The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (40 page)

“That’s a lie!” Eli roared. “I would never betray you.”

“Oh, but you tried,” Lukas said, stepping toward Kane. “You tried to destroy my army at Montgomery. You tried to lose my war with the Patriarchs just as it commenced. So tell me, how long have you been working for Sigmund?”

“Sigmund?” Kane shouted. “I’ve never spoken with that man!”

“Don’t lie to me!” Lukas thundered. “We uncovered all your lies, you traitorous son of a bitch!”

“Lukas, please, listen to me. I never have spoken with Sigmund in my life! I have only seen him when he hacked our meeting days after the Battle of DC. Now whatever blunders I had with the command at Montgomery—and I admit there were faults and I learned from them—they were only blunders, not treason.”

“But you see, someone had been there with me since we first began this war, hacking Sigmund into every meeting so that he could counter every move we made before we even made it. Someone has continued passing on trade secrets. Jamie and her team…they showed me the audio. She uncovered the footage of you and Sigmund not five months ago in England—footage you tried to destroy. Tell me, is Jacob in on all of this too?”

“Lukas!” Maria growled, a shout she attempted to disguise as a whisper. Her words were quickly overshadowed by a gasp that rose from the audience. Up until that moment, any idea of a treasonous Jacob Brekor had been locked behind closed doors. “My father would never—”

“I will find out the truth, Maria,” Lukas said harshly, turning to his wife. “If your father has nothing to hide, then he has nothing to fear. If you don’t agree….”

Maria gazed back at him, her eyes hurt but understanding as she slowly nodded her head. Lukas turned back to Kane.

“Lukas, please listen to me,” Eli pleaded. “I don’t know Sigmund. I have not been to England in decades! I came to you in good faith because I believed in the Imperium. I believe in you! The Patriarchs tried to destroy you and I watched as you and your friends turned the tide. You solved the problem that was the United States. After that, your men approached me, not the other way around. We all have our faults, but I never believed the lies they spread about you, beginning with that journal. I never believed you killed those men. I believed in you and I swear I still believe in you!”

Lukas paused, glancing down at General Kane.
What if you’re wrong?
What if you execute a man who was telling the truth? What if—

“I don’t want you to believe in me,” Lukas said. “I want you to believe in hell!” He nodded to the four men behind Eli. They quickly seized him by the arms as Lukas stepped over and stuck the cylinder against Eli’s neck. Eli thrashed and struggled with the men as he cried out for help. He ripped his left arm free and swung his elbow against the forehead of the man behind him before swinging for the man to his right. The soldier ducked underneath the general’s punch and connected his own breath-taking jab to his ribs. As the air left Eli’s lungs, the man he had elbowed grabbed his outstretched arm while the third man swung a club down on it with an audible cracking of bone that caused the audience to gasp. Eli’s eyes went wide with pain as they kicked his legs out from underneath him, forcing him to his knees.

“I’ve thought a lot about torture since the sheer agony I felt at Sigmund’s hands,” Lukas said as the four men wrapped a gag around Kane’s mouth, tied his limbs, and left him to kneel atop the pile of historical American documents. One of the men stepped back, drawing a thin canister from his belt and upending dense white powder on General Kane. “I’ve thought about the information I could gain if I could only bring myself to torture my enemies, as I had been tortured. I could pick your brain before I melted it with Sigmund’s drugs. I could discover everything he had ever told you.”

Lukas hesitated before smiling as he pressed the button atop the cylinder. Eli’s eyes went wide as his body slumped over.

“But then I thought about what I really care about. I don’t care to know more about Sigmund. Some might call that a tactical blunder, but not me. You see,” Lukas said, turning to the crowd, “there will always be those who try to destroy this dream of ours. There will always be those who try to infiltrate a good thing and ruin it from within. From those corrupt men and women, rebellions will grow. We must be diligent. We must burn the resistance before it forms. I know there are such traitors in this crowd right now. I want every last one of you cowards to know that the temporary tortures that nearly broke me will never be an option for you. Sigmund’s dealings are nothing to me. I will march everything I have down the Patriarch’s throats after I burn every traitor alive.”

Lukas turned back to Kane, his face a rigid mask of hatred.

