Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (19 page)

Finn shook his head. "You sound like
Adrian. It's sickening."

Bix groaned. "How did I get
here?"

"I carried you," Finn answered. He
stood up and went to sit beside his friend, flicking Jennifer away
with his hand and a hateful glare.

"I feel like shit."

"Here, honey," Jennifer said, offering
a glass. "Sip some water."

Finn slapped the glass out of the
woman's hand. He wanted to scream at her not to touch
him.

She patiently went over and picked up
the glass, refilled it, then gently helped Bix sit up and drink.
When he was finished, she set the glass back on the
table.

"It's a new world, Finn," she quietly
said, "with new rules and new ways of doin things. And before y'all
get to judgin, y'all need to know that some good comes out of our
work. But nothin is free, and in a world that ain't got no use for
money, sometimes we have to pay in other ways."

"Pay for what?"

"Goods that we need to do our work.
Supplies. Wood fer buildin. Till the world is rid of the Flense,
it's how we have to do things."

Finn rocked where he sat. The buzzing
in his head threatened to blow him apart.

"What's going to happen to that man
now?" Bix asked, his voice weak. He gagged and sounded like he was
going to throw up.

Jennifer moved a large plastic bowl
closer to the side of the couch.

"The one being punished," Bix
clarified. "He's a Wraith now, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is infected."

"What's going to happen to
him?"

"We'll try to cure him."

"And if you can't?"

Jennifer looked kindly down on the boy
and gave him a gentle smile. "You think we're heartless, but we
ain't. We ain't cruel."

"Quit defending your sick actions and
just answer the damn question," Finn growled.

"Father Adrian will—"

"Stop calling him that! He's no holy
man!"

"I will try to save him usin my
methods. Me and him, we have different ideas about salvation,
different paths to take. That man failed to save himself last
night. Now it's my turn to try."

"I don't believe it for a second," Harry told Eddie at breakfast.
"Danny wouldn't just up and leave without saying anything to the
rest of us. And why? Did he think he could just go back to the
bunker on his own? By foot?"

"Keep it down," Eddie warned. "No
talking about that place in public."

He glanced suspiciously over at a
group of men who had just entered the dining hall, their clothes
dusty, fully automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Their
faces were black with road grime, except for the patches covered by
their goggles.

Someone at another table said
something that elicited a roar of laughter from the others, and
they looked unabashedly over at the new people seated at Eddie's
table. There was open curiosity in their eyes, but they made no
attempt to interact.

The previous day, once the medical
examinations were completed and the survivors were cleared, each
individual was assigned a task. A couple of women came in to
explain the process. "Everyone has to work for their keep here,"
they told the group. "Yes, even those just passing
through."

"You get a lot of people just passing
through?"

"A few."

"Anyone change their mind after
leaving and come back?"

"Usually when people leave here like
that, it's permanent."

"And why is that?"

The woman gave them a perplexed look.
"Because it's dangerous outside the fence. And it's not just
roamers and infected. There's wild animals. People die out
there."

They talked a while about the various
jobs that needed to be done. Most of it sounded like busy work, but
some of it was clearly necessary. Three hundred people living in a
small space produced a lot of waste and required a lot of food,
water, and supplies.

They were assured that the assignments
were on a rotating basis for most residents, so if they didn't like
the job they got, it wouldn't be long before they would move on to
another. "But seniority plays a role, too. If you choose to stay on
here—"

"Which we won't," Eddie declared.
"Once our bus is fixed and we have all our people together again,
we'll be moving on."

They gave him looks that suggested
they knew better, but didn't argue.

Danny had been assigned to sanitation
detail, but no one saw him for the rest of that day. And when he
failed to show up that night in their quarantine barracks, some
began to suspect that something bad had happened to him.

"Now, we don't know," Harrison told
them. "It's possible he got assigned to regular quarters, like
Harry and his family."

But other than the Rollinses, no one
else had been reassigned.

Then, just that morning, their second
at the base, Eddie overheard one of the two guards talking about
how Danny had demanded to leave in the middle of the night with
nothing more than a backpack and some water. Eddie was in complete
disbelief. He hid around the side of a small storage shed about
eighty feet away to eavesdrop on the rest of their conversation.
Though they spoke in normal tones, he had no problem hearing
them.

He saw Captain Cheever emerge from the
administrative building, where he shared an office with Colonel
Wainwright, and wander over to the guards. He acted surprised by
the news of Danny's departure. "And you just let him walk
out?"

"You informed the newcomers they could
leave whenever they wanted to."

