Prologue
Rachel Anderson
Location Unknown
The helicopter rattled like something was wrong. Rachel’s cheek rumbled on the floorboard as gravity pulled her right and left before she realized they were landing. She had exhausted herself trying to break free of her bindings. The flesh around her wrists was raw and bloody after useless writhing. Ultrafine granules of dirt and coarse sand cut across her cheek with every movement. The mercenaries who kidnapped her from Louisville left her on the floor of the aircraft like a hog-tied pig for the entire flight to their destination. Lurching against the shuttering winds, the helicopter lowered until Rachel could see the airstrip they landed on.
Shifting to her right side to relieve the mounting pressure on her left, Rachel watched the men hop out of the cabin and drag a thick gray hose from a large refueling tanker to the helicopter's side. They attached it to the aircraft, and a few moments later, she saw the hose go taut with rushing fuel.
Despite pinching her eyes shut and gritting her teeth, no more tears streaked Rachel’s cheeks. She had none left to cry, having pinched her last ones out while being flown away from Sean. All that remained inside her was hate.
Rachel didn’t care who these men were; the only thing on her mind was the vengeance she would exact on them once she was reunited with her father.
For leaving Chris and Sean to die. My dad will have them all executed for laying their hands on me, she seethed. The vile rage that bubbled inside her was new. Rachel was not hateful, but surviving this outbreak these past weeks had changed her forever. She knew this long before now.
A black military boot stepped in front of her face, causing crumbs of grime to rain across her face. Straining her neck, Rachel saw Blake, the tall one who dragged her around, pass a black bag to the man in charge. Gavon shot a look down at Rachel full of contempt, and she replied in kind.
Gavon Reins… the man who kidnapped me, assaulted me, and pointed a gun at my unborn baby. She repeated his name like a prayer to ensure she didn’t forget it.
Gavon took the bag and walked somewhere out of sight. Wind gusts whipped through the cabin, and Rachel stared at the mountaintops that encased the airstrip. The silhouette of tree branches swayed wildly. She couldn’t help but wonder if the torrential winds were byproducts of the nuclear strike on Louisville and who knows where else. Even in her restrained position, she could see the flash and hear fractions of words that her captors shouted to each other. If there was any hope of Sean surviving, it died with the flash from that explosion.
The world Rachel had grown up in was gone. The person Rachel once was was gone. Sean… was gone.
After several minutes, two men detached the fuel line from the helicopter and waited. Gavon returned a moment later with a stubby shovel in one hand, its tip was caked in dirt. He was without the backpack he left with. The aircraft lurched into the air and flew the remaining distance to their destination. The trip was long enough for Rachel to worry they were not taking her to her father.
What other tortures have they planned for me?
The knot in her stomach released when they landed a second time, and she saw real soldiers on the tarmac. They wore uniforms with American flag patches and names embroidered on their chest. Hands gripped under her armpits and lifted her with ease. Rachel defiantly pulled a shoulder away from one of the men, but his grip tightened so hard she thought her bones might snap.
“Hey, whoa, whoa!” a sergeant waiting for them near a series of white tents and trailers hollered with outstretched arms. He had a round face and concerned eyes the shape of almonds. A small group of soldiers moved at his back. “Why is she cuffed? Do you know who that is?”
“They kidnapped me! They killed my Secret Service agents!” Rachel blurted out when she heard the worry in the sergeant’s voice. “They’re monsters!”
Gavon took in their surroundings and gave a dismissive shrug. “She’s crazy or something,” he said. “Maybe just delirium from thirst or starvation.”
The sergeant hesitated and did a double take at Rachel, who continued to struggle. “Is she infected?”
“I’m not infected!” Rachel yelled, and her voice cracked. “Help me!”
“You never know, maybe,” Gavon shrugged. “Where is everyone?”
There were enough trailers and tents to house a few hundred people, yet only fifteen soldiers gathered to greet them. Standing in the center of it all felt like standing in the center of an empty shopping mall. The sergeant glanced around and shrugged. “This is the VIP entrance. The last of us were waiting for you all to do the decontamination process before going down under.”
“Down under?” Gavon asked.
“Into the bunker,” the sergeant said, gesturing to a nearby tent. “You and your men can go through there to start your decontamination. I’ll take Ms. Anderson.”
Gavon’s eyes tracked the red spray-painted lines along the grass that led to the tent. A greasy grin grew on his lips as he looked at Blake over his shoulder.
Blake shoved Rachel’s shoulder and sent her stumbling into the sergeant like she was a dresser that had just been sold.
“No, no!” Rachel shouted and jerked her arm away from the soldier’s grasp. “Get off me! You can’t let them inside!” she sucked in cool air between every other word as she hyperventilated. “Dad! Where’s my dad? I need… I want my dad!”
“It’s okay… it’s okay…” the sergeant said reassuringly as he steadied her from falling over. “President Anderson is inside the bunker waiting for you. You can call him from inside the trailer. It’s right over here.” With his palm resting on her back, he tried to guide her to the nearest trailer door. “Trust me. You’re safe now.”
“No, no, no…” the words spilled out of her mouth as she spun and teetered on falling over. Exhaustion, dehydration, and emotional taxation all struck her at once.
