The light from outside the tunnel was streaming down from the entrance now, and it renewed Nathan’s hope that he would make it out of the mine before Larson and his crazy followers came out after him.
The air got colder, cutting into Nathan’s chest, but it felt good to be on the way out of the soupy atmosphere.
With his breath torn and catching, his legs under the weight of the body feeling like molten lead, and his head swimming with a mixture of remorse and elation at reaching the entrance, Nathan made it through the opening of the mine to dump the body in the deep snow, laying up against the access point. Nathan didn’t have time to think, though. He fell to his knees and began shoveling snow over Beard’s broken body. When Larson and the others came out of the mine, it would be better if they thought that Beard had been called away on some errand, rather than been killed and dumped.
Before Nathan covered Beard’s still showing pupils with snow, he gently closed the man’s eyelids. The contrast between the way Nathan had killed him and the way he touched the still warm eyes could not have been greater, and Nathan felt that gap acutely. Briefly, Nathan bowed his head, said something like a prayer to something he didn’t know if he believed in, and then got up.
“Well, it was kind of you to bury Bobby in the snow, but I think we’d rather he was laid to rest in our graveyard,” Larson said in Nathan’s ear. “So, if you don’t mind, dig him out again.”
“It’s a tourist attraction. Did you really not think there would be an emergency exit?”
Nathan and the others were tied to chairs in the family room. Rapier was tied by a chain through his collar to a leg of the stove. Tony and Brandon hadn’t been returned from the mine, and Larson was there pacing. He was out of his spaceman gear, and back to being dressed like all the others. His face was ruddy, but his manner was calm.
“Where are my sons?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Nathan. And right now, I don’t know if I’m minded to let you find out. I’m very unhappy that you killed Bobby. Bobby was a good man.”
Nathan strained at the bonds holding his wrists. Free and the others had been tied up for some time, it seemed. They’d already been in position when Larson and the others who’d been waiting for him outside the entrance to the mine had escorted Nathan back to them—after he’d dug Bobby out of the snow.
Free had been bleeding from the nose from a blow, and Lucy had a swelling eye. Dave’s metal-covered arm had been twisted behind his back and tied in place, and the sweat on his face and his bulging eyes told Nathan that he was in considerable pain. Tied up beside him, Syd held onto Rapier’s chain as she and Donie stared at Larson with pure hate in their eyes.
“I’m sorry, Nate,” Free said, looking up through teary eyes. “I tried to stop them, but they had guns and threatened to shoot Tony. If Tommy had been here…”
Nathan shook his head. “It’s okay, Free, I’ve seen them. They’re okay, I think. Larson needs them for the weird crazy stuff that’s going on down in the mine.”
Larson, who was standing between his two men from the mine with their MP4 and the AK-47, stepped forward and belted Nathan in the chops. The blow hurt like hell, turning Nathan’s head almost a hundred-eighty degrees. Nathan bent forward and spat blood on the floor.
“You cannot ever understand what I’m building here, you dolt! You’re the crazy ones. Living your life like it doesn’t matter. Not caring about the higher powers and forces at play in the galaxy! You are fleas on the back of my world.”
Lucy looked up at Larson. “If I were you, I’d get back on your antipsychotics, my friend. I think you’re having an episode.”
Larson struck Lucy, too, and Free yelled and screamed, trying to break his bonds and get at the Drymouth leader. “You touch her again and I’ll…”
“What? Give me a hard stare? Look at me askance? Oh, you people are such inferior stock. No imagination. Nothing to help you progress. Just stuck in the morass of ordinary. Like so many people before you.”
Nathan swallowed the blood in his mouth and looked hard at Larson. “I just want my boys, and we’ll get on our way. It was a mistake coming up here, and I’m sorry about Bobby, but it was self-defense. He was trying to strangle me.”
Larson smiled thinly, his eyes slivers of steel. “Well, if that was his final wish, perhaps one of us should finish the job.”
MP4 and AK-47 thought this was very amusing.
