Broken Worlds Super Boxset (71 page)

***

It’d been almost a full day since Alex had left. Todd joined the rest of the community on their walk from the factory up to their housing. The tired, worn faces rubbed their pricked, bloodied fingers and shuffled through the dirt on Main Street. Todd glanced back at the sentries at the main gate and the few that lined the side of the street, watching their exhausted dogs make their way back to the kennels. 

The sun was sinking behind him and Todd knew that most of the messages should have been delivered by now. His focus was distracted when he felt a nudge in his ribs.

“Hey,” Emma said.

“We should know by tonight,” Todd replied, knowing full well that she was just as anxious as he was. Probably more so.

“I went and saw her today,” Emma said.

“You did?”

“I know I haven’t done it in a while. It’s shameful really. I guess I just didn’t want to go back with nothing to show for it.”

The first month after they buried their daughter was hard for both of them, but Emma completely shut down. She turned into a zombie. She didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t talk, or smile or laugh or cry. She simply decayed into nothing. And then one day, she just snapped out of her trance, like the spell that had been cast on her was suddenly lifted. Slowly, she started eating again, sleeping, talking. But even though Todd watched her claw back from the brink, her eyes weren’t the same as before.

“I understand,” Todd said. “You wanted to be able to show her something, to tell her something worthwhile. That doesn’t make you shameful.”

Emma leaned her head onto Todd’s arm, and for a moment he let himself believe that they weren’t walking from their slave labor jobs, or that the dirty ground underneath their feet didn’t seep into their worn shoes and splatter against their legs and ankles. He let himself pretend that they’d be able to go home together and the kitchen cabinets would be stocked with the ingredients for tonight’s supper. He let himself back into a world where he could feel warmth radiating from within him and contributing to the world around him. Then Todd opened his eyes and the feeling dissipated. His entire body was filthy. They would go to separate houses, and there was no food for them to cook.

Once the cluster of community members made it to their designated housing, Emma gave Todd a smile and then started to head over to her group. Todd walked with Ray and Nelson up to their house and settled in for a long night of waiting.

***

Todd rolled over to the side of the bed and reached for the watch on the nightstand. It was almost midnight. Todd twisted himself off the mattress and made his way to the back door where Nelson and Ray were already waiting.

“You think it’ll happen tonight?” Ray asked.

“If it doesn’t, then I don’t think it will,” Todd answered.

The three men stepped quietly out of the back door and into the chilly night air. They looked to the north where the signal would appear. Todd could see Emma and Ben on the back steps of their houses, looking to the north. Everyone was eager to see if Alex was able to deliver.

“Christ, it’s cold,” Ray said.

Their mouths puffed the frigid night air and their hands ran over their arms quickly to try and create any type of warmth they could. Todd was the only one that kept still. His eyes wouldn’t turn away from the northern horizon. Everything had come down to this. If they couldn’t get the rest of the communities on board at the same time, then they wouldn’t have the manpower to accomplish their objective. Their spark of rebellion would be snuffed out before it even started.

“Maybe he didn’t make it?” Ray asked.

“He made it,” Todd said.

“What time is it? Shouldn’t it have happened by now?” Ray added.

Todd broke his concentration to check his watch. It was already two minutes past midnight. “Give it another minute. The time is just a parameter, it’s not exact.” But with each second that ticked by, Todd could feel the clouds of doubt growing. He checked his watch again. Now five past midnight.
Come on. Do it.
Todd felt his body lean forward, as if trying to lean in a few inches to look at a signal fired twenty miles away would allow him to see it better.

“Maybe something happened?” Ray asked. “He could have been picked up by a sentry unit.”

“If he was picked up by a sentry unit, we would have heard about it by now,” Todd answered, absentmindedly still looking into the distance. Todd checked his watch again. Eight past midnight.
Come on.

And then, cutting through the night sky was the faintest orange glow of a flare. Todd’s heart rose to his throat as it floated across the horizon. Alex did it.

The side of Jake’s face was still swollen, but at least he could see out of both eyes now. The first sentry that asked him what happened was met with a vicious punch to the face. No one asked any questions after that. Despite the wounds, Jake had found out something very important. There was definitely a connection between what was happening in Wyoming and the United States military. He just wasn’t sure how far the connection went.

Sydney almost fell out of his chair when Jake knocked on the door. “If you ask me what happened, I will shove the biggest test tube I can find up your ass and then smash it with the hammer so it breaks while still inside you.”

“I-I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Where’s Alex at with the lab?”

“Um, nothing. Nothing yet.”

Jake left, still nursing his face with a bag of ice. When he made it back to his office, he turned on his computer and saw that there indeed hadn’t been any messages sent. He tossed the bag of ice on his desk and reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He had just pulled the cap off when his Class 2 sentry knocked.

“Sir?” the Class 2 asked. “You wanted me to keep an eye on the scientist’s communications?”

“Yeah, what do you have?”

“Well, sir, I’m not exactly sure. I put a tracker and blocking software on his computer and Coalition log-in information, and there hasn’t been any activity there for the past two days. But the other day our satellite link had two unknown pieces of data travel to two separate locations. The IP addresses were encrypted, so I don’t know who sent it, but I was able to find the general locations of where their destination was located.”

“Where?”

“A Coalition community in Wyoming, and another in Topeka, Kansas.”

