The Tide: Deadrise (16 page)

He grabbed a handful of Navid’s hair and yanked his head back. The sudden movement twisted Navid’s neck painfully. He caught himself before crashing to the floor and pushed himself upright.

He rubbed one of the Skull claws on his necklace. “You want a job with my boys?”

“Fuck you.”

The man laughed, and the rest of his men echoed the sound. He started to walk away but then turned back. The laughing stopped as the brute backhanded Navid. The force sent him sprawling, and his head cracked sickeningly on the floor. His vision swam in waves of red and black. Then boot after boot connected with Navid’s ribs. He was kicked around by a flurry of painful blows until his mind started to go hazy.

At last the beating stopped. Navid groaned. It hurt to breathe. He tasted something coppery and spit out a mouthful of blood. With his head still pounding, he forced himself to his knees once more. He expected to be swatted down again, but the man with the Skull-claw necklace had already moved on.

“Who the hell are you?” Adam said.

“Does that really matter?” The man was circling Adam, prowling like a beast. “Name’s Rick Lyon. Used to be a pencil pusher for the US Treasury. Thought I had a pretty good life. Thought I was safe.” He stopped and used the seven-inch knife he wielded to push Adam’s head to his right. He examined the Hunter like a predator with its prey. “Guess I was wrong, huh? Got to protect ourselves now. Got to survive on our own.”

“Then get on with it,” Adam said. “Let us go. You can have our guns, our packs, food. Everything.”

Rick laughed, toying with his Skull-claw necklace. “We’ve already got all that.” He planted a boot on Adam’s chest and knocked the man over. “You’re a fool if you think you’re in a position to bargain for anything. The only deal left is between
us
.” He held out a hand to indicate the men gathered around. “We’ll be figuring out what to do with you and”—he leered at Kara—“who gets to do it.”

“You asshole.” Adam surged up. With his hands still tied behind his back, he slammed his shoulder into Rick’s chest. Caught off guard, the man fell. Adam kicked him in the groin and stomped on his face. He moved to kick him again, but several of Rick’s cronies rushed in. They surrounded Adam and attacked like a pack of wild dogs. Adam didn’t cry out in pain. Navid couldn’t tell whether it was because he was too macho to cry out or if he’d already been beaten unconscious.

“Stop!” Kara cried. “Please, stop!”

Sadie was sobbing now. Maggie pulled against her rope, growling and yelping as best she could with the muzzle. Navid couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Adam had jeopardized his life so many times for them. He didn’t deserve this. No one did.

With his head pounding and blood dripping from his nose, Navid stood, wavering slightly. Rick’s gang was too focused on Adam to notice. Rick himself was still lying on the ground. Navid crouched beside him. He used the Skull claws on the barbaric necklace to tear at his ropes. He could only hope that the nanobacteria in the claw had already died off. Rick wouldn’t be risking his own ass by wearing them, right? The answer didn’t matter to Navid as his bonds broke.

He tore Rick’s necklace off. There were several long claws in the center of the chain, and he held one out like a knife. The group was still focused on beating Adam senseless, so Navid lunged at the closest man, taking him by surprise. The Skull claw met the flesh of the man’s neck. Warm blood spilled over Navid’s hand.

Never in his life had he imagined he would take another man’s life. And yet this was the second human to die at his hands since the outbreak. He lashed out at another of the raiders, invoking all the fury of the creature whose claws he used as a weapon. The men turned on Navid, but he snarled at them in defiance. One landed a punch that sent intense pain through his already-broken nose. His vision blurred, but he continued to strike out with the claw necklace. He barely noticed Kara struggle to her feet next to him. She kicked one of the men in the groin. The crony fell hard, and she swiftly delivered another kick to his face.

For a moment, it seemed like they might actually succeed. But their rebellion was short lived. The men quickly overpowered them. More blows to Navid’s head, his stomach, his ribs. He crashed to the ground in a bloody mess, wondering if Abby would be proud, then wondering if she would still love him despite the animal he’d become. His mind became muddled, his vision fading, until a booming voice ended the attack.

“Stop! Stop, boys!”

Rick shakily got to his feet. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. The gesture hardly made a difference; his face was covered by blood. He snatched the necklace from Navid’s hand. With a single gesture from Rick, his men backed away from Adam like well-trained hunting dogs. One man was already dead. He had a long gash down his arm from Navid’s attack and a split in his abdomen that revealed the inner workings of his anatomy. A second lay clutching his throat as blood oozed from between his fingers. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he managed to speak.

