’s no point now. Let him go!”
“No! Damn him!” Diego continued to squeeze.
“Let him go.”
Diego swiveled his head around and looked at Aidan. “Why should I?”
“Because I said so.”
Diego let go, and Vinnie slumped against his seat. Then, he took two steps and stood in front of Aidan.
“Lay off,” Zach said. “You don’t have any beef with him.”
Diego locked eyes with Aidan. “Maybe I do now.”
“Back in your seat,” one of the soldiers said.
Diego ignored him and mumbled something to Aidan that sounded like a curse.
“I said, back!” the soldier said, threatening with his rifle.
Diego retreated, but kept staring down Aidan like a dog ready to attack.
When he returned to his seat beside her, he sat with his fingers laced together in his lap. Something made her notice his hands, and after a moment she realized what it was: he didn’t have the triangular O.N.E. symbol. That was because neither he nor Zach had ever been in a O.N.E. controlled city. The mark had been forced on Vinnie during his time in Sedona, and she and Aidan had crude, self-made symbols they’d used to get into the city. Of course the O.N.E. soldiers all bore the mark.
After a couple of minutes passed, she glanced sideways to see if the soldiers were paying attention to them. A couple of them had their eyes closed, and the others were in a heated conversation. Cheryl leaned across the aisle and whispered to Zach. “When they stop for fuel, you and Diego should make a run for it. You didn’t have anything to do with the RT. You don’t need to be taken down with us.”
“We’re not going to abandon you.”
“I figured you’d say that, so just listen to me. Luke Marshall doesn’t even know you exist. You aren’t on his wanted list—Aidan, Vinnie, and me are. What good is it if you’re killed along with us? You know where we’re headed. If you’re on the outside of the city, you could find a way to sabotage them, cut their fuel supply, or rip out some of the black boxes on the Beasts and turn them back into Eaters to cause some havoc.”
“None of that is going to do any good. After all the efforts of y
our Resistance to take them down, they’re still running the show.”
“So, you’re just ready to give up?”
“I never said that.”
“You won’t be able to do anything if you’re locked in a cage with us or you’re dead. You heard what Vinnie said they did to the other RT members.”
Zach’s face went pale.
“Please. Don’t go down with us. If the worst happens to us, I’d feel a lot better if you were free to run some guerilla resistance on the outside.”
Zach glanced across the aisle at Diego, and they both went silent for a few seconds. All the time they’d spent together verbally and physically knocking each other down seemed to have taught them to read each other with a glance.
“Okay,” Diego whispered. “We’ll go. But I promise…it won’t be the last you see of us.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She found herself grinning, though inside there was a powerful sense of despair as she considered her own fate.
Zach spoke in a murmur, barely moving his lips. She almost couldn’t hear him over the banter of the soldiers. “Someone is going to have to cause a commotion, do something to get their attention for a few seconds.”
“I’ll do it,” Vinnie said, a little too loudly. “I’ll be the distraction.”
There was hesitation amongst them. Were they wondering the same thing she was? Was he volunteering just to set them up? Just to save his own skin again?
“It’s the least I can do. I owe you…”
The soldier who had threatened Diego before turned and snarled at them. “All of you…shut up! You’re getting on my nerves.”
Cheryl and the others leaned back in their seats. With at least a vague plan for a couple of them to escape, she felt better. When the time came, if Aidan was well enough to make a run for it, maybe she’d run too. If not…well…there was no way she could leave him behind to be tortured or executed and live with herself.
There was nothing she or the others could do until their rolling prison stopped. There were too many armed soldiers in between them and the back doors of the vehicle, and they were separated from the driver by a wall and a small window that looked like it was made out of bullet-proof glass. All she could do was sit and worry, or try to sleep to reinvigorate herself for some blessed opportunity when they stopped that would allow at least Zach and Diego to escape.
She closed her eyes and endured the nightmarish scenes that flashed into her groggy mind before she fell asleep: flashbacks of eating dinner with Mark; her last visit with her father in the I.C.U. at Fort San Manuel; and the worst of all—the angelic face of Cassie lying in Hannah and Jeremiah’s bed, her eyes closed and her skin turned a mottled gray with no more life left in her.
###
When she woke, they were stopped. The back doors of the vehicle squealed as the soldiers opened them and jumped out. All but one disappeared in a hurry. The remaining man stood there facing them with his rifle slung over his shoulder. He shuffled his weight from foot to foot as he lit a cigarette.
“Where are we?” Diego asked.
“Fuel stop.”
“Where?”
The soldier, a tall, gruff looking young man with a square jaw took another drag and looked away.
“He’s probably not supposed to be talking to us,” Cheryl said.
“Why don’t you try charming him?”
