Chapter Sixteen #2
“Clearing patrol?” Maisie asks, the curiosity evident in her tone as A Crew’s dirty, gore-splattered members enter the gym, hang their array of machetes, baseball bats, and barbells on hooks on the wall, and promptly undress to nothing, depositing their filthy gear in a bin by the door.
They march toward the back, where the locker rooms must be.
“Mornings are for retrieving survivors, and afternoons are for clearing the dead. We have three clearing patrol groups, each taking a four-hour shift once a day. The shifts naturally get harder and more dangerous as the day progresses, but good behavior and teamwork earns you a spot on the earlier shifts. It just so happens we have an empty spot on our C Crew.” Connor winks at me, as if this is supposed to be exciting news.
I swallow. If the B Crew just started, the last patrol must basically be a death sentence.
“Don’t look so freaked, bro.” Connor punches me hard in the pec, knocking an oof out of me.
“It’ll do you good. It’s a fantastic workout.
You know axe choppers?” He mimes swinging an axe, his obliques clenching in harmony as his eyes gleam with that innate predisposition toward violence that I saw from time to time in military school.
The loose cannons sent to learn discipline, to harness their unhealthy urges productively for the ol’ U.S.
of A. I’ve probably known half a dozen Connors in my life, and I figured out early to escape their predatory orbit as soon as possible.
He grunts as he swings again. “Just like that, but with resistance.”
My eyebrows rise. “By resistance, you’re referring to decomposing human flesh?”
“Exactly.” Connor narrows his eyes at me as though he’s assessing just how much of a problem I’m going to be.
“We’re located in the middle of a residential zone.
The nights are mobbed here, and we’re doing our best to secure the area.
After the morning’s survivor-retrieval efforts, we’re clearing the apartment building beside us, one patrol at a time.
I keep telling these guys we can’t live in the gym forever, am I right?
” He laughs, then claps a buff dude on his back, who, despite his size, flinches.
“It’s pretty dark in that building, though. Gotta stay on your toes.”
I glance at Maisie to see how she’s taking this, but she’s already walking over to the windows, accepting everything he’s saying in stride.
“What’s your perimeter like?” Maisie asks. “I didn’t see it when we came in.”
“Because we were drugged, honey,” I grit out. “And unconscious? Remember?”
“Naturally,” Connor says. “We had no way of knowing if you’d come peacefully, or whether you were dangerous. Our retrieval patrol follows a very strict protocol to keep everyone here safe. You don’t just automatically receive our trust—that’d be stupid. Right, Ms. Shenandoah?”
“Right,” Maisie says, almost absently. “You were saying about the perimeter, Coach?”
I stare, open-mouthed, at them both.
“I’ll show you.” Connor leads Maisie to the front, and after a second, I follow incredulously along. Outside, tractor tires lie in stacks of three all around the gym, which is situated at the corner of a block. I can just make out the street signs.
My eyes widen. We’re a block away from Gemma’s house.
“Wow, where’d you get all those tires?” Maisie places a hand on the glass, looking out with admiration. “Great use.”
“Thank you,” Connor says, his chest puffing with pleasure. “We have an annual tire-workout competition, so they were in our storeroom. Tire flips. Deadlifts. Farmer’s carry. That kind of thing,” Connor says, eyeing up Maisie’s triceps. “I bet you can do hundreds of tire dips.”
“I can,” Maisie says matter-of-factly. “Where do you all sleep?”
“Ah, my favorite room in the gym! This way.” Again I’m left to trail behind as this weird gym-cult leader gives Maisie the tour. The remaining crewmembers have fallen into a new formation, following us like a highly disciplined troop of hot puppies.
“So,” I ask a nervous-looking woman in the front pairing, “how many of you were ‘retrieved’ from the outside this week?”
Her eyes dart from mine to Connor, whose back is turned as he leads Maisie into a big room at the end of the hall. “Three,” she whispers. “That are left.”
“What?” My eyes grow wide. “Where’d the rest go?”
“C Crew,” the man next to her whispers. “It’s for troublemakers.”
“Mr. Shenandoah!” Connor calls. “Don’t fall behind.”
Unnerved, I step through the doorway to what must have been a group fitness classroom, now lined with thick gymnastics padding.
While everything so far has been neat, tidy, and organized to a militant degree, the bedroom is a mess of tangled blankets and pillows, and in the air hangs a certain… smell. An eau de ohh!
“We all sleep together,” Connor explains, grinning suggestively.
