Red Zone (Red Zone 1)

“If you hear anything different, please contact me immediately.”

“At double the usual cost.” There was a smirk in the voice. Their informant had them over a barrel, and they knew it.

“Of course.” She inclined her head in polite acceptance of their new deal before cutting off the communication.

She looked over at her three co-conspirators. “As soon as this is over, I want to find out the identity of the Broker and have them removed.”

There were nods of agreement, as well as smiles filled with relief.

Chapter Ten

From a sealed box that had been left beside the canyon rim, Striker retrieved a lantern and switched it on. He also pulled out two bottles of water and yet more unappetizing meal bars. He offered both to Friday. She took the water but shook her head at the bar. Striker couldn’t blame her. He tossed both bars back into the box.

Friday sat on the ground, her back to a rock, staring at the thick red cloud in front of them. Her face, which had been filled with emotion minutes earlier, was now carefully blank, the mask she wore when she was terrified. Obviously, she was resolved to follow him into the Red Zone but didn’t think she’d make it out the other side alive.

The lack of faith in his abilities was depressing.

“It’s so thick,” she said, her eyes glued to the sea of red. “When they talk about it, they always call it a mist. It’s nothing like a mist.”

“Yeah, it’s more like deadly red cotton candy.”

She glanced up at him, then back to the red cloud. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s bright pink spun sugar. You eat it. It looks like fluff, but it’s sticky and thick. Like the cloud.”

“Is this something you’ve seen in the Coalition Countries outside of the Territories?”

“Something like that.”

Silence fell again as s

he stared at the red void. Striker was familiar with the sight, but for someone who’d only heard about it, he could imagine it would take some getting used to.

“Six million people.” The whispered words broke the unearthly stillness that permeated the Red Zone. She looked up at him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “That’s how many people were killed.”

He felt a strange tightening around his heart at the sight of her grief. In the three years he’d been taking people through the zone, it was the first time anyone had commented on the destruction the cloud had caused. And it was definitely the first time he’d seen someone moved by the overwhelming loss of lives.

She wiped away a tear that had fallen onto her cheek. “The people couldn’t get out of the blast zone in time.”

“They weren’t given any warning.”

“There was warning. But there were too many people to evacuate.”

He knew better but kept his silence. This wasn’t the time, or the place, to argue about the past.

“They’re still in there,” she whispered.

For a second, he could see the Red Zone through her eyes. It must seem like one vast graveyard.

“The people who were responsible for releasing an unknown and untested weapon were put to death shortly afterward,” she said, as though he didn’t know. “Theirs were the last executions carried out in the old United States.” Her eyes held heartbreaking sadness. “The government shouldn’t have done that. We needed to keep the scientists alive to find out what they’d done in order to undo it. Such a waste.

“They destroyed their research when everything went wrong, and their deaths took their knowledge with them. It was only years later, when the cloud didn’t disperse as the scientists had promised, that the authorities regretted their hasty actions. Now we’ll never know what’s in the mist, and we’ll never be able to combat it. It’s impossible to get close enough to study it. It’s like a huge time bomb from our past, just sitting there waiting to go off. What if it expands? What then? We’re no better equipped to deal with it now than we were a century ago.”

“It’s dispersed some,” he pointed out. “It retreated from the water pretty damn quickly after it was released.”

“Another mystery. Why disperse from the water, but not the land?”

“At least the rivers run clean.”