Текст книги "Howlers"
Автор книги: Kent Harrington
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
CHAPTER 27
They’d noticed that Howlers were learning to use simple tools. The Howlers had worked together to muster battering rams. Groups of the things had started dragging trees they’d pulled down in the forest. Twenty or more, holding a tree, would run toward the cabin’s front door. Each time, the cabin’s defenders cut the Howlers down before they could reach the porch.
It was this new aspect, their learning to use tools, which had unnerved Summers. The second time they’d tried it he’d panicked and run down into the bunker, leaving his weapon on the floor, sure the Howlers would succeed in breaking in and kill them. He’d closed the safety door separating the lower bunker from the cabin, trapping the rest of them upstairs. No one had noticed.
The five remaining upstairs—Quentin, Lacy, Marvin, Miles and Dillon—were shocked and exhausted from the second battle. The numbers of Howlers that had attacked the cabin was something they’d never anticipated, or would ever forget. Thousands had attacked in wave after wave. Howlers of every kind, many obviously from cities—more black and brown Howlers now—rushed up the snow-covered road toward the tiny cabin. The five of them had stood by their gunports, firing their automatic weapons straight toward the horde. The sound of five automatic weapons, the barrels heating up so they were sometimes glowing red, had filled the tiny cabin. They had had no respite, no time for screaming, no time for crying, or for even drinking water. They had slaughtered thousands of Howlers, who now lay in heaps outside the cabin again. The beautiful snowy field had turned into an ugly battlefield reminiscent of the Somme or Gettysburg, carpeted with corpses.
The battle had taken place over three hours in the dead of night, making it even more terrifying. By dawn, the floor of the cabin was covered with thousands of shell casings from the assault rifles. The sickening smell of cordite clung to their clothes and to the walls. Their trigger fingers were blistered and they had burns on their hands from handling their overheated weapons while reloading.
The dawn had come and they were drinking coffee in silence. An occasional pounding on the door of the cabin signaled that one of the many wounded Howlers had dragged itself over the corpses of the dead onto the smoldering charred porch and continued to attack, even bullet-torn and half-dead. They were still intent on breaking down the door and killing them all.
It all seemed impossible and yet they had seen it, and lived it. They’d managed to clear the field of fire from the mounds of dead Howlers stacked up in the kill zone one more time and in preparation for the next attack. Already more Howlers were gathering below on the road, calling out for more to join them. But the worst had been the sight of them carrying trees and running with them toward the cabin. It was their learning to work together that had terrified them more than anything. If they were learning to use tools, they soon might learn to use firearms.
“Where is the kid?” Dillon asked at last, his face haggard. A dark shadow of beard had grown over his face in the last forty-eight hours.
“He’s hiding,” Marvin said.
“The door to the bunker is locked,” Lacy said. “He’s locked it!” She stood over the open trap door, trying to slide back the iron plate.
They all looked at each other.
“There’s only one way down there,” Dillon said.
Marvin nodded.
“All the extra ammunition is down there,” Quentin said. His shirt had been burnt from the flame thrower they’d used during the battle. Some of the gel had dripped onto him and caught fire as he’d tried to turn off the weapon. Lacy had smothered the fire out with her own body.
No one had noticed Summers sneaking off during the battle. They had no way even to communicate with him. The trap door was covered with a two-inch thick steel plate, set in place from below.
Lacy, first to see the plate, had immediately realized what Summers had done. During the battle, she’d seen him frozen with fear when it looked as if they would be overrun and the front door breached. But she’d been forced to concentrate on her firing and she’d forgotten about Summers, lost in her own manic killing and reloading.
“Motherfucker!” Dillon said. He took a sip of coffee. “I guess this Phelps guy never figured on a coward fucking everyone like that.”
“There’s only a couple of boxes of ammunition left up here,” Marvin said.
A loud, steady banging started on the cabin’s door. Coffee in hand, Marvin walked slowly to the gunport with a view of the porch. He saw a teenage Howler with a sledgehammer. The thing was using deliberate, careful swings, hitting the cabin’s reinforced door. Marvin watched the hinges jump, intrigued by the Howler’s use of the tool.
“They’re learning fast. He’s got a sledgehammer,” Marvin said, not bothering to turn around. He stuck the barrel of the FAL through the gunport, fired a burst at the kid’s head and returned to the table. Killing Howlers had become routine.
