Army of the Unsettled: A Dystopian Novel (Academy of the Apocalypse Book 3)

by K A Riley

  “See?” Sara beams. “Now isn’t that better for everyone?”

  Ignacio is the first of us to stand up. With short, soft steps, he inches over to the end of the stainless-steel table by the wall where our weapons are lying in a neat row. His eyes fixed on our four captors, he extends his hand out toward his shillelaghs. When the four Outposters don’t resist or even react, he finishes the motion, picking up the weapons and snapping the deadly twin staffs into his shoulder harness.

  Libra does the same, hoisting her powerful sledgehammer up and returning it to its mag-lock harness on her back. She tosses Arlo’s scythe to him. He catches it with one hand as she tosses my twin Serpent Blades to me and Sara’s bandolier of throwing darts to her.

  The six of us, armed again and with Matholook safely tucked behind me, are now standing in a line in front of the table with the four Outposters watching us curiously from the middle of the room.

  “We’re going to go now,” Ignacio says. It sounds like an announcement, a guess, and a threat all at once.

  “Yes,” Rosalind agrees. “Of course.”

  “This has been fun,” Simmons says with a clap of his hands. “It’s a shame for a pacifist to admit, but, honestly, I’d kind of like to kill you all right now.”

  The tight knot in his jaw just below his ears and the flexed muscles in his forearms tell me he’s not kidding.

  Simmons catches my eye, and the tension in his face softens. He gives me a glum, humorless grin and tilts his chin toward Sara. “Your friend there is right. Keeping you here doesn’t do you or us any good.”

  “So…we can keep our weapons?” Libra asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And…you’re really going to let us go?” she stammers.

  “Yes.” But in about two minutes, you might wish we hadn’t.”

  “What do you—?” I start to ask, but he cuts me off.

  “We can’t risk having you betray us. It’s happened too many times before.”

  Even before the last words are out of Simmons’ mouth, Fatima has tapped a small button on the silver bracelet on her wrist. A lazy cloud of what looks like snowflakes drifts down in loopy swirls from the ceiling, encircling me and my Asylum.

  How cute, I think. A snowstorm indoors.

  And then, after a flash of movement from the Outposters, there’s a bag over my head and what feels like a foot-long knitting needle jammed into my upper arm.

  11

  Evicted

  Lying on my side on the ground, I wake up in hot, steamy darkness.

  Where…? What the frack just happened?

  My head is throbbing. I can sense Haida somewhere nearby, but she seems to be reacting to my pain and is keeping her physical and mental distance.

  Great. I need help, and she chooses this exact moment to get skittish and develop a thin skin.

  I can’t blame her for staying away. What I feel, she feels. And right now, wherever she is, she’ll be as confused, uncertain, and as wracked with pain as I am, so she’s probably wise to stay away.

  I’m on my side with my cheek pressed to the ground, and I’ve got what must be the sharp edges of a dozen rocks digging like shark teeth into my legs and ribs. A pain-storm full of thunder and lightning rips through my body, and I can’t tell if none of my bones are broken or if all of them are.

  I blink my eyes to try to focus, but everything is still cloaked in a shadowy haze.

  Oh, right. The bag.

  I tug the musty cloth sack off my head, and the intensity of sudden daylight blasts my black eyes white. I cringe against the pain and take a split-second, internal inventory of my body from the cramped muscles in my legs, the spasms in my neck, and all the way to the dull throb in my upper arm from where those bloody frackers stabbed me with that needle.

  At least they had the courtesy to free my hands first and let me have my weapons back. And I don’t think the zip-cuffs burned my wrists too much.

  Not a good sign when that’s the best news of the day.

  I chuck the hood aside as my eyesight rushes back. On the ground in front of me, Matholook and my Asylum are also squirming to life and pulling off their own hoods. Sitting but slumped over and with her legs splayed wide, Sara presses her fingertips to a cut on her cheek and pulls her hand back to examine the blood. Ignacio leans to his side and puts a fist to his mouth to cover up a hacking cough.

