The Escape (8 page)

She was rail thin from the near-starvation rations, and the blue circles under her eyes made it clear she was losing steam.

“Let’s sleep. We can take watch for two hours each,” Barker suggested. “I’ll stand watch first while you girls rest.”

They waited until they found a truck, stalled on the highway. Barker grunted as he opened the back of the huge metal container. It had already been pried open, the contents stolen—most likely confiscated by the army for the FEMA camps. It was bare inside.

“You can sleep in the back here. I’ll lie on my stomach with my rifle pointed out. We’ll keep the back door slightly open so I can see. If I see anyone coming, I’ll close it, or shoot. Depending.”

“Fuck. Would you really kill someone like that?” Clarissa asked, fear in her voice.

“Yes. I would have killed that guard earlier if he hadn’t let us leave.”

Jenna could see that the information didn’t sit well with Clarissa, but they were on their own now. The government, the soldiers—they were not their friends.

“Clarissa—unless you can shoot to kill, I don’t know if you should even bother taking watch when it’s your turn,” Jenna said softly.

“You both need sleep too,” Clarissa said. “I’ll just wake you up if I see anything, okay? So you can sleep.”

“Fine.”

She curled up with Clarissa, her rifle next to her, wrapping her arms around the girl so that they both had something—someone—soft to sleep next to.

It felt like only a moment had passed before it was time for her watch, although it had been two hours. She woke with a start, unsure if Barker was waking her up because he heard something.

“Everything’s fine,” he whispered. “Mind if I get some shut-eye?”

Jenna carefully disentangled herself from Clarissa, who slept on. “Sure.”

Was he going to cuddle up to her friend now, too? That would be so weird.

Even weirder was that tinge of jealousy. She didn’t own Barker. And she certainly had never been the jealous type before.

“I can sleep in the other corner,” Barker said, as if he could read her mind.

Jenna winked at him and grabbed her rifle, ready for her turn to keep watch.

Lying on her belly, with her rifle pointing out of the open bottom of the truck back, she watched the horizon silently. Moonlight glinted off the car windows, but no shadows moved.

Here, in the truck, with Clarissa and Barker behind her, she had no fear of ghosts.

Barker heard footsteps
walking toward him, and he sat up, grabbing his gun.

“It’s just me,” Jenna whispered. “Clarissa’s keeping watch now.”

“I’m so glad I found you,” he murmured, and pulled her down next to him. They lay together, wrapped in each other’s arms in the dark.

God, having her so near to him, all he could think about was their night together, the night they spent pretending everything was going to be okay.

The night before she betrayed him.

Stop, that’s over. She saved your life.

His body reacted to her nearness, to her lush sensuality, even in his sleep-fogged state.

Jenna must have felt his erection pushing against her thigh, because she turned her head to him and kissed his lips tenderly.

“We’ll have to be very quiet,” she whispered in his ear, nibbling on his lobe until he moaned.

“Fuck yes,” he said, and slid on top of her, pulling her pants down around her thighs, position himself between her legs.

She thrust her hips up to meet him, taking his length inside of her, gasping as he entered her fully.

Barker groaned at the sheer pleasure of it, tangling his hands in her hair, moving faster now, using his mouth to tug her shirt low enough so that he latch on to her tight nipple.

“Oww,” Jenna gasped, when he gave her a little love bite.

“Shh,” he smiled, and lightened up.

“I didn’t say st—” She broke off her sentence, looking past him in horror.

“Don’t move, asshole.” It was Clarissa, above him. Holding Jenna’s rifle, the rifle she was borrowing for the watch.

Barker froze.

“I knew it, you fucking rapist, get the fuck off her,” Clarissa said.

Barker rolled off of Jenna, who was shaking her head.

“No,” Jenna said, “no, Clarissa, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, he can’t do that to you.”

“You don’t understand, Clarissa, this is consensual. I wanted to.”

“Consensual? Like how it was always
consensual
on the Tracks?” Clarissa spat. “You don’t have to do this anymore, Jenna! That part of your life, waking up to a soldier having his way with you, that’s over.”

“I woke
him
up to have my way with him, damn it. Clarissa, put the gun down, you don’t even know how to use it, please,” Jenna said. “Lower the gun. Take your finger out of the trigger guard slowly.”

But Clarissa didn’t listen. Her finger was dangerously close to the trigger, where even a light touch could mean the end of Barker’s life.

“Just lower the gun—you can still hold it,” Barker said softly.

“I’m through taking orders from soldiers,” Clarissa said. “I saw what you were doing to her. Is that how you like it? When she’s hurting?”

“That was an accident,” Jenna said. “I’m fine. Stop this.”

