Last Victory: Book 6 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 6)

by Kevin Partner

  "Including Devon. He needs to be out of there before Mendoza returns."

  Scriver shrugged. "We'll do our best."

  "You'll what? Are you serious? The whole point of coming here was to rescue Devon and Marianna!"

  "For you, maybe. I had bigger plans."

  Jessie opened her mouth to let fly, but Gert patted her on the arm. "We'll get Devon out, Jessie. I promise. Even if you and I have to go into Hope alone."

  Scriver said, "I'm not unsympathetic, Jessie, but we can't allow the fate of one or two people to divert us from our mission."

  "And what is this mission, exactly?"

  Looking from one to the other. "A lasting peace. Whatever the cost."

  Chapter 11: Mutley

  Devon tried to work out how many times he'd woken up in this cell, but quickly gave up. This small effort was too much for him. He rolled over on the thin, lumpy mattress and his one working eye settled on the light coming in through the small window high on the wall opposite.

  The place had gone to pot since he'd briefly been sheriff here, and the cops had all been replaced by Sons of Solomon fighters—the sheriff's department, it seemed, having been dissolved after Laverne's death.

  Devon tilted his head and looked across at the other cell. No sign of Marianna. She'd been gone since yesterday morning. Until that point, she'd gotten off relatively lightly as they'd concentrated on questioning him. Perhaps some of the fighters here remembered her and, maybe, even had a little remaining loyalty. More likely, Mendoza had ordered them to go easy on her unless they couldn't get what they needed from Devon.

  He smiled, then winced as pain lanced through his jaw. He'd told them nothing. But then, they were amateurs who thought it was all about how hard you could hit someone until they cracked. Devon hadn't cracked, though his jaw was pretty sore.

  He supposed he ought to be grateful Mendoza assumed he had information it was worth the effort to extract. As he and Marianna were brought into Hope, the general was about to leave on his crusade to unite all the forces of the Sons under him. It gave Devon little comfort to consider that the members of the committee who'd sided with Mendoza had now discovered how futile that was. He would settle for nothing less than instant and complete obedience, and the ruling council was surely no more.

  How long would it be before he returned? The farthest east outpost of the Sons that Devon knew about was in Pennsylvania, the former Amish community where he'd met Noah and Anna Kurtz. But there were almost certainly more bases along the East Coast, and it would take weeks for Mendoza to reach each of them. Some would resist, surely. It could be months before he returned to Hope. But return he certainly would. This was to be his capitol, the beating heart of the new regime.

  He hadn't left the city undefended, however. Though Devon hadn't been outside the building since being brought here a week ago, he'd seen plenty of soldiers as he peered out of the back of the Land Rover. Not the overwhelming numbers there had been when the committee had arrived, but enough to keep the city subdued.

  And it was subdued. Though the window of the little jail was open, he heard nothing more than the sound of the occasional vehicle driving past and the thud of marching boots. He wondered where the people were, fearing for the fate of the old and infirm.

  It was the uncertainty that was the most frustrating. He rubbed his jaw, then tried to gently prize the lids of his left eye apart. Yes, he could see out of it, but it would be days before the swelling would go down enough for the eye to be usable. And that was assuming they didn't lay into him again in the meantime.

  The door to the sheriff's office opened and the fighter Devon had christened Mutley came in carrying a tray. He kneeled and slid it under the cell door. "Room service," he said. "Make sure y'all fill in the feedback form, won't ya? We wanna look good on TripAdvisor."

  This was his one "joke" and he repeated it every mealtime before dissolving into a bronchial laugh.

  Devon said nothing, simply watching the fool as he stood there waiting for a reaction.

  "What's gotten into you? Cat got yer tongue? Don't ya wanna know what's goin' on? Like with yer girlfriend? You like blonde girls, don't ya?"

  Devon had read Man's Search for Meaning as part of his training as a counter-terrorism officer, and he'd taken its central message to heart. Viktor Frankl had been a concentration camp inmate during the Second World War and had learned to recognize the freedom he had over his own mind and, to however tiny a degree, his outside world. Here in the twenty-first century and in his prison cell, Devon had his internal thoughts. And Mutley. So he enjoyed the tiny victory of provoking the bigoted idiot. After all, he had nothing to lose.

