Good Intentions (The Road to Hell Series, Book 1)

by Brenda K. Davies

  “Do you send a truck to each town in the state on this day?” I’d inquired when the other trucks first joined us.

  “No,” the colonel had answered. “We send twenty trucks out at a time until all the towns in Massachusetts have been covered.”

  “Oh.”

  I’d become silent again afterward, too lost in my own grief and thoughts to carry on a conversation with them. I could still smell Bailey’s caramel scented skin, still feel his warm body against mine. His broken wails, tear-filled eyes and flushed cheeks haunted me. A sob lodged in my throat as I stared at my clasped hands.

  I hoped he didn’t think I’d abandoned him, that I had chosen this over him. If it wasn’t for my request to make sure they were safe and away from our mother, they would have had to drag me kicking and screaming from that house. Now I knew my brothers would both be taken care of, and I didn’t have to traumatize Bailey by causing such a scene. They would be together, and they wouldn’t go hungry, and as much as this hurt, that knowledge made it better.

  My entire life, I’d known I was different from others, but I’d never expected that difference to rip me away from my family. They would be okay, I kept telling myself. Asante and Lisa would take good care of them until I could return. They would keep my mother away from my brothers. Gage was tough and he’d get Bailey through this. They’d cry, they would miss me, but they’d get through it.

  I lifted my head again to stare at the farmland passing by outside the window. “Why don’t you send some of these crops and livestock to us?” I inquired.

  The colonel glanced at me. “Your community is surviving on its own. These supplies are needed for those residing over the wall, the cities, and other areas where it is difficult to grow crops, fish, or raise livestock. Believe me, no community is better off than another. There is no wealth and plenty, not anymore. We all have to eat to survive.” His gray eyes burned into mine when he turned to look at me. “We are all equal in this world.”

  “Just a regular old utopia of kidnapping people,” I quipped bitterly.

  His clean-shaven jaw clenched at my words, forming a little dimple in the center of it. “Far from a utopia. Everything we have we’ve fought for, and in order to keep it, we must all do things we don’t want to do. Including you.”

  “Maybe if I knew what it was I’m supposed to be doing, or why I was taken, I would be more willing to help.”

  “If you’re meant to know, you will,” he replied.

  The more and less he said, the more I questioned if I’d ever walk away from this alive. I glanced at the door of the truck and the woman sitting by my side. Maybe I could get the door open and shove her out before leaping out myself. I had no problem with knocking her out of my way, seeing that she’d had no problem with tearing my life to shreds.

  The woman’s gaze was on me; her lips flattened as she seemed to guess at what I contemplated. I smiled sweetly at her in return.

  “Why can’t I ride in the back with the others?” I asked.

  “You know why,” she crisply replied.

  “If I knew why, I wouldn’t be asking.”

  My statement was met with stony silence. I glanced at the door again. If I could somehow manage to get away from these people, then what? Run into the countryside and walk the hundreds of miles we’d already traversed back home? I would do it if I thought I could make it, but they’d hunt me down, and the first place they’d go to look for me was my brothers. I had to do everything I could to keep them out of this.

  “I’m not going to run,” I said.

  “Not if you want your brothers to be taken care of and for them to stay free of us,” she replied.

  And there it was, the confirmation they would use my brothers as leverage over me if I didn’t play nice. She’d also confirmed my dislike of her. I turned away from her before I opened the door and shoved her out, just because.

  My thoughts turned back to what had happened at my house. The idea that Asante had volunteered to take my brothers in as a way for the government to know where Gage and Bailey were at all times crossed my mind. I hastily buried it.

  Asante was my friend. He may be a Guard, but there had been true regret in his eyes when he’d stepped through my door. Besides, I didn’t think they’d expected me to request my brothers be removed from my mother’s house.

  I focused on the darkening horizon as the sun slipped behind the land. Reds, yellows, pinks, and oranges lit up the sky as the truck rolled down the highway. I glanced over at the gages on the dash, trying to figure out which each one of them was. Some of them I knew, others I couldn’t recall, and some I’d never seen before. It had been so long since I’d been in a vehicle, I’d forgotten what the wheels on the pavement sounded like and the bouncing, almost soothing feel of them spinning on the road.

  The sky was almost completely black when we pulled into a gas station and parked next to one of the pumps. Lights filtered onto the pavement from the store to the right of me, illuminating a small patch of the rutted asphalt. A man opened the glass door and hurried out to us. He said something to the driver of the truck in front of us before walking to the side of the truck.

  “Gas,” I whispered in amazement.

  The woman snorted before opening her door, jumping out, and walking around the front of the hood. The colonel turned toward me, draping his arm over the steering wheel to face me.

  “You got a raw deal. You shouldn’t be here, but your brothers are safe and working the wall is something this country needs,” he told me.

  I bit back a ‘save me the speech’ retort. The woman already didn’t like me for some reason, not that I cared; I didn’t like her either. This man wouldn’t give me any answers, but I felt starting out with both of these senior military members disliking me was a bad idea.

