Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (36 page)

"Loading's nearly finished," Harrison
said. "We're ready to go."

Finn nodded, then watched the man step
over to his son. The two talked in low voices, and Finn felt his
heart tighten. It was rare to see the two express their feelings to
each other, but he knew that it didn't mean they didn't love or
worry about each other. Their bond, while invisible, was
palpable.

It made him miss his own father all
the more, despite the acrimony that had long existed between them.
Only in the final days of his father's life had Finn begun to
understand that their own bond had been just as strong.

"Is Harry around?" he called over to
Kari. He stripped down to his underwear and pulled on the camos. He
didn't care anymore that others could see his skinny legs— except
they didn't seem so skinny anymore.

"Woo woo!" Hannah said, appearing
around the back of the truck. "Sexy!"

Finn felt his face grow red. He gave
her an embarrassed smile and said she was going to get him in
trouble with her father.

"Harry and Fran took the kids around
to the family residences," Kari answered. She shooed Hannah
away.

"I wanted to say goodbye."

"He knows."

"He should be up here, with the
guards, directing them."

"Don't worry about them," Kari
advised. "They'll figure it out. And with Fran at his side, they'll
do okay. She's a good, strong woman."

"I just worry that since they're the
newcomers here—"

"They'll be okay. It's us you should
be worried about."

"Why?"

"Look at us, just a bunch of misfits."
She smiled and handed him a rifle and a couple extra magazines. "By
the way, have you ever fired one of these?"

"No."

"Then you're in the back of the pickup
with the rest of the virgins."

"I'm not a—"

"
Firearms
virgin, Finn." She shook her
head at him. "Firearms. I'll be giving a lesson on loading,
sighting, firing, and clearing jams. And safety," she added,
directing the muzzle of his down to the ground.

Bix joined him as Kari walked away. "I
knew you were a virgin."

"Would you knock it off,
perv!"

"Just saying." He shouldered his own
rifle and walked away. "In case you're wondering, I get to sit in
front. With the non-virgins."

They were on the road before daybreak, a caravan of two vehicles—
the truck they got from the base and the van Finn and Bix had
arrived in.

Jonah knew of a place where they could
refuel along the way, which was good as the gas tank on the van was
close to empty.

There were six of them in the pickup:
Finn, Susan, Eddie, Hannah, and Kari in the bed while Jonah drove.
Harrison and Bix shared the van.

"We should have loaded the supplies in
the truck and sat in the van instead," Finn groused. "Bad
planning."

They'd all taken to wrapping bits of
clothing around their faces, covering everything but their eyes to
protect them against the sun, wind, and dust. Even so, he felt like
he'd inhaled a lungful of grit.

Along the way, Kari taught them what
they needed to know about using their weapons. She explained that
they were Colt M4 carbines, military grade, which were in such
abundance on the base that they didn't feel bad about taking a few
from the armory, along with sufficient ammunition that Finn felt
like they might actually stand a chance in a gun battle.

He sincerely hoped it wouldn't come
down to that. On the other hand, he was eager to get out and try
his aim once they stopped to refuel.

The ride was bumpy. Jonah kept up a
bruising pace, hoping to cut the two-hour drive in half and make up
some of the time they'd lost. But it meant that the people in the
back were getting thrown around.

After the lesson, Eddie made Hannah
climb through the sliding window and buckle herself into the
passenger seat, despite her complaints.

Behind them, the van fishtailed
through every sand drift and gravel bar. Harrison was at the wheel,
which left Bix to sit back with his feet on the dash and laugh and
point at them until his father told him to behave.

Jonah slowed at a junction and turned
onto it, yelling back that the fuel truck was a mile or so
ahead.

Halfway in, they passed a downed
motorcycle. Sand had already begun to drift over it. The adjacent
rock outcropping was stained darkly with blood. Bits of tattered
clothing were caught up in the weeds, rippling as they
passed.

At last they arrived at the fuel
truck. Jonah skidded to a stop in the shade with the van pulling up
right behind them. The air reeked with the smell of
gasoline.

"Those bastards," Susan swore, bending
down to touch the ground. It was still damp. "They emptied the
tank."

Jonah confirmed it, holding up the
dangling hose. "They probably figured somebody'd come after
them."

"Sonofabitch!" Bix cried. "Now
what?"

"We carry on," Finn said firmly. He
turned to Jonah. "How much gas is in the truck?"

"We're good. We left with a full
tank."

"Okay, we'll all just have to fit
then. Three across in the cab, five in the bed. Leave the van
here."

"And the supplies?" Harrison asked.
"Where do we put them?"

"On the floor, on our laps," Finn
said. He walked over to the van and opened it up. "We sit on some
of it, the rest we tie what we can onto the roof. We just need to
make it to the bunker."

"That's a good seven hours," Jonah
said. "We might not have enough gas."

"Well, what do you want me to say?"
Finn cried.

"We go back and—"

"No! That'll put us another three or
four hours behind. Besides, we may not need to go all the way
there. Bren and the rescue team might be heading back now. We could
meet up with them an hour down the road for all we
know."

