by Siara Brandt
“I’m thirsty mostly. I had some MRE’s, but I didn’t want to drink the water here even if I could find some.”
Fears about water supplies being contaminated had made everyone cautious. There was a renewed banging against the door. Maybe because they were making noise they were drawing attention.
“Did you find the doctor?” Grey asked.
“No. Apparently he was long gone before we even got here. There were a few staff members hold up here with me the first day. They said there was something going on here that would make the MKUltra experiments seem like a Sunday school picnic.
“Seems the doctor was arrested not because he was working on this, but because he didn’t go along with this. He had some information they didn’t want to get out and he was about to sound the alarm.
“The powers that be were pushing through an agenda of population control. And trying to make money at the same time. It had something to do with mass mind control, Grey. Like Operation Paperclip in the fifties.”
It was easy to see that Dray was tiring, but he seemed to need to talk. “They never did stop the programs. Nobody wanted to believe they could do the things they did, but they never could leave it alone. I’m sure the doctor could give us answers if we could locate him. There was something more here, Grey. Something dark and evil. The men that want the doctor? They’re the ones we work for. I have been wondering how deep they were involved in all this.”
“You think they knew what was going on?” Grey asked.
“Do you trust them?
The truth was that Grey didn’t trust them. Not completely. The officials they worked for were powerful. And power had a tendency to corrupt.
“I’m going to get you out of here, Dray.”
There was no other consideration. Grey never left a man behind. Even now.
“If you move me, that might kill me.”
“We don’t have any choice. We have a Humvee waiting in the woods. We’ll get you out. And then we’ll get you to a medical facility.”
“Grey,” Dray began earnestly. “If it does kill me, don’t think twice. Put a bullet in my brain if- ”
Grey didn’t give him any more time to think about it. As carefully as he could, he hoisted the soldier over his shoulder. Dray gritted his teeth and could not suppress a groan as he was lifted. As soon as he was positioned over Grey’s shoulder, he let out a sharp cry and then went limp.
“Check for a pulse,” Grey ordered one of the men.
“He’s alive. He’s breathing.” Grey heard.
That was good. He hoped they could keep him that way.
“Keep an eye on him.”
They all knew what he meant. If Dray died and he turned he could take a bite out of Grey before anyone could do anything about it.
Chapter 4
A cup of warm tea and a freshly-baked donut would be good right now. One of those heavenly chocolate donuts from Brynmor‘s Bakery. While she put her feet up and relaxed to nothing more suspenseful than a good cooking show on TV. Not that there was a prayer of any of those things happening any more. Not the donut and not the cooking show. And certainly not relaxing with her feet up.
Savhanna stopped in the kitchen doorway and listened. Every sense was attuned to the heavy silence that had settled over the empty rooms of the house. At least she hoped they were empty. She closed the door quietly behind her and moistened her lips, tamping down the sensation that had momentarily paralyzed her, a conviction that she wasn’t alone in the house. She was overly tired, she reasoned. Maybe that accounted for her jumpiness. But you couldn’t be too cautious these days.
She looked into a utility room. There were clothes scattered everywhere, but nothing moved. She stepped over the clothes and glanced out of the curtained windows and wondered if it had been the rattle of the iron gate in the side yard that had startled her earlier.
That must have been it, she decided as she looked down into the yard. She moved down the hallway leading off the kitchen. Still wondering what might have moved that gate, she went from room to room, checking each one carefully.
She glanced through the doorway that led into the living room. It was darker in there. At least in the corners that were beyond the reach of the sunlight, it was darker. Her eyes had to adjust. The downstairs was clear. It was time to go upstairs.
At the top of the stairs she had to force herself once again to take a deep breath and calm down. To listen and think, and trust again the instincts that had sustained her so far. The same instincts that had meant her survival so many times in the past few weeks.
She checked the first bedroom to her right and found it empty. She checked another bedroom and found it empty, too. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the house with her. And in spite of her precautions, fear ran down her spine like the feather-light brush of a cold finger.
She heard another sound, a slight creak, and then a soft thud. It had come from behind the door at the end of the landing, the only room she had not yet checked. She made her feet take one step forward and then another. She approached the end of the hallway with nothing more than grim determination. It certainly wasn’t bravery that was pushing her. If someone was in the house, they were in that room. She didn’t want to confront the answer to that question. But she had no choice in the matter. You had to make a lot of difficult decisions nowadays. If you wanted to survive. And Savhanna wanted to survive.
For what seemed an eternity, she just stood and stared at the closed door. There was the sound again. It was just a muffled thud, but it got her heart pounding wildly. She realized that delaying the inevitable was only adding to her fear. The longer she waited, the more afraid she was going to be.
She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders, preparing herself mentally. She pushed the door open and saw a sudden blur of movement. She jumped back and gave a little cry. She couldn’t help it. Her gaze collided with a wide gray one.
Meow.
Her gaze traveled quickly around the room. There was just her. And the cat.
