Bankrupt: Wipeout Book 6: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series)

by ES Richards

  “I’m sure it will be,” Samuel replied confidently. “Any place where we can have a hot meal and a roof over our heads is good by me. I trust Austin, I don’t think he would’ve agreed to go if he wasn’t sure about what the place would be like.”

  “I thought you said he’d only had one brief conversation about it?”

  “That’s true,” Samuel admitted, “but looking at our other options, I’m not sure we could do much worse.”

  Charles looked at his son and tilted his head to one side, remarking at how much Samuel had changed. He wasn’t the same man who they’d seen broadcast on the news from the Trident building all those weeks ago. Admittedly even that had been out of Samuel’s usual character, but from that moment he had changed more every day even more so than he had throughout his adolescence.

  “So just step over it there, do you see it?” Samuel pointed to the low tripwire, crouching down beside it to make sure Charles knew where it was. Miles appeared and took the bag from the old man, offering a hand on the other side in assistance.

  “Yes, yes. I’m not blind,” Charles tutted at them both. “I can walk over a little piece of wire just fine, thank you.”

  Samuel held his breath as his father walked forward, imagining them being the most famous last words anyone had ever spoken. But just as he’d boasted, Charles cleanly stepped over the tripwire and joined Miles on the other side, causing Samuel to heave a sigh of relief. With his father across, he was able to relax somewhat and he rushed back to collect Dante, with Austin and Bowie finally bringing up the rear. Only minutes later they were all on the other side, their original zone behind them and the new restricted area under their feet.

  “Okay then,” Austin beamed, pleased at how easy that had been. “Let’s go. I don’t think we’re that far away from the entrance now.”

  ***

  “Who?”

  “Luke,” Austin repeated, growing infuriated by the situation. “He was with a woman with red hair, and another guy who said he used to be a policeman. Come on, I can’t remember all of their names but I swear they said we could come here. They said it would be safe.”

  “I’m sorry pal,” the woman blocking the door shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you. No one by that name or description here.”

  “Please,” Dante stepped forward, seeing his husband’s frustration and knowing that Austin was quickly going beyond the realm of reasonable argument. “My mother just died in our apartment. My son can barely keep his eyes open he’s so tired. We need somewhere to rest, just for a few hours. Maybe we’ve got the wrong address, or maybe the people we’re looking for don’t exist at all. But please, can we just come in for a couple of hours? This city is like a fortress now and it’ll take all day for us to get back home – if we can even go back there. Please just let us in, I promise you can trust us. Please?”

  “Oh, alright,” the woman finally gave in, standing to one side and letting the group file in past her. “Straight down the hallway and through that door at the end.”

  “Thank you,” Dante smiled at her as he walked past. “Thank you so much.”

  The woman only raised her eyebrows in response, pursing her lips and closing the door behind Samuel, the last of their ensemble. The room which she led them all into was plain white, with a low bench running around a couple of the walls, broken up only by intermittent and random doorways.

  “You can stay in here for the day,” she spoke curtly, taking in each member of their group slowly. “But you need to be out again by nightfall. Is that clear?”

  “Sure,” Dante replied for everyone. “We won’t be any trouble.”

  The woman made a sound under her breath but didn’t say anything out loud, turning her back to them and walking out through one of the various doors. After she was gone, a silence claimed the room as everyone looked at each other with confused expressions on their faces. This was not what they had expected, and Austin seemed almost beside himself with astonishment.

  “I swear this was the place they said,” he defended himself. “I swear it.”

  “Maybe you misheard?” Dante suggested quietly. “You did say yourself you weren’t in the best headspace at the time.”

  “I still know what I heard, Dante,” Austin glowered at his husband. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “I wasn’t saying that…”

  “Whatever,” Austin didn’t give Dante a chance to continue. “Looks like we’re stuck here now anyway. I’m going to try and get some sleep.”

  Turning away from his husband, Austin curled his legs up to his chest and sighed. There was no way he was getting any sleep, not with everything that was swirling around in his head. This was definitely the place. He might not be able to remember exactly what the three people had said to him, or what their names were, but he could remember their faces and their instructions. They had told him of this place and said that if he brought his family, they would be taken care of. They’d said there would be medicine – something that might be able to save Meghan. It had been their duty, they’d said, to try and do the right thing and restore New York City to its former glory.

  The frustration plagued Austin as he sat in silence, unable to sleep like the others around him. He stared forward instead, his eyes boring into one of the many closed doors and questioning what was behind it. On more than one occasion he almost stood up and walked towards it, determined to heave it open and discover the truth for himself. But something always stopped him. The sound of Bowie snoring gently to his left, the thought of losing his family or causing them even more trouble. If there was a guarantee behind any one of the doors, then Austin would take it, but the trouble was he had no idea what was going to happen next. Just like everything else in his life, this room was far too unpredictable.

  “Good afternoon.”

  Austin must have drifted off to sleep at some point. When his eyes opened again, there was an unfamiliar looking man standing in the room with them and a table of food which had been wheeled in. He eyed the loaf of bread and fresh fruit greedily, eager to rush towards it and devour everything, but instead Austin forced his gaze back to the man, curious to see what he was going to say next.

