Phil still said nothing.
“Dammit, Phil. Where is it?”
Without looking back, Phil said, “Forget about the leg, Ryder. It’s gone. Men behind us took it with instructions to chuck it five minutes after we left that cabin.”
Sean’s stomach knotted at the confirmation of his fear.
“Not like you’re going to need it, anyway.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Might just dump you over the next bridge we cross. Tied hands and one leg should be enough to finish the job in a couple minutes.” Phil turned his head, a smile plastered on his bearded face. “But that wouldn’t be fair to those folks who lost kin ‘cause of you. Now would it?”
Keep me alive, you son of a bitch. You’ll pay for it.
“I’m sure the punishment they dream up will be more than suitable.”
“Just let me go, man. Like you said, tied arms and one leg, I’m done for. Even out in the open. First afflicted that comes along, I’m breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Not with a missing leg, you’re not,” Phil said. “More like an appetizer.”
The men in the truck got a chuckle out of his comment.
Sean hoped his antics had cemented in Phil’s head that they’d take Sean to the camp. Was he better off for it? Perhaps not, but the longer they rode together, he felt he had a chance to overcome them.
The weather intensified over the next five minutes. Hail bounced off the truck, cracking the windshield on the upper right corner. A small tree snapped in front of them. It hit heavy power cables. They sagged, but stopped the tree from blocking the road.
“Maybe we should hole up, Phil,” Barton said.
“Keep going.”
“This ain’t no regular storm, man.”
“I said, keep going.”
“All right, fine, whatever.”
Keeping the vehicle straight turned into a chore for Barton. The man hovered over the steering wheel. His arms bowed out to the side, hands wrapped around the wheel at ten and two. He jerked it left and right, correcting every time the truck was blown off course.
Sean glanced back, saw two sets of headlights behind them. They’d fallen behind some, no doubt the drivers of those vehicles had no choice but to follow.
Let them fall back even further. Makes it easier for me.
He’d rather deal with four men than twelve or however many were packed into the other pickups.
As the minutes passed, the storm lulled Sean into a serene state. His training and instincts kicked in. He’d been taken prisoner once as a PJ. It had been early in his career, on a mission in Syria that probably only fifteen people knew about. He’d gone in to save a pilot who had ejected from his F-18 moments before it had crashed. As a result, the pilot had come in too hot and suffered what turned out to be life-ending trauma. Sean had found the man dead. And then they had found him. He had spent two weeks, starved and tortured, before Turk lead a squad from SEAL Team 8 and rescued Sean.
“Don’t see them anymore.”
Roused from his memories, Sean opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of Barton staring in the rear-view.
Phil slugged one arm around and turned in his seat. He peered past Sean into the black.
“Could be due to the rain,” Phil said. “Blocking the view.”
Barton shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right, man. Something’s wrong.”
“What are you suggesting we do? Turn around?”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Phil placed his hand on Barton’s shoulder. “We keep moving forward. I’m sure they’re only slowed down by the weather.”
“That’s a lot of men back there. Imagine what my camp is going to say when we come home without them? You think they’re gonna take kindly to bringing this guy back if it means we lost brothers, husbands, fathers?”
My camp?
Sean pieced together the puzzle. The night Sean was at Phil’s camp, the man had mentioned they had another settlement established. And now Sean understood that Barton was in charge there. And after weeks of being the leader, he was forced to succumb to Phil’s wishes. If Sean could widen the fracture between the two men with a simple bending of the truth, he might be able to force his way out of the truck. Conditions were less than ideal, but he’d rather die at the hands of nature than by Phil’s doing.
“When I was in Nigeria,” Sean said. “We encountered these things, the afflicted. Crazy thing was the weather. We were camped out on a ridge near the facility.” He shifted his gaze and met Phil’s as lightning flashed close by and lit up the cab. “The one where they killed your brother. Anyway, damn rain came down almost as intense as this.”
“So?” Phil said.
“So, it whipped the afflicted into a frenzy. They went nuts, attacking each other, and then us. The most violent I saw them. It seemed as though the weather made them more aggressive, stronger.”
“What are you getting at?” Phil asked.
“What if something blocked the road back there and held up the trucks? And what if something else came along at the worst possible moment?”
“What if, what if,” Phil muttered. “What if I shove a rifle muzzle into your mouth and pull the trigger?”
Sean shrugged. “Would save me the torture of having to smell you four assholes.”
Phil moved with speed that belied his physical stature. He turned around in his seat and lashed out with his right hand. But as fast as the man performed the actions, Sean saw it coming and leaned to his left. Phil struck the rear windshield. The glass cracked under the power of his punch. Phil called out in pain.
The truck whipped left, then right, turning around.
“The hell?” Phil said, propping himself up.
“We have to make sure they’re okay,” Barton said.
Phil forgot about Sean and threw his weight into Barton. The truck jerked to the left, then hydroplaned.
On Sean’s right, Ralph slumped over after his head slammed into the window with a thud. The guy on Sean’s left clutched to Barton’s seat.
Sean placed his foot on the ground and pressed his hands into the seat behind him, forcing his body up. He drew his head forward, then whipped it into the man next to him. Sean’s forehead caught the guy on the bridge of his nose. The man grunted, then went limp.
Barton tried to steer with one hand and fight Phil off with the other, while Phil delivered blow after blow to Barton’s head, chest, and stomach.
Flashes of lighting lit the surrounding area enough for Sean to see that they were heading for the embankment. The shoulder faded into the darkness of a ditch.
