“What do you think?”
“Well, since you can pretty much go to sleep in a hurricane…” He heard her handcuff yank against its D-ring.
She said, “I can’t believe that jerk didn’t bust us free.”
“No shit.”
“Washed up hooyah. I’m Force Recon. And a decade younger.”
“You preach, girl.”
“Don’t get smart.”
There was a long pause, then he said, “I’ve missed that. Nobody gives it straight to me like you do.”
She responded with silence.
He shifted on the cot. “Something wrong with that?”
“Nope.”
“Cat got your tongue?”
She let more silence fill the vacuum, then, “What do you want me to say, Jon?”
“I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Well don’t.”
“Fine. Down in the mouth it is.”
The cot springs creaked under her. “See, this is what you do. You take a serious situation and—“
“Try to lighten things?” he interrupted. “That’s right. I do.” He leaned back against the wall, wondering if she was doing the same. “When we met, things really couldn’t have been worse. Literally. Now we find ourselves in some familiar territory, and you know what?” He waited for her response. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I’m going to laugh in the face of it this time. Or I am for now. It would be nice if you’d join me.”
She sighed. “Fine. Ha Ha.”
“Lame, but I’ll take it.”
She let out a deep breath, like something she’d been holding for a long time. “I’ll admit…” She let the thought hang.
“Admit..?”
“Nothing.”
“Oooo, you’ve got something gooey you want to say.”
She gave a short laugh. “Shut up.”
“You’re having feelings,” he said in a mocking tone.
“Asshole.”
He became conciliatory. “I know. You hate being gooey, but go ahead. I won’t tease.”
Silence
“I promise.”
“Fine. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too. That all you wanna say?”
She waited a whole ten seconds, then, “I was an asshole to let you go.”
“You have a potty mouth.”
“You said you wouldn’t tease.”
“Sorry. I’m an asshole.”
Her voice softened and almost became forlorn. “We’re both assholes.” She chuckled.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing. You don’t want to know.”
“Now hold on. If you’re going to say you’re an A-hole for letting me go, you can’t clam up now.”
“Fine. It’s the danger.”
“Huh?”
“Danger. We get off on it, you and me. We fell in love during the most intense experience of our lives, then we got bored, and separated, and fucked it up. Now we’re in danger again and, voila.”
He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, desperately wishing he could stand and look into her eyes. “Fair enough. Let’s make a pact. We survive this thing, we stay close, and we figure out how to survive the boredom too.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to get back together.”
“Yes you did.”
“No, I said I was an asshole to let you go. Not the same thing.”
“Is too.”
“It’s not and I don’t.”
Now it was his turn to be silent. Finally he let out a frustrated sigh. “Why the hell not?”
“Ask me again if we survive this thing.”
“Ask you why you don’t want to get back together or ask you if you want to get together — if we survive this thing.”
“The second one.”
He digested that for a moment, then said, “So wait, you’ll think about getting back together only if we surv—“
They heard voices outside, then the sound of a chain being pulled through the door handles. The barn doors opened roughly. Flashlights scattered shadows across the walls as two soldiers came in, rifles shouldered, lights mounted on barrels. They cautiously stepped close enough to confirm that Jon and Nikki remained locked in their pens. One lowered his weapon and moved forward to check their cuffs while the other remained covering them.
“Guess the frog got caught,” said Nikki, incapable of holding back the sarcasm.
The soldiers didn’t acknowledge her, instead, they observed the pen that had held Dean. One of them stopped scanning the barn with his light when it rested on the ladder rungs. They were dusty and had clear hand and footprints on them. The other soldier pointed his light up into the high ceiling and scanned the small space that was the cupola. They exited the bar and in short order returned, one of them wielding an ax. While the other kept his rifle aimed at Jon and Nikki, the other took the ax to the ladder. With a few sharp whacks, the ladder broke and fell. The soldiers carried it out and pulled the doors closed loudly behind them. The sound of the chain being threaded through the outside handles echoed off the rafters and was followed by the faint sound of the clicking padlock.
“Morons,” said Nikki.
“How’s that?”
“Closed the door after the cow got out.”
A gauzy grayness was all that Dean sensed at first, then he became aware of a small hand gently rubbing his back. He blinked and felt a stabbing pain across the back and side of his head — a memory flash of the butt of a rifle coming at him in his peripheral vision.
“Dad?”
Billy’s voice jolted him into a higher awareness and a plain white wall came into focus.
“Dad? Can you hear me?”
He felt the left side of his head lying on a hard pillow, a thin mattress below him, supported by something solid rather than springs. “Hi, Son,” he slurred. “Came to rescue you.”
Billy stopped rubbing his father’s back. He let out a wry laugh. “Nice job so far. By the way, you have a terrific lump on your head. It only bled a little, but—“
“Hurts, yes.” He gingerly touched it and then slowly turned on his side to get a look at his son. “They hurt you?”
“No. I haven’t seen anyone except a soldier who brings me food, and… I have to go to the bathroom in a bucket. A thousand times better than when I was a captive of the Chosen.” He paused and tears welled up in his eyes. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again.”
