Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (30 page)

"We need more horses!"

"Where are you going?"

"To knock out the main
generator!"

He ran down the road toward the front
entrance, the wind pelting his skin with rain and leaves. Careening
down the path, guided only by the few lights Adrian had strung
along it, he swiped at his eyes.

Finally, he came to the path he'd seen
Billy using the day after they arrived. The red five-gallon fuel
cans in his hands had told Finn that there was a storage tank
somewhere back in the trees. And the thick insulated cables laid
along the ground betrayed their purpose. The path led to the main
generator powering the house and fence.

"Hurry your ass up, Bix," he muttered,
then plunged into the wood. He prayed that Adrian and the others
would remain behind to put out the fire at the barn. He and Bix
needed all the time they could get to make their escape.

The muffled clatter of a large motor
grew louder as he approached the building, guided once again by the
faint glow of a bulb shining through the trees. Finally he emerged
from the trail.

The lamp illuminated the front of the
brick structure. He stepped up to the heavy panel door and frowned
at the thick padlock. The door was too solid to force open with his
shoulder. It barely shook when he tried kicking it. And there were
no windows to break.

He searched the ground within the
sphere of light for a sizable rock, but there was none, forcing him
to look deeper into the darkness. He could almost feel the night on
his bare skin as he searched on hands and knees, sweeping his
half-frozen hands over the soggy ground, sensing the invisible
things that might be watching him from the shadows.

"There's nothing out there," he told
himself. "No Wraiths, so stop psyching yourself out."

There was no time to worry about it
anyway. He needed to get that door open.

At last he found a rock and hurried
back to the building with it cradled in his arms. The latch was
recessed into the corner of the doorframe, underneath the knob and
well out of reach of the rock.

Finn growled in frustration and
hammered at the knob anyway. It bent after the first blow, then
broke off from the second and landed onto the cement pad by his
bare foot. The knob was gone, but the latch and lock remained
intact.

He continued hammering, hoping to
break the deadbolt instead. The door shuddered with each blow,
denting but not breaking. The booms sounded dull in the storm. The
latch bent. The screws holding it in place started to strip out of
the metal.

"Put it down!"

Finn froze at the sound of Jennifer's
voice.

"I said, put it down!"

He turned to find her standing at the
end of the trail, a dozen feet away, a plastic raincoat shedding
water in streams. She held a rifle in her hands, and it was aimed
at his chest.

"What you're doing here is wrong," he
shouted.

"Put the damn rock down, Finn. I don't
want to shoot you."

Still facing her, he backed up to the
door again and swung the stone. The door shook. The padlock jumped
and fell back.

"Finn—"

"You won't shoot me!" He
swung again:
BAM!

"Yes, I will." She stepped forward,
her boots squishing in the soggy ground.

"I see the way you treat Luke and
Billy," Finn yelled. "Even Adrian. I've seen the sympathy on your
face when you look at the Wraiths."

He swung —
BAM!
 — and the top
two screws of the latch pulled a quarter of an inch out. The rock
nearly slipped out of his grip. If it landed on his
foot—

"You know what they're doing in the
barn is wrong!" he shouted. "The way you cared for Bix the other
night. You're not like them, Jennifer! You're not a
killer."

He regripped the stone and
swung:
BAM!

"It's not killin. We're rehabilitatin
them. We're savin them!"

"No, you're not!
You're
using
them.
And Adrian's using you. That's why you won't stay there and watch.
I saw the disgust on your face."

BAM!

The screws were nearly out.

"I can't let y'all leave. Adrian won't
let you."

BAM!

Finn kicked at the door, and the lock
rattled, but the latch stubbornly held.

"Finn, drop the rock." She stepped
forward again and raised the rifle to her side. It was now pointed
at his gut. "You don't know what you're doing."

"You're going to shoot an unarmed boy
in nothing but his underwear?"

She hesitated. Then shook her head.
"Don't Finn."

He considered swinging the stone
again, then dropped it onto the concrete pad. "Shoot me then," he
said, and raised his hands. "Shoot me, or let us go."

She didn't move. Emotions contorted
her face, and for a moment, he believed — truly
believed — that she'd let him go.

"Y'all don't know what yer doing," she
said. "Or what yer startin. Lord help us all."

With a thunderous clap, the gun jumped
in her hands. The lightning flash blinded them both.

Behind Finn, the latch exploded and
the door flew open. Shards of metal shrapnel peppered his bare
back. He ducked away, staggering, as his blood sprinkled the
ground. When he raised his head again, she was gone.

Shutting down the generators extinguished the pathway lights and
threw the entire compound into darkness. Only the sporadic flashes
of lightning helped guide Finn's way back to the house. The whole
time he feared blowing himself up into little pieces because he'd
strayed too far off the path.

When he emerged from the trees into
the clearing surrounding the house, he first thought that the light
coloring the sky was the clouds parting and the first traces of
morning. But the glow came from deeper in the woods. Despite the
rain, perhaps aided by the winds, the fire was
spreading.

