Windigo Soul (22 page)

He pulled the blood-soaked shirt away from his arm and inspected the gash. He could use some stitches, but at least the blood had clotted. He grabbed his remaining clean shirt and wrapped it around his arm the best he could. He sat for a moment, trying to slow his breathing and ignore the pain. He yearned to return to his cool, clean, and well-appointed apartment. Just a few blocks away. He’d take a few pain pills and wash it down with an icy cold beer before enjoying a hot shower. He’d dress in his own clothes, slip into his own bed, and sleep for days.

“Knock it off,” Sanderson said out loud and forced himself to stand up. No good could come from thinking such thoughts. What he really needed to do was concentrate on finding a way out of the city to the rendezvous point.

He unzipped the tent door and stepped out. Daylight was fading fast and the pig pen took on a livelier, almost festive air, as the pick pockets and pan handlers returned home for the evening. John caught a whiff from a cooking fire and his stomach rumbled.

He passed a shack constructed of old pallets, cardboard, and sheet metal, and noticed a woman sitting out front. She had to be pushing eighty, if not older. Her face was weathered and wrinkled, her body bent over and frail, but when she smiled at him with a toothless grin, John saw the clarity and wisdom in her eyes. He nodded at her and kept moving, suddenly feeling hopeful for the first time that day since he’d seen his wife. Perhaps if an old woman like that could hide from the State in plain sight, clearly well past her retirement day, there was hope for him yet. Hope for all of them.

Chapter 36

The lieutenant’s nose was a mangled mess and his left eye was completely swollen shut. Blood oozed from a large gash over his other eye. He was wobbly on his feet and barely able to keep his balance, but he shuffled forward. His right arm hung limp but he still held onto his government issue M9.

Hank said nothing and made no effort to get away or even move. It was over. He simply held on to his unconscious wife, ready for the madman in front of him to end his life. He was glad Peg wouldn’t be aware when Hendricks turned the gun on her.

Hendricks turned his head and spat a large wad of blood, deliberately aiming for the face of a retiree close by.

“Bull’s eye!” he shouted. “Don’t you ever watch the movies, Reed? You never turn your back on the bad guy. You always make sure he’s dead, you stupid son of a bitch.” He touched his swollen eye and winced. Laughed. “Is that how you see me? The bad guy?” More laughter.

Hank could see Hendricks talking but still couldn’t hear a thing. It didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was sleep.

“I like that,” the lieutenant continued. “I think I like being the bad guy.” He raised his gun and aimed it at Peg. “I’m going to shoot your wife and then you. Not that bad? Well how about when I’m done here I track down that sweet young thing of a daughter. I still have big plans for her.”

Hendricks pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Hank flinched. Hendricks frowned and inspected his gun with his good eye. “Oops. When did I put the safety on?” He pointed the gun back at Peg.

Hank heard the gunshot over the ringing in his ears but it hadn’t come from Hendricks. Hank blinked and in that time it seemed as if half of the lieutenant’s head simply vaporized. The gun dropped from his hand and he fell to the floor.

Before Hank slipped into the darkness, he saw them on the other side of the room. A man and woman from one of the other teams. The woman lowering the rifle she used to save him. As they rushed over, he desperately wanted tell them to take Peg, to save her and not leave her behind. But he couldn’t make his mouth form the words before the world turned to black.

Chapter 37

The trucks sat idling. James Grayson glanced from his watch, to the road leading into the compound, to the sky, and back to his watch. “We’ve got barely five minutes left,” he said to nobody in particular. The men around him nodded but said nothing. They knew what was at stake with every second that passed by.

“What are we going to do with these guys?” one of them asked. He nodded at the group of prisoners sitting on the pavement, held at gunpoint. “Are we gonna waste ‘em? No more room on the trucks.”

Grayson looked at the soldiers. They all looked so young, practically kids. “I think we’ve done enough killing for one day. They surrendered.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? They’ve gotten a good look at all of us. Especially you.”

Grayson chuckled. “Hell, I don’t think the State will have any trouble figuring out who’s responsible for this. In fact, I’m counting on it.” He turned to the soldiers. “You men are free to go. We’ll need to keep the cuffs on, but you go on and take off though the woods.”

