Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

  I finished my drink and left another bill on the table.

  “Let me think about it. I’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sabrina,

  Colorado Springs Federal Training Center

  The sun was beginning to set, and lights were blinking to life up and down the street. The weather had been growing steadily colder lately as winter tightened its grip on the city. To the west, the sky was dark gray punctuated by streaks of orange and scarlet. Shallow banks of snow lined the streets and lay in pristine blankets over the areas not kept clear by the diligent shovels of the Training Center’s groundskeepers.

  Sabrina left the Training Center, known by its students simply as the Academy, and started heading home. Students from her class milled around the building’s broad stairs and stood in clusters on the sidewalk. They chatted, flirted, made plans, and talked excitedly about the careers that lay ahead of them. Thin drifts of fog formed at their mouths and dissipated into the air as they spoke. A few called and waved to her, especially the young men, but she gave only a perfunctory wave and continued on her way. Tonight was not a night for partying.

  Sabrina knew her dad was not looking forward to her taking a job with Homeland Security. He was a doting father, and in his care, Sabrina had wanted for nothing. In fact, he had done everything in his power to make up for all the years of her life he had missed. And, in Sabrina’s estimation, he had largely succeeded. He took them shopping, to restaurants, to parks, he scoured the town’s social scene for activities to enjoy together. Parties, festivals, plays, even concerts filled with music he did not like. All just to see a smile on his daughter’s face.

  As much as it pained her, and as much as she knew it would hurt her father, she could not stay under his roof for the rest of her life. The wider world called to her. There were places she wanted to see, things she wanted to do. She wanted to be a part of something, forge her own path. And she knew as long as her principal occupation in life was being Gabriel Garrett’s daughter, those things would never happen. It was time to have a final talk. Her dad was still holding out hope Sabrina would change her mind and find work in the Springs, but as to what he thought that work might be, she could only speculate. Whatever the case, it was not going to happen. There was no career she could pursue here in the city that would not slowly drive her insane. The only way for her was a career in law enforcement. Federal, not local. Not that she had anything against the local cops. The good ones, anyway. It was just not the life she wanted.

  Over the last year she had been afflicted with a severe case of wanderlust. Combine that with how well she knew the wastelands, and the rampant atrocities being committed out there, and she knew she was in a unique position to make a difference in the world. The thought of staying safely at home while others went forth to restore law and order made her want to pull her hair out and scream.

  These thoughts occurred to her in a small, cordoned off section of her mind. The rest of her mind occupied itself with the extreme vigilance she had learned from four years spent wandering the wastelands. Her eyes never stopped moving, her ears were attuned to any sound not a part of the city’s normal rhythms. She scanned the people around her, checking for weapons, for signs of nervousness, anger, or any signal of deceptive behavior.

  It was this last instinct that alerted her something was wrong.

  At this time of evening, most people on the street were animated. They talked, they laughed, they argued, lovers walked arm in arm smiling at each other, families hustled their kids along with impatient haste. And throughout all of it, there was a general air of excitement. A stir of conviviality. But that stir did not reach a man standing next to a restaurant doorway pretending to read a menu posted on the wall. Sabrina slowed her pace and watched him. It occurred to her he had been staring at the menu long enough to read it twice. Which in itself was not unusual. Lots of people have trouble deciding what to eat for dinner. But the way he kept looking over his shoulder and wiping a hand across his face sent alarm bells ringing in her head.

  Wrist mic, she thought. That would explain the face wiping. And if he was looking over his shoulder, he might have accomplices.

  Sabrina’s mind spun with possibilities. The man could be with one of the clandestine services. They often tried to kidnap their own recruits off the street to evaluate their skills. Rendition, they called it. The students were made aware of the possibility and told to avoid being caught at all costs. It was a constant cat and mouse game between students and staff. But that explanation did not hold water with Sabrina. For starters, if this guy was a real professional, she never would have seen him. Second, he did not look like any of the staff she had seen in the Training Center. Not that she knew all of them by their face, rather it was more a question of general appearance. There was a certain seediness about the man, a furtive surreptitiousness with a strong undercurrent of malice. The wastelands were overrun with men like that, and she had seen plenty. Even killed a few.

  Another bell started ringing when she heard hooves clomping on pavement. The Academy was in the middle of what was once downtown, occupying several restored pre-Outbreak buildings and a wide swath of land that had been cleared and redeveloped post-Outbreak. The government only maintained a few paved roads here. There were no residences in the area, and the only commerce was a couple of restaurants and a few vendors who catered to the Academy’s students and staff. Getting to and from the area required walking two blocks to the nearest transport stand where, at virtually all hours, wagons, carriages, rickshaws, and even a few mechanized transports waited to catch fares. As for the vendors, they rarely took deliveries. Most of them had their own wagons and brought in their own supplies.

  Sabrina glanced over her shoulder. Two riders were coming up the street at a slow canter. Neither of them looked like students or staff. Dozens of people along the sidewalk had stopped their conversations and were staring at the riders, no doubt thinking the same thing Sabrina was. The riders, for their part, kept their eyes straight ahead, but there was a stiffness to their posture Sabrina did not like.

