“You. You wretched man.”
Peter dropped his gun and wrapped his arms around the pastor as he collapsed to his knees. He leaned the old dying man back to the snowy earth.
Steele marched toward the two men. The gunfire slackened in its symphony of battle, the climax already come and gone. Peter held his master. The pastor’s lips moved quietly as he prayed. Steele bent and picked up his blood-drenched tomahawk. He ran his hand down the drenched shaft and swung it to the side, flinging off gore.
Steele’s voice was firm. “Step aside.”
Peter leered at Steele with tear-filled eyes. “You killed him.”
“No, we killed him.”
Peter placed his head near the pastor’s chest.
“Move aside.”
Begrudgingly, Peter let the pastor’s body, his lips still moving, rest in the snow. Steele stood over them, watching the old man die. The pastor seemed so weak and feeble in his current state, not imposing or commanding, only an elderly man on his deathbed.
“You have brought great sorrow to our people. You have butchered in the name of God, and now your wretched life has come to an end. No more. Not now. Not ever again.”
Steele grasped the pastor by the hair. Flurries had settled atop him, whitening the aged man. “I condemn you to death for the murders of Tess, John, Lydia, and my mother.” His fingers clutched the pastor’s hair like a handle. “You’ve been found unfit for society.” He squeezed and his arm tensed as he hauled the pastor off the ground. The pastor’s neck stretched long, and Steele swung with all his might. “Rah!”
The blade cleaved halfway through the pastor’s extended neck. What blood remained found an easier path to escape, squirting into the fresh powder. Wide eyes and trembling lips took over the pastor’s face. Steele swung again harder with the rage of injustice. The blade broke through bones in his neck, fragmenting them. The pastor’s mouth stayed ajar. Steele swung again a third time, cutting through the last of the muscle and tendon holding the man’s head on his body. Steele held the long-faced head high in the air. Streams of crimson escaped from the pastor’s jaggedly hewed neck, pooling in the snow.
Peter sobbed on the ground nearby. Townsmen and women from Hacklebarney led captured Chosen toward the center of the camp. Red Clare and Margie had the remains of the War Machines in a collective. A host of camouflaged soldiers held weapons in their hands, bug-eyed Major Ludlow at their front.
“This didn’t have to be this way,” Steele screamed at them. “We could have been united against this threat, and now we are broken. Never again. You are either for us or against us.” He stared at them angrily. “If you are against us then you die.” He took the pastor’s head and tossed it through the air.
The head floated end over end until it landed on the mass of burning bodies. The mouth opened and closed one last time, eyes staring blankly. Its skin blackened around his ears, hair burning atop his head. The eyes shut and it was engulfed by the fiery inferno.
JOSEPH
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, CO
Joseph drove toward the tunnel light slowly so he wouldn’t draw any unnecessary attention. A convoy of two-and-a-half ton green military trucks drove the opposite direction into the mountain base.
Byrnes eyed each one, cradling his M4 carbine with the unfamiliar nervousness of a man who hadn’t handled a long gun in years, but his muscles held the memories somewhere inside.
The light grew brighter and brighter as they neared the outside, the dim winter sun needing little strength to penetrate the tunnel’s darkness. White carpeted the ground, surprising Joseph. It didn’t seem possible that months had passed since he’d reached the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. The brightness of the outdoors stung his eyes, causing him to squint, and he’d almost forgotten the beauty of the mountainous countryside.
Joseph whispered, “It’s been so long.”
Byrnes covered his eyes with the back of his hand. “I know.” He busied himself straightening his uniform and wiping whatever dirt and grime that came from being captive inside a cave cell. He ran a hand through his hair atop his head leaving it straighter than a moment before.
“Everyone stay quiet,” Byrnes said.
People shifted in the back and then lay still.
Joseph brought the van to a rolling halt at the guard post. An airman stepped out of a white guard shack. The cold had made his cheeks rosy and he wore a knit cap along with gloves. He walked over to the window rubbing his hands.
“IDs?”
Joseph held up his personal ID card. The guard skimmed it quick then eyed Byrnes.
“ID, sir?”
Byrnes fumbled with his ID card stolen from the soldier.
The sentry took it with a nod. “Give me second, gentlemen.” He disappeared back into his tiny post, hardly enough for two men. He picked up a black phone and put it to his ear.
Joseph’s voice came out quiet but harsh. “What are we going to do?”
Byrnes scrutinized the guard in his post, his eyes glinting with an uncharacteristic danger. The airman turned and studied them, speaking into the mouthpiece.
“I don’t like the way he’s looking at us,” Joseph said.
Byrnes continued to study the airman, his hands on his gun. The airman hung up and walked back from the booth. He ducked his head looking inside.
“Where are you headed today?”
“We’re headed to Peterson for a medical briefing.”
The airman smiled and nodded. He motioned out at the mountain roads. “There’s only a few main roads plowed. You’ll want to avoid any others. Blizzards really got us bogged down. If you get stuck in this thing, it’ll be awhile before anyone can get to you. Lower manpower than usual.”
The phone in his booth started to ring. The sentry turned to look back. Joseph stifled his fear, watching the phone vibrate in the booth.