During the worst moments of the battle it had been the doctor who made sure everyone had ammunition: running to the back of the cabin and the gun locker and bringing boxes of ammunition to each of them, sometimes sitting on the ground, his back to the wall, his blood stained sheep-skin coat open, reloading their empty clips himself with a gadget from Phelps’s gun locker. Never once had Marvin looked frightened or even worried, even at the very worst moments when Summers had stopped firing and started screaming like a child, having snapped.
At their worst moment, when a horde of Howlers gained the porch, dozens of the creatures beating on the thick plastic window, their faces big, their spit hitting the window, their dirty palms pressed against the bullet-proof plastic—some of them shoving hands through the open gunports—even then, when it seemed they would all die soon, Marvin had worked with the same dull look on his face, almost as if he’d become one of them.
It was then, while Summers pissed himself and fell on the floor screaming like a child, that Quentin ran for Phelps’s homemade flamethrower. Quentin manned the awkward thing, attached to a jerrycan by a plastic hose, itself attached to an air compressor. He’d pulled the compressor’s starter and the flamethrower jumped to life, building pressure in the jerrycan, pushing a gel-like substance that Chuck had designed to mimic the Napalm he’d seen used in Vietnam.
The homemade flamethrower began to spit hunks of gel from its nozzle. Quentin screamed for people to get away from the gunports and lit the end of the flamethrower. Dripping flame, he poked the flamethrower’s head out of one of the cabin’s gunports and pulled the trigger. The nozzle shot flaming gel at the attackers, covering them in flames.
The weapon saved the day, turning the wall of pounding Howlers, a hundred of them, into a blue-yellow ball of fire. The burning gel struck the creatures, igniting their clothes and skin. Their whole bodies on fire, the things ran out in different directions, blind.
It had been Dillon who opened the cabin door and rushed out to kill them as they ran. At the same time, he doused the flaming porch with buckets of water that Marvin and Lacy passed out to him.
It was then, while they were all fighting the fire on the porch, that Summers had crawled to the trap door and had locked himself down in the bunker, without anyone noticing.
“What do we do now?” Lacy said. She was looking at her father.
Quentin got up from the table. “We have to eat something. Can you fix us something?” He walked to the trap door that led to the bunker. He opened the cover and saw that the inside was locked with a steel plate that slid over the hatch and could only be locked from the bunker side.
“Yes,” Lacy said.
“Hey, kid. Can you hear me?” Quentin said.
No one answered.
Quentin opened the cabin door and looked at the dead Howler, his hands still around the sledgehammer. He slid the hammer out of the Howler’s hand and closed the cabin door, re-locking it. He walked over to the hatch and with all his might, swung the hammer down on the steel plate.
The hammer’s head snapped off and flew off, nearly hitting Miles. Quentin looked at the hammer’s broken handle.
“Now what?” Miles said. His face was white with exhaustion, his hands blistered from his weapon.
“We eat breakfast,” Quentin said. He took the broken handle, walked toward the cabin’s door and leaned it carefully against the door. Lacy got up and turned to the refrigerator.
“I must face the man that hates me or lie a coward—or lie a coward in my grave—.” Dillon sang the words to High Noon quietly.
“Shut up!” Quentin said.
“What’s wrong, Sheriff? We got a couple boxes of ammo and these things are starting to use tools. What do you think is going to happen to us? We’re heading to the green room.” Dillon walked over to the hatch separating them from safety and looked down again at the steel plate. “I should have listened to Rebecca and shot that fucking kid when I had the chance.”
“Please shut up!” Lacy said. She started to cry. She was holding a box of eggs she’d found in the cold room. “Please.” It was so pitiful, her exhausted tone of voice, that Dillon shut up. He looked at her, then went down to the gun locker and threw it open.
Three boxes of long rifle shells were left. A whole stack of shotgun shells remained, but their range made them almost useless. They had only survived because they’d killed so many of the things further out from the cabin. He closed the locker door and for the first time in a long, long, time felt real fear. He felt a kind of panic.
He turned and looked at the cabin door. He had the sudden irrational urge to run out the door and onto the field. He could see himself running through the snow to the road, to some kind of vehicle that would take him far away from this nightmare.
He heard the sound of bacon frying, then smelled it. That familiar sound, and the smell of the cooking food, helped him get hold of himself. He turned around in time to see Quentin collapse onto the floor. He watched Quentin’s body twist and shake in the grips of some horrible seizure.
