Omen Operation

by Taylor Brooke

  “So, the laptop is no good either? No internet, no files, nothing?” Rayce asked.

  Julian nodded. “She ran a full wipe on both. The laptop just has a few family photos and a spreadsheet, but there’s no data.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “Yeah, the document itself was labeled ECHO.”

  Porter inhaled a sharp breath, and his jaw clenched.

  Dawson was nodding, thinking to himself while he rubbed his hand up over his mouth. His forehead creased, foot tapped against the floor.

  “You’re with us?” he asked.

  “All the way,” Rayce answered, holding his hand out for Dawson to clasp tightly.

  All Brooklyn could think about was the outside. The world beyond the arms of their little forest and the trees that had kept them secluded. She thought of her parents, of her friends. She wondered if they would recognize her now, if they would remember the girl who left.

  “Amber—” Dawson brushed past Stephanie, whose lips hung open in silent offense “—go raid Cabin D. Fill a bag with medical supplies. Take as much as you can.”

  A girl with cropped black hair nodded.

  “Gabriel—” he looked over his shoulder “—can you help Brooklyn get dressed and finish packing our cabin?”

  Gabriel nodded. She slipped her hand into Brooklyn’s, where their fingers interlaced.

  “What can we do?” Porter asked.

  “Find the keys to the bus and the car while Rayce and I get the guns.”

  “Whoa, you aren’t taking guns!” Stephanie shouted.

  Dawson’s lips pulled up into a smug grin. “Yes, we are. Actually.”

  “I’ll…” Stephanie huffed and puffed with wide eyes as she searched her surroundings. The redhead grunted and she dove to snatch up Terry’s gun. “I’ll stop you! Those guns are staying, and so are all of you because someone is going to come relocate us!”

  Dawson tilted his head to the side, analyzing the gun trembling in Stephanie’s hands.

  Before he could open his mouth to say anything, Stephanie’s back was slammed against the near wall, and the gun was once again clattering on the ground. Gabriel kicked it away, her hand wrapped tight around Stephanie’s throat. She squeezed hard, lips pulled back into a snarl.

  Stephanie choked and kicked her feet while blood rushed to her face.

  “Point a gun at him again,” Gabriel seethed, “and you’ll wake up without the use of your legs.”

  Stephanie gagged and choked. Gabriel let her go. Stephanie’s thin body slumped into a heap.

  “I could’ve handled it, ya know?” Dawson said playfully as Gabriel returned to Brooklyn’s side.

  “Or you could just say thank you,” she quipped as her lips spread up into a smile.

  Dawson rolled his eyes and stepped over Stephanie’s legs to look outside at the rest of their peers.

  “For those of you who want to come with us, get your things. We leave in an hour.” He looked back at Stephanie, who smacked away the tears trailing over her cheeks. “For those of you who don’t want to come with us, stay out of the way.”

  They dispersed.

  Dawson and Rayce jogged toward the weapons shed. Amber gathered a couple of people to get the medical supplies. Porter stayed with Julian to look for the keys, and Gabriel guided Brooklyn back to the cabin.

  ***

  When everyone was ready, they met in front of the long white bus with black windows. It’d been parked behind Terry’s cabin since the very beginning. A way out in case they needed to evacuate, in case there was a breach.

  Brooklyn stood on her tiptoes so she could look around the other side of the cabin, where a tough-looking four door black truck slept in the grass. That was theirs.

  “We’ll follow behind you. Keep your walkie on, yeah? Our best bet is communication at this point.” Rayce slid his half of the pair of walkie-talkies they’d found onto his belt.

  Dawson nodded. “You guys have enough food and water in there?”

  “We’ll be good,” Amber said from her place beside Rayce.

  Brooklyn watched the small group disappear into the bus and listened to it roar to life.

  Gabriel had to physically pull Brooklyn to get her to move—every hair on her body stood on end.

  They were leaving.

  Brooklyn’s face crinkled into a grimace when she lifted herself into the back seat of the truck. Her hip ached, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins made it easy to ignore. Excitement. Terror. Curiosity. It was hard to focus. It was hard to breathe.