They exchanged uncertain glances and nobody moved.

“That spot you’re sitting in is going to be a smoking crater in just a few minutes. I suggest you haul ass and pray you’ve run far enough.” The soldiers scrambled to their feet and ran off, glancing behind them to make sure they weren’t about to be gunned down by the terrorists.

“James, look!”

Grayson was overcome with relief as he saw Elias emerge with Hank draped over his shoulder. Right behind him, Joanna struggled with a sheet-covered unconscious woman. Everybody ran over to help them. Grayson jogged over to the lead truck, the fastest he’d moved in years. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

He got into the truck and the driver floored it. Grayson took the phone out of his shirt pocket and tossed it out the window. “No need for that anymore. Son, I’m going to need you to drive as fast as you can without wrapping this thing around a tree.” The driver sped up as much as he could on the narrow road and Grayson peered out the mirror behind them. He took small relief in seeing the three other trucks directly behind them, but knew they were cutting it too close. At the same time, he feared the bomb wouldn’t go off at all.

He turned to the driver, about to ask him to push the truck harder, when the world around him erupted into a blinding brilliance. A second later, an unseen force slammed into the truck as if a giant hand tried to swat it off the road. “Keep going!” Grayson screamed, barely hearing his own voice. He grabbed the driver by the shirtsleeve. A wave of tree branches, rocks, and dirt rained down on them.

James rubbed his eyes and looked into the mirror. The other trucks still miraculously followed, but coming up fast behind them was an immense wall of smoke and debris. It enveloped them in seconds, plunging them into darkness.

Chapter 38

Hank opened his eyes and immediately shut them as the room spun out of control. He touched the side of his face, covered by a large bandage, and carefully opened his eyes again as the vertigo slowly passed. A low ache throbbed in his ear.

As his vision cleared, he noticed the two IV bags hanging above him. One filled with clear liquid. The other empty but stained blood red on the inside. Hank attempted to sit up and was greeted by a sharp pain radiating from his leg that caused a yelp to escape from his dry throat. The leg was bandaged too. He took a few deep breaths and tried again, this time succeeding in sitting up slightly so he could take in his surroundings.

He was in a bedroom with peeling wall paper on the walls and boards covering the single window. A few rays of daylight slipped in through the cracks. A kerosene lantern sat on the table next to the bed but otherwise the room was empty.

Hank struggled to capture a solid memory of what happened before he woke up. He had no idea where he was, and for some reason couldn’t remember how he’d been injured. Fuzzy memories intertwined with each other, becoming clear for a second before fading away.

The door opened and a man walked in wearing a huge smile. “Morning sunshine! Finally awake, huh? Sounds like things were a little iffy for a while, but once you got some blood in you, the doc said you’d pull through just fine.” He rubbed the inside of arm. “I even gave a pint or two myself. Least I could do.”

“Maz?”

“In the flesh. How are you feeling, Hank? I heard you shout out from the next room. Leg hurting?”

Hank’s heart sank as memories suddenly flooded in. Mike. Peg. Hendricks. And here he was again, waking up in an empty room being greeted by Sam Mazanghetti. Khaki uniform and all. “Oh, God,” he whispered.

Maz leaned forward. “What’s wrong? I called for Doc Jasper. He should be here any minute.”

“Where are we?”

Maz looked around the bedroom. “The tattered old sign out front says it used to be The Clear Lake Lodge. Clear Lake isn’t much more than a festering mud puddle, and the lodge looks like a healthy breeze might knock it over any second. But the folks running the show think it’s a safe enough place to hide out for now.”

James Grayson entered the room after a quick knock on the door frame. “There he is! How are you feeling, Old-timer? Glad to see you awake.”

“What happened?” Hank asked.

“Thanks to you folks, I’m outside for the first time in twenty-three years,” Maz said. “I have to admit I’m so scared I almost soil myself every day, but it feels good to be alive. I’m going to enjoy it while I still can.”

“We did it, Hank,” Grayson said. “No retiree will ever step foot in that damn place ever again. As a worker or a resource. They might try to rebuild, but it’ll be glowing with radiation for years, so I doubt it.”

