I knew then that I would have no choice but to cooperate with this witch.
She saw it in my face and I wanted to kill her when that smile of hers reached her eyes.
“Now then,” she said turning to look at the shore. “We need your help I’m afraid. This big ship didn’t move as fast as we would have liked it to. We sent ahead some of our crew on the speed boat, including your West. They should have gotten to safety before the Bane woke. But it’s starting to get light, and they’re waiting for us.”
She pointed to the shore and I finally noticed the small details I had missed before.
Bane.
At least a dozen of them standing along the shore, watching us with empty eyes.
“From what your friend told Tara, you have the ability to control them,” she looked back at me with curiosity. “We need you to keep them off us so we can get home.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “I think you’re overestimating my abilities. Controlling the Bane, especially that many, isn’t a sure thing.”
“I think you’ll manage,” she said coldly. Suddenly she made a signal with her hand and the boat growled back to life and started to crawl forward.
It was going to be pointless to fight them, that much was obvious.
So all I could do was start thinking stay away.
The massive boat pulled alongside the dock, and with jerky movements, the Bane along the shore started moving toward us.
One of them had been standing on the boardwalk and was moving at a quick rate. His legs moved at jerky intervals as if he were walking through tar.
“I suggest you make it stop,” Margaret said, turning cold eyes on me. “Because if you can’t do what your friend West said you could do, we have no reason to try and keep you alive.”
“Just shoot it!” I yelled as I watched it make its way closer. It stumbled as its legs froze.
“Call this a test,” she said.
By now the Bane had climbed to its feet again and was sprinting toward the dock.
“Stop!” I yelled, my heart pounding in my chest.
And it instantly froze in place.
“The water,” I said, my voice shaking more than I would have liked. “Now.”
It jumped off the dock. It hit the water with hissing sounds and a quick pop of light before it shorted out and sank out of sight.
I slowly met Margaret’s eyes. That wicked grin was back. “Now that’s more like it,” she said. “Test completed. Shoot the rest of them.”
The air was instantly alive with the sound of gunfire. Their bodies dropped on the shore.
“Let’s move!” Alistar screamed.
The dolly I was chained to suddenly jerked to motion as one of the men grabbed the back of it and started pushing me out onto the dock. And everyone was running.
When we got to the end of the boardwalk and out onto a road, I saw why.
A good one hundred Bane were climbing out of buildings, running down roads. All called by the noise of their shots.
Stay back, I thought, over and over.
“Stay away from us!” I yelled.
More and more bodies climbed out of buildings.
My connection wasn’t very strong with so many of them, but my captors fired as we ran. And I was able to keep them far enough away to keep any of them from touching us.
We had run for less than a minute when one of the armed men pulled open a heavy door in the sidewalk. A set of stairs dropped into the darkness. Someone grabbed the metal plate beneath my feet, and the two of them lifted me and down we dropped.
Once everyone had clambered inside, the door was closed and I heard a lock slide into place.
The lighting was dim and it took even my eyes a few moments to adjust.
We were in some kind of tunnel. Crumbling brick, stone, and wood walls stretched out before us. Moisture was heavy in the air. Everything tasted like mildew. Gas lamps hung every so often, providing little light to see by.
They carried me down the tunnel. As we moved, other’s popped their heads out from doors. Each of them was as pale and sickly looking as the last.
I didn’t have to ask questions. They survived in this city by never seeing the sun.
But that was only going to last so long. The Bane were Evolving past that need.
We entered a large room. The floor was dirty and dusty, just like all the walls and the crumbling ceiling.
The men carrying me set the dolly down and Margaret and Alistar stood before me.
“Welcome to the Underground,” she said.
“I think I’ll decline that welcome,” I growled.
“Then decline it,” she said, her expression going sour. “But you’re not going anywhere.”
“Why are you doing this?” I said. I wasn’t sure if I felt any better when her armed men started disbanding from the room. “I mean, you’re human. Aren’t we supposed to be helping each other survive? Not kidnapping each other.”
“Exactly!” she exploded. Her eyes blazed and she seemed to grow six inches. “Those of us who are left are supposed to help each other! Each of us has a duty to reclaim our world. But your people keep their technology to themselves. They let that weapon sit and rot on the roof when they could be using it to clear our country, our continent!”
“What did you expect?” I spat back. “You came in with secrets and lies and guns and just expected us to hand it over to you?”
“I expected you all to see what the right thing to do was,” she said coldly as she took a step closer to me. “We are growing fewer and fewer each and every day. You want to know what the estimated percentage of the remaining human population is now? Less than half a percent! Ninety-nine point five percent of the population has been infected. If we don’t do something now, we are handing the planet over to the Bane.”
The last statistic I had heard was ninety-eight. And even though it had only changed by one and a half percent, it was crushing to hear it.
I didn’t have anything to say in response.
“We’re not done with your friends down south,” Margaret said. She placed her hands on her hips and took another step closer. “But we have a new subject to learn from first.”
“I’m not telling you anything until I see that West is safe.” Everything in me screamed to find a way out of this place, to not say a word. But I couldn’t just leave West here unaware of what these people were really doing.
“And I’m happy to oblige,” she said with that repulsive smile. I realized then why it was so vile. Her teeth were a disgusting mix of yellow and brown and the ones on the left side of her mouth were horridly crooked. “Right this way.”
Alistar came behind me and wheeled me down another tunnel.
“I seriously suggest you don’t say a word, or even breathe,” Margaret said as we slowed at the end of a tunnel. “He is never to know you are here.”
“I understand,” I said with a dead voice.
We stopped outside a door with a cloudy window. Alistar wheeled me right up to it.
West was seated inside, talking to a man with a bushy beard that didn’t fit his narrow body. The man tapped the device in West’s chest, speaking words I couldn’t hear.
“Thank you,” I said quietly and they started wheeling me down another tunnel. “What is this place?” I asked when we had some distance between us.
“The Underground of Seattle,” Alistar said. So he did speak for himself after all. “The majority of the city of Seattle burned in the late 1800’s. The ground level frequently flooded with the tides and rain though, so instead of rebuilding, they built on top of the remains. These tunnels are what’s left of the original city. We’ve extended them into the basements of other buildings, securing them.”