Exodus

by Brian P. White

“You want to risk that kind of exposure for playtime?” Doc said. “You’re sick.”

  Gordy stared down Doc. “Sick or not, she’s mine now.”

  Doc threw up his hands and walked away.

  Gordy the Green Beret waved at the first two jumpsuits, who cautiously approached Didi with long poles sporting big clamps. She growled at them to play her part, growling like her boneheaded group. She even tried reaching for them—feebly, of course—until one of them clamped her arm and pulled her to the nearest stairway gate.

  A few of her rotten brethren tried to come to her rescue, but gunshots drew them away.

  Against her theatrical struggling, the jumpsuits led her up the platform and after the Green Beret into a hallway with some tight corners. A few turns later, they entered a small weight room, where the Green Beret smugly grinned at her against a small desk, his blouse bearing three chevrons over two inverted arches between U.S. ARMY and the name SAFFRAN.

  Gordy Saffran, not a pleasure to meet you.

  He wasn’t bad-looking, but that alpha male confidence oozed the same chauvinism as Murphy did before he had started raping her on a daily basis.

  Gordy took off her glasses—earning the cursory attempt to bite him—and looked her over with a superior grin. “Well, look at you now, you little slut,” he condescended. “A little flatter than I remember. Probably didn’t die the breast way, huh, guys?”

  The jumpsuits laughed before the one on her right noted, “What’s up with her leg? It looks like the whole bone is out of place. How is she still walking on it?”

  Please don’t let them examine that, she prayed.

  “And what’s with her face?” the other one asked. “It looks all stitched up.”

  “I guess this is what plastic surgery looks like after,” Gordy replied smugly. He reached under her chin, which she snapped at just to see what he was doing. “Cute little trinket.”

  The cameo, she realized. If you take it, I swear—

  “What are you going to do with her, Gordy?” the jumpsuit restraining her right hand asked.

  Gordy shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. Maybe I’ll mount her on my wall or something.”

  Didi immediately stopped growling. “That is so not happening again.”

  Despite how blurry he looked, she could see his smile vanish just before she thrust her boot into it, sending him flying over the desk like a laundry bag. She yanked free of her so-called restraints, grabbed one of the rods, and knocked out both of her escorts with it.

  Gordy scrambled to his feet, bumping into things on his way up while pulling his pistol.

  She quickly grabbed his neck, slammed him against the desk, and stepped on his chest.

  “What the fuck?” he grunted.

  Didi opened her chest flap, pulled her sword from her torso and leg, drew out the blade, and placed the edge against his throat. “Baby Dahl’s having a tantrum,” she teased. “What are you doing with all those boneheads?”

  His eyes widened like he had just seen the Devil. “You’re a-tearin’,” he muttered in shock, just like Lieutenant Rapist did yesterday.

  She pressed the blade further into his throat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that. Must be my rotting ears. What kind of testing are you doing here?”

  He stared defiantly at her. Now it was time to go for the throat, so to speak.

  “I know you’re trained to withstand all kinds of torture,” she coldly stated, “but you have no idea what pain is compared to me. Answer me or you’ll find out when I bite your dick off.”

  “We-we-w-we … w-w-we’re testing,” he stuttered through his panicky breathing, his once proud eyes filled with terror, “f-f-for exposure to the zo-zombie poison.”

  That threw her for a loop. “Poison?”

  “The doctors … tried to make a vaccine, b-b-but all it did was kill zombies quicker.”

  She pressed her blade further. “You’re sending them down there to be poisoned?”

  “No,” Gordy said desperately, “the pulse did that yesterday.”

  The E.M.P., she realized, which killed more than her N.S.U. “How long does it take to work?”

  He frowned up at her. “Were you out there, too?”

  “How long?” she yelled, pressing again, drawing a little blood.

  “A few days,” he squeaked desperately, “if it worked.”

  So, she was just told she had a few days to live, and she was already dead. Talk about a feat!

  “How many more of you are here?” he asked with dread.