She rolled her eyes. The soldier was easily ten years younger than her, just a kid in her eyes, and she’d heard enough from Erik about how O.N.E. rewarded its servants with sex and other types of dark candy. She’d try reason instead. “Can we get out and go to the bathroom? Stretch our legs?”
The guard ignored her. His feet danced a little jig as he smoked. His eyes looked tired, and she guessed that the powers that be at O.N.E. must have kept him going on long shifts without much chance for sleep. Now all those energy drinks he’d been slamming then crushing and tossing on the truck bed floor along with the others had him seeing yellow in his eyeballs.
Maybe this was the best chance they’d get to rush him and take him. She was about to make a move when he motioned them out with his hand.
“All right. You can get out. Take a leak over by the air pump. Then you get back in.”
She glanced at the others. Were they ready?
They were all on their feet, even Aidan, with anxious looks on their faces. She took a step towards the door and heard the cackle of laughter as the other soldiers returned.
Crap.
Her disappointment was even greater when she looked around.
They were at a gas station in some small town. It was surrounded by a tall chain link fence, topped with thick rolls of barbed wire, and the gate they’d driven through was latched shut and padlocked. O.N.E. was apparently keeping this station running and wanted it all to themselves.
She could see a diner across the street with broken windows. There were heaps of discarded clothing in the parking lot that probably contained corpses that had been lying there for months, now sunbaked and picked down to bones by vultures, raccoons, and other scavengers.
“Move it, people!” It was another soldier yelling at them now.
With legs sore from sitting too long and a dour mood, Cheryl and her friends shuffled to the air pump to take care of business and returned to the vehicle only after they were shouted back in.
Several hours later, they stopped again. The sun was lower in the sky, but from its brightness and intense heat, she judged that it was still late afternoon. They were at an enclosed gas station again, but this one had lean, snarling Dobermans on the inside and a dozen Beasts with black boxes hanging out in the parking lot of the car wash next to it. Where were they? If she had to guess, she figured Raton or Trinidad. If an escape was going to happen, they were running out of time.
When she and Zach returned to their seats, she told him, “Next stop, you’re going to have to get out before they lock the gate.”
“There’s no way. Only the soldier riding up front gets out while we’re stuck back here until the gate is locked again.”
“There are five of us, and six of them inside here. If we rush them—”
Zach shook his head with a solemn face. “It’s no use. We’ll just have to wait until they unload us in Denver.”
She’d never seen Zach look this nervous before, and had only seen such a chink in Diego’s mental armor when the Eater had a hold of his hair back in the Quimera police station. Vinnie seemed zoned out and Aidan slept as they rode for several more hours with a fog of despair hanging over their heads.
When they finally stopped again, Cheryl nudged Zach in the side. He shook his head—there was no way he was going to mutiny inside the truck and risk getting a belly full of lead.
Before the back of the truck was opened, Cheryl was fully prepared for the same hopeless situation. But, this time, the scenery was different. The gas station was not fenced in. It was next to an off ramp coming from I-25, and surrounded by fields of old, dried corn that had likely been planted last spring before the epidemic started. About a quarter of the tall, tan-colored stalks had been knocked down by snow or high winds. What was still standing along with the towering weeds that had grown amongst them would provide a good amount of cover for escape.
Where were they?
She saw a white billboard near the exit ramp with a faded red silhouette of a cowboy on a horse, wielding a lasso. It was advertising a rodeo at the Colorado State Fair Grounds that was supposed to have taken place late last July. Now, she had a clue. They were in Pueblo, about a two hour drive from Denver.
She didn’t have to say a word to Zach or Diego. As they stood next to the gas pumps, a warm breeze soughed through the corn, and she could see the tenseness in their bodies like tigers ready to spring.
As before, the driver and four of the soldiers went towards the building while one of them pumped gas, and one stood at the rear of the vehicle, guarding them. It was a different man this time. He was short and stocky with
thick arms like Zach used to have before he lost some weight.
“If you’re going to water the weeds, better do it now!” he shouted at them.
They were all out of vehicle now, except for Vinnie. He was still in his seat with his head between his knees, clutching his stomach and moaning.
“What’s wrong?” Cheryl asked, the gooseflesh starting to rise on her arms as she knew the game was on.
“I’m sick,” he said in weak voice that had risen an octave.
“Sick?” she asked, feigning alarm. “Sick how?”
“My stomach. I think I’m going to throw up.”
The soldier guarding them furled his brow, looking unsure of what to do. “Ahhh…”
“What’s up?” a returning soldier asked as he zipped his fly.
The guard pointed to Vinnie. “That one says he’s going to throw up.”
“Geez. Don’t let him blow chunks in the truck. Get him out of there!”
The stocky soldier hopped up, grabbed a hold of Vinnie’s arm and started to pull him out while the other one watched from an angled position that barely put the rest of them in his peripheral vision.
Eaters: Resurrection Page 20