  She stopped walking and looked across the street. The man standing next to the restaurant caught her looking in his direction and immediately looked away. She turned to the riders again and caught them looking at her as well.

  It’s me, she thought. They’re here for me.

  There was no more time to think. She shouted a warning to the people around her and bolted across the street. The man next to the restaurant drew a gun.

  “Gun!” someone shouted.

  The gun swiveled in Sabrina’s direction. In the distance, she heard the clomping of hooves pick up to a gallop. Her hand went to the small of her back and she drew her Glock 19. The man squeezed off a shot in her direction, but Sabrina was already angling away, and the shot went wide. Her hands came up, she dropped to a kneeling position, and returned fire. Just as she did, the man turned and started running. A splash of blood on the wall told her she had at least winged him.

  The man fired two more shots up the street ahead of him. By some miracle, no one was hit, but he succeeded in clearing a path to escape. After sprinting to the corner, he disappeared around the side of a building.

  Sabrina wanted to give chase, but she had other, more pressing problems. On her left, the two riders were bearing down on her. One of them pointed a pistol at her and yelled, “Drop it!”

  She did not drop it. Instead, she dove to her right, rolled, came up, and fired two shots at his chest. The man jerked backward and fell from his horse. The other rider was trying to draw down on her, but his horse was dancing around nervously, making it impossible for him to aim. Sabrina sighted down her weapon, but before she could fire, three shots rang out across the street. The man stiffened, spat up a gout of blood, and slumped to the pavement. The horses, now free of their riders, began to flee in terror.

  “Stop those horses!” Sabrina shouted.

  If this had been a place full of civilians, it was like
ly no one would have leapt up to help. But the people on this street, most of them just teenagers, were not ordinary civilians. They were trainees going into careers in federal law enforcement. Their thought processes operated on a completely different set of parameters. Before the horses had gone a block, nearly a dozen people had surrounded them and seized the reins. She glanced in the direction the third man had run, but as before, there was no sign of him.

  Fuck.

  She returned her attention to the dead men in the street. Two other people were approaching from the Training Center courtyard. She recognized both as instructors from the FBI side of the house. Like her, they kept their weapons trained on the downed gunmen. Sabrina reached them first and kicked their guns away. The two instructors vectored off and covered the men while Sabrina checked for pulses. She found none.

  “They’re dead.” She stood up straight and holstered her pistol. The two federal agents did the same.

  “What the fuck,” one of them said. Her name was Lynnwood. She turned a grim stare in Sabrina’s direction. “You got any idea who these guys are?”

  Sabrina shook her head, wheels turning. “None. Never seen them before.”

  “You sure? Because it looked to me like they were gunning for you.”

  “Yeah, I got the same impression.”

  “Any clue why?”

  Sabrina took a deep breath and thought about it. “My father is an executive for the Blackthorns, and my stepmom is a US Attorney. It could have been a kidnapping attempt.”

  “Kidnapping? Here? You sure they weren’t just trying to kill you?”

  She shook her head again. “Doesn’t make sense. If they wanted me dead, they could have set up on a rooftop and picked me off from…”

  A sudden thought occurred to Sabrina, and she felt the cold grip of panic seize her.

  “Shit. I have to go,” she said. “Call the federal courthouse. Tell them not to let US Attorney Elizabeth Garrett leave.”

  With that she turned and sprinted toward the transport stand. Agent Lynnwood shouted at her to come back, but she ignored it. There was no time.

  Elizabeth was in danger.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sabrina,

  Transport Stand, Downtown

  The federal courthouse was less than a mile away, but that did not mean Sabrina had any time to waste.

  At the transport stand, she looked to the front of the line where the mechanized transports, or what older people still called ‘cars’, waited. The one at the very end was an old diesel pickup truck. It was rusted and patched together from spare parts but looked to be in good working order. With diesel being plentiful now, more of these types of vehicles were starting to show up in the city.

  The driver, who was leaning against the fender reading a tattered old paperback, heard her shout at him and looked up. She raised a hand above her head as she ran and made a spinning motion. The driver tossed the book through the window, ran to the front of the truck, and removed a double-bent bar from a bracket on the grill.

  “Get this thing moving,” Sabrina yelled as she drew close.

  “I’m working on it,” the driver replied.

  “Work fucking faster!”

  The man inserted the bar in a cylinder just beneath the hood and gave it several vigorous turns. With automobile batteries being mostly a thing of the past, the Phoenix Initiative had begun teaching mechanics how to rig manual starters to modern engines. The old pickup was one of a growing number of vehicles thusly equipped.

  After priming the charge, the driver replaced the bar in the bracket and hopped in the driver’s seat. Sabrina arrived as he did and ripped open the passenger door.

  “Where to?”

  “Federal courthouse.” Sabrina dug a wad of cash from her jacket pocket and threw it in his lap. “GO!”

  The man picked up the cash, eyes wide. “You got it, kid.” He stashed the money, and the engine came to life on the first try.

