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  Kenyon stood ten feet back with a group of female Riders. He stood partly behind two of them.

  Living shields, Ella thought, wondering if the two creatures understood why he had positioned them that way. They might not fully understand the danger posed by the weapons Mason and Chad carried, but Kenyon certainly did. And he was armed with an assault rifle of his own, though he kept the barrel low and unthreatening.

  Mason waved Ella out and she complied. As she passed Mason she met his eyes and offered him a fiendish grin. “Your funeral.”

  A flash of doubt and horror flickered over his face, doubly so when he noticed she’d ripped her shirt, revealing the bra he’d supplied her. Then she was outside, on the porch, limping, crying and holding one hand to her head. “Eddie, thank God.”

  Kenyon’s face was a frozen mask. He didn’t look angry or confused, but Ella knew that it was his poker face. Just because he wasn’t showing emotion didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling it. The question was, what was he feeling. Anger? Hate? Concern? The emotion she was hoping for, the one that would get her the result she sought, was love. If he loved her still, despite her betrayal, he wouldn’t be able to ignore what she said next.

  Stumbling toward the steps, she said, “He sent Peter away to be killed. He’s probably already dead.” That didn’t get a reaction, but it wasn’t really supposed to. That information was only offered to lend credence to what came next. “He kept me here. Dressed me like this.” She motioned to her Southern belle outfit and let her hand stop over her chest, pulling Kenyon’s attention to the lacy bra he knew she would have never worn by choice. “Eddie...” She fell to her knees, eyes on the ground and the large hairy feet at the bottom of the steps. “He raped me.”

  23

  Peter gauged the distance between him and the Rider, then took a step closer. If the creature attacked, it would be close, but he thought he could manage it. They’d have to then survive the horde of male Riders and Woolies positioned on either side of the road, and whatever might still be following them, but facing problems one at a time was the only way to ensure things got done right. It had been drilled into his head during Marine training, and it made a lot of real world, logical sense. In the same way as finishing folding laundry before starting the dishes, you didn’t aim at a new target until the first was down. Getting ahead of yourself was a good way to get dead, he’d been taught. Just one of many lessons learned during his time as a CSO that kept him alive.

  So he ignored the future problems presented by the monsters closing in from all directions, and focused on the one standing right in front of him, spear aimed to kill, but still in hand.

  The creature was showing restraint.

  And the look in its eyes—confusion—suggested it had understood his apology.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  No reply.

  “For Kristen.”

  No reply. No reaction.

  “For killing your leader.”

  The female snarled. That resonated.

  “Family,” she said, her voice deeper than his. “Kill family.”

  The words stung. Peter hadn’t just killed his wife and his son’s mother, but this Rider’s surrogate family member as well. No wonder they tracked us down. But what was Kristen to this Rider? A sister? A mother figure? Something more...intimate? Kristen was as heterosexual as someone could be, but she’d changed in nearly every other way, so it wasn’t impossible.

  “Leader,” Peter said, and then patted his chest with both hands. “She was my wife. My family.”

  The female growled again, and then stabbed her spear into the dirt road. She let go of the weapon that she really wouldn’t need if she decided to kill him, and pointed at his chest. “You killed family.”

  “Protected family,” Peter said. “Kristen—your leader—tried to eat my son. Her son. She tried to eat him.”

  The female showed no reaction, including anger, which Peter took as a good sign.

  “Do you understand?” Peter asked.

  A nod.

  “Do you have a son? A child?”

  The Rider’s face contorted. “Not...anymore.”

  Peter didn’t have to ask. He knew the child’s likely fate. But the Rider seemed to be in a sharing mood.

  “Daughter.” The female linked her arms like she was holding a baby. She rocked them back and forth, looking at the memory of a bundle. For a moment, her eyes looked nearly human. Then her natural ferocity returned. “Killed by...monsters.” She opened her arms, looking at the gnarly hair dangling from them. “Like me.”

