by Angela White
“Major Garret is coming to talk to you.”
Hudson was instantly uneasy. He must think the new people are a real threat, Hudson deduced. Most groups that had come through Little Rock had stayed low and quiet, but this one was the opposite. They had to know they were being followed, but they showed few signs of worry. They might be a harder caliber, and Hudson became glad the Major was on top of things.
“He’s here,” Embry whispered in awed admiration.
Hudson gestured rudely. “Get lost, Em, while we talk.”
Embry spun, sputtering in protest, and the Major supported his XO.
“Get lost.”
Embry flushed at the order and vanished into the lines of snickering, elbowing bounty hunters that made up Garret’s personal guard.
The Major signaled for the lines of men behind him to fall out of sight, and then leaned toward his top explosives man. “Get up to the dam and set a surprise for dawn.”
“We floodin’ this shit-hole?” Hudson asked. He’d wanted to do that when they’d first arrived here.
Garret confirmed it. “Yes. We’ve been here for months. It’s time to finish it and go.”
“But our men–” Hudson stated to protest.
“Have served their time. Give them an honorable discharge. It’s time to roll.”
Garret hated Hudson’s way of rubbing his fat, crooked nose when he was deep in thought and switched attention to something more pleasant–like the blood on Hudson’s army boots.
Hudson understood. The Major never left before he got his man, not once in the twenty years they’d been together. “That’s Mitchel down there! We’re in the homestretch.”
Garret was pleased, but also uneasy at the intelligence. “And that’s why you have my right, Hud. Now, do as I said and do it right, like usual.”
Hudson swelled at the praise and went in a fast trot. Life was good.
The line of hunters taking up perimeter places and lying low around the Major didn’t react to the order. Garret was as apt to kill as to sleep, but they were wired the same. Sympathy and empathy were things the Major’s chosen guards didn’t have.
5
It took a little while for the clerks to fill the order. Conner kept pointing to things, and the clerks kept loading the team up. Only Kenn and Kyle weren’t given a pack, at Adrian’s orders. Those lethal hands needed to be free for protection.
Conner saw the clerk approach Adrian. Cara was glowering despite the nice chunk of profit she and her girls would get from this transaction.
“If you leave him here this time, he will die,” she stated, scales on her wrist glinting in bright warning.
Shorter than the rest, it was still clear that Cara was in charge. Her scales were brighter, almost golden, and her braids were woven around the top of her head in a coil. Her painted face (heavy blue around both eyes and black lipstick) glared out to make her different from her girls. Her markings said, Pay attention, I’m the leader here.
Adrian took the heavy bag without complaint or answer. He had no intentions of leaving the boy again.
Annoyed at the silence and worried for Conner, Cara lowered her voice. “The hunters are coming for him!”
She spun away before Adrian could ask when.
Kenn got a whiff of Cara as she moved away and couldn’t stop the vague interest in her as she walked away. Nice ass. Too bad.
Adrian picked out things the others missed. The females had baskets of dried and drying meat in the corners, telling Adrian they’d been allowed to operate down here for a while. He wondered what they’d used for bartering with Major Garret. They also had weapons, which meant the kids might, as well. Adrian narrowed in on the carpet-layered walls and wondered how many exits were had hidden behind them.
Adrian stared at the clerks, picking up their resentment, but also their concern for his son. Conner had his own army here. Did he know it?
“They won’t fight. Not unless I agree to Cara’s deal,” Conner stated as they waited for the stone door to be opened. “She wants a marriage and to merge the kids into their group. Without telling the Major, of course.”
Conner led them into the darkness without any change of tone. “I’ve considered it, but they kill the males, so I had to tell her no.”
“How long until we get to wherever we’re going?” Kenn asked.
“I’ll handle that,” Adrian directed. “You give our newest friends a surprise.”
Kenn eagerly pulled the black box from his pocket. He powered it on and didn’t hesitate to flip the switch.
Beep!
Kenn held up a hand. “Five...four...”
He curled a finger down with each number he counted. They all braced when his hand was a fist.
Silence...
“They found it, maybe,” Kyle said.
Booooommmmm!
The explosion echoed for miles in the apocalyptic stillness, rattling the ground as it went.
“Boo-ya!” Kenn laughed.
The repercussion hit the tunnels an instant later.
“Come on!” Conner shouted, picking up that fast pace again.
The team followed, hoping the dust would be the only thing to fall on them as the sewer walls groaned from the pressure.
6
“What are those?” Kevin asked when Conner’s pace allowed breathing. “They smell funny.”
The floors were clear of debris and the dead as Conner led them deeper, but it had gained a few inches of murky, reeking water that none of them wanted against their skin. The boy had slowed back down when he was sure the tunnel wasn’t coming down, but none of the team were exactly relaxed as they followed a mere teenager through the nasty gloom.
“Those are Kudzu vines. The city used to spray to keep them from taking over. They grow super-fast anyway, but with all the water and no service crews to cut them, they’ve taken over most of these tunnels,” Conner stated.
The thick plants were twined throughout the sewer tunnel, running along the walls and ceiling like webs.
