From the Ashes

by Kyla Stone

  Logan stiffened. “Hell, no. I’m not getting stuck in some FEMA camp.”

  “Agreed.” Dakota knew exactly what government-sponsored care looked like. She’d experienced the brokenness of the system firsthand. Gotten slapped around by it a few times, too.

  She’d chew her own foot off before she went back to it.

  “FEMA is helping,” Shay said, wrinkling her nose. “Without them, all these families wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “I’ve read about the chaotic mess after Hurricane Katrina,” Dakota said. “Thousands of scared, panicky, stressed people shoved together in close quarters for days, weeks, or longer is a special kind of torture.”

  “For some people, it’s their only choice,” Hawthorne said. “But if you have a better option—friends or family with a stocked home outside the city, for example—you should take it while you can.”

  “We do,” Dakota said.

  “I’ll get our stuff from the hotel room,” Logan said. “I’ll meet you back here.”

  “I’ll get Eden,” Dakota said. “Julio is with her.”

  “Okay,” Shay said. “Okay. I see what you mean. What about Carson and Vanessa?”

  Dakota made a face. “What about them? As far as I’m concerned, we saved them from the Blood Outlaws, no thanks to their own stupidity. We don’t owe them anything else.”

  “And Park?” Shay asked. “What about him? The doctors couldn’t repair the damaged tendons without access to the instruments they needed for microsurgery. He may have permanently lost the use of his right hand. He hasn’t been discharged yet.”

  Dakota actually liked Park. He was funny and resilient, and not nearly as annoying as most people. Plus, she felt guilty as hell over Harlow’s death. She didn’t want to leave him alone and helpless. “Damn it.”

  “We have to go,” Logan said, already moving toward the lounge entrance, restless and antsy.

  Shay bit her lower lip. “What if we pull him out early? If he wants to come, that is. Or at least give him a chance to decide. Otherwise, as soon as they discharge him, they’ll ship him off to the nearest camp. I know we don’t know him well, but that doesn’t seem like his style.”

  “I’ll help you,” Hawthorne said quickly. “I can use my uncle’s clout to get him discharged if I have to. But with the overwhelming demand for beds, I don’t see that becoming an issue.”

  Shay touched Hawthorne’s arm and gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

  “It’s…ah, nothing,” Hawthorne stammered, shuffling his feet and glancing down at the floor like an awkward teenager.

  Shay’s smile widened.

  Dakota cleared her throat. “You think we could get our guns back? And our truck?”

  “Right,” Hawthorne said, abruptly all business again. “Get your people and meet me outside at the domestic arrivals entrance D at sixteen hundred hours. That’s three hours from now. Let’s do this.”

  41

  Maddox

  “Maddox Cage! My man!”

  Maddox jerked his head up as a large man jogged toward him across the clearing. “Reuben.”

  His cousin was a thick, burly guy in his mid-twenties. His face was square and wide as his neck, his mouth and nose flat. He wore lightweight camouflage pants, hiking boots, and a gray T-shirt already stained with sweat from the sweltering heat.

  “We’ve been waiting for you to wake up for days!”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Everyone who matters, of course.” With a jovial grin, Reuben slapped his shoulder. “The Shepherds.”

  A burst of pain radiated all the way down his arm. Maddox couldn’t help it—he flinched.

  “You look like hell, man.”

  He forced a smile. “Feel like it, too.”

  Reuben stepped close to Maddox and scraped a hand through his dirty blond buzzcut hair. All the Cage boys were blond. “Hey, man. About that. No hard feelings, okay? I tried to warn you, soon as I found out it was happening early. Something went wrong in Chicago. They delivered the van early and someone found it, reported it to the feds. It was out of our hands. We had to move everything up before the entire country went on high alert, you know?”

  Maddox stared at him, his muddled mind still working to take in everything Reuben just said. What he’d suspected was the truth.

  The Prophet—and the Shepherds—were behind the attacks. They’d done this. All of it. The bombs. The fallout. The destruction and death.

