The Hunger (Book 4): Ruined

by Brant, Jason

  “No.” Bill stood in front of her bars, close enough to reach out and grab her. “I have a vehicle set up on the other side of the reservoir. It’s fully fueled and has a few guns inside. I told Valerie I was going outside the wall to take engine parts to the men who haven’t radioed in yet. She thinks their truck broke down and I’m going to help them.”

  Cass put her head against the cool bars. “Thank you, Bill.”

  Though she’d hoped to somehow convince him to help, she couldn’t believe he’d already prepared an escape vehicle for them. While she thought he’d abandoned her in the prison all afternoon, he’d actually prepared an exit strategy and executed quite a bit of it.

  The best she’d considered him doing was unlocking her cell door, not taking care of everything while she remained locked up. Her hopes rose, and her pulse quickened as she watched him.

  Even still, she questioned why Lance hadn’t arrived yet if he had commandeered a truck. Did he not know where this camp was? Had he not actually stolen a vehicle and was still on foot? Had something happened to him?

  “Don’t thank me yet. Getting everyone out of here is going to be damn near impossible.” He stared her dead in the eyes. “If we’re going to pull this off, you have to do everything I say, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you?” Bill looked to Charlie. “Are you going to play along?”

  Charlie hurried over to the front of her cell. “I’ll do anything if you get me out of this freaking cage.”

  “Good.” Bill watched her. “Because if we get caught, we’re all dead. Valerie won’t lock us up this time; she’ll have us executed on the spot.”

  Another vehicle drove by.

  Bill flinched and strode over to the window, carefully peeking outside. When the car continued by, his shoulders relaxed and he ran a hand along the top of his head. “I have no idea why I’m doing this.”

  “You’re doing it because this is the right thing to do,” Cass said. “What’s the plan?”

  “I can order some of the guards to change posts, but not all of them. Anyone Valerie gave instructions to personally won’t listen to me, so it’s going to be tricky. The men watching your people will be easy to shoo away, but the guards along the reservoir will be difficult to deal with.” He stood in the middle of the room, switching his attention from Cass to Charlie and back again. “I’ll get your people out first using a few rowboats. Getting across the water without being seen is going to take a miracle. We’re going to wait until magic hour, because the reflection of the sun on the water makes it difficult to see across to the other side. They’ll see the boat, but it’ll be tough to make out who is in it. If we make it, I’ll come back for you two. Once I get you to the reservoir, we’ll use a boat with an engine so we can get the hell out of here in a hurry.”

  “Good.” Cass pointed at his chest, her face hardening. “If they spot you taking everyone else across the water, just leave. Don’t risk those kids so you can try to get me out. You hear me?”

  “Don’t worry about that, lady. If they see us, we’re getting out of here and you’re on your own.”

  Charlie fidgeted in her cell, but stayed quiet.

  Cass felt a pang of sorrow for the girl, but refused to put her child in more danger for anyone. Even a teenage girl who deserved her freedom.

  “We have another problem.” Bill worked his hands in front of his waist. “Something is going on with the demons. They’re extremely active right now. We think they might be planning an attack tonight.”

  “Goddamn it!” Cass hit one of the bars with the bottom of her fist. “Of course.”

  “Your husband apparently kicked a hornet’s nest last night. Now every demon in the area is wound up. It has everyone here on edge. That’s why Valerie posted so many of us on the perimeter.” He stopped rubbing his hands, stuffing them into his pockets. “But maybe we can use it to our advantage. I can tell some of the guards along the reservoir they’re needed by the gate for extra security. They’ll buy it because the demons never try to cross the water.”

  “But if the Vla—demons—are out there in full force, how are we going to drive the whole way to Baltimore?” Cass asked. “You’re asking me to risk everyone I care about by driving so close to sundown.”

  “It’s even worse than that,” Bill grunted. “Even if we get clear of here, there’s a massive nest along the highway heading south. We’ll have to get past that first. The rest of the way down to the city should be smooth sailing until we hit the suburbs. Gonna be a bitch from there on out.”

  “This sounds crazy.” Charlie said. “Baltimore is crawling with those things at night.”

  “Can your people protect us?” Bill asked.

  “Maybe if we can get close enough to The Light, but that’s it.”

  Bill turned to Cass. “I know how this sounds, but—”

  “It sounds like you’re trying to get us all killed.”

  “—you have to trust me on this.”

  “I don’t trust you at all.”

  “You don’t have a choice if you want to get out of here. It’s now or never.” Bill’s hands resumed their wringing. “It takes about an hour to get into the city. The highways are clear the whole way, so we can haul ass. If we get everyone across the water as fast as I expect, it’ll give us just a hair under an hour to make it to the city. We can do it.”

  “That doesn’t give Lance any time to find us.”

  “I’ll have a radio stashed on the boat. Once we make it there, we’ll reach out to him. If he does have the truck my men were in, then he should be listening in to our radio chatter. We’ll tell him where we are and what we’re doing.”

