Chapter 9 Carson Sink #3
Lark steadied his rifle in the cargo shadow.
Mara moved one step nearer Benji.
Elias whispered, “Little lady, I hope you know what kind of stupid you’re making.”
Nell opened the toolbox.
Inside, beneath rags and metal scraps, was not the medical cooler.
It was Elias’s second road flare bundle, wired to a smoke canister Otto had built from lodge supplies and checkpoint parts.
Elias sucked in a delighted breath.
“Oh, she learned crime.”
Nell pulled the striker.
White smoke exploded upward.
Rosa shot the tower guard.
Lark fired at the gate guard. Dane drew the revolver and shot the loudspeaker pole transformer, because Otto had told him what to break if noise became cover. Sparks snapped. The yard plunged into confusion.
Mara ran for Benji.
Rosa seized Nell by the back of her flannel and dragged her toward Tomber as bullets cracked through smoke. Dane moved between them and Reeve’s line, firing once, twice, forcing men behind cover. He saw Reeve draw his pistol with no panic at all.
Silas came through the smoke from the left.
Dane turned too late.
A shot rang out.
Not Silas’s.
Benji stood beside the mechanics’ shade, Mara’s pistol in both hands, eyes wide with shock. Silas looked down at the blood spreading across his chest, offended as much as hurt. He fell to his knees, then forward into the dust.
Mara grabbed Benji and pulled him away before he could freeze around what he had done.
Otto screamed from the cab, “All channels open!”
Reeve’s voice, caught by his own microphone still clipped near his collar, went out across every frequency Otto could reach.
“Close the pens. Shoot anyone who runs. The girl alive, the rest optional.”
The words hit the camp harder than gunfire.
Prisoners heard them. Guards heard them. The lodge would hear them if the signal carried. Any Milemen listening heard what protection meant when leverage slipped.
For one second, Reeve Calder’s calm cracked.
Dane used it.
“Now!” he shouted.
Lark and Elias shoved the real cooler through the interior hatch into Rosa’s hands.
Nell climbed into the cab after it. Otto ducked beneath the dashboard as bullets struck the windshield frame.
Mara pushed Benji and the four freed teenagers toward the drainage gap near the south fence, where Lark had told them to run if chaos came.
Dane fired his last revolver round at the chain holding the south service gate. It sparked but did not break.
Elias appeared from the cargo box with bolt cutters raised over his head like a religious relic.
“Move, you dramatic children!”
He cut the chain while bullets snapped around him. Rosa covered him from the passenger window. The gate swung wide.
Mara shoved Benji through, then turned back.
Dane saw why.
Reeve stood in the smoke with his pistol aimed at Nell through the cab’s shattered side gap.
Dane moved without thinking.
The shot struck him high in the shoulder instead of the girl.
Pain knocked the world sideways.
He hit Tomber’s door and nearly went down. Rosa screamed his name. Nell screamed too, not a word, just sound. Dane stayed upright because falling felt like agreement and he was not in an agreeable mood.
Lark fired from the cargo hatch.
Reeve staggered back, hit in the side but not dropped.
Mara raised her pistol at him.
For a moment, the whole camp seemed to hold its breath around old ownership and new betrayal.
Reeve looked at her and said something Dane could not hear.
Mara fired.
Reeve fell behind a fuel drum and vanished into smoke.
“Truck!” Rosa shouted.
Dane climbed into the driver’s seat with his left arm hanging wrong and blood running hot beneath his jacket. His right hand found the key. The engine turned once, failed, then caught.
Tomber lurched toward the south gate.
The camp broke behind them.
Prisoners ran. Some guards fired. Others hesitated.
A few turned their weapons on one another as Reeve’s broadcast orders and Reeve’s exposed cruelty collided with whatever obedience remained.
The four teenagers sprinted through the gate after Benji.
Mara climbed onto Tomber’s rear step and hauled Benji up with her.
Elias dragged them both into the cargo box.
Dane drove through the smoke, through the gate, through a curtain of dust and shouts and the terrible possibility that one of the bullets behind them would find the cooler, the engine, Nell, anyone.
Then the dry lake opened ahead.
Flat. Pale. Endless.
No cover. No road.
Just distance.
Rosa pressed both hands to Dane’s shoulder while he drove one-handed, her voice fierce and breaking.
“Stay with me.”
“Busy.”
“Say something smarter.”
“Nell has your flare.”
Nell leaned forward, crying now without caring who saw.
“I was supposed to give you back the snow globe.”
Dane kept Tomber aimed at the far side of the dry lake, where the last western road shimmered in the heat.
“You still can.”
Behind them, Carson Sink burned in patches of smoke and sunlight. Ahead, beyond the basin and the Sierra line, Harbor Nine waited with its gates, its labs, its promises, and its cages.
Dane’s blood ran down his sleeve and dripped onto the wheel.
He kept driving.