“Overlord, I’m sorry to interrupt, but the signal from your mate has disappeared. Her captor must have destroyed it.”
“Does Target One have one in still?” Rager hoped it would be the case, but the computer quickly dashed that hope.
“No, Overlord.”
“Fuck!” Rager’s fist struck the panel of the transporter and he brought it to a stop. He had no idea where they were headed or how to track her down now.
For the first time in his life, Rager felt completely helpless and without a direction to go in, he felt powerless. He sat back in his seat and looked down at the scene below. He’d hadn’t quite realized it, but he’d been following a road. A road that ran all the way up California. He could follow it for a while, see if he overtook them before they turned off. That was the only hope he had right now that he’d get his mate back before Rex did something to harm her.
16
There was a sound, a sensation that was oddly also a sound. A vibration maybe? Why was the bed so hard? Was that metal? Was she in a truck bed? How?
Ann knew before she opened her eyes that she wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t sure how that had happened, but for the moment, it didn’t matter. Her brain was fuzzy, her head hurt, and her body ached. Where was she?
Fear started to trickle in when she opened her eyes and saw the panel of a truck bed, as she suspected. It sped down the road, and the frigidly cold wind blew over her prone body with a cruel touch. She pulled her legs up, to try to sit up, but it wasn’t easy to do. The truck kept swerving around and the momentum would knock her over.
She finally rolled to her side and pushed her way around. She was clumsier than she usually was, and her body didn’t exactly want to cooperate. That was more than just her pregnancy and she began to wonder if she’d been drugged. And if she’d been drugged that could only mean one thing.
Rex.
She pushed herself up against the place where the wheel made an arch in the bed. She could make out the back of someone’s head, and when she tilted her head a little more, she could make out the face.
“Shit! Rex! You fucking termite! Let me out of this thing!” She managed to throw herself against the glass at the back of the cab and beat against it. “Let me out of this truck, you putrid little bastard!”
He jerked and swerved when he heard her and then saw she was about to put her fists through the glass. He lifted a rather evil looking pistol and pointed it at her as he stomped on the brake.
“Stop that, or I will shoot you and get this all over with.” He shouted it at her through the glass.
As usual, Rex had been stupid and hadn’t thought things through.
The gun made her pause, but he hadn’t tied her hands or her feet together, the stupid fucking idiot, so she moved to the back of the truck and decided to wait. The gun didn’t scare her,. He obviously wanted her alive or he’d have killed her already. She smirked at him as he turned back around.
She’d just jump out of the truck when he stopped the next time.
She hadn’t counted on how cold it was though. Or the fact that all she had on was a pair of gray jogging pants and another black hoodie. She’d freeze before he stopped again.
She didn’t even have socks on, so she pulled the bottoms of her pants down to cover them. She’d be frozen by the time he stopped, if he stopped before she actually died. What was he up to this time?
Well, it was obvious what he was up to, she thought, but why? Why again? Some hatred he had of Rager? Or did he think this was payback for escaping him the first time? And leaving him, her mind added.
That was probably it. She’d left him and that was just too much for his brain to take. The fact that he’d made it back was a show of just how deep his hatred ran. It must have been a nightmare to try to get back to their sector.
She thought about Amanda for a moment, how sad the woman had been since Rex had disappeared into the wilds on the other side of the rift. She’d got on with life, but there was a sadness about her that nothing could take away. This would only deepen that sadness. Ann had come to realize, as her baby grew inside of her, that as a mother, Amanda must be sad for her child.
It would break her own heart if this baby grew up to be a monster like Rex. Even if he wasn’t very good at being a monster. He’d partially succeed then mess it up somehow. And maybe that was even worse for Amanda. Because those mistakes might be signs that he wasn’t that bad. That he wasn’t that evil.
And she wouldn’t have to question why her son was so bad, then either. Even though Ann was certain she did. It was a complex situation, made worse because Amanda knew Ann, had known Ann most of her life.
Ann grimaced as the truck bounced and she landed on something sharp. It was a tire iron, with a sharp end, a good weapon, but not a good idea to leave floating around the back of a truck. It barely broke her skin, but it was enough to make her bleed. She could feel the blood that ran down her back, but she couldn’t really see the wound. She kicked at the back of the cab until Rex raised the pistol again. Fuckwit.
She moved, huddled up against the cab where the wind most passed her by, and tried to figure out what to do. She couldn’t run, her belly was far too heavy for that, but she could waddle quickly. Could she waddle fast enough though?
Exhaustion began to pull at her as the road noise made by the tires lulled her. She slept a lot lately, quite a lot. Would she be able to stay awake long enough to get away from him? What if she fell asleep, he stopped, and she didn’t know it? She tried to stay awake, tried to fight the sleep that pulled at her eyes, but she couldn’t.
She felt the bumps when Rex hit something, he probably should have avoided it, and felt the truck begin to climb a hill. Every bump woke her up just a little bit, and the climb up the hill caused her to slide down to the tailgate. That woke her up more fully than the bumps did because, for a moment, she was afraid she would fall out of the truck.
