Hidden Evil: Eden Lost Book One (The Hunter Wars 7)

by SD Tanner

  “Do ya wanna meet him?”

  “Really? You can take me to meet him? I kinda owe him.”

  “Sure, I can take you in the bird. He’s at Axe’s base.”

  “Can you bring us back here afterwards?”

  “Sure.”

  Another head popped up over the shattered window, and the boy he assumed was Marky asked, “Are you playing soldiers?”

  Out of the mouth of babes, he thought dismally and replied sourly, “Apparently.”

  “Cool, can I play too?”

  Unwittingly Marky had perfectly summarized how he felt. With no obvious enemy, he couldn’t motivate or train his troops, and they were playing at being soldiers. The situation was ridiculous and he needed to talk to Gears. It was all well and good for his brother to march about giving orders, but he had no idea of the state of the situation he was dealing with on a daily basis. His troops were unmotivated to learn, there was no real policing required, and certainly no enemy to fight. He wanted to go and look for Cain, but Gears said he couldn’t until the shooters were trained, or it would be a bloodbath. Believing he had too few soldiers to deal with any serious conflict, Gears didn’t want to put his limited resources at risk that way.

  Calling his shooters to come out from hiding, he decided he’d had enough of playing nursemaid to a bunch of ingrates. Unless Gears had a battle for him to fight, he wasn’t going to waste his time trying to train them. They didn’t want to learn, and he couldn’t find an enemy. Without an enemy under their noses, none of Axe’s troops were interested in fighting. In his lifetime, he’d trained many men and women to fight, but they’d all chosen to earn a living protecting the country they loved. As things stood now, there was no country to fight for, and no one needed to earn a living. Houses, food and water were readily available, and he’d no doubt there were plenty more people in Eden living safely off the grid.

  After a frustrating six weeks, he’d come to the conclusion Eden was paradise, and neither he nor Gears had any business living in it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Phillip

  “Thought you were dead.”

  “No need to sound disappointed.”

  “I’m not. I’m British. It’s just the way we talk. We’re not loud like you Americans.”

  “I’m not sure there’s any such thing as an American left anymore.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame, who will we laugh at now?”

  Gears didn’t look happy and he assumed something terrible must have happened. He wasn’t going to be any happier about the news he was bringing from the UK. Having been stuck stateside after Eden unexpectedly turned up, he’d spent years getting two ships working to take the trip across the pond to his homeland. Ships weren’t really his thing since he was trained as a commercial airline pilot, but worried he’d never find aviation fuel in the UK, he’d decided to sail rather than fly.

  The trip was a disaster from the start. The engines had failed and they’d spent several months at sea fixing them. The ports were no longer manned or maintained, so finding somewhere to dock was a nightmare. When he arrived at the Isle of Wight, there was no one there, and the island had turned into a dense forest that they could barely navigate. Although he’d left with two ships, they lost track of one another at sea, and the second ship never arrived at the agreed rendezvous on the Isle of Wight. He still didn’t know where they were, and was hoping he’d find them at the Naval base when he returned.

  “Why’d ya come back?” Gears asked irritably.

  “I live here. I’m married to woman who considers this country her home.”

  “So why’d you go to the UK?”

  “To see if any of your kinsmen wanted to come home.” Feeling exasperated by Gears, he added, “I thought that was always the plan. I was doing what you intended and trying to bring your people home.”

  Sniffing derisively, Gears asked, “So, where are they?”

  “I couldn’t find them. The forest on the Isle of Wight is thicker than a French woman’s armpit, but we looked anyway, and there didn’t seem to be anyone there.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  Giving Gears an irritated look of his own, he said bluntly, “How do I know? If this isn’t a good time for you, Gears, I can come back later.”

  With a wave of his large hand and a disgruntled expression, Gears replied, “Nah, it won’t help. You either deal with me as I am or don’t talk to me at all.”

  “Is that really an option?”

