LaRouche dropped his hands to his sides. "Are you f.u.c.king serious right now? What the h.e.l.l do you want us to do, Jim? We're only twelve guys-eleven now that Lucky's gone. Against five hundred? Possibly more?"

Jim threw a hand out towards an imagined enemy. "We can't just let them do this! We can't just leave all those people to be victimized! All the women and children..."

"No!" LaRouche stood up and pointed a finger in Jim's face. "You are not gonna guilt trip me on this s.h.i.t, Jim! I don't care about your priestly duties or your G.o.dd.a.m.n Christian sensibilities! Have you completely forgotten what we're here to do? We were given a mission, and we're gonna f.u.c.king complete it. If you can't get on board with that, then what the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" LaRouche turned and slammed his fist on the hood of the Humvee. "f.u.c.k it! I know exactly what you're doing here! f.u.c.king making my life miserable-scratch that-more miserable."

Jim jutted his chin out and his eyes narrowed, his face fading quickly from his usual pleasantness to a very unusual look of anger. He took two deep breaths, and spoke as calmly as he could. "What happened to Willie?"

LaRouche's face contorted with confusion. "What?"

"The guy we captured. What happened to him?"

The two men stared at each other. Both of them angry, both of them unyielding.

Finally, LaRouche spoke, and the words came out like barbs-meant to stick and inflict pain. "I beat him, Jim. I beat him bad. Broke his bones, actually." LaRouche's hands balled into fists. "And I hadn't even asked him a question yet. Then I used the cigarette lighter from the van to burn him until he was begging me to ask him a question. So I asked my questions. And when I got my answers, I killed him." He put a single finger to the center of his chest. "I put one right there."

There were tears in Jim's eyes, but there was no pity to them. It was still just anger. "You killed an unarmed man. Tortured him and killed him."

LaRouche nodded. "Yes. I did."

Jim stepped closer. "Do you think you would have ever done something like that before all of this? Do you think you had it in you?" He threw his hands up. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you? Do you think that because there's no law that right and wrong have ceased to exist? Do you think that just because things are falling apart, you have carte blanche to act like an animal? What's happening to us? What's happening to you?"

For a split second, LaRouche thought he might tackle the man and beat him to death, pound his head into the pavement until there was nothing left. But as quickly as that thought came to him, it scared him, because it seemed to give bitter credence to every word that the ex-priest had just said. Something was wrong with him. Something hard and ugly was taking root.

Any words he might have said in that moment were silenced by another howl, this time coming from the opposite direction, and much closer. The three men only took a moment to look in that direction, the argument suddenly forgotten.

Then LaRouche grabbed his rifle and chest rig from the hood of the Humvee. "I think we've been sitting in one place too long. Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here."

CHAPTER 9: CAPTIVE.

The hood stifled him. Lee's breath was warm and moist inside, and it smelled rank from the blood left on his tongue. He could barely breathe through his broken nose and so had to huff through his mouth, which had grown parched. Though everything under the hood was hot and swampy, the rest of his body was cold, save only for the outside of his right leg, which Deuce lay against.

He sat against something, but couldn't tell what. Something metallic, like a car or a large piece of machinery. His hands were still bound, though they'd clipped off the zip-ties and replaced them with duct tape. The skin was chafing and becoming painful. The upside was that they were bound in the front, which allowed him to easily manipulate things.

If only he could see to manipulate them.

He could hear the quiet murmur of voices nearby. A fire too, the twigs and branches crackling and popping loudly, and if Lee outstretched his cold, bare hands, he could just faintly feel the warmth of the fire. He tried to estimate the distance, thinking it was perhaps fifteen or twenty feet from him, but he wasn't sure what difference it made. Maybe he was just trying to distract himself.

He tried to listen to the conversation, but the words were spoken in the low tones of conspiring thieves, and he could only make out a few words in each sentence-not enough to make sense or to get a gist of what they were talking about.

He tried to stretch his senses out beyond the stifling hood, to hear if there were others, perhaps someone closer to him who guarded him and remained quiet. But if there were, they were extremely disciplined. He could hear neither breath, nor sc.r.a.pe of boots, nor rustle of fabric to give them away.

Just the voices, and the muted warmth of the fire, about fifteen or twenty feet in front of him.

They seemed to speak in turn, rarely talking over each other, so that it became difficult to figure their numbers. He had to a.s.sume there were at least as many as had captured him in the neighborhood, which meant five. But there might be more. Maybe there were people who had stayed behind to guard the campsite while the others went out to scavenge.