The guard took a step back and waved them onward. “Have a good day.”
Joseph gassed it a little too much and the wheels spun. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and the guard stood in the middle of the road watching them depart. The thruways had been plowed and salted from the complex to the interior Golden Triangle.
They winded down the mountain roadway, picking up speed as they went. Humvees drove past them going the other way. Joseph eyed them in his mirror; each foot they went in the opposing direction eased his anxiety the tiniest fraction.
“Turn here,” Byrnes ordered. Joseph hooked the van off the man roadway. The snowfall hadn’t been addressed recently on the side street. The van’s wheels skipped and slid until they found their place inside the track marks left by other trucks. The van weaved its way down the residential lane.
“Left,” Byrnes said.
Joseph turned and they drove on.
Desai and the others sat up in the back.
“Did we make it?” she said softly.
“Long way to go,” the colonel said. He pointed out their next turn. Joseph took that too. He thought his anxiety would subside with every turn and mile put between them and the mountain, but it didn’t. Something deeper than self-preservation dug at his insides like a wicked mole. Am I doing the right thing? The work is back the other way, not out here. Don’t I have an obligation not just to my team but to mankind as a whole?
It was a daunting thought, but he knew their work would save lives and give Americans a chance to fight back. The infected could still kill a vaccinated person, but infection rates would decrease dramatically. Despite their efforts, there wasn’t enough produced. The nation needed so much more. One for every person left in this dying country. If he had his way, one for every single person left on the planet. It wasn’t just something he wanted to do. It was something that he felt in the pit of his gut. The testing. The death. The sacrifice. The murder. Everything that had been done in the name of science to get them to this point.
Joseph switched his foot off the gas and let it depress the brake. The vehicle rolled then slid a few feet to a stop.
<
br /> “What are you doing?” Byrnes said. Being so close to escape when death loomed, he twisted his face in anger. He spun in his seat, weighing the threat out the back of the van.
Desai hand jostled him for attention. “What are you doing?”
Joseph let his chin drop and slowly shook his head. “No.” His glasses slipped on his nose and he adjusted them back into place.
“What do you mean no? We’re in it. Thick,” Byrnes said. “Doctor. Drive this van.”
Joseph released his hold on the steering wheel, staring at the snow-laden housing development, almost a romantic winter scene aside from the whole end of the world bit. “No. I’m going back.”
“By God, you’re not. Drive this car. Now!”
His hands settled comfortably in his lap. “I can’t. I have to go back.”
“We don’t have time for this.” The dour man eyeballed Joseph. “Why?”
“We need more of the vaccine. People need this. They cannot replicate what we were doing. Without us, there is no vaccine.”
“We will set up a new lab.”
“All of our research and stockpiles are back there. That will take forever to replicate without our research. You know this, Byrnes. Someone has to go back.”
“They should have thought about that before they started murdering us.”
“I know. You go. This is something I have to do. I’m not a brave man, but someone needs to continue the production and hope that it gets to the people.”
Byrnes sighed heavily. “I can’t go back. I’m in too deep. The Sons and Daughters need me out here.”
“I understand that, but this is my purpose. This is why I fight. That vaccine is our future. It could be the only thing between us and annihilation.”
“Doesn’t mean much under a dictatorship.”
“That isn’t my battle.”
Byrnes put a hand on his arm. “I can’t say what they’ll do to you if you go back.”
“Neither can I. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“You won’t get another chance to escape.”
“I know. Good luck, friend.” Joseph stuck out his hand and Byrnes took it.
“And to you. The Sons and Daughters will look for you when the time comes.”
A grim smile formed on Joseph’s lips. “I know you will.”
He opened the door and cold blasted him. Byrnes hopped out and ran to the other side.
“Wait!”
The van door rolled open and Dr. Desai jumped into the layered powder. She closed the door and the van’s wheels spun as it picked up traction throwing compressed snow into the air. It drove away, disappearing down another residential street.
He put an arm around her, and she held herself with her own arms. They struggled back to a main road, high-stepping over the tightly packed snow. Trucks and Humvees, even an MRAP, passed by them before anyone stopped.
They didn’t bother to handcuff them, only led them to the backseat of a Humvee like scolded children caught running away from their parents. Joseph and Desai went willingly. Nothing needed to be spoken. They had aided and abetted the escape of thirteen political and military prisoners, surely something that could be punishable by indefinite imprisonment or even death. Who was he if he didn’t try to produce more of the vaccine? His cause wasn’t political or military or monetary. It was humanitarian. He wouldn’t say he was above those things, but if he had to put himself at the mercy of a dictatorship to accomplish a worthy goal, then he would sacrifice himself for it.
They rode in silence. The winding mountain road twisted like a slithering snake back to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Trees stuck out of the mountain, the pines providing the only green in a field of chalky white. The tunnel entrance loomed ahead of them, a mountain giant opening its massive mouth to swallow them whole.
The Humvee slowed at the guard shack, and he waved them by. The mountain mouth engulfed them, and once again, they were shrouded in the darkness of the governmental complex’s underbelly. The lights faded behind them as Dr. Desai studied Joseph with dark eyes. She offered her hand and gripped his. Their hold was tight on one another. He knew this was only the beginning of a long brutal struggle.