Rachel wanted to scream and cry. She needed her dad, but she couldn’t breathe. Her knees buckled, and soldiers rushed to her side to keep her from striking the ground. Her vision blurred as she saw the mercenaries disappearing into a tent one at a time. Gavon paused long enough at the entrance to turn his smug smile toward her. The wink he gave her felt like a blade piercing her chest.
Chapter One
Brandon Armstrong
Louisville, KY
Sweat soaked the blonde stubble covering Brandon’s chin. Drips started to fall with every push-up he knocked out. His broad shoulders and trim torso bobbed up and down from the floor as he counted out fifty in his head. This was followed after he completed fifty squats and fifty sit-ups. The litany of injuries his body had collected during its travels between Atlanta and Louisville had finally healed thanks to weeks of forced rest since his capture. The strain on his muscles and elevated heart rate felt good after so much time spent stagnant. Brandon wasn’t built to be in a cage. One way or another, he was getting out of this damn room.
The luxurious patient room he and his companions were jailed inside of faced the city's South side. He knew that from watching the sun rise and fall through the floor-to-ceiling window in the corner where he slept. Also because this side of the hospital still had its windows intact. He guessed they were three or four flights up in the Louisville General Hospital. This make-shift jail cell was high enough so they couldn’t smash the window and jump but not so high that their captors didn’t have to go up fifteen flights of stairs every time they needed feeding.
Brandon stood after reaching fifty to begin another set of squats. His eyes caught sight of Sean, who held the plank position in the same corner the man had been sleeping in, nearest the door. Sean began exercising yesterday, which Brandon took as a challenge, and started his own sets separately. Perhaps it was juvenile, but Brandon figured a bit of internal competition couldn’t hurt. That was until Sean removed his shirt for his workout, revealing chiseled eight-pack abs and tightly cut physique. It confounded Brandon that a Secret Service agent could have a more defined physique than a professional athlete. Brandon kept his shirt on as he finished his set.
Karen paced the same five-foot section of the room, impatiently tapping her thumb on her arm. It had been weeks since they were taken captive, and his wife hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to him. This was nothing new, of course. Karen would hit him with the silent treatment before their big fights. It was like foreplay for her. She loved having a reason to be pissed at him and didn’t want to waste it with a quick fight. She wanted to stew and relish in the resentment for a day or two before they got to the action. At least that was Brandon’s read on her. He didn’t know what her deal was this time and didn’t feel like getting into it in front of an audience. Besides, Brandon had more important things on his mind.
Can’t be dealing with wife bullshit, a hostage situation, and the end of the world, Brandon thought.
Facing the window, Brandon watched the rising sun to the left side of his view as he caught his breath. The desolate city was a mess of shattered glass and debris from the nuclear blast. Brandon kept telling himself and the others that they were far enough away from the explosion to avoid the radiation, but the truth was Brandon didn’t know dick about nuclear bombs. He was a trigger puller, not a nuclear scientist—hell, he wasn’t even EOD. There was a video on the internet he remembered saying the first hours after the explosion were the most dangerous as far as radiation went. Their capture probably worked out in their favor in that regard.
By the time everyone had recovered their footing after the nuclear detonation knocked them on their asses, armed men barged into the demolished room and ordered Brandon and his group to their knees. As Brandon would later learn they were called the Sons of Liberty. Soon after, they marched them into a windowless office in the hospital's center. It was probably the safest place after a nuke-det. Not that any of them had any energy left to fight or complain. A class of third graders with a bad attitude could’ve subdued Brandon with how exhausted and banged up he was. Outnumbered and unarmed, Brandon had resigned himself to death. With the power out to the city and rabid flooding the streets, death was a certainty.
Mine as well get the party started now, he thought while tucked away in that dark room.
But death never came.
They stayed there for close to three days. Under guard, they were delivered food and water twice a day. No one talked to them, and they didn’t speak to each other. In the complete darkness of their windowless room, the five of them slept and processed their losses of the past days. In truth, Brandon slept great those first nights. He’d doze to the sound of Alyssa’s choked whimpering from the opposite side of the room. In the span of days, she had lost her parents, her little brother, and her fiancé.
Her fiancé… Brandon scoffed at the title. Derrick had been reduced to a lie Alyssa could tell herself to make herself feel better. You happy now, Derrick?
Alyssa’s story wasn’t unique. Everyone alive had lost someone. Most lost their entire family, like the kid, Zoe. Don’t see her crying about it; Brandon nodded approvingly as he glanced at Zoe, who stood quietly near the door. She might be useless, but at least she wasn’t as annoying anymore.
Sean turned to his back and began knocking out leg lifts, and Brandon returned to silently counting off his squats. He didn’t know Sean. The man wasn’t talkative, not that anyone was especially loquacious in the face of the apocalypse. But trusting a man who kept his cards so close to his chest was difficult.
Sean came back for them when their car flipped while they tried to save the president’s daughter. After she was choppered out, he fought with us to get to the hospital. He pulls his own weight and then some. That is enough for now.
“Guys,” Zoe whispered, her ear flattened to the door. “I think someone’s coming.”