  She cracked his head with the blunt side of her sword, knocking him out. She pulled the new cell phone Nick gave her from her jacket pocket and tried to call Cody, but she got no response.

  Duh, you’re underground! she thought bitterly, feeling as stupid as those boneheads she came in with, who like her were about to die again in a matter of days.

  She pulled her hilt from her other pocket, reattached it to her sword, and pulled out Nick’s little present for the next phase of the breakout plan. Better that than to sulk over her fate.

  *****

  Sean held his wife’s frigid hand under the three blankets, which did little more to warm her than the black sweats he had changed her into. Her faint breath steaming through her nostrils—a humorous analogy for her behavior—would’ve made him laugh if it wasn’t her only indication of life, but he would take it. He would’ve lay next to her if Gilda hadn’t warned him about undue pressure and contaminants. All he could do was sit on the dayroom couch beside her and hold her hand while his left foot throbbed, trying not to worry after Didi left him with a surly prisoner, a detached hacker, two bickering twins, and a young murderess. He doubted Gilda could keep the others in line.

  “Why?”

  He looked sharply at his wife, whose eyes fluttered like she was straddling the line of consciousness. “Paula? I’m here.”

  “I know,” she said faintly. “You’re crushing my hand.”

  He loosened his grip. “Sorry, honey. I just can’t let you go.”

  “Why?”

  He flinched. “Why what?”

  She slowly faced him, her pretty browns barely peeking through. “Why do you stay with me?”

  A breath of laughter escaped him. “‘til death do us part,’ honey. Those aren’t just words to me. They’re how I feel about you.”

  A tear fell straight out of her eye onto the top blanket. “Sean, we’ve failed. Let me go.”

  He wiped her eyes. “Never. I love you, Paula, no matter how rotten you are to me,” he added with a laugh that he hoped would either be returned or at least get a rise out of her; anything to bring life back into his love. Neither happened, which broke his heart more than her rejection. “I didn’t just swear one time to be with you for life; I swear it every day because you mean that much to me. I don’t care what I have to do to make your life worth living again; I’ll do it. I’m not letting you give up on life or on us.”

  Another tear fell from her. “But why? I can’t do anything right.”

  A tear burned in his eye. He let it fall. “Paula, don’t you remember when we first got married? We kept fighting over the housework because of our jobs. What did I do?”

  A faint grin crossed her beautiful lips. “You did it … because you were there.”

  “I had to get up earlier to make it all work, but I did it. Do you remember why I said I would?”

  Her eyes closed, but that little smile remained. “Because I was the best teacher in the whole wide world … and those children’s futures depended on me.”

  He shook her hand lovingly, reassuringly, but made sure not to squeeze too tight. “And that’s what you do for these kids, too. You give them everything … often more than me,” he admitted as his eyes fell. He wiped the tears from his eyes. “But that’s okay, because I get to say I’m the proud husband of someone who makes futures possible.”

  Amazingly, she squeezed his hand back. It was weak, but it was there. “I don’t deserve you.”

&n
bsp; “But you got me, honey. ‘til death do us part. Shoot, if I had to be in Didi’s shoes, I’d still be here for you, pain and all.”

  She looked like she was falling asleep, but she kept smiling. He would take that, too.

  CHAPTER 25

  EXECUTIVE DECISION

  Isaac got antsy again. All the dead chick had to do was open a damn door. It shouldn’t take a badass like her twenty fucking minutes. Even with the Hilux ducked just behind the bend and Nick’s assurances that NORAD’s satellites won’t see a damn thing, he still felt exposed. “Man, how long have we got to wait?” he griped, but he got a lot of shushes back.

  “She’ll do her job,” Cody whispered harshly. “Anything this well-defended would take time to navigate, so be patient.” Somebody was getting his attitude back with his strength.

  Just as Isaac was about to shout at him, the massive doors finally slid open. “Been waiting long?” came through the little walkie-talkie Nick had given them.

  “All good here,” Cody replied. “What’s your status?”

