“The Monster?” I asked, stepping out from behind the woman in front of me. “And what exactly are we supposed to do with that?”
You would think I would stop letting my mouth run away with me at every possible opportunity. Maybe even that I’d have figured out that it only ever got me in trouble—and very rarely got my questions answered. You would be wrong about that, but you’d certainly think so, wouldn’t you?
The guard turned his glare on my face, scowled even more deeply, and marched right up to me.
“You’re supposed to do exactly what I tell you to do!” he screamed, his spittle spraying all over my face.
I reached up and wiped it off, staring him down. Because he might be screaming like he was a member of the military, but I could see the acne on his cheeks and the lack of a mustache on his upper lip. This kid might think he was tough, but he was just a kid acting tough. Just a friend of Adam’s, I had no doubt, who thought he was more than he actually was.
That thought had a sneer growing on my own face. And I let it.
Look, I had a thing about letting pathetic men see that I was laughing at them. And I wasn’t even sorry about it. So sue me.
“Listen, bub, I can hear you just as well when you speak in a normal tone of voice, and I don’t really appreciate getting spit all over when someone is speaking to me,” I said evenly. “So, I suggest you figure out what it is you think you want us to do here, and then tell us. That way we can get started and we can all go home earlier. Capiche?”
Yeah, okay, it was ballsy—especially when I could see that he was holding a gun and itching to use it. But I knew guys his age. I knew that they didn’t have their egos set yet. And I knew that you could talk them down—if you were confident enough in what you were saying.
And, just like I expected, he backed down, his eyes darting to the ground and then back up. He was angry, I could see that much, but he also didn’t know how to handle someone who actually talked back to him. He didn’t have a damn clue what to do when one of the women stood up to him.
Hell, I bet he’d been given the job of overseeing the women because Adam himself didn’t think he was confident enough to boss the men around. And though the feminist in me raised up her fist and shook it angrily at the thought, the more practical side of my nature saw that for what it was: An advantage.
Weak guards made for weak guarding. And that was exactly what I liked to hear.
“Walk the coaster,” he grumbled, narrowing his eyes and glaring at me like he would be able to take me out with the heat from his stare alone.
Fat chance, buddy, I thought, grinning at him. Because I knew exactly what to do with poisoned darts shot at me from an immature boy’s eyes.
“And?” I asked, arching a brow. “Just walk around and have a nice day, or…?”
“Figure out the best way to take it apart,” he continued. “Observe the joints, observe the foundation. Figure out what tools the men will need tomorrow when they come to dismantle it.”
And at that, my smile did slip. Because what the hell? Take the coaster apart? By hand? Like… starting from the bottom?
That seemed all sorts of wrong to me, and I was just about to say so when I turned my head, trying to figure out how this was logical, and saw that the men weren’t going to be doing it by themselves. Because there were cranes in the park that I hadn’t noticed until right then. Cranes and lifts that would get people to the top of the coasters. To start from the top down.
Cranes that we didn’t get to use, evidently, to help figure out how they were going to do it.
Well, add that to the list of things Adam is too stupid to be able to plan effectively, I thought.
Because we were going to be of little use to the men walking around the bases of the coasters figuring that sort of thing out when they were supposed to start at the top. And not only that, but the whole thing was really pointless. How much could we actually tell them? Unscrew the screws, take the coasters apart at the joints?
Basically, if my understanding was correct, we were being given a throwaway job.
Weird. Maybe the women weren’t considered bright enough to do anything more important.
And that inner feminist that had raised her fist and shouted about the situation before? This time, she screamed and put on the war paint, let me tell you. But I didn’t say anything. I just nodded and watched the kid walk away, to lean up against the building that housed what had once been the loading area for the rollercoaster. Then I turned and raised one eyebrow at the women around me.
“Well, girls, it sounds like we get to walk around out here and do a whole bunch of nothing while we pretend to figure out how those big, macho men can take down this coaster. Shall we?”
I saw the answering smirks in the crowd, then. I saw the raised eyebrows, the shaking heads, the grins at how stupid this whole thing was. A few of the women even met my gaze, their own gazes challenging me. They’d seen me take on one of the guards, those gazes said. What else did I have for them? Was I the leader they’d been unconsciously waiting for?
Was I the spark to their dynamite?
I tipped my head and gave them all a meaningful look back. Hell yeah, I was the spark. I was the freaking explosion waiting to happen. And hell yeah, I was going to lead them the fuck out of here.
But first, we had a rollercoaster to investigate.
And I had an escape to make. Because they didn’t need me out here, walking along the foundation of this coaster and staring up at what had once been a rip-roaring ride—but this was the freedom I’d been craving. The chance to get out into the open air on my own and have a look around. I didn’t think I would ever have been able to do it on my own—especially with Adam and his people watching Will and me so closely after our first escape.
