Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  "I was screaming my daughter's name. And stop deflecting the issue."

  "Your friend getting shot was an accident. That's all it was."

  "This was an accident," Eddie said, lifting his bandaged arm. "What was done to our friend was not. He was murdered in cold blood. Ask the two boys who arrived with him, Finn and Bix. I'm sure they saw everything."

  "Well, they are being interrogated right now."

  "By who?"

  Captain Cheever pursed his lips. "The colonel."

  Eddie jumped up, but Cheever waved him back. "He's not alone. There are others with him. Nothing will happen to your boys."

  "Has Harrison Blakeley been told that his son is here?"

  "We haven't told anyone yet, though everyone on base probably knows by now what happened. Word travels fast in this place. But the colonel needs to conduct his interview without interference. Once he's done—"

  Eddie grabbed the captain and raised him up into the air. "The colonel is the problem! I'm telling you, you can't trust him."

  "I've known the man for years," Cheever cried. Panic and surprise filled his eyes. "He's an honorable man!"

  "Why would he order his men to get my daughter out of bed? Why have heavily armed men escort her to the gate? What kind of danger does a little girl pose?"

  "Your man, Danny, he insisted on seeing you. He refused to come inside until you came out. He asked for you by name, but nobody knew where you were. You were missing, and none of the guards said you had left. The colonel fetched your daughter instead. Let me go!"

  "That makes no sense! The next obvious choice would have been one of the other adults in my group," Eddie growled. He threw the man back onto the stool. "Not her!"

  Cheever shrugged. "I don't know what to say. Maybe that's how you would've done—"

  "Ever since we came here, you and the colonel have evaded our questions. My people have been disappearing and all you've done is give us lies! You told us that Danny left on his own."

  "He did."

  "Did you actually see him leave? Did he tell you he was leaving?"

  "Private Ramsay was on duty that night."

  "Ramsay is mixed up in this, too!"

  Cheever's eyes widened. "Listen, maybe your guy went out looking for those two boys. Maybe that's why—"

  "And he'll never be able to tell us because your colonel killed him!"

  "And I'm telling you Colonel Wainwright would not have shot him! Please wait until our investigation is completed before throwing around accusations!"

  "Who told you Jonathan and Nami died in your infirmary?"

  "What?" Cheever blinked in confusion. "The medic. Why?"

  "And who buried them?"

  "Private Vinnie used to be on the burial detail. Ramsay is pulling the extra duty until we find someone else."

  "Ramsay again! It sure seems like he's at the center of everything, don't you think? Wasn't it Ramsay who left Jonah and Vinnie behind in the desert?"

  "So?"

  "So what if I told you that I happen to know Jonah is alive?"

  The captain shrugged. "I don't know how you would, but even if it were true, that doesn't mean anyone lied. The search team never found any bodies, just a lot of blood and a dead motorcycle. It isn't that great of a leap to conclude that they were both dead."

  "Did you know that Ramsay sabotaged the bike intending for the men to die?"

  Cheever opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  "Did you know that more than half of the graves in your cemetery are empty?" Eddie asked.

  Cheever didn't answer. He stared at Eddie as if the man had lost his mind. "Why would you even say a thing like that?" he finally asked.

  "Dig them up if you don't believe me."

  "This is ridic—"

  "Tell me this, Captain: Why are there so many? Since we've been here, I've seen five graves being dug."

  "This is a tough world. People die. Only the strong survive for very long."

  Whether Captain Cheever intended to parrot the colonel's words from earlier in the day, Eddie didn't know. "A lot of apparent deaths," he growled, "but very few in reality."

  Cheever shook his head. "I don't—"

  "Do you oversee the burials?"

  "Some of them, yes. But as base commander, Wainwright is responsible for the census. Unless he specifically asks me to, he manages those details."

  "The body count. How convenient."

  "What are you implying?"

  "I'd be willing to bet that Wainwright and Ramsay are somehow mixed up in this together. What are they doing with the missing people?"

