Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (31 page)

Finn scrambled to his feet. They were
coming down the runway, driving the animals mad with fear as they
came. They fed on them, physically, psychically. But it was him
they wanted, him they wished to infect.

He pistoned his legs, trying to gain
purchase on the slick floor with his bare feet. Another stall
behind him collapsed, letting loose a cacophony of bleating cries
and trampling hooves.

He was almost to the door, not caring
about the crushed piglet bodies beneath his feet, when a shadow
stepped into the opening. Without hesitation, it entered. Finn
didn't stop. He charged straight at her, the pitchfork held out
like a lance.

"No!" Jennifer cried, as the tines
entered her belly.

Finn let go of the pitchfork in horror
and backed away.

"Go," Jennifer gurgled. She yanked the
pitchfork out of her stomach and shoved the object in her other
hand into his arms. "Take it. It's the only thing that stops
them."

Then she pushed him toward the
door.

He was outside when he heard her
scream. Slipping and sliding through the mud, his feet torn to
shreds by the rough ground, he tried not to hear. An unholy sound
erupted from the barn, filled with a mix of anguish and
fury.

She screamed for a long
time.

He ran to the road, not knowing where
he was going. He ran to get away from the things that would soon
follow after him. He ran until he knew he was being
followed.

He felt its presence coming up behind
him, heard the terrible growl, so loud that it shook the ground. He
ran until he couldn't run anymore. And then he turned, holding out
the object Jennifer had given to him as a sacrifice.

The vehicle slid to a stop a few feet
away, spraying him with mud. The passenger door slammed
open.

"Get your ass in here!" Bix
shouted out at him.
"NOW!"

"Hold on to something!" Bix yelled and stomped on the accelerator.
The van leapt forward, fishtailing on the slick surface.

Something slammed against the back
doors, prompting Little Charlie to scream at them to
hurry.

More figures rose up out of the night,
crystallizing from the pouring rain. They surrounded the vehicle,
attacking it with their clawed fingers and bared teeth, grabbing
anywhere they could gain purchase.

The door beside Finn popped open and
something reached in. A pale hand brushed the air in front of his
face, coming within an inch of touching him.

"Go!" he shrieked, and pulled back
just as a blast came from the seat behind him. The figure leaning
in jerked out of the car in an explosion of red, splattering Finn
with gore.

The van sped away, thumping
over more Wraiths, flinging them aside or under its tires. Finn sat
in shock, not seeing any of this, not sensing anything but the
droplets burning on his skin.
I'm
infected
, he thought.
Oh my god! I've been infected.

"Shut the damn door!" Danny yelled. He
reached forward and shook Finn. "Shut the door! Lock
it!"

"I'm infected!" he yelled back. "Stop
the car! I have to—"

"No!" Bix roared, and skidded around a
turn in the road that almost cast Finn out anyway. "It doesn't work
that way! They have to be alive to infect you!"

"What? How do you know?"

"I saw one of the men trip over Nami's
body. Skin to skin. Nothing happened."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, Finn! Just shut the
goddamn door and get your seatbelt on!"

He did as Bix said without thinking,
even though he knew his friend was wrong. It didn't work that way.
How could it?

As the blood and tissue dripped down
his rain-soaked skin, he tried to feel the infection passing into
his body, tried to predict when the moment would come when he'd no
longer have control over himself. But he was too wired, too cold
from the rain, and everything hurt too much to know whether
anything he felt was Flense or not."

"Everyone okay?" Bix called out. He
didn't look away from the road.

Finn spun around and saw Byron two
seats back, his boys on either side of him. Danny occupied the
middle seat. Both men held rifles in their hands, though clearly
Byron wouldn't be shooting anything. A thin wisp of smoke rose from
the muzzle of Danny's.

"Here we go!" Bix said. "Brace
yourselves!"

Finn turned back in time to see the
gate rising up before them. "You're going to crash!"

"That's the point!"

They hit, and Finn flew into the dash,
slamming his head on the windshield before being jerked back by the
belt. The pain blinded him, a flash of white so brilliant it felt
as if his head had exploded.

Bix spun the wheel. "Told you to put
your belt on!"

"I did," Finn groggily replied. He
pulled it tight and tried to blink the pain away.

"You're bleeding."

He raised a hand, intending to press
it against the gash on his forehead, then dropped it to his lap
before making contact. More blood spotted his palm, blood from the
Wraith. He suddenly felt like a walking time bomb, like he was
covered in something that had the potential to turn him and
everyone else into killers.

"First chance you get, Bix," he
mumbled, "pull over. I need to wash this crap off of
me."

He also needed to throw up.

* * *

We found the van parked outside the house," Bix explained. "The
keys and rifles were inside, just begging to be taken."

"Probably belonged to someone in
tonight's crowd," Danny said.

Bix agreed. "Wasn't Adrian's. He
doesn't trust cars. Too unreliable. And he doesn't know how to fix
them." He seemed unable to shut up as they tore down the
leave-strewn road. "Horses don't break down, don't need gas
stations and oil changes. And they make more of
themselves."

