Too full of conflicting information.
“Exactly,” the red-haired woman replied. “We saw you when you first came into town. You obviously didn’t know what had happened, but you were moving carefully enough that it became apparent that you were smart. Logical. Rational. We need people like that if we’re going to figure out what happened.”
I already knew what happened. But I wasn’t going to tell them that. This whole thing was screaming that it was some sort of Trojan horse. I just couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Or how to get away.
Ten minutes ago I had been striding confidently toward my apartment, planning to get in touch with old friends, do some research, figure out what had happened and whether there was a way forward. I’d had the promise of a shower—maybe—and clean clothes, definitely. And now I wanted desperately to turn back time and go back to that version of myself.
Sure, I would have been alone. But I also would have been safe. Safer.
“So, this mansion…”
“We’ll take you there and keep you safe,” the woman said, nodding. “Come with us.”
Ha. Said like I had no choice in the matter—which I suspected to be absolutely true. For the moment, though, I’d keep playing their game. Keep acting like I thought I was joining them voluntarily. If they thought I was cooperative, maybe they’d take their eyes off me long enough for me to get away.
I watched them all fall into a weird single-file line in front of me, and took the last spot in line, my hand going back to my gun, making sure the safety was still on.
I didn’t like the idea that I was bringing a single gun to a multiple-bats-and-crowbars fight, but I sure felt better knowing I had something.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that they had guns as well. We’d gone several blocks, my mind flying through options for how to get out of this situation, when we saw someone in the distance.
“Freeze!” Bat Guy screamed, dropping to his knees and yanking some sort of handgun out of a holster on his ankle. He drew the gun up and, without even waiting for the person ahead of him to actually freeze, started shooting.
I dove for the nearest doorway and ducked into the shadows, my heart racing while the group all took cover in other doorways and started shooting into the mist ahead of us. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but it sounded like all-out war to me.
These people weren’t looking for allies. If they were, they were going about it the completely wrong way. They were actually shooting at the people who could have joined their group.
It backed up what I’d been thinking up to this point, and definitely, definitely told me that these weren’t good people. These weren’t people I could trust. These were people who were shooting at other people with no provocation. I hadn’t seen anything up to this point to tell me that there was any sort of war going on, or anyone doing anything so horrible that they had to defend themselves, had to shoot first and ask questions later.
In fact, the only people who seemed to be dangerous here were the ones I had accidentally and totally unintentionally—and unwillingly—managed to team up with. While everyone else around here seemed to be going about living their lives—or trying to figure out whether they even had lives anymore, which was more likely—these people were intent on shooting people up. Or hitting them with a bat. Or kidnapping them.
And now that I thought about it, I wondered if this group was why that first kid I’d seen had looked so terrified. Had he had a run-in with them already? Lost someone to their insane manner of dealing with other people? Had he thought I was actually one of them?
That made me feel sick. I might have done illegal things in the past. But I’d never, ever hurt anyone physically.
Well, my uncle. But I wasn’t really counting him. He’d shot my friend first. I’d basically only hurt him out of self-defense.
But these people… something definitely wasn’t adding up here. Something was definitely wrong.
I was beginning to build the case about these people not actually being corporate workers, lucky enough to have a CEO who not only had a panic room, but also liked them enough to let them use it. Even if they had been—and they’d been just lucky enough to have a more generous CEO than any CEO I’d ever heard of in my entire life—something had gone sideways with them since the attack.
They weren’t acting like office workers, intent on keeping the peace and putting a group together to figure out how to survive this little dystopian nightmare we had going on. They were acting like mercenaries. Like people competing for resources and intent on taking the other groups out of the picture.
Beyond that, they didn’t look like corporate sorts. Those weren’t corporate clothes. Camo and military boots? Crowbars and bats? Hell, they didn’t even have a pair of loafers or a tie between them.
They hadn’t been working in an office. They looked more like some sort of street gang, right out of one of those video games where gangs wore ridiculous clothing and the women were almost always in huge pants and skimpy, bra-like shirts.
The red-haired woman wasn’t wearing a bra-like shirt. But she was on her knees in the doorway across the street from me, shooting like crazy at anything that moved on the street ahead of us.
Who the hell had I managed to fall in with? And what did they want with me? They were shooting to kill right now. Why had they only hit me with a bat?
And how much longer did they intend to keep me with them? How much longer did they intend to keep me alive?
I jerked back into the doorway as a bullet hit the wall around the corner, and bit my lip, trying to re-gather my scattered thoughts. I hadn’t expected to come up to the surface and find actual anarchy. I’d really thought that the attack must have been only in certain places—and that even if it had been across the globe, I’d find people who were so glad to still be alive that they would have been working together, doing everything they could to make sure society recovered.
Instead, I’d found my way right into a goddamn war zone.
