The Malefic Nation (Graham's Resolution Book 4) (18 page)

Clarisse sat across from Harding, who held the letter between his fingers and looked around her lab for the evidence that might prove her guilt or innocence. He hoped she wasn’t capable of the crime the letter suggested.

“What can you tell me about this, Clarisse?” His words sounded scolding. She stared blankly at him or beyond him, showing no emotion on her face.

“What did you inject into them? You have to tell me. Please Clarisse, don’t play this game. I need to know.”

“This”—he shook the piece of paper—“this piece of paper says you gave them a virus that will result in the genocide of their people. Clarisse! You can’t do this!” His arm swept the lab equipment from the surface of the work table in an instant, creating a cascade of glass that landed on the floor.

Clarisse flinched and stepped backward and into the soldier guarding her in order to avoid the flying glass. The soldier braced her, one hand on her shoulder; the other hand rested on his holster.

“The prisoners are secure?” he yelled to the soldier.

“Yes sir.”

Harding strode closer, to face her. “How long?”

She stared past him.

“How long until they die? How long until they’re carriers? And how long have you been planning this behind my back?”

He swung his arm around to strike her, and she braced herself, but before his hand could reach her the soldier intervened and blocked Harding with his own arm. Then Clarisse was shoved behind him and Harding was faced with his own soldier holding him at gunpoint.

“What in the hell are you doing, soldier?” Harding lunged for him.

“Don’t, sir. I’m warning you.” The soldier then turned to Clarisse. “You’d better run, doctor. They’re waiting for you out front.”

She was stunned.

With her hands still cuffed behind her back, Clarisse ran to the door, turning and smiling at Harding before she fled.
I did what I had to do
, her smile told him.

Rick had retrieved their Jeep as Dalton waited and watched the doorway for any action. He could see faint shadows through the windows, but nothing more. Their plan was to storm the room, retrieve Clarisse, and then get the hell out of there. As soon as Rick had returned with their vehicle, Dalton spotted Clarisse at the door. With her hands still tied behind her back she ran to him. Guards watched the scene unfold, but no one intervened. Dalton quickly cut away her binds and asked, “What about the rest of your supplies?”

“Did you load up our room with the laptop and chest under the bed?”

“Yes.”

“Then we have everything we need. That was my duplicate stash. The rest I can replace. I always make backups. Plus, he just destroyed the vaccine and the virus when he threw a temper tantrum back there. Why are the guards helping us?”

“I don’t know,” Dalton said. Rick just drove them through the main gate, the guards waving good-bye. “Maybe they’ve had enough of living the perfect life. Maybe they want to live in reality for a time.”

“What about the prisoners?” she asked.

“Sam’s got them,” Dalton said and then showed Clarisse his bite marks.

“She bit you?
That bitch!
”

Rick piped up, “Yeah, well, can we blame her? We had it coming, I guess. We made her a weapon.”

“She doesn’t know that,” Clarisse said as she attended to Dalton’s wounds.

“I still can’t believe Reuben did this. I mean, I knew he had a hard time with some of the things we did—but this?” Dalton complained.

“Where’d they go anyway?” Clarisse asked.

Dalton shook his head. “I don’t know. North, possibly? Maybe he needs to be on his own to live with his own conscience.”

“Yeah, well. He’s subjecting his family to it too.” Dalton said.

“We can only help those who realize the reality of this world. Back there? That’s not life. That’s crazyville. You can’t pretend your way out of this. You have to meet it head on or die trying,” Rick said as he sped down the rough road out of Hope.

“How much longer before we meet up with the others at the rendezvous? And where are they?” Clarisse asked.

“About twenty minutes more. Barring any problems,” Rick said. “No one’s following us, right?”

Dalton looked again. “Nope, not a soul.”

“We have to get the prisoners planted in the next three days. How are we going to do that?” Clarisse reminded them.

Dalton rubbed his head. “I’m not sure yet, but we’ll make it happen.”

The three of them fell into silence then. So much had happened in the last several minutes that they hadn’t had a chance to process it yet.

