Finn
The Warden’s office wasn’t booby-trapped and showed no apparent signs of life. Signs of death, on the other hand, were in abundance. Perhaps the most disturbing thing wasn’t the dried and splattered blood, nor the skeleton lying on the ground, wearing a dark-blue suit. Both of those Finn could live with. The strips torn off the leather couch, which sat beneath a wide bay window. Strips as though someone had been scratching at it and tearing at the stitching, that’s what sent a chill rolling up his spine.
“He went crazy,” Joanne said, her eyes jumping between the man and the leather couch.
“Not crazy,” Finn replied. “He was trapped in his office after The Shift hit and slowly starved to death.
“So, he ate his sofa?” Foster asked, his face all squished up.
“Uh huh. Least he didn’t try and eat himself.”
Joanne around fruitlessly for something to cover him with. “Poor man.”
On the warden’s desk was a computer, and Finn knew he was going to have the same problem here he’d had at Tevatron’s offices in Vegas. No power to turn it on.
Foster must have noticed Finn’s disappointment. “Commander Zhou had the engineers rig up an old generator they found by the maintenance area. If you’re willing to hump that computer all the way back, we may be able to get it powered up.”
“Not a bad idea,” Joanne said, and Finn was becoming more certain she was eager to simply get the hell out of here.
“We’ll do that, but there’s something else I’m looking for.” Finn opened a filing cabinet by the desk and began leafing through folders. Certain kinds of sensitive documents don’t normally get sent around via e-mail.
Joanne was right there beside him, peering over his shoulder, and something about the way she smelled made Finn’s pulse begin to quicken. Didn’t seem to matter that she was as dirty as the rest of them, somehow she managed to smell of vanilla.
Fighting to keep his mind focused, Finn was flipping past files with convict names and prisons when Joanne reached in and plucked a folder out. It was labelled: The Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center in Las Vegas.
“You recognize it?”
“No, but I also can’t imagine the both of us would have been kept at the same prison.”
“Good point.” Finn finished that drawer and moved onto the next.
Foster was beginning to pace back and forth. “We really should hurry up. Staying in one place for more than a few minutes ain’t a great idea.”
“I think I got something here,” Joanne said, holding up a sheet of paper. “It’s a transfer order from Florence Mclure in Vegas to Tevatron’s research facility in the desert.”
Finn looked it over, running his finger down a list of women’s names. “Maybe they’re potential candidates, going for interviews.”
“Looks like it,” she said.
His finger stopped halfway down. Joanne Blackwood. “Getting hotter.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, and Finn felt the blush rise up his neck and into his face.
“Project Arrow,” she said pointing to the letter head. “What’s that?”
“Long story. I’ll explain on the way home.”
“You folks find what you were looking for?” Foster asked, throwing a quick glance into the hallway.
“Nearly,” Finn told him, returning to the filing cabinet’s middle drawer. He was almost at the end of the pile when he saw the folder he’d been expecting. This one also read Project Arrow. He laid it out on the desk and opened it up. The first page was a list a lot like the one Joanne had found, except this one had a list of men. Bud or Benjamin wasn’t there. But Finn’s name was, right at the top of the list. These were the male candidates remaining after the first round of cuts had been made. Also in the folder was a glossy Tevatron handout where they discussed the projects goals of treating PTSD and rehabilitating criminals. That part he’d already seen down in the underground lab, but the newspaper clipping he saw next was something entirely new. An exposé on public sector companies set up as covers for secret government black projects. The article talked about a whistleblower who leaked details of a secret project code named Arrow designed to test the effects of ultra high-powered magnets on human subjects. The goal was weaponization and mind control. They’d hidden funding for the project within the government’s black budget and earmarked it for $10 billion a year.
“You reading this?” Finn asked.
Joanne took the clipping and was scanning through it when Finn noticed a tiny scrap of paper seesaw to the floor. He grabbed it and read it over twice, just to be sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
Please ensure the following: Subject Francis Inn must never be informed his wife is a part of Project Arrow. Below that was his wife’s name:
Joanne Blackwood.
Larry
The note on his desk was the first thing Larry noticed when he entered his office. Folded over twice in just the sort of style he remembered from his old school days as a teenager. The sweet smell of Gail Patterson, the dark-haired girl who sat next to him in 11th grade English class. She’d passed him a note. One Larry hoped contained passages professing her undying love for him. Instead, it read:
Can I copy your homework?
‘Course, he’d let her, and it was after many other favors Larry had done for Gail that she started fucking Johnathan Baker, the school’s track star.
See what happens to nice guys? You pussy shit! His father had shouted, berating him for over an hour.
Shaking off the memory, Larry closed his office door, went to his desk, and opened the note. He glared down at the words he saw written there with confusion and mounting horror.
“Did you know that Romeo is still in New Jamestown?”
The penmanship was extremely poor, as if someone were trying to mask their true identity. Larry let the note fall from his hands. He’d given Dana explicit instructions to banish Romeo from the compound as soon as possible. If this note were true, it meant she’d disobeyed a direct order. But why would she do that? Larry knew Romeo had incriminating information on him. That he’d asked the kid to crack the safe so he could steal the cult’s scriptures. That’d he’d used what he found there to help take All Father down. Surely, she didn’t think he’d killed the old man. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. He remembered hearing the news, and being as shocked as everyone else. Well, maybe elated.