  “No.”

  “What on earth has being going on since I’ve been away?”

  “Nothin’ and that’s the problem. Nothin’ seems to be going on, but somethin’ is. I can’t work out what it is, and the place I need to start looking has more troops and they’re better trained than my own.”

  “You have troops again now?” He asked in disbelief.

  “Nah, not really. I got ‘em off a Boy Scout leader.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story. So, what’s your news? Where’s the other ship?”

  “I don’t know. We got separated on the crossing and we never found them again.”

  Gears grunted and asked, “So, what did ya find?”

  It was what he didn’t find that was more worrying than what was actually in the UK. Like the US, the UK was recreated as heaven on earth, only the forest was so dense it was impossible to find the roads, much less follow them. The wide eight-lane motorways had disappeared under the dense greenery, and if they hadn’t brought their own all-terrain vehicles, they wouldn’t have been able to travel anywhere. As it was, the trucks kept breaking down, and they could barely find any parts. It took months, but they drove from Dover to Stonehenge, looking for any signs of life in the crumbling cities and small villages that were becoming overwhelmed by the forest.

  “There’s no one there.”

  Looking surprised, Gears asked, “Whatdaya mean there’s no one there?”

  “We zigzagged our way across the country from Dover to Stonehenge, and we didn’t find a single person.”

  “Were they hiding from ya?”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “You took military vehicles. Maybe you didn’t look like friendlies.”

  “We flew the UK and US flag all the way, and the survivors would have known who we were.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  He didn’t know where they’d gone. At least twenty thousand survivors went to the Isle of Wight and they couldn’t have all died. In their travels, they’d looked for signs of recent burials, but given bodies were absorbed back to the land within a day, they were unlikely to have buried anyone. Besides, what would they have died of? In the United States, they had the Lake of Life and he assumed the UK would have something similar. Earth was reborn with anything and everything man needed to live an easy life.

  “That’s not the only thing that was missing, Gears. We found no animal life at all. Luckily I packed a lot of MRE’s, but we mostly survived on the plant life.”

  “What? The UK and Isle of Wight are jus’ one big forest with no animals or people?”

  “Not just there. We went across the Channel to France and it was the same there. No people, no animals.”

  Leaning into the table in the meeting room, Gears said in a low growl, “Are you tellin’ me all the survivors we sent to the UK for safety are all dead?”

  He wasn’t sure they were dead, all he knew was they weren’t anywhere he looked. It was possible they’d moved and left the country, or were living further north. His expedition team of sixty men and women had been getting fed up with one another and their limited supplies, but they were committed to finding their fellow survivors. Gears had promised to bring the survivors home once it was safe, and he was determined to fulfil that promise. Many of the survivors who went to the UK were the ones who took the refugees from the UK into their bases, and shared what little they had. The least he could do was to bring them home, and he and the team hadn’t willingly abandoned their miss
ion.

  “We made it to Stonehenge.”

  Stonehenge was the place where Ruler had opened the gates to hell, and the ghosts of the dead and the demons had flooded onto earth. No one had known it, but Stonehenge was built to protect the world from a gateway to the other side. Once Ruler had enough dead souls, he was able to open the fiery portal in the middle of Stonehenge, so there was no more earth and only hell. It seemed their ancestors had tried to keep the gateway closed with an elaborate and impressive temple, but he doubted it ever had any effect, and it was only a superstitious wish that the Devil could be stopped so easily.

  With his eyes narrowing, Gears asked suspiciously, “What did you find that brought you home?”

  “The gateway is burning again.”

  “Whatdaya mean?”

  Before the outbreak, there was nothing in the middle of Stonehenge, but grass. Once Ruler opened the gates to hell, it turned into a fiery hole drilling straight to hell. Pax described the demons and dead streaming out of it, and how they walked as shadowy figures that brought a freezing cold as the only physical evidence of their existence. Once the gates closed, the area in the middle of the stones should have returned to its original peaceful state.

