“You did well,” Tom said, surprising him. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
“Surviving?”
“Putting people down like that,” Tom said.
“I’ll put anyone down who deserves it.”
Tom studied that a moment. The complexities were like cogs whirring inside a clockmaker’s fantasies and Tom’s son was correct that they didn’t have the time for any of it.
“He deserved it,” Tom agreed. “I still wish there was another way.”
“I don’t think I care anymore, dad.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s kinda why I said what I said.”
He left it at that, still hopeful Lucas might contemplate that seed of consideration and maybe even tend to it. Tom left the matter behind them in the crushed grasses they now emerged from to cautiously track across the bridge. Brass cartridges expended long ago lay profuse across the road surface, and the side-turned cars collapsed on disintegrated tires revealed several skeletons in ragged clothes, their flesh long gone along with any clues about their story. But it explained the roadblock they now had to squeeze through, and despite looming proximity to the promised kennels, where Yusuf said Lilianna was taken, Tom felt the sheer emptiness of the countryside and his hopes dimmed with it.
But he pushed them ever onward, forehead ablaze with imagined logistics for a situation he couldn’t foretell and was little more than a sophisticated distraction to keep his screaming thoughts from the images of his daughter – alive, or dead – in a living hell.
*
THE FAR SIDE of the bridge yielded onto a wilderness of riverine vegetation which had long-since conquered the picnic spots and information boards and tourism signs and parking bays of the land sloping higher in a series of overgrown, manmade terraces abutting another road. Beyond it, the path immediately west was blocked by a long wire fence subsumed by yet more woodland and vine-infested land, but Tom spied the hint of another road to the north and lifted his weapon up as he advanced.
He had no idea how long it’d been since Lilianna was taken.
He had no idea whether they were racing against the clock, or if that clock had long since wound down to nothing.
The sun beat in vain against the thick cloud cover, the skies ever-moving with the harsh breeze scouring in across the grasslands throwing leaves and twigs like confetti. Tom barely checked the clear way north, but then he froze mid-step and remained there until Lucas caught up.
“What?”
“Look,” he said.
Lucas reoriented his gaze on the far horizon and stood sharing his father’s almost biblical awe at the sight of a gray-bodied twister annihilating the distant landscape.
“Tornadoes,” Tom said.
The wind intensified as if to make the significance clear. Tom stammered in the back of his throat, grabbed Luke by one shoulder, and hurried ahead to the turn-off. He then broke into a ragged jog with his son close behind.
The churning twister drifted across to the west as if keeping pace with them.
And it grew slowly in perspective as it also tracked across the landscape headed south.
*
THEY ABANDONED ANY stealth the shrieking winds left to them, hurrying deeper through a stand of trees running parallel to recent tire tracks crossing the overgrown slope. The old dirt road surface showed like a ghost among crushed weeds. A few towering ferns rose out of the swards to left and right like sentinels of sorts, seed-heavy flowers stripped skeletal and bare. Thorns grabbed at their legs. Trees blocked the rise to the north, and it was only the land’s continued swell which gave Tom and his son glimpses to confirm the seasonal Ohio tornado chugging inexpertly across the land beyond, destroying submerged homes, fences, loosening water towers which flew up into the sky like some kind of mechanical Rapture, torn into and then thrashed to pieces by the dirty vortex spiral as it meandered south-west.
Stray debris in the wind clawed at Tom and Luke as Tom led them to the edge of the rise and threw himself down in the long grass. Lucas knelt, nowhere near as out of breath, his face flushed as he gave the recently-claimed AR15 a professional once-over.
Tom had to drag his own mesmerized, mortified gaze from his son to focus on the sunken complex to which the vehicle tracks led them.