The girl’s injuries, once thought to be fatal, would soon be a fading scar across her abdomen at this point. It was a lucky turnaround for the teenager to have stumbled into a hospital with dozens of nurses and doctors being held captive with nothing better to do than perform exploratory surgery on her. Her surgeon came by yesterday and removed her stitches, signing off on her being officially recovered.
The lock on the door shifted out of place, and a familiar woman pushed their breakfast cart inside. Sharon’s black curly hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a pair of purple nurse scrubs. Though, Brandon had a creeping suspicion that she was not a nurse. He wiped the sweat from his face with the tail of his shirt and waited. Only one of the four-door guards that rotated security on them was diligent enough to come inside with meal delivery, and the diligent man wasn’t on duty this morning.
“Okay, we have to hurry,” Sharon said in a hushed tone as soon as the door latched shut behind her.
Yesterday, she had stayed too long while sharing their daily allotment of intelligence and was dragged out by a suspicious guard. The secrets that Sharon and her two cohorts, Victoria and Martinez, passed along to Brandon’s group spanned the chasm from valuable intel on enemy numbers to gossip on which nurses are catfighting and new hair styling techniques. The latter mostly came from Martinez, and Brandon listened intently all the same because—what the fuck else was he going to do? It was essential to protect Sharon from suspicion. When you have an asset in the enemy’s ranks, you protect it at all costs. At this point, she was more valuable than anyone else.
“Something’s happening tomorrow,” Sharon whispered as she made a point to rattle the plastic bowls together for the guard’s benefit, who listened outside.
“Something what?” Karen pressed as she took the bowls absentmindedly.
“I don’t know; I heard there will be a meeting tomorrow. It’s about you. I think… I think they’re going to execute you,” Sharon said, turning to Brandon and Sean. Her eyes had more of an apology in them than concern, like she was talking to dead men. Brandon didn’t know the woman’s story, but after Brandon killed one of the Sons of Liberty, she helped him. When they were taken prisoner, Sharon convinced the other women who witnessed it to say that rabid killed the man and not Brandon. He didn’t confuse her for a fighter or a friend, but loyalty went a long way in Brandon’s book.
Brandon rubbed a sweaty palm over his mouth, his fingers and thumb brushing the sweat from the short beard he had grown. Sean did not react other than to put on his shirt.
“You’re sure?” Brandon asked.
“Wesley, the guy that’s in charge, he said they can’t keep feeding you guys indefinitely. Said you guys are a ‘bottomless pit of food rations.’” Sharon glanced at the door and lowered her voice, “Then I overheard Baron talk just now—Baron is Wesley’s son. He—”
“I remember who Baron is,” Brandon snapped, irritated by his impending execution.
Sharon's eyes narrowed, but she continued, “He said that they were going to dump your bodies across the street afterward.”
“All of us?” Karen asked. A clump of paper towels froze between her fingers.
Sharon looked down, then glanced at the three women across from Brandon and Sean. “I think they’ll kill the men. They don’t seem to keep men long if they don’t have a use,” Sharon said, looking over at Sean. “And they don’t seem to like different skin colors either.”
Sean seemed to find this amusing. He slightly smirked as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
“And the women?” Alyssa asked from the sofa she sat on. Her arms wrapped her knees to her chest like a child.
“I think they’ll keep you… maybe let you join the nurses out there,” Sharon said.
Zoe furrowed her brow, “Why would they kill the men and not the women?”
The girl’s words hung in the air unanswered. The silence was loud with each nightmare their imagination could conjure up. Brandon barely had time to process Sharon’s words, but he already knew what he needed.
“You need to get me a weapon,” Brandon demanded and stepped closer to Sharon.
“I can’t. They’d know it was me or my friends who gave it to you,” Sharon said.
Brandon shook his head, not caring about this irrelevant information, “A steak knife, a metal fork, a brick, metal rod, brass knuckles—I don’t care, something!”
Brandon’s words were cut short by the door cracking open behind Sharon. The prisoners, with different degrees of nonchalance, separated from Sharon as the scruffy-faced guard poked the barrel of his rifle inside the room.
“Shar’n, you good?” the man asked with a thick accent. It sounded like he chewed tobacco, though, none was in his mouth.
“Yeah, I'm just finishing,” Sharon said as she picked up an old coffee can that contained their communal breakfast—some variation of stew or rice or some other hot plate meal—and placed it on the table near Alyssa’s corner.
“Come on, then,” the guard said, backing out and watching the two men with his squinted eyes.
When the door latched shut, Brandon put his ear to the door to listen and confirm they weren’t being spied on. Satisfied, he turned to Sean.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on going quietly,” he said. “I don’t need a weapon. I’ll use my damn fingernails if that’s what it takes.”
Sean stared at Brandon for a long moment, then nodded, “I’m with you.”
“Maybe there’s another way?” Karen spoke softly to Brandon for the first time. “Maybe we can talk to them?”
“They don’t want to talk,” Brandon said dismissively as he returned to the window.
“Brandon,” Karen whispered sternly. “You can’t just murder people based on rumors.”