  “It’s on fire,” he replied simply.

  “Whatdaya mean it’s on fire?”

  “The gates to hell are burning and they shouldn’t be.”

  “Did you see any super hunters, demons or ghosts?”

  It had taken them four months to zigzag their way across the UK, and initially they saw nothing, only an endless, empty forest. The UK, so famous for its less than hospitable weather, was sunny and mildly warm every day. In the evenings, they would build a fire more for light than warmth. The days and nights were silent except for the rustling of leaves in the breeze. If it weren’t for the lack of animal life, he would have believed everything was well. As they’d got closer to Stonehenge, they’d all noticed the evenings were getting colder, and decided the further north they were, the colder it was likely to be. He knew they were lying to themselves. These days it didn’t matter whether you were north or south, the weather remained the same.

  “No, we didn’t seeing anything living or dead.”

  “Then what did you see, Phillip?”

  They hadn’t stayed around long enough to explore the little they did see. Beyond Stonehenge, they noticed brown patches of dying forest. Curious, they’d hacked their way to the top of a low hill and climbed a tall oak tree to see above the forest. It hadn’t been easy to make their way to the top of the tree. He remembered standing on a less than sturdy branch, and breaking through the canopy of leaves, finally able to see several miles ahead. The rich, green forest ended about a mile beyond where they were. After that, it was a desolate brown, and further into the distance, he could see billows of smoke where fires were burning out of control. It was as if something was sweeping down from the north, destroying everything in its path, leaving a barren wasteland in its wake.

  “Death,” he replied solemnly. “I saw death coming, Gears.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Gears

  “So, where are we at?”

  “Nowhere good, Gears, ya stuck me with a bunch of boy scouts.”

  “You’ve trained worse, Pax.”

  As the words left his mouth, he wasn’t sure it was true. Living in paradise seemed to have diluted man’s ability to do anything other than live like sheep. Maybe we need war to keep us sharp, he thought, without it we become complacent and lose our competitive streak. Maybe that’s why heaven or hell rarely get to rule, neither sit well with the psyche of man.

  “You don’t get it. They’ve got no goddamn sense. They wander into possible ambushes, whine about carryin’ their gear, refuse to be trained as medics…”

  Interrupting Pax’s seemingly endless flow of complaints, TL said, “I’ve got pretty much all the leaders from the largest towns on their way here.” Patting Ip’s hand, he added, “One look at hell and they knuckled under straightaway.” Elbowing Pax at the picnic table, next to the kitchen container at the Marine supply base, he said, “Maybe Ip can take your troops on one of her tours.”

  Eyeing Ip suspiciously, Pax replied, “I ain’t been on one those tours yet. What’s it like?”

  “We ain’t doin’ that right now, Pax, we gotta work out what we got workin’ and what we gotta work on,” he said sternly.

  “Why do I always get stuck with the crappy jobs? I never get to do anythin’ fun.”

  Giving him a look of disbelief, he said bluntly, “I gave ya a whole goddamn army and all you’ve done is complain about it.”

  “That’s ‘cos it’s not an army, Gears. How the hell am I supposed to motivate ‘em when they don’t need anythin’.”

  “Guess charisma and leadership are outta the question,” TL said dourly.

  “Shaddup, TL, you only managed to get the town leaders ‘cos Ip scared the crap outta them.”

  He suspected that was true, all the leaders were now terrified that hell was on their doorstep, and based on what Phillip had told him, it just might be. Other than TL’s government, nothing was coming together right and he didn’t even want the Council of Eden. He wanted an army, and if what Phillip saw was any indication of what was coming, he was going to need one sooner and not later. Pax had to stop whining and get on with his job.

  “It ain’t good enough, Pax. You need to pull your finger out and get me a goddamn army.”

  “What’s the fuckin’ rush, Gears? We ain’t livin’ in the past here. You can’t just tell me to hurry up and wait, like the army always did.” Scowling, Pax added, “I don’t even work for you. You ain’t the boss of me.”