For orgies, my brain screams. For nasty gym-rat orgies!
“For safety.” Maisie nods, impressed.
“Sure.” Connor winks. “That, too.”
I can’t get over how close we are to Gemma’s. We probably were being followed yesterday. How else would they have known to ambush us in the White House parking lot?
I grab Maisie by the hand and squeeze tight. “Honey? Can we talk for a second?” I jerk my head to the hallway, safely away from the sex smells. “Over there?”
“Sure.” She turns to Connor. “We’ll be just a minute. Then I want to see your food storage.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Connor salutes her, smiling smugly at her ass.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. “It’s like you’re seriously considering signing up for Connor’s gym cult!”
“I’m just curious.” Maisie glances at the patrol schedule posted to the wall. “They’re very organized, you have to give them that. We’ll leave after the tour. We still have plenty of sunlight to get out of the city, if need be. At least an hour, maybe more.”
“Maisie, I don’t think we’re leaving.” I eye the remaining crewmembers, still standing silently in formation down the hall where Connor lurks, watching us. In the sex smell. “At least, not with Connor’s permission.”
Just then, the eight members of A Crew march into the hall, scrubbed clean.
Also naked. Still.
Everyone marches in perfect synchronization except for the last guy in the lineup, the only one who’s not fully swinging his arms in time.
The right one’s going, but he seems to be holding the left one pinned to his side, the movement hinging only from his elbow instead of his shoulder. It sticks out like a—well.
Like a sore arm.
He looks terrified. I frown after him until he disappears with the others into the laundry room, where another crew passes out freshly cleaned spandex.
“I don’t like the way they captured us,” Maisie begins, her brow furrowed, “but it was pragmatic on their part, and I really don’t think they’ll stop us from leaving.
They untied our hands, didn’t they? They’re just—disciplined, that’s all.
Kind of weirdly so, but hey, people respond to uncertainty and trauma in different ways. They don’t seem that bad, honestly.”
“I’m telling you, this is more than people with an unhealthy preoccupation with box jumps. We need to make a break for it as soon as possible. C Crew is a death sentence Connor’s going to put me on!”
“We’ll just tell him no. We’ll be out of here before he can make you do anything.” Maisie glances around to make sure nobody’s listening before her eyes return to mine. “Listen, with my background, I don’t say this lightly, but you sound really paranoid right now.”
“Just—please. Trust me?” I stare into her icicle-blue eyes. “They’re going to kill me and try to turn you into one of their sexy gym people if we don’t escape immediately. I know guys like Connor, Maisie; we cannot trust him. We’re a team, remember?”
After a second, her disbelieving face dissolves into resolution. “Okay. After the tour, we’ll leave. One way or another.”
“Ms. Shenandoah!” Connor grins as we rejoin him. “Let me show you the supplies room. Of course, when you join us, all your belongings will be collected here and available to the whole family. You have quite the rig, we saw.”
“Yes, we do,” Maisie says, eyeing the shelves with genuine pleasure. “Diets?”
“We’re Whole30 or GTFO.”
Maisie tilts her head to the side, surprise painting her features. “So you eat meat, then?”
“Organic, pasture-raised, hormone-free. Only the good stuff,” Connor says, then flexes his arms. “Can’t make gains like these without maximal protein.”
“Fascinating,” she says, and I can practically see her filing this information away to convince Gramps that it’s not the evil vegans after all.
“Antibiotics, wound repair kits, oxygen, insulin supplies, protein bars, and loads of creatine, of course—you really are well stocked. Where is my rig, by the way?” she adds in among the compliments, much more naturally than her earlier “bandits!” explanation.
Connor pats his shorts’ pocket, the telltale rattling of keys coming from within. “Your rig is safe in our secured lot behind the building. We can process your belongings immediately if you like.” He raises his eyebrows in question. “We have about thirty minutes until the streets become active.”
“Thirty minutes?” I stare at the clock above the mirrored wall in alarm. “It won’t get dark for another hour.”
Connor scrunches his nose up. “Yeah, doesn’t matter to our mobs. It’s the ones in the dark houses, you see. They start moaning. It’s like a signal. Gets the ones outside riled up before the sun’s fully set. By five-thirty, the streets are impassable.”
“Well, it’s already almost five, so I think we should be going, dear. I’ll just be getting our cat, and if you could hand over the keys to our rig?” I hold out my hand, willfully ignoring the menace growing in Connor’s tight, botoxed face.