Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5 Read online

Elijah had a small Swiss Army knife in his pocket, which they hadn’t searched, and he sawed quickly through the duct tape and was free. However, when he stood straight again, a sharp pain stabbed through his leg, then his ribs. He squashed those feelings down and limped to Jamie.

  “C’mon, man,” he whispered as he untied Jamie’s feet.

  Gunfire this time was followed by what sounded like an explosion in the distance, or quite a few.

  Unable to reach his hands since he was hoisted in the air, Elijah quickly dragged the metal folding chair they’d sat on to question him over and stood on it. Outside, more gunfire cracked off, which spurred him into moving faster despite his injuries.

  Once he sawed through Jamie’s duct tape, which was thicker than his own, he cut through the zip ties carefully. Jamie fell to the floor like a limp rag. Elijah knelt beside him in the thick puddle of blood and felt for a pulse, which he found. It was slow and seemed weaker than it should. But he was still alive.

  Elijah ignored the pain in his shoulder and hefted Jamie. The man was stocky in build and unconscious to the point of being totally dead weight. Elijah was going to have to carry him, but first, he needed to stop the bleeding.

  He took his jacket, which was discarded a few feet away, and searched the pockets. Inside, he found a handkerchief. It would have to do, whether it was clean or not. Jamie’s gut wound was bad. Even in the middle of the night, without much light in the room, he could see blood still flowing slowly out of it. Lifting the shirt carefully, Elijah pressed the rag against the man’s wound. Then he slipped his jacket around Jamie’s waist and tied it tightly. It was the best he had for a bandage, and this would also add a little warmth. Then he cut off the sleeve of his flannel shirt and bound his own leg wound. It was tight, which hurt, but Elijah didn’t want to continue bleeding.

  “Jamie,” he whispered. “C’mon, man. You’re gonna need to help me out here.”

  The man moaned weakly. They didn’t have much time. Elijah could hear the men shouting somewhere in another area of the building. They could be coming this way. Or they could be getting overrun by those things, which meant he and Jamie were in bigger trouble.

  He could tell they were on the ground floor, so going out a window seemed to be the only option in this room since he didn’t see an exit door.

  Elijah left Jamie on the floor while he ran to a window and pushed it open. A man on guard duty or something similar almost jogged right by him with his flashlight beam aimed forward. Elijah ducked back and flattened against the wall. When the man was gone again, he pushed the window open further. Unfortunately, they were the types of windows that tilted outward and only about halfway. He wasn’t sure he could even slip through that much space, let alone with Jamie. They were going to have to go out the door the men always came in. That meant they could run into them. This wasn’t good. His other option was to leave Jamie in the hopes of coming back in a few hours for him with his brother. That wasn’t good, either, but they’d probably leave the man alive, maybe even treat his critical wounds so that they had something to bargain with if they no longer had Elijah to get information from.

  “Elijah…” Jamie called weakly, hoarsely.

  He ran back to his comrade and knelt beside him. “I’m here, Jamie. I got you free. We’re getting outta’ here.”

  “No, just go. I’ll only slow you down too much. Just get out of here and do so quickly. Hide behind buildings. Use evasive maneuvers. You aren’t going to fight your way out of here. Avoid them. Sneak.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  Jamie coughed, sputtered, and mumbled. “Damnit, go. Get to her. Take care of Wren for me.”

  Shouting outside followed by gunshots startled him.

  “Look at me,” Jamie stated and grabbed his forearm with a strength that Elijah didn’t think he still possessed in his deteriorating state. “Is it better for both of us to die here? Better for her? She’s the only thing that matters. Find her. Take care of her. Do that for me. Promise me, kid.”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered obediently in a shaky tone.

  “Now, go!” he whispered, the sound wet and raspy. “They’ll keep me alive until you come back to negotiate. But, Elijah, don’t come back. I won’t be alive by then anyway. If you come back at all, they’ll just kill you and her, too. Just go. Take care of her. Promise.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice steadier now. “I promise.”

