The Escape Read online

  Another shot rang out, and Dobson whirled, shooting at the older man. With a look of surprise on the man’s face, he went down with a cry.

  Gotcha, motherfucker.

  * * *

  Barker shot at the soldier, hitting his shoulder. To his left, he heard one of the women wail.

  “Noooo!” Clarissa had seen Roy get shot. He was down.

  Fucking hell.

  “Stay down, Clarissa,” he yelled. “Or shoot them!”

  Clarissa started spraying bullets at the tractor, and an Asian man leapt off the vehicle, with his weapon pointed.

  “Don’t shoot,” the Asian soldier yelled. “We’re taking you in, alive. Don’t make me shoot you.”

  Then he ducked as a bullet from Jenna’s gun whizzed by his arm.

  A soldier with an ugly scar running across his cheek came from out of nowhere, it seemed, and grabbed Evan’s gun with an aggressive move that had the kid disarmed almost immediately.

  Barker knew that soldier. Scar, they called him. He was almost as bad as Lanche himself.

  Scar held Evan in front of him like a human shield and pointed his handgun at the kid’s temple. “Drop your weapons,” Scar yelled.

  Barker kept aiming at his head, but the asshole was hiding completely behind Evan. There was no way to get a clean shot.

  Clarissa dropped her weapon. “Don’t shoot him,” she said. “He’s just a kid.”

  “Hey,” the Asian man said. “I know this guy. He escaped from our camp in Greenwich. Tried to dodge the draft when his birthday hit.”

  “Wen,” Evan said, his voice amazingly calm for someone with a gun at his head. “The men you are with are bad. Shoot them. Shoot them!”

  Wen shook his head. “The Colonel is with us. He’s going to save us all. They’ve got seeds.” He turned to Scar. “Let the kid go, he’s one of ours.”

  But Scar held the gun on Evan. “Drop all of your motherfucking guns or watch this kid’s head explode. Now.”

  Barker backed up. He needed to get the other tire on the truck. The truck was jacked up and the old tire already off, it just needed the new one. As quickly as he could, he started putting the new tire on.

  Jenna saw what he was doing and dropped her gun, letting it fall against her chest, but not to the ground.

  “I want to speak to the Colonel,” she said.

  Thank God. She was trying to buy him some time.

  “Hands on your heads!” Dobson yelled, and Clarissa and Jenna put their hands on their heads.

  “Where’s Barker?” Scar demanded.

  “You shot him,” Jenna lied. “He’s over there.” She pointed to Roy’s body.

  “That’s not Barker,” Dobson said. “That’s some old guy.”

  “His name was Roy,” Clarissa said, and tears rolled down her face. “And you killed him.”

  The Colonel stepped out of the tractor. “I’m glad to see you’re not as dead as I was told you were, Jenna,” he said. “We’ll need you and Clarissa to come back with us.”

  “That will never happen,” Jenna said.

  Finally! Barker finished with the tire and jumped into the front seat of the truck, keeping his head low. He wanted to shoot the Colonel, but he couldn’t risk it, not with Scar holding Evan hostage.

  “Get in,” he said under his breath.

  Jenna and Clarissa turned at his voice and scrambled into the truck.

  “We can’t leave Evan with them,” Clarissa shouted as Barker sped away.

  Bullets were flying. They were trying to shoot their tires.

  “We have no choice, he’s a hostage. If we shoot at them, they’d kill him.”

  “They’re going to torture him to get information,” Jenna whispered. “We have to go back.”

  “And Roy!—Roy is lying there, I want to see him . . .” Clarissa said.

  “Roy is dead. We are not going back for a corpse. And we’ll get Evan, I promise,” Barker said, driving as fast as he could through the cars. The tractor behind him was slow, very slow compared to the truck.

  “They won’t kill Evan, not while he has information about us,” Barker said. “Evan is a smart kid, he’ll know that. A smart guy. Old enough to take care of himself.”

  “Bullshit. I want to go back there and kill them,” Jenna said.

