Knights of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Series Book 2) (20 page)

TWENTY

The water station wasn’t far from the camp—a
point Jerry made to reinforce the idea that the mountain men weren’t as hidden
as they thought. Five of them moved down the hill using the trees for cover
though there wasn’t much to hide from. The majority of the station crew was
hiding from the cold inside a small cabin. White smoke fluttered out of the
chimney and there was no telling how many men were crowded around the cabin’s
stove.

Only one guard was outside and wasn’t so much
patrolling the area as pacing quickly to keep his blood flowing. He stomped
from one end of the cabin to the other keeping his chin down and hiding behind
the large collar on his jacket.

The group moved behind a snowdrift at the
tree line. Jerry peeked over the top for a moment and slid back down between
the other four. “The guard just moved behind the cabin. Someone has to take him
out.”

JJ was built thick and quick to volunteer for
the raid team. He mumbled behind a thick brown beard as he climbed to the top
of the drift. “I’ll do it.”

He took aim with the rifle.

Jerry grabbed JJ’s ankle and pulled him back
down. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to take him out.”

“Not with the gun,” Jerry said. “They’ll hear
you.”

“So I’ll shoot them, too.”

“No,” Jerry said. “We have to do this
quietly.”

“Guns aren’t very quiet, man.”

“That’s why I’m saying don’t shoot him.”

JJ shook his head. “So why’d you even give me
the gun?”

Jerry sighed. “Just go down there and knock
him out.”

JJ frowned through the beard and started to
climb the drift again. He stopped at the top. “Can I at least hit him with the
gun?”

Jerry put his face in his hands and nodded as
JJ climbed the snowdrift and slid down the other side. He pulled his hands away
from his face and found the other three men from the team staring at him.

A man named Kyle was a little older than JJ
and not nearly as thick. He acknowledged the frustration in Jerry’s expression.
“Nobody really likes him because …”

There was a crack and thump and an, “I got
him!”

Jerry closed his eyes tight and said, “Shit,”
under his breath. When he opened his eyes, Kyle was still staring at him.

“… He’s kind of stupid.”

Jerry led the team over the drift and down
towards the cabin as five men rushed out into the snow. They were unarmed and
not expecting an attack. The mountain men made short work of the crew without
firing a shot.

The men from the woods fought hard. They were
hungry for revenge. There were years of frustration behind every punch, every
tackle and every kick at the unconscious guards. Jerry let them have only a
couple before instructing the men to bring the crew back into the cabin.

They bound the men and found a rack of keys
hanging on a nail on the wall. “Someone grab those keys and open the carriage
house.”

Kyle grabbed the keys and the men followed
him outside. Jerry looked around the spartan office. He had expected the
illusion of castles and kings to end at the castle walls, but even here he
found no guns and little technology aside from a two-way radio and an electric
light.

He was about to go after the team when the
radio crackled to life. “Water station. This is engine nine. We’re on schedule
and about twenty minutes out. We’ll be needing to top off the tanks.”

Jerry picked up the transceiver and pressed
the button to speak. “That’s good to hear, engine nine. We’ll be waiting for
you.”

Jerry set down the mic and stepped outside.
The carriage house doors were already open and Jerry walked along the spur into
the building. The team was standing around their target with their mouths
hanging open.

Jerry looked at the train car and smiled.
“That’s the one that we’re looking for.”

Kyle patted Jerry on the back. “Good plan.
Good plan.”

“Thank you, Kyle.”

The car impressed JJ as well
,
but his thinking got the best of him. “Some
plan. This thing won’t push itself. Where are you going to get a train?”

Jerry looked at his watch. “It will be here
in eighteen minutes.”

TWENTY-ONE

Erica awoke with a start. She gasped and
jerked and hit her head on the wall of the mine. She choked on the air and
remembered where she was. She began to panic. How long had she been asleep? How
could she have even fallen asleep? She wasn’t safe here.

She looked around the tunnel. Nothing had
changed since she passed out. The knight’s still held the tools as weapons and
the miners were lined against the wall. They made no move toward the king or
his men.

The beating had stopped. The miner that had
lunged for her was curled up with his back to the group. She could see his back
move as he took in deep breaths, so she knew they hadn’t killed him.

She noticed bruises on several other
prisoners but could not remember if they were there before she fell asleep. Had
there been another struggle? Had the king’s men beaten them? Or was it just a
matter of life in the mines?

She could hear Elias speaking but she could
not make out the words.

Erica stood and stretched out the kinks that
came with sleeping on the floor of a mineshaft. She nodded to the knights that
took notice and made her way towards the king’s voice.

The lights provided enough light to work by
but were also a reminder of how impossibly dark it was deep in the earth. She
moved from the cast of one bulb to the next, speeding through the shadows in
between.

