Salvation (Rise Book 2)

by Nathan Hystad

  “He is old,” Yas said. “He doesn’t want to give up his comfortable life and will happily close his eyes to the rest of the world.”

  “And by doing that, he’s doomed his entire people,” Monet hissed as she leaned forward to rest the tip of her knife into the flames of the simple fire they had risked only when the tree cover was thick. “Can’t cure stupid, that’s what Tom says.”

  “Is Tom your chief?” Yas asked.

  “In a way,” Monet answered, her usual guarded nature softened by travel weariness. She lifted the knife from the fire and hissed in suppressed pain as she used the hot point to spear a blister on the side of her exposed heel. “He’s our leader. One of the very first people to start resisting the Occupation.” She shrugged as if that was all there was to say on the subject and leaned back to rest with a groan.

  The silence hung for only a few seconds before a throaty grumble from the shadows indicated Buddy’s anxiety.

  “What is it, boy?” Lina asked, reaching out away from the fire to try and locate the animal by touch.

  She recoiled her hand as the grumble became a snarl; instinct kicking in to preserve her fingers.

  “Bear?” Monet asked, pulling up her sock and stuffing her foot into her boot before retrieving her rifle.

  “I cannot smell bear,” Yas whispered, “and this is not a place they live.”

  As if remembering suddenly, Monet tutted angrily at herself and scrambled for the tablet to shield the light emitted by the screen.

  “Nothing,” she said in confusion. “Not for miles and miles.”

  “Could it be the… Hunters?” Lina asked her, unfamiliar with how the moniker stuck in her mouth.

  “Hunters without any drones in the area, this far away from a road?” Monet answered, applying logic to the situation and drawing a blank on what the threat could be. “Spread out, keep low,” she ordered them.

  Lina moved away from the fire and patted her thigh gently in the hope that the coyote would follow her. She thought he did, not that she could see in the darkness, as the fire had robbed her of any ability to make out shapes in the shadows. He had stopped growling at least, which could mean a good or a bad thing.

  “Please!” cried out a voice. “Please don’t hurt us, we… we followed your trail as soon as it was safe…” Lina missed the next words as she stood and crashed through the woods towards the voices.

  “Who are you?” Monet demanded.

  “We heard your words,” a new voice answered, “and… and we want to join you.”

  Noises all around them swelled as more people than Lina cold count stepped into the range of her returning night vision.

  “There are more than one hundred of us who don’t want to live in hiding any longer. We’ll gladly fight.”

  “You left your people?” Yas asked, his voice edged with something somewhere between awe and fear.

  “We did,” the same strong, confident voice answered. “We cannot cower in the shadows and pretend we are living as free people for one more day. Others may believe this is not our war, but we believe they are wrong. But is it true? Are they truly building a doorway to their world?”

  “That’s what we believe,” Monet answered, her gun lowered and her words passionate. “And what they can bring through scares me to death.”

  “What they can take away,” Lina added, “scares me even more.”

  Chapter 25

  Dex

  It felt surreal returning to St. Louis with Cleveland, and the motel they’d operated out of seemed even smaller, more run down than ever.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Dex asked, his passenger window open. A plume of gravel dust rolled to his face as Cleveland brought the truck to a halt.

  “On different missions. Kathy’s gone, as you know, and a couple of the others seem to have vanished too. This isn’t a good time to be a Hunter,” Cleveland said.

  Dex appraised the bulky man, wondering if he might be able to recruit him to the cause. If Cleveland said no, Dex would have to kill him, so the option wasn’t very enticing.

  “Was it ever?” Dex asked.

  “What?” Cleveland seemed lost in thought.

  “Was it ever a good time to be a Hunter?” Dex repeated.

  “You’re probably right. Jesus, Dexter. What the hell have we been doing all these years?” Cleveland rubbed his eyes with meaty hands.

