Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2) (21 page)

Rachel turned and grinned at her passengers. Jeb chuckled and shook his head.

Rachel popped into gear and they headed up the mountain. Now that the rain had stopped and the wind had died down it was easier going. She still took it slow, and it was another half hour before they made it around a long bend and up a steep incline to a leveled off area. Open skies ahead of them told Jeb they had made it to the pass.

“Patrol Two should be here somewhere,” Rachel said.

“Holy shit! What’s that?” Annette said from the front passengers seat.

Rachel slammed on the brakes. Jeb lunged forward, caught himself, and peered over Annette’s shoulder.

Bodies. Dozens of bodies scattered across the road.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“OK, you’re seeing me. What do you want?”

The Doctor’s office seemed like another world, something that hadn’t existed for a hundred years. Although she was barely conscious, Susanna couldn’t help but admire how clean, how technological, it was.

She didn’t need to look at The Doctor himself as he poked and prodded her, checking her health with a variety of instruments she didn’t recognize. One look at him confirmed her suspicions—he was a fanatic, just like The Giver, just like The Pure One. While his fanaticism had created this wonderful place, this safe refuge, that didn’t make him any less of a fanatic.

And Susanna had learned through bitter experience that fanatics thought only of one thing—whatever it was that drove them. Everything else, everyone else, was irrelevant.

“I was enslaved,” Susanna said as The Doctor clicked on the end of what looked like a pen and a little electric light came on at the tip. He flashed it first in one eye, then the other.

“I know you were. All the porters were. We’re not holding it against you. You’re safe.”

Susanna shook her head. “I’m not talking about the Righteous Horde, I was enslaved after that by your own people.”

The Doctor sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.

“I’m afraid not all my people are as understanding as I am. Where did this happen? Do you know their names?”

Susanna watched at his face. His reaction would be important.

“It happened in Weissberg.”

The Doctor looked confused.

“Where?”

“Abraham Weissman’s new town.”

The Doctor stared at her, stunned.

“He’s building a settlement about three days north of here, past that stretch of toxic land. It’s hidden in a little valley. He’s got a group of New City people and scavengers building it and he’s planning on bringing the entire Merchant’s Association there eventually. He went through the wildlands rounding up porters to work as slaves. I escaped. There’s about. . .”

Susanna’s voice trailed off. The Doctor’s face had turned purple with rage, eyes afire. His hands balled into fists and shook. The penlight snapped in his grip.

Susanna edged back. She’d like to think that he was enraged for her sake, for Donna’s and the other slaves’ sake, but no. He was enraged that Abe had defied him. People like The Doctor were all the same.

“Can you take us there?” The Doctor’s voice came out in a harsh whisper.

“Sure,” Susanna nodded. “If you promise to free the other slaves.”

“I’ll do a hell of a lot more than that. Guard!”

The guard at the door hurried in, gun leveled at Susanna and obviously thinking she had tried something.

“Go get Clyde and Marcus, right now!” The Doctor barked.

The guard’s eyes went wide and he ran off like a scared rabbit.

Yes, they fear you, don’t they? They respect you, some of them might even love you, but they fear you too.

The Doctor turned back to Susanna.

“Tell me more.”

So Susanna told him everything. About Eduardo, about getting picked up by a Weissberg patrol, about Derren, noticing that The Doctor’s face flared in recognition at the mention of his name, and about her domestic servitude and eventual escape.

She left out her meeting with The Giver. The deal had been to deliver the message to his daughter and not tell anyone. Besides, she sensed that was something The Doctor would be interested in and she didn’t want to distract him. The important thing was to get to Weissberg and free Donna and the other slaves.

A few minutes later, two aging men hurried into the room. One was dressed in camouflage and the other looked like he had been pulled out of bed. The Doctor turned to her.

“This is Clyde Devon, the Head of the Watch, and this is Marcus Callahan, my assistant mayor. Tell them what you told me.”

She looked at Marcus. This was the man who was taking care of The Giver’s daughter. How had he managed to get his little spy into the assistant mayor’s house? There was a lot she didn’t understand here, and she was too tired to figure it out now.

As she repeated her story, The Doctor left the room. Clyde and Marcus looked shocked at what she said, then angry. Clyde’s hand kept straying to the pistol at his belt. Just as she finished, The Doctor returned carrying a small paper package. Unwrapping it, he handed her a brown, sticky bar that smelled faintly of honey.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A nutrition bar made to my own recipe. Nuts, honey, dried fruit, and cereal all mixed together. It will help you regain your strength.”

