The Renegades (Book 4): Colony (5 page)

N
ew York had always been
a place I’d wanted to visit; I just never imagined I would see it like this. Smoke drifted through heaps of metal and brick covering up the streets. The outlines of towering buildings now half their original size were startling to see.

An hour earlier, the others and myself joined another group of survivors in what I came to find out was where they trained their worker bees. Of course they didn’t call them that, but after my conversation with Birdy, that’s all I could see them as.

We were each given a futuristic-looking handgun that was a dark grey metallic. The grip was the same as any other gun except the barrel dropped down almost parallel to the grip. A guard demonstrated how it worked before they handed them out. It worked like a police stun gun except that it didn’t fire electrode projectiles with barbs on the end that stun a victim and then reel back in. Instead, it operated like a regular gun, firing a round that would emit an electrical pulse upon contact and render a person unconscious for up to several minutes. We were told that it had been developed by the government as a means to stop the biters. However, I didn’t expect that we would be using them solely on Z’s.

“It’s just like government to hold back on us, eh?” Baja said. “I mean for years our boys have been sent overseas with AR-15’s, meanwhile they had the best shit in storage.”

Baja kept taking potshots at the wall.

“We have to wear these?” I asked a guard, holding up a dark black uniform with a pentagon symbol on the back.

“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”

“No.”

“Hey, you want to stop pissing around,” a guy yelled at Baja. “You’ll have plenty of chances to use it out in the field.”

I slipped into pants and a jacket, then donned a helmet that made me feel like Robocop. By the time we were all kitted out, we all looked the same. Attached around our waists was a holster to place the stun gun, along with additional magazines. Maybe the uniform was good, maybe not. Whatever the Coalition had against this group, they were likely to fire first and ask questions later.

“Either they are trying to help or they are stupid,” Jess said. “I mean who would willingly hand us a weapon if they didn’t trust us?”

“Now listen up.”

Tanner, the guy with the Mohawk, came into the room.

“Our target tonight is the resistance group known as the Coalition. The intel we’ve gathered has allowed us to establish that a meeting is taking place in the lower part of Manhattan. You are not to fire upon the dead, unless attacked.”

“Where did they get this chump from?” Baja muttered. “Have you been out there?”

“Do you have something to say?”

“I just find it funny that you are telling us to not fire upon the dead, when that’s all that is out there. Now I for one don’t think a stun gun is going to stop them. It takes a bullet to the head to take these bitches down.”

Tanner looked at one of the other guards as if he couldn’t believe someone was talking back to him. The guy reminded me of G.I. Joe. All muscle and no brains.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

The officer beside him leaned in and whispered something. Whatever he told him, it seemed to do the job as he immediately backed down.

“Yeah, you better back down, bitch,” Baja mumbled. Thankfully I was the only one who heard him say that.

“On your way out the door, you will be given an AR-15. Does that answer your question?”

“Just one thing.”

“What now?”

“Do you think we’ll have time to drop by a 7-Eleven and pick up some Pop-Tarts?”

“Officer, move them out.” He walked away shaking his head.

We filed out the door towards three choppers that were waiting. Whup-whup-whup. The noise of the turbine engines and churning rotors was deafening. A wave of cold coastal wind hit us as we closed the door behind us. Each helicopter was carrying no more than nine people. A few of them were empty to provide room for people who we’d bring back. Guards that worked for the Warden dispersed among the helicopters, no doubt to keep an eye on our ragtag group.

One of them gave a signal and the pilot ascended. We were told the reason they did this at night was to avoid detection. I was pretty sure a bloody loud chopper coming in would be pretty easy to detect even if it was black. Once we were over the wall the helicopter came low. All that could be seen outside was darkness. There was no way to determine where the sky and the East River met. The city itself was lit up with fires that burned in various places.

Wind swept across the surface of the dark water as we moved closer to a heliport that was located in downtown Manhattan close to Wall Street.

“We have pier six in sight.”

The pilot’s voice came over the earpiece I was wearing. The moon peeked through clouds. Outside I could hear the wind howling, and the slightest sound of rain. It seemed strange to find ourselves in this position. Only months ago we were in Castle Rock. Now we found ourselves helping a dubious government.

“I hope he knows where he’s going,” Baja muttered. “I don’t want to end up drowned in the ocean.”

It wasn’t a good night for being in the air. That was for sure.

New York didn’t look as I imagined it would. It was in complete devastation. Smoke drifted through heaps of metal and brick covering up the streets. It was if the Air Force had dropped bombs on the city and blown up buildings. It was a mountain of rubble and fire. Through the smoke you couldn’t tell what were streets or the remains of buildings. Everywhere was covered in bodies and concrete. While there were still some high-rises, most of them had large chunks taken out the sides. Windows were shattered. Jagged metal twisted beneath concrete and stone.