  The vibration of the truck made her sink further into her seat.

  Porter rode in the front while Dawson drove.

  No one said anything. No words of encouragement. No late protests.

  The back seat was spacious. Brooklyn glanced over her shoulder and looked out the window. Julian sat on one side and Gabriel on the other.

  They turned the corner down the long dirt road toward whatever paved highway was waiting for them. The camp disappeared into the darkness, and the trees swallowed the image of it whole.

  Chapter Six

  A dark wooden sign sat on the base of light grey boulders at the end of the dirt road. Letters curved and swirled in an inviting display, white and vibrant against the darkness.

  “Mt. Hood National Forest.” Dawson leaned over the steering wheel as he read off the name.

  “Oregon,” Julian said. “We’ve been in Oregon.”

  “We need to head north, then,” Dawson said.

  The wheels gripped the asphalt. That sound—the crunch of thick rubber smashing pebbles into concrete—it was so strange to hear again.

  “It’s almost morning; it’ll take us until noon to get there.” Brooklyn yawned.

  Porter glanced in the rearview mirror, catching Brooklyn’s eye. “I’ll need to change out your bandages in a few hours. Let me know if it starts to itch or if you feel any sharp pain.”

  Brooklyn looked down at her stomach and wrinkled her nose, annoyed by the tiny circle of red in the middle of the thick white bandage. She found his eyes reflecting back at her again in the mirror.

  “It seems okay, just sore,” she said.

  Porter nodded, leaning his head back against the seat. “Lemme know when you get tired so we can switch,” he said to Dawson.

  Brooklyn watched Dawson’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror as the bright blink of the bus’s headlights appeared behind them.

  Rayce’s scratchy voice came over the speaker of the walkie-talkie on the dash. “A couple hundred miles to go?”

  Dawson pressed his thumb down on the green button and said, “We’ll be there in half a day.”

  The road was wide and dark with the exception of the lights that cast a dim glow on the traffic barriers.

  Julian stretched his arm over Brooklyn’s seat, and Brooklyn leaned into the warmth of his chest. He laid his chin on the top of her head while Gabriel shifted so that Brooklyn’s legs were draped over her lap. Long fingertips danced lazily over Brooklyn’s shins until Gabriel reached out and grabbed Brooklyn’s hand.

  It was easier to fall asleep than she imagined.

  ***

  Brooklyn woke to the sound of Gabriel’s loud laugh and the tap of her nails against the window.

  “Apparently people are still driving to and from work,” Gabriel said.

  Brooklyn’s eyelids pulled apart, and she hissed at the overwhelming brightness from the sun. It was hidden behind a sheet of thin grey mist that only helped amplify the morning light.

  Gabriel was right, though. People were driving next to them on the freeway. A woman was eating an apple while she drove to their left, and a man with an SUV full of kids sipped a cup of coffee on the right.

  Normalcy.

  Blatant, surreal normalcy.

  “We’re coming up on Portland,” Dawson said. “We’ll make a stop there, eat something, try to get some cash for gas, and then keep going.”

  Brooklyn pawed at her eyes with the ba
ck of her hand.

  Julian shifted underneath Brooklyn. “You’re all soft and warm like a kitten,” he cooed playfully.

  Brooklyn smirked and sat up. She rolled her neck from side to side and flexed her torso until a sudden prang of pain reminded her that she’d been shot less than five hours ago.

  Gabriel kicked her bare foot across Brooklyn’s knee and let it rest on the center console while she busied herself with the magazine that belonged to their late camp supervisor. That damn magazine was the start of it all.

  “You brought that?” Brooklyn snorted, eyebrows pulled together as she leaned over to try to get a look at what Gabriel was reading.

  “Yeah, I figure if we’re going home soon, I should probably catch up on the latest trends.” Gabriel’s voice was stale and deflated.