  “You would kill to protect your daughter,” Peter said. It wasn’t a question. With parents, it never was.

  “I did kill,” came the quiet answer.

  “I did the same,” Peter said. “I killed my wife, your leader. I killed her to protect my son. I am sorry for that, but...I would do it again.”

  The female grunted, and Peter had trouble hiding his shock. Was he getting through to her? Could this creature reason? He’d been surprised when Kristen was able to recognize him and Jakob, and to think clearly enough to demand her son back. But this...this was a step beyond. The Riders were evolving, becoming more intelligent. And with intelligence, they were gaining understanding. And empathy.

  But all the empathy in the world couldn’t change the fact that he and Boone had killed even more Riders, though most of the dead could be chalked up to the ExoGator. Then again, the Rider caste system seemed to value the much larger and stronger females. So far, he’d only killed males.

  He needed a way to remove himself from the hit list, and the only way he could think to do that was nearly as disturbing as ending this confrontation in battle.

  Peter put a hand on his chest. “My name is—”

  “Peter,” the female said. “Peter Crane, enemy of the Chunta—” She opened her arms to indicate the Riders and Woolies. “—of Feesa—” She placed a hand on her hair-cloaked breast. “—and of Eddie Kenyon.”

  Peter tensed at Kenyon’s name. He’d suspected the man’s involvement, but hadn’t yet confirmed it. If Kenyon was working with the Riders...the Chunta...then working through whatever lies, or truths, he’d told them could prove impossible. Just because they’d found some common ground didn’t mean the Rider was planning to let him walk away. But this creature valued family, and understood the pain of losing it so deeply that she had pursued him across a large portion of the country. He wasn’t sure if Feesa’s bond with Kristen had really been that deep, or if his wife’s death had picked free the scab sealing in the pain wrought from her daughter’s death. But there might be a way to make things right, or at least salve the wound.

  He risked a step closer, hands outstretched. “Kristen. Your leader. She was like a mother to you?”

  “Sister,” Feesa said. “She was sister.”

  “She was my wife.” Peter took a few steps closer. They were just ten feet apart. He looked for signs of aggression, but saw none. So he stepped even closer. Within arm’s reach, he stopped. He pointed at Feesa. “Your sister.” Pointed at himself. “My wife.”

  A nod and grunt were confirmation that she heard him, but it was the sudden blink and widening of her eyes that told him she understood. He waited for her to say it. She looked up, eyes meeting his. “Brother.”

  In-law, he thought, but close enough. He smiled, reached out slowly and placed a hand on her hairy arm. “Sister.”

  And then he sweetened the deal. “My son. My daughter.”

  Feesa inhaled loudly, a smile on her lips. Her shifting teeth tugged at the skin of her face where the tips were hidden. “Nephew,” she said. “Niece!”

  Peter nodded. In a screwed up, post-Change world, none of this was far from reality. There were no laws to govern such things, and family could be determined however anyone chose, especially if that someone was strong enough to tear a man in half.

  Peter stayed silent. Feesa’s twitching eyebrows reminded him of the Golden Retriever he’d had growing u
p. Named Mr. Miggins, the dog’s eyebrows spoke a language of their own. Young Peter had tried to find meaning in the dancing brows, but came to the conclusion that Mr. Miggins’s eyebrows revealed he was pondering something—usually food or tennis balls. But Feesa had a bit more going on upstairs than Mr. Miggins.

  Her deep thinking about new familial connections ended with a look of grave concern. One that Peter shared.

  “Kenyon?” he asked.

  “Will kill family,” she said, and then added the magic words that gave Peter an inkling of hope. “Our family.”

  “We can stop him,” Peter said. “Together.”

  Feesa grunted with something that sounded like agreement, but then she cocked her head to the side and looked beyond Peter. “But first, that.”

  She said it so casually, that Peter thought she must be referring to Beastmaster or Boone, who was still manning the gun. But then Peter felt a rumbling underfoot. As he turned to look, he knew what he was going to see, but still felt a measure of shock upon seeing it.

