by Shows, Greg
“Who is the enemy, sir? What were we doing fighting First Cavalry last night?”
Titman ignored Blakely and closed up his map.
“You got a location yet?” he asked the specialist in the front seat.
“No sir. Sorry sir.”
“Well keep trying,” Titman growled. “Come on, Sergeant.”
Blakely followed Titman, who’d opted to ignore his respirator, and the two of them strode over to the stairs at the bottom of the hill. Titman climbed the steps quickly, and Blakely came after him, three steps behind.
At the entrance, two guards in full face respirators stood with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
The men looked relaxed, but Blakely could tell they were professionals, ready to swing their rifles around and fire in an instant.
They didn’t move out of the way when Titman and Blakely approached, and Titman was forced to stop suddenly to avoid running into them.
Blakely smiled from behind Titman. He could see the general’s shoulders tensing up.
“No admittance, sir,” one of the guards said with a flat, bored voice.
“Are you fucking serious, Hoss?” Titman asked.
“That’s okay, boys,” someone said from behind the guards. “Step aside.”
“Yes sir,” the guards said. They stepped back immediately and stood at attention.
Whoever these people were, Blakely thought, they were holding onto discipline.
From out of the shadows came a man with short blond hair shaved close to his scalp. His eyes were black, and the shadows in the tunnel mouth entrance made his ears appear pointed. He was dressed in the same gray camo outfit everyone else was wearing.
“Derek!” General Titman said. He stepped forward quickly to shake the new arrival’s hand. “I didn’t know you were on site.”
“Got in from Florida three weeks ago,” the man called Derek responded. He gave Blakely a look, noticing the stripes on his arms and then looked back to Titman without pausing. “The secretary recalled Brooks and asked me to take over here…to look in on things in the region...see what I can see.”
“And what can you see?”
“Things are about as bad as we thought,” Derek said. “If God’s not throwing us an apocalypse party, He missed a damn fine opportunity for it.”
Titman laughed.
“Well, He’s certainly keeping things interesting.”
“Indeed,” Derek said. “What can I do for you?”
“I heard you got some intel out of Warren,” Titman said.
“Not me,” Derek said, and turned toward the dark tunnel beyond the entrance. He waved Titman and Blakely forward and stepped into the darkness. “Some of the Secretary’s special boys. They brought a prisoner in late last night. Been working on her since they got here.”
Derek lead Titman and Blakely forward down the dark tunnel. The ceiling was only six and a half feet tall, and tiny white LED lights had been spaced at five foot intervals along its right side—just enough illumination to keep you from walking into the walls or tripping and falling on your face.
After thirty feet the tunnel intersected three other tunnels. Derek took them to the right, and a few feet beyond the turn they encountered a crude spiral staircase made of diamond plate steel. The steel was bolted into the cinder block walls, and it descended into darkness below.
“They get anything out of her?”
“Oh yeah,” Derek said and hurried downward.
“Eeeeehh!” someone screamed from somewhere below. Blakely thought it was a man’s voice but he couldn’t be sure.
“Shut up!” another man yelled. A loud “thunk!” echoed up and the scream cut off abruptly. “It’s quiet time!”
“God, help me!” another voice cried.
“God can’t help you now,” Derek said to no one as his feet clanged on the steel plating.
At the bottom of the staircase a wide hall opened and LEDs along the ceiling illuminated the cinderblock walls and eight pairs of opposing steel doors. Each door was solid except for a small barred window at head height. A narrow horizontal slit at waist height.
“A prison?” Blakely said, trying to figure out why in the middle of a country-destroying crisis you’d need a black site out in the middle of nowhere.
Derek and Titman ignored him. Then they were walking along the hallway, and people locked behind the doors moaned and wept, or begged to be fed or set free or killed.
When they reached the fourth pair of doors, a hand shot out between the bars of the left door, the fingers reaching to grab Blakely.
“Shit!” Titman said, and spun around, inadvertently backing toward the door on the right.
Blakely leaned away from the fingers and brought his left hand up in a quick blocking motion. He spread his thumb and index finger into a Tiger Mouth grip and slammed the attacker’s wrist upward, pushing it so that it was forced to bend at the elbow. He was able to pivot and bring his other hand up to grab the attacker’s arm at the triceps and gain control of the entire arm.
Blakely couldn’t see the attacker’s face inside the dark cell, but he quickly realized the size of the hand and the softness of the skin meant it was a woman.
He let go of the woman’s wrist and triceps and she jerked her arm inside her cell.
“You goddamned monsters,” the woman screamed. “She was just a little girl.”
“Come on, gentlemen,” Derek said. “Seems this one’s got a little fight left. We’ll take care of that.”
“A little girl!” the woman screamed again.
A steel exit door stood at the other end of the hallway. Blakely followed Ttman and Derek through it.
The room they entered was a makeshift supply and janitorial room. Floor to ceiling shelving lined the walls. The shelves were filled with mostly unopened boxes of various cleansers, detergents, and disinfectants.
