Final Ride
Survival Of The Fittest Book 3
K. M. Fawkes
Copyright 2021 by K. M. Fawkes
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Contents
Final Ride
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
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Final Ride
Chapter 1
I came to a screeching halt right in front of the row of tanks, my chest heaving with the effort it had taken to force myself to keep driving right toward them, my hands shaking with the idea that they were right freaking there.
The tanks were manned by military guys wearing camo that looked like what US troops always wore, with the kinds of guns that US troops would carry. On the surface, they looked exactly like they should have looked if they were who they said they were.
My paranoia, though—that sense that had become stronger and stronger the longer I lived in the underground world of hackers and secret deals—was absolutely screaming at me about all of those things. Screaming that just because something walks like a duck and talks like a duck… doesn’t mean it’s actually a fucking duck.
Sometimes it’s a wolf dressed up like a duck, who is trying to convince you that it’s just some hapless fowl, and will bite your fucking head off the moment you relax.
“Are we really doing this?” I breathed to Will, who was sitting absolutely still beside me in the car, his eyes on the row of tanks ahead of us.
I didn’t think he was any more excited about this than I was, honestly. The guy might have had a good heart, but he was a crook, through and through, and that meant that he had to be feeling just as nervous about facing any sort of law enforcement as I was.
Which was, you know, something we maybe should have thought about before we went off seeking law enforcement, in the hopes that they might be able to tell us what the hell to do in a world that had suddenly gone crazy. A world where ninety percent of the people we came across were actually dead, struck by a biochemical weapon that had caused their bodies to seize up until they literally stopped working.
A world where the power had gone off. Where the internet no longer existed. Where chaos reigned, and everything we had once depended on to help us get through that thing called life seemed to have vanished into thin air, contaminated by VXM powder.
“Well, let’s consider our options,” Will said quietly. “We’re on the run from a murderous gang who might be behind us at this very moment, coming after us again. They’ve already shot me once, so we know they’re not going to hesitate to do it again if they find us. We have no friends. We have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world—or if the rest of the world even still exists the way we once knew it. We don’t know whether there’s a central government left in this country or not, and we definitely don’t know whether there’s another attack coming. If that attack happens, we don’t have any place lined up to hide from it. You said you wanted to find something that looked like law enforcement so we could get some real information. That’s law enforcement right in front of us.”
I blew out a slow breath. “One, that gang probably isn’t coming after us, now that they think you’re dead and that there was another attack,” I reminded him quickly. “Two, I don’t see how having any friends is of any importance here. Three… I mean, you’re right about not having any idea of what’s going on in the rest of the world and needing to find out. Four… yeah, theoretically, finding law enforcement or someone with connections to the government should give us the answers we need. But five, I’m not entirely sure that those people in front of us actually qualify as law enforcement. My 'those-people-aren’t-who-they-say-they-are' alarm is screaming right now. And that alarm isn't usually wrong.”
“You haven't thought that it might be overreacting?” he asked, mostly reasonably.
I scoffed, though. “It's never been wrong before,” I said shortly. “I learned pretty early on that when something smells wrong, it’s best to avoid it. And it’s saved my life more times than I can count.”
At that moment, a bullet flew through the windshield of the cherry-red little convertible we’d been driving—something we’d picked up after our last run-in with Sally and her gang. Another bullet followed in quick succession, and the windshield exploded in front of us, sending shards of glass flying in every direction.
Will and I both threw ourselves down into the space between the seats, him on top of me in a futile attempt to shield me from the flying glass. I could feel the stuff slicing at my skin, though, and remembered suddenly that he was already wounded. His shoulder and ribs were bruised pretty bad—which couldn’t be getting better with the sudden movement he’d just made.
We both became as still as we could, though, hardly daring to breathe as we listened to the air above us. Waiting. Wondering if there was going to be another shot. Instead, we heard that same voice we’d heard earlier.
“Get out of the fucking car,” it boomed through the tension. “Keep your hands above your head and we won’t shoot again. Make any funny moves, though, and we’ll take you both out without giving it a second thought.”
I paused for a beat, trying to figure out whether we actually had to do what the voice was saying. But it didn’t take long to go right back to the realization we’d come to about two minutes ago.
