Broken Tide | Book 6 | Breakwater

by Richardson, Marcus

  "No! No, you can't go! You're the first voice we've heard on this stupid thing in the last couple days!"

  "Look here, if I don't get off this thing, I'm not gonna be able to get back to you for a long while. How about this, why don't we meet back here again tomorrow morning. Say 10 o'clock?" Mitch asked as he looked at his watch.

  After a pause, the woman came back. "Okay, okay—we can do that! We look forward to talking with you again, Bee’s Landing. This is Hilton Head, out."

  "Catch ya on the flipside, Hilton Head, Bee’s Landing signing off."

  He switched off the power and sat back in his chair with a sigh. “That was a lot more stressful than I thought it’d be."

  Amber looked at Cami. “Can I speak with you for a second outside?"

  "Excuse us," Cami said to Mitch.

  "Oh, don't worry about me—I need to rework some of these wires, and get things put away nice and neat. This is a hot mess…I’ll see you later?” he added for Amber.

  Amber nodded at Mitch and smiled, then helped Cami down the hall to her bedroom, then quietly shut the door. "Mom, when are you going to tell everybody about our supplies? We can't keep sneaking around the solar panels like this. It's been four days since we had anything set up and the batteries are almost drained completely—and the only thing I've had hooked up is the fridge, and that’s only on once or twice a day. We gotta do something."

  “I know, I know," Cami said as she sat on the bed with a sigh. "The hurricane really messed everything up. I was hoping everything would be cleared up with Cisco and we could get back on track…"

  "Mom, I don't think you understand, there are several houses that are damaged beyond the point of being habitable in the neighborhood. People are starting to bunk up with neighbors and friends. We've had several people sleeping downstairs for the last couple days. There's just not much anybody can do.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Sooner or later they're going to start wondering where all our food and supplies are coming from. We can’t keep it all hidden forever. I think it’d be best if we just flat out told everybody what's going on, so we can actually start using electricity in the open."

  Cami frowned. “Amber, once people find out that we have all this stuff…once people find out we have electricity…don't you think they're going to be upset?”

  "I've seen just about everybody over the last couple of days, through the worst of the storm and Cisco's attack. I don't think you're giving them enough credit," Amber replied. She crossed her arms. "Besides, how much longer are we going to be able to draw this out? And how exactly will people react if it's another month down the line and somebody figures out that we've had power and extra food and water for months…it's gonna blow up in our faces. I think now is a good time to just come out with it."

  Cami looked down at the cane in her hands. “How’s Marty?”

  "Mom," Amber moaned, "stop changing the subject. He’s fine—or as fine as he can be. We've got to do something about this."

  Cami sighed. "You're right, you're right. I just…I'm scared. This goes against everything Reese and I have practiced for the last decade or more!”

  "I know it's scary, mom—it's scary for me, too. But we’ll do this together. We'll get through it like we always have.”

  Chapter 13

  Braaten Forest Preserve

  Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina

  Reese crept forward through the undergrowth on the southern edge of the Braaten Forest Preserve. All around him, cicadas screeched, and flies buzzed around him. The ground was still saturated from the hurricane, and everything in the forest had a steamy, almost fog-like atmosphere. Behind him, the others followed, their footsteps muffled on the soft, loamy forest floor. It'd been several minutes since anyone had whispered anything, and the little party of survivors crept silently through the woods, recognized by animals all around as no threat.

  In the distance, a jay squawked, expressing its outrage that they dared walk through its territory. Squirrels and chipmunks chattered from the trees and rustled along the ground, scattering as they approached.

  Reese came to a small rise, hidden in the forest of saplings among larger trees, and motioned for the others to slow down. He crept ahead to peer over the crest. He was glad he did so—just on the other side of the hill was a small clearing, occupied by several men with weapons. They stood in a rough semicircle, their backs to Reese, in absolute silence. He'd had no idea they were there, and his heart raced with the thought that his little band might've walked right into a trap if he hadn’t been paying attention.

