by Harley Tate
“What about Ben?”
“We can set him up with supplies.” Barry glanced at his wife. “We need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, not just for Ben, but for all of us.”
Tracy volunteered. “That Brianna and Madison are already dead?”
“No. That we’re signing our death warrants. If we don’t kill every last Cunningham in that place, we’ll never be able to sleep again. They will hunt us down. They will make us pay. It’s what they do.”
Walter nodded. “The one I spoke to said as much. It’s why he took Madison and Brianna. He blames them for his father’s death.”
Tracy stayed silent as Walter explained what he’d learned to Barry and Anne. When he finished, Barry nodded in understanding. “It’s their code. Even before the grid collapsed they were like that. The old man lived not that far from here in a shack up north of the ski resorts. If he thought you wronged him, he never forgot it.”
Anne nodded. “A few years ago one of his dogs was hit by a car. He was convinced Spencer, a nice old man who lived on the resort property, was responsible.” She pulled her coat tighter as she recalled the memory. “Spencer woke up one morning to find all his chickens slaughtered and his horses missing. He died not long after.”
Tracy exhaled. “And it’s the same Cunningham who’s in charge now?”
“His son, from what I can tell.”
“Then we can’t waste anymore time. We need to hit them and hit them hard. Our daughters aren’t going to end up like those chickens.”
Barry’s voice cracked as he spoke. “If we don’t get there in time, they’ll end up a hell of a lot worse.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
MADISON
Somewhere near Truckee, CA
5:00 a.m.
“What the…”
A groan sounded from somewhere nearby and Madison rolled onto her side. A sharp pain lanced her hand and she clutched it tight to her chest.
“Where the hell are we?” Brianna’s voice cut through the throbbing and Madison managed to sit up.
“Wherever Silas decided to take us, I guess.”
“Who is Silas?”
Madison blinked. She couldn’t see much in the dark. Using her good hand as a guide she stood and felt around. Wood table. Four chairs. Old tube TV on a bench. Bed with a bouncy, squeaky mattress. Ashtray full of cigarette butts.
She recoiled with a grimace and opened the drawer to the bedside table. “Yes!” She clicked on the small flashlight and a weak beam of light illuminated the space. The room was just as she’d felt in the dark: old and run-down. “I think we’re in a motel.”
Brianna groaned. “A really nasty motel.” She picked her fingers up from the floor. “The carpet is gritty.”
Madison shined the light on the floor. What had once been brown indoor-outdoor carpet now looked like worn down strips of Velcro stapled to the floor. “Maybe this room was scheduled for renovation before the EMP.”
“Or maybe this Silas guy is a slob.” Brianna looked around the room. “Where are our jackets?”
Madison glanced down at her sweater and jeans. “I don’t want to know. We need to get out of here.” She walked over to the windows and clicked off the light. It was still dark, but judging by the pale coloring of the sky on the edge of the forest, dawn wasn’t that far off. “We can’t be here when they come looking for us.”
“Why not?”
Madison turned to Brianna. “Because whatever they have in mind, it’ll be bad.” She filled her best friend in on what happened after she passed out. When she got to the part about Silas turning on her, Brianna cursed.
“So you saving his life didn’t matter?”
“Apparently not.” Madison eased down onto the edge of the bed. The flashlight lit up a stain streaked across the lower half of the comforter and she stood back up. “He thinks we’re to blame. He’s going to be taking out his anger on us.”
Brianna tugged a hair elastic off her wrist and wrapped up her hair into a tight bun. “Then let’s go. You scope out the windows. I’ll try the front door.”
She leaned forward on her knee and tried to stand. She didn’t make it more than halfway up before collapsing in pain. “Damn it.” She slammed her palm on the ground. “I forgot about my leg.”
Madison walked over and crouched beside Brianna’s left leg. The swelling in her knee was almost gone. “In the Jeep your knee was huge. Are you sure it’s your leg that’s broken and not something in your knee?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about your head? You were out of it in the Jeep. I tried to wake you up, but I couldn’t.”