  “I knew you’d be cool,” Reuben said with another wide grin, even though Maddox hadn’t said a thing. He was like Jacob that way—always bending others to his will, either through charm and cajoling, peer pressure, or sheer force.

  “You made it back,” Reuben said. “The Lord has blessed you. I’ll put in a good word for you with my father. We need you with us.”

  Maddox peered over Reuben’s shoulder. Several of the guys he’d grown up with were sitting at one of the yellow-painted picnic tables in the center of the compound. A dour-faced woman, Sister Ada, served them fresh sandwiches and lemonade from a large platter balanced on one hand.

  They were all Shepherds, the chosen ones, the Prophet’s inner circle of warriors. These young men had trained together since they were ten. Almost every boy in the compound was selected.

  Except for Maddox. The black sheep. The disappointment. The doubting Thomas.

  He turned away. “Where’s Franklin?”

  “He and Gerber are both in Montana finishing some stuff up.”

  Maddox knew there were other Shepherds, at least one other outpost, though that one was more paramilitary rather than a commune. The Prophet traveled between them, coming and going as he pleased.

  On return, he was always greeted with the adoration and worship of his flock. When he was away on other holy business, Maddox’s father, Solomon Cage, remained in charge.

  “What stuff?” Maddox asked.

  “Covering our digital tracks or something. They’re the internet experts.” He shrugged like they were discussing fishing or golf—simply a hobby he enjoyed, not the destruction of entire cities.

  But he hadn’t seen the devastation firsthand. He hadn’t lived it.

  Reuben saw something in Maddox’s expression he didn’t like. The corners of his flat mouth twitched downward. He was a jocular guy—until he wasn’t. “You know I’m not supposed to be telling you this stuff. You’re not a Shepherd.”

  “Not yet,” Maddox said.

  The suspicion faded from his gaze. “That’s the attitude the Prophet wants to see. Come on, man! Wake up! The judgment is finally here. The one we’ve been hearing about all our lives. And we get to be a part of it. We get to be the ones to build the new America. It’s wild, man. Beyond imagining.”

  He couldn’t tell Reuben how sick he still felt. How every inch of his skin was raw like it was being scorched by a merciless sun. The last thing he wanted was to be cast aside now, after he’d suffered so much.

  “Where’s the Prophet?” he said. “I need to speak to him.”

  “In the big house. I’ll take you.”

  Maddox turned and scanned the property, taking in the familiar fishing and airboat docks on the western border of the swamp beside the boathouse. In the compound’s center stretched the big grassy area rimmed by picnic tables painted in bright colors. Adirondack chairs encircled a giant fire pit.

  Across from him stood the family cabins and the barracks that housed the single men. The big house where the Prophet stayed was set back a little way. Behind the family cabins were the kitchen and cafeteria, one-room schoolhouse, greenhouses, and laundry area where the women worked.

  Clotheslines were strung between the stubby pines as several women washed and hung the linens. A couple of children too young to be taught in the schoolhouse played around their legs, their high, bright laughter echoing in the still air.

  There were solar panels on the roofs, generators, and several tanks of propane behind the storage sheds—the compound had power, but t
he Prophet frowned on modern amenities. Laundry was handwashed. Food was grown, prepared, and cooked from scratch—by the women, of course. The men had more important things to do.

  To the east, on a raised bump of land, sat the church: a simple, unadorned building with hard wooden pews, cement block walls, and a plain wooden cross hanging behind the hand-carved pulpit.

  The other buildings were hidden from view behind a forest of cypress and live oak trees, located far back from the rest of the compound. There the men trained in weapons, combat, and tactical exercises—militia operations, patrolling, ambushes, raids, concealment, and guerrilla warfare.

  And where they learned the specifics of the Prophet’s plans and carried out his instructions—instructions hand-delivered by God, of course.

  There were men who traveled with the Prophet, men Maddox didn’t recognize. They were all heavily armed, didn’t talk much, and spent most of their time in the off-limits buildings.