“I knew he was like the others, I knew from the moment we escaped Grand Central.” She looked at Barker, her gaze steely. “When you hurt me, when you pulled my hair in your fist, just like you did to Jenna. I saw you. When you invited the other soldier to fuck me too. I knew.”

“Oh my God,” Barker breathed. “It was the only way to get you out, I thought you understood. You agreed to it.”

“I was panicking. I didn’t realize that you weren’t acting at all. That those words would just roll off your tongue like you . . . like you’ve said them before. Like you’ve
done
it before.”

“Never, I swear to God,” Barker said. Realization dawned on him. “When you ran from me, you were running for real, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Clarissa whispered. “And when you caught up with me, I knew I couldn’t run anymore. And since you didn’t try anything, I thought—I hoped—that it really had been all an act.”

“But then you saw me with Jenna, just now,” Barker whispered.

“Yes.”

“I’m okay,” Jenna said again. “I wanted to have sex with him, really I did. I do. I . . . I like him, Clarissa. And if you shoot him, I’ll be really fucking pissed off at you.”

Clarissa finally lowered her gun.

Barker exhaled the breath he’d been holding. “Holy fuck.”

Jenna stood and
gently took the rifle from Clarissa’s hands. “Thank you. And thank you for trying to help me, I appreciate it.”

Clarissa looked at Barker warily. “You don’t understand, Jenna. He could be dangerous. I really thought he was going to rape me back at the camp, when we escaped.”

Jenna looked at Barker. “What the hell did you do, exactly?”

“I got us out safely, the only way I knew how,” he said. “And apparently I scared the shit out of her in the process.” He looked at Clarissa. “I’m very sorry about that. I really am. I guess I assumed you’d know it was all for show.”

“Barker,” Jenna said softly, “Clarissa hasn’t met a single soldier she could trust. Not one man has ever threatened her and not made good on it. Why would you think she’d trust you to be the first?”

Barker shook his head. “Are you going to shoot me? Because I’m sick of almost getting killed. I really am.”

“She’s not going to shoot you, not if she wants to stay with us,” Jenna said resolutely. “Okay, Clarissa? I vouch for him. He’s safe. He won’t hurt you. He let me go, don’t you see? He could have taken me back to Grand Central, but he listened to reason. And then he saved you.”

Clarissa sat down heavily. “I’m sorry, Jenna. Barker. I thought—I thought he was raping you.”

“He wasn’t,” Jenna said. “All the sex I’ve ever had has been consensual. There are a lot of reasons to have sex. Not all of them involve love. I chose to fuck those soldiers on the Tracks. My choice. And I’m . . . I’m sorry you didn’t feel the same.”

Barker winced when she mentioned fucking the other men at the camp. Well, fuck him, because she wasn’t some cowering virgin, afraid of his big bad cock.

“I don’t think I can sleep now,” Barker said. “Maybe we should get back on the road. We’ll hit the marina before noon.”

He looked at Clarissa carefully. “I can’t be part of a team if I think the team might try to kill me. The next time you point a gun at me, you better shoot.”

Grand Central Terminal, the Tracks

ANNIE

After
Clarissa and Barker escaped, Annie spent the night alone for the first time since the Pulse.

It was hard to tell day from night down on the Tracks, since the only light came from burning garbage fires. But the general bustle when it came time for morning rations alerted her that the sun was up, somewhere at least.

She knew she shouldn’t walk on her broken leg, not when it was still healing and she didn’t have a proper cast or crutches. Just a splint, and the pain that sometimes woke her in the night.

No one checked on her. No one brought over her morning ration.

A soldier walked by a couple of hours later and peeked his head into her subway car.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Oh hell.

“Annie, sir. Please forgive me for not standing, my leg is broken.”

“Got one,” he said to someone outside her sight range, to his right. Another soldier came up and they both stepped inside, uninvited.

“You didn’t report for morning rations,” he said.

“My leg is broken, sir. I can’t walk.” Annie’s palms were sweaty. Would they ask how she’d been getting her rations this whole time? Did they know about Clarissa?

“Tell us where Clarissa is.”

They’d realized even quicker than she’d expected. “I don’t know. She was here when I fell asleep,” she lied.

“Let’s get her to Colonel Lanche,” the other man said. “See if she’ll talk to
him
.”

“Please don’t move me, sir, my leg is very unstable,” she begged. “Can he come talk to me here? I don’t know anything.”

But the soldier ignored her and pulled her up off the plastic orange seats, a bolt of pain zapping through her as her leg was jangled.

She screamed, but the soldier just sighed and pushed her forward, as if he could make her walk by willing it so. Instead, she fell.

“I can’t walk on a broken leg, why don’t you get that, you animal?” she yelled, then shut her mouth abruptly. Talking back, yelling in frustration, neither was a good idea.

“I’ll show you animal, you cunt,” the soldier growled.

