Burt pointed. “See those boulders?”
“Yeah.”
“We should be able to hide there and watch them pass by. Then we’ll know more. Let’s go.” Burt didn’t hesitate, starting a hike toward the turquoise-colored rock formation.
Burt took center position behind the smallest of the four boulders, with Dustin on his right. Albert decided to crawl to the other side of Dustin, keeping Burt as far away as possible.
The man’s stink was stifling, almost to the point of making him want to gag. He knew he had to suck it up as Burt had suggested, but it wasn’t going to be easy. The space was limited, but at least they had cover.
If Burt was correct about the military presence heading their way, keeping out of sight was job number one. He just hoped Burt wasn’t going to do something stupid and get them all killed.
The man’s arrogance was only outdone by his willingness to go out of his way for a fight, as if he was in constant need of a physical altercation, like it was some kind of affirmation of his manhood.
Somewhere deep inside Burt was a root cause, Albert figured, buried under a mountain of anger and pain.
The guy was in serious need of a hug, but Albert wasn’t going to be the one to give it to him. A knife to the gut would be more along the lines of what Albert was thinking at the moment.
He took a second to imagine himself sticking the blade in deep, pressing harder and harder until the soft flesh gave way to hard bone. Then he’d twist it slowly in a circle, watching the life run out of Burt’s eyes with every degree of hurt delivered.
It was a glorious vision, but one Albert knew would never happen. He wasn’t a killer, no matter how badly he wanted it.
Even though he was sure everyone in town would agree that Burt was a first-class asshole and probably deserved it for all the pain he’d caused to everyone over the years, Albert wasn’t going to take on the role of the Reaper. That wasn’t who he was. He was more into the cerebral side of altercations, using wit and cleverness as a defense. And a disguise.
Killing would have to be someone else’s job, like the new guy in town that he’d heard about, Jack Bunker. Albert hadn’t met the drifter yet, but everyone was abuzz about the brute’s military background and his bravery.
Albert imagined a towering hulk of a Marine with a chiseled chin, hawk-like eyes, and shoulders that could carry an endless amount of weight. Someone who could bring hell down on anyone who got in his way. Sure, it was a second-hand guess at the man’s size and stature, but from what he’d heard, it fit.
The road below them was about fifty yards away and at a slight decline, giving Albert a straight-line view of the blacktop through the trees. He figured as long as they stayed out of sight and quiet, the military convoy should pass them by without incident.
Albert kept his head low as the three of them waited for the fleet to arrive. Dustin didn’t seem too willing to poke his head out, either, but Burt did, unable to keep his eager eyes from peering over the top of the boulder. Albert couldn’t decide if he should say something or not, his mind visualizing the enemy’s first round finding its way into Burt’s forehead.
His vision was both wonderful and horrifying, giving him pause. Tissue and blood would spray everywhere, etching the ghastly memory into Albert’s synapses for all eternity—a gruesome thought to be sure.
Yet he wasn’t entirely sure if a decapitated Burt was a bad thing or not. It would all depend on which side of his conscience was in charge at the time of the decision.
Albert reached past Dustin and tapped Burt on the shoulder. “You need to get down. You’re gonna give away our position.”
“Relax, Jumb—” Burt said, stopping his words in mid-sentence. “—I mean, Albert. Unless they’re looking right at us, they’ll never see us up here.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Albert snarled, trying to burrow his way through the man’s wall of pride. “These men are trained killers. This is what they do, look for assholes like us.”
“I need to find out who they are and that can’t happen unless I keep an eye on them.”
“He’s right,” Dustin said, swinging his eyes around to Albert. “Sorry, dude, but we have to know who we’re dealing with.”
“You’re taking his side in this?”
Dustin shrugged.
Albert wanted to say more but realized it was useless. He was running with a pair of clueless bastards and one of them had just thrown him under the bus. “I’m outta here,” he said, backing away on his stomach, his legs and hands moving in concert.
“Where you going?” Dustin asked.
