RecruitZ (Afterworld Series) (25 page)

I moved back about twenty paces and watched as Preston’s head and shoulders came into view. The rope was pulled taunt, and my concern was that it wouldn’t hold the weight of both of them. Preston’s fingers worked quickly as he pressed himself against the rock, throwing himself over the last berm and wiggling both of them to safety. Preston crawled slowly away from the edge to ensure neither of them slipped backward and I ran over to him.

“I think I might as well keep him tied on my back while we make it down the hill.”

I nodded and held out my hands in case Preston needed something else to grab onto. He stood on his knees and then threw one foot in front of him and lunged into a standing position.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I am,” I said, and walked behind Preston as we carefully made our way down the slippery terrain. Every now and then my breath would catch as Preston slipped down a portion of the hill, or when he got caught up on a root. But we made it down, safely.

Preston opened the backdoor of the car and began hastily untying the rope around his body that anchored Braden to him. Braden’s arms were plopped over Preston’s shoulders, but I doubted they held any strength. When Preston finished untying the ropes, he slowly turned around as if he was planning on getting into the car.

“Go around to the other side and try to work him in carefully, lying him across the seat.”

“Right,” I said, running around to the other side.

Braden’s back came toward me as Preston carefully sat backward into the car. I grabbed under his arms and hauled him toward me as Preston began pushing on him.

We got him secured, and I hopped in the front passenger seat. I turned to look at Braden. His eyes remained closed, and his cheek was swollen but other than that his external injuries weren’t horrible looking. Unfortunately, it was the internal ones that had Preston and me concerned.

The ride back home felt far longer than it ever had. When we turned down the drive, I felt Preston step on the accelerator just to close the gap even faster. Once the home came into view, my nerves finally began to calm. The front door opened slowly, allowing light to escape onto the porch. Emily stepped outside and glanced in our direction. Preston pulled the car to an abrupt stop and Braden groaned, which I took as a good sign. I opened the car door and ran to Emily with Preston right behind me.

“What are you doing back so quickly?” she asked, dropping her bags on the porch.

“He’s alive,” Preston said, hugging her.

Emily began crying and pounding Preston’s chest. “You’re lying. You’re lying.”

“We’re not, hun. Can you go inside and call the doc?” he asked. “We’ll bring him right in.”

Emily’s eyes were completely glazed as the shock of what Preston said settled over her. Rather than running to the car, she did as she was instructed, and I realized Preston was right. We were very different. She took commands. I gave them.

I followed Preston to the car.

“You guys have a doctor you trust?” I asked.

He nodded, slowly opening the door, as he positioned his hands to catch Braden before he fell out.

Preston anchored his hands underneath Braden’s armpits and began pulling.

“Grab his ankles and we’ll get him inside and up the stairs.”

I caught his ankles right before they dropped to the ground from the seat and followed Preston as he walked backward toward the house.

“We aren’t planning to go back tonight, right?” I asked, unsure how many more adrenaline surges I could take.

“We have no choice,” Preston muttered, climbing the front stairs carefully since he was unable to see where he was going.

“Doorway,” I said, as he made his way through.

“The doctor will take care of him as best he can. There’s no point in us delaying what needs to be done,” Preston said, as he continued walking backward down the hall until we hit the staircase.

“No rest for the weary,” I muttered, climbing the stairs slowly as the weight of Braden’s body made my arm muscles ache.

“I don’t buy for a second that you’re weary. Wicked, maybe. But not weary,” Preston said, smiling.

The air howled around me as my legs pounded against the solid ground. Grateful I was no longer on the rickety bridge or hanging from a spindly cable, I quickened my pace to catch up to Preston. Being on this side of the wall was the first battle we’d won and after the last week, I’d take any victory—small as it might be.

Even inside the fence, the compound was heavily treed, providing ample places to hide. The largest building was centered in the middle of the grounds with several outlying buildings that served many purposes. One was the barracks for TRAC members, another was for the medical staff, another building was the quarantine area, and the last building in the far corner was unidentified. All of the outlying buildings were made of concrete block, which was quite unusual for this region of the country, and all had red metal roofs. The only exception was the largest building, which acted as the main hospital. It was an old brick building from the twentieth century. Its exterior matched its age.

Preston stopped ahead, leaning against a cedar tree, and I quickly caught up to him.

“What do you say we check out the building we know nothing about first…” he stated more than asked. My heart was thumping inside my chest from the running, and I wasn’t sure how well controlled my voice would be so I just nodded.

We snaked around the back of the buildings, the floodlights on the guard towers barely illuminating the ground underneath as the fog rolled in. Things were looking up. Preston slowed as he came to the end of the last building before our target. He held up his finger to his lip as I inched toward him. A girl’s whimpering chilled my blood as I glanced at Preston. That must have been what slowed him to a standstill. He pointed in the direction where the eerie voice carried in the cool, damp air. It sounded like a young child but what would one be doing outside at this time of night in a place like this?