  The ExoGenetic alligator, bits of flesh and clumpy brown hair dangling from its jaws, galloped toward them. A cloud of dust billowed in its wake, giving it the appearance of some kind of hellish beast. But this was no denizen of a supernatural underworld. It was a flesh and blood creature, modified by science gone awry, but still mortal.

  Still killable.

  “Boone!” Peter shouted, pointing at the gator. He turned back to Feesa. “Let it pass. Then attack from behind.”

  When Feesa began barking at the surrounding Riders in a language that was far from the English language, Peter assumed she understood, and he ran for the truck. He leapt into the driver’s seat and shouted out through the open rear window. “Hang on and aim for the eyes!”

  “Just go, man!” Boone shouted, and then he yelped in surprise as the whole truck rocked to the side.

  Peter glanced back. Feesa had leaped into the truck bed beside Boone, spear in hand. She crouched and looked through the window. “Go!”

  Well, all right then, Peter thought, and crushed his foot against the gas pedal. Beastmaster surged through the first twenty miles per hour of acceleration and then started to crawl slowly faster. Peter looked in the rearview. The gator was going to reach them long before they matched its top speed. If his new friends didn’t help balance the scales, they were all dead. Given the ease with which the gator had dispatched both Riders and Woolies during the earlier pursuit, he didn’t have high hopes.

  24

  Starting an insurrection was far easier than Jakob imagined it would be. Granted, he didn’t have a lot of experience in such things, but he thought there would be some pushback. A fight. Maybe even a few dead people as a result. But Mason was a hated man. The guards patrolling the wall, the two guys who had been manning the gate—Marcus and Stevie—and every other hard working person inside the compound, were all but giddy about the idea.

  Word spread fast, and people gathered inside the unfinished shell of the biodome still under construction. Most of it was complete, except for the glass, which had to be collected from a warehouse hundreds of miles away. The walls and the distance from the house were enough to hide them from view, though Marcus had assured him that the lookouts were notorious nappers. Still, Jakob, Anne, Alia, Carrie and Willie had snaked through the compound using water tanks, solar panel arrays, storage sheds and shanty villages for cover, spreading the word as they went. “Meet in the unfinished dome. We’re taking Hellhole.”

  Jakob felt a little like Paul Revere, riding through towns, warning of the Red Coats. It was a fun fantasy, and helped him cope with the reality of what was going to happen. Blood would be spilled. People would die. Maybe even him. Or Anne. Or Alia.

  And now, here they were, a small army of nearly seventy-five people. It was more people than Jakob had expected to ever see in one place again—including three babies, all of them Mason’s.

  Despite the large number of people gathered, clumped into nervous, whispering groups, the majority of them weren’t in any condition to fight. Mason kept them hungry. They were just strong enough to do their work, and desperate enough to follow his commands. Of the seventy-five souls happy to see their oppressor overthrown, only nineteen of them were in any shape to fight. And of them, only fifteen had weapons, and that included Carrie, Willie, Anne and Alia. The guards had access to spare weapons and ammo, but not nearly enough to arm everyone. Hell, half the people weren’t strong enough to hold up a rifle for more than a few seconds anyway, let alone aim and fire, and deal with the recoil.

  After hiding the weak, hungry, young and old behind the wall of the dome, the small group of fighters gathered in a tight circle. Jakob waited for someone to speak, half expecting the aged, but feisty Willie to lead the charge. But when he looked around the circle, he noticed all these people had one thing in common: they were looking at him.

  Jakob’s pulse quickened. Apex ExoGenetic monsters he could deal with. Public speaking, not to mention leading men and women into battle... His stomach clenched and he nearly vomited in front of them all. He focused on his father. Imagined him in this same situation. How would he handle it? How would he speak to these people?