As we hovered low over the water and came in close to the pier I scanned for the undead. There were none. It didn’t make sense. The place should have been swarming.

“Where are the undead?” I asked Tanner.

“Oh they’re out there. A while back we set up an electrical perimeter to ensure we could land and get out without being overrun. It’s not foolproof but it seems to have kept them at bay.”

I nodded.

As soon as the wheels kissed the concrete pier, we all had our game faces on. “Let’s go,” Tanner said, sliding the door open. We burst out with our AR-15’s at the ready. One team broke off right while we went left. Along with our group of six were three others, one of them was Tanner. I’d hoped he would go with the other group but I had a feeling the Warden wanted him watching us.

R
ain cut through the night
, plastering us from the second our boots hit the ground. Lightning flashed on the horizon while thunder rumbled in the distance. I shook the water from my face as the other members of the team made their way around pier six. Rough, frothing waters crashed against the shore. A large wave broke over the edge, spraying water into the air. I glanced across the bay to where the Statue of Liberty should have been and noticed it was gone.

“What the hell?”

It was no longer there. The copper lady’s head peeked above rough waves as if taking its last breath. What the hell had happened here? I remembered what my father had said about the government bombing cities. By the look of the devastation, I assumed that was what happened.

We rushed towards the towering concrete jungle. What remained of the city loomed over us like giants. My mind was occupied with the plan we had discussed. It was agreed that staying at the Hive was no longer an option. Whatever chance of survival humanity had, it wasn’t to be found at the hands of the Warden. I for one certainly wasn’t going to become a human guinea pig. If what Birdy had told us was true, it was only a matter of time before we would be dead.

There were eighteen of us that evening heading towards South Ferry-Whitehall Street Subway Station. I brought down the night-vision binoculars to my eyes and scanned the way ahead for Z’s. Tanner was convinced we wouldn’t see any until we hit the subway. They had done these trips into the city many times. On the way in I had asked Tanner how he managed to convince people to come with him. He said that he didn’t need to convince them. Desperation was a good motivator. Most of the people that returned were stragglers. Barely surviving in a city overrun by the dead. Others need a little more persuasion.

About forty feet away from us was the first entrance point to the subway.

“Now listen up,” Tanner said, pulling the group into a tight circle. “We are going to break into two teams once we’re down there. Each of you has the location of where the meeting is taking place. Be advised, you are to take necessary force, however, that doesn’t always mean using the AR-15’s for any of you who are a little trigger-happy. Remember, we are here to bring them in alive.”

At the bottom of a steep flight of steps we checked areas to the left and right of us. Echoing throughout the subway was the sound of Z’s.

“Stay alert. Stay alive,” Tanner said, leading the way. I was about ready to dump this guy but until we knew the location of the Coalition we were going to use their intel to our advantage.

It was eerie being below the streets of New York not knowing when or if Z’s would attack. We heard the other group’s gunfire before we had even unloaded one round. I twisted around instinctively, thinking we should go back and help but Tanner was calling the shots.

“They all know the risk.”

“Why split up?” Jess asked.

Tanner didn’t need to answer that. Ben did. It’s a common tactical strategy. If one of your group gets fired upon, you still have the element of surprise. We jumped down onto the tracks and broke into a jog.

“How far is it?” Ben asked Tanner.

“About ten minutes from here.”

He was an oddball. I was curious to know more about him. How had he ended up here working for the Warden? Did he know what the Warden was doing with the people he had taken? It seemed that morals only mattered when survival wasn’t at stake. Beyond that people did whatever the hell they wanted. As we jogged down the dark tunnel, the smell of death lingered in the air like rotten meat covered in flies. We had grown used to living in a world that smelled bad.

“So how did you come to work for the Warden?” I asked, coming up beside him.

He glanced at me skeptically. But like most people who loved to talk about themselves he opened up.

“I was in the military. Eight years. Special ops. When everything went bad, our platoon was brought into New York to extract some of the key officials.”

“Did you get them out?”

“Of course. That’s what we’re trained for.”

“Where’s your platoon now?”

“Dead.”

He didn’t bat an eye. It was like he’d already dealt with the grief.

“So why Rikers? I mean, the Hive?”

“It’s the most secure place on the east coast. The road in and out is barricaded. The structure is fortified by concrete and barbwire. No sucker is getting in or out of there unless we say so.”