The sound of male laughter erupted next, and my fingers tingled with a desire to make something wrong right again. Preston slid along the wall, careful to step only on solid, clear ground, and I did the same. The whimpering continued steadily, but the laugher only erupted every so often. When Preston reached the corner of the building, he drew his knife out of his pocket, and I screwed my silencer on my pistol. It sounded like the group was only steps away from us. The girl’s whimpering changed to a low hum, a chant possibly, as the men’s laughter died down.

Preston curled his body around the building and I followed right on his heels. What I saw horrified me. We were dealing with pure evil, and once more it was tied to TRAC.

In the shadows, I saw two men taunting a young girl who was tied to the trunk of a tree. Her blonde, gnarled hair hung in her face, and she was dressed in a hospital gown many sizes too large for her.

“You gonna try to sneak out again?” The man closest to Preston asked the girl.

She shook her head, her eyes meeting mine. And that was when Preston swiftly came up behind the guard, grabbed the man’s head and sliced his neck, dropping him to his knees. The other guard spun around at the sound of the commotion and raised his pistol, pointing it directly at Preston. Without a moment’s hesitation, I aimed squarely at the center of the guard’s forehead and pulled the trigger, watching him collapse immediately.

“We have our way out of here,” I whispered, as Preston ran to the little girl and began cutting through the ropes that tied her body to the tree.

I began peeling off the clothes from the guard directly in front of me before the material was completely blood-soaked.

Preston held the little girl as she stared at me quietly while I continued working on the next guard, stripping him almost bare.

“How old are you?” Preston asked the girl.

She turned to face him and raised her hands up, too frightened to speak. She flashed both hands in the air; all five fingers fully extended and then held up an additional finger immediately after. She was eleven. Attempting to hold my temper at bay, I began pulling the man back behind the building. The guards were dead but they deserved far worse. I heard Preston speaking something softly to the little girl, and then he appeared next to me behind the building, dragging the other guard.

“We can’t make her go back in there,” he said quietly. The girl was standing behind him, peering up at me.

I began tugging on the pants from the smallest guard and zipped them up, which left me in pants about three sizes too big. I hurriedly slipped his bulletproof vest and TRAC jacket over my arms and buttoned up. I grabbed the guard’s helmet and buckled it just as Preston did the same.

“What do you expect us to do with her then?” I asked. It wasn’t like we’d be able to let her tag along as we wandered around the grounds.

“I can stay here,” she whispered. “Until you come back for me.”

My eyes moved between the girl and Preston, and I let out a sigh. He took off his coat and handed it to the girl before slipping on the TRAC vest and jacket.

“Fine. But don’t move, no matter what you hear,” I told her. She looked relieved but did exactly as I said and took a seat on the ground, her back pressed against the concrete wall.

I glanced over at Preston and saw the softness in his eyes as he looked at the girl. She probably reminded him of his own sister when they were young. I got annoyed with myself, more specifically at my apparent lack of emotion. I was the female. Wasn’t I supposed to be the one with the maternal instincts and warm and fuzzies inside?

“Let’s get going,” I said, nodding in the direction we needed to go.

“Good luck,” the girl whispered.

I looked over my shoulder and saw her eyes fasten on us as we took off toward the concrete block building in the corner. With our luck, it was nothing more than a janitor supply closet or something. I glanced up toward the sky and saw the familiar inky shade begin to emerge. We were getting closer to sunrise and needed to hurry it up, whatever it was.

Just as I caught up to Preston, I heard a twig snap behind me and spun around, my pistol locked in front of me.

It was a bunny.

Preston picked the lock in front of us and pushed the door open slowly. The room was almost completely empty. White tile covered the floor, and two stainless steel tables were pushed along the wall to our right, but that was it. I closed the door behind us as Preston moved carefully and quietly to the grey metal door at the end of the room. His hand rested on the door handle until I got right behind him.

“It’s unlocked,” he whispered. “Ready?”

“I am.”

He opened the door and it led into another sterile room, but this one had computer equipment lined up against the wall to our left on the floor, and there were monitors plastered on the wall. None of them were turned on. There was yet another door at the far end of the room, and I was beginning to feel that it would reveal just as little as the other two. I walked by Preston and placed my hand on the handle. It was unlocked. He came up behind me as I opened it. This time we weren’t met with another room but with metal stairs leading underground.

There was a narrow tunnel that I could barely make out at the bottom of the stairs. I looked back at Preston who pushed me to move forward, to the unknown. I took a deep breath and began the descent. The air immediately changed once I reached the bottom. Cold air surrounded me as I looked into the tunnel that had been carved out of the earth. Neither of us would be turning on lights for the simple fact that we didn’t know what was down at the other end of the tunnel. We didn’t want to risk showing ourselves or alerting anyone to our presence.

My heart hammered with every step forward. I had never felt claustrophobic before and had always thought that would be a terrible fate to encounter. But with each step deeper into the darkness, it felt as if the walls were closing in on me from all sides—top, bottom, left, and right. I imagined my world shrinking, threatening to crush me. My palms moistened as I tried to steady my breaths. Preston’s footsteps were right behind me, but it didn’t help.

I just wanted out.

I wanted out.

I needed out.

My breathing changed, and I flipped around, running smack into Preston.