“Do you three want any help?” Anna asked.
Luis spun, then saw who it was and smiled. “Si, you’re always welcome,” he said with a goofy grin.
Goldie saw that and smacked him in the back of his head. “Get your eyes up to the top of her head or I’m going to get the spoon out and whack you with it.”
Harry started giggling, holding his side with one hand, the big shovel held up in his other. The dogs had both followed them, and tried to stay away from the big machinery that was going to be put up soon.
“One more spot on the map,” Anna said softly.
“Si,” Luis said, looking at Goldie carefully. “We think it is nearby here. I am trying to find it with the metal detector but…”
“He’s getting tired, and I can’t keep it up for long,” Goldie finished.
“Here, let me,” Anna said, ignoring the sudden flush on Luis’s face.
“But you’re all bruised up,” Luis said.
“Yeah, I’m too sore from the fight to really help out in the workshop, so I figured I could help here.”
“Let her,” Harry said. “She understands it’s a pirate’s job to always get the booty!”
Even Goldie couldn’t hold back a snicker at that. Luis held out for as long as he could, then walked away, red in the face. One hand covered his mouth as he laughed at the sky.
Harry looked at Anna and shrugged. “Do you know how to use this?” he asked, pointing to the metal detector at her feet.
“I do, plus I watched Dante work the dials, so if I get it wrong, can you help me fix it?”
“Sure, if I wasn’t so little and this thing so long, I could for sure find the booty!”
Grandma Goldie walked away, fanning her face with both hands, tears running down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong with them?” he asked, innocently.
“They’re just weird. Let’s go. Now where is the spot you walked the mark from again?”
Rob had slipped out of the truck a couple of minutes after Lucy had gone in to get her paperwork signed. Once the truck was inside of the fence, nobody really paid much attention. Rob had stashed his gear and was wearing his regular clothing, minus guns, since he’d ‘picked up’ Lucy. He was in blue jeans, a flannel shirt, a ball cap, and cowboy boots. It also helped that he looked like the other half a dozen truckers who were unloading or dropping and hooking trailers at the small distribution center.
He made sure he didn’t bump into Lucy, and walked up to one of the black-clad guards.
“Hey, is there a bathroom and a place for me to get some coffee? It’s been a long day.”
The guard looked at him and sighed, then nodded and pointed. “That’s our unofficial break room. I have a fresh pot on, and there’s a half bath in there. Just don’t make a habit of it, the other guys get bent out of shape if we let the truck apes shit up their place.”
“Nothing changes.” Rob grinned. “Drivers are truck apes and that makes you boys unloading…”
“Dock monkeys.” The guard grinned back. “Hurry up. This place is going into lockdown in 20 minutes. After that, nobody in or out unless that shit outside gets better suddenly.”
“Will do, thanks,” Rob said, seeing Lucy out of the corner of his eye.
Lucy was getting her paperwork signed and was arguing with a man on a forklift. She didn't notice him as he slipped through the door and shut it behind him. Rob saw three figures headed to his hiding spot. He tensed, then gasped. Walking right towards him was a woman who could have bench pressed Rob. She was leading a familiar looking man in their direction, but he couldn’t mistake the smaller figure walking behind them.
The man appeared to have his hands tied behind his back, and Rob had no idea if the woman was with Angelica or not. Then again, Angelica wasn’t restrained, and was following both. He could only guess she had worked out her own escape plan. Right then and there, Rob said a quick prayer. He had planned on getting inside and waiting for the perfect moment to get her and make their escape. Now? It was both more and less difficult than before.
“Now get your ass in there… ok, Mr. Governor, it’s safe. Oh,” the big woman said as she saw Rob stand up from where he’d been crouched.
“Thank you,” the governor said, oblivious to the look of fear on Bailey’s face. Nobody was supposed to be in here.
“You got to be shitting me,” Angelica said, then pushed past both of them and launched herself into the air.
Rob caught her as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, giving him a full body hug. Although he outweighed her by an order of magnitude, he wasn’t expecting it and both crashed to the ground, almost knocking over a table, and making a huge racket. He tried to push her back so he could tell her to keep it quiet, but she crushed his mouth with a kiss and rolled with him as he tried to roll over. The fall had almost knocked the breath out of him. Finally, she gave up and let him breathe.
“We gotta get out of here, everybody heard that,” he said, his voice hoarse from fear and something more basic.
“They were supposed to be tuning me up,” the governor said to them. “They probably expect some noise from in here.”
“Which guard? It looks like we have one walking this way?” Bailey said, then paused. “Wait, the guards from the door are talking to him.”
“Then we don’t have long, “Rob said. “They told me I could use the break room as well. Angel, what was your way out?”
“Not mine,” she said, pointing at the big woman, “It was hers. My original plan was to sneak out in the back of a truck and figure out it from there.”
“Follow me,” she ordered, and everybody did.
“I noticed that there’s a tool crib right behind here that their maintenance guys use. Now, if this drop ceiling is like every other place the government puts up in a hurry, there’s a big void above us,” Angelica explained as Bailey put the toilet seat down and stood up on it, pushing up on the tiles. “Then we go over the false wall, grab some bolt cutters from the tool crib, and cut a hole in the fence and disappear.”