  Three of the Prophet’s seven sons were trained soldiers in the United States Army. There were other soldiers who came and went. Former Navy Seals and Special Forces—all muscular, whip-smart killers who’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  They’d become disillusioned by the American military-industrial complex, good American boys dying in a desert so defense contractors and rich, fat-cat politicians could become even richer and even fatter.

  The soldiers fought to defend America; the defense companies manufactured wars to turn billions in profits. The Prophet promised these weary, disenchanted warriors that they could save America—the real America, the one built on the backbone of good, hardworking, God-fearing people.

  Maddox had seen the armory. Thousands of rounds of ammo of all different calibers. Dozens of semi-automatic and automatic weapons. Even a few RPGs.

  They were prepared. They’d been preparing for almost twenty years.

  And the Prophet was smart about it. They bought their weapons at gun shows. It was easy enough to purchase “collector’s items,” including a .50 caliber Browning machine gun able to shoot 500 rounds a minute with a muzzle velocity of 2900 feet per second at a range of two thousand yards. Each round was over five inches long.

  Maddox stared hard through the trees. Had the bombs themselves been built back there? Or had they been hidden elsewhere? And where the hell had they gotten ahold of the radioactive materials?

  “Maddox!” Reuben called. “You fall asleep back there? Come on!”

  Maddox shook his head to clear his thoughts. He hurried across the property, wincing at his clothes scraping his tender skin and the sickening lurch in his belly—the nausea still hadn’t completely subsided.

  He opened the screen door to the big house and entered the darkened room. The living area was modest—wooden plank floor and walls painted white, lace curtains hanging over the windows, a beige sofa with a coffee table in one corner, a piano in the other.

  On the far wall beneath a large metal cross perched a small desk. The Prophet sat at the desk, pouring over a pile of papers written by hand. A heavy leather Bible sat next to his left elbow next to a satellite phone and a battery-operated radio.

  He looked up as Maddox came in. “Blessings be upon you, Maddox Cage.”

  42

  Dakota

  Heat and humidity blasted Dakota as soon as she stepped outside. At least it would rain soon. Dark storm clouds billowed on the horizon. The wind had picked up, whipping the palm tree fronds and blowing stray strands of her hair into her face.

  She glanced at her watch. 2:45 p.m. The typical Florida summer rainstorm was right on time. It’d be over and sunny again in an hour or two.

  Dakota hastened through the airport parking areas, passing soldiers, police officers, government officials, and security guards hurrying in all directions. Buses, shuttles, and army Humvees were everywhere.

  A red-and-white medical helicopter descended to the east, its rotors thumping. On the other side of the airport, a military cargo plane swooped toward a nearby runway.

  She passed tent after tent, all with different designations: radiology, ICU, emergency, triage, exam and decontamination tents, surgical, and at least three dozen large white mobile buildings in a row, all labeled “morgue.”

  Out by the tent hospital’s entrance, a long line of people stretched out as far as she could see. Hundreds were sitting or lying down in the road, too sick or injured to stand. Volunteers in Red Cross T-shirts were walking up and down the line with carts, offering food and water.

  Several dozen Guardsmen armed with rifles stood outside the hospital tent’s main entrance, keeping the peace. Dozens more guarded the entrances to the airport along with several military vehicles and a couple of tanks. They ensured no one who didn’t belong—and who hadn’t gone through the decontamination procedures—got inside.

  By the time she reached patient ward F, she was panting, almost wheezing. At discharge, the nurse had warned her of long-term smoke inhalation effects like hoarseness, prolonged coughing, and shortness of breath. He’d recommended a few weeks of rest. Screw that.

  The wind picked up as the storm clouds headed closer. She redid her ponytail to keep her hair out of her eyes as the first fat drops of rain splatted against her cheeks.

  She flashed her visitor’s badge to the soldiers guarding the entrance, slipped inside the tent, and made her way past a cluster of nurses and a long row of hospital beds filled with wounded and sick patients to Eden’s bedside.

