by Debra Webb
Now for the improvising. “I screwed up.” She shrugged. “I had an opportunity to pad my bank account and I took it. I see no reason to share the dirty details. Sadly, two days ago I found out an investigation had been opened and my assets were about to be frozen. I moved a few things around but there was no way I was going to be able to disappear quickly enough. I needed someplace to go ASAP. Someplace they wouldn’t be able to find me. Since they haven’t been able to find you in all this time, I figured we could help each other out. The information would buy my way in. Then I found out Pollard is about to spill his guts. I’m assuming your organization has a backup plan for disappearing.”
“I fear you have overestimated your worth, Agent Buchanan.”
Well, hell.
“I regret that you feel that way.” She stood.
There it was. The no-go she had hoped wouldn’t be thrown out. Still, he had mentioned a holdout. Maybe, just maybe the game wasn’t over yet.
When no one said anything else, she offered, “Since there’s no place for me here, I guess I’ll just have to take my chances trying to outrun the Bureau’s reach. I wish you well in doing the same. They are coming, Mr. Prentiss. Trust me on that one.”
A remote smile tugged at the old man’s face. “Perhaps you should have done your due diligence when weighing your options, Agent. You see, once you’re here, there’s only one way to leave.”
She didn’t need a more detailed explanation.
The Council had decided her fate.
Death.
Chapter 5
“What happens now?”
As usual, the guard said nothing while he steered Sadie out of the building. She hadn’t actually expected him to answer her question, but she needed to try. He was the one person who had spoken to her besides Prentiss, even if it had been only once.
And there was the man who had visited her in the dark of her cell.
Definitely wasn’t the guard. His voice was different. He smelled different, too. This close it was obvious her guard wasn’t freshly showered like the man who’d sneaked into her cell. The stranger who’d made that middle-of-the-night appearance had smelled clean, like soap—the kind of soap used by a man who cared how he smelled. His hair had been lighter, as well; a blond or maybe a gray.
Frankly, she hadn’t encountered anyone else who met the smell-good criteria. She thought of the blond man in the room where her appearance before the powers that be had taken place. He had seemed nearer to her age. Considering his light-colored hair, he could have been the one, though she hadn’t been close enough to him during the questioning to pick up on his scent.
Didn’t matter, she supposed. They hadn’t bought her story so living past this moment was growing more and more unlikely. Not exactly the way she had seen things going. She was still breathing so no need to give up just yet. There might be time to turn this around.
“Are you supposed to kill me?”
Her guard just kept walking, shepherding her along as he went. He wasn’t so old. Early forties, maybe. It was difficult to tell. He was tall, reasonably muscled. He looked fit. The woodland greens uniform molded to strong arms and legs and a broad chest. His complexion wasn’t as pale as she would have expected considering this place—wherever the hell it was—appeared to be sheltered from the sun. Now that she thought about it, the old men who’d sat around the table, the younger one, as well, had good coloring. They either had tanning beds around here someplace or these people spent time in the sun outside these walls.
But where?
Gardens? Fields? Wasn’t part of the doomsday prepper thing attaining self-sufficiency? They either raised their own food or bartered with others of like mind.
“If I’m going to die, why not talk to me? It won’t matter in a little while anyway, right?”
Despite her urging, he kept his mouth shut. He led her beyond the quad and all the buildings that seemed to circle the place where she’d been questioned by the group of elders or leaders. The final building they approached wasn’t really a building. It was more like a massive carport. SUVs and trucks and a couple of military-type vehicles were parked beneath its expansive canopy. On the far end a long low building with half a dozen overhead doors connected to the covered parking. Vehicle maintenance, she supposed.
The guard didn’t stop dragging her along until they were beyond the parked vehicles. Several small metal domes dotted the ground. At first she thought of underground gasoline tanks, but that didn’t make sense since four huge tanks stood next to the maintenance building. Maybe the aboveground ones were water tanks. There had to be a water supply in here somewhere.
Her guard ushered her to the nearest dome and opened it. Beneath the metal dome was a steel wheel, the kind you would see on a submarine door. Grunting with the effort, he twisted it to the right and then raised the lid-like door upward. Beyond the door was a ladder that disappeared into the ground.
The guard straightened and reached for her secured hands. When he’d removed her restraints, he gestured to the ladder. “You go on now.”
She looked from the hole in the ground to him. “What’s down there?”
He stared at her a moment. “You’ll see.”
“Really? You couldn’t think of anything more original than you’ll see?” She ordered her heart to slow its galloping. This was that moment, the one where she had to decide if she was going to cooperate or make a run for it.
She glanced around. There was no readily visible place to run. Her guard didn’t appear to be armed but that didn’t mean that others who were close by weren’t. Besides, where the hell would she go? And there were those guard towers.
“Running won’t do you no good.”