"Dammit, Sergeant Bolton! Not in the
middle of the night! It's suicide! You should always advise with me
first before letting anyone go."

"I wasn't at the gate," the sergeant
insisted. "Private Ramsay was! Do you want me to discipline
him?"

"Ramsay? Dammit. No, I'll deal with
him myself." The captain spun around to leave.

"Um, sir?" Bolton asked. "I heard the
search team found Private Singh's bike yesterday."

Cheever stopped. He took a moment to
allow a couple people to pass out of earshot before stepping back
over. "They found it abandoned by the side of the road about a half
mile from the fuel truck. It was covered in blood. The tank was
full, but the men couldn't get it to start." He sighed and shook
his head. "It sounds like a mechanical failure. They were
attacked."

"By infected?"

"Them or mountain lions."

"Jesus," Bolton said. "I'm sorry to
hear that. Singh was a good man."

"Yes, he was," Cheever snapped. "We're
not telling anyone just yet what happened, understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The captain nodded and walked away. He
didn't see the smirk on Bolton's face, but Eddie had.

He couldn't decide if he should tell
any of the others what he had seen and overheard. They already
guessed that Jonah might be dead, but now he wondered if there
might be more to the story. There had been something sinister in
Bolton's smirk, and the convenient explanation of Danny leaving in
the middle of the night didn't sit well with him.

Which is why he decided to wait for
Harry to show up at breakfast. He needed to talk it through with
someone, and he didn't want it to be Harrison— not that he didn't
trust the man, but because he seemed too blasé about things
sometimes, too willing to accept the status quo and not expect
something more. He was too accommodating. After all, he'd let his
only son run off on what was almost certainly a suicide
mission.

Harry had echoed his own alarm. "This
stinks," he said, when Eddie finished telling him what he knew.
"Danny had no reason to leave. He didn't want to."

"So, what do we do about
it?"

"It's that Cheever guy. He's as
crooked as a dog's hind leg."

Eddie frowned. Until that morning,
he'd have agreed, but now he wasn't so sure.

"I'm telling you," Harry went on,
"that man is trying to break us apart. First, it was separating the
men and women."

"You and Fran and the boys are
together."

"Because I went straight to Cheever's
boss, that Wainwright guy, and demanded it. You should do that,
too. It's wrong that you and Hannah are separated."

Eddie nodded in the direction of the
girls at the other end of their table. "At the moment, Hannah and
Bren need each other more than she needs me."

Harry's forehead furrowed. "That's not
the Eddie I know. You used to be a lot more protective of
her."

"I still am. But I know exactly where
she is, and I know she's safe with Kari and Susan. I'm also
confident enough in my own . . . abilities that I'll
be able to protect her if I need to."

"Hey, what are you two talking about?"
Fran Rollins asked, shifting closer to her husband. "Making secret
plans to blow up the latrines so you don't have to dig them
out?"

Harry gave her a dirty look, then
shook his head. "Eddie says Danny's gone. He heard the guards say
he decided to leave in the middle of the night."

Fran shook her head. "That doesn't
sound like Danny. In fact, I know it's not true."

Eddie leaned in and asked, "What do
you know, Fran?"

"I saw him yesterday, right after
lunch. He was coming from talking to the captain."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing really. He was in a hurry and
couldn't talk because he was supposed to go report to some guy
about work. He said he'd see us at dinner."

Harry shook his head. "He was assigned
with my team on latrine duty, but he never showed up. I just
assumed he was still with the captain."

"If the captain was finished with him,
and he didn't show up for work, then what happened to him?" Eddie
asked. "And why are they saying he decided to leave last night if
he didn't? He had no reason to. He had no place to go." He shook
his head. "It doesn't add up."

"Do you think it has something to do
with Jonah?"

Eddie grimaced. Should he tell them
what he'd overheard? They had a right to know that Jonah was dead.
But how would they react?

"Looks like you're the one who knows
something and isn't telling," Fran said, studying his
face.

"Is it that obvious?"

She nodded.

"We don't know for sure what
happened," Eddie said. "They haven't told us anything. And I don't
want anyone to worry unnecessarily. Let me gather some more
information."

He stood up from his uneaten
breakfast, then bent back down again. "Regardless of what is
happening, everyone needs to watch each other's back."

He glanced over at the group that had
come in earlier. The man who had brought Danny back on the
motorbike was with them, but he had moved over to where Sergeant
Bolton was seated in the opposite corner of the hall. They were in
the middle of a heated discussion, though the background noise was
too loud for Eddie to hear what it was about.

He turned back to Harry and Fran.
"Don't get too comfortable. We should all be ready to leave at a
moment's notice."