“Help,” the man gasped, his face awash in pallor. “Help.”

“Mac, can we fix that?” Rick asked a man with a bulging belly and a long, bushy beard. Mac shook his head.

Rick pulled his pistol from his holster and shot the injured man, ending his moaning. A third raider, his leg sliced by Navid’s frantic attack, cowered against the wall.

Rick pointed at him next. Mac lifted his shoulders in a gesture of indifference. “I can probably fix that. But if he’s got nerve damage, he’s not going to walk again.”

“A man who can’t walk right is no use to us.” Rick raised his pistol to the man’s head and fired. With deliberate slowness, he circled Adam’s body. The Hunter’s chest rose and fell in shallow jerks. His face was an unrecognizable mess. One arm was bent at an odd angle, and an ear was hanging off by a thin thread of flesh. “Can’t fix that either, can we, Mac?”

“Wouldn’t want to if we could.”

Another deafening bang.

“No!” Kara yelled. Sadie collapsed beside her sister, her whole body convulsing in sobs. Maggie yelped and backed against the column she was tied to.

“Bastard...you...fucking,” Navid said, spitting blood with every word. One of his eyes was already swollen over. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his insides churning like whitewater rapids. Not Adam. Not like this.

Rick forced a harsh laugh. “You take one of mine, I take one of yours. Only problem is you took three, the way I count it. Debt’s not repaid yet.” He aimed at Kara.

“No, take me!” Navid yelled. He held his hands out and half-crawled in front of Kara. “Shoot me and let them go!”

“Don’t, Navid!” Kara said.

Rick lowered the gun and leaned in close, speaking low in her ear. “By the time we’re done with you, you’ll wish I had pulled the trigger.” He shoved her down. Sadie crawled to her and draped herself across her sister’s chest.

“Mac, you get first dibs.”

Mac was grinning from ear to ear, rubbing his belly as he approached Navid, Kara, and Sadie. “This could be fun.” Tugging his beard, he bent over and studied each in turn. Kara spit in his face, and he jumped back. “Feisty.”

Navid started to shiver. The remnants of adrenaline were fading, replaced by shock. He couldn’t attack them again. That course of action had already gotten Adam killed and condemned the rest of them to their fate. The heavy weight of despair fell over him. If only Kinsey had never tried to capture the
Huntress
. If only they’d never sheltered in Mt. Vernon. If only the Hunters had arrived just two hours earlier.

And then an idea sparked in his brain.

“Wait!” Navid yelled. “Wait!”

Rick cocked his head. “Wait for what, boy?”

“Don’t you want to know why we were just sitting here in Mt. Vernon?”

“Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

“You might want to start,” Navid said, “because if you don’t, if you lay one more hand on any of us, I guarantee you’ll all end up dead.”

Rick bent over Navid and sneered. “And why’s that? You going to haunt me? Or maybe you got a bomb vest under that shirt, brown boy?”

Navid didn’t take the bait. “It’s got nothing to do with me. You want guns. You want ammo. I know where you can get some.”

“Navid, don’t!” Kara said, anger tingeing her voice.

He tried to give her a look that said
trust me
, but he wasn’t sure how well it worked given the state of his face. “Her father is the leader of a paramilitary outfit. Weapons, food, medicine. They’ve even got a ship. They’re supposed to rendezvous with us here.”

“And I suppose Santa is fucking the Easter Bunny in the parking lot, too, huh?”

“Whatever.” Navid shrugged, trying to appear far more confident than he felt. “Don’t believe me. I assumed you wanted to live.”

“If he ain’t lying, could use more supplies,” Mac said. “Military’s been giving us all kinds of trouble. Might be this fella has what we need to get ‘em off our backs.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Rick stared at Mac until the man backed down. Fiddling with his broken claw necklace, he started circling around Navid again. “If, and this is a big
if
, I believed you, how in the hell would we contact this bitch’s daddy? I want to work out the terms with them before we make a deal.”

“We have a radio, asshole.”

“Fine,” Rick said. “Let’s call these military men of yours.” He glared at each of them in turn. “But if I find out you’re trying to play me, you’ll be wishing you were him.” He gestured to Adam’s lifeless, bloodied body.

