Sue, his dead manager, stared up at him from where she lay on the ground, her neck at an unnatural angle, eyes sightless, brains sprayed across the floor. She might be dead, but she still stared accusingly at him. He knew what she thought. Sue was disgusted with him for helping the lieutenant. Her dull, dry eyes told Tony he was a coward, that he needed to suck it up and be a man. That there were things worth dying for—and the future generation was one such thing.
Tony closed his eyes for a moment, screwing up his nerves to act. He stretched out his hand to the button that would close the doors again on the carriage. His finger tip hovered over the control as he stared back at his murdered boss, knowing that if he pressed the button, he would likely join her before the day was out.
Chapter Forty-One
Ethan dropped to a crouch on the ground, trying to decrease his surface area as the carriage door began to open. He gripped the pistol tightly, the weapon providing scant reassurance as he saw the giant-sized guard approach with an assault rifle in hand.
When the door was no more than a handspan apart, Gwen squeezed off her first shot. The distance was around thirty metres, challenging for a handgun, but Gwen hadn’t topped the leaderboard at the shooting range without reason. Sparks flew from the metal at the edge of the opening, making the guard flinch. But it didn’t look like it was the first time the man had come under fire, he just grimaced and brought his rifle to bear through the gap. His muzzle flashed, a stream of bullets pounding into the ground within arm’s reach, sending up puffs of sand as they hit.
Gwen didn’t budge, a frown deepening between her brows as she maintained her aim and squeezed off another two measured shots. The guard lurched back into the cabin with a garbled cry as one of her bullets caught him in the throat. Crimson spurted in an arc across the inside of the window. Ethan saw the lieutenant roughly shove his remaining guard into the gap, the door now wide open. The second man didn’t look half as confident as his colleague as he dropped to a kneeling stance.
Ethan loosed a shot, allowing long hours of practice at the range take over and saw it spark near the man’s hip. His second shot hit centre of mass, punching a red hole in the man’s chest.
“How many rounds?” he asked Gwen.
“Only two shots left. And you?”
“Four.”
Ethan clenched his jaw and aimed at the doorway, waiting for the lieutenant to enter his sights.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tony flinched as the sound of gunfire came over the feed from the carriage. Time was running out. He had to act. He’d always known what needed to be done, just hadn’t had the courage to follow through.
Tony took a ragged breath, his finger still hovering over the button that would close the carriage doors and end the fight. If his interference led to his own death, so be it. There were some things that couldn’t be forgotten and erased, and he refused to live with the knowledge that he’d aided another man to kill children.
He thought for a moment on the threat that Harris would kill his family and for the first time that day, a humourless smirk hit one corner of this mouth. Tony was a single man and his parents were dead. The only death sentence he’d write would be his own. He smashed his fist down on the button to close the doors, then started to the sequence to send the Maglev onwards.
“To the end of the line with you bastards.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Harris stood with his back up against the wall of the carriage, well out of the line of fire from the beach below. His gaze flicked angrily between the two failed officers. The giant lay in a pool of his own blood, lifeless eyes staring at the roof with a confused expression, like he couldn’t believe his own death. The other sat propped against a seat, a pathetic wet gurgling with every breath as he slowly drowned in his own blood.
Harris cursed the kids on the beach. The children had been raised as expendable cannon fodder to protect the corporation’s interests in the advent of war, and yet here he was, on the bloody receiving end of that training. Viperob had taught the kids to bite, and now that he’d backed them into a corner, they’d duly sunk their teeth to the bone.
Harris swore violently, driving a savage kick into the dead officer’s face in frustration at the situation. If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. He leant down and retrieved the corpse’s rifle from a pool of blood, globs of warm clot covering the stock smearing onto his own clothes as brought it to bear.
An orange light flashed next to the doorway, signalling they were about to close. No! That can’t be happening! Harris lurched forward to the closing doors, squeezing the trigger to full auto, shooting blindly at the kids. The doors finally met in the centre, cutting off his line of fire, the last bullet ricocheting off the metal back into the cabin to lodge in the corpse of his guard.
An electric hum sounded as the carriage lifted off the track and began to move forward. Harris dumped the now-useless weapon on the floor and stood at the doorway hammering on the glass in frustration as the kids slipped into the distance and out of reach.
Chapter Forty-Four
Ethan lifted his face from the ground, sand pouring out of his hair and blinking off his eyelashes as he watched the Maglev in disbelief. He’d dived for cover as rounds punched into the sand in a rising line towards him, thinking his number was up for a second time that hour.
Ethan slowly got to his feet and picked up the pistol that had been smashed from his grip. A circular dent was driven into the barrel, just the size of a bullet point. He made the weapon safe and holstered it, feeling a nervous buzz in his chest as he realised just how close he’d come to catching a round.
