“Is that what I am? Broken?”
“I stick to bandages,” Evelyn says. Talk about false modesty. There’s more to this woman than just patching people up. But the footsteps have stopped outside the door, so I can’t keep the conversation going. “I need to leave.”
She slips out the door. I hear her retreating down the hall, perhaps to fix the broken, perhaps to attend to some other mysterious matter. The door almost shuts before a thick fingered hand grabs the edge and flings it open.
I meet eyes with Slick, his arms crossed over his barrel chest.
There are no formalities.
He just says, “Let’s talk about HIVE, shall we?”
“What’d you do to get this gig?” I say.
“I volunteered,” Adriana says. She limps away from me, trying to end the conversation before it begins.
“That’s a piss poor idea,” I call after her. “I figured you were smarter than that.”
“Well you never really can know much about anyone, can you?” She points in the darkness, past the flickering light at the four-way intersection at the bottom of the highway’s off-ramp. “Bank is about a mile that way. Your friends are waiting.”
Slick—President Knute, leader of the newly formed Ashes of the Fall—told me, in no uncertain terms, that I now owed him twice—once for saving my life, the second time for sparing it after I stole from him and sabotaged his operation. That feels a little bit like double jeopardy, but I wasn’t in a position to argue.
Which means I’m back in the Lost Plains already, sent on the first of two missions. My HoloBand-free existence makes me useful for an adventure like this. Slick said that Blackstone retraced Matt’s final days. Found that he stopped two places on his trip outside the Eastern Stronghold. One of them was at a set of coordinates a little ways up. Slick’s men scouted it out, found it was a bank.
That tracks with what Jana told me. The drive must be in the vault—and Slick’s men must’ve attacked them earlier this week to get the key.
My next stop, should I survive, is a visit with Andrew Marshwood, the disgraced former Head Treasurer of the Circle. Slick believes that a third drive—the final piece of the HIVE source code—was left with Marshwood.
After I’m done, I’m to take everything to Director Blackwood. Then Slick will finally be square with the Director for the get out of jail free card, and I’ll be square with everyone, too. Slick doesn’t want anything to do with the Director after that. Just wants to be free and clear.
Him and me both.
As an incentive, he’s told me that, should I not comply, they’ll hunt down every last one of the Remnants. Kill the girl Jana right in front of me. Told me Kid, who’s apparently VP of this AoF organization, would do the honors himself. Since I’m not really friends with the Rems, that threat shouldn’t bother me. But there’s a certain honor, deep in my chest, that forces me along with the plan.
Plus, I didn’t save that girl and kill Jackson for nothing.
I asked Slick what the AoF believed in, and his one-word answer was survival.
All of this means I’m out here, thirty miles west of the old FEMA camp, shivering in the cold, about to rob a bank. I follow Adriana and the third member of our crew, Sammy, to a concrete barrier separating incoming and oncoming lanes. The hastily poured concrete is misformed and lumpy. Whoever did the job didn’t know what they were doing.
“You need to get moving, Golden Boy,” Adriana says, taking Jackson’s old line and throwing the barb my way. “I hear you got other things you need to do for the Prez.”
Sammy nods, rifle slung over his lean shoulder. He’s a dead-eye shot, apparently—tactical support in case things go wrong and I can’t sweet-talk my way inside. After I’m in the bank, I’ll use this safety deposit box key hanging around my neck to open the box. Simple enough.
“You guys stay outta sight,” I say, starting to walk down the off-ramp. “And don’t shoot anyone.”
“We’ll do a better job hiding than you did,” Adriana responds.
“Danged gun makes too much noise, anyway,” Sammy says in an aww shucks kind of way that doesn’t quite ring true, “Won’t fire ‘less there’s an emergency.”
I look around at the silent night, stars visible as I trudge towards my destination. Being out here gives my stomach a turn. I walk past the lonely stoplight, which still manages to draw power from some unknown source. Probably a little energy from a solar panel.
