Emily nodded again but she didn’t feel any better. She knew too much.
They had to kill her.
Would Lanche ask her questions first, or just shoot her right there?
The soldiers prodded her to keep walking, so she did. One foot in front of the other.
Colonel Lanche sat behind a makeshift desk in his private quarters, a room that used to be one of the shops in Grand Central, off the main terminal. He gestured them inside.
“Emily,” he said, standing to greet her. “We’re glad to have you back.”
It was a trick, she knew. She didn’t say anything.
“You are, of course, under arrest.”
Admit nothing.
“You stole our only way of communicating with the outside world,” he said, pausing again.
She waited for him to accuse her once more, but he held his ground, waiting for her to speak. Finally she couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
“How could you keep that radio a secret from everyone?” She meant to scream it but it came out as a harsh whisper, her throat already raw from yelling.
“We cannot share classified information with civilians,” he said, making civilians sound like a distasteful word. “You wouldn’t know how to utilize that information.”
“Why is having a radio classified? Why couldn’t you share the news every day with people? Let us listen to the American Victory Radio?”
Lanche laughed. “Well, that answers my next question. You listened to the radio, I see.”
Emily didn’t speak. She’d already said too much.
“The American Victory Radio is just one man, spouting lies from a basement somewhere outside the city. He doesn’t know anything. He has access to some radio equipment that was apparently saved in the Pulse, like our radio.”
One of the soldiers handed over the backpack to Lanche. He opened it and removed the radio reverently.
“Good work, men,” Lanche said. “You can go now.”
The soldier who had kept threatening her scowled at her. She understood the look in his eye, even if he couldn’t speak. Fear rushed through her.
He’d find her later.
If Colonel Lanche didn’t kill her first, of course.
Lanche continued searching through her backpack. “What’s this?” he asked, pulling out a scrap of paper.
Oh no… Mason’s address.
She tried to look nonchalant, hoping he wouldn’t recognize the significance of the address.
“Did you tell anyone about this radio, Emily?” Lanche asked, his voice velvet. She shook her head, trying to stifle the panic that crept up into her throat like bile.
“I think you did. I think you told someone.”
Emily shook her head again, dropping her eyes, not wanting him to look into them and read the truth.
“Andrews!” he barked, and a soldier—the very threatening soldier—immediately came back in the room. He must be stationed as a guard outside the Colonel’s room.
“Go to this address,” he said, handing the man the slip of paper. “If you see anyone there, kill them.”
“No!” Emily shrieked, horrified.
Lanche nodded at her outburst, as if she’d just proved his point.
Andrews glanced at her before looking back at Lanche. “What about the girl, do you want me to take care of her, too?”
“Perhaps. Report to me when you get back from your assignment.”
Andrews grinned at her malevolently and stepped back out of the room, holding the scrap of paper with Mason’s address on it.
She had to get out of there. Had to warn him.
But how?
“What shall I do with you?” Lanche murmured almost to himself. “I can’t trust you back in the general population of the camp. You know secrets you can’t be allowed to share.”
“I won’t tell a soul, I swear. Besides, who would believe me? Everyone knows all the radios got fried.”
Lanche smiled but shook his head.
“Just let me go,” she said. “You’ve got your radio back—let me leave. Please.”
“If I were to let you leave, what would you do for me?”
Emily swallowed. “Anything. I’ll do anything you want me to.” But could she really do whatever Lanche wanted? Yes, she realized. She’d do whatever it took to survive.
But Lanche was pure evil, and he disgusted her more than anything. Besides, she couldn’t trust him. Even if he said he would let her go after he had his way with her, that didn’t make it true.
He’d never let her leave.
Lanche smiled, looking satisfied with himself. “You always thought you were too good for us soldiers, didn’t you.”
“No—no sir.” Her voice sounded false even to herself.
“Well, I don’t want you, how about that. You’re filthy. You’re a traitor who doesn’t deserve to live. I’ll let Andrews take care of you when he returns.”
When he returns from killing Mason.
Emily swallowed around the lump in her throat. As much as she wanted to poke Lanche’s eye out, she had to keep her cool. If she could change his mind, perhaps play on his sympathy, then she’d be free. “Please, sir, don’t give me to Andrews. He’ll rape me before he kills me.”
“He can do what he likes with you. In the meantime, I can’t have you running around blabbing about things, now can I?” Lanche looked at her and smiled thinly. “You’re staying here. I’m going to dinner.”
And the mention of dinner, her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Stupid, she thought, to be thinking of food at a time like this.
“I won’t be wasting a ration on you, you’re already dead,” Lanche said, walking out the door and shutting it behind him. There was a faint but audible click as he locked it, even though there was, no doubt, an armed guard standing outside the room as well.
Her life was over.
Andrews would find Mason, and then Andrews would come back here, rape her, and kill her. A loud sob hitched in her throat at the certainty.