  He was with a new group now. Not necessarily new, but merged. Still, he’d rather leave them behind and go off on his own, but in reality, they’d probably just die. There was a woman in the new group, young, perhaps in her thirties. She seemed capable, not so soft. The others were nothing like her. The others in her group were like the ones in his; weak, timid, incapable. He wished, as he kept watch that he could just leave and offer the woman to go with him. She seemed frustrated, too.

  Then he heard one of the children snoring softly in the other room.

  Damn conscience. If only humans weren’t born with those damn, inescapable things. He would’ve left days ago.

  Chapter Two

  Tristan

  “Remember, you move when I move,” he told Roman and Abraham. Spencer was in the backseat next to their other new neighbor Alex, who Tristan learned had a little bit of his own experience since he was in the Army for a short time. Small world. And they were all on their way to save Wren’s uncle and Alex’s younger brother named Elijah. Tristan sometimes wondered if trouble just found him or if he went looking for it. Either way, it was here again like an old friend come to visit.

  “Right,” Abraham said.

  “Yes, sir,” Roman also answered.

  Wren was in the middle of the backseat with that huge dog of hers on the floor in front of her. Tristan had objected to bringing it, but Wren and Alex had both argued their points against that notion rather persuasively. They also assured him that it wouldn’t bark and give them away, which had been his biggest concern. Some factions of the military still used a canine unit, but his did not as sneaking in and assassinating people the CIA wanted dead was conducive to partnering with someone who could use a headset, pull a trigger, or drive the getaway car and not someone that barked.

  Abraham asked, “You said you’d tell us what to do about the ones who run if it comes down to that. What do we do, Tristan? What do we do if they run from us?”

  “Spencer and I will mostly handle that,” he said, knowing they’d pull the trigger without a second thought. “Just defend yourselves if you need to. Assume everyone is a threat. Wren told us what her uncle and Elijah look like. Just don’t shoot them. I would imagine this group has them locked up somewhere inside this building. If this isn’t the place, if they aren’t in there and are really just coming to meet us there tomorrow, then we’ll have to wait until they do. But I have a feeling they’re already there. If this isn’t their normal setup, their compound, so to speak, then they are probably still there anyway setting up their own ambush plans. That’s what I’d do. I would imagine the people who took her uncle and your brother, Alex, are in the same mindset.”

  “How do we know who to shoot? I mean, other than her uncle and Elijah?” Roman asked.

  “If it isn’t them or one of us, shoot. Assume anyone wandering around in there is in on this with them. Right? Obviously, don’t shoot unarmed women or kids, but anyone else is fair game. I mean, I wouldn’t hang out with assholes who would kidnap people if I wasn’t in on the plan.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Roman agreed.

  He’d already done some recon and foraging missions with her younger brother, and Abraham had handled himself pretty well. The last couple of months, he’d been working with Abraham and the rest of her family, even little Finnegan. He taught them how to use each weapon, check and clean it, fire them, and some basic evasive maneuvers. Abraham and Ephraim caught on quickly. Finn was just a little kid, so he didn’t really want him to get involved in anything unless he was only defending himself. Her s
ister, Kaia, was as good with the weapons as the boys and was asking more frequently to go on missions. He took her a few times, but something about dragging the girls out into the fray just seemed wrong.

  Roman, he’d gone to town with to rescue his people, which had ended up only being Noah, Jane’s friend, since the other two were dead. The kid seemed very smart, tactically speaking. He was decisive and intelligent. Tonight, this mission would be on a whole other playing field, however. It would be a test of everyone but himself and Spencer.

  “You think we’ve got enough guns and ammunition?” Roman asked.

  “Yes, if we don’t, then more wouldn’t help,” he answered. They’d already stopped and picked up the guns and ammo from this Jamie person’s hidden stash, which in simple terms was a shit ton. It made him question who this guy was that they were about to rescue, but Tristan figured there’d be time for answers later.