He would need to talk to Dana about Romeo and see if he could gauge from her reaction to his questions whether she was still trustworthy. Once that was settled, he would try and find out who had gotten in here and left this note. And why that dumbass Charlie hadn’t stopped them.
But before any of that, Larry would attend to the rumbling in his belly. He stalked over to the cabinet trying to decide between chunky beef stew or canned salmon. When the door to his private stash swung open, all the blood suddenly drained from his face.
His food was gone
All of it. Every single last can, and now the feeling of hunger and confusion he’d been feeling over the strange note was being shoved aside by white-hot anger.
“CHARLIE!” he shouted to the guard outside. In came Charlie. And it was clear by the deep tremble in Larry’s voice that something was terribly wrong. The concern showed on the young man’s face as he entered. “What is it, Sir?”
“Who did you let in here while I was away?” Larry barked.
“No one. I mean, no one that I know of, Sir. But I’m only posted outside when you’re present.”
“Yeah, well now you’re gonna stand there all fucking day long ‘cause someone’s been in here and gone through my things.”
“Was something taken?”
“Yes, you moron. Something was taken. Just get back out there and do your goddamned job.”
Charlie looked like a scolded puppy as he pulled the door closed behind him. And that got Larry wondering. Had leaving that note and snatching Larry’s food been the intruder’s only goal? A ta
ngle of frantic thoughts was running through his head when his eyes settled over the locked drawer. The one in his desk where he kept All Father’s diary and Abigail’s channeled scriptures. He had to blink twice before his mind fully digested what he was seeing. The drawer wasn’t fully closed. Larry wrenched it open and cursed as loudly as his lungs would allow. Just then the door swung open. Standing there slack jawed was another cult member.
“What is it now, goddammit?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Finn
They were halfway across cell block C when they heard the noise. Foster out front, Finn and Joanne close behind. All three of them turned at once. It sounded to Finn’s ears as though someone was running a baton along the cell doors somewhere in D block above them.
Foster had his weapon at the ready, his finger not quite on the trigger, but resting alongside it. They stood there for a moment, frozen in place as the sound slowly drew closer.
“Think they know we’re here?” Joanne asked, fear cloying her every pore.
Finn gave a short nod. “Maybe, but I’m not gonna stick around to find out.”
Foster agreed, and all of them quickened their pace just a little more. Then the sound of clanging against cell doors intensified, as though they were also speeding, and now Finn was sure whoever that was knew where they were.
Every bone in his body begged for them to break into a dead run. He’d been cornered by Wipers before and knew perfectly well what they were capable of. Although a mad dash could easily turn an ordered retreat into a chaotic run for your life.
Unshouldering his .30-06 rifle, Finn used the bolt to load a round into the chamber. They were just coming to the end of cell block C and preparing to pass through the gated check point before descending into cell block B when Finn took a quick glance behind him. Three men in orange prison jumpsuits were standing at the end of the long hallway.
The animal-like way in which the men lurched toward them, each holding a curved piece of rebar, made it clear they weren’t offering guided tours of the prison. No, these guys were Wipers, and Finn raised his rifle right as they broke into a run. He squeezed the trigger and the sound of the escaping round echoed violently. The Wipers dropped to the floor. One even dove into an empty cell, but either way it wouldn’t have made a difference ‘cause his shot went high. Finn turned to follow Foster and Joanne who were disappearing through the gateway on their way down the B block.
As he did so, a Wiper, rippling with muscle, who must have been lying in wait, came charging out from one of the cells, a crude homemade machete in hand. Finn swung the rifle around to fire, but the Wiper parried the blow, and the shot ricocheted off the wall. The rifle stock was just as good a weapon as any, and Finn buried it into the side of the Wiper’s face and then down on the hand holding the machete. The blade clanged to the ground.
In a few more seconds, the Wiper’s buddies would catch up, and then Finn would be in real trouble. But the blow to the face hadn’t knocked the Wiper out, and now the two of them were locked in hand-to-hand combat, Finn unable to use the rifle bolt to chamber another round. It was no better than a club, and this Wiper was holding onto it with everything he had. The wounds in his chest where Bud had shot him felt like hot daggers charring his insides. He wasn’t in any state to go toe to toe with anyone, let alone with a prisoner who looked like he’d been preparing for a shot at Mr. Universe. It also didn’t help that he had the warden’s computer strapped to his back.