Chapter 22
The moment the shooting stopped, Bat Guy was at the front of my shelter, grabbing for me and yanking me back out into the misty street. I fought him, but only a little bit.
This time, he was holding something a whole lot more deadly than just a bat. And I didn’t want to get shot. I was out here without any friends, and without anyone who truly cared about what happened to me. This wasn’t the time to play rebel.
I might have spent my entire life fucking the system and undermining the big man, but even I knew when to shut up and behave. Besides, even though I’d spent the last several blocks outlining exactly why and how these were bad people, unworthy of my trust, there was a small part of me that hoped I was overreacting.
Maybe there was a good reason for them acting like this. Perhaps there had been a war, and I just didn’t know about it because I was new to the neighborhood. Maybe being locked in the bunker with my paranoid uncle had made me paranoid, too. Maybe everything was fine, and they really were going to take me to some mansion where I would find plenty to eat and drink and safety from whatever craziness was going on in the world.
Maybe.
Between the knowledge that I couldn’t afford to fight them yet and the shrinking hope that maybe I was overreacting, when they started marching forward—surrounding me, this time—I went quietly. I walked along, keeping my eyes on my surroundings, and trying to avoid looking at the bodies littering the ground, trying to keep from feeling guilty about them, or upset at the death. Those people were long gone and weren’t going to be able to offer me any help. And what was more, they didn’t matter anymore. They were long gone. Too gone to care much about what happened to the bodies that had once housed their souls.
I was better off worrying about myself.
As we walked, I noticed that we were slowly moving into the better area of the town. The area where the few rich people had lived—and where someone like a CEO of a major company would definitely have ma
de his home. If he’d existed at all.
On that point, I was still holding out doubt.
If he had existed, it was weird that he had picked Ashland, yes, but then again, this town was close enough to larger cities for it to have seemed, I supposed, like a small-town life that counteracted his busy work environment.
Yeah, I could see the allure there.
I couldn’t see how he would have had time to hear reports about an attack happening, grab a bunch of his employees, and get all the way here from any of the larger cities, though. That part of the story still didn’t make sense. Sure, if the attacks had happened in some sort of staggered way—maybe starting in Europe or something, and then coming to the States—then they might have heard reports of them. But that seemed to contradict the very point of a terrorist attack.
Why do it in a way that warned half the world that it was coming? Wouldn’t you want to coordinate things so that all the attacks happened at the same time, for maximum efficiency?
Maximum carnage? Maximum terrorizing?
I snorted to myself, fully understanding the irony of talking to myself about terrorist attacks in terms of efficiency. I was actually starting to sound loony. Or maybe I was just so broken that these things were starting to sound normal to me.
And in the meantime, the scenery around me had changed. We were out of the town now and into the suburbs. And what suburbs they were. Enormous mansions with what had to be acres of greenery surrounding them, each of the houses a different take on the classic Victorian or Colonial, only about ten times as big as any true Colonial house might have been. I stared. I couldn’t help it. I’d never come to this side of town—not being part of this crowd—and so this was all new to me. The grandeur of it.
The outrageousness.
Who the hell needed that much space? Who needed a house that big—particularly when they probably only had a wife and maybe two to three kids? I mean, sure, they probably needed an entire staff to help run the house, but that was partially because the houses were so freaking big. It was a chicken or the egg sort of thing.
Buy a huge house. Require tons of staff for said house. Need more rooms for said staff. Buy bigger house.
I’d dealt, for most of my life, with the excesses of the dark side. The pure greed of doing things just for the money. And even I thought this was extra. The absolute display of wealth, just for the sake of reputation. It seemed stupid to me. Pointless. Almost frightening in how disconnected it was from the rest of the world.
And I was willing to bet that it hadn’t even saved most of the people who had lived in these houses.
Less than three miles away, in the seedy, poor area of town, people had been starving to death and living in shacks. Stealing and selling drugs just to stay alive. While here, people had been richer than gods, able to buy whatever they wanted and never know anything else.
Two completely different worlds, so close to each other. And yet, I bet they’d all died equally horribly, their bodies spasming on the ground until their lungs gave out. No amount of money had been able to save the people who lived in these grand houses.
It was a real-life demonstration of money not being everything in life.
Then, quite suddenly, we were pulling to a sharp stop in front of one of the very houses I’d been admiring and despising at the same time. I looked up at it, taking in the plantation style, the faux Grecian pillars, and the soaring white walls, and I narrowed my eyes. This was where their CEO lived? It looked more like something someone with old money had built. An estate that they called the family estate and passed down to the oldest son of each generation.
“This is where you guys have been staying?” I asked.
I knew my voice was full of doubt. I couldn’t help it. This was all too weird. First, they took me hostage. Then, they shot at people when they claimed to be building a team. And now, they had me at some antebellum estate that they said belonged to them, via a CEO of a company that I was now definitely thinking they’d made up.
