by West, Kyle
“Here,” I said, handing her my canteen.
She took it, taking a drink. I set my pack on the ground, opened it up, and pulled out a clean shirt. I knelt beside her.
“Here,” I said. “You can clean up with this.”
I looked at her face, which she turned aside. A deep bruise had surfaced below her left eye, while her nose had been bloodied. It could have been worse, but it looked like we came along just in time.
She wet the shirt with my canteen and wiped at her face. Her breaths came out ragged.
“It’s alright,” I said, sitting on the floor. “You’re safe now.”
Michael stood behind me. He hadn’t yet seen the inside of the room, nor Ruth. He knelt next to me.
Ruth looked up, having cleaned herself as best she could. There was hardness and anger in her eyes that reminded me nothing of the happy woman I’d known in Bunker 108. She slowly stood, then walked over to Jade’s body. She paused for a moment before kicking him full in the face.
“He had his guards grab me while I was sleeping,” she said, her voice wavering. “And they dragged me here. Rey would have stopped him, but Rey went up with Cain.” She was quiet for a moment. “He had practically begged to stay behind. Now, I guess I see why he wanted that.”
“Well, he’s dead now,” I said.
Michael shook his head. There was sadness, and anger, in his eyes. Michael took off his pack, reaching in for a camo tee.
“Here,” he said.
Ruth put it on gratefully over her old shirt, which had a tear in it.
“And this.”
Ruth grabbed the handgun that Michael handed her.
“Thanks,” she said. “Let’s just...not talk about this. Just give me something I can do to take my mind off it.”
“What can you tell us about the resistance down here? We’ve found a few guards, but not many.”
Ruth nodded, recollecting herself. “Most went upstairs to fight. They had...him...stay down here, as well as the rest of the Diamonds. That’s about twenty men.”
Michael nodded, obviously pleased with this news. “We’ve killed what, four or five so far?”
I nodded. “About.”
“We have twenty of our own,” Michael said. “The rest are fighting upstairs.”
“The people are in the dorms,” Ruth said. “The guards sleep outside those, blocking the exits. There’s also the night guards at Hydroponics.”
“We passed that, but came straight here,” Michael said. “I imagine the rest of the Diamonds know we’re here.”
“They might surrender, if we tell them about Jade,” I said.
Michael looked at the former gang leader’s bloody corpse. He looked so pathetic with his shirt off. A pool of blood had collected beneath his body. I knelt next to him.
“What are you doing?” Ruth asked.
I reached for Jade’s left hand, suppressing a shiver. I tried to ignore those lifeless eyes, staring vacantly at me. I pried five diamond rings off his right hand, and then reached for his left, pulling off the other five. They were flecked with blood. I wiped them on Jade’s sleeve before pocketing them.
“Proof of our victory,” I said. “Any Diamond will know what we’ve done once we show these. I doubt they’re loyal enough to fight after he’s dead. Jade wasn’t the type of person who commanded respect.”
Michael nodded, gesturing to the open doorway. “Good idea. Dorms are that way.” He turned to the rest of the Angels. “Everyone catch that?”
The men nodded silently.
“We’re heading for the dorms,” Michael said. “Hopefully the Diamonds will surrender without a fight.” Michael held his hand out. “Hand me those rings, Alex.”
I reached into my pocket, handing them over. They glittered in the darkness – diamond, sapphire, ruby, emerald, gold, platinum. All worthless in today’s world. Michael put them in his pocket.
“Take Ruth back upstairs,” Michael said to me.
“Isn’t that more dangerous than staying here?”
“Maybe so,” Michael said, “but I need you to take Makara a message. Let her know what’s going on. Then return to me, and let me know what’s going on upside. Plus, Ruth can help out up there. Find Lauren and she can take care of it.”
“Will do,” I said.
“Hurry,” Michael said. “And be careful.”
Chapter 14
We left the control room and headed to a stairwell that led to the upper reaches of the Bunker.
“We need to watch out for Lords,” I said. “If we’re winning up there, they could be retreating.”
Ruth nodded, not saying anything further. I wished there was something I could say to make her forget the last thirty minutes of her life. Of course, I knew that was impossible. All I could think to do was get her to Lauren. She would know what to do.
We made it to the stairs, and took them at a jog. We paused for a quick breather every few flights. When we reached ten, the stairs ended in a long, dark corridor. We had to follow this corridor to reach the next ascending staircase, which would lead to level three.
When we turned a corner, footsteps pounded from the stairwell ahead. Ruth and I entered a dark, open doorway. We were hidden from view as people rushed past.
Outside, I heard a woman’s voice.
“Faster,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”
“Makara!” I yelled.
Instantly, everyone stopped and guns were raised to shoulders.
“Alex?” she called. “Where are you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Ruth and I are in here.”
Two men stepped into the room, lowering their rifles. Amid the shining flashlight beams, Ruth and I stepped out into the corridor.
“Ruth?” Makara asked, surprised.
“Alex saved me,” she said. “Let’s leave it at that for now.”