Dalton, though he didn’t say it, held Clarisse a little tighter. He’d heard the yelling in the lab and worried that Harding might try to harm Clarisse in his rage. She leaned into him and closed her eyes. To rest was a gift in this life, no matter how short the time. Finally, they were away from the falsely named village of Hope and were now making their way back to their own country. And they had a cure for the pestilence that infected it.

Once Macy received the radio call from Graham, everything proceeded at a rapid-fire pace. She told Mark and McCann immediately, and they packed up their gear as fast as possible. Lucy gathered Addy and the younger boys and together they mounted up their supplies and made their way back to the vehicles.

Per their plan, McCann drove the horse trailer and Mark drove the truck and they headed back to the northern tip of Ross Lake, where they would cross back into the United States. It didn’t take long. They drove the trucks off the main road and down into the forest to conceal their position.

The younger children were scared, but Marcy and Lucy did a good job of allaying their fears. “No, your Dad isn’t dead,” Macy heard her sister relay to Kade as she passed them by on her way to haul water to the horses. Macy was worried—they all were—and she hoped that what her sister had just said wasn’t a lie.

“How long do we wait?” Macy asked Mark and McCann as she placed a bucket of water in front of the horse.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to make camp here tonight if no one shows up,” Mark said.

“Someone will show. This has been the evacuation plan that we’ve all studied, over and over. I just hope they were able to get the food supply or it’s going to be rough for a while. We have enough to last us only tonight and tomorrow, and lots of little mouths to feed,” McCann said.

“Did Graham say anything else when he called in?” Mark asked.

“No, he just said,
Code evac. Now go!
I didn’t ask questions. I just said okay. He sounded scared.” Macy tried to keep the worry out of her voice. “I hope everyone else is okay.”

McCann put an arm around her. “Graham’s fine. He’ll be here soon. Look, if no one shows up in the next two days, I’ll go back and see what happened.”

“No. You can’t do that!” Mark said. “I can’t take care of all these kids by myself. What if she’s right? What if you don’t come back? They told us never to split up like that. They said to stay together, and we’re staying together.” He stomped off to gather firewood.

McCann raised his eyebrows.

Macy said, “He never acts out like that.”

“He’s got a point,” McCann said. “Let’s just give it some time. Someone will show up.”

~ ~ ~

By late afternoon they heard a truck on the roadway. Marcy jumped up. “Someone’s coming!”

“Get everyone into hiding,” advised McCann. “We don’t know who it is.”

Lucy and Marcy gathered the children and took them farther into the woods for cover, while Mark, McCann, and Macy split up and moved toward the roadway to spy on the vehicle.

Soon they could see that it was one of their own trucks, but waited further until the driver slowed down. A dark figure peered out the window for signs of people, and a baby cried in the backseat. The door of the pickup opened and Graham stepped out when a second truck pulled up behind them. The driver turned out to be Olivia.

McCann came out of hiding and approached Graham.

“Oh, man, it’s good to see you!” Graham said.

“What’s happening?” McCann asked as Mark and Macy also showed up.

“I almost couldn’t tell you guys were here,” Graham said.

“We pulled down into the trees and covered our tracks,” Mark said.

Macy reached for the crying baby before Graham could soothe her and Bang climbed out, clearly relieved to have the crying baby in someone else’s arms.

McCann wasn’t sure if Graham was avoiding his question or if he was just rattled. “Graham, what happened?”

“Harding found out about our plans. He tried to stop us. He may have, in fact; I don’t even know. Dalton had Olivia and I pack up everything and get out.”

Olivia looked shaken. Bethany ran up and into her arms. “Oh, thank God.” Olivia tried to hold back tears as the children gathered around her. She quickly went into mothering mode, counting the little ones.

Graham patted her on the back. “They’re coming. I’m sure they’ll make it, Olivia.” But he wasn’t sure himself, and he wasn’t sure that lying to her was the right thing to do.

McCann asked, “Should we stay here and wait or go farther in?”

“I say we wait here. We have most of the supplies. We can set up a few tents. We should be fine here for the night. We’ll wait and see. If they aren’t here by morning we’ll make different plans.”

A half hour later, Sam arrived with a truckload of prisoners.