  “Colonel…” I strove to recall his name from the volunteering earlier.

  “Colonel Ulrich MacIntyre. For now, you can call me Mac.”

  “Is there a lot of gas out in this area?”

  He shook his head and turned back around in his seat. “This station is only for military vehicles. Most things out here are the same as where you’re from. Only less seafood.”

  “And more meat.”

  “But I bet many of the people out here would really enjoy a lobster or a crab leg once in a while.”

  “They probably would.” I’d grown sick of seafood over the years, but now I realized I may never have it again. Tomorrow, I would not be able to wake up and go fishing. For all I knew, I might not wake tomorrow. I had no idea what these people planned for me.

  “You’ll be able to write your brothers, and you’ll find your compatriots on the wall will become like family to you,” Mac said.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. At least it sounded like they planned to keep me alive for a while.

  He didn’t say anymore, and I sat wordlessly as I waited for the vehicles to be filled. I didn’t know if I preferred getting back on the road or dragging this out for as long as possible. I was exhausted, but once we arrived at our destination, it would be final. My life as I had known it would be over. At least right now, I could still somehow hold out hope they would come to their senses and take me back where I belonged.

  The woman climbed back into the truck, closed the door, and we pulled out onto the road again. The next couple of hours passed in silence. The stars shone in the sky, and the full moon and headlights lit the black ribbon of road before us in a ceaseless pattern that had caused my mind to go numb hours ago.

  I was so used to the same old sights out here that at first I assumed I was imagining it when something began to take shape in the gloom in front of us. Leaning forward, I rested my hand on the dash as two red lights blinked into view on the horizon. As we drew closer, I noticed more and more identical lights high in the sky and stretching endlessly onward across the horizon.

  “What are those?” I murmured, though I didn’t expect an answer.

  “The markers of the wall,” Mac answered.


  I glanced at him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the distant wall for more than a second. Alongside the road that had been mostly barren for a few miles, houses materialized again. Livestock roamed some of the pastures in the distance, and leaves and tall grass swayed in the breeze. The closer we got to the wall, the closer the houses sat toward the road. People emerged from their homes, curious to see the arrival of the newest recruits.

  Then, there it was.

  My head tilted back as I craned my neck to try and see all the way to the top of the wall. It loomed above us like some kind of monstrous Goliath set to destroy us or save us all. It easily stretched a hundred and fifty feet into the air, blocking out the moon behind it. I’d heard parts of the wall were enormous, but I hadn’t been prepared for this.

  The TV cameras didn’t do it justice, and I wondered if they had been avoiding this section of wall just as they avoided the more hastily assembled ones. Whereas the sections made of debris looked weak, this looked like overkill and would have people dreaming of King Kong-sized monsters lurking on the other side. Much like I was doing right now.

  As we drove closer, the blinking red lights cast an eerie red glow across the cab of the truck and the people sitting on either side of me. I half expected an alien spaceship to rise over us, to drift down and say hi, or to suck us up and have us for dinner. Instead, it was only lights, which I now realized were set out at certain points and connected by a wire stretching another twenty feet into the air. I’d bet anything no blackouts affected this wall.

  I went to sit back in my seat when a low, grinding noise caught my attention. Sitting forward again, I couldn’t hold back the startled puh I emitted as what I’d believed was a solid section of wall now had a crack spreading across the bottom of it as it began to rise up before us to give us entry to the other side of the wall.

  Before the war, I’d seen the movies Jurassic Park and King Kong; neither one of those movies could have prepared me for the sight of the wall sliding up from the ground before me. I’d expected the truck to pull to the side of the road and park near one of these houses to unload us, and then we would find a doorway through to the other side, or maybe stay in this town for the night. Instead, we drove straight on through the large opening in the wall.

  For the first time, I felt more apprehension for myself than I did for the family I’d been torn away from.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kobal

  “Kobal.”

  I glanced up from the book I’d been absorbed in when my name was spoken. I may not have much use for the human race, but I did enjoy these books they’d created. It had taken me a while to learn how to read them, but over the years, I’d become more adept at doing so. Humans were creative; that was the best I could say about their species.

  My gaze focused on Corson in the doorway, staring at me. His orange eyes were brightened by the lanterns flickering within the tent. His black hair, so dark a hue it appeared midnight blue in some lights, stood up in jagged spikes around his narrow face. He must have recently been with one of the human women again as his pointed ears had earrings dangling from the tips of them. Those women enjoyed decorating his ears, and he happily let them do it.

  “What is it?” I inquired, trying to ignore the dangling pink butterflies swinging from his ears when he stepped forward. I’d never understand why a demon as powerful as Corson, and nearly as old as me, would wear those ridiculous things. If I stared at them for too long, I’d rip them from his ears, and I’d been working on trying to curb my temper. The humans were apprehensive and timid enough around me on the best of days, never mind witnessing me tearing the earrings from one of their favorite demons.

  “They’ve returned,” Corson replied.

  “And?”

