Unbeaten

by A. R. Shaw

  “Why would they do that?” Sloane asked.

  For a minute there she thought Marvin was going to cry. The grown man’s eyes teared up, but he took a deep breath and said, “Because he’s now a danger to Tale. You don’t understand. In Astoria, if you don’t return on time or disappoint him in any way, he takes away your dependents.”

  “Takes them away?”

  “He kills them. He calls it a reckoning. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You can’t live there without dependents and if you mess up, your dependents cannot live without you. Do you understand now? You understand why I know there’s no reason for me to return? My family…my wife and two boys. They’re gone.”

  “So you think Davis returned anyway with Jason in hopes his family was still alive?”

  Marvin nodded. “I think he’s hopeful but…there’s no way. It’s happened too many times. I’ve seen it happen too many times. If Davis returned, they have him in lockup to keep him from threatening Tale. That’s if they haven’t already killed him.”

  “If we discover Davis in there, what should we do with him?”

  Marvin thought about that scenario for a second. “Open the door quickly and run like hell. Get out of his way. If you don’t take Tale down, he will.”

  “Are there any friendlies we can depend on in case we get caught up?”

  Marvin shook his head again.

  She could see he was holding back the physical pain as much as he could at that point but his words were important.

  “There is one. Her name is Linda. She’s the doctor but if you end up in her care you’re screwed anyway. She’s the only one without dependents and only allowed to live because she’s so useful. Tale keeps her under constant surveillance, though.”

  “Okay,” she said. This man had helped them more than he knew. She couldn’t thank him enough but that would wait. She had to complete the job first. She got up to leave when he grabbed her arm.

  “Wait. Listen, if you get him, you can’t leave there without blocking that damn bridge. That’s why we’re all in this mess.”

  “The Young’s Bay Bridge? We’ll do what we can on our way out.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “no, the big one. Over the Columbia River, the Astoria-Megler Bridge.”

  “Wait. That’s a huge bridge. It’s what connects Oregon to Washington State over the Columbia.” Now she was the one shaking her head. Blowing up a smaller bridge to secure them regionally over Young’s Bay was hard enough. Destroying the big bridge over the Columbia would mean cutting them off geographically north. Sure, they could get around to the east if they had to, but far out of their way. Suddenly, she realized she was making decisions for the next few generations. That was a lot of pressure. Without modern equipment, there was no replacing that thing. “Why do you think that bridge brought all of this on?”

  “Because one tyrant meets another and the next thing you know we have wars and crap. The fewer numbers we have, the more likely you weed out the psychopaths before they get to power. If you block that bridge somehow, we buy ourselves a little bit of peace and quiet on this side, at least for a time. You can deal with nuts in a vacuum, you just crush them. It’s the ones you can’t see coming…those are the ones you worry about.”

  She understood now, and she had more questions for him, especially about the airfield, but Kent was ready at that point with another injection. Marvin was done for now. His advice might have just saved them all.

  She was now on the boat trying to remember all of Marvin’s words, everything he tried to impart to her, when they reached the center suspension on the pylons of the Young’s Bay Bridge. It had taken long enough, and they were only halfway there. The wind was so sharp it stole your breath away. One of the three boats stayed behind, the one with Chuck and his backpack. He had something to do there first, and it would take a while.

  She waved her hand at him as they continued on with the other two boats. First slipping under the bridge to the edge of the other side, with her head peeking up, she looked for anyone scanning the horizon and waited. After a time, no one showed themselves, which led her to believe her assumptions were true. They were only concerned with the bridge itself. Soon, that wouldn’t be an issue for them if she had her way.

  47

  Davis

  The kid was sweating now. He’d even taken off his jacket. When Davis was first brought into the holding cell, he was trembling and his lips were the wrong shade of blue. He’d seen it happen in here before and hell, he’d practically handed the kid to these morons. He felt responsible for him.

