Gabriel's Sacrifice (The Scrapman Trilogy Book 2) (7 page)

“Place is big.” The hunter ran a hand along his chin. “I’ll need seven more. Go get me the best markers we got.”

Raydea enjoyed the night air as she walked the structure’s top, looking out onto the darkened horizon. The air, with the moonlight dancing across each serpentine cylinder, just seemed to taste better than the staleness waiting within the building.

It was freedom.

Mohamyd had given it to her. If only Lumyn could discover it for herself. They were safe there, together. It was the feeling of not having to move, the feeling of being exactly where she needed to be.

There was no place safer.

They hadn’t heard a weapon discharge in days. Perhaps it was finally over; perhaps the pale-ones were no longer looking for them. Raydea felt a flutter of hope well in her chest. Dare she allow it? Could she actually live out the rest of her days with Mohamyd and Lumyn, safe from those who wished nothing more than to watch her die? Was it possible?

She rejoiced in the thought, curious over her lack of sorrow on the matter of her dead brethren; but there was relief in the freedom that death had brought them. No more suffering–only peace. She would feel it for them.

Raydea pressed her face toward the orange moon as it crept atop the hills to which she once aspired–no longer feeling the need to reach them. They were as distant to her as the night sky. And there, riding on the back of the dark hour’s breeze, a noise reached her. It was subtle at first, as if emitted from the depths of her subconscious, but quickly became chilling in its lucid attachment to reality.

Many pale-ones, possibly hundreds, were unified in great lengths of vocality.

They were celebrating.

And there was only one reason for which she’d known pale-ones to celebrate.

If she were waiting for a sign that it was over, this was it. Another sound then rose in the darkness, startling her completely, one she’d never heard before.

It was the sound of her own laughter.

“You gotta be shittin’ me!” Kyle exclaimed, rubbing his hands together.

“No … I’m not shitting you.”

“How many you think are in there?”

“At least one. Whatever the number, it’s the last of ‘em.”

“Must be my fuckin’ birthday.”

“So who wants in?”

Every hand raised, every soul in the room.

“There are only seven spots remaining. I’ll need the rest to stay here–guard the place.” There was an audible sigh as the hunter looked over his volunteers, weighing their strengths and weaknesses. “Kyle … Kevin … Warlock … Jasper … Beetlejuice … Lincoln … and Rain man, you’re all in.”

“Woah!” someone objected. “I got more kills than anyone!”

The hunter found John, Hazel’s father, approaching him.

Many men had earned themselves monikers over the past few weeks–Warlock, Rain man, and Beetlejuice, to name a few. But this one insisted on an old military alias he claimed to acquire while still in the service, that of Saint John. It had yet to stick; but the hunter knew Hell would have to freeze over before he’d agree to something so self-righteous.

“I’m well aware of your kills, John.” That much was true. The markers kept a running tally etched into the back of the building, and John had quite the significant lead over the others.

“I used to head missions just like this in Iraq!”

And therein lies the problem, Asshole, your eagerness to be in charge.

“Let’s let the boys put another couple notches on that wall. You’ve got plenty.”

“This is bullshit!”

Jackson cleared his throat, pulling back the slide assembly on his weapon. John watched as he did so; and the two of them continued to stare at each other for a generous length of time.

“Shame to make your daughter an orphan so young there, Big boy,” Jackson threatened, prompting a tightened fist at John’s side.

“Stand down, Fellas.”

John spat an expletive through clenched teeth before making a furious departure, smashing his fist into the wall on the way out. He was a brute of a man. Lucky for Hazel it was only his crystal-blue eyes she’d inherited, not his mug and hopefully not his temper.

“Fuckin’ Jackass,” Rick huffed.

“Which is exactly why we don’t need him. Alright, go enjoy what’s left of the party, then get some rest. We’ll meet back here in six hours.” They all turned to leave. “And Fellas … be discreet about this. No one else needs to know.”

“I’m going, right?” Coda asked, stepping in front of his father.

The hunter shook his head. “I need you here, Codes. Someone’s gotta stay to look after this place.”

