Her distraction had given Ben a few seconds to recover. He grabbed the Transport soldier by the throat and squeezed. Metal glinted, and the soldier slashed at Ben’s face. The blade sliced through his cheek. Ben released the other man’s throat. He lunged for the knife but was too late. His eyes widened as it sank deep into his gut.
“No!” shouted Leah.
Ben clutched feebly at the wound. Blood pulsed around his fingers.
The Transport soldier turned his attention to Leah. His eyes were open wide in a manic stare. He grinned as he stalked across the truck toward where she sat on the floor.
Leah searched for a way out. The wall behind her was a solid sheet of metal with no way for her to get into the cab. Anderson was following behind them in her truck. If Leah jumped, Anderson wouldn’t be able to avoid hitting her.
The soldier took another step. Leah pushed herself away. Her hand landed on something hard—a pistol. Leah grabbed the weapon and fired, blindly letting off two shots. The first went wide; the second clipped the man’s ear.
He grunted in surprise and clutched the side of his head. The surprise turned to rage, and he dived at Leah. She turned her face away and fired again. The man landed on top of her, the gun pinned beneath him. Leah kept firing. Again and again, she squeezed the trigger until the crack of the gunshots changed to the soft click of the empty magazine. Leah tensed, expecting the cold bite of the man’s knife.
It never came.
Gears ground against gears, and the truck’s engine revved again. Hesitantly, Leah struggled free from beneath the dead man. She realized she was still clutching the gun, her finger still squeezing the trigger. She dropped it suddenly, as though it was burning her hand.
The truck turned sharply, and Leah stumbled. Her foot landed on Ben’s arm. She pressed her hands against her mouth, stifling a scream. The truck slewed sideways. Metal ripped, steel grinding against steel. Leah fell back. Her head slammed against the metal bed of the truck as she landed. A black mist descended over her face like a veil.
Gunfire echoed around the truck, but it was distant, muffled somehow as though Leah was listening to a radio wrapped in cotton wool. She lay there, surrounded by the dead, staring up at the green canvas until the blackness took her.
13
Leah woke from a nightmare filled with blood and death. Her heart was pounding. Something was pinning her to the ground—a body. She lashed out, kicking and flailing as she tried to get free.
“It’s okay, Leah. It’s okay.”
A hand pressed against Leah’s shoulder, easing her back.
“No, get him—”
“Shhhhh. You’re safe.”
Alice’s face came into view. Leah tried to rise again, but Alice pressed her back down. “Just relax.”
Leah tried to move her arm but couldn’t. She lifted her head and found she was wrapped in a heavy blanket. She was still in the truck, but there was no sign of the Transport soldier she’d shot. Or Ben or Tia.
Memories of the fight came flooding back to her. Tia lying on the truck bed, clutching her throat. Ben stabbed in the gut. Blood, so much blood. Leah’s stomach clenched. She gagged and almost threw up. A barrage of feelings—guilt and fear and revulsion—battered her senses and left her reeling. She closed her eyes.
She’d killed someone. Really killed someone.
Alice pressed her hand against Leah’s forehead. It was cool. “Breathe…”
Leah took a long, slow breath. The scent of grease and gasoline filled her nose. She focused on that, not the whirlwind of emotions inside her head. Gradually, her heart began to slow. The sick feeling eased.
“That’s better,” said Alice.
Leah opened her eyes. Alice was still looking down at her. “How are you feeling?”
Leah smiled, but she could still feel the weight of the man on top of her, the jerk of the gun as she fired it. She pushed at the blankets again, and this time, Alice loosened them but it did nothing to ease the oppressive weight that seemed to be bearing down on her.
She’d killed another human being. She knew what her father would have thought of that. The wrongness of it was as deeply ingrained as breathing.
Alice helped Leah sit up, and handed her a canteen of water. Leah sipped at it. It had been self-defense. He’d been a soldier intent on killing her. If she hadn’t shot him, she’d be dead. Like Tia. Like Ben.