  He licked his lips, and carefully—slowly—moved his hand to wipe sweat from his face. He brushed off an annoying gnat and paused, trying to figure out what to do next.

  Jo crept next to him, silent as a cat. "Who the heck are those guys?" she breathed.

  Reese shook his head in answer. "No idea." He looked over his shoulder, caught Alain’s eye, and slowly motioned the others to lower themselves to the ground and wait. He nodded in agreement and looked relieved to deposit his father and the makeshift stretcher on the ground.

  Jo tapped his shoulder and Reese returned his attention to the men in the clearing. "Got some movement on the far side of the clearing," she whispered.

  Reese watched as the bushes parted on the far side of the clearing, exactly where the men were looking, and a half dozen ragtag people, mostly men—and a few women—staggered into the sunlight that filled the clearing, blinking and shielding their eyes. Behind them, a pair of big men followed, one with an AR-15 pointed at the back of the last man in line.

  "What the…?” Reese muttered.

  The guard, for that's what Reese assumed the man with the rifle to be, presented his charges to the five men that waited on the near side of the clearing. Reese couldn't hear the conversation clearly, but he could catch every other word. They were talking about prisoners, and at the same time he heard “new recruits.” He frowned. He never heard of recruits being forced at gunpoint to join a cause.

  Either way, the men laughed, and one of the men who'd been waiting—a skinny, wiry man with a bald head—reached out to examine one of the women. She flinched back at his touch, and stared daggers at him, but he only laughed.

  The sound made Reese's stomach flip-flop. The man reached out and snatched the woman's jaw, then roughly jerked her head this way and that as he examined her. He mumbled something to the other men, who broke out in a short fit of laughter, then nodded, waved his assent and watched as the others rounded up the group and forced them to march north.

  Reese and Jo watched as the last of the group disappeared into the bushes, and the wiry man turned as if to check his tracks. He spent a long moment looking along the tree line all around the clearing, and Reese held his breath as the man's eyes—he had a dead, empty gaze—swept over their position. He only started breathing again when the stranger moved on, apparently satisfied no one followed them.

  Still, Reese held Jo in place and they waited until he had counted to 60, two times, before they slowly crept back to the rest of the group.

  "What was all that about?" Jo asked as she dusted leaves off her knees.

  Reese shook his head. "I can't say for sure, but that sure looked like one group of men brought in a bunch of captives and transferred them to another group.”

  Jo scratched her head. "You see how all those jokers had red armbands on?"

  Reese nodded. "Just like those two goons back at the strip mall. They gotta be working for the same crew…” Jo hugged herself. "I can't get that image out of my head…the way that one guy looked at that girl…like she was a piece of meat.”

  "We have seen this many times since the tsunami," Dira said. "There are bad people everywhere."

  Reese glanced at Alain, who looked at him and dipped his head. "You're right," Reese agreed. "We need to get going. Okay," he whispered, as he brought the group in for a huddle. "Those guys went north. We need to go northwest, so as long as we head in that direction," he said
as he pointed across the clearing, "we should be okay. Let's give it another minute, then we'll head out. Make sure to be as quiet as you can. We do not need their kind of attention brought down on us. Agreed?"

  "Agreed," Jo said immediately. The others nodded assent, and when Reese felt the coast was clear, he led them off across the clearing. Reese kept the shotgun at his shoulder and paused in the middle of the open space, then waited as his troop of survivors disappeared into the bushes on the far side.

  As he trotted across himself and was about to enter the bushes after Jo, a shout erupted in the distance. It came from the direction the men and their prisoners had gone.

  Reese turned and dropped to one knee, raised the shotgun to his shoulder and sighted and down the barrel in the direction of the shout. He opened his mouth to call out a warning to Jo, when a gunshot cracked in the distance, the explosion of sound echoing through the trees on the far side of the clearing.

  With no imminent threat, every fiber of Reese's being screamed at him to get up and go. Finally, he tore himself away from his position at the tree line and sprinted the 15 feet to catch up to the others. "Go, go, go!" he said in a hoarse whisper.

