“So, what happened out there?” she asked. “All I know is that the ships crashed.”
“The dragons hit us over Wyoming,” I said. “At least fifty of them. I don’t know what we were thinking, and it’s lucky all of us survived. Augustus, believe it or not, got a spaceship out of Bunker Six — Orion. He picked us up when he detected Aeneas and Gilgamesh falling.”
“Really?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah. He’s on our side, now. We think.” I paused. “He even gave us another spaceship, Perseus. But there will be time for all that later. What’s important is getting you to Command, safe and sound.”
She said nothing for a moment.
“Thanks, Alex,” she said. “I should have said that earlier. Guess this is the second time you’ve gotten me out of a rough spot.”
“It was nothing,” I said. “I just came along at the right time.”
“Are Lauren and Callie up there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They got out before the Lords fully took over. They’re in Command.”
Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I knew she had gotten out, but I didn’t know what happened after.”
We took the rest of the stairs without a break or further conversation. As we reached level three, the lights flickered on again. I shielded my eyes, squinting, waiting a moment for them to adjust. I clicked my flashlight off.
My eyes were met with ruin. The bodies of both Angels and Lords littered the floor. Blood splattered the walls and coated the floor. A pile of rubble lay where the corridor had collapsed. Maybe they had hoped to use those explosives on the Command Center.
“Horrible,” Ruth said.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
The New Angels had been fractured by the Vegas Lords’ rebellion. With both Gilgamesh and Aeneas crashed, and no word from the leaders, the fracturing was inevitable. Char and Marcus couldn’t keep the lid on, and it only took a few days for it to boil over.
It was an indisputable fact that there were only two weeks of food and no way to evacuate everyone from Bunker 84. The only solution was to preemptively decide to feed fewer mouths, and the Vegas lords wanted to decide which mouths to feed.
Jade, Rey, and Cain and their chosen followers elected themselves to survive the coming bloodbath. They had taken control in the night, and anyone who resisted their rule, or who was aligned with the Raiders or Exiles, was either attacked or driven into the higher reaches of the Bunker.
Char and Marcus woke to the sounds of the fighting and rescued who they could, and were captured in the process. Those that were left behind, including the Raiders and Exiles who didn’t manage to escape, were brutally murdered. It was necessary, in the gang lords’ minds, to kill them in order to save the chosen remnant.
It wasn’t clear why the gang lords had decided to spare Char and Marcus. When we found them, their forms were thin and haggard. They’d been without food for a week. Char had said that the gang lords had wanted to starve them to death, as a warning to any who dared stand against them.
The fighting continued on and off throughout the following week. Every day, the Angels’ numbers dwindled. Given another week, the Lords’ victory probably would have been complete. Hundreds died, mostly civilians, and what had once been fifteen hundred survivors now totaled four hundred.
Only half of the Community women had been spared. Lyn was among the dead, but Deborah and Ada survived.
In the day following the Lords’ capitulation, everyone was moved downstairs from the Command Center. Cain, the only rebel gang lord to survive, came bound hand and foot. Many cried out for his immediate death, but I guessed Makara and Samuel wanted to keep him alive for some reason. I realized that, other than Grudge, he was the only gang lord left. Boss Dragon died early in the fighting from a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
So much had changed, and much more would change still. In the south, Augustus still needed our help, and that fact was at the forefront of Makara’s mind.
It wouldn’t be long until the Radaskim reached Los Angeles.
Ashton parked Perseus in the hangar, and I took advantage by getting some much-needed sleep. I probably crashed around 08:00 — approximately twenty-five hours after I had last woken up. My sleep was dark and dreamless, as close to being dead as I’d ever felt. I was almost surprised to wake up later that afternoon. I checked my watch, finding that it was now 16:02.
I was drifting into a doze once again when the compartment door slid open. It was Anna, supporting herself by the doorframe.
I patted the bed. She smiled, and limped forward. I got up to help her out.
“Don’t worry yourself,” she said. “I got this.”
“You need to learn to depend on me,” I said. “Really, it’s not so bad.”
“I guess,” she said.
I eased her onto the bed. She winced in pain, settling on her good side. Ashton said she had broken two ribs on her left side. She lay on her right side, propping her head up with her arm.
“You alright?”
She waved a hand. “Yeah, fine. Except that lying down all the time is going to make me go weak.”
I wrapped my arm around her, gently. It felt good to hold her again.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” I said. “It could have been much worse.”
“What’s worse than being useless?”
“You’re not useless. Someone’s value isn’t determined by how many crawlers they can skewer through the eye.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
We lay there for a moment before I closed my eyes, ready to let myself drift off to sleep.
“You’re so tired,” she said. “You’ve been sleeping since this morning.”
“I know. I could sleep more if I wanted.”
“Well…Ashton said there was a conference later.”
“What time?”
“18:00. I think they’re wanting to leave the Bunker behind.”
“For Los Angeles?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s crazy to think how we’re allied with him,” I said, eyes still closed.
“Politics can change fast,” Anna said. “I’ll bet if it were beneficial to him, he’d switch right back.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I think he’s actually genuine. Yeah, he’s out for himself, but he’s trying to protect his Empire. Who can fault him for that?”
Anna didn’t respond. Something else was on her mind.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked, opening my eyes.
She sighed. “Now that this Bunker business is over…maybe now’s the right time to see the Wanderer.”
“What about Los Angeles? That’ll keep us pretty busy.”
“I think this is more important,” Anna said. “Los Angeles will just be a battle. Getting an answer from the Wanderer could mean the war.”
“We already know what will win the war,” I said.
Anna’s body stiffened. “I don’t think you believe me yet. I’m not going to let you die. That’s not an option. We’re going to find another way. I’m tired of this idea that the innocent have to die to save the rest of us. It shouldn’t be like that.”
I hated when she talked about this. The more she got this idea stuck in her head, the more painful it would be, in the end.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked. “If there was another way, don’t you think he would have told me?”
“We’ll never know unless we ask him specifically.”
“I already have asked him,” I said. “He said this was the only way.”