“Just that easy?” Rob asked, grinning.
“Just about,” Bailey said, pulling herself up the concrete wall and into the open void above. “Let me see if the other side has anybody in it.”
After a moment, they could hear her moving up there and her feet disappeared. There was more movement and a knocking on the door outside. The rest of them squeezed into the bathroom, locking it.
“Hurry,” Angelica hissed.
“Give me your hand,” Bailey said, her big arm shooting down from the yawning hole above.
Angelica got on the stool and jumped, barely brushing her fingers against the bigger woman’s. Rob grunted, then picked her up until Bailey grabbed her by the forearm and yanked her up. A moment later they heard shoes hitting concrete somewhere on the other side and her arm came down again.
“I don’t need help,” Rob told her.
“The governor will,” she said. “Give him a boost like you did Angel and I can sling him over to the other side.”
Rob did, straining a little bit. The governor had gone soft in the middle and, although he’d once been a big football player, he hadn’t lost the weight and the muscle had turned into flab. Both grunted as they got him over the other side, then it was Rob’s turn. He put his hands on the wall and pulled himself up as a big hand grabbed the back of his shirt and held on in case he slipped. When he got up, he found himself partially kneeling on a cement block wall that divided the two areas.
“Put the tile back in place,” Bailey hissed.
“Can’t reach it, I’m not flexible enough—”
“Hop down then, I got this, Rob.”
He hopped down to the other side where the rest were waiting for him. He stood up, brushing the dust off his ass, and then it hit him. The woman had used his name. His blood ran cold as he looked up. The woman dropped down to the floor with them just as there was a crash on the other side of the wall and confused voices. How did she k
now his name?
“I think they just found out we weren’t in there,” Angelica said with a grin.
“Unless we left footprints on the seat, it’ll give us a few minutes until they figure out the ceiling is how we got out of there.”
“They have to break that door down too.” Angelica grinned. “Now let's go.”
Bailey and the governor both grabbed tools that were hanging on the wall. Bailey went with a crowbar, the governor a big 1” wrench, probably something they used in maintaining the hi-lo’s. Angelica smiled prettily as she grabbed a set of large handled bolt cutters. She grinned, then handed them to Rob. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t need to do anything, he could have waited outside of the fence for them.
That’s when there was cursing and a crunching sound from the other side of the wall.
“Let’s go,” Rob whispered.
“Where the fuck are they?”
“They don’t all fit in here,” another voice said.
“Are you sure this is where they were going?”
“I fucking watched them walk in here,” another voice shouted.
They hurried out of the tool crib into an open area where floor lifts and other tools were spread around. A half-assembled forklift was being worked on. Nobody paid them any mind as they slipped out of the overhead door on the opposite side of the building to where the trucks came in. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the bright lunchtime sunlight.
The area looked to be outdoor storage. It was littered with pallets, errant scraps of old shrink wrap, plastic debris and hi-lo parts that were slowly being oxidized by sitting in the elements. The fence behind them was the same construction as the fence in the front. They had found the boundary fence after all.
“I can toss you guys over,” Rob said simply.
“You couldn’t get over,” Angelica said. “We have to cut through it.”
“It’s electrified, even stronger than we have at the farm,” Rob said. “I can cut it, but it might trip something, it might blow a spark, it might shoot lightning out of my ass. There has to be another way.”
“I’ll do it,” the big woman said, trading him the crowbar.
He was about to protest, but she yanked hard at first her left sleeve, then her right. Both tore off after a few moments of effort. She wrapped her hands and then gripped the rubber handles of the bolt cutters. She checked her shoes, moving gravel out from under her feet so she wouldn’t accidentally slip. Then she started cutting.
Rob almost panicked when she cut the chain link. He was certain there was enough current there to make his hair stand up from five feet away, but she kept cutting as the screams from the rioters and guards got louder. A loud siren went off as Bailey cut the final strand and then pushed the chain apart with the bolt cutters, keeping it from touching her, and arcing.
“Go, one at a time. I’ll come through last. Angel, you and your hubs go first so you can help us out afterwards.”
One by one, they went through the fence, being as careful as they could be. When all were through, Bailey tossed the bolt cutters through, then her sleeves. The governor wrapped one sleeve around his wrench and pushed the chain link back with the tool. Angelica did the same with the bolt cutters.
Twenty-Seven
Rob couldn’t believe they’d got out of there without a shot fired. He had prepared mentally to wage a war of blood and death, wading through one or both to get to his wife. Instead, he’d found himself blessed by fortune every step of the way, scoring the easiest extraction in the history of ever, and then fleeing the area with his wife, the former governor and a woman named Bailey. But he couldn’t leave behind the gear he’d stashed. Not with the riot happening at the gate. He had wanted to leave everyone somewhere safe, and crawl in and get his gear. He didn’t want to leave some of what he’d brought with him out there to be found.