He could feel the creeping coldness of fever overtaking him. It slid between all the other discomforts like mortar between bricks of misery. He had to a.s.sume it was his head wound. The infection finally setting in. He couldn't expect his captors to provide him with antibiotics, or to give a s.h.i.t that without them the infection would go systemic and he could very well die. His own body was a clock ticking against him.

He staved off the desire to sleep, because he feared the ensuing confusion when he awoke, feared that it might cost him an opportunity to escape. His mind worked, pinballing between his worries. Time stretched interminably and he had no way to gauge it, only knew that it was pa.s.sing him by and that he could not afford one second of it lost.

He sat here, while Eddie Ramirez escaped with his GPS.

Lee's tenuous thread which still connected him with the possibility of victory was being stretched and stretched and overburdened. Eventually Eddie's trail would be cold, if it was not cold already, and then that thread will have snapped and Lee's ability to access his bunkers, to provide for the survivors, to put some semblance of life back together in the region, it would all be gone as quickly as if it were a daydream.

Without that GPS, Lee was just another survivor. He could run and gun with the best of them, but in the end, that's all his life would amount to: running and gunning. And eventually, inevitably, dying.

Footsteps approached.

He clenched his fists, held his breath and tightened his stomach, forcing blood into his extremities and hoping it would put some life back into his frozen fingers, in case he needed them to be nimble in the next few seconds. It also forced blood into his head. Helped increase mental focus, so he'd been told.

Deuce growled.

The footsteps hesitated.

Lee reached to his right, touched the dog's flanks, felt the animal's bristling tension relax just a bit.

A female's voice: "That thing gonna bite?"

"I don't know," Lee said simply. "Haven't been around him that long."

"If he bites me, I'm shooting him."

She's got a gun on her, Lee noted, mentally arraying his playable cards out in front of him. Look for the gun.

To the female, he said, "I think you'll be okay."

Another footstep, slower this time.

Deuce remained silent.

The hood came off with a swish of coa.r.s.e fabric.

The air outside was brutally cold and stung his lungs and dried his lips to cracking, all in a single breath. It was filled with the heavy smells of oil and grease and old engine parts and it made him think of Camp Ryder, though the smell was much stronger here.

His gaze went rapidly left to right, soaking his surroundings in, trying to imprint it behind his eyes. He was in some sort of mechanic's shop. A few hydraulic lifts directly in front of him. An old car sat on one, an abandoned project from another time. Engine parts were scattered around, rolling tool boxes posted here and there like headstones. Lee himself leaned against a cabinet, he discovered, though he wasn't sure what it contained.

Directly in front of him knelt the woman-or girl, really-from the van. She regarded him with skeptical eyes, and he knew just from the look on her face that Shumate had been telling stories. It struck him as odd in that moment that Shumate would not have secured him better, knowing first hand his abilities to escape. But he also supposed that Shumate had no way of knowing that Lee had escaped of his own cunning, and not with the help of a third party.

Lee would take what luck he could get.

"So," the girl said, mildly. "You're some kind of captain?"

Lee eyed her in response, not quite sure how to answer her question.

"You're like, some type of special soldier? Like a Navy SEAL or something?"

Lee dropped his eyes. "I don't know what Shumate's been telling you," his voice was hoa.r.s.e. "Maybe he's got me mixed up with someone else."

"Well, you recognized him, didn't you?"

Lee licked his lips. His tongue wasn't wet enough to transfer moisture. He decided to change the subject. "Do you have any water?"

Her eyes mocked him with some dark amus.e.m.e.nt, but she held up a bottle of water. "Take it. Drink it. Give it back to me."

He took the bottle and drank greedily, the plastic snapping and popping as he emptied it. The dark haired girl watched him, but didn't seem to notice that while he drank he also watched her. His eyes traveled rapidly across her body, absorbing what information he could.

Knife clipped to the pocket of her pants.

The b.u.t.t of her pistol protruded from the front of her jeans.

The girl was pet.i.te, would have been pet.i.te even before the collapse and now was pet.i.te and slightly malnourished. The bones of her wrists stood out like a bird's, her cheeks sunken. Her neck seemed barely thicker than his arm. Four months ago, the thought probably would not have crossed his mind, but nowadays, savagery was survival, and he thought to himself, I could snap that skinny little neck. So easy...

He finished the bottle and handed it back to her. The water sloshed unpleasantly in his stomach, but at least it was there. He raised his chin towards her. "So, what are you? The slave around here?"

Her head c.o.c.ked just slightly, but otherwise she gave no indication of surprise at his question. Which meant there was some truth to it. Or she was a much cooler customer than Lee had suspected.

"What's your name?"

She thought about it for a moment. "Mich.e.l.le. They call me Sh.e.l.ley."