His father held out an arm and the boy rolled onto his side letting his father pull him into a hug.
Dean whispered, “Should have stayed in the Bahamas. All of us.” After his son settled down he said, “Remember what we learned in Nicaragua; maybe the only good thing to come out of that whole experience; no matter what, there is something more than this life.”
“You think they might kill us?”
“I doubt it. It’s just good to keep in mind.”
Billy let out a sigh and nodded. “I hope Eliza and the twins are okay.”
Dean thought about Hansel’s situation and decided there was no point in protecting the boy from it. “I saw Hansel. He was strapped to a chair. Unconscious, but breathing.” He gave his son a squeeze. “Heck, the big fella can sleep anywhere. Probably that.”
Billy smiled with fondness for the puck. “Why are they doing this to us?”
Dean sighed loudly, memories of war filling his head. “Fear makes men do all sorts of things we might call evil. My guess; this place; The Shore as they call it; it’s built on fear.”
“But Hansel and Gretel are good. Anyone could see that within the first few minutes of meeting them. We all are.”
“During the wars before Omega, I worked with lots of people on both sides of the blind hatred that makes for these things. There’s always two sides to a story. That said, it usually ends badly for the willfully blind.”
The room suddenly lit up in harsh white light, spotlights built into the ceiling blasting.
Billy and Stewart squeezed their eyes shut. The deeply irritated voice of Josh Olsen came over a speaker. “Missing a man, we are, Captain Dean. What can you tell us about it?”
On the far shore of the Chesapeake, Corporal King and Private Klausen watched the sentinel walk up the long street that led from the town’s docks into the heart of the village and toward the distant fire that still lit the sky.
With so many boats they’d had to tie up at the furthest point on the weatherbeaten docks.
Casting his arm in a swath across the huge number of vessels, Klausen said, “Who did this?”
King, not having an easy answer, chose to say nothing. Instead, he glanced around for the tenth time and marveled at it. As he looked across the mass of boats toward the shore, movement caught his eye. It was to his left. He stared hard at the shadows, but saw nothing more. Probably just a boat — all of them bobbing in the gentle swell. Out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Gotta smoke? Out I am.”
“Buddy, know you do that I don’t.”
“Shit. Thought you smoked. Was sure you smoked.”
“Nope.”
“A long wait we’ve got with no smo—“ He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, opposite the rhythm of the boats. “You see that?”
“What?”
King stared hard into the gloom, then reached down to his belt and pulled out a small powerful flashlight. He turned it on and lit up the far docks in the tight beam. Boats bobbed, rigging clanged gently, water gurgled under the worn out decking.
Klausen said, “I don’t see—“
A dense group of birds suddenly took flight at the edge of the beam and both soldiers lifted their asses off their seats in surprise. Klausen put a hand on his chest as his voice shifted into falsetto, “Christ!”
King laughed with a combination of relief and mockery. Then another laugh joined his. He turned to Klausen. Klausen wasn’t laughing. The mute man’s eyes went wide as he stared past King’s shoulder. King turned his head in time to see a filthy ragged figure of a naked gangly man laughing madly and charging down the dock. Before he could get his rifle up, the man dove at them, crashing into King who crashed into Klausen.
King knew from childhood nightmares what he was dealing with, but his body failed to react — curling instead into a fetal position. He screamed in agony as the Fiend bit into his cheek and yanked a long piece of flesh off his face. It hurt so much — shocking pain, worse than he’d ever imagined. Then the thing was sliding over him, its reeking naked belly dragging across his bleeding face, cutting off his scream, reducing it to Klausen’s lone soprano, the struggle and thrashing above him wild and vicious, Klausen’s feet kicking out, kicking King. Klausen yelling, “No! No! NO!” Then a straight up high-C howl of agony that shifted quickly to a gurgle, the kicking feet becoming spastic.
King used all his strength to heave the filthy man off, only to scream again as the creature turned like a snake and drove its teeth into his face — hot breath and a bloody tongue, then his nose ripped away in one vicious jerk. The thing munched gleefully while shoving him back down to the deck. With a strength that King in his shock couldn’t fathom, the Fiend pinned him down and began to dine in earnest.
2nd Lieutenant Singletary, the sentinel driver, was alone in his trailer, his face reflecting the green glow of the drone’s night vision on his screen. He sipped a cup of lukewarm tea and watched the empty forested road the machine was walking on. The outside temperature over on the far shore read 48º Fahrenheit. Humidity 68%. The barometric pressure indicated a likely storm on the way. That will put out the fire, he thought. A bit of movement on the right side of the screen caught his eye, and at the same time the drone itself picked up the movement, turning and zooming in for a closer look. Three humans stepped out of the forest, their bodies glowing hot in the infrared light. They cocked their heads while looking in the direction of the drone.
Beyond the surprise of seeing humans on the far side of the bay, there was something in the way they stood that put Singletary on alert. He noted the ragged clothes on the two men and one woman. They stood in the cold air, nearly naked, staring for another moment, then charged the drone.
