The Saffron Malformation (49 page)

             
Dusty was heading toward the lake where there was a dip before the water’s edge.  He meant to stay low and follow it around to the other side.  Rachel hesitated until he looked back at her from the moist dirt surrounding the water.  Finally she took a long slow breath, tried to calm her heart racing so hard in her chest she could feel it, and ran after him.

             
When she was at the lake’s edge she slumped down and breathed heavily.  “I can’t,” she said.

             
Dusty settled in beside her.  Gunshots cracked in the distance.  Once Men barked.  Actual men, ones who would kill her if they knew she was out here, shouted to one another.

             
“Just let me go back,” she said, trembling.  “I’ll send Quey, he’s better at this.”

             
“Hey,” he snapped at her as briskly as he could without raising his voice.  When she stopped and looked at him, tears flooding her eyes, her mouth agape and gasping, he touched her cheek with his hand.  “I don’t want Quey here with me.”  He took her hand and if her finger had been on the trigger this time she would have fired.  “Look at me.”  She did.  “You and me, remember.  Whatever happens.”

             
She nodded but he didn’t believe she believed that nod.

             
“Your idea,” he told her.  “The two of us coming out here.”  She started to shake her head and he went on.  “It was a good idea.”  She looked at him.  “I mean, when’s the last time we had a night out, just the two of us?”

             
She started to laugh but kept it quiet.  He smiled and kissed her.

             
“We’ve got this,” he told her.

             
Footsteps hurried across the dirt on the ledge above them.  Rachel and Dusty pressed tight against the side of the drop and waited until they faded into the distance.

             
“See,” he said.  “They’re not even lookin for us.  Cake and pie.”

             
She nodded.  “Cake and pie.  But next time you take me out for steak,” she told him and he smiled and kissed her again.

             
“You bet.”

             
After a long breath she told him she was ready, though her heart was still racing and she wasn’t sure if she really was or not.  When he started to move she made herself believe it enough to follow.  Once her feet were moving every step grew easier and before she knew it she had to pace herself so as not to pass him.  Her head was spinning and for a moment she thought she must be dreaming because this couldn’t be real.

             
Dusty made his way along the drop before the shore, keeping low to the ground and tight against the ledge wall.  Rachel followed and as they crossed meters of shoreline she slowly began to believe she might be able to do this after all.

             
They were almost to the other side of the lake when automatic gunfire broke out behind them.  Dusty and Rachel turned and saw that the Brood’s rig had arrived and there was a man kneeling on the trailer, the gun in his hand spewed a brilliant muzzle flash with each rapid burst.

             
“We need to be quick now,” Dusty told her and they moved on with a bit more urgency.

             
Once Men didn’t like a fair fight, let alone one where they were the underdog.  This sudden shifting of advantage would bring about an aggressive but brief onslaught.  Once aware they were on the loosing end they would abandon the Brood and rush back to where they’d come from.

             
“Look,” Rachel said, almost laughing with excitement.

             
Dusty looked at her then to where she was pointing and couldn’t help but smile.  Quey had been right, there was an access bridge but it wasn’t at the bottom of the lake, it was running strait across and it was only a hundred or so meters away.

             
They ran, almost recklessly toward the bridge.  It was a hydraulic bridge designed to drop to the bottom of the lake when it wasn’t in use but this particular design was made to surface if the power or hydraulics were cut.  It needed energy to keep it down, insuring that people on the island would never be trapped there because of a malfunction.

             
Rachel and Dusty hurried across the bridge and crouched against the side of the tower for a brief rest.  They both knew the bridge was the most dangerous time for them because there was nowhere to hide.  On land they could keep low, find crevices or buildings to stay close to but on the bridge they stood out.

             
They watched the other side of the lake for a split, where the Brood was finishing up their successful defense against the savages attacking them, and Dusty was satisfied they hadn’t been noticed.  He turned to find Rachel and saw she was at a metal door trying to pull down on a lever like handle.

             
“Stuck,” she whispered.

             
Dusty joined her and together they managed to move it slightly and with a loud metallic squeal.

             
“Shit,” he whispered and looked around.  The gunfire was beginning to die down.  “Come on,” he said.  “We have to hurry.”

             
They gripped the handle and began to pull again.  Rachel was almost hanging from it as Dusty leaned back gripping it like a baseball bat and pulled until his face was red.  It squealed through another few centimeters of movement then broke free and slammed into the down position with a clank.  Another cautious moment of looking about assured him no one had noticed the sound, and so they began to pull the door open.  Every bit it moved was protested by old metal rusted in place and the few seconds it took for them to pull it wide enough to enter seemed like an eternity.

             
Eager to be out of sight the two of them squeezed in through the partially open door and entered the blackness inside.

             
Dusty pulled his sheet computer from his pocket and selected the bright screen app.  It wasn’t much light but it was enough.

             
“What are we going to do if there’s no power to this place?”

             
“Then we’ll just take the hard drives,” Rachel said and started deeper into the building.

