Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed

by Molles, D. J.

  They didn’t need air flow right now. They needed privacy.

  There was no furniture in the flat. They gathered, standing at a counter that separated the small living area from the tiny kitchen.

  “Alright, let’s keep our voices down,” Sam murmured. “We need to just assume that someone’s got their ear to the wall, listening to us at all times.”

  The others nodded their assent to that.

  Sam fixed onto Jones. “You said you got the satphone?”

  Jones nodded, slung his pack off and placed in on the counter. “Lucky they didn’t search my shit again.” He unzipped the main compartment, dove in, and pulled out the satphone, which he’d buried at the bottom.

  Sam left it on the counter for now. “Jonesy, what was your interview like?”

  Jones curled his nose. “Frankly, it was insulting. There were a lot of implications that I might be allied with those bastards from the United Eastern States.” Jones huffed dramatically, then smiled. “I convinced them of my loyalty.”

  Johnson shuffled in place. “I think they hit me with the same questions.” His face screwed up. “It’s like they know something’s up, Sam.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s the impression I got as well. Like they knew that there might be elements trying to infiltrate them. Which is concerning.”

  Frenchie kept wiping his sweaty palms across the counter in an odd self-soothing motion. “Man, I don’t know about this. They’re on high alert right now. It is not a good time to be running around out there trying to talk to people out rebelling.”

  “Hey.” Sam frowned at Frenchie. “You knew what you signed up for. You all knew what this was going to be. Lee didn’t promise it was going to be easy. We’re going to have to be smart about this. We’re gonna have to be slick as shit. But we are going to do what we came to do.”

  “I don’t see how,” Frenchie snapped. “The second you open your mouth to anybody, they’re gonna be so worried about saving their own skins they’ll turn you in at the drop of a hat.”

  Jones blew a raspberry. “Frenchie, when’d you turn into such a pussy? When we left Texas you were all rarin’ to go for the resistance. The second you realize it’s not gonna come easy, you get cold feet? Grow a fucking sack, bro.”

  Marie, who had watched the others in silence, finally interjected. “Neither of you are wrong, and neither of you are right.”

  The others looked at her.

  “There is gonna be extra scrutiny. I don’t know what information they have, but I think we all had a similar interrogation, and it sure as hell seems like they suspect that Lee sent someone here to infiltrate them. But…they don’t know it’s us. Or they would’ve already locked us up. Or flat out killed us. Which means that we still have a chance to slide in under the radar and do what we need to do. It’ll be challenging, but like Sam already said, you knew it was going to be challenging when you agreed to come.”

  “I knew it would be challenging to secretly convince people to rebel,” Frenchie retorted. “I didn’t think we were going to be getting this much attention while we tried to do it. It’s borderline impossible at this point.”

  Sam felt a flush of heat rising up his neck and into his face. He turned to Frenchie and glared at the man so hard that Frenchie looked away and his worrying hands fell still.

  “Frenchie, I swear to God, you better not fuck this up. I vouched for you, do you understand that? You too, Johnson. Lee didn’t know either of you, and he didn’t want to send you with me because he doesn’t trust you guys.” Sam stabbed a finger down on the countertop. “I vouched for both of you.” Sam shook his head, his eyes flashing intensely between Frenchie and Johnson. “Don’t make me regret that.”

  After an awkward silence, Pickell cleared his throat. “Alright. So it’s been established that there’s more scrutiny than we thought. How do we move forward?”

  Sam hiked his elbows onto the counter and raised his fingers, ticking off his points. “First off, the scrutiny has practically no bearing on one aspect of our mission: we can still observe and report. We can still identify the soft targets, the entry points, and we can still provide up-to-the-minute intel for Lee. That’s huge in and of itself.

  “Secondly, we don’t know what that scrutiny is going to entail. It could just be tough talk, designed to scare us, and make the others be on the lookout for anyone talking treason. What we need to do right now is figure out how hard that scrutiny is, and whether we’re being treated any different than anyone else.”

