Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  “Why did you let us come back here? What do you get out of this?” Connor demanded.

  “Me? Nothing. I don’t do anything here that benefits me, not even my position is permanent. What’s done here is for the greater good,” Dinnley answered, backing up when Drake turned his wide frame toward him.

  “And what’s this ‘greater good’ you speak of?” Drake asked, flexing his hands open and closed, making sure Dinnley saw the movement.

  With a gulp, Dinnley calmly reached down for his drink and took a large sip of it. “Basic supply and demand. The Ark won’t survive without people, and the people won’t survive without resources. The survival of humans is now determined by supply and demand. We barter; it’s what we do with other communities to ensure our place here. Amanda was much better at this than I am,” he quipped.

  “What do you barter? Food? Any asshole with enough patience can grow a fucking garden and scavenge for the rest,” Drake said. His fists continued to flex. Open, closed. Open, closed.

  “Not everyone wants to suffer as you have, my friend. How long until someone else with a bigger gun comes along and takes what you have?” Dinnley scoffed. “In numbers, we are safe. Protected. There are rules to follow, and rewards to be earned from following those rules.”

  “Some fucking reward this place is,” Jacks growled. “What you did to us while we were here. To Kris, to Riley. To Win…” Connor could tell the way the name came out, that that it was painful to say.

  Dinnley glanced down at the floor and then met his eyes. “Just like you, we’ve only done what was needed to survive. To keep the supply and demand healthy. Kris was, and still is, a very important part of the Ark.” He took a seat then, as if he was no longer bothered by the increasing amount of tension that hung in the room. “I know you want to leave, we have surveillance, remember? I’ve already confirmed this with Lou, though the old guy was pretty hesitant to talk.”

  Drake blinked at Connor. “Shit,” he mumbled.

  Dinnley laughed and took another swallow, finishing his drink, but held onto the tumbler. “Nothing happens here without my knowledge. In fact, the security detail that was out on patrol this morning just returned as you knocked on my door. Shortly, they’ll be escorting the others to more…secure facilities. Unless…” he began, holding his hand out as Jacks pushed off the wall and lunged across the room.

  Connor stopped the man, and pointed a finger at him. “Unless what?”

  “You have to understand that you can’t just come in and out of the Ark, using our precious resources and time, and leave nothing in return. That’s not how the system here works.”

  “What the fuck do you want?” Drake growled at him.

  “Well, we don’t want to babysit you all. I’m fully aware that the Ark is not the right place for your group. But I’m not a total prick, either. Killing those of you who aren’t useful would put quite a dent in my Karma points, and burying your bodies in this weather would be impossible – the ground is as hard as concrete right now. Don’t worry, you can all get on the plane tomorrow if you want, bound for your island getaway, just as long as you leave something with me.”

  “What? We don’t have anything of value,” Connor said, panic quickly crawling up his spine like a centipede.

  “All I want is the girl. Leave Kris here in our care, and the rest of you are free to go. Otherwise, by the time you get back downstairs, the others will be gone, and you’ll be thrown into the Tank, with or without supplies. I hate to be an ass, but this deal is non-negotiable. And Lou tells me another storm front is moving in, so this deal has an expiration date.” He paused to look down at his watch. “You have an hour to decide.”

  Connor felt the color drain from his face. “We aren’t leaving anyone behind.”

  Drake snagged Dinnley by the arm, shaking him hard. “Fuck your deal, and fuck you. It’s three on one here, asswipe. By my math, you’re more than outnumbered, you’re screwed.” He began to move Dinnley toward the large bay window that led out over the lobby entrance. “It’s hot in here…time to open up a window,” he snarled.

  Jacks was on Dinnley’s other arm before Connor realized he’d left the wall, but something in Dinnley’s eyes threw him off balance. He was smiling. “Wait,” he shouted, grabbing at Jacks and Drake. “Wait!”

  “Get off me, man,” Drake said, shoving Connor backwards.

  “Something’s wrong,” Connor said, struggling to keep hold of Dinnley’s shirt.

