Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (20 page)

“Alright. Jake, you’re with me. Mia, stay here with Jonah. Just keep watch and do what Michael said. There’s no reason for all of us to get into trouble.” Then I informed the other watchers of what I was doing, and handed her the radio once the protests began streaming out of it.

“I don’t have time to argue with them, so just tell whoever asks that I went to the Warden’s office. They can meet us there or not, I don’t care. Either way I’ll be getting an ass-chewing before the night’s over.”

I rushed over to my chair and picked up my rifle, checked that it was loaded, and jogged over to the staircase. Jake was right behind me the whole way, just as he’d been since we first met. That’s one thing I can say about Jake. He might be crazy, he might be making jokes about half the time, but when it comes right down to it, when shit gets deep, he’s right there watching our backs.

“Come on, I want to do this like we’ve done a dozen times before. I’m on point, and you cover,” I said, approaching the large glass door.

I pressed my back against the cold brick on one side, and Jake mirrored me on the other.

“You’re expectin’ somethin’ bad, aren’t ya?”

“I always expect something bad.” I swung around the corner and flung the door open.

Jake was behind me with his rifle up, the barrel poised just over my shoulder. The light in the lobby was out, the hallway beyond was lit up. We entered slowly, scanning the area and spreading out. Once we saw the front desk area was clear, I nodded to him and tried the security door. And of course, it was locked.

“Shit,” I hissed. There was no other way of getting in, unless I had a key to the door. Which I did not. And there was no one on the other side to buzz us in.

“Hold up,” Jake whispered. He hurried over to me and leaned his gun against the wall. “Let your hair down.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. He motioned impatiently with his hands and stepped between me and the door.

“Just undo it and give me the bobby pins.”

I did as he asked and started pulling the various clips from my hair. I’d bunched it all up that morning in a haphazard pony tail, not caring what it looked like because of the wicked hang-over I’d been suffering from. Now I was thankful for feeling so shitty. I looked at him through a few strands of stray blonde curls and handed him a handful of bobby pins.

“Well I don’t need that many, overachiever.” He picked a couple from my palm. Leave it to Jake to be skilled at lock picking. I kept my eyes on the hallway beyond while he worked on the lock, glancing back at the front door every so often.

“C’mon you little bitch,” he mumbled, twisting the pins this way and that, coaxing the mechanism to turn. Finally I heard a click, then a buzz immediately following.

“That’s it, let’s go.” I quickly pushed the door open before it could lock again.

I held it for him so he could stuff the pins into his pocket and retrieve his rifle, then he took point and I eased the door shut behind us. I wasn’t worried about it locking again; we could hit the switch from behind the front desk to let us out later. We snuck quietly down the hall, Jake hugging one wall and me the other, both our barrels trained on the open office door at the far end. Harvel’s office. The light was on inside, and there was something sticking out of the doorway.

It looked like a shoe.

Jake held up one hand, motioning for me to stop and cover him. Something was definitely not right about this. Not only was the shoe in the doorway not right, but the smell in the air wasn’t either. It was coppery, something we’d smelled before. Jake stopped just a few feet from the open doorway and motioned for me to come up next to him. He fixed me with his eyes and leaned his gun against the wall, then nodded for me to follow suit once he drew his sidearm. I understood what he planned on doing, so I quickly, but quietly, propped my rifle next to his, pulled my pistol, and took a couple steps to the side, pressing my back to the opposite wall and bracing myself to cover him.

We both took a couple deep breaths, then he stepped forward and swung wide until he was standing directly in the center of the doorway. Before he went inside I quickly came up behind him, something we had done before when clearing houses or buildings. Usually Jake would enter the room now, and I would replace him in the doorway to cover him and our exit.

This time was different.

This time there were no zombies in the room, no attackers of any kind.

Only a very dead Calvin lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. No Harvel, no Harvel’s bitch. Just Cal, beaten beyond recognition, his shirt torn from his body, and one foot lacking a shoe.

“Oh my God.” I was too close to throwing up to say much more. Jake, however, was uncharacteristically quiet. We lowered our weapons and stepped inside.

There’d obviously been a fight; the desk had been shoved against the wall, chairs were overturned and one broken, the lamp in the far corner lay shattered on the floor. And the blood. It was on the walls, the desk, the floor, anywhere and everywhere Cal had been thrown or fell against. His face looked like something had plowed into it. I’d never in my life seen someone look this horrendous.

It was sickening to imagine the blind frenzy of his attacker, to have inflicted this much damage to a man’s face. It was gone; his nose, lips, and his cheekbones were literally void of skin and flesh. They’d been beaten bare. One eye hung from its socket, the other completely gone. The only thing identifying this body as Cal was the curly black hair on his head. Even half that was missing; pieces of scalp lay here and there on the bloody floor.

“What the hell happened here?” Jake finally muttered.

We just stood side by side with our hands covering our mouths, staring down at Calvin, overwhelmed by the carnage.

“We need to cover him up with something, then tell the others.” I choked the words out.

Before Jake had a chance to answer, shouts and the sounds of running came from the front lobby. I took a few steps backwards until I was in the hallway and was acutely aware of how hard it was for me to tear my eyes away from that room, away from Cal. I suppose I just couldn’t get over how badly he’d been beaten.

“Kasey! Jake!” Michael was yelling on the other side of the security door.

“Stop him, Kase, he can’t see this,” Jake said.

I ran down the hall. Jake pulled himself away from the office and searched the empty room next to it for anything to cover Cal. I heard keys in the door, someone saying hurry up, then Michael and John bursting through once the former finally got it unlocked. I was halfway down the hall by that time, and holding my hands up.

“No, Michael, don’t go down there,” I was saying, but he was trying to push past me. John, on the other hand, seemed to understand how bad it was just from the pasty look of horror on my face.

