“They poured down the hills. Sheer cliffs. I’ve never seen them move so fast.” Davis swallows. “We bolted for the cab, but before we got back we heard screams. The cab was swarmed. She had the door open and couldn’t shut it before one got in. She took him out but not before he got a piece of her.”
I sink into the closest chair. “She’s vaccinated. She’ll be okay?”
None of us has experienced a bite since vaccination, and understandably there’s a distrust to my sister’s incomprehensible science. Just because Jane says the vaccine works, should we trust the word of a madwoman? Are we really safe?
“She lost a lot of blood before we could get her back here.”
“So even if she survives the bite,” Paul says, “the attack may kill her.”
Cole walks over to the wall and slams his fist against it, kicking the bottom for good measure. No one says a word, we all feel like kicking walls, or at least I know I do. But I know this can’t be good for him—he already feels added responsibility for Chloe and even Josie because he worked directly on the vaccine with my father before all hell broke loose and later at PharmaCorp. I know he feels a responsibility for me—he’s never backed down from the task my father gave him to protect me. But Parker’s life is not on his shoulders.
I walk over and rest a hand on his back but he shrugs it off. “Not now, Alex.”
“There’s nothing we can do, man,” Jude says. “We just have to wait.”
Cole turns to face us, his jaw tight and eyes hard. He looks at his watch and says to me and Paul, “We have two hours until our first mission. I’ll meet you when it’s time to leave.” He turns on his heel and storms off.
I start to follow but Paul grabs my arm. “Let him go.”
“He’s a mess,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Today is going to be tough. Let him use it.”
Chapter 11
The following weeks are filled with work; hard work that leaves us bruised and exhausted. We hijack cargo trucks. We sabotage sewer systems, solar panels, and ambush food supplies. We round up prisoners, Fighters, and other workers loyal to Jane, caging them below Fort Arnold. The survivors? They’re given a choice. Go on your own or get the real vaccine and join up. Most agree to the latter and Erwin builds his army.
I stare at my reflection in the truck’s side mirror. There’s a hard set to my jaw, lines are next to my eyes and at times I barely recognize myself. I see the same in my team. We’re real soldiers now, not just people playing them.
Something strange happens between us. We’re closer than I could imagine. Like family. Maybe more than family, at least in my case. I learn their moves, how they carry their weapons. We fall into a dance, a rhythm, while we watch Jane’s carefully built society start to crumble, if only on the edges.
But even with that familiarity, there’s something else happening with our team. We retreat into ourselves, building walls to get through the battles, form thick skins of protection with our emotions. Chloe taught us that. Almost losing Parker confirmed it.
The truck lurches in and out of a pothole and I grab on to the dash to hold steady. “Do you have to hit every one?” I ask, shaking my head at Davis.
“I don’t hit every one.”
He hits one.
“That one was on purpose,” he says, eyes cut in my direction.
“Sure.” I push my hair out of my eyes. It’s windy today and the temperature keeps dropping. “It’s like you’re giving them a warning signal.”
“Trust me,” Jude says from the back, checking his gun. “They have no idea we’re coming for them today.”
Them is the largest base that we know of other than The Fort. This one is on the outskirts of Columbia in a large middle school. According to Erwin, it’s an active evacuation center about to turn testing lab. Erwin wants the survivors out before testing begins, and apparently because the city of Columbia isn’t cleared, it makes it high risk for everyone. The facility is way too close to the Death Fields to go on much longer.
It’s our biggest mission yet. So far we’ve kept things small and destructive. More of a nuisance than anything else, but this one will get Jane’s attention. Our goal is to take out the entire facility and bring back the Fighters and any personnel. We’ll get to the survivors and loop them in the system at Fort Arnold.
“How many civilians are there?” Paul asks.
Davis glances in the review mirror. “Intel says five hundred. It’s a big school, surrounded by a lot of property and a fortified fence. It’s how they’ve managed to keep going for so long.”
“And they’re untrained?”
“It looks like this facility is used similarly to PharmaCorp when we were there. Survivors are processed and given jobs based on their skills. Some filter into the Fighter training program, others are assigned to keep the facility running. Then a small portion that meet criteria are separated for the Hybrid program. The remaining people are scheduled for testing but as far as we know they haven’t begun.”
“That’s a lot of people to handle,” Jude says, looking out the window. There’s nothing but countryside flashing by.