She let her breath out in a long sigh of relief and sat down on the bed, watching the cat watching her. She had probably scared it more than it had scared her. Though that seemed doubtful.
The quiet was now a comforting sound. The late afternoon sunlight was sifting thru the lace curtains on the window. It slanted a deep golden pattern across the bed and part of the carpet. She took it as a welcoming sign. It would be a good place to spend the night. She never traveled in the dark. She certainly wasn’t going to make an exception tonight.
She reached out to pet the cat who sat beside her and began to purr contentedly. Apparently it was happy to have company, too.
He couldn’t miss her. She was wearing a soft yellow sundress that ended just above her knees. She had a green sweater over the dress. On her feet was a pair of garden boots. Shiny green garden boots with daisies all over them. Her hair was a lustrous shade of gold that reflected the early morning sunlight. The riotous, tumbling curls were caught back in a trailing ribbon that was also a vibrant shade of yellow.
Goldilocks had just emerged from between two houses. From his vantage point Grey could see what she could not. Three staggers were concealed behind the bushes in the side yard. She was about to run right into them. And with that gate there, she would likely get trapped.
But she had a gun, Grey saw. No, it wasn’t a real gun. She had . . .
A toy squirt gun?
“What the he- ”
He stared harder to make sure he was not seeing things. Nope, he’d been right the first time. She had a neon green squirt gun. What did the little fool think she could do with that?
Damn. He had to get down there fast. Or Goldilocks was going to find herself wishing she’d run into the three bears instead.
By the time he reached the gate, he had stopped dead in his tracks. The staggers were stumbling around like they had forgotten her entirely. All three were making hellashis noises and they were clawing at their eyes. L
iterally clawing.
Goldilocks had her back up against the fence and she was staring up at him as if she wasn’t quite sure he was safe. “This gets gross,” she informed him breathlessly.
It did get gross. One of the staggers had pulled at his eyeball until it came loose, guts and all. He put it in his mouth, He tried to bite into it but some of his teeth were missing. He finally got it between some jagged, broken teeth. He kept biting down until the eyeball ruptured like a ripe cherry tomato. Grey made a disgusted face as the eyeball squirted and blood-tinged liquid ran down the stagger‘s chin,
Grey was snapped out of his morbid curiosity by Goldilocks pushing the gate open and running down the sidewalk.
Apparently she was in a hurry, and she had no intention of waiting for him. But she was about to turn the corner and quite possibly get the surprise of her life.
Savhanna had just about reached the alley at the end of the block, when she was jerked back into some bushes by an arm that circled her like a band of iron. A hand clamped heavily over the lower portion of her face.
For such a slight female, her strength surprised Grey. After her initial shock, she was full of fight. He had his hands full trying to keep her quiet. She must have taken some self-defense classes somewhere along the line, he realized, but she was no match for his experience and his strength. He had taught self-defense classes.
She did her best to try and drive an elbow into his ribs, and then she stomped down on his combat boots with those garden boots. With surprising force. She tried to hammer fist him in the groin. He stopped her before she could do any damage.
The ribbon came undone and her long curls tumbled loose around them both. It clung to the dark whiskers on his chin and made their struggle that much harder.
Savhanna knew she was losing the fight. Not that she wasn’t trying with everything in her to free herself. The man must be all muscle, she thought as she tried an ineffectual kick to his shins. He literally lifted her off her feet and dragged her back into the bushes. She quickly shifted gears. There was the distinct possibility that she was going to have to use her brains to escape him instead of tae kwon do moves.
She paused to reassess her situation. And to catch her breath. At the same time, she felt the man lean forward, which brought his mouth close to her ear. “There’s about thirty of those things on the other side of that building,” he hissed. “Keep quiet, honey, and we may both get out of here alive.”
But instinct was a hard thing to immediately clamp down on. Especially when you were in survival mode. She wasn’t fighting quite so desperately anymore, but her body continued to strain to be free of the ruthless confinement.
Give her an inch, Grey thought, and she just might try to bolt a mile.
“You’re going to have a hundred of those things down on us if you keep fighting me,” he gritted as he dragged her tighter against his body. “I’m trying to help you.”
He didn’t know if he was getting through to her at all. He pulled her even further into the bushes, closer to the house and took the chance of letting her go after he looked around to make sure there were no nearby threats.
She whirled around and faced him. She was still breathing hard but she didn’t try to run this time. That was something at least. She looked him up and down, taking in all the details, from the army fatigues to the various weapons strapped to his body.
“You seem to be in a hurry,” he said in a low voice.
Savhanna noticed that he was barely winded while she was still trying to catch her breath.
“I have to go into that house over there.” She indicated the big white house across the street with a glance.
“I wouldn’t advise that.”
“I’m not asking your permission.”
He lifted one dark brow but she remained undaunted.
“I am going into that house.”
“Family or something?” He asked.
“Or something,” she answered him.
