He stabbed down on the gas and took the car straight across the yard of the abandoned house behind. They'd end up in the middle of town, but it was away from the school/army camp. He hoped it would throw off the pursuit but, as the car ground its way across the sidewalk, he saw figures running toward them from both directions.
"Get down, Martha!" Devon called out. "Joe, give it to them!"
Devon's rationality horizon was firmly in the rearview mirror by now, and he forced the car into a skid that would have impressed Bo and Luke Duke before crying out in agony as he fought to bring it back under control. Glass showered over him as the back window shattered, the round fizzing past Joe's ear on its way out. The trunk took hit after hit as Devon kept his foot to the floor, and his head low over the steering wheel.
He took a left onto Avenue J, taking him away from the highway toward the east of the town, past dark ranch houses with people cowering in their beds, terrified that the Sons were coming for them. Trouble was, the direction he'd taken would bring them too close to the school.
"Hold on tight," he called. "We're going cross-country."
The car's suspension squealed as he took it off the small road and onto the gritty terrain that sat between this side of town and the mountains. He didn't dare turn on his headlights, so, once he was a hundred bumpy yards from the road, he slowed down to a crawl.
"I'll get out and lead the way," Joe said. Then, as he opened the door, he turned. "Where we goin'? The farmhouse?"
"You know about that?"
"Sure. I been in the resistance since the beginning. But we're on the wrong side of Hope; we're gonna have to go south, halfway to Ezra before we can loop around."
He hopped out and walked alongside the front of the car, guiding it into the desert as Devon fumed. So, Gert and the others hadn't trusted him to know where the farmhouse was, but they had told Joe Bowie. Then, after a few moments, he grunted. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter one jot. He'd killed a man tonight. A bad man who would have seen him hanged from a lamp post, to be sure. But, then, if all that mattered was personal survival, what was to separate the good people from the bad?
Right now, he didn't care. He focused on keeping the car moving forward nice and slow as he listened to Martha Bowie's shallow breathing in the back seat and blood congealed on his clothes.
#
General Jorge Mendoza slammed his office door, took the revolver from his belt and hurled it across the room. He roared his frustration into a darkness only broken by light leaking in from the corridor outside.
Betrayal!
He'd expected it from that double-crossing collaborator of a sheriff, Devon Myers—a man who slipped away every time Mendoza got him in his crosshairs. Myers had been useful, after all. If he hadn't learned (because Mendoza ensured he would) of the committee's arrival, then the general would have found it more difficult to … slim their membership to suit him better.
And tonight Myers had slipped away again. One day, one day soon, Mendoza would have him. He would take the life of Devon Myers one atom at a time.
But Marianna DeMille.
Betrayal!
He had taken her under his wing, believing he had found a protege to mold into, perhaps, a partner to rule the new world alongside him. But she had been Scriver's pet all along.
Mendoza drew in a deep breath, felt his way across to the table and lit the lamp.
Scriver. Poor, crippled Scriver.
Probably dead, but his ambitions were over either way. Tomorrow, Mendoza would begin the process of bringing Scriver's forces under his control. He would have to execute several loyalists among their commanders, he was certain. A sad, but necessary, step to persuade the others to bow to him. Within weeks, he would be in sole command of almost the entire military might of this new United States.
And then he would make them pay.
He would make the burn.
Traitors.
Traitors against time. People alive beyond their usefulness.
Like those who had hurt him when he was young. He'd thought it was a price worth paying. They'd persuaded him of it. Endure the humiliation and pain now to be rewarded later. Old hands, dry skin, hungry eyes.
He had dealt with them, one at a time, after his first tour of duty. He'd learned discipline and how to handle weapons. He'd gone back to where it had happened, pissed on the graves of those who'd since died, and taken the lives and dignity of those who hadn't. Oh yes, they'd wished they'd joined their colleagues in death by the time he finally allowed them to breathe their last.
But it hadn't cured the rage inside. Every time he saw someone with white hair and wrinkles, the shame and anger returned.
Then, quite by chance, he'd been introduced to the organization that became the Sons of Solomon. Finally, an ideal to believe in. A cleansing of all that was wrong with the old world. Millions would die in one night, and then he would lead a mission to finish the rest off; all those who made his skin crawl.
But Hope had survived. And now, with Scriver out of the way and the council in his pocket, he could turn his attention to sifting the chaff from the wheat.
Tomorrow, he would begin the killing in earnest.
And then, settlement by settlement, city by city, he would take his revenge until this country was his to command, his to exploit.
He spoke into the darkness, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
LAST CITY Book 6
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Last Hope: Book 5 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 5) Page 17
