Badlands Trilogy (Book 3): Out of the Badlands (33 page)

“Come on then,” Jasper said.

“We’re chained,” one of them said. “We can’t go anywhere.”

Jasper felt along the length of one of the chains, his hand arriving at a bolt driven into the wall. “I can probably get these chains out of the wall,” he said. “But it’ll take some time.”

“Do it then,” one of the prisoners said.

Jasper slid the iron rebar he’d found into the eye of the bolt in the wall and began twisting it counter-clockwise. He worked quickly, removing them one by one. Eventually he had them all removed, but the chains remained locked around the women’s ankles.

“Best I can do for now,” Jasper said. “You’ll have to carry the chains until I can remove them.”

The women gathered at the door, laying the chains over their shoulders.

“There’s a fire escape on the roof,” one of the women said in the darkness. “I’ve been up there before.”

“What’s your name?” Trish asked.

“Denise.”

“Can you take us to it?” Jasper asked.

“I can. We’ll take the stairs to the roof. There’s a fire escape that leads down from the south side of the building.”

“The building’s on fire,” Jasper said, “so the sooner the better.”

As the women filed through the door one by one, Trish recognized one of them.

“Alice?”

Ed awoke to the smell of smoke. His head throbbed and his body ached. He looked around in the darkness, trying to figure out where he was and what had happened. With his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could make some shapes in the dim light. One of them happened to be the unmistakable form of an apex carrier lying a few yards away.

He scooted backward, heart racing, but the figure didn’t move. In the dim light Ed could see a length of iron rebar jutting up and out of the thing’s chest, impaling it. It had fallen recently, the blood still wet.

He searched for Zach and Jeremy, knowing he’d find them just as dead as the carrier.

But he didn’t. They hadn’t fallen. Some hope, at least.

He stood, his head throbbing, wondering just what to do next. Zach and Jeremy could be anywhere and he had no idea how to find them. He felt along the wall and found a door leading out of the room and into another hallway. It seemed this building was made up of dozens of long hallways, all interconnecting.

He shoved the door open. It scraped on rusty hinges, pushing debris out of the way on the other side. All he could think about now was finding Zach and Jeremy. Nothing else mattered, not the carriers, not the guns, not even the acrid smoke filling the hallway.

He searched the bleak darkness, finding nothing and having no idea where he was. Empty boxes, chunks of concrete and large pieces of ceiling tile littered the floor, forcing Ed to walk around them. It didn’t take long to realize that the building was slowly collapsing on top of itself.

Ed rounded a corner and saw flames at the end of the hallway. The smoke grew thicker, irritating his eyes and throat now.

Then a figure came out of the shadows, illuminated from behind by the flames. Ed could see the familiar shape of a rifle in his hands as the gunman pointed it directly at him.

* * *

“Put your hands up,” the man said.

Ed lifted his hands. “Let me go.”

The man chuckled. “You’re funny.”

“My kids are in this building somewhere and I have to find them.”

“You’re on private property,” the man said. He had a southern drawl and a slow, methodical manner of speech. In the light of the flames Ed could see a dark brown beard covering the man’s face. “Daddy says to round you all up and get you to the roof.”

“Why are you doing this?” Ed asked. “We didn’t do anything to any of you.”

“Daddy says to round all of you up,” Southern Drawl repeated. “And if Daddy says to do a thing, then I’ll be goddamned if I ain’t gonna do it.”

“I told you my kids are in this building somewhere. If I don’t find them they’ll die. Can’t you understand that?”

“I don’t give a goddamn about your kids,” Southern Drawl said. “Daddy says to bring you to the roof and that’s what I’m gonna do.”

Ed glared at the man. He lunged toward the rifle, attempting to wrench it from the man’s hands, but Southern Drawl turned out to be faster than Ed. Another rifle butt to the head took him down hard.

“Why’d you go and do that?” Southern Drawl asked. “Daddy’s gonna be pissed if I don’t get you up there right away.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and reached down, pulling Ed to his feet. Ed’s head swam as he stood, his balance already affected by the fall he’d taken earlier.

