"You should feel sorry for the child that's tied to the bed. You should feel sorry for the children you abuse here. Your daughters and your sons. You've turned them all into slaves."
She turned the pistol around in her hand, so she was gripping the metal barrel, and whipped Soto in the back of the head. He dropped to the ground and his face slammed into the puddle of blood originating from Gates' lap.
Sam returned to the bed. Cole had already freed one of Alex's legs and was working on the chain wrapped around her left arm. Sam worked on untangling the chain around her right and fought back the tears forming in her eyes. She managed to undo the knot after a few seconds.
Doc knelt on the bed and shined a penlight into one of Alex's swollen eyes and then the other. He placed the miniature flashlight in the breast pocket of his lab coat and extracted a pair of latex gloves from one of the lower pockets. He pulled them on and gently touched Alex's face, first under her cheeks and then around her jaw.
"Well?" Sam asked.
"Hard to know for sure," Doc said as he continued the examination. "Her right cheek bone is fractured and I'm fairly confident her nose is broken. Probable concussion." He slid his hand down the girl's torso and examined her chest and ribs. "I'll need some things from my medical bag to be certain or better yet we should get her to the medical unit."
"No," Alex whispered. "No surgery."
Sam's heart skipped a beat at the girl's voice and she grabbed Alex's hand. "You're going to be okay, sweetheart. Just stay with us." Alex didn't answer.
"Where's your doctor's bag?" Cole asked.
"There are several," Doc said. "My primary bag is in the office, but I have emergency kits spread throughout the facility."
Sam nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on Alex's battered and bruised face. When she finally broke her gaze, she turned to Cole. He had also been staring at the girl. His face was flustered and red, and his bloodshot eyes were glassy. A trail of tears ran from each eye and disappeared into the depths of his bushy beard.
"Don't no one deserve nothin' like this, Miss Sam."
"No," Sam said quietly. "No one does."
Sam rummaged through the wardrobe next to the bed and found a sheet. She moved Doc aside and covered Alex's naked body. She whispered in her ear, "You're going to be okay."
"We need to find her clothes," Cole said.
Sam nodded but didn't immediately leave Alex's side. This girl had come to her when Sam was at her weakest and tried to help her escape. Sam wouldn't leave her now—when the girl was at her weakest. She deserved better.
Sam continued to stare at the girl's broken face, as Cole and Doc went to find her clothes. As much as she wanted start working on an escape plan, she couldn't push past the hatred she felt for the two men behind her. Sam thought of how large the bunker was, of how long this had been going on and how many girls had been made sex slaves of these disgusting men. Instead of an exit strategy, a white hot anger flooded her senses. She picked up the pistol and held it in her hand. There was more work to be done, and that work started now.
Sam spun on her heel. Soto's face was half smeared with blood and was slowly crawling toward his fallen comrade. Soto was the least of her worries. Sam would use him until he was useless to her.
She marched across the room and once again lifted the gun. This time Gates didn't lift his hand in fear. His skin had grown a sallow shade of white. His chest rose and fell at a breakneck speed matching each shallow breath.
"I hope there is a hell," Sam said coldly, "and I hope you rot in it for eternity."
Sam unloaded the remainder of the magazine into the vile man's face. Six shots in all. By the time the last shot was fired, his face was nothing more than a bloody wad of hamburger meat, completely devoid of any recognizable facial features. She continued to pull the trigger well after the sixth round had lodged into the dead man's face.
Cole put a gentle hand on her arm, forcing her to lower the weapon. Unwelcomed tears were streaming down her face as her heart broke over and over for the girl on the bed. And for all the children in Lost Angel. And for Rebecca. And for Jordan. She turned to her friend and buried her face in his chest.
"Don't you cry, Miss Sam," Cole whispered. "That was a bad, bad man. You did good by that girl."
Sam cried silently, and the tears abated soon after they started. She was growing cold on the inside. It was her training kicking in. What training? A blurred memory surfaced and vanished before she could grab hold of it.
"I found the girl's clothes," Cole said. His words brought her back.
Sam pulled away and let out a weak laugh as she saw the wet imprint of her face on the big man's white dress shirt. "Sorry." It was all she could manage.
"Don't you apologize to me, Miss Sam," Cole said and squeezed her shoulder. "Ain't no need for it."
"Okay." She wiped the remnants of her tears away with her bare arm.
"Doc found some pants and boots that might fit ya. Only found one top though. Figured we'd give it to the girl."
"Where's her clothes?"
"Torn to shreds."
Sam screamed and buried her foot into the General's bloated gut. Cole grabbed her before she could kick him again and carried her back to the bed. It took her a minute to calm herself.
"Thank you," Sam whispered.