  "Not speakin'? Well, maybe I'll just go ahead and take your food away again."

  Devon stayed still, acting as if he hadn't heard the man speak. If Mutley moved, on the other hand, Devon would grab the tray. He was pretty sure Mutley was under orders to keep him alive, but a man could survive a long time without food. As it happened, Mutley got bored, shook his head and walked away.

  Once the man had disappeared, Devon crawled over and picked up the plastic plate, bringing it back to his bed. Mutley, or whoever prepared the food, would certainly have spat on it, but he didn't care. It was dry bread with a small chunk of rubbery cheese. Someone in Hope was obviously experimenting with producing dairy products. Experimenting and failing at this point. He wondered who it might be.

  Then he heard footsteps, and the door swung open again. Marianna stumbled in, followed by two large men, one of whom Devon recognized as a former bodyguard of hers. It seemed loyalty really was worth nothing.

  It looked as though she'd been treated to the same torture techniques he'd experienced. Her face was pink and puffed up, one of her eyes black. One of the guards pulled open the door of the other cell and threw her inside.

  The bodyguard then smoothed down his uniform and spoke. "We will get the information one way or another. Tonight, we'll choose one of you. If they do not give us what we want, the other will lose a hand. The general has instructed us to keep you alive until he returns, but he did not say whole."

  "Akan," Marianna said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I thought you were my friend."

  The bodyguard spoke without turning his head, "I am not friends with traitors." Then he spun on his heels and marched out.

  Devon moved across to the bars separating the two cells and reached out to Marianna. She hauled herself up off the floor and limped to him, taking his hand.

  There was no point asking how she was; he knew exactly. "Do you want anything to eat?"

  She rubbed her jaw. "No. Not yet, anyway."

  "I'll keep a little bread and cheese back in case you change your mind. It's disgusting and Mutley has spat in it, but it's better than nothing."

  "Mutley?"

  He smiled. "I sometimes forget how much younger than me you are. If we ever get out of here and restore the electricity and YouTube, I'll show you some episodes of Wacky Races."

  She pulled away and slumped onto the bed. More than ever, she looked like the young girl she was, and not the lieutenant of the Sons of Solomon she'd once pretended to be. "I thought, maybe, I could talk Akan around, but I was wrong. So wrong. You spend all that time with someone, and you barely know them."

  Devon sat on the side of his bed and watched her as she laid herself on her side and, soon enough, slipped into a fitful sleep. He could handle the pain, the humiliation and defeat, but it was the sense of powerlessness that threatened to beat him in the end. He couldn't help himself, much less the girl in the cell next to his. Maybe he was, as Jessie insisted, a caveman, but he looked at Marianna—someone he'd seen as an enemy only weeks earlier—and it broke his heart that he could do nothing to save her.

  So, he leaned against the bars and thought of Viktor Frankl.

  #

  "I am not willing to wait any longer!"

  Elliot DeMille marched back and forth across the floor of Hick's cabin. He pointed an accusing finge
r at Sam. "You have your daughter; now I will go and fetch mine."

  Hick fought to keep his temper under control. The old man had been nothing but a nuisance since Marianna had gone off with Devon. "You know we don't have the fighters yet to take the city."

  "How do you know? Have you scouted?"

  DeMille had a point. Hick had hoped they would get some intelligence from Gert, but all they'd had was a message sent by bike that Scriver had taken back control of the camp and that neither Devon nor Marianna were there.

  "Look, I'll send someone to take a look."

  "Too late! She is being held in Hope, and that's where I'm going."

  Hick threw up his hands. "So, you'll attack without knowing anything about the enemy forces?"

  "No. We will camp outside the town—perhaps at the mine workings where your people were held. We'll send in people to find out how things stand and then make our decision."

  "How many are you taking?"

  "A forward party of fifty in a truck, the remainder to follow on foot."

