Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (38 page)

"It's Cheever," Eddie said, quickly
turning over the closest body. He waved a swarm of flies away.
"Shot in the head. Couldn't have been more than a few hours ago.
Rigor hasn't set in yet."

"We must have just missed them," Jonah
said.

"Anyone see Bren?" Finn cried. He ran
from body to body, turning them over.

"They're people from the base," Susan
said. "Cheever's men."

"Not all of them. I recognize this
woman as one who left the base with Bren," Jonah said, turning over
another body.

"Um, guys," Harrison said, grimly
motioning them to the body of a man he stood over. "It's Dominic
Green."

"And here's Chip Darby."

"Jesus," Eddie said. He ran a hand
over his scalp. "It was a massacre. What the hell happened
here?"

Finn shoved past him and ran for the
bus at the top of the ramp. He screamed Bren's name.

"Wait!" Eddie shouted after him. "Let
me."

He boarded the bus. But after quickly
checking it front to back, he reappeared shaking his head. "They're
not here. It's empty."

"No Bren or Seth or Kaleagh. No
Largents or Caprios, either. That's at least nine missing. Where
are they?"

"Plus at least a dozen more from the
base unaccounted for."

"How could they have done this?" Kari
asked. "There were no firearms in the bunker."

"Could they have taken the guns away
from Cheever's men?"

"Disarmed them? And then done this?
With only two casualties?"

"We are talking about Seth Abramson. I
wouldn't put this past him."

"I don't see Ramsay's body," Eddie
said. "I can smell him, so I know he was here."

"He did this? Why?"

"He didn't like Cheever," Jonah
replied. "He might've killed the man to discourage anyone from the
base seeking revenge."

"If it was him, then he wasn't alone,"
Bix announced. He stood at the doors and swung them away from the
walls. "They left us a message."

The words had been scrawled across the
scratched and faded surface in blood.

Eddie read them each
aloud:
"Salvation . . . or
damnation?"

"Daddy?" Hannah asked. "What does it
mean?"

"It means I know where they were
taken," Finn said. "And why."

"Horses," Finn confirmed. He pointed at the telltale pile of manure
on the ground. There were several more within view.

"Maybe a half dozen, by the look of
it," Susan noted. "But why didn't they take the bus?"

"Because it's dead," Jonah said. He
pulled his head out from under the hood, where he was trying to
figure out why it wouldn't start. "Battery's got juice, but the
engine isn't cranking. By the smell, my guess is the motor
overheated and seized."

"Even if it did work, Adrian wouldn't
have taken it," Finn said. "He was anti-vehicle."

"Motorcycles are dead, too," Harrison
said. "They pulled the wires."

"Not all of them." Eddie wheeled one
of the bikes up the ramp. He straddled it and gave the starter a
kick. It roared to life and ran for a moment before he switched it
off again. "They must've been in a hurry. With a little luck we may
be able to repair the others."

"Still doesn't explain why he didn't
take them," Susan noted. "He couldn't have had enough horses for
everyone to ride."

"What I don't understand," Eddie said,
wiping the grease from his hands onto his pants, "is why he'd take
our people.

"Revenge," Bix said.

Finn nodded. "For what we did to them
back at the ranch. We destroyed his operation, exposed his lies. He
took our people so Bix and I would follow him back
there."

"But it'd be crawling with Wraiths by
now," Bix pointed out.

"Exactly."

Understanding swept over Bix's face.
"We've turned the place into one giant killing cage. He means to
lure us in!"

Finn nodded.

"Then how do we stop him?" Susan
asked. "Sun's going down. If we leave now, we'll be caught out on
the road after dark."

"And if we leave in the morning, we
may not catch them at all," Eddie said.

"They've got a solid head start on
us," Finn acknowledged. "We still have to fuel up the truck. But
he's also on horseback, which means they'll be taking the long way
around. They'll be camping somewhere along the way
tonight."

"Yeah, with everything booby trapped,"
Bix reminded him.

"Which is why we wait till
morning."

"They'll be at the ranch by noon.
There's no way we can catch him."

"We won't have to. We're going to cut
him off before he does."

"How?"

"The footbridge." He pointed at the
functioning motorbike. "And we're taking that thing across with
us."

* * *

"You're freaking nuts. No, not nuts, you're insane—"

"In the membrane. I know." Finn smiled
grimly at his friend. "But he's got Bren, not to mention Mia and
Samuel Largent."

He remembered the flower drawing that
Mia had colored for him, the one he'd stuck to the ceiling above
his sleeping mat all those months ago. He'd lost it back at the
ranch, along with the rest of his stuff.

His eyes drifted upward at the empty
spot, and he felt his anger grow.

There had been little argument from
the group, as daylight swiftly left the sky and shadows quickly
spread over the land. There had been no time.