Nathan shook his head. “All we’re trying to do, like you, is survive.”
Larson turned on his heel. “Okay, Nathan, I’m not without mercy. Let’s call it quits, shall we? You and your fellows can be released now and go on your merry way. How does that sound?”
“Like there’s a catch.”
“Not a catch, as such, but a payment for the time you’ve spent here, the resources you’ve taken, and the death of my good friend, Bobby. I think you owe us for that, don’t you?”
Nathan knew what was coming and was determined not to play along. “Just spit it out, Larson. I know what you want as payment. You want my kids.”
“Not yours anymore, but potential Calistans. Now, doesn’t that sound a much more inviting prospect than them eking out a desperate existence in the snows of Dead America? Once they have been educated, and are ready to be transubstantiated to Calisto One, they will have a life that you could never offer them. One a simple man like you could never conceive of. Let your sons come to me, Nathan Tolley. I’ll be a better father to them than you could ever be.”
Nathan pulled at the bonds on his wrists, but they were far too tight, cutting into his skin and cutting off the circulation to his fingers.
Oh, Tommy, Tommy. If there was a moment now when you could fall through the ceiling and shoot these SOBs dead, and rescue us, now is the moment to do it. Now, Tommy. Please let it be that you left here to make a plan, to find out a way to defeat Larson and his fools.
Tommy. Please. I need you now. My children need you now.
As if on cue, there came an enormous thumping at the door. It startled Larson enough to make him step back, and it made MP4 and AK-47 flinch involuntarily.
Nathan’s heart swelled.
Tommy, here to help them stop this madness?
And yes, in a way, it was Tommy.
The door opened and the Texan was pushed bodily into the room, hands tied behind his back.
There was also the handle of a knife, sticking out between his shoulder blades and surrounded by a spreading pool of blood.
18
Tommy remained facedown on the floor, a froth of blood working its way out of his mouth in a stream of bubbles. The breath behind it was labored, cracking and clicking like popcorn cooling in a pan. The man’s fingers twitched and curled in his bonds behind his back, and the side of Tommy’s face that Nathan could see was scrunched up with pain. The Texan was in a world of agony, and the depth and angle of the knife told Nathan that if Tommy didn’t get any medical attention soon, then he wouldn’t be long for this world. Rapier whined and whimpered, eyes filled with concern for the injured human.
The two men who’d come in behind him were Drymouth residents, dressed alike. One held a rifle, the other a Glock.
“We found him up on the ridge with binoculars. There was a fight. He came off worse,” Glock said, pointing at the knife in Tommy’s back.
“For God’s sake, get him to a doctor!” Nathan roared. “He’s going to die if you leave him like that!”
“Nearest doctor is in Denver, thirty miles away at the FEMA hospital. It’s just starting to snow, and anyways, I’d quite like to watch him die,” Larson said, his voice shot through with all the calm of a scientist about to dissect a live rat. “What do you say? I’ll light the fire and we can have marshmallows.”
Larson toed Tommy with his boot, and the Texan groaned through blood-painted lips. The eye Nathan could see was unfocused and moving rapidly in the socket.
“Please, Larson. There’s no need for this…”
; “What is it your bible says? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? My bible says a Tommy for a Bobby. Fair exchange is no robbery, as they say.” Larson pulled up a chair and put it down inches from Tommy’s head. He sat on it while his men kept their weapons at the ready, even though everyone else in the room was tied up.
“Now isn’t this cozy?” Larson asked, staring down with fascination at Tommy’s face—slathered in blood, eye flickering, chest rising and falling but never seemingly able to take a full breath.
“Not as quick and intense as Bobby’s death, I’m sure you’ll agree, Nathan. A stabbing is so much cleaner in some ways than just beating someone’s brains out against the concrete. I’m sure Bobby didn’t know a lot about it once you’d started. Tommy, on the other hand… I get the impression that he’s aware of everything that’s going on around him now. I’d bet all his senses are heightened. All his faculties acutely attuned to his surroundings. He may not be able to communicate to us right now, perhaps because of shock or blood loss, or maybe just because his throat is full of fluid draining from his lungs.”
