Right to Rule: Hunter Wars Book Five (The Hunter Wars 5)

by SD Tanner

  Puzzled, he eased into the room and stood with his back to the wall in shock. The room must have once been a large open plan office, and in one corner there were broken remnants of desks, chairs and equipment piled untidily. In front of him were rows of people chained together. Heavy chains had been run between six sets of pillars at each end of the floor. People were attached to the long chain, equal distances apart and secured with another length of chain. Sitting slumped, the people looked dirty, desperate and defeated. The man on the chain closest to him looked up and his bloodshot eyes widened in shock.

  Croakily, the man said, “Hello?”

  He walked over and saw he was probably only about thirty, but was so haggard, he looked much older. The man was wearing torn jeans, a filthy white t-shirt and his feet were bare. The chain securing the man ended with a manacle and his hands were held behind his back. He looked up at the chain attached to the ceiling and saw it was so short, all the man could do was sit up.

  “Who are you? And what the fuck is going on here?”

  By now he’d caught the attention of the people nearby and they began to call out to him. He shook his head and put his forefinger to his lips, but they continued to plead with him.

  The woman chained next to the man, pleaded pitifully, “Help us. We’re dying.”

  He looked at all of the people chained and estimated there was at least four hundred or more of them. There were several feet between each person, but it was cramped. On closer inspection, he saw some were badly injured and others looked dead or close to dying. All of them were dressed in a range of tattered street clothing and almost all were blood stained. The woman who was pleading with him was pale, shaking, and as she spoke, he saw she was missing all of her front teeth. She was sitting on her rear, but the chain behind her back was so short, it pulled her arms up awkwardly, and her cuffed wrists were torn and bleeding from the pressure of her arms being dragged against the chain. He knew the way they were chained was usually reserved for torture and no one should be left that way for long, or their arms would literally be torn from their sockets. Being chained, people were urinating and defecating where they sat and it would only be a short time before they would all die under these conditions.

  “How long have you been here?”

  By way of reply, the man shook his head distractedly and he realized he probably didn’t know. More people were becoming aware of his presence and calling out to him.

  “Water.”

  “Help us.”

  “Run!”

  He looked for the person who was telling him to run, and there was a man sitting on his haunches looking more alert than the others. He walked over to the man and crouched down until he was eye to eye with him. “Who are you? What’s happening’ here?”

  “My name is Mike Prelee and I am, or was, a First Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Over fifty thousand of us were taken prisoner six days ago and since then we’ve been held in buildings around this area. We seem to be food and entertainment for these assholes.”

  While Mike gave him a sitrep, he moved behind him to try and understand how the cuffs were secured. It was a simple design. A metal bolt secured the two sides of the cuff together, but he would need a spike and a hammer to bang it out of position.

  “I’m Gears. Do you know where I can find the spike and hammer to getcha outta this thing?”

  “No. They don’t often free us, and if they do, it’s never for a good reason.”

  He stood up and looked at the pillars securing the main chain. It wasn’t his mission to free these people, and he couldn’t free everyone in every building, but he’d be damned if he’d just walked away doing nothing to help them. Through his radio mike, he said, “Pax, you TL and Benny need to get in here. There’s a back door, and once you’re in, take the far left door and come up to the first floor.”

  “Roger that,” Pax replied.

  Ip followed him with her hunter guard as he walked over to the pillar at the far end of the room. When the hunters passed them, some of the chained people wailed in fear and he thought, honey, keep the hunters away from ‘em. Ip understood and her hunters walked away to stand by the door to the stairwell. The room quietened and he inspected how the chains were secured to the pillar. It was primitive, but effective. A deep groove had been cut at the top of the pillar, and the heavy chain was wrapped inside the it.

  “What the fuck?” He heard Pax ask, and turned to see him walking into the room with Benny and TL.

  TL surveyed the room balefully and then strode over to where he was standing. Giving him a hard stare, he asked angrily, “What the hell are you doing, Gears? This is not our mission. We’re supposed to get intel and get out. You’re already forgetting your own orders to make attacking Ruler our priority.”

  He looked at TL in utter disbelief. “Do you seriously think I’m gonna walk out on this?”

  “Yes, I do, Gears. We can’t save them this way. We have to come back in the right way with the right resources. Get a fucking grip. This’ll just get us all killed and then there’ll be no hope for any of them.”

  Pax was examining the manacles on the person next to the pillar. “TL, you’re my brother and I love ya, but shut the fuck up. You’re wrong and you won’t talk Gears or me outta doin’ this, so jus’ get the fuck on board.”

  TL said nothing, but shook his head in disgust. Deciding to deal with him later, he turned to Pax. “Whatdaya think?”

  With a downturned mouth, Pax said, “We need to break the main chain to get their arms down, and then we need to break a few of ‘em free so they can free the others.”

  “I know that, Pax. I was askin’ how.”

  Giving both of them a filthy look, TL waved his hand at the chain attached to the pillar. “You’re both stupid. You need to get the spike and a hammer to release the cuffs otherwise they’ll still be chained and just how far do you think they’ll get then?”

