Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (259 page)

***

“Grenade!” Alex yelled, jumping behind the wheel well of one of the armored trucks as the explosive detonated, sending a blast of energy that crumpled the metal armor on the other side of the truck. The adrenaline coursing through Alex’s veins was still going strong, but he wasn’t sure how much longer it would last.

Alex poked his head over the hood of the truck and could see the farm camp where Todd was housed. It was right between both sides, who had seemed to come to a stalemate within the city limits. The soldiers Alex was with had backed the sentries up against the wall, which gave the sentries only two options: kill the soldiers or die.

“Is that where Todd is?” Ray asked, shouting above the gunfire.

Alex nodded and then reexamined how the hell he was going to get inside, but before he had a chance to come up with a solution that didn’t involve running through the firefight with nothing but blind luck, Ray took off at a sprint toward the farm camp.

“Ray!”

But it was too late. The man was already halfway across the field. Alex cursed under his breath then looked up inside the cab of the truck next to him, which shielded him from the grenade. The keys were still inside, so he crouched around to check the damage on the side of the blast. The doors were bent, but the tires and axles checked out all right.

Alex jumped behind the driver’s seat, and when he looked out onto the field, he could see Ray’s lifeless body lying in the dirt. He floored the accelerator and kept himself crouched low behind the dashboard so only his eyes peeked over the top.

The farther Alex drove, the more intensely the rain of bullets peppered both sides of the truck and started splintering the windows until the passenger-side glass finally gave way and burst into broken shards. Alex pulled the truck to the right, protecting Ray’s body from any more enemy fire, and jumped to the ground beside him.

Blood gushed from Ray’s right arm and the right side of his stomach, and he had placed both his shaking hands over the wounds. His entire body convulsed from shock.

“You have to get him,” Ray said, coughing up blood. “You have to get him out.”

Alex scooped his arms under Ray with a coordinated, strained effort from the rest of his muscles, lifted him off the ground and laid him across the backseat. “Hang on, Ray.” Luckily, the soldiers on their side had ceased fire, allowing Alex to get Ray out, but the bullets from the sentries continued their vicious assault as Alex hightailed it back to the front lines.

Both Alex and Ray bobbled and shook as the truck rumbled forward, flying over bumps and hills, and dodging the bullets that were now flying in through the shattered back windshield. Alex skidded to a stop with the hood smoking. The medic pulled Ray, now unconscious, out of the back.

Alex jumped back behind the wheel of the truck, and one of the soldiers rushed over to him. “Sir, what are you doing?” Alex cranked the engine to life, and a puff of black smoke ejected from the tailpipe.

“I’m getting those people out of the farm camp. Cover me.”

The engine whined as it came to life, and the tires spun out in the loose dirt, gaining traction the farther he drove. Using the left side of the building as cover from the sentries, Alex got the truck as close to the front of the building as he possibly could and slammed on the brakes before smashing into the structure.

Alex looked behind him and could see the soldiers concentrating fire into the sentries. The only entrance was at the front, which was a good one hundred feet from the safety of the corner that protected Alex from the exchange of lead. Finally, he sprinted toward the entrance, kicking dirt up behind him, and he slid into the entrance feet first, with the barrel of his rifle pointed forward, ready to shoot any sentries who may have been stationed inside, but was greeted only by darkness.

The metal structure caused the gunfire outside to echo ominously within the walls of the farm camp. Alex took a few light steps forward, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness as he made his way through the front-entrance hallway.

Each step forward was full with anxiety-filled anticipation. Aside from the thunder of gunshots outside, the farm camp was quiet. With his eyes finally adjusting to the darkness, Alex could see the faint glow of the hydroponic tanks at the end of the hallway.

The structure was large, and the dim lighting only allowed Alex to see twenty feet in front of him. But the quiet felt odd. He couldn’t hear anything. No breathing or the shuffle of feet. Nothing.

Alex began to panic. Maybe this was the wrong farm camp. Maybe they had moved everyone, or worse. No. Todd was in there somewhere. He knew it. Alex took the first step inside and pivoted to the back wall, using the sights on his rifle to help him segment and scan the area in blocks.

The aerators from the tanks, bubbling the water inside, gave off a constant hum. The deeper he went into the camp without any sign of the workers or sentries inside, the faster his heart beat. He could feel a black hole ripping through him. If he couldn’t get Todd back, then everything he had tried to do would have been in vain.