  “What difference does that make?” Johnson asked.

  Sam felt disappointed by the question, because the answer was damn obvious. Did he have to spell everything out for these two new guys? He’d vouched for them, but he was already regretting it. “Because if they’re scrutinizing us and not everybody else then that’s a bad fucking sign. You get it?”

  Johnson looked enlightened. “Right. Gotcha.”

  “So we need to take extra care to stay off the radar and not get any extra attention. At the same time we need to discreetly—again, discreetly—monitor how much attention we’re getting. Are there going to be people following us? Watching us? Dropping in and questioning us at random times?”

  “They mentioned something like that,” Jones put in. “My interviewer told me that someone would be ‘checking in on me.’”

  Sam nodded. “I got the same warning. Which leads me to point number three.”

  He hesitated here, wondering how to sum up what amounted to little more than a gut feeling. The others watched him carefully as he tried to form a concise morsel of knowledge that they could digest.

  “It’s possible—I’m not positive, but it’s the vibe I got—that my interviewer might be a weak link.”

  “Weak link?” Pickell asked. “Like, you might be able to turn him?”

  “Her,” Sam corrected. “And yes.”

  Jones’s eyes lit up. “Oh. ‘Her,’ huh? Was she hot?”

  Sam just closed his eyes for a moment. He’d come to understand why Billings had always seemed like a harried father looking after a bunch of wild children.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Jones raised his hands in defense. “If she’s hot, and maybe she thinks you’re hot, or even better, maybe she’ll think I’m hot…Maybe we can turn her by, you know, layin’ that good pipe.”

  Sam looked heavenward. “I should’ve left you behind.”

  “Everything’s on the table,” Jones replied, sagely.

  Sam finally returned his eyes to Jones. “You’re right. Everything’s on the table. Jonesy, if your dick is so magical that you can turn people with it, then you go right ahead. Do what needs to be done.”

  Jones seemed pleased by that. “Gonna fuck my way to freedom and democracy.”

  Bridling a smirk, Marie met Sam’s gaze. “Bringing us back around to the original point: What makes you think you can turn her?”

  “She said some things that made it seem like she didn’t agree with how Greeley was being run.” Sam mulled it over as he spoke. “Like she might have a moral problem with the treatment of civilians. Particularly after Greeley took Butler.”

  Marie kept her eyes on Sam. “Is it possible she was trying to bait a response from you?”

  Sam considered this. Then nodded. “Yes.”

  Marie’s lips tightened. “Be careful with that, Sam.”

  “We all need to be careful with everything,” Sam returned. He straightened up, passing a look around his team. “We don’t have a lot of time before Lee’s knocking at the door. So we’re going to have to be smart. Keep your ears open. Prompt people to talk, and then just listen. Let’s figure out who says what. Who seems like they’re a true believer in Greeley, and who seems like they’re just toeing the party line. And in the meantime, keep your eyes open. We need troop counts, locations, response times. Anything that bears on Greeley’s ability to withstand an assault. Try to find weak points in the structure. Things that can be taken advantage of, either by an assaulting force,
or through sabotage.”

  Sam gestured to them all in a sweep of his hand. “At the end of the day, Lee might come knocking, and it might just be us inside Greeley. And if that’s the case, we’ll work with what we have. Because even just five of us, working smart and discreet? We can do a helluva lot of damage.”

  ***

  The Alpha knew it would feed.

  But it also knew that what came next was not about food.

  It could smell it in the cold implacability that radiated off of the Omegas. It could see it in the stillness of their sinews, in the focus of their eyes, as they crept through the woods in the place outside where the Easy Prey had gathered.

  To the Alpha, this was confusing, because it was something it had not experienced before. Much of what had occurred had been new to the Alpha. When all the Others gathered in one place, and yet did not kill each other. When the Strange Ones began to lead them, through the Omegas. When the pack that had been his, became theirs, and became one with many other packs of Others, and the scents of the Others started as strange and feral in the Alpha’s nose, but now had become simply the scent of the pack.

