Conflict (Cascade Book 4)

by Phil Maxey

  “The cold. Many of them are warm blooded. It must be minus five outside. They don’t care about a few strange lights passing them by, at least not enough to expend energy on,” said Cal. Zach and Michael exchanged the briefest of glances. It was an answer that made both of them uncomfortable in it’s level of knowledge.

  Bass’s voice came on the radio informing them to take the next left turn, then right then left again. The convoys headlights caught windows of single story homes.

  “Doesn’t look like the owners planned on coming on back,” said Michael looking at the houses with open front doors.

  Cal looked in the same direction to Michael. “That, or E.L.F’s got inside.”

  “Just stay alert,” replied Zach, who then raised his radio. “How far are we from the signal, Bass. Over.”

  “A few hundred yards up this road. Over.”

  The convoy trundled along, slowing when it got to a junction that stretched, left and right of them.

  Bass’s voice came through once again. “Signals coming from the opposite side of this property in front of us, looks like it’s in the woods at the back. Over.”

  “Lets take the left track, looks wider. Over.”

  A few moments later, they stopped behind a large wooden single story property to their right, and woods which fell sharply away from the road on their left.

  “Signals coming from down the slope to our left. Over.”

  Zach looked at the plunging tree line just a few yards from them and sighed. Yeah it would be down there.

  Cal sat slightly forward, but without looking in Zach’s direction. “Zach?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re not alone.”

  “Which direction?”

  Cal closed his eyes, he found this helped sometimes. “Mmm…maybe behind us, about eight o’clock,” he then paused, and his brow tightened. “There’s something…something different, about what I’m sensing.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Cal nodded his head. “I can’t tell, just that there’s an E.L.F behind us, not too far off, maybe few hundred yards.”

  “Bass, we might have E.L.F’s on our tail, maybe eight o’clock, keep the big gun in that direction. I’m going with Cal and Michael to check out the state of the drone. Over.”

  Before Zach finished the tanks turret slowly rotated around to face behind them.

  The secure door at the back of the tank opened, and Bass emerged, his breath quickly creating a pool of mist around him. Zach, Cal and Michael got out of the Humvee and joined him.

  Bass held a small black device with a large protruding aerial and mini LCD display. “It’s thirty yards away,” he pointed to their left. “In that direction, shouldn’t be hard to spot, even now.”

  “In anything comes out of these woods, open up on it, but save the ammo unless it’s a real threat. I’ll let you know the condition of the drone, whether its a lost cause.” Zach and the two others, then walked to the partially collapsed wooden fence, and looked down into a sea of darkness. Cal stepped over the splinted wood first, then pulled his night sight goggles down over his face, Zach and Michael did the same.

  Cal slipped a little before regaining his footing. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he spread both of his hands out to his side and slid down the steep embankment. His gloves caught leaves, sticks and ice but managed to keep his fingers protected until the ground evened out, and he could stand upright. He then looked behind him and Zach and Michael were both there anxiously looking all around.

  Zach pointed keeping his voice low. “Just over there.”

  Just as they were about to move off, Bass’s voice came from Zach’s radio. “We got some kind of movement up here, maybe a hundred yards away from the west. Can’t tell what it is in this darkness, but there’s something down there.”

  Zach went to reply when the sound of gun fire split open the silence of the forest. They all crouched down instinctively.

  “Bass, what’s happening? Over.”

  “We’re being shot at! Over.”

  Even in the weird green glow of the night-scopes their faces were expressions of confusion.

  “Bass, who’s shooting? Over.”

  A second layer of gunfire opened, and a third, it sounded like a war was being fought just a few yards above them.

  Cal went to climb back up the slope, but Zach grabbed his arm. “No, whoever shooting probably doesn’t know we’re down here, we’ll follow the track through the forest see if we can come at them from the side.”

  Cal and Michael nodded, and they all set off, running as fast as they could, while trying to stop from falling on the uneven ground.

  Zach tried Bass gain. “What’s the situation? Bass. Over.”

  “Second Humvee is shot up. One of our people has got minor injuries. Looks like they have taken casualties. We’re moving down towards them now, where about are you? Over.”

  “We’re coming at them from the side, your north, don’t shoot as we come out of the woods. Over.”

  Zach, Cal and Michael crept up the embankment. It wasn’t long before they could hear voices.

  “He never told us they would have a tank! How the fuck are we meant to capture him? when they got that!”

  An older voice then spoke. “Harry’s dead, took one straight in the chest, Grady’s probably a gonna as well, we gotta back the hell out of this shit storm.”

  “Geneva’s not going to be happy.”

  “Yeah, well that’s on Tinley. We need to go now!”

  Just as the two men were about to leave their position behind the torn up wreck of what was a red pickup, Zach, Micheal and Cal appeared from the tree line with their guns raised.

  The younger bearded man, went to raise his own gun, but the older man put his hand on the barrel, pushing it downwards. A man in his thirties, lay dead on the ground, his body laying across the curb, to his side a man in his forties, with a scarf around his neck, lay mortally wounded, breathing heavily.