  “Does this little group have a leader?” The man asked. “And if so, might I speak with him?”

  Austin paused for a couple of seconds, processing the words. Then, before anyone else could move, he stood up and presented himself, taking a few paces forward toward the mysterious man.

  “Wonderful,” the man beamed. “Would you follow me, please?”

  Without saying anything else, the man turned and strode toward the door he had likely entered through, opening it and disappearing into the darkness behind. Austin quickly looked back over his shoulder to where Dante, Samuel and the others watched on and then – before any of them could say anything to stop him – he walked forward and disappeared into the darkness behind the stranger.

  No sooner had the door closed behind him, than a piercing alarm blared out from the walls, drowning Austin in noise as he frantically tried to figure out what was happening. All of a sudden, his heart was filled with dread.

  Chapter 6

  Wiping blood from his face, Dennis stopped the sticky red liquid from dripping into his eye and looked up. The deck of the ship was quiet now. The gunfight was over. But evidence of its brutality remained. What had once been a clean, varnished wooden deck was now stained with crimson, the blood cascading along the grooves in the deck and making its way toward the ocean below. Several bodies lay on the deck too, Dennis unable to avoid the massacre no matter where he looked.

  The element of surprise had worked well for his team, three of them had managed to get onto the ship before the alarm had been raised. A teenage boy – likely the son of someone else higher up on the ship – spotted them, dropping the bundle of fabric he carried in his arms and running away, shouting something in Chinese. After that everyone turned and looked in their direction, noticing the locals of Kauai climbing aboard in
place of their paler-skinned associates.

  “Whoa now,” Dennis spoke as several rifles were pointed in his direction. he held his hands up to indicate that he wasn’t there to start a war, but before he was able to utter another word somewhere on deck a trigger was squeezed and gunfire erupted.

  Dennis hit the deck as fast as he could, shielding his head and grabbing his pistol in one fluid moment. There wasn’t time to think after that – he just needed to fire. Jason collapsed next to him after reaching the top of the ladder they’d climbed up, a bullet whizzing past his head and missing by no more than an inch. They needed to get everyone up and on board as quickly as possible if they stood any chance of winning this battle, the Chinese may be unprepared, but they still outnumbered them and if Dennis’ team didn’t utilize the element of surprise, he knew things could turn out very bad for them very quickly.

  There was nothing for it but to fire blindly into the crowd on deck. Dennis did his best to avoid the fleeing women and children that desperately ran for protection, sighting his pistol on armed and threatening men.

  A burning sensation tore through Dennis’ calf and he cried out, clutching the back of his leg where blood now made his pants wet. For a couple of seconds, the pain was blinding, making him numb to everything else going on and blurring the battle into the background. Then, just as suddenly as the pain had stopped him, the rest of the world came flooding back and Dennis was back in the action, just the weapon in his hand there to protect him against an even worse fate. Placing his trust in his abilities, he faced the enemy and opened fire again.

  Bodies fell at an alarming rate, once Dennis’ team were all on the deck of the ship, they were much more equipped for the ambush than the Chinese were. Several tried to run for it and hide inside, weaving through the narrow galleys in a desperate bid for safety. Upon Dennis’ instruction, that was quickly cut off – blood splattered the interior walls of the ship just the same as the outside, those who wouldn’t stop and surrender finding a quick and easy death.

  The whole ordeal couldn’t have gone on for more than a few short minutes, but by the time the madness ended and the deck of the ship grew quiet again, there were more than enough bodies littering the once clean wood.

  “How did we pull that off?”

  “It’s not an achievement, Jason,” Dennis scolded his companion with a shake of his head, looking away from the mess they had made. “They were still people.”

  “I didn’t mean that, boss,” Jason replied awkwardly. “I just – I can’t believe we’re still standing to be honest.”

  “Well, we better make it worth it. Come on,” Dennis started to walk across the deck, heading to the engine room where Fran was guarding all the crew members who had been smart enough to surrender. “Let’s sort out what we came here for and get back to the island. We’re far from finished yet.”

  Striding across the deck of the ship, Dennis passed a number of Chinese bodies as well as a few he recognized. He deliberately didn’t look at the faces of those he knew, able to tell from a single glance exactly who they had lost in the battle to win the ship. The causalities on their side were far fewer, but there were still lives that had been lost. Deaths that Dennis had been hoping to avoid. Just like Indra on the beach, he vowed that they would not die in vain and that things on Kauai would be returned to normal in their honor.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” Dennis announced as he walked into the engine room, Fran holding open the door for him, her rifle aimed at the ground. Dennis held his arms up in the air to show that his hands were free of any weapons, just like he first had when he stepped foot on the deck of the ship. The teenage boy who had raised the alarm was in the engine room now and just like before he stared at Dennis, only this time he said nothing, cowering away in fear instead.

  “Look,” Dennis made a point of opening his jacket out, showing the people that he didn’t even have a weapon on him anymore. The thought of picking up a gun again any time soon made him shudder, the reality of doing what needed to be done to survive was far harsher than he had ever imagined. “It’s okay. Do any of you speak English?”