  "What missing people?" Cheever asked, clearly at the end of his patience.

  Eddie bent down over the captain. "You listen to me. People here are mixed up in something crooked, and I think your colonel is at the center of it. I think he executed Danny at the gate because he knew something. And as long as those boys, Finnian Bolles and Bixby Blakeley, are in that man's presence, they're in danger, too."

  For the first time, Captain Cheever looked uncertain. He pushed himself off the stool, still warily eying Eddie. "Sit tight," he said. "I'll be back."

  "I'm coming with you."

  "You're being held for trespassing and destruction of property. Or did you forget about that?"

  Eddie laughed. "Held?"

  Cheever stepped over to him. "We still have rules here. They're the only things that keep this place from descending into anarchy."

  "Rules," Eddie spat in disgust.

  "Look, Mister Mancuso, I give you my word that I will check out your accusations. But I can't just go barging in. This needs to be handled . . . judiciously. Because if you're wrong—"

  "I'm not."

  Cheever sighed. "All right, if you're right, then your presence will only make my job that much harder, don't you think?"

  "At least let Bix's father know his son has returned."

  "Fine. Just give me some time to investigate."

  Cheever pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway. He instructed the guard to keep an eye on them. "Make sure they stay put. I'm going to see the colonel."

  The guard nodded. He was a young kid by the name of Kenny Benneder, a private not much past his seventeenth birthday and eager to please. He nodded and settled in with his rifle on his knees, determined not to let his commanding officer down. But he was tired from all the excitement and his eyelids felt heavy, so he was glad when another guard arrived to relieve him a few minutes later.

  "Take ten, boy. Get some fresh air," Private Ramsay told him. "I'll cover for you."

  * * *

  Captain Cheever did not head straight down to confront Wainwright. There were a few things he needed to check first, a couple people he needed to speak with before doing so. He didn't want to walk in on the interrogation unprepared.

  He shook his head with regret, knowing deep in his heart that no matter what Wainwright said, it was not going to end well. A lot of what Eddie had told him confirmed suspicions he'd held for a while.

  The old man had been a friend since Cheever was assigned to the depot as a first lieutenant straight out of OCS, a year or so before the Flense. Wainwright had taken him under his wing.

  Within six months, the colonel promoted him to captain and made him his executive officer, even though that role typically fell to someone with the rank of major. They had developed a special bond. Lyle Wainwright had always treated him like a son.

  Which is why Eddie's accusations shook him to the core, especially his claims about the empty graves. How he could possibly know something like that was beyond Cheever, but it certainly warranted checking into.

  However, he planned on visiting the cemetery last before attending to the colonel. What he expected to accomplish there in the graveyard he didn't know. Maybe he just needed to set his mind at ease. He had a theory to test that might indicate whether the graves were fake or not.

  Along the way, he picked up a piece of steel rebar. His thinking was that fr
eshly disturbed ground would be sandy and loose. The rod would push easily into it when inserted. If it stopped prematurely, hit undisturbed clay, then that would be a sign that the grave was shallow and therefore fake. Lazy men, men who worried more about appearances, wouldn't bother putting forth the effort to dig a full, deep grave.

  The cemetery was a small marked-off area in the north-east corner of the base. It had been established there in the early days, right after the Flense began to spread and there were a lot of casualties. Not all of the bodies had been infected and required putting down. Some victims had succumbed at the hands and teeth of the diseased. Some simply couldn't bear to live in such a world anymore.

  The rest were collateral damage.

  There actually was an old cemetery outside, but after the fall, it was easier and safer to dig the graves inside the wire. Now it was filled with close to seven hundred graves, some containing multiple bodies.

  They were all marked with sandstone chips the same color as the desert floor. Each new grave was dug next to the previous one, continuing the row until it reached the end before starting a new one.