  “I had a little tiff with a Green Beret,” Didi said soberly, not her usual fun-filled voice. “Come on in and I’ll tell you more about it.”

  “On our way,” Cody said, then nodded ahead.

  Isaac shifted gears and eased the truck up to the cave doorway, looking anxiously around the mountainside and the tall, snowy mound surrounding the drive for traps or shooters. He hated the idea of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but this was way too easy.

  “Weird,” Cody said.

  Isaac briefly glanced back. “What?”

  The wounded warrior pointed at the mound. “The berm. I took a tour here once. They didn’t have a … barrier mound like that … around the parking lot.”

  Isaac scrutinized the new mounds more closely, hoping they didn’t have bombs in them.

  “Hell, you should be able to see—”

  Gunshots suddenly lit up the truck.

  “They spotted us,” Lavon shouted over the gunfire as she raised an M-4.

  Cody pointed out the back window. “It’s the Gamesman!”

  Isaac looked back at a bunch of jexes moving up on him from behind the bend. “They’re gonna bring every damn soldier in the place out here.”

  “Floor it,” Cody yelled gruffly.

  Isaac did exactly that, speeding through the mounds and busting the closed gate wide open with no idea how many were after him. He didn’t waste time shooting back; he let Cody and Lavon do that. Once inside the enormous tunnel, he pulled to a stop next to one of two concrete platforms along the sides. “Now what?”

  The tunnel doors grinded closed like an oncoming train, blocking gunshots and keeping those jexes outside. He breathed easy until a gray monster appeared at his window. He scrambled for his pistol until he recognized Didi, her patchwork face regarding them through her Malcolm X glasses without her telltale grin.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said mirthlessly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Isaac asked her as he got out of the truck. “You look like somebody died. Other than you.”

  Didi’s mouth stretched into a half-assed smirk. Forced.

  Cody started to get out of the truck, hanging onto every part of it to stand. “You okay?”

  She just stood there, that Frankenstein face looking pathetic.

  Lavon got out and frantically searched the place, aiming her rifle all around.

  “What’s up with you?” Isaac asked her.

  She glared at him like he had just told her two plus gun equaled green. “Why aren’t you worried? Someone should’ve heard all that. Where is everybody?” She kept searching.

  Isaac regarded the immense tunnel with a few opaque glass doors and a left turn halfway down the stretch that ended in a T-intersection. Each platform and catwalk around him had doorways. All of it was empty. “That’s suddenly a good question.”

  “With an easy answer,” a new voice echoed through the cave.

  Isaac, Didi, Cody, and Lavon aimed all around, but found themselves quickly surrounded by soldiers on those platforms and catwalks, some wearing green berets next to a few in those yellow HAZ-MAT suits. A bruised Green Beret ran up to Didi and placed the barrel of his pistol right on her forehead, looking pissed enough to plug her on the spot.

  Then a familiar brother stepped onto a platform and grasped the railing, an American flag tie shining under his black blazer. He stared down on them like the man in power he was … sort of.

  “Vice President Ramsey?” Cody blurted.

  The pepper-grayed politician grinned and, with a deep voice, corrected his soldier. “That’s President Ramsey, Sergeant Montgomery.”

  Lavon and Cody stared up in awe. Didi frowned like she tried to see the guy, ignoring the Desert Eagle against her temple. Isaac just wanted to know what the fuck was going on.

  *****

  “Come in,” the Arab said for the third time while stabbing at his keyboard like it was broken. He looked up at the others with a shrug. “They’re gone. I can’t reach them through the door.”

  “What about that thing you gave Didi?” the twitchy twin asked impatiently. “Isn’t that supposed to—”

  “That’ll take time.”

  “So now we’re just supposed to wait in here, freezing our asses off while we wait for the zombie and your equipment?” the tubby twin cut in. “What if the Gamesman’s men find us? Or those Mountain Men? What are we supposed to do?”

  “Maybe keep it down if you don’t want them to know where we are,” the nurse said curtly.