He didn’t need a crystal ball or to be a mind reader to recognize what she had on her mind. “Tell me what’s down there and I’ll get out of your hair.”
With a big put-upon breath, he said, “There are people like you down there.”
“Prisoners?” She stared him directly in the eyes.
He nodded.
“Are they dead or alive?” That was the big question now.
He shrugged. “Does it matter? Like I told you, there’s some things worse than dying. This is one of them.”
He said a mouthful with that. So much for rescuing Levi Winters. Then again, maybe he was down there, too. “Well, thanks for the heads-up.”
It was now or never. If she was going to make a run for it—
“You see that hole in the wall to your right?”
His words yanked her attention back to him. “What hole?”
Even as she asked the question, a small square opened and the barrel of a rifle extended from the wall. Apparently there were guards monitoring the walls of this place from numerous vantage points, not just the obvious towers she had seen. Running would definitely be a waste of time.
“If you run, you’re dead.”
Made her decision considerably easier. “Got it.”
Sadie put a hand on the ladder and swung one foot, then the other onto a rung. When she’d scaled down about four rungs, the squeak of metal on metal drew her attention upward as the hatch-type door closed. She drew in a big breath and let it go. Nothing to do now but see if there were any other living humans down here.
Thankfully it wasn’t completely dark. Emergency-type lighting, dim though it might be, was placed along the downward path. When she reached the bottom of the ladder, a good twenty feet below the hatch, a long tunnel lay ahead of her. More of that dim recessed lighting kept the darkness at bay. The temperature was far cooler down here and there was that earthy, musty smell in the air.
Speaking of air, it was obviously pumped down here somehow. She took another breath. Hoped like hell it was anyway.
“You’re the first female we’ve had down here.”
Sadie whipped around at the muttered words
. The man stood only inches from her. How had he sneaked up on her like that? Her instincts were generally far more in tune with her surroundings.
“Who are you?” She kept her shoulders square and met his curious gaze without flinching.
Unlike the men in the compound, this man was as pale as a ghost. His hair was a stringy brown and hung down around his hunched shoulders. His clothes were like hers, sweats and a tee, only his looked old and were filthy and ragged. His feet were bare and dirty.
“George.” He licked his lips. “What about you? Got a name?”
“Sadie.” She braced to make a run for it but decided to hold off until she got a better indication of his intentions. It wasn’t as if there was any real place to go and George here likely knew the place like the back of his hand.
“Sadie.” He rolled her name around in his mouth as if he were tasting it.
She glanced around again. “What is this place?”
“The big dig.” He chuckled, the sound as rusty as his teeth.
She forced her lips into a smile. “Like in Boston. I gotcha. Where are you digging to, George?”
He shrugged one of those bony shoulders. “Wherever they tell us to.”
“They tell you things?” She jerked her head up toward the hatch at the top of the ladder.
“Orders. Yeah. They send ’em down along with food and water.”
Thank God. That was her next concern. “So they feed you. That’s good.”
Another of those spasmodic shrugs. “Enough to survive. Most of the time anyway.”
Well, great. Just great. “What now, George?”
“Can’t say for sure. You work until we hear different.” He started forward into the tunnel.
“Work?” Sadie walked alongside him. The tunnel was wide, plenty wide enough for about three people to walk side by side. Overhead, wood and steel supports kept the ground from caving in. This was no slipshod operation. Some amount of engineering know-how had gone into what they were doing.
“On the dig, of course. We’re working on a tunnel headed south to Huntland. Already got one finished to Winchester.”
“Sounds like a sizable operation.”
He croaked another of those rusty laughs. “The Resurrection’s got big plans, Sadie.”
Clearly. “How many workers are down here?”
“About twenty.”
“They’re all prisoners?”
“Yep. Some of us were part of them before we screwed up. I guess getting put down here was better than the alternative.”
That remained debatable. “What about those who weren’t part of the Resurrection?”
“Some were taken from the outside for their knowledge or skill and put down here.”
“Knowledge?”
“Contractors. You know, builders. A couple ex-military guys who were assigned to the air force base.”
A point she would need to pass along if she ever got out of here. “You have tools and equipment?”
“Sure.” He glanced at her, his brown eyes sunken and hollow. “Lots of tools.”
Sadie followed him down the length of the first tunnel and then they hit a sort of fork in the road, except there were about four different ways to go. He took the fork farthest to the left.
“Do you dig up to the surface, creating an egress or access point?” This could be a good thing.
He shook his head, deflating her hopes. “Only so far up. The rest is up to them. They do that part from above. We’re not allowed to get too close to the surface.”
Nevertheless, that meant those areas were closer to freedom. “Sounds like they’ve got it all figured out.”
Her escort grunted an agreement.
The sounds of metal clanging and low voices rumbled in the distance. “We’re almost to the dig where we’re working now.”