“Oh!” Maz snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot, there’s somebody else who’s just dying to talk to you. Be right back.” Maz zipped out of the room. Hank turned to Grayson for an explanation but he only smiled at Hank and said nothing. A moment later, Maz opened the door again and entered with another visitor.

“Hello, Hank.” His wife approached the bed and gently kissed him on the forehead. It took a moment before Hank could finally form the words to greet Peg back.

Chapter 39

The Eastern sky started to lighten as dawn approached and he wasn’t exactly sure how much farther he needed to walk. It still wasn’t light enough to read the tattered old map stuffed in his pocket so he just put his head down and kept pushing. He noticed the outline of a road sign ahead but it was still too dark to read that either.

Sanderson reached behind him with his good arm and blindly fished around in his backpack for the bottle of ibuprofen. He found it and shook out four into his hand. He popped them in his mouth and washed them down with a sip of water from his last bottle. Just half-full. Or half-empty, depending on how you looked at it. Sanderson didn’t have a preference either way, but he did know he’d be in trouble if he arrived at the rendezvous and nobody was there to greet him. He didn’t feel particularly optimistic about finding more fresh water around these parts so perhaps the bottle was half-empty.

As he got closer to the road sign, the faded and blistered white letters started to come into view. WILSON 2. STRATFORD 10. Finally some good news. After walking this far, two miles was nothing. He was almost there. Wilson, with its iconic forty-foot tall fiberglass cow statue. The perfect landmark to meet another party by.

Getting out of the city was challenging, but not impossible. He’d ridden bus and rail, changing routes and transferring as much as was practical to the outer suburbs. From there, he’d offered his last twenty to a truck driver heading north in exchange for smuggling him through the security checkpoint in the back of the truck. Sanderson hadn’t exactly trusted the driver but he didn’t have much choice. Going through the checkpoint on foot was out of the question and trying to slip through the wire was too dangerous, even at night.

As the truck crept farther up the queue, Sanderson crawled forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder with the muzzle of his Glock. He’d made it clear that just in case the twenty bucks wasn’t enough incentive to keep his mouth shut, Sanderson would have the gun pointed at him the whole time. Even the slightest sign of him ratting Sanderson out would result in a bullet to the back.

They made it through the checkpoint just fine, but John realized the threat was a bad move when the driver pulled over just a mile down the road. He insisted that unless Sanderson had more money to spend, that was as far as he was taking him. Sanderson considered shooting the driver anyway and just taking the truck, but only for a second. His days of murdering innocent civilians were over.

From that point it was on foot for almost sixty miles. He rested in an abandoned gas station off the exit ramp and moved out after dark. Ten hours of walking the first night and now pushing twelve the next. Although he was in good shape, he’d had little to eat and his energy was low. His feet hurt, his arm hurt, and a headache was settling in. Probably the early signs of dehydration. He could hear the bottle of water sloshing in his bag, tempting him. It reminded him of his short time on the run with Hank. It wasn’t that long ago, but already seemed like years. He felt like he’d lived a whole lifetime in just the last couple of weeks.

Something rustled in the brush by the side of the road, snapping Sanderson out of his day dreaming and sending his hand for the Glock. He relaxed a bit. Just something small and furry, searching for something to eat before dawn. The wildlife in the area was practically non-existent but that shouldn’t have been surprising. It was a virtual desert these days and even if water wasn’t a problem, most of the vegetation had dried up and died years ago anyway. Kill off the plant eaters and the meat eaters would follow.

Sanderson picked up his pace as the town of Wilson grew closer. He was curious to see the abandoned town. Not because of the giant cow, but because it would be the first standing village he would see since the last one, almost forty miles ago. Long before he’d been born, the State bombed and razed entire cities and towns in the north after herding the citizens to the cities in the south. The justification for such acts was concentrating resources and services in one area to be more efficient. A way to spread the wealth over a smaller and more manageable area. Sort of like having the whole family hole up in one room to keep warm when the power goes out in a blizzard. It was just another means of control, of course. With their old town burned to the ground there was nothing for the citizens to go back to once life in the big city didn’t pan out. Sanderson shook his head at the billions they must’ve wasted on such madness.