25
They moved as fast as they could—as fast as they dared. The night began taking on hallucinogenic qualities, creating living nightmares of pain, exhaustion, and terror. Sara stumbled along, her wounded arm dangling uselessly at her side most of the time. Parker hadn’t secured it with a cravat sling because she’d need it to fire her pistol if they were caught by surprise. Finn lay quietly, soaking the stretcher with blood.
Parker led the way, attempting to pick his way around patches of Coyote quicksand, deeper pools of water, and tangled brush. They were leaving a trail a blind man could follow, even at night. One of Parker’s boots had filled with blood from his hip wound, as well, but the pain was a dull, distant ache that made him fear he was sliding into shock.
Despite how light Finn was, and their broken, exhausted states, they continued stumbling across the dark terrain lit only by what they could see of the moonlight and stars since they didn’t dare use headlamps. Sara began staggering as she fought to remain upright. They crossed a stream and came up out of the bottomland.
“We have to rest,” Ava called out. “We all need water.”
“Top of the hill,” Parker said. “Where we have elevation.”
Pushing up the trail into a narrow cannon clogged with cheatgrass and elderberry bushes, they fought to make the short climb. Exhausted with the effort of it, they sank into the grass behind a little stand of willows. In the distance, Parker could see the road connecting the cabin to the highway below them on the other side of the bluff. He didn’t see any headlights.
Looking in the direction of the cabin, Parker could see plumes of black smoke rising in the distance, and he said a silent goodbye to the cabin he’d worked so hard to stock. The part of him that had become so barbarous in the last week wished that Spencer had been among those soldiers he assumed were caught in the fire. After everything that had happened at Stapleton Mall and then the TV station, how was it he was here? Now?
He drank some water and then bent over Finn. There were less trees here, and the moonlight revealed more than it had in the hardwood swamp by the river. Her eyes were open, but could only track if he leaned in very close. With the Ketamine, her pupils were shiny now, and she seemed to be floating on a pillow of painkillers and blood loss.
Parker adjusted her dressings where they’d come loose. When he looked up again, Ava was staring at him, a silent question on her face. He shook his head and Ava settled down next to her friend to cradle Finn’s head in her lap. She stroked her hair, tears running down her face unchecked now.
Sara didn’t seem to know what to do. She hadn’t been close to Finn like the others, but they’d shared desperate danger together—the sort of thing that forms lasting bonds. Stopped here, she’d come stand next to Parker for a moment and then walk away, unable to look any longer.
“I need to talk to Finn,” Ava said quietly. “Alone.”
Parker, who’d long suspected Finn’s feelings for Ava, and knew Ava almost certainly had also, nodded. As he rose, Ava, still quietly crying, continued stroking Finn’s hair. He’d already ceased to exist for the two of them entangled in this goodbye. He walked over to where Sara watched the road below them.
Sara didn’t turn as he came up, simply continuing to stare out into the middle distance. She hugged the arm of her wounded shoulder to her, and the breeze played with her hair a little. Her profile looked so much like her mother’s that it made Parker’s chest hurt.
“You need to let me wrap that arm now that we have time,” he said.
She nodded, but didn’t move. “We’re not going to be able to save them, are we?”
“We’re walking wounded,” he said. “And Finn…” he trailed off.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“We let your mother try and repay us,” he said. “We try and make for this train she spoke about. If that doesn’t work, we go to Lake Michigan, then Canada. After that last battle, they’ll never stop looking for Ava and me. Probably only the fact that the Council has such limited access to aircraft, even with their planning, has saved us to this point.”
“I want to go to the Vineyard,” she said. “We might be able to beat the Council there.”
“Sara,” he said, “the Council obviously knows their person on the inside is gone. They know their operation is done for, and they’ll move in. They’ll probably have already taken down the place. We need to pick our battles at this point because that force that showed up at the cabin didn’t exactly ask about your well-being before they opened fire and sure didn’t give a damn when they knew you were there. I hate to say this but maybe they were cleaning house and you got swept up in it.”
Sara didn’t answer, but she lowered herself to the ground when Parker opened his kit. Silently, he checked her wound, cleaned it again, and then redid the dressings. This time, he added a sling to take the weight off her arm.
“I’m tired,” she said. “The idea of us going to the Vineyard got me this far, but…” she trailed off, not bothering to qualify her last statement.
“We can’t hide,” he said. “We can only run. We have to find the most brutal terrain possible and cut through it, staying as far away from population centers as we can. We’re better outfitted than we’ve ever been, but we don’t have the luxury of time.”
“We’re just waiting for her to die, aren’t we?” Sara asked.
Parker didn’t answer. Instead, he packed up his medical supplies carefully, trying not to let his eyes linger on the pre-filled loads of Ketamine. You use, you die, he repeated to himself as he put the supplies away.
After several more minutes, Ava walked up behind them. “I think she’d like to talk to you, Parker,” she said.
Parker nodded and stood. Out on the edge of what he could see, a line of headlights winked into existence. Though several miles away, they were obviously heading in their direction. In this new America, only one group of people were brazen enough to travel in vehicles with the lights on for the whole world to see; the Council was coming for them.
