Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (25 page)

We fell silent, both frustrated by how close we were to the truth. Ida resumed her frantic scan of the road, and a moment later, we decelerated.
 

Searching the right side of the highway, Ida changed lanes and slowed almost to a stop as she turned down a tiny road tucked into the trees I had nearly missed. The tires groaned as we drove through the hard-packed snow. No one had plowed the road here.

We passed several private gravel roads, and I felt a twinge of sadness imagining all those empty houses. My dad had wanted to move out to a place like this. He loved the country, but he tolerated the suburbs mostly for my mom. She loved the neighborhood barbecues and the green lawns, but my dad had always been more of a lone wolf. Now he would never get his dream home in the woods.

Through the trees, I could just make out a dilapidated white building. It blended in with the snow, but as we rounded the corner, a squat steeple came into view. The half-collapsed sign sticking out of the snow read “Salvation Baptist Church,” and the windows looked dark. Several other vehicles were parked along the road and in the gravel drive. Ida stopped the truck.

“Got that list?”

I withdrew the folded piece of paper Miller had given me, and Ida squinted through her glasses to read the tiny, cramped handwriting from the clipboard.

“She must be dreaming,” Ida muttered. “She wants four hundred rounds of ammunition plus two gallons of antiseptic, gauze, forty rolls of toilet paper, and thirty gallons of gasoline.”

“How much is meat worth?”

“A lot. The only thing worth more is ammunition and fuel, but that’s gotten more and more expensive every time I’ve come here. We’re not importing oil anymore, and all the factories, refineries, and oil rigs are now PMC controlled. There’s a finite supply.”

As Ida muttered some mental calculations to herself, I studied the old church warily through my foggy window. If I hadn’t seen the other cars, I would have thought the church was empty. There were no people milling around outside, and the windows looked dark.

“Leave your gun,” Ida said, putting her own on the floorboard behind the seat. “These people are a little . . . on edge.”

I tucked my own gun away with some hesitation. I didn’t like walking into the unknown without it. Following her through the snow, I began to feel the excitement and nerves humming in my chest.
 

“Shouldn’t we get the venison?” I whispered.

She shook her head once. “It’s not a good idea to show your hand. These aren’t the Murphys or even the Rulons of the world. Most of these people are preppers.”

“Preppers?”

“Survivalists. They’re the ones who saw this coming. They made it big after the Collapse because they’d already stockpiled enough food and weapons to last for years. But you can’t trust them. They’re only looking out for themselves and their families. They’re not afraid to kill anyone who gets in their way.”
 

I swallowed, feeling the knife hidden under my coat.

“Keep a sharp eye.”

As we drew closer to the church, I heard the murmur of voices inside. Ida pushed open the door, and several dozen pairs of eyes snapped in our direction. They were scattered between the pews, vendors using the benches to display their wares as traders prowled up and down the aisles. I couldn’t tell which group looked more unsavory. The vendors all had a smug, rugged look about them, and most of the people looking to make a trade were thin with pinched, tired faces.

A few vendors nodded at Ida, but she returned their greetings with a tight, closed-mouth smile so unlike her usual warm, toothy grin. I had never seen her more ill at ease.

To my left, a shout erupted. I turned in time to see a vendor with a scraggly beard spit on the shoes of a man in a tattered winter coat. The trader shoved the man across the pew, and the vendor pulled out a handgun and pointed it at his temple. I froze, preparing to hit the deck, but no one else seemed to notice. The trader whimpered and backed away, clutching a tin of motor oil he had tried to barter.

“Don’t stare,” Ida murmured to me.

I snapped my eyes away from the vendor but continued to drink in my surroundings. Most of the vendors were selling an odd hodgepodge of items: clothes, tools, weapons, ammunition, car parts, kitchen utensils, canned food, coffee, eggs, vegetables, breakfast cereal, soap, makeup, farm equipment, and even live chickens.

Ida walked straight to the back and stopped in front of a man in his mid thirties with a thick red beard and a leather vest. Tattoos snaked up his folded bare arms, and his skin was smeared with grease. He smirked when he saw us approaching.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” he said with an appreciative twang in his voice. Something about the way he said it made my skin crawl.