“Not just underground, though, and not only here,” Adrian informed them. “A lot of cities were fighting Kudzu before the war.”
“It’s mutating,” Angela guessed, peering closer as they came to another intersection, this one choked with the twining vines. “Don’t they usually need sun?”
“I think they have a new energy source,” Conner muttered.
He stepped high over the vines in a goofy way that had Eagles trying not to snicker. He had no idea how funny it looked.
“We’ve found bones down here that aren’t people. It could be from the snakes, I guess, but I haven’t seen a one in about three months. I believe the vines are carnivorous now,” Conner stated matter-of-factly. “I won’t let the kids touch them.”
Adrian and Angela exchanged a horrified glance, and all of the Eagles immediately began to take those higher, funny steps over the vines.
“Are there rats down here?” Angela asked, flashed to her trip under Max and Lenore’s den.
“Yes.” Conner walked faster. “Also, spiders–big ones.”
“Are they mutated, too?”
“Some, but most are on the eastern side, where the water built up and went stagnant. Some of those tunnels would require a canoe. The water’s halfway to the ceiling.”
“What keeps these tunnels from flooding?” Kyle asked.
“They slope upward, towards the dam,” Adrian answered, moving to walk by Conner.
It implied that he knew this city, but when Adrian began asking questions, the rest of his group stayed quiet, searching the damp darkness for trouble.
“Has anyone been up to the dam?”
Conner automatically adjusted his stride to match his father’s. “The adults talked about it at first, but I don’t think anyone actually went to check. I’m sure it’s leaking. The place we swam through filled up after the war.”
“How many ways into where your kids are?”
Clearly stoking Conner’s ego, Adrian l
istened with a trained ear to the son he was overjoyed to have found alive, and an instinctive ear to Angela as she searched.
“A lot. These sewers run all under the city.”
“Is there a cleared way out?”
Conner turned confidently at the next intersection. “Not that we know of. If there had been even a rumor of a way out, the adults would have forced us through to test it. At least then we would have had a purpose to them, a reason to be fed.”
Adrian continued with his details, employing a facade of indifference instead of the fury, the parental rage that could easily obliterate this destroyed city with mental fire. “What about the enemy? Do they come down here?”
“Not much, but when they do, it’s in big numbers. They say they’re a new world militia, but we call them bounty hunters. Or assholes,” Conner muttered.
Adrian could feel Angela wanting to smile, and didn’t interrupt that light mood. He knew how deadly bounty men could be. He would carry that heavy knowledge.
“Is there something I should know?” Angela asked sharply.
Adrian’s lips curled. Apparently, concrete didn’t put a damper on her gifts. “Where are they based?”
“They took over Mansion Hill. Garret stays there, unless there’s a problem his crew can’t handle.”
“Does anyone fight them?”
“Most of our parents fought and lost. There was a rumor that the Junction Bridge had held after the quake, but it was a trap. The parents pushed us into the sewers when the bounty hunters came; hoping that at least a few of us might survive.”
Adrian’s throat stopped working, realizing now where the boy’s mother likely was. He had been hoping she’d survived, too. He hadn’t been in love with Shannon, but he had cared enough about her happiness to give her the son she’d longed for.
“So, the adults down here now are not the parents?” Kyle clarified.
“No. The bastards down here now came after the war, when the Major started clearing out survivors,” Conner replied angrily. “They pushed us further in, after taking what little we had.”
“What type of injuries do your people have?” Adrian asked, manipulative words only a small part of it. He needed to reinforce Conner’s leadership so the boy would get the others to come willingly.
“If I tell you that, you might not take them.”
There was no answer to Conner’s hope, and the group behind them exchanged concerned glances in the gloom.
Conner spun toward Adrian, stopping their convoy. “Say you’ll take them all! Even the three we think will die. Say it!”
“We’ll take them all,” Adrian repeated tonelessly.
“You’re probably lying, but I don’t have another option.” Conner’s shoulders sagged. “What do you need me to do?”
“Ensure cooperation. Are they willing?”
“They are, I’m not,” Conner snorted, not looking up. He hadn’t expected his father to have his own mind reader. He had to be careful. “They made me come out and save you from that trap. They can’t wait to flee this underground hell.”
“You don’t want to go?” Angela asked, surprised. “We offer safety.”
The teenager wore jeans and a long sleeve black shirt under a dark hoodie layered in months of crud. It was like looking at Adrian from a long time ago. Conner was roughly a third of his dad’s weight and about even on Angela’s height. Pale, filthy skin covered hard muscles, and a hood hid the hair they all knew would be like rippling wheat when clean.
“There is no safe place or safe people,” Conner warned, swiping down a wide cobweb that he rubbed down the side of his jeans. “Most of the kids voted for me because I’m the oldest, they don’t know who you are. We’re keeping it that way.”
Conner propelled himself into the darkness with angry steps. “If you had come to her a month later, someone else would have been picked, and I would be dead.”
Silence came as the team began to understand what that meant. Not all of them had realized who Conner was until now.
“How much farther?” Kenn asked, distracting.