Lacy had laid a wooden spoon on the counter. Marvin, realizing Quentin was having a seizure, forced the spoon into Quentin’s open mouth as he shook and jerked on the floor.
Dillon looked out the scratched and bloody window. A new wave of Howlers was gathering at the bottom of the field. He could see them shaping up for a new attack, most of them sitting on their haunches and howling. He expected to die.
* * *
Howard Price passed Timberline’s shot-up population sign and drove on around the bend and over a short concrete bridge into town. He drove slowly down Main Street, sometimes having to drive directly over dead bodies and around abandoned cars. The town seemed completely deserted. He’d seen no one on the road after turning off at Emigrant Gap. He’d seen a few creatures on the side of the road, some standing passively by deserted cars, others in groups of thirty, or so, had been running along the road in a surreal fashion, heading east. Some of them stopped to howl, or to stare at him as he drove past. A few had run after the car, but he’d sped up and left them behind. The next ten miles had been Howler free, the road empty. He passed a smoldering hulk of a motel to his right and sped on.
He looked at his gas gauge. He had only a quarter tank or less, but more than enough to get him to the bed and breakfast Miles had described. He decided to try and fill up his Prius in Timberline if possible. It would be dangerous, but it was important to do while it was still possible. He noticed lights on in the storefronts he passed—even the Christmas lights, strung down the town’s main street, were still on. If he could find a gas station, the pumps, and the computers attached to them, might still be functioning.
He stopped his car in the middle of Main Street and looked out at the unreal scene of snow-covered wrecks and dead bodies. He consulted the Google map Miles had emailed him. The cabin, according to the instructions, was only about five miles to the east of Timberline. He looked at the electronic pin he’d stuck in the map. It was four in the afternoon and he’d eaten nothing since the night before.
He heard the slap of his windshield wiper. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw nothing moving on the street behind him. He tried to squint and see through the falling snow in case he was missing something.
“I’ve got to eat something!” he said aloud. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d gotten back in the car at the rest stop. He looked at his phone; it had a signal. He put the car in park and thumbed through his contacts until he saw Miles’ cell number and decided to try it.
“Hello,” Miles answered.
“Miles?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“In Timberline,” Howard said.
“Fuck!” Miles said.
“I’m almost there,” Howard said. “I’m going to try and get gas in case we need the car.”
“You can’t come now,” Miles said.
“What?”
“It isn’t safe. We’re surrounded by them and—it’s useless here. There’s no point. We’re locked out of the bunker. I’m sorry, Howard.”
“I can try,” Howard said.
“It’s suicide,” Miles said.
“I don’t know what else to do, Miles.” Price could hear someone take the phone.
“Hello, this is Dr. Marvin Poole. You say you’re in Timberline?”
“Yes,” Howard said. “I’m on the main street right now, by the public library.”
“I need some medicine, for seizures. They’re in my office. It’s very close to where you are. Can you get it and bring it here?”
“But I thought—”
“Can you do it? It’s called Felbatol. I’ll text you the instructions, where to find it in my office.”
“All right, I’ll do it,” Howard said.
“Thank you. Turn to your right. What do you see?” Marvin asked.
“It’s a restaurant called The Copper Penny,” Howard said.
“Okay, three doors down, to the south, you’ll see my office door. It is unlocked, I’m sure. I’ll text you now which other medicines I need you to bring. What’s your name?”
“It’s Howard, Howard Price.”
“Thank you, Howard. Good luck. Call when you get to mailbox number 30. Take the eastern road out of town. You’ll pass the high school and a 7-11. You can’t miss it. That’s the direction you’re going to travel, and toward where we are now. I’ll come and meet you on the road myself. I promise. All right?” Marvin said. “You’ll be all right.”
“Yes. Okay,” Howard said. “How far am I from where you are?”
“Twenty minutes, probably even less,” Marvin said. “You’ll see Howlers on the road near us. But you’ll be okay. Stay in the car until you see me.”
Marvin hung up. A text appeared from Miles’ cell with a list of drugs Poole needed and instructions on where exactly he would find them in the office.
Howard turned and looked down to his right and saw Poole’s office. He was afraid of getting out of the car. He remembered the pistol Jon had given him at the rest stop and picked it off the seat next to him. It was snowing hard, the sky dimensionless, the highest peaks of the Sierra Madre hidden in mist.