The king and five of his men were at the end
of the tunnel drawing in the dirt with a stick. They spoke in hushed tones but
she could hear the ebb and flow of a debate. Once she stepped closer, she realized
they were making a plan to retake the kingdom.

The king was the first of the group to see
her. “Ah, there’s our Sleeping Beauty. Are you feeling better, my dear?”

Erica nodded and wondered if the king could
see her roll her eyes in the dark. “Thank you, Elias.”

The king nodded. “Call me Greg.”

“Thank you, Greg.” She looked at the
scrawling in the dirt. “Making plans?”

“Yes, we’re pretty certain we can retake the
town with minimal force if we can just kill that son of a bitch Robert.”

“Your son?”

Elias shook his head. “That’s not … he’s not
…” he sighed. “I’m done playing make believe. Things will be different from
here on out. But first we have to kill the prince. And we don’t think that will
be a problem.” He stepped back to give her a full view of the map on the floor.
“Once we get to the town’s wall, we enter through a secret passage known only
to me. If we go in the dead of the night, we can remain unnoticed as we move
throughout town. We’ve identified those loyal to Robert and those whose loyalty
is a matter of convenience. Once his true soldiers are taken out, and he’s
killed, there should be no trouble retaking the throne.”

“Which—” one of the knights prompted.

“Which,” Elias continued, “I will then
abdicate to a democratically elected ruler.”

“Sounds like a great plan, Greg.” Erica
didn’t care that the king had learned a lesson. She didn’t care he was growing
as a person. She just wanted outside. “So how do we get out of the mine?”

Knights of legend were known for their
stoicism. They would face death or dragons in the eye and never flinch, never
frown. Erica realized only now how easily stoicism could be confused for dumb
looks. Every man in the circle looked at her with a blank expression.

She rolled her eyes again. “Sounds like a
great plan, Greg.”

Elias pointed to the crudely drawn map on the
floor. It indicated the mineshaft, their location and several exes. Elias
explained these. “Some of the prisoners were kind enough to share what they
knew. There is a large contingent of guards at the entrance. They are now
undoubtedly armed with firearms, or we might have a chance. There is another
group here halfway up the American Tunnel between the exit and where we are
now.”

“Elias’s Vain,” Erica added.

“Yes,” Elias said with more than a little
grit in his teeth. “Thank you for reminding us all. Even this small group,
armed as they are, would mow us down.”

“There aren’t any other tunnels?” Erica
asked.

“Hundreds of them,” Elias said. “People have
been digging in the mountain for more than a century. But the prisoners have
never found the one that leads out.”

“So there is another way out?” Erica said.

“There’s another way in,” one of the knights
explained. “They’ve encountered animals down here. Every now and then a
mountain lion wanders in. It could have come from some other path. But just
because it could get in, doesn’t mean it could get out.”

“But there is another path to the surface,”
Erica said.

“Okay,” said the knight. “But how do you plan
on finding it? Do we just wait for another beast to wander in and ask it
directions? We have to attack the guards.”

“No, we have to wait,” another began to argue
and it set the debate in motion again. Every one of them had an opinion as to
what should be done, and every one of them was convinced they were right.

“Well, boys,” said Erica as she backed away.
“This is where I came in.” She walked back up the tunnel to where she had
passed out. The prisoners watched her with lustful eyes but said nothing. The
beating of her attacker must have been severe enough to turn the rest into
gentlemen.

She sat against the wall and looked up at the
ceiling. It was too low, too close, and she could feel herself begin to panic
so she looked at the ground. It reminded her of the ceiling so she looked at
her hands. When that didn’t work, she closed her eyes and focused on breathing.
After a few deep breaths, a voice spoke to her.

“You’ll get used to it.”

She opened her eyes. It was one of the
prisoners. He repeated himself. “The tightness. You’ll get used to it.”

A knight took a step toward the man. “What
did we say about speaking to the lady?”

“Relax, Lancelot.” The prisoner picked at the
dirt under his nails. It would be a lifetime to get them clean. “I was just
trying to help.”

The knight raised the shovel. “Do I need to help
you shut up?”

“No,” Erica said to the knight. “It’s okay.
Let him talk.”

The prisoner smiled at the knight and
continued. “You get used to it. You get used to walking hunched over and
breathing this dust … you get to where the outside world scares you, you know.
It’s just so big and open. Down here it’s …” he searched for the word for a
long quiet moment before shrugging and saying, “… safe.”

“Safe?” Erica asked.

“Sure. You’ve got a mountain on every side of
you watching your back. You’ll never freeze to death. You know where you stand
down here. It’s safe.”

“What about the mountain lions?”

He smiled. “That doesn’t happen often.”

“Where do you think they come from?”

“Who knows? They probably built their den in
an old tunnel thinking it was a cave. But then they got trapped and went
looking for an escape. Who can blame them?”

“Must have been pretty scary.”