  He’d hoped his old friend Ivan would help him, but something had changed in the man since he’d last seen him. Before, they’d plot and steal little victories but now something was off. Something had happened while he was gone, and Davis had no idea what that was. Maybe he had to witness the death of Davis’s family. That was probably what it was. It scared him, too. Though Davis realized his boys and wife were probably dead now, he wanted revenge and Ivan only had one dependent, a teenage nephew that was training as a guard. Heck, he’d moved out into the soldier’s barracks and taken a wife of his own already. That left Ivan with no dependents and vulnerable to Tale’s whims. He wasn’t sure how Tale reconciled that situation with his rules. That left Ivan open, with nothing to lose. But when Davis tried to talk to him about it earlier, he said nothing and left.

  “Are you done?” Davis asked Jason.

  The boy nodded.

  “Put your jacket back on. Keep your body heat inside. You’re going to need it.”

  The kid looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Now.”

  Jason reluctantly slipped his jacket back on and zipped it up. That was when Ivan returned with another blanket in hand and a couple of bottles of water.

  “That’s generous of you, but how ‘bout some pants?” Davis said.

  “Just don’t tell anyone where you got these.”

  “You can do better than that, Ivan. What the hell’s going on here? I need to know. Just tell me if I have something worth fighting for.”

  Ivan didn’t make eye contact nor answer the question but instead slipped the blanket between the cell bars. Davis grabbed Ivan’s forearm holding the blanket. “What happened to my family, Ivan? Tell me!”

  Ivan jerked back from his hold and still…his eyes would not meet Davis’s.

  “Trust me when I say get the hell out of here. Leave, Davis. That’s the only thing I can say. You have no dependents now.”

  That’s when Ivan raised his eyes to meet his. There was not just pain but deep sorrow there.

  Davis wasn’t sure what to make of it. He released his friend’s arm. He let him go and took the blanket and the two bottles without another word.

  Ivan stopped near the door, turned and nodded to Davis. It was one of those last looks you give a good friend. A kind of farewell.

  After the door shut, Davis found the ridged knife wrapped in the blanket. He didn’t show the kid. Instead, he handed the other blanket to Jason and also handed him one of the water bottles. The boy had to be thirsty.

  Davis turned his back on the boy and opened the blanket, studying the knife. Something shook in the hilt. There was a screw cap. When he opened it, he found a lighter loose inside the cavity. Before he could think what the heck Ivan was up to, he had to turn abruptly because the kid behind him was spewing and choking on something.

  When he looked, the kid stared at the water bottle in his hands as if the clear liquid contents were poison.

  Davis opened his own bottle and smelled…nothing. He took a taste and then realized what Ivan had done. Vodka.

  48

  Ivan

  So much screaming. He couldn’t tell who was more hysterical. The mothers, of course, but there were a few of them. All terrified.

  “You have to decide, Ivan. Which one will it be?”

  If only he could kill the man and get away with it.

  “Sir, please, with all due respec
t, I can take them all.” His voice had a quiver in it when he spoke. He had to avoid looking weak, desperate.

  Tale shook his head and laughed. “You already have one recent dependent. I can’t let you take them all. There are consequences for the actions of your friend. What kind of precedent does that set for the others? I won’t spare them just for you. I was already lenient with one of the abandoned families. I’ll let you choose one of these. That’s it. One of the boys or the wife? Which one will it be? Tell me now, Ivan. Now, Ivan!”

  “I can’t,” he said, looking at them all. “I can’t choose.”

  “Then they all die,” Tale said with a slide of his chin.

  Ivan ran forward as the rifles raised. He grabbed one of them, jerked the boy from his mother’s side, just as the rifles began to fire.

  It was a moment he’d never forget. The boy’s mother looked at him in that last surreal moment. Both hatred and humanity at once. She’d died in the next second but her slow motion end told him everything. He’d grabbed the boy as the kid tried to run back to his mother despite the gun blasts. Held him forcibly against his chest, keeping him from turning to look at the horror unfolding.