Before going to Poole’s office, Howard stopped in the Copper Penny to scavenge something to eat. The scene was horrifying, but nothing frightened him more than what he saw on a tablet computer he found on the floor.
It was a scene shot from a helicopter of an overpass on Highway 80, southeast of Timberline. The entire highway—all six lanes—was filled with creatures coming from the greater Los Angeles basin, tens of thousands of them heading toward the Sierra: a kind of strange mutant army on the march.
He found the tablet’s volume control and turned it up.
“Terrorist creatures are massing on this California highway heading away from Los Angeles and into the mountains. There is no explanation for this mass movement of creatures out of the LA area,” a CNN newscaster’s voice said.
Howard pushed some cold French fries into his mouth. He looked at the dead people in the booth, their plates of food hardly touched. The food on the plates in front of them was ice cold, but, he hoped, still edible.
“In other news, the new Provisional Government is taking emergency measures to ensure citizens’ safety from this attack, which sources say may be linked to sleeper cells of terrorists based in Los Angeles. Colonel Terry Bent, spokesman for the Provisional Government, urges all Americans to continue to shelter in place. Local law enforcement and military police will be moving door-to-door with further instructions, and confiscating private firearms in order to prevent civil disorder.”
Howard reached over and took a turkey club sandwich from in front of a woman with a crushed face. She’d been hit so many times in the face that she was unrecognizable. He pushed the tablet computer to the side and ate the sandwich, picking up an iced tea that was cold to the touch.
CHAPTER 28
Lieutenant Bell stopped the limousine they’d taken from the hotel’s parking lot and turned in the driver’s seat. They’d found Rebecca some designer jeans and a black turtleneck sweater to wear. Her sweater had been torn in a melee on the hotel’s turnaround on the way to the limo.
Rebecca told them that Senator Prince knew all about the Phelps cabin, and exactly where it was located. She said Prince was planning to use it as his headquarters. Rebecca’s hair was down; she looked older. Something awful had happened to her eyes. Her expression had been girlish; now it was mean.
Rebecca held an automatic weapon across her lap. She’d picked it up off the ground as they were running out onto the turnaround. They’d run through a gauntlet of Howlers equipped with nothing but a fire ax that Patty had found in the hotel’s equipment room, and the pistol that Bell had taken in the fight. Prince’s men had been overrun and had retreated to the lobby. The trio had taken a chance and run out the back of the hotel, near the pool, and headed for the parking lot.
Bell emptied his pistol as they left the hotel, before the parking lot was even in sight. The fight on the turnaround had been horrific. Twenty feet from the limousine, a new group of Howlers had attacked them, responding to the howling at the hotel. Only seven of Prince’s gunmen had survived the earlier battle, and their nervous commander ordered them inside. The gunmen had watched the un-armed trio from the lobby, sure they’d be killed.
Reaching the turnaround, Bell had been able to clear a path through ten or more of the thing with the red handled fire-ax, the girls standing behind him. One of the Howlers, a very tall woman, had grabbed the ax and torn it from his hand. He’d thought it was over, but Rebecca had seen a weapon lying only a few feet from them. She’d picked it up and run, screaming at Bell and Patty to hit the ground.
Rebecca had opened up with the short-barreled assault rifle, spraying fire into the gang of Howlers. She killed all but two of the things before the weapon stopped firing, out of ammo. Instead of giving up, Rebecca ran straight at the two remaining creatures: a young Latin man dressed gang-banger style, exposing his underwear, and a young girl. She used the rifle as a club, cold-cocking the girl with the butt of the rifle, hitting her in the face until the thing finally fell over.
The young man had loped up and grabbed Rebecca from behind, spinning her around. As he swung a skateboard at Rebecca’s face, Bell had picked the ax off the ground and sunk it into the top of the thing’s skull, using all his might. The ax head came straight down and split the kid’s head open all the way to its neck. The skateboard board tumbled out of its dead hands. Rebecca had pushed the still-standing thing over.
The two made it to the limousine, Bell jumping into the driver’s seat. They’d both failed to notice that Patty had been in her own hand-to-hand battle and was trapped standing on top of a car, unarmed. She’d been saved only because one of the gunmen, inside the hotel watching her, had decided he couldn’t let her die. He’d stepped outside, firing his weapon at the things surrounding her. Patty turned and looked at him as he walked toward her, firing.
