Apocalypsis: Book 3 (Exodus) (31 page)

Buster came over as if on cue, angling his head under my hand to get a pet from me.  I absently played with his ears.

“Just like Kiersten and her girls,” I said, trying to get a smile from him.

His responding snort had zero humor in it.  “Maybe.”

I put my arm around him and leaned over to kiss his cheek.  “When we get to the prison you can build a special place for her.  Maybe you can find more birds, too, and train them.  I’ll bet some of the kids would love to learn how to do that … what you do.”

“Maybe,” he said.  He took another small sip of water and then looked at me.  “Thank you for trying to make me feel better.  I’m gonna be okay later.  I chust need some time to make things all straight in my head.  It’s very confusing for me right now.  Da drugs are still swimming and swimming dare.”

I nodded, patting him on the back.  “I know.  I can wait.  I’m here for you if you need me.”

Buster jumped up on Bodo, begging for attention.  Bodo reached out to touch him on the head a few times with the tips of his fingers, making it seem like even petting the dog was too much effort.

“Me too, Bodo,” said Peter, holding out his hand.  “Come on, I’ll help you up.  We need to go.”

A sound of someone shouting off in the distance gave serious emphasis to his words.  Buster barked several times before I was able to grab him and squeeze his mouth shut.

“No, Buster!  No bark!” I growled at him.  He stopped trying to bark and looked at me suspiciously.

Winky cocked her head.  “Did you guys hear that?”

“Yeah,” said Jamal.  “Good guys or bad guys, do you think?”

“Assume they’re all bad guys,” I said.  “We need to get off the highway,
now.
”

We scrambled to our bikes, even Bodo moving faster than I’d seen him go all day.  He was stumbling a bit, like he was drunk, but he was able to grab his handlebars and get on his ride.

“What about the sign?” I asked, looking at Winky, panicked.  “For Rob and Fohi?”

“I’ll do it later.”  She glanced left and right, looking over both sides of the shoulder.  “Where are we going?  Which way?”

“There!” said Peter, pointing to a copse of trees in the distance, off to our right.  We had to get across at least one hundred yards of weeds and tall grasses to reach it.

***

“Run!” I said, pushing my bike a few feet before jumping on and pedaling.  I waited for Bodo to get in front of me before I put too much energy into it.

Peter was in the lead, pumping his legs as fast as they would go.  Winky was just behind him, followed by the twins.

Buster’s little body bounced all over the place as my bike went over the uneven bumps that sprung up out of the ground.  They were clumps of grass, not earth, and in between the ground was soft.  Our tires kept getting stuck, making the going much slower than I would have liked.

More shouts came from behind us.  I risked a look back and saw no one yet.  “Go!” I said, not too loud, but desperately enough that it had an effect.  Legs pumped harder and bodies hunched farther over the handlebars in our efforts to go faster.

Peter jumped off his bike and started running with it, his tires giving him too much trouble to continue.  The rest of us soon followed suit, and the last twenty yards had us all running like charging bulls at the trees.

We pushed our bikes behind the thickest part of it and stood there for a few minutes, getting our breath back.  Bodo fell to the ground, letting his bike drop with him.  Luckily, it fell in the other direction.  I wasn’t sure he would have been able to move if it had landed on him.  He turned his head and vomited into the grass, moaning.

Peter bent down and stroked his forehead from behind.  “Shhhh, I’m sorry you feel sick, but you have to be quiet.”  He looked up at Jamal.  “Can you bring me some water for him, please?”

While Jamal moved to get him a bottle, Ronald, Winky and I went to the edge of the trees, trying to get a good look at the highway.

At first we saw nothing, but then we saw a guy.  And then another.  And eventually a whole group of them, seven in total.  The majority of them seemed energized, happy to be partying it up on the highway.  But a few of them, three it looked like, did not.  They walked in a line, their shoulders stooped and their hands in front of them like they were folded in prayer.  All of them were staring at the ground.

“What in the …?” said Ronald.  “Why are they walking like that?”

“Who?” asked Winky, pushing aside some leaves that were in her way.

“Those guys with the prayer-hands,” I said.  “In the middle, kind of.”

I looked at Winky in time to see her eyes widen.