  Libra asks me what happened, and I tell her that her guess is as good as mine. “Off the top of my head,” I say through a groan, “I’d say we’ve just been evicted.”

  My jaw is slack, and my tongue feels like a useless slab of ham.

  “And drugged?” Ignacio asks.

  Obviously.

  “Better than killed,” Arlo grumbles, and I have to agree.

  “About what that guy Simmons and those Outposters claimed,” Matholook says, “about what they accused me…my people of doing…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. But inside, I’m thinking, the opposite.

  Definitely worry about it.

  Gathering myself, I realize it’s cooler than it was before, and I turn back to see that we’re sitting in the dark shadow of the settlement wall.

  And we’re not alone.

  Gathered behind us, nearly invisible in the shadows and looming cold and quiet as a cluster of tombstones, are at least a dozen members of the Army of the Unsettled.

  The boys and girls are armed with a deadly collection of homemade weapons, mostly metal shards, knife blades, bike chains, or lengths of rebar attached with wire and twine to wooden broom and mop handles. Some of the Unsettled have small crossbows hanging from sagging rope-belts around their waists. Others are gripping pickaxes, hoes, shovels, and steel-headed rakes with hooked, red teeth. It looks like they’ve raided a hardware store.

  Like almost all of the Unsettled we’ve encountered over the years, they’re kids, our age or younger.

  Startled into action, the six of us on the ground spin around and scramble to our feet to face the shabby, crusty-haired assembly of the Unsettled.

  Different shapes and heights, the kids are lined up in a neat row, as tidy and still as pieces on a chessboard.

  Stepping forward, a tall girl peels down the powder-blue surgical mask she’s got strapped around her mouth and nose. Adorned with an Africa-shaped, toast-colored birthmark on her cheek, her face is pimply and streaked with gray creases of grime. Her eyes are struggling to be blue, but they’re failing and are closer to the color of cold steel. Dressed in a dirt-brown hoodie, baggy cargo pants, and unlaced combat boots at least three sizes too big, she takes a second step forward and thrusts her spear—really just a two-foot wooden handle with a pair of rusty steak-knives tied to the end with black duct tape and a few loops of frayed twine—right under my chin.

  She has a Glock nine-millimeter pistol clipped with a carabiner to her belt by its trigger guard, but I can tell from here that it’s missing its magazine, so, assuming there’s also no bullet in the chamber, I don’t have to worry about getting shot. The knives under my chin on the other hand…

  The girl taps the flat part of one of the two blades against my cheek. “Hers and hims vas a venir con nosotras troubling in times.”

  I blink up at her and offer up a simultaneous shrug and a frown to let her know I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Hers and hims—venga, venga—troubling in times,” she repeats, casting her eyes over the six of us before letting them land back on me.

  “I don’t know what the frack you’re talking about,” I snap.

  And your people killed the one person in our group who would.

  I smack her bladed contraption away, but the girl makes an animal growl from somewhere inside her chest and returns the weapon to my cheek.

  Inching up next to me on all fours, her eyes wide, white, and locked onto our new batch of assailants, Libra asks me what we should do.

  “How the frack should I know?” Despite the pair of knives dangerously close t
o my throat, I risk looking back over my shoulder to my Asylum. “Anyone here speak Crazy?”

  The beastly girl isn’t amused. She jabs the blades forward just enough to make contact with the skin above my shirt collar. And now I’m totally brassed off six ways from Sunday. Mattea died like this—with a knife to her throat.

  I smack the weapon away and reach for my Serpent Blades…which aren’t there.

  Oh, frack.

  A shorter girl barks out for the tall, gray-eyed girl to stand down.

  “It’s okay, Mary. No sense killing them before they have a chance to get executed.”

  Ah. English. Wait. What? Executed?

  Smiling through a set of spotty, domino-looking teeth, the shorter girl greets us and tells us the leader of the Unsettled (she calls him “the Governor”) would like to see us. “He says you’re the answer he’s looking for.”