             
The corridor they’d entered wasn’t long, twenty feet maybe, and then there was another door, though she was glad to see this one wasn’t metal.  It was wood and it opened easily enough and with a subtle squeak as opposed to a violent squeal.  Through it was the main room of the building.  She took the folded sheet computer from Dusty and scanned the room.  It was a control room, the walls lined with computer banks and a center console in the middle, just ahead of the door they’d come through.

             
“This is it,” she told him.  She looked back and said, “Cake and Pie.”  As he stood in the doorway smiling back at her she noticed the glimmering reflection of eyes in the darkness behind him.  Next the shimmer of metal emerged from the darkness and her smile melted into terror.

             
Quey and Reggie were crouched on opposite sides of the window facing the main road, each peeking out at the battle between the Once Men and the Brood.  Behind them Rain was sitting on the floor with Leone next to her, her arms wrapped around him.  Arnie was beside her.  She smiled at him and he offered her one of his hands, as much for his benefit as hers.  She knew this so she took it and slid against him.

             
“Coming to an end,” Reggie pointed out.

             
“I believe so,” Quey agreed.

             
The bursts of rapid gunfire came less and less.  The individual pops cracked from time to time but the Once Men weren’t interested in the fight anymore.

             
The next set of shots that rang out sounded different and it took Quey a moment to realize they hadn’t come from the main road but from somewhere else.  They had come from the other side of the lake.

             
He looked to Reggie with wild eyes and the look the big man gave him confirmed what he had suspected.

             
“Never a break,” he muttered slightly under his breath then said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Get packed.”  Reggie moved with purpose, checking the bags of guns and ammunition they’d carried in from the vehicles.

             
“What’s going on?” Rain asked, a tremble in her voice.

             
“We’re humped,” he told her.

             
“How do you know?” Arnie asked as more gunshots rang out from the wrong direction.

             
“Because,” Reggie told him, “Those shots aren’t coming from the road.”

             
“Maybe we’ll still be okay,” Rain said.  “Maybe-”

             
“Maybe the Brood won’t hear them,” Quey interrupted.  “Chances are good you’re right, for now, but soon enough the Brood’ll be done and the only ruckus around’ll be whatever Dusty and Rachel got into.  Then it’s only a matter of time before they notice that and scour this place looking for us.”

             
Rain took a long breath and kissed Leone on the forehead.  “So what now then?” she asked.  Quey had to silently admit he was beginning to wonder that himself.

             
The Once Man was lying on the floor twitching ten feet from where Dusty stood with his rifle aimed into the dark hallway.

             
“Make it quick baby,” he said and Rachel shifted into another mode.  She put her fear aside for the moment and focused on the task at hand, getting the information out of the tower’s computers.  She moved to the main bank at the center of the room and looked for a power up switch.

             
Dusty fired again, the report was a cannon shot in the confines of the computer room.  Another Once Man collapsed to the floor and he could see more moving around in the moonlight at the end of the hall.  He saw hands grip the door and heard the hinges cry out as the savages struggled to move it.

             
Rachel hit the power button twice and got what she suspected, nothing.  With a deep sigh to calm her nerves she looked around the room and on the far wall she saw what she needed, an emergency power switch.  She ran to it and flipped the switch to the up position.  All around the room weak yellow lights began to glow and lights blinked on the computer terminals.  She hurried back to the bank in the center of the room and pressed the power up button again, this time the computer beeped and holoscreens flickered as it began the boot process.

             
“Good work baby,” Dusty said, then pulled the trigger as a Once Man poked his head in from the outside, splattering his skull into a thick mess that slowly dripped down the door.  “How much longer?”

             
“Just a few minutes,” she replied as she watched the system come online.  The first thing she did was disable the network’s security system.  Then she accessed the network with the sheet computer and set to copying the contents of the hard drive onto it.  Progress bars appeared on both the sheet and tower computers screens.  Rachel watched its slow and steady progress with nervous energy.  The bar was moving at a good speed, considering the amount of data being copied, but to her it seemed to stand still.

             
Dusty fired again.

              “Arnie’s going to have to come with me,” Reggie said, standing next to one of the downstairs windows looking out at the night.  “Quey you can cover us from here if it comes to that, got a good vantage point, but we need him behind the wheel and once we start rolling a vehicle around we’re not gunna have time to switch.”

             
Arnie nodded, “I’m with you.”

             
Reggie gave him a little smile and a wink.  Then he turned to Rain and the boy.  “Be ready, we get to that door you need to be in the back of the truck pronto.”  She nodded.  Reggie liked the look in her eyes as she did so.  She was afraid, sure, they all were, but she knew what to do with that fear.  Some people let it get to them, take them to a bad place of panic and despair and all that ends in people getting killed.  But this girl was a survivor, she used the fear to fuel her determination and the place that took her was a good one.  It was where you might just make it out alive.

             
“You ready?” the big man asked Arnie.

             
“Let’s do it.”

             
Quey knelt near the window and peered out at the road leading past the front of the house while Reggie and Arnie hurried out the back and snuck around to the boat hanger where the truck was parked.  Arnie kept watch as Reggie pulled open the big door and tapped his shoulder.  Next he hurried to the driver’s side while the big man opened the cargo door and climbed in.