Blood Runs Cold (Stone Cold Fear Book 2) Page 16

  She never stopped surprising him.

  “That’s a lot of gun for a little girl,” the old guy said.

  “Don’t worry, mister. I know how to shoot.”

  Marie found a bag and held it up, raising her eyebrows in Pete’s direction.

  He nodded. They’d use it to carry the ammo.

  “I’m not taking too much,” he said. “The more we take, the more likely it is that Thomas will send someone after us.”

  “You don’t think he’ll do that anyway, once we steal the horses?” Marie asked.

  “You’re right,” Pete said. “How about this? The bag will be too heavy if we overload it.”

  “That makes more sense,” Marie replied, sighting down the muzzle of the Glock.

  Pete shouldered the extra bag. “Stop flirting with your gun. Time to go.”

  Marie went to the old man, patted him on the shoulder, said something in a soothing tone of voice, then joined Pete by the door.

  “I’d lock this as soon as we’re gone,” Pete said to the guy. “You might not be so lucky the next time someone walks through the door.”

  The old man began the arduous process of tottering to his feet, and Pete cracked the door for a look. “It’s clear.”

  They exited the building and headed for the barn, using sheds and shrubbery as cover when they could.

  Pete hadn’t heard any gunfire for a while, and wondered if the battle was over—a question that filled him with urgency. If the battle was over, they’d be up against Thomas or other residents of Clearview soon. The moment they realized that Pete and Marie weren’t in the prison, actually.

  But despite his worries, they reached the far end of town unscathed.

  From their new vantage point, Pete could see the rest of the chain-link fence. The gate at this end of town was open, but undamaged. So the bikers had evidently gotten in via something other than ramming the gates.

  Weirdly, it looked like the gate had actually been left open.

  But the vehicle that came through first had paid the price. It was skewered on something that had been hidden beneath the snow, and it didn’t take much to fill in the blanks.

  “Thomas left the gate open so they could skewer themselves on a booby trap,” he said quietly.

  “Holy crap,” Marie exclaimed.

  A dead man draped over the steering wheel while another had flown halfway through the windshield. A couple others lay dead in the snow, turning the clean white powder red. The vehicle was toast. Unless Thomas had parts for a WWII truck lying around, its fate was sealed.

  On the other side of the wreckage, the barn was huge—a combination of many cargo containers set side by side and stacked on top of each other.

  Pete watched the top of the barn, looking for sentries. Finally, one appeared. A woman, who held her rifle with obvious expertise. They weren’t going to get lucky like they had in the armory. Thomas’s people must have been spread very thin for Thomas to have made such an error.

  He should have taken Pete and Marie up on their offer to fight alongside the citizens of Clearview.

  “We wait till she moves back to the other side again, then we go,” Pete said. “All out.”

  Five minutes later, it was starting to look like the guard would never move, and Pete was beginning to think he’d have to shoot her—something he really didn’t want to do. Then, finally. the woman moved on, walking toward the opposite end of the building.

  Pete and Marie took off at a sprint, aiming for the man-sized door beside the larger door that must have been used to move the livestock and the wagon in and out. When they got there, Pete twisted the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. He tried again, but it wasn’t just sticky, it was locked.

  Before he could ask, Marie lifted the hem of her coat, tucked the Glock into her waistband, and pulled the keys they’d taken from Jack out of her pocket. She stepped in front of Pete and began testing the keys for fit.

  Pete moved to her side, both to keep a lookout and to watch her progress. The first key didn’t fit, nor did the second. While Marie was flipping through the keys to get to the third, she dropped the ring in the snow and cursed. Her hands started to shake.

  “It’s okay,” Pete said. “I’ve got your six. Slow and methodical.”

  He scanned their surroundings and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. In a fluid motion, he turned in the direction of the movement and raised the rifle, but it was only a squirrel dashing from one tree to the next.

  Marie got back to work with the keys. “Thank God I started at one end,” she muttered.

  The next key worked, the door opened, and they scooted into the barn.