On one shelf there was a single a black rubber tub filled with hundreds of long skinny strips of white plastic.
“Zip ties,” Blakely thought, but then noted the yellow mop bucket and mop pushed into a corner. Even though the room smelled of disinfectant, he could detect the faint scent of blood and sweat and old bitter cigarette smoke.
He kept his face impassive despite being in a mostly darkened room, and followed Derek and Titman out through another door and into a narrow hallway. Three doors were set into the right hand side of the hall.
Derek walked straight to the first one. He turned the knob and when the steel door swung open he stepped inside. He beckoned Titman and Blakely.
The stench inside the room was awful—sour and relentless, like a truck stop toilet that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. LED lamps were hung around the room, and two men in unmarked tan camo stood close together with their backs to the door.
They were both giggling.
Derek cleared his throat and the men both turned quickly, separating to reveal what they’d been looking at.
Blakely stopped in the doorway, unable to look away, speechless at what he was seeing.
A little girl, sitting in an old metal folding chair, had her arms tied behind her. Her skinny pink legs were pulled apart and had been tied at the ankle to the chair legs. A huge puddle of blood covered the floor beneath the chair.
The girl was naked except for a pair of baggy white panties that were urine-soaked and nearly transparent and bunched up at her hips. Next to her on the floor were her clothes—a pair of jeans, a blue blouse, and a bright pink ski jacket splattered with blood.
“General,” the man on the right said.
“Mallick,” Titman said in greeting.
“Hello, sir,” the man on the left said.
He held out his hand.
Dried blood covered the back of his fingers, but Titman didn’t seem to care. He stepped forward and they shook. Then Titman pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket and bit off the end. He spat it directly at the girl.
“I hear you got some intel out of this little gem.”
Blakely was only half listening.
He was distracted by the girl.
Her hair was soaked and hung limp around her drooping head, and her entire body was covered in blood spatters. Before she’d died someone had put out cigarettes on both her pre-pubescent nipples, then continued putting out cigarettes across her belly. The burns formed a curved line that taken in tandem with the nipple burns was meant to suggest a smiley face.
But the worst part was her feet.
Someone had snipped off her toes off and left them lying on the floor in a pool of blood in front of her.
Blakely’s stomach rolled over, and he was almost glad the little girl was dead.
At least she was away from the horrible torture she’d suffered.
The slash marks running up her forearms told him that at least she’d had a fairly quick death after what looked like a long torture session.
“Where’d you find her?” Titman asked.
The one called “Mallick” snickered.
“You’ll love this,” he said. “We snatched her in Warren, right out from under these Fort Hood Fucks.”
“What was her name?” Blakely asked, fighting to keep his hand from dropping to his holster and pulling his pistol.
“What’s the matter, soldier?” Mallick sneered. He reached out, grabbed the girl’s damp hair, and lifted her head up.
The girl’s slack mouth fell open, and Mallick slid his fingers under her chin. With a few quick nudges and pulls he made her mouth pop open and closed. His voice, when he spoke again, came out high-pitched and vicious.
“Never seen a little dead terrorist girl before?”
Blakely stared at Mallick, grinding his teeth and willing himself not to pull his pistol and kill every last one of them. He had his men to think about. If he wanted to get himself and his soldiers out of this place alive he had to keep himself under control.
Flashes of memory popped into his head, and his hands began to shake and a wave of nausea hit him so hard he got dizzy.
“Daddy!” he heard his daughter call.
“What else did you get out of her, besides the obvious,” Titman asked, and instantly Blakely looked away from the girl and blinked his eyes a few times.
“Her name was Melinda,” Mallick said, and he let go of the girl. Her head fell forward again. “Lovely, lovely, Mel-linda.”
“And?” Titman said.
“Her father killed the Bishop in Youngstown,” the man on the left. “He was just about to get the package when this chick comes up and nearly takes him out. Then a pack of feral dogs show up and the whole thing goes triple-dipping fubar. They all run from the dogs, and those Fort Hood Fucks come in and rescue them, and the next thing they know this chick’s on the Bishop’s bike, hightailing it out of town.”
Blakely winced, but quickly readjusted his face so the two maniacs wouldn’t notice his surprise. Hearing members of the 1st Cavalry Division described as Fort Hood fucks was going to take some getting used to. The last Blakely had heard, they were all on the same team.
Unless something had drastically changed.
Unless things were so far beyond fucked there was no hope of ever unfucking them.
In which case, he was going to have to seriously reevaluate what he was doing with Titman. After all, it wasn’t like he’d been getting paid the last nine months since the Crisis began.
“So who is this bitch that’s fucking everything up?” Titman asked.
“Unknown, sir,” the man on the left said.
“Derek thinks she’s a random RROF!” Mallick said, and burst out laughing.
Titman stared at Mallick.
“Which is?” Titman asked, getting impatient.
“A random reversal of fortune,” Derek said, and everyone turned to look at him. “A Wildcard. A Black Swan. She was in the right place at the right time...for her. The wrong place at the wrong time for us. Like the Pharoah’s daughter finding Moses in the bullrushes. She was in the right place at the right time for her and Moses and the Israelites, but the wrong place and wrong time for the Pharoah.”
