Then on to Wellspring.
And is that what I should be doing? He had been sent here with a mission. Did that mission now include joining the Resistance?
He remembered reading by flashlight in a cave in Tora Bora. A history of the French Resistance. How Le Resistance might have done little to deter the Nazi’s plans. And worse-it made life hell for the people of France. A hundred people executed for any Nazi or Petainiste killed.
Heavy price to fight back.
Raine’s philosophy was that, in a war or a battle, you best have a chance of winning. Otherwise the struggle and the loss of life just wasn’t worth it.
So he told himself, at that moment, he’d decide where he stood-and what he’d do-when the time came.
The broken road by his side, even more gaping pieces without any pavement, curved right. He followed alongside it.
And then-around a small hill, just ahead-he saw a city.
Raine tried to match what he now saw and what he had studied on the charts. A few towering buildings had obviously been broken in half, like branches stuck in the ground during a hurricane and roughly snapped in two.
He saw a few glimmers of reflected light, windows that still had glass. But most of the buildings had dark, gaping holes. Other buildings missed a wall or had no top. It looked as if some force had pried the roofs off like the pull tabs on a can.
The hospital, he thought. Near the center of the devastated city. He’d have to go deep into this destroyed city, the Dead City, to get there.
Did they use this place because it was well away from the cities and settlements… so they could keep their work secret?
Or was what they were doing so dangerous that this “dead city” was the only place they could do it? Suddenly he wished he had a convoy with him. A few squadrons of well-armed grunts following in his tracks. Because-sitting here in his buggy, a few sidearms and grenades his entire arsenal-it seemed absolutely insane to be going into the place alone.
He went slowly.
Crevasses mixed with chunks of broken street. Towering buildings had fallen across what were once avenues, forcing him to stop, turn around, and find another way forward.
Once, he nearly drove over what looked like merely another oversized pothole but in fact turned out to be an opening that could have eaten his buggy, a giant pit sliding down to… what?
Sewers? A subway? Underground tunnels?
And all the time, while he navigated the streets, he kept looking left and right.
He heard a sound.
At first he took it to be the wind sighing through the open structures, creating weird whistling and groaning noises that cut through the skeletons of the buildings. And some of what he heard was definitely that.
But then he heard other noises. Sporadic. Sudden. Like barks. Quick. Sharp. No wind was making that particular sound.
It was made by something alive.
He had the shotgun across his lap. His automatic rifle and handgun sat on the seat next to him.
Each few yards deeper into this city made him feel more edgy. It got to the point where he had to remind himself to be steady. Keep your eyes open. Finally saying those words aloud, as he might to a squad trailing along with him.
“Steady. Eyes open. Don’t rush.”
No, rushing could be the worst. Wanting to get in and out without proper scouting, you made mistakes.
He passed two cars, one a cab, the other an SUV. Both with their hoods open, their innards removed, paint vanished. He wondered if whoever came for the parts got out of the city.
Then, barely recognizable… a store.
God, he thought, a bodega. A few letters were still visible, and the faded sign advertised fruit, a few faint bananas sitting next to a faded apple.
He stopped and, from the buggy, looked inside the hollowed-out inside of the building. Whatever it carried had long ago vanished. Now only the ancient signs remained, a reminder of what life used to be.
He took a drink of water from the canteen Kvasir gave him. Then he ripped off a piece of the “bread,” its doughy texture a poor excuse for what he remembered.
“Loaded with good stuff,” Kvasir had said.
He thought: Will I ever taste real, fresh food again? He looked longingly at the pictures of fruit. He imagined that all those tastes, the smells, were gone forever.
All gone.
Raine started the buggy again.
The way to the hospital was blocked, as though someone had piled up a line of smashed cars and trucks, half a bus, and a container car from a train to create a wall of metal.
Odd, that they all just ended up here, cutting off the street.
He’d have to leave his buggy, climb over, make his way to the entrance of the building.
Raine looked up.
Three stories tall, and Kvasir said the data room of the hospital was at the top. The Authority had run their experiments out of this building until they couldn’t anymore.
He had heard sounds. Were there mutants here? And if so, where were they?
It was an edgy feeling that he’d had before, patrolling dark city streets in Iraq.
But never this bad.
He killed the buggy’s engine and grabbed the pack from the back. The hard drive Kvasir described would be compact and not have much weight-the pack Kvasir had given him should be perfect for the job. And, despite how quiet it was, he put a few incendiaries into the pack.
He got out, stuck the handgun behind his back and filled his pockets with shells.
He’d like a free hand, but it would be wisest to bring both the automatic rifle and the shotgun. He looked into the buggy, seeing if he’d forgotten anything.
He grabbed the tools from the back. The screwdriver. The hammer.
The tire iron.
You never know…
Quiet wasn’t always a good thing, he told himself. He slid the iron into his pack, the handle sticking out over his shoulder.
He started climbing over the wreckage that blocked the way to the abandoned hospital.
The revolving door had been smashed, the rotating blades devoid of glass.
A sign in the lobby said: BE PREPARED TO SHOW PROPER AUTHORITY IDENTIFICATION.
The place smelled. A sharp metallic stench mixed with something like oil, as if pipes had burst here. To the right he saw stairs. They were behind two security doors, both now hanging off their hinges.
Whatever-whoever-went through this building didn’t like doors.
A sea of shattered glass glistened on the floor. A reception desk had been smashed in two.
Would anything be left of their computers?
Seemed unlikely.
Holding the rifles at hip level, he took a breath, the smell still horrible, and started up the stairs.
On the second-floor stairwell-in the darkness, with scant light coming from the corridor outside-he stopped.
He heard sounds now. Nothing too loud. But there was definitely movement. A sound of steps. He tried to place it. On this floor, or below? Or maybe just above him?
Fuck, he thought.
He just knew one thing now: he definitely wasn’t alone. How many incendiaries, the handmade grenades Kvasir had given him, did he throw into the pack. Four? Had he taken enough?
And though his pockets were filled with ammo, if there were muties here, you could go through bullets so sickeningly fast with them.
You never had enough.
The sounds stopped.
He started up the stairs again.
He walked past laboratories, the once gleaming metal tables turned over, cabinets with empty shelves ripped off the walls.
And past the labs, what might have been patient rooms-save for the fact that the bed frames had leather straps all around. Whatever was put into these rooms… no one wanted them to get up.
In one room, he saw walls covered with a dark, purplish crust. Like blood spatters, the type of thing you’d find after a firefight in close quarters. Except here the color was wrong. He thought back to his fight in the desert with the mutants and remembered something.