  "What? How will you feed them?"

  DeMille's eyes narrowed. "Springs will provide enough for a few days."

  "And then what?"

  "In all likelihood, I will send in a squad to snatch her."

  "Them. Snatch them."

  DeMille blinked as if surprised. "Yes. Yes, of course."

  "Sit down, Elliot, and let's talk this through. You've gone to all this effort to bring together a fighting force—are you going to throw it away on a fool mission?"

  The old man shook his head. "Nothing is more important to me than my daughter. We leave tomorrow."

  Hick watched him disappear through the open door into the sunshine outside. "D'you know, just for a little while there I actually thought we had a chance."

  Rusty Kaminski ran his gnarled hands over his face and rubbed his eyes. "To be honest, Paul, I don't know what to think. There are way too many unknowns, and I don't blame him for wanting to go after his daughter. I sure wish I knew where mine is."

  Hick couldn't help looking across at Sam, who sat on the rescued couch with her arm around Jay.

  On the other couch sat Joe Bowie and his wife Martha, who'd come looking for Roger after his latest disappearance. The damn chicken, it seemed, had forgiven Hick for abandoning him and now kept turning up in his living room. They'd been having what passed for a pleasant conversation when DeMille had hijacked the gathering.

  "You wanna know what I think, Paul?" Martha said as she stroked the cockerel's head.

  No. "Sure, go ahead."

  Martha squeezed Joe's leg. "This place sure is nice. I mean, a person could stay here and pretend nothin's goin' on outside. Until he comes for us. But I figure we've lost enough already, Joe and me more than most. If we wait for the right time, we'll never go nowhere. Maybe Elliot's right. It's time to act."

  "But we know there are other groups on their way. If we wait a few more days, we might have twice as big an army."

  "And for all we know, so will they. How many d'you reckon we've got now?"

  Hick nodded at Rusty, who picked up the clipboard and pushed the glasses down his nose. "Accordin' to this, five hundred twenty-two capable of holding a weapon. Maybe three hundred we can give firearms to. The rest'll have to throw rocks unless they can get up close and personal."

  "Zak hasn't arrived," Sam said. "He's got a hundred or so. I guess he'll be here in a day or two."

  Martha sighed, then put a fidgeting Roger on the floor. "Look, we could wait for a month and we'd probably still find ourselves outnumbered."

  "What do you suggest then, Martha?" Hick said.

  "Well, seems to me there's no time like the present. Elliot is gonna go with or without our blessing or help. And I don't know about you, but I'd like us to be there if he wins, or we might just be replacin' one dictator with another."

  Hick looked into her eyes and, for the first time in months, saw the spark he'd come to dread in the years before the firestorm when they were regularly at loggerheads. He hated to admit it, but she was probably right. A part of him would love to stay here, enjoying some time with Sam, but he knew that particular movie only ended one way. There could be no peace for him or anyone else while Mendoza lived.

  "I'll go talk to Elliot," he said, getting up. He paused at the door and looked back at them. Apart from Sam and Jay, all the people there had been his opponents when the world still spun on its axis. Now, they were the closest thing he had to a family. And he wondered how long it would be before he'd be able to have a conversation in peace again. He had a feeling there would be a whole lot of pain between now and then.

  #

  Mutley played his game again that evening. Give the brute credit—he was a man of habit. This time, however, his temper snapped in the face of Devon's stonewalling.

  "So, you don't want yer food?" he said, then kneeled and went to grab the tray.

  Devon, who'd maneuvered himself a little closer to the door without Mutley noticing, threw himself at the outstretched wrist and caught it under his knee, pulling at Mutley's collar through the bars. Devon yanked the man's forehead into the bars as he yelled. If there were fighters in the office next door, then he only had moments.

  Mutley collapsed and Devon pulled the keys from his other hand, ears straining for the sounds of footsteps. He was on his feet and out of the cell when the first figure appeared in the doorway. Devon leaped at the masked man, pushing him against the wall with feral ferocity. He grabbed the guard's gun and pressed it against his temple.