  From the backseat, Wren stated, “There’s quite a few of them, but they didn’t seem all that smart. Damn drongos if you ask me.”

  “What the hell’s…” Roman started to ask, but Tristan interrupted him.

  “We’ll use the fireworks a few hundred yards out, distract them if we can,” he said. “I’ll leave Abraham to deal with that. The four of us will go in. I’ll pop my canister, and you pop yours, Roman.”

  He was referring to the smoke grenades they’d lifted from his base. At the time, he hadn’t figured they’d ever use them. Now, he was glad Avery and her siblings found that basement beneath his former lieutenant’s office.

  “Yes, sir,” Roman answered.

  “You sure you want to be involved, Wren?”

  She snorted. “Oh, yeah,” she replied in a scratchy, sleep-deprived voice. “I’m in. I want involved. Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourselves. This ain’t my first rodeo, as they say.”

  “How old are you?” he asked her and glanced in the rearview mirror at Spencer as the truck slid a few feet in the thick snow when he rounded a corner. They were almost there, and those old familiar nerves started kicking in. He wasn’t afraid, just anxious to get into it. He was a little nervous about what they were getting into since he had Avery’s little brother with him, but Tristan was pretty sure he could keep him alive and mostly out of it.

  “Seventeen, why?” she asked with the chip he suspected she had on her shoulder.

  “Do you have some sort of military experience from your country or something like that?”

  “Something like that,” she answered evasively.

  Wren, like Arsenal Jamie, was also a mystery. Tristan didn’t like that, didn’t like surprises within his group, but he also figured he’d find out more about them later.

  They’d picked up the guns from some odd, random place outside of Elijah and Alex’s town of Massillon. The hiding spot for the guns was basically an old storm drain closed off by a metal gate that was welded in place. Jamie had installed a padlock on the grate, according to Wren, but a quick stroke of his rifle’s heavy-duty buttplate took it right off. Inside was small, barely wide or tall enough for a man to crawl through. Wren made them wait as she handed them out ammo crates and four military M4 rifles, a shotgun with another ammo crate full of slugs and buckshot loads, two .45’s, each with an extra mag, and another larger crate that she told him not to open but to store in the truck’s bed. He was curious about the contents but didn’t question it. There wasn’t time anyway. Tristan was fine with the secrecy for now, but there was still one question that would need to be answered as soon as they got home. All of the weapons had their serial numbers scratched off. He wanted an answer to that.

  “Abraham, when we get within visual range for your fireworks, we’ll find a building where you can set them off.”

  “Got it,” Abraham answered him.

  The fireworks were Abraham’s contribution. They would be an excellent distraction to draw some of them off the site. It was a simple technique, but in his experience with civilians, simple distractions usually worked just fine. Besides, Abraham said the fireworks were leftovers from their family’s Fourth of July party last summer, something they went all out on, according to her brother, whose eyes had glossed over with the longing of wanting his memories to be his reality again.

  “Up ahead, turn left,” Alex instructed. “I think this is the road.”

  Tristan slowed the truck, letting the beams hit the green road marker. “Cleveland Avenue. This it?”

  Alex answered, “Yeah, we’ll head south about three blocks, maybe a little further. I think that’s where this place is.”

  Tristan hoped he was right. It wasn’t as if he could do an internet search or plug it into his GPS, which no longer worked. Most days, the internet didn’t work. He was just happy when the electricity still did. Having someone with them who’d lived in this county helped a lot. He’d gone on a field trip through school, sixth grade, to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but Tristan really hadn’t gotten much out of it. Sports weren’t really his thing. Staying alive and not getting his ass kicked by his old man every day was more of the objective than watching football on the tv. Most of the time, his dad forgot to pay the cable bill anyway, so television had phased out of his life early on.

  “Up ahead,” Roman alerted him.

  There was a car on fire. Tristan drove carefully around it, curbing the truck and going on the sidewalk for nearly a block to get around. It was more than one car. It was three and a city bus. Down the street a little further, he could see a building on fire, too.