She came fully awake when Rex pulled off the road and onto a track that was now overgrown with thin trees and grass. Her heart thudded in her chest as she saw where they were. He was headed right for the bunker they’d hid in for all those years. He could keep her there for the rest of her life, if he managed to shut that hatch with her inside. She clutched at the tire iron and tried to calm her breath down.
When he pulled to a stop in front of the small shack that led to the hatch, Ann tried to get over the tailgate, but he got out of the truck and ran to stop her. The gun in her back soon calmed her down.
“Don’t fight me, Ann. That’s done. You’re going down into that bunker and that’s all there is to it.”
“I will not!” she refuted and spat at him, but he just slapped her, hard enough to make her ears ring, and growled at her.
“I’m done playing with you, Ann. Do it now or I’ll beat you to death and leave your body up here to rot.” The coldness in his eyes told her that the old Rex was gone, and this was someone new. Someone that had survived, learned to kill, and would do it again in an instant.
Oh fuck, she thought, and turned to go into the shack.
She pulled open the round hatch and climbed into the chute that led down to the bunker. There was a pain between her shoulder blades, a pain that made her wince, and she wondered what it was. It dawned on her when her fingers slipped the first time and the sudden move made the painful spot sting even more, that it was the spot where her tracker had been. Rex must have removed it.
She knew she had to keep moving though so she did the only thing she could do and continued the climb down. It took her some time; the chute was narrow, and the rungs built into the cement walls were thin. Her fingers kept slipping, because her palms were moist with fear, and she was terrified she’d fall. She finally made it down to the ground and tried to waddle away from him.
She could lock herself up in the food storage area, and that would be the end of it. He’d starve to death after a while, and she could get out. But she couldn’t move fast enough. Rex caught up to her and pushed
her in the direction of her old quarters.
“Fuck off in there, and don’t come out unless I tell you to.” Rex waited for her to shut the door and then pushed a metal bar through the slots on each side of the door.
She hadn’t noticed the slots when she’d lived there in the past, so he must have come here and installed the slots before he came for her. She stared out through the thick window in the door at the man that had just locked her in. He was more rugged, dirty, and now looked like the insane man she knew him to be.
He was talking to himself about something, but she couldn’t hear what it was he said. She watched him for a while, tried to plead with him to let her go, but he ignored her or didn’t hear her. He walked off, in the direction of the food storage area, and she finally decided to stop her vigil.
Rex would not let her out, and she knew that if Rager didn’t find her somehow, that she would die here. Rex didn’t seem to care whether she was alive or not, he just wanted her there for some reason she couldn’t fathom. Revenge was the highest on her list of guesses.
She’d counted on his stupidity the first time he’d kidnapped her. He wasn’t so naïve this time, and he’d obviously done a lot of planning. How he’d gotten into the house was beyond her. He must have drugged her somehow, and carried her out, but how he’d gotten past the guards was another mystery. One she doubted she’d ever get an answer to.
Then there was the truck. Most vehicles wouldn’t work now for quite a few reasons. The batteries were dead was the first problem. Then there was the fact that valves, hoses, and seals became thin with the cold, cracked over time, and became little more than dust as time wore on. A car’s engine was full of rubber and plastic that broke down with the cold temperatures. All of that would have to be replaced with new ones, and finding parts that hadn’t become useless, even in the deserted auto parts stores, was rare.
Then came the final problem. Cars needed fuel to run in the engine, if the person managed to replace all the parts that were damaged. Ann knew people could make a kind of diesel from old cooking oil, but that took time and wasn’t very good for engines. Alcohol made from corn would work too, but she thought that required replacing some parts of an engine. She’d read about it all in a book she’d found down here all those years ago.
Somehow, he’d managed it, because the truck ran without a hitch, and he’d brought them there. Now, the question was, what did he want with her? He’d threatened to kill her baby the last time he had her. Ann’s hands clutched at her stomach and she stared at the window. She still had the tire iron, stuck down in her underwear at her hip. She took it out, hid it under her bed, and decided she’d just have to wait and see what happened.
There was nothing she could do now but wait.
Something was wrong. She could feel it. Rex had left her alone for three days. He’d slid food in through a slot she hadn’t noticed in the door and dropped in bottles of water, but he hadn’t let her out of the quarters she was in. Luckily, there was a toilet and a shower in there, although, as she became ill, she needed to pee less than she normally did. All she’d used the toilet for today was the sporadic vomiting that kept hitting her.
The problem seemed to be the wound in her back, the one from the tire iron. It was infected, and now it had started to smell a bit on top of the intense pain it caused her. The other wound seemed to be infected too, but not as badly. She was certain that she was very ill, from either one or both. She needed a doctor, and Rex didn’t care.
She’d cleaned the bottom wound as best she could but without antibiotic ointment or proper care, it had become infected. Now, she suspected it was worse than a simple infection. She had a fever, she was nauseous and vomiting, and her pulse was high. She knew they were all symptoms of septicemia, and without help, she would die.
“Rex!” she called when she heard his footsteps. She was so ill she could barely move, but she used the strength she had to call out to him. “Rex, I need help!”