  Pax strode back toward the stairwell. “I don’t reckon they’d carry the kit with ‘em, so it’s gotta be here somewhere.”

  “Send the shooters in with our packs, so we can give ‘em the food and water we got with us,” he said through his radio as he watched Pax leave with Ip and her hunters following.

  Shaking his head, TL said dourly, “That’s a stupid thing to do as well.”

  Ignoring TL, he walked back to Mike and crouched down again. “We’re jus’ the recon team and I ain’t got any forces with me to sort this out, so even if I can getcha loose, you’re on your own. I gotta find the little shit that did this to you and stop him for good.”

  Mike winced as he painfully adjusted his position on his haunches. “I don’t care. I just don’t wanna die chained to a ceiling.”

  “I hear ya, but whatdaya know that’ll help us?”

  “They’ve got an army of men that can control the hunters. I don’t know how they did it, but they brought a million of the damned things through the city, found us in the buildings and hauled us out. Then they split us up and put us all into these buildings. I assume we’re all secured pretty tightly because I haven’t heard anything that sounds like anyone escaping.”

  He’d never heard anyone describe the super hunters as an army. “Whatdayou mean they’ve got an army?”

  “They’re an army. Wearing ACUs and carrying guns. There seemed to thousands of them all over the place.”

  “Did they have blue on blue eyes?”

  “Yeah. What are they?”

  “We call ‘em super hunters. They can control the hunters, but they didn’t used to be able to use weapons. That’s new and it ain’t good new either.”

  “Got it,” Pax said through his earpiece.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Pax has found the gear to free you. TL might be bein’ a bad tempered asshole right now, but he’s right and we gotta finish this mission. I need to locate Ruler and I believe he’s in a hotel around here. We’ll get you loose, but after that you need to do whatcha can for the rest of ‘em here. Res
t assured, I’ll be back with an army to sort this shit out.”

  Mike gave him a tired, but relieved look. “Thanks. If I live, I’ll meet you on the battlefield when you get back.”

  Pax returned with the mallet and spike and as he held Mike’s arms still, Pax hammered the spike into the cuff and the bolt fell to the floor.

  He heard Mike take a sharp breath and with genuine concern. “You alright?”

  “Yeah, but my shoulders hurt like a bitch.”

  Scoping around the room, Pax identified another person who was looking reasonably alert and walked across to free him next. “Where’s Ruler’s demons? There’s no one here. Jus’ more floors of people in no better shape than this lot.”

  Mike was massaging his shoulders. “I don’t know. It all got very quiet a few days ago, but I don’t know why.”

  They spent an hour helping Mike free people from their chains and it was as much as they could do, but not nearly enough. He realized TL was right and they needed to get on with the mission and locate Ruler. There was no point freeing prisoners if they didn’t get rid of the source of the problem. They might have destroyed Ruler’s last camp, but it hadn’t done them a blind bit of good. Most of the survivors there had no doubt died as a result of being so badly abused, and all that happened was Ruler moved on and set up again, only this time he had more people and was doing more damage. He figured he could leave Benny and the two combat shooters to free as many people as they could and then lead them out of the city. It wasn’t a satisfactory solution and he knew there were tens of thousands of people trapped in the buildings. He hadn’t expected to find a good situation in the city, but this was even worse than he imagined, and he reluctantly ordered them to move out. Leaving Benny and the shooters with extra handguns, magazines and all the food and water they carried, he wished Mike the best and genuinely hoped they would see him back at the tunnel.

  With his brothers and Ip, he walked down the stairs outside into the fresh air, and said, “I hate this shit.”

  Ip speaks: To keep the many, we must lose a few. We must see our mission through and true.

  As usual, Ip’s emotions were steady, and he allowed her calmness to sooth his own dissatisfaction with the decision he’d felt forced to make.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Redemption (Luke)

  The transport ship had been cutting through the waves for days. He and Jon loved sitting up on the bow of the ship, hanging over the railing and peering down at the water while the ship endlessly drove forward. When they got bored, they would dodge through the crowds of people lounging and standing around on the deck, race to the back of the boat and watch the churning water that left a trail of white froth behind the ship. This was the most fun he could ever remember having, but being only twelve years old, he hadn’t had much time to experience anything yet. He was ten years old when the world changed abruptly, but having no fixed idea about how the world should be, it hadn’t bothered him much. His mum had dropped him off at school and he’d met up with Jon and gone to class. Sitting at their white plastic covered tables, he’d been happy to hear the sirens hooting through the hallways. They’d assumed it was a fire drill and were surprised when, over the PA, they’d been told to stay in their classrooms. Their teacher had walked out into the corridor, closing the door as she left and he’d never seen her again. Then the screaming started. He hadn’t liked that, and he and Jon had run to the window and climbed out to the concrete ground below. Running to the parking lot, they’d been called by one of the teachers to get in a yellow school bus, and then full of kids it had rocked its way out of the school.