"Jennifer's dead," Finn
interrupted. He stared at the box-shaped object on the floor at his
feet and repeated himself. He didn't know what the device was, or
why Jennifer had given it to him, but her last words rang in his
ears:
It's the only thing that can stop
them
.

Why had she sacrificed herself? Why
had she let him go?

"And I say good riddance," Bix
replied. He looked over.

"She
wasn't . . . . She
didn't . . . ." But Finn let the thought go
without finishing it.

They drove for about twenty minutes,
soon emerging from the trees, then arriving at a lookout point
somewhere near the cable bridge they had crossed a few days before.
Neither boy said anything to the others about what they'd seen down
below.

Bix stopped in the middle of the road
and suggested that Finn wash himself off. The rains had stopped by
then, and the clouds were beginning to break apart. But it seemed
like the night would never end and the sun would never
rise.

Using the sandy water from several
puddles, Finn scrubbed his skin clean of the gore. He was almost
certain he hadn't contracted the Flense by then, but given that he
was still technically within the window of time it took for the
infection to complete, he didn't feel comfortable being around the
others.

As they gathered around to discuss
their plans, he wandered away from them and stared out over the
rail into the gorge. He shivered at the secrets he knew it
held.

"I think we've decided that our first
priority will be to find clothes," Bix said, coming up beside him.
"Those boxers just aren't cutting it, bro. Can't be seen around you
looking like that."

"Says the man wearing the tightie
whities with holes in all the wrong places."

Bix grinned. "Gotta let the boys
breathe." But the smile slipped away. He leaned his elbows on the
cold metal and sighed. "That was some wild ass shit back
there."

Finn was quiet for a moment. "I'm
still really pissed at you. It was crazy."

"It was the only way we had a
chance—"

"I could have been wrong about the
immunity!" Finn snapped.

Danny and Byron stopped talking and
looked over.

"You need to keep it down," Bix
murmured. "We don't know what's out here. And, for the record, I
never had any doubt you were right."

They piled back into the van once
more. Byron and his sons took the third row, as before, but this
time Danny and Bix swapped places. Danny was still sore from the
beating he'd taken and felt terribly weak. But he assured the rest
of the group that he was mending quickly and could
drive.

"Besides," he told them, as he eased
into the driver's seat with his face twisted in pain, "I'm the only
one who knows where we're going."

"Where
are
we going?" Finn asked, taking a
place beside Bix.

"South. To the army base."

"But what about Harper?"

"Your brother can wait," Danny
answered firmly. He sighed and shook his head. "Look, I know you
want to find him, but it was a mistake to split up back there like
we did. And unless we hurry, we may not find anyone to
rescue."

Finn sighed and shook his head in
frustration. "How far?"

"Six hours by car, I think. I can't be
exactly sure."

They rode in silence, crossing over
the gorge around daybreak, then continuing on for another hour or
so. Sunlight streamed into the van through the dusty windows,
steaming the glass as their clothes dried and lulling them all into
a sort of exhausted torpor.

Danny pulled over after a bit so they
could stretch their legs. It was the first opportunity they'd had
to see each other in the full light of day.

Danny insisted on driving when they
resumed their trip, telling the boys that they should rest. No one
argued.

Finn was nearly asleep again when he
felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped reflexively and turned to
find Charlie leaning toward him in his seat.

The boy studied Finn's face intently
for a moment. "You have a brother?"

Finn nodded. "My twin. Bix and I were
heading north to find him when those people brought us to the
ranch."

"Harper? You said his name was
Harper."

"Yeah. He was staying inside
a . . . a sort of special place where he could be
protected from the sickness. I haven't seen him in a long
time."

"Since before?"

"Yes."

Charlie sat back and nudged his father
with his elbow. Byron leaned in and listened to the boy whisper
something in his ear. When he was finished, he frowned and
whispered something back.

"What is it?" Finn asked.

They exchanged a few more words, then
Byron straightened in his seat. "Are you sure, son?"

The boy glanced over the seat again.
He raised a hand toward Finn, who flinched. But Charlie didn't want
to touch him. He made a frame to block out a part of Finn's face.
Then he nodded and said, "I'm sure, Daddy."

"Sure about what?" Finn
asked.

"Is your bother Harper Bolles?" Byron
asked.

"How did you— You know him? Have you
seen him?"

Byron didn't answer right away. He
chewed on his lip for several seconds, as if trying to decide what
to share. Finally, he asked, "Where did you say you were going? And
where were you coming from?"

"North," Finn replied. "To
a . . . to a mine."

"Bunker Two?"

Finn's mouth dropped open.
"Yes."

"Me and the boys," Byron said, hugging
them to his sides, "we were there, too."

"With Harper? Were my mother and
sister there?"

Byron shook his head. "He was alone.
Other than to say he'd lost his entire family, he never mentioned
anyone. Few of us did. We all lost people, friends and family. It
sort of became an unspoken rule not to dwell on the people who'd
died during the Flense."