I was tempted to ask him about the bodies. But I got the feeling that he was just another cog in a wheel among many who performed a job. That’s how they kept the machine running and the blood flowing.

As we rounded a corner each of us came to a grinding halt. Before us were six Z’s feasting on the remains of some unlucky guy. They cocked their heads at us. Our lights fell on their milky white eyes. Right then they did something we had never seen before. They didn’t shuffle, or begin running at us. Like spiders that could climb walls, these monsters went up the sides of the arched walls. The lights on the ends of our assault rifles lit them up as they scrambled towards us. It was beyond terrifying, it was seriously messed up.

“What the fuck are those?”

We began unloading on them, bullets ricocheted off the sides as all nine of us took them down. One landed inches from my feet. Its skin was different to what I had seen before. It was pale and the veins protruded like thick purple webbing covering every inch of its grotesque body.

Jess and Izzy prodded the beast before us with the ends of their gun barrels.

“You want to explain to us what we just saw?”

Tanner laughed. “Let’s go.”

We rushed forward continuing towards the designated location. Tanner had brought the two men that we usually saw hovering around him like flies. They were only known to us by their last names tagged on the front of their uniforms: Randall and Eastley. Each of them was equally abrasive when addressed. It was as if they wanted to make it clear that we weren’t one of them. There was us and them thrown into this shit pot together but that didn’t mean we were working for the same team.

Over the earpiece we continued to receive intelligence updates from the helicopters. The pilots didn’t linger after dropping us off. They immediately began sweeping the streets above us, searching for anyone who was trying to escape.

“So where does the Coalition reside?”

“Everywhere. But they have taken up base in several of the abandoned underground subways.”

“How did you find that out?”

Randall looked at Tanner and chuckled as if they were in on some inside joke. Once we made it to the location, which appeared to be a dead end, Tanner put his finger up to his earpiece.

“Bravo Two, this is Whiskey One. What’s your status? Over.”

There were a few seconds where nothing could be heard, and then a reply came back. “Whiskey One, this is Bravo Two. We are in position and waiting to go. Over.”

“Okay, maybe someone wants to tell me where the hell we are going?”

“There is an outer and an inner platform. You are standing in the outer one. The inner one was built back in the early 1900s but since then it was walled off. The Coalition has got their hands on it. Come, look.”

He led us up to the wall and we glanced around it. A section was missing. If you faced the wall head on, it just looked like it was sealed off but it wasn’t. There was an arched doorway that led into another area.

“Let’s go.”

T
his is it
, we are going to die.

I truly thought they were going to execute us there on the spot.

“On your knees.” That was the first thing we heard as we made our way past the opening in the wall. Strobe lights blinded us. We didn’t know what hit us. They had obviously heard the gunfire and were ready. All of us were tossed to the ground and dirty cotton bags were pushed over our heads, sending everything into complete darkness.

I’m not sure how long we were on our knees but it felt like an eternity. In that time, we heard gunfire. Short bursts followed by an explosion. Through the bag I could make out the silhouette of figures. How many were there? Maybe ten?

They yanked us to our feet and pushed us forward. I stumbled, not able to see where the hell we were going.

“Please tell me this is not part of some weird satanic sex ritual. As I want to give you forewarning. I have a seriously bad case of the crabs,” Baja said. “You do not want to come near me.”

“Shut the hell up and keep moving.”

We must have walked for two miles. They led us down a series of tunnels as I could see the tracks just below the bag.

When they finally lifted the bags from our heads I found myself squinting hard. A bright light was being flashed in front of my face.

“Thought you were going to take some more, didn’t you?”

“You have this all wrong.”

“Really? Put him in the chair.”

I was shoved back into a seat, unable to see my captors. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the world around me because of the damn light they were flashing in my eyes. I could feel the heat coming off it, warming my face. Then, I was pulled back. A wet rag went over my face. I could barely breathe as it was but things were about to get a lot worse. They began pouring water over the top. The assholes were waterboarding me.

There is no way to explain what it’s like except that you are slowly drowning. Every time I would catch my breath, more water would rush over my face. I was coughing and spluttering as they brought me back up and ripped the wet rag off me. I blinked hard, trying to catch a breath so I could tell them that I wasn’t the enemy, but it was useless. The clothes weren’t exactly working in my favor.

They tipped me three times. All the while I could hear them doing the same to Jess, Izzy, and no doubt the others. I wasn’t going to die at the hands of someone who I didn’t even know. I held my breath on the next rotation and when I came back I shouted one name.

“Wren.”

They paused.

“What did you say?”

“I want to speak to Wren.”