Sam went to the bed and together with Cole and Doc they dressed her in Gates' long T-shirt over the girl's head. It hung down to her knees. The underwear had been ripped off of her as well as the rest of her clothes.
They placed her back on the bed and Sam pulled on the pair of khaki cargo pants. They were three sizes too big for her. She cringed at the thought of wearing the dead man's pants, but the repulsion quickly passed as the comfort of wearing something other than the skimpy dress took over. She unwrapped one of the chains from around the bed post and wrapped it twice around her waist, tied it in a crude knot and pulled the length of the dress over it. The pants were still loose but she would have to manage.
She wiped the blood from the bottom of her feet onto the bed sheet and slipped into the boots. They were only a size larger than her New Hope-issued tennis shoes. She tucked the excess fabric from the cargo pants into them and tied them as tightly as she could.
"How many bullets do you have left?" Sam asked Cole.
The firefight in-between the dining hall and the President's suite had been over quickly. Sam dealt the three fatal shots, but Cole had sprayed a wave of bullets of his own.
Cole pulled the clip from his rifle. "Ten in this mag." He snapped it back into place. "Plus a full mag in my pocket. You?"
"I'm empty," Sam said and motioned to the Desert Eagle on the floor.
"You wanna backtrack and pull a gun off one of those ingrates we left in the hall?"
Sam shook her head. She walked past Gates' body and picked the battle ax off of the floor. The oak handle was covered in blood. She stepped over to General Soto and wiped it on the back of his pressed shirt.
"No," Sam said. "This will do just fine."
Cole looked at her with an odd curiosity in his eye. "There's something different about you, Miss Sam."
Sam only nodded. There wasn't time to tell him about what she had seen in the dining hall or the terabytes of data sporadically downloading into her mind.
"Can you manage her?" Sam said and motioned toward Alex.
"Carried tool bags twice her size back in New Hope," Cole grinned.
The General groaned and lifted his head from the crimson puddle. Half of his face was coated in blood and dripped off him as he stared wide-eyed at what was left of Gates.
"What about him?" Cole asked and pointed to Soto.
"Kill the son of a bitch."
"Wait!" Soto screamed out. He shot up to his one good knee and held his hands up as if he planned on surrendering. "Please don't kill me. I can help you get out of here."
"I think we're capable of doing that on our own," Sam said. "We've got Doc to guide us out of here." She looked apprehensively at the doctor who gave a quick nod and looked back to the floor.
Cole raised the rifle and aimed it at Soto.
"There's more," the General screamed and squeezed his eyelids shut in the process. A fresh trickle of blood slammed out from the hollow eye socket when he did but Sam felt no sympathy for the man.
"More what?" Sam asked.
"The President's room," Soto cried. Fat crocodile tears rolled from his good eye and trailed down his bloody cheek.
"We're in the President's room," Sam said.
"Not this one," he spoke quickly. "The one in the mines. Close to the common area I showed you."
"So? Why would we care about some room down there?" Cole asked.
An awful smile emerged on his face—the wicked, horrible trademark smile—and Soto opened his eyes. "There's a computer down there. A secret computer. Only the President and myself, well, only I know about it."
"What's on it?" Sam asked.
"That I don't know, but—"
This time, Sam lifted her weapon. She reared the ax far behind her head and readied it for Soto's execution. She had every intention of splitting the man's stupid skull in half and ending his miserable excuse of a life. But right before she started her downswing—
"All it says is Concordia."
8
The group didn't encounter any guards on their way from Gates' Presidential Suite to the entrance of the mines. The great halls were empty and much to Sam and Cole's displeasure, General Soto couldn't—or wouldn't—provide any reasonable explanation for it.
"Maybe they've all left," Soto said. He chuckled and Sam kicked him swiftly in his bad leg.
They hadn't left. Invisible warning signs burned hot in her guts. Somewhere in the complex, a trap was waiting for them. She half-expected it to be wherever Soto was leading them, while the other half of her was terrified that it would be sprung as the group tried to exit Lost Angel. Either way, they were low on ammo and had only Soto as a bargaining chip…or a shield if it boiled down to it.
They continued to plunge deeper into the dark abyss. Soto led the way and Sam followed right behind him with her hand on his shoulder. Doc walked beside her and Cole brought up the rear. He carried Alex in his giant arms. Her broken body barely moved as she struggled with each breath.
"How much further?" Sam asked as they passed the mess hall. She couldn't see the door through the darkness but recognized the break in the lighting. Her voice echoed off the cavern walls and her arms erupted in gooseflesh.
"Not much," Soto said. "Near the bottom of the hill."
As they descended further into the mines, the pathway canted at a steep angle. By the time General Soto said 'Not much further' for the third time, the majority of her weight was on her heels to keep her balance.