  Five graves had been dug since the arrival of the people on the bus. Of that, Eddie was correct. One was a woman who had been a resident since soon after the Flense. She was old then and only got older. A few weeks ago she refused to get out of bed; the day before yesterday, she'd passed from malnutrition and kidney failure. She was one of the rarest of all the survivors— a victim of old age.

  He was able to push the metal rod into the soft clay and sand of her grave all the way up to his hand, burying close to three feet of iron.

  The rod refused to go more than about a foot into the next grave over. It behaved exactly the same in the next three.

  "Goddamn it," he whispered. He spied another piece of rebar between mounds and realized that Eddie must have used the same trick. He picked it up and hurled both rods into the darkness, where they clattered over the rocky ground. "Sonofabitch!"

  He flexed his sore fingers, checked that his sidearm was loaded, then headed off to find the colonel.

  Corporal Lawton sat watch on the steps outside of the administrative building's front door. He jumped to his feet when the captain approached and saluted. "Sir!"

  "At ease, Corporal." He gestured inside and asked, "Why are you standing out here? Aren't you supposed to be inside?"

  "Colonel didn't want me coming in."

  "Why not?"

  "I guess because of the broken door. Said he needed privacy."

  Cheever frowned.

  "If you're going in," the corporal said, "could you take this?" He pointed to a box filled with wrapped sandwiches and bottles of water. "He told me to go see if I could rustle up some grub in the mess hall, but that was twenty minutes ago."

  "He hasn't been out to check on you?"

  "No, sir."

  Cheever glanced nervously at the door. "Sure, no problem." He used his key to unlock it. "Stay out here, please. Don't let anyone else in. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir. Um, sir?"

  Cheever hesitated.

  "Is it true what they're saying?"

  "About what, Corporal?"

  Lawton stepped closer and whispered, "That those people have a cure."

  Cheever gave the soldier a surprised look. "I-I don't know anything about that."

  He let Lawton hold the door open for him, then waited for it to click shut behind him and lock before setting the box down on the floor again.

  Stepping away from the door, he removed a silencer from his pocket and screwed it onto his revolver. Thus assembled, he slipped the weapon into the back of his waistband and pulled his coat down over it. He wasn't sure how he'd spin the colonel's death just yet. The camp would swallow whatever story he gave them, but only if the scene had been properly staged.

  He picked up the food box again, squared his shoulders and headed down the hall.

  The drone of voices grew louder. Yellow light poured through a hole in the duct taped window, illuminating the fine desert dust that never seemed to settle out of the air.

  As he stood outside the door and leaned down to eavesdrop on the conversation inside, Cheever worried why the old man would want to conduct the interview alone and in private, without witnesses.

  What are those boys telling him?

  Bad things, things a man would die before copping to.

  The door abruptly opened, and a young boy stepped out and ran into Cheever, nearly forcing him to drop the food. The kid backed up again, his eyes wide with surprise.

  "Grant!" the colonel exclaimed, seeing him there. "How long have you been standing out there in the hallway?"

  "Just, uh . . . ." He held up the box.

  "Ah, good, Lawton found some food. Bring it in! Set it there— No, not on the desk. Over there." He pointed at the filing cabinet along the side wall. "Boys, this is Captain Grantham Cheever, my right-hand man."

  Cheever eyed the old man carefully, studied his body language, the sweat beading up on the paper thin skin of his forehead.

  What have they told him?

  He was surprised to see a black man seated at the worn wooden chair beside the filing cabinet, his arms wrapped about a young boy perched on his lap. Both stared in his general direction, but did not make eye contact. They're the blind ones.

  The boy who'd nearly groined him followed him in. He started digging through the food box as soon as Cheever set it down.

  The other two, both teenagers, stood over by the map of the bunker that the colonel had hung on the wall two nights before.

  Their bunker, he thought. The dam.

  "I was just about to tell these boys about our rescue plan," Colonel Wainwright said. "They have quite the story of their own, which you should hear."