“That’s not the drug that nearly destroyed me. What swims in your veins is a synthetic compound meant to paralyze you and amplify pain a hundred times over. You won’t be able to scream or cry out. You will simply exist in these final moments. I do not want you to think about where you went wrong as Sigmund’s puppet. I don’t want you to think about me or the Imperium or anything of this world. I want you to crawl back into the portion of your mind that might still believe in God, heaven, and hell. And now…I want you and every other traitor to know a primal fear as you embrace the fires of oblivion.”

Lukas stepped away from Kane, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a lighter. He lit it and casually tossed it on top of Kane. The white powder, a combustible chemical compound that was designed to slowly melt steel, quickly lit, growing as it began to consume Eli and the pile of historical American documents. Lukas raised the Bible in his hand before tossing it into the fire, the flames dancing in his dark and jubilant eyes. After a few breathless moments, he turned back to the crowd and cameras.

“For those of you who are my genuine brothers and sisters, I tell you today that I will do whatever it takes to keep you alive and win this war. Jacob, if you are watching and have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. But to you and all others who might be here with me while you serve another, I want you to take a long look at the heap of refuse that burns! I want you to memorize every flame. I want you to remember every twitch of Eli Kane’s body as his life flees him. I want you to know what is coming should any of you ever betray my dream of peace. I vow the same fate or worse for any man, woman, or nation that stands in the way of the Imperium’s destiny to unite the world!”

C
hapter
F
ourteen

A Plunge through Darkness Cold

Adam looked to his right, surveying the glowing haze of the nearby city with a surprising sense of wonder. The moon shone brightly overhead, illuminating the few wispy clouds that meandered through the night. Before that evening, the largest gathering of humanity Adam had seen in two months had been back at Princeton, West Virginia. None of them had expected Memphis, Tennessee, to be such a lively dwelling. It wasn’t nearly the size it had been before, but it still dwarfed everything Adam had laid eyes on since the fires of DC. He shook his head, bewildered by the idea that simply gazing upon a civilization larger than a ghost town or a small homestead now induced culture shock.

He reached down to retie his boots, looking to his left at Edward Christoff as he pulled the laces tight. Edward chewed his nails nervously as he looked off in the direction that Gene, Lev, and Alan had gone. The three men had left the convoy at the outskirts of Memphis to scout the city. They had parked their line of vehicles in an abandoned industrial parking lot just north of the Highway Sixty-One and Interstate Fifty-Five exchange on the southern side of the Memphis. Though they had all wanted to continue east, their fuel supply was running low and the convoy had little more than one hundred miles left before they’d be forced to brave the road on foot.

Adam, Edward, Jack, and William had climbed a water tower with their solar powered radios and mismatched rifles so that they may keep an eye out for unwanted company while they waited for the scouting party to return. Adam leaned forward, looking past the steel railing at the quiet group of men and women parked more than one hundred feet beneath them. The convoy had halted five miles south of downtown, far past the fringes of where most residents now lived. For those who had decided months ago to remain behind in Memphis, the mass exodus had meant free lodging in the nicer parts of the inner city. So far as Adam could tell, they were alone in a no man’s land on the edge of civilization.

“How long do you think until they’re back?” Edward asked, spitting over the edge and breaking the night’s silence. “They’ve been gone since morning.”

“They’ll be back when they’re back,” Adam replied dryly. “Just do your job, keep an eye out for anything that moves, and try not to get too bent out of shape.”

“Sorry,” Edward said, breathing deeply as he glanced over the side. “I hate heights.”

“You hate heights?” William said amusingly, turning toward Edward. “Then why the hell would you climb a water tower with us?”

“Because they terrify me,” Edward replied, glancing at William before taking a deep breath. “The way I figure it, there’s no use letting my fears control me if I’m going to survive.”

“Wise words from a man who can’t look down without wobbling,” Jack said with a grin.

“What can I say?” Edward replied, laughing lightly before swallowing loudly. “I am who I am.”

“Yeah,” Jack began, “and what did a man like Edward Christoff do before the madness?”

“Me? I was a cowardly lawyer in the Midwest.” Edward closed his eyes tightly as he leaned against the white steel behind him. “I was surrounded by dozens of spineless assholes and I fit in just fine. These past few months might have been chaotic, but they sure grew me a backbone.”