“I have a nasty headache, but other than that, I’m alive.” Brianna pointed at Madison’s head. “You don’t look so good yourself. Try to help me up.”
Madison held out her good arm and Brianna tried to stand. She shook her head and eased back to the floor. “It hurts like a you-know-what as soon as I put weight on it.”
“Then we’ll have to rig up a splint.” Madison spun around, searching for something she could use. The flashlight beam lit up old, painted cabinets with one knob missing. A kitchenette with a wood-paneled mini-fridge and a single burner on the Formica counter. A small closet with sliding doors.
“Here!” She rushed to the closet and popped the wooden closet rod out of the slots on the wall. “We can secure your leg to this to stabilize it.”
“I don’t think that will work.”
“We won’t know unless we try.”
Madison brought the rod over and set it beside Brianna’s leg. “Try and straighten it out.”
Brianna clenched a fist as she lowered her leg toward the floor. A few inches away, she shook her head. “I can’t do it. It hurts too much. I need some sort of crutch.” She grabbed the closet rod. “How about this? Can we make it into a crutch or a cane?”
“We can try.” Madison picked up the rod and set it on the bed before beginning her search. She managed to find a wooden clothing hanger in the closet and two potholders in the kitchenette. After ripping off a strip of fabric from the flat bed sheet, Madison brought everything over to Brianna and the pair set to work bending the metal hook of the hanger and wedging it into the hole on the end of the rod.
When it was tight enough not to wiggle, Brianna wrapped the pot holders around the hanger and wound the strip of sheet around and around the entire contraption until it resembled a single crutch. She held it out with a smile. “What do you think?”
“That I have an amazing best friend.” Madison glanced down at her own injury. “I wish we had something for my hand.”
Using the new crutch, Brianna managed to drag herself up to stand. She held her injured leg bent with her foot off the ground and leaned on the crutch. “This will work. Let’s look for something for you.”
“We don’t have time. Besides, I can manage. Check the front door. I’ll check the windows.” Madison hurried over, but her hope soon faded. They were old, single-paned, and unable to open. She peered down into the dark. They had to be at least a full story off the ground. “We can’t get out this way.”
“The door is locked. It won’t even budge.” Brianna gave the handle a yank. “There’s a plate covering the lock. Even if we had a crowbar, I don’t think we could wedge it in far enough to pop it.” She sighed and turned around. “I can’t see anything through the peephole, either.”
“Then we’re trapped.” Madison reached up and gingerly felt around the bruising on her temple. Her head still ached and every time she turned too quickly, it took a moment for her vision to catch up. Two of her fingers were mangled and she didn’t know if she would ever be able to set them right again.
She slumped onto the bed, no longer caring about the grime. “We have no weapons and no way out. We’re going to die here.”
“Don’t say that. We’re not giving up. Not yet.” Brianna hobbled away from the door and stopped at the foot of the bed. “There has to be another way.” She crossed the room and thre
w open a cabinet. Using her crutch to keep her balance, she ran her fingers up and down the back wall.
“That isn’t a magical wardrobe. We’re not going to find a gateway to another world through it.” Madison fell back onto the bed and a cloud of dust plumed into the air. The circle of light from the flashlight came to rest on a vent grate in the short wall above the closet.
Madison stared at it for a moment before peeling herself off the bed. She dragged a chair over to the closet and climbed on top. Using the flashlight, she inspected the screws and the space beyond the vent. “I think it’s big enough. If we can get this grate open, we might be able to crawl out.”
“How are we going to get up there?”
Madison hopped off the chair and opened the drawers in the kitchenette. She pulled out a beat-up butter knife and climbed back onto the chair. With the flashlight gripped between her teeth, she wedged the knife under the side of the vent and tried to pry it open. It wobbled, but didn’t come free.