  Jakob met Anne’s eyes first, her gaze so intense and confident that it bolstered him. Alia smiled at him and gave a nod. Her belief in him helped, too. But it was the desperate hunger in the eyes of the rest of them that gave him the strength to push past his anxiety. Empathy became anger, which he used to fuel his bravery. He met the eyes of the men and women around him one by one. Willie and Carrie. Marcus, Stevie and Isabel, who’d greeted them at the gate. Three women in maid uniforms, who’d fled the house of their own accord after noticing the gathering throng headed for the unfinished dome. Out of all the people ready to fight, those three seemed the most eager. Clutching hunting and semi-automatic rifles, they looked like something out of a Grindhouse movie.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jakob said to the group, and he closed his eyes at how dumb it sounded.

  “Ain’t an AA meeting, kid,” Willie said.

  The joke got a nervous chuckle from everyone but the maids.

  Funny or not, it helped Jakob relax. “What kind of fight can we expect?”

  “Right now?” the maid named Sabine said, “Not much.”

  “Two guards in the lookout,” said a second maid, Charlotte, “but Chad’s a pushover. He’ll avoid a fight if he can. Probably will root for us, though he’s probably not brave enough to turn on Mason, or Dave, who is loyal.”

  The third maid, Shawna, spoke next. “The trouble is that they have a house full of weapons and a defensive position.”

  “If they hold out until Boone and the boys get back...” This came from Isabel, who Boone had seemed interested in, even if he showed it in an inappropriate way.

  “They’re the real problem,” Stevie said. “If we can’t take the house before they get back, we’re fucked.”

  “Is Boone that bad?” Jakob asked.

  For a moment, no one answered. They seemed to be considering the answer. It was Isabel, the object of his rude affection, who replied. “He’s a Southern prick and occasional testosterone-fueled asshole...but he also sneaks the pregnant women food. Helps maintain things when others are too tired or hungry. When Mason tells him what to do, he falls in line without complaint, but on his own... He’s not all that bad. And as much as he is loyal to the old man, the boys are loyal to him. They’re like frat brothers or something. With guns.”

  “So if Mason is dead,” Jakob said. “Is he going to be set free like the rest of us, or is he going to seek revenge?”

  Isabel just shrugged. “I’ll try to talk him down. He might listen to me. And if that doesn’t work—”

  “We’ll kill him,” Sabine said. “All of them.”

  “If we don’t have to—”

  Sabine cut Jakob short with a pointed finger. “You don’t know what it’s like inside that house. Not all of the ‘boys’ are like Boone. Some are worse than Mas
on.”

  Half the people in the circle were nodding in agreement. This wasn’t just about freedom for them, it was about vengeance. And he couldn’t blame them. They had freed Lyn Askew from her Questionable cage, and had given her what meager food and water the group had, but she was severely malnourished. And she sported scars and bruises from numerous beatings, some at the hands of Mason, some from Boone’s men.

  Knowing there was nothing he could say to undo years of abuse, Jakob nodded. “Do what you have to.”

  Anne’s small hand gripped his wrist. She mouthed the word ‘Mom’ at him.

  Jakob flinched back from the word. With all of the excitement of mounting an insurrection, he’d forgotten about Ella. He turned to the maids. “There is a woman inside. A prisoner.”

  “He’ll have her in one of these,” Charlotte said, motioning to her uniform, “before the day is out. Probably trying to have his way with her right now. It’s the same initiation we all got.”

  Jakob’s mind froze up a bit, his thoughts stuttering as he tried to comprehend and deny the horrible words he’d just heard. “You mean...like...”

  “He’s going to rape her,” Shawna said. “If he hasn’t already. And if we don’t take this place from him today, he’ll keep on raping her, right along with the rest of us.”

  “Fuck this shit.” It was Anne. Despite being the youngest and smallest member of the group, she was armed with a handgun. Three of the unarmed people were adults, but Anne had far more experience with weapons than anyone else, including Jakob. She racked the slide, chambering the first round in the 9mm handgun, and stormed toward the exit.

  “Anne,” Jakob said, chasing after her. “We need to do this right.”

  She wheeled around on him. “We need to do this now.”