But now I had my chance. With luck, while I was doing all this looking at rollercoasters, I’d see something that would clue me in to what was really going on here.
With even more luck, I’d overhear a conversation that no one realized I was listening to.
Chapter 15
As the other women continued to walk forward, chatting quietly amongst themselves, I slowed my steps a bit, going from the lead to three or four people behind it, and then even further back to mid-pack, the women around me barely registering the change in my position—or at least pretending that they didn’t notice.
Something told me that at least a couple of them did. They had to know that this was all too weird for words and that we had to do something about it. They had to know that us being out in the open, basically unsupervised, was the best possible chance for just that.
I just didn’t understand why they weren't doing anything like trying to escape. Then again, maybe they had just been waiting for someone with a plan, and now that I was here, they were going to do their best to cover me.
Actually, I kind of liked that idea.
And if that was what they were doing, then they were doing a damn good job of it. They were all chatting , now, and it was almost as if we were out on a Sunday walk that happened to include a number of very silent rollercoasters.
And men with guns.
And cranes in the distance.
During the fucking apocalypse.
As the women walked, though, I could see the tension starting to melt off of them. I could see them turning from automatons into human beings again, see their personalities starting to shine. Hell, I even heard a laugh or two. One woman in particular, a tall brunette with strong shoulders and an even stronger glare, caught my eye several times, her own face a mask of questions, her eyes telling me that they were giving me a chance—and that if I was going to take it, I’d better do it quickly.
And that was what finally made my decision for me. That woman’s name was Annie, I remembered. I’d heard it when the guards were talking to her. And she was giving me the clearest sign she could possibly give me that they were ready for me to make a move.
These women weren’t completely turned off.
They weren’t hopeless in the face of what had happened.
They were biding their time. Waiting for someone to come along and tell them what they needed to do to get out of this bizarre, backward situation.
And I was betting the men were doing the exact same thing.
Well, luckily for them, I’d arrived—with my trusty sidekick—and it turned out that as much as we might not have set out to be, we were a ready-made hero and heroine.
But before I could get to playing that role, I had to figure out what exactly was required of me. So I dropped a bit further back, and then a bit further back, until I was actually at the tail-end of the pack.
And then I turned sharply left and walked right under the rollercoaster and around one of the big columns, pausing there and glancing back to see whether anyone had noticed I’d gone. I hadn’t been super obvious, I didn’t think, but I’d walked with enough determination that it should have looked like I knew exactly what I was doing. Going to find a place to go the bathroom, perhaps.
With luck, the guards wouldn’t have noticed. And that was helped by the women themselves, who kept right on walking… and the kid who was supposed to be guarding us, who was looking down at some sort of magazine in his hands. He didn’t have a clue what the women were doing—or that I was no longer doing it with them.
That sort of attitude was probably the very reason he’d been given this particular duty in the first place. And it was exactly what I needed to take the next step in my personal mission.
I started walking quickly in the other direction, moving casually enough that no one who saw me could have said that I was in any big hurry, but quickly enough that I was going to be out of that kid’s sight within moments. I had no idea what I was looking for. I didn’t even know what I needed, really—but I knew it would be out here somewhere. This was the first real freedom I’d had, and I would have been a complete idiot not to take advantage of it.
Then I saw the very thing that I hadn’t even known I needed to see. In the control booth of a nearby ride—another rollercoaster—stood Adam and Zach. The booth was a story off the ground or so, attached to one of those rides that you had to take stairs to get onto, but I could see them clearly defined in the window. I could see Adam’s unkempt hair and a five o’clock shadow that I bet he never got rid of in the thought that it made him look important. And I could see that Zach looked just as fearful and frustrated as he had the last time I’d seen him.
They were also shouting at each other, their faces so close together that they looked like they could have been trying to kiss… except that they were screaming.
I started quickly in that direction, thinking that it didn’t take a freaking rocket scientist—or even a rollercoaster engineer—to figure out that whatever they were talking about, it was a conversation I needed to hear. Because that was the leader of this whole shebang and, as far as I could tell, his second-in-command—who, it turned out, didn’t have much faith in his leader. And they were definitely arguing about something important.
More than arguing. Shouting at each other.
Whatever the problem was, I wanted to know what it was. Maybe it would give me some insight into whatever they were doing here, because whatever they were doing, it was trouble. And if I was going to get Will and me out of it—and, I thought, the rest of the people here—then I needed to know what I was getting into.
Or rather, what I was getting out of.
I lengthened my strides, working to keep myself in the shadows and darting from column to column when I could. I was able to stay out of their sight for most of the walk, and though I wasn’t even sure they’d be looking at anything other than each other, I went out of my way to take a roundabout route to the base of the coaster they were currently inhabiting.
Then I realized I had a problem. Try as I might, I couldn’t hear them from down here. I strained my ears and got right up against the building, trying, but it was no use. The thing must have been soundproofed or something. Or maybe they’d stopped yelling.