Angelica had flat out refused to leave his side. The governor wanted to stay outside of the fence hiding near an old structure overgrown with weeds, but when Bailey said she wasn’t leaving Angel’s side, he’d lost his nerve. Now all of them were making their way back to the overgrown field edge. Rob crawled to his ghillie blanket and pulled it back. He’d dug a small depression in the soft dirt and had tried to make the resulting hump underneath natural looking, but hiding his pack.
“We got it; can we call for help now?” Christian asked.
“Not yet,” Rob said. “We got out of there, but it won’t take them long to figure out how we got out. We need to move, but slow enough that we don’t attract any more attention. They’ve got drone support from somewhere.”
“Hun,” Angelica said softly, pulling some binoculars from the top pouch where she knew her husband kept them, “not everybody who works there wants to be there. They’re forcing people to work. Taking their kids and using them. They must have them all in one building, because I’ve never seen them, just heard about them.”
“What are you asking me?” Rob asked.
“Can’t we do something, help them?” Angel asked.
“I’d love to help them out,” Christian said, “but right now we’re on this side of the fence and we should be getting to safety so we can tell the world what’s going on.”
“The kids are in Building Six,” Bailey said, pointing.
Rob followed her arm to the building she was pointing at, and nodded.
“How do I know who works there reluctantly?” he asked. “In all this chaos, everybody looks like ants.”
“If they’re wearing scrubs, they’re locked up, whether reluctantly or not. You see the ones in black pajama tacticool gear, they’re the bad guys,” Angelica said, looking at Bailey, who nodded in agreement.
“Then it’s time to get out my hammer,” Rob said, pulling the upper and lower receiver out of his bag and fitting them together. He laid out three magazines from the vest that took up most of the top of it and handed a compact spotting scope Anna had loaned him to Angelica.
She went prone next to him and set up. How could they help people the most? When all they had was a hammer, everything looked like nails. She thought that’s what Rob was referencing, but she wasn’t sure. Rob was next to her now, his big rifle out. He’d loaded it and was peering through his scope. Angel moved to the big crowd by the gate.
“I got the front gate at five hundred and ten meters,” she said softly. “Back of the group in front of us is a little over three hundred meters. They will probably hear the shots.”
“That’s what I got too when I was looking for you,” Rob said. “I need a way to help but I can’t see just shooting into the masses.”
“What if you took the power off the fences?” Christian asked suddenly.
“Now how would we do that, sugar?” Angelica asked without looking up.
“I know they probably have backup generators somewhere, but I doubt those could run the current needed for the fences, so my best guess would be to shoot out the transformers. If the fence loses power, it won’t be long until folks figure it out and push through or folks push it out from the inside.”
Rob thought that was pretty good thinking. He found a telephone pole in his scope and followed it slowly until he saw the boxy shape of one on a pole. There was no way that was what powering the place. Mini malls had their own usually he thought, a big one on the ground. Hating to sweep hundreds of innocent people with his scope, he kept searching.
“I’ve got one on the pole leading in,” Angel said after a second.
“I’ll get that one, but there’s got to be a bigger one. Probably somewhere inside the compound.”
“Would it be a big green box that hums?” Bailey asked.
“Yes,” Rob told her.
“Left side of the building we just escaped from,” she said softly.
Both Rob and Angelica were surprised; they had seen it, had heard its hum as they escaped, but neither of them had registered or remembered it until Bailey mentioned it. She was a lot smarter than she looked. Rob was goi
ng to ask Angelica about the stitches and bruising on the woman’s face, but he wouldn’t right now. No man should ever beat a woman so bad. If he knew which man had done it, he’d put a bullet right through his brain pan. Then again, a man who could put a hurt on a brute like Bailey would be a big scary mofo, he thought to himself.
“Found it,” he said, then looked down to make sure the magazine he had seated didn’t have a red stripe.
“You got the right ammo loaded up?” Christian asked, watching him look at his magazines.
“Yeah, this is going to be loud, but I doubt anybody on the other side of the fence is going to hear it over the sirens and the riot. I just needed to make sure I wasn’t shooting my sub sonics. Those are in the red taped magazines.”
“Oh,” Christian said, confused.
“A little over six hundred meters,” Angelica said softly. “I don’t have the tables—”
BOOM
Angelica was surprised, and it took her a second to find the transformer in her optic. She saw it was smoking with a perfectly round hole in the bottom left.
“Hit bottom left. It’s smoking. Sirens are still running so—”
BOOM
Bailey startled that time.
“Hit,” Angelica said. “Dead center. Something’s dripping out of it. I don’t know if it’s something cooking off inside doing it, or if the rumors they’re filled with oil are true. I don’t know much about them.”
BOOM
“There’s a fire,” Angelica said as the sirens abruptly cut off.
“They’re shooting at us!” was shouted in the distance. None of them knew if it was by the mostly peaceful rioters, or from within the fence.
Rob turned the rifle, finding the transformer on the pole he’d noted earlier. This one was a lot closer, so he waited as Angel read him the range, then fired. The transformer blew up in a ball of flame, and the noise was like a small bomb going off. It was just enough to panic the back of the crowd, who rushed forward, pushing.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 3 | The Farm Page 16