"And how are we going to tie supplies
to the roof? We have no rope."

Finn unsheathed his knife and walked
back over to the van. He pulled the passenger side seatbelt out as
far as he could and sawed it off at their attachments. "I think
these'll work," he said, throwing it at Jonah.

Eddie pulled him aside while the team
transferred the supplies. "You realize Cheever might be heading to
Eight, too, right? At least some of them are likely to support
him."

"Or not," Finn said.

"They came this far."

"I don't want to talk about it, Eddie.
We save our people. If we meet Cheever along the way, we'll deal
with that then."

* * *

The drive was miserable. The sun baked down on them, and the heat
and dust rendered their thirst unquenchable. Jonah, Susan, and
Eddie took turns driving. The men tried to make Hannah and the
women sit inside the cab. Susan went, but Kari flatly refused,
insisting instead that she needed to be in back "if and when the
shit hits the fan."

All this talk made Hannah argue that
she should be in back, too. But Eddie would have none of it. "And
stop swearing," he told her.

"I was just saying what Kari
said."

"What
Miss Mueller
said. And it's no
excuse."

"Daddy!"

"I mean it."

For Finn, the hardest part of the ride
was knowing that Cheever and his men were somewhere up ahead of
them. There were traces of their passage— tire tracks in the sand;
a single Wraith, freshly shot in the forehead and left for the
vultures in the middle of the road; a downed power pole blocking
the way, the wood newly chopped. More and more he had to accept
that they were heading straight for the bunker. And that meant a
confrontation was inevitable.

The group arrived at the gorge around
three in the afternoon and caught their first glimpse of the dam
forty minutes later. Eddie was driving. He slowed their
approach.

"There's the bus," Hannah cried. "I
can see the bus!"

"Shh!" her father warned.

She sat in the passenger seat with Bix
between her and Eddie. Bix's head had been keeping rhythm with the
road's bumps as he dozed off. But it popped up when Hannah yelled
and he cried out, "Banana cream pie!"

Finn twisted to take a look, but
they'd gone around a turn in the road by then and the dam was out
of sight.

"Everyone be on the lookout for
Wraiths," Kari said.

"Anything moves gets a bullet in the
head," Susan added, and they all nodded.

They pulled over at the last curve but
remained hidden from the dam behind a line of trees. Eddie shut the
engine off. "Good timing, too," he said. "We're running close to
empty."

"There's still fuel in the refueling
tanks below," Jonah said, pointing to a small building visible a
few hundred yards beyond the dam. "Only way to empty them would be
to pump them out or burn them, and it doesn't look like either has
happened."

"That how you gassed up the
bus?"

He nodded. "By mouth."

"Great."

They piled onto the road and stretched
their bruised and aching muscles. Finn and Jonah walked ahead to
see what they might find. Nothing moved. After a few minutes, they
returned to the group.

"Think they're inside?" Kari
asked.

Finn shook his head. "What worries me
is that the bus is still here. If they arrived two days ago, why
haven't they left yet?"

"Don't read anything into it, Finn,"
Eddie said. "Stay focused. It means they're still here."

"Anyone see any motorcycles? Any other
vehicles?"

"No, but that doesn't mean anything.
They might be somewhere else out of sight. We have to assume
Cheever's here."

"Maybe they took the cutoff road and
are heading for the ranch instead."

"Everything seems so quiet," Hannah
said. "Maybe it's empty. They could already be gone."

"You heard Eddie. Don't jump to
conclusions," Susan warned. "Remember that it's supposed to look
empty. That's why nobody ever came by when we were
inside."

"A few did in the beginning," Jonah
quietly said. "I remember seeing them in the monitors."

Everyone looked at him. Nobody said
anything. They'd all seen people in the beginning, both infected
and not. They'd all watched the former attack the latter and done
nothing but sit in mute horror, too afraid to open the
doors.

"What's the plan?" Finn
asked.

"You're in charge of this little
escapade," Jonah said. Finn couldn't tell if he was being
patronizing or not.

"The cave?"

"We could try," Harrison said, "but I
doubt Seth Abramson would have let an hour go by without sealing
the door to Level Ten. He moved pretty quickly to seal off levels
after the attacks he staged."

"He tried to make it look like my
father did it," Hannah said, her face growing red with
resentment.

Eddie shook his head. "Honey,
don't."

"And then he blamed Jonah."

Jonah placed a hand on her arm. "It's
okay, Hannah. Let's just focus on what we need to do now, which is
find Bren and rescue the rest."

"Then what, Mister Know-it-all?" Bix
griped. He grabbed a rock and chucked it into the gorge below them.
"They didn't want to leave last time. What makes you think they'll
want to now?"

"The base," Finn replied quickly. He
gave Jonah a hard look, who returned it. "Tell them there's a
community with more people, fresh grown food, sunshine."

"You think Seth will give up what he's
got now for fresh vegetables, especially if Bren's in there with
him? Did you forget how he accused your father of building a
kingdom inside the dam."

"If memory serves, you made the same
accusation," Bix replied. "So did your father!"