––––––––

A
scream echoed down the passageway leading to the medical bay. Lauren startled and ran to the hatch. It sounded like Samantha, but that couldn’t be right. She’d once seen an unsecured crate land on Samantha’s foot, breaking three toes, and the techie hadn’t so much as whimpered. What could possibly be so bad to make her scream like that?

“Hold it,” Smith said. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Someone’s hurt,” Lauren said.

“You stay here.”

“But they might need my help.”

“If they need your help, they know where to come, don’t they?” He directed Lauren with his submachine gun. “To the lab.”

Lauren began walking slowly, but her mind was racing. Before she’d reached the lab, heavy footsteps sounded along the deck and two soldiers burst through the hatch. Between them, Samantha hung limp. Blood covered her right forearm, obscuring the tattoo of vines and roses. Her face was twisted in a grimace.

“What happened?” Lauren asked. She glanced between the soldiers. “What did you do to her?”

“Didn’t do a goddamn thing,” one of the soldiers said. He let go of Samantha’s shoulder and pushed her forward. Samantha flopped into an empty chair, cradling her injured arm.

“She did it to herself,” the other soldier said.

Lauren used a cloth to clean the blood away and examined the wound. It was a relatively clean, straight cut.

“Soldering accident,” Samantha said, gritting her teeth.

That inspired more questions than it answered. Samantha was a talented technical specialist. Things weren’t adding up. But Lauren ignored her confusion and grabbed a packaged suture set. She dabbed the wound again with sterilizing alcohol and began stitching the wound shut.

“I was working on a project,” Samantha said. “Slipped and cut myself. Clumsy, huh?”

Lauren nodded, murmuring her agreement, but she still didn’t understand what was going on. She finished suturing the wound and placed a bandage over it. With a few strips of surgical tape, she secured the dressing and patted Samantha’s other arm. “All good.”

Samantha finally seemed to relax. She clasped Lauren’s hand. “Thanks, Doc. Really appreciate it.” There was something small and plastic pressed between their palms. Samantha gave Lauren an earnest smile before she let her hand go.

Curling her fingers over whatever Samantha had placed there, Lauren returned the smile. “Of course. Don’t cut yourself again, okay? Not your best idea.”

“Good thing we have you to save us, then, isn’t it?”

The soldiers grabbed Samantha’s upper arms and guided her out of the med bay’s hatch. Lauren quickly shoved her hands in her pockets and stalked back to the lab. What had Samantha given her? Her mind raced through a thousand different possibilities. What could be so important that she would injure herself just for the chance of delivering it? Her hand was wrapped around the handle to open the hatch when one of the guards tugged her shoulder.

“Doctor,” Smith said, his brow furrowed. Lauren’s stomach flipped. She was accustomed to science and medicine, but not subterfuge. Had she already given herself away? “Another patient’s asking for you.”

“Huh?” The spell on her mind was broken. “Who?” She’d already checked the Weavers and Alex, along with Ivan, Scott, and Thomas. They should all be fine. She spun and saw a shirtless Hunter was standing in the hatchway with a military escort. White bandages clung to his shoulders and chest. She knew they covered nasty Drooler-inflicted burns from a previous mission.

Terrence’s face seemed paler than usual, and beads of sweat were rolling down his forehead. Lauren pressed the back of her hand against his temple and frowned. “You’re hot.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Terrence said, forcing a wry grin. “But don’t you have a thing going on with Glenn?”

Lauren shook her head. “Are you in pain? How are your injuries?”

“Just exhausted,” Terrence said, slumping into the exam chair Samantha had just vacated. “Muscles, bones, everything. Like I’ve just run a marathon or two. Except all I’ve been doing is sitting in the brig.”

Lauren used an ear thermometer to take his temperature. The digital readout showed 101.5degrees Fahrenheit. Definitely a fever. Prior to the Oni Agent outbreak, she’d have assumed this was a sign Terrence’s wounds had become infected. But now, these symptoms might be harbingers of a nascent Oni Agent surging through the Hunter’s blood vessels. “Any headaches?”

Terrence’s eyes went wide. He seemed to understand the implication at once. “A little bit.” He rubbed a hand over his shaved scalp. “Right here. Is it...?” His words trailed off.