  The older man spoke first. “Okay you got us, we surrender.”

  Michael ran towards him. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “We live around here, we thought you came to steal out shit.”

  Zach frowned, as Cal walked past the two surrendering men, instead kneeling down next to the man with the scarf.

  Zach joined him. “What is it?”

  “He’s…”

  “He’s what?”

  “It’s him, he’s the E.L.F I sensed.”

  Before Zach could reply, some motorbikes started up in the distance, Michael, Bass and other soldiers went to move off in that direction, before Zach put his hand up. “Let them go, we can’t chance walking into another trap, and I don’t want to hang around here for too long incase we attract unwanted attention from E.L.F’s.”

  Michael stepped closing to the man with the scarf. “He doesn’t look like a monster.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s like me.”

  “Wait. What? You can sense Cascaders? I didn’t know you could do that.”

  Cal stood up. “Nor did I. I couldn’t before, at least I don’t think I could.”

  “There’s nothing we can do for him. Cal, Michael, take these two back to our vehicles, make sure they are well secured,” said Zach.

  Cal walked backwards for a few steps keeping his gaze on the dying man, before turning, grabbing the two others and walking them back to the Humvee’s with Michael. Zach watched Cal walk away.

  Bass noticed Zach’s focused attention on Cal. “Anything I should be concerned about?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we have a way of tracking Abbey.”

  CHAPTER 11

  By the time Abbey laid the last steel beam across the pile of rusting machine parts, bricks and planks of wood near the door, she was so tired she couldn’t think straight. She took one last look at the job that had taken her the past few hours, smiled and then receded into a corner with a pipe in her hand
for company. The next thing she knew someone was banging at the door which was thoroughly barricaded shut.

  “Open the damn door!” the gruff voice from yesterday was followed by a impact on the door, which barely made the pile Abbey had erected move an inch.

  She scampered to her feet, blinking, then leant back down and grabbed the pipe.

  The door was slammed once more, again the pile of heavy items from the world before, didn’t budge. Abbey almost wanted to laugh, and then released she needed to be thinking of another way out before they came back with something that would blast the barricade out of the way. She ran to the window, and stopped her mouth agape.

  “Where…”

  Glinting in the morning sun were broken glass windows stretching high into the clear morning sky, the kind you only find on buildings in a large city. It was a place she partially knew from a trip she took as a child, the city of Atlanta.

  But how? From her calculations they could have only been three or so hours from the camp, which would have taken them to perhaps the eastern edge of Texas, but this wasn’t Texas, it was Georgia. She was sure she had only been unconscious for a few hours, but maybe it had been more? She shook her head in discussion with herself. Flown here? It still made no sense how Tinley had been so well prepared considering he lost all of his fighting force when he was captured in Roswell.

  She then realised the attack on the door behind the barricade had grown quiet, which worried her more than discovering where she was. She looked closer to the window, but they were not made to open more than a few inches, she would have to smash them, but then what? Peering downwards, there was nothing but a sheer drop to the sidewalk below, and she couldn’t see any pipes to cling onto outside. Climbing down wasn’t an option from here. She went to run back to the office she first woke up in, when the sound of boots, along with something that was being dragged drifted through what gaps there were in the door, followed by a voice she hated.

  “Abbey, Abbey, I was eating my breakfast, when Emmet breaks my time alone, all sweating and agitated, saying that you have put a barricade up behind this door. But I told him, that can’t be true, because if it were. If I were to try to open this door now, and I found I couldn’t, then that would mean I would have to kill this beautiful Hispanic woman, I have bound and gagged just behind me. Anyway, I’m going to go and finish my breakfast, and then I’m going to come back and open this door. I’ll be back real soon.”

  Abbey swallowed best she could with what little moisture she had left in her throat. If I remove the things from the door, he’s going to be able to get to me, him and the others. The thought made her shudder and feel sick. But that poor woman, he will kill her, it will be my fault! She dropped the pipe and started frantically pulling away the only wall between her and the serial killer.

  * * * * *

  Zach emerged from the back of the smart single story residence. The sun had been up for an hour and most of the convoy personnel were sleeping. He wanted intel from the two men they captured, and he wasn’t resting until he had it.

  He opened the screen door that led to the garden, and picked up some ice that was covering what was left of the former residents lawn, and rubbed it over his hands. Blood and other organic matter ran with the melting ice to the ground, and Zach took a deep breath. He had learned that Abbey was taken by air west to Atlanta.

  It was all planned, I was a fool for thinking we had him. He was in a prison again, one that Tinley had carefully crafted for him. He could feel panic deep down in his mind wanting to rise up and overwhelm him, but he knew if it did, he would never see her again. A noise made him turn around. It was Fiona with a blanket over her and a mug of something which was quickly evaporating in the morning air.

  “Thought you might want some coffee.”

  Zach forced a smile and took the mug. It’s heat stung some of the flayed flesh on his knuckles.

  Fiona looked at his hands. “Did you get what you needed? Do we know where they took her?”