  All of this was new to the Alpha. And yet it was right. It had to be right, because something inside of the Alpha followed it and conformed to it. It simply was, and what is must be right, because that is where the tide had taken them.

  The Alpha was animated by something that lurked in a place beyond thought. It was simply a flow, and the Alpha knew that it was right and should not be challenged, because the flow swept the Alpha up. What is must be right.

  Like the moon. Like the flow of wind. Like the rise and fall of the sun and stars. Like the air that grew hot, and then cold, and then hot again. It moved, and the Alpha moved with it, in it, and all of this was right.

  The Strange Ones wanted something. They yearned for it day and night. The Alpha could smell their hunger for it permeating the many Others that had become the one pack. The Alpha did not know what they hungered for, but he knew that it was not something to be consumed, not something that could satiate the belly.

  Their hunger was the hunger that takes a bird and causes it to fly to the place where it knows that it will be warm instead of cold. It was the hunger that causes a female to flow into estrus, and the hunger that causes the male to flow into her. It was the hunger of knowing without knowing that the flow takes you in its tide, and where it goes is the right place to go.

  It was, and what is must be right.

  And so the Alpha knew that it would feed. It would feed, but it would not rut. Not with the Omegas, whose time to Glow had gone with the changing of the moon. And it would not rut with the females of the Easy Prey either, for that time had changed as well. The Alpha would hunt, and it would kill, and it would feed, but the tide that had taken the pack was not for the purposes of feeding. The killing tide was for only one thing: Killing.

  First the killing, and then the feeding.

  And so the pack that had once been Others, but was now just the pack, waited. The Omegas led them to the place that the killing tide pushed them, and the Alphas and the rest of their packmates followed.

  The scent of the Easy Prey was strong and heavy, mixed with the rot of the forest floor; the verdancy of all the living green; the warm tinge of scat; the heady rush of the killing tide. When all was still and silent, the Alpha could hear the Easy Prey. It could hear the rumble of their hard-skinned shells that rolled faster than the Alpha could run. It could hear the strange calls that the Easy Prey made to each other with their mouths.

  By scent, and by sight, and by hearing, the Alpha knew that the Easy Prey were relaxed. They thought themselves secure. The screaming had not begun. The fear could not yet be smelled. But it would come soon.

  Closer and closer they crept. First the Omegas, and then the Alphas, and then the pack.

  The killing tide surged the Alpha’s pulse, and it sharpened the Alpha’s eyes. Hunger fled. The hunger to feed, and the hunger to rut. The killing tide swept all of that away, and all that was left was the hunger for killing.

  The sun beat down in hot shafts that leaked through the trees above them.

  The call of the insects filled the air.

  When the time came, the Omegas did not call out. They simply moved.

  And the tide swept the Alpha up.

  Running. Surging. Through the woods. Trees flashing. Brush thrashing.

  Into the open. The sun hot and loud. The scents heady and all-consuming.

  Across the hard black rivers that the Easy Prey had built, towards the massive doors where they came and went, the doors that rattled and squeaked so loudly when they were opened and closed.

  This was the place, the Alpha had learned, where there were no humming threads that killed with their hot lightning. Here the doors were covered with tangles of steel brambles that would cut and slice, but not kill.

  A scream went up from the Easy Prey.

  Movement, straight through those doors.

  The thunderous crash, the flash and billow of stinking smoke. The buzz of the fast stones that the Easy Prey hurled at them—they whisked past the Alpha’s ears, found the flesh of a packmate, thudding sharply and spewing blood.

  The Omegas split in many different directions, opening the way to the doors ahead of the pack, and the pack did not shy from the flow of the killing tide, but let it carry them on.

  The Alpha launched itself at the doors. Its clawed hands and feet latched onto any handhold it could manage, and began to writhe upwards. The steel brambles cut and slashed, but the Alpha paid them no mind. Blood brought blood. That was the way of things.