  “What we were trained to do, buddy. It’s not our fault. It’s theirs.” Dex didn’t have to say who they were. It was as far as he was willing to go on the subject. He popped the truck door open and hopped out. God, he missed his car.

  Dex eyed the room Kathy used to inhabit when she was in town, testing the door handle. It wasn’t even closed all the way, a clear indication of how fast she’d left for her last hunt. The lights were turned off, the drapes pulled tight. He stepped inside, hearing the truck door shut in the parking lot.

  He’d spent the odd night in there with Kathy, both of them seeking solace in each other’s beds on occasion. It had never worked, not really. For Dex, their connection was purely physical. She seemed to feel stronger about it, but it could never have grown into anything more. Kathy was loyal to the job. She reveled in bringing the Roamers to the Overseers and even kept count of how many she’d found dead. It was sick, but he supposed others would have considered him crazy for ever becoming a Hunter himself.

  The sunlight was all but gone, but he still pulled the curtains open. He checked her desk and found a couple of guns inside. He took them, searching for anything else of use. At least that was what he told himself as he walked through the tiny suite.

  She had some food supplies lined neatly along the table, and he took that too, thinking he might need it. Minutes later, he left her room, all her life’s possessions, as pathetic and meager as they were in his arms. He shook his head, saddened by the waste.

  “You had to kill her, Dex. You had to,” he whispered, and saw a light on inside the registration office where Cleveland stayed.

  The door chimes rang as Dex pressed through the entrance, and Cleveland glanced up, the glow of his tablet bright on his dark face. “I have one for you. If you’re interested.”

  “Cleveland… what are we really doing here? It’s clear things are about to go…”

  His supervisor raised a hand, silencing him. “Didn’t you say you wanted something near… Washington?”

  Dex nodded.

  “Then how about this one.” He flipped the tablet around, showing Dex the picture of an old man. “Name’s Carlton Nesman. Fled the hangar.”

  “The hangar… okay, I’ll take that one.” Dex smiled at the supervisor. He could come across as a little underwhelming at times, but he was being perceptive now. Dex had asked Cleveland for any locations nearby where the alien ships were housed. Dex had never seen them parked anywhere, not unless they were stopping briefly at a facility. Cleveland had only said one word to him about it on the drive. “Washington.”

  Tom had a theory that there was a hangar there, or a field. Some place that the Overseers stored their vessels. He’d also passed Dex the location of a Reclaimers safe house near Alexandria, Virginia. That was where Dex needed to head, and soon.

  “I don’t have a ride,” Dex said.

  Cleveland rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a keychain with far too many keys on it. “Here.” He pulled the one for his truck off it and tossed it to Dex, who caught it easily. “But you have to get some sleep first.”

  “No can do, buddy. Drive’s twelve hours on a good day, and I’m wired. Maybe we can make a pot of coffee first, though.” Dex crossed to the side of the room and flicked a switch on their solar generator. It whirred to life, and he was glad the Overseers allowed them a few minor comforts. He’d dozed for an hour or so in the truck, and that would have to be enough to tide him over.

  “Want a smoke?” Cleveland asked as Dex went through the motions of dumping bottled water into the coffee maker and added a filter and ground flecks of brown
gold. Dex tried not to think of how old it was as he flipped the lid closed and turned on the device. Soon it was steaming and sending the smell of perfection into Dex’s nostrils.

  “Sorry, smoke?” Dex asked, and Cleveland held out a pack. It was squished, yellowed along the edges. “I’ll pass. Think I’m done with those things. They’ll kill you, you know.” Dex smiled, and Cleveland let out a loud laugh, as if Dex had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

  “Damn right they will.” Cleveland wiped a tear from his eye as he stopped laughing and composed himself. “Dex, I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re tangled up in, but hear this.” He glanced around the room and stuffed his tablet under his huge jacket. “There’s chatter out there.”

  “About what?” Dex asked, sensing a serious conversation about to take place. The coffee maker chugged along behind him.