I hadn’t come up to the over-ground to become a hostage of some lunatic house-robbers. But I was afraid that that was exactly what had happened.
Only, I wasn’t the sort of girl to go down that way. I hadn’t seen my only friend shot in our escape attempt, then flung my own uncle against the wall, then walked all night in the creepy, empty mist, just to end up a hostage. I didn’t want to be just one more person shot by this crazy crew of supposed office workers.
I wanted to get back to my apartment, get to my equipment, and start figuring out what the hell was going on here, and whether there were other cities out there with people. Hopefully people who were still operating on normal rules, with normal ethics.
I fingered the gun in my waistband, wondering how quickly I could move. If I shot one, and then a second one, would I be able to get away in the pause that followed, when they were too shocked at what I’d done to do anything about it? I knew I’d have to shoot Bat Guy first. Several of them had weapons, but he seemed like he was going to be the most trigger-happy, and he was the only one who still had his gun out.
I eyed the others, wondering. Which of them would be carrying another gun? How many of them had guns, in fact? They’d be the ones I’d have to shoot first.
Before I could make a move, though, whoever was standing behind me gave me a shove, and I shot forward, my feet working to keep up with the momentum of my body. I stumbled and almost fell—until Bat Guy grabbed my arm and kept me upright.
Unfortunately, he kept a hold of it even after I was walking normally again. Either they’d seen me planning or they knew exactly how this all looked. Knew that at some point, I’d start reacting to it. If they’d truly been watching me since I came into town, they would probably know that I wasn’t going to fall for their story for too long.
Unfortunately, I was now surrounded, and one of their leaders was actually holding onto me. This was very, very bad.
We strolled up the main walkway, which was raised above the grounds, and I had enough time to look around and see that whoever had lived here had definitely had enough money to employ a full staff of gardeners. I saw those fancy manicured hedges on one side, and beyond that, I saw some sort of… forest, I thought, only it was one that had definitely been planted on purpose. The trees were way too pretty and evenly spaced to be wild. Turning my gaze to the other side of the walkway, I saw what I thought had to be a full acre of rose gardens, the roses in full bloom now, a riot of color that completely contradicted my current situation.
It was beautiful, and in another life, I would have wanted to walk through that garden and literally smell the roses. Right now, all I could think about was whether they’d do enough to hide me if I got in there and got behind one of the larger bushes.
Before I could decide on that plan of action, we were at the front door and Bat Guy was raising his hand up and twisting the knob, then walking right in like he owned the joint.
That joint was freaking enormous. And beautiful. And everything you’d expect from an antebellum plantation-looking mansion. The floor was done in a checkerboard of black and white marble, only at one point, that checkerboard turned into a spiral sort of effect, leading right into the next room, which looked like it was the dining room. To the right, I saw a broad, sweeping staircase that led up to a second-story landing. It looked like the landing had three hallways leading off it—no doubt to equally impressive rooms and more staircases to more rooms and levels.
This place was ridiculous. I have to admit that I stared.
Then, I turned to the right and saw the huge, spreading bloodstain on the beautiful black and white marble.
I almost bit my tongue right off to keep from screaming. The bloodstain wasn’t fresh. It wasn’t like there was a pool of blood lying there or anything. But it had definitely been a pool of blood at one point—and it had been left for some time, to leave a stain like that.
That was too much blood to have come from someone who lived to see the other side of
it. And I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly who it had belonged to.
I turned back to the group, hoping none of them had seen me noticing said stain, and started talking.
“So, when do we meet this CEO? Do you suppose he has any information on what happened out there? Suppose he might know who did it? And whether we can expect it to happen again? I lived through the first attack, but I don’t want to see a second one, if you know what I mean.”
An exchanging of glances between all four members of the group, and then the red-haired woman who had been speaking for them said, “He’s not available right now. Out doing recon, you know?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, knowing for a fact that she was lying.
I turned, my eyes on the ceiling above as if I couldn’t get enough of the view, and dropped my gaze to the garden outside before the last guy in shut the door. And that was when I saw it. Right there, just to the right of the walkway, but in the shadows, where you wouldn’t be able to see it from the road or the walkway itself.
A mound of dirt that looked exactly like a freshly dug grave.
One guess who’s buried under that dirt, the voice in the back of my head whispered.
And that voice was right. I didn’t even need to guess, if I was being honest. I knew exactly who was under there. And that meant that their entire story—the one I’d been questioning this entire time—was definitely made up. They hadn’t worked for some national company. They hadn’t been employed by a do-gooder CEO.
I didn’t know where they’d come from or what they wanted, but it was glaringly obvious that they were trouble. Trouble that I’d just managed to barge right into. I’d thought it would be safe to come up to the surface, now that the VXM was degraded.
I didn’t think I’d ever been more wrong about anything in my entire life.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall Page 14
