Cascade box set 2, p.49
Cascade Box Set 2, page 49
The lieutenant did as asked and Abbey’s face filled almost the entire screen.
Zach fell back as if he had been hit. That can’t be her. Why is she there? With them? A hundred questions had flooded all other thoughts before Bower looked back at him.
“She’s probably being held hostage Zach, we don’t know anything,” said the older man.
Zach slowly walked forward towards the woman that left him, then the screen went black. The soldier brought up a diagnostics screen, with charts and numbers.
“What happened? Where she’d go?” said Zach.
The soldier typed away at a small keyboard. “We’ve lost the signal. We’re not receiving any data… I think the drone was destroyed.”
Zach turned away in frustration.
Bower looked at him. “This is a good thing. Now we know where she is.”
Zach shook his head, still not quite believing what he had just seen. “Pack everything up. I want to be back on the road within the hour… and get a message to Mitchell, tell her we’re coming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Abbey watched as the creature that killed the young man from the bunker a few days earlier, slipped into a fifteen-foot square hole in the middle of the parking lot.
A scrawny looking man, standing near the rim of the crater waved his clenched fist in the air. “Go on boy! You get’em!” He looked up at Abbey across the street and sneered.
“Hi?”
Abbey turned around. A gaunt looking young man stood looking awkward on the sidewalk. “Hi…”
“How long you been with Erin’s people?”
“I’m not… umm not long. You?”
He smiled nervously, slowly walking up to her. “Oh, I’m not, I’m with another group.”
“Cascaders?”
Any semblance of a smile left his face as he shook his head. “One of us is…” He looked up at the bird monkey E.L.F on the nearby roof of a truck. “You are?”
Abbey smiled. “That’s Mo. So that would be a yes.”
They both looked at the carnage that had been done to what remained of the ground of the town around them. “Do you know why they are doing so much digging? What’s down there?”
She shook her head.
“Well I better get on with trying to find some food for the others.”
She smiled and then instantly felt a kind of numbness in her mind. He’s here. She spun around trying to see if Clovis was within eyeshot, but he was nowhere to be seen.
The young man saw the change in Abbey’s demeanor and looked puzzled. “You okay?” His attention was then drawn to something over her shoulder. “Bryan…”
She turned around. A few hundred yards further down the street a car pulled up, with a six-legged bear E.L.F running behind it. Two men got out. One she recognized immediately. She stepped back into the doorway of a store and watched as Clovis was helped from a pickup truck, by a man in his fifties. There were a number of dark patches of red on Clovis’s clothes. A few other people ran to both of them, and then they moved through the doorway and into a plain looking office building.
“Sorry, I have to go,” said the young man, running in the direction Abbey was looking.
He’s injured, this is my chance… But what will Erin and his people do to me if I kill him? Does he sense I’m here?
She hesitated in the door-well, not knowing if this was the right moment or not. ‘We don’t kill our own, unless we have no choice…’ Erin’s words echoed in her mind. She didn’t care about that, but she wasn’t prepared for a suicide mission if Erin took Clovis’s side.
She took one last look at the building the two men and then the younger one entered and began walking away, back in the direction of the hill which she ran down the night before.
She could feel the eyes of the balding man near the large crater following her across the parking lot, and she was relieved once she had moved down an alleyway and out of his view. Erin didn’t seem to see her as a threat, that was good but it was obvious she wasn’t trusted by many of the others.
She crossed another small street lined with stores, then ran onto the road which led to the hill. Mo circled high above keeping an eye on things.
Soon she was back where she had started the journey the night before, walking up the drive to the large broken house. The front door opened and Raj appeared.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I needed to make contact. Find out what the situation was. I did that… and umm Clovis is down there.”
“What?! Does he know you’re here?”
“I don’t think so.”
Raj looked at the trees around the house anxiously. “I couldn’t leave! Without your protection I’m marooned here!”
She looked down. “I know I’m sorry, I just thought if you knew I was going, you would want to argue and I didn’t have time for that. Let’s go inside.”
They both walked into the large hallway and then into the living room which was surprisingly untouched considering just a few yards away the outside wall was completely missing.
Raj sat on the arm of a sofa. “So what’s the plan? What did you find down there?”
“There’s a man in charge called Erin. Most are Cascaders and they are trying to get into the bunkers. I don’t know if they have succeeded.”
“We can’t stay here! We need to find a way back to the outpost.”
Abbey shook her head, pacing around the room. “I don’t think this Erin is all bad. He seems like someone who wants the best for the Cascaders.”
“And what about the rest of us? And why is Clovis there? Is he working with this guy?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I can’t leave. If they manage to get into the bunkers, maybe I can persuade them to have a ceasefire or something.”
“Do you even know why they are trying—”
The sound of gravel being crunched came from outside, followed by Mo squawking somewhere in the sky above the house.