  Whispers in a language Dennis didn’t understand rippled through the engine room as those that could understand him passed the message on. Narrowing his eyes, Dennis tried to catch sight of those who had relayed his words first, keen for a one-on-one conversation rather than addressing the frightened group. To his surprise, it was once again the teenage boy who stood out, the young man eventually taking a step forward.

  “What do you want? Why have you come here?”

  Dennis smiled, taking a step forward to meet the boy and holding out his hand in greeting. “My name is Dennis,” he introduced himself, “what is yours?”

  “Kai. Why are you here?”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Kai,” Dennis replied, holding out his hand for a couple more seconds before returning it to his side, Kai’s refusal to shake clear. “And that’s an interesting question you ask. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t come to our home in the first place. Can you tell me why you came to Kauai? What are you doing here?”

  Kai looked back over his shoulder to the group of people behind him, several of them shaking their heads and murmuring under their breath. Dennis wished he wasn’t having this conversation with a teenager, already feeling like he wasn’t going to get the answers he wanted, but he had to try. All this time they had been flying blind as to why the Chinese had come to Kauai in the first place, the soldiers on the island told them nothing and neither Dennis nor anyone else had the faintest idea what was happening in the rest of the world. They needed to know the truth, they needed to understand what had happened.

  “Dennis?”

  Turning around, Dennis looked to Bryce who was standing by the door, a strange expression on his face. The man was sort of pale, his tanned skin a peculiar shade of green.

  “What?”

  “You should come with me boss,” Bryce spoke quietly. “We’ve…we’ve found your brother.”

  Dennis was out of the engine room as fast as his legs could carry him, brushing past Fran by the door and causing Bryce to stumble as he picked up his feet to move as well. Dennis didn’t ask any questions as Bryce led him through the ship, turning down tiny passages with Chinese instructions printed above them, going deeper and deeper into the belly of the ship until Dennis doubted whether he would be able to find his way back out. But getting out wasn’t what he cared about right now, finding his brother was all he could focus on.

  It was no secret across Kauai that Dennis and Jamie didn’t have a normal brotherly relationship. In fact, many would say that the two siblings hardly had any relationship at all. It hadn’t always been like that; growing up, Dennis and Jamie were incredibly close – they had always liked different things and had different hobbies, but their bond as brothers kept them close and meant they could rely on each other no matter what.

  It wasn’t like they had grown apart as they got older either, despite Dennis going away to study and Jamie remaining on the island, every time Dennis had returned their relationship picked up exactly where it had left off. It was like they hadn’t been apart, the two of them thick as thieves and always with smiles on their faces.

  Then in just a few short weeks, everything changed. But as Dennis raced through the ship with the promise of seeing his brother again, it wasn’t their falling out or the past couple of years of silence that flashed through his head. It was the childhood memories, the laughter and friendship – that was the brother he was hoping to find and in recent days, that was the brother he had realized he missed. It was true what they said, it wasn’t until something was truly lost that you realized what had always been there. When he entered the room where his brother sat though, that smiling face was hardly recognizable.

  Jamie was perched on a wooden chair in front of a small, metal cell. The door of the cell was open, but Dennis could tell that had been a recent adjustment to the room. Jamie barely had the strength to lift
his head to see who had entered, his eyes flickering up at Dennis and then dropping back down to the floor.

  “Jamie,” Dennis knelt in front of his brother, reluctant to touch him in case it caused any pain. Jamie was covered in bruises, his skin welted and raised in places from numerous beatings. One of his eyes was almost entirely swollen over from a gash above his eyebrow, dried blood coating his skin and mixing with a layer of dirt.

  It looked like he hadn’t eaten in almost a week, his clothes hanging off his body where they were torn and ripped. His face was gaunt and his cheeks hollow, he was a shell of the man that had left Kauai, a ghost in his brother’s body.

  “What did they do to you?”

  The words escaped Dennis like a sigh, the question hanging in the air as Jamie was too weak to answer. It didn’t need a response either, the evidence was right there in front of his eyes. Dennis just couldn’t believe it. He felt anger rising up inside of him and for a split second all those bodies which lay on the deck of the ship weren’t enough. He wanted to hurt someone, to make someone pay for what they had done to his brother, but as he looked at Jamie for longer, he slowly came to the conclusion that more violence wasn’t the answer. More pain wasn’t going to solve anything. Jamie needed to be taken care of, he needed to be taken home and looked after in the comfort of his own bed, nursed back to health by those that loved him. Revenge would come in its own form for Dennis, but before that he just needed some understanding.

  “I’m going to get you out of here, Jamie,” he whispered to his brother softly, gently resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to look after you now. Everything is going to be fine.”

  Standing up, Dennis then turned to Bryce who stood quietly at the door behind him. “Get him a change of clothes,” Dennis instructed. “And for pity’s sake, get him some food and water, then bring him out on deck. We’re going to get him home. You hear that, Jamie?” Dennis looked back at his brother. “We’re going to get you home. Tonight. Just hold on.”