At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Read online

  “You guys going to tell me why I’ve been arrested?” he asked sharply. “It’s my right to know, you realize.”

  Neither of the men answered, and Garrett found himself being led quickly toward what looked like the main building on a military compound.

  He could see other men and women around, but there was something distinctly off about the place. The way the people walked wasn’t right. And they handled their guns as if they weren’t completely comfortable with them. These weren’t people who had spent years sleeping with their guns, people who could take them apart and put them back together with their eyes closed.

  These looked like civilians who had been commandeered and forced into new positions.

  He filed that away on the growing list of suspicious things, and then filed it under the heading of “Things That Might Be Useful” as well. These people might have bigger guns than he did—well, they might have guns at all, since his had been taken from him—but he was already starting to think he had more training than all of them put together.

  After a moment they were entering the building, and the place looked like every military building he’d ever been in. Done in bland walls, the floor a generic buff color, the desks around him made of metal and painted green or black, the place was depressing as hell.

  The soldiers behind him turned him and marched him down a long hall where the lights above him flickered, and Garrett paid attention for long enough to realize that there were lights on here—which meant they were using electronics and machinery that had withstood whatever those bombs were.

  A true military base, then, though that didn’t answer the question of who exactly had shot those bombs into the night sky.

  Then he realized that the hallway around him was changing. The quality of the steel supports suddenly increased, and the windows around him were now lined with high-grade steel and looked as though they were triple-paned. The walls turned darker, the concrete beneath his feet somehow more textured. And then the lights changed. They stopped flickering, and the color became brighter. More intense. Hotter.

  What the hell was going on here? Was this some sort of top-secret base, full of higher tech than you would usually see on a military compound? This place had obviously been here before the virus; had it had anything to do with the experiments that led to the nanobots themselves?

  True, that last one was a reach. But he’d only ever heard stories of places like this. And those stories had always included an aspect of quasi-illegal operations.

  Suddenly the soldiers stopped at a door that looked like it was reinforced steel, heavy rivets lining the edges of it. When they swung it open, he saw row upon row of cells, each of them separated from the others by at least a foot of space, and everything done in heavy steel bars set close together.

  This wasn’t a standard prison. This was a prison wing designed to allow the soldiers around it to observe the prisoners twenty-four seven. A prison designed to house terrorists and enemies of the state.

  The soldiers shoved him into the first cell they came across. Garrett was just turning around when they slammed the door shut. Then, without a word, they walked back out the main door and closed it, shutting the light out completely.

  Chapter 13

  The door had barely closed when Garrett started hearing sounds in the darkness. He froze, trying desperately to remember whether he’d seen any other prisoners when he’d scanned the place. He’d seen lots and lots of bars, yes. Many aisles, which had led him to believe that soldiers walked through here often, and that they wanted easy access to the cells themselves. Had he even been able to see the walls at the outer edges of the room? He thought back, telling himself that he should have been able to see them through the bars, but didn’t remember anything like that.

  He’d thought he was observing. Turned out he’d failed completely. And that left one enormous question: who—or what—exactly was in this room with him right now?

  He grew still, took a deep, silent breath, and held it, straining his ears against the darkness to catch the sounds again. There, he thought. A scuffling. Not even anything specific, just the whisper of something against the concrete. And there it was again.

  He narrowed his eyes, trying to think. It didn’t sound like claws. It sounded like clothing rubbing against the floor. Could there be… Were there other people in here? The thought both sickened him and brought him a sudden burning hope.

  “Hello?” he asked quietly. “Is there anyone else in here?”

  His only answer was that deep, heavy silence, and the darkness that accompanied it. He squinted, but the lack of light was such that his eyes had nothing to work with. He couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face. But his ears were starting to catch more sound, and he was sure now that there were people in here. Off to his left, he heard what he was sure was breathing. And more and more rubbing of cloth against the floor of the room.

  There was someone in here. Several someones, in fact. But where had they come from, and how had they gotten here?

  “Please,” Garrett said, putting a note of pleading into his voice this time. “I don’t know where I am, or why I was arrested. I just want to figure out why I’m here.”

  Nothing wrong with making himself the victim, at least for now. Later on, once he got these people talking, he’d tell them what he was planning. Plenty of time for them to figure out who he actually was then, after he’d gained their trust.

  He waited, knowing that it might take a second—but that there was bound to be at least one prisoner who wanted to talk, wanted to know what was going on outside this room. And that prisoner would be the one who broke the silence.

  “Who are you?” a female voice suddenly grated out. “Why are you here?”

  Ah, there she was. The woman who had been acting as their leader up to this point—or the one they all hated for being incapable of staying quiet. It didn’t matter, really. She’d get the rest talking, and Garrett could start figuring out what was going on here.