A soldier appeared at the back of the truck. It was the young man who’d interrupted them when they were talking to Captain Anderson.
Alice saw him and said, “How is it?”
The soldier shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere. Support will be here within the hour.”
Alice grimaced. “Let’s hope Transport doesn’t find us before then. Thank you, Mo.”
Mo nodded and left them alone.
“What’s going on?” said Leah.
“The truck was damaged. We’re a couple of hours from the farmhouse, but that’s as far as we could get.”
“What about the other one?”
Alice’s face hardened. “It didn’t make it.”
“But Captain Anderson…”
Alice shook her head.
Images of TRACE fleeing from their base filled Leah’s mind. “How many people survived?”
“Seven, including you, as far as I can tell. One of the Jeeps got away too. Hobbs and Nat have taken it to get help. Barr is with them; she caught a bullet.”
Leah was puzzled for a moment, then understanding dawned on her. She felt the familiar warmth of anger in the pit of her stomach. Seven survivors out of how many? Twenty? Thirty? She’d grown up believing TRACE were the enemy, the terrorists. That had been a lie.
“Leah?” said Alice. “Why did you come back? Really.”
“I wanted to warn you,” said Leah, the lie coming automatically.
Alice raised her eyebrows.
Leah felt heat rise in her cheeks. The idea of telling Alice the truth made her uncomfortable for reasons she didn’t quite understand. There was no real reason not to.
“Have you heard of the Hopkinson Research Labs?” said Alice.
Leah shook her head, confused by the sudden shift of topic.
“Hopkinson was a Transport facility. As far as the public was concerned, it was working on ways to improve the food supply—increase crop yields, raise stronger, healthier livestock, things like that.”
The idea made sense to Leah. Food had been tightly controlled in the City. Then she remembered Isaac had told her it was because Transport controlled the people by controlling the food.
“Transport was lying,” continued Alice. “Hopkinson was a front for military research. Transport was looking for ways to create new weapons, better vehicles, even enhanced soldiers. They were working on using okcillium power sources to make weapons. And bombs.”
Alice paused, her eyes fixed on Leah’s. Leah held her gaze as long as she could, then looked away. There was a dark brown patch on the floor, near the tailgate—where Tia had died.
“My brother, Jacob, worked at Hopkinson. He was a mechanical engineer, no one special. He was part of a team that kept the facility running. He didn’t know what Transport was doing. If he had, he wouldn’t have stayed. He’d always stuck to his principles, no matter what.
“And then one day, there was an accident. One of the researchers messed up and there was an explosion, and he was killed.”
Leah shifted uncomfortably, unsure what to say.
“Transport tried to cover up the explosion. They said he’d been killed in a car accident, but the more we dug, the more evidence we found. And then people started dying.
“Over the course of seven months, all the key people looking into the Hopkinson incident died. They were hit by cars, or had some other accident. One was killed in a robbery gone wrong. Another apparently committed suicide. On their own, none of the deaths would seem suspicious, but taken together…”
“It was Transport.”
Alice nodded. “T
hey came after me. I got home one night, and as soon as I opened the door, my cat, Millie, ran out. She’d never left the house before, but that night she wanted to get as far away from it as she could. I found her cowering under a car across the street. As I tried to catch her, my house exploded.”
Alice lifted her shirt. A ragged scar about five inches ran vertically down her left side.
“Shrapnel,” she said.
Leah winced.
“The official report was a gas leak, but the explosion was far too big for that, and the gas would have killed Millie. I knew what had really happened.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. I found TRACE.” Alice shrugged. “And here I am. As far as I know, Transport thinks I died in the explosion.”
“What happened to Hopkinson?”
“TRACE took care of it. We blew the whole place up. I led one of the teams.”
Revenge. Alice was talking about revenge. Leah thought of Katherine, her father, everyone who’d died in the City. She saw the bright flash of the explosion.
“The woman,” said Leah hesitantly. “The one who said I was a Wild One.”