She didn’t wait for him to say anything else. She shook her head, gathered her long hair with both hands and hastily tied it back. Into a loose braid this time.
“All right,” she heard. “We’ll go into the house. But we’ll stop and think about the best way to do it first.”
“You mean I’ll go into the house. I wasn’t asking you to go with me,” she snapped. And then she was gone.
Grey breathed out a curse and then set out after her.
They made it safely to the house, even though Grey muttered a few descriptive oaths on the way. Once safely inside, they came to a tacit agreement of sorts and searched the house from top to bottom, making sure there were no surprises waiting for them.
Savhanna glanced at the combat boots that had come to an abrupt halt just a few feet away from her.
“Puppies?” She heard the disbelief in the voice above her.
There were three of them in a basket. With their mother. They looked healthy but there was no way of knowing the last time they had eaten. It had probably been a while.
When Grey finally remembered to close his mouth, he said gruffly, “Lady, you’ve got to be kidding me. We just risked our lives for a bunch of puppies?”
“We didn’t risk our lives. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dra- ” His voice ended abruptly as his lips closed in straight lines. “We just ran a gauntlet of thirty staggers. I’d hate to see what you consider risking your life.”
He continued to stare down at her. The whole world had turned upside down. The sky was falling, and she was worried about puppies.
He watched her get to her feet. Without a word, she left the room. He called out after her. “You know, being soft hearted could get you killed in this world.”
He got down on his knees beside the basket. He drew his hand back suddenly and just as quickly masked the guilty look on his face as she reappeared in the door way. She was dragging a huge bag of dog food. She left the room and came back with another bag.
“It’s my choice to be soft hearted,” she said and then she reminded him, “I didn’t ask you to come with me, you know.”
“I wasn’t about to let you fight off a pack of stagger’s on your own.”
“You just have to be smarter than they are,” she said quietly as she reached into the basket to pet the dogs. He wasn’t fooling her. She’d seen him petting the puppies from the doorway.
“Smarter, huh. Well, you get a few dozen of those things coming at you at once and I don’t think knowing the square root of pi is going to be enough.”
She looked up at him, fixed him with eyes the color of a summer sky and said, “But it helps. Brute force isn’t always the best way to do things.”
What was she implying? Hell, all he had been doing was trying to help her. She could at least be thankful. And she could lose the attitude.
“You can’t take them with you, you know,” he said, wondering if that was her plan.
She sighed and said softly, “I know. I just didn’t want them to starve to death. I wanted them to have a fighting chance.” She looked at him. “Isn’t that what we all deserve? Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?”
He didn’t answer as she leaned over the basket again and gushed, “Aren’t they the cutest puppies you’ve ever seen?”
“Stay put.”
Grey suddenly stopped and turned to face her again. He never knew what she might do.
After a sharp little intake of breath, he heard, “You can’t command me.”
“If it’s in your best interest, or mine for that matter, then I will command you.” His tone brooked no argument, but somehow he knew she still wasn’t about to give in so easily. She never did. They’d crossed swords several times already.
“I’m not one of your soldiers.” She raised her chin a few notches. “I can decide not to obey you. What are you going to do? Court-martial me?”
He got it. She didn’t like being told what to do. But this was a war. And in any war, learning to follow orders
was critical for survival. For both of them. She needed to understand that.
“Yeah, you can decide anything you want, sweetheart. But I’ve got the guns. The real guns. So that makes me the one in command. So stay put.”
While she glared mutinously and searched for words to put him in his place and assert her own independence, he turned and made his way down the alley. He checked out the side yard behind a brick wall and then he did a reconnoiter of the block ahead, carefully noting the condition of the houses. There wasn’t a soul around. Living or dead. When he was satisfied, he made his way back to her.
He stopped dead in his combat boots. She wasn’t where he had left her. He puffed out an impatient breath, something he was doing a lot of lately where she was concerned. Then he set out to look for her.
He found her down another alley. And she wasn’t alone. The man looming over her wasn’t a stagger. He had her by the throat. One massive hand was squeezing it while the other hand was groping at her breasts. It was easy enough to see what his intentions were.
She wasn’t doing anything. She was just standing there taking it. Which didn’t make any sense to Grey. She didn’t seem like the type to submit so easily. She had certainly fought him hard enough.
Either she was letting him think she was helpless before fighting back. Or she was waiting to be rescued. He half rejected that thought right away. But either way, something had to happen pretty quick. The guy was unzipping his pants.
Grey had taken two steps in her direction, when out of nowhere a body hurdled down onto her attacker. The man was slammed to the ground, and she was dragged half way down with him. It was the damndest thing. He’d never seen a stagger do that. Leap onto a person like a tiger from up above.
Weighted down by the stagger, her attacker was struggling to get to his feet. But the stagger, who must have leapt from one of the second story windows of the building above them, had landed on his head. With sufficient force to effectively inactivate him. He lay there with blood and brains oozing out over the cement. He looked stone dead. For real this time.