It takes me fifteen minutes to cover the distance to the bank. The burnt out sign reads Bank of Greater Tennessee. The last “e” is hanging off, about to fall to the pavement. Two guards pace about the lot, guns by their sides. I can’t be sure, but I think, on the far end of the bank, a tree has split in two and gone through the roof. A couple of other fallen trees are scattered around the lot.
I duck down behind an abandoned car, heart stammering, whole body tingling.
I hear Slick’s words over and over again, pounding against the walls of my brain.
It’ll be easy, bud. Simple. There’s an old bank. Bank of Greater Tennessee. The vault’s inside. Box 342. Should be a drive in there, bud. If you’re lucky.
Yeah—I should hope to be so lucky. The silence and breeze whistling through the empty road are almost worse than any noise, because they contain endless possibilities.
I take a deep breath and get up from behind the car. Wonder if the old skills will come back to me and the lies will flow. Or whether I’ll stumble and be skewered out here in the wastes. I’ve been gone from camp a week—they gotta know something’s up, after I didn’t offer anything for trade. These Rems, they might not even know who I am.
As I approach with my arms raised, both men train their guns on me. I haven’t even made it to the bank’s lot before they’re screaming at me to get on the ground.
I do as I’m told, and one rushes over and jams the end of the rifle into my back.
“I know Vlad,” I say, figuring I should bring the big guns out right away. “I’m Luke Stokes. I saved his daughter.”
“You’ve been missing,” the guy says. Clearly word spreads amongst them pretty fast. “Jana says you didn’t show up to trade.”
“I’ve been expanding my search radius,” I say. “Running low on supplies.”
“The truck was missing.”
“I took the truck to search for supplies.”
“Where is it now?”
Jesus, this guy is thorough. “It broke down.”
“A long walk back.” The guard whistles, and his buddy comes over. They’re both standing over me, discussing something in low tones.
A gunshot cracks out, and one of them falls on my back, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I hear my interrogator curse, then another shot comes, and he, too tumbles on top of me. I struggle to breathe underneath the pile. The sound of two people sprinting my way makes me stop moving.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” I say from beneath the bodies. “They were gonna let me in.”
“Our way was faster,” Adriana says. Neither she nor Sammy offer me any help in digging my way out from beneath the corpses. Finally free, the smell of blood fresh in my nostrils, I stand and brush myself off.
“I thought you said the gun was too loud.”
“It is loud,” he says with a casual, nondescript shrug. “Didn’t ya hear it?”
“You knew what this was, Stokes,” Adriana says with a little menace. “A coupla them were always gonna die.” In the moonlight, I can see the scar running down the side of her cheek, temple to jaw, where a Rem caught her on a supply run. Slick told me that. It’s deep and jagged, and even though it healed years before I ever met her, it still looks raw and fresh. No wonder she hates ‘em so damn much.
I bite my lip and don’t answer.
“Someone’s gonna come looking after those shots,” Sammy says. “Best y
a get going inside.”
I glare at him. I would say don’t shoot anything, but it’s clear that my instructions don’t hold any water around here. Got to get this thing done before more Remnants come and investigate. Or before the bank falls down on top of us.
I step inside the ghostly abandoned structure, winding my way through the charred remains of desks and office furniture. The frameless glass doors and windows of the Bank of Greater Tennessee are all shattered, making it look like the structure’s roof is simply floating above the jumble of ancient debris. Computer monitors lie in a melted heap in front of the counter, remnants of Damien Ford’s scourge.
Adriana pushes ahead and says, “Let’s pick up the pace here, Stokes.” Despite her limp, she climbs over the ruined tellers’ counter with ease. Whatever bulletproof glass was once here, it’s long gone.
A fluorescent strip lighting fixture hangs at an angle from the ceiling, dangling so low that I have to duck when I join Adriana. Sammy hangs back in the main lobby and sits on a ruined filing cabinet with his rifle on his lap.
Adriana rattles the door leading to the back offices and the vault, but it won’t move.