“Lawyer?” Adam said, glancing over at Edward. “I thought you said you were a realtor in Virginia.”

Edward looked over at Adam, coughing and working his mouth.

“I…I was,” Edward began after a pause. “Before that, I meant. I—”

The radio vibrated in Adam’s hand, cutting Edward off.

“Bravo team, this is Lev. We’re almost back and we weren’t followed. We’re passing East Mallory Avenue now.”

“What did you find out?” Adam asked.

The radio was quiet for about fifteen seconds. Adam looked over at Jack and William with concern, though they stared back quietly without a word. He was about to radio again when Lev finally responded.

“Just leave someone up there on the lookout and meet us at the bottom,” Lev said, his voice flat and bothered. “We’ll fill you in.”

“Roger that,” Adam replied, before tucking the radio away and turning to Edward. “Alright, you want to get over your fear of heights, so you get to remain up here. William, you stay with him in case he needs someone to hold his hand and help him down. And Edward…I’d love to hear your
real
story once we get through this city. The one that explains you being both a cowardly lawyer from the Midwest and a realtor from Richmond.”

Adam turned and nodded to Jack before Edward could respond. He slowly made his way over to the nearby steel ladder and began to descend, holding on tightly to each cold bar while trying to avoid swaying too noticeably. Adam saw no reason to reveal his own fear of heights. By the time he stepped away from the ladder, a small crowd had gathered as Gene and the others approached.

“So what happened?” Adam asked as Jack’s boots hit the pavement behind him. Jack stepped forward, stopping next to his wife Leila as a semi-circle of men and women formed around the three arrivals. Alan ignored everyone, walking up to his wife with a grim face and embracing her, the moon glistening off tears in his eyes.

“We scouted downtown,” Gene said. “It’s full of people alright. Hard to estimate, but there’s got to be tens of thousands calling this place home. If I had an army I’d march it through Memphis tonight and put a bullet in almost every one of them.”

“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Adam asked.

“Not as harsh as selling women and children as sex slaves,” Gene replied, turning to the side and spitting with obvious disgust.

A quiet murmur passed through the group and Adam’s face grew hot with shock, disgust, and anger.

“You saw it?” Jack asked.

“Hard to miss it,” Gene answered, shaking his head. “They’re set up downtown next to the I-Forty Bridge in that big glass pyramid and they’re not being shy about a thing. A good three hundred armed men are watching over the place like ranchers guarding cattle. Men and even some women are flocking in from all over the region for a taste of it too. You just walk in with the right trade—mostly ammo, food, or fuel—and you can have your way with a kid not old enough to be in braces yet.”

Gene’s voice quivered at the end and he muttered a curse under his breath. He took a deep breath and lowered his head as he wiped a tear away from his cheek.

Adam had thought Gene incapable of crying until that moment.

“How many women and children are there?” Lillian asked.

“Hundreds,” Gene replied, glancing up from the ground. “Maybe more. No way to know for sure. We were going to scout it out inside but they wouldn’t let us in the building without paying ahead of time. We had a good ten men converge on us, telling us to pay up or get the hell out. The way I saw it, there is only one way those bastards are getting any of my ammo tonight and I wouldn’t have been walking back had I done what every fiber inside me wanted to do.”

“What about the bridges?” Adam asked. “Can we cross if we stay quiet?”

Gene opened his mouth to reply, but Lillian cut in.

“Who cares about the bridges? We have to help them.”

“Lillian,” Adam began. “I understand your anger. What’s going on there boils my blood too, but we can’t—”

Help them….

The voice caught Adam off guard, cutting off his words mid-sentence. It had been two months since he last felt something tugging at him so heavily that he could almost hear the words audibly. It was more shocking than seeing civilization again or listening to what it had become. As he paused—wondering if he should heed the words that had quietly pulsed through him or ignore them for the sake of safety and reason—Lillian took advantage of the silence.

“We can’t just leave them behind.” She stepped forward with a look in her eyes that pleaded with him. “You said you once had kids. A teenage boy and two little girls. What if it had been them forced into the sex trade? What if they had been the ones caged up down there, waiting for grown men to rape them every night?”

Help them….

Adam pushed the voice aside, unwilling to let it sway him. He couldn’t help everyone and he was sick of people thinking otherwise.