“Yes, I can,” he said, chortling with a laugh as he lightly tapped his palm on the glass. He’d thought about breaking the window to scavenge a big enough chunk to use as a dagger, but he figured the guards would be on him before he found one.
Karen folded her arms tight to her chest like a chill had gone through the room and moved to the opposite side of the room from him.
They ate their breakfast in silence. Brandon spent the afternoon hating the greasy film caked on his body and regretting his workouts without being able to bathe. In his mind, he played through scenarios of him being escorted from their room and killing the guard with his bare hands. Gritting his teeth, he could almost feel the tiny bones in the guard’s throat snapping beneath his tightening grip.
He went over every inch of the patient’s room, scouring the place for a weak point to escape from or a loose something to use as a weapon. He figured one of the cupboard doors could be ripped off, though it would have to be done in the moment. It’d make too much noise and wasn’t worth the risk in order to gain an awkward piece of wood as a weapon. Brandon chuckled at the thought of him charging a guard with a cupboard door only to take five rifle rounds to the chest.
This is going to be a shit show, he decided.
Brandon knew something was up when their supper meal arrived just before dusk. Sharon brought the food cart inside, and behind her was the diligent guard who propped the door open with the toe of his boot. Sharon always delivered the morning meal. Victoria or Martinez brought their supper meal. Brandon rather enjoyed Victoria’s visits; she was attractive in a hippy kind of way, and watching Karen stew as he flirted with the woman was the closest Brandon got to revenge for his silent treatment.
In an awkward silence, everyone watched Sharon swap out their empty coffee can for a full one of food. Zoe made a face as she placed the used bedpans on the cart's bottom shelf while Sharon stacked three empty ones on the floor. All the while, the guard took turns switching his muzzle from Sean to Brandon and back.
Sharon didn’t look up from her work until she scooped up the paper towel and plastic spoons. She set the fistful of items on the table and looked steel-eyed at Brandon before leaving. The guard backed away cautiously and locked the door. Brandon waited a moment before he went to the spoons and unwrapped them. Between the plastic spoons was a flat silver medical instrument with a blade on one side that looked deadly sharp. Brandon thought it was a scalpel but was never big into doctor shows.
“One knife?” Karen shook her head in disbelief. “What does she expect us to do with one knife?”
Brandon looked at Sean.
“Go out fighting,” Brandon said.
Chapter Two
Sharon Hill
Louisville, KY
Sharon went up the central stairwell, brushing the outer wall with her hand to act as her sight. Darkness was redefined in this new world. It was early in the evening, yet blackness became a consuming entity in places like the stairwell, where there were no windows to let in the light of the moon and stars.
During the summer thunderstorms in Tennessee, her house would lose power two or three times a year. Sharon’s family never really experienced the black of the night, though, between the candles, flashlights, and camping lanterns. But those were things of the past in Louisville. Electricity and everything that ran on batteries hadn’t worked since the explosion. Half the time, when Sharon woke in the middle of the night she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed.
Once on the third floor, she moved down the corridor briskly. She did her best not to look guilty, but there was a surge of panic mixed with a dump of adrenaline after what she had just done. Victoria would tear her apart for giving away their knife, but Sharon felt compelled to do something. She still remembered what it was like to be imprisoned for an inevitable execution. Helpless. Vulnerable.
Focusing on slowing her pace as she walked the hallway back to her room, Sharon nodded politely to the passing women who came and went to the different rooms.
It was probably only eight o’clock at night, but all the women hid from their captors after dinner. The Sons of Liberty tended to drink at night. That left the mornings rather peaceful as they nursed their hangovers, but come the afternoon, the men grew restless, and by nighttime, they were rowdy as the cycle began again. It hadn’t been an issue yet. The dozens of captured women were allowed to select patient rooms on the third floor while the Sons of Liberty slept on the second. To Sharon’s surprise, the Sons of Liberty had shown restraint when it came to them. They treated the women like pets. They were fed, maintained, allowed to wander in predetermined areas, and given rules for their existence. Aside from a handful of Sons who loved to cat-call and crack crude jokes at the women’s expense, the Sons of Liberty mostly ignored the women.
Some women saw this as a sign the Sons weren’t actually the bad guys.
‘They’re just religious,’ some women would argue.
‘They’re old fashioned.’
‘They’re misunderstood.’
‘The Sons are trapped here just like we are…’
With nothing but time to talk, the other women could waste hours hypothesizing and fantasizing about what kind of men the Sons were, but Sharon already knew what kind of men they were. The same as all men. They weren’t protecting the women; they were fattening the cows before slaughter. Women weren’t people to them; they weren’t even pets; women were objects. A means to procreate more men for their prepper cult. Had the nuclear bomb not gone off and stopped all the cars from running, Sharon was confident that she and every other woman there would have been hogtied and stacked like carcasses in the back of pickup trucks on the way to their bomb shelters across the state.
Wesley and his men ignored the women because they didn’t have to worry about escape attempts after what happened to the runners. All the women knew they were stuck in this fucking hospital regardless if the Sons were there or not.
One of the open doors she passed in the hallway had four women sitting on the floor giggling to one another as they played some card game. Sharon sneered and walked a little faster. She hated how quickly some people could normalize their situation and forget the horrific past. It only made Sharon’s subconscious try harder to recall her life before. Just remembering her children’s names was enough to make her want to rip her insides out.