The realization that we didn’t actually have any choice. Yes, we had a gun and I knew at this point that I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. But those guys in front of us had freaking tanks. And I was guessing they had a whole lot more than one gun.
Guns that were probably a lot more powerful than the one I was packing. Tanks that could run us over in half a heartbeat if they wanted to.
“Right,” I murmured. “So, I guess we’re getting out of the car with our hands up.”
I felt Will huff. “It does seem like that’s the smartest option, here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly want to die today. And my shoulder hurts. If those guys come with a doctor, I’d sure be happy to meet him. Or her.”
He was right; his shoulder was just one more reason to give ourselves up right now.
Even when my instincts were screaming about how dangerous it was to do so.
“On the count of three, then?” I said.
“On the count of three,” he answered.
He reached over, grabbed my hand, and gave it a squeeze, an
d in that squeeze I felt all the things he wasn’t saying. That this wasn’t perfect, but that it might keep us alive a little bit longer. That it might give us what we needed to actually find safety.
That no matter what else, we were in this together. Just like we had been for the last two days.
“One, two, three,” I muttered.
We both sat up, our hands on our heads, and slid out of the now-battered car, our eyes on the supposed military crew in front of us.
Chapter 2
It took next to no time for the guys to rush forward in a macho sort of rush, guns up like they were facing some kind of enemy, but I noticed right away that they didn’t do it the way I’d seen other military personnel do it. Hell, they didn’t even look like mediocre cops. They weren’t moving in time with each other and there was none of the usual, robotically synchronized movement that you see with groups of military soldiers who have been together for any amount of time.
You know how they usually move like they’re fifteen people with one brain between them, all hive-mind-like? Yeah, there was none of that, here.
And I knew enough from my past life—and from the research I’d done for one break-in or another—that it was one of the first things all soldiers learned: That ability to move in sync with each other. It was some sort of safety mechanism, and probably made them uber-efficient or something. I knew it meant that they moved more quickly once they were doing something like getting into a building or going after someone, and though I’d always thought it was slightly stupid, given that it made them super predictable, it evidently worked for them.
I mean, they kept right on doing it.
And I had always gotten the idea that it was something soldiers must start working on during their first day together. Hell, maybe it was even a sort of team-building exercise or something.
Which made it super weird that these guys didn’t seem to have any idea how to do it.
Still, they were rushing toward us with guns, so military or not, it didn’t really matter. We were going to have to do what they wanted. When they got to us, they frisked us down—again, not even doing a good impression of mediocre cops, and worse even than the standard security you’d run into at an airport—but still, of course, they immediately found the gun I had. They also found the knife I had shoved into one of my boots.
So we were now effectively disarmed. Except for the remaining rat poison I had in my backpack. Which wasn’t going to do us much good unless I could somehow shove it down someone’s throat. And even then, it would only take care of one of the people.
If they didn’t have the hive mind thing going on, I definitely couldn’t count on killing one of them and disrupting anyone else.
To my surprise, they left the packs with us, though—after going through them and not finding anything dangerous—and then one of the guys ushered us toward an SUV, which was painted in that desert camo sort of design. After a quick glance at each other, Will and I went without arguing. In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought—or more accurately, now that we were disarmed and effectively arrested, it was a little too late to suddenly start struggling.
For the moment, at least, we were at their mercy. Once we got to wherever they were taking us, we could regroup and figure out how the hell to get out of this newest mess.
I took the step up into the backseat of the truck, wondering why the hell anyone would want to drive one of these enormous things, and slid across the bench there to make room for Will. Five seconds later he was joining me, grimacing at the twist it took him to get in—that shoulder was probably killing him by now, I realized—and five seconds after that, two men were clambering into the front seats.
So we were evidently not going to be hanging out on the road, then. Which… I mean, I guessed it made sense, since they already had us. Still, it didn’t answer the question of what they’d been doing out there on the road—and what they wanted with us.
Surely they hadn’t set up a roadblock just for us. They hadn’t even known we were coming. I didn’t think.
“Who are you and where are you taking us?” I asked, deciding that I might as well jump right into the deep end.