  “Won’t your guards hear that?” Cass asked. “Valerie?”

  “They will, but we’ll be on the road by the time they can get through the fence and around the reservoir to chase us.” Bill took a deep breath. “And they have to deal with the demons that we think are going to swarm us tonight. That’s why we have to do this now. The demons rarely come out in full force anymore, so we have to use this distraction to get out of here. If we wait another day, we might not get a chance like this again.”

  Cass frowned as she worked his plan over in her mind. He had a point about using the coming distraction outside the fence to their advantage, but the rushed nature of the whole thing had her hesitating. Then again, Lance and Megan were out there somewhere, searching for her. The longer they stayed out in the open, the more dangerous it became for them. Where could they safely spend the night, away from the reach of the infected? How long could they test their luck without a secure place to stay?

  “This is freaking nuts,” Charlie said. “We’re going to drive to another state while the sun is going down?”

  Bill didn’t respond to her, kept his attention on Cass. “We don’t have time to waste. You in?”

  Cass squeezed the bars as she mulled it over. The situation felt like an impossible one. A decision like this needed to be thought through, every angle analyzed. It had taken months of discussions and risk assessment before they’d come to an agreement to leave the island.

  Then again, as she thought about it, they’d left the island and had fallen into a world of shit ever since. They’d run from pirates and psychopaths the entire way up the East Coast before settling in Baltimore because their ship was sinking, and they’d run out of food and water.

  Maybe a rash decision would produce a better result right about now.

  Or maybe they were in deep shit no matter which fork in the road she took.

  Either way, Cass knew one thing—her baby didn’t have his daddy. If they stayed put, her boy wouldn’t even have his mother. If they went for it, there was a chance, however slim it seemed just then, that they could be together again.

  As of now, she had no say in what happened to Lincoln. Valerie could do whatever she wanted to Cass’ friends and family and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  Cass set her jaw, held his g
aze. “Do it.”

  “I’ll be back for you soon.” Bill strode to the door.

  “Bill?” Cass called after him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Find me an axe.”

  36

  Lance held the accelerator to the floor longer than he should have. The engine roared, gasoline burned at a ridiculous rate, and they rocketed away from the Vladdie behind them. Smoke plumed from the exhaust, obscuring some of his view in the side mirror.

  His mind struggled to reconcile what he’d just witnessed.

  Last night, a mindless monster had spoken to him.

  Today he’d seen them wearing the skin of a man and a deer to shield themselves from the sun. Pieces of flesh from beast and man were sewn together, a tapestry of insanity that threatened Lance’s hold on everything he thought he understood about the infected.

  Wearing the hide of other creatures pointed toward an intelligence that disturbed Lance. Sewing the hide together meant they used tools. That took things to another level. Combined with the speaking Vladdie from the night before, Lance realized that they were in even deeper shit than any of them could have imagined. If he managed to get his people freed, they had another problem waiting for them that dwarfed everything else they’d encountered so far.

  Intelligent, talking Vladdies were far more frightening than any crazy camp of sex cultists or kidnappers.

  “They’re moving around in broad daylight.” Eifort seemed out of breath as she stared into the passenger-side mirror. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get our families back.” Lance focused on the road, eased off the gas.

  “And then what? How can we keep everyone safe when they’re walking around in the sunlight?” Eifort spun toward him. “Lance, what—?”

  “Stop.” Lance grabbed her hand in his, squeezed it. “We’re going to get everyone out of there and then figure out the rest.”

  “But—”

  “If we can get back before nightfall, The Light will keep us safe,” Brandon said from the backseat. His voice was unsteady. “It’s secure from anything that will come at us.”

  Eifort closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat, breathing slowly. “Sorry. Sorry. I just… they’re so much smarter than we could have imagined.”

  Lance wondered what else they didn’t know about the beasts. If he could even think of them as beasts anymore.

  Their interactions with the Vladdies had been limited over the past year or more. The island insulated them from the outside world. In two days, they’d learned so much more than they could have possibly anticipated.

  Things were different now.

  They had to adapt or die.

  Lance didn’t plan on kicking the bucket any time soon.

  “We’ll worry about them later.” Lance listened to the men in the back crying out in fear, but ignored their pleas. “Kid, check the map. We should get to the camp pretty fast in the truck.”

  He checked the gas gauge.

  They had more than three quarters of a tank.

  More than enough to get to Baltimore.

  The kid fumbled with the map.

  Eifort asked, “Still think it’s a good idea to split up?”

  “Probably not the best idea I’ve ever had, but I don’t know what else to do.” Lance maneuvered them through a tight fit between a bus and an eighteen-wheeler. “Do you have any bright ideas?”

  “Greg and I get decent angles with our rifles while you attempt to trade our hostages for theirs.” Eifort’s eyes narrowed. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll drive the truck through whatever barricade they have set up and start shooting.”

  “What are the odds that works?”

  “Slim. But what other choice do we have? The Vladdies are swarming, and we don’t have a safe place to hunker down for the night. We get our families out now or we’re all toast.”