  “We will, Jenna.” Barker stared straight ahead, keeping his eye on the road. The tractor was no longer following them.

  They had turned back, and were headed, most likely, back to Grand Central. With Evan as their prisoner.

  “We will get back to Grand Central, and we will fucking kill them. And we’ll get Evan back.”

  “When?” Clarissa asked.

  “As soon as we can. But we need help. We need . . . our own army.”

  * * *

  Lanche cursed at the slow-moving tractor Wen had brought them. There was no point in chasing them down.

  No, the kid, now in handcuffs on the seat next to Scar, would know where Barker and the rest were heading. When the Colonel got his crew back to Grand Central, they’d be able to patch Dobson up and get a better truck. The next time they went after those terrorists, they’d kill them all on sight.

  “You should have shot them all,” Lanche said.

  Dobson clung to his bleeding shoulder. “Sir, we had direct orders from you not to shoot the women or the boy. We got one male.”

  “But you didn’t get Barker!” Lanche yelled.

  Wen spoke up. “Sir, when I get the seeds, I’d like to take Evan back to our camp.”

  “I’m not fighting for you, Wen,” Evan said softly. “I hate all of you.”

  Wen appeared lost for words. “You have to. It’s a draft. It’s not voluntary.”

  “You’re a worthless piece of shit, Wen,” Lanche said. “I’ll give you your fucking seeds and your stupid slow-ass tractor, but Evan is ours now.” He turned to the teen, whose boyish face was impassive. Blank.

  “You hear that, boy?” Lanche said. He reached over and grabbed the kid’s ear, making him wince in pain. “You should have stayed with Wen, back when you had the chance. Because you’re mine now.”

  Heading north on Interstate 95

  BARKER, JENNA, AND CLARISSA

  Jenna couldn’t stop staring out of the back window as Barker drove her and Clarissa up the coast.

  Clarissa had long since stopped asking Barker to go back.

  “What if he wasn’t dead?” she’d kept saying. “What if Roy is alive, and needs our help?”

  “He was dead,” Barker had to say, over and over.

  Denial. Poor Clarissa, Jenna thought. Just when she’d finally allowed herself to open up to a man. To make love with him.

  Fuck, poor Roy. Dead.

  “It could have been any of us,” Jenna whispered. “It happened so quickly.”

  Clarissa looked at her with a tear-stained face. “I couldn’t even kill the bastard who shot him. I just kept shooting, and shooting . . .”

  “I winged him,” Barker reminded her. “He’s hurt. Hopefully he’ll get a fucking infection and die from it. Slowly.”

  “Yeah.”

  Anger seethed through Jenna’s body. “I don’t understand. Last time the three of us were able to shoot, to kill four soldiers. What the hell happened back there?”

  “Battles don’t always go well,” Barker said, swerving to miss a stalled car. “People die. You knew that, going in. That this was real.”

  “Of course it’s fucking real,” Jenna said. “I would never have left Grand Central in the first place if they didn’t kill Taryn. Who the fuck are you to tell me I don’t know it’s real?”

  “Stop fighting,” Clarissa whispered. “All you guys have now is each other. What if Barker gets shot next time, huh, Jenna? Then what?”

  Jenna closed her mouth and sat ba
ck. Clarissa was right. If Barker got shot, got killed—so quickly she might not even have time to hug his body, or bury him, or . . . hell. Then she’d feel terrible about fighting with him.

  Because despite everything going on around them—or perhaps because of it—she’d come to really care about Barker. And not just as a man who could help protect her. Not just as a fuck-buddy, or a friend with benefits, whatever the hell that meant anymore.

  He was the first man since the Pulse who treated her like a human, like a woman, instead of a thing. An object to be used and discarded.

  What would she do if he died, too?

  Don’t think about it. Don’t dwell.

  “Where are we going?” Clarissa asked.

  “As far as we can. We’ve got to find a place that’s not as bad as all the others. It has to be out there.”