“Anywhere but here. You guys are nuts.” Albert got to his feet and headed for higher ground. He decided to angle to the left, choosing an area where he wouldn’t end up directly behind the line of fire when the barrage was unleashed.
He prayed he was wrong about the troops spotting his team behind the rocks, but his gut knew better. In fact, it was screaming at him to climb faster and higher, so he did, pushing his thighs through the pain.
The combination of altitude, weight, and terrain took the air from his lungs quickly, but he couldn’t stop, sounding like a racehorse, wheezy and puffing its way down the home stretch of a high-stakes race.
Twigs snapped and needles crunched as he pressed on, finally reaching the summit of the climb. He took position behind a fallen tree, lying on his back to allow his mouth to have priority access to all the air it could take in.
He’d never been so tired in all his life, feeling a squeeze in the center of his chest as a river of sweat emptied from the pores of his skin. Three breaths later, dizziness found him, and so did an ocean of stars in his vision.
Albert closed his eyes and fought the raging nausea building in his stomach, but then the blackness came and he passed out.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Deputy Daisy squeezed her thin frame past the next stack of heavy, reinforced pallets in Tuttle’s barn, wondering how many more she’d have to check before finding items that could be deemed tactically useful. Specifically, she was searching for communications gear—something she’d been tasked to find on an earlier visit with Bunker.
If it weren’t for the Pokémon men and their assault rifles, this electronics hunt would have been completed a while ago. So would a lot of other things, she figured, knowing that critical town plans had gotten interrupted when everything went sideways at the miner’s camp.
“Better late than never,” she mumbled, thinking of the near-lethal interrogation they’d escaped from in those old shacks. The term never was the word tearing at her heartstrings, knowing they could’ve all been killed, children included.
Thank God for Bunker and his quick reaction skills. Otherwise, there would be several funerals on the docket. Hers included.
Her thoughts turned to the lonely man from Los Angeles and his wicked set of tattoos—the colorful Kindred emblem front and center in her mind. She hadn’t seen or heard from the troubled soul since they’d split up after Grinder’s death.
She didn’t know if Bunker was hurt, lost, wandering around, back in town, or captured again. No way to know, so she’d just have to stay positive and wait for him to make an appearance.
Hopefully, he hadn’t skipped town. If he did, she wouldn’t blame the guy. She’d pulled a gun and was ready to shoot him, her apprehension about his past taking over in a moment of weakness.
She hoped they had put the unexpected confrontation behind them, but the former biker might have decided to take off. In that case, it would be her fault and she’d have to live with it. She’d overreacted and wasn’t proud of it, but sometimes a woman needs to take a step back and take a moment to be sure. Especially when it has to do with someone brand new in your life—a man whose past wasn’t what she expected, and neither was his gallantry for that matter.
Tuttle seemed to have a little bit of everything stored in his pole barn, but so far, she hadn’t found a single electronic device. Not a one. The first three columns of inventory
had proven fruitless, leading her to stack number four.
Her eyes scanned the contents of each plastic-wrapped bundle, stacked neatly from the floor to the ceiling. Nothing of interest caught her eye, though she couldn’t see much detail on the pallet near the top.
“I’m getting tired,” Jeffrey said from Daisy’s left. “I don’t want to look anymore. Can I go back to my mom?”
“Not yet, sweetheart. Not until we find what we need,” Daisy said, wanting to keep the kids occupied while Martha, her daughter Allison, and Stephanie King tended to Franklin Atwater’s injuries.
“But we already found the bandages and stuff. Why can’t we go back?”
“Because your mom and the Raineys are busy helping Mr. Atwater. We need to let them do their work so he gets better. It won’t take long, I promise. Just keep looking.”
Daisy returned to the front of the stacks to check on Megan. The young girl hadn’t said much since they began this forage, obviously worried about her dad.
Her tiny backside sat centered on top of a small crate near the barn door, her crutches lying at her feet. She wasn’t crying but the traumatized look on her face told Daisy all she needed to know.
