Chapter 7 #2
“Here to get you out, captain,” he said, moving rapidly to the lock. “We don’t have much time.”
Jeff stepped back to give him room and the door soon swung open with a rusty creaking.
Happy to be out of the cell, Jeff hastened across the threshold and accepted the blaster Les handed him from the holster at his hip.
Then his rescuer handed him an even more valuable gift—one of the alien bracelets.
“I took out the desk sergeant and the guard,” Les said as he led Jeff down the corridor. “They were both from Quantike’s originals so they were braceleted.” He raised his arm and Jeff caught a glimpse of a bracelet on his wrist. “Figured we could use these.”
Jeff clamped his onto his arm. “Smart thinking. I hope these devices work as well as the one Frawkins had.” He stepped over the unconscious guard, sprawled at the entrance to the cell block. Another soldier was lying on the floor next to the desk. “Good work.”
“Neither of them suspected me. I said I was sent here to supplement the guard force. They both know me so they had no suspicions.” As he opened the door to the outside, Les added, “I’ve been keeping my nose clean since we got here, acting like I want to get soldier of the month honors, brown nosing, playing my part so if and when Devora and I ever did get a chance to escape, I’d be the last man Command would expect to be a rebel. ”
“Probably a wise strategy to adopt,” Jeff agreed. “I was doing a similar act, until they kidnapped my wife.”
Now they were outside in the cool pre-dawn air and running, keeping to the shadows.
“What’s the plan?” Jeff asked. On the move with Les McDaniel, he sent to Cody.
“Tamsyn came to us for help last night after you were taken. She told us the truth about why the three of you were here and promised we could escape with you if I helped you break out of the jail.”
“How did she know I was in trouble? I didn’t have time to com her before I was stunned.”
“She’s on the loop for the medical building chat and she got an alert there’d been an intruder in Dr. Sharpton’s office.
She figured it was you. She said she tried to contact you but no luck.
Devora managed to find out you were in jail after attacking Quantike.
Command is trying to keep it quiet of course. ”
“Of course. The whole can of worms spills if the camp finds out what’s been going on with the people sent to the research facility. Where are we going?”
“I’ve been working on various ideas for escape ever since we got here.
” Les flicked a glance at Jeff. “I’m not as naturally inclined to believe authority figures as Devora is.
She idolized the sheriff in her town before he died.
I guess she hoped the leaders here would be like him.
I love her, so I agreed to join the camp since she was so determined it was best for Jenny, but I like to keep my options open.
Anyway I have a spot in the derelict vehicles yard where I’ve created a small gap in the force fields.
The coverage gets patchy, as you know. Too much area to cover for the units they’ve got.
The problem has always been the infected all around the damn place.
I can get outside the fence but without help I couldn’t guarantee safe passage through the swarm.
I was going to set off some kind of diversion if we made the choice to escape but now I have the bracelet and Tamsyn says your men outside have an APC with a megacannon. We’ll make it.”
“I’m communicating with them now,” Jeff said. Cody, we’re going to break out from the derelict vehicle field. Exact co-ordinates coming.
Getting into position now.
Now they were inside the vast yard where the assorted vehicles the refugees had arrived in were parked, ready to be stripped of anything valuable and made part of the ever expanding physical wall barricades.
Les led Jeff unerringly through the packed field until he reached a battered school bus at the edge, so close to the force fence Jeff felt the buzzing energy against his skin.
Tamsyn and Devora moved out of the shadows as they approached. The latter was carrying her daughter, who had a brightly colored backpack that bulged, barely closing.
“Good to see you,” Tamsyn said in a whisper. “Cody says he’s right on the other side of the fence.”
Jeff climbed the stacked cars and trucks and peered into the night. The two APC’s loomed in the darkness. Ready? He asked Cody.
As ever. No time to waste. We’ll lay down covering fire once your party emerges from the fence.
There weren’t many infected staggering around. Jeff supposed since the vehicle yard usually had no humans except for the occasional roving guard, the predators were drawn elsewhere. The situation would change in a hurry once the APC’s commenced laying down fire.