  “There is a possibility with them.”

  Closing the book, I dropped my legs from where I’d propped them on the table we often used for meetings and my feet hit the floor. “How good of a possibility?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know. I kept all the demons away from the new volunteers this time. That whole screaming and running thing is a real turn off.”

  “Don’t want a repeat of last time?”

  “No.”

  The last time, some of the new recruits had gotten a look at some of the more obviously demon kind among us before we could keep them penned in, and they had run screaming into the night. We found four of them, but two had been lost to the nightmare of the world the humans had created.

  It was often quite a shock for humans to learn of our existence, and our appearances didn’t help much, or at least some of our appearances didn’t. Some of us, like Corson and myself, were more human in appearance than others, but some of us were what humans would consider nightmarish.

  Personally, I considered the humans all pussies, but then I had little use for their species. Except for one, and if we ever located that one, I’d do everything in my power to make sure they accomplished what had to be done, even if I had to drag them kicking and screaming into the fray.

  “How do you know there is a possibility with them then?” I inquired.

  “There is someone riding in the cab with Mac and Bernadette.”

  A person separated from the other volunteers and riding with the soldiers was a good indication they had not come here willingly. Rising to my feet in the tent that stood over seven feet high to accommodate my size, I strode toward the flap that had been pulled back to allow air to flow through.

  “Take those earrings off,” I said to Corson before slipping outside.

  The cool air brushed over my skin as I surveyed the town nestled into the valley below us. There was far more going on down there than on a normal night at the military compound. The headlights from the newly arrived trucks were still on and facing what I’d been told was a human development.

  The dwellings all looked the same and had the same square yards. Apparently, this was what humans had once liked and strived to live in. To me, the development was just like humans, they all looked the same and possessed rather flat personalities.

  I watched as the new volunteers climbed from the back of the trucks. They stretched their muscles as their eyes darted around, trying to take everything in.

  “So young,” Corson murmured from beside me and pulled the last earring from his ear. “They seem too young for this.”

  “They’re not.”

  I spotted Bernadette standing by the door of a truck. She stared into the cab as she spoke with another. From inside the truck, a slender hand rested on the door before the person moved forward. I caught sight of raven-colored hair as a woman emerged into the night.

  “A woman,” Bale said. I turned to watch as Bale made her way across the ground toward us with a natural grace I’d become well familiar with over the years. She and Corson were the two demons who had been with me the longest and through the most battles. Bale stopped beside me to stare down the hill toward the new arrivals. “I had bet it would be a woman.”

  “We don’t know if she’s the one we’ve been searching for,” I reminded her.

  Bale lifted a delicate shoulder. “Go find out.”

  I shot her a look, but she only smiled back at me, revealing all of her teeth. She didn’t have her razor-sharp fangs descended, but then, I’d only seen them when she was in a full-on rage. Her mischievous, lime green eyes shone brightly in the dark surrounding us as she watched me. The fiery color of her hair tumbling to her ass wasn’t the only reddish color about her as her skin had a scarlet hue to it that some humans believed to be a sunburn.

  “Who’s in charge here?” I inquired.

  “You know you’re as curious as the rest of us about her, and you won’t make her run screaming.” Her gaze raked me from head to toe as she pursed her lips. “Well, maybe you won’t. We should get you some contacts or sunglasses.”

  “That will never fucking happen.” It was bad enough we wore the humans’ clothes and tried to adapt their mannerisms and ways in order to
keep from scaring the delicate little mortals; I’d be damned if I hid my eyes from them too.

  “Don’t think contacts would work anyway,” she replied.

  “You’re the one who suggested coming back to this area of the wall. Do you think she’s the one we’ve been searching for?”

  Bale’s smile slipped away. “I don’t know. All I know is something instinctual pulled at me to return here. It could be because there might be an attack on this section of the wall, or maybe it was because of the impending arrival of a possibility. For all I know, it could have been to enjoy the spring weather. We know how my intuition goes.”

  “You’ve had no visions about her arrival or anything else?”

  “I’ve had no visions since the one four years ago telling me the progeny lived and could be the key,” she said. “You know how those things work for me. I could have visions ten times a day for ten years and then go a century without. I’m only shown what I’m meant to see.”

  I turned away from her to focus on the people milling about below. Bale and Corson may be two of the oldest and most powerful demons in existence, but Bale’s premonitions were often sporadic, and Corson had turned into a pincushion for the humans. They were also my two most trusted advisors. If Bale had suggested coming here, then there was a reason, and I wanted that reason to be the progeny.

  I had to see the possibility the humans had brought back with them. Breaking away from the two of them, I strode down the pathway winding toward the human dwellings below. What few humans I encountered on my way stepped quickly aside to let me pass.

  The truck engines were turning off when I arrived at the line of vehicles. I strode purposely forward, surveying the group of new recruits as the older soldiers herded them along. The distress of the newest volunteers beat against me, and the acrid stench of their despair filled my nostrils. My nose wrinkled at the disgusting aroma.