  “Mutiny? Seriously, Pax?” TL asked with a chuckle.

  They always did what he told them to do unless one of them pulled the ‘brother’ card, and then they did whatever they were asked to do, no matter how ridiculous it was. Ever since they met at Mom and Pop’s Ranch at the age of ten, he was the one who appeared to call the shots. It wasn’t quite how it worked, but TL and Pax were always at opposing ends of the spectrum. Pax would want to take the risky, high impact, least effort path, and TL would want the low key and less dramatic option. As the reasonable and more analytical of the three of them, he would listen to both their arguments and decide which blend of their suggestions would keep them, their troops and the people they were protecting alive.

  “Alright, that’s enough outta both of ya. What’s the real problem here, Pax?”

  “I can’t train ‘em. They don’t wanna learn.” Sighing and twisting his mouth into an unhappy grimace, Pax added, “They got no edge, no fire in their bellies. Life is too easy. They got no fear, no worries and it’s made ‘em not care about anythin’. They’re driftin’ around, ready to move to another town on a whim. They’re directionless and I can’t get ‘em to focus in any direction that means they gotta work hard.”

  Good soldiers needed a combination of steadiness, discipline, independence, teamwork and an ability to take calculated risks. It wasn’t a small ask, and most greenhorns needed their heads banged a few times before they understood the real demands of their chosen profession. ‘Break ‘em down to build ‘em up’ was a motto he and Pax knew well. What Pax was trying to tell him, was that there was no way to break them down. In the army, they owned their asses until their time was up. It meant they could push them to their limits, and they couldn’t leave without a medical certificate, or a dishonorable discharge that might even come with a little military prison time.

  Soldiers who thought they could go home at the end of the day were of no use to him. The military was a lifestyle, not a nine to five job you forgot about the moment you walked out the door. Their last army, the one that had defeated Ruler, were highly motivated by fear. The hunters were killing all life and food was hard to come by. It hadn’t been difficult to attract survivors to their bases, and people angry at losing their loved ones were looking for payback. Time had moved on since then. Obviously, people weren’t
frightened anymore, and whatever revenge they’d wanted had disappeared with the hunters. His problem was he didn’t have an obvious enemy.

  “Yeah, alright,” he replied with a sigh, “I hear ya. Question is, what are we gonna do about it?”

  Shaking his head, TL said, “Wrong question. The real question is, what are we doing here?”

  “We need to be here, that much I know,” he replied steadily. “Ip took Nelson and me to hell, and the kids were bein’ held prisoner sometime in the future, so Max’s vision is right. It is gonna happen, we jus’ dunno when.”

  “What about Ruler? Is he still around?” Pax asked.

  Although Ip showed them the replacement Horsemen being held in cages, he couldn’t prove Ruler was still on earth, or that he was responsible for kidnaping the children. Given where the stadium was, he suspected Cain was going to take the children, but he believed Ruler must be behind it.

  “I dunno, but I don’t think he’s gone.”

  “He’s no problem, you can jus’ call up your Immortal Army from the dirt, and whup his ass like ya did last time,” Pax declared confidently.

  If it were as simple as fighting super hunters controlling hunters, then he knew exactly what to do about that, but he didn’t think it was going to play out that way. There were no hunters for the demon super hunters to control. All he knew was, there was a human army under Cain’s control, and he couldn’t use his Immortal Army to fight man.

  “I can’t use the Immortal Army against man, it wouldn’t make sense. I’d be killing man to save man, and if I have to do that, then man isn’t worthy of life.”

  Giving him a surprised look, Pax replied, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Course ya didn’t. Thinkin’ ain’t your strong suit, Pax.”

  Glaring at him, Pax replied sarcastically, “Oh, thinkin’ ain’t my strong suit, but you think I’m smart enough to build you an army.”