“And what do you plan to do with that information?” Henry asked, an eyebrow raised.
Sam thought about it for a moment. Why did he care about it? What could he possibly do? Then the realization came over him as though the clouds had parted and the sun shined through onto his shoulders. With a smile, he said, “Stop them, of course.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Leland was alone.
Getting to the hospital from here seemed like an impossible task, considering the large crowd. A lot of these people weren’t even rioters but were just there to see what the ruckus was about. Some just wanted answers as to why their situation had become horrible and yet there had been no response. There were soldiers out there, so why weren’t they helping them?
He didn’t know what Henry and his brother had gotten themselves into, but it had to be something big. Leland didn’t want any part of it, though. He had rescued the two of them from their captors, and now he was separated from his daughter by a sea of angry mobs and vengeful soldiers. He should have just left the hospital with Cora and gotten out of there.
No. This was not how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t his fault that Henry—the convict—and his brother had gotten themselves into a seriously dangerous situation. He had done his duty. He had gone above and beyond that. He had pulled Henry away from his captor, but it didn’t mean Leland had a responsibility to risk his daughter’s life and help Henry get out of the city. Wasn’t this their territory anyway? Weren’t they from Chicago?
Henry and Sam needed to lay low for a while. Sam needed to heal from whatever torture he had experienced. Unless they went north to Hope, they would never see Leland again. It was strange that there was something about that fact that made him feel sad. He had grown fond of Henry.
Leland didn’t like to admit it, but Henry reminded him of Travis. He missed his son desperately. Every time his boy’s face popped up in his mind, Leland had to choke back tears. It wasn’t becoming of a sheriff to be fighting away tears all the time, but he had lost a wife and a son. His pillow had become a haven where his tears could hide. Grief happened in the quiet times when his thoughts were allowed to wander and he started to see the reality of where he was.
Leland was alone. That was his reality. Even though his daughters were alive and they were all he had left, it was still a fight to not be alone.
He had to take what he had left and make sure it survived. Make sure he preserved it. Henry wasn’t his. Gwen was his. Cora was his. Those were the two souls he had any responsibility to protect. Once they were safe, his duty would be done.
A terrifying thought seized Leland as he pushed through the crowd, his rifle in hand. What if Cora wasn’t at the hospital? What if she had, for some inexplicable reason, left? He couldn’t bear to think of it.
It was at almost the same moment that he saw a burst of flames pour out of the hospital in the distance. It was so dark outside he couldn’t tell where the flames were coming from within the building, but it didn’t matter. The hospital was under attack. His hurried steps turned into an all-out sprint, and he didn’t care who he ran into or shoved out of his way to get there.
If the hospital was on fire, then all of those people were in trouble. There were so many faces, so many screaming faces, that he would never be able to find her. He looked for a woman carrying a child, but that wasn’t an uncommon sight. He scanned every face that wasn’t covered in darkness from the night, but it did no good.
The closer he got to the hospital, the more easily he could see that people were pouring out of it. Smoke was billowing through so many windows.
He felt like someone had punched him in the gut over and over again. He had only been gone for a short time. How could this have happened? He shouldn’t have left her. He should have just stayed with her and gotten them out of the hospital. Leland hated himself. He hated the decisions he had made. It seemed these last few days had been full of hard decisions that he couldn’t escape.
He decided to do what had helped him find her in the first place. He started yelling her name.
“Cora! Cora! Cora!”
No one seemed to look at him much less hear him over the crowd of people. That didn’t keep him from screaming her name. “Cora!”
He felt desperate. He had only felt so desperate a few times in his life, and now was one of these times. He was contemplating running into the hospital, but he wasn’t sure that was the right call either. Cora was smart. She would’ve seen the smoke and gotten out, wouldn’t she?
Leland looked for a proper opening to the hospital, but the flames were so large and the smoke so thick.
Who would attack a hospital? What was wrong with these people?
He felt hopeless. He had no idea if she was in there, but there was a part of him that said she was. Why wouldn’t she be? Leland had lost so much in his life, what was one more child? What was one more loved one?
Everything.
To lose one more was to become that much less human.
He started to yell out her name again when he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head and he fell to his knees.
He looked up long enough just to see a soldier standing over him with a gun pointed at Leland’s face. When he looked in every direction, he saw that he was surrounded by soldiers. Had they followed him there?
Then his eyes fixed on the soldier who had hit him and he realized he recognized the man’s face—the man who had let him into the neighborhood earlier in the day.
Russell.
Now, Leland was his prisoner.
Chapter Fifty
Henry sat behind the garbage can and watched the truck from their vantage point. The soldier would occasionally get on his radio and respond to something neither he nor Sam could hear, but otherwise he stood motionless and alone. The crowd was about half a block in front of the truck, and they didn’t want to go near it.
“We could take that,” Henry said. “It’s just one guy.”
Sam didn’t respond, but he did look at Henry with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” Henry said.