Susanna nodded and took a bite.

“So do you think you can find it again?” Clyde asked, his hand resting on his gun.

“Yes,” she replied around a mouthful of food. “It’s well hidden, though. You’d never see it just passing by. Some hills block it from view. And if you were going through the hills you probably wouldn’t see it because there are bigger hills all around. You’d have to walk right into it or you’d never know it was there.”

Clyde nodded. “A nice little spot. I bet a few scavengers knew about it, but those folks always keep good finds to themselves.”

“Abe’s people probably hunted them down and killed them off,” Marcus said, speaking for the first time.

Susanna nodded and finished the nutrition bar. Licking her sticky fingers, she looked around hoping to see another one.

The three of them made her tell her story again, asking for more details—any names she could remember, what equipment they had, how many guns. She fought to keep her eyes open. At last they stopped pestering her.

“Not a word about what you’ve told us to anyone else, understand?” The Doctor said.

Susanna nodded. “I understand. You are going to do something about it, aren’t you?”

The Doctor’s face darkened. “Damn right I will.”

“Alright then, I’ll keep it quiet. But one thing, I’m not going back to that prison you have in front of the wall.”

“It’s not a prison it’s a—”

“It’s a prison, and while I don’t blame you since most people would have killed us it’s still a prison and I’m not going to it.”

“Now look—”

“The deal is that I keep my freedom for showing you Weissberg. Do I look like I can hurt anybody?”

With a visible effort, The Doctor calmed himself. At last he shrugged.

“Fine,” he said, and turned to the others. “Where should we put her up?”

“I can handle that,” Clyde said. He summoned a guard and he told him, “Find someone in the Burbs with a shack and trade for them to move out for the night. Search the shack and clear out anything that can be used as a weapon. Then post a pair of guards outside. The prisoner will stay there.”

“I’ll lead her out,” Marcus said. “Looks like you have an expedition to plan.”

Clyde sighed. “I sure as hell do.”

Marcus looked at her with sympathy. She met his gaze and liked what she saw there. He looked kind. How someone who looked kind made it so far in this world was a mystery to her.

“Come on, let’s get you something hot to eat and then you can rest,” Marcus said. Turning to Clyde he asked. “Has she been searched?”

“Several times.”

Marcus nodded and motioned for her to follow. A pair of guards dogged them as they left the building. Once outside, Clyde hurried off. The guards remained with Marcus and Susanna.

The assistant mayor led her to a frame house and without knocking went onto the porch and unlocked the front door.

“This is my place,” he said.

Susanna blinked. She’d been led right to where she needed to go. For once luck was with her.

Just as he opened the door a woman in her sixties, hair tied up in a gray bun, came up and greeted him. Electric light glowed from inside.

“I was just reading. There’s some stew warmed up. Anytime The Doctor calls you out this late you’re up half the night. Oh, guests!”

The woman smiled at Susanna and the guards.

“This is Rosie, my wife,” Marcus explained. “Rosie, meet Susanna. You already know Conrad and Spiegelman. Susanna was one of the porters. She’s going to help us out.”

Rosie looked at Susanna and worry deepened the lines on her face.

“You looked worn out. Come inside. Here, sit down.”

Rosie ushered her into a dining area where she sat her down on a chair in front of a wobbly card table. Bustling about, Rosie produced a pillow, blanket, and piece of bread in short order.

“I’ll get you some stew. Marcus, pour her some milk.”

Marcus grinned and lifted up a flagstone in the corner of the kitchen. Beneath was a stone-lined cyst in the floor. From it he pulled out a small jug.

“Goat’s milk, from my own herd just today,” he said, and brought it over. “Oh, and don’t mention to The Doctor or Clyde that you had dinner here.” With that he gave a significant look to the guards, who shrugged. “They suffer too much from stress. It’s their job to be paranoid, I suppose.”

Susanna took the milk and drank deeply. Within a minute she was shoveling down a steaming bowl of stew. Everything seemed distant, unreal. She could barely put a thought together. Her worn-out body worked automatically to put food into her mouth. People were talking, but she wasn’t sure what they were saying or even if she was replying.

Then everything went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Annette stared openmouthed at the corpses strewn across the road. Her throat clenched, then relaxed when she saw they weren’t her own people.

“They must be Righteous Horde,” Rachel said from the driver’s seat. “Nobody else around here’s got these numbers.”