“Get out of here,” the gunman said, changing clips as he spoke. She hopped off the car’s hood and ran toward the limo.
The gunman watched them drive off. “Fuck Prince,” he muttered. He’d seen enough of what the Senator had in mind for America. He walked away from the hotel and slipped into the woods.
On the way to Timberline, Bell spotted the abandoned car that he and Lacy had driven from her boyfriend’s house the day before. It was still parked in the middle of the highway, exactly where they’d left it. He drove on until he saw a driveway in the moonlight to his right and stopped the car. Not one car had passed them on the road since they’d left the hotel. It was a bad sign, Bell thought.
“This might be the place. Ryder and that bitch Sue Ling picked Lacy and me up just back there, where you saw the abandoned car. Ryder said they’d just left the mansion when they found us on the road.”
“Yeah, there’s a mansion up there,” Rebecca said. “A friend of mine worked a party there for Mr. Towler, the caterer. She said the old rich guy who gave the party was showing everyone his personal helicopter.
The pitch-black driveway was barely lit by the moonlight. Snow had started to pile in a small drift at the front of the mansion’s wide-open security gate. Bell doubted he could get the limo up the driveway, which was probably snow-covered and impassable.
“The place could be full of Howlers,” Patty said, looking at the open gate.
“Let’s find out. What’s the worst they can do to us?” Bell said. “Fuck it. We have no choice.”
Bell put the limo in Drive and sped straight toward the snow piled in front of the gate, turning the steering wheel hard as they bent the turn onto the driveway. He heard the bottom of the limo hit the asphalt, bottoming out. He raced through the snowdrift piled in front of the driveway and drove through it.
The limo’s rear power-wheel slipped and slid on the steep driveway, unable to get much traction. Bell punched the accelerator. The power tire spun loudly, then finally caught asphalt. The front of the limo plowed on past the stone portals. At times the big car felt as if it was going to fishtail right off the road, but the lieutenant, fighting the wheel for control, was able to get the huge limo up to the top of the mansion’s driveway. They crested the hill and the driveway opened up onto a huge dark snowless expanse in front of the mansion that was completely dark. To their right was another long driveway that led to a huge barn-like structure.
“Why no snow on the ground?” Patty said, looking at the expanse of pavers in front of the mansion.
“It’s heated, I guess,” Bell said. “The driveway.”
“Jesus,” Patty said taking in the palatial “summer” house. She’d bumped up against the vacationing super-rich at the ranger station. They would send their bodyguards or personal assistants into the office to ask directions, or to make reservations for some of the hiking trails that were controlled. Sometimes, when she was out on patrol on horseback, she would pass them and their little armies: personal assistants, nannies, professional guides. She could tell the super-rich because they had porters and even cooks who would follow them into the back country. A family of four might have ten people in support. Quentin had told her about some of the fabulous places they’d built in the mountains around Timberline. The place in front of her looked as big as a hotel.
“A lot of Fun Hogs have heated roadbeds. They’re solar powered,” Rebecca said. “My uncle Ken puts them in. Maybe we can find some weapons, or whatever in the house. This thing is useless.” Rebecca tapped the ammunition-less weapon resting on her knees.
Bell saw headlights come up the driveway behind him. He looked in the rearview mirror. In a moment Johnny Ryder’s familiar stolen white Land Rover crested the hill going fast and almost rear-ended them.
“Ryder will think that weapon is loaded,” Bell said, turning to Rebecca. He could see she wasn’t afraid. She nodded.
* * *
Gary Summers was standing with the mountain bike he’d found at the bed and breakfast across from the Phelps cabin. Nothing lay in either direction in front of or behind him on the snow-covered, one-lane road. To his left was the road to Emigrant Gap, and beyond that Highway 50, which would take him to Sacramento. To his right was a ten-mile stretch, mostly uphill, that would take him into Timberline. He was so cold that he realized he couldn’t possibly bike to Sacramento—his plan—unless he was able to find some warmer winter clothes.
He wore only jeans and a light windbreaker that Rebecca had given him at her shop. He was cold in a way he’d never experienced before, to the very marrow of his bones. He’d sweated heavily while crawling down the long escape tunnel at the cabin, not sure whether he would be able to get out. He’d heard Dillon talking about the escape tunnel, but he’d not had time to look at the instructions in the control room. He’d been so frightened and ashamed of what he’d done, locking the trap door behind him, that he just wanted to keep moving to get away and save himself.
