“Lucky for us.”
“Yeah, lucky for us,” Fletcher said, mumbling as if his repeat was involuntary.
“They might have bugged out for one of the other facilities, boss,” Boone said, spitting a round of saliva into the dirt on the right.
“That’s a possibility.”
“Must have known we were coming and set the explosives,” Boone said. “Them fuckers. They gotta pay.”
Dice agreed. “Makes sense. If you can build one silo—”
“Why not build two? Or three,” Fletcher added, nodding. “Assuming you have the money and supplies.” He turned the map over and leaned in closer, studying something for a few seconds. “Hmmm. That’s interesting.”
“What?” Dice said, leaning in close to take a look. He saw a sketch of a figure done in pencil. It was of a man. A naked man. Muscular. Badly malformed. There were other elements drawn on the page as well, but the character was the most prominent. “What the hell is that?”
“Looks like Edison was doodling,” Boone said.
“Or he was gay,” Dice quipped. “Who draws a naked man on the back of a map?”
“Yeah, an ugly one at that,” Boone said.
“I don’t think that’s what this is,” Fletcher said, pointing to a symbol in the bottom right corner. It was a rudimentary shield with a pair of arrows on it. A string of six numbers was written underneath with slashes separating every pair of numerals. “Looks like a date.”
Dice agreed. “Ten years ago.”
Fletcher continued. “Right before The Event.”
“So does that mean this is a real person?” Boone asked.
“Or he’s Edison’s spirit guide,” Longbow said.
“Yeah, nice try, Chapa,” Boone said to Longbow. “Not everything is about your damn spirit guide. You really need to let that mumbo-jumbo shit go. It’s exhausting already.”
Dice pointed at the other parts of the sketch, specifically, the area of the drawing behind the figure. It ran from left to right, in a downward rippling-line pattern. It resembled a river with something rising up from the water. They looked like heatwaves, only not quite. “So what’s all that?”
“Water,” Longbow said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Nah, not with all the stuff rising up from it,” Boone said.
Dice looked at Fletcher. “What do you think, boss? Real or imaginary?”
“If I had to guess, real. And it’s something military-related, based on this shield in the corner,” Fletcher said. “Plus, there’re these initials.”
Dice looked. “T. N.”
Boone continued chomping on whatever was stuffed in his mouth as he spoke. “The Nomad?”
“Shit,” Dice said.
“That means he was working with Edison,” Longbow said, his tone terse and to the point.
Fletcher held for a beat before responding. “Maybe. Or perhaps Edison figured out who the man was and noted it on this map for some reason.”
“Then why not write down his real name?” Dice asked.
“Security, I’m guessing.”
“Or T. N. are his real initials,” Boone said.
Fletcher closed the map but didn’t say anything.
“What’s the plan, Fletch?” Dice asked.
“We finish our sweep of this location, then move on to the next,” Fletcher said, raising the map in the air like a prize. “If they bugged out, we’ll find them.”
* * *
“What the hell happened?” Summer asked a female citizen she didn’t know, whose hand was on the side of Zimmer’s neck. It appeared as though the woman was pressing down in an attempt to contain the man’s blood.
“I don’t know,” the female said, her eyes flashing behind her, directing Summer’s attention back down the hallway. “Ask him.”
“Your dog just went nuts,” Simms said, clutching the leash of Sergeant Barkley as they followed along in a trot.
Summer could see red streaks on the dog’s chin and whiskers. Even so, she didn’t want to allow her mind to accept the facts as truth. “What do you mean, nuts? Dogs just don’t go nuts. Not like this.”
Before Simms could answer, Zimmer moaned, opening his eyes and looking up at Summer. She had to look away, not wanting to stare at his neck or the blood seeping through the hand of the female next to her.
“Don’t crowd me,” Krista said as she pushed the gurney at a furious pace. “You need to step back, Summer. I’ve got this.”
Summer slowed her feet and took an extra breath to calm her insides. The sight of blood was always an issue, ever since Avery ate it at the hands of the Scabs. But this was different somehow. More intense. More disturbing.
She wasn’t sure why, but it felt as though something deep inside, something that had gone dark long ago, was now back to haunt her, and in a big way. Maybe it was Zimmer. Maybe it was the dog. Maybe it was the fact that the situation in the silo was spinning out of control.
“Step aside,” Liz said to the female keeping Zimmer’s neck together as they neared the door to the infirmary. Liz slipped in and swapped places, applying pressure on Zimmer’s neck.
The woman dropped back and changed her pace to a steady walk, her hand dripping blood onto the concrete floor.
Summer passed her, then looked back. “Thanks for your help.”
“Please let me know what happens,” the girl said, leaning up on her toes as if she were trying to make eye contact with the patient she’d helped hold together.
Simms and the dog zipped past her, taking an adjusted path around where the female stood.
“Someone needs to get that door,” Krista said, her eyes focused on the entrance ahead.
“I’ll get it,” Summer said, breaking into a full-on sprint. Anything to take her mind off the facts, even if it was only for a moment.
CHAPTER 12
“You better stop eyeballing me, boy,” Wicks said to Nomad, sitting across from him in the back of the transport truck. “Or I’ll gut you where you sit.”
“You okay back there, chief?” Watson asked through the pass-through window from his passenger seat in the cab.
Wicks couldn’t hold back a snicker when he made eye contact with Watson through the opening. “Yeah, I got this. Trust me. This guy ain’t nothing.”
In truth, Wicks would never admit it publicly, but he didn’t want to be where he was. Not now. Not ever. Not on some grunt-level babysitting mission. There were more important duties waiting for him back at the silo. Mainly, providing backup to Krista in case the situation changed with all the variables at play.
Yet he was thankful Watson wasn’t driving. Not after the last time when they nearly hit a building the size of Texas.
Allison had the wheel. One of the new guys. A decent man, though it was hard to tell for sure. The guy hardly ever spoke. He just grunted and fiddled with his beard, stroking it as if it were a pet.
Rumor had it Allison used to drive rock trucks for a living back in the day. Or cement trucks. Wicks couldn’t remember which. Not that it mattered. They all had a job to do.
When Wicks returned his focus to Nomad, he found the masked man’s eyes were still burning at him, seemingly content to push his buttons.