As Sharon passed the last room in the hall before turning to her hallway, a woman spilled out of the doorway and stumbled into the wall opposite it. Reflexively, Sharon caught her and steadied her shoulder. It was Jessica. A young woman who stayed close to a group of girls with attitude and a stick up their butts.
Jessica licked her lips in a slow and odd way as she rebalanced herself as if she were learning to walk again.
“You alright?” Sharon asked.
Jessica’s droopy eyes clung to the floor as she smacked her lips together and wobbled on her legs for another minute before realizing Sharon’s presence.
“Get off me–hey…” she whined, pulling her shoulder from Sharon’s touch. She fell into another wall while doing so. Jessica giggled and slowly continued down the hall back to where Sharon had come from.
Glancing inside the cracked door Jessica came from, Sharon was attracted to the unusual glow of light. On the floor in the center of the room was a single candle stick with a flickering flame dancing on it. Three women lay around the candle as they passed a sandwich bag that rattled like a maraca with every movement. It was Stephanie’s room, and when she caught Sharon’s spying eyes peering through the crack, the bony-faced woman quickly moved to the door and slammed it shut.
Sharon didn’t care, but she was interested in discovering how Stephanie acquired the baggy of pills and the candlestick. Both were highly controlled items by the Sons of Liberty.
When Sharon arrived at her room at the end of the hall, she could hear the nervous pacing inside before opening the door. Martinez gnawed on her thumbnail as she waited.
“Did you do it?” Martinez whispered.
Sharon closed the door quietly, “Yes.”
“Oh, jeez. Sharon…” Martinez gasped as she found the couch in Sharon’s room by memory and slumped into it. Martinez had been a nurse in this hospital for nine years before everything fell apart, so she knew the place like the back of her hand. Though her personality didn’t reflect it, she used to be the go-to person nurses sought out when they were stumped by a problem. An educated woman both formally and from years of experience, Martinez was one of those rare people you’d struggle to find fault in. Sharon initially found it rather annoying and questioned if she was being played or if Martinez had some angle she was working. The circle of housewives Sharon used to call friends before the outbreak spent their free time pretending they existed in one of their reality shows and felt it necessary to complain or trash someone or something in every conversation. Not Martinez, though. She was as kind and genuine as they came.
“Did he say anything?” Martinez asked.
“We didn’t talk. Tom was on duty,” Sharon said.
Martinez nodded, “What do you think he will do?”
“Brandon? He’s going to hurt someone. Maybe a few people.”
“But when they find the scalpel on him, won’t they know you gave it to him?” Martinez worried. She was a heavy-set nurse in her early forties, though her clear caramel skin made her appear younger than Sharon. Short black hair framed her fitting round face.
When Sharon didn’t reply, she muttered something in Spanish as she shook her head disapprovingly at the floor. Victoria often joked that Martinez was the hospital’s mother. The woman was the most natural-born caregiver Sharon had ever met.
A minute later, there was a soft knock on the door before Victoria entered the room, paused, and spied down the hall, ensuring she hadn’t been followed, before closing the door behind her.
“What is it?” Martinez asked.
“Stephanie just went downstairs by herself,” Victoria said without looking away.
“They took her?” Sharon asked.
“No,” Victoria hardened her expression after latching the door shut. “She went on her own.”
“Why would she do that?” Martinez asked as she sat forward in her chair.
Victoria looked at the ceiling and then narrowed her eyes on Sharon.
“You gave them the knife, didn’t you?” Victoria said. Sharon hung her hands on her hips and looked away, which was enough confirmation for her. “Dammit, Share, that was our only weapon.”
“What use is one scalpel against a bunch of men with rifles?” Sharon asked, gesturing to her door as if the entirety of the Sons of Liberty were lined behind it.
“Exactly my point,” Victoria shrugged, stepping to the center of the room. “So what difference can it make giving it to them?”
Victoria was twenty-six years old, a few years younger than Sharon, but she stood only a few inches shy of six feet. The baggy purple nurse scrubs hid the athletic body of a young cop well. Beneath Victoria’s tight fitted uniform were thick tattooed arms and a stout midsection from a regular weight-lifting habit until recent events.
Sharon pursed her lips as she considered her response. The others hadn’t seen what transpired in the hallway as Sharon had the day she met Brandon and his group; they didn’t know the violence Brandon used to disarm the Sons of Liberty guard, break his face, and toss him over the ledge.
Sharon shook her head, “His hands are different from ours.”
“What does that mean?” Victoria raised an eyebrow.
“It means that if Wesley is going to have them executed either way, the right thing to do is to give the men a chance to defend themselves. Maybe Brandon can kill Wesley or Baron in the process,” Sharon said.
“The right thing to do would be to keep Brandon and Sean alive,” Martinez said absently and to herself.
“And how do we do that?” Victoria huffed.
“I’m on your side, Vikki. They seem like nice people, is all,” Martinez said.