  As they drove, Sabrina shouted directions, her voice shrill and urgent. She screamed at the driver to go faster, faster, faster. They careened down mostly deserted streets, buildings and old garbage piles flashing by, rear tires kicking up a rooster-tail of dirt and gravel and snow as they sped along. It was nearly full dark outside, and the truck’s one working headlight was too dim to see very far ahead. A few times they hit patches of ice and the driver had to wrestle the steering wheel to regain control.

  Finally, the federal courthouse came into sight, along with the throngs of people who never seemed to leave its entrance. Sabrina knew trying to drive through that crowd would be slower than running, so she slapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Stop, stop, stop. Let me out here.”

  “Okay, let me pull over.”

  “No, you idiot! Right fucking here!”

  The driver hit the brakes and Sabrina came out of her seat, head smacking the windshield.

  “Fuck!”

  “Sorry about that. Shoulda’ wore your seatbelt.”

  Sabrina ignored him and clawed at the door handle. As soon as her feet hit the pavement she started running.

  The new federal courts occupied a cluster of buildings that were once the Colorado Springs Municipal Court and City Hall. Hundreds of people worked there, and at least as many people came and went from the complex daily. It seemed as if every one of them was milling around outside on the sidewalk or standing in the broad street fronting the building. Sabrina stood on her tiptoes and frantically searched their faces, looking for a tall woman wearing a dark blue pantsuit, heavy black wool coat, hair pulled back in a bun, and a red scarf. To her dismay, that description matched nearly half the women in the crowd.

  “Elizabeth!”

  A few people looked, but none of them were her stepmother.

  Shit.

  Her mind worked quickly. At this hour, Elizabeth would have left the building. She was most likely on her way home. The question was whether she had taken a carriage, or, as was more frequently her custom, decided to walk.

  “Does anyone know Elizabeth Garrett!”

  An older man with a shock of white hair raised a hand. “Yeah, I know her.”

  Sabrina rushed over to him. The man took an involuntary step back.

  “Is she here?”

  “Uh…no, no, she left just a few minutes ago.”

  Sabrina grabbed him by the arms. “Which way did she go?”

  The man gathered himself, stood up straight, and pushed at her hands. “Young lady, take your hands off of me.”

  “Somebody’s trying to kidnap her, goddammit! I’m her daughter! Which way did she go?”

  The man blinked, and then pointed down the street toward the mountains rising in the distance. “She said she was going for a sandwich at Philly’s.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sabrina began running down the street, shouting for people to get out of the way. She wished like hell her training was complete and she had a badge she could hold up in the air. As it was, she settled for using her size to shove aside people who did not dodge fast enough. A patrol cop noticed and came trotting over.

  “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m a trainee at the Academy,” she replied breathlessly. “Someone just tried to kidnap me. I think they’re going after my mom next.”

  “Hold on, kid,” the cop panted, struggling to keep up. “Who’s your mom?”

  “She’s a US Attorney.”

  “Wait, stop for a damn minute.”

  “I can’t! They might have her already.”

  Just as she cleared the crowd, the cop caught her by the arm. She wrenched it away, and rather than argue with him, simply took off running. The cop was shorter than her, and heavier, and from his labored breathing, not in the best of shape. She had no doubt she could outrun him, so she put her head down and that was exactly what she did. As she put ground between them, she heard him speaking into his radio.

  Good.

  If the cops pursued her, she could
bring them to Elizabeth. Assuming, of course, she found her before the cops ran her down.

  “Elizabeth!” she screamed again.

  The street was sparsely populated now with only one or two lights per block. Sabrina turned the corner and ran toward her stepmother’s favorite sandwich shop. Another corner loomed ahead, and Sabrina could now hear two pairs of footsteps chasing her.

  She turned the next corner and nearly stopped when she saw Elizabeth opening the door to Philly’s and calmly walking inside.

  Thank God.

  She ran to the entrance and ripped open the door. Elizabeth looked over her shoulder.

  “Sabrina?”

  The shop was small. Standing space to the left, counter to the right, and a straight hallway that led to a doorway at the end. The doorway opened to the alley behind and was standing slightly ajar. As Sabrina looked at it, the door opened, and two men rushed in.

  “Elizabeth, get down!”

  In the space of an instant, several things happened. To Sabrina, the world turned a shade of gray and seemed to slow down.

  Rather than drop to the floor, Elizabeth followed Sabrina’s gaze to the door. She saw two hard-faced men headed straight toward her and froze.

  Sabrina aimed her Glock, but Elizabeth was in the way. Snarling a curse, she switched the pistol to her left hand and used her right to draw one of her karambits. The two men saw Sabrina and rushed forward.

  In that instant, Sabrina knew her time was up. She had to get to Elizabeth before the kidnappers could use her as a human shield. Her long stride covered the distance in two steps, but the attackers arrived at the same time. One of them grabbed Elizabeth around the neck and pulled her close. With his other hand, he tried to aim a pistol at Sabrina. And he would have succeeded if Elizabeth had not come to her senses and pushed the man’s arm upward. The weapon went off and fired a round into the ceiling.

  “Sabrina, run!”

  Sabrina did not run. She stepped close, aimed carefully, and swung the karambit in an overhanded slash. The hooked blade bit deep into the gunman’s forearm, severing muscle and tendon and glancing off the man’s bones. He screamed and the gun clattered to the floor.