Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  “Hey, Pacifist,” one of the fighters called.

  Oliver started. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Is anyone else here concerned about the deaths of despots and their lackeys?”

  He refrained from glancing in Cedric’s direction. “What do you want?”

  “We don’t have any sleeping gear for you and your little friend,” the fighter said.

  Oliver almost told him to point them to the nearest town, but he caught the words before they could escape his mouth. “We’ll be fine on the floor by the fire.” It was only mid-afternoon. Perhaps he and Cedric could still slip out unseen.

  And leave a trail of footprints showing the exact direction they had gone, giving that psychopath Abel Ross every opportunity to corner and dispose of them.

  He decided to try a different tactic.

  “Not that it matters whether we have anywhere to sleep,” he said in a low voice to Kennedy. “I’m pretty sure your dad’s planning to kill us.”

  Her face twisted in outrage. “How could you say such a thing? How would you like it if I said something like that about your father?”

  Oliver shrugged. “It might be true, for all I know. I don’t remember him. Do you think all the adults back at Prom-F deserved to die?”

  She was almost a head shorter than him, but she thrust her face as close to his as she could. Her narrowed eyes exuded contempt. “Yes,” she said, emphasizing that single word.

  That lump of misgivings in his throat knotted up even more. He swallowed to quell his jittery nerves. “If that’s true, then here’s a strange conundrum: why didn’t you kill them back when you had your chance?” She recoiled, wide-eyed. He continued. “You had a full two or three hours’ free rein at Prom-F, and yet, not a single administrator died. If you think they deserved to die, why didn’t you just have them all kill each other?”

  Her mouth opened and shut. “I—I wouldn’t have gotten away with it.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Oliver said. “I’m not sure why you want to play the role of murderous psychopath, but maybe if you repeat the lie long enough, you’ll believe it.”

  She stalked off into the kitchen.

  “If everyone really died,” said Cedric, “it’s as much your fault as hers.”

  “Shut it, boot-lick,” said Oliver, still watching the doorway where Kennedy had disappeared. It was another gamble, sending her off in a snit somewhere else. If he could bring to mind her humanity, her mercy in sparing the lives of the administrators and handlers in those hours of complete power over them, perhaps he could trigger her to spare others.

  He settled near the fire, absorbing its warmth, his eyes often straying to the windows as the minutes ticked by. He had counted a dozen fighters at this farmhouse along with Abel and Kennedy. If the Brotherhood was engaging in another attack on Prometheus, it would happen sooner rather than later. Likely the other units were hunkering down at waypoints as well, waiting for the coming cover of darkness to make any long-range travels.

  And Abel Ross would never take a broad-spectrum null with him on the excursion. Oliver would interfere with any projections the man intended Kennedy to employ.

  “Pacifist,” one of the fighters barked. Oliver wondered at what point that had become his nickname. “Make yourself useful and get some more firewood. It’s out in the shed behind the house. Take your little friend with you and grab as much as you can.”

  “He doesn’t have a coat,” Oliver said.

  The fighter gestured to the piles against the wall. “Grab one from the gear, then.”

  Oliver didn’t question the command. He moved forward, pretending to sift through the coats there. He pocketed a couple of packaged fruit bars and filched an extra pair of gloves and a length of the nylon rope. He hid the latter two items beneath the coat that was, ostensibly, for Cedric. He was fairly certain that the fighter who had given him his task saw at least some of the thefts, but the man didn’t intervene.

  The task itself was random enough, but that careless reaction strengthened Oliver’s worries. People only ignored theft when the items didn’t matter or when they knew they’d get them back.

  Cedric reluctantly joined him. “You can put the coat on outside,” said Oliver, careful to keep any tremors from his voice. “We’d better hurry. We don’t want the fire to get low, especially if we have to sleep by it tonight.”

  As they exited the farmhouse, he shoved the extra gloves into his pocket, alongside the ones he’d gotten back from Cedric earlier. Out on the porch, he handed the coat to Cedric and slipped the rope underneath his own under the pretense of buttoning it.