  Brooklyn pulled at the edge of the page she was reading. It was about nail polish, what colors to wear with what outfits, and the statements they would make. Nothing about it was important to Brooklyn, not that she didn’t enjoy her fair share of beauty products—she most certainly did—but keeping up with the trends and the ins and outs of fashion was exhausting.

  “That’s pretty,” Brooklyn murmured. She pointed at a nail polish ad featuring a beautifully airbrushed model caught mid-laugh with her hand covering her mouth.

  Gabriel shook her head. “Canary yellow? Looks more like a cry for help if you ask me.”

  She smiled at Brooklyn, and they pushed their shoulders together to share the magazine. It was the sliver of a tiny materialistic portal out of the camp and into whatever the real world was. The cars that whizzed beside them, the signs they continuously left behind as they drove through town after town, all of it was so foreign. The high-gloss, mass-produced, cosmopolitan beauty bible had been their lure. Now they were on their way to find answers to questions they didn’t even know how to ask. It was nerve-racking.

  “Everything seems normal,” Julian said as he looked out the window.

  He was right. Everything did seem so surreally normal.

  “It could just be a clean area,” Brooklyn offered. “I mean, there was no cure for the virus, but they said they had it contained. I don’t know how…exactly, but this could be one of the better areas. Maybe Oregon didn’t get hit so badly.”

  “Did they ever end up giving that shit a name? I’ve been calling whatever it was ‘the virus’ for way too long now,” Julian said, emphasizing with air quotes.

  “Mutation of rabies,” Gabriel mumbled, licking her index finger so she could turn the page of the magazine. “Apparently an infected possum bit a woman at an animal clinic who had been recently vaccinated with the yearly flu shot. She started seizing, foaming at the mouth, the works. When they got her to the hospital she’d already spread it to the EMT’s and one of her coworkers.”

  “We all know that story,” Dawson said.

  Brooklyn looked down at her lap.

  “Anyways, I don’t know its name. I don’t call it anything,” Gabriel added.

  Gabriel was good at a lot of things. She was good at gymnastics, hand-to-hand combat, beauty rituals, and she was a master of deflection. If there was something she could ignore, something unpleasant that she could pretend wasn’t there—then by god whatever it was wouldn’t have a place in her world.

  The virus was one of those things she washed away. She covered the stain of it with something expensive. The spritz off a black bottle of Chanel perfume usually did the trick or even the wet smack of her lips after she coated them thoroughly with red lipstick.

  Brooklyn followed in her footsteps because giving it name was like inflating it with power. Giving it a name gave it purpose. Whatever that virus was and whatever it did to people, it had no place in their world. There was no room for its name.

  The road swooped down. Brooklyn saw vines crawling up the bricks on the barriers lining the freeway. The bridges overhead were decorated with old graffiti. Deep green leaves sprouted from the cracks in the cement.

  Portland emerged all at once. The sudden view of tall buildings made Brooklyn lean over the center console so that she could stare into the vastness of concrete and earth. Trees still loomed overhead; they shared the space with apartment buildings and stacked parking structures. It was a city hidden in the sanctuary of deep forest and constant rain, a metropolis inside a snow globe full of ferns.

  “Wow,” Brooklyn whispered.

  Porter’s knuckles brushed against her hand. “Yeah, everyone says this is where young people go to retire.”

  “I can see why.”

  People on scooters whizzed by, followed by bicycles and joggers paired with canine companions.

  Dawson parked in the Rose Quarter, a bridge away from the meat of the city in an empty parking lot behind a grocery store.

  The white bus pulled up behind them. Dante stepped out followed by Amber and the rest of the larger group.

  Julian and Gabriel exited on either side of the truck. Brooklyn was slow, scooting herself toward the edge of her seat so her feet would dangle out of the open door.

  “C’mon, let’s take a look,” Porter said.

  He adjusted his glasses. Brooklyn felt her cheeks heat when he stepped in between her legs and poked her chest. “Lie down.”

  “Bossy,” Brooklyn laughed around the word.

  He hummed in response. She just barely caught the glimpse of a crooked smirk before he took off his gloves and reached for the zipper on her jacket.