Blakely had heard enough. He was now convinced he was the only sane person in the room.
He wanted out of there, and out from under the tons of dirt and steel and cinderblock.
He forced himself to take a few deep breaths as Derek rambled on about the Bible and random reversals of fortune and God’s will for America.
“So let’s go kill this bitch and get the package,” Blakely said during a lull in Derek’s spiel.
“Now you’re talking,” Titman said, and lit his cigar. “We’ll make a go getter out of you yet.”
Chapter 4
Sadie shut off the Honda. Instantly the engine noise was replaced by thunder—one loud rolling rumble punctuated with low-pitched bangs and booms, like a band of mad kodo drummers banging randomly on their biggest bass drums.
It was a constant noise, and she wondered half-heartedly how much hearing loss she would suffer if it continued.
Not that hearing loss would matter much in the big picture.
Not that much of anything would matter in the big picture.
Sadie kicked down the bike stand and eased herself off the seat. Her legs shook, and her back was on fire from her left shoulder blade to her hip.
Beyond the club strike injuries, the exertion of the fight had left her legs sore. She could barely move her left arm or turn her head. She had to swivel her entire body to look at anything.
Walking to the sign on the side of the road was painful. She did it anyway, and after knocking away dust she discovered the town she was looking down on was Shanksborough.
The seven miles she’d travelled to get here had taken her two hours. She’d had to backtrack to get around closed roads, and to stop so that she could vomit or pee.
Several times she’d had to lie down on her back and stretch her hip muscles by rolling one thigh over the other while pressing her shoulders down hard against the road.
At one point she had to stop beneath an overpass and shelter there as dust fell in thick clumps and lightning lashed the land around her. Several strikes had come so close to hitting her that her long brown hair had stood almost straight out from her scalp. The lightning had blinded her and she’d smelled the hot bitter stench of freshly made ozone.
And the storm wasn’t anywhere close to over.
She’d taken a risk by riding out from under the overpass and heading south during a lull, and so far she’d been lucky. But luck might not last.
She had to get shelter.
Something indoors and solid and reasonably sealed off from the weather.
Her respirator was beginning to foul and she needed to change cartridges before silicosis became a certainty.
She also needed medicine.
She was going to be laid-up for several days if she couldn’t find some serious painkillers. Ethanol and Ibuprofin could only do so much. She needed something strong enough to let her ignore her pain and push south as fast as she could.
She couldn’t help thinking she was being watched or tracked or followed, and had been ever since she got on the motorcycle in Youngstown.
She was afraid of the people who’d fired at her in Youngstown, even if the fear was irrational. After all, it wasn’t likely anyone could have followed her without her knowing it. She’d travelled a hundred miles and seen no signs of anyone trailing her.
Still, the feeling of being pursued didn’t leave.
“Fear keeps us alive,” she muttered, mimicking the words of the professor who taught her first cognitive neuroscience class.
Sadie’s voice was lost in the boom of thunder from a nearby lightning strike, but the lecture echoed in her head.
“Manifestations of intu
itive thoughts that bring about fear might be a result of the central nervous system acting to warn humans of dangers they cannot see,” the professor had said. “The difficulty is differentiating between valid or invalid fear warnings.”
Sadie couldn’t tell if she was being rational or not. All she knew was she hadn’t been this scared since she began this journey—not even when the coyotes or feral dogs were after her.
Right now she was pee-your-pants terrified.
The lightning and dust she was facing could kill her within the hour if she didn’t act immediately. But if she made a mistake and went into this town too fast she could be killed just as fast—with a heck of a lot of pain and terror involved. What she’d seen in the last five miles had convinced her of that.
Nearly every farmhouse and trailer house and barn she’d seen along the little state highway had been burned out or shot so full of holes they weren’t a viable place to stop and rest.
The only house that hadn’t been burned or blasted was six miles behind her, not far from where the cop had attacked her. The house sat far off the road and was surrounded by gray, dust-coated crops. A barn with a collapsed roof had sat off to the side of the house, but the roof of the house had been shoveled clean. A jeep and an old red tractor had also been free of dust.
When Sadie had stopped to sight on the house with her rifle, she’d seen gun barrels bristling from nearly every window—eight guns in all—pointed right back at her. She’d given a wave and flashed a two-fingered peace sign and climbed back onto the bike.
Not long after that she’d begun to see the bodies.
Dozens of them, scattered along the highway, usually surrounded by dark stains in the dust on which they were resting.
Some of the bodies were missing heads. Others were missing arms or legs. A few had been dismembered completely, leaving only a ribcage and scattered femur and humerus bones.
A word she didn’t want to think about had begun to force its way into her consciousness, ever since she’d killed the cop. She didn’t know if she was prepared to face that horror now. Not with the black wall of death right in front of her—full of roiling dust and ash and vicious lightning she could no longer outrun.