  “Why do we have to fetch firewood?” Cedric asked sullenly. “They’ve got half a dozen guys upstairs smoking and playing cards.”

  Oliver had smelled the smoke and had his suspicions about it. Tobacco had been forbidden at the Prometheus campuses, but during his time at Prom-A, where handlers lived off-campus, he’d had his share of encounters with cigarette smokers. He’d had a few run-ins with smokers of a different type, too, and he suspected this group was the latter.

  Which was in his favor, all things considered.

  At Oliver’s last count there were seven men in the loft, three in the kitchen, and the one in the great room who had issued the command for more firewood. That left one fighter guarding the barn.

  He started down the steps of the porch, the rope pinned to his side with one arm. The fighter who had ordered him to fetch the wood poked his head out the door. “The shed is that direction,” he said, pointing the long way around the house, the opposite direction of the barn where they had left the transport.

  Oliver swallowed and nodded. He set off with Cedric in his wake. As they neared the corner of the house, he slowed, skirting against the wall.

  “What’re you—” Cedric started, but Oliver motioned him to silence.

  Quickly he checked around the corner. The side aspect of the house was clear. “Come on,” he said, motioning for Cedric to follow.

  “What is wrong with you?” the boy asked. “If they were going to kill us, wouldn’t they have done it already?”

  “You think he wants to kill us in front of his own daughter?” Oliver sidled up to the back corner of the house and glanced around it quickly. It, too, was clear.

  The woodshed stood in the snow that drifted across the back yard. Footsteps led to and from it, meaning others had already come this way. He hadn’t seen Abel in a good twenty minutes at least; the man had passed through the front room on his way to another part of the farmhouse. There was a back door here that gave access to the shed, though.

  “What are the chances he’s waiting out there for us?” Oliver asked.

  Cedric fidgeted, nervous about the possibility. “What’re we supposed to do?”

  Oliver let the length of rope drop from beneath his coat. He gathered it from the ground. “We can tie the shed shut. You take one end, I’ll take the other. Walk close together, and when we get to the shed door, we each bolt around to the back and tie a knot there.”

  “That’s stupid,” said Cedric.

  It was. In all likelihood Abel would have a knife and would easily cut through the rope’s barrier, especially if there was any give to it at all.

  “You have a better plan?” Oliver asked.

  Cedric didn’t. Reluctantly he accepted one end of the nylon rope. They walked together, following the footprints to the shed. Oliver calculated their dismal chances along the way.

  If Abel really was lying in wait, he would have a handgun at the very least. He held the tactical advantage.

  “You’re going to feel really dumb when it turns out there’s no one there,” Cedric whispered.

  “Maybe,” said Oliver. Their shoes crunched through the top crystalized layers of snow, and their breaths puffed clouds of vapor into the air. The door was ten steps away, then five, then one. Oliver reached his hand with the rope toward the handle, but he slipped the end through it instead of pushing down on the l
atch.

  “Run,” he whispered.

  They bolted in opposite directions around the small outbuilding and met in the back, where Oliver whipped his end of the rope around Cedric’s and pulled tight. From within, a scuffling noise sounded.

  “Keep it tight!” Oliver instructed, tying the square on the knot as quickly as he could.

  The rope jerked out of his hands as someone tried to open the woodshed door, but it caught against the wall, its knot holding fast.

  From within, Abel Ross let loose a string of curse words.

  Oliver grabbed Cedric by the arm and pushed him up against the wall of the shed. The boy, wide-eyed, remained there as the rope restraint dropped to the ground.

  Abel had a knife with him after all.

  Footsteps sounded in the snow on the left side of the shed. Oliver tugged Cedric to the right, rounding the corner. They couldn’t keep the shed between them and Abel for long, but at the moment, it was their best option.