Victoria flexed her hand open and closed like a fighter preparing for a bout. Sharon could tell she was pissed. In the days following the bomb going off, Sharon and the other women were confined to their rooms while the Sons of Liberty ‘fortified’ the hospital for their stay. Fortifying, it turned out, meant stripping their section of the hospital clean of all guns, bullets, and edged weapons. They also barricaded hallway doors and clogged the four stairwells with furniture above the third floor so they couldn’t venture to other hospital wings. When Sharon and the other women were released from their patient rooms, they saw they had just traded one cell for a bigger one. It was the next day when Victoria found the scalpel kicked in the corner of the floor in one of the operating rooms. A lucky find but the only one of its kind that the Sons had missed.
The scalpel was the first item in the three women's hidden stash of gear, which they had collected over the past weeks. Hidden above one of the tiles in Sharon’s ceiling was a pink child’s backpack with Barbie dolls on it. The miniature bag also contained two cans of food and four water bottles. It was their unspoken escape pact.
In those first days after the bomb went off, Sharon heard whispers from each of the women about plans to escape. They were about as common as rumors of police or the army coming to rescue them any day now. The whispers grew until a small group composed of the few male doctors and nurses left alive and a couple of the females slipped past the Sons of Liberty guards early one morning in the second week. No one had even noticed they had escaped until the screams drew everyone's attention near the end of breakfast. The women and the Sons of Liberty packed the hallway and side offices to get a view of the commotion out of the windows, but after, most wished they hadn’t.
Fewer than half of those who fled ran back to the hospital. As they are now infamously referred to, the runners, pounded their fists on locked doors and windows, begging to be let back inside. The first infected rounded the nearest intersection within seconds and pounced on them. Moments later, the entire street was crawling with thousands of rabid. The runners were torn limb from limb before their eyes. For most women, it was their first time seeing the infection in the flesh. For Sharon, it was all too familiar.
The runners were another reason Sharon felt comfortable giving up their only scavenged weapon. Even if a scalpel was enough to overcome the dozens of Sons of Liberty, they weren’t running into the city to face the rabid with just a one-inch blade.
Victoria turned back to Sharon and relaxed her posture, “Listen, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you—or you,” Victoria glanced back at Martinez with a nod. “I support your call on this, but it’s not as simple as giving a dude a knife and seeing what happens. There are going to be consequences for this. What’s the best-case scenario for Brandon and Sean in this situation?”
Sharon shrugged, “They kill Wesley and Baron and escape.”
“Then what happens?” Victoria asked. “Wesley’s a monster. I can see it in his eyes as clear as day, and his son is worse, but that doesn’t mean the rest of his men are any better,” Victoria rubbed her fingers through the short-cut side of her hair and let the longer side of blonde bangs dangle in her face. “I mean, these fuckers came here specifically to kidnap women, right? Doctors and women. So we know where their minds are at… What if Wesley’s the only one keeping this place from turning into a scene from every woman’s nightmare?”
Knowing looks were exchanged between the three women. Each of them had thought about their purpose in being kept alive by the Sons, but this was the first time anyone had spoken it aloud.
“Maybe we—” Sharon started, but the door suddenly swung open and clapped against the wall.
The man who stood in her doorway eyed the three women and seemed to enjoy the startle he created. Baron was now the only son of Sons of Liberty leader, Wesley, after his eldest son was killed. The young man was short and stout with a bald head and a greasy way about him.
“What’s goin’ on in here?” Baron asked. His voice was wet and sounded more playful than Sharon liked while he stood in her bedroom.
“What are you doing here, Baron?” Victoria asked. The darkness followed his face as he entered the room, shrouding his expression. All the men should have been either on guard duty or downstairs in the ‘Club House’ by now.
“Well, I was gonna decorate my room, and I wanted to get some ideas,” Baron said as he looked around Sharon’s spartan living quarters. Apart from her disheveled bed and the stack of extra scrub pants and shirts on her couch, her room looked the same as before she slept in it. Still, Baron walked its perimeter. Amused by everything, he touched her clothes, looked out her window, and sniffed her bed in a way that was beyond disturbing. Sharon fought the urge to look at the tiled ceiling above her couch to double-check if it was properly in place and not exposing their hidden backpack.
“If you’ve seen enough, I want you to leave,” Sharon said. Baron approached from behind her and brushed shoulders as he passed.
“And what if I haven’t seen enough?” Baron asked and looked Victoria up and down like it was an inspection.
Victoria smiled coyly and leaned forward as if she spoke to a child, “Never gonna happen.”
Most of the women and all of the Sons might’ve thought Victoria was just another kidnapped nurse, but her confidence set her apart from the other women. Baron stiffened, and the greasy smirk on his face slowly morphed into a scowl that couldn’t hide his intensity. For a moment, Sharon thought he would swing on her. Baron was the boldest of the Sons despite his father keeping him on a short leash. Should their treatment begin to worsen, he would be the start of it.
“Come on, then,” Baron turned to Sharon after a moment. “Wesley wants to see you.”
“Me?” Sharon questioned.
“Who else?” Baron asked, returning his playful smirk. “Did anyone else deliver food to the prisoners today?”
Sharon gasped but did her best to hide her shock.
Did the guard hear me through the wall this morning? Did they find the scalpel I gave Brandon? Did Brandon already use it?