  “I think we’re good,” I tell her, rubbing my backside and doing my best to work feeling back into my aching jaw. “But please thank him for the offer.”

  “It’s not an offer,” the girl says, her rust-brown hair hanging limply over one shoulder. “It’s an order.”

  “Well then, that’s different. Thank your Governor for the order. But we’ll still have to decline.” I give her a modest, rolling salute. “Respectfully.”

  Behind the girl, a boy slouches, his arm is hanging low under the weight of an army-green canvas duffel bag. Ignacio’s two shillelaghs, the long handle of Arlo’s scythe, and the shorter, thicker handle of Libra’s sledgehammer are sticking out of its open top. I’m assuming my Serpent Blades and Sara’s bandolier of throwing darts are in there, too.

  Great. We get our weapons back from the Outposters, and two seconds later, another posse of buck-nutters snatches them away.

  The boy, from under a surprisingly elegant head of curly, chestnut brown hair, catches me eyeing the bag, and he pulls it back and drops a protective arm down in front of it.

  Let’s assess this situation, Branwynne: We’ve been chased into a place we didn’t want to be, kicked out just when we were getting answers, and now we’re unarmed and at the mercy of the same people we were running from. The same people who killed Mattea. Talk about out of the frying and into the fire…and then, as only we seem able to manage, back into the frying pan.

  A million questions, mostly about what the frack we’re supposed to do next, rush through my mind. Haida’s voice, clear and protective this time as my mother’s, rises out of the turmoil.

  ~ You’re in a storm.

  Thanks.

  ~ You can fight it…

  Or?

  ~ You can ride it out.

  You’re telling me to surrender to these murderers?

  ~ I’m telling you to be patient. A tempest is only as deadly as you imagine it to be. And no storm lasts forever.

  I need you. Where are you?

  There’s a crackling in my head, but I catch Haida’s answer at first. I concentrate hard enough to give myself a monster of a headache, but at least I’m able to tune her in.

  ~ I’m where you need me to be. For now.

  A flashing wave of dizziness whips through me as my perception changes from my own to Haida’s. Instead of sitting here helpless on the ground, for a second, I’m high above the earth, soaring and banking on thermals and looking down at a spread out, cloud-covered caravan of construction, military, and recreational vehicles.

  Haida severs our connection, leaving her cryptic advice and the overhead panorama of the endless motorcade of the Army of the Unsettled ebbing from my mind’s eye.

  The tall girl with the birthmark lowers her weapon and turns to face the other members of her gang.

  Four or five of them launch into a hodgepodge of English and Spanish and a few words that don’t sound like either. I can’t follow it all, but I definitely get the gist. Two of the girls and one of the boys seem to be in charge as they debate about whether to kill us or take us back to their army.

  I don’t understand what they say about their final decision, but since we’re not dead, I’m assuming they’re taking us with them.

  The short girl orders the boy with the bag loaded with our weapons to step forward. He complies, dragging the bag behind him.

  “Put them in there.” She points over to where one of their vehicles is resting in a skewed group about fifty yards away on top of a small dune of sand, scrub-brush, and a cluster of about two dozen bottle-shaped rocks. He gives her a slight bow before jogging off toward one of the Skid-Steers and tossing the clunky sack into its front-loader bucket.

  “It’s time,” the short girl says, directing us to the collection of vehicles.

  We groan ourselves upright. I want to fight. Even without Haida’s abilities enhancing mine, I have a feeling that if we don’t make a stand now, we won’t have a chance later.

  There are only two problems: We’ve got no weapons, and my muscles feel like watery banana pudding.

  Whatever the Outposters injected us with is doing its job, and I have to hope it wears off, or else we’re all going to spend the rest of our very short lives at the complete and total mercy of the Unsettled.

  In a flash of white that nearly makes me puke, I get a second wave of sensory-images in my head from Haida Gwaii. The images are a blur, and I feel like I’m sensing more than seeing.