  He and Jon spent that bus ride with their eyes glued to the scenes unfolding around them. Cars were crashing into one another, others were mounting the curbs and driving over people running from the chaos. The sound of gunfire rang out over and over and he’d seen a young girl, no older than himself, running down the footpath. She was being chased by a group of bloodied adults and they caught her and yanked her off her feet, but the bus went by so fast, he never did see what happened to her. He felt like he was in the kind of movie his older brothers liked to watch. He wasn’t supposed to watch those movies, but late at night while his parents slept, his brothers would let him. There was always some homicidal maniac and a lot of blood, and for some reason he never understood, no one could ever kill the guy. He sort of missed his brothers, but mostly he didn’t think about them. He and Jon had stuck together while they hung out with a group of grown-ups, and other than making sure they were fed and safe, nobody paid much attention to them. It hadn’t bothered him to be ignored, and eventually they’d joined a bigger group of people who’d set up a base in a storage building. From there they were moved to a cruise ship and now they were on a transport heading to an island. He never questioned any of the moves. He did as he was told and he’d never missed a meal or been hurt in any way. Since he joined this group, he hadn’t even seen anything bad happen other than they made him go to the small school on the ship.

  The transport ship had been slowing down, and from the bow of the ship, he saw they were the last in the line to be brought to the dock. Thousands of people had already disembarked and they looked like small figures in the distance. He was excited. Someone told him they were going to another country and this was the first time he’d ever been outside of the United States. One of the teachers on the ship showed him where the UK was on a big map. He hadn’t thought it looked very far away, but it took them seven days by water to get there. From the bow of the boat, he looked back over their transport ship and saw hundreds of people had already made their way to the deck, eager to see their new home. There’d been a growing buzz of excitement building on the ship, and people were talking and laughing while they patiently waited for their turn to dock.

  “Shit, I left my Grandpa’s ring in the cabin,” Jon said anxiously.

  Jon’s grandfather had died a long time ago and his mother gave him her father’s ring. It was far too large to fit Jon, but he carried it everywhere, believing it brought him good luck. Understanding his friend’s anxiety, he said cheerfully, “No probs, we’ll go back down and get it, but I don’t wanna miss the ship docking.”

  Looking flushed and nodding, Jon said excitedly, “Me neither. It’s gonna be cool.”

  Together he and Jon fought their way through the crowds, pushing and ducking until they reached the entrance to the lower decks. The corridors below were as crowded as the deck above, and it was as if no one was prepared to spend one more minute in their cramped cabins. He didn’t think it was any better for people to wait in a crowded corridor than their cabins, but grown-ups never made much sense to him. Once they shoved and pushed their way down the corridor and into their cabin, Jon raced to his bunk, and standing on the bottom bunk, began to dig about his bed.

  Finally he held up the heavy silver ring with the ruby red stone. “Found it!”

  He took the ring from Jon, jammed it on his thumb. “Hey, look, it fits.” He waggled his hand to see if he could get the ring to slip off, but it caught on his knuckle, and although it slid sideways, it stayed on his thumb.

  Jon laughed. “You can wear it for a bit. You know, for luck.”

  Just to be contrary, he said, “I don’t need luck.” Pausing briefly, he added, “Well, maybe I need a bit.”

  Deciding he would wear it just to see if it really did bring him luck, he turned to Jon. “Wanna go back up top? It’s stinks down here.”

  Jon wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, it smells like farts.”

  They both giggled at the thought that the cabins were full of fart air and walked back into the corridor. Preparing to push their way back out through the crowds, over the sound of the voices and laughter, he thought he heard a scream. Jon was behind him, and without thinking, he pushed him back into the room and slammed the door shut.

  “What’s up?”

  He didn’t reply, but he put his ear to the door. “Listen.”

  Jon put his ear to the door. “What are they screa
ming for?”

  Shaking his head, he continued to listen to the noises coming from outside the door. The faint screaming he’d heard from the corridor had gotten louder now the door was closed and he realized more people were screaming. A loud thump hit the door and they both pulled away and looked at the door in horror.

  “Lock it,” Jon whispered hoarsely.

  He managed to twist the door lock and attach the security chain before there was another loud bang against the door, and he heard a keening wail from the other side. Stepping further back from the door, he looked wide-eyed at Jon, but neither said a word. The wailing stopped, and now he could hear and feel loud noises coming from everywhere. The sound of banging was reverberating off the metal floors and doors and he and Jon retreated further into their cabin.

  With his voice laced with fear, Jon asked, “What are we gonna do?”

  “Wait.”

  Suddenly he heard the sound he wanted to hear. It was the sound of rapid gunfire and it seemed to be coming from outside their cabin. “I’m gonna look.”

  “Don’t open the door.”

  “Hunters can’t use guns.”

  He unchained and unlocked the door, but before he could open it, a woman dressed in ACUs and carrying a gun practically fell through the door followed by a man also wearing ACUs. Both of them slammed the door shut and stood leaning with their backs to the door.