“The Colonel’s expecting her. We gotta go,” the other soldier said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder before he could do anything. “She’s little, I’ll carry her.”

He picked her easily off the floor, throwing her body over his shoulder in a fireman-carry.

Her leg hurt like crazy, but at least they weren’t making her walk. As soon as she could, she’d lie back down with her leg up. Maybe someone would be willing to find her some of the homemade alcohol the soldiers made.

Hell, maybe one of these soldiers would have some. Anything to numb the pain.

The women on the Tracks watched her be carried away with nothing more than mild interest. Josephine, her neighbor on the Tracks, caught her eyes and shook her head, as if to say she was sorry she couldn’t do anything.

No one could do anything.

And the worst part was, they were all so used to being helpless that helplessness had become second nature. Not standing up to injustice was the status quo.

Annie tried to swallow hard, a trick she’d learned long ago that helped to keep her from crying when she didn’t want to cry. Every step the soldier took jostled her leg.

Finally, they reached the OCC and she was set down into a chair, her leg throbbing. Colonel Lanche stood above her.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Annie,” he said, as if she hadn’t been carried there against her will. “How’s your injury?”

“Healing, thank you. How can I help you, Colonel?” she asked quietly. Lanche fed on his own power. If she pretended to already be submissive to him, he’d have no reason to try and prove his dominance over her. Hopefully.

“I have some bad news, Annie,” he said. “It appears your roommate Clarissa was kidnapped last night by a man named Private Barker.”

“A soldier?” she asked, as if amazed one of their helpful soldiers could ever do anything wrong.

“I had just discovered for myself that he was dangerous. We think he aided and abetted a domestic terrorist. I was going to have a trial for him,” the Colonel said somberly. “But he escaped, with a hostage. That hostage is Clarissa.”

“Oh my God,” Annie said, and finally let herself cry.

Not because she thought that Clarissa had really been taken hostage, or that she believed any of his bullshit about Barker being a bad man. She cried because her leg hurt, and she was scared that somehow, someway, they would implicate her in this whole thing.

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Lanche said. “I promise I will do everything in my power to get Clarissa back home to safety.”

Home. Safety. As if Grand Central could be anyone’s home, or safe at all. When Annie first came to the camp, she wanted to believe everything Colonel Lanche said. Wanted to believe that he had the citizens’ best interests at heart—the citizens he was responsible for.

For a long time, she believed what she was told. Didn’t question anything.

Didn’t question when the rations got smaller, when the people became weaker. Too weak to fight anyone or anything.

And then Emily escaped, and then Taryn was executed. After that, she couldn’t help but to question everything . . . at least in her mind. Not out loud, not yet.

Too dangerous.

“Tell me everything you know about Clarissa, and about Barker,” Lanche said softly, “and I will bring your friend back. We need your help, Annie.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking. She wanted to appear cooperative. “Clarissa is kind of tall, taller than me by several inches at least. Um, she has red hair, long red hair, but I think you know that already. She was my roommate on the Tracks.”

Lanche sighed. “Good, thank you for all of that, but we need more. Where were you last night?”

“In my subway car, with my leg elevated, because it’s still healing.”

“Have you ever met Barker?”

Should she lie? Tell the truth?

Telling the truth as much as possible would probably be the best bet. She just couldn’t tell them that Barker told them Jenna was alive, or that he’d taken Clarissa willingly.

Did they know that she’d gone of her own free will, or did they really think she’d been kidnapped?

What if . . . What if something happened, and she really had been kidnapped?

“Simple question,” Lanche said sternly. “Yes or no. Did you ever meet Private Barker?”

“Sorry, sir, I was trying to recall. Yes, I’ve met him, but only once. He visited Clarissa on the Tracks.”

“When?”

“The other night.”

“Really?” Lanche frowned. “It was just the other night, yet it took you so long to recall when it was?”

“I haven’t been off the Tracks since I came back from the infirmary, sir. It’s hard to tell the days apart, that’s all.”

“Tell me exactly what Barker said to you when you met him.”

“He said, um . . . he said, ‘My name’s Private Barker. You must be Clarissa.’ And then Clarissa said she was, and he asked her to go for a walk. Then I fell asleep. That’s all I remember.”

“Did you see him last night?”

“Um, yes, he came by and took Clarissa for a walk, and I fell asleep.”

The soldier looked at Lanche, above her head. “Sir, she told us that Clarissa was with her in the car when she fell asleep last night.”

Fuck. Fucking hell.

“I was mistaken. Now that Colonel Lanche asked me to tell him exactly what happened, I remember. Barker took Clarissa on a walk.”

“Did she go with him of her own free will?”

“She didn’t look happy, but she went, sir.”

“Did she say what happened the first time Barker took her for a walk?”