“Yes…”
“She was responsible for the bomb in the City.”
“What? How do you know?”
Leah paused again. Her stomach roiled as she tried to decide how much to tell Alice. She needed TRACE’s help to get to Katherine. What did she have to say to get it?
“I heard them talking, at the inn.”
“She’s a bomb maker?”
“I don’t think so, no. But she said she made sure TRACE didn’t get to the bomb before it went off. Something about killing a man and getting a… memory module.”
Alice frowned, but she was nodding. “We’d heard rumors that Transport was planning something big. We had intelligence, but our courier was killed before he could get the information to us.”
Leah’s heart began to race. Any second now, Alice would see through the lies.
“And you said this woman is going to Oakdale?”
“Yes.”
“If she was involved in the bombing, she could have information we can use.”
Leah clutched at that idea. “That’s why I came back. I thought you’d want to know.”
“That was the right thing to do. But you could have told Anderson.”
“I was going to, but then…”
Alice placed a hand on Leah’s arm. She let out a slow breath. “Thank y—”
Gunfire erupted outside. Shouts filled the air. Alice grabbed Leah and pulled her to the bed as bullets tore through the canvas above their heads. There was a deafening boom of an explosion that left Leah’s ears ringing. The truck tipped sideways as the force of the blast hit it.
14
Leah screamed. The world rolled around her. She slid across the truck bed. Her shoulder hit metal. Agonizing pain shot down her arm. Bits of equipment bounced around the truck. Something hard caught her in the mouth, and she tasted blood. The truck stopped rolling with a metallic crunch. Leah slammed into the metal wall. The chatter of gunfire was barely audible above the high-pitched whine in Leah’s ears. Sparks bounced from the wall beside her head. Or was it the floor? She couldn’t tell.
Alice grabbed Leah’s shoulder and squeezed. She said something that might have been “Are you okay?” and Leah nodded. The movement sent pain lancing down her spine. There was a thud. Leah braced herself for another explosion.
Alice was speaking to her again. Something about moving. She pointed toward the back of the truck. The two of them started crawling. The pain in Leah’s back was less intense now, and she was relieved to find she could still move her arms and legs.
The truck had rolled onto its side and was nestled in a ditch. Smoke and steam drifted around the back of the vehicle, obscuring their view outside. Together, they tumbled out of the truck and onto the sodden ground. The pop of automatic rifles became louder as the whining in Leah’s ears began to subside.
Leah couldn’t see any of the TRACE soldiers, or Transport’s, but she could hear them—sporadic bursts of gunfire punctuated by panicked shouts. Flames flickered around the base of the upended truck. The underside was blackened and burned, and part of the cab had been torn away by the explosion. A body lay across the dashboard. Leah felt her legs go weak. They shouldn’t be alive.
Alice pointed along the ditch. “Keep your head down.”
Leah half staggered, half ran. The ground beneath her feet was wet and mud seeped into her pants. Leah’s foot sank deep into the soft earth. Ice-cold water sloshed over the top of her boot. She clung to the icy feeling. It meant she was still alive.
The whining in Leah’s ears was coming back. The pitch had lowered. It was almost a buzzing sound, like a swarm of deranged bees circling her head. Gunfire crackled nearby. Leah heard someone cry out in pain.
“Get down!” shouted Alice.
A white sphere rose up out of the smoke—a Transport drone, the dark shape of a gun hanging beneath it. Leah froze. The light on top of the drone blinked red. The gun swiveled to face Leah.
Alice stepped in front of drone, and Leah had barely realized she was there before four sharp cracks split the air. Sparks flew from the drone’s body. It jerked backward and spun toward the ground. Its weapon chattered, but Alice’s shots had done enough. The bullets went wide as sparks burst from the holes in the drone’s shell. Leah covered her face as the drone hit the ground, but it landed with a dull thud and nothing more.
Two more drones drifted into view. They circled the truck like spherical ghosts. Muzzles flashed occasionally as they fired at unseen targets.
