“Don’t talk like that,” I said as I grabbed her face in my hands and looked her right in the eyes. “We’re gonna get out of here, okay?”
“No, we’re not.” The blonde woman’s eyes filled with tears. “At least we saved my dimension though, right?”
“Right,” I said with a somber nod.
As much as I hated to admit it, Natalie was right. Maybe one of us had the chance to escape, but that was only if the anchor decided to hold. And even then, we still had the Rubberfaces to worry about.
I could hear their footsteps growing closer, and it was only a matter of time before they were upon us.
Then I heard a sound that made my hair stand on end.
The chuff of helicopter blades.
A moment later, a dark shadow appeared over the hole in the silo, and then two ropes fell down through the opening.
At their end were the Scavengers William and Harrison, both armed with AK-47s. The two men took aim at the platforms down below, squeezed their triggers, and rained hell on the Rubberfaces. They both held their attack for a solid ten seconds, and then they holstered their weapons and high-fived each other.
“William?” Natalie gasped. “Harrison?”
“I heard a little bloke and sheila were in trouble!” he shouted as he threw his weapon over his shoulder. “So, we figured we’d come to bail the two of ‘yas out.”
“Marcus is going to be sooooo pissed,” Natalie murmured, but her face was plastered with a wide grin.
“I wouldn’t worry about him,” Harrison called down as he pointed up at the hovering chopper. “It was his idea to come get ya.”
“Now, are we gonna all just gonna stand here with our weddin’ tackles in our hands,” William interjected, “or are we gonna shoot through this godforsaken place?”
God bless this man.
William and Harrison both held out their hands, and Natalie and I took them. The two men wrapped their arms around us in a bear-hug like hold and produced a flashlight from their belts. They flashed them up at the pilot twice, and then the ropes began to rise.
Soon, all four of us were pulled up to the cabin of the helicopter, where another Scavenger helped us crawl up inside.
It was Marcus.
“Well, well, well… ” He feigned annoyance as he placed his hands on his hips. “Look who couldn’t pull it off on their own after all.”
“Can it, Marcus,” Natalie joked. “We did literally everything but escape.”
“It’s still a crucial point,” the Scavenger leader chuckled.
“Thank you.” I nodded and outstretched my hand to Marcus. “We disobeyed your direct orders, stole your supplies and your dune buggy… And you still came back for us.”
“Of course I did, Hunter!” Marcus proclaimed. “You’re a Scavenger, my boy. Now, let’s get the fuck out of here, eh?”
Marcus turned to the pilot, let out a loud whistle, and then the chopper began to head back toward the camp.
Meanwhile, I slumped back down into one of the chairs.
It was over.
Somehow, some way… Natalie and I had pulled it off, and we’d both come out the other side in one piece.
If this didn’t call for a Scavenger celebration, I didn’t know what did.
“Karla,” I whispered to the voice in my head. “Tell your father… mission accomplished.”
Chapter 16
Now that we were safely away from the power plant, in the cabin of the helicopter headed back to our base, the entire Scavenger crew was in full celebration mode.
“Could you guys have cut it any closer?” Natalie laughed. “We were literally minutes away from death.”
“It’s not too late to take ya back.” William shrugged.
“Of course I cut it close, I wanted to make sure you were grateful.” Marcus mused sarcastically, and Natalie responded with a playful slap to his arm.
“But seriously,” I spoke up. “What made you decide to change your mind?”
Marcus’ face grew overly serious as he leaned back in his chair.
“I never changed my mind,” he admitted. “I thought it was a hopeless plan back then, and I thought it was a hopeless plan all the way up until we picked you up. Thankfully, I was one-hundred percent wrong, and I fully admit that. However, the reason I came back for you was simple… We don’t leave our own to die, no matter how much they’ve wronged us.”
“But… what about the people you’ve exiled over the years?” the blonde woman questioned. “They were ‘your people,’ too, right?”
“Wait,” William chuckled, “do you really think Marcus here just sent ‘em off into the forest alone to die?”
Marcus shot the Aussie a glare, but William didn’t give a damn.
“That’s what we were all told.” Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “Is that not accurate?”
“I think we should maybe—” Marcus began, but William cut him off.
“Not inna slightest, sweetie!” William guffawed. “Marcus here just ‘banished’ em to another Scavenger group. The one up on the north coast, near the place with the abandoned stadium.”
“Wait,” Natalie gasped, “you’re telling me this whole time, you’ve just been sending people off to another group, and they’re perfectly fine?”
“It wasn’t a total lie,” Marcus grumbled, “I did banish them from the Scavengers… But I wasn’t gonna be the one to sign their death warrants. All of our banished brothers are up in the Coldlands with the Scroungers.”
“The Scroungers?” I chuckled. “How original.”
“Well, we sure as fuck weren’t lettin’ ‘em take our name!” William cackled.
“In all seriousness, though,” I noted, “you should probably get with them and let them know everything that’s gone down. They’ll probably need to evacuate this area before the meltdown happens, too.”
“I’m already planning on it, Hunter.” Marcus nodded. “In fact, now that we have to be completely uprooted… I think we’re going to make some drastic changes to our lifestyle.”
“Whoa, there,” Harrison spoke up, “how ‘drastic’ are we talking here? I kind of like our current lifestyle.”
“And you’ll enjoy the new one, as well,” Marcus reassured his follower as he placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “We will still scavenge fallen cities and make camp and do all those things. But we’re going on the move. We need to tell every single surviving human about what happened here. If we can somehow replicate your actions at other nuclear plants across the world? The Rubberface species will be wiped off the face of the map.”
That must have been what Karla and Dr. Nash had been talking about. This was how the timeline was saved.
If the Scavengers helped the rest of humanity in eliminating the Rubberfaces, there would be no more threat to their existence.
Once the mutants were gone, the human race could start to rebuild.
All on the shoulders of Marcus and the Scavengers.
Suddenly, Karla’s voice popped into my head.
Hunter? Miss Nash questioned. Are you there? We’ve got some… interesting developments going on over here.
My heart sank into my stomach.
“What’s up?” I asked softly enough so nobody else in the helicopter could hear, which wasn’t hard since it was crazy loud.
My father’s algorithms are going crazy right now, she explained. Did anything unusual happen during your mission?
“What, other than fighting off bloodthirsty mutants?” I joked. “Other than that, no. The mission was successful, and I should be ready to go after I wrap some things up with the Scavengers.”
Just you? the voice in my head questioned. What happened to Natalie?
“She hasn’t made a decision yet,” I explained. “She’s still got a lot to work to do here, with her own people, so I’m not sure if she’s going to be coming back to Dimension One.”