Larson’s words were unbearable in Nathan’s ears. Coupled with watching Tommy near enough to dying in front of him, a wave of nausea and panic had begun barreling through him. There was no other hope of rescue now that Tommy was out of action. No other people in the party to come through and at least cause a distraction. For the first time since Cyndi had died, Nathan felt the last of his dwindling store of optimism drain and dissipate, like the bubbles of blood frothing out of Tommy’s lips.
“Okay, okay. Whatever you want, but please don’t let him die there in front of us. Please. Get him to a doctor. It wasn’t Tommy who killed Bobby, it was me. Let the others go. I’ll stay here with you. Do what you want with me. Just let me see my kids—after that, I don’t care. Just… please… let Lucy and Free help Tommy. Let them take him back to Denver. If there’s just one shred of human decency in you, Larson, do this. Do this, please.”
Larson smiled. The expression on his face said his victory was complete.
Nathan knew he was broken. He knew there was no fight left in him. All that he wanted to do, whatever happened to his body, was to ensure his boys lived. If that had to be as part of Larson’s cult, then so be it. At least they would be alive. It would have to be enough.
There was a tinkle of glass off to Nathan’s right.
AK-47 sighed like a man seeing the woman he loved, and the side of his head blew out before he crashed to the ground, dropping the gun.
Glock was taken in the chest by another round tinkling through the window. He pitched forward, crashing into Larson, who was trying to get out of his way but wasn’t quick enough. They crashed to the floor together, arms and legs entwined, a long streak of red like a daub from the brush of a careless painter covering Larson’s face with its thick stroke.
Rifle and MP4 leaped to the wall to either side of the window and made their guns ready to return fire, but they may as well have stayed where they’d stood to begin with, for all the good it did them.
The wooden clapboard walls behind them split apart in two places, half a second apart. First MP4 and then Rifle went down, spewing blood in gouts and brains in a gray slurry across the floor, slivers of fresh white bone in the mess.
Larson was propelling himself across the room, trying to get to the door and ducking down so that he couldn’t be seen through the window.
“Oh my good gahd!” Lucy shouted as another hole burst open in the wall, spitting splinters at her shoulders. The high-velocity round which caused it, Nathan swore, lifted strands of Lucy’s hair in the rush of a generated breeze as it passed over her head.
Larson spun like a dancer trying too hard to impress an audience, his arms thrown out. The top of his head was stove in by the force of the round and, before he hit the floor, another burrowed into the top of his arm, exited through his shoulder, and slammed into his temple.
Larson lay back like a man settling gently into bed, his lips trembling on his last breath and his eyes locked on Nathan.
The room was quiet. Even Rapier had stopped whining.
The carnage had lasted all of nine seconds.
All Nathan could hear was Tommy’s labored breathing and the sound of footsteps running outside the window, crunching through the snow at breakneck speed, heading for the building.
“Can anyone get free?” Nathan asked the room while pulling at his own bonds. He had no idea who was approaching the building. Was it the sniper, or one of the Drymouth residents with a gun, ready to take revenge on them for getting their leader killed?
He just didn’t know.
The general consensus in the room was that everyone had been tied far too tightly for them to make any headway freeing themselves. Whoever was coming, their feet now clumping up the steps to the raised verandah outside the main building, would be able to walk into the room, if they so desired, and shoot them all in the head with ease.
Nathan and the others watched the door as they heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside. The boots were heavy, making the same sound that a Drymouth resident might make if they were approaching.
“Let me do the talking,” Nathan said. The words had sounded right in his mouth, but he suddenly realized he had no idea what to say.
The footsteps stopped outside the door and, with a crash, it was kicked open. A figure in arctic camouflage came in, face covered with a black balaclava and hands snug in tight-fitting gloves. The figure—Nathan couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman—came in and went to each of the dead men, rolling them over to check that they were all confirmed kills.