Singletary jerked back in his chair, spilling tea on his lap, yet barely acknowledging it as he reached for the controls. He’d been a kid when Omega happened. Hadn’t seen a Fiend in real life, but he’d seen a ton on TV. He’d blown away countless ones training on a simulator. The simulator had been dead right. The things were on the sentinel in a heartbeat, screaming and clawing. They crashed into it as one and had nearly knocked it off its six legs.
“Holy shit, holy shit!” Singletary kept repeating as he steadied his machine and grabbed the Fiend in front. He’d come up with a favorite maneuver in training and it didn’t fail him in real life. The arms on the sentinel were ridiculously strong. He had the machine grasp the skinny male Fiend by the neck, grabbed a bicep with the other hand, and with a quick jerk, tore the head off the thing, pulling some of the spine along with it. It was far more brutal than the training video and he had to swallow bile as the sentinel continued to rock with the assault. He got a hand on the leg of another, yanked it away from the sentinel’s body, and like whipping a towel, smacked its head hard into the ground, the body swinging like a rag doll. The third Fiend was on the sentinel’s back. Singletary spun the machine’s head around and found himself staring into the face of raging, spittle flying, madness. He brought the sentinel’s arms up over its shoulders, grasped the Fiend on either side of its head and squeezed until the skull collapsed, like a crushed gourd.
Singletary was shaking. His hands were sweaty and greasy feeling within the haptic gloves. He withdrew them and shook his fingers out while blowing on them. “Holy shit,” he said to himself again while watching the sentinel progress further down the road on autopilot. He keyed his radio. “Lieutenant Silver, you read?”
“Go for Silver.”
“L.T., Colonel needs to come back and see this.”
“Bit busy now, Singletary.”
“Gonna wanna see this. Demons on the far shore. Just killed three of them, I did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Crickets
Marlena and Littlefield let themselves drift. The doctor had no idea if there was a current, but the breeze seemed to be pushing them the right way. After an hour of rowing, their arms had become leaden and they took frequent pauses, both of them praying in their own way that the current wasn’t simply erasing their progress.
The moon offered some light and she glanced at the doctor. The man’s face was drawn and pallid. Reddish blotches shown through his weathered skin and heavy bags hung below his eyes. He looked more than exhausted, he looked like how she felt — sick — not just a simple viral illness, something deeper, something that put fear in her. She could feel it in her gut.
For the third time, the doctor redundantly mentioned how fortuitous the weather was. “I mean, think about it. If there was a storm of any kind, we be swamped.”
The girl had grown weary of nodding as though she understood. Instead, she simply stared off into the distance, the hazy moonlight winking the occasional jewels across the water. She could tell from his tone that the doctor was mostly babbling to reduce stress, talking for the sake of talking. He wasn’t looking for acknowledgement.
She was terribly thirsty and she was shivering. Drying sweat had made her clothes cold and clammy. The light breeze that pushed them along was working its way into her bones. Deep down she knew she needed to press on or she would begin to give up. She didn’t want to give up, not after so much and coming so far. Glancing up at the doctor again, she firmly grabbing her oar. “Vamos, si?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, psyching himself up. “Si.”
Bracing herself against the bench in front of her, she pulled — each stroke causing her shin to ache and throb. She gritted her teeth and forced her mouth to be silent.
Jon listened to Nikki grunting as she yanked against her cuff. The
boards between them creaked and he could feel the vibration of it across his own cuff. The heads of the bolts that held the D-ring to her side of the board were clearly visible on his side. He said, “Wait!”
“What?”
He whispered, “You can see bolt heads on your side of the wall right next to the ring holding your handcuff, right?”
“Uh, I guess. Sure.”
“Ever seen two people work a big tree saw back and forth?”
“At an Oktoberfest once.”
“Let’s try to do the same thing. You yank your way, and I’ll yank mine, back and forth.”
“Huh?”
“We’re both cuffed to the same board. When you yank on your side I can see it bending a bit. Maybe if we yank back and forth we can get it to crack.”
For the hundredth time she glanced around the barn looking for anything that could be a camera and saw nothing. Clearly, this jail had been an afterthought. “OK, on three I yank first.”
She counted down and pulled, he responded in kind, and they quickly fell out of rhythm. He whispered, “Wait, wait, wait. I’ll say one, two. I’ll be one. Ready?” He said one and yanked, repeating the whisper and getting a proper rhythm. The board bent and squeaked like the springs of a lover’s bed, but didn’t crack in the slightest. Finally after roughly fifty yanks Nikki said, “Okay, enough. My wrist is bleeding pretty badly.”
“Mine too. They don’t make wood like this anymore.”
“Huh? Wood’s wood, isn’t it?”
“Nope. This is old growth. Tight grained wood. Makes sense they would use it for horse stalls. Then again, this whole barn is probably built with the stuff. You know, when they put it up long ago, before we farmed trees.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The wood they build modern houses with… well, when we were building houses, that wood is quickly grown and has fewer rings, less dense. We could have probably broken that.”
“How do you know this shit?”
A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 22