  Lance didn’t like her plan any more than his. If they used the truck as a battering ram, it might be too damaged to drive away even if they managed to extract the others. They were winging it at this point. A sneak attack was probably out of the question anyway, now that they’d captured the three amigos in the back. He figured it was only a matter of time before they realized they had a few people missing.

  They switched on the radio attached to the center console and listened for chatter for a while, but didn’t hear anything. Lance left it on, in case someone called for the missing men.

  It took longer for the kid to direct them toward the camp than they’d hoped. Back roads in Pennsylvania were poorly marked and hard to navigate at times. Lance remembered his days of searching for addresses in Pittsburgh, wanting to pull his hair out. He’d loved the state a lot during his time there, but its oddities often drove him a little nutty.

  The men in the back continued to call out for them until Lance finally had enough of their cries. He pulled over, then climbed out of the truck.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Finally,” the driver half yelled. “We’ll tell you how to get to our place, if you’ll just listen.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “Because the goddamn demons are walking around in broad daylight! Why do you think? You morons drove right up to a nest. Almost got us killed!”

  The other two mumbled their agreement.

  After the kid got out and conversed with the former driver for a bit, then consulted the map once more, they got going again. Greg opened the window behind the backseat, which allowed the men in the back to talk with them.

  Lance asked about their setup and security. For the most part, they remained secretive, but the driver did relay they had an expansive, high-voltage fence surrounding their land. How that was possible, Lance didn’t know. He assumed they were full of shit and just trying to make their place sound safer than it was.

  Then again, they’d managed to stay alive for several years in the middle of nowhere, so he tried to keep his mind open to the idea of a Jurassic Park-style fence keeping the infected at bay. It sounded stupid, but he’d also walked into a secured building in the middle of a city yesterday.

  “Valerie won’t negotiate with you,” Fabio-Light yelled through the window.

  Lance slowed down, quieting the wind noise whistling through the open windows. They’d kept the men hogtied face down in the bed, making it hard to hear them unless they were driving slowly. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a man.”

  “You aren’t convincing me.”

  “She hates men. There’s no way she’ll listen to you.”

  “Oh really?” Lance stopped the truck. “Then why do you geniuses stay with her?”

  “We have our reasons.”

  “Again, you aren’t convincing me.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” the driver said. “She might not even talk to you. Have the woman do the negotiating and it might work.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Eifort asked over her shoulder.

  “Because I want to go home,” the driver yelled. “I want off the back of this damn truck! If we have any chance of Valerie trading us for them, then it has to be you who talks to her!”

  Lance raised an eyebrow at Eifort.

  She gave him a shrug.

  If he were being honest with himself, he preferred the idea of her doing the negotiating anyway. He didn’t trust himself to keep his emotions in check. At the first sign of this Valerie asshole not negotiating in good faith, he was apt to lose his cool.

  Eifort would be more levelheaded.

  And if the men in the back were right, then having a pair of boobs would give her a leg up for whatever reason.

  He started them forward again, while contemplating their next move. The kid and Greg sat in the back, quiet except for the occasional directions from Brandon. Each grew more nervous with each passing mile.

  The end of the tunnel was in sight.

  And they could all hear a train barreling toward them.

  37 />
  Even though Cass understood Bill wouldn’t be back until almost dusk, she couldn’t help the nervous jitters that worsened with each passing moment. Her doubt he would go through with his insane plan grew as she watched the shadows inside the cabin lengthen.

  Charlie didn’t seem to know how to take the new developments. The teen had suffered through captivity for a long time and doubted whether Bill, a man who occasionally brought her food and often interrogated her, was sincere. More than once, she expressed her misgivings about the whole thing.

  In fact, for the past half an hour or so, it seemed as if she’d given up any hope that Bill would come through. She assumed it was all a ploy to get Cass, or herself, to give up some kind of information about The Light. Apparently, Valerie and Bill had attempted several other tricks over the past few weeks to get the girl to spill some details.

  Cass had started to believe she might be right when the head guard finally came back. Sweat soaked through his shirt and coated his face. He breathed heavily as he stomped across the room and sorted a thick set of keys attached to a ring.

  “Some of your friends are a real pain in the ass.” He jammed a key into the lock on Cass’ cell. “That Paul guy wouldn’t trust Mother Theresa.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. Why should any of us trust you, anyway?” Cass felt her hands flex involuntarily as the cell door swung open. If this whole thing proved to be one giant ruse, then now was her best chance to escape. She decided to let it play out a little longer.

  “You shouldn’t.” Bill moved to Charlie’s cell. “But you don’t have any other choice right now. None of you will get out of here without my help.”

  Cass stepped out of captivity and into freedom.

  Hopefully.

  Charlie proved even more cautious as her door opened and Bill stepped back. She tentatively inched forward, wary eyes watching the guard. “Is this for real?”

  “As real as it gets.” Bill motioned for her to turn around. “I need to zip tie your hands again.”