“Twenty minutes,” Conner tossed back.
“Wait. We’ve been underground for an hour?”
The males snickered, and Angela frowned at herself as she pulled damp clothes away from irritated skin. I still have a long way to go to be a real soldier.
Not the goal, Adrian sent, keeping a sharp ear on her thoughts for things her inexperienced gaze might miss.
“When we get there, I’ll have to leave you alone for a few minutes, but I won’t be far,” Conner stated, slowing.
“You’ll meet and tell them what you think?”
Conner finally looked at his father, feeling bitter, old. “I’ll tell them you’ve promised to take them all, no matter how sick or flawed.”
Adrian understood if he went back on that, Conner would convince his kids to run from them.
“This is it.”
They came to a dead-end and helped Conner shove a large chunk of the wall to one side, exposing a narrow passage.
“This was an escape route some convicts dug from the prison. Now, it’s our backdoor.”
As they went through, the Eagles verified that the crumbling bricks had indeed been gouged in millions of desperately taken swipes that appeared to have been made with forks, knives, sticks, and fingernails.
The passage was damp, making the floor a slick trail of thick concrete-like mud that filled in their footprints almost as soon as they lifted their feet. Most of the letters on the door they came to were faded, gone, but there were enough left to warn them they’d better have their ids ready.
“When the guards found the bodies of the men who’d been snake bit before they could dig through, they convinced the city council it would make a good stop on a Halloween tour.”
Conner pushed the door open to reveal a small, dingy holding cell that hadn’t been touched by a scrub or a prisoner for years. The toilet was red with rust, the bunk rotted through, and here, the floor was covered with a thicker layer of that reeking sludge.
Conner swiped at the spider webs over the hall cell door before opening it, and they were all impressed as they realized the boy had brought them in a different way than he had come out.
Another lesson he remembered, Adrian thought. Thank you for letting him live!
“Wait here until I call. They’re jumpy.” The rusty door closed behind the boy, taking away some of their light.
Adrian and the team took up positions around the room, and Angela stayed close to the boss. Something didn’t feel right.
“You can come in now,” Conner called from the other side of the door.
Angela frowned, wishing she knew the boy better. As soon as he had disappeared into the other room, her line into his mind had closed.
Adrian went first, using his hands to tell Kenn and Kevin to stay out here and alert.
Kenn watched the team file in through the door, straining to pick up any bits of conversation from the other room. Beside him, Kevin did the same. Both men thought it odd to hear nothing from a room full of kids, but Kenn was instantly uneasy at Adrian being out of sight.
“Good job, son,” a deep voice praised Conner triumphantly. “He had no idea you were lying the entire time. Excellent.”
Thud!
“Rookie lesson R!”
Adrian’s roar meant trouble, and the two Eagles waiting outside followed their training. They spun into the darkness to avoid capture.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A Major Pain
1
“Shoot him.”
Conner hesitated to complete his betrayal, and Garret growled, “Finish it!”
Conner’s thin shoulders slumped. He’d taken a risk, but hadn’t seen a better choice. It was up to his dad now.
He fired the dart and hit Adrian in the neck.
Garret laughed in delight. He hadn’t been sure, either.
Garret gestured to his guard. “Now, dart the son.”
&
nbsp; Conner turned to run, and the dart caught him in the back, took him to the ground almost instantly.
“And now, a bit of fun for me!”
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Garret paused long enough to throw an order now that Adrian’s team had seen him being beaten. “Dart them all.”
The drugs forced Adrian to endure the beating as his men fell around them.
Thud!
“That’s enough, for now,” Garret panted, slinging blood onto the walls.
Adrian sagged, sliding to his knees as the bounty hunter let go of his arms.
Around him, all but Kyle and Angela were down. Only Kyle holding her back was delaying their turn. Around them, were three dozen bounty hunters dressed in long coats and hatred.
“Nice to see you again, Mitchel.”
The bitter man standing before Adrian was the same one Angela had seen in his mind, but with years of hatred layered on. The green eyes and brown spiky hair were still sexy, and the body was incredibly defined under the dusty coat, but the demeanor was schizophrenic and extremely unstable.
Angela hated their captors on sight. Unlike Cesar’s vendetta, which could almost be understood, these were Americans, and she was once again sickened by her fellow man. Before the war, Angela had been one of the few who had believed things would be so ugly. Her time with Kenn had shown her the hard side of human nature, but she’d never expected the aftermath to be this bad. She had even hoped for groups of traveling aid convoys back in the beginning, but there was only this setup, time after time. Evil reared its head, and she and Adrian destroyed it. That would be their life’s work.
“And what do we have here?” Garret asked cheerfully, turning his attention to the remaining Eagles. “A female. Not smart, Mitchel.”
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll hurt you,” Angela warned furiously.
Keeping her behind his body, Kyle gave her a rough nudge. “Be careful! Rape is the least of your worries with someone like that.”
Angela closed her eyes as tears of rage welled. I’m going to kill them all, Kyle, but I need strength.
On your mark, Kyle approved.
Angela began to draw power, and Kyle jerked, distracted by the powerful sensation.