  “You boys are just delaying the inevitable,” Abel said from the back of the shed. Oliver rounded the front where the door stood open. On instinct he shoved Cedric inside and followed, picking up a stout piece of wood to use as a weapon. Cedric did the same. Abel’s footsteps moved around the outside of the shed.

  Then there was silence.

  The door moved slightly, as though brushed by a breeze. A shadow shifted at its base.

  Oliver kicked it outward and felt it contact with a body. He bolted from the enclosed space. Abel had stumbled back onto the ground from the force of the swinging door. In the snow a few feet from him lay the handgun he had lost his grip on.

  The man rolled, frantic to reclaim his weapon, but Oliver got to it first. Abel froze as the teenager pointed his own gun straight at him. Adrenaline pulsed through Oliver’s veins on a thundering heartbeat. He backed up a few steps to put some distance between him and his would-be killer.

  “Now, now,” the scruffy man said. He lifted his hands in the air and started to get up.

  “Stay down,” Oliver commanded. “You don’t move a muscle without my say-so. Cedric, get over here.”

  The younger null scrambled to his side, eyes as wide as dinner plates.

  “I’ll wager you don’t even know how to fire that thing,” said Abel.

  “And I’ll wager you have it set so that all I have to do is pull the trigger,” Oliver replied.

  A grudging acknowledgment crossed the man’s face. “So what now?”

  “Now you lie flat on the ground with your face in the snow and your hands over your head.” Oliver backed up another pace.

  “The further you get from me, the less likely you are to hit me if you fire,” Abel said.

  Oliver’s scoff cut through the afternoon air. “And the further I get from you the further you have to run to get your gun back.”

  “You don’t have it in you to shoot.”

  “That’s not a gamble you want to take. Me killing you would save upwards of five hundred lives at Prom-B, and who knows how many others on the rampages you’re planning after that.”

  “Then pull the trigger.”

  “Okay.” He raised the gun as though to obey, only to watch in perverse amusement as Abel flinched. “Not so ready to die, are you?”

  “I’m gonna strangle you with my bare hands, kid.” Abel wore a smile and the calm, calculating assurance of one who spoke only the simplest of truths.

  “Cedric, run for the barn,” Oliver said under his breath.

  “You think you can get away from here?” Abel jeered.

  “If you’re going to strangle me, I’ve got nothing to lose trying,” Oliver said. Cedric had already taken off across the yard. The scruffy man watched him go, bitterness upon his face. Oliver drew his attention back. “It’s too bad most of your crew is buzzed up in the loft. The rest of them are probably busy keeping Kennedy from looking out any of the back windows. Wouldn’t want her to see what kind of a monster Daddy really is, would we?”

  Abel’s mouth twisted in a sneer. On his knees, arms raised to the sky, he was in no position to attack. Something in Oliver’s words snapped his inner restraint, though. With a growl he whipped a knife from beneath his sleeve and lunged forward in the snow.

  So Oliver pulled the trigger.

  A deafening crack cut through the air. He had been aiming for critical mass, intending to hit the man’s torso. He hadn’t taken into account the recoil of the gun. It jerked up in his hand. In that moment, he registered the strange phenomenon of a shell casing ejecting from the chamber in a spinning arc, the acrid smell of black powder clinging to it.

  The casing and Abel Ross both hit the ground. A spray of blood flowered out across the pristine whiteness of snow. The man sucked in a deep breath, clutching at his left shoulder.

  Oliver had already bolted for the barn, still clinging to his gun. Abel’s howls followed him across the broad expanse.

  The gunshot should have brought fighters running, but no one immediately appeared.

  Meaning they had expected a gunshot. Hadn’t one of them sent Oliver and Cedric out to be killed?

  Abel’s hollers drew attention quick enough, though. As Oliver reached the door to the barn, he heard fighters exit from the back door. Kennedy’s shriek echoed through the open farmland.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Oliver squelched his instinctive guilt and ducked inside, only to discover Cedric standing over the prone body of another fighter, a rifle in his hands.

  “What happened?”