“Need a little help here.”
I send it crashing in with a thunderous kick, the rusty hinges clamoring as they’re ripped off the wall. The door kicks up a cloud of dust as it careens down the hall. Adriana disappears in the cloudy fog. I bat at the air, trying to get a better look at where she’s gone. When the dust settles, I see the vault is straight ahead. A massive Douglas fir trunk is lodged in the center of the hallway’s soiled carpet.
I squeeze by the trunk and then pass by a doorway leading to rows of cubicles on the right—dust coating the phones, desk chairs and joke calendars. I head towards the vault, which is locked tightly shut. Without power or backup generators, the keypad and biometrics are all useless. The key around my neck is only good for getting inside the box, not the vault. But I doubt the Rems knew the code, anyway, when they hid their stuff in here. I push against the door, try the handle, but nothing budges.
“Adriana,” I say, trying to keep my voice a hushed whisper. No response. “Adriana?”
“On the roof,” I hear her call. I hug the wall to get by the tree again, then shimmy up the rough bark to the roof. When I step down, I can see that the tree was cracked in half—and the other half is lodged in the vault, having battered its way through the titanium plating.
“What took you so long? I was getting lonely,” Adriana says. She’s peering over the hole the other tree trunk has created, trying to determine a way down.
“I figured I’d check the door.”
I take a flashlight from my pocket and turn it on before sidling over to examine the hole in the vault’s roof. I position the beam so that it cuts into the darkness below. The weight of the tree has sliced right through the titanium like a splinter through skin. Reinforced metal proved little match for the power of gravity and a whole hell of a lot of weight.
Aside from some jagged edges around where the tree punctured through, the interior of the vault looks safe. Only problem is, unlike the other half of the tree, this one didn’t leave a convenient way to the ground. It went hurtling straight down, leaving it lodged almost vertically.
It’s only a ten or twelve-foot drop into the vault, but it’s too far to jump unless the situation turns desperate. A broken bone out here would be a real problem.
“You’ll have to lower me down,” Adriana says. I see that she’s already got the harness roped up. She tosses me the carabineer, and I clip it my belt. “Try not to drop me.”
“You move pretty quick for…” I let the words trail off.
“For what, a cripple?” She snatches the key from around my neck. “I’ll need this.”
I don’t say anything and she disappears into the vault. I hear boxes clanging as she tosses them around the vault.
“Throw me your gun,” Adriana says during a break in the action. I hear her try a key in a lock, then curse. “I need some extra firepower.”
“You didn’t give me a gun.”
“Damn right we didn’t, Stokes,” she says. “Because you’re a lying bastard.”
I hear two gunshots echo loudly in the chamber below. Then the whole clip emptying.
“Maybe you actually do need some extra firepower.”
“You just worry about yourself, Stokes.” There’s a long pause. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shit down here.”
“The curiosity’s killing me,” I say. I look out across the Lost Plains. From the top of the bank, it’s a pretty good view. No one’s coming, but with all this noise, someone’s gotta know that a robbery’s in progress. “You almost finished?”
I feel a tug on the rope and Adriana says, “Pull me up.” She’s clutching the drive, a box jammed out the top of her backpack. Her face is giddy, eyes crinkled by a broad smile. I give the rope one last yank, to help her feet clear.
But I pull too damn hard, and she swings backwards, her legs bouncing against the tree. I hear a little groan, the sound of the trunk dislodging from its precarious equilibrium. I yank as hard as I can, and I shout, “Sammy, you gotta get out of the bank.”
Adriana tumbles on to the roof, almost rolling off the edge. I catch her as the bank begins to quake.
“This stays with me,” Adriana says, tapping the drive with her pistol. “I’m watching you.”
“We gotta get moving,” I say.
But the massive roar of the broken tree ripping loose drowns out her reply. I unclip the carabiner, take her hand in mine and stare at the ground. Spot a patch of tall ferns nearby. Prickly, maybe, but softer than the torn asphalt.