Now if you thought that was my ticket out of this hellish Guantánamo Bay nightmare, it wasn’t. That’s when the fists started. Thankfully it didn’t last long. Finally they stopped but only when commanded to.

“That’s enough.”

I spat a big glob of blood onto the floor and they pulled back the light so I could finally see who was giving me a smackdown.

“How do you know Wren?”

“I knew Birdy.”

“Knew?”

I cast a glance to my right and to my astonishment I noticed that Tanner and his three men weren’t anywhere to be seen. The only ones besides me were Ben, Baja, Elijah, and the two girls.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

“Who? There’s more of you?” one of them asked.

I shook my head, trying my hardest to figure out what that smell was. It smelled like cigar smoke and fries.

“How do you know Birdy?” a female voice asked but I couldn’t see her.

I was given another smack on the side of the face. “Answer her!”

“Rowan, that’s enough.” The muscular guy who was enjoying giving me a good licking was tall, strong, with cropped hair and the one smoking the cigar. I peered past him to see a girl step out of the darkness. She was wearing a black leather jacket, tight black jeans, combat boots and had long light hair.

“You were saying…” she began.

“He told me to find someone by the name of Wren, is that you?”

She didn’t confirm or deny.

“Did he have a message?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

My eyes dropped.

She looked at the man they called Rowan.

“I say we kill them now,” Rowan brought up a Glock. His finger shifted near the trigger.

“Look, we are not like them. We were brought in a few days ago. Birdy showed me what they’re doing.”

“So let me guess, you are here to let us know that everything is dandy now? Please, let me end him now.”

“Stand down,” the girl said. Rowan scowled and then walked away.

“I don’t expect you to believe me. If I was in your shoes, I would probably put a bullet in us too but I’m telling the truth.”

“You said there were others with you, where are they?”

I scanned the room. “I don’t know. There were three others in our group and another nine.”

“We took care of the other nine.”

I swallowed hard.

“Put the rags back over them.”

“No. Hey.” We tried to stop them but she had made up her mind. Thrown back into darkness we were dragged to our feet and led out. I tried to figure out where we were being taken but all I could see was the ground. I was pretty sure they led us around in circles a bit to disorient us before we were thrown into the back of a truck and driven away.

When they finally tossed us out, we heard them drive away. It was silent except for the rustling of one of us.

“Baja?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Ben.”

One by one we let the others know we were still there. The skin around my wrists ached from the zip ties. I didn’t waste any time getting out of them. I pushed my hands underneath my feet and stood up. Then tugging on the ties until they were as tight as they could go, I slammed my fists against my body. In a matter of seconds they snapped. Off came the rags and I could now see where we were. We were at the top of a large multi-story parking garage. Once the others were out of their restraints I went over to the edge.

Baja tossed his broken restrains in a moment of frustration. “They just dumped us off in the middle of nowhere. Those bastards.”

“Well, you certainly can’t blame them. Would you have trusted us?” I replied.

“At least they let us live,” Jess said, getting back to her feet.

“Live?” Baja stammered. “News flash. We don’t have our weapons and we are in the middle of New York surrounded by whatever the fuck those creepy ass things were… and it’s pissing with rain. Which reminds me, what the hell were they?”

I shook my head. “No idea, but we need to find something to arm ourselves with.”

A large full moon lit up the darkened streets. Smoke from fires spiraled up. There were no vehicles on the roof. A ramp went down to the next level but without a weapon we were likely to wind up dead long before we found anything.

“You think they’ve mutated?” Izzy asked.

“It’s possible. It was a biological weapon that started this shitfest,” I replied.

“Well, what now?”

Ben headed down the ramp, not paying any attention to what we were saying.

“You are kidding me?” Baja said, following behind him.

“We are going to settle in for the night and get out of this rain. Find a car, a van, anything and get inside. There’s no use prowling around the streets. We have no idea of where we are or what’s out there. And after seeing those spider freaks, I for one, would prefer to keep my limbs intact.”

Down on the second level there were six vehicles. A collection of small sedans. We checked each of them to see if the doors would open. None of them did. I was about to smash one of the windows when Ben continued down to the next level. The sound of snarling could be heard nearby. We knew we didn’t have long. It was hard to know if these things could see us or if they were the same as the other Z’s we had encountered.

“Over here,” Jess called out toward a white van.

“Oh yeah, cause I always wanted to get into a creepy ass serial killer van.”

“What the hell are you on about?” Elijah said.

“You know. White vans.”

Right then I turned at the sound of shattering glass. Ben had launched a large chunk of rubble through the back window of a dark blue Chevy Suburban SUV. “This will do.”