“Slaves,” she said in a whisper.

“What?” I asked, looking back.  “Slaves?  Where?”

“She’s right,” said Ronald.  “They have their hands tied, and they’re all strung up together, in a line.  See?”  He nodded his head in their direction.

“I can’t see any rope, but it sure looks like that’s what’s going on,” I said.  “This is not good.  Not good at all.  Maybe they’re not slaves.  Maybe they’re the food.”

“Regardless, it’s bad news.  What’re we gonna do?” asked Winky.

“We’ve got to do
something
,” said Ronald.

“We do?” I asked, looking to them for confirmation.  Deep down I knew the answer, but I so wanted to be able to just walk away and mind my own business for a change.  I was already worried about taking care of the people we had with us now.  I glanced over at Bodo, sleeping now in the grass with his mouth hanging open, his pitiful bald, white head practically glowing with sweat.  I shook my head at our chances of success.

“Yeah, we do,” said Winky.  “But not all of us.  And not out here in the open.”

“You have a plan already?” asked Ronald.

“Yep.  We wait for them to go to sleep, sneak in, take the slaves out, bring them with us, take off for the prison, make it there by tomorrow.  And pray they don’t wake up in the middle of the rescue.”

“Dang, you’re good,” said Ronald, smiling.  “I appreciate your positive outlook in the face of these odds.”

“Thank you,” she said, grinning back.  “No one ever got anywhere thinking negatively.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Ronald.  “My daddy always used to say something similar. 
Think positive, act positive, be positive.
  He always said that you become what you think about most of the time, so you need to think good things to be a good person.”

“Your dad sounded like my kinda guy,” said Winky.  “So are you in, or are you going to stay behind with Peter?”

He shrugged.  “I’ll go.”

“I think it’s better if he stays behind,” I said.  “No offense, Ronald, but Peter and Bodo need someone watching over them, and Winky and I are going in for sure.  Plus, Winky’s the quietest one of all of us, so if anyone’s going to be able to sneak past those guys, it’ll be her.”

Ronald shrugged.  “No skin off my back.  I just want to help any way I can.  If I can avoid being killed at the same time, well, that’s just a bonus.”  He flashed his super-white teeth at us.

“Okay.  That’s the plan, then.  Thanks, Winky.”

“My pleasure.  When do you want to do it?”

“When it’s dark.  We were going to stop anyway, right?  Might as well set up camp here while we wait.  Maybe they won’t go far.”

Winky frowned.  “Okay, well, at some point I need to get back up to the road and put the symbol down for Rob and Fohi.”

“You don’t need to do it during the day,” said Ronald.  “We can keep any eye out for them now ourselves and go get them if they come by.”

“They’re going to be riding right into this group.  That’s what worries me,” I said.

“You don’t think those canner guys or slave drivers will stop here on the highway in the middle of the day, do you?” asked Winky.

“No, probably not,” I said, searching my mind for the options they might choose from.  “If I were a canner, or a slavedriver, were would I go hang out?”

“If you were bold as brass and marching down the middle of the road with slaves in tow?” asked Jamal, coming over to join us.

“Exactly,” I said, not coming up with any answers.

Everyone remained silent for a few seconds, mulling over our dilemma.  Finally, Ronald spoke.

“If I were a highwayman bandit with slaves who look as tired as those ones do, I’d stop in a nice piece of shade where they would have a hard time getting away, and I’d be able to take a nap.”

We looked around the immediate area, since Ronald’s assessment of the slaves seemed to be pretty right-on.  One of them had just tripped and looked like he was having a hard time getting up.

“Problem,” said Winky.

“What?” I asked.

“After we rescue them, how the heck are we going to get them all the way down to the prison?  They can barely walk as it is.”

“Good question,” I said, once again without answers.

Jamal spoke up.  “I would guess that when motivated with the opportunity of freedom, they might find some hidden energy that would at least get them out of the area.  We can also put them on our bikes and push them along.  It would take longer, of course, but it could work.”

“So long as they can hold on,” said Winky.

“Maybe one or two of them could ride in the trailer,” I suggested, looking over at it and wondering how we might rearrange our stuff to do that.