Annette nodded. They were all men, and all had been shot. Mutilated too. Some were missing ears or hands. Others had been beaten to a pulp.

Annette’s hand went to her pistol as she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. The New City patrol came out from behind a heap of boulders by the shoulder of the road and waved to them.

Everyone got out. Annette sucked in clean air, thankful that they had left the foul sea rains behind them.

The patrol—five hardened members of Clyde’s special guards—approached the vehicle. One pointed to the dents in the fender.

“Have some trouble?” he asked.

“Nope,” Rachel said as she got out.

Annette went and shook hands with the leader.

“Hey Dean. So what happened here?” she asked him.

Dean shrugged. “A massacre. And these aren’t the only bodies. You probably didn’t see because you were driving through the rain. There are corpses dumped here and there in the gullies and by the side of the road all the way up the mountain.”

Annette turned and saw Jeb walking among the dead a little way off. He crouched by one man whose throat had been cut so deeply his head was all but severed.

“Esperanza. Diego Esperanza. I knew this guy.”

“One of the Elect?” Annette asked.

Jeb nodded, his mouth a grim line. “They all are,” he said, pointing. “I knew him, and him. Recognize most of the others. At least those who still got faces.”

“What do you think happened?” Christina asked. She stood near him with her pistol out.

“The Pure One decided to make a clean slate,” Jeb replied. “I bet that most of the dead we missed on the road were Elect too. He’s cutting out all those he can’t trust.”

“There’s still plenty, though,” Dean said, shouldering his M16. “We followed them down the other side of the mountain and for two days across the plains. There’s still at least a few hundred.”

“The bodyguard numbers about two hundred,” Jeb said, “with the best weapons and of course that machine gun. The Elect that are still with them will have good weapons stripped from the dead. We’re facing the hard core now, all the true loyalists, and they got plenty of guns and ammo.”

Dean furrowed his brow. “Wait, who are you?”

Christina was about to say something when Jeb cut her off. “I was a machete man. I was given the choice of a bullet in the brain or fighting on the wrong side. I chose fighting on the wrong side. I’m on the right side now.”

Dean looked him up and down. “Make sure you stay on the right side.”

Jeb looked out across the plains, partly visible between the peaks. “There’s nothing for me out there. Hasn’t been for a long, long time.”

Something in his expression pulled at Annette.

He’s lost people. Hell, we all have, but it sounds like he lost everything.

“How’s the road on this side?” Rachel asked. “I haven’t been down there in a season.”

“Good for a few miles,” Dean said.

Rachel scanned the sky. “We have a couple of hours of daylight left. I’m going to drive them down as far as I can and then come back for you. I don’t want to drive back alone, so if someone doesn’t mind squeezing in with a bunch of folks soaked with toxic rain, I’ll owe them a beer at $87,953.”

Dean laughed and ordered his group to clear the road of bodies. Jeb helped them. Once they were done one of the guards joined them in the four-by-four and they headed down the other side of the mountain. Protected as it was from the ocean storms, the road here had stood the test of time better. Although the pavement was cracked and in a few places washed away by streams, Rachel maneuvered through these obstacles with no problem. They got most of the way down the mountain before they found the road completely blocked by a landslide old enough that bushes grew on it.

“Got to send a work crew to clear this someday,” Rachel said. “Then we’d have access to the plains. We could drive all over.”

“Maybe find that southern city,” Jeb said.

“Do you really believe it’s there?” Annette said.

“Yeah,” Jeb said, a faraway look in his eyes. “After seeing New City I’ll believe anything.”

“So,” Annette sighed. “Looks like this is the end of the road. Literally. Everyone grab their gear and let’s go.”

Annette felt her heart pounding in her chest. She’d been putting off the reality of this expedition as long as possible—the reality that she was tracking someone across the wildlands in order to put a bullet through them. She hated killing, and hated even more the fact that she was so good at it.

I’m nervous about killing someone like that cult leader. How the hell did I ever survive out here?

Everyone loaded up their packs and weapons. The guard handed Annette his radio.

“Once you get to the top of the pass radio in. Clyde will be waiting to hear from you,” he said.

Annette nodded and stowed the radio in a side pocket of her pack.

“Jackson, come over here a minute. Christina, take Jeb back to the vehicle.”

Jackson came up, pulling a laminated topographic map out of his side pocket.

“This what you need?” he asked with a smile.

“I didn’t bring you along for your personality,” Annette said with a grin.