  When Dinnley began to laugh, all of them froze. “Do you think I’d let you in here without ensuring my own protection? I told them fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of radio silence, and if they didn’t hear back from me, their orders were to eliminate the threats, while preserving the innocent, mind you. The girl and your precious daughter, Jacks, they’ll be fine. The others, well, according to my math, they’ll be dead in less than two minutes if we don’t all walk out of this room…alive and well.”

  “Get them on the radio…now,” Jacks hissed in Dinnley’s face. “Call it off.”

  “I’m sorry, but I won’t do that. Is she worth it, one girl? Worth the life of your daughter, Jacks…the life of your lover, Drake?”

  Connor punched him square in the nose, and then a second time in the mouth, and Dinnley folded forward like a lawn chair. Drake and Jacks dropped his arms and stepped back, shocked that it was Connor who had lost his temper, and not one of them.

  “Fuck you,” Connor spat. “You won’t touch Riley, not while I’m alive.” He turned around, yelling at the others to follow him.

  When they reached the door, Dinnley’s muffled voice cried out after them. “You have one hour…one hour to make your choice. They’re already downstairs,” he called out, as they kicked open the suite door and slammed on the call button for the elevator. “They’re already downstairs with your family!” Dinnley hollered.

  When they were alone in the elevator, Connor began to shake. Jacks turned in frantic circles, and Drake stared at the light above the door, watching for the lobby floor to light up.

  “They won’t let us all walk out of here,” Connor finally said.

  “We’ll fight our way out, we’ve done it before,” Drake snapped. He slammed a fist against one of the metal walls, and cursed for the elevator to move faster. “We have guns, remember.”

  “With hardly any bullets,” Jacks reminded him.

  “We can do it,” Drake said, slamming into the elevator door again. “We have to.”

  “They’ll kill us,” Connor said, dazed. “They’ll kill them all before we make it down the hall. If Dinnley told the truth, they might already have them.”

  Drake spun around and used his forearm to slam Connor backwards. “I’m not fucking dying today, and neither are you, so pull your big-girl panties on and grow a pair, or I’ll throw your ass out of this elevator first and use you as a shield.”

  Connor began to laugh, and pushed Drake off him. “I’ve a feeling you’ll do that anyway.”

  Drake grunted. “Don’t tempt me, asshole.”

  When the elevator door opened a second later, the three of them found themselves staring down the barrels of four long rifles, one of which had been theirs only a few minutes earlier.

  “You first,” Drake grumbled at Connor. “I’ll take that shield any time now, buddy.”

  COLE

  He knew something was wrong the moment the elevator door closed and the others were whisked upstairs to the main quarters. It was a sick gut feeling, like he’d eaten something rotten. Wondering why Keel had never returned from his last meeting with Dinnley, Cole paced from the tree to the lobby doors, and on the third revolution, Jin finally grabbed at him and demanded he stand still. But he couldn’t, something was wrong.

  “I think we should go for a walk,” he said suddenly, grabbing up the baby’s diaper bag and pulling Kris to her feet.

  “It’s freezing out there,” she complained. “Plus, they told us to wait here.”

  “We aren’t leaving,�
� Jin agreed with her. “It’s best to stick together.”

  “Trust me,” he said, glancing outside again. “We need to go. I know a place.”

  “What’s wrong,” Kris demanded, moving Lily from one shoulder to the other. The baby was sound asleep, drooling on the soft receiving blanket that was draped over Kris’ shoulder.

  “I think…” Cole started, but he froze and stared hard out the glass of the lobby windows. “They’re coming,” he whispered. Though far away, and only a pinprick on the horizon, he saw the clear shape of his missing Ark camper on the main road, heading in their direction. He grabbed Kris’ hand and slung the bag over his shoulder, pushing out the door and headfirst into the cold air. “This way,” he urged. “Before they see us…hurry!”

  Jin snapped at him to stop, then ran after them, but Cole’s feet were swift. If not for being attached to Kris, who was shorter than he was, and balancing a baby in her arms, Cole could have put twice as many feet between himself and the main building by the time Jin ran up beside him.

