Badlands Trilogy (Book 3): Out of the Badlands (8 page)

“We don’t need any.”

“I think maybe we do.”

“Speak for yourself,” Chloe said, glaring. She could feel the anger building inside her as he continually refuted her arguments.

Sam took a deep breath. “Look. I just lost my mom and I’m not even thirteen yet.”

“Don’t talk to me about losing a parent,” Chloe said. “Like you’re the only one in the world who has.”

Sam’s mouth turned into a frown. Now
he
was upset…and mad. Chloe could see any chance of convincing him to leave dwindling right before her eyes and yet she couldn’t stop herself from lashing out. She loved him and hated him at the same time.

“What are we going to do when we need an adult around?” Sam said, his eyes hard and cold. “Lester is a good guy and you haven’t proved he’s not. Some kind of weird feeling isn’t enough to leave everything behind and run away.”

Chloe felt hot tears of frustration begin to well up. There was no way she would let him see her cry. Obviously he was bound and determined to stick with Lester, regardless of anything she had to say and leaving without Sam was out of the question. Even as stupid and bull-headed as he could be.
 

“What if he tries something?” Chloe said.

“We got the guns, remember?”

“What if it happens when we’re asleep?”

“We’ll sleep in shifts. One of us will be awake with him, just to make sure.” He looked at her earnestly. This was Sam’s attempt at a compromise and Chloe knew that she wouldn’t get any better deal than that. She gritted her teeth, took a deep breath and admitted defeat. “Whatever then,” she said.

Sam’s face lit up. “Good! Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

Chloe frowned. “Go on. I have to pee.”

“I though you wanted me to stay with you.”

“That was just an excuse to talk in private, you dummy.”

“Oh,” Sam replied sheepishly.

Chloe shook her head. Sometimes Sam really was just a kid. “Go on. I’ll be right there.”

She watched him walk away, back to the road and to Lester, her stomach a roiling pit. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. For a split-second she considered just walking away, deep into the forest. Let Sam have creepy old Lester. They could be best friends. And if something bad happened then that was Sam’s own fault.

That was the kid in her talking. She knew it and she shut that voice up. She had no time to be childish, especially now. Now they needed to be the adults they didn’t have, despite what Sam said about having Lester around. They had to be their own guardians, make their own decisions.

As she stood in a nondescript patch of woods along a crumbling road, Chloe wondered to her herself if the boy she liked so much would end up being the death of her. Frustrated, she headed back toward the road, hoping like hell she was wrong about Lester.

It happened so fast that Ed could barely register it. Only moments after descending the steps, the door at the top slammed shut behind them. Startled, Ed turned around. Behind him stood two men in robes, their beards wiry and unkempt, their eyes dark and cold.

In their hands they held pistols.

A man yelled from somewhere within the basement kitchen. A woman screamed. Ed reached for his pistol, but received a fist to the face for his efforts. The blow caught him by surprise and he went down hard, slamming his chin off the concrete floor, but maintaining his grip on the gun. Stars swirled along with patchy black spots, clouding his vision. Somewhere in the distance he heard Jeremy cry out; a moment later his son’s voice went silent.

More yelling echoed throughout the basement now. A gunshot rang out, followed by two more in quick succession. Men yelled. Someone cursed. Movement flashed near Ed as he struggled to get to his feet. He made it to his hands and knees before lifting his pistol, searching for anyone in a robe as a target. Another flash of movement and the gun flew from his hand, smacking the floor and sliding away. Strong hands gripped him from behind, wrenching his arms backward until he thought his shoulder joints might pop out of place.

“Dad!” Zach called out amidst the confusion. Ed watched helplessly as more men in robes wrestled his son to the floor, piling on top of him, pinning his arms behind his back.

Fueled with rage, Ed lunged forward, calling out his son’s name. He broke free for only a moment before another blow struck him across the temple, causing the room to spin. He spun along with it and went down hard, his head slamming against the unyielding concrete floor.

Then Ed Brady knew nothing but darkness.