“What’s your plan, Rambo?” Sam adjusted himself, sat a little straighter, and closed his eyes as though to quell the pain inside of him. He let out a deep sigh. “The moment we take that truck, the soldiers are going to come down on us like a colony of ants.”
“Maybe not,” Henry said. “There’s so much going on out there, they might not even notice for a little bit.”
“And then what? Do we go after your friend? What if he hasn’t found his daughter yet? That doesn’t help us. If we’re taking that, then we’re taking it out of Chicago.”
“The hospital isn’t that far away,” Henry said. “If he knows where she is, then he will be in and out. He’s most likely already there. It’s just a matter of getting in there and grabbing her, then getting out. He would be coming back this way.”
“If you think it’s two against one, you’re wrong. I’m not much good for a fight right now.”
“It doesn’t mean you can’t distract him on one side while I take him on the other.”
Sam seemed skeptical, but he didn’t argue this time. Henry wasn’t sure how to operate the gun on the back of a truck like that, but he had seen movies. Surely, it wasn’t that complicated. If the soldiers came after them, maybe he could spray them with bullets. But he didn’t think it was going to go that far. It didn’t need to. The soldiers weren’t going to come after them because they weren’t going to see them.
“Come on,” Henry said, “let’s do it.”
Sam looked up at him, incredulous, but again, he didn’t argue and instead pulled himself to his feet. Then he motioned for Henry to continue. “Left side?”
Henry nodded.
He stood up first and started creeping toward the vehicle, then he looked back to see Sam gather enough strength to walk behind him. When they were clear of the alley, Henry motioned for Sam to go to the other side. Sam took a deep breath, nodded, and started walking. Henry kne
w he would have to act quickly. The soldier would probably be on edge and could do something rash if Henry wasn’t there to stop him. He moved forward toward the back of the truck, careful not to make any noise with his feet.
Despite his pain and weakness, Sam performed admirably. Sam winced and started groaning as he fell on his hands and knees. The soldier jerked his head toward the ground where Sam was now crawling, breathing more heavily than before, and almost screaming in pain.
“Could you help me?”
The soldier pulled his rifle around and pointed it at Sam. “What are you doing?” the soldier yelled.
There was no time for an answer as Henry sprang from the other side of the truck and jumped. He wrapped his arms around the soldier’s waist, and they tumbled onto the ground. The soldier’s face smashed into the ground, and Henry immediately grabbed for his gun. Sam was up on his feet, then he clambered to get on top of the soldier to help Henry. Henry took the butt of the rifle and slammed it into the side of the soldier’s head, and the man stopped moving. He wouldn’t be out for very long, but it would be long enough for them to get the truck and go.
The truck started easily enough. As Sam got into the passenger side, Henry started it up.
He took a left toward the hospital, and he hoped that the rioters would see they weren’t soldiers driving the truck and would applaud the fact that they had stolen it. He hoped the soldiers would be too preoccupied with the rioters to notice they had stolen the vehicle.
Whatever the case, they were almost out of time.
Chapter Fifty-One
The pandemonium outside the hospital frightened Cora to her bones. She clung to Michelle almost as tightly as Michelle clung to her. Citizens fought and shot at soldiers, and soldiers returned the favor. It was like a war zone and certainly not something she would have ever expected to see in a place like Chicago. She looked behind her and saw the hospital in flames, and she almost couldn’t believe it.
As she pushed forward, she kept her eyes focused on any soldiers or anyone who might be hostile to them. She hadn’t forgotten the man who had come after her earlier in the day. She hadn’t forgotten the doctor who had tried to kill her just a little while ago. People’s minds weren’t right.
Cora had to take a break. Her arms burned furiously. She set Michelle on the ground and knelt beside her, wiping the sweat from her own face.
“Are you okay?” Cora asked her.
Michelle nodded. “I think so. I think I…” She stopped mid-sentence as her eyes fixed on something ahead.
“What is it?” Cora asked, looking in the same direction.
“It’s my mom,” Michelle said, almost with no emotion. It was as though she didn’t believe her own eyes.
Cora’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure?” Could it even be possible? Weren’t they so far away from where Michelle had been left?”
“Mom!” Michelle yelled out. “Mom!”
The woman Michelle had seen looked up from among the crowd. When her eyes fell on Michelle, she clambered toward her, screaming. “Michelle! Baby, come here!”
The woman fell to her knees in front of Michelle and the two of them embraced, tears falling down their faces. Cora couldn’t believe the sight. She had been prepared to take Michelle with her to Hope, away from this place. What if she had? Michelle might not have ever seen her mother again.
Cora held a hand over her mouth.
“This is Cora, Mom. She helped me!”
“I’ve been looking all over for her,” Michelle’s mom said. “I lost her in the chaos of the streets.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I was so lost without you, sweetie. I’m so sorry, I lost you.” She reached out and hugged Michelle again.
Cora wanted to tell her the horrors that Michelle had been through in the past day, but Michelle would tell her on her own. They were all going through horrors, and these weren’t the last of them.
Cora quickly told her about the infection and handed Michelle’s mother the bottle of antibiotics.