His eyes were on the open office doorway, his big hands were grabbing Michael’s upper arms. I was shoving back on his chest and talking to him, trying to calm his growing anger and pain. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Jake slipping out of one of the abandoned offices with a curtain, then waited for what I thought was a reasonable amount of time for him to have covered Cal before letting up on Michael. He slipped past me and ran the rest of the way, John rushing behind him, and I noticed there were several people who had come with them, hanging back next to the security door. Martin and Smith were the only ones I recognized, so I waved them forward.

“Go on down, he’s gonna need you.”

They may have argued with Cal earlier, but the deep friendship that existed between the group of men was intensely clear. They hit the doorway just as Jake was coming out, and just as Michael let loose and began crying. Crying and swearing worse than Jake ever had.

“That’s fucked up, Kase. You know damn well who did it. Question is, where’re they now?” Jake asked, his voice shaking.

He handed me my rifle, which I slung on my shoulder, then we turned and walked back down the hall together.

“C’mon folks, let’s give them some space.” I gestured with my hands towards the people gathered at the end of the hall, herding them back through the door and into the lobby.

“Hey, Jake, let’s find something to prop the goddamn door with,” I said. “I’m sick of trying to get in and out of it.”

He rummaged around the front desk area and finally came back with a chair. Martin and Smith had joined in the chorus of grief coming from down the hall. Jake wedged the back of the chair underneath the security door’s knob and motioned for me to follow him outside. I weaved my way through the murmuring crowd in the lobby and caught up with him just as he kicked the front door open. He ran his hands through his hair roughly, then stumbled around the corner and threw up in a shrub. It was hard to stop my own guts from heaving, but after several deep breaths I finally got myself under control.

The dormitory was lit up across the courtyard, no doubt alive with activity considering the hell storm that had just been unleashed. I stood with my hands on my hips, scanning the rooftops and noting the new snipers that had taken up position, then to the wall where Mia and Jonah still stood along the edge. She threw her hand up and then simply stood and watched us. Jonah turned and went back to his shooting bench.

Jake wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve. “This is bad, Kasey. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Harvel and his man must still be here somewhere. It doesn’t matter which one did that, hell, maybe they were both all over Cal, but it doesn’t matter. No one here is safe until they’re found.” I rubbed my face and tilted my head back. “Shit.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Sure, you’re right. But, Kasey—he’s gonna blame you. Michael is gonna blame you for this.”

He was pacing back and forth now and becoming highly agitated. His eyes never left mine. I hadn’t considered this. Yes, I was blaming myself, but I’d been blaming myself for everything ever since Ben had died. I knew the confrontation with Harvel in the cafeteria had been a turning point for these people, and yeah, I had been the catalyst. It just never occurred to me that pissing off the Dictator of Blueville would directly result in what we had walked into. Another mistake I would most likely live to regret.

“Maybe, Jake. Maybe. If he does, and tries something, we’ll deal with it then. But we do need to worry about where those sick fuckers are right now.” I pointed an angry finger across the grass, to the living quarters of several dozen men, women, and children. “What if those bastards are in there? Shit, Jake, they could be anywhere. No one is safe.”

I stopped my own absentminded pacing and stood facing him. He mirrored my posture, neither of us looking forward to skulking around in the dark looking for one, possibly two madmen, all the while knowing it had to be done.

Raised voices coming from the other side of the large glass door interrupted our planning. John came out first and headed straight for us without missing a beat.

“What did you two find when you got here?” He was shaking with anger, but it wasn’t out of control yet. With his massive arms folded over his chest, he fixed us in his glare and waited for an answer.

“Exactly what you saw, John. I asked Jake to cover him up, but other than that, we didn’t touch a thing.” I have to admit, at that moment I was scared shitless of John. Judging from the look in his eye, he wasn’t above hitting a woman, and I had serious doubts whether I’d survive a hit from a man his size.

“Was the security door open when you got here?” he asked.

“No, I picked the lock,” Jake said. John’s eyes sized us both up.

“John, listen. I realized a little while ago that no one had seen Cal since before the meeting on the wall, and I had a bad feeling that he’d went against Michael and talked to the Warden anyways,” I explained. “So we came down here to check it out. Harvel and his buddy had to have done this. And as far as anyone knows, they’re still in the prison. What do you want to do about that?”

John’s jaw clenched at the mention of the Warden’s name and his nostrils were flaring. “Well darlin’, you know what I’d
like
to do, but this isn’t my show, and I’m not the boss. We’ll find them, don’t you worry about that. Let’s sit tight a few minutes and see what Michael says.” He snatched the radio from his belt and began calling all the watchers on the roofs and the wall.

“I want all of you to keep your eyes on the surrounding fields, inside and outside the perimeter as far as you can see. We may have two men trying to get out, and as far as we know they may already be gone. Take a good look at your areas, and report back anything that seems out of place. Solice out.” He replaced the radio just as Michael, Martin, and Smith stormed outside.

Michael seemed lost, wandering away from the building and looking around the empty courtyard. Martin, the one with the quick temper, cut away from the other two, and before any of us could react, he drew back and belted me right in the mouth.

With the exception of getting a Louisville Slugger to the nose, I’d never been hit in the face before. I have to say, it hurt worse than the baseball bat. The force of his punch knocked me backward into Jake, who wrapped me in a hug and swung me away. John was already on top of Martin and had him on the ground. Michael and Smith rushed between us, both heads snapping back and forth with wild eyes and gaping mouths. Blood gushed from my mouth and I tried bending over to spit it out, but Jake had an iron-grip on me and was dragging me away from the other men. He didn’t trust any of them now, and I’ll be damned if I could blame him.