by Rosaria, A.
Sarah bolted, head held down, zig-zagging as she went. Bullets hit the ground near her and snapped the surrounding air. A marksman wouldn’t have missed her at this distance. She didn’t see Geon. There was no guarantee he would keep the door open for her. If he suspected that the enemy got too close, he would slam the door in her face.
She fished out the speed loader from her pocket and loaded her revolver. Her pursuers were taking potshots at her, wasting time, allowing her to increase the distance between them to a hundred yards. She shot at them while running. The bullets went everywhere with no hope of hitting a thing, yet the men sought cover again, increasing her chance to escape.
The gap between them was big enough that even with their goggles they wouldn’t see much of her. She followed the bend in the road and sprinted the stretch ahead. Still no Geon. She guessed by now he must have reached the entrance. She loaded her gun again and shot behind her, knowing they couldn’t have reached the bend yet. She hoped the shots fired would make them hesitate, expecting her to wait for them to pop out. By now even if they followed her she wouldn’t be able to see them. She reached the branch in the road to the dead end. The door was open and Geon was waiting, an assault rifle in his hand.
Vance was there too, and so was Priss. Priss held her Sig in hand and Vance carried a rifle. Sarah rushed inside. Priss followed. Vance hesitated at the threshold. “What’s going on?”
Geon pushed him inside, sending him crashing to the floor, and then shut the door. “Fool, you want them to find us?”
Sarah collapsed down. Between pants, she said, “That was close.”
Priss glared at her. Vance watched on knowingly. She realized Priss wouldn’t say anything now, but after the crisis, there would be a reckoning.
“Return to your rooms and stay there till the morning. We will figure this out by then,” Geon said.
Sarah stood up. She avoided Priss and hurried away from them all. Things seemed to go from bad to worse. She should be used to that by now. It was foolish thinking things would ever go smoothly after they found this hideout. Nothing worth it was ever easy to keep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A knock on the door. Sarah sat up straight. Her arm hurt where the bullet had grazed it. Untreated, it was an infection waiting to happen. She needed rest, not visitors. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” came a nasal voice.
Her doing, and the son of a bitch deserved it. “Go away.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s not morning yet.”
“It’s not like you were sleeping. Not with what’s going on.”
No, she wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t with about twenty men camped outside at their front door.
“Are they still there?”
“We have to talk.”
“I will not talk to her.”
“Not about that. Come on, don’t be such a bitch. It’s stupid talking to a door.”
Sarah opened the door. Geon stood at the threshold, holding a rifle, and slung over his shoulder an AK-100. He still wore the black guard uniform, as did she. They seemed like a team, though she didn’t feel like one. Geon offered her the rifle. She pointed at her P90 leaning against her bed. He stepped inside and handed her the rifle, a bulky thing about twice the size of the P90.
“For what I got planned, we need more range and stopping power.”
“You mean loud and cumbersome.”
He shut the door. “No. Hard-hitting and far-reaching.”
She weighed the rifle in her hands. It was surprisingly light. “What model is this?”
“None you’ve heard of, it never got to market. What matters is that it will hit anything you aim at, killing your target, or making him wish you did.”
Sarah pointed at the assault rifle strapped over his shoulder. “Is that a grenade launcher attached to it?”
Geon grinned. “Sure it is.”
His tone toward her was different. It could be her breaking his nose made him sound different. No, that wasn’t it. Could it be he hated her a little less?
“Come on, move your lazy ass, we have some hunting to do.”
She followed him outside. “What about Priss and Vance?”
He pressed his index finger to his lips. “Keep quiet and there will be nothing about Priss and Vance, especially Vance.”
“You don’t trust him.”
“Do you?”
“After what he did? Not one bit.”
They snuck up the stairs to the top level. Sarah stopped at the door and eyed the screen next to it showing a feed from the outside cameras. Tents stood raised in the clearing, guarded by men holding military-grade assault rifles.
“Are you planning a frontal assault? If you are, I’m out.”
Geon didn’t answer. He pressed his right hand against a panel at a door she failed to notice before. Part of the wall slid aside. Walking up to him, she wondered about how many secrets this base had. The door opened inward to a hall running straight ahead. As they entered, emergency lights lit up along the floor, leading the way into a tunnel that seemed to go on forever. It inclined after a turn.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
His broad shoulder faded in and out as the darkness engulfed him, making it difficult for her to see as he led the way. Not for the first time she wondered about what she got herself into by trusting him. They stopped at a dead end. “Now what?”
“Now we climb.” Geon climbed the rungs fastened against the wall. Darkness swallowed him as he went up. Sarah sighed and grabbed the rung. The cold, damp steel felt slippery. She dried her hands and started climbing. Thirty feet up, she bumped into him and cried out in surprise.
“Took your damn time.”
Sarah heard metal sliding on metal followed by the rush of cold air. Geon climbed out and offered her a hand. She ignored him and made her own way through the narrow shaft. He smirked at her, amused. Trees surrounded her. Geon slid the metal door in place. He winked at her while he shoved a fake brush that was indistinguishable from a real one on top of the hole. “Emergency exit,” he explained.
