Into the Fire

by Kyla Stone

  Logan didn’t lower the gun, just in case. “Julio, bring up the light. Everyone else, stay back.”

  With the penlight, they saw what Logan had suspected. The figure didn’t move because he was already dead. The harsh white light revealed a garish face pocked with huge blisters, the flesh burnt, boiled, and melted—as if acid had eaten away at him from the inside out.

  Not acid. Radiation.

  “He made it out of the city, but it didn’t matter,” Julio said quietly, his hand over his mouth and nose to mask the pungent stench.

  Logan closed his eyes briefly. The horrors radiation had wrought upon the man’s body were too terrible to look at.

  He and Julio made their way back to the group and explained what they’d found.

  Julio pursed his lips. “I hate the thought of just leaving him to rot like that. Whoever he was, he was someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s father.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight. Come on.” Logan turned to Eden. “Good eyes, kiddo.”

  Her face was in shadows, but she lifted her head toward him, like maybe she was beaming with pride. Good. She needed to be skilled at something, to feel like she was contributing.

  They kept walking. Where was that damn truck? Walking two miles in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere while getting eaten alive by bugs was no one’s idea of fun.

  About twenty minutes and fifty mosquito bites later, Eden stopped and pointed again, this time into the woods.

  “What is it?” Julio asked.

  She signed something. Everyone stared at her blankly.

  She stepped to the edge of the gravel and aimed the light at the ground. Logan made out the faint mark of tire treads veering off the road before disappearing into the underbrush.

  They’d reached the F150’s hiding spot.

  “Good job, Eden,” Julio said. “I would’ve walked right past it.”

  Logan, too.

  Another sound splintered the night air, this time from behind them. Twigs cracked. Leaves shook.

  Logan whirled again, searching the woods across the road. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. “Turn off the lights.”

  “It’s nothing—” Park started to say.

  “It’s not nothing,” Logan said in a low voice. “Not this time.”

  His body thrummed with adrenaline. He had that feeling again—like someone, or something, was watching them.

  Maybe an animal predator. Or maybe something else.

  Either way, he was on high alert.

  Eden watched him with wide eyes. Julio put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “What do you want us to do, Logan?”

  “Move fast but quietly. Get in the truck. I’ll cover you. Whatever it is, I doubt it’s friendly.”

  They hurried into the forest, making far more of a racket than they should’ve. Logan took up the rear, facing the road and straining over their shuffling movements for any sounds that didn’t belong.

  The moon broke free of the clouds, illuminating the darkness in shades of silver.

  Something crashed through the underbrush across the road. The dark shapes of small trees shuddered as twigs and branches cracked under foot.

  Logan raised his weapon, shifting back and forth, wildly scanning the trees. He had no clue where to aim.

  A large deer ploughed through the trees and darted out into the road. It turned and dashed into the forest not twenty feet from them, white tail high in the air as it plunged through the underbrush and swiftly disappeared.

  The sounds of its flight faded into stillness.

  Logan sucked in several deep breaths, willing his heartrate to return to normal.

  “Told you it was nothing,” Park said, his voice squeaking. “Just nature. Totally harmless.”

  With his free hand, Logan swiped at a mosquito attached to his forearm and killed it with a satisfying splat. He wiped the smear of blood on his pants. “Nature is not harmless.”

  A twig cracked. Then another.

  Logan turned toward the sound.

  Park sighed. “Just another deer—”

  A loud, booming voice shattered the muggy air. “Stop right there!”

  9

  Logan

  “Don’t you move a muscle!”

  Logan froze, AR-15 half-raised.

  Not fifteen feet away, a Caucasian man strode out from the trees across the road. His features were shadowed in the moonlight, but Logan clearly made out the shape of him—he was huge, with shoulders broad as a doorway, a barrel chest, and arms bulging with muscles the size of footballs.

  He gripped a hunting rifle in his massive hands, the muzzle pointed at Logan’s chest.