  “Look alive,” he warned. “Could be a trap.”

  “Hell, this is going to be tricky anyway,” Roman stated. “The night crawlers could be out now.”

  “They will be,” he assured him. “This weather won’t scare them off. Might make them more bold. They gotta be hungry. Animals will be learning to hide from them by now.”

  “Let’s just hope they don’t start eating people,” Wren added what most of them were probably thinking. She seemed like a pretty blunt person, which was good and bad– mostly bad right now.

  “Right,” Roman agreed.

  Overhead, the beating of a helicopter’s blades let him know the military was still trying to get in on the play somewhere in this city. Sitting on the bench was never their forte. He was just glad he got out to take care of Avery and the kids because killing people who used to be just ordinary Americans seemed wrong, and burning city blocks was, too. Without him, the Andersson family would’ve been robbed, hurt, or killed eventually. Constantly stressing about their safety also made him weak, he knew. Having a soft spot like his new family would not help him in the thick of it. He couldn’t even think about them right now for that very reason. Tonight, he just had to stay focused on finding this Elijah kid and Wren’s uncle, Arsenal Jamie, who had a lot of illegal guns.

  “Wren, are you and your uncle going to be staying at Alex’s farm?” Roman asked.

  “Not sure. Maybe,” she said quietly. “That’ll be up to Jamie. For a while, at least, I think we’ll stay there.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Roman said beside him. “Strength in numbers right now might be a good idea. Surviving something like this with allies is imperative. Or that’s what I figure.”

  She gave a quiet, “Hm.”

  “Here’s probably a good place to leave the truck and Abraham,” Alex informed him as they passed under the freeway over them. Of course, no cars were on it. If there was, they were parked and abandoned from running out of gas like so many others.

  Tristan found a spot and pulled behind a building. He got out with Alex and Spencer and told the others to wait with the truck.

  “You sure they’ll see it from here?” he asked Alex

  “Oh, yeah,” Alex reassured him. “They’ll see it for sure. We’re only a few blocks away. Everything out here is more spread out. Lot of empty, level lots where businesses used to be and were abandoned and torn down by the city.”

  The sign above the entry door read, “Tuskin Printing,�
�� which made no sense to Tristan. This part of the city was foreign to him, but he was more used to that than the others. Being dropped into a foreign city he’d only studied on satellite imaging was a common occurrence in his military career. This was no different. Just the landscape was off.

  “Search around back,” he ordered Spencer, who immediately nodded and jogged away.

  The building was brick, old, probably from around the 1920s, and still standing. The owners took pride in its craftsmanship by the looks of the freshly painted black window frames and modern entry door. Their sign was still intact and not chipped or hanging by one chain crookedly like so many businesses now. It seemed clean but abandoned. The lack of broken windows on the first, second or third floors, which was what a lot of the buildings looked like on the drive in, spoke to its recent closure and not something that a hard recession had forced closed for good. He felt bad they were about to change its nice, clean façade.

  Tristan took out his leather gloves and pulled them on. Then he used the butt of his rifle and busted the glass on the top half of the entry door, which were two side-by-side panels and were probably newer but made to look original to the building.

  The way he broke the glass didn’t cause a lot of noise, and he had to take out a large shard of it to reach his hand through to unlock the door. He handed the shard off to Alex beside him.

  This building was connected to the one next to it, which was some sort of antique car museum, which seemed like a dumb idea to have in the middle of the worst end of town. That place, strangely enough, also looked untouched by the state of the country. He was curious if they had any vehicles that would help them and made a mental note to check later. There was also a sign for a service garage, so he assumed it was owned by the same people. Maybe the whole block of buildings was owned by the same family, including the printing company.

  The plan was for Abraham to light off the fireworks and then get in the truck and head towards them. He just hoped the kid could get back down to the truck after making a ruckus on the roof that would inevitably draw in night crawlers.