In my experience, if you asked someone a big question right off the bat, they sometimes answered you just because they were so shocked that they didn’t have time to think about it.
Unfortunately, the guys in the front seat didn’t seem shocked at all. They didn’t even bother to acknowledge the question.
Well, if they weren’t going to acknowledge me, then I guessed I’d just keep asking questions.
“What branch of the military are you with?” I asked. “What base do you come from?”
Because that was the other thing. I was from this area—or at least, I’d been living there for a couple of years—and I knew that there wasn’t a base around here. Or at least… not one that the public had known about.
I frowned at that, trying to remember if I’d ever seen anything about a top-secret base that the public didn’t know about. Because even if the public didn’t, the dark web would have had rumors. And I would have seen those rumors. I racked my brain, trying to dredge up any mention I’d ever seen of anything like that… but came up blank.
Either I wasn’t remembering, or there hadn’t been any rumor worth paying attention to. Which led me right back to my original line of questioning.
“Are you under orders from the American government? Do you have any idea what’s going on in the rest of the country?”
Still no answer from the two Joes in the front seat, and I was starting to get pretty annoyed. They could have at least tossed a look over their shoulders or something. Shifted in their seats. Coughed.
Ignoring my questions like this was just plain old rude.
I threw myself forward and up against the front seat and dropped my voice a little bit.
“Look, I don’t know if you guys know anything about what just happened, but I do. I’m part of a group of people who were investigating the terrorists that initiated the attack, and I know who they are and what they used. I know how the biochemical weapon works and what we can do to protect ourselves.” I waited a beat, narrowing my eyes at the continued lack of interest from these shmucks. “I also know when another attack will be coming,” I added.
Yeah, that last part was a gamble. I didn’t know if there was even going to be another attack and I certainly didn’t know when it might happen. Hell, I only had a rudimentary idea of how we could protect ourselves if it did. But that particular gambit had worked wonders with Sally and her crew, and I didn’t see any reason for it not to work with these guys.
Surely they’d seen what the chemical did to people. Surely they wanted to protect themselves as much as anyone else. And if that was true, then surely they’d want to have someone with inside knowledge on their team. Someone like me.
I wasn’t sure what my end game was, there. I didn’t want them to try to keep me. I just wanted some sort of assurance that they weren’t going to throw us out into the wilderness without food or water—or shoot us in the head at the first possible opportunity.
And for a moment, I thought it worked. Because I actually got some action out of the guy driving the truck.
He turned in the seat and met my eyes—pretty stupid, when he was actually the one driving—and looked me up and down as if he was actually considering for the first time whether I would be useful or not.
I felt a glimmer of triumph at that, because hell yeah I could be useful. I mean, I didn’t plan to be overly useful to him for long. I planned to get to wherever he was taking us and then run at the first chance. But I definitely wanted him thinking I was useful—because that was how you stayed alive when you were with people you didn’t necessarily trust.
And for just a second, I thought I’d given him enough reason to actually give us some goddamn information. Maybe start answering some of my questions.
Then he turned to the guy sitting next to him and started talking to him inste
ad.
“We need to make sure we have a stricter curfew at the base,” he said shortly. “I don’t want anyone wandering around after dusk. Too much chance of another attack at night.”
The man in the passenger's seat cast a glance at the driver that said this was about the fifteenth time he’d heard that very thing, and I could actually see him rolling his eyes. Still, he nodded like he was actually taking mental notes.
“I’ll get one of the boys on that,” he said. “Should help us get everyone into bed at a specific time, too. Less chaos at night.”
“And we need to secure the food sources,” the driver continued. “Make sure they’re not vulnerable to any attack.”
I snorted at that. I didn’t think the VXM did anything to food—particularly if it was in some sort of sealed package—but that was the sort of information I was officially keeping to myself. If they weren’t going to answer my questions, I wasn’t going to volunteer any advice.
And also, who the hell were these guys that they were talking about a group of people—who they evidently controlled—and securing food stores? How many people did they have? How had they protected them? How did they mean to protect them in the future?
And did they have any communication with the government itself?
“How many people do you have?” I asked quickly, inserting myself into their conversation. “How did you survive the attack?”
Survival of The Fittest | Book 3 | Final Ride Page 1