  Later that day, Linda looked the boy over. He wasn’t talking. He was in shock. There was no doubt he’d seen and heard too much, despite Ivan’s efforts. Like a limp doll, Ivan slung the boy over his arm and carried him home. Inside the door, the girl had already prepared dinner. She was only seven or eight and already doing a grown woman’s work. He landed the boy on the floor as if saying to himself, Here’s another to add to my collection.

  Everyone else thought Ivan’s motives were insurance. A way to stay alive. That wasn’t it at all. Before the girl came to him, his only thought was to get rid of Tale. Now, these two children were his weakness. Ivan the Adopter. That’s what they called him now.

  49

  Sloane

  It was Sloane’s own hand that cast them afloat out from beneath the safety of the bridge, with anything but a devil-may-care attitude. Anyone really looking over the side into the water would see them without a doubt. As the two boats continued to fight the waves, Sloane faced the other way, leaning back with her rifle aimed and ready. Surveilling the bridge activity through her scope, her pulse quickened when she noticed a few guards walking along the bridge. One was running and for a second, she thought perhaps he’d noticed Chuck below the bridge, but after a few moments she realized he was just jogging along the perimeter. There was no haste in his steps, just a steady rhythm. These people were doing a job, she realized. There was no heart in their efforts. They were merely running the clock to their shift, unlike the people of Cannon Beach, who took things a little more seriously. Guard watch meant something to her people. Life and death.

  Wren raised her hand suddenly, and in the inky black of night, she’d only noticed because her arm blocked the torchlight of the bridge. She pointed to the approaching land. Sloane turned and saw they were getting closer, but it was so dark, she could not tell one building from the next, let alone between one that was blue or purple. Again, Wren silently led them to the right. The youthful eyes on her daughter came in handy.

  Without a word, the two boats ran the rocky shore. Someone from each vessel jumped out into the breach between water and land and pulled them in. They tried their best to mute the sounds of the metal scraping on the rocks beneath but with the waves creating their own cacophony, she didn’t think it really made much difference unless someone had a trained ear for detecting a different cadence to the waves’ rhythm. Still, they could not be too careful. It would only take one person to blow their cover. Sloane stepped out of the boat as the others completed their tasks. She aimed again at the bridge, looking for Chuck through the scope. The third boat was coming their way. She tried waving an arm to show their location, but they didn’t indicate they’d seen her yet.

  “Mom, they’re off course,” Wren whispered close by.

  “Let them get closer. They’ll spot us.”

  It wasn’t as if she could set off a flare highlighting their location. “Come on, come on…” she murmured under her breath when they looked as if they were going to veer farther up shore, and then someone in the boat finally raised their hand against the backdrop of the flames on the bridge and they course-corrected toward them at last.

  “Whew, the last thing we need is to lose one another now.”

  As the boat neared, Chuck jumped out and pulled the others ashore. He and the others efficiently picked up the third boat as Sloane kept watch when suddenly, someone lost their hold on one end of the boat, sending the metal edge crashing hard against the side of a slate boulder.

  “What was that?”

  The unknown voice made them crouch on the gravel beach in the dark.

  Sloane aimed at the person above them but shooting off a round now would blow their cover. They were exposed there in the dark. The man above them looked directly over their position, his eyes fixed on the bridge instead of below. Had there been moonlight, their deaths would have been eminent.

  Sloane didn’t dare breathe as the man muttered, “Screwing off as usual.”

  He sounded older, disgruntled even. He turned to leave but then he turned back again as someone in her group must have slipped a foot in the gravel.

  “Someone there?” the raspy voice said.

  A beam of light suddenly blinded Sloane.

  Her finger on the trigger, she began to pull when suddenly there was a hard thunk and the man let out a moan. The beam of light disappeared into the tall grasses above the shore.

  Scurrying sounds in the gravel. She too ran toward where the man had been.

  “Good job, Wren,” Chuck whispered.