  Right? Cynthia thought, shaking her head at the spineless pervert while she donned the big blue Cardigan over her new white shirt, which warmed her way more the green denim despite how baggy they were on her. The black jeans were just as oversized, but her new belt solved that problem.

  “She’ll come through,” the ginger farmer said as he stood next to his wounded wife’s couch, favoring his left foot a bit. “She has before.”

  The perv glared at Sean like he was nuts. “Maybe against that gang you guys were talking about, and I’ll admit she did good in Denver, but this is the United States fucking Army! I’m not sticking around so they can come wipe us out. Screw this! I’m out of here,” he declared as he grabbed a pistol and a rifle off the gun pile on the coffee table and headed for the exit.

  “Where are we gonna go, asshole?” Alan snapped. “I’m not going back to Kearney.”

  “What a surprise,” Aaron shouted at the sky, “my brother has no problem leaving me behind.”

  “You’re the grown-assed man talking about leaving, even if you keep acting like a child.”

  Aaron looked like he was getting ready to hit his twin, but waved him off and marched away. “At least now you’ll know what it feels like to have your brother leave you, asshole.”

  The twig rolled his eyes, grabbed and slung a rifle over his scrawny shoulder, and marched off after his brother. “Fine, but not Kearney.”

  The perv chuckled on his way out. “Maybe that hotel we were in yesterday.”

  Gilda gawked at them disappointedly. Sean shook his head and sat with his wife again.

  Having had enough of this, Cynthia grabbed the nearest gun—an M-4 she had learned well how to use on the road—and shot at the ground behind the perv’s feet.

  The tub quickly drew his pistol and aimed at her, which drew her aim up to his chest. “What the fuck, you little brat?” the perv shouted. “That could’ve ricocheted and blasted off my feet.”

  “I’m the brat?” she spat back at the lump. “I’m not the one running off like a scared little bitch, even though I’m the one they held prisoner.”

  “Hey, let’s take it easy now,” the twig said with hands out at her and his asshole brother, wisely leaving his gun strapped to his shoulder. “Nobody needs to lose their heads, here.”

  She stared down the twig while keeping her aim on the perv. “That zombie out there had every right to kill me, but she’s in t
here fighting for me every bit as much as those whiny bitches she’s there to free. And here you are, about to ditch her, after she rescued your asses? I’m not the nicest person in the world, but at least I’m loyal to the one who actually gives a shit about me.”

  Alan flinched. “Didn’t you destroy their home?”

  “Of course. They were my enemies. What are you but a couple of pussies?”

  Aaron looked like he wanted to shoot her. “Watch your mouth.”

  She laughed at him. “Go ahead and shoot me, if you can. You’ve been trying to show me your balls since you came aboard. Let’s see ‘em now.”

  The twins regarded each other.

  Cynthia lowered her gun. “No wonder the dead woman is the boss. You’re all weak; totally lost without her. You want to go? Go. Maybe you’ll avoid the Army or the Gamesman, and we won’t have to hear you argue anymore. I know I won’t miss your eyes or hands on my ass,” she spat at Aaron.

  The twins stared in stunned silence, as did the ginger. The nurse grinned at her. Even the Arab took notice over his laptop.

  “Or,” she added as she set the rifle down on its buttstock like a cane, “we can give Nick the time he needs to make this whole thing work, and we can help the Death Doll—who helped all of us—get her people out of there safely and find a new home. I know what I’m choosing.”

  The four men glanced at each other, waiting for someone to answer her challenge.

  “I’m … with you,” came from a barely audible yet clearly pained voice that drew Sean and Gilda’s attention. That priss would be useless, but at least she saw the light.

  The ginger huffed resolutely. “Then so am I.”

  The Arab shrugged. “I came to beat the government. You know I’m in.”

  His anti-patriotism pissed Cynthia off, but she needed his expertise more than the others. This wasn’t about government; this was about people.

  After a good minute, Alan nodded to her. Aaron looked betrayed, but he didn’t leave.

  She went to the Arab’s—Nick’s—side. “Pull up the base for me. I want to see something.”