Two large shapes lay in the middle of
the clearing, and in a flash of lightning he saw that they were the
horses they had ridden. The side of one heaved, spurting blood from
a terrible gash in its side. Steam rose in the cool
night.

The other horse was dead from a
massive wound in its neck. The flesh was shredded.

Claymore mine?
Shotgun?

Who would shoot it? And
why?

"Bix!" he screamed, scanning the
grounds.

The house was pitch black — no
sweeping flashlight beams or the dull glow of a gas lantern in the
windows — and no one came out as he ran to check around back.
He pulled the axe from the woodpile before hurrying to the storm
shelter. Nothing but darkness and silence greeted him inside,
nothing but the hot, thick stench of their waste.

"Bix? You down there?
Anyone?"

He picked up a handful of dirt and
cast it into the darkness. The bits rained down the steps. Nothing
moved. Everyone was gone.

Or dead.

He whirled around and ran for the
path.

Flames leapt higher into the night. A
solitary figure, half naked, stood at the edge of the yard,
silhouetted in the glow.

"Bix!"

Rain pelted his face as he ran,
blinding him. His feet ached from cold and the battering they
received from running bare. Adrenaline had kept the pain at bay,
but it was now fading.

The figure still hadn't moved. Finn
stopped and called out again.

He heard the howl in the woods then,
and he knew what had made the sound. He knew that the figure before
him wasn't Bix. It wasn't even human, not anymore.

And he also knew what had happened to
the horses.

The creature dropped to all fours and
began to stalk him. Finn didn't move. He knew if he ran, it would
attack. Slowly, he raised the axe over his shoulder and waited.
Then, not three feet away, it stopped. It stood up. It reached a
finger out to touch his elbow.

Finn swung the axe down. It embedded
itself deep into the creature's skull and the thing fell into the
mud.

He didn't bother removing the axe. He
just ran.

Calling Bix's name, he stumbled into
the clearing by the animal barn. The Dutch door that they had used
that first night was open, each of the halves swinging freely in
the wind. The animals inside brayed in agitation.

"Bix?" he shouted into the darkness.
"Hey? Are you in here?"

From the other end of the runway, he
thought he heard pounding. It was too insistent, too regular to be
anything but human.

"Bix?"

Plucking a pitchfork from the wall, he
entered. Chains rattled in the shadows off to his left, sounding as
if they were being pulled tight. A face emerged from out of the
shadows — pale and ghostly, white teeth against blackened
lips, eyes that seemed to swallow light — followed by an
equally pale body.

The skeletal figure lunged, but jerked
back, unable to free itself. Finn stumbled away against the stall
on the other side of the walkway.

"Jesus,"
he whispered, and hurried on.

The sound of the pounding drew him
further into the barn. He edged his way past each of the animal
stalls, leaving behind the wan rectangle of light behind. He wished
for more lightning, but the storm was growing weaker and the
flashes grew more and more intermittent.

The further in he went, the more
frantic the animals became. Goats rammed their heads against the
wooden boards, bleating in panic. Cows lowed unhappily. But it was
the horses that concerned him. They were at the far end. He could
hear them whinnying in distress, beating against the rails and
walls.

"Bix?"

The banging grew louder.

He reached the far end of the barn,
arriving at the second door, the twin of the one he had just come
in. But no sound of wind or rain came through it, only the steady,
purposeful drumming of something alive inside.

He ran his hand along the rough wood,
feeling for a handle, but only found a small opening about as wide
as the width of his finger. It was a keyhole.

"Bix?"

The pounding abruptly
ceased.

"Anyone in there? Can you hear
me?"

Now there was a new sound, low at
first and indistinct. He pressed his ear against the wood and
listened. The animals behind him seemed to still as well, as if
they were waiting, too.

The sound was a whisper, wavering just
beyond his ability to make sense of it. Then came a soft scrape of
something rubbing against the door. Finn pushed himself away,
frowning. A finger of ice worked his way up his spine.

"Bix?"

The door rattled.

Get out of here, Finn.
It's nothing good in there.

But he needed to know for sure. What
if it was the rest of Bunker Eight?

It's not!

The door rattled again.

It's not them.
It's—

A howl rose on the other
side, raising the hair on his neck. Finn stumbled away.
Wraiths!
And a lot by the
sound of it. The scratching sounds grew more frantic, accompanied
by more growls and hisses until the barn was filled with an entire
chorus of them. The door rattled.

CRACK!

Dust rained down on his skin from the
rafters above. The wooden frame was failing.

Time to go,
Finn!

He spun around and began to run. The
animals were frantic. Wood from one of the stalls ahead exploded
into the runway. A pig the size of a small cow tumbled into the
path, followed by a half dozen piglets. Squealing in fright, the
mother trampled its young. Behind Finn, the door splintered, then
crashed to the ground. Finn's legs tangled, and he fell.

He could hear them coming out now,
slipping through the fractured pieces of the wooden door like steam
through vents. The horses were mad with terror. They crashed and
screamed. There was a noise, like the crunch of teeth on bone, and
a sudden high-pitched whinny of pain. The cry rose for a moment,
then abruptly stopped.