  “My name’s Garrett Floyd,” he said quietly. “I’m an architect. Was working on turning an old missile silo into a bunker when everything went sideways on me. I’ve been living in the silo for almost a month now, came up for some air and supplies, ended up being arrested by two guys in a military vehicle. Two guys who didn’t look like military to me.”

  It wasn’t the whole story. But those were the useful points, he thought. That whole bomb-that-knocked-out-the-power-grid didn’t seem like it was important right now. Besides, he’d always found it useful to hold back some information for later use. You could never tell when you were going to need something to…encourage people.

  He closed his eyes at that thought. He was starting to sound just like one of his teachers at the military academy. One of the teachers he hadn’t particularly liked, due to his manipulations of others.

  “There was some sort of bomb last night. You guys know anything about that?” he added.

  A snort to his right was his only answer. “We’re in prison, dude. How do you think we’d know anything about what’s happening on the outside?”

  “I heard a soldier talking about that this morning,” the first female voice answered. “My name’s Alice, by the way. Man who runs this place is called Green. I don’t know much about him, but I do know he’s not a nice guy. Has some screwed-up idea of what he’s doing and how it’s going to help the country.”

  “Seems to me he’s more interested in helping himself,” the other male voice Garrett had heard added. “I’m Manny, by the way. Been here three weeks, from what I can tell. Hasn’t been a pleasant stay.”

  “Manny, Alice,” Garrett said, nodding his head in greeting—and realizing belatedly that it was a stupid thing to have done in the pitch dark. “Alice, what exactly did the soldier say about those bombs? Were they EMP weapons? They knocked out all the electricity in the area.”

  “Guy said Green believes the government set them off,” she answered quickly, and despite the h
oarseness of her voice, Garrett thought he could hear strength there. Determination.

  This woman wasn’t happy being locked up, he thought. And if she wanted to get out as badly as he did, she was going to be a valuable ally.

  “He said that Green—that’s the guy who runs this place, who calls himself a general if you can believe it—believes the government hoped the EMPs would kill everything that needed juice—including those nanobots.”

  Garrett pressed his lips together. Just as he’d thought, then.

  “So they sent the country back to the Dark Ages—and perhaps the whole world, depending on how far those things reach,” Garrett said. “And they may or may not have cured us of this sickness.”

  “That’s the way I read it,” she answered.

  Right.

  “So that just leaves one question,” he murmured. “If the world is safe again, how are we going to get back into it?”

  Before any of the other prisoners could answer him, however, the main door swept open, bringing with it a bright, glaring ray of light.

  Startled, Garrett squeezed his eyes shut. He could hear several soldiers coming in, their boots ringing against the concrete, and then hear the door in front of him swinging open.

  “On your feet,” a harsh voice said.

  Thinking that now wasn’t the time to argue, Garrett got to his feet without argument, and didn’t struggle when handcuffs were snapped around his wrists again.

  He walked forward willingly, the soldiers strutting behind him, and took a moment to actually look for the people he’d been talking to. The woman right across from him was striking, though small, a petite thing with chin-length hair, sharp cheekbones and nose, and wide, dark eyes. Impossible to know whether she was just overly thin or naturally small, but he could see strength in those eyes and knew immediately that it was Alice.

  She was the only one he got a chance to find before he was marched out the door, his destination unknown.

  Several minutes later, Garrett found himself being shoved through the doors of another room, this one looking like it had once been a strategy or comms room. It had been turned into something completely different, looking now like some sort of courtroom. A man was sitting on a raised platform behind a desk, while several people sat to the side of him in lowered desks or chairs. He was told to stand still in front of the man, and looked up, confused.

  “Do you understand the charges brought against you?” the man asked sternly.

  What?!

  “What charges?” Garrett asked.

  “You’ve been charged with looting the dead,” the man said, looking at Garrett as if he’d just murdered someone.

  Garrett opened his mouth to argue. This was clearly some sort of kangaroo court, and he didn’t know who was running the show or what they thought they were doing, but they had no authority for that sort of thing and he knew it. But then he glanced around the room, at all the men with guns—also clearly not belonging to the military—and closed his mouth. They might not be real soldiers, but he had no doubt that they would shoot him at a moment’s notice, and arguing with them probably wasn’t the smartest course of action.

  “What’s the sentence?” he asked instead.

  The judge asked him a series of questions about who he was and what he’d been doing before the virus, what his life skills were, and even what his schooling was, and nodded and took notes as Garrett gave him the shortest possible answers. Yes, he wanted to appear useful. No, he didn’t want them getting any ideas about pushing him into a situation where he’d have to fight back.

  Finally, the judge held his hand up to end the questions.

  “I, General Green, sentence you to a year of hard labor for your crimes,” he intoned.

  “By what authority?” Garrett sputtered, shocked.

  The man gave him a slow shake of the head. “There is no authority anymore, Mr. Floyd. Only God and my military faction.” He looked up at the soldiers then. “Take him back to the brig. He starts his sentence in the morning.”