Sarah followed him up to a ledge and observed the camp beneath them. Sarah stepped back and whispered, “Are you crazy? They’ll see us.”
“They’ll see us soon enough, but it will be too late by then.” He beckoned her to come closer. She did. The men guarding the camp were looking everywhere but up. She counted ten two-person tents and five men guarding them. At least twenty men and at most twenty-five.
“There were at least a hundred when they captured you.”
“Well, they ain’t here now. You drop the two to the right and I’ll take the other three.”
The campfire lit her targets clearly. The two young men were not much older than herself. Geon counted down from three. She hated herself for what she was about to do. At zero, she squeezed the trigger twice. The first bullet hit one man in the chest, sending him to his knees. The second man looked up. Sarah shot him in the chest. They turned fast. In three quick shots, Geon ended his targets. All clean headshots. In the silent seconds that followed, he frowned at her. The scrutiny became too much for her.
She focused on what was happening below. The newly turned zombies, the men she had shot in the chest, launched themselves at the men exiting the tents. In the confusion that followed, the men fired blindly around, hitting the zombie’s body instead of the head, missing altogether, and hitting their own. After the initial panic, they coordinated their movements better. Sarah headshot a man giving orders. Leaderless, the men fell in a panic again. Geon started shooting. By the time the men downed the last zombie and realized they were being attacked from above, about half of them were on the ground, dead or dying.
Bullets hit the ridge and went zipping in the air past Sarah. She backed away. Geon peeked over the ridge and back. Bullets snapped the air. He barked out laughing. “We stirred the hornet nest real good.”
“What now?”
“Follow me!”
They
followed the ridge out of sight from those below. Geon stopped near a boulder about a hundred yards away from the camp. He rummaged through his backpack and took out a canvas rope and a climbing anchor. He wedged the anchor between a tear in a nearby boulder, attached the robe to the anchor, grabbed the rope, and put his weight behind it, pulling. It held. Geon wrapped the rope around his body.
“Go back to the ledge. Wait till you hear my signal before you start shooting.”
Geon didn’t wait for her to answer. He rappelled down and was away before she could say something. He went down fast. She sprinted back to the ridge. She checked her ammo and waited. A gun cracked. Sarah leaned over and aimed at the men not facing her. Her bullets ripped through their backs, sending them down in screams. Geon made short order with the ones left standing. It was a massacre. With the last man down, Sarah’s knees buckled under her, her bum hit the ground hard, tears streaked down her cheeks, and her hands trembled. They were clean but still soiled in the blood of the men she just killed. She didn’t grasp why her body reacted like this. She didn’t feel it. She didn’t want to experience it.
Some time must have passed, because Geon appeared at her side. “We’re not finished. We need to dispose of the bodies.”
She looked up at him, not understanding. Geon cocked his head. His grin faded. “Shit,” he said.
Geon helped her up, hugged her, and let her go almost immediately. “They needed dying. You understand that, do you?”
Sarah wiped her eyes. “Was it? Isn’t it a choice?”
“If the choice is between them or us, it really isn’t one.”
Sarah observed the camp. One lone zombie shuffled on a field of corpses. They’d killed twenty men. Twenty lives destroyed so she could live. She never thought about having to make these kinds of decisions or about what it meant when someone’s life got snuffed out and would never become what they were supposed to be. What about their loved ones? What about their dreams? Some must have had them. And she ruined it for them all.
“Do we tell the others?”
“No, we did this, we’ll clean it up.”
Sarah faced him. He examined her, but his usual cold cruel eyes didn’t send chills over her back anymore. She wondered if her own eyes were looking back at him in the same way. “Why me?”
“Why you what?”
“Why ask me along?”
Geon smirked. “I can trust you to go through with what needs to be done. But I made a mistake thinking killing would not affect you.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry about that.”
Sarah wondered if he really meant it. He seemed like a pragmatic killer, a man who shot her on purpose to prove a point. She decided he didn’t care, and that it didn’t matter. It changed nothing.
“Will you teach me how to go down the rope like you did?”
Geon smiled the first genuine smile she’d ever gotten from him. “Okay.”
He showed her how to secure the anchor and how to wrap the ropes around her body. Next, he explained what to do while going down the cliff. Sarah inched to the edge with her back turned to it. Geon instructed her a few times how to climb over the edge. When she did, her limbs grew cold and fingers clumsy. She was sure she would fall, and she did. Her feet slipped out, she slid over the ledge and hit her chest against the rock. However, the rope held tight. If she had not been secured by the rope, she would have plummeted to her death. Holding herself in place, she looked up at Geon. He looked down at her. “You can do it.”
She wondered how high she was.
“Don’t look down. Keep the rope tight and your feet on the rocks. Give a little slag when you descend.”
“Is this really a good idea?”
“Well, it was your idea to try to, so no, not likely.”
Sarah grimaced. He was being such an asshole, but in a way his words stung less. She got her feet under her body and the rock, pushed out, and started her slow descent. The rope felt tight in her hands. The rock smelled of earth. The wind, chilly cold, made her cheeks blush. Hanging on the rock, she felt alone. The idea she could slip and fall to her death horrified and exhilarated her at the same time. Most important of all, for a moment, no matter how short, she didn’t ponder about what they had done. With both feet back on the ground, reality set in.