  “What, what is it,” the older man asked between pants. His pack thumped noisily against his back with each stride.

  “Keep moving,” Cole gasped, slipping in the mud, but regaining his balance. “On the other side of the cemetery…there’s a place …we’ll wait there…stay on the grass as much as you can!”

  He ignored the pain that shot up his ankle when it folded into the uneven ground, hidden under a patch of snow, and continued to run until the cemetery came and went by them in a blur. When Kris got tired and began to slow, he turned around and took the baby from her, though she was reluctant, and urged her to run, to keep going no matter what. He led them toward drier ground to hide their prints, but anyone with half a brain would be able to follow them to the cemetery at least. After that, they’d have to search. He weaved them through the tree line, keeping the fussing baby close to his chest. He could see it, the roof of the building, and a wave of calm rushed over him as the rest of the structure came into view. They left the safety of the trees and ran across twenty yards of dead grass, and Cole took them around to the back, where he kept the key hidden.

  In the spring, one of the other Ark kids had found the previous groundskeeper’s house, unlocked and uninhabited. The leaders knew it was there, but never had a reason to use it, as it wasn’t hooked up to the main power grid. To them, it was just a tiny cabin on the outskirts of the woods, with two broken windows that were shuttered closed, hardwood floors that were always dirty, and a roof that leaked badly in one of its corners. Cole had been to the place a handful of times to sneak drinks with a few of the other boys his age, but when they left, and Cole never knew why, it felt weird to go there alone. He took one girl to the cabin, before Kris, and she complained about the spiders and the old creaky sounds of the place so much that Cole never took anyone else back.

  “Kris, you wait inside with Lily, and try and keep her quiet, okay?”

  She nodded as he let him push her into the kitchen, and closed the back door. “Jin, give me a boost,” he said, gesturing to the low eaves that hung over the back of the house. “I can see the Ark from the roof.”

  After some grunting and shoving, with Jin’s help, Cole scrambled his way over the edge and onto the sagging wooden shakes. On his belly, he crawled to the highest point and watched the valley that stretched out below him. A handful of seconds later, Jin slithered up to his side, startling him.

  “How did you…? Never mind,” he said with a laugh. “Look, just beyond the tree line, where the snow stops. You can see the main buildings.”

  Jin nodded, and yanked the pack off his back to rifle through it. When he produced a pair of folding binoculars, Cole rolled his eyes. Jin probably had everything in his bag, sort of like Mary Poppins.

  “They’re looking for us. How did you know?” Jin asked, after a long minute of silence as he watched the small valley. He passed the binoculars to Cole, and he tilted them till the angle fit his face. A security truck was parked directly in front of the lobby, and two armed men were searching the area.

  “I don’t know,” Cole whispered, though there was no need to. “It didn’t feel right…the guys going upstairs…the guards not being around. If Jacks is right, and I think he is, Dinnley wants Kris, not the rest of us.” Another thought came to his mind, worse than the one that made him take off toward the woods. “You don’t think they’ll run and leave us behind, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Jin answered. “Riley won’t allow it.”

  “But she’s hurt! She can’t do anything,” Cole complained.

  “She won’t allow it,” Jin snapped, ending the discussion.

  Cole stared through the field glasses, watching the guards walk the perimeter of the main building, and when they set out into the field, toward the cemetery, Cole’s heart stopped. “They’re coming,” he told Jin.

  “Let them.”

  CONNOR

  They sat side by side against the cold wall with their hands in their laps, hateful looks on their faces, and heat seething from their bodies. Connor was in the middle, between Drake and Jacks, wondering how it was that he kept being thrown into such proximity to a man he so desperately wanted to see dead. When the guards began questioning them about the whereabouts of Cole, Jin, and Kris, Jacks tried twice to break free. They’d apparently gone missing just as the security detail moved in. It was exceptional timing, and Connor imagined it wasn’t by accident. Somehow, the others had gotten away. He dreamed that they were far from the Ark by then, hopefully in a vehicle, already out on the highway. But, even as that thought flitted through his mind, he realized it couldn’t be true, because the guards would have intercepted them leaving. Plus, Jin had proven himself loyal to Riley, and if what they’d been told was true, she was still in her bed, oblivious to the happenings in the lobby. Jin wouldn’t leave her behind. The others weren’t with her.