“Hey, Peter,” said Jamal.  “Do you think you could do some organizing of the stuff in the trailer to accommodate some tired riders?”

Peter frowned.  “Riders as in
people?”

“Yes.”  Jamal turned and winked at me.

“Probably.  Yes, if I had some time to work it out.”

I nodded.  “Do it, Peter.  Make as much room as you can in there.  We have three people who won’t be able to ride a bike.  We’ll carry stuff on our backs if we have to.”

Peter left the care of Bodo to begin his task, and I for one was happy to have him doing something that I knew would make him feel good about his contribution.  He never complained about being left behind, but I knew him well enough to know that he wanted to pull his weight in some way.

“So where are they going to stop?” asked Ronald, almost to himself, studying the area around the highway.

“You can’t really see it from here,” said Winky, “but there’s a spot on the other side of the road from us that had some shade trees.  I didn’t like it because there was no cover except from above.  Not like here,” she said, gesturing to the heavy brush that was under the trees, making is possible to be hidden from the view of the highway.

“Let’s watch and see.”

The kid who had fallen was on his knees now, causing the other two in his chain gang to have to stop as well.  They stayed there for a while, until their herders realized they weren’t moving.  One of them came over and gestured to the kid on the ground.  He didn’t appear to respond, or at least he didn’t get up.  The slave driver kicked him in the shoulder, knocking him on his side into the street.

“Oh, crap,” whispered Winky.

The slave driver yelled something I couldn’t make out and gestured to one of the other slaves, who hurried over with the other and lifted up their partner from under his arms.  The slave driver looked over towards our trees, making my blood go cold for a moment, before pointing in the opposite direction.  The slaves disappeared from site as they went to where he had ordered them to go.

“They’re going for those trees I saw,” said Winky.

“Thank the Good Lord,” said Ronald, “because I thought for a second there, he was going to tell them to come here.”

“Me too,” I said, still trying to gauge the situation.  “Four bad guys, three slaves.  Can we take out four guys?”

“Are we taking them out or just sneaking the slaves out?” asked Winky.

“I’d prefer to sneak in and out, but what are the chances we could do that?” I asked.

“Probably not good,” she said, sighing.

“You should avoid killing anyone, if you can,” said Ronald.

“Is that the preacher’s son talking?” I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic, but for me, it felt a little late to be talking about morality, considering all we’d been through.

“No.  That’s the guy who doesn’t want other canners to hear gunshots talking, actually.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little guilty over assuming he was lecturing me.

“Yeah, let’s keep as low a profile as necessary,” said Winky.

Jamal chimed in.  “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

“Theodore Roosevelt.  Very nice, my brother,” said Ronald, holding up his hand for the high-five his twin was happy to deliver.

I had thought that was from Winston Churchill, but pretty much anyone’s knowledge of history was better than mine, so I didn’t argue.  It was a good proverb, regardless of who said it, and it was exactly what I intended to do.  Only my stick was going to be some krav maga and a possibly a knife.

***

We ate small bits of food and drank water, speaking in whispers and sharing stories from our pasts, hiding our laughter in our shirts.  Peter remained on constant guard for Buster’s barks, holding his hand lightly over the dog’s muzzle so that when he did bark, it came out muffled and didn’t carry across the open space to the highway.

While we were doing everything we could to be quiet, the slave drivers seemed almost to be doing the opposite.  We could hear their rowdy guffaws and shouts coming from the other side of the road.  It went on for part of the day and stopped for an extended period when the clouds began to move in as they normally did in the late afternoon.

“Should we go now?” asked Winky.

“No, it’s not dark enough,” I said.

“But they’re sleeping now, right?  When it’s dark they’ll get up and party.”

I looked at the other guys to get their input.

“It’s risky,” said Jamal.  “I wouldn’t do it in the daytime if it were me.  But she’s right about them being awake.  That would be risky, too.”

“I say, wait until it starts to rain.”   Ronald looked up at the sky.  “It’s gonna be a big storm, you can tell from how dark and heavy those clouds are.”

I looked up where he was pointing and realized that he was probably right. They looked like they were only about a half-hour away.  A loud rolling batch of thunder came from off in the distance, underscoring the accuracy of his predictions.