“I’ve been thinking about things,” Jack said.
“What things?”
“The flight, New York, and home. I can’t decide whether we were lucky or doomed for getting into all this. I’ve never told you, but I was kicked out of the Army for punching a major.”
“Why are you telling me this? It hardly matters now.”
Jack sighed. “It’s something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while. I don’t want you thinking—”
“Why don’t you tell this lot? I’m sure they’re bothered.”
Typical Jack. He’d never had a sense of timing. The incident probably weighed heavy on his mind, and he would have stewed over telling me. Lying in a pit of dead bodies, it was the least of my concerns. The major probably deserved it.
He raised the blazer a few inches and looked at me. “I suppose you’re right. Our history is irrelevant now.”
“Remember northern England, Jack. We’ve still got a glimmer of hope.”
Jerry had told us during his interrogation in Montgomery that the activation had failed in northern England. Ron’s reaction had seemed to back it up, but I’d refused to let myself get carried away. Killers could easily spread from the southern end of the island, Scotland, and Wales. Besides that, our priority remained immediate survival.
Jack gasped.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I think a rat bit my finger. I’m going to move toward you. I can’t stop myself from sinking here.”
I heard a moist crunching sound and a twiglike snap as he shuffled across. “Don’t even think about telling me what that was.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not looking.”
I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll be all right. If we can get through this, we can get through anything they throw at us.”
He grunted. “We’ll see.”
For the next hour and a half, we lay in still silence. A Genesis Alliance goon could arrive at any time to scan the area. Signs of movement would be easy to spot. Corpses don’t scratch themselves, cough, or flinch if a bird lands on their head.
Eventually, the light began to fade, and we still hadn’t experienced any live human contact.
“What’s the plan?” Jack mumbled through the blazer.
“I’m still trying to decide. The way I see it, we’ve got three options. Option one: We go cross-country, away from Monroe, and pick up a vehicle on the southbound highway. Option two: If the coast is clear, we sneak back and get the rifle to give us a bit more protection, then either take the Toyota or revert to option one…”
“And the third?”
“We try and find Lea, but I—”
“No way, Harry. I’ve already thought about that. She sneaked away from us, and we have no idea how to find her. A betting man would put money on her being in Monroe, dead or alive. You know she went back to find Martina. It’s too dangerous.”
“I kind of agree. We don’t owe her our lives. I think that’s why she did what she did, to save us making a difficult decision.”
“We could always come back for her with a small army.”
“Do you want to go back there?”
“No.”
“What’s your preferred option?” I asked.
I felt regret about leaving Lea behind, but she had made her own move and taken the decision out of our hands. The first mission had to be getting out of this stinking pit at nightfall; the second, to move away from danger and come up with a plan. The longer I spent in the place, the more rage bubbled inside me about Genesis Alliance and their actions. They were pushing me to prioritize revenge over survival.
Jack peeled the blazer away from his face. “I say we recover the rifle, hunt a goon, and gather some intel. What do you reckon?”
I thought about it for a moment. Although it initially seemed an unnecessary risk, we needed to know about the prospect of a second activation. “Give it another half an hour. We’ll crawl along the hedge and sneak through the cars again. If we can’t find a goon before midnight, we go.”
“Two would be perfect. I’m stiff and cold. We could both use some dry clothes.”
I fully removed the shirt from my face, and rain spattered against it. I used the last few minutes of the fading light to gain my night vision and check our immediate surroundings. Without seeing any danger signs, I sat up, stretched my limbs, and shivered before rubbing my arms and legs to get the circulation going. If GA had fanned around the perimeter of Monroe, they wouldn’t be expecting what we were planning.
I rolled to the edge of the pit. “Leopard-crawling all the way unless the shit hits the fan.”
The Army had taught me to lose my silhouette in the background and not to expose it to the skyline. We only had a short distance to travel, and I was conscious that we wouldn’t last long in a firefight.
I balanced my boot on top of a human head, hoping for a solid platform to haul myself out of the mass grave. I thrust upward and my sole slipped on the hair below it. My boot slid down the face and twisted the jaw into an unnatural position with a crunch. I composed myself, stood on the side of the same face, and successfully hoisted myself out. I’d never felt happier to be lying on wet grass.
Jack clambered out a couple of feet to my left. He raised a thumb and crawled toward the hedge. He wriggled through the gap, and I followed him through, back among the clutter of cars.
He held the Ruger forward in his right hand. Rain tinkled off the vehicles, and a slight breeze created background noise as the trees rustled on our right. Under the cover of the wet darkness, we snaked through the tangle and cleared the mass obstacle within minutes.
My clothes were soaked. The sweater seemed to be very efficient at absorbing moisture, but I was glad of anything that might dilute the stink of the pit that we had brought with us.
Jack crouched behind a stray vehicle at the end of the mass and pointed his Ruger. “Over there. Can you see it?”
I squinted into the dark and picked out the shape of our Toyota, still in its original position. We had fifty yards to cover. Other vehicles, indiscriminately parked at angles on the road, were clustered around it, most likely from a continuing cleanup operation.
We edged closer, ducking between cars. I caught sight of a red glow in my peripheral vision and grabbed Jack’s arm.
He spun to face me. “What is it?”
I held up two fingers and pointed ahead. Jack looked toward eleven o’clock from his position. The glow illuminated at regular intervals from inside one of the vehicles close to the Toyota. We shuffled behind an SUV.
“Somebody’s having a smoke in there,” Jack said.
I peered over the SUV’s hood to confirm. “It must be one of them. Who else is gonna be out here tonight?”
“Okay, let’s take it.”
“Check it out first. If it’s one person, we jump straight in. If it’s full, we leave it.” I glanced over again but couldn’t see inside the dark, rain-covered windows. “If the doors are locked, make sure they don’t get a chance to pull a gun.”
Jack held up the Ruger. “If the doors are locked, I’m not fucking about.”
Dark shapes of single-story houses ran along the right side of the road. Perfect for sneaking—level with the car for a quick assault. “Right flanking maneuver. Take them from behind.”
I ran for the closest property, trying to stay light on my feet. At the back, I climbed over a six-foot fence, landed in a neighboring property’s back garden, and clattered into a child’s swing.
Jack passed me and slapped my shoulder. “We’ll be heading away in no time. I can’t wait to get those heaters on.”