  “What if Evan was right, Barker,” Jenna said, “and there is no place left? What if every place is the same. FEMA camps, incompetent leaders or crazy dictators, martial law. Drafts for a war no one wants.”

  “I don’t know. I refuse to believe that there is no place in all of America that hasn’t been able to get its shit together by now. It’s been a fucking year, someplace has to be okay.”

  “Maybe we should be heading west,” Clarissa said. “You know, farming, that sort of thing. The kind of place where people know how to live off the land.”

  “We could end up dying out there,” Barker said. “We don’t know what’s out there. This, we know. We know I-95, am I right?”

  “And we can fish,” Jenna added. “That’s living off the land. Well, off the water. Surely there’s a place . . .”

  “So we keep going. Until we’re stopped. Any town worth its salt will have the entrance barricaded, remember?”

  “Why wasn’t Greenwich barricaded?” Clarissa asked.

  “Because it was a ghost town,” Jenna said. “Except for the camp Evan escaped from. That’s why. Manhattan’s not barricaded. Just Grand Central.”

  “And the crops at Central Park,” Barker reminded her. “Fucking Lanche. I want him dead.”

  “I can’t believe we let Evan go with them,” Clarissa said, again. “Lanche is going to hurt that boy. We should have shot them.”

  “We couldn’t, not with Evan as a hostage,” Barker repeated.

  “We should have shot them anyway!” Clarissa screamed, bursting into tears.

  “Shut the fuck up, Clarissa,” Barker yelled, shocking them both. “Don’t scream like that, like we didn’t try. Like we didn’t do the best we could with what we had. We had to leave, we had no choice. Just shut up and let me drive. We will get him back, I promise. We will.”

  Jenna watched Barker’s knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel.

  She took Clarissa’s hand in hers, holding it in silent comfort.

  “Hey Barker,” Jenna said after a few minutes.

  “What.”

  “When you curse at us, when you yell like that? You know who you sound like?”

  Barker’s face tightened into a grimace. “I sound like him. Like Colonel Lanche.”

  “Yeah,” Jenna whispered. “I know we’re in a war zone. I know you just lost Roy, we all did. But let’s keep it cool between us. We’re not the enemy.”

  Barker pulled over and got out of the truck, opening the door on Jenna’s side.

  She looked at him warily. What was he going to do? Make her walk?

  “Why did you stop?” she asked defensively. “I’m sorry, okay? Just calm down. We’ll shut up so you can drive.”

  “Come here,” he said softly, and pulled her into his arms on the side of the road. “You have nothing to be sorry about. You’re right. And . . . I am so sorry.”

  Jenna fell into his embrace, and finally let herself cry. Tears for herself, for Roy,

  (may he rest in peace)

  . . . for Clarissa. And tears for Evan.

  God, if you’re listening, we need you now. Give that kid the strength to get through this.

  “We’ll get Evan back, and we’ll get all those women off the Tracks,” Barker whispered in her ear. “If I have to die to get them free, I swear I will.”

  “Don’t die, Barker,” Jenna said, her voice muffled against his chest. “I couldn’t lose you too.”

  Grand Central Terminal, the OCC

  EVAN

  Evan had never been more terrified in his life. That was saying a lot, since those first few months after the Pulse hit had been scary. He hadn’t been used to living in a world where he couldn’t text his friends, Google any questions, or even know what was happening in the world.

  If he could do it all over again, he’d have a library of paperback books filled with survival info. The simplest things he used to look up online, it was all information he now had to seek out. Like how to make his drinking water safe. Hell, he hadn’t even realized that his water would stop running out of the faucets after a couple of days. His kid brother was terrified of the dark, too. And they couldn’t waste candles by using them as nightlights.

  Trying to be strong for his brother while he was scared as well had been hard.

  But today, watching Roy get shot and killed—bam, just like that—his life was over. So quickly. One bullet and gone. It made Evan hate guns even more. No, he hated the soldiers behind the guns. The ones who followed orders like sheep.

  No way Evan would ever be one of the government’s human drones, killing because they said so. Fuck that shit.