  “The Hunters. One of them stopped at the orchards from the South East chapter. Entire place was burned to the ground. Same thing in the Midwest. Crops destroyed,” he said.

  “Did some Roamers sabotage them?” Dex asked.

  “Doesn’t seem like it. Truth is, there has been no direction from the Overseers on either of those Agri-Zones. It was like they allowed it to happen…”

  Dex finished the other’s thought. “Because they were responsible. The damned aliens are doing it.”

  Cleveland nodded. “They’re stopping food production.”

  “Which can only mean one thing.”

  “Dex… They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” It was the first time Dex had seen his supervisor afraid like this. His hand shook as he placed it on the counter.

  “They are.”

  “Is there… how can we…” Cleveland sputtered.

  “We don’t. You stay here, act normal. Anyone shows up, you tell them what you told me, but try not to accuse anyone specifically. Not everyone will buy in to our theory,” Dex told him.

  “Sure. I hear you. This is only the start. I should have known better. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I wanted to run away when I first started out.” Cleveland said.

  Dex shook his head. “I had no idea. Why did you stick around?”

  “Because I was afraid. I was never smart enough to make it on my own. So I kept coming back, until one day, they decided they needed a new supervisor, and here I am. Ten years later…”

  “Your story isn’t different from any of ours. Go easy on yourself. We all did what we needed to do,” Dex told him. “And I’m going to carry on doing what needs to be done.” He grinned at Cleveland and turned to pour a cup of coffee.

  “Dex, I have something for you.” Dex heard a gun settling onto the desk, and for a split second, he thought his time might be at an end. He spun slowly, and relaxed when he saw the weapon out of Cleveland’s hand. “This is my old baby. She saw me through some rough times, and since you’re out of real weapons,” he glanced at the two guns Dex had stolen from Kathy’s room, “I figured you could use her.”

  Dex picked it up, feeling the perfect weight of the rifle. He looked out the window through the scope and lowered it. “Thanks, Cleve. I’ll make sure she’s returned to you.”

  “Sure, sure.” Cleveland walked around the counter, poured himself a steaming cup of black coffee, and leaned against the wall. “Be careful out there.”

  “I will be,” Dex assured the man. “Thanks again… for the truck, the gun… for everything.”

  “When I’m judged, perhaps it will be the last things I did that will be in focus.” Cleveland smiled. The expression was no longer jovial on the man.

  “Let’s hope so, for all our sakes.” Dex grabbed his pack with a few supplies, balanced the to-go mug of coffee, and pried the door open. He stopped before walking through, and nearly told Cleveland about the Reclaimers. “Catch you later.”

  The door chimes rang again as he left, and Dex climbed into the truck, the driver’s seat depressed from years under Cleveland’s weight. He brought the engine to life, rolled down the window, and threw it into reverse, cranking the wheel. Seconds later, he was kicking up gravel and heading for the highway.

  Next stop, Washington.

  Chapter 26

  Cole

  They moved slowly, ever cautious of hidden surveillance or other human-catching devices left in the ruins of the old world by the aliens and their traitorous underlings.

  Slowly didn’t mean covertly, however, because the last thing they wanted to do was to sneak up on the people they were there to find.

  “Why?” Cole asked, out of a genuine need to learn instead of in the annoying way that younger people nagged their elders for detailed explanations.

  “We want them to prepare for our arrival so that it isn’t a surprise.” Soares explained the tactics without condescension. “Think about it; we want them to feel in control, so sneaking up on them and basically saying we can beat their defenses is a poor way to open negotiations.”

  Cole mentally shrugged to accept that he had a valid point, even if it seemed a simpler explanation than he was expecting.

  As if to make his point, Soares’ pace faltered fractionally before he recovered and walked confidently beside Cole.

  “You okay?” Cole asked, confused by the misstep.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Soares answered. “You… you feel that?”

