Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (3 page)

“That could be, Sir,” Blakely said, choosing his words carefully, trying to keep his voice calm. “But could you listen to my solution first, sir?”

“I don’t need your fucking help,” Sadie said from behind Blakely. She was revelling in the rage that had come roaring up into her chest. It wasn’t often she gave into such powerful, out-of-control emotional states, but when she did, she had to admit the feeling could be sublime.

“You shut up,” Titman yelled. “Before I cut your goddamned tongue out.”

Blakely took a breath and glanced at the girl, trying to get her attention, to send the silent message: “Calm down. I’m on your side.”

But the girl wouldn’t look at him. She’d gone into a basic fighting stance, her left leg forward, her right leg back as if she were about to launch a kick at someone.

“Okay Sergeant,” Titman asked, lowering his pistol and stepping back. He crossed his arms and let the pistol hang loosely over the back of this elbow. “Before I shoot the both of you for insubordination, what’s your solution?”

Chapter 3

“Use the monitor, but send me with her,” Blakely said.

“No way!” Sadie said. “I’m not going anywhere with him.”

Blakely ignored her.

“The monitor won’t be a hundred percent, sir. She could escape into a storm. Let me do the job but stay close enough to come if I need you.”

Titman nodded.

“Sound tactics, Sergeant,” Titman said. “It’s what I was planning all along.”

“Of course, sir,” Blakely said.

“I won’t do it,” Sadie said.

Titman smiled.

“Oh, you’ll do it,” he said. “Unless you want me to destroy that little trailer park you came riding out of last night. One RPG and it’s over.”

Sadie ground her teeth. Logically, she knew that if Titman were to destroy the little community it would be his actions, not hers. But she couldn’t get herself to believe she wouldn’t feel guilty about it.

“Fine,” she said, and let her shoulders drop, hoping she’d put the right amount of resignation into her gesture. In reality, she was glad to get Blakely alone. She’d have a better chance of making him pay for what he’d done.

“Actually, it’s outstanding” Titman said. “Now pull those shorts off.”

Instantly Sadie was back on guard, ready to fight.

“Fuck you,” she said.

Titman laughed and looked at Getter.

“Someone get her some iodine and bandage her up,” Titman said as he headed for the door. “Can’t let our little hero get an infection. And check that monitor.”

“I’ll do it,” Mallick said, giggling and clapping his hands together.

“You’ll get the hell out of here,” Blakely said.

“Mallick,” Titman said as he walked out of the room. “Come on.”

Twenty minutes later Sadie was in her boots and parka, the ankle monitor secured around her leg. Her backpack was zipped and ready to go—minus her spare clothes, her pistol, rifle, combat knife, and the loose ammo she’d had in the bottom of the bag. She’d inventoried her possessions and discovered they’d let her keep her chemicals and her respirator. Blakely told her that when they’d recovered the Geiger counter and the hidden information inside it, she’d get her weapons back—along with twelve MREs.

“Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, Sergeant Shitstain,” she sneered at Blakely. “Those psychos will kill us both when they get what they want.”

“I can promise you they’re not going to kill you,” Blakely said, buttoning up the denim shirt he’d taken from someone’s closet upstairs. “Someone else might, but those three...nope.”

He was wearing thick canvas cargo pants with deep pockets over thermal underwear, along with a pair of Adidas running shoes. A heavy black windbreaker hung to the middle of his thighs. The last touch was the black knit ski cap he pulled down over his ears. This wasn’t exactly the best tactical gear, but it would look like what he wanted it to look like—a civilian playing at being tactical.

“Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter,” he said. “My men and I will keep you safe, and when you get us the Geiger counter I’ll turn you loose myself.”

“Give me my guns,” Sadie said.

Blakely only stared at her.

Sadie scowled.

“You want it to look like I’m travelling with you by choice you have to give me guns. The people in the square saw me ride out with my rifle.”

Blakely thought for a few seconds, then nodded.

“All right,” he said. He unloaded her pistol and handed it to her. He did the same to her rifle, which was leaning against the wall.

“Asshole,” she said, and Blakely smiled.

Sadie suppressed her desire to kill him. It was time to turn cagey. To play along with these military meatheads and rapists. She stood impassively while Blakely pulled Duck aside and whispered to him. When Blakely asked if she was ready a few minutes later, she said “Let’s get this over with,” and walked out through the living room, where Titman sat smoking on the couch. Without a backward glance she stepped out into the dusty gray outdoors.

Blakely followed her, turning to give the general a half-hearted salute as he stepped  through the door. He watched Sadie trudge slowly forward, limping slightly on her left foot, and heard her sharp intakes of breath when she stepped wrong.

He pushed his guilty thoughts away and tried to focus on keeping the girl safe.

Sadie maintained silence during the twenty minute walk to the town square. She half-hoped the snipers watching their approach would put a slug through Blakely’s head. But no one fired.

Blakely, seemingly oblivious to the danger he was in, walked along beside her in silence, scanning the streets around them.

When they reached the place where the biker had crashed into the back of a car, Sadie slowed. The man’s body was still there, crushed between the bumper of the car he’d crashed into and the heavy motorcycle that had squashed him like an insect. Flies covered what was left of his face, and maggots were already deconstructing his body.

“I thought the insects would’ve died off by now,” Blakely said.

“Insects will inherit the earth,” she said. “Except for this human cockroach.”

When they were thirty yards from the car maze someone shouted “Hands up!”

Sadie stopped and put her hands up.

Blakely did the same.

“Hello!” she shouted,”It’s Sadie Halloman. I was here last night.”