  Groans and whimpers echoed throughout the tent. Someone was crying. A middle-aged woman with raw and blistered skin tugged thick strands of her own hair from her scalp and laid them in neat rows across her bedsheet. Three doctors bent over a writhing, moaning teenage boy clutching a gushing wound in his shoulder.

  Dakota shut out the horrific sights and sounds of suffering and focused on Eden. The girl was sitting up, a new notepad on her lap opened to a page with several sketches of the ASL alphabet. The first six hand signs were shaded in near-perfect dimensions.

  Eden was signing something, and Julio, who was sitting in the chair next to the bed, was trying to mimic it. He looked up with a smile at Dakota’s approach. “Your sister’s teaching me how to say ‘I love you’ in American Sign Language.”

  “Great.”

  “And ‘I really have to pee!’”

  Eden gave a hoarse, whispery laugh. She looked better—happier.

  “Sounds fun,” Dakota said. She stopped a nurse hurrying past. “Excuse me. Can my sister be discharged early? We have a friend who’ll take us in.”

  “Eden Sloane, right?” She rattled off a date of birth. Eden nodded. The nurse frowned down at her tablet before turning to Eden. “It says discharge tomorrow morning, but your vitals are good. You’re feeling better?”

  Eden nodded again.

  “We could sure use the extra bed.” The nurse pulled out a folded piece of paper typed with instructions from a side pouch on her medical cart. She took a step closer to Dakota and lowered her voice. “This is only the first stage of radiation sickness. We estimate her body has absorbed between two and two and a half gray.

  “She’ll seem better for eighteen to twenty-eight days after prodrome, or the first symptoms. Then she’ll likely experience anorexia, fever, weakness, increased bleeding and infections, and partial hair loss. It will last for several weeks, possibly longer.”

  Dakota’s stomach tightened. She’d received the same warnings when she was discharged, but her symptoms—and exposure—were far less that Eden’s. “I understand. Thank you.”

  Within minutes, the nurse had unhooked Eden’s IV and released her. Dakota signed a discharge form on the tablet, and they were free to leave.

  Julio helped Eden out of the hospital bed. “Careful now. There you go.”

  Dakota bent down until she was even with the girl’s face. She placed her hands on her shoulders. “I know you’re scared, but you have to be strong now.”

  Eden’s eyes welled with tears. Her chin trembled. The g
irl looked terrified. Was she going to freeze up every time something bad happened? She was going to put them all in danger.

  Dakota bit back her frustration. They didn’t have time for this. They couldn’t afford it.

  “Don’t be so hard on her,” Julio said gently. “She’s just a scared kid.”

  “She can’t afford to be a scared kid anymore,” Dakota said. Her mind flashed back to that moment during the shootout when she’d realized Eden hadn’t run for cover behind the dump truck. “She almost got you killed, Julio.”

  Eden flinched like she’d slapped her.

  Guilt pricked her, but she brushed it away. “It’s true. You can’t freeze like that again, Eden. Do you understand?”

  Tremulously, Eden nodded.

  Dakota straightened and turned away.

  Eden tugged on her arm.

  “What?”

  Eden turned the page in her notepad and scribbled with her pencil. Have to tell you something.

  Dakota forced down her impatience. “Later. We have to go.”

  Eden shook her head. You don’t understand.

  Dakota sighed. “Okay, fine. What?”

  I’m sorry.

  “For what?”

  Eden bent her head as she wrote, her blonde hair falling like a curtain across her small, intent face. When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with sadness—and guilt.

  Maddox asked me where we were hiding before, she wrote. I told him. I told him about Ezra.

  For a second, Dakota just stared at her in stunned silence. Then anger slashed through her, sharp and furious. What the hell? What was Eden thinking? How could she do something so ridiculously stupid—

  Something far stronger and deeper took hold of her: an intense, debilitating fear.

  Not fear for herself, but fear for Ezra.

  He was ex-military, but the grizzled old bear was seventy years old. Even the mightiest warriors were slowed and weakened by age. Even the most cunning fighters could be defeated by the element of surprise, by an unsuspecting ambush.