There was a long rifle on the figure’s back, with an attendant, chunky rubber telescopic site. Nathan didn’t know the make or model of the rifle, but it looked modern and deadly. Arctic had a pistol on both sides of their utility belt, and a long bowie knife in a holster on their thigh.
“Who are you? What’s going on?” Nathan asked, suddenly finding his voice.
No answer. The figure moved from body to body, silently.
“Did you kill Larson and the others?”
Arctic got up from where they’d been kneeling next to Larson and pressed his or her index finger to where their lips had to be hiding behind the balaclava. The message was clear.
Be quiet.
Arctic took out the bowie and went around the room, cutting the bonds of those in the chairs, and of Tommy on the floor, allowing his arms to thump uselessly to his sides. Re-sheathing the knife as Nathan and the others rubbed their wrists to get their circulation going, Arctic turned to Tommy. The Texan was still facedown on the floor and breathing harshly through a mouth creased in pain.
Arctic undid the studs on the front of his or her camouflage jacket and reached inside, pulling out a thin, white, paper-wrapped package, some fifteen inches square.
Nathan knelt by Tommy. “Can you help him?”
Arctic said nothing and just ripped open the paper around the pack. Inside were a tray, gauze, wound packs, medical scissors, and tape, plus a small bottle of sterile water, a stitch kit, and a tube of medical glue.
Arctic worked quickly as the others looked on, horror and concern etched onto their faces. The figure used the scissors to cut the material of Tommy’s coat around the knife wound. Beneath the material, the wound was sodden with blood, and bubbles were appearing around the blade forced into the skin. Nathan could hear the wound sucking and gurgling as Tommy breathed. The blade had gone through the ribs over his lungs and had penetrated the organ. Every time Tommy tried to fill his lungs, the wound sucked and bubbles frothed.
Arctic got ready. The top was taken off the glue, the gauze was readied, and a wound pad was teased out of its two-part covering.
Donie was looking away, and Free held onto Lucy’s hand so tightly that his knuckles had lost all their color.
Arctic grabbed the knife’s handle and yanked it out of the wound in Tommy’s back with one swift movement. The blade came free with a swell of fresh bloo
d, and Tommy’s fingers clenched in agony against the floorboards. Gauze was applied to the wound, and Arctic grabbed Nathan’s wrist and pressed his hand down hard, applying all the pressure a hand could.
Arctic readied the wound pad and the glue. When Arctic was ready, they hissed one word, “Now.” And Nathan lifted the gauze.
The wound was deep red and black-lipped.
Nathan could see through the layers of skin and down past the bones of Tommy’s rib cage. Arctic wasted no time in applying a wound pad to soak up as much blood as possible. Two more pads were utilized in this way. When the worst of the blood was staunched, Arctic applied glue to the length of the two-inch wound and then pushed the lips of the opening together.
After a few seconds, the wound was stuck closed, and Tommy groaned gently. Arctic put another pad over the now closed wound and stuck it in place with tape.
“FEMA field hospital. Denver. Now!” Arctic hissed again, with still no chance for a guess to be made about their identity or gender.
Without another word, Arctic ran from the room, leaving only heavy footsteps retreating into the silence.
Free, Lucy, Dave, and Syd took Tommy to the back of the F-350 and headed out toward Denver. Donie had agreed to stay behind with Nathan to search for the kids and to make sure there was someone in each party with the IT smarts to nurse the laptops through contact with Brant’s spyware without giving away their locations again.
The snow, falling in gentle flakes, was mostly holding off. There was a storm coming, and it wasn’t going to hit for a while, but it was going to hit hard when it did.
The emergency first aid Arctic had performed on Tommy at least gave him a fighting chance. Tommy’s breathing had settled quickly, and blood had stopped draining from his mouth. Before Free had driven away, Tommy had grabbed Nathan’s hand and pulled his ear close to his mouth. “Cruiser. Down the road a ways. Keys… in the tailpipe.”
After the Shift: The Complete Series Page 68