A lone, dented white four-wheel drive with its chassis hacksawed open sat parked, pointed with redundant headlights on the descending path to a concrete-slab house with a front office business beside the rusting, decrepit, tin-roofed kennels on the east side of the property. From the height of the crest overlooking it all, they had a good view of the strangled Irish strawberry trees framing the back of the house, more submerged car wrecks, and beyond them a collapsed chain-link fence, after which the land fell away to reveal more distant tree-studded, forest-overcome Ohio plains, and then the infernal, ghostly shadow of the twister grown to massive proportions throughout its advance towards them.
“We have to get into cover,” Tom hissed.
“And Lila?”
“She may be in there.”
“Unless we’re too late,” Lucas said.
Tom forced down bile, nodding curtly. “We need to interrogate anyone we find, not just kill them outright. Understood?”
Lucas nodded as if scolded.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” he said. “But don’t tell me we’re getting through this without more . . . without any more people getting killed. Right, dad?”
Tom replied with a hooded nod. His grip refastened on Yusuf’s Mp5. He unlooped the longbow from across himself and checked the sword and the pistol remained in place.
“I want you to stay here,” he said.
“What? Why?”
Tom motioned so Luke would see the vantage they enjoyed. Broad daylight and the elevation conspired to rob the site’s few secrets. As they watched, the front office door banged open and a pale-featured man in motorcycle leathers burst out, cramming a helmet onto his head as he ducked and headed through into the dog kennels, dislodging the shadows to reveal another figure just beyond the clarity of its rusted wire-mesh screens.
“You’re a good shot,” Tom said. “I need you to cover me.”
“There’s no keeping me out of this, dad.”
The words – and the tone – were disturbing from someone so young, and coming from his own child only made it worse, but Tom nodded fiercely rather than wince, almost grunting his reply.
“You’re in this with me whether you like it or not,” he said. “Or whether I do. That’s the deal. So can you fucking cover me, or what? We’re here to find your sister.”
Lucas gulped at the classic “careful what you wish for” – his own words maybe haunted him, knowing this was the quiet before the very literal storm to come.
“We’re going to need shelter,” Tom said.
He eyed the brooding entity roaring quietly across the near beyond.
“And we don’t have much time.”
He nodded to Lucas and disallowed himself any other comment as he quit their vantage point and scurried down the embankment in a crouch.
*
MILITARY-STYLE OPERATIONS weren’t ever something he’d imagined in his future, and frankly Tom didn’t have the patience for much in the way of strategy with the howling storm thrashing everything outside. He made the edge of the cleared yard equidistant between the office door and the half-open kennels shelter with the sub-machinegun to his aching shoulder.
He ducked down and to the right without any pause and came in on the helmeted man gesturing to a broad-featured woman, struggling to be heard above the gale. The woman’s lizard-like gaze widened seeing Tom over her comrade’s shoulder, and though the helmeted man didn’t turn to see, whatever he saw writ across the woman sentry’s face was enough to send him dashing to the left, ducking low and out of sight beyond an intervening wall of wire, timber, and old chipboard dividers.
It left the woman dead to rights. Tom stalked forward, casting a desperate look after the vanished man, knowing
any change in focus would let the woman run for it too. So he thrust the brutal muzzle of the gun straight at her, fighting back a low growl deep in his chest.
“Where’s Lilianna?”
The blonde woman stared back at him in shock.
“Gone!”
“Where?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
Tom pointed the gun at the woman’s bare throat above the Kevlar. And she stared back, frozen and aghast. Crashing noises and a muffled, feminine squeal came from deeper in the kennels and forced that low growl up and out of Tom’s throat.
“Fuck!”
He emptied a burst into the woman’s chest and face and she flew back into the dusty concrete corner and fell down dead.
He swiveled and took a step to chase the helmed guard, still processing the noise made by more captives barely glimpsed as anything other than movements in the wire cages deeper in the shed. Tom’s heart surged with irrational hope one might be Lilianna. But then a series of sharp rifle cracks kept him turning, and he nearly fell over himself checking back out through the day-lit opening to the slope and just a flicker of movement as Luke fired on the front of the house from cover.