“It’ll be okay, Megan. Mrs. Rainey is a really good nurse and she’s going to help your dad. He’ll be good as new in no time.”
“I know,” Megan said. “I just wish we were at home, where it’s safe. I don’t like it here.”
Daisy wasn’t sure what to say, so she said nothing. Sometimes trying to comfort someone else’s child backfires when you meddle without the proper experience or frame of reference. Right now, the smart move was to keep quiet. Otherwise, she might say the wrong thing and upset the girl.
In truth, the safest place for everyone right now was here, at Tuttle’s place, but she didn’t want to argue the point. Megan was calm and waiting patiently, exactly what everyone needed.
“I really miss my horse. I hope Star is okay,” the dark-skinned girl said, her tone depressed. “He was probably really scared when someone let him loose. I’m afraid he ran far away.”
“I’m sure he’ll find his way back home,” Daisy said. “Horses are really smart. He knows that you love him. He’ll come back.”
“Yeah, but unless I’m there, I think he might try to find me or something. It’s really scary out in the woods when you’re all by yourself.”
Daisy was at a loss for words again. The girl was pushing the conversation down a path she wasn’t sure how to handle.
“What’s he gonna do, Daisy? He’s got nobody to feed him. Or give him water.”
“He’ll find a stream to drink in, sweetheart, and there’s plenty of grass around. Horses know instinctively what to do. They used to run wild before we corralled them and put saddles on their backs.”
Megan nodded, her lips turning silent as she fiddled with the heavy leg brace. Her tiny fingers tugged at the metal, straightening the alignment around her sore knee.
Maybe Daisy had finally found the proper words to bring comfort to Megan’s broken heart. Daisy’s heart was feeling it, too. So much happening and so little of it good. Everyone was reeling but they all seemed to be holding it together.
Strength in numbers was the phrase that seemed the most appropriate at the moment, though misery loves company would also work. Let’s face it, sometimes too much drama all at once drowns a person, suffocating their ability to think or even act. But her friends were pushing through it.
The girl’s comments about food and water reminded her that they needed to tend to Tuttle’s chickens and pigeons out back. It would also give the kids something to do while everyone waited for Franklin’s recovery.
Before Daisy could blink again, she heard the unmistakable sound of hollow tin, banging away. It was coming from the left, yet it was distant, somewhere near the back of the barn if she had to guess. Jeffrey must have been rapping on something made of metal.
At that moment, her memories fired, reminding her of something she’d seen the first time she’d walked through the barn with Frank Tuttle as her guide. The sealed storage cabinets near the hatch to the man’s underground bunker. Each cabinet featured twin doors whose seams had been covered with metal-reinforced tape.
Her memory changed again, flashing the letters TEOTWAWKI. It was the term she’d seen written across the doors—an acronym that meant THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
The banging continued, louder this time.
“Hang on, Jeffrey, I’m coming to you,” she said, breaking into a full sprint to the ten-year-old’s location.
When Daisy arrived, she found the boy hitting one of the cabinets with a three-foot-long piece of 2x4. Black magic marker ink had been scrawled across its knotty surface, spelling the phrase Master Story Stick. Under that phrase was another pair of words, CC Legs. She wasn’t sure what the chicken scratching was for, but Tuttle’s handwriting was a mess. Almost like he was in a hurry. Or drunk.
“It’s locked,” Jeffrey said, taking another whack at the cabinet. His aim caught the center of the left door, creating a more pronounced dent than before.
She held out her hand. “Here, let me try.”
The boy gave her the lumber, taking a step back after he did.
Daisy wrapped both hands around the end of the wood and brought it back past her shoulder like a baseball bat. Her target was the pair of handles in the middle where the doors met, specifically, the one on the right. It featured a key slot.
After a full swing and a loud clang, a tremor-like reverberation shot through her arms. It made her elbows hurt and her hands release, sending the 2x4 to the ground with a hollow thud.