  He pushed Jo gently on the back and urged everyone to go faster. Heedless of the noise they made, the group picked up its pace and crashed through the bushes heading northwest, angling away from the direction the red badge crew had gone.

  The hairs on the back of Reese’s neck stood up, and he couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. Despite the fact that he stopped every five paces and spun to check behind them, he never saw anyone. When they failed to hear any other sounds from the captives or the strange men with weapons after about 10 minutes, Reese finally started to relax.

  That was precisely when all hell broke loose.

  With a tremendous crash, rather like a rhinoceros bursting from the trees, the two men Reese had seen prodding prisoners across the clearing, exploded from the greenery halfway down the length of their column. One raised a hand to grab Dira, but she screamed and ducked, quick as a snake. She came up kicking, and landed a blow square to the man's midsection, which staggered him and drove him back far enough for her to get out of arm's reach.

  The second man raised a broken tree branch like a club and swung, clipping Yavan on the shoulder. He tumbled into the bushes and spilled the old man out of the stretcher with a startled cry.

  The man with the tree branch turned and took aim at Dira, but he never got to finish the back swing. Reese heard the soft hiss of Alain’s sword coming free of its scabbard and then the man was on the ground, gurgling on his own blood. That was all the opening Reese needed. As the second man recovered from Dira’s kick, Reese lined up the shotgun, squeezed the trigger, and sent a rubber slug downrange.

  He hit the man square in the neck, and the thug’s eyes bulged wide as he collapsed into the bushes with his hands around his throat.

  Reese racked the slide, and the cha-chack sound froze everyone. "Go!" Reese yelled. "That way!" He pointed with one hand in the direction of travel he wanted them to take, and shoved Jo. She grabbed the screaming child, and urged Dira forward.

  Reese helped Yavan get to his feet, and they put the old man back on the stretcher while Alain cleaned and sheathed his sword. Reese had no idea the man could draw three feet of steel so fast—and use it. In less than the time it took Reese to pump the forestock, Alain had pulled the sword free, dispatched one enemy and dropped to a knee, which allowed a clear shot over his head at the second attacker.

  With his charges safely crashing through the bushes heading toward Bee’s Landing, Reese spun when he heard someone approach from behind.

  He found out too late it'd been a set up. The man he heard approaching loudly from behind was none other than the skinny one who’d been appraising the woman in the clearing. Reese lined up on the man's chest, but failed to see a second man burst from the tree line next to him. The impact knocked the wind from Reese's lungs, and before he could blink, he kissed the dirt.

  Strong hands yanked Reese’s arms painfully behind his back. He cried out in pain and arched his back to relieve the pressure on his half-healed shoulder. Rough lashings tied his wrists together, then those same strong hands grabbed his biceps and hauled him painfully to his feet. He stood gasping for breath as the man who’d tackled him drove a piledriver fist into Reese's gut, which made all the air whoosh from his lungs a second time.

  He dropped to his knees, struggling to get his diaphragm working in the right direction through blurred vision, then finally sucked in a gulp of air. On his knees, he looked up and spotted the wiry man watching him with a crooked smile on his face. In his hands, he held Reese's shotgun.

  "Mighty nice toy you got here…you a cop?" he asked in a whisper.

  Reese tried to speak, but couldn't get enough air, so he shook his head.

  "I told you he ain't no cop," the man who’d tackled him growled.

  "Get him on his feet," the wiry man said in a bored voice.

  His captor hauled Reese back to his feet a second time and held him in place on unsteady legs. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about a couple of our boys, they got taken out back on the edge of town, now would you?" he whispered into Reese's ear. The stink of rotting gums and sour breath nearly caused Reese to lose what food he had in his stomach.

  "There’ll be time for that later. Boss’ll be happy we brought in somebody with some skills," the wiry man said. He glanced at Reese, looked him up and down, and smirked. "Probably have to break you before you’ll toe the line.” He shrugged. “But you'll see. Your life just got a lot easier, friend.”