“Why the hell are they driving off?” Gwen stared after the Maglev, her face totally confused.
“Might have been someone back at the station?” suggested Jaego.
Gwen looked back at him, hope dawning on her face. “Maybe it was my dad? Surely that’s a sign he was watching out for us just like he said, a sign that he’s still ok?”
Ethan nodded slightly. “I hope so.” He shouldered his backpack and held out a hand to help Jaego to his feet. “We need to get moving. There’s always a chance that train will be turned around again.”
Gwen stood with her pistol hanging at her side, face torn with indecision. “My dad said he’d follow us though. Surely we should wait for him?”
Ethan bit his lip, knowing the chances of Marco getting off the island were slim, if not totally non-existent. With everything that had happened, the rail link would be shut down entirely. But, if he had to place his money on anything, he’d bet that Marco was already dead.
“Gwen, if your dad’s able to follow, it won’t be for some time until things calm down a bit. I think we should do as he asked and keep going. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have made it this far. We owe it to him not to waste this opportunity.”
Jaego threw an arm over Ethan’s shoulder for support as he stood, his injured leg held off the ground. Gwen took a last look back toward the island and mouthed a silent thank you. She then hooked her arm around the other side of Jaego, tears running freely down her face.
With their injured mate supported between, the trio started up the beach. As Jaego hopped beside him, it dawned on Ethan that this was the first time in his life that he’d ever left the island. They’d succeeded in the first part of their mission to reach the mainland, and if he was true to himself, he’d never expected to get even this far. He looked up at the rising landscape at the rear of the beach where shadow cloaked the rocks and barren ground in ominous tones of grey. They might have escaped one set of predators, but from everything he’d heard about the Wastelands, something worse awaited them.
Ethan pushed the thought aside and tightened his grip around Jaego’s waist, a feral grin appearing on his face. It didn’t matter what was to come because he knew he wouldn’t be on his own. Whatever happened, he’d face it head on with his two best mates at his side.
Epilogue
Harris win
ced as he was yanked forward, the sharp edges of stainless-steel handcuffs biting into his wrist as the guard wrenched on the chain between.
“Ease up,” he muttered.
He got no reply from the guard, nor did he expect one. His position had changed markedly in the past four hours. When he’d lost the three teenagers and with them Viperob’s data files, he’d lost everything.
Rank.
Employment.
Housing.
He was without contract, and shortly, he’d disappear without a trace. After all the people he’d helped to eliminate over the years, he couldn’t help but find a sick sense of humour in that. He was dead. It was only a matter of time.
Harris shuffled along the hallway. Now that adrenaline had abated, everything hurt. His head still felt like a rat was gnawing its way from the inside out, but now a myriad of cuts, bruises and contusions also wailed for their own slice of attention.
The guard opened an oak-panelled door off the right of the hall and shoved him through. He groaned as he recognized the room. If he’d been brought to the Viperob corporation board room, he knew his death wouldn’t be pretty. To come to the personal attention of the Board meant they had come up with a fate to equal his crime of failure.
Plush carpet lined the floor, silencing each footstep to a whisper as he staggered in. The first rays of dawn glimmered through the window at the far side of the room that spanned the entire area from floor to ceiling, clear glass providing a majestic view of the ocean from forty levels up. The centre of the room was filled by a long table of polished Tasmanian Blackwood. Twelve stern faces stared at him from either side without an inch of compassion.
A metal stool awaited him at the end of the table, his guard shoving down roughly on his shoulder to make him sit. How strange it is to be on the receiving end. Harris knew he should avoid eye contact, play his part as the loser begging for mercy, but he couldn’t do it. Maybe it was the agony pounding behind his forehead making him angry and defiant, but he gazed resolutely ahead, searching out eye contact of each of the board members, forcing them to acknowledge his presence before they killed him.
A grey-haired man in his sixties stood from his chair at the other end of the long table. The CEO. Harris didn’t know his name, didn’t care either, because it was the title that gave him power. The name was meaningless.
“You’ve failed the corporation, Lieutenant Harris.” The man’s mouth moved, and yet his eyes looked dead. No expression, disconnected. “That is a grave disappointment; one that might elicit the need for… retribution.”
Don’t skirt around the edges, you bastard. You want my death.
“Considering your record, however, I have been persuaded against my better judgement to show leniency.”
Harris felt his heart stutter in his chest. Are they giving me a reprieve?
“You will have one last chance to redeem yourself. At the end of this meeting, you will be delivered into the Wastelands on the other side of the channel. Given weapons, ammunition, you’ll follow those kids on foot, and return with them…”
Harris pushed to his feet, a shark’s smile grinning mercilessly as he cut off the CEO’s monologue. “I get it. Come back with the kids, or not at all.”
He turned back to the guard behind him. “Get these damn cuffs off me. I’ve got work to do.”
The Viperob Files Page 23