He cracked it open and we all bundled inside. There was no safe way to do it. Of course we could have spent the next hour checking all the vehicles to find one that was open but the chances of that were pretty slim. The sound of those freaks was getting even closer. We filled the open window with pieces of material that we ripped off the seats. We would rotate shifts. It wasn’t an ideal situation but we had our first weapon, a tire iron.

The bones in my neck made a cracking noise as I rolled my head around trying to work out the tension. As we tried to get sleep that night I found myself waking up every few minutes. Panic clawed away at my insides. I couldn’t get the sight of those biters out of my mind. I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Garret on the library roof in Salt Lake City.

The infection had been created. A biological weapon but for what purpose? I wished I had asked him more questions. To think that our own government had created this was a tough pill to swallow. But the realization that they would withhold the cure seemed even more outrageous. Would people really do that? Long before the world fell apart, I remembered hearing about treatments for cancer. Natural plants that could administer pain relief, and talk of cures. But like anything, if pharmaceutical companies couldn’t make money from it, it would never see the light of day. Then there were those who said that free energy was available but large corporations would never allow it to happen.

The truth was, humanity didn’t need an apocalypse to demonstrate their selfish need to gain and control others. It existed long before the infected showed up.

Birdy’s words echoed in my mind.
They want to develop and sell the cure.

As I drifted back into a slumber I could hear Elijah and Ben talking.

“You think you’ll ever return to Salt Lake City?” Elijah asked.

“I have no reason to go back.”

The thought of returning to Castle Rock hadn’t crossed my mind. Even if we could return, the place was devastated. The only reason it felt like home was because of the people around me. Beyond that it was just another town in the middle of nowhere. My eyes fluttered and I saw Izzy looking at me.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Some days I’m not sure.”

“How did he die?”

She was referring to Dax. I let out a sigh and told her. Her eyes welled with tears which made me choke up.

“Do you miss him?” she asked.

“Every day. Him, Specs. So much has changed since this began.”

Izzy leaned her head back against the window and banged it ever so softly. “I wished I’d told him what I felt when he was still around. You know, I just couldn’t seem to find the right time or words.”

“Is there ever a right time?”

“Do you have any regrets?” she asked.

I thought back to Danielle, then cast a glance over at Jess who was asleep.

I was about to respond when the window behind Izzy shattered. Shards of glass shot in every direction. The entire van began rocking as she started fighting for her life against a Z. It dragged her out through the window, trying to bite into her. I was still processing what the hell was happening when Elijah leapt out of the back wielding the tire iron and began beating on that thing. It screeched like an injured animal as he turned its head into mush.

“We need to move. There’ll be more coming.”

When Elijah hauled Izzy up, she was bleeding at the neck.

“Have you been bitten?”

Ben pushed her into the light coming from the moon without a moment’s hesitation. We didn’t know if the bite of these new mutations would speed up the process of changing.

“It’s okay, it’s just glass.”

Glass had embedded in her neck and for a few brief seconds we all feared the worst. Elijah didn’t waste any time. He went to the next vehicle and smashed the back window, unlocked the door, and fumbled around in the back. When he rose up he tossed Baja a tire iron then moved on to the next. Five minutes later all of us were packing. It didn’t make us feel any safer but at least we had something. And right now that was better than nothing.

We ventured down to the third level, searching for a stairwell to get out of there. That’s when Ben spotted an elevator.

“Give me a hand.”

“There’s no power, Ben,” Izzy said.

“Just help.”

They shimmed open the elevator and we peered up and down the long dark shaft. Thick wire and iron rungs went down into what we could only imagine was where the elevator was.

“I’m not going in there,” Jess said.

“It’s just for tonight.”

I didn’t know she was scared of enclosed places but the alternative wasn’t any better. We squeezed through the envelope-thick gap and climbed down the sides until we found ourselves on top of it. That’s where we slept that night. Hidden away inside an elevator shaft. The smell of piss and metal permeated the air. It was cold and damp inside but it was better than being awoken by the screams of the undead. Without knowing where we were in the city it was the best option we had.

That night I didn’t sleep much. I maybe got an hour tops. I thought about Specs back at the fortress, and how far we had traveled up to that point. There was so much we didn’t know about what our government had planned for the cure. Up to this point we were going on the words of someone who belonged to an unknown group called the Coalition. If they were the same people we had encountered earlier that evening, who knew if they were to be trusted. Time would tell.

I heard a rustle above us. My eyes flicked up along with everyone else’s. None of us were prepared to risk closing our eyes for the remainder of the night. I gripped the tire iron and kept my gaze fixed on the door above.