Abbey ran back to the front door and looked through the small panes of glass. Raj appeared behind her. They both watched as two men that she didn’t recognize got out of a pickup.
“They followed you!” Said Raj looking around at the best place to hide.
“No… I… Maybe. Stay here I’ll take care of it.” She went to open the front door when another sound came from the kitchen. They both turned around and a thickset man was standing with a gun in his hand.
“Mr. Santiago wants you to come with us.”
The short ride back into town, ended at the public library. An impressive neoclassical revival building which was mostly still standing.
Raj and Abbey exchanged a brief glance before getting out, while Mo landed on the street nearby and started to flap his wings while growling.
One of the men stood outside the car. “Mr. Santiago says to make sure you control your creature.”
Abbey went to enquire why she would need to do that, but thought better of it, as the man had his hand on a handgun. She nodded while sending a mental message to her pet for him to calm down. Mo lowered his wings but still stamped around on the concrete.
The men led the way up the stone steps and through the large arched doors, finally opening double doors to the main room of the library, which was packed with people. They immediately hushed.
Abbey and Raj walked forward into cavernous space slowly, looking at the faces studying them. On the second floor balcony, Erin stood looking down. He briefly nodded to the men with the guns, who closed the doors behind them.
Abbey looked up. “Why have you brought me here? I thought I wasn’t a prisoner?” She noticed the sneering man from earlier was standing beside him.
“Who’s this?” said Erin looking at Raj.
“My friend.”
“He’s not like us, I can tell. Why do you care about him?”
“Like I say, he’s a friend. I protect my—”
“Remember what I said about a difficult situation if a particular man returns? Well he did and it is.”
The doors opened once again and all eyes including Raj’s and Abbeys turned to the open space where Clovis now stood.
“You…” He growled, but he wasn’t looking at Abbey, he was looking at Raj. He went to walk forward.
“You know this man?” said Erin from above.
Clovis looked up through the strands of hair that were still stuck with clots of blood to his forehead. “He’s a scientist from the camp. He experimented on us.”
A ripple of discomfort ran around those watching.
“Us?”
“Cascaders!” Shouted Clovis.
Abbey and Raj moved closer together, bumping shoulders, while looking at all the angry eyes around them. She went to say something when Raj stepped away.
“Yeah I did and what of it!” He looked at Abbey next to him, whose eyes were trying to communicate what her mouth couldn’t say.
Raj continued, looking between Abbey and Erin. “She’s not my friend! I told her to come down here, to find out inform—” He fell to the ground. Behind him stood a woman from the crowd with a heavy looking piece of wood in her hand.
“Get away from him!” shouted Abbey pushing the woman away. She dropped to the ground trying to see where the blood was coming from on his head, which was forming a pool on the tiled wooden floor.
Clovis started limping forward. “Now it’s your turn b—”
The distant clatter of gunfire mixing with the screeches of E.L.F’s echoed around the street outside. Clovis stopped, frustrated, then joined the others looking at the opening doors.
One of the men from earlier rushed inside. “We’re being attacked!”
Everyone in the hall started leaving, pushing and shoving to get outside. Clovis grimaced as arms and legs pushed against him, but he kept limping forward towards Abbey who was on the ground trying to understand if Raj was alive or dead.
Clovis stopped trying to walk, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small handgun, then pointed it at her head. “You killed my boys…” His words came out broken and drenched in sadness.
Abbey looked up at him with defiance in her eyes. He sneered and just as his arm tensed the world around them exploded into splinters of wood and glass. Abbey instinctively covered Raj on the ground.
Mo stood in the library, his wings almost reaching both sides. He immediately swung one of them around catching Clovis and sending him crashing backwards.
“Help me with him!” She shouted towards her pet.
Mo’s head bobbed and he reached down, grabbing Raj around the shoulders and hoisted him up.
Abbey looked back as the man she hated more than any she had ever come across, tried to get back to his feet searching for his gun.
She hesitated, looking around for something that she could end his life with, but the sounds of explosions and gunfire distracted her from outside.
Clovis looked back at her and their eyes met. She then followed Mo who was carrying Raj through what was left of the large windows, back onto the street.
*****
The front door splinted into pieces as Zach smashed it open with his shoulder. Running inside with Fiona, Michael and Wyatt, a crab like creature as big as a car, slammed into the front of the house just behind them. They fired their automatic rifles back through the gaping hole that was once the doorway, but the bullets bounced off the creature’s dark blue shell.
Zach ran up the stairs to the second floor, while clicking on his radio. “Could do with some help! Over.”
Pinchers snapped away at the wall which made up the front of the double story home, knocking out chunks.
“Try again!” shouted Fiona at the young man.
“It’s no good, it’s already been imprinted by another Cascader!”
Pieces of wood flew along the hallway and clattered against the walls.
“You must be able to do something?”
Wyatt frowned but closed his eyes once again to try to influence the beast that was slowly dismantling the structure around them. After a few seconds he let out breath. “It’s not listening to me.”