They came back and crouched near Finn. She looked at Parker and tried to smile, and he saw that she seemed more alert than she had before, more aware.
“Hey, Parker,” she said. “You’ve looked better.”
He smiled and took her hand. “I owe my life to you, you little idiot,” he said. “What are you doing, acting like a hero?”
Finn looked at Ava and smiled. “I was trying to impress a girl,” she said. Ava took her other hand.
Parker laughed, it coming out as an abrupt, raw sound. “Yeah, well, that’s a pretty good reason.”
“You guys have to get going,” Finn said. “Once they see how we kicked their ass, they’re going to be all over this area.” She looked at Parker, her eyes growing feverish from the pain again. “I did good, right? You didn’t want me to come when you found me, but I showed you, right?”
Parker leaned down and brought her hand to his lips. He closed his eyes hard to stop the tears from coming, and then he nodded quickly. “You showed me good,” he whispered.
“You have to go,” Finn said.
“No!” Ava protested, but it was more of a sob than a word. “We’re not leaving you.”
“Shut up, blondie,” Finn told her. “A girl tells you she loves you and you immediately start trying to order her around?”
Ava was too exhausted to keep up her charade of strength. She hung her head and cried as Finn tried to soothe her.
“Shut up,” Ava said. “You quit trying to comfort me; you quit trying to take care of me.”
“It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do,” Finn told her simply. Ava didn’t answer—she couldn’t answer. “You’ve got to take care of your dad,” Finn said to Sara. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s getting old as hell. Without us girls around, he’ll never make it.”
Sara put her hand on Finn’s leg. “I’m sorry we never met earlier, Finn. You’re one impressive lady.”
“Parker?” Finn a
sked.
“Yes?”
“It’s time for you to go, okay? I’d like to fall asleep like this, looking at the stars. That’s not a bad way to—” her voice caught, but she pressed on, “to…go to sleep.”
Hating himself for thinking it, Parker remembered those headlights out in the darkness. He nodded. “Okay, Finn; whatever you want, honey.”
“I hurt,” she said. She squeezed his hand and he looked her in the eyes. “I hurt,” she said again, “and I’m cold.”
He understood her meaning, and he nodded. “Ava,” he said. “Over in my pack is a coat; would you go and get it, please?”
Ava looked up, panic on her face. She was quiet for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “Have Sara get it. I want to sit here until she falls asleep.” She paused, and when she spoke again, Parker knew she understood. “Give her something for the pain, okay? She doesn’t deserve to hurt.”
Parker nodded and began opening his medic bag. Sara got up and went over to where he’d dropped his pack. Parker carefully laid out his Ketamine syringes. Taking a small length of tubing, he tied a tourniquet around Finn’s arm. She’d lost so much blood that her veins were hard to find at first. Sara came back and laid Parker’s jacket over her, then backed away. On Finn’s other side, Ava cradled Finn’s head and didn’t move. After a few moments, Parker felt her cephalic vein begin filling with backed up blood.
The opioid crisis in America had reached pandemic proportions by the time the Event had happened. Parker’s office, like numerous law enforcement agencies, had been given extensive familiarization courses. From his overdose awareness training, he knew five grams of the drug was frequently lethal in a one-hundred-fifty pound person. Finn had been thirty pounds lighter than that when he’d met her. The weeks of privation under Council rationing had only reduced her further.
His hands didn’t shake as he pushed the plunger and smoothly injected the dose. Then, because he wouldn’t get a second chance to get it right, he gave her another shot, this one in the shoulder.
“Honey, do you feel better?” he asked.
She made a soft, warm sound, but the words were too slurred for him to make them out. He looked up at Ava, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He took his surgical shears out.
“Finn, I’m going to loosen these bandages a little so they’re not so tight, okay?”
She didn’t answer, and he snipped one side of her dressing, removing pressure. Blood instantly began flowing out.
They waited in silence for a while after that. Sara and Parker sat silently, waiting for Ava to cry herself out. When the tears stopped, they got up and moved out.
26
Sara felt bad about slowing them down, insisting she was all right despite the haggard and drawn look that etched itself deeper into her face with every passing hour. Parker had insisted that they both take more antibiotics, but he still worried constantly about her. They were keeping to the hills, trying to stay above the patrols searching for them, and it was cooler there, gentler on her fever.
Well after sunrise, they holed up for a few hours and slept. They moved out again in the afternoon, but their fatigue was constant, and it made Parker realize that they had to start reconsidering the manner in which they’d been doing things—before they ended up walking in circles.
Both he and Sara needed to rest. The last of their adrenaline had burned off hours ago and Parker was a sweaty, shaking mess. His vision had been reduced down to a tunnel’s worth and, every minute, he was thinking about the pain meds in his pack as he wrestled with his need for them. Given everything that’d happened… could happen… he couldn’t risk becoming complacent. Finn would chew him a new asshole if he did.
Fuck. Finn’s gone.
Reaching into his pack, he took out four Tylenol and handed two to Sara, taking the other two with a sip of water.
He looked at Ava then, who was walking woodenly along in a slightly catatonic state. It was obvious how hard she was taking the loss of Finn, but he had no idea what to say to her. The Ava he’d known seemed to have died with her friend.
