Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (24 page)

You're no better than Seth
Abramson.

The words plagued him as he continued
his terrible trek after the bus.

He had kept off the road, returning to
it whenever there was a junction so that he could check that he was
still on the right trail. It was physically draining, having to
make his way over the rough ground in the blazing heat of day. And
it was mentally exhausting, always having to worry that he was
going in the wrong direction, that he was following the wrong
trail, or even a phantom trail, his nerves as frayed as his
senses.

He didn't see a single Wraith the
entire time, except maybe once, though it was a long way off. It
certainly moved like one, and he couldn't imagine some other poor,
lost sap wandering about the desert like he was.

He did see more bikers, however.
Several each day. They were easy to hide from as he could hear them
coming from miles away.

The compound was double-fenced, the
runway between the barriers patrolled by dogs. Through the
binoculars he'd taken from Vinnie, he saw the high-voltage warning
signs posted periodically along the perimeter, and he assumed that
it only pertained to the outer fence. The dogs knew not to touch
the wire, but humans were either stupid or lacked some sensibility
that the animals had for sensing electrical current.

In the half hour that he sat there on
the sand leaning his back against a rock, he had seen no less than
four foot patrols and two trucks. All of them carried automatic
weapons, either in their hands or mounted on the vehicles. And he
wondered which they feared an attack more from, Wraiths or other
people.

The bus was nowhere in sight, but the
base was sufficiently large that it could be anywhere, perhaps even
inside a building somewhere. He was sure it had to be there, but
until he set eyes on it or on someone in his group, he couldn't be
certain that they had been brought here.

Or, if they had been, that they were
even still on the premises.

Leaning his head back, he shut his
eyes to rest them. The desert sun and dry air had chapped and
swollen the skin around his eyes and lips. His throat was scratchy,
and his nose had bled. And the whole time he was walking, he
wondered what he'd do when he finally caught up. He still didn't
know.

A faint scratching noise caught his
attention. He cocked an eye open and, at first, saw nothing. But
then he felt it, a finger of weight on his shoulder. He didn't
move, just waited. The movement shifted to his ear, then ascended
to the top of his scalp.

His first night in the desert alone
had been a test of his resolve, more than the days had been, even
though the latter were certainly more grueling. That first night,
he'd fallen asleep leaning against an outcropping of loose
sandstone, and he'd woken the next morning when some of it crumbled
onto his face. In a panic, he pushed himself away, and by the time
he heard the rattle it was already too late to escape the
strike.

The snake attached itself to his leg,
injecting its venom into his flesh. All he could do was stare
stupidly at it.

Only when it released him and drew
back did he react. He lashed out, more in anger than to defend
himself. His foot came down on the rattler's head and crushed it.
The rattle shook as the animal writhed in its death throes. By the
time it went still, he'd regained control of himself.

He considered himself lucky. It seemed
the snake had recently expended the bulk of its venom in another
victim, and, indeed, there was a telltale bulge in its belly. The
wound on his leg swelled and ached for most of the next day, but
the poison hadn't spread. He hadn't had much trouble with it
since.

He cooked the snake and ate it,
including the partially-digested jack rabbit it had consumed
earlier.

That whole experience had taught him a
valuable lesson, that his greatest weakness was fear. So, as he sat
there, the army base aglow a hundred yards away and something
crawling over his skin, he didn't panic. And, just as he expected
it to, the scorpion eventually lost interest and wandered
away.

Off in the distance to his left, the
first signs of dawn appeared in the sky, and he realized that it
was time to move. He couldn't risk being stuck where he was once
day broke. There was no place to hide, whether from the base
patrols or the merciless sun.

He leaned forward and stretched his
aching muscles. He would have to backtrack or go around and hope to
find a weakness he could exploit. He might last another day without
water, but it would only weaken him further.

Then what?

The whine of an engine drew his
attention. Inside the fence, a large army truck appeared. It pulled
up to the gate and shut off. A man got out of the cab and walked
over to speak to the sentries.

Two more people caught Jonah's eye.
They had exited from the central building, which appeared to have
once fulfilled an administrative function in the past. An empty
flagpole stood in front. The two, one tall and male, the other
smaller and female, walked toward the truck. They joined the driver
at the gate.

Jonah pulled out the binoculars again
and trained them on the trio, but they were in shadow and he
couldn't make out their faces.

One man stepped away at the same time
that several riders on motorcycles appeared. He spoke to one of the
bikers, then disappeared around the back of the truck. A flap
lifted, and four people jumped out, two men, and two women. They
all carried rifles and sidearms.

Garbled sounds and laughter reached
Jonah's ears. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits. They all
milled about for several minutes before the first man
reappeared.

"Where's the other vehicle?" he
shouted.

"Coming!"

A moment later, the bus appeared.
Jonah pulled the binoculars back up to his eyes. It was theirs all
right, but the man behind the wheel was a stranger. It pulled up
behind the truck and idled.

"Are we ready?"

The soldiers shouted in unison that
they were.

"Then wind her up!"

The guard returned to the gate and it
began to open. The truck driver stepped into the cab and started it
up. The four from the back of the truck returned.