The drones suddenly darted away from the truck. Alice pulled Leah down, behind a thick bramble growing in the ditch. The truck exploded in a pillar of fire and burning canvas. Metal bounced across the ground. Warm air filled with the acrid tang of burning steel and plastic rolled over them.
Leah could see the tension in Alice’s movements. Her face was a stone mask, but her eyes darted left to right as she searched for threats.
One of the drones reappeared out of the column of black smoke rising up from the wreckage of the truck. Alice took aim through the brambles. The drone zigzagged across the road, a thin line of red laser light sweeping the ground ahead of it. It slowed for a second, focusing the lasers in on something, then continued its advance.
When the drone reached the ditch at the side of the road, it turned and began moving along it. Its progress slowed. Leah willed it to turn back and resume its scan somewhere else. Her heart sank when instead of turning away, it picked up speed, moving toward their hiding place.
Alice fired. Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted off the drone. The drone wavered, and for a moment Leah thought Alice had done enough damage to bring it down. Then it righted itself. Alice’s gun clicked empty. The dark cylinders protruding from the sphere, cameras, stared at them. The red light on the top of the drone was flashing. The killing blow would come soon.
The thunder of an explosion rumbled through the ground. A fresh column of smoke, black and greasy looking, rose up from the other side of the truck. The intermittent gunfire intensified into a near constant stream of cracks and pops. Gray smoke drifted across the road.
A truck roared into view and slid to a halt. Four soldiers jumped from the back, assault rifles pressed against their shoulders. They fanned out across the road.
The drone pulled up and away, turning its gun and firing at the new arrivals. Bullets clattered off the side of the truck. The TRACE soldiers returned fire, and the drone went down in a cloud of sparks and black smoke.
A second truck roared into view. Its brakes screeched as it pulled up behind the first. Five more soldiers piled from the back. They worked their way along the road. Another drone fell. Shouts came from the trees as the Transport Authority soldiers fell back. Within minutes the battle was over.
The TRACE soldiers reappeared. Two of them had been shot. One, an Asian man with long, curly hair had been hit
in the shoulder. He was holding the wound, and there was blood trickling down his arm, but otherwise he seemed okay. The other victim wasn’t as lucky. He’d been shot in the gut. Two men were carrying him toward the truck, one holding his legs, the other with his arms beneath the man’s shoulders.
The injured man’s jacket and pants were soaked with blood. He screamed in pain as the men hauled him down the road and lifted him into the truck where a woman began tending to him. The men pulled the canvas door on the truck closed, but the pained look on their faces told Leah all she needed to know about the man’s prospects.
Two men appeared carrying brown sackcloth bags. They moved around the battle site, picking up the remains of the drones and dropping them into the bags.
Alice clambered out of the ditch, then helped Leah up. One of the soldiers spotted them as they moved toward the nearest truck. He lifted his rifle. Leah raised her hands, convinced she was about to be mistaken for a member of Transport and get gunned down.
“Easy, Hobbs. Be careful where you point that thing,” said Alice.
Hobbs broke into a smile and lowered the gun. “Good to see the TAs didn’t get you.”
As they drew close, Leah could see the man had a small cut on his right cheek.
Alice had obviously spotted it too. “Looks like they got you, though.”
Hobbs wrinkled his nose. “Nah, caught my face on one of those damned branches,” he said, flicking his head toward the forest.
“Yeah, likely story, Hobbs,” said Alice.
“So, who’s the kid, Sergeant?” said Hobbs.
Leah didn’t like his tone. He was talking about her like some of her dad’s friends had, the ones who’d always treated her like a five-year-old.
“This is Leah. I need to get her to the colonel as soon as possible.”
“Well, in that case, you’ve come to the right place. The bus will be departing soon. If you would just provide payment, I’ll get you on board.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. “Payment.”
Hobbs didn’t say anything, but he turned away from Alice, offering her his cheek. She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, and she gave him a quick kiss on the side of his face.
The Girl in the Wilderness (Leah King Book 2) Page 7