  "Let her out," he hissed, pulling the man across the room until they reached Marianna's cell. Once she was out, he got the guard to pull Mutley's insensible form inside and then shut the door on them both. "Make a sound and I'll blow your head off."

  He grabbed Marianna by the arm and ran into the office, swinging the guard's pistol left and right. There was no one there, but he couldn't count on that lasting.

  They ran out the back door into the parking lot where he'd stolen the squad car after killing Laverne. "Hey you! Stop!"

  Devon spun around to see two figures approaching, assault rifles trained directly on him and Marianna. He cursed under his breath.

  "Put the gun down or we shoot!" They were twenty yards away now.

  Devon raised his arms as the voices of Mutley and the other guard called from the cells.

  "We're gonna hurt you real bad," one of the approaching guards said. "Startin' with the lady."

  Chapter 12: Convoy

  A shape darted out, followed by another, larger, form. Before Devon's eyes could make sense of what he was seeing, the guards were on the floor as other shapes kneeled beside them, metal flashing in the sunlight.

  "Come on!" Marianna hissed, pulling on his arm. "We can get away."

  Devon shook his head. It might be the most stupid thing he'd ever done, but he needed to know what was going on here.

  The struggle was over, and he watched as the lifeless bodies of the guards were dragged into the shade beside the police station building. And then, out of the shadows strode someone he recognized, though he couldn't find the right name.

  "Hello, Devon," she said, casting a suspicious look at Marianna. "We came to get you out, but it looks as though you did a pretty good job yourself. Bad luck those guards happened to come around the corner. Bad luck for them." The young woman turned to Marianna, her strawberry-blonde curls flapping behind her head. "Name's Cassie Miller. I guess we're on the same side now. But come on, we gotta get out of here."

  Devon pushed his jaw back into place as she turned, then spotted someone else he recognized. "Elwood?"

  The old farmer smiled and nodded. "Yeah, it's me. But let's get under cover before we talk." As they began walking, two of the guerrillas went into the sheriff's office and, moments later, the sounds of calling voices ceased.

  Marianna looked a little unsure whether she was going from the frying pan into the fire, but allowed Devon to guide her after the others, along the back of
the police station. They then slipped between the Laurel and Hardy Museum and Bowie's Store. Devon and Cassie peered out onto the main intersection. "It's quiet," Devon said. To his right, the barrier that stood beneath the lights was there, but he could only see two or three moving figures rather than the dozen or so who usually manned the main entrance to the city.

  "Yeah, Mendoza took most of them with him. There's enough left to keep people quiet, though. Or that's what he thinks, anyway. But we can't cross here, and we can't hang around out in the open."

  "What do you suggest?"

  She nodded at the building next to them.

  "You want us to hide in there?"

  She smiled. "Why? Ain't you got a sense of humor?"

  "Strangely enough, I had it beaten out of me over the last couple of days."

  Cassie signaled to the others who were lurking in the shadows of the side road. "Come on," she whispered. "We've been in here before."

  She took one more look along Main, then slipped back past the brick wall until she reached a side door covered in flaking white paint. She pulled a key from her pocket and turned it in the lock before opening the door onto the dark interior.

  Devon followed her inside, pinching his nose to stop himself from sneezing as he breathed in the clouds of dust. Cassie made her way confidently along a dim corridor that ended in a flight of wooden stairs. "Careful on the steps, they creak," she said. Then she turned and, keeping to the extreme edge, she crept up the flight.

  At the top, she led them along a gallery lit only by the occasional chink of light coming in through the closed shutters. Devon glimpsed a bowler hat and jacket in a case, then almost tripped over something large that jutted out onto the floor. Finally, they reached a small room that overlooked the highway, a gap between dusty drapes admitting just enough light for them to be able to see that it contained glass cases and two rows of wooden chairs.

  Cassie sat in a chair by the window and peered carefully between the curtains. "They used to do presentations in here. Stories of their lives. Came here on a field trip when I was a kid. Nice old fella ran the place. Finlayson, I think he was called. Wonder what happened to him?"