  From my mind’s eye, I watch myself and my friends, caged in glass and surrounded in the middle of a war. Only, we’re not exactly surrounded. The fighting isn’t happening around us as much as it’s happening…below us? Arcs of silver smoke streak overhead. A burst of muzzle-flashes blinds me for a second. Gasping, I choke down a swell of doubt, fear, helplessness, and…betrayal?

  I try to ask Haida what’s happening, but I get feedback and a crushing migraine in response.

  I don’t always see what she sees, and I can’t communicate with her like Kress can with Render. But something different is happening, something Kress hasn’t taught me or talked to me about. I think Haida and I are starting to connect in a different way than we’re supposed to. It’s not visual. Well…it’s not only visual. And it’s not intellectual or emotional. I think it’s almost…I don’t know. Chemical? Molecular? That last flash had me in it, but in a place I’ve never been and in a situation that hasn’t happened. At least not yet.

  Could our connection even be…temporal?

  Whatever it is, it’s fading again, and I blink my eyes hard to refocus on the band of the Unsettled in front of us.

  Arlo seems to have recovered already. But the rest of us are still doing our best to deal with our woozy heads and wobbly legs.

  Three of the boys and three of the girls half-guide, half-carry us over to an aluminum-sided camper parked up on the road just past the Skid-Steers.

  Domino-teeth flips up the latch on the rear door and ushers us up the two steel steps and into the dark, empty box.

  We all climb up, except for Matholook, who’s stopped by Domino-teeth’s hand on his chest.

  “The Governor is going to be happy to see you.”

  “I don’t know any Governor.”

  “Climb on up,” she says, stepping to the side and waving him forward. “By the time we get back to the Army, you’ll definitely wish you didn’t.”

  Looking back at her for answers she obviously has no intention of providing, Matholook joins the rest of us inside of the hollowed-out camper.

  It’s musty and steaming hot in here. The floor is made of long wooden planks, riveted to the truck’s base. The walls and ceiling are corrugated steel with horizontal ridges that make it look like an unfolded piece of origami. A small, slatted vent at the top lets in five perfectly parallel strips of light.

  We all jump when the door slams shut behind us, and I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know my heart sinks a little at the clunk of a lock being turned, sealing us inside this steel container like six raw fish sticks about to be baked to a crisp.

  12

  Helpless

  Next t
o me, Libra latches onto my arm as the vehicle’s engine putters to life and grinds forward. With no seats or benches, we’re jostled against the ribbed steel walls and have to hang on to each other to stop from sliding around and falling arse over teakettle.

  It doesn’t help that whatever the Outposters drugged us with hasn’t completely worn off.

  “I feel fine,” Arlo says through a totally inappropriate smile.

  I know he’s teasing us to lighten the tension, but my goopy muscles and foggy brain aren’t in the mood.

  I tell him to knock it off, but since my mouth and jaw are still limping their way back to normal, my command comes out more like a slurred bowl of mashed peas.

  At least I’m not drooling. At least not much. And the leftover numbness in our bodies is keeping us from experiencing the full brunt of the jostling vehicle.

  Like most of the world we’ve seen in our lives, smooth, paved roads are in short supply. I honestly can’t tell if we’re on the sand and debris-covered highway or trundling along over the completely raw, unpaved ground of the open desert.

  The six of us drop to the floor, our arms wrapped around our knees or around each other, just doing our best to avoid being slammed to death against the walls.

  It’d be a shame to die before the Unsettled have a chance to execute us.

  I try to tap into Haida again. Thanks to the brief flash of vision I had before getting loaded into this truck, I know she’s out there somewhere, but my connection with her hasn’t been this weak since early on in our telempathic relationship back in the Tower of London. I get the sense she knows something, only I can’t tell if what she knows and has been trying to relay to me is where we are or where we’re going to be.

  At the moment, instead of conversation, I get patches of feelings and emotions—sorrow, fear, anxiety, and helplessness—although I can’t say for sure if it’s her mind I’m reading or my own.

  Finally, I breathe a relieved sigh when our interior voices connect.