  “Holy hell,” Park whispered beside Logan.

  The man gestured with his rifle. “Put down your weapons and come out onto the road before I shoot you dead.”

  Logan cursed. But he didn’t drop the gun.

  He should just shoot first. It didn’t matter if the other guy was the one doing the threatening; whoever shot first always won. Almost always.

  He could drill this thug right through the center of his giant forehead with a .556 round before he could blink…

  A second, shorter man stepped out from behind the giant. He looked like the first guy, but he was slimmer and shorter, dressed in a green camo shirt, dark cargo pants, and a leather vest marked with an insignia unreadable in the dark. His long brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the base of his neck.

  He aimed his shotgun at Julio’s head.

  If Logan was by himself, he’d risk it. Maybe he could make two headshots before either of them could react quickly enough to pull their own triggers.

  But he wasn’t alone. He had the others to think of, to keep alive.

  Helpless anger flashed through him. He’d known they were being watched. And now he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  “Move. My brother’s not gonna ask twice,” the pony-tailed man said.

  Logan cursed again, this time silently. Resentment mingled with the adrenaline surging through his veins, but he obeyed.

  So did the others. Logan, Park, Julio, and Eden lined up along the edge of the road. They lowered their weapons and raised their hands. Logan didn’t remove the Glock, still in its concealed holster at his back.

  It was risk, but one worth taking.

  “Kneel down,” the giant instructed.

  They knelt. Gravel dug painfully into Logan’s kneecaps. He inhaled the scent of wet leaves, damp soil, and the sharp tang of his own nervous sweat.

  He glared up at his captors, seething.

  The two men stood less than ten feet away. It’d be hard for them to miss if they decided to take a shot. At least they didn’t bother to frisk their new hostages. Amateurs.

  When the opportunity arose, Logan would be ready.

  “We don’t have anything of value.” Julio shifted his body so he partially shielded Eden. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  The huge guy flashed white teeth beneath a thick, bristling beard that reached his chest. “Yet here you are, skulking around like thieves.”

  “I assure you, we’re not thieves,” Julio said calmly.

  He was the natural negotiator, so Logan let him do the talking. If Logan said anything, it’d be hurled curses and insults through gritted teeth.

  Or maybe he’d just take his chances and lunge at them both, take them by surprise, tackle the smaller one and wrestle that shotgun away…

  Ponytail cradled the shotgun in the crook of his forearm and lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “We’ve got them. Come on in.”

  The distant rumble of engines filled the air.

  Logan felt Julio twisting to look down the road, but Logan kept his gaze lasered on the giant. The giant stared back at him, grinning, like he could read every thought in Logan’s head and was relishing the opportunity to blow his head off if he made a wrong move.

  Three motorcycles roared toward them. They came to a sha
rp stop twenty yards away. Three men jumped off and strode up behind Giant and Ponytail.

  They were a rough bunch, all in their thirties or forties, worn lines creasing their hard, bearded faces, their expressions grim. They wore leather vests with baseball caps or red handkerchiefs on their heads, rifles slung over their shoulders.

  A biker gang, come to rob them or worse. They were probably riding the Tamiami Trail back and forth, waylaying unsuspecting refugees just trying to escape the chaos of radioactive Miami.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” Julio said under his breath. “We can talk this out.”

  Logan rolled his eyes. “You’re thinking of Dakota, not me,” he muttered. “I’m never rash.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What’s going on, Archer?” asked a broad, heavy-set man with a goatee, thick scowling features, and sly eyes. Aggression poured off him in waves. Logan knew his kind—dangerous and shifty, the type of man who’d slit your throat for the hell of it.

  “More thugs,” the giant—Archer—said to the others, eyeing Logan’s tattoos.

  He had no room to judge; his group had plenty of their own ink. If anything, they looked more vicious than Logan’s group did. Julio could hold his own, but Park looked about as threatening as a toy poodle.

