14. Gauge
GAUGE
“She’s a fighter,” Rat said as he poked his head in between me and Dallas from the back. “She’s gonna be fine with Nielson.”
“Yeah,” Dallas murmured over in the passenger’s seat.
We had our van loaded up with everything we needed.
From guns to gasoline and grenades, we were strapped to the nines and ready for whatever awaited us at that abandoned building.
It felt like we drove forever, despite only being on the road for forty-five minutes, and I couldn’t get my mind off Char.
I knew I needed to keep my head in the game.
I knew that my guys needed me. I knew I needed to focus before I ended up just like Doc and Bait.
But I hated the fact that I couldn’t see her.
Or hold her. Or go find her whenever I needed a goddamn, motherfucking break.
Without her, I didn’t know that she was safe. Not really. And that killed something inside of me.
“Gauge,” Rat said.
I chewed on my lower lip. “Keep your eyes peeled. We need to be on the lookout for traps.”
Rat patted my shoulder before he sank back into the dark abyss of the back of the van.
The trip was about as silent as they came, and it wasn’t until we turned down the dirt road leading straight toward our final destination that we perked up.
Dallas leaned forward, his head on a swivel as he watched the road in front of us.
Rat situated himself in the back with a mounted gun in between our shoulders just in case he needed to blow out the fucking windshield.
I inched us toward the deserted building, keeping an eye out for trip wires glistening in the little bit of setting sun we had left for us. We had maybe two more hours of daylight, if we were lucky, and we had a lot of ground to cover.
“Thank fuck you brought those flashlights, huh?” Rat asked as he slapped Dallas’s upper arm.
Dallas sighed as he pointed. “That’s the same door we watched that woman go in and out of.”
“Marcie,” I said as I brought us to a stop.
“What?” Dallas asked.
I shoved the van into park. “If we’re gonna talk about her, use her name. It’s Marcie.”
Dallas looked over at me. “You got a hard-on for the woman or something?”
I shoved my door open. “No, I’m just tired of us talking about her like we don’t know shit. Now stay on your fucking guard and follow me.”
I slammed out of the van and stalked toward the back.
I ripped the double doors open just as Rat placed the mounted gun back onto the floor.
I reached toward the racks on both of the metal walls and pulled down everything I’d need.
A gun on both of my hips, a knife on my ankle, grenades and ammo in all of the pockets I could manage, and a flashlight for when the sun set.
We geared up as the shadows of the trees around us loomed against the ground.
The wind kicked up, swirling dust and dirt and leaves toward us like miniature tornadoes.
As if the earth itself protested our presence.
“Remember, stay alert,” I said as I approached the door.
And as Dallas clicked on his flashlight, I grabbed the knob and ripped it open.
“Maybe stay subtle, too,” Rat said.
I shot him a glaring look over my shoulder before I withdrew my gun off my hip.
I silenced my footsteps, creeping through the threshold before Dallas’s flashlight followed my every move.
The stench of the dead already permeated the air.
The smell of metallic blood was thick beneath my nose, and the musky odor of decomposition already infiltrated the air.
It led us right to Doc’s feet, where he laid in a pool of his own blood.
“Jesus,” Rat hissed as he covered his mouth and nose with his forearm.
I hopped over Doc’s body and canvassed the room he collapsed in.
“This phone’s pretty busted,” Dallas said as he bent down and retrieved the pieces.
“If anyone can get anything from it, though, it’s Plug,” Rat said with a shrug.
I looked around the room, trying to find anything special or spectacular about it.
Maybe a camera, or a document of some sort.
Anything to show me why this room was important to her.
Or him. Or anyone, for that matter. But there was nothing.
Four metal walls covered in haphazard fabric blocks.
A concrete floor that was unforgiving on my feet.
No furniture. No windows. Nothing to denote that this place had any sort of special meaning.
Just a blank page for Doc to die on.
“We can’t leave him here,” I said as I holstered my weapon.
Dallas shoved the last of the cell phone bits into his pockets. “What?”
I bent down and threaded my arms beneath Doc’s lifeless armpits. “We can’t leave him here. Let’s get him in the back of the van.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dallas said.
“Here, I’ll help,” Rat said.
With me heaving his upper body and Rat grabbing his ankles, Doc’s blood dripped down my body as we hauled him back out to the van.
I felt the cool liquid dripping down my torso.
Down my legs. All the way down to my motherfucking boots.
I vibrated with fury. Sliding him into the back of that van and watching his limbs contort themselves any which way they needed stoked a fire inside of my gut that hadn’t been ignited in years.
“Do we have blankets or anything?” Dallas asked.
I shrugged off my coat. “This will have to do.”
And after I splayed my leather cut over the upper part of Doc’s body, I closed the van doors.
Before turning my attention back to the abandoned building.
“All right,” I said as I pulled my flashlight off my hip, “let’s go see where she had Doc held in the first place.”
Step by step, the three of us eased down hallways that looked more familiar than most. We swept our flashlights from side to side, alternating directions so that we were never without light at any given moment in time.