Ahead, the outline of bodies moving came into focus. Men wore helmets with attached lights. They swung pickaxes, hefted shovels and other digging tools. A battery-operated jackhammer rattled off. Sadie surveyed the cacophony of activity.
“This is what I’ll be doing?”
George stopped and faced her. She did the same. “You give me those flip-flops you’re wearing and I’ll tell you.”
She could do that. They were a sort of one-size-fits-all and pretty much worthless as foot protection went. “Sure.”
As soon as she kicked off the footwear, he snatched the thongs and tugged them onto his grimy feet. When he’d finished, he looked directly at her and held up his end of the bargain. “We’ll get the word—usually don’t take long, I’d say between now and tomorrow—then we’ll know whether you’re a worker or supplies.”
“Supplies?” A frown creased its way across her forehead. Deep inside she had a very bad feeling this was the worse-than-dying thing the guard had mentioned.
“Sometimes they stop feeding us. Like when we don’t get as much done as they want. Some of us get sick and can’t work as fast. They punish us then. If you’re supplies, then you’ll be the emergency food.”
Oh hell.
He shrugged those bony shoulders again. “You’d be surprised how long even someone as skinny as you will last.”
She glanced around. Said the only thing she could think to say in response to that unnerving statement. “Doesn’t seem as though you have any way to keep your supplies from going bad.”
“No need. We wouldn’t eat you all at once. We always keep supplies alive as long as possible. Take an arm or a leg, then another when that one is gone. It works out pretty good. By the time the supplies is dead, we can finish off the edible parts before they start to rot.”
Made an eerie kind of sense, she supposed. Unless you happen to be the main course.
No one paid much attention to them as they arrived at the worksite. The man who’d served as her guide—George—handed her a pickax and motioned to a spot for her to start. Sadie walked wide around the other workers and started hefting the ax. She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder now and then just to make sure no one was watching her. Most of the group looked like the man who now sported her flip-flops. Baggy, ragged clothes. Long, stringy hair. Filthy. Pale and weary looking.
Now that she had arrived they didn’t talk so the only sounds were the pecking and scraping at the earth. The rattling jackhammer. And in those rare moments of silence, the breathing and grunting. During the next few minutes several things crossed her mind. Where did they sleep? Relieve themselves? And if she was the only female to show up, would she be raped if she tried to sleep?
Maybe she would ask George the next chance she got.
A loud sound like the single dong of a doorbell echoed through the rhythmic poking and pecking and grunting. She glanced around, her attention settling on George. He put down his shovel and started back the way they had come. The other workers looked from George to her before going back to work.
Apparently the news had arrived. Maybe dropped down from the top of that ladder the way she basically had been.
Her fingers tightened on the handle of the ax.
She supposed she would know soon enough if she was to be a permanent worker or emergency supplies.
* * *
Smith waited for Prentiss to show up.
He’d asked for a meeting with the man immediately after the Council questioned Buchanan. The old man had decided to take his time. He knew Smith was not happy with the decision and he wanted him to wallow in his frustration.
Smith crossed the Council’s private meeting room and stared out the window. For more than three decades the Resurrection had been clawing its way into this mountainside. Back then there had been only whispers about a group of doomsday survivalists sprouting up in Franklin County. No one really knew or understood what they were. Smith wasn’t sure if even those early leaders of the small group understood what they would
become over time.
Smith shook his head. They had become something entirely different from what they once were—from what they were supposed to be. Preparing to survive mankind’s destruction of himself was one thing, preparing for a war with those not like-minded was something else altogether.
But things had escalated in the past decade. Now it was about power and greed for the few rather than the safety and survival of the many.
“Making you wait was unavoidable.”
Smith turned to face the man who had entered the room. Rayford Prentiss was an old man now, but that didn’t stop him from being utterly ruthless. Age had not mellowed him at all—in fact, it had done the opposite. He was as mean as hell and cared nothing for human life.
Prentiss poured himself a hefty serving of bourbon and lifted the glass to his lips. Smith watched, his patience thinning all the more with each passing moment. But he would not allow this bastard to see his mounting discontent. He couldn’t let that happen until the time was right.
Soon, very soon. Sooner than Smith had anticipated.
The Buchanan woman’s arrival and the name she had tossed about was a warning. Something was about to go down. Smith needed to prepare. To do that, information was required—information from Buchanan. Dropping her into the hole had been premature. The move was a blatant challenge against what Smith had suggested.
“You’re displeased with my decision about the woman,” Prentiss announced as he poured himself a second drink.
“She obviously has connections. Those connections could prove to be valuable.”
Prentiss sat the bottle of bourbon back onto the credenza and belted out a laugh. “Because she spouted the name of a man who has been gone from here for years? If she had connections, she would know that Pollard is likely dead and buried. Of no use or threat to anyone.”