The last figure, the woman who had
accompanied the man, walked over to the bus. The doors whispered
open and she stepped onto the first stair. Then, just before going
inside, she turned to say one last thing to the man who'd
accompanied her. The image in the binoculars was
unmistakable.

It was Bren.

Finn feared that the crowd would riot if he and Bix didn't
neutralize the Wraiths soon. He had tried half-heartedly several
times, but the creatures were simply too fast and too wary of the
prods. Twice he'd come close, and the third time would have
succeeded had he not been foiled by the chain link. The crowd's
boos grew louder with every failed attempt.

And poor Bix. He'd thrown the cattle
prod to the ground in refusal, only to have Luke step over and
sucker punch him in the gut. "Next one'll smash that pretty face of
yours even more," he snarled, then thrust the device back into
Bix's hands and ordered him to stand up.

For a moment, Finn was sure he'd turn
it on Luke, and he shouted for him not to do it. But the yell was
lost in the roar of the crowd. Luke stood there, a grin curling his
upper lip, as if daring Bix to do it.

Visibly shaken, Bix turned back to the
cage and jabbed reluctantly at the wire when a Wraith flashed
past.

The crowd reached the end of its
patience. Someone threw a stone, hitting Finn on the ear. It wasn't
a large one, but it had been thrown hard. He felt a trickle of
blood run down the side of his face. Or maybe it was sweat. He
couldn't tell. In any case, it stung terribly.

The two naked men, still hooded and
with their backs to the cage, seemed frozen in fear. Finn felt for
them. He knew that Adrian had been right, that those men's only
hope rested in his and Bix's ability to shock both Wraiths
simultaneously, but it seemed an impossible expectation. They
couldn't even shock one. How were they going to get two at
once?

At last, Adrian grew tired of their
futile attempts. Or perhaps he was finished with his masochistic
demonstration. He walked over to the main circuit box that he and
Finn had installed just a day earlier, opened it, and flipped one
of the switches.

The lights dimmed and the generator
whined from the extra load placed on it. Both of the Wraiths, one
climbing the wire at the opposite end of the cage and the other
hanging from the top halfway between Finn and Bix, suddenly began
to jerk violently. There came a series of crackles and the barn
filled with the smell of burning flesh. Both Wraiths fell to the
ground.

When Adrian flipped the breaker off
again, the lights immediately brightened.

The cattle prods were stripped from
the boys' hands, even as the crowd began to chant: "Forty-five!
Forty-four! Forty-three . . . !"

Adrian snapped the box shut, then
circled the cage to stand before the prisoners.

"Y'all will be unmasked before yer
peers and placed into the cage fer judgment. There will be two
ferals, both shocked and harmless. They cannot kill. They cannot
infect. It's yer choice: executioner or not. Salvation or
damnation."

"Thirty!" the crowd shouted.
"Twenty-nine!"

"Y'all will have twenty seconds and
nothin but yer wit and bare hands. Understand?"

The men shook their heads and began to
babble. One of them collapsed to his knees. The other wore a splint
and seemed unable to move, even if he wanted to.

The men flanking the prostrate figure
pulled him up again.

"Twenty-five! Twenty-four!"

"Open the gate!" Adrian
shouted.

The gate was opened.

"Remove their hoods!"

The black bags were pulled away. Both
men lowered their heads to shake the sweat out of their eyes. Then,
just as the count reached twenty, they were spun around and shoved
toward the opening.

Finn's eyes widened in shock. He
looked over at Bix and tried to cry out, but the crowd noise was
too great, and his voice was lost in the roar.

But Bix wasn't looking at him anyway.
He was staring at the men with the same utter disbelief that Finn
felt.

The two men stumbled in. Locked in
their own version of Hell, neither acted. They simply pressed
themselves against each other for protection and eyed the bodies of
the Wraiths.

As if on cue, both boys screamed for
them to hurry up. The crowd screamed, too. Time was running out.
The count was already down to fifteen. But neither Nami nor
Jonathan could hear them. They stood and stared and at first did
nothing.

Nami was the first to snap out of it.
He slowly turned, his gaze sweeping the crowd. It touched Finn and
continued on without recognition, and Finn thought that the man's
mind had simply shut down from shock. But then it snapped back in
surprise.

The count was down to
twelve.

Finn jabbed his finger at the Wraith a
few feet away from Nami and screamed for him to break its
neck.

Nami looked at it, then back at Finn.
Finn nodded and made a snapping motion with his hands.

"Eleven!"

Nami leaned stiffly over and screamed
something into Jonathan's ear, then limped over to the Wraith Finn
had indicated. The crowd went wild with excitement. Someone jostled
Finn roughly, and he fell forward onto his knees.

Nami grabbed the Wraith just as it
began to move. Jonathan looked on with horror.

"Nine!" the crowd screamed.

In a flash, Jonathan turned, and for a
moment, Finn feared he was going to try to run away, except there
was nowhere for him to go. He saw the other Wraith and started to
go for it, hesitating only momentarily when it, too, began to
rouse.

"Seven!"

Finn looked over at Bix and saw the
horror he felt reflected in his friend's face. There wasn't enough
time for their fellow survivors.