Neither of these things were enough to make me give up, though. I wanted—no, needed—to know what they were discussing.
But how was I going to do it?
I stared at the stairs that would have, at one time, taken the coaster riders up toward the loading area, but knew immediately that I couldn’t use them. There was no place to hide on those stairs. One mistaken glance from anyone—Adam, Zach, the zitty kid who was supposed to be keeping an eye on me right now—and my goose would be well and truly cooked.
I couldn’t afford to get caught. Not after I’d already been caught sneaking around and spying yesterday. I might have been given the one chance to be bad without punishment. I didn’t think I’d get a second.
Also, if I got caught, I wouldn’t get to hear what they were saying. And I desperately wanted to hear that.
I turned my back to the building and stared out across the grounds of the amusement park, waiting desperately for inspiration to strike. I had always done my best thinking when I was under pressure, but that pressure had rarely come from physical danger like what I was in right now. And thinking about how to fix something when you’re sitting in your apartment in the dark is a whole lot different than trying to figure it out on the fly. In the middle the day, in the middle of an amusement park. When there are people with guns wandering around.
Then I realized that in the movement of rolling over against the wall like that, I’d…. rolled over something.
I stepped away from the wall and turned, frowning.
And then I saw it. It wasn’t large, just one of those little call boxes that rollercoaster operators use to communicate with their counterparts on other parts of the ride. The guy starting the ride has one that connects to the guy loading people up, to make sure everyone is appropriately belted in and ready to go.
And he also has one to the guy managing the line. To make sure that the line is moving the way it should.
That box was what I was looking at right freaking now. And if memory served, the box upstairs in the control booth should be one that was always on, for safety.
If I could somehow get into that box and turn it on, I might be able to hear everything that was going on upstairs.
I mean sure, it would take some very tricky work, but rewiring electronics was sort of a natural sidestep when you dealt with computers as much as did. I’d learned how to do it at a pretty young age. It had even helped me get into a rich guy’s house, once.
If I could get into that box, I was betting I could jump start the entire system. I already knew the park had electricity. I’d just have to figure out how to hotwire the system so it turned on. If I could get into that box.
I looked down at the power drill in my hand and grinned.
“It’s not about how big the tool is,” I whispered to myself, putting the drill up to the first screw in the box and smirking. “It’s about how you use it.”
Chapter 16
It took me next to no time to get the screws out of the box to loosen it, and I was about to jerk the whole thing off the wall, my mind already running ahead of me and wondering what I’d find underneath, when I heard someone in the distance. They were speaking loudly… and their voice was coming closer and closer to where I was now standing. Even worse, they were coming from behind me—which meant that I had zero cover.
I couldn’t just stand here, or I’d be caught. And if they looked at the box I’d gotten halfway off the wall… well, I’d be caught.
But it wasn’t like I had a fucking choice. I wasn’t going to stand out there in the open, all exposed.
I ducked around the building, my heart pounding and my eyes on the space where that voice was coming from. It seemed weird that someone would just be walking along, speaking loudly to themselves, but then again, I was stuck in a world where some insane cult had decided they were going to destroy the entire population just so they could… well, do whatever it was they’d decided they needed to do.
With that in mind, I guessed I should probably put any pre-conceived ideas about what was normal right out of my mind. If someone wanted to walk along talking loudly to themselves in the middle of a deserted amusement park that had a bunker under it and a madman at the helm, well, maybe that was just their way of reacting to this crazy version of the world.
A second later, though, another voice answered them, and unless I was actually going insane, that meant someone else was with them. Which at least meant that the owner of the first voice wasn’t insane.
So that was something. Though I didn’t know whether it actually helped me or not.
I ducked further back against the wall, trying to make myself actually melt into it—and failing horribly—and kept my eyes pointed at the space emitting those voices, which were arguing about someone or other not doing their jobs and what was going to happen to them when someone else found out that they’d done such a bad job.
Typical job review stuff, I guessed. And not very interesting job review stuff, at that. Nothing spicy. Just sounded like an employee who couldn’t get their shit together.
Then they came into view and I saw that the employee who evidently couldn’t get their shit together was none other than the kid who had been in charge of watching me.
Well, I thought, two guesses why he was in trouble, then. My first guess—and probably the only one I needed—was that someone else had come to check on the Wandering Women and found that I was no longer with them. I didn’t know how they would have. It wasn’t like we’d had a sign-in sheet or something. But I guessed someone had been paying attention.
And also, shit. Because if they knew I was missing, it meant they were also looking for me.
And that was going to make my whole rewiring the communications box and listening in on whatever conversation was going on above me idea a whole lot harder. If that conversation was even going on anymore.
Survival of The Fittest | Book 3 | Final Ride Page 8