Southern Drawl reached down by his side and retrieved a large knife. He held it up in the light of the flames for Ed to see. “You’re coming with me. You try anything and I stick you. Understand?”

Ed nodded weakly as the man gripped him by the arm and led him toward a stairwell. There they began their ascent to the roof.

“Alice, what are you doing here?” Trish asked.

Alice stared at Trish in the darkness. “You’re Ed Brady’s girl, right? What’s your name again?”

“Trish.”

“Trish, that’s right.”

“How did you get here?” Trish asked. “I thought we lost you back at the church with the others.”

“I got out,” Alice said. “Got back on the road again, back on plan. But they got me on the highway.”

“Who got you?”

“The rednecks,” Denise said. “That’s what they do. They caught us all at one point or another. You can see what they’ve been doing to us.”

“How long have you been here?” Trish asked Alice.

“A few days.”

“The rest of us have been here for months,” someone said.

“Years,” another woman added.

“I’m glad you showed up,” Alice said. “Where’s Ed?”

“I don’t know,” Trish replied. “We got separated.”

Alice only nodded.

“You guys can catch up with each other later,” Denise said. “We need to get moving.”

* * *

Trish, Jasper, Alice and the remaining four women exited the room and walked carefully through the debris littering the darkened hallway. They followed closely behind Denise who led the way toward a set of stairs.

“This way,” Denise said. She opened the door and held it for the others, allowing them all through before taking the lead again.

The group made their way slowly up the steps, following more or less in a single file line. They moved slowly, allowing the pregnant women in the group to keep up. Lightning flashed periodically, lighting the interior of the stairwell as they went. More debris littered the steps, forcing them to side step chunks of the ceiling, old bricks and random trash. A few of the windows had been broken, allowing leaves to accumulate inside.

They passed the third floor, arriving at the top. The steps ended there, leading them to a single door leading onto the roof.

“Wait here,” Denise said. “I’m going to check things out and make sure the way is clear.”

Trish pulled the knife from the sheath on her belt. “I’m coming too.”

Denise glanced at the knife and shrugged. “Sure.”

She placed her hands on the door’s panic bar. “Ready?”

Trish nodded.

Denise opened the door and stepped through.

Trish followed.

* * *

Outside the cold rain poured, drenching them almost instantly. The dark clouds hid the moon, but a full-blown lightning storm raging in the sky above them provided occasional flashes of light, allowing them to scan the rooftop. Thunderclaps roared after each flash, some strong enough to shake the building. The storm was right over top of them now, beating them down as hard as it could.

“Which way?” Trish asked. She had to yell over the noise of the rain on the rooftop.

“This way,” Denise said, pointing toward the far end of the building. An enormous bolt of lightning flashed, forking into a dozen jagged lines across the sky. A second later a massive thunderclap crashed overhead, jarring the building on its foundation. Four stories below them the carriers howled over the noise, in pain or anticipation Trish couldn’t tell.

They followed Denise, Trish second, Alice third, with Jasper and the other women trailing behind. The roof stretched at least a hundred yards before it ran out. The cold rain pelted them as they ran, drenching them completely. Trish had already begun shivering before she’d taken even a dozen steps.

“Watch out for that,” Denise yelled over the howling wind and rain, pointing in the dim light at a gigantic hole in the roof. Smoke exited through the hole. Trish wondered if the entire building had caught fire and wondered next where Ed and the boys were. She felt an overwhelming sense of dread at the thought, but pushed the feeling down for the time being.

The roof seemed to go on forever, but eventually they made it to the other side. Denise stopped thirty yards from the edge, pointing to an enclosed tube that arched up and then down from the roof, enclosing an iron ladder.

“There it is,” she said, turning to Trish and smiling.

Trish returned the smile just as Denise’s head exploded in a meaty spray of blood and brains.

“I’m not gonna make it,” Terry said.

Even in the dim light Emily could see the dark stain spreading out across Terry’s shirt. “You’ll be okay. I’ll patch you up once we get out of here.”

“You’re a bad liar, you know that?”

“Just keep moving. We need to get the hell out of this building. You’ll make it, I promise.”

