The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (26 page)

“Just in case,” Gene replied.

Marc drew a knife as well and threw it toward the ground as the other rat scurried away. He caught it in the back of the head, its legs kicking forward in shock before slowing to a stillness. As Marc grabbed the two rats and tossed them in the kitchen sink, Adam began pulling shelves from the pantry. When he was finished, Adam held a flashlight on the empty pantry while Gene walked in, running his fingers along the edges and searching for a hidden handle. When his eyes failed to find anything, he stepped back and looked at the others.

“It looks like recent plaster on the edges, but I don’t see—”

Marc stepped forward, raised his foot, and kicked the back wall in the tiny pantry. After the third kick, a deep thud reverberated in the kitchen and Gene glanced back inside. The rear wall had separated a few inches from the pantry, framed by a ring of darkness.

“Ladies first,” Marc said with a smile, gesturing for Adam to lead the way.

Adam stepped forward and began pushing the wall. The heavy steel door with drywall fixed to its front slowly rotated to the right, revealing a dark corridor into the basement. Adam pulled the cord hanging from the ceiling, though the light failed to turn on.

“Look at the bright side,” Gene said.

“What’s that?” Adam asked.

“You were right and you’ll be the first eating some good ol’ fashioned MREs here in a minute instead of impaled vermin. We’ll be dining better than Gordon Flowers himself. The thought is enough to make a grown man weep.”

Adam smiled as he began to descend into the darkened basement. Gene followed, dreaming of food and a place to finally rest his aching bones. But as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Adam already slowing inside the black room, his hopes for a decent meal and rest plummeted.

The room was empty.

“No,” Adam said breathlessly. “It can’t be.”

“Son of a bitch,” Gene muttered angrily behind Adam.

Empty shelves and gun racks lined every wall. Gun safes stood open and a few MRE wrappers were strewn on the floor.

“Who else knew about this place?” Gene asked angrily.

“Nobody,” Adam said as a twinge of hunger and terror nearly doubled him over.

“Damn it, Adam, who?” Gene roared.

“No one!” Adam yelled back. “She said I was the only one who knew about this location.” Adam paused, his eyes widening before shouting again. “Wait, what if she’s alive?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Gene replied flatly as he began examining the empty shelves slowly.

“Gene, no one else knew about it,” Adam said definitely. “And if she’s alive, then that means—”

“I’m warning you, Adam,” Gene said as he slowly turned to him. “You don’t want to go down that road.”

“Damn it Gene, they could be alive,” Adam said. “My family could be alive and out there right now.”

“They’re dead, Adam. You buried them already. Maybe not physically, but you buried that pain when you accepted their deaths. You dig them back up and you’ll never move on. I can promise you it wasn’t them.”

“How do you know?” Adam asked angrily.

“Because I’m not letting hunger and hope that the dead might still live cloud my judgment,” Gene replied. “Because I know they wouldn’t have left with hundreds of guns and more food than they could carry.”

“Footprints in the dust,” Marc said, bending down and tracing a faint imprint on the floor. “There’s at least three pairs. Possibly five. Boots, from the look of it. Probably military.”

“They were at Fort Bragg,” Adam said. “What if by some miracle they got out. They could have escaped with other soldiers. If Eric survived—”

“I said they’re dead!” Gene roared. “Eric is dead. Elizabeth is dead. Your family is dead! The entire country is one big graveyard! There are no miracles when you’re walking through hell. There’s only death and war and more. Accept it and get over it.”

Adam stared back at Gene, his eyes watering as the man yelled. It was almost like the pain of losing his family was finally settling in after weeks of focusing on survival. When Gene finished, Adam paused—letting the solitary tear that formed in his eye drop to the dusty concrete below. He then slowly walked back to the stairs and began mounting the steps, his heavy boots thumping on thick wood one by one as though he were a dead man mounting the gallows.