  Chapter 17

  It was warm inside the barn, and the air smelled of livestock and hay. A cow mooed. Chickens clucked from the second floor. There was a ladder straight ahead to get up there. The entire thing seemed incredibly…

  Farmy.

  Then a loud metallic bang sounded, and Pete jumped, pointing his rifle here and there as he searched for the threat.

  “Calm down,” Marie said. “A horse or cow kicked the wall.”

  A wide aisle ran down the middle of the space, with stalls of various sizes on either side. Down at the opposite end from where they’d come in, a horse hung its head over the stall door. Pete and Marie hurried toward it.

  The closer Pete came to the horse, the more certain he was that this idea had been a mistake. He didn’t know how to ride, and the horse’s head was huge. Might as well try to saddle a moose. Marie, however, had no qualms. She walked right up and scratched it behind one of its ears.

  “Too bad I don’t have an apple or a carrot for you,” she said.

  It snorted into her hair and she smiled happily. Pete shook his head and reminded himself that he needed to stop being surprised at what this woman was capable of.

  “Would they have saddles for this kind of horse?” Pete asked.

  “They might,” Marie answered. “I’ll be able to tell you for sure when I’ve seen their tack room. Unless you want to ride bareback,” she added.

  “Ha-ha. I don’t want to ride it at all, but since I have to, I’d prefer a saddle.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marie said. “These big guys are usually more docile than the regular-sized horses.”

  Usually.

  “I wonder if they have an old car sitting around instead.”

  Marie moved to the door next to the horse’s stall and opened it, while Pete kept an eye out for sentries or bikers.

  “Saddles, reins, and the big harness they used for the wagon,” Marie said. “Blankets, too.”

  Suddenly a sharp bark sounded, and a big hairy dog of no discernable breed came barreling down the aisle toward them. Pete didn’t know whether to shoot it or not. He liked dogs, but he didn’t want to get mauled.

  Marie, of course, just dropped to her haunches like this sort of thing happened all the time. “Come here, boy.”

  As soon as she did that, the dog’s tail wagged so ferociously that its butt began to wiggle. It raced right up to Marie and she petted it while it panted and wagged its tail. “Good boy,” Marie said. “What a good dog.”

  Bemused, Pete shook his head. Then he cleared his throat to let her know it was time to get moving. They didn’t have all day to sit around here, talking to a dog. Hell, they didn’t even know how much time they had, period.

  Marie stepped into the tack room, the dog at her heels. Pete followed her—only to hear the door to the barn open again.

  “Shit,” he muttered. Why the hell hadn’t he locked that door? “Stay here,” he told Marie, pitching his voice low so whoever had come in wouldn’t hear.

  Marie didn’t respond, and he could only hope she’d heard. He was just about to peek around the door to see what they were dealing with when the man who had come in started talking.

  “Thanks for getting that door open,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get in here for the last hour. It’s a total shitshow out there. Who knew a bunch o
f off-grid weirdos would be so well armed?”

  When Pete didn’t answer, the guy added, “Set the gun on the ground and kick it to me.”

  Pete blew out a breath and glanced around the door jam. It was one of the bikers, and he had a rifle aimed right at them. He bent his knees, wondering whether he could take the guy down, but decided it was too risky. He’d get shot before he got anywhere close to him. He placed the Glock on the barn floor and scooted it toward the biker with his foot.

  “Turn around,” the guy said. “And put your hands behind your head.”

  Pete complied, lacing his fingers together. He hoped Marie would find a place in the tack room to hide, though he also knew that was probably a pipe dream. If the guy had been watching the door then he’d also seen that she was with him. It was only a matter of time before he found her.

  Though Pete didn’t think he’d expect her to be armed.

  “Where’s your friend?” the guy said, speaking to Pete’s back and voicing exactly what Pete had just thought about.

  “She went upstairs,” Pete said.

  “What’s up there?” the guy asked.

  “No idea. That’s what she went to find out.”