She spit out the flashlight long enough to talk. “Let me see if I can get it open.”
“I’ll search the rest of this dump for anything we can use.”
While Brianna opened cabinets and drawers and looked under the bed, Madison managed to slide the knife blade into the screw top on the lower left of the vent grill. With painstaking effort, she twisted the screw until it popped free. “One down, one to go.”
“I think we can stack these bedside tables. That should give us enough height.” Brianna pushed the far table off the wall. “Ooooh! And I found a lighter!” She disappeared beneath the side of the bed and came back holding a glowing flame. “Plenty of butane, too.”
Madison managed to unscrew the other side and used the knife to pop the bottom of the vent grill free. She shone the light down the shaft. “It’s a return duct. Pretty big. Tons of dust and…” she groaned. “Dead cockroaches.”
“I don’t care if it’s full of live rats if it gets us out of here.” Brianna shoved the table again. “Help me move this over there and we can climb up.”
Together, the young women worked to build a steady platform, stacking the bedside tables against the wall and using the bed to keep them stable. It wasn’t the safest of climbing structures, but it would give them a means of getting up.
Madison climbed up onto the bed and held out her one good hand. “I’ll stand here and help you up.”
Brianna took ahold and grimaced against the pain as she stood on one leg. She looked up at the vent. “Here goes nothing.” With Madison’s hand gripping the underside of her thigh, Brianna used her upper body strength and Madison’s leverage to make it onto the first table.
She stood up eased the crutch into the hole. “If we fall through the duct and into someone else’s room, I hope they’ve got a bigger bed.”
“Why?”
“So we land on it and not the floor.” Brianna shoved her arms into the vent shaft and hooked her elbows over the opening. “Push as hard as you can on three. One, two, three.”
Madison shoved her up, straddling the sinking mattress as Brianna scrabbled with all her might. After a few touch and go moments, her good leg kicked like a dolphin and she disappeared inside the shaft.
“When you said cockroaches, you meant it. These things are as big as chihuahuas.”
“Can you see anything?”
The flashlight beam bounced around in the vent for a moment. “It ends in the T about twenty feet ahead. We’ll have to make a choice which way to go.”
“I vote for the path with the fewest bugs.”
“Deal.”
Madison climbed up the end tables and shimmied into the vent. The grate swung shut behind her and she low-crawled toward Brianna. “Let’s find a way out of this place.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
WALTER
Donner Lake
6:00 a.m.
The lone sentry leaned back against a dented Toyota Tacoma, shotgun perched on his forearm.
“See anyone else?” Colt leaned close enough to Walter to whisper.
“No. But the way he keeps checking his watch, we’ve got to be near a shift change.”
“Then let’s wait him out.”
“Tracy will be impatient.”
Colt glanced behind him where the rest of their group sheltered in the trees. “Do we want to do this right or fast?”
Walter exhaled. “We’ll wait.”
It didn’t take long. Within five minutes, another pickup truck rumbled down the single access road on that side of the lake and stopped beside the Tacoma. A man lumbered down from the cab, hair shorn close to the scalp, with a wiry beard stretching almost to his collarbone.
He hoisted a leather jacket over his expansive shoulders and plucked a hunting rifle off a rack mounted in front of the truck’s rear window before walking around to shake the sentry’s hand.
“All quiet?”
The sentry spit out a wad of tobacco juice and adjusted the dip in his lip. “Yup. Ain’t seen nothin’.”
“Good.” The new man ran a hand through his beard. “Silas brought us back a couple of real nice presents.”
“Yeah? Did he finally find that whiskey I wanted?”
“Naw, man. Women. Two real lookers. Young, too.” He clapped the sentry on the back and the pair laughed and made a crude gesture that boiled Walter’s blood.