All the betrayal, all the pain he caused Todd and his friends and family, the hundreds of hours he spent trying to solve the soil crisis would be for nothing. Alex couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let a man who’d made his mission in life to bring the rest of humanity out of the pits of hell die in a place like this.

Alex had his rifle raised, and something dripped from above and splashed his arm. It looked dark in the fading glow of the hydroponics lab, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Then another drip landed on his arm, then his shoulder, his forehead. It felt warm against his skin, and when Alex brought the tip of his finger to wipe the drip rolling down the bridge of his nose, he felt his body run cold. It was blood.

Alex lifted his head slowly as the drops continued to fall over his face, and the very first thing he saw were the soles of the farm camp workers hanging from above. Dozens of bodies hung in the air with hooks dug into their backs and their flesh extended from the body.

Alex bent over with his hands on his knees, forcing the contents of his stomach back down his throat. He spit on the ground, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of rotten bile. He wiped his lips and forced himself to look up at the lifeless bodies, hanging from the rafters. He pulled out his flashlight and started scanning the faces.

Each face Alex lit up, he felt his heart drop into the pit of his stomach. The pained, hollow expressions the light exposed were the final moments of a life that was consumed with agony. If Gordon was sending everyone a final message, then Alex heard it loud and clear.

Then, when Alex shone the light on one of the faces, the eyes squinted, shielding themselves from the brightness. Not all of them were dead. Alex clicked on his radio. “We need men in the farm camp now!”

Gunfire and a panicked voice from the lieutenant echoed in his ear, “We’re moving as fast as we can!”

Alex used the beam of his light to follow the length of the chains that kept the bone-thin workers suspended in midair. The chains were attached to a catwalk. Just before Alex rushed to the stairs, the light ran across the bearded face of a man he recognized. His body was slowly rotating, spinning in midair as the blood from the puncture wounds on his back trickled a small waterfall of blood to the floor.

Alex leapt the stairs to the second story two at a time. The thump of his boots against the metal catwalk where the bodies were hung thumped in rhythm with the bullets firing beyond the walls, outside. He found the chains with Todd’s body and pulled, the muscles along his legs, back, and arms burning with every inch he brought Todd closer to the ledge.

Alex watched Todd’s skin tug and tear the closer he moved his body to the top. Tired moans of pain escaped Todd’s mouth with each jerky motion of the chains in Alex’s hands. With Todd’s body now dangling just on the edge of the catwalk, Alex grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him onto the sliver of metal. Afraid of further damaging Todd’s back, Alex didn’t touch the hooks. 

“Todd? Can you hear me?” Alex asked.

Downstairs, the soldiers from outside flooded the first floor of the building, their flashlights jerking in the darkness, searching for any sign of life.

“Up here!” Alex shouted, waving his arm. The soldiers below hurried up the steps while Alex kept hold of Todd. “Hang in there. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.” Alex repeated the words, almost saying them more to himself than to Todd. The war was coming to an end, and Alex hoped that by getting Todd out of the hellhole he put him in, a weight would be lifted off his shoulders. So he waited, waited for that feeling to come. But as the soldiers around him pulled up the rest of the workers dangling from the chains and hooks, he wondered if it would ever happen.

The chopper touched down in the street just outside the town hall where the Soil Coalition’s headquarters used to reside. Frizen was the first of the joint chiefs to step out and make his way up the steps, with General Mears and General Cooley flanking him on either side.

The rest of the city was a mixture of bodies and smoke. Once the military pierced the western line and made it into the heart of the city, what sentries remained quickly surrendered. And when Frizen learned why, he insisted on visiting Topeka personally.

“We didn’t have any indications of any flights taking off during the fight,” Cooley said as he followed Frizen down the twisting hallways of the worn city hall.

“And we’re sure Gordon didn’t possess any type of stealth craft or was working on any project that could have afforded him such an escape?” Frizen asked.

“I am one hundred percent confident that he did not leave through the air, Admiral.”

“There was a break in our northern lines during the battle,” General Mears said. “I think Gordon drove his way out of here.”

“Then I want every available asset tracking him down and finding out where he is and where he’s headed,” Frizen said.

“I have men already on it,” Mears answered.

Frizen came to a stop outside a door that had charred burn marks scorched on the outside edges. A team dressed in white hazmat suits scanned the wreckage for anything that wasn’t destroyed. One of the workers saw the admiral and immediately called everyone to attention.

“At ease, Sergeant,” Frizen said, giving the man a salute. “What have you got for me?”