  Packmate after packmate slammed into the doors, dozens, then hundreds, and the doors creaked and groaned and began to fold on themselves, unable to bear the weight. The Easy Prey kept up their mindless screaming, and their tools of death continued to bark and spew and slam the life out of the Alpha’s packmates, but the pack was many, and the Easy Prey could not withstand it.

  Over the door, even as it fell.

  The Alpha tumbled to the ground, the world in its vision rolling over on itself. The Alpha’s claws clenched the hard black ground and righted itself. Blood poured from flaps of flash torn by the steel brambles, and scraped off by the hard ground.

  Movement. Prey.

  Screaming. Running.

  Two of them, side by side, their tool of death peeling like thunder, emitting a hail of stones that threatened to chew through the Alpha’s packmates. They did not see the Alpha. Their fear was too great, and they only saw what was in front of them.

  The Alpha launched itself into their sides, tackling both of them with the weight of its body. The fell, thrashing and screaming. A black claw in the hand of one of them, slashing the air. The Alpha snatched the arm in its mouth and clenched its jaw with everything in it. Blood gushed. Bones cracked.

  The Easy Prey beat at the Alpha with its fists. The Alpha plunged its claws into the prey’s jugular and ripped out that river of life so that it spilled over. The other prey tried to draw a black thing that the Alpha knew would spit killing stones, so the Alpha slashed, and the object went flying from the prey’s ragged hand.

  Blood dripped from the Alpha’s mouth. It seized the prey by its face and plunged its claws through the frightened eyes and into the brain, then smashed the skull against the hard ground.

  No time to feed.

  Only killing.

  ***

  How had it come to this?

  Colonel Freeman had no place to run, and barely even a place to hide. He had found a janitorial closet in the Butler High School and had run into it without thinking, while the screams and gunshots rose to a crescendo behind him, and then petered out into silence.

  He was scared. Of course he was. He was crammed into the dark backend of a closet, hiding behind a wooden bin of something that Lee and Angela’s folks had left behind—not janitorial supplies, that was for sure.

  But Colonel Freeman was an intelligent man, and not prone
to full-on panic. He was able to think, even as his heart thudded along at an alarming rate and his breathing increased to the point that he could no longer fully oxygenate through his nose and had to pant like a tired dog.

  They would smell him. He knew that. And because he knew that, he knew that he was going to be found, and that when he was found, he was going to die. He’d emptied his sidearm during his retreat from the gymnasium—the very same command center that Lee Harden had used—and he had no other weapons on his person.

  He began to fumble around in the darkness, trying to be quiet, but also trying to find something sharp, or with enough heft to brain one of the creatures when they finally came for him. Oh, it wouldn’t save his ass, he knew that. But he wasn’t going to lay down and just let them kill him. No, he’d take at least one of those bastards with him.

  It was right at that moment of thought, the world beyond the darkness of his hiding place now filling with grunts and growls and the skitter of claws on tile floors, that he stopped. His hands were frozen on an empty rack.

  He was going to take one of those bastards out with him?

  Really?

  For what? So he could be pleased with himself in the afterlife? To prove a point? To who? The creatures?

  Dimly, his own words lilted through the background of his memories, mocking him: You’ve always been a grunt, you always will be a grunt, and it doesn’t matter what promotion Angela’s seen fit to give you, you’ll shirk the very obvious responsibility that she was trying to bestow upon you, and run out into the wilderness to lug a rifle and try to justify your fucking existence.

  He’d said those words to Lee, feeling hot and self-righteous as he did.

  But Lee had survived. Because he was a fucking grunt.

  Maybe if Colonel Freeman knew as much about fighting as he did about commanding troops, he wouldn’t be in this position right now.

  Oh, the fucking irony.

  And the irony didn’t stop there. No, the hits just kept on coming.

  He’d barged in through Lee’s perimeter and attacked him at his most vulnerable, and then he’d set up shop in the gymnasium, right where Lee had stationed his own TOC. And now he, Colonel Freeman, was being overrun, forced to abandon that very same cursed gymnasium, and run for his life, because the primals had come through the very same perimeter that he had.