Coda was visibly disappointed in his decision, but the hunter taught him better than to argue. Coda simply clenched his jaw and looked away. At times, when conversing with Coda, the hunter would feel like he was talking to a younger version of himself. It was possible he was harder on Coda for that reason. He expected a lot from the boy, about as much as he expected from himself, in fact.

But Coda was not just an extension of the hunter; he was also an extension of his mother.

Andrea.

Too soon did God come to collect her.

After years of fighting, while the hunter could hardly prepare himself for a world without her, she’d somehow made peace with death. And it was on a stormy Saturday evening, surrounded by the warmth and comforts of home, that the hunter held her from this life to the next.

He’d still find her in Coda at times–the only part of his son different from him that he didn’t feel like driving out. For it was the parts of him like Andrea that made Coda a better man than he could ever hope to be.

The hunter put a hand on Coda’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Whatever reassurance the gesture gave his son would have to suffice for now.

R
adia seemed adamant that the hunt was over, claiming to hear the hunters rejoicing at some point in the night.

Mohammad wanted nothing more than to believe her, and although he did enjoy seeing Radia’s smiling face, the Fijian was not yet convinced by her experience. His gut was still in a stubborn state of unease, not yet swayed by her tales of a distant celebration.

“I’m still getting breakfast,” he informed her.

The last time Radia saw the sun was a week before, when she’d killed three men to rescue Lumin. Mohammad had been keeping her on a kind of house arrest ever since, only allowing her access to the roof at nightfall. He wasn’t willing to take any chances on her being seen during the day, especially after their site had been deemed suspicious by the locals.

Mohammad’s former survival strategy was to remain a ghost in the apocalypse. He only hoped that strategy could still be salvaged after all this.

“And what of your freedom, Radia?” Mohammad asked her. “If you’re right, and the hunting is over, what will you do with your freedom?”

She thought about the question for a long time, so long in fact that Mohammad feared she hadn’t understood him.

“With my freedom,” she began, “I will get breakfast tomorrow.”

She smiled big and Mohammad couldn’t keep from laughing.

Then, to his surprise, she laughed too. He’d never heard it before–so real and genuine. It was lovely.

“I would like that, Radia,” he admitted. “Believe me, I want nothing more than for you to be fr …”

Radia raised her hand, silencing him, then turned her head and stared off into nothingness.

“What’s wr…”

“Shhh!” She silenced him again.

And with further conversation off the docket at the moment, Mohammad, too, pressed his ear to the morning’s stillness … and heard nothing. He looked at Radia as her eyes widened. She grabbed his wrist just as the door to the maintenance mezzanine burst open, spilling sunshine down onto the stairwell. The shadows of men lingered just beyond–the wispy predecessors of their intruders.

Radia tore Mohammad from his seat as they left the simmering pigeons behind. He followed her past the corrugator and into the forest of rolled paper, climbing up until they reached the nest.

And there–all his weapons were gone.

“Lumin!” Mohammad spat through clenched teeth.

The men were already within the plant. He could hear their voices and footsteps, the sound of one as he called them out.

Radia pointed to the hatch.
Up
.

But then what? We’ll die if we leave the building.

Radia jumped up the ladder and spun the wheel on the hatch, locking it in place.

It then lifted just enough that a slice of light could seep in from beneath. The hatch shook violently above them as the locking mechanism held it shut–the struggles of someone on the roof. It ceased as Mohammad heard the man say, “We gotta hatch up here, but it’s locked.”

“Alright, keep your eye on it.” The latter voice came from two places simultaneously: one from inside the plant and the other from the roof. “Someone is definitely here.”

They’re using two-way radios.

Now the roof was out of the question as they remained weaponless on the nest. They could make a run for the guns. Lumin must have taken them into the boiler room again. They could make it there, but Mohammad doubted they could make it back without being seen. They could stay where they were, wait it out on the nest, but he hated feeling like a sitting duck.

“I’m faster,” Radia whispered. “I’ll get the guns. Meet you here.”