  A rough black cloth descended over Reese's face and was cinched tight around his throat. He cried out in surprise, but relaxed when he realized they weren't intending to choke him to death, merely blindfold him. "Easy," his captor grunted as he shook Reese. "Standard procedure. Don’t get jittery."

  Reese turned his head left and right, desperate to see through the cloth, but with his wrists tied securely behind his back, he was helpless.

  A new voice grunted from Reese's left. "What about the others?"

  Reese turned his head automatically to look at the newcomer, then frowned inside the sack over his head. Great.

  "Don't worry about them,” Skinny said. “We already lost enough men today. We’re gonna be shorthanded. This guy’ll make up for it, but it may take him a while to see things the right way. Let's go. Boss is waiting.”

  As they marched Reese blindfolded through the underbrush, his one consolation was that Jo and the others had gotten away and continued to head northwest. As long as she kept them on the right heading, eventually they'd run right into Bee’s Landing.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked, as he tripped over a root.

  “To your new home,” his guard replied. The man laughed. “Welcome to the Charleston Protection Alliance.”

  Chapter 14

  Braaten Forest Preserve

  Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina

  Cisco crossed his arms and stood in front of the command tent as he watched the new recruits parade past. Jenkins led them in front of the rest of the men, who'd stopped their work to watch the new meat arrive. There was plenty of catcalling, whistling, and lewd comments—directed toward both the men and women among the new arrivals—but Cisco merely smiled and let it happen. Hazing was all part of the initiation. The men under his command had at one point or another all been outsiders. He was the unifying factor and brought them all together to become a cohesive unit, capable of taking on a National Guard outpost.

  Cisco grinned. That had been a good time. They’d walked in and surprised the supply chain commandos, killed half outright, and captured the rest. A few went along with his plans, and they’d been forced to execute the others…but the loot! He shook his head. They ate like kings for a week before they’d started an orgy of burning and looting in the local neighborhoods.

  The smile faded. Then he’d decided to take on
Bee’s Landing and get some payback. What a debacle. He forced the memory of the failed attack out of his mind as the parade continued.

  Cisco watched the newcomers walk by, every one of them eyes downcast, some with hands tied securely behind their backs. None of them offered any resistance whatsoever. Cisco's smile returned. It was a good first step. The first batch of recruits that he and Jenkins had brought in from I-17 had been troublesome…but were quickly learning their place. And now they weren’t the rookies anymore…they had someone else to pick on.

  He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled, the universal signal for his men to gather around. As the guards pulled in workers from the outer sections of the camp, Cisco made his way through a dozen of his own supporters, and climbed atop the MRAP, still parked where it had been ever since it was destroyed in the attack led by Cami Lavelle and Darien Flynt.

  Just thinking about the devil woman from Bee’s Landing turned Cisco’s stomach sour. It was because of her that he'd been forced to reevaluate how he treated incoming recruits. His first impulse had been to humiliate, beat, and break every one of them.

  For starters, he found out that was a futile endeavor—he didn't trust any of his men, and he certainly didn't trust Jenkins to do a proper job of it…that meant he had to do it all himself, and there just wasn't time enough in the day.

  Cisco grunted as he hauled his massive frame up over the back of the MRAP and clambered onto the charred, deformed roof. No, he’d discovered with the first batch of “recruits” that it was easier to catch more bees with honey than vinegar.

  He raised his hands, and his men fell silent, which caused the recruits to fall silent. Several of the newcomers refused to look up at him until they received a sharp elbow to the back. Once Cisco was confident he had everyone's attention, he looked over his army.

  Almost 60 people surrounded the MRAP. Every single one of his loyal followers carried a weapon of some kind, and most of the probationary members—drawn from the ranks of the first batch of road refugees—had at least a pistol. The few precious semiautomatic rifles left over from the National Guard went to the super loyal among his men. It was a waste, he knew, to use such talented fighters as prison guards, but what he planned on saying next might alleviate that situation as well.