Rage Page 23

  Elizabeth nodded as if she had heard his thoughts, then disappeared into what had to be a small belowdecks area.

  The ship sailed evenly. Raine drank water from a cup that she brought up, and he shed his jacket for a clean one Elizabeth had found.

  He stood next to the woman as she steered the balloon ship, the engine producing a steady roar that mixed with the whistle of the wind moving over the balloon.

  “Okay to ask where we are going, Dr. Cadence?”

  “Tell you what. You call me Elizabeth, and I won’t call you ‘Lieutenant.’ ”

  “Great. Just Raine will do.”

  She pointed ahead. “Out there… there are more settlements. Some closer to Capital Prime.”

  “Capital Prime?”

  “The fortress city of the Authority. Those settlements really serve the Authority. They live and die… at the Authority’s whim.”

  “And we’re going to one of them?” he asked skeptically.

  “No. We’re not. I’m taking you to our main base. Underground, in a place called Subway Town-right under their noses. The Authority ignores it and hasn’t learned that we hide there. Least, not yet. We will have to move soon. We always have to be on the move.”

  For a few seconds Raine just stood there, listening to the sound of the wind, feeling the breeze as they sailed through the night.

  “Nobody down below can see us?”

  “No. Just got the fire in the boiler. And it’s pretty much covered by the deck.” She looked off into the distance.

  He looked at her. A woman from his own time. He couldn’t even begin to think of the questions to ask her.

  She turned and looked back at him. “You had a rough couple of days, hm?”

  “Hasn’t been easy.”

  “Going to take us an hour or so, Raine. And I know you’ve got questions. So let me start… from the beginning.”

  As she spoke, Elizabeth looked at the man she had rescued.

  Already she wondered if he’d be up to what lay head. Amazing that he had survived the few days he’d been here.

  But did he have the strength, the basic health, to do what had to be done in the next twelve hours?

  Could one man-even with all his training, his experience, now battered by the Bash, shaken by the arena-do what she was going to ask of him?

  She was not at all confident.

  “My field is-was-molecular biology. I was one of the core teams working on the nanotrites project.”

  “They’ve been very helpful, by the way.”

  “Well, don’t get used to them.”

  “I’ve heard-”

  “My husband helped create them. We didn’t know… what they could do. How they could change.”

  “Your husband? He didn’t come with you?”

  She turned away. “I was sent in an Ark with my husband-a physicist-and our son. The three of us.”

  “They let children go?”

  “If they wanted us, our son had to go, too. That was our stance. And I imagine they thought the gene pool might be promising.”

  “And your husband is…?”

  “We were all picked up by the Authority,” she said quietly. “My husband, son-they were taken away. I was sent to the Dead City to work. The deal-”

  “They like deals here.”

  She smiled wanly. “The deal was, if I helped them, then we could be reunited. At first I was diligent. But there were rumors… rumors my family was dead. And the work I was doing, I didn’t understand. It seemed… sick. Using nanotrites on the mutants. Yet I only dealt with a piece of the puzzle.”

  She took a breath.

  “Hopefully, what you got on that hard drive… will explain what was being done. What is still being done.” She looked right at him. “Could be very important, Raine.”

  “And so you left.”

  “I couldn’t keep helping the Authority. I had to leave. And I didn’t believe they would ever let me see my family again. If they were still alive.”

  Raine went quiet for a few minutes.

  So much to take in, she thought. She’d had years. This world no longer held surprises for her.

  But for him?

  Raine broke his silence. “How did this all happen? The Authority, the Enforcers? What happened to the plan to rebuild humanity, to make a new world?”

  This was the question she had been waiting for. “You know what they say about plans,” she said. “This one had a flaw that doomed it from the beginning. That, and a big surprise.”

  She then told Raine about the asteroid, how its course had shifted, whatever was inside it reacting to the planet. And how General Martin Cross and Colonel James Casey had commandeered an Ark.

  How they made sure they were the first out.

  Made sure that they would run this world.

  “Most of the survivors that came after them were either killed or captured. The ones that could be used were put to work. A few, like myself, escaped. But not many.” She looked at Raine again. “Now, there’s only one other like you that we know of.”

  “Like me?”

  “A soldier. Captain John Marshall. Leader of the Resistance.”

  “I look forward to meeting him.”

  She nodded.

  Not yet, she told herself… she wouldn’t tell him yet. Instead, she simply said:

  “Me, too…”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  SUBWAY TOWN

  She turned and looked at him. She had already decided on a slight detour before they came to Subway Town.

  This survivor needed to see things.

  “Raine, take a look down there.”

  The airship felt steady enough for Raine to walk to the edge and lean over. With the moonlight, he could make out the landscape below.

  It reminded him of grainy photographs of the trenches from World War One. The devastated landscape, farmhouses burnt to the ground, the terrain turned into a series of long, desperate lines as men charged at each other, day after day, so many falling uselessly to their death.