A heavyset man with a shaved head and neck tattoos stumbled into Tom’s view and collapsed to his knees, clutching at the blood gushing from his chest and throat as he fell over and died. The office door behind him hung half-open, darkness beyond.
The hostages in the kennels started thrashing madly. A woman’s frantic, incoherent cries renewed Tom’s insane hope the female trooper lied, and Tom whirled back the way he’d come and stormed into the back of the dingy complex lit only by dangling orange globes. He thrust the Mp5 out front, scanning between the individual caged hovels as best he could alert for the other of Wilhelm’s fled henchman.
Two women and a man writhed bound and gagged in kennels at the rear. Daylight shone on them from the tin back door left ajar.
The screaming woman worked her gag free, but locking eyes on Tom’s furious mask left her stricken, and it was only the male captive shaking the wire cage door and grunting, gagged, at him, that broke off Tom’s stare.
He glanced at the gate’s flimsy padlock. Outside winds blasted into the kennels, the outside concrete walls not quite reaching the timber-framed roof. Tom stamped down on the mechanism as hard as he could. The lock broke, and the young man stumbled out, but Tom glowered at him with blood rage still clouding his vision.
“Stay low,” he grunted. “A lot of bullets. Tornado coming in.”
Then he whipped around the dividing wall and headed back to the front.
*
TOM LEFT THE kennels just as the office door blew open again and a solid, chestnut-featured man in tactical armor charged out hefting a grenade launcher.
To his shame, Tom threw himself to the ground, but the trooper hadn’t even registered him – focused instead on swinging the snub-nosed weapon around on Luke’s position and promptly opening fire.
The M40 grenade lobbed true right into Lucas’ sniper spot, detonating as it hit the tall-grassed ridge and exploding with a sharp bang. Dirt rained down, but was instantly flung away from them by the gale – and Tom grabbed onto the horrified reprieve to vault bodily from the ground and charge into the gunman.
Tom drove Chesterton directly into the flaky-painted frame of the officer door. The ginger-hued trooper’s thick-haired head smacked back into the concrete and he slumped without passing out, growling his own inspiration even as he clawed at Tom’s chest for purchase.
The trooper seized a handful of Tom’s tunic and drove a knee into the inside of Tom’s thigh. Tom’s stance buckled immediately, and the trooper parlayed the momentum into a wrestling move to somehow get astraddle while also driving Tom onto and then into the half-ajar door.
Tom hit the wood face first and blacked out for the shortest second. Blood flowed back into his brain along with terrified thoughts about his son. But the adrenalin burst of it all saw him backhand Chesterton aside, before the other man could consolidate his hold, and then with his hip and ribcage shrieking their protests, Tom threw his arm and shoulder into Chesterton’s midriff despite barely getting up again from the floor. The trooper drove powerful elbows down on Tom’s head and shoulders and Tom took the punishment in trade for the time to get boots beneath him once more. He clutched his foeman around the waist with both arms and then thrust Chesterton bodily upwards.
The chief trooper’s head smashed into the concrete lintel of the doorframe and he was barely conscious to resist when Tom drove him up again a second and then a third time. Tom finally dropped the bloody bundle hard into the open doorway and snatched the Glock from Chesterton’s hip.
Outside, Luke’s vantage point was just a ruined chunk of exposed dirt. The wind continued stripping it, black clouds like gnats peeling away from the crest to vanish into the day turning rapidly dark. Whole tree branches and boards and pieces of sheeting crashed across dead Dixie’s private enterprise as ambassadors of the tornado’s advance.
Tom grabbed Chesterton by the beard and almost couldn’t shout the question for all the tears choking him.
“Where’s Lilianna?”
He shook the guard and repeated the question two more times.
“. . . dead by now,” Chesterton groaned. “Or one of them.”
Tom cursed him and shot another look back to Luke’s blasted position hoping to see his son reappear. The noise of a motorcycle roaring to life was almost inaudible beneath the weather’s attack. Tom could also barely hear the half-conscious Chesterton, who continued speaking, groggy, perhaps delirious. Tom grabbed him one-handed by the vest and dragged him into the lee of the kennels, throwing suspicious looks back to the office door too, no idea of how many armed men or women there might be.