  “Where the fuck did they go?” A man with an overbite the size of Texas spat at him. He pressed the end of his rifle into Connor’s chest, and jabbed him twice with it.

  Connor carefully wiped his face clean with the inside cuff of his sweater and glared up at the guy and his greased-back hair. “If we knew where they were, we wouldn’t tell you. Might as well let us go now and save your bullets.”

  “Did ya hear that, Filly,” a second guard said. He made a loud sniffing sound between every other word, and wiped at his pointy nose. “He be tryin’ to pull a fast one on us, the dickwaddle.”

  Drake nudged him, and then with a confused frown that scrunched up his entire face, mouthed the words ‘Filly’ and then ‘dickwaddle’. A laugh escaped from Connor, loud and guttural. It spread to Drake, who tried to keep it in, but eventually let it out as a sputter first, then a thunderous roll. Jacks, horrified to be stuck next to them, stared with wide eyes between the two laughing idiots, and the three men with guns.

  “What’s wrong with you,” he hissed at Connor. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Filly?” Connor choked. “Is that really your name, mate?”

  “Wasn’t there a whale movie named after a Filly?” Drake laughed. “No, wait…that was Willy.”

  They howled harder, stuck in a place where mania is happy to take over the mind, and Connor simply couldn’t stop the crazy from happening. “Ah, Jesus,” he wailed, wiping tears from his eyes. “I can’t wait to use dickwaddle in a sentence.”

  Drake slammed into his shoulder so hard that pain flared up his neck. “You just did, you dickwaddle.”

  “Oh, God,” Jacks whispered behind the safety of a shaky hand. “I’m going to die sitting next to the biggest jackasses in the world.”

  “Shut it, you dickwaddle,” Connor snapped, slapping the man’s thigh. “It’s Filly’s fault, mate. He started it.”

  Jacks flinched away from him, as if Connor’s head had split clean in half releasing a dragon, but mania was contagious. As Connor’s shoulders shook with uncontrollable jerks, Jacks’ eyes began to water, and his mouth began to trem
ble. The sound that came out of him was more of a cry than a laugh. He bent forward and leaned on his leg, releasing wave after glorious wave of chuckles.

  “That’s it, mate, let it out. Us dickwaddles might as well die laughing,” Connor cried, roughly thumping Jacks on the back. This made Jacks wheeze even harder. The three of them lost their minds in that hall, with their asses going numb from sitting on the freezing tile.

  “What in the horseshit is wrong with them?” The second guard stepped back from the trio as if they were toxic. His frantic dusty-green eyes stared at each of them, darting back and forth, waiting for one of them to jump up and pounce on him.

  “Ervin,” Filly said, elbowing the quiet guard, who up to that point had done nothing but stare at them with hard eyes, as dark as his skin. “I think they’ve gone and lost their shit. This is what crazy looks like, brother.”

  Connor let his head fall back against the wall, and gasped as Drake repeatedly wailed into his side, for some reason finding the name ‘Ervin’ as hilarious as ‘Filly’.

  “You’ve no idea,” Connor tried to tell the guards between chokes and grunts. “You’ve no idea how crazy we really are. You should be scared.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  KEEL

  He hadn’t spent this much time in the Tank since his first arrival at the Ark, when he was forced into the decontamination period. To be honest, it didn’t bother him much back then. There’d been enough food, clean water, and heating to keep him alive. One other survivor was tossed into the Tank with him on his last week, and fortunately, they didn’t kill each other. Sam ended up becoming Keel’s right hand man when the Ark eventually put him on security detail. Short and stocky, with a square face and dark features that left little room for warmth, Sam was the perfect visual definition of an ex-military man, but he never served. He was a prepper, and only went out into the world after his family died, despite his own underground bunker with a top of the line air purification system.