Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (2 page)

He sighed unhappily and forced his
eyes away. They drifted over the rest of the faces in the mirror.
The group was down to seventeen now. Waking up that morning safe
inside the bunker — or at least with the semblance of
safety — they'd numbered nearly twice that many. Twenty of
them had fled, leaving a dozen behind. Now, just six or seven hours
later, they were already down by three.

How soon before we're cut
to half? A quarter? How long before we're all gone, dead or
scattered?

He was already regretting
leaving.

Staying would have been
worse, Danny. That's what Mamá believed. That's what she always
said.

His gaze came to rest on Harrison
Blakeley. The man sat alone, his head bobbing to an unheard tune as
he fingered a song on his guitar without actually picking at the
strings. Out of all of the adults, Harrison was the oddest, not
showing the least bit of concern for their situation, and that was
doubly incredible given the choice his seventeen-year-old son, Bix,
had made.

What the hell kind of
father would—

"Danny! Look out!"

He'd only been half watching the road
ahead. They'd come up over a short rise and were beginning their
descent into a shallow dip. Tearing his eyes away from the mirror,
he saw too late that the ground at the bottom had eroded away
during the rains, collapsing the road from underneath. The hardtop
had buckled, throwing up a jagged edge of concrete. There was
nothing he could do to avoid it.

The front tires hit, jerking everyone
forward in their seats. He nearly lost his grip on the steering
wheel. There were startled cries from the back.

And then they were ascending the other
side.

The rear tires hit the seam with a
loud crunch a half second later and threw everyone out of their
seats. There were more cries and more than a few shouted curses.
The baby started to cry.

"Anyone hurt?" Danny called out,
pulling over to the side of the road. He switched the engine off
and got out of his seat to check.

Jonah pushed past him looking worried.
Someone shouted not to open the door. "I need to check underneath!"
he yelled angrily back.

"Wait! There might be Wraiths out
there!"

Jonah made a quick check around them
through the windows. Fortunately, Danny had brought the bus to a
stop atop the rising edge of the arroyo, and they had a decent view
of the surrounding area. Nevertheless, there were still ample
hiding places for the things to hide in.

"Has anyone seen any?" Jonah asked,
challenging them. "Because I haven't, not since we left the
bunker."

"You said there wouldn't be any out
here at all," Danny reminded him. "You were wrong about that. Part
of the reason we left was because we believed you."

Jonah glared at him for a moment, his
eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I was wrong. I admit it. But there weren't
any during all the times I spent outside fixing this
bus."

"But now we know they're still
around," Kari Mueller said. "So we—"

"We need to check that we didn't
spring a leak or something," Jonah finished. "Sitting here arguing
about it isn't wise. We need to get moving again."

"At least take someone with
you."

"I'll be fine. Just keep everyone
quiet." He pulled away from Danny and was out through the driver's
door before anything more could be said about it.

Danny watched him disappear around the
side. "That kid is suicidal," he muttered.

"Aren't we all?" Susan
asked.

Danny frowned as he turned his
attention to the passengers. "Anyone hurt?"

Most shook their heads. Blood trickled
down Kari Mueller's cheek, but she shrugged it off when he passed
her on his way to check on Jasmina Cardoza and her baby.

"Is he okay?" he asked the young
mother.

Jasmina nodded up at him.
"
Es sólo miedo
,"
she whispered.

"
Estara bien
," he automatically
replied, before realizing they were speaking Spanish. "We're all
scared, but it'll be okay."

There was fear in everyone's eyes to
one extent or another, and he wondered yet again if they'd have
been better off staying sealed up inside the dam
complex.

Not with that
murderer.

He turned to find Bren Abramson
staring at him, as if she had heard his thoughts. He quickly
averted his eyes. No one had come right out and said it, but he had
to guess that others were thinking what he was, that they should
have thrown Seth Abramson out instead.

Would have, if not for
Bunker Twelve.

Now he wondered if that had been a
ruse to get them to come out.

There was a short, shrill whistle. He
found Jonah standing beneath a broken window. "One of the dualies
popped," he said. "It's shredded, but we still got three more tires
on this side, so we should be good for a while."

"Is that all the damage?"

"The rest of the tires are fine. We
are leaking oil, though. Not a lot, but steady."

"Dammit," Danny cursed. "I'm really
sorry. I didn't see—"

"It's not new. I tracked it back to
where we hit. We were already leaking before then." He gestured
that they should join him outside. "There's something
else."

Danny raised his eyes past Jonah and
scanned the surrounding landscape once more. Since leaving Finn
behind, the terrain had slowly transitioned, become less flat,
dotted by more scrub and scored with more ravines. Anything could
be hiding out there. And with the sun so low on the horizon, the
shadows were growing longer and deeper. "What is it?"

"Just come."

Harrison Blakeley stood up and strode
toward the front of the bus, followed by Harry Rollins and Susan
Miller. With a shake of his head, Danny trailed after them and made
for the door. "Everyone else stay put," he said, then
exited.