Victoria and Martinez said nothing, but Sharon could feel their concern radiating from their stiff posture. Victoria went to follow Sharon out the door, but she raised a hand, stopping her friend. This was her decision. This was her consequence to face.
By the time Sharon had made her way downstairs and to the employee lounge of the hospital, she had sorted through all the ways she had screwed up. The employee lounge that once was the watering hole and gossip epicenter for all the nurses of this hospital, according to Martinez, had been converted into the Club House for the Sons of Liberty. One of the men had even scribbled out ‘Employee’s Only’ from the sign on the door and wrote, in red marker, ‘Sons of Liberty Only.’ Sharon thought it was something her eight-year-old son would do when he made a fort in the living room with couch cushions. Taken aback by the thought’s appearance, she quickly bit the corner of her cheek until she tasted blood, and the unwelcome memory of her children went away.
“Hold up,” Baron said and entered the Club House, leaving Sharon outside.
Sharon pushed herself to the balls of her feet so she could see, too. Five candles lit the break room like a medieval hall. Men sat behind tables pushed along the walls and left the center of the floor open. At the head of the room, Wesley stood addressing his men, but Sharon’s gaze was distracted by a familiar figure. Stephanie sat in one of the Sons’ laps along the back of the room. Her narrow frame fit easily in the young man’s arms and she hugged her arms around his neck without a care. She looked like a bored girlfriend at her boyfriend’s work meeting.
As if sensing Sharon’s eyes on her, Stephanie looked behind her and saw Sharon spying through the window. Stephanie whispered something to the man she sat on, planted a kiss on his lips, and walked on wobbly legs to the exit.
“Sharon,” Stephanie said with a measured tone after the door closed behind her. Stephanie was one of a handful of women Sharon had issues with since her arrival. It was pathetic that even now, after the loss of so much, women like her who strived for popularity and social dominance still existed. Despite Sharon’s inability to care less about her social status, Stephanie had targeted her as a rival from day one, probably because of Wesley’s obvious and persistent affection for her.
“You okay?”
“I’m more than okay. I’m having the time of my life,” Stephanie laughed with a slur in her words and stumbled backward. “Where–where’s your friend? Victoria?”
Sharon said nothing but made it a point not to look away from the drunk woman. She couldn’t stand still as a jerky spasm went through her body as she smirked. It was a simple question, but Sharon heard it as a threat. Aside from Martinez, Stephanie and her friend, Jessica, were the only ones who knew Victoria was not one of the nurses. Victoria was the only Louisville Police Officer who survived the Sons of Liberty attack on the hospital. The small band of women worked together briefly to change her into nurse attire and out of her uniform. The fact that Stephanie and Jessica had kept their mouths shut this long had been a miracle, but now it seemed their good fortune had run out.
Sharon and Stephanie stared each other down for only a few seconds before Stephanie looked away and giggled in a snotty way.
Baron popped his head out the doorway and looked both women up and down, “Come on, then.”
“Bye-bye,” Stephanie waved her fingers playfully as she nearly fell, shuffling into the dark hallway.
“Mm mm,” Baron hummed as he watched her walk away. “Need to get me a piece like that.”
Sharon's stomach was already in the middle of a roller coaster loop as she was ushered inside the Club House. A rumble of voices in the room reminded her of a cafeteria as a kid. Only now, the voices came from shadowed faces with menacing snarls as they watched Sharon walk the gauntlet to the center of the room. Clasping her hands in front of her, she felt like a lamb surrounded by a room of jackals.
“Well, Miss Hill, aren’t ya lookin’ lovely as ever?” Wesley’s thin lips grew into a wide grin. He sat at the head of the table as if he were the wedding reception's groom.
“You wanted to see me,” Sharon said, steeling her voice for what was about to come.
“Yes… yes… and here’s ya ares,” the intoxication in Wesley’s words was evident. Grasping a glass with a small pour of water-like substance in it, he tongued his yellow-stained teeth and grinned. “You have spent quite a bit of time with the prisoners, haven’t ya? More than most.”
Sweat wetted her palms and she quickly wiped them on her pants. “I’ve… been in charge of feeding them.”
Wesley nodded and stroked his long, gray beard. Drunkenly, he gestured to his men, “Some of the boys said they heard you talkin’ to them some, too. What’s that about?”
Sharon felt a wall of heat behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see Baron saddled directly behind her, his rifle in hand.
“Um, I don’t—what do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, seems to me you have spent the most amount of time with them out of anyone. Tell me what they’re like? They good people?”
Sharon looked down at her feet so Wesley couldn’t see the considerations in her face.
Is he fishing for me to say something positive about them to see if I’m a traitor? Do I say bad things to throw him off? If I do, will they hurt them?
Sharon’s mind shifted to Zoe for the briefest of seconds. She was the teenage girl locked in with the prisoners. For weeks, Sharon avoided speaking to the girl because she struggled not to see her daughter in Zoe’s eyes. But that didn’t stop her heart from aching for the child as only a mother could.
Was I about to get her killed?
“They… seem like normal people,” she said, “nice, friendly… the women always help unload and reload the supplies.”