Jonah and Eddie worked together to
draw fuel from the storage tanks down below and refill the truck.
Harrison and Susan struggled with the motorbikes, but were unable
to get any of the others to run. The rest of the group collected
and repacked supplies in preparation for the next day's
rescue.

Then they sealed themselves inside the
bunker.

Finn could feel the darkness pressing
against the walls of the dam, prying its fingers against the front
door. He shivered. It was going to be a long night, and sleep was
likely not in the cards.

Only after the rush to prepare and
protect themselves did the others try to argue Finn out of his
plan. But no one proposed a feasible alternative. Jonah was the
exception. He said Finn's strategy was the only one with a
reasonable chance of working. "They know we're coming. They'll be
expecting us behind them, not ahead."

"Well, if you love the plan so much,"
Bix said, "then you can go with Finn. I'll happily give up my spot.
I mean, have you seen this bridge? I literally peed my pants
crossing it the first time."

Jonah could have jumped on the comment
with a snide remark, but he didn't.

"Won't work with anyone else," Finn
said. "Adrian wants the two of us. If he sees Jonah, he'll get
suspicious and we lose the element of surprise."

There was a lot of grumbling about how
difficult it would be to follow along out of sight until the right
moment. Finn reminded them that Jonah had binoculars.

But the truth was, he didn't want any
of them involved at all, including Bix, who was needed to get the
bike across. Once on the other side, he planned to ditch him. Jonah
would never let his guard down long enough to let himself be fooled
in that way.

He intended to meet Adrian alone and
negotiate for everyone's release. He would give himself up in
exchange.

"Okay, so we stop the rat bastard on
the road. Then what?"

"We hold him until the rest of you
arrive in the pickup. Once we have him surrounded, he won't have
any choice. He'll have to give up."

"You know I love you, Finn," Bix said,
"and your theory about the Flense was brilliant. But that is about
the lamest plan I've ever heard."

"It'll work," Jonah quietly
said.

Finn couldn't explain it, but for some
reason he suspected Jonah knew what he was planning.

They ate what they could — not
because they were hungry, but because there was nothing else to
do — then they settled in for the night in the game room. But
Finn was restless and slipped out to return to the room he had
shared for three years with his father.

Bix found him there a little
later.

"Look at it this way, Finn. By this
time tomorrow, it'll all be over. We'll have Bren back. And the
rest. We'll take them to the camp. Then we'll find Twelve and screw
the Flense."

Finn leaned back onto the worn and
dirty cardboard and sighed unhappily. He wished he had his friend's
confidence. Or even the ability to fake it. "You know, it's just
been nothing but one disaster after another since we left
here."

"The disaster started long before
that, bro. None of this is your fault."

Except it was, it always was. After
all, he had failed to stop Eddie from getting burnt in the boiler
room. He hadn't noticed the missing food. He had pushed for them to
leave. He had promised them they'd find Bunker Twelve.

For three years, their little group of
thirty-one had remained safe. Then, in the space of two weeks, they
had lost ten. If things turned bad tomorrow, they'd lose
more.

He looked over at Bix, intending to
disagree with his friend, but he was already, impossibly,
asleep.

The trail of horse droppings made it clear that they were on
Adrian's heels, not that there was any doubt in Finn's mind which
way the madman had gone and where he was headed. Even stopping to
double-check the manure's freshness, which Bix argued that Jonah
should be an expert at, "since no one knows caca like Jonah knows
caca," it took them just under two hours to reach the cutoff road
leading to the cable bridge.

Adrian had made his camp at the
junction. His fire was out and the ashes on top were cold, but the
embers were still hot underneath. The ground showed evidence that a
lot of people and horses had spent the night there.

Scouting the site, Kari nearly
stumbled into a snare, but Eddie stopped her in time. He showed the
group the tripwire and traced it back to a claymore mine buried
just underneath the forest litter. They didn't know if it was meant
for them or if it had been accidently missed in the morning's haste
to leave.

Harrison carefully disconnected the
trigger from the battery and spooled the wires around the mine,
then slipped it into his pack. "No sense to leaving it behind," he
said.

They also found another of the plastic
boxes identical to the one Jennifer had given to Finn right before
he and Bix escaped the ranch. A walkie-talkie was wired to it. Bix
reached out to pick it up. This time it was Finn who stopped him.
"Leave it alone." Worry creased his brow as he stood and peered
into the woods around them. "I don't like it."

"But it might come in
handy."

"We already have one and we don't know
how it works or what it does. We don't need another."

They gathered as a group at the end of
the bridge and looked out over the canyon. Jonah whistled in awe.
The sound echoed back at them, sounding like the cry of an eagle.
"Go ahead, Blakeley," he said, shaking his head. He gave them a wry
smile. "I'll take the road. Meet you guys on the other
side."