“He wiped everything, Admiral. We’re taking what hard drives we think we might be able to salvage back to the lab, but it’s a long shot we’ll be able to pull anything off of them.”

“And nothing on the servers?”

“No, not yet.”

“Very well. Keep me updated if you find anything of interest.”

“Yes, sir!”

The sergeant went back to his work, and Frizen stepped over a broken computer screen and back into the hallway, where the faces of Mears and Cooley mirrored his own fears. Gordon escaped, and he still had the soil data. “General Mears, we need to find Gordon before he leaves the country.”

General Mears took off and was then replaced by an out-of-breath corporal who did his best to retain his composure and extended a message to the admiral. Frizen’s jaw slowly dropped as Cooley waited eagerly to see what he was reading. Frizen crumpled the piece of paper up and grabbed the boy by the shoulders. “Who knows about this?”

“Only the doctors, immediate family, and a few of the men who were part of the rescue mission, sir.”

“You tell Commander Luis that no one but me is allowed to see him, and I’m leaving for their location immediately.”

The soldier nodded then quickly dashed back down the hallway. Frizen looked back into the charred lab next to him and let a small fountain of hope well up inside of him. As long as Todd Penn was alive, they still had a chance at fixing this.

***

The air grew cold, and Gordon fastened the top button of his coat as he stepped out of the vehicle and onto the wide-open tundra that was North Dakota. He rubbed his legs, attempting to loosen the aching stiffness that had grown over the past sixteen hours. “Christ, this place is a fucking hellhole.” Even before GMO-24, Gordon didn’t think this place would grow anything other than calluses on his feet. Jake climbed out of his vehicle and joined him in the arid cold.

Almost all of the trucks were riddled with bullet holes and cracked windows. The Class 3s who escorted Gordon and Jake pulled a few of the dead bodies from the previous battle out of the truck and dumped them on the ground. The escape from Topeka had proven slightly more difficult than anticipated.

The head of the Class 3 unit, Jay Kriken, looked over to Gordon as the last body was pulled from the caravan. Kriken was the most dangerous sentry Gordon ever brought into the Class 3 program. He had the mind of a sociopath with the face of a big-screen actor, which offered the illusion that he wouldn’t slice your throat then rip the skin from your skull. “What do you want to do with the meat sacks?”

“I just want them hidden,” Gordon answered. “The military will be out in full force looking for us, and I don’t want to leave any breadcrumbs for them to pick up. Just don’t bring any attention to yourself.”

Kriken nodded and gave the bodies a slight kick with his toe. A small rock formation was just to their left, and he rolled them in that direction, motioning for a few other sentries to assist him.

Gordon enlisted the protection of thirty of the best Class 3 sentries in the Coalition. They were the top one percent of the top one percent. Gordon was surrounded by some of the deadliest and most ruthless men on the planet.

The only downside to having a team like the one Gordon had was they could only be controlled as long as Gordon had something to offer them, and with the entire might of the United States military looking to hunt them down and kill them, Gordon’s offer of freedom and wealth was enough to keep them in line. At least for now.

“You really think Sheng will come through?” Jake asked.

“He better. Because the alternative is joining those bodies in the rocks over there,” Gordon answered, then looking back to the car he added, “See if he needs a bathroom break. I don’t need him making a mess, with all the ground we still have to cover.”

Jake opened the back door of the truck and grabbed Sydney by his collar, who was bound with rope at his wrists with a gag stuffed in his mouth, and pulled him out of the vehicle. He landed on the hard ground with a crack, followed by a muffled moan. Jake picked him up, forced him into a standing position, and yanked the gag out of his mouth.

“You don’t have to be so rough,” Sydney said, rotating the shoulder that received the blunt force of the impact.

“Well, if you had finished your job, we wouldn’t be here in the first place,” Gordon said. “So shut the fuck up!” A large puff of vapor roared from Gordon’s mouth from the cold air. “You better hope the Chinese don’t have a better scientist than you, because if they do, I’m going to let Jake treat your body like a punching bag, and then I’m going to hand you over to the Class 3s so they can use you for target practice until you bleed out.”

Gordon gripped the back of Sydney’s hair and tossed him forward, letting Jake walk him out onto the frozen ground. When Sydney dropped his pants, the sentries started to laugh.

“Don’t let your balls get too close to the ground!” Kriken roared, clutching his stomach.

Gordon kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. The impact sent a pain up through his entire leg. He took in the landscape around him, wondering if he’d ever see anything that was truly alive again.