  “You’re the thugs,” Logan said. “You’re the ones holding guns to our heads.”

  “We’re just passing through,” Julio said over him. “We’re fleeing the radiation and trying to reach Naples. We’ll give you whatever you want that we have, though it isn’t much. You can let us go.”

  Julio didn’t mention Ezra Burrows’ cabin, which was the smart play. These biker gangster wannabes didn’t need to know anything about the stash the old geezer had hoarded away.

  “Everyone’s got a sob story these days,” Ponytail said. “Ain’t none of our concern.”

  “They got a kid with them,” Archer said.

  “So?” Sly Eyes said. “Doesn’t make them any less of a threat. The last ones did, too.”

  The last two men stood a few feet back, both carrying shotguns with handguns holstered at their waists. Logan realized with a start that they were twins—the same burly build and square squat features, wild reddish beards, and forearms so hairy they looked furry.

  The first one spat on the asphalt. The second tapped his shotgun with his fingers. “You’re trying to tell us you’re walking to Naples?”

  “It’s less than a hundred miles,” Park said.

  “Nice try,” Ponytail snapped. “We’ve seen your type at least a dozen times already. Thieves and hoodlums taking advantage of the chaos to rob and steal the house right out from beneath a man. That’s not happening here, you get me?”

  “We wouldn’t do that,” Julio said.

  Sly Eyes gave a dismissive snort. “You, what, got your car stashed around here somewhere, ready to load up on someone else’s goodies?”

  “No, we don’t,” Logan interjected before Julio’s conscience started bothering him and he confessed the truth. “We don’t have a stashed car or anything else.”

  He’d gotten them wrong, he realized. They weren’t the ones preying on others—they were some sort of local patrol, protecting the area from criminals on the prowl.

  Not that this made their group any safer, not when they thought Logan and the others were the bad guys. These bikers didn’t look like the type to balk at violence, especially when it came to protecting their own.

  “We’re not who you think—” Park started.

  “Got it!” shouted a female voice from a few dozen yards behind them. “A gray shot-to-hell Ford F-150.”

  Logan’s heart sank. Damn it all to hell.

  10

  Logan

  “Well, well, well.” Sly Eyes gave them a nasty, triumphant grin. “Thieves and liars. Probably murderers, too.”

  Logan’s mind raced, desperate to find a way out of this mess. If they backtracked and tried to tell the truth, it wouldn’t go over well.

  A woman sauntered out of the woods where they’d stashed the truck. She seemed to glide more than walk across the road. Though she moved with a fluid grace of someone much younger, the fine lines in the bronze skin around her eyes and mouth suggested she was in her early fifties.

  She wore a revolver at her hip along with camo hiking pants, sturdy boots, and a loose, long-sleeved black T-shirt. Her long, raven-black hair was pulled into a ponytail.

  Logan couldn’t remember what Indian tribes Dakota had said lived in the Everglades, but this woman was definitely Native American.

  She looked them over, one hand on her hip, her face expressionless.

  “Thanks, Maki,” Ponytail said. “Good work. You caught them red-handed.”

  She gave a silent nod but didn’t speak. She was the one he’d heard in the woods, Logan realized with a start. She’d been following them, stalking them.

  “We’re sorry,” Julio said quickly, his words running together. “We lied. We thought you guys were the robbers. We hid the truck. We’re staying with a friend here to ride out the storm. That’s all.”

  Archer raised his thick brows. “Oh yeah? Who’s the friend?”

  Julio glanced at Logan for permission.

  Logan shrugged. What difference did it make? Things couldn’t get much worse.

  “Ezra Burrows.”

  Archer snorted. Ponytail let out a sharp bark of laughter. The other men chuckled in derision.

  “Ezra Burrows, a friend?” Archer bellowed. “That ornery old coot never had a friend in his life. Now we really know you’re full of crap.”