Hold off until we see if it’s needed, Jeff advised. Two of us are wearing the infected-repelling bracelets.
He descended from the stacked vehicles and jumped the last foot or so to the ground. “Now or never. Do your thing to the force field.”
Les nodded and wove his way in between the noses of two crushed cars. “I’ve set up a couple of jury-rigged blockers,” he said in a muffled voice. “Let me insert those where the power fluctuates and then we can get out. It’ll be a bit of a crawl at first.”
Jeff took up a guard position in front of the women and the child. “We’ll let Les go first since he has a blaster and a bracelet. I’ll bring up the rear.”
“I have a bracelet too,” Tamsyn said, holding out her arm. The sluggish red accents glowed in the waning moonlight. “I can take point if you want.”
“Where did you—?”
“As low person on the medical staff roster, I got tasked to escort Frawkins’s body to the morgue,” she said. “I took this as a souvenir of Glastine. Figured it might come in handy and by the time anyone missed it we’d be gone.”
“Smart thinking.” Hearing sounds in the car lot beyond where he stood, Jeff motioned the women to take cover.
Crouched low, he took off to investigate.
From the noise, there was only one person and Jeff thought it was the roving guard, belatedly making his rounds.
The man would leave soon, none the wiser.
Instead the footfalls continued to move closer and there was a muttered curse as the person banged their shin against one of the parked groundcars. Jeff moved onto the light, blaster at the ready. “Freeze. Hands up.”
Madrigan stood there. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said as she raised her hands. “You can’t be the one messing with my force fields. The fluctuations started long before you got here. Tonight I was going to catch the miscreant in the act.”
Jeff motioned for her to precede him. “Keep quiet and you’ll survive.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?” she asked as they walked to the school bus.
“This whole place is a damn jail,” he said with venom. “How you can work here in good conscience I don’t understand.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him.
“When I agreed to be on Quantike’s team setting the camp up, I believed at first it was going to be a genuine effort to save lives but right away things didn’t add up.
They were sending teams into the cities to find specific people, even kids, and Quantike and his girlfriend were real cagey about the research facility—”
“You knew you were going to be safe,” Jeff said with disgust.
“Exactly. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with looking out for number one,” she said with spirit as they rounded the last obstacle and arrived at the bus.
“Devora?” Faltering for a moment, Madrigan stared beyond her.
“That must mean Les is the one who’s been fucking with the force fields. I never suspected you two.”
The man in question emerged from the tunnel of debris packed into a wall in time to hear his name. Blaster out, he glared at the force field expert. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been tracking your incursions into my area,” she said with spirit. “I can’t believe someone like you could mess with my systems.” She sat on the bottom step of the bus and pulled out a feelgood stick, igniting it and placing it between her lips.
“I might not have been Special Forces,” he replied, “But us grunts learned a thing or two along the way. We should go—your people are waiting, captain.”
“Oh you have people, do you?” Madrigan raised her pencil thin eyebrows. “I bet Quantike had no idea what he was getting when the three of you were admitted into the camp. Although Dr. Jericho turned out to be exactly what the research facility wanted, didn’t she?”
Jeff had a deep code against harming women but at her flippant words he grabbed her, knocking the feelgood to the ground and pressed her against the side of the bus with his free hand circling her skinny neck. “What do you know about my wife?”
Eyes wide and pulse pounding in her neck, Madrigan tried to push him away but Jeff outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds of muscle.
He eased up his grip slightly to allow her to talk.
“Not much. The RF has us run those blood tests on every new person, checking for certain blood types, special markers, stuff I don’t understand or care about frankly.
I heard Sharpton tell the general your wife had a rare set of submarkers, whatever the fuck those might be.
I’m glad I don’t have them. The RF wanted her sent up right away, special truck, no delay. Quantike jumps when the RF barks.”
Behind them in the fairground a siren began to blare.
“Out of time,” Les said urgently. “We’ve got to go.”
Jeff released Madrigan with a shove. “Les, take point, show them the way. Devora, you’re the only one without a bracelet so you and the girl go behind Tamsyn and I’ll bring up the rear.”