Makara looked at me curiously, but said nothing.
“We got cut off by the explosion,” I said. “We saw the stairs, and Michael decided to go down. Jade’s dead. We were coming up to deliver the news.”
“That’s news, alright,” Makara said.
“Michael should have the rest of the Diamonds on lockdown by now. We were coming to get reinforcements.”
Makara nodded. “So we control the bottom level?”
I nodded. “With Jade dead, Michael’s hoping to convince the rest of the Diamonds to surrender.”
“What of Marcus? Char?”
“They’re alive,” Ruth said. “They’re locked up in some holding cells in the security section. By the dorms.”
“We can deal with that later,” Makara said. “Rey is dead, and Cain is in custody. The battle was won upstairs, but it was close.” She looked at me. “If you hadn’t discovered their attack, it would have been a different story,”
It was a little surreal that my own stupid idea of going to see Anna, something that could easily have gotten me killed, had ended up saving everyone.
“Don’t make a habit of disregarding protocol,” Makara said. “But in this case, it worked out. We still lost a lot of men. Samuel and Julian chased a lot of the Lords down into the deeper levels.”
“We haven’t seen anything,” I said.
“We can’t waste any more time chatting,” Makara said. “I need to reinforce Michael. How many Diamonds are left?”
“Twenty, give or take,” I said. “About the same on our side. We lost several men, but there wasn’t much resistance.”
“Alright,” Makara said. “Take Ruth the rest of the way. The stairs should be fine, but be careful. Everyone is still gathered at the Command Center. After that, you can go on to Perseus and let Ashton and Anna know everything. Once I decide it’s safe, I’ll let you guys dock.”
“Perseus?” Ruth asked.
“Alex will explain,” Makara said. “We should get moving. Good luck.”
Makara and her followers headed down the corridor. We watched as they went downstairs. When the last of them were out of
sight, we turned the opposite way down the corridor, heading for the other stairs. When we had gone up a couple of flights, Ruth spoke.
“So, what happened out there?” she asked. “All I know is that the ships crashed.”
“The dragons hit us over Wyoming,” I said. “At least fifty of them. I don’t know what we were thinking, and it’s lucky all of us survived. Augustus, believe it or not, got a spaceship out of Bunker Six – Orion. He picked us up when he detected Aeneas and Gilgamesh falling.”
“Really?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah. He’s on our side, now. We think.” I paused. “He even gave us another spaceship, Perseus. But there will be time for all that later. What’s important is getting you to Command, safe and sound.”
She said nothing for a moment.
“Thanks, Alex,” she said. “I should have said that earlier. Guess this is the second time you’ve gotten me out of a rough spot.”
“It was nothing,” I said. “I just came along at the right time.”
“Are Lauren and Callie up there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They got out before the Lords fully took over. They’re in Command.”
Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I knew she had gotten out, but I didn’t know what happened after.”
We took the rest of the stairs without a break or further conversation. As we reached level three, the lights flickered on again. I shielded my eyes, squinting, waiting a moment for them to adjust. I clicked my flashlight off.
My eyes were met with ruin. The bodies of both Angels and Lords littered the floor. Blood splattered the walls and coated the floor. A pile of rubble lay where the corridor had collapsed. Maybe they had hoped to use those explosives on the Command Center.
“Horrible,” Ruth said.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
***
The New Angels had been fractured by the Vegas Lords’ rebellion. With both Gilgamesh and Aeneas crashed, and no word from the leaders, the fracturing was inevitable. Char and Marcus couldn’t keep the lid on, and it only took a few days for it to boil over.
It was an indisputable fact that there were only two weeks of food and no way to evacuate everyone from Bunker 84. The only solution was to preemptively decide to feed fewer mouths, and the Vegas lords wanted to decide which mouths to feed.
Jade, Rey, and Cain and their chosen followers elected themselves to survive the coming bloodbath. They had taken control in the night, and anyone who resisted their rule, or who was aligned with the Raiders or Exiles, was either attacked or driven into the higher reaches of the Bunker.
Char and Marcus woke to the sounds of the fighting and rescued who they could, and were captured in the process. Those that were left behind, including the Raiders and Exiles who didn’t manage to escape, were brutally murdered. It was necessary, in the gang lords’ minds, to kill them in order to save the chosen remnant.
It wasn’t clear why the gang lords had decided to spare Char and Marcus. When we found them, their forms were thin and haggard. They’d been without food for a week. Char had said that the gang lords had wanted to starve them to death, as a warning to any who dared stand against them.
The fighting continued on and off throughout the following week. Every day, the Angels’ numbers dwindled. Given another week, the Lords’ victory probably would have been complete. Hundreds died, mostly civilians, and what had once been fifteen hundred survivors now totaled four hundred.
Only half of the Community women had been spared. Lyn was among the dead, but Deborah and Ada survived.