Again the prisoner shrugged. “It was
exciting. Not a lot happens down here, you know. The first one that showed up,
one of the guys got so excited he tried to make the cat his pet.”

“What happened?”

“He died horribly. He died from cat.” The
prisoner smiled. “He was an idiot. But at least it only got him. The second one
killed three of us.

“It came in the dark, you see? Lights out. We
were sleeping. One of the boys feels the thing’s nose on him. He wakes up
thinking it was one of the boys playing a prank. So he punches it.
Right in the nose.
You’ve probably never punched a lion in
the nose before. It’s not a good idea.

“The thing went nuts, tearing into anything
it could find in the dark. The screams were horrible. They bounced all over the
walls; it was like a mad house before the day’s dosage kicks in. It was a
nightmare. We had to fight it in the dark. We thought we had it, but
,
by the time the lights came on
,
it was gone.”

“So this happened some time ago?” Erica
asked.

“Wednesday.”
 

“Did it die?” Erica asked. “Will it come
back? ”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” His smiled
turned wicked. “You’ll be dead long before a cat can get you.”

The knight stepped in between Erica and the
prisoner. “That’s enough out of you!”

“Enjoy your moment, Lancelot. You’ve got the
shovel now, but just wait until lights out and we’ll see how big you are.”

The knight took two quick steps forward and
struck the prisoner in the mouth with a fist. The prisoner didn’t make a sound
until he spit his front tooth out onto the mine floor. The knight smiled. “I’ll
listen for the whistle,” he promised.

Lights out? They were going to turn the
lights out? She knew she’d go mad. The dark, the deep, the heat and knowing
there was an angry mountain lion somewhere in the mines … how could she handle
lights out?

Hours passed. Or maybe it was minutes. The
knights argued. The prisoners stared and Erica focused on breathing. By doing
this she had started to feel better with the space. She focused on steady
breaths. Not too deep. Not too fast. Shallow and slow enough to get more air
than dust. She had fallen into a comfortable rhythm when the lights went out.

Confused calls came from the knights as they
tried to answer what happened, but it was soon clear that even knowing wouldn’t
help.

The prisoner that had been so chatty had the
laugh of a boogeyman. “I’m coming for you, Lancelot.”

She had never known
a
darkness
like it. There was nothing. She held her hand in front of her
face. The dial of her watch glowed faintly from what little sunlight the
luminous dial still held. She tore it from her wrist and threw it away.

“I saw that, girl.” It was the man that had
come for her before. “I know right where you are.”

The tunnel erupted in sounds as the prisoners
sprung their attack. Even a vast amount of experience in the dark meant very
little. Dark was dark. It didn’t matter how used to it you were. But the
enemies had certainly found one another. Grunts and screams filled the tunnel
as they clashed.

Erica backed against the wall and pulled her
knees to her chest, praying that the lights would come back on and that the
knights still had control.

A hand seized her ankle and pulled her into
the middle of the tunnel. She felt a hand on her chest. It was calloused and
rough. The other hand wrapped around her neck and squeezed. She felt someone
near. Hot panting breaths hit her face. The prisoner’s voice was a rasp against
nails. “Wasn’t it nice of them to turn the lights off for us?”

Erica screamed, but it did no good. They
couldn’t find her in the dark. She was at the mercy of the monster. She began
to wonder how far away the prison guards were. Where was the stupid x in the
dirt? Would they even care enough to come?

She heard the pounding of feet from farther
up Elias’s Vain. At first she thought they were the guards. But they were soft
and padded steps galloping through the dirt and dust of the fallen rock. It
growled.

The sounds of the struggle slowed. The
prisoners heard it, too, and called to one another. “It’s back.” “Get
together.” “Over here. Come find me.” “You find me.”

The man on top of her relaxed his grip and
pushed himself up. She could hear the fear in his breathing.

The beast drew closer with tremendous speed
and began to growl.

She heard the weight of the beast launch on
her attacker and the man began to scream. He screamed as the beast tore into
him.

It lasted for less than a minute. His screams
grew weaker with each second until they ceased all together.

There wasn’t a sound in the tunnel.

The beast stopped growling.
 

Erica heard it turn towards her in the
darkness. She put her hands up in front of her face. She knew what was coming
next.

The animal’s hot breath covered her face. She
felt the nose on her cheek as it sniffed. She took its head in her hands and
began to cry. “I missed you, too, girl.”

Chewy barked and Erica moved. She found the
dog’s collar with her hand and held tight as the mastiff led her up the branch
to the American Tunnel.

A light danced in the dark and a timid voice
called, “Hannibal? Hannah? Where’d you go?”

“Brae?” Erica whispered back and the beam
from the flashlight found her face in the dark.

“I swear that dog can find you anywhere!”

Erica gave Brae a quick hug and took the
flashlight the girl offered her.

“Follow me,” she pointed the light farther
into the American Tunnel. “Hannah found a way in.”