No, she couldn’t afford to fall apart now. She was a nurse, damn it, and trained to think critically through a crisis. There had to be a way out, even though it seemed hopeless. She’d survived this long, against all odds.
Pull yourself together. Think.
* * *
Mason looked out over the rooftop of the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue in disappointment. He was ready to call it quits for the night.
He’d been out searching for a new gun all day, had climbed to the roofs of dozens of buildings, but, so far, no downed shooters.
Then, something glinted in the corner in the moonlight.
Mason blinked, unsure if he could believe his eyes. In the dark, it was hard to see what was there, but something definitely gleamed amidst the cement and dirt.
Bounding over to the corner, Mason whooped in delight. A skeleton in army camo lay slumped in the corner.
The soldier had been dead for a long time, Mason presumed, to be just bone. Although the pigeons may have helped scavenge the meat from the bones.
Pigeons weren’t a problem anymore now that they’d been hunted to near extinction in New York City.
“Sorry you died, buddy. This wasn’t your fault,” he said to the soldier’s corpse.
Next to the body lay a rifle. Mason picked it up. Still loaded.
He patted down the worn pockets on the skeleton until he found the ammo pack. “Thank you,” he said to the corpse, pocketing the ammo.
I may have just saved my own life.
Mason hefted the rifle over his shoulder and aimed it at the street, looking through the optic sight. This thing was amazing, like looking through a telescope. He could see right to the ground, see the cracks in the sidewalk, even.
Mason looked back over at the corpse and noticed, for the first time, a huge backpack. The dead soldier must have been carrying as much as he could with him, since he wouldn’t have had a home base.
> Maybe there were MREs in there. He wasn’t hungry now, but he wouldn’t turn down food if it was available. Mason sat down on the rooftop and hefted the large pack toward him. He emptied the contents on the cement.
A photo fell out, of a man and a woman on their wedding day. Damn.
He looked at the corpse and sighed. “That sucks, man. I’m sorry.” He wondered what happened to the soldier’s bride. Was she still alive, even? It wasn’t likely, Mason knew.
Hopefully there was a heaven, and they were in it together.
Mason shook his head and laughed to himself. He never got gushy like that before. He must’ve gotten softened a bit by Emily, because that was the only reason he could think of for his newfound Hallmark moment.
Emily—where was she, was she okay?
He brushed the thought aside so he could focus on the contents of the pack. She’s gone. He had to forget her, as hard as that would be to do.
Jackpot. Another gun, this one smaller. A pistol.
Mason checked it to see if it was loaded. It was. He clicked the safety on and slid it into the back of his pants and grinned. Perfect.
And look… a fresh shirt.
If he wore a soldier’s uniform and carried a soldier’s gun, he might be able to move more freely. Who’s to say he’s not part of the army—instead of a convict on the run?.
He stripped off the tight T-shirt Emily had given him and quickly buttoned the brown-and-khaki camo shirt. He’d keep his own pants—the dead soldier was a lot shorter than him, and the pants wouldn’t fit.
The shirt fit tightly, straining across his shoulders at the seams.
But the gun—ah, the gun was just right.
“Thanks, man,” Mason said. He took the photo of the soldier and his wife back out of the pack. He placed it on the dead man’s body, right over his heart.
* * *
Emily paced Lanche’s empty quarters at Grand Central Terminal.
Her stomach was in knots. She couldn’t eat now even if someone did offer her food, which they obviously weren’t going to do. How did criminals on death row ever manage to choke down their last meal?
Mason, she prayed, please don’t be home. Don’t let them find you and kill you.
If only she could warn him. Damn, how could she have been so careless as to leave his address in her backpack like that? She gritted her teeth.
Escape.
She had to focus on escape—it was the only chance she had of living through the night. Looking around the room with renewed vigor, she glanced up at the walls, hoping to find a window.
Of course, there were none—she was in an abandoned corridor of shops within Grand Central. The only glass was the display window, which had been painted over for privacy. She’d bleed to death if she tried to crash through that.
Hmm. There was most likely an armed guard at the door to Lanche’s room, but she’d never actually confirmed that fact.
Walking over to the door, she slowly grasped the doorknob and tried to turn it. Nothing. The door was locked. She knocked on the door, hoping someone outside—maybe even the guard—would hear her and help.
A man’s voice answered, “What.“
“Sir?” she called through the door. “I have to use the bathroom.”
“There’s a bucket in the back of the room behind the curtain. Use that.”
Shit. She’d actually already known that—she’d hoped the guard hadn’t.
“Please, let me out,” she said, her cheek pressed against the rough wooden door. “They’re going to kill me. You don’t want my death on your head, do you?”
The guard didn’t respond.
“Think about Nazi Germany,” she said, “how good people stood by and let bad people do horrible things. You don’t want to be like that.” She held her breath, hoping her impassioned speech had softened the guard toward helping her.
Still, no answer.