***

The stack of reports piling on Jared’s desk coming out of the Gulf Coast began to topple over. One by one, the fishing villages across Louisiana and Mississippi were falling under Coalition control. The door to Jared’s office remained open, and he could hear an increase of hurried voices and feet stomping across the hallways. Then the echo of gunshots rippled through the office and the hurried voices were replaced with screams.

Jared immediately pulled the bottom desk drawer open and lifted a small black case with a fingerprint access code embedded on top. He placed his right hand over the indentation, and the small red light that signaled the case was locked turned green and granted him access. Inside the case was a Glock 9mm along with three fully loaded magazines. Jared shoved one of the magazines in the pistol and placed the other two in his pocket when Marcus came rushing in and closed the door behind him, sealing off the panic-stricken voices beyond the walls.

“What’s going on?” Jared asked.

“Gordon sent a unit of sentries here.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know, but I have a helicopter waiting for you out back. We need to hurry.”

The two men rushed to the office door and cracked it open to get a better look at what was happening, but their view was blocked by the flurry of legs and feet that stormed through the hallway. More gunshots sounded, and one of the women running collapsed to the ground right in front of the door. Her eyes were still open and her dead gaze rested upon Jared, who recognized the girl as a member of their accounting team. Marcus quickly shut the door and leaned back up against it. “They’re too close.”

A single window offered escape to the outside, and Jared quickly picked up his office chair and slammed it into the thick paned glass. The first blow did little but crack the window, but each repeated blow after that sent the cracks traveling up the glass like spiders crawling to escape the heel of a boot. The chair finally burst through and landed on the outside of the building, and Jared quickly jumped out. Marcus was right behind him when Jared suddenly stopped, turned, then headed back into the office through the shattered window.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked, his voice harsh and low.

Jared went to the computer on his desk and quickly started to search for files. He dragged a few select pieces of information into a folder and then uploaded it to his thumb drive. A loud thump at Jared’s office door caused both Marcus and Jared to look up. Another harsh blow caused the wood to splinter. The loading bar was at sixty percent.

“Jared, we have to go now!”

The next kick swung the door open, and Jared aimed and fired his pistol at the two sentries that barreled inside. The first few bullets hit the sentry’s Kevlar, and Jared ducked behind his desk for cover as the sentries returned fire. The reports on the top of his desk were sent flying into the air. He jumped back up and fired again, this time sending a bullet right through the eye of one of the sentries and another into the neck of the sentry’s partner. Both of them collapsed to the ground. The files finished their upload and Jared removed the thumb drive and headed out the window as the sound of more boots echoed behind them.

The scene outside was just as chaotic. The unit of sentries that Gordon had sent over had swarmed the area. A cluster of his workers were herded together and forced to kneel in front of a firing squad. Jared turned his head just in time to miss the bullets that killed them. Sights like that were happening everywhere. Gordon wasn’t taking any prisoners.

The blades from the chopper were already turning when Jared and Marcus arrived. Jared looked out the side of the window at the atrocities being committed all over the compound.

“What was on the computer that you needed?” Marcus asked.

Jared pulled out the thumb drive from his pocket. “Sydney managed to contact me. The president needs to see this.”

“Holy shit.”

“We need to get to Washington immediately.”

Marcus nodded. “I’ll set something up as soon as we land.”

“No. We need to get on this now. Gordon has made moves on the oil refineries, the fisheries, and now he’s attacked federal administrators under the President of the United States. I want the President ready for a meeting the moment we land on the grass of the White House.”

***

A trail of blood followed the dead bodies of Jared’s former staff members as sentries dragged the carcasses to a massive body pile that was to be burned. Gordon’s boot stepped right into one of the blood trails, and each step forward after that left a thinning path of red footprints as he made his way through the compound.

The red stains on the floor were accented by the splatters on the walls and ceiling and the few select handprints along the carpet from those that tried to crawl their way to safety. Gordon stepped to the side as one sentry dragged one of those scurrying rodents that had tried to flee past him, then continued until he stepped through the broken door frame of an office where two of his sentries had been shot. Both of the bodies were still inside, their pale flesh void of any life.

Gordon immediately went to the computer and searched the desktop. When he couldn’t find the file he was looking for, he flung the wireless mouse against the wall where it exploded into broken pieces of plastic. “Have someone from technology come and collect this computer. I don’t want anyone else in here, and I don’t want anyone touching anything in this room.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two sentries quickly got out of Gordon’s way as he stormed back down the hallway. Gordon mumbled to himself, brushing past the dead bodies that lined the walls until he finally made it back outside. The smell of burning flesh hit his nostrils as the first flames from the pile of bodies took to the air. The blaze grew, heating to the point of sweltering, and the rancid stench grew along with it. That was what he wanted. The smell of burnt flesh would fill the whole city. It was his message. Anyone or anything that opposed him would burn.

Gordon called Jake the moment he was back in his office, pacing around, foaming at the mouth. “The files weren’t here. He must have taken them with him.”

“So what’s our move?”

“You have sentries ready to move on that community at a moment’s notice. You do not let him get that data to Sydney, understand? The moment you’ve confirmed that he has it, I want you to blow the doors down at every house in that community.”

“I’ll have my men ready.”

“Good. I’ll be there to join you.”

They still had a chance to get the data before the President did, and from what Jake had told him earlier, Sydney hadn’t told his father too much. But it would be enough to spark the President’s interest in the area, and that was something Gordon couldn’t afford.