  Someone doused the flashlight but before then, Sloane watched in the light of the beam as Wren pulled the arrow from the man’s neck. Her daughter had just saved them all.

  Sloane turned again and watched the bridge guards. Their heads bobbed along the edge. They seemed not to notice their tiny invasion at all.

  50

  Jason

  This, he realized, was the reason he didn’t drink. How in the world did people consume this stuff? His entire throat burned like hell and he couldn’t stop coughing. Worse yet, he had no actual water to rinse his mouth with.

  The liquid in the bottle didn’t smell like alcohol, but it certainly tasted like it. What a crappy trick. Ivan’s a jerk, Jason thought as he tried to catch his breath. Heaving air in felt as if he were breathing in flames. He looked up and saw that Davis was practically yelling at him and raised his finger to his mouth, shushing him angrily. Jason tried to read his lips but realized it didn’t matter. A string of curse words would not help his predicament.

  Jason was about to pour the liquid in the bottle down the drain in the middle of the floor when Davis went absolutely bat-shit crazy and lunged his arm between the bars, reaching for the bottle in Jason’s hand. That’s when the blanket he held fell harder to the floor than it should have on its own, exposing a big knife.

  Then…then the door of the jail began to open, sending Davis to fling the edge of the blanket over the knife with his bare foot.

  The other guard, not Ivan, the one with the beard, said something like “What’s going on in here?”

  Davis’s head was turned away. He seemed to be reasoning with the guy.

  Suddenly Jason understood. He took the bottle again, as if it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever tasted, and took a swig, all nonchalant like, and screwed the cap back on. The guard glanced in his direction. Davis pointed at him. Jason bobbed his head up and down as if to agree with whatever Davis was saying. Like, “Yep, nothing to see here. He just choked on the, uh…water. What an idiot.” Or something like that, Jason imagined. Meanwhile, the inside of Jason’s mouth felt like it was burning away the lining.

  The guard left and when Jason looked at Davis, he was sweating, even though he was still only dressed in a nightgown without an ass covering.

  Jason lifted his arms and
opened his mouth, like, What’s going on?

  “What do you mean, what the hell? You nearly blew it.”

  Jason pointed at himself, and shook his head, no, and pointed at Davis again.

  Davis walked over to the bars separating them and said, “It doesn’t matter now, kid. Look, you need to make a decision here. Right now. I’m leaving. You have two choices. You can either come with me and get killed or, you can stay here and get killed. What’s it gonna be?”

  “Fuh,” Jason said, shaking his head.

  51

  Sloane

  Roll call. Sloane quickly counted them as they entered the cleared building.

  Wren said, “I thought Marvin said the building was blue or purple, it looks more periwinkle. Am I right?”

  No one answered the question.

  “We’ve got it. We’re all here,” Sloane said with relief. “Now a hike through the woods. Wren, no jabbering unless necessary. Chuck, you’re taking up the rear. Everyone else in between. If you need to adjust your gear, take a restroom break or heck, if you need to pray, do it now. We leave in two minutes.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Chuck said. “I can’t remember the last time someone asked me if I needed a potty break. I feel like a two-year-old.”

  “You’ll thank me later,” she said with a smile. “Let me remind all of you…keep the chatter down unless necessary. This is their turf, not ours.”

  Heads nodded. She knew they were getting nervous. She could feel the anxiety rising in her gut as well. They could be found out at any moment, attacked and killed, their little invasion done for.

  Two minutes later, they spied out the front side entrance to the building. Except for the occasional fire from a torch or lantern, there were no signs of life from the homes across the street. Sloane did something then that she instantly regretted. She thought she could treat her daughter as one of the others but the moment she led the first group across the empty expanse, leaving Wren to come with the second group, her anxiety level skyrocketed. She couldn’t think about everyone’s safety, just hers. This was the danger. She wasn’t built for that when her daughter was present among them. Plan B, she thought.