Her other senses adjusted and compensated for her lack of vision. She heard each footstep of the General's hard-soled shoe followed by the other foot sliding along the rock floor. She heard water rush through unseen pipes running above their heads. Somewhere far off in the distance, she heard the soft thrumming of the generators.
She also grew alarmingly aware of the sudden drop in temperature and she thought of all the unfortunate souls that worked down here in the pitch-black cold. The child slaves. The true
Lost Angels
.
"Where are they?" Sam asked, taking a cue from Soto and dropping her voice to a barely audible whisper.
"I told you," Soto said. "They've probably left."
"Not the soldiers," Sam said. "The workers. Where are the children?"
"Still working. You don't think they'd up and stop production because of a couple alarms, do you? What kind of operation do you think we run here?"
Sam gave him a shove with the handle of the ax and the General stumbled forward. "The word enslavement comes to mind. What are you going to do after I free all the children? How will your precious Lost Angel survive?"
Soto didn't answer. Instead, he slowed his pace and placed his hand on the side of the cavern wall. Sam lifted the blade of the ax from her shoulder and her grip tightened around the wooden handle. It felt slick in her hands, the weight of it less than ideal, but she had no doubt that she could do what was necessary when the time came.
"I asked you a question," Sam said. She angled the steel blade of the ax and pressed it against the man's neck.
"We're here," Soto said.
Sam noticed the break in the string of lights and lifted the blade from Soto's neck. She placed her hand on the wall and felt where the jagged rocks became smooth, cold metal. She let her fingertips slide down the frame until they touched the steel handle. She tried to turn the handle, but it held firm.
"It's locked," Soto said.
Sam sneered at him. "I can tell. Open it."
Soto's hand darted for the utility belt around his waist. Sam let go of the door and gripped the handle of the ax with two hands. The General froze.
"Easy," he said. "Just getting the key. It's in my pocket. Don't cut my head off."
"I'm not making any promises."
"Well aren't you a ray of sunshi—"
Sam slammed the handle into the General's mouth. The blow sent him reeling back. And then the tears returned, and he started to sob.
"Stop crying and open the damn door," Sam said. "No one here feels sorry for you."
Soto wiped his cheeks on his sleeve and then pulled the key from his hip pocket. The clack of the lock sliding open boomed through the silent cavern and Sam's heart jumped into her throat. A hideous squeak followed and Sam held her breath. The room beyond the doorway was somehow darker than the pitch-black cavern.
Soto flipped an unseen switch and light burst forth from the room. Sam shielded her eyes and for a the briefest of moments she felt absolutely defenseless. If the General was going to try to escape then this would be his moment to do so. Instead, Soto stepped into the room and Sam followed without hesitation.
Sam stared in awe as her eyes adjusted to the bright fluorescent overheads. Giant monitors covered the entirety of the walls surrounding them. Every square inch from floor to ceiling. The screens were blank and their black frames were shiny, and at the bottom-center of each frame was a silver logo. A large C surrounding a tiny silver skyline of a city. It caused her stomach to twist into a violent knot.
Concordia.
Sam jumped and her attention was torn away from the logo as the metal door slammed shut behind her. She spun on her heel. Cole looked at her wide-eyed and then apologized. He placed Alex in an empty chair by the door and Doc grabbed the penlight from his pocket and began to reexamine her.
The interior of the room consisted solely of two large wooden desks that mirrored each other. They sat in the center of the room, one facing the doorway where they stood, the other facing the largest of all the monitors which encompassed the entirety of the rear wall.
"These monitors…" Sam said. Her voice trailed off.
"These monitors are how we protect our citizens," the General said, finishing her sentence. "Our watchful eyes in the sky. This is…was the President's private monitoring station."
"Turn them on," Sam whispered.
"I don't think—"
"Do it," Sam commanded.
Soto limped to the center of the room. He made a dreadful whimper with each step. He took a seat at the leather chair in-between the two desks and rolled up to the computer facing them. A moment later, he began typing on an unseen keyboard.
The entire computer unit was hidden from view. As Sam approached the desk, her battle ax still at the ready, she saw an embedded piece of glass in the center of the desk. Underneath the glass a flat-screen monitor angled up at the General. Soto typed commands furiously into the keyboard, his one eye scanning back and forth with each keystroke. Sam wondered if giving him free-reign to the computers had been a good idea but then the screens surrounding the room turned on simultaneously.
"Holy shit," Cole said. He pivoted and ran his fingers through his damp gray hair. "Pardon my language, Miss Sam."
"You're excused," Sam said as she gaped at the screens.
The images displayed around the room shed light on what Soto's 'watchful eyes' truly meant. On one wall, the screens were filled with dozens of rooms resembling lesser versions of the President's chambers. A section of screens monitored the gaudily decorated hallways and another on various rooms throughout the complex. Sam saw the hospital rooms and the dining hall. She cringed at the sight of a handful of screens focused on operating rooms.