“Radia … ”

“No time.” She leapt from the nest and ran toward the boiler room, her footsteps hardly audible as she disappeared behind the concrete partition.

“Shit.”

The hunter picked up the bird, tearing flesh from its bones.

Delicious
.

There were two seats surrounding the grilling station–fire still burning, pigeons still cooking.

They’d earned their way in with a make-shift grappling hook to the building’s wall. Five men remained on the roof as the hunter entered the plant with Jackson and Rick. Kyle and Kevin came down, close behind.

“Come on out!” the hunter beckoned, rifle in hand.

With the exception of the sheets of day coming in from the skylights, the place was doused in deep shadow. Huge cylinders of paper blocked every apparent exit as the aisles were lined with towers of flattened, corrugated board.

The hunter signaled Jackson to follow the largest machine all the way to the end of the building as Rick stayed left, inspecting the smaller machines running perpendicular to it. The place was congested with all kinds of conveyors, infinite places for hybrids to hide.

His radio suddenly blared to life, Beetlejuice on its other end. “We gotta hatch up here, but it’s locked.”

He held down the receiver. “Alright, keep your eye on it … Someone is definitely here.” The hunter noticed a thin layer of dust layering the surface of the entire floor. He switched on his flashlight to examine it. “There she is,” he whispered, seeing that same female foot print from outside, along with a man’s.

There are at least three here: a man, a woman, and a female hybrid.

With his rifle trained ahead, he followed the prints. There were many–days and days’ worth of walking this same path back and forth. There was a routine, a schedule, and the hunter had just interrupted breakfast.

He held down the receiver again. “They’re at the north end of the plant, Jackson, right in front of you.”

Just then shots rang out through the building, Jackson’s voice booming a moment later. “Gotta hybrid over here!” he shouted. “She just ran into this room on the right!”

“Kyle, Kevin, go give Jackson a hand over there! Rick, come meet me center aisle!”

Both brothers flew past as Rick came to his side. With the hybrid cornered, that only left the man and the woman–both could be heavily armed, waiting beyond the partition to pick them off. So the hunter would take Rick and go around, placing them at the center of a pincer attack.

Raydea locked eyes with the man just before he fired, the pale-one’s projectiles embedding into the concrete beyond her running body. His skin was dark, even darker than Mohamyd’s, his eyes brighter in contrast. They looked to be on fire.

Unscathed, she leapt into the boiler room and climbed the piping to find Lumyn hiding in her upper shadows … without a weapon in sight.

“Guns!” Raydea shouted, shaking her. “Where are the guns?!”

Lumyn only stared blankly back at her. But there was no time. The dark pale-one had already entered with another two at his side. Raydea lowered herself, crawling away from Lumyn, as the men below searched for her, combing the shadows with beams of light at the death’s-end of their weapons.

Raydea couldn’t look at them directly; her irises would give her away in an instant.

Mohammad heard gunfire almost as soon as Radia went to retrieve the weapons. They’d missed her, luckily; at least they thought they did. There was still a chance she could survive. Radia had better aim than even him.

Mohammad heard the voices of multiple men as they followed her into the boiler room–where the seconds seemed to drag for all eternity. Then a gunshot rang out, and another, along with the sound of a falling body. His knuckles tightened as it echoed through the building–the violence of metal upon flesh, then the final smack of asphalt, like the popping of a great balloon. But their rejoicing was the worst sound of all.

Mohammad could no longer wait. He had to find a way to defend his home. He lifted himself to the hatch, unlocking it slowly, and lifted it just a quarter inch. There he found the boots of a man, his heels toward him. Throwing open the hatch, Mohammad grabbed the man’s belt and yanked him inside.

“Whuda f…” the man started to shout, the edge of the hatch silencing him instantly. He hit the nest completely limp as a pool of dark blood began seeping out the back of his skull.

Mohammad jumped down, retrieved the man’s rifle and aimed it back up at the open hatch; but the blue morning’s sky was the only thing to cross it for several seconds. He reached down, swiping the man’s radio; and judging by the rate the blood was escaping his body, Mohammad doubted he’d be waking up again.