Seconds later the chief of police strode forward through the car maze. She threw out her arms and hugged Sadie.

“Glad to see you,” May said. “We thought you were dead.”

“I nearly was,” Sadie said.

“We went after you, but when we found your bike and all those dead bikers, we couldn’t risk looking any further.”

“It’s okay,” Sadie said, swallowing down her desire to point at Blakely and say, “you should kill him.”

“You kill all those bikers?” May asked, and turned to Blakely.

“Some of them, Ma’am,” he said.

May smiled and held out her hand. Blakely took it.

“We thank you,” May said. “They’ve been nothing but a plague. Now we can put an end to ‘em.”

“Glad I could be of service, Ma’am,” Blakely said, and Sadie wanted to scream. She had to fight to keep a look of disgust from crossing her face. If May figured out what was happening, she and the whole community would be in danger.

“Is Callie here?” Sadie asked.

“Afraid not, honey,” May said. “She left early. Said she was going while the bikers were too fucked to function. Her words.”

Sadie smiled.

“You’re welcome to stay,” May said. “We could use you. Him too if he knows how to work hard and follow rules.”

Sadie shook her head.

“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ve got to find Callie.”

May stared at Sadie.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked. “Why you all fired up to find Callie?”

“Did she take the Geiger counter I gave her?” Sadie asked.

    “I guess so,” May said. “We haven’t found one.”

    “Good,” Sadie said. “I just wanted to make sure she took it. Mr. Blakely here says there’s some radiation where she’s heading. I’m worried about her.”

    “That right, Mr. Blakely?” May asked. Her hand had moved to the butt of her pistol, and now she was staring at the sergeant.

    “It is,” Blakely said. “You’ve got to be careful these days. Carelessness is a real killer.”

    “Amen to that,” May said, and Sadie shuddered. She realized she needed to get away from the square. As long as she was tangled up with Blakely and Titman, anyone she knew was in danger.

    “I guess this is goodbye, then” Sadie said. “Thanks for your hospitality last night.”

    “You’re welcome,” May said. “You ever get the urgent feeling you just ought to come back here, you do it.”

    “All right,” Sadie said, and led Blakely away from the town square.

Chapter 4

“We should find bicycles,” Sadie said from beneath her respirator. “Or motorcycles.”

“No,” Blakely said. They were two miles east of Shanksborough, traveling back the way Sadie had come less than forty-eight hours earlier. Behind them, the little town was disappearing below the crest of a hill. All Sadie could see when she looked back was the curve of the hill and the wall of black clouds shot through with white veins of lightning.

    “Why not?” Sadie asked. She stopped and stared at Blakely through her face shield. “You afraid to ride?”

    Blakely lifted his own respirator.

    “I can’t track from a bike,” he said. “I don’t want to lose her. And I don’t want the general thinking we’ve run off. We’ll catch up to her by tomorrow morning as long as we keep on after dark.”

    “I won’t be out after dark,” Sadie said, both hands on her hips. She lifted an arm and pointed back at the distant storm. “We need shelter.”

“That’s what abandoned cars are for,” Blakely said. The most important thing is catching this girl.”

He wasn’t worried about finding five star accommodations. The girl’s tracks were clean and easy to follow, and there was no way he was going to stop.

He was willing to walk in bad weather and stumble around at night.

The sooner he got the package, the sooner he could leave the general in his rearview mirror.

Or kill him, if it came to it.

He’d already made the decision. When they retrieved Titman’s package, he wouldn’t take another order from the man.

“The most important thing for me,” Sadie said, “is not breaking my ankles or smashing my face open. The first rule of survival is ‘don’t get injured.’”

“Oh,” Blakely sneered. He shrugged his pack higher onto his shoulders. Twenty minutes of hiking and he was already sick of this chick. “You’re gonna tell me about survival now.”

“If you’re going to act like an asswagon I am.”

After that, they walked in silence. Blakely scanned the girl’s tracks, looking out ahead to where they blended in with the gray dust. The road turned northward. Blakely pulled a map out of his windbreaker and studied it as they walked. Then he laughed.

“You know exactly where she’s headed,” he said.

Sadie shrugged. Blakely might not be just a military meathead after all.

And I might be Mother Theresa.

She needed to be careful, because she needed a plan to get away from Titman. That meant she needed Blakely unsuspicious.

Their boots crunched over the dust as they walked, and the tension built as Sadie let Blakely’s supposition hang between them, unanswered.

“Okay,” Blakely said. “I get it. You don’t trust me, and you sure as hell don’t trust those assholes. But did it ever occur to you that I don’t trust them either? Or like them?”

“Yeah,” Sadie said, “but you’re following their orders. And I didn’t see you protesting when…”

Sadie cut herself off. She’d felt an insistent, swelling balloon beginning to expand inside her chest—a mass of grief and shame that couldn’t be punctured or stopped.

Don’t cry! Not in front of him!

She thought about Mallick, and Getter, and what she was going to do to them if she got the chance—saw the multitool in her hand, the razor sharp knife blade extended, slicing through the goose-pimpled flesh of Mallick’s scrotum.

She heard his screams. His threats. His pleading.

She imagined herself merciless. Relentless. Remorseless.

As she relished his screams in her mind, the balloon in her chest deflated, and the tears that had formed at the corners of her eyes dripped harmlessly down her cheeks, hidden by the respirator from Blakely’s unwanted attention.

She noticed how sudden the division between Blakely and the other three had occurred. It had been almost instantaneous—once he’d made the remark about not liking or trusting her torturers. She was still angry at him for tackling her, for terrorizing her with a bag over her head. But her rage was no longer completely directed toward him.