Fiona nodded. “Get to the back, see if there’s any other E.L.F’s you can control around here.”
He moved off into the kitchen, looking out the windows to the patio and tried to sense any other creatures around them. He could sense plenty, that wasn’t the issue. The problem was, every one he came across so far was already under the control of another Cascader. Taking a deep breath and trying to steady his nerves while the others shot at the thing that had already devoured the front section of the building, he pushed his thoughts and feelings further out, beyond the E.L.F’s in the town.
As if a key in a lock fell into place, he felt the tingling sensation of something that was pure, not sullied by control.
Zach ran back down the stairs, hopping over the bannister to keep away from the crumbling walls of the hallway near the entrance. “Bower’s tied up where he is, we’re on our own.”
The creature’s pincher scythed through the front of the house, completely collapsing it. Zach and the others fell backwards, then jumped to their feet, pushed the patio doors open and ran out into the backyard. The air around them was full of roars, repeated snaps and screeches as a light rain fell.
“Can you sense the Cascaders? The direction they are in?” said Zach to Wyatt.
It was a question the younger man already had an answer for, because the moment they drove into the outskirts of the town, he sensed them. He pointed to the north.
Zach turned to Fiona and Michael. “Meet up with Bower—”
Fiona looked back at him, scrunching her face. “We’re not leaving you!”
“I’ll be fine. Meet up with Bower at the other bunker entrance.” He looked at Wyatt. “Keep them safe.” Wyatt nodded.
They all ran to the rear gate, pushing it open and then out into the alleyway. Trashcans and an abandoned sedan with open doors looked back at them.
Zach started backing off, towards the direction Wyatt had just indicated. “Go!”
Fiona wanted to go with him, wanted to help protect him. She couldn’t lose the only other man that meant something to her.
Michael put his hand on her arm. “Come on.”
Zach turned and started running. Past the car and across the puddles, which were littered with plastic children toys. What am I doing? How am I going to find her?
Ignoring the fact that he had no answers to either of the questions, he slowed as he approached the end of the path, briefly looking back. The others had gone. He peered around the corner into the street. It was empty and the sound of battle was happening somewhere behind him.
Ruins of buildings lay all around. It reminded him of imagery from destroyed cities in world war two. He then had an idea and looked up at the sky. If he was lucky maybe Mo would be flying overhead, and that would allow him to zero in on where Abbey was.
Running across the street he stepped onto the sidewalk and then scrambled across mounds of bricks and blocks that once were the rear wall to a three-story building. A stairwell appeared in front of him and he thought about running into it, but decided not too, as the whole structure looked like it was about to fall. Instead he kept on going, across the yard and into the next street. The sound of vehicles pulled him along the sidewalk, and then to the corner of a building which looked out to a junction. In the distance small groups of people ran in various directions. E.L.F’s accompanying them. A particular bearded individual seemed to be directing everyone. He pulled out his binoculars from his pack and looked again.
Scanning the scene, Abbey wasn’t one of the anxious looking people. He looked at the buildings ahead trying to ascertain which he could make it to without being seen, when he heard it. A squawking that despite all the other E.L.F noises around him, he recognized. “Mo…”
The sound was coming from somewhere in the major road which led out of the town, and was growing fainter. He had to go after it, but it was at least fifty yards to get across the junction and he would be completely exposed. He held his binoculars up once again and looked towards all the commotion. A few guards were still standing outside certain buildings, but everyone else had driven off.
He waited for them to be looking the other way then sprinted forward, bundling to the ground behind a small wall on the other side of the road. His heart beat in his ears as he tried to hear Mo once more, but there was no distinctive sound.
He kneeled and peered over the wall. The guards were still standing in the same place.
He plotted his path across the grass and what obstructions he could use to block anyone’s view of him, then set off again. It wasn’t long before he was clear and free and in the wide road which ran up to the hill.
For a moment he froze, not quite believing that he could see the back of Abbey, Raj and the large feathered wings of Mo some hundred yards ahead. He went to shout out, but thought better of it. Looking over his shoulder, he ran along the sidewalk, his anticipation almost making his arms and legs seize up.
He went to shout out when Mo spun around. Abbey and Raj did so too.
She put her hand to her mouth then ran forward, as did Zach, both of them stopping a few yards short of each other. The sounds of battle raging played out in the town behind them.
“Are you okay?” Said Zach inching forward.
Tears started running down her cheeks and she ran forward and flung her arms round him, followed by a kiss.
“I’m okay but Raj has a concussion. There’s a house at the top of the hill, where we have some of our things. Are there others with you?”
He smiled and nodded. “Let’s get to that house.”
They all then walked up the slope as quickly as they could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bower looked out from the second floor window of an old farmhouse, across the dark landscape to the small lights which burned at the center of town. In the valleys in-between white mist curled and crept.