He shifted his wrists inside their bindings. "Sh.e.l.ley, what are you doing with guys like this?"

She glanced back at them. Something unpleasant flickered across her face. "Just trying to survive."

"You friends with these guys?"

Hesitation. "Sure."

"They treat you as an equal?"

Her eyes narrowed. She didn't answer.

"Could you walk away at any time?" He leaned his head back and rested it on the cold metal cabinet that propped him up. "Are you free to come and go as you please? You're just here because you like these guys so much?"

She cleared her throat. "I don't know what kind of mind games..."

"Just asking," Lee interrupted.

They stared at each other for several beats, her dark eyes searching his face, not giving up much of the thoughts that lay behind her own.

"Will you answer a question honestly?" he asked.

She pursed her lips. Nodded slowly.

He paused, then spoke. "If you were given the chance to leave, would you take it?"

She blinked twice, broke eye contact, looked for something else to stare at, and found a bit of dirt on her hands to worry about. Almost under her breath, she said, "You think you could help me?"

Lee sat forward, checked over her shoulder again to see if the others were still not paying attention. His pulse was suddenly pounding. "We can both get out of here," he whispered.

Her voice was blank. "They...uh...they just do whatever they want with me."

Lee cringed. "Sh.e.l.ley..."

She looked at him fiercely. "I need to get away from here."

Lee reached forward, just slightly, extended his fingers until they touched hers. "Help me."

She stared at his hands, at his bindings.

He pushed them forward just a bit more to make his point clearer. "Help me. Help me so I can help you." Lee looked up from his bindings at the men around the campfire, nervous that even their low, breathy whispers would garner attention.

When he looked back, Sh.e.l.ley was smiling.

Amused.

Lee felt instantly cold.

"What f.u.c.king world do you live in?" she said, her voice maintaining its secretive tone. She leaned into him until their faces were intimately close. "You think you're some kind of white knight that's going to ride up and rescue a damsel in distress? You're a f.u.c.king idiot." She mimicked wiping tears from her eyes and her voice took on a babyish, mocking quality. "Oh, these bad guys are raping me! Won't some big strong man come and save me?"

Her wiry little hand shot out and seized him by the jaw, the fingernails digging in like claws. "You think I give a f.u.c.k that I have to give up some s.n.a.t.c.h so I can roll with the big dogs instead of getting eaten by them? We all have a part to play. I play mine very well, and all my boys can confirm that. It keeps me warm, and fed, and safe." She smiled sweetly. "What else could a girl want?"

He ripped his face out of her grip and glared. He wanted to tell her that she was f.u.c.ked in the head, but no matter how true he thought those words were, he wasn't sure it was the wisest thing to say. He kept his mouth shut.

She stood up and reached into the back pocket of her khaki pants, producing a can of tuna which she held out at arm's length and dropped unceremoniously between his legs. "There's your dinner, Hero." She leaned over and spat, the little white globule landing perfectly atop the can. "Hope you got a can opener." She turned and walked away, mumbling under her breath, "s.h.i.thead."

"d.a.m.n!"

Lee looked up and found Shumate standing there with a little smirk on his face, his hands clasped together as though he were about to begin clapping. He stood a few feet away and watched Sh.e.l.ley walk past, back towards the fire. He shook his head, then turned his face back to Lee and rolled his eyes, as though it was all some hilarious inside joke. As if to say, Oh, that Sh.e.l.ley! She gets 'em every time!

"Here." Shumate stepped to Lee, pulling a knife out of his pocket and kneeling down. "Let me help you with that." He stuck the knife into the top of the can of tuna, not bothering to wipe off the spittle. He worked the knife around the edge of the can, then pried open the rough edge, almost handed it over to Lee, then seemed to think better of it and removed the sharp top.

He handed the disarmed can of tuna to Lee. "Can't be too careful with you. You know what they say, and all: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I'd have to slit your f.u.c.kin' throat."

Lee dipped his dirty fingers into the tuna, pinching the fibrous meat and bringing it to his mouth. It was salty and fishy and seemed like the best thing he'd ever tasted. After he'd taken two bites, he swallowed and hesitated before going further. He evaluated the ex-lawman kneeling across from him.

He seemed much harder. Much rougher. But then again, everyone was like that. If you had made it this far, if you had lived this long past the collapse, then you were probably much harder and rougher. This world was no fine-grit sandpaper. It did not polish you. It chiseled you. Left your edges coa.r.s.e and sharp.

"What happened to your face?" Lee asked flatly.

Shumate shrugged. "It's a long story. But then again, you're not going anywhere, are you?"

Lee worked a bit of tuna out of the gap where his tooth used to be. "Doesn't look like it."