“No, sir, she’s not the type to tell me anything like that. Or anything at all, really. So I don’t know . . . anything.”

Lanche frowned at her. “Did Barker have a gun with him?”

“I don’t recall, sir. The soldiers always have their guns with them, right? But I can’t remember one way or the other.”

Damn it. Maybe she should have said he didn’t have the gun, so they wouldn’t go after them trying to get the gun back.

“Actually now that I think about it, no, he didn’t have a gun.”

“That’s not what the guard said, the one who saw him leaving with the girl,” Lanche replied. “He said he had a gun and a pack.”

“I don’t know anything about it, sir. I’m sorry, I wish I could help.”

“Where would Barker take her?” Lanche asked. “Where did he take her the first time?”

“I don’t know, sir. I assumed they had stayed inside the terminal since she didn’t say otherwise.”

“I thought she didn’t tell you anything.”

He was trying to trip her up. Fuck.

“No sir, she didn’t tell me anything. Nothing at all.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you sweating?” he asked. “Am I making you nervous?”

Yes.

“It’s just my leg, sir. It really hurts from being carried up here.”

“Here,” he said, and she watched with cautious interest as he reached into a drawer, a locked drawer, and took out a bottle of something very dark and thick-looking.

Lanche took a glass, an actual glass—something she wasn’t used to, since they all drank from metal cups—and poured what looked like four shots of the stuff into it.

“Drink this. It’ll make all your pain go away.”

It was a trick, she knew it was a trick. They were plying her with the alcohol, trying to loosen her tongue. But her leg was on fire, and she knew the drink would quench it.

She took a sip. It burned her throat on the way down, but holy hell it was so good. She gulped the entire glass, already feeling woozy before she was even done drinking. The stuff worked quickly.

“Why don’t you rest for a moment,” the Colonel said. He placed another chair in front of her. “You can put your leg up on this.”

Why was he being so nice to her? He could be very nice when he wanted to be, the Colonel. Maybe he really did want to help . . .

Don’t be fooled. Don’t be a sucker.

With a groan, she put her leg up on the chair, grateful that the throbbing slowed. The room was wobbly around the edges, blurred. She blinked.

“I may have . . . drank too much,” she laughed softly.

“You rest. I have to see to something, and I’ll be back. We don’t want you to be in any pain, now do we?” Lanche smiled kindly

(or maybe it wasn’t so kind)

and left, leaving the soldiers standing watch over her.

Maybe it was the drink, but she wasn’t afraid of them. And they didn’t try to touch her, or say anything. They just stood there. Not like she’d try to escape, not with her leg all messed up.

Not while she was drunk off her ass.

One of the soldiers was even kind of cute. The one who’d carried her.

She woke up later, on the Tracks, still tipsy, with a piece of ration bread near her hand.

Oh God.

The Colonel had come back to talk to her, and she had been so intoxicated she couldn’t remember what she’d told him. She’d blacked out. Everything past the first few moments after taking the drink was fuzzy.

Clarissa, wherever you are . . . I hope you’re far away.

The Cross Bronx Expressway, Bronx, NY

Barker was tired,
but they kept walking. Only the image of his father’s boat kept him moving. His legs felt like jelly. In fact, he could barely feel them at all.

They kept to the main roadways, mainly because they didn’t have a map to figure out a more direct route to the marina. It was frustrating having to walk north only to find the road curving south, but he didn’t want to lose his way.

Of course, by being out in the open, on the major roads, it would also be easier for the Colonel to find them.

They heard the rumble of a truck engine long before they saw it.

“Hide,” he said quietly.

Jenna grabbed Clarissa’s arm and pulled her down next to her, crouched behind a car. Only Jenna of the two of them had a gun.

Barker slipped behind another car, to the right, and peered down the road, waiting to see the vehicle.

If there was a car running, it could only mean one thing: the soldiers from the camp. They were the only ones who had working vehicles.

“Don’t shoot until you can see them clearly,” he said to Jenna, who nodded without looking at him. Her eyes, too, were fixated on the old pickup truck heading toward them, weaving in and around the stalled vehicles, driving on the shoulder, and sometimes even crossing all the way to the other shoulder to get through.

The cars were, for the most part, in pretty normal linear order, although many had rolled or crashed when the power went out. So some cars were turned, partially blocking the road.

That was good for Barker and the women, but not for the army guys. It slowed them down. But not enough for Barker to outrun a vehicle going easily forty miles per hour.

“We’ll have to go on the offense,” Barker said. “I’ll shoot the driver first. Jenna, you shoot the guy in front.”

“What if there are more? I think there are more,” Clarissa said, the fear evident in her voice.

“I will fucking kill them all if I have to,” Barker said. His pulse pounded, adrenaline rushing through his blood like a drug.