  Then things went from bad to worse. Merle, of all people, peered around the corner of the tack room door. He had one arm wrapped around Marie’s throat, and a gun in his free hand. It looked like the Glock Marie had taken from the armory.

  The biker didn’t react, which meant Pete had blocked his view of Merle and Marie.

  Pete made eye contact with Merle, gave the barest hint of a nod, and dropped to the ground. Merle fired, hitting the biker in the chest.

  It was a perfectly placed shot. The man was dead before he hit the ground, though he discharged the rifle on his way down. The shot hit the floor and ricocheted with a pinging whine, setting the horses to whinnying and the cows to mooing and any number of them to stamping and kicking the walls.

  The dog bolted out of the tack room and ran around skittishly, tail tucked between its legs.

  “We’re just trying to get out of Clearview,” Pete said to Merle. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “I see you helped yourself to our stuff along the way,” Merle said with a sneer. “Jack’s going to have some explaining to do, fuckin’ idiot.”

  “Can’t you just let us leave?” Marie asked, pulling at Merle’s arm to loosen it from her throat. “You don’t want us here, and we don’t want to be here.”

  Instead of answering, Merle shoved her toward Pete. She stumbled a few steps and then got her feet under her, holding her hands up without being told.

  “I would have had more sympathy if I hadn’t caught you trying to steal our horses,” Merle said.

  He called the dog to his side. “Hell of a guard dog you turned out to be, Scout,” he said, but scratched behind Scout’s ears anyway. “I want you to give me that rifle you have slung over your shoulder,” he told Pete. “Slide it over here.”

  Pete did as he was told, using slow movements so that Merle wouldn’t get antsy. His mind was working ferociously on the problem, trying to find a way out of it. He’d hoped that letting Merle shoot the biker would have shown him whose side Pete was on, but evidently, that hadn’t worked.

  He needed to get his guns back. He needed to get Marie out of danger. The horses, at this point, were completely secondary.

  Merle looped the rifle’s strap over his shoulder, then said, “Pick up your gear and get moving. Thomas is going to want to talk to you.”

  “He doesn’t have to know you found us,” Marie said. “We’ll sneak out and you’ll never see us again.”

  Merle exhaled impatiently. “Just shut up and do as you’re told.”

  Pete picked up both of their backpacks and passed one to Marie. He still had the Kimber in his back pocket, and he was willing to bet that he was a quicker shot than Merle.

  But he wasn’t willing to bet Marie’s life on it. And at the end of the day, that was exactly what he’d be doing.

  “Is the fight over?” Marie asked.

  “Yeah,” Merle answered with plenty of bravado. “Those yahoos didn’t know what hit them.”

  He ushered them toward the door, and they walked down the main aisle and finally out the door they’d come through, avoiding the dead biker on their way out.

  “Whichever one of you has Jack’s keys can lock that door,” Merle ordered.

  “It’s me,” Marie said, and slowly reached into her pocket. She withdrew the keys and held them so that Merle could see them.

  He nodded that she should proceed, and she turned and locked the door.

  “Now give me the keys.” Merle held out his hand.

  Pete hoped Merle would look at Marie while she passed him the keys, but no luck. He kept his eyes locked on Pete, and the Glock pointed firmly his way. Then he told them to head to the other end of town, to Thomas’s house.

  Outside, the sun had moved across the sky, and a few clouds had appeared. Sunset was near. If they could get away now, they’d be a whole lot harder to track.

  Of course, they’d also have a much harder time finding shelter before full darkness descended—and along with it, the cold.

  Merle marched them down Main Street, where the buildings were now dented and dinged, marked by the impact of bullets.

  There were men and women collecting the dead, carrying them one at the head and one at the feet. There were two separate piles of bodies; one large one where they were stacking the bikers like logs, and a smaller one, where the townsfolk were being laid with more care, side by side. A woman cried. Scout ran over to her and she pulled the dog to her.

  It was all so strange, Pete thought. These people had chosen to be part of this life. They’d chosen to fight for Thomas and his bizarre, paranoid ways.