* * *

Ed opened his eyes. The world drifted in and out of focus as the smell of sweat and human excrement wafted through on a warm breeze. He blinked hard, forcing the world into focus. Above him a crosshatched ceiling of old wood held together by rusty nails looked down oppressively upon him. He felt nausea flood in and for a moment he thought he might vomit.

When the feeling dissipated he sat up slowly, feeling the hardness of the wooden floor beneath him in every muscle of his back. As his eyes adjusted to the light he struggled to remember where he was and what had happened. Quickly it came back to him; the truck and the church, the men in the robes. The basement. They’d been attacked and then…he remembered nothing.

He looked around for his family. He was in a cell, with a section of chainlink fence now serving a new purpose as prison bars. He scanned the room more quickly now, his head pounding from the sudden movement. A handful of people sat nearby, none of them speaking.

“What the hell happened?” he said, not realizing he’d spoken out loud.

“Ed!” Trish cried out, rising up from the group sitting on the floor. “You’re awake!”

“What happened?” Ed asked again. “Where are the boys?”

“They attacked us in the basement,” Trish replied. “Then they locked us up in here.”

“Where are the boys?” Ed repeated.

Trish pointed behind him. “In the other cell,” she said.

Ed followed her finger to find only a wooden wall. He returned a confused look.

“On the other side of the wall,” she said.

“Are they…?”

“They’re okay.”

“Zach! Jeremy!” Ed called out.

“We’re here, Dad,” Zach replied.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy answered.

Ed stood, stumbling as he did. Trish steadied him until he regained his balance. “You took a bad bump on the head. You should take it easy.”

Ed barely heard her. “How did I let this happen?” he said. Fear gripped him tightly as the reality of their situation began to set in. “We never should have stopped. Not for anybody.”

Jasper appeared beside Trish. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

Ed shook his head. “No, it was. We should have run, but I hesitated. I knew this was wrong, all of it.” He brought his hands to his face. “Why did we ever stop here?”

“If you’re looking for somebody to blame, how about starting with that bitch in the other cell,” Terry Wilkinson said, his baritone voice resonating off the walls. He pointed to the wall dividing them from other cell. “You can thank Alice for all this.”

Ed felt his chest constrict as his breathing quickened. This was it. The end. They’d run out of luck. Who knew what Enoch and his band of true believers had planned for them? His mind ran through dozens of scenarios, each one worse than the one before it.

“I have to think,” he mumbled to himself, “figure a way out of this.” The walls seemed to close in on him as he paced back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “This is bad. Really bad.”

John and Alice. They’d stopped when they shouldn’t have. They didn’t follow the plan. They were supposed to, but they didn’t.

“They didn’t follow the plan,” Ed said out loud, hardly aware of himself. He turned toward the group. They stared back at him, their faces weary and beaten.

“They didn’t follow the plan,” Ed repeated like a mantra. His voice rose as he turned toward the other cell. “You didn’t follow the plan!” he yelled. “Why didn’t you follow the fucking plan?”

No response came from the adjoining cell.

“You might wanna pipe down,” a voice said from behind him.

Ed whirled around, chest rising and falling. Eyes wild, he fixed the owner of the voice in a piercing stare. A man in his late-thirties with brown, unkempt hair and a beard reaching down to his chest put up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, man, just slow down.”

“They take the troublemakers,” a woman said. Dirty streaks smeared her face. Ed could smell her as she approached. “The loud ones are considered trouble.”

“What do you mean ‘take’? Take them where?” Trish asked.

“They take them and they don’t come back,” the woman said. “You don’t want to know what they do with them.”

“They ain’t taking me,” Terry said. “Not without a goddamn fight.”

“They have guns,” the bearded man said. “It’s no use.”

Terry puffed up his chest. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather take a bullet than wait for these creeps to do to me whatever it is they got planned.”

“I don’t care anymore,” the woman replied. She walked away, taking a seat against the back wall of the cell, her gaze locked on the floor.

“Tina lost her daughter,” the bearded man said. “They took her right after they locked us up.”

“Who’s Tina?” Trish asked.

The bearded man pointed toward the woman sitting against the wall.