Looking at the hordes of Howlers running toward the cabin, Summers had realized that there was no way they could kill them all fast enough. When he’d seen them rushing the cabin carrying a battering ram, he’d lost his nerve. He’d stood up and stopped firing his weapon. He’d looked at the others firing theirs, the doctor helping load clips with a terrible expression on his face, and the horrific sound of the gunfire—five FALs firing at once. Terrified, he’d crawled toward the trapdoor on his belly and slid down the steep steps. Before he locked the plate down behind him, he’d hesitated; but he convinced himself they were all doomed upstairs. He wasn’t going to die there, in that cabin, torn apart by those things. He’d rammed the bolt home, locking the trapdoor and sealing his comrades’ fate. He’d crawled down the escape tunnel in the dark while the others were upstairs fighting for their lives against the massive attack. In the darkness, like a rat, he’d crawled toward he didn’t know what.
When he got to the end of the tunnel, he panicked and cried like a little boy. He accidently touched the end of the rope Chuck had hung from the trap door. When he touched it, he stopped crying and pulled. At first it hadn’t moved. The second time he used both his hands and slowly the lid, its top piled with frozen snow, cracked open and early-morning light flooded the pitch-black tunnel.
He raised himself up in the opening and saw, almost immediately, Howlers running through the forest toward the cabin, some crouching on the ground and calling. He gazed out, frozen with fear. If he could make it across to the road, he might escape and live. He scrambled out the opening and fell into the snow, crawling on his hands and knees through the fresh powder snow toward the county road only fifteen yards away. He could hear the gunfire coming from the cabin behind him, heard rounds smacking the pine trees around his head.
He lay in the snow, the heat of his body melting it and soaking his skin. He waited, too afraid to crawl, listening to the bullets whack pine-tree bark, making it fly off the tree just a few feet from his face.
A few Howlers were on the road in front of him. Most had run toward the cabin. He spotted the bed and breakfast on the other side of the road; it seemed to be deserted, but he was too frightened to risk standing up and running across the road, afraid that Howlers would spot him. He watched the road and urinated on himself, making the cold worse. He started to shake uncontrollably. If he didn’t get up out of the snow, he’d die of hypothermia.
Piss-stained and freezing, Gary Summers stood up as soon as the shooting stopped. He ran through the thigh-deep snow until he broke out of the woods. Without stopping he turned and ran toward the bed and breakfast, sure he was going to be chased down by one of the things and murdered. But he wasn’t. Gary Summers ran down the Country Bride Inn’s empty driveway and into the Inn full of dead guests and warm clothes he took from their open suitcases.
* * *
Bell got out of the limo. He raised the empty automatic and pointed it at the Land Rover. “Get the fuck out of the car,” Bell said.
Ryder slipped out from behind the wheel his hands up. “Okay, I know you’re pissed at me,” Johnny said. “I don’t blame you. But hear me out, Bell.”
Rebecca opened the back of the limo. Pointing her weapon at Ryder, she walked up to the passenger side of the Land Rover and dragged Sue Ling out, throwing her onto the driveway roughly.
“I’m going to kill this bitch in two seconds if you don’t throw out all your weapons,” Rebecca said. She held the short barrel of the assault rifle against Sue Ling’s cheek. The girl lay on the ground, terrified.
“Okay, okay!” Johnny said. “For fuck sake, on the backseat!” He nodded toward the Land Rover. Rebecca reached in and pulled out a Marine AA 12 shotgun. “And my pistol,” Johnny said. He lifted his jacket and showed the butt of an automatic. Bell had him toss the pistol to him by the barrel. It landed on the pavers in front of him.
Patty, who’d gotten out behind Rebecca, picked it up. She immediately checked to see if it was ready to fire, then pointed it at Ryder.
“I got a deal for you,” Ryder said.
“Yeah?” Bell said.
“Yeah,” Ryder said, smiling as if nothing was wrong in the world.
“What is it, asshole?”
“You help us move something, and I’ll show you where there’s another Prepper cabin—one that the Senator and those crazies don’t know about.”
“What are you doing here? Why did they let you go?”
“The senator—the crazy fucker—wants Sue Ling and me to run a whorehouse for them. The New American Army, or whatever the hell it’s called, is going to need one up here in the Sierras. I told them they should use this old rich guy’s place.”