Unlike the others, he didn’t have a bunch of random items spread out in his pew. Instead, there was an array of disassembled guns spread out on a greasy towel and neatly stacked boxes of ammunition.
 

“What can I do you for?”

“Hello, Rick.”

“It’s been too long.”

“I’ve been on the move. And there’s been some trouble.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Rick’s voice was pleasant enough, but something about him still made me uneasy.

“Who’s this?” he asked, looking me up and down.

“This is Haven.”

I smiled, not wanting to.

Rick cracked a grin and extended a greasy hand. “Well, Haven, it sure is nice to meet you.”

The way he said it made me slightly uncomfortable, and Ida stepped smoothly between us.

“How are you set for meat this winter?”

He shrugged. “We’re doing all right. Can’t complain.”

“You must be spread pretty thin . . . trying to do all the hunting while protecting your family. I heard that area was hit really hard by carriers this summer.”

“We manage,” he said. There was a note of defensiveness in his voice.

“How many pounds of venison would twenty rounds cost me?”

“Venison?” He chuckled. “Damn, I was hoping you’d decided to slaughter one of them fine cows of yours.”

She smiled, and again I noticed it did not meet her eyes.

“Twenty rounds will cost you ten pounds of venison.”

“How about five pounds?”

“Sorry, Ida. I want to help you out, but venison just isn’t worth that. Now if you had beef . . .” He smacked his lips. “But it’s getting harder and harder to find ammunition.”

She nodded. “All right.”

“How many boxes can I put you down for?”

“Fifteen.”

“That’s three hundred rounds.” He laughed. “What am I supposed to do with a hundred and fifty pounds of deer meat?”

“Freeze it.”

He studied her for a moment, and there was an odd gleam in his eye. “All right. But only because I like you. The wife’s gonna be pissed that she has to cook venison for the next three months.”

“We’ll be right back,” said Ida. “We have a few more trades to make. Then we can exchange payment.”

He nodded and winked at me.
 

I followed Ida back down the aisle, keeping Rick in my line of sight for several feet. Something about him wasn’t right.

To my surprise, Ida’s voice sounded worried when she spoke next. “We need to make the next trade and get out of here. I trust Rick, but I don’t like people knowing what we’ve got.”

We made the rounds to a few other vendors Ida knew, trading pounds of meat for the goods on Miller’s list. For the smaller trades, she sent me out to the truck to get the meat. The hunters had wrapped it in brown paper with the number of pounds of cut meat written in grease pencil.

Once we had gathered all the first aid supplies, the food we needed, and gasoline for the truck, Ida nodded to Rick to follow us outside to make the trade. I opened the truck bed and piled the packages of meat into a wooden crate. I hopped down into the snow and stared at him loping toward us.

Something was wrong.
 

He wasn’t carrying a crate of ammunition; instead, he cradled his rifle lazily in the crook of his arm.

“Well, we’d like to be on our way,” said Ida. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was.

“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Rick. There was an odd note to his voice. “Why don’t you unload all that meat there and be on your way.”

“Where’s my ammunition?”

Rick sighed. “That’s your problem, Ida. You’re always too eager, and you make these massive buys.” He laughed. “That’s dangerous.”

“I do business with you because you’re an honest man.” Her voice was strong, but I could detect anger beneath the surface.

Rick rocked back on his heels, smiling like a crazy man and looking around. “I used to think so. But times are hard, Ida. I can’t let you just walk away with three hundred rounds. It’s all I got. I have my family to think about.”

“So you were planning on robbing us blind?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“After all the years we’ve known each other.”

“Well, I —”

Rick stopped abruptly, cut off by the wail of sirens in the distance. We all looked down the gravel drive, panicked, and he was the first to refocus.
 

“Unload that meat. Now!” he yelled.

I shook my head, but Ida was still looking around for the direction of the sirens. We stood there with Rick’s gun trained on me, and I slowly got down from the truck and motioned as if I was going to unload the venison.
 