“Where’s my fucking daughter, you piece of shit?”
Tom half-throttled the man. In more ways than one, it was a miracle Chesterton could speak at all.
“Greerson took her, with the other one,” the trooper replied. “With the others.”
“What ‘others’?”
“Greerson’s pals . . . Wilhelm’s . . . frequent flyers.”
“You piece of shit. . . .”
“. . . never touched any of them.”
The redhead hawked up a piece of tooth and spat, eyeing Tom with difficulty as one of them swelled shut.
The motorbike noise rose to a peak – and echoed by another.
Back up the slope, the old four-wheel drive coughed to life and fired up as well.
Tom checked Chesterton again – no immediate threat – and then towards one of the female captives coming forward, still pulling tape from her wrist.
“They were talking about your daughter earlier!” the carob-haired woman said and blinked rapidly, flustered, all kinds of fucked up. “You’re Tom Vanicek, right?”
The other two captives flanked her.
“I worked with your daughter,” the woman said. “I know her. I met you too, on the train the day you came in. I’m Gwen Stacey.”
Tom took it all in without blinking. Chesterton slumped except where Tom clutched him.
The two engines outside squealed amid a sickening crash and it felt like the whole kennels shelter almost gave way as the impact of a collision rolled through.
“Twister’s coming in,” Tom said as if he’d heard nothing. “Tie him up.”
He motioned to Chesterton as he released the broken man and then headed back into the storm to find his son.
*
THE HELMETED MAN’S screams were dulled by the mask he wore, but the moment Tom registered them, the crushed man stayed forgotten, pinned by the faded white four-wheel drive now with its grille caved in around him against one of the trees to the side of the yard. The roofless vehicle had driven up and over the fugitive’s motorbike, and Lucas stepped out of the driver’s seat and waved a hand at his father.
The nearly twelve-year-old held the AR15 by his side as casual as a career marine. And the look
he gave his father floundered in confusion as Tom charged forward and grabbed him in a fierce hug.
It took a few seconds for Tom’s breathless profanities to stop. Their crouched embrace left him at much the same height as his son, and Lucas scanned back over his dad’s shoulder to the front of the office, surveying it for threats.
“Dad. . . .”
“He fired a fucking grenade right where you were. . . .”
“What?” Luke replied and dared make a puzzled face. “No he didn’t.”
“You were set up there.”
“First position, yeah,” Lucas said and snorted, amused despite his father’s clearly near-incoherent relief that he lived. “You don’t stay in the same spot once you reveal your position, dad,” Lucas said more gently. “Anyone could tell you that.”
Tom straightened as he released his son and not yet ready to acknowledge the world of pain radiating through his battered back and limbs. He glanced to the crashed four-wheel drive instead.
“Yeah,” Lucas said without needing the question. “The guy from the shed tried to get away on that bike he’d stashed.” Lucas shrugged. “I stopped him.”
Tom snorted. “You stopped him.” He shook his head. “You sure fucking did.”
“I was already using the truck for cover, so. . . .”
Lucas suffered his father’s bloody hand ruffling his hair. The man Tom had freed earlier now appeared with the young black girl, guarding the front of the kennel office. The younger man bore a fresh assault rifle he trained on the half-open door. Behind them, near the kennels’ entrance, the older woman Gwen crouched beside where Chesterton lay hogtied.
Tom went to bellow and order, but an awful ripping noise came in slow motion, causing them all to flinch as a fresh blast-wave of haze tore through the yard. The back of the kennels started disintegrating one rusty tin roof panel at a time.
The big serrated sheets cartwheeled into the air like a card dealer’s trick, lethal and sharp, and now it was Lucas clutching his father by the arm as they rushed down to the others and into the concrete bunker.
After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 22