The right side of the Wiper’s face was swollen and bleeding from where the stock of Finn’s rifle had struck him, but the man was smiling, as though for him the pain was but an appetizer and Finn was the main course. That was when Finn caught a strange sight over the Wipers shoulder in the prison cell. Someone was emerging from under the lower bunk bed, as if crawling up from hell itself. An older man with a long white beard, and he, too, was dressed in orange, but his movements were slow and methodical, not crazed like the Wiper before him or the three others racing down the long C block hallway. The muscled Wiper had Finn pushed up against the wall, the length of his rifle at his neck, cutting off his air. He was going to choke Finn out. And the old guy with the beard, what would his role be in all this? Was he the one who liked to watch? Those were the jumbled thoughts coursing through Finn’s oxygen-deprived brain when the old guy raised his hand. He was holding what looked like a hammer, but this one had a long curved spike at the end, and he swung it into the back of the Wiper’s head. The sound was sharp and wet as Mr. Universe’s knees buckled and his eyes rolled up in his skull before he collapsed onto the floor.
“Hurry,” the old man said, pulling Finn into the cell and slamming the door right as the three Wipers arrived outside, out of breath and very pissed off. They were bashing the door with their weapons, hollering like mad, but even in his woozy state, Finn knew they weren’t getting in.
The old man lifted the cot, revealing a hole just large enough for a man. It was dark down there, and Finn wasn’t sure at all if he’d just been saved by one set of psychos to fall into the hands of another.
“If you wanna see your friends again, I suggest you climb in.”
Larry
Following the cult member down the stairs, Larry wasn’t sure how this shitpile of a day could get any worse. Dana, Lou, and Tanner were waiting for him in the compound’s spacious kitchen. Directly behind them was an open pair of pantry doors. Standing there looking solemn was Dana, holding the Master padlock they used to keep it sealed at night.
“It’s been cut,” she said.
“How much did they take?” Larry asked, trying real hard to keep his cool.
Dana’s answer was simple, but devastating. “Everything.”
“Please tell me you know who did this, so we can string them up.”
“We’re working on it, Larry” Dana said. “But there’s more. Whoever emptied the pantry also stole the seeds we were gonna plant along with the topsoil.”
Larry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I want you and every deputy you have to tear this place apart until you find the sonbitch who did this and recover what they stole.”
Lou’s eyes dropped to his feet. They were wet.
“What is it?”
“Well,” Lou said. “I know you ain’t gonna like this one bit, Mr. Larry, but we already found the seeds and the fertilizer. Least what I mean to say is we know what happened to ‘em.”
Dana was wringing her hands. “Someone dumped it into the river last night. Found the plastic bags washed up along the water’s edge.” She paused. “I just don’t get who would wanna sabotage our food stocks, that’s what we’ve been trying to figure out.”
Larry didn’t say a goddamned word. Not just yet, but he was pretty sure he knew who had done this.
A cult member raced in a moment later, panting for breath, and Larry hoped it wasn’t more bad news.
“There’s a group of people at the gates, and they’re driving an ice cream truck.”
Carole
A crowd had gathered around the ice cream truck as Russell pulled in. Callahan swung open the back doors and jumped down. Someone brought a stretcher from the medical tent, and Holly and Callahan helped get her onto it. Every breath Carole took was accompanied by stabbing pain. Breathing was one of those things you always took for granted, until bullets went and ripped your insides apart. Every searing breath she now took was a workout, as though she were trying to breathe in water. Carole heard a young girl cry out as her stretcher was lifted from the truck and she knew right away that it was Nikki. Her daughter appeared over her, fat tears streaming down her emaciated cheeks. Carole’s heart surged at seeing her daughter, wondering on some perverse level whether she was hallucinating.
Everyone here looked so skinny. Even through the burning pain in Carole’s abdomen, it was something she couldn’t help but notice. She’d been gone so long from Rainbowland that the place she was seeing now – high walls and cult members armed to the teeth – might as we
ll have been another camp altogether.
Looks more like a prison than a colony of survivors.
They brought her to the medical tent and transferred her to one of the cots. A nurse named Kim Grovesteader gave her a shot of morphine, and almost at once the pain faded from a shrill scream to a dull thud. Nikki remained by her side the entire time, holding her hand, even when the nurse told her it would be best if she gave her mother some room.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ma,” Nikki told her, and Carole felt her heart nearly burst with joy. Others trickled into the tent. Lou, Dana, Tanner.
“Where’s Finn?” Carole asked, her voice down to a whisper.
“Nevada,” Dana replied, “but he’ll be back soon.”
“And Johnson?”
A question that made everyone look decidedly uneasy.
Dana put her hand over Nikki and Carole’s. “You’ve been shot. Rest. There’ll be plenty of time to fill you in on all the details later.”
It was only after that the nurse was finally able to convince Nikki to wait outside. They needed to check Carole for other wounds and assess the severity of her situation. Carole watched her daughter rise and leave the medical tent, amazed and proud that in such a short time Nikki had blossomed from a troubled teenager and into a woman.
Nikki
It felt like an eternity before Kim finished with her mother. Nikki had waited right outside, pacing back and forth, the sky a beautiful pink and yellow with the setting sun. A sight she’d hoped was a positive omen. Ethan had stayed with her for a while, but the truth she hadn’t been in the mood to talk or be comforted by anyone. All she wanted was to hear that her mother was going to be all right. Eventually, he seemed to get the message and left her alone. She’d helped to nurse Finn back to health during the month where he’d been in and out of consciousness, and she was prepared to nurse her mother for as long as it took.
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 11