The weather had been changing for almost two days now, with clouds gathering in gray waves on the horizon and piling up, threatening rain. The sun was going down fast as they came off a wooded hill overlooking a valley on the approach to the Vineyard and with the sun going down, it was going to get cold quick.
Reaching the tributary creek running behind the compound, they headed straight downstream.
Except for intermittent lights on the highway and county roads below them, they hadn’t seen a single patrol. When the foliage along the creek bank thinned, Parker stopped them. The girls stared at him with deep, bruised circles under their eyes, filthy and strained to their breaking points. They looked like ghosts.
The Vineyard was just over the low ridge, less than two or three football fields’ worth of ground away.
“This is it,” Sara told him.
“What can we expect?” Parker asked.
“A fight. More than likely. I’m assuming they won’t know that Truesdale is dead, but word about Dexter’s death and me disappearing will have spread, so no one will be greeting us with open arms. I’m guessing the ones Truesdale left in charge will fight until it looks like they’ll lose.”
Parker nodded. “If they run, they live. If they surrender, they live. If they hide, they live. They fight, even for a moment, they die.” He looked at the girls. “When we go in, don’t look at faces, and don’t look into anyone’s eyes,” he added. “It’ll slow you down. Look at their hands. If their hands are holding a gun or any kind of weapon, fire. If they’re empty, take the time to double-check. But you have to be automatic, quick on the trigger, willing to make a mistake, because we will be outnumbered.”
He waited to see if Sara was going to argue, but she looked back at him with the thousand-yard stare of a combat veteran.
“We’re not serving a warrant,” he continued. “We’re not some government commando unit on a secret mission. We haven’t had time to plan or train, and we aren’t fresh. We’re basically outlaw raiders and we’ve been beat to shit. If we try to be knights in shining armor, we will lose—and losing is death. We don’t want to die, so we can’t show mercy.”
He realized he wasn’t experiencing the same crisis of conscience that had plagued him before he’d struck the TV station while looking for Ava on the night of the Event. There, his instincts as a cop had shadowed his decision to fight. But since the ambush, and now with Finn’s death, a Rubicon had been thoroughly and irrevocably crossed, both within himself and seemingly in the country.
He looked at Ava, expecting some sort of snarky reply given that she could have drawn him a map of the compound while they’d still been in New Albany, but her head was down and she was quietly checking her weapons. Parker waited for her to look up and, when she did, the light in her eyes that had dimmed so drastically on their walk there seemed a bit brighter. Maybe she was still in there. After a final weapons check, Sara drew a crude map in the dirt to indicate where the women’s barracks would be, and they set out.
27
The Vineyard
The compound was almost a hamlet, with nearly fifteen different buildings laid out neatly against the base of a hill and overlooking the vineyards. There wasn’t decent cover from this approach, either, making Parker feel exposed as the dawn began bleeding through the night’s clouds. As they crawled in, he didn’t dare rise up fully for a better view of where he was heading. He knew a man with a rifle would have a field day catching them, running across open ground.
“That’s the kitchen and common dining room,” Sara pointed out to where a knot of eight men had wandered from a building on the far side of the group of buildings, some lighting cigarettes. Not all of them were armed, but half were.
They were less than a hundred yards away from where they stood but still shielded by the buildings. “We’ve got to hit them now,” Parker said. “Before the men disperse.”
“Jessica,” Sara said, kneeling by the girl. “It’s me, it’s Sara, do you recognize me?”
Eyes huge, Jessica nodded. Sara removed her hand from her mouth. “I’ve come to get you out, to get you away from the Church.”
Jessica looked up at her. “I don’t want to leave the Church….”
“What the fuck?” Ava snarled.
Parker put his hand on her arm. “Quiet,” he whispered.
“What do you mean you don’t want to leave?” Sara asked. “That’s all we talked about.”
“Don’t you know how scary it is out there?” Jessica asked. “The government came the night Truesdale left us; told us all how we could stay here at the Vineyard, but how there were bandits and killers roaming around. The section leaders agreed to work with them because of how dangerous it is out there.”
“Just like that?” Sara asked. Her voice was almost comically incredulous. “After everything Marr taught us? They teamed up with the Council? And you’re going to stay here?”
“Truesdale said you killed Dexter and worked for the government,” Jessica said. “If you can do it, why not us?”
Sara looked as if she’d been slapped. “Does everyone feel this way?” she asked.
“Sara,” Jessica said, “it’s like the section leaders say: if we fight now, what will we do? Where will we go? They know who we are.”
“Jesus wept,” Ava said.
Parker looked at Jessica. Of course, they weren’t going to fight. Marr, Truesdale, Maggie—their leadership, their true leadership and not the middle-management types like the section leaders—were all gone. Those who remained at the Vineyard were a flock of sheep without a shepherd, and they were going to follow the path of least resistance. He felt the urge to laugh bubbling up in his chest, and at the same time, he felt furious at Sara for believing in her delusional thinking, but his anger passed quickly as he saw the look of horror on her face.
Dead End (911 Book 2) Page 22