As the tree begins to fall, I yank her off the edge and we jump.
We both land hard as the tree pitches over and slices through the middle of the bank, bisecting it like the blade of a sword, sending up a plume of dust and a shockwave that feels like an earthquake. I feel my face and my arms, covered in small cuts, but I can tell there are no broken bones.
Then I hear the screams.
“My leg,” Adriana says, the words guttural.
I glance down, amidst the trampled branches and leaves. In the near-zero visibility, thanks to the dust shot up by the impromptu demolition, it’s difficult to tell what’s wrong. But Adriana’s knee looks askew, the leg flopping in the wrong direction, like a broken appendage on an action figure. She landed on her bad leg, coming in at the wrong angle in an attempt to protect it.
Worse, there’s the distant sound of engines on the horizon. I try to get up and survey the land.
“Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.” Adriana’s arm is gripping my wrist so tight that I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to. Her pupils are dilated into pin pricks.
“I gotta look for Sammy.” I shake free of her death grip and sprint to the middle of the lot. The bank is completely destroyed. The concrete groans slightly, still crumbling in on itself. Amidst the tangle of metal and dust, I can see patches of splintered wood.
“Sammy,” I call. The engines are getting louder. They’ll be here in a minute. “Hey.”
No answer. He’s gone. I run back to Adriana.
“We gotta go.”
“The drive,” she says. “Get the drive.” Her fingers are pointing to it, grasping for it. I pick it up from a patch of soil about ten feet away and brush it off. Hopefully it still works. I hand it to her. She looks surprised.
But I have bigger things to worry about.
I can’t outrun the bikes. There’s nowhere to hide in the immediate landscape, except the bank. That’ll be the first place the Rems search. The dead guards—they didn’t walk. I scan the area for bikes, spotting them about twenty yards away. Unfortunately, that’s closer to the growl of the attack party. I begin jogging, but then remember.
The keys.
Gritting my teeth, I turn
around and race over to the downed guards, frantically searching them. I find a keyring in one of the dead man’s breast pockets. Sprinting back to Adriana, I try to figure out the fastest way to do everything. Headlights are visible on the horizon amidst the dust.
It’d be easy to leave her behind. Hell, she might even deserve it. But I throw her over my back and start to run like hell towards the bikes.
A searing pain rushes through my shoulders, begging me to put down the hundred-pound woman draped across my shoulder. She’s tall, five ten at least, which spreads the weight out in an odd way, like when you have to pick up a big dog, an old friend who’s all limbs and can’t move too good any more.
Her brown hair, tied back in a hasty ponytail, scratches my nose when I run. The keys jingle and the engines scream. I hear the bark of a firearm, the bullet colliding with the nearby pavement. With no time to set her down, I adjust all her weight on to one shoulder and throw my leg over the bike.
I jam the key into the ignition, hoping that this is the right one. Another gunshot screams nearby, hitting the other bike with a metallic ting. I turn the piece of metal, and the engine roars to life. Squeezing my palm tight around the throttle, we speed off into the night, the scent of torched rubber clinging to my nostrils.
A couple more shots follow, but the Rems don’t give chase for long. I hear a whistle, and the bikes trailing us up the highway on-ramp turn around. The sound of the other engines fades, and then it’s just me and Adriana atop the stolen bike, racing along the ruined highway.
I figure the Rems were worried about running out of fuel—burning too much of it and getting caught dangerously close to the Otherlands. They probably could have overtaken us or made a damn good attempt, had they gone all out. But survival hangs by a thread in the Lost Plains, and recovering a lost drive wasn’t worth the risk.
I leave the bike on the side of the road next to our truck—parked about ten miles from the bank—and then I settle into the driver’s seat for a long trip back to Atlanta. Adriana sleeps in the passenger’s seat. There’s nothing I can do for her leg with the limited medical kit in the back. They’ve gotten smarter—didn’t risk losing anything good if I ran off again.
Ashes of the Fall Page 16