The pair felt their way down the hall, maneuvering around piles of debris and leaves that had blown in through windows broken years before the virus destroyed the world. They came to an intersection in the hall and slowed. Emily crept toward the corner and peeked around, looking into the black abyss of the long corridor, listening hard.

“I hear somebody,” she whispered.

Both Emily and Terry peeked around the corner. There, two men appeared from a small room just off the hallway.

“You and your brothers get up to the roof,” one of the men said. A thick, country accent coated the words. “When you git there, you wait on ‘em. Don’t leave without ‘em, hear?”

“I hear ya, Daddy,” the other man replied. “What about the women?”

“Ain’t got time for ‘em,” Daddy said. “They’re a lost cause.”

“But two of ‘em are with child. Ricky and Jeb’s babies, you know.”

“It’s a damn shame, son, but sometimes God just takes the little ‘uns and there ain’t a thing a man can do about it.”

The second man sounded downhearted. “It don’t seem fair to me.”

“You go on up to the roof and wait on your brothers,” Daddy said. “They’ll be up shortly.”

Emily heard footfalls echo through the hallway, growing softer as the man headed away. Then the sound of approaching footsteps quickly replaced it as Daddy came toward them.

“Follow my lead,” Emily whispered to Terry.

“Huh?”

She waited as the footsteps approached the T-shaped intersection of the two hallways, squinting in the low light. The footsteps grew louder and adrenaline flooded her system. Her heart beat faster and her palms began to sweat. She swallowed hard as Daddy rounded the corner.

Emily charged, spearing Daddy in the abdomen and knocking him to the floor. Capitalizing on her surprise attack, she reached down and gripped a handful of his hair, slamming the man’s head down hard onto the tile floor. She repeated the attack, smashing his skull onto the floor when a bony fist smashed her in the nose. She felt a pop, followed by a burning sensation as the blood began to flow from her nose. Before she could tell what had happened, she found herself on her back, those same thin yet strong hands gripping her around the neck. Every breath felt as if drawn through a straw. Stars began to form in her vision as she gagged for air.

She saw a flash of movement and felt the pressure instantly release as Terry stepped in, delivering a boot to the man’s jaw. The leather smacked off the man’s face as he fell to the floor. Terry landed on top of the man, grunting as he drew back a fist and broke the man’s nose. In the dim light, Emily saw a thin old man with a white beard and equally white hair beneath Terry taking a hell of a beating. The man’s beard stretched halfway down his chest, his long hair spread out on the dirty floor like Medusa’s snakes.

Terry drew back again and delivered another blow to the Daddy’s face. He went limp, his head lolling to the side. Another blow, followed by another and the man’s face began to change shape. Another fist finally crushed Daddy’s nose. Another shattered his eye socket. Terry hit him again and Emily heard the man’s jaw break.

“Terry,” she said.

Terry hit the man again, the sound of the punch like striking a piece of wet meat.

“Terry, stop,” Emily repeated.

Terry landed another fist, the dull thud echoing throughout the hallway.

“Terry!” Emily yelled.

Terry looked up from the mess of the man below him. She could barely make out his face in the darkness, but she could see the light reflected in her friend’s eyes.

“He’s dead,” she said.

Realization returned to Terry’s face. “Shit, I didn’t mean to do that.”

Emily glanced at the bloody mess that had been known as Daddy. “He deserved it.”

She stood, helping Terry to his feet. He leaned hard on her. The entire side of his shirt was sticky and wet with blood.

Terry followed as Emily walked down the hall, toward the room from where she’d seen the two men emerge. Inside a candle flickered, illuminating the room enough to see clearly, considering how well-adjusted her eyes had become to the darkness.

Shelves lined one of the walls of the small room. On them sat an array of perhaps a dozen different kinds of guns; a few pistols, ten rifles and two shotguns. Boxes of shells sat beside the guns, appropriately matched.

“Grab as much of this as you can,” Emily said, stepping into the room. She picked up one of the pistols and checked the magazine. It was full. She looked at Terry in the candlelight and saw his eyes perk up at the find. “What do you say we even the playing field?”

Terry nodded, grimacing at the movement. “I think that’s a fine idea.”