Jackson had the only topographic map of the region she had ever seen. It had proved vital on the last mission. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the machete man was out of sight, Jackson spread it out on a flat stone by the side of the road. The swirling lines and various colors bedazzled her, but she had begun to learn how to read it, despite Jackson not offering any lessons. He had added his own marks too: red dots for chemical spills, a few blue spots for fresh water, and some green and yellow marks that were mysteries to her. She looked at the pass to the south of this one, the pass beyond Toxic Bay. She was glad to see Jackson hadn’t put a mark there. It was there that they had found the repeater for Radio Hope, and met a few of its masked operators.

No, Jackson was far too cautious to mark that spot, and the only living person besides them from that expedition had joined the radio station. Briefly she wondered what Ha-Ram Lee was doing now. She had listened to Radio Hope a lot since then, hoping to hear his voice, but she never had. Of course with everyone tuning in, including scumbags like Abe Weissman, Ha-Ram would probably never go on the air.

Again she worried what Abe thought of the story she handed him. She pushed that out of her mind. Abe was a problem for another day.

Jackson looked out at the section of plains visible from where they stood in the pass. He called the guard over and pointed to a pair of steep-sided hills about a mile beyond the base of the mountain.

“See those? Tell me where the Righteous Horde went in relation to those.”

The man studied the terrain for a moment and then said. “They turned to the south about halfway between the end of the pass and those hills.”

Jackson put his finger on the topo. Annette saw a pair of concentric ovals that she figured indicated the two hills. Jackson saw her looking and moved the map slightly.

Still greedy with your knowledge, eh? Annette thought. What’s that expression of yours? “Knowledge is power.”

The guard continued. “After they turned south they crossed a broad dry wash and continued due south for maybe ten miles. Then they shifted southeast.”

Jackson traced the route with his finger. “Did they pass over a low ridge?”

“Yeah,” the guard sounded surprised. “That piece of paper tell you that?”

“So what did they do then?” Jackson asked.

“They followed the south part of the ridge for a while and hit a group of farms near where the ridge petered out.”

Tanya cut in. “What did they do?”

The guard gave her a grim look. “What do you think they did?”

Tanya’s face fell. “I’ve been to that farmstead. The Ingalls family lived there.”

Nobody had to ask why she referred to them in the past tense. After a pregnant silence the guard continued.

“After that they turned due south again. We followed them for another ten miles before we came back to report. That was yesterday.”

Jackson traced the route with his finger. “We can cut across their path diagonally and catch up with them quick enough.”

“They’re moving pretty slow, sending out foragers on all sides. We had to keep well back to avoid them. We heard gunfire in their camp pretty much every night.”

Jackson folded up the topo and stowed it in an inside pocket.

“Thanks for your help. Looks like we’re ready to go.”

Annette gathered everyone and Rachel and the guard hopped into the vehicle.

“Best of luck!” Rachel called, waving out the window before turning the four-by-four around and heading up the mountain. Everyone watched in silence as the vehicle dwindled into a dot and disappeared around a bend in the road.

Annette looked out across the plains. She licked her dry lips and said, “Let’s go.”

The words came out as a whisper.

Beyond the landslide, the road made a gently curving path that led to the plains. The weather was drier here, with patchy clouds that held no threat of rain. They’d left the coastal weather behind when they crossed the mountains.

They still stank, though, and as they made it to the foothills and discovered a broad stream that smelled clean, Annette ordered a halt for the day. The men and women split off into two groups on either side of a bend in the stream and washed their clothes and themselves. Then they built two fires and dried out.

Once they were all together again, Annette sat down next to Jeb. Tanya sat nearby with her gun trained on him. Annette was glad to see Christina was busy cleaning her gear and taking a break for once.

“So tell me a bit more about their armament,” Annette said to Jeb.

“Pretty much what you saw at the siege. A bunch of assault rifles, especially a lot of AK-47s we took off that Chinese group. Plenty of ammo for those but less for the M16s and other models. Some good hunting rifles too.”

“Any sniper’s rifles?”

“No. A couple of the hunting rifles have telescopic sights.”

“Any machine guns besides that Gau-18/E? Any explosives?”

Jeb shook his head.

“It would be nice to get that machine gun and bring it back,” Tanya said.

“No chance. We’re taking out The Pure One and getting the hell out of there,” Annette said.

“Yeah, but if we—”

Tanya never got to finish her sentence, because at that moment a rifle shot cracked the air and her skull blew apart.