“Are you two going to be okay?” Cora asked.
The mother looked at her and smiled. “I am now. I think I have a way out of the city. I wasn’t going to take it until I found Michelle, but now…” She sighed deeply. “Thank you for taking care of her. Thank you so much.”
“We took care of each other,” Cora said, reaching out to Michelle’s hair and stroking it. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, but now wasn’t the time for long goodbyes. She had to keep moving. She had to get out of there. “Wherever you go, take care of yourselves.”
The mother nodded at Cora, and Michelle reached out and hugged Cora tightly. Cora didn’t understand why she didn’t want to let go of her, why she felt like her heart had been stabbed through. She would never forget Michelle.
“Goodbye,” Michelle said.
“Goodbye,” Cora answered, her lips quivering.
Cora stood and turned from the mother and child, hoping Michelle didn’t see the tears streaking down her face. This was best, no doubt, but she felt an emptiness—a loss she couldn’t explain. That emptiness faded, however, when she made it down an alley and cut a corner. She saw a group of soldiers surrounding one person. They had their guns trained on him, standing over him as though he were some kind of threat. As though one man would be a threat to twelve soldiers.
Then, Cora’s eyes went wide when she recognized the man on the ground.
Her father.
She instinctively crouched to the ground.
With all the rioting and people screaming and fighting, she couldn’t imagine why the soldiers would be fixated on her dad. It wasn’t as though he was trying to pick a fight with them. Maybe it was because of the rifle he had been holding?
She felt a nervousness within her that she feared would overtake her. She couldn’t let her dad remain a captive of the soldiers, but she couldn’t just attack them either. There was something in her that wouldn’t let her do it. A fear so deep, so tangible, she would almost rather die than fight. Her instinct was to run. Her instinct was always to run. That’s what she had always done, and it was all she had ever known.
But this time she couldn’t run. There was nothing left for her to do but to stay and fight.
She pulled two pistols from her belt. She knew what this might mean. She knew she was risking her life to save her father, which was something he would probably never want her to do. But he had come all this way and risked his life for her.
It was time that someone rescued Leland West.
Chapter Fifty-Two
It was over. Their fight. Their purpose. There was nothing left for Leland to do. They had taken his guns. They would question him, then when they found out he didn’t know anything, they would kill him. His death would be as meaningless as the riots, as empty as the entire situation they were in.
Leland didn’t try to ask the soldiers why they had captured him, and they didn’t look like they were interested in holding a conversation. He watched Russell walk away and grab his radio, then talk back and forth with someone. Judging by the look on the man’s face, it seemed they had found Elias’s body in that dank room.
What concerned Leland the most about that place wasn’t that they had Henry and his brother tied up, nor that there were even a bunch of soldiers there. It was the fact that the building had electricity. Why, in the middle of the city, was there electricity in a single building for the soldiers to work out of? Sure, they might have somehow restored power to the place as a standard base of operations, but that didn’t make sense. It was not as simple as flipping a switch back on and restoring power.
Then Russell marched up to Leland, still holding the radio in front of his face. “Where are the other two?”
Leland stared at the ground. They were going to kill him. It didn’t matter what he said. Lying to them wouldn’t do much more than make them angry. So, he decided not to say anything.
“Where are the other two?” the soldier demanded. He reared back and kicked Leland
in the ribs. Pain screamed through his body and he doubled over, one hand on his side, the other holding him up off the ground. Then the soldier kicked his hand out from under him, and he went face-first into the asphalt. “Where are the other two?”
Again, Leland didn’t answer, and again he was kicked in the side. He could take this kind of pain. He had been in plenty of fights where he was kicked, punched, and bruised up. It was never a pleasant experience, but it wasn’t the worst. They would kick him, beat him up, then put a bullet in his head. He could handle that.
The soldier kicked Leland in the side again, and that was the moment he heard her voice. It was a scream through the night, unlike the other yells and screams he had heard. It wasn’t one of fear or grief; rather, it was of pure anger and hatred. Each of the soldiers surrounding him looked in the direction of the scream, and suddenly blood started flying through the air. Soldiers dropped to the ground. It took a moment for Leland to realize what was happening, but when he got to his knees and the fifth soldier dropped, he saw her.
Cora was unloading on the soldiers with dual pistols, one shot right after the other. The ones who hadn’t been shot yet looked for a place to aim, giving Leland just a single moment to grab one of the dead soldier’s guns and wheel it around on the remaining few. He made each pull of the trigger count—one shot right after another.
Almost as quickly as the fight had started, it was over, and dead mercenaries lay in a circle around him.
Leland stood and met Cora’s eyes. Even from this distance in the darkness, with only the flames of the hospital to light her face, he could see tears running down her cheeks. This wasn’t her domain. This wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be. She wasn’t meant to hold a gun. She wasn’t meant to fight like this. But she had been forced to in this new world—a place where everyone had new roles despite what they had done in their previous life.
Fallen Earth | Book 2 | Aftermath Page 25