  “Feel…?” Cole began to say, stopping his mouth from moving until his mind caught up. He did sense something; something tickling the edge of his consciousness that couldn’t be defined. He’d felt the sensation before, too many times to be comfortable, and he usually trusted the instinct enough to run for cover as fast as he could.

  “They know we’re here,” Soares said softly, confirming Cole’s feeling of being watched. “Keep walking until they decide it’s time to talk, okay?”

  “Mmm hmm,” Cole answered, his lips clamped tightly shut, realizing that they weren’t only being watched but were being tracked as they moved through the subterranean tunnels, making no attempt to hide.

  “You think they’ll try to kill us?” Cole asked loudly.

  “I hope not,” Soares answered, also speaking in a louder voice than he needed to. “I pray they let us speak long enough to explain we’re on the same side.”

  “And that we can help them,” Cole added.

  “Yeah, kid, that too.”

  They walked on in silence as they descended deeper into darkness and Soares produced a long string of thin plastic tubes from a leg pocket. Each was about the size of Cole’s little finger and he watched as Soares tore one off and cracked the plastic before shaking it and tossing it to the dusty ground. The glow grew from the tube until a haze of fluorescent green radiated from it.

  Leaving a lit trail was suicidal from a tactical perspective, but Cole guessed he wasn’t the only one feeling the stress and wanting the impending confrontation to happen sooner rather than later. Without taking out the tablet and reviewing the data from their hijacked Tracker, there was no way to be sure how much further they had to travel before reaching the Roamers.

  Once they were so deep below the surface of the deserted and ruined city, they couldn’t see a thing without artificial light, and unnatural noises began to echo around the claustrophobic tunnel.

  The man-made burrow fashioned of steel and concrete nestled deep beneath an entire city felt so aberrant to nature in the empty world above.

  Something about the echoes in that tunnel made it feel like the noises were coming from ahead and behind them, and each noise bounced back as if reflected by an unseen barrier to confuse and disorientate them.

  Flames erupted to their right; not like a gunshot in the dark, more like a primal version of a light switch being flipped. The fire blossomed and billowed upwards as a spark was touched to soaked cloth and a torch burst into life to radiate a flickering orange brightness all around them.

  Cole and Soares froze as the light unveiled shadows that became ragged people standing motionless. Their eyes seemed to reflect the light
of the fire to show a dozen pairs pointed directly at them. The bearer of the torch stepped forwards confidently to block their path, even if they possessed the stupidity to try and forge ahead.

  “You made a mistake coming here, Hunter,” the voice said from within the folds of old material that shrouded the speaker. Something about the voice gave both outsiders pause, because it spoke with the gravelly tones of a woman whose vocals sounded damaged by a lifetime of breathing in the harsh chemicals of the manufacturing plants.

  “We’re not—” Cole began, but froze stiff as a blade appeared at his throat, held by someone behind him who’d approached so silently, it was as though their feet didn’t need to touch the ground.

  “Quiet, boy,” the woman croaked as she lifted the torch higher to bathe all of their faces in the fiery glow, “I was talking to him, because you’re too small to be a Hunter. He probably brought you along as a snack.”

  Cole’s mouth, stuck partly open, clapped shut to prevent him from saying something stupid when his life rested on a jerked movement of the steel edge held against his skin.

  “I’m no Hunter,” Soares said calmly, “and he isn’t either. He’s Cole Mason.”

  The words seemed to suck the air out of the blackness like some alien munition had detonated without a sound. The woman holding the torch stepped closer, lifting the leather-covered stump of her left hand to his chin and move his face around, as if searching for the truth in the man’s words.

  “Never heard old Tom had any kids,” she retorted questioningly.

  “Not Tom,” Soares said flatly. She peered hard into his eyes before dropping his chin with a jerk from her bony fingers.

  “Maybe he is,” she croaked, “maybe he isn’t.” She shrugged and stepped away. Without instructions, hands and bodies came forwards to strip them of their weapons and equipment. Cole and Soares said nothing, but they were afforded an explanation all the same.