Wesley gave an appraising look as he nodded. “And what of the two men?” he leaned forward on the table. “What they like?”
The room went deathly quiet. Sharon pursed her lips as she felt dozens of eyes bore into her from every direction, “Quiet. Respectful. Polite. They seem glad of the treatment they’ve received. The food.”
Wesley lifted his gaze above her shoulder to nod to his son.
“The lady says they’re good people,” Wesley shrugged.
Baron stepped before her like a child, pining for his father’s attention, “You gone trust her, Pa? I thought we had this decided.”
“Dunno, Wesley,” Maul grumbled. He was an overweight slob of a man who didn’t own a shirt that wasn’t stained. “I gotta side with your boy here. It’s easier just to off em’.”
“Might be easier, but might not be best,” Samuel offered, as Wesley’s right hand man. He was a thick, hairy man with a braided beard, giving him a strange appearance. “Since the nuke we have a need for things, and those two boys might do to help.”
Baron pushed past Sharon as he whined, “But Pa, you said…”
“Nothins decided until it's decided, boy. And Miss Hill here has a high opinion of these folks, and I have a high opinion of Miss Hill.”
“Just because you want a piece of that ass,” Baron mumbled with his pouting lips dragging on the floor.
“Now, hush up!” Wesley snapped, then lightened his expression as he turned back to Sharon. “But while we on the subject. Why don’t you come round here and have a seat beside me? Join us for a cocktail. We got another gal round here to keep you company while the men talk.”
Wesley sloshed his drink back and forth in the glass before taking a minuscule sip, which caused a hiss through his teeth and a discomforting groan. He shook his long gray hair from side to side to end the production.
Sharon saw the slippery slope before her. How easily in this setting, taking a seat in a room surrounded by drunk, lawless men could lead to being dragged off to one of their rooms.
“No, thank you,” Sharon replied and stiffened her back.
Wesley slammed the glass down in a sudden flash of anger that disappeared as quickly as it came.
“No thank you, no thank you… always so polite, aren’t we?” he laughed, softening the mood, then shook away a thought he didn’t express. “You know, yous keep tellin’ me no, and one of these days, I’m just gonna stop asking, right?”
Sharon wasn’t sure if what he said was reassuring or a threat, but she didn’t like where this conversation was going. She cleared her throat and stepped closer to the table, attempting to look more comfortable than she felt.
“What about what we discussed before? About some of the women learning to shoot and defend—”
“Doggonit! I tolds ya, ladies don’t b’long with a gun when there’s a man there for it,” Wesley sighed. “Why’s this so important to ya? You’re here. You’re safe. My men’s keepin’ this place safe, arentchya boys?”
A drunken roar of celebration and thumping hands on tables filled the room for a brief moment.
“A lady should know how to protect herself,” Sharon countered. “Men aren’t always there, and when they aren’t, a woman shouldn’t be defenseless. A couple of us, me and Victoria, one of the nurses here—”
“Oh, we know Victoria,” Baron interrupted with a bothersome tone. He mimed fondling imaginary breasts in front of himself, and a roar of laughter overtook the room.
Sharon blinked and waited for the room to quiet. “We’ve heard you have plans of sending teams out to gather supplies. Victoria and I would like to go with them. Not all women can, but it wouldn’t hurt to teach a couple of us how to protect the rest. That way, we can contribute, too.”
More than a few men at the head table laughed in a drunken stupor before she could finish. They mockingly joked about different ways they could contribute. Sharon remembered Victoria’s comments about things being worse if Brandon killed Wesley, and she wondered if she was right.
“Man, look at yous,” Wesley chuckled teary-eyed. “You like one of them city lawyers from those shows.” Then Wesley leaned forward sloppily but with suspicious eyes. “Why you bringn’ this up now? You saying this has somethin’ to do with havin’ a drink with me?”
Shit. The last thing she wanted to do was to affirm a causality between her receiving gun training and Wesley receiving sexual attention from her, but she had been trying for weeks now to gain access to a gun.
How far are you willing to go to get what you want, Sharon?
Sharon bit her tongue and then said, “Maybe.”
Wesley leaned back in his seat with a soft smirk.
“Wooodoggy! You got a live one!” Samuel hollered and shook his head obnoxiously.
“I’ll tell you what?” he said, quieting his men. “Tomorrow mornin’ I’ma talk to our guests we been keeping locked up here.”
Baron scoffed and moved to storm out of the Club House only to stop and double back to his father. “We ain’t got to talk to no one, Pa. Just shoot em’ and be done with it!”
“I said hush, damn you! You want me take my belt off?” Wesley snapped. The men chuckled at his red-faced son, who shrunk under the humiliation. Turning back to Sharon, Wesley continued, “You see, my boy had plans to take care of them folks, eaten all our supplies and contributed nothing. But new… opportunities have come up. If these two fellas are as respectful as you say, maybe we can get you some training.”
“You mean,” Sharon hesitated, feeling the spin of vertigo fall over herself. “You’re not going to kill them?” Sharon pictured the scalpel she passed Brandon just minutes ago.
Wesley chuckled and shrugged, “Well, I suppose I’d kill ‘em if they give me a reason to, but not if they don’t.”
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