“Whatever is left of my kids is rotting back in North Carolina,” Adam replied, a low grumble on the brink of becoming a roar. “And I wish we could do something to save them from that god-awful situation, but I just don’t see how the few of us could stand a chance.”

“But we—”

“He’s right,” Jack said, stepping forward. “I’ll hate myself forever for saying it, but we can’t help them.”

“Jack!” Leila shouted, turning to her husband with tears in her eyes. “We have to do something. They’ve got children down there and—”

“And so do we,” Jack replied, looking over at the four vehicles that housed the surviving toddlers. “What are we going to do? We’ve got a couple dozen men armed with hunting gear and a handful of militarized rifles. Are we going to snipe each guard? Are they going to line up nicely for us to do the deed? I doubt we even have enough ammo if they stood still.”

Leila shook her head and brushed away the tears in her eyes before turning back toward the vehicles. Lillian stared at Adam, her hurt eyes searching him with a beseeching hope. He gazed back quietly, a man wounded by his own decision and yet unwilling to budge.

“You want me to lead you to safety but you don’t want to listen when I make the tough choices,” Adam said. “We can either all die fighting a battle we won’t win or we can move on and hope that we find a place where we can prevent travesties like this from happening again.”

Lillian paused, staring at him silently as tears pooled in her eyes. As two drops of defeat finally broke free, she wiped them away with the sleeves of her shirt. “What good will it be to find peace but lose what makes us good in the process?” She turned and walked away toward the vehicles. Adam watched her go, her words digging into him as he struggled to cope with his own decision.

“We can’t…we can’t help everyone.”

“I hate it as much as you do, but you’re right,” Gene said. “Besides, we’ve got bigger problems.”

“Like what?” Adam asked.

“Like crossing that river.”

“Why?” Adam asked, turning to Gene. “What’s wrong with the bridges?”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the bridges. I’m just not overly keen on the guardhouses who are preventing anyone from crossing to the west side without searching your vehicles and confiscating anything they might want. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they saw the nurses and the doctor and decided…well, let’s just say I don’t reckon we should be crossing those bridges unless we’re in a damn hurry. There is an old rail road bridge, but it looks like someone tried to drop it.”

“Can we use it?” Adam asked.

“Not unless we want to risk sending our convoy to the bottom of the Mississippi,” Gene replied. “That, or we abandon our cars and cross it on foot, which leaves us worse off once we’re on the other side. And none of this takes into consideration the blockade we saw through our binoculars on the other side of the bridges.”

“Why would they set up blockades on both sides of the river?” Adam asked.

“I doubt they set them both up,” Lev replied. “Whoever’s on the other side is likely trying to keep Memphis from crossing the river.”

“Or vice-versa,” Jack said.

“Well, whoever is trying to block out whoever,” Gene began, “that’s not our concern. We’re not crossing those bridges unless the devil’s at our heels and we have no other choice.”

“Are there any other bridges we can drive across?” Adam asked.

“Those two are the only two that are drivable here in Memphis.” Lev pulled up a satellite image on his tablet. “There was a crossing seventy miles south at Helena, but the latest imagery shows it blown to shit.”

“Anything farther down the Mississippi?”

“We go much farther and we risk running into whoever invaded the Gulf,” Lev replied. “I can’t get a picture of the Gulf Coast. Something is blocking the satellite feed.”

“You think it’s another Graystone?” Adam asked.

“More like twenty or thirty Graystones,” Lev replied. “I can see as far south as Jackson and it appears they’re set up nicely there. They have been branching out eastward. My guess is they brought the bridge at Helena down because they don’t want anyone else controlling the region’s most natural barrier.”

“What about ferries?” Adam asked. “Are there any ships we could use?”

“We looked into that and even asked around as much as we could without sounding too shady,” Gene said. “I don’t know why, but the river seems to be all but shut down and devoid of ships.”

“Any chance we can build something out of—”

“Tell me you’re not that ignorant,” Gene interrupted quickly. “What, we carve enough canoes to transport forty people, the medical equipment we stuffed into the back of vans, and all our gear and food? Not a chance in hell.”

“So we go back east and loop around the city before heading north,” Adam finally said. “It’ll add days or weeks to the overall trip, but if we can cross somewhere up north, we’ll have an endless number of routes we could take to Texas by using the backroads.”