STEELE
Camp Forge, IA
He marched to the flagpole. The black-smoke-laced snowstorm shrouded the flag. Frozen fingers reeled the flag down the pole and ripped it off its metal brackets. Steele’s blood and the pastor’s blood stained the Stars and Stripes.
“You swear loyalty here and now. We do this together.” In a fist, he held up the Stars and Stripes for all to see.
“I swear to you all here. I will defend your lives against all threats. I will do everything in my power to ensure that we survive the coming battles. I swear it on the symbol that we’ve all held dear and my loyalty to this cause.”
He gripped his tomahawk, pointing it at Peter. “What say you? Can you commit to these people? Can you commit to fight for our lives?”
He commanded the man upright with the blade of his tomahawk.
“We swear to this flag to see this through to the end. United as a single people fighting for a single cause. No more Chosen. No more Sable Point. Just one people.” He leveled his tomahawk at the rabble, letting it waver over individuals in the crowd. “You swear it here and now over everything else or meet your fate.” Steele aimed his tomahawk at the broad-shouldered curly-haired man.
“You’re first. Swear it or join your master.”
Peter stood, his hands and clothes stained with the blood of his beloved leader. He brought himself level with Steele. His eyes darted downward. His voice came out as a whisper. “I swear it.”
Steele used the head of his hawk to lift the beaten man’s chin. “What do you swear?”
Peter spoke with more conviction. “I swear to protect the survival of these people.”
“And to fight for us to the end?”
His blue eyes hardened. “And to fight for you until the end.”
Steele let the blade of his tomahawk leave the man’s neck.
“Bring me the next man.”
Men shoved War Child before him. The elder biker president breathed hard, blood weeping from a wound in his shoulder. Nathan handed Steele a handgun in a worn leather shoulder harness. Steele slid it from the holster. It was a classic piece. The metal along the slide had been worn dull from being shoved in and out of a holster and the brown grip faded from sweat and wear.
“He had it on him.”
Steele flipped the Colt .45 1911 to the other side, inspecting the weapon.
“This was Tess’s.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
The War Machine president peered at him and sneered. “She wasn’t going to need it where she was going.”
Steele nodded in grim acceptance of his friend’s death. Anger lurched in his gut. He battered it deep down inside him. “What do you have to say?”
The white-haired man sneered. “Should have put a bullet in your head a long time ago.”
“Then I condemn you to death for the murder of Tess.” He stopped for a moment, collecting himself and realizing he didn’t even know her last name. He shoved her weapon back into its harness and handed it to Margie behind him. Using his tomahawk, he gestured to his men to hold the prisoner.
The biker spit on the bloodied brown slush in front of him.
Steele nodded to Nathan and Gregor. They pushed the man down to his knees.
“Do you have any last words?”
War Child’s eyes searched the bedraggled people before him. His voice grew in volume. “He’s too weak for this world. He doesn’t have what it takes to see us through the coming storm.”
Steele’s mouth formed a mean flat line. “That all you got?”
“I’d do it again.” The old biker nodded his head and bent his neck, whipping his ponytail out of the way.
Steele stared at the back of War Child’s weathered neck. He positioned himself on his flank and gripped and readjusted his hand on
his melee weapon handle. His eyes never left the slightly tan skin of War Child’s exposed neck. The tomahawk moved in a blur.
The blade of his tomahawk head bit into the flesh and bone alike. It severed muscle and tendon, and the split in his skin instantly became crimson.
War Child slumped forward in the arms of his captors. He gurgled and groaned with the trauma to his spine, his jaw working, but only blood spewing forth. His body jerked, but his head hung limply, incapable of resistance. The tomahawk blurred through the air again. The blade sunk deeper into his neck like a red sapling. Steele tugged his weapon free and swung again. Gore flew with each swing. He lost count as he butchered the traitor, each swing severing more of War Child from his body.
The old biker’s head thunked into the snow, rolling in the powdery layer. The flurries covered everything in fluff, as if the sky tried to mask the gruesome violence of mankind.
Steele bent down and grasped War Child’s ponytail, hefting his head into the air. He lifted it high and tossed his head in the fire. The flames lapped his skin, blackening the edges first, using it as fuel to engulf the entire thing. Gregor and Nathan dragged the headless body back to the fire and heaved him in.
“Bring me the next one.”
GWEN
Camp Forge, IA
One by one, Steele administered justice to the traitors. She watched in utter misery. Both of her grandparents were gone. John and Lydia Reynolds had been taken in the single bomb blast along with a woman who had become a friend, Tess. The blood spilt in the snow did nothing to quench the thirst of loss.
Worse, the temperature had dropped almost fifteen degrees over the course of the morning. The night would be worse as more people would be crammed together in the barns and cabins.
“Next,” Steele said.
A man in riding leathers covered in patches was brought before him. She didn’t know his name. His captors shoved the War Machine to his knees. Steele placed the blood-soaked American flag in the man’s face. A flag that was stained with the blood of patriots and traitors alike.
The End Time Saga (Book 5): The Holding Page 39