  Or had they?

  When they reached Thomas’s home, they entered through the front door. Pete and Marie dropped their packs and took their boots off without being told. Pete took Marie’s hand and gave it a squeeze as they walked toward the back of the house, where Thomas was waiting for them at the dining table. The dead men’s bodies had been removed, though there were still blood smears on the floor.

  “I found these two in the barn, ready to saddle up horses,” Merle said. “Jack—”

  Thomas cut him off, holding up one of his hands.

  “Jack fucked up, yet again,” he said. “I already heard.”

  Merle placed Jack’s set of keys on the table.

  “We just want to leave,” Pete said, even though he knew it would amount to nothing. “We’re not your enemy.”

  “How can I be sure of that?” Thomas asked. “You didn’t have any qualms about stealing from us.”

  “That rifle was with me when we got here,” Pete answered, which didn’t amount to shit. He and Marie had stolen two handguns and a load of ammunition. “We didn’t kill any of your people, either.”

  “We didn’t,” Marie added. “You can ask the old man in the armory. We didn’t harm him.”

  “What do you want me to do with them?” Merle asked.

  “Right now, we need to bury our dead and mourn,” Thomas said. “I’ve got people in the kitchen, getting a meal ready. Lock these two up. We’ll decide what to do with them tomorrow.”

  “Thomas,” Marie said. “Please. I don’t understand why you’re doing this. We’re not bad people. Pete was serving his country, and you’re punishing him and me for that. All we’ve been trying to do since the EMP is survive. So we lied to you. Now you know the truth. Let’s move on from there.”

  When Thomas didn’t answer, Merle gestured the two of them toward the front door.

  “Put them in the cell next to Jack’s,” Thomas said. “That should keep them all entertained.”

  “You’re making a mistake!” Pete called over his shoulder. “You’re down in numbers, and now you’re wasting resources to hold us when we’re not your enemy.”

  The convicts were still out there, though he didn’t bo
ther to remind Thomas of that. At this point, the convicts were starting to look like the good guys.

  Merle slugged Pete in the side. The blow sent fiery pain shooting through his lower ribs, and he dropped to his knees.

  Could he come up swinging and take Merle out? Marie looked like she was asking herself the same question—but Pete knew that they would both fail. Because Merle had something they didn’t: a loaded gun pointed right at them. Everything they’d done to get away, and here they were, headed right back to the detention center. At least Merle let them put their boots on.

  They crossed the street and made their way to the correct building.

  But when Marie reached out to open the door, it sprang open, pushed from inside. Marie went to the ground and a man stepped out and shot Merle, who shouted with pain and surprise. As his body spun away from Pete, he dropped the Glock.

  Pete went for the Glock, but the guy fired again. The bullet hit the ground at Pete’s feet, and he changed course while the guy yanked Marie off the ground and hauled her inside the building.

  There were no townsfolk nearby. Everyone was at the other end of the street, dealing with the dead, or in the kitchen, cooking. None of them seemed inclined to stop what they were doing and investigate the sound of fresh gunfire.

  Now that he was in the clear, Pete went for the Glock. Merle shouted at him to stop, which he ignored. He could run. Right now. Except he’d have to leave Marie behind. He might have a better chance of rescuing her from a position of freedom, he thought, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with that if he did it.

  Then, just as he was about to pick up the gun, Hilda came around the corner with her rifle aimed at Pete. He froze and stood slowly while raising his hands.

  “Merle’s been shot,” he told Hilda. “Not by me. And the shooter has Marie.”

  “That true?” Hilda asked Merle.

  “He didn’t shoot me.” Merle’s tone said such a thing would never happen. “I’ll live,” he added. “Go take care of business.”

  Pete couldn’t help eyeing the Glock, so temptingly close, and then thinking about the Kimber in his back pocket. The gun he still hadn’t been able to reach for. His fingers twitched just thinking about it, and Hilda’s eyes narrowed as she assessed him.