After driving through the gate, Sam continued to fly down the abandoned roadway. He was not only fleeing crazy town but closing the distance between him and his daughter. Though he knew she was probably fine, she was all he had left in the world, and he didn’t want to have her out of his sight for any longer than was necessary. It bothered him that morning when she wanted to go fishing with the others. He’d reluctantly let her go, chiding himself for being overprotective. He knew she needed to hang out with other kids.
McCann will keep them all safe
, he had reassured himself.

His mind was jogged from his thoughts when he heard the woman in the back grunting. When he turned around, the man was doing his best to prevent her from smashing herself into Sam from behind. Even though her hands and legs were tied together she had somehow managed to wriggle free, and he guessed her intent was to cause an accident by throwing herself into him. The man in the back’s face was beet red from the force she was exerting on him

Sam reluctantly pulled over, shaking his head.
This crazy bitch is relentless. No, we just had to stop and grab one of the lumps in front of the fire. Dammit!
He brought the truck to a stop, took out the keys, and got out. He made his way to the back, and the only thing he could think of to do was to use a roll of duct tape to restrain any part of her that moved. He didn’t want to hurt her because of her value to their plan, but he couldn’t allow her to hurt anyone else, either.

He got in the back and pushed her to bottom of the truck bed while kneeling on her back. He taped her hands completely together so that she couldn’t even move her fingers. He ran tape around her ankles and secured them—bending her knees—to her thighs. He taped her mouth shut, but left enough space so she could breathe through her nose. That would keep her menacing efforts down to focusing on her breathing. And as he would do to any spooked mare, he taped her eyes shut.

Sam sat her up and taped her arms to her back and her torso to a bar that ran the length of the truck. He looked at the boy, who cowered in the corner, thinking he was next, and the third man, who only smiled back at him. “Maybe that will keep her still for a while,” Sam said. The man nodded, looking relieved to have the woman restrained properly and out of his hair for a while.

And then Sam looked back again at the young man. He was sweating and Sam thought he was probably starting to run a fever.
Hell, we’ve already killed them.

Once he was back on the road it didn’t take him long before he neared the entrance to their chosen hideout location. He prayed his daughter was all right; He didn’t know what he’d do without her.

Once he pulled up, he leaped out of the truck. Mark and McCann were guarding the vehicles, and McCann shook his hand and, before Sam could ask, smiled and said, “She’s fine. She’s with the others.”

There was pounding on the back of the cab which caused Mark to look at Sam with raised eyebrows that indicated a question.

“I’ve got the prisoners,” Sam said.

“You do? Where are the others?”

Sam took a deep breath. “They should be on their way. Dalton said to go, so I did. Last I saw them, they were trying to get Clarisse out of questioning. The guards seemed to be on our side.”

“What do we do with the prisoners?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know. Leave them in there, I guess. It’s probably safest for all of us. The boy is running a fever already. We need to get them in place. The woman keeps trying to kill us, so we need to be careful with her. The oldest one, he seems to be on our side. Hell if I know what’s going on.” Sam made his way to the back of the truck to see what was going on inside.

Once he opened it, everything was as it was before, only the woman had worked one of her feet free and was pounding on the flooring of the truck. Sam pulled off another length of duct tape and plastered her foot to the floor. He opened a bottle of water and gave both the boy and the man as much as they wanted. When he got to the woman, he ripped off the tape, but before he could give her the water, she spit in his face. Both Mark and McCann jumped back. Sam didn’t react out of anger, he simply wiped it away and then squeezed her jaws open with one hand and poured the water into her mouth. Then he shut her mouth and pinched her nose. She struggled a bit, but she eventually swallowed the water. “You’re not dying on my watch, missy. We can do it this way if you want.”

“Man!” Mark said.

“Yeah, I know. She bit Dalton. She tried to choke Clarisse. Don’t give me a hard time for restraining her. She’s dangerous as hell.”

“No, I meant the kid. He looks sick,” Mark said. “He’s not contagious to us, right?” He took a step back.

“No. Only if you’ve had their vaccine.”

“I wish we didn’t have to do it this way,” McCann said.

“You and me both son, but this is the truth. It’s brutal, it’s ugly, but you both need to know that we’re fighting back with the same evil that they put on us, and it’s a horrible thing.”