They were alive. He tried to be thankful, but the urge to shoot the two men almost overwhelmed him. But as they assembled all the gear that morning before hitting the road, everyone agreed: no guns until they had no choice. They had to go in stealthily and quiet and deadly. Shooting would only alert the rest of the group to their presence and they couldn’t fight off fifty guys at once.
After the two Cunningham men talked a bit more, the younger man on the night shift climbed up into his truck and started the engine. Colt motioned for two of their crew to follow him by keeping to the trees.
Walter and Colt waited for the right time. As soon as the bigger man turned back toward his truck, they took off, silent as their boots rolled across the asphalt. Walter’s hand wrapped around the man’s mouth from behind and Colt kicked him in the back of the knee. He fell and the rifle in his hands clattered to the pavement.
Colt picked it up. “We’re going to ask you some questions. If you scream or try to alert your friends in any way, we’ll kill you.”
Walter pressed a wicked hunting knife with a five-inch blade up to the man’s neck. “Is that clear?”
The man tried to nod, but the blade poked into his skin and he recoiled.
Walter let go of his mouth. “Where are the girls being kept?”
“I don’t know what you’re…”
Colt stepped forward and cracked the man’s skull with the butt of the rifle hard enough to knock his brains about but not render him unconscious.
The man wobbled, but Walter gripped him tighter, bringing the knife back to his throat. “Try again.”
“They’re in the main building. A room on the second floor.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
Walter pressed the blade of the knife deeper into the man’s neck. Blood welled across the blade and dripped onto the man’s hand. “Which one?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Only Silas made it back after that ambush.”
Walter was losing patience. He dug the knife in. More blood spilled. “How many?”
The man whimpered. “Thirty. Maybe thirty-five.”
“How many are a good shot?”
“Fifteen or twenty. The rest are girlfriends or kids.”
Shit. It was more than he’d hoped. They would have a hell of a time taking them all out. Walter looked up at Colt. “That everything?”
“Pretty much.” Colt pulled back and with all his might, slammed the rifle once more into the man’s skull. This time, bones crunched.
Walter let go and the body slumped to the ground. He
frisked him, pulling out another handgun, but nothing more.
Colt grabbed the man by the ankles and dragged him into the trees while the rest of their group emerged. “Everyone into the back of the truck. There are upward of thirty-five. Twenty shooters.”
Tracy, Peyton, Anne, and Barry climbed into the back of the truck and Walter and Colt took the cab. As the doors shut, Walter glanced at Colt. “We’re on the same page, right?”
“Kill first, no questions?”
“I’d like to spare the non-hostile women and all the kids.”
“Agreed. What about the men who surrender?”
Walter thought it over. “Depends on the situation. But I’m not losing Madison to these thugs. They forfeited the right to a fair deal when they ambushed us and kidnapped my kid.”
“Amen.” Colt cranked the engine and turned the truck around.
They headed straight toward the motel and as soon as the first building came into view, Larkin flagged them into the trees. They hid the truck twenty feet off the access road in a thicket of brambles and everyone piled out. Walter found Larkin near the road. “What do you see?”
“There’s one main building with two floors, then a bunch of side buildings, outbuildings, and sheds that are all single story.”
“The girls are in the main building on the second floor. No details as to where.” Walter glanced past him to the Tacoma sitting quietly in the parking lot. “Did the sentry give you any trouble?”
“Didn’t even know what hit him. Neither did the guy stumbling out to take a leak. Died with his dick in his hand, poor asshole.”
Walter clapped Larkin on the back. “Good. That leaves upward of seventeen capable shooters, maybe that many unarmed women and kids.”
“We going in hot?”
Colt joined the conversation. “These guys aren’t early risers. We might be able to get in and out without blowing the place up.”
Larkin checked his rifle. “Not a bad plan. This place is in a good spot. If we flushed them out…”
“I don’t care if it’s turned to ash. I just want Madison and Brianna out of here.” Walter motioned to everyone to join them and the group huddled around, protected from sight thanks to the thick underbrush and trees.