The smell of shit and piss hit her before she reached the corpses. Not everyone got their head blasted off; the immune stayed down along with everyone who got their brain or spine destroyed. The single remaining zombie met them on the road. Fresh zombies didn’t look much different from the living. The only signs were the awkward walk and glazed eyes. It moaned when it noticed Sarah. The zombie, once a young, attractive man, shambled her way with outstretched arms. Sarah unsheathed her knife. Sick to her stomach, she walked up to him and plunged the knife to the hilt into its eye socket. The zombie dropped at her feet.
“Good job,” Geon said behind her.
Sarah wiped her blade on her pants. She made a mental note to throw them away once done. By the time they were finished, she expected to be under grime and gore and would throw everything she wore away. There was no point cleaning her clothes with so many spares she could choose from.
Together, they started with a corpse of a heavyset man. She held one foot and Geon the other. Sarah felt the strain in her back as she dragged on.
“Have you noticed something?” Geon said.
“What?”
“None of them are slender.”
They pushed the man over the ridge. The corpse tumbled down and smacked hard on top of a boulder.
“They must have fed themselves well. They were holding a big BBQ party when they locked you up in the cage.”
“Yeah, whatever they were doing to survive worked, until today that is.”
Sarah wondered—in a large group with lots of women and fewer men, how would the women survive without their men? Did she doom another forty people by killing these men? “And the women and children?”
“Whatever they had going for them, it’s over now.”
They returned to collect another body to dispose of, a well-built man with the back of his head cratered. Geon bent over and picked up a still intact night vision goggle. Several lay on the ground. No wonder they traveled the night. Little good it did them during the ambush.
“You remember who else owned one of these?” Geon passed her the goggles. It was the same model as the one Vance lent her.
“Son of a bitch.”
Geon nodded. “Mr. Loverboy has some explaining to do.”
There was something else she had borrowed from Vance when she went looking for Geon. Sarah put the goggles on. A big X lit up where the hidden door was. She tore the goggles off and pushed them at Geon. “See for yourself.”
He did and whistled. “No wonder they found us.”
Sarah wanted to drag Vance out and do to him what she had done to the others. Geon grabbed her by the arm. “Not now, later.”
Sarah glared at the spot of the big invisible X and felt fatigue grip her. This would break Priss’s heart. Suddenly she didn’t want to go inside. She nodded and went back to disposing of the bodies.
After two hours they finished pushing all the corpses down into the precipice. These men were out to hurt them, yet she felt callous about disposing of them like this. Done with the gruesome task, they dismantled the camp. They dumped the tents after the corpses. The only thing hinting to their besiegers were the dark splotches where their blood had dried into the ground. Finished, dirty, and tired, she made her way back to their stronghold.
“What now?” she asked while Geon opened the hidden door.
“Now we rest.”
Sarah followed Geon inside. She heard the door lock behind her.
“What about Vance?”
“Deal with him in the morning.”
“What about Priss?”
Geon’s eyes turned hard. “She’s a smart girl, she’ll see through him once faced with the facts.”
Vance and Priss most like
ly were asleep. Thanks to the thick walls, no sound came in or out. Come morning, it would be a big surprise for Vance when he noticed his comrades had disappeared in thin air. Geon was right. It was better to postpone the confrontation. Once facing reality, he wouldn’t be able to fend off the attack. And Priss wouldn’t be able to deny what needed to happen. Sarah felt satisfaction knowing Vance would die this morning. Dawn was close. Two to three hours of sleep and this part of her story would finally be over and she could focus on the future. A future with her and Priss, together.
Geon and Sarah went to their rooms without goodbyes or any words exchanged. She slid out of her clothes before entering her room and left the reeking bunch outside. She threw her naked body on her bed, too exhausted to remember or care if she shut the door. The moment her body hit the soft bed, she fell in a deep, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Something cold pressed against Sarah’s throat. She groaned and opened her eyes. Her room was dark. She didn’t remember turning off the light. She stirred. A sharp pain cut at her throat. She stiffened. A hand on her back pinned her down on her bed.
“You thought you would get the better of me, didn’t you?”
“Vance?” she said, voice croaking.
The knife traced her neck and over the small of her back. He pressed the tip against her lower spine. “Maybe I should cripple you. Wouldn’t that be fun? How long do you think that old jackass will keep you around when you are no use to him? I’m sure not long, not long at all.”
Panic welled up inside, making it difficult to concentrate. Sarah forced herself to keep a steady breath.
“Not smart leaving your door open. Gramps kept his locked, leaving me only you to deal with. Too bad. I prefer leaving no loose ends behind me. We are similar on that end, at least. I know what you did to my friends.”
The knife tip traced between her butt cheeks. Sarah clenched her butt as she felt the cold blade against them.
“Oh, wow, you’ve been working out. Buns of steel. I should stick you like a pig. Roast you on a fire. Tasty meat like yours, a pity to waste.”