  He was in a bad situation now, that much was easy to see. Colonel Lanche was clearly batshit crazy, and his men did whatever he said.

  What would they do to him? What did they want him for, anyway? He was nothing. No one. Useless to them, especially if he refused to fight their battles. Evan was no soldier.

  Be a lover, not a fighter. Practice peace.

  Man, it was all so easy when it was just a theory. But like Jenna had said, when someone’s trying to kill you, suddenly being a pacifist doesn’t sound like a workable plan anymore.

  “Keep up,” the man they called Scar said, dragging him by the scruff of his neck across the main terminal of Grand Central.

  It looked so different now, so different from the last time he’d seen the place, before the Pulse. Armed guards were everywhere. People milled about, skinny, weak, scared-looking. There were a lot more men than women. Where were all the women? What happened to them?

  Something about the Tracks. He’d heard Jenna and Clarissa talk about that, when they didn’t know he could hear them. The train tracks all around Grand Central might be where they kept the girls. But why?

  “What are you looking at?” Scar asked.

  Evan glared at him, and winced as the larger man backhanded him across the face.

  He’d never been hit in the face before. Never actually been hit, period. The shock of it had him reeling.

  “Keep moving.”

  Evan walked as slowly as possible, not wanting to run to his own death. Would they actually kill him? Maybe not. If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it already. So why keep him alive?

  Finally they arrived at a boarded-up room. Scar knocked on the door, and Colonel Lanche opened it.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

  “Pretty boy here had to take a leak. And Dobson’s at the infirmary for his shoulder.”

  The Colonel looked at the fresh bruise Evan could feel forming on his right cheekbone. “What’d you do to him?”

  Scar shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell, soldier,” Lanche said, and laughed. “Had to take a leak, my ass.”

  What?

  Suddenly the reality of what they were talking about hit him. Lanche thought that Scar had . . . like, molested him or something. He hadn’t. He was creepy as fuck, but he hadn’t. Wha
t he had done was hit him for no reason. Asshole.

  Scar coughed. “No, sir, nothing like that.”

  “Well, you can have him if you want. I don’t give a fuck. Maybe it’ll get him to talk.”

  Evan felt faint. “I need to sit down.”

  Scar let go of his shirt collar, and Evan crumpled to the floor, his hands still zip-tied behind his back.

  “Uncuff him,” Lanche ordered. Then he went over to the door and locked it.

  Scar pulled out a switchblade and hovered over Evan threateningly before reaching behind him and cutting the zip-ties. Evan brought his hands around to the front and rubbed his wrists.

  “So,” Lanche said, sounding almost friendly. “What were you doing with a crew of known terrorists? Maybe they kidnapped you?”

  Evan stared up at him but didn’t answer.

  “You are a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” Lanche said, his voice light, teasing. “You look like one of those, whatcha call them, boy bands. Or like a little lesbian. You sure you’re a dude? Maybe we’ll even find a place for you on the Tracks, if you’re good.”

  Evan looked away. He wasn’t going to let them intimidate him like that. Looked like a boy band? What a moron. That didn’t even make sense.

  The Colonel nodded to Scar, who grabbed Evan’s hair, and pulled his head back so far his neck hurt.

  “I don’t think you recognize the seriousness of the situation you’re in, Evan,” Lanche said softly. “I own you now. You have to do what I say.”

  Evan tried not to let them see he was in pain, but Scar had a death grip on his hair. A whimper escaped his throat, and he cursed himself for it.

  He wanted to be silent, be cool in the face of danger, like the guys in action movies were. Not like some whimpering kid.

  Strands of Evan’s dark blond hair were in Scar’s hand now, and he dropped them to the floor in front of Evan’s eyes, to show him. Evan rubbed his scalp and dropped his head, wanting to ease the tension the soldier had put into his muscles.

  “Tell me what you know about Barker,” Lanche said. “Everything.”

  Evan kept his head down, focusing on looking at the floor, and on breathing.