  “Why are we wasting time?” Sly Eyes swung his shotgun between Julio and Logan. “Just shoot them.”

  The sound of a small vehicle came roaring toward them. Several of the bikers looked up, including Archer and Sly Eyes.

  Logan studied them, searching for a weakness, a break. Giant was a beast—a full head and shoulders taller than Logan, who was six feet—and too big to take down quickly. Ponytail was the closest to Logan, but his shotgun was still aimed at Julio. The twins and Sly Eyes were too far away to rush.

  A four-wheeler exited a dirt driveway thirty feet to the left. The drive was so overgrown with weeds and crowded with underbrush that Logan hadn’t noticed it until then.

  The driver parked a few yards away and hopped off, leaving the engine running. The headlight beam lit up an older woman with dusky bronze skin and coal-black eyes, dressed in a flowered nightgown, her long gray hair draped around her shoulders.

  She strode toward them, a crossbow in her hands. “What the hell are you doing? I could hear the racket all the way back at my place.”

  “We’re taking care of it, Haasi,” Ponytail said, turning slightly toward the woman as she spoke. The muzzle of his gun turned with him.

  “Clearly, not well enough, Jake Collier,” she snapped back, saying the guy’s name like an insult.

  Logan didn’t wait for the neighbors to hash it out. This was his chance, maybe the only one he was going to get. He moved.

  He leapt to his feet and lunged for the ponytailed guy, the one the woman had called Jake. Logan didn’t care what his name was. He was a threat, and Logan needed to take him out.

  He knocked the shotgun from the startled man’s hands with his left arm as he reached behind his back with his right hand and seized the Glock. He fumbled with his shirt for a moment, the pistol snagging on the fabric as he yanked it free, but he still had the element of surprise on his side.

  The bikers’ brains were still registering the fact that their quarry was no longer kneeling by the time Logan had spun Jake around, wrapped his arm around the biker’s throat, and pressed the Glock against his temple.

  Five men and two women aimed their collective firepower in Logan’s direction.

  “Let him go!” Archer shouted.

  “Let them go first,” Logan said. “Then I’ll think about whether he deserves to live or not.”

  “No one needs to die tonight,” Julio said, pl
eading. “We’re not enemies. There’s no reason for any of this.”

  “You just made a reason,” the old woman they’d called Haasi said angrily, her gaze trained on Logan.

  Eden, who’d been huddled beside Julio, climbed to her feet. She was shaking, but her chin was lifted, her eyes gazing straight ahead.

  “Eden!” Julio grabbed at her arm but she was already taking a step forward, then another.

  Haasi caught the movement and swung the crossbow toward Eden.

  “No!” Julio cried. “Don’t hurt her!”

  Park just stared, wide-eyed, too shocked to speak.

  Logan’s mouth went dry. He was too far away to stop whatever was about to happen. If he moved away from Ponytail, he was dead. They would all be dead. His gun against Ponytail’s skull was their only leverage.

  He watched helplessly as the girl walked directly into the line of fire.

  11

  Logan

  Eden stood there, arms at her sides, chin raised, just a kid in the middle of a group of armed hostiles.

  Haasi’s gaze narrowed. The crossbow trembled ever so slightly in her hands. Logan half-expected her to pull the trigger and shoot Eden, but she didn’t.

  “Eden’s just a child,” Julio said. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “Eden?” Haasi asked suspiciously. “Eden Sloane?”

  Eden nodded.

  “You know her?” Archer asked.

  Haasi gave the slightest nod, a stunned look on her lined face. “The kid who lived with Ezra Burrows for a while. The one that couldn’t talk. She’s grown but…I know it’s her. She’s got the same scar.”

  “We were telling the truth,” Julio said. “We’re here to see Ezra Burrows. We’re not thieves or looters. We pose no danger to you or yours. Please, if we could all put our weapons down and discuss things like civilized human beings.”

  “Them first,” Logan growled. He wasn’t putting down a thing.