He passed through the open pantry, tossing his pistol on the kitchen counter absentmindedly, and entered the living room before plumping himself down onto the red velvet couch. A cloud of dust sprung up around him, growing like his own personal storm, there to surround him and slowly suffocate him. He stared absentmindedly past William, his gaze lingering on the dark beyond the large front window. He could hear the others on the stairs behind him. William looked away from the window hesitantly, observing Adam with eyes nearly as empty as his. Marc stopped a few feet to Adam’s right in the living room, pausing for a moment before clearing his throat.

“We can’t rest now,” Marc said quietly. “We’ll need to—”

A hole the size of a quarter broke through the window, followed by a quick shout to Adam’s right. Marc grabbed his neck as he fell to the ground, blood spraying across the luminescent moonbeams and onto the rug underfoot. Adam instinctively threw himself to the ground as he heard William, Edward, Lev, and Gene begin to yell. Adam reached for his pistol only to quickly remember tossing it onto the counter a few moments ago in his brief flash of apathy.

As Adam started to shout, the crackling thunder of rapid gunfire filled the room.

William raised his large rifle overhead from a prone position and began firing blindly out the window. Adam crawled over to Marc, fighting back the urge to vomit as warm blood misted his face. The bullet had struck Marc’s neck just below his left jaw, cutting an inch deep gash. Adam pressed hard against Marc’s neck and raised his head, shouting for Gene’s help. Gene and Lev were crouching behind the kitchen corner, firing through the rear entrance toward the backyard. Edward threw himself back into the basement, shouting as he descended into the darkness below. Adam realized, as he peered toward to the shattering glass door at the back of the house, that tracers were not only piercing the front window, but were also flying into the home from the rear.

They were surrounded.

“William!” Gene cried out from the kitchen. “I need a mag!”

“I’m out!” William yelled back. “Adam, silver pouch in Marc’s pant leg. Press it to the wound, pull the blue cord, and—”

More gunfire filled the room, striking William in the shoulder and hand, cutting him off mid-sentence. Marc continued to hiss from underneath Adam, fighting his own battle to hold in his precious lifeblood.

As thunder, pain, and chaos filled the room, an overpowering madness slowly engulfed Adam. He covered his ears, rolled to his back, and began to scream. For weeks, he had wanted nothing more than to survive at all costs, get to safety, and find peace. But now, as unknown men surrounded them and fired round after round, he realized the truth.

Gene had been right. Peace was but a fairytale, as accessible as the moon outside. He had lost everything and everyone. He had no food, no energy, and no hope. As his hatred climaxed into a moment of awe and recognition, the world grew strangely calm. He no longer fought the chaos; he embraced it.

Adam Reinhart was ready to die.

He quickly removed his vest while lying on his back, unsheathing the knife at its front before tossing the Kevlar to the side. He grabbed the front of his thick cotton sweatshirt and began cutting it down the middle. When he was through, he ripped it off—wincing impulsively as a new volley of fire sprayed glass onto him from across the room. A loud crash boomed from the kitchen, followed by Gene’s panic-stricken shouts. Gene had risked a pause in the fire to overturn the refrigerator, diving behind it for cover as he shouted for Adam to toss him Marc’s rifle. Adam ignored him as he gritted his teeth, muttered a prayer under his breath, and stood up.

A bullet whizzed through the air as he stood, the wind that followed ruffling his hair. He walked to the front door, grabbing the handle as William cried out next to him, wrapping his hand with a makeshift bandage and shouting for Adam to get down. Adam ignored the man as he clenched his teeth and opened the door, striding out into the black night.

He walked forward, panting tiny clouds on the cold winter air as he awaited the hereafter. He hoped Heaven was real. He hoped that the coming moment of terrible pain would be followed by a glorious eternity of peace. He had been shot before, but he had been fighting for his life last time. To him, the difference now was as far apart as Heaven and earth. This time, it wasn’t a struggle to live.