  Cheever tried to look interested. He didn't want his friend to sense his true feelings, that he already knew. "Couldn't be any more incredible than the story I just heard," he carefully replied.

  Wainwright shook his head. His thumb and fingers worried the pistol on his own hip, a nervous habit he'd developed since all the killing he'd done in the early days of the outbreak.

  Cheever had seen the man pull and fire his revolver well over a thousand times, rarely missing a shot. He was deadly with the thing. In fact, Wainwright had always joked that the pistol was a natural extension of his own body, like the fist is an extension of the arm. He probably slept with it in his cot.

  "How are our friends?" the taller of the two teenagers asked. His eyes were red, and he looked exhausted. He wore an ill-fitting Nebraska State sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants, and for a moment Cheever couldn't figure out why they looked wrong on him, but then he realized that they were meant for a girl to wear. The lettering was pink. "How's Danny?" he asked. "And Eddie?"

  "You are . . . ?"

  "Finn Bolles."

  Cheever nodded. "Well, Mister Bolles, Mister Mancuso is lucky. He sustained a surface wound on his arm. He also has a number of scratches on his arms and neck from—" He pointed at the mangled blinds in the window. "The medic is attending to him still."

  "And Danny?"

  Cheever hesitated, then shook his head. "We couldn't save him. I'm sorry."

  The shorter of the older boys slammed his palm on the wall. He also wore a set of sweats meant for a girl, and Cheever wondered if they'd salvaged their clothes from a coed college dormitory room. He knew firsthand that most of the department stores and private homes had been raided in the years since the outbreak, emptied of just about anything useful. And since most of the survivors had been men, women's clothing would be easier to find.

  "Bix," Finn warned.

  But the other boy pointed at the captain. "Danny was right not to trust you!"

  "Me?" Cheever replied, startled.

  "Bix," Finn repeated. "Let's not—"

  "You shot him in cold blood!"

  "Son," the colonel calmly said, "I can assure you that Captain Cheever did not shoot your man. He was nowhere near the gate."
<
br />   Captain Cheever turned a cold eye to Bix. "Why would I shoot him?"

  "So he wouldn't talk about—"

  "Enough!" the colonel snapped. "Everyone just calm down. Let's get back on track."

  Bix dropped into a chair and covered his face. The taller boy went over and tried to console him. Despite the dazed look on this boy's face, Cheever noticed something else, a sharpness. The kid's brain, whether he was aware of it or not, was busily trying to fit all the pieces together.

  Wainwright pulled Cheever to the side and spoke quietly to him. "This Danny fella that was killed, this didn't happen to be the same one who left in the middle of the night a few days ago, was it?"

  Cheever tore his eyes away from Bix to face the old man. "Yeah."

  "You told me he left on his own."

  Cheever nodded. "He did."

  "So, why would these boys say that's not what happened."

  Cheever's throat felt as dry as the desert. "What are they saying happened?"

  "That he was taken from here, that he was beaten for information about the bunker. That he was then sold — him and two others, apparently — to some roamers up north. Cheever, you didn't—"

  "Sounds like a story to me," the captain quietly replied. He turned his cold gaze toward the boys.

  Wainwright gripped Cheever's arm, forcing the younger man to look at him. "They said they were made to cage fight infecteds."

  "Did they say who allegedly did all this to them?"

  The colonel stared at Cheever for a moment, frowning.

  "It's all true," the blind man said, speaking up for the first time. He didn't move from his chair, but he'd swiveled his head toward them, tracking their location by their voices. "I was sold to the same people, too. Me and my two boys. I don't know what this couple meant to do with us, but they went on and on about saving people. And Wraiths."

  "Grant," Wainwright whispered, pulling Cheever out of the room and into the hallway, "I thought you said the girl volunteered information about the bunker."

  "She did."

  The colonel studied his protégé's face for a moment, then said, "You told me we were done with those whack jobs. They were supposed to stay on their side of the river."