  “He was questioning why I was here,” the younger null said, “and then when the gun went off outside, he started that direction, so I grabbed his rifle from against the wall and hit him in the back of the head.”

  Oliver sucked in an appreciative breath, but there was no time to rain accolades upon the younger null’s violence.

  “We gotta get out of here. Quick. Bring the rifle.” He ran for the snowmobile on the far side of the barn’s enclosure, stowing the handgun in his pocket as he went. The vehicle’s controls consisted of nothing more than a brake and a throttle. He’d watched the operators the past two nights. He was pretty sure he could keep it running. The real issue was the pull-cord to start it.

  “Help me,” he said. Together they pushed the craft closer to the barn door, which stood open with a gap just large enough for them to pass through. The color red caught Oliver’s periphery. Within the nearest horse stall sat a dozen or more plastic fuel canisters. He ducked inside to snatch one. Shouts sounded outside the other end of the barn.

  The fighters not tending to Abel would be coming for the two boys.

  “Get on,” he told Cedric. “Tap the throttle when I pull the cord.”

  Cedric didn’t question orders, thankfully. He’d secured the rifle cross-wise over his back. Astride the snowmobile, he clutched the brakes with his left hand, and the thumb of his right hand moved to work the throttle.

  Oliver pulled. The engine sputtered.

  “You kids! We have you out-armed!” someone shouted from the other door. “Come out now, or else!”

  He pulled again. It turned, but didn’t catch.

  “Come on,” he muttered under his breath, and he pulled a third time. Cedric overcompensated with the throttle, and the engine roared to life. Oliver leapt astride the snowmobile as the younger boy let go of the brake. The gas can and the rifle sat between them, a volatile sight as the machine jolted out into the snowy yard.

  Oliver reached around Cedric to push the throttle to its limit.

  Shouts and gunfire sounded behind him.

  “They’re just going to follow us,” Cedric yelled over the noise of the engine.

  “They’ll try,” Oliver said grimly. More gunshots peppered the air behind him. “Go left at the road. Put as much distance between us as possible.” They had turned into the farm from the opposite direction, so he hoped continuing on that road would bring him and Cedric to a town or settlement.

  “But what do we do when they follow
us?” Cedric asked, though he turned the snowmobile onto the advised course.

  “I shot Abel Ross,” Oliver said. “If we get far enough away, Kennedy’s hysteria will overpower any thoughts of pursuit, or of anything else.”

  At least, he hoped that would be the outcome. Abel was a null, though limited in scope, so if she was too near him, he would cancel her projection. Hopefully the other fighters would make her hang back while they treated his wound.

  It wasn’t fatal, despite the crimson blood against the whiteness of the snow.

  Cedric gunned the motor. They jetted down the road and over a hill, moving beyond sight of the farmhouse. Oliver kept one hand clenched upon the gallon of fuel and the other clinging to the right handlebar.

  How far could they get before they needed to refuel? Was there oil in the storage compartment beneath the seat to mix with the gasoline? Were there instructions for how to do it?

  Far from feeling relieved at their apparent escape from the jaws of death, Oliver fretted over the thousand tiny details that could get them killed again.

  Not the least of which was that if and when he and Cedric actually did arrive at a town, the people there would have seen his face splashed all over the news.

  The sullen teenaged bomber, who had committed the bloodiest school crime on record.

  Well, he had just callously shot a man. Maybe he wasn’t so far from that wild accusation after all.

  Chapter 16

  Reclaimed

  Sunday, February 24, 6:39 PM MST, in transit

  Oliver and Cedric stopped in falling darkness to refuel—muddling through instructions on the back of the oil that was thankfully kept in the seat compartment, mixing fuel and listening for sounds of anyone on the road that they traveled. They ate the filched fruit bars, no more sated than from the earlier granola. Oliver took over the driver’s position when they started again.

  Night redoubled the bitter chill around them. Neither boy had a hat, but Oliver gave Cedric his scarf to wrap around his head. They pressed forward, quick as they could.