  Chapter 14

  The moment the door closed them into the darkness again, Garrett opened his mouth and started talking.

  “I’ve just been sentenced to a year of hard labor for supposedly looting the dead. Is that how you guys got here? What the hell kind of place is this, anyhow?”

  “More or less the same thing, across the board,” Alice answered. “We were all picked up on bogus charges—probably arrested by the same guys who arrested you—and had to stand trial in that fool court of theirs.”

  “We’ve all been sentenced to years of hard labor,” Manny continued. “If you only got one year, you got off lucky.”

  Garrett sat up straighter. This didn’t make any sense. If the government was still able to set off bombs, then they should be the ones in charge, and that contradicted what Green had told him in the courtroom.

  “Whose authority is he under?” he asked. “Is the government responsible for this? Is this guy even with the military?”

  This time it was a new voice that answered. “Used to be,” he said. “We were actually assigned to this base. In charge of top-secret medical experiments. Or rather we were the guards who were guarding the scientists who were doing them. And then everything went to hell. Almost everyone on the base died quickly, and before long only a couple of us were left. That’s when things got scary around here.”

  “What’s your name, friend?” Garrett asked, intrigued at the idea that this man had actually been here from the start. “And where exactly is here?”

  “Raoul,” the man answered after a long pause. “Staff Sergeant Raoul Simms. Or at least I used to be. We’re at a top-secret base southwest of Socorro. Middle of the desert, and you won’t find it on the map. Called Fort Paine. Don’t know if the men who named it that had any inclination about what it would become.”

  That made sense, Garrett thought. Definitely matched the mental map he’d built for how they got here. And it didn’t make him any further away from the Mexican border than he had been before. Being in prison was never going to be good news, but this wasn’t the worst news he’d ever received.

  “And how did this all happen?” he asked.

  “The leaders of the base died first,” Raoul said simply. “Green was never that high up, and wasn’t even high in the chain of command. Hell, he wasn’t even in the military anymore. His CO had dismissed him and he’d been dishonorably discharged for cruelty to younger recruits. But when everyone else dies and you’ve got a bone to pick…”

  “Nobody’s left to tell you no,” Garrett finished. “And the military moves anyone with true leadership quality up the chain. Those left below…”

  “Aren’t fit to make decisions,” Raoul finished in agreement. “And particularly with people who’ve been dismissed. That was exactly the problem with Green, right from the start. Low-level soldier who made trouble and abused the younger soldiers to the point that he was kicked out. I don’t know how he ended up on base again, but he must have been in the right place at the right time. One day we were all terrified that we were going to die, confused about what we were supposed to do. The next day our leadership had all drowned in their own blood and were gone, and Green was back, telling us he’d been secretly promoted to general and was taking charge. Never even had time to fight him, not that many people would have. The entire base was decimated. In the end, only three of us survived. Well, three of us outside of the immediate circle he recruited.”

  “So those guys he keeps around him are actually soldiers?” Garret asked, surprised. He’d never have guessed that.

  “They were once. These days they’re nothing but thugs. Without a country to be loyal to, they’ve turned into his bodyguards. I used to know some of them, back in the day. These days I wouldn’t even recognize them.”

  “You said there were three of you that survived. Where are the others?” Garrett asked, his mind working furiously. He had a plan. But for it to work, he was going to need help, and the mor
e soldiers he had on his side, the better it would be.

  “Dead,” Raoul said bluntly. “They were higher up than I was, and Green never even gave them a chance. Shot them both in the head the day after he took power.”

  Garrett cringed. This Green guy was really starting to get on his nerves.

  “But he left you alive?” he asked softly, hating to bring it up, but needing to know all the facts. Why had Green killed the others and left Raoul?

  There was a long pause before Raoul answered. “Told him I was on his side,” he said. “Convinced him that I thought he was doing the right thing, taking over. That I didn’t think the American government was going to protect us anymore. He believed me—had never had any reason to doubt my word, if I’m being honest—and that was that.

  “He made me part of his crew. I was in charge of going out into the countryside and finding new recruits. Forcing new recruits is more like it, though. There was no volunteering here. We were just taking prisoners and making them work for us. And if people didn’t come with us, they were killed. Never by me. I couldn’t stomach it. But by…the others.”

  He stopped speaking for a long time, and Alice was the one who took up the story.

  “Raoul here started a rebellion,” she said softly. “We never saw it; we were in here. But the guards talked about it a lot. He actually had plenty of people on his side, and when they finally made a move, the guards here had thought he was going to succeed. I’m not sure whether they wanted him to or not.”

  “But I didn’t,” Raoul said darkly. “I was caught before I could do anything useful. They beat me in the courtyard, then sentenced me to a life of hard labor and threw me in here. Happened just a few days ago, actually. Don’t figure I’ll ever see the outside again—not as a free man, anyhow. Green doesn’t have any intention of letting me go.”