But he didn’t walk to her door, and the sound of her pitiful cries was all that broke the silence. She would die here, alone, uncared for, with her baby inside her, unborn. She tried to think of something, anything that she could use to cut herself open before she died, but there was nothing sharp enough in the room.
If she could find something she’d use it to break her water, force the delivery of her baby, but what would happen then? Rex had turned into a cold, unfeeling monster. He would just leave her baby there to die. Maybe it was best that the baby died along with her. He might do something worse with the baby, if she had it.
She was feverish, perhaps delirious, so she might be crazy, but she thought that might really be for the best. That way, he couldn’t hurt her baby, or torture it. Sweat broke out on her skin as she began to shiver. He wouldn’t touch her baby, not if she could help it. She pulled the blanket up over her head and turned to face the wall, even though it increased her nausea to move and made the pain in her back almost unbearable.
She wouldn’t even look at him. She’d just lie there, and hopefully die before he could do anything worse to her.
17
A strange calm settled over Rager. He’d been frantic for the last three days, uncertain and frustrated as he tried to figure out where his mate was. He’d gone through stages. The first day he’d followed the road that she’d been on until he fell asleep. When he woke up, the transporter had stopped moving.
He’d gone back to the mothership and tried to use the computer to find her, but nothing had worked. The second day, he and his soldiers combed side streets, paths, anything that might even remotely look like a road. By that evening, he had a burning pain in his back that would not leave him alone.
He finally woke up on the third day, sick with worry. Literally. He’d tossed up his breakfast and hadn’t even bothered with lunch. That didn’t stop him from searching though. He’d run out of places to look, so he went to Ann’s father.
“Are you certain Rex has her?” John asked, his face just as worried as Rager’s. He was Ann’s father, of course he was worried sick, too, Rager thought. Maybe even more so than Rager.
“I am.” Rager looked around, but didn’t see a familiar face in the living room. “Where’s Mary? With the babies?”
“Yes, but she’s heartbroken about Ann. She won’t leave the babies now, not unless it’s to go to Ann. I’m really worried about her, but there’s nothing I can do. I’ve thought about…” his words trailed off and he shook his head.
“You’ve thought about what?” Rager prodded, curious to know what his thoughts were. John was an intelligent man, one of the most intelligent that Rager had made a mayor. He respected the man, not just because he was Ann’s father, but because of how he governed and always had his hand in things. He didn’t just sit back and make decrees like some minor king, he actually took part in the business of governing, and that impressed Rager.
“I’ve thought about taking Mary and the babies back into the bunker, at least until we found out what’s happened to Ann. I think Mary would feel so much better there, more secure you know.”
“But you took all the food out, didn’t you?” Rager thought that’s what had happened anyway.
“Not all of it.” He looked a little guilty, then brought his head up, just a little defiant. “We weren’t sure how things would go here, so we left some. Just in case.”
“Smart man.” Rager nodded and smiled with a hint of pride. “You are a good and smart man, John.”
“I hope so. I only want what’s best for my wife and children. All of them.” He sighed and looked at Rager. “I had another thought; one I hope I’m wrong about.”
“What’s that?” Rager leaned forward on the couch, his hands together at his knees.
“If Rex took her, he might have taken her to the bunker. You haven’t been there, have you?”
“No, I haven’t been there. But it’s a place to look. Somewhere that’s familiar to him, and out of the way.” John’s eyes were lined, dark, bu
t now bright with hope,
“And off the road that Ann was last tracked on.” Rager was already counting out how many soldiers he’d have to take with him.
“Yes. I guess he thought about it at some point on the way up there, stopped, and took her tracker out. And his.” John couldn’t seem to think of a better explanation of why Ann’s tracker stopped working.
“I almost wish we hadn’t moved them to the back now, Ann might have been able to fool him into thinking she had it removed. Everyone knows that’s where we put them now, not on the arm.”
“It’s not your fault. Rex is sick, mentally. He’s no good for anybody now.”
“I’ll deal with him, don’t worry. And I’ll try not to kill him.” Rager didn’t want to make the promise but felt he should. Since he’d made it, he knew he’d try to keep it.
“That might be best for Amanda and her husband. They’re done with him, I think, but if he was dead, it might be worse.”
“We can’t have him on this planet anymore. If I do capture him, he’ll be sent to another planet. You realize that, don’t you?” The hard look on his face said death might be a better option.
“Alive is better than dead. Unless Ann is,” he paused, caught his breath and blinked rapidly, his emotions getting the better of him, “unless Ann is dead. Then, I don’t care what happens to him.”
“I understand.” Rager knew that Rex would die if Ann wasn’t breathing. That would end all promises he’d made up to this point.
“I’ll draw you a map, in fact, I’ll come with you. And call Skye, Ann may need her.”
“Skye may still be in the clinic. I’ll call and see if she’s well. If not, I’ll get Meg to come with us.” Rager didn’t want to think about John’s last words. Ann may need her.
There could be a thousand reasons why Ann might need Skye. It didn’t have to mean anything… bad. But in the back of his mind, Rager knew anything was possible. Rex had completely lost it, if he was the reason Ann was gone. That still hadn’t been confirmed.
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