  “What is it?”

  Elizabeth had to speak loudly to be heard.

  “Used to be the Cane Settlement. It was independent, made up of basically goodhearted people. But some of the Cane leaders started working with us. Supplies, information. They knew the risks.”

  Raine looked back at Elizabeth. He could guess the rest of the story.

  “Someone-could have been one of their family, maybe another trader who overheard something-turned them in to the Authority. And instead of arrests… they did that.”

  “Killed everyone?”

  “Every last one of them.” She took a breath. “Then burnt it to the ground.”

  It made Raine remember something he was thinking about earlier, about the French Resistance: did the Resistance feel any responsibility for what happened?

  It was a classic scenario… a resistance does something, and innocent people pay a heavy price. Was any of it worth it?

  Historians debated that.

  “They wanted to make an example. For all the other far-flung settlements. Cross us, and this is what will happen. I’d say, based on the level of cooperation we’ve been getting, it worked. We’ve had to be more careful, more underground than ever.”

  Raine kept looking down.

  The landscape had been left as pure desolation.

  “How many people?” he asked.

  “Depends on who might have been in the settlement. There were always migrant traders passing through. Our guess… nearly a hundred.”

  Raine nodded. A massacre, taking its place in line with others throughout modern history. He stepped back from the edge, for a few minutes saying nothing. He noticed that the airship had turned now, returning to an earlier course, the moon sliding to his left.

  “You brought me there… for a reason.”

  “Could be.”

  “To show me what you are fighting. And why.”

  She turned, her face determined. This woman from his time w
ho didn’t know whether her own family was alive or dead, prisoner or free.

  “I hoped it would help you understand.”

  “And that I would join you?”

  She held his gaze. “They did send you back with a mission, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have to figure… this wasn’t what they imagined for that future. Slaughter. Fear. Terror. The goddamned Authority.”

  He looked away. “No.”

  “So-”

  Back to her. “Say no more.” Another deep breath of the chilly night air. “I’m in.”

  And Elizabeth nodded.

  The airship began dropping in altitude well before Raine could see anything like signs of life.

  Just more deserted buildings, chunks of metal walls, upturned cars.

  They now glided a mere hundred feet above the ground.

  “What is this?”

  “Crescent City. Ever been here? I mean, before?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “The city got destroyed by Apophis. But they had built a small subway line, and people took refuge there. Lawless, dangerous; it wasn’t a great place to visit before. Definitely not a great place now.”

  The ship dropped a few more feet.

  “But it’s a good place for us to hide. For now. Definitely a place where no questions are asked.”

  “This is Subway Town?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “And the Authority tolerates it?”

  “They could wipe it out. But that would mean going through every square inch of the tunnels, into tight spaces where people have amassed a lot of weapons. So it would be a costly, deadly operation. Besides, Redstone-”

  “And he is?”

  “He runs Subway Town. Who knows why…”

  “Love the political system in this world.”

  “Yeah. Another thing we want to change. For now, though, Redstone is in charge. Whether people are scared of him or need what he can get, it doesn’t much matter. This is his place.”

  Now only thirty feet above the ground, Raine watched Elizabeth turn to the right, banking the craft slightly.

  “So you are safe here?”

  “Like I said, for now. No place is safe too long. We’re already looking for a new place.” She looked at Raine. It seemed to him that she wanted to tell him something more but stopped.

  He could see that up here, at the street level, the city above-ground was completely deserted.

  Everyone was living below, he realized. Like…

  What was the word?

  Living like troglodytes.

  Elizabeth grabbed a lever and the engine slowed. Another lever let more hot air out of the sausage-shaped balloon above.

  In minutes they came to a landing.

  She pulled the engine lever all the way down.

  The boiler went quiet, and as the balloon deflated she ran around, neatly catching the folds of canvas material as if wrapping a mainsail tight after a day at sea.

  “Okay-ready?” She jumped off the ship, its hull now camouflaged amidst the scattered debris of the city. “We have people waiting.”

  Raine grabbed his guns and his pack with the hard drive. Would they be of any value to this group?

  He guessed he was about to find out.

  Down into dark subway tunnels. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see that stretches were dotted with lights. Slowly, he could make out the sound of voices.

  “Just walk like you live here,” Elizabeth whispered. “Nice and natural, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  The passed people, some drinking, others haggling at a stand.

  She leaned close to him. “Put your arm around me. Looks better.”

  Raine did so. Been a while since any human contact, he thought.

  They walked close together now, as if out for a late night stroll.

  Past a place with neon lights…

  Jani’s.

  From a doorway, smoke and people poured out. Raine could see that everyone had a weapon-either a rifle slung over their shoulder or a handgun by their side. No, it wouldn’t be easy even for Enforcers to clear out this place.

  Elizabeth leaned her head into him.

  “We turn up here. It’s going to get dark. Then we get to a place the train inspectors used to use. No one goes there-too dark, too far from the action.”