She brought her eyes to bear and looked at her target. The locking handle had been bent slightly to one side, but it appeared to be holding firm against her attack.
Daisy bent down and picked up the makeshift hammer to swing again. This time she let out a powerful grunt as she unleashed her malice with more force.
The lever sheared off in pieces, pinging a death song across the cement floor when it landed. Their collective journey came to an abrupt halt when the pieces slid into a stack of thirty-pound bags on the floor—mostly white and evenly placed in a crisscrossing pattern.
The blue stenciling on the bags told her the weight and the name of the business that Tuttle had purchased them from—some place called Dewey Farms in Arizona. Under the brand name was the word FERTILIZER with chemical formula NH4N03 with 34% N printed after it.
“Nice shot!” Jeffrey said.
“All those summers of girls’ softball really paid off,” she quipped, reliving a painful moment of glory from her youth. It was back when she ran headfirst into a heavy girl at home plate. Bethany was her name, if she remembered right. Actually, it was Big Bethany, the official nickname of the opposing team’s immovable catcher.
Daisy’s team lost that game in the city finals when she was thirteen. That was the last time she ever picked up a glove or bat. The collision was the main reason, though her focus would soon switch from sports to boys.
That legendary impact had changed her life, but she wasn’t sure if it had been for the better. Her luck with the opposite sex hadn’t exactly been good; she always seemed to choose the wrong guy. Maybe she only attracted assholes, reeling them in like an expert fisherman with all the right bait.
Daisy used the sharp corner of the 2x4 to cut through the tape along the middle seam. Once she had a loose piece to work with, she was able to pull the remaining tape away from the cabinet, working it free from the center out.
The instant the restraints were removed, the doors, no longer held in place, plopped open an inch. Daisy finished the reveal, swinging the doors open until the hinges stopped the movement. Inside were five shelves, spaced evenly apart from top to bottom.
“Now that’s more like it,” she said, seeing an array of electronic equipment on each level. She figured Tuttle stored them inside the steel structure and used metal-infused tape to complete what she assumed was another
one of his homemade Faraday cages.
“Hey, what’s this?” Jeffrey asked, pointing at a bulging orange manila folder hanging on the inside of the door. A strip of two-inch clear tape was holding it in place along the top, but the folder was loose otherwise. The boy yanked at it, freeing the paper from the grip of the sticky packing tape.
Daisy took it from him and put her hand inside, sliding past the open flap on one end. Her fingers found a wad of papers partway down. But not just one batch. There were two, folded in half separately. She yanked one of them out.
“What is it?” Jeffrey asked, his curious eyes round with excitement. “Let me see.”
Daisy bent her knees and brought herself down to Jeffrey’s level, letting the helpful boy get a good look at his discovery.
He smiled at her.
She unfolded the fold of papers. There were eleven pages, all handwritten on white letter-sized notepaper. The cursive writing was precise, curly, and easy to read.
Daisy figured it was a woman’s handwriting—Helen’s—knowing from the 2x4 that Tuttle’s penmanship was a disaster. Like most men’s.
Must be part of their DNA, she decided—bad penmanship and horrible relationship skills. Oh, and let’s not forget embarrassing table manners, and last but not least, disgusting bathroom etiquette. The term spraying and praying entered her mind, carrying a cruel dual meaning.
Daisy scoffed silently, realizing that God had a wicked sense of humor, pairing women and men together with an invisible, yet unbreakable attraction for each other. It was a bond that had been forged by the Almighty in heaven, then laced with passionate heat and unending turmoil.
How any of that worked was beyond explanation, with both sides polar opposites in every respect. It was a wonder anyone on Earth got along for more than a minute without shooting each other. Especially couples.
Jeffrey pointed his stubby finger at the first line on the page, aiming its tip at the first two words, both of which were underlined in black ink. He read the phrase aloud, sounding out the words using medium speed. “Inventory List.”
Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 1, 2, and 3) Page 42