She turned to the opposite wall and gasped as she got her first look at the children. The screens were tinted night-vision green, and each displayed heartbreaking scene after heartbreaking scene. Dozens of children littered each screen working furiously as they tunneled through the mines. Dirty children. Skeletal children. Hundreds of them in total. Hundreds of
lost angels.
"You're monsters," Sam whispered.
Soto didn't answer her.
She walked down the length of the wall as she scanned through the screens. Midway down, her eyes fixed on two monitors. Neither possessed the green tint. One was fixed on a dozen men sitting around a long conference table.
The other displayed a room full of young girls ranging from 13 to 30. Most of their faces had been horribly transfigured by plastic surgery. Sam's skin crawled at the sight of them. Not out of disgust for the girls but rather at the men who did this to them.
The monitor above showed a bird's eye view of two stone structures; perfectly square in shape, with a pathway running in-between them. A fleet of soldiers surrounded the two buildings. Sam guessed one structure housed the girls, and the other contained the royalty. The rapists. The enslavers.
"Where is this?" Sam asked.
The General snorted and continued typing.
"You better answer the lady," Cole said.
"Those are the safe houses. They're in the heart of the mine," Doc said. "Not too far from where we are now. The pathway outside leads to a large opening within the cavern and the two buildings are there."
"Silence," Soto hissed.
Doc seemed to consider this for a moment and then continued, "The royalty are in the building on the left and the girls in the other. There's a supply bag in the room with the royalty. It's full of supplies. We keep it there for situations such as this one. In case of an intruder or a breach. In case they're trapped down there for a long time."
"I said silence," Soto snarled. "Why are you aiding them?"
"Because they're right," Doc said. He turned back to Alex. "We are monsters."
"You're a traitor," Soto seethed.
"Perhaps," Doc said. He lifted Alex's eyelid and flashed the penlight at the pupil. "A traitor to a city that's turned its back on its citizens. A traitor to traitorous men. Rather poetic, no?"
"It doesn't matter," the General said. He waived a dismissive hand toward the doctor and leaned back in the desk chair. "They're all in lockdown and you're ill-equipped to breach the safe houses. The city of Lost Angel will survive just like it so many times before. Even if you were to save a handful of workers, the men in that room will continue to repopulate this city. But that is a big if, isn't it?"
"You think we'll fail?" Sam asked. She couldn't believe the General's smugness after everything that had happened. "Do you honestly think you're prepared enough for—?”
"Prepared enough for you?" Soto roared with laughter and Sam felt the reproachful ire bubble in stomach. "We've lived through worse than you. Our people survived the fallout. We survived for a thousand years in this bunker. You don't think we'd let a couple of outsiders derail us, did you?" He flashed a spine-chilling smile and resumed typing.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"I've taken a calculated risk bringing you here," the General said. He looked up at her. "While there
is
a computer in this room that says Concordia, the true reason I brought you here was to ensure you couldn't cause any more damage." He smiled again and then resumed typing.
"Stop what you're doing," Sam said and gripped the handle of the ax so tight her knuckles turned white.
"I don't think so," Soto said.
The room slowed and Sam's vision focused. Her heartbeat pounded between her ears and her muscles tensed. Every imperfection of the wooden ax handle amplified in her hands and she could feel every notch and groove. Sam took a step toward him.
Soto looked up and flashed the smile Sam had grown to loathe. Then he lifted a fist straight out ahead of him. He extended his index finger and pointed it to the keyboard.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"I'm initiating the contingency plan."
"Don't move another in—"
Soto dropped his fist and his finger mashed down on the button. "Whoops."
Air hissed from the door and Sam watched in horror as it began opening on its own.
"What's happening?" Cole asked. "Close it back."
Soto ignored him. "Now, if you would focus your attention to the monitor above the door…" he paused and waited for them to look,"…our show is about to begin."
The screen above the door had remained blank, but the General hit another button and it flickered on. The camera was aimed at a steel door, similar to the one in front of them. The door on the monitor also began to open and Sam shrieked as its contents were revealed. A mammoth creature slunk from the doorway and then sprinted away. She only got a glimpse at the elongated face and beady orange eyes, but she recognized it at once. It was the creature from her dreams.
"What the fuck was that?" Sam yelled, not willing to accept what her brain was telling her.
"I think you know, Samantha," Soto said.
"I need your help, Cole." Sam dropped her ax and ran to the door. It was completely open. She shoved it but the heavy metal door didn't budge. Above her, the pneumatic door closer had extended fully. A locking mechanism had dropped into place to prevent it from shutting.
Cole joined her and the two pushed. Even with his added strength, the door refused to move. Cole looked up and began pawing at the device.