Adam
wanted
to die.

He hated the world. He hated what it had become. It had taken his family and replaced them with endless days of hunger and stress. It had taken his country and exchanged it for a blood-thirsty tyrant. He knew, just like the dream had shown him weeks earlier, that if he were to survive this madness, he would be forced to submit to his inner demons.

Adam stopped in the open field across the street from the home, the moon barely illuminating the meadow around him. He looked around him, surveying the place that would serve him as his grave. Frost crunched under his boots, the grass bending with a cold and audible snap. Black mountains rose against a charcoal sky full of bright stars. It was strange, thinking he’d never see daylight again. He glanced across the field and beyond to another street. A row of homes dotted the other side of the road a couple hundred feet in front of him—homes that likely concealed the men who would end his life. Adam took a deep breath and began to shout.

“What are you waiting for?” Adam bellowed at the darkness, stretching his bare arms out to his sides to show whoever had been firing that he had nothing but the knife.

Silence reigned.

“I have nothing!” Adam roared, holding the knife out in front of him and pointing at the homes. “No food, no ammo—nothing! Do you want the meat of my bones? Then come and take it like a man!”

The stillness continued and the night felt as though it was pressing in from all sides, stretching for an eternity. He could hear shouts in the house behind him. Maybe it was eternity. Maybe his death had come and this was some strange way of easing into the next. He took another deep breath of the crisp air and cried out.

“What are you waiting for?” Adam shouted again. Suddenly, it dawned on him that gunfire had ceased the moment he entered the field.

“Keep your hands up where we can see them,” a voice said over a loud speaker.

Adam’s eyes narrowed, trying to pinpoint the origin of the voice. A few moments passed before a row of six uniformed men—their clothing as dark as the night—walked up to him. The man at the front stopped ten feet in front of Adam, brandishing a white smile that cut into Adam like daggers.

“You’re one stupid asshole, that’s for sure,” the man said after a slight pause. He tapped his earpiece and began speaking. “This is Livingston. Ripley, Jefferson—stay on over watch. All other units stand down. Bring the five inside out here to me. This is as good a place as any to do what needs to be done.”

“So you’re an executioner?” Adam asked angrily.

“Not unless you give me a reason to put your head on a block,” the man replied. “How many more men are with you?”

“Five of us,” Adam said. “One of them you shot. The other four are in the house and I can assure you they won’t come quietly.”

“Is that so?” the man replied with a grin. “Well, drop the knife now or all
five
of your friends are going to die slowly before we’re done with you.”

Adam hesitated before tossing the knife to the ground. The man withdrew a yellow zip tie and approached Adam.

“Now slowly hold your hands out in front of you.”

Adam complied, though he was surprised he did so quickly. He realized he had nearly lost any will to fight, even now when death wasn’t a certainty. The man walked up to him, latching the plastic tightly around his wrists. The man then stepped back, smiled, and proceeded to punch Adam as hard as he could in the face.

Stars as bright as the stars above danced across Adam’s vision as he plummeted to the ground. The freezing grass on his bare torso nearly shocked his system as much as the man’s strike had. Adam began to rise when a steel-toed boot struck him in the side. He doubled over, the wind within leaving his lungs as vacant as his empty stomach. He had hoped the combination of hunger and exhaustion would have numbed the pain somewhat, but it only seemed to amplify it. He rolled over to his side, gasping for air as he lay on the cold ground. He was about to open his eyes when the same boot that had nearly cracked ribs planted on his face, pressing his skull into the cold ground.

Adam tried to scream, but his lungs were still empty. He grabbed the man’s ankle and attempted to push it away, but the man just twisted his foot with a laugh, stretching the bearded skin on Adam’s face painfully underfoot. As fire raced across his jaw, Adam finally managed to scream in the form of a child-like whimper.

The man laughed again before removing his foot and kneeling down next to Adam, his words quiet and dangerous, like the rustle of a serpent.