  He followed her lead, and Elizabeth led him down a narrow tunnel, leaving the tracks behind. The lights and sounds behind them faded.

  He didn’t know how she knew where she was going. Counting some kind of markers on the side?

  But then she stopped. She pulled her headlamp on and turned on the light.

  “Here we are.”

  Raine didn’t see anything.

  But she knocked, and he could hear that whatever she was banging on was hollow. She knocked three times. One time. Then twice… and a door opened.

  She moved to go inside, but before she did, she turned to him.

  “Don’t be disappointed… but welcome to the Resistance.”

  Not the best welcome…

  A burly man-no shirt, but a band holding a knife around one of his thick muscular arms and two full holsters-stood on the other side of the door.

  Having the correct knock… probably pretty damn important.

  No smiles at Elizabeth’s return.

  “Everything go okay?”

  She nodded in Raine’s direction. “He won the Bash. That helped. I had the explosives ready for plan B.”

  The man nodded.

  “Raine, this is Jack Portman. He’s our ordnance expert. Gets the weapons, keeps them working. Irreplaceable.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Raine said.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Another man hurried out from the rear.

  “Does he have it? I’ve been waiting.”

  Elizabeth continued, “And this is Mark Lassard. Does what we used to call I.T. Except he’s a real genius.”

  “Yeah, yeah-we don’t have a lot of time, Elizabeth. Where is it?”

  “He’s talking about the hard drive you got.”

  “Oh.” Raine dug out the incendiaries and the shotgun, then handed the pack with the drive from the Dead City to Lassard.

  “Good. I’ll get on this right away.” He hurried away.

  Portman still stood there, taking him in.

  Trust had to be scarce.

  Was he weighing whether he, newly arrived, was worthy of it?

  “Seems to be in a rush,” Raine said.

  Elizabeth turned to him.

  “Yeah. Well-”

  “And your leader. Marshall. Is he here?”

  “Bring him over to the table,” Portman said. “Chitchat time is over.”

  Good conversationalist, that Portman.

  They sat at a small metal table.

  Behind them, Lassard was at a keyboard at what seemed to be a decent computer setup. The sound of typing accompanied their talking.

  “Want some food?” Elizabeth asked him.

  Raine shook his head.

  Portman sat with his elbows resting on the table, his arms folded.

  Elizabeth looked at him. “There is a rush.”

  “I see you got your I.T. guy working like crazy,” Raine said.

  Portman looked back at Elizabeth, ignoring him. “Let’s get on with it. See if he’s really with us or not.”

  Yeah… not much trust emanating from the weapons guy.

  “Our leader isn’t here.”

  Raine nodded, listening to Elizabeth.

  “He was captured days ago and sent into Capital Prime. He’ll be questioned, tortured, then questioned again. Eventually he will tell them what he knows… or die. Either could happen.”

  “Or both,” Portman rumbled.

  “He’s in the Capital?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “We know he’s still alive. We got word about that. We also got word that he’s close to breaking. Tomorrow will be the day
they pull out all the stops and try to get everything they can from him. What he knows could destroy the Resistance. Expose our cells all over the Wasteland, our plans…”

  She looked to Portman to see how she was doing. He made a slight shrug with his massive shoulders. She continued.

  “If we don’t get him out by then, it’s disaster for the Resistance. And with what you brought, we could be close to a turning point in our war against them.”

  Raine kept listening but noted that was the first time he had heard the word… war.

  War was something he understood.

  “We can tell you about that. About what we are trying to do. But none of it-the Resistance, the data on that hard drive-means much unless we get Marshall out.”

  Raine looked around at the room. No one said anything for a few moments. A lightbulb came on, without anyone saying a word. Finally, he spoke up.

  “And I’m guessing… that that would be my job.”

  And no one said no.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE PLAN

  Portman spread out a hand drawn map.

  “This is the Capital. We’ve sent teams around there to do a recon. Some made it back. It’s as accurate as we could make it.”

  “But where did you get this?”

  “People who worked on the Capital buildings… a few deserted to us,” Elizabeth said. “The ones that could get away.”

  “And we’ve had some people on the inside,” Portman added. “From time to time.”

  Raine recalled what they said about learning Marshall’s condition.

  Elizabeth was nodding to what Portman had said. “Still, there are a lot of things we don’t know.” She put a finger down.

  “Here, this is the prison… right under one of the Enforcer barracks.”

  “That’s convenient.” They didn’t acknowledge his sarcasm.

  “Marshall is there. Could be any cell. Our last informant never could find out where, and now we don’t have any inside information at all.”

  “Been in situations like that before.”

  “Not like this one,” Portman said. “The outer perimeter of the place has weaponized fences. Enforcers patrolling all over the damn place.”

  “You make it sound almost easy.” Raine glanced at a digital clock above Lassard’s bank of computers. It was just after twelve. He was tired of all this debriefing. Tired, and hurt, and drained from the hell of the last few days.