Sean shifted back into the seat, then flung his body forward, driving his shoulder into Phil’s side, sending the man into the dash. Phil managed to wrap his hand around the back of Barton’s neck and pulled him along. The truck lurched again, sending Sean into the rear window. Already weakened by Phil’s punch, the window shattered. Shards of glass sliced into Sean’s back and arms, re-aggravating his earlier injuries.
Barton had lost control of the vehicle. Worse, it seemed his foot had pressed down on the gas. The engine revved and the truck entered a counterclockwise spin.
Sean dragged his arms along the jagged remains of the window in an attempt to slice through the zip ties that bound him. He received a few more gashes in his arm for the effort.
The truck dipped as it slipped off the edge of the road and onto the gravel shoulder. The tires crunched on the rock. They were only a few feet from the ditch.
Sean forced himself into the seat and wedged himself between Ralph and the other guy. Everything happened in slow motion. The truck tipped sideways then rolled. The embankment was steeper and longer than he had anticipated. Bodies were flung around the cab. Sean hit his head on the seat, the roof, another passenger. Every muscle in his body clenched. He tried to get his hands around his sides. The zip tie gave an inch, but before he could free his hands, he was tossed to the front of the cab, then thrown back into the rear windshield again.
The truck came to a stop, teetering on the roof. The tailgate touched the ground. Sean heard water rushing past. He was half in the cab, half in the bed. He realized he didn’t just hear water, he felt it. Cold and moving fast across his forehead. Aside from the sensation, he felt numb.
Christ, am I paralyzed?
Chapter 28
The engine revved with a high-pitched whine, competing with the sound of rushing water. Darkness interspersed with brief flashes of lightening. Behind Sean, the men moaned, groaned, pleaded for help. One sounded like he was choking. He was drowning. They hadn’t come to rest in a ditch. They were on a riverbank and half the truck was submerged.
The numbness faded. Pain flooded every nerve in his body. He felt beaten and battered, but he was alive and could move his hands, foot, fingers and toes.
Then Sean had the distinct feeling that the truck was moving. The ground shifted underneath as the truck was pulled into the current. The roof dragged along the bottom.
He fought against the heavy-duty strap of plastic that bound his wrists. There was wiggle room, but not enough. He decided if he couldn’t get his arms free, he’d crawl through the window, into the truck bed. He had a better chance of escaping through there than he did in the cab.
He tried to shift his leg. A heavy weight made it difficult to move. He managed to move enough to look back. An unconscious Barton pinned Sean’s leg between the front seats.
The truck was pulled out further. The bed now sat on the water’s surface. It went black inside. The rush of water sounded like a waterfall. If Sean could get through the window, he could sink into the river and be free of the men.
Echoes of thunder rattled the cab and truck bed.
He couldn’t tell which direction the truck faced, or which way it floated. It was going under, though. Water kissed his cheeks and lips. Time worked against him.
With a yell, he pulled his arms apart from one another with every ounce of strength he could muster. The zip tie held firm. He had to take another approach. Simple pulling wasn’t working. Sean pressed his arms together then jerked them apart. He repeated the move five times, after which he managed to slide his wrist free.
Sean placed his numb hands on the seat backs and pulled himself up. He twisted and turned until in a position to move Barton. It might be easier now with all the water that had flooded in. Lightning flashed and Sean realized that while the bed of the truck was sinking, the cab still remained a few inches above the water line. He hooked his hands underneath Barton and pushed him up enough to free his leg.
Another bright light filled the cab. It lasted long enough for Sean to see that there were only three others in there with him.
Phil had managed to escape.
Sean rolled over and pulled himself through the jagged rear opening, suffering additional cuts in the process. Water slipped into the cab from the bed. It had the putrid smell of raw sewage. The remains of humans. He figured they must be close to Raleigh, but had no idea what waterway laid claim to the truck.
Free of the cab, Sean sucked in a final lungful of air and dived down. He fought against the current, lengthening his body and holding his arms wide. Last thing he wanted was to become trapped under the weight of the truck in a spot where he had no idea how deep it was. With his leg extended down, he couldn’t touch the bottom. He remained there as long as he could before surfacing for more air.
He penetrated the surface and heard a roaring thunder crack. Only there was no lightening. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a muzzle blast.
Phil.
“Bastard,” Sean yelled.
Another shot tore past.
Sean gulped and dove back down. The water was cold and rough. It pulled him deeper into the middle of the torrent. He had no idea what obstacles blocked his path. Could be anything from rocks to abandoned vehicles. After all, the water was only this high because of the substantial rainfall that had occurred in the past hour or two. How far past its banks had it expanded?
He surfaced again and heard Phil yelling from the shore.
“You’re not getting away, Ryder. I won’t let you take the easy way out, either.”
The water didn’t seem that bad a place to be at the moment.
Then his movement stopped. The side of his head felt as though it had been hit with a golf club. The current pressed him against the obstacle. The storm lit the night and he determined he was pinned against the side of a bus.
He reached over the top in search of something to grab hold of, but his fingers slipped off. The surface was too slick to climb with nothing other than force of will. Using his foot, he felt along the side of the vehicle, hoping a window had remained open. But the results were the same. There was no way to climb up.
So he decided to roll against the side. The bus spanned the river and to the right, the side they’d crashed from, it appeared to reach shore. At least close enough he could drag his body through the mud to get out of the river.
That was also where Phil lurked. Maybe the man had given up and left Sean for dead. Or maybe he remained, watching and stalking, waiting for Sean to pull off the impossible and get back to land with only one leg and shredded arms.