But just then, there was a flash of blue light through the trees, and I saw the white PMC cruiser rumbling down the road on the other side of the church. Rick wiped the sweat from his brow and then started backing away toward a pickup truck parked several yards behind us. He fumbled with his keys and started the engine. He peeled out of the gravel on the side of the road and spun around to face the other direction. With a rumble and a spray of gravel, he was gone.

“Get in the truck,” said Ida.

“The other people,” I muttered. “The ammo!”

“It’s not worth it.”

But I was already running toward the church. I burst in the back door and ran down the aisle. “The PMC is here!” I yelled.

The vendors’ eyes widened. It was mass chaos. People grabbed whatever they could carry and ran, shoving each other aside and crowding through the back door. Rick’s guns were still laid out across the pew, and there was a crate full of ammunition lying on the ground. I grabbed it and sprinted back the way I had come just as the front doors of the church burst open.

“Freeze!” yelled the officers. They fired, and I heard the groans of several vendors being shot as they scrambled to pack up their wares.

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t stop. I flew through the snow and jumped into the passenger side of the truck. Ida peeled out of the gravel drive, and we rumbled down the road. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel the anger coming off her.
 

The sound of more sirens pierced my eardrums. I looked around desperately but didn’t see any other cruisers. Then I looked in the mirror.
 

Trailing behind us through the snow was a white SUV, its bright blue lights unmistakable.

We pulled onto the highway, and I felt the truck shudder slightly as Ida accelerated. There was a shadow of panic in her eyes. I followed her gaze to the dashboard, where the needle on the fuel gauge was hovered over E. We hadn’t refilled yet, and we wouldn’t have enough gas to make it back to camp.

Our only chance was to lose the cruiser, but it was right on our tail.
 

“I could shoot out their tires,” I said.

Ida shook her head once. “Their tires are reinforced. Even if you made the shot, it would only waste ammunition.”

Seeing the huge crate filled with boxes of rounds out of the corner of my eye, I understood her true meaning: It would only waste energy. And as soon as we started shooting, they would open fire as well.

Then I felt it: the lurch of the truck as the engine gobbled up the last fumes of gas. The truck slowed abruptly, forcing the cruiser to swerve around us to avoid collision. The SUV spun out, coming to a halt in front of us as we stopped. Two officers in full riot gear jumped out, pointing their guns in our direction.

“Drop your weapons!” yelled the officer. “Drop your weapons, and exit the vehicle slowly.”

My gun was cocked on my lap. Without thinking, I threw open the passenger door and fired.

Miraculously, one of the officers staggered, and I ducked behind the door just as the other returned fire.

“Get down!” I yelled to Ida, and I heard the officer I’d shot collapse onto the pavement.

I crawled back into the truck under the dashboard with Ida, waiting and breathing heavily. My heart was pounding so loudly I couldn’t think.
 

Another shot punctuated the heavy quiet.
 

My mind was racing. Now that I had shot an officer, we wouldn’t be taken prisoner. We would be killed on the spot.

Just as I was weighing the risk of shooting again, another shot made contact with the truck — closer this time.

“You hear that?” Ida whispered.

“
Yeah.
”
 

“No. All three shots came from the same gun. It’s just one officer shooting.”

The collapsed officer wasn’t returning fire. Maybe I had killed him.

“If we both jump out,” breathed Ida, “he can’t shoot us both without getting shot himself. One of us can get away.”
 

I nodded. “Okay.”

“One. Two. Three.”

Ida and I jumped out of the truck simultaneously, and I whipped my gun around to point it at the lone PMC officer standing in front of the truck. The other officer lay on the ground completely still, blood seeping from a wound in his chest.

The officer already had his gun pointed at Ida. If I missed, Ida would be killed.

“Drop your weapons,” yelled the officer. The voice was muffled by the heavy helmet, but it was definitely a female’s. I immediately thought of Logan.

It’s not her,
I told myself. I tried to clear my head, unsure what to do. I could shoot and kill the officer, and Ida would live, or I could miss the officer, and Ida could die. Or I could surrender, and we would both be killed.