  “Atlanta,” Fiona went to say something but Zach continued. “But they don’t know if it was by plane of chopper.”

  “Fuck.”

  They both sat on some leaf covered garden chairs. “What’s the plan?”

  Zach sipped on his coffee, then looked at her. “Did Cal say anything about what happened last night?”

  “No, when we made it back to this place, he was pretty tired…why?”

  Zach wasn’t sure how to continue. Explaining would mean perhaps two secrets would be out in the open, but he needed to tell someone. “When we approached the drone, Cal felt the presence of an E.L.F behind us somewhere…”

  “Okay. He can do that. Why’s that surprising?”

  Zach glanced at her, then looked away. “The E.L.F turned out to be one of the gang members we killed.”

  Fiona’s expression changed to one of confusion. “What? He can track,” she hated the expression ‘Cascaders’. “Others effected by the Cascade?”

  “It seems like he can.”

  She looked away from Zach to the ice covered lawn. “I see, he never told me.”

  “I don’t think he knew until last night.”

  Fiona just nodded, she was beginning to get a grasp on the changes the man she loved had gone through, but it seemed the Cascade wasn’t done with him.

  “There’s something else. This ability that Cal now has, it might be useful to us,” Fiona looked at Zach, unsure of what he could mean. “Abbey’s like Cal.”

  “Like Cal how?” just as she finished her words, her face changed to one of realisation. “Oh. She never said anything to us.”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “What?” Fiona’s words came out with more force than she intended. “I mean, how does she not know? Did it just happen?”

  Zach looked down guiltily. “Trow told me in Roswell, but I didn’t have the strength to tell her, I just…I couldn’t deal with anything else coming between us. So I waited for the right time to tell her. That time was going to be yesterday, but we know what happened.”

  Fiona took a deep breath. “And you think Cal can sense her somehow? But she’s a long way away Zach.”

  “Maybe, I don’t know how any of this works, maybe when we get closer to Atlanta he will feel something, like he did last night, it might give us an advantage. But can you keep this between you, me and Cal? And.. Raj.”

  “He knows?”

  “He knew about Abbey, but I don’t think he knew about Cal’s new ability. Anyway maybe he can help Cal use it, refine it somehow.”

  Fiona fought the tinge of anger she felt welling inside her. “I don’t know if I trust Raj. I’m not sure how he see’s those that have been changed.”

  “Right now, he knows more about what’s happening to the people we care about than we do.”

  Fiona sighed and nodded in agreement.

  CHAPTER 12

  Zach sat in the Humvee passengers seat exhausted. He had snatched an hours sleep while the others were waking, but the only effect it had was to make him feel even more detached from the world around him. The plan was to get some sleep on the road.

  He clicked on the radio. “Bass we are ready. Over.”

  “Good thing the other Humvee just needed a change of tire,” said Fiona in the drivers seat, looking down at a page showing a map of eastern Texas.

  “Good thing we had Gregg’s here to patch it up,” said Zach. In his mind flashes of Rob struggling with the wheel of the yellow bus entered and then were immediately pushed away. “Having second thoughts about the route?”

  Fiona continued looking down. “No, just getting it clear in my head. Two days and we should be in Atlanta. The good news it’s it’s a pretty straight run, although we might have to detour around Jackson and Birmingham depending upon the E.L.F levels in those areas,” she looked to her left at the remains of the drone they salvaged from the branches of trees the night before. “Guess it needed to be done.”

  “Destroying the drone?” rep
lied Zach.

  “Yeah.”

  “Once it was obvious it’s flying days were over, it needed to be turned into junk. Couldn’t let anyone else get their hands on it, and we don’t have the room to take it with us.”

  “Would have been real useful.”

  The tanks engine at the front roared and the tracks began to turn, propelling the solid looking vehicle forward with a jolt.

  Fiona nodded to the vehicle in front of her. “Least we have that, more than what we had to and back from Portland,” she turned to Zach, who gave a sleepy smile in return.

  The convoy moved over the lawn in front of the house, and rejoined the road. Within a few minutes they were back on the highway they had originally entered the town of Catacomb on. The blue patches of sky above them were being replaced with gray clouds and icy rain begun to fall.

  Fiona looked over to Zach to say something, but his helmet was tiled back, and he was asleep.

  “Looks like he’s having better luck sleeping in that helmet than I do,” said Raj.

  “You get used to it,” replied Fiona.

  Raj cleared his throat, before looking at Cal who was sitting next to him. “So you sensed the other Cascade effected individual, last night?”

  Cal shifted uneasily. “I think so.”

  “First time that’s happened?”

  “Yes,” Cal continued, answering while looking out the side window.

  “I understand what’s happened to you must be…traumatic, but you’re not alone, there are others, and maybe now you could help us find them.”

  “So you can separate them out?” said Fiona to Raj, trying not to make the question sound like an accusation.

  “If you’re referring to the postponed vote, that’s above my pay-grade. I’m just a scientist, and Cal has unique abilities that could help us all survive,” Raj emphasized ‘all’.

  “I hope the council feel the same when they take that vote.”