Then… the guard spoke. “You are a threat to national security. My assignment is to make sure you don’t leave this room, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”
A threat to national security? Oh please. Emily felt a bubble of semi-hysterical laughter come up in her throat.
She really would die tonight. So she had nothing to lose.
She looked around the room again, this time trying to think of anything, anything at all, even if she might get hurt in the process.
She was fearless now. A rush of power settled over her. It felt freeing, somehow, knowing she was going to die.
It made her feel invincible.
Could she bash the door down, tackle the guard—maybe hit him over the head, or poke his eyes out—and escape?
Only one way to find out.
Mason walked slowly along Fifty-Seventh Street, enjoying the feeling of his limbs stretching out.
He swung two dead rats by their tails. His secondary rat nest had been in surprisingly good shape considering how long he’d had to leave his rats to fend for themselves.
He’d make himself dinner at his apartment and clean his new guns. After a year of exposure to the elements, both weapons needed some TLC, that was for sure.
Two men were talking as Mason rounded the corner to Trump Tower. Freezing, Mason flattened himself against the building and listened.
“Fucking squatters,” one man said. “Found himself a pad in Trump Tower. Bet he was on welfare before the Pulse.”
“Opportunistic fucks, am I right?” the other man said. Then—”All right, Andrews, how we gonna do this?”
“We go up, find the bitch’s leak, and kill ’em. Then I’ve got a date with Emily.”
It took every bit of self-control Mason had to not open fire on them right then and there.
And the only reason he didn’t was because he didn’t know how many more of them there were. Two against one was bad enough, especially since he hadn’t gotten a chance to test his new weapons yet.
What if he took aim and missed? What if the gun misfired, or the sight was off? It was too risky.
They must have Emily.
Fear washed over him like ice water. Damn that stubborn woman—he never should have let her leave.
Andrews said he was going to kill him. And if they had gotten here, they must have either found his address in Emily’s bag, or tortured it out of her. He prayed to God it was the first and not the latter. The thought of Emily being in danger, being hurt—he could barely breathe.
He had to help her.
Mason stayed where he was until he heard the men go into the building. They wouldn’t find him there ever again. He’d have to leave everything and start over.
All his possessions, what few things he’d been able to acquire, were gone now. It was like when he first escaped from Rikers—alone, with only the clothes on his back and a gun.
But this time, instead of spending all of his time and energy avoiding the law, he’d have to go right into the heart of the army. He had to rescue Emily—so he’d go to the military camp.
Grand Central, he thought, watch out.
* * *
Emily stared at the door, her only way out of Lanche’s room. Okay, she could do this. Just like when she used to watch television and the cops would ram their shoulders against a door, breaking it open.
The soldier outside wouldn’t be expecting that—she could catch him off guard.
She went to the far side of the room so she could get a running start. Man, if only she had big broad shoulders like Mason. Her puny bony ones were probably going to shatter before the door would. But that didn’t matter—not if she was going to die anyway.
She may as well go out with a bang.
On the count of three, she thought.
One. Two. Three.
Emily stormed the door, twisting at the last moment and throwing her shoulder against the rough wood, slamming into it so hard she literally saw stars in her vision for a brief moment.
The soldier outside yelled “What the hell?”
But the door, she realize
d dismally, was still fully intact. She hadn’t even dented it.
A loud booming noise startled her as the guard behind the door rapped his fist against the wood sharply. “Whatever you’re doing in there, stop it.”
Damn it. That was it. That was all she had, and it hadn’t done a thing. The door was too hard. But what about the display window? She’d dismissed it earlier as a way to certain death, but she’d run out of options. It was painted glass, so obscured she almost forgot it was there. Glass she could break out of.
This… this could work.
She would have to be careful. There were so many places on her body she’d need to avoid accidentally cutting if she didn’t want to bleed to death—like the carotid artery on her neck, for instance.
Touching her neck self-consciously, Emily quickly surveyed her body. Radial arteries of the wrists, she’d have to protect those. Femoral arteries in her groin, those should be easier to protect, depending on how she went through the window.
But there was a very real risk she’d cut herself terribly from all the glass.
The image of herself somersaulting through the glass and landing at the feet of the guard, holding her hands out to him, unable to breathe as she choked to death on her own blood, stopped her cold.
What if she broke a hole in the glass first by throwing an object other than herself through it?
That might be smarter. It would, unfortunately, alert the guard that something was up, and when she the stepped through the hole in the glass she would most likely find herself staring down the barrel of his rifle.
But maybe she could bring a weapon—something heavy—and bash his head in.
The thought of injuring someone else, when she had spent her whole nursing career trying to save people’s lives, bothered her. But if she had to choose between that soldier—a man who probably helped himself to the girls on the Tracks every night—and herself, she’d choose herself without a second thought.
She needed to find something to throw.
The metal chair.
She could throw that through the glass, and then step through, pick up the chair, and smash the guard over the head.
The Pulse: Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy Page 8