The hallways of what we eventually realized was an abandoned warehouse seemed more like a maze than anything else.
Dead ended hallways with lines of doors filtering in every which direction.
It felt like being back in that bunker, with those doors and those lights leading us all the way to the one door we had to open.
And as we rounded the corner, I found myself staring at the darkened entrance to the basement.
With those metal stairs shining right back at me as I whipped my flashlight in its direction.
“Bingo,” I muttered as I picked up the pace.
“Gauge?” Rat asked.
“I found the stairs, follow me,” I said as I brushed past him and Dallas.
They fell in line behind me as I eased my way toward the stairs. I shined my bright ass flashlight down the stairs into the darkness, but I still couldn’t see the bottom.
“The fuck do you think it is?” Dallas asked over my shoulder.
“I hear buzzing,” Rat said.
I held my breath and strained my ears. “Not a fucking sound.”
“You guys really don’t hear that buzzing?” Rat asked.
“There’s a light switch on the wall,” Dallas said, “want me to flip?—?”
I spun around and yanked his hand away from that wall so fast. “Flashlights only. Got it?”
Dallas paused. “Sure?”
I shoved his hand to his side. “We don’t know what she’s got set up to trigger in this place. Flashlights only.”
After giving Dallas one more look, I turned back toward the steps.
We inched downward, with Dallas behind me and Rat bringing up the rear.
I aimed my flashlight out in front of me with my gun settled on top of my supportive hand.
The cement stairs laced with metal muted my footfalls, and the closer we got to the bottom, the more sounds that settled on my ears.
All of a sudden, there was water dripping in the distance.
Pipes and ductwork that ran over our heads roared to life and died down.
Roared to life and died down. Bottoming out against the concrete flooring forced a sigh of relief to escape my lips.
We got down the stairs without any major incident.
Time to explore.
“Fan out, but keep close. If you can’t see the other two, you’re too far away,” I said.
We disappeared in our own directions as our flashlights illuminated the space around us. Dallas was smart, however. He found a table and propped his flashlight up on its ass, which spread light across a big portion of the room. And honestly, what we found was pretty underwhelming.
“I’ve got a live air conditioning unit over here!” Rat exclaimed.
“I found the source of the dripping!” Dallas called out.
“I still can’t find that fucking humming, though,” Rat muttered.
“Gauge! You found anything!?” Dallas yelled across the room.
“Hey! Gauge!” Rat belted.
I was much too preoccupied with the door I came across, though.
Just beyond the threshold of light that the flashlight was responsible for, I found a sleek metal door emblazoned into the aging, crumbling concrete wall of the basement.
I ran my flashlight up the wall and studied the bolts.
The hinges. The untouched stainless steel.
The door was new, despite the decrepit nature of the basement around us, and as I placed my ear to the metal…
“Rat!” I called out. “I think I found the source of that buzzing!”
They scurried toward me before Dallas ripped his flashlight off the table. With all three of our lights pointed at the door, Rat’s jaw hit the floor as he walked up to the metal surface and placed his hand against it.
“Something big is behind there,” he said.
“What do you think’s behind it?” Dallas asked.
“I don’t know, just give me a second,” I murmured.
I shined my light all along the walls and the ceiling around us.
I looked for any signs of wires, or counting clocks.
I searched for anything that seemed out of place, like holes drilled into the wall where they weren’t supposed to be.
Or evidence of a bomb that was planted. After all, we could’ve just walked into a gigantic trap, ready and waiting to blow us all sky fucking high.
My heart rate inched up. My grip on the flashlight grew tighter.
This went way too much like what happened with Bait, and I felt the nape of my neck breaking a sweat.
“What do we do?” Rat asked.
“I swear, we need to clone Plug,” Dallas said breathlessly.
But then, as my guys bellyached in the background, I swept my flashlight across the floor.
I was so focused on the walls and the ceiling that I didn’t stop to look at what was on the fucking floor.
And right there, crystal clear, were thick black cords taped to the floor along the outer border of the wall.
It disappeared through drilled holes in the concrete wall that housed the metal door in front of us.
“Do you trust me?” I asked as I swept my flashlight back up to the ceiling.
“The hell kinda question is that?” Rat asked.
I focused my attention on the ceiling long enough to trace the ductwork above us. My eyes darted around, following their curvature until—you guessed it—that shit disappeared into the border wall that wasn’t really a border wall.
“Gauge,” Dallas said as he shined his flashlight in my face, “what’s going on in that head of yours?”
I smiled when I took stock of how large that ductwork hole was.
If we can rip it out… “You up for a bit of climbing, Rat?”
His gaze slid along the wall until he found the ductwork my light enhanced. “Why don’t we see how quickly we can rip out that ductwork first.”
“Oh hell yeah,” Dallas said as he placed his flashlight in between his teeth.
We were gonna see what was behind that fucking wall.
Even if we had to destroy the building in order to do it.