  She swatted him away. “I can undress myself, thank you.”

  Porter’s mouth turned upwards into a grin. Brooklyn prided herself with the ability to make him blush.

  He held his hands up so she could see his palms and arched a brow. “Go for it. I’ll watch.”

  They laughed like they were free for the first time in two years. Brooklyn giggled like she was actually twenty-one, young and ready for a life that didn’t include being taught how to shoot a gun or throw a knife properly. Porter covered his wide smile with his hand and shook his head. He didn’t look like a doctor, but his hands felt like they could heal, and his laughter felt a little healing too.

  She pulled the black jacket aside after unzipping it and lifted the thin tan shirt up so he could get to the bandage.

  He was gentle, and it helped, even when he pressed his fingers down on the edge of the sewn-up hole. “Tell me when it starts to hurt.”

  He walked the tips of his fingers in until they brushed against the stitches.

  Brooklyn hissed, “There, ow. Yep, right there.”

  “Hold on, I’m gonna grab some alcohol swabs and Neosporin.”

  She heard chatting between the two vehicles. Rayce’s deep voice was easy to pick out, followed by Gabriel’s sultry charm.

  “What’re they talking about?” Brooklyn asked when Porter walked back over.

  “Gabriel wants to go in the city to look around. Dawson thinks we should try to get some money from the gas station across the street. Rayce is hungry. Amber has to pee.”

  “Oh, thrilling…cold, cold! Cold hands, damn!” She squirmed when the wet swab licked around the stitches and his icy fingertips rested on her stomach again.

  “Sorry,” Porter said. “You’re healing fast though, really fast.”

  “I’ve always been that way.” She shrugged, sitting up on her elbows as he dabbed the jelly antiseptic over the wound and covered it with a fresh piece of gauze. “My parents just said I have a high immune system.”

  Porter taped her up and stepped back so she could slide out of the truck.

  “Thank you for taking care of all this.” Brooklyn gestured in a circle to her hip as she zipped her jacket back up.

  “Anytime.”

  She thought she felt his hand on her lower back, but it vanished when he stepped away and walked toward the rest of the group huddled beside the bus. Gabriel had her arms folded across her chest and frowned.

  “Everything is fine! We can just go into the city for an hour, look around, ask some questions, and then
we can go. I don’t know what the big deal is.” Gabriel tapped her foot.

  “We’ve been held hostage in a camp for two years without the ability to contact anyone. That’s the big deal,” Dawson said.

  Gabriel rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t we be immersing ourselves? Shouldn’t we be trying to blend in?”

  “Terry said something to me,” Brooklyn interrupted. “She said ‘they’ll find you.’”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Rayce asked.

  “I don’t know, but she seemed pretty confident they would come looking for us.” Brooklyn leaned against the door of the bus. “I think Gabriel might be right. We can at least get a feel for what’s been going on.”

  “We shouldn’t split up,” Porter said.

  “We can kill two birds with one stone if we do, though.”

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea, Brooklyn.”

  “I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” Gabriel chimed in.

  “Fine,” Dawson sighed loudly, “what do you think, Rayce?”

  “I think your girls got a point…”

  “I’m no one’s girl,” Gabriel snapped.

  Rayce pursed his lips. “Sorry. She…” he pointed at Gabriel “—has a point.”

  Concentration boiled over Dawson’s features as he stared at the ground. “Fine. Go.” He said quietly. “Do not make any phone calls; do not tell anyone your name. Rayce and the rest of us will stay here and try to get some money. Be back in two hours.” He held up two fingers, asserting the words again. “Two. Hours.”

  Gabriel bounced on her feet and turned toward Brooklyn, a toothy grin stretched between her dimples.

  Porter’s gaze stayed glued to the concrete, fists clenched at his side.

  They grabbed a few things. Julian carried a backpack, and Porter pulled a beanie on.

  Dawson snatched Gabriel’s arm before they left and pulled her aside while Brooklyn re-laced her boots.

  “Be careful,” he said tenderly.

  Mossy eyes sparked, and she smirked. “You worried about me?”