In the day following the Lords’ capitulation, everyone was moved downstairs from the Command Center. Cain, the only rebel gang lord to survive, came bound hand and foot. Many cried out for his immediate death, but I guessed Makara and Samuel wanted to keep him alive for some reason. I realized that, other than Grudge, he was the only gang lord left. Boss Dragon died early in the fighting from a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
So much had changed, and much more would change still. In the south, Augustus still needed our help, and that fact was at the forefront of Makara’s mind.
It wouldn’t be long until the Radaskim reached Los Angeles.
***
Ashton parked Perseus in the hangar, and I took advantage by getting some much-needed sleep. I probably crashed around 08:00 – approximately twenty-five hours after I had last woken up. My sleep was dark and dreamless, as close to being dead as I’d ever felt. I was almost surprised to wake up later that afternoon. I checked my watch, finding that it was now 16:02.
I was drifting into a doze once again when the compartment door slid open. It was Anna, supporting herself by the doorframe.
I patted the bed. She smiled, and limped forward. I got up to help her out.
“Don’t worry yourself,” she said. “I got this.”
“You need to learn to depend on me,” I said. “Really, it’s not so bad.”
“I guess,” she said.
I eased her onto the bed. She winced in pain, settling on her good side. Ashton said she had broken two ribs on her left side. She lay on her right side, propping her head up with her arm.
“You alright?”
She waved a hand. “Yeah, fine. Except that lying down all the time is going to make me go weak.”
I wrapped my arm around her, gently. It felt good to hold her again.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” I said. “It could have been much worse.”
“What’s worse than being useless?”
“You’re not useless. Someone’s value isn’t determined by how many crawlers they can skewer through the eye.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
We lay there for a moment before I closed my eyes, ready to let myself drift off to sleep.
“You’re so tired,” she said. “You’ve been sleeping since this morning.”
“I know. I could sleep more if I wanted.”
“Well...Ashton said there was a conference later.”
“What time?”
“18:00. I think they’re wanting to leave the Bunker behind.”
“For Los Angeles?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s crazy to think how we’re allied with him,” I said, eyes still closed.
“Politics can change fast,” Anna said. “I’ll bet if it were beneficial to him, he’d switch right back.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I think he’s actually genuine. Yeah, he’s out for himself, but he’s trying to protect his Empire. Who can fault him for that?”
Anna didn’t respond. Something else was on her mind.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked, opening my eyes.
She sighed. “Now that this Bunker business is over...maybe now’s the right time to see the Wanderer.”
“What about Los Angeles? That’ll keep us pretty busy.”
“I think this is more important,” Anna said. “Los Angeles will just be a battle. Getting an answer from the Wanderer could mean the war.”
“We already know what will win the war,” I said.
Anna’s body stiffened. “I don’t think you believe me yet. I’m not going to let you die. That’s not an option. We’re going to find another way. I’m tired of this idea that the innocent have to die to save the rest of us. It shouldn’t be like that.”
I hated when she talked about this. The more she got this idea stuck in her head, the more painful it would be, in the end.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked. “If there was another way, don’t you think he would have told me?”
“We’ll never know unless we ask him specifically.”
“I already have asked him,” I said. “He said this was the only way.”
“He didn’t have to deal with me,” Anna said.
“He knows a lot more than we do.”
“I know,” Anna said. “But he doesn’t know everything.” She paused. “Besides, you promised me.”
She squeezed my hand. Yeah,
there was that.
“You’re right. We’ll bring it up at the meeting. We’ll find a way to get there. The Wanderer might have some useful information we could use, anyway.”
All I wanted was to make Anna happy, but I didn’t know if I had the ability to keep that up. After all, it was hard to make someone happy when...
I couldn’t think about that.
“It’s worth asking him again,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, finally relaxing.
I pulled her close, and she buried her face in my chest. I wanted to do whatever I could to keep this going. Love was as scary as it was exhilarating. I didn’t know how it would turn out, but I had to keep it going, because there was no greater reason for me to fight than her.
Still, the Wanderer’s words haunted me. The logical side of me warred with the illogical. It was no good to cling to false hope. I had to face reality, no matter how painful. I had to focus on my mission. My ultimate goal. It wasn’t just Anna and me at stake. It was the world.
At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the beauty I held in my arms. If there was even a chance she was right, I had to take it.
Chapter 15
We slept for a while before the alarm on my watch buzzed at 17:45. I turned it off, keeping my eyes closed. I didn’t want to get up and move just yet. I could sleep the rest of the night if I let myself.
“We have to get up,” Anna said.
I groaned. “Would it have killed them to put it off until the morning?”
“There’s a big mess to clean up.”
Finally, I forced myself to get up. I checked my watch again, seeing that it was now 17:47. The council was supposed to start at 18:00 and wasn’t supposed to last more than an hour.
I knew there was little chance of that.
“Where’s your wheelchair?” I asked.
“I’m walking.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to be out and about for a while.”
Anna sighed. “Fine. It’s in the clinic.”
“Be right back,” I said.
I found the wheelchair and rolled it to the cabin, its wheels squeaking. Anna had pulled herself up. Her eyes were half-lidded and sleepy.
“Here,” I said, helping her into the chair.