The group headed down to where the
road had crumpled, perhaps a hundred feet away. Jonah led them.
Harry and Susan kept glancing nervously about, just as Danny did,
but Harrison's gaze and gait gave no hint of worry. He walked with
his hands in the pockets of his threadbare jeans, apparently
certain that they would not be attacked.

"What do you see?" Danny
asked.

When they reached the bottom of the
swale, Danny realized just how lucky they'd been. The surface of
the road had cracked all the way across. One edge had risen up
while the other folded underneath. Mud and other debris had washed
into the gap, partially filling it with fine silt, which had dried
into a crumbly clay. Deep ruts had been gouged out of it by the bus
tires.

"Tracks," Harrison said. "Not
ours."

He stood off the side of the road with
Jonah studying a second set of tracks. They'd been dug out of the
mud the last time it was wet. Harry bent down and snapped off a
piece of the dried earth. "Wonder how old they are."

"Couldn't have been more than a few
months."

"That means there are other people out
here," Danny said. "And cars." He felt almost justified for his
excessively cautious driving.

Harry stood up again and
handed the dirt to him. "Question is, are they
nice
people?"

"I should just leave you here," Finn told Bix.

"And be depraved of the gift that is
my company?"

"You're depraved;
I'm
deprived
. And
gift is not the word I'd use."

Bix's laughter carried across the
canyon and echoed back at them. Finn shushed him, stopping to
listen. But all they heard was the sound of the wind blowing
through the trees.

The river was too far below them for
its roar to reach their ears, had been since late the previous
afternoon. Finn was glad for it. He'd hated being so close to the
rushing water. The noise had made it impossible to hear anything
else.

"You need to keep it down," he
murmured. "Something tells me once we get back up to the top, there
may be trouble."

The two boys continued on in silence
after that. Two full days had passed since leaving the bus behind,
the wisdom of which had tormented Finn since the moment his feet
hit the ground. But what other choice had there been? He couldn't
expect the others to follow him. And how could they expect him not
to go after Harper?

It had been hard — the hardest
thing he'd ever done — leaving without telling Bren. He knew
she'd want to come with him, and he couldn't let that happen. So
he'd instructed the others to keep going, to find the evacuation
center just as they had originally planned. It was their only hope
of finding Bunker Twelve, answers to the Flense, and a possible
cure.

"No arguments," he'd told them. "This
is my choice, my duty, and no one else's. I need to know what
happened to my brother. I need to know if he's still
alive."

But then, every single step he took
away from the bus, away from the safety it represented, had been
utter torture for him. Loneliness fell upon his soul even while he
was still in the vehicle's shadow, crushing him like a terrible
weight. Yet he refused to change his mind. He refused to look up at
the faces staring quietly down at him as he passed. He knew that if
he did, he'd chicken out and get back on the bus. And he'd never be
able to forgive himself for it.

He might even resent Bren.

The only thing that kept him going was
knowing that Harper would not have second-guessed the decision at
all.

One step at a time, that's how he
went, counting silently. One foot in front of the other and his
mind filled with hatred for himself for how angry he knew Bren
would be when she woke.

He very nearly did turn around when he
heard the bus start to pull away. He was blind to the road then,
blinded by his tears, feeling as much as hearing the sound of the
fading engine as it receded into the distance.

"Bang, you're dead," Bix said,
grabbing him from behind and scaring the crap out of
him.

"Jesus!" Finn spun around, expecting
the bus to have returned. It hadn't. It was gone. "What the hell
are you doing here?"

"Watching your back, apparently. I've
been, like, three steps behind you for the past ten
minutes."

"Does your dad know?"

"Of course, dummy! Everyone knows.
Well, everyone except Bren, but she'll find out soon enough." He
shuddered. "Glad I won't be there for that scene."

"Thanks for setting my mind at
ease."

"Then my work here is
done."

"You shouldn't even be here! You need
to go back! You're supposed to go to the evac center!"

"Okay, I'll just sit here and wait for
the next bus."

Finn gave him a dirty look.

"You're stuck with me, man, so let's
move. I don't like being out here on the open road." He began to
walk, leaving Finn to stand alone. "I think I saw a cutoff for the
river up ahead. We might be able to save a bunch of time if we take
it."

Finn turned one last time, in case the
bus magically appeared. Then he ran to catch up with his
friend.

"I hope you brought sunscreen," Bix
said. "You know how easily I burn."

That had been the day before
yesterday. They'd made good time, taking Bix's shortcut despite
Finn's doubts. And by that first evening, they'd made it all the
way back to the top of the gorge, where they made camp without a
fire. Neither slept a wink that night.

The next morning, as soon as the sky
began to lighten, they descended to the river, reaching it shortly
after noon. They were in desperate need of water by then and
greedily refilled their canteens and their stomachs.

They had encountered no Wraiths along
the way, though at times it certainly seemed like it wasn't for
lack of trying. At least three times they'd forgotten themselves;
their voices were loud enough to echo back from the opposite side
of the canyon. Twice it was for arguing, one of those times over
whose morning breath stunk worse, which really wasn't an argument,
since they both agreed that it was Bix. The argument was more about
what exactly it stunk like.