“Jimmy, don’t talk about it,” Tina said, her eyes still on the floor. “I can’t do it all over again.”

Jimmy leaned in closer, lowering his voice. “They take the kids first,” he said. “Tina saw what happened, but we don’t know what they do with them. She won’t tell us.”

The sound of keys jangling on a ring broke the taut silence. A door opened at the far end of the room and three men stepped through. Once inside the room, the two men in front parted to allow the third through.

Ed swallowed hard. He recognized the man immediately.

Enoch.

After another couple of miles of Lester talking and Sam listening with rapt attention, Lester stopped and pointed ahead, Sam’s broomstick handle stretched across his shoulders. “We’re going to want to avoid this stretch of road,” he said. “Bad patch.”

“What do you mean?” Chloe asked, balancing her own pillowcase and broomstick contraption.

“Road gangs and the like. What they used to call highwaymen. They’ve claimed the next couple of miles as their own. You don’t want to get caught by these guys.” Lester looked toward Chloe and then back to Sam. “Especially a young girl like you.”

“What’s that mean?” Sam asked.

“These men are anything but gentlemen,” Lester replied. “I surely don’t need to tell you what they’re capable of, even as young as you are.”

Sam stopped and considered for a moment, his eyes registering the moment he understood. “Oh, yeah,” he replied, glancing toward Chloe. “Do you know a way around then?”

“This is your lucky day,” Lester replied, “because I do.” 

“How?” Chloe asked. 

“I’ve been living along this roadway for the last year or so.  A scavenger needs a large territory if they want to survive. Only so much food left and it’s not concentrated in one place anymore. I made the mistake of running into these men during one of my runs. I barely made it out alive.” He raised an eyebrow. “But if the two of you are determined to go through, then by all means, don’t let me dissuade you. You’ll just have to do it alone. Coming that close to death is something I never want to do again.”

“We might be young but we’re not stupid,” Sam said, standing up to his full height. “We’ll go with you and your shortcut. Right, Chloe?”

Chloe sighed. “Right.”

Lester smiled wide. “Wise choice. Now follow me.” Lester stepped off the highway and into the weedy field.

Chloe watched as Sam followed. Around them, birds perched on defunct power lines. A butterfly fluttered randomly while crickets chirped a symphony around them. It struck her how beautiful the scene might have been, under different circumstances.

A dozen steps out, Sam turned slowly, balancing their supplies on the horizontal broomstick. “You coming?”

Chloe frowned.

“What?” he said, shrugging.

“Never mind. Let’s just go.”

Chloe balanced the broomstick on her shoulders and followed them into the field, unable to shake an undefinable sense of trepidation.

* * *

The trio trekked through the waist-high weeds, away from the road. Eventually a sad and dilapidated farmhouse appeared, its shingles cracking and its external paint peeling. Lester had never seen the house before—hadn’t even been in the area—but it looked like it might be secluded enough to have survived the worst of the post-virus scavenging. Sometimes these places had still-functioning hand pump wells nearby; a drink of cold water sounded damn near perfect.

Lester smiled as he walked, smitten with himself. His bluff—allowing the teenagers the choice to go off on their own—had paid off. That he was a murderer Lester never denied, but a cheat he was not. He worked his targets like a hunter stalking prey, outsmarting and outwitting them. If the two had chosen to take the stretch of highway and make off on their own, he would have let them go. That would, after all, be fair. He’d lied about the road gangs, of course, but lying was not cheating, merely manipulation. Part of the game. And who knew…maybe highwaymen did lurk along that roadway, waiting for the next unsuspecting victim.

Ultimately, the choice had to be Chloe’s. She had to fall for the ruse and choose her own fate. Anything less than that would be unscrupulous. Thankfully she’d already made that choice. She belonged to him now, but he wouldn’t rush it. Time remained to savor the experience of the hunt, to gradually build to the utter bliss of total and complete domination of his quarry.

Plenty of time, indeed.

Certain he’d now firmly established himself as the adult of the group, Lester would begin the process of asserting his control. Little by little he’d assume more and more of the decision-making, so deftly that they wouldn’t even notice it. For now, however, he simply made suggestions.