Chapter Twenty-Three
11:33 a.m.
Anger was too tame a name for what coursed through Ava’s body like a molten river, scorching everything it touched.
Rage was a little better.
Murderous. That sounded right.
She doubted she looked homicidal at the moment. Not after screaming, crying, kicking, and blubbering all over the college kid trying to hang onto her. All of them could see the result of tears and snot running unchecked down her face. She hoped she looked hysterical.
She hoped they thought she was terrified of them.
She was terrified, but of the Neisseria they no doubt carried, not of them specifically. These boys, children, were rejoicing in their triumph of winning a battle against two armed soldiers. Premature celebration.
Had they forgotten the six dead of their own they left behind?
There were only four of them left.
Were four all there really was? The van they were in had no backseats in it. Someone was driving, another person riding shotgun, and two in the back with her. If she got loose, there would be one fewer. She had plans for the asshole who’d shot River. Plans that involved her hands wrapped around his throat. Plans that ended with only one of them still breathing.
He had a smug expression on his face whenever he glanced back at her. The prick. Just because a girl has an ugly cry doesn’t mean she isn’t busy plotting to kill you. In fact, if you’re the cause of the ugly cry, she probably is plotting to kill you.
The driver was arguing with Boots, telling him they should hide and not go back to the university, while Boots insisted that since the CDC had already been to the university, they weren’t likely to go back.
Had someone made a law about that when she wasn’t paying attention?
Nope.
They’d blown up a lab along with three FBI agents/bomb techs. There was going to be CDC, FBI, and Homeland Security all over that building just as soon as the demands of the outbreak allowed for an investigation.
“What do we need her for anyway?” the driver asked.
“She is going to be part of our next message to the government.”
“Yeah, but what do we need her cooperation for? I mean, you gave her time to help that fucking soldier.”
Boots’s chuckle had a nasty edge. Malicious in a way that made her stomach twist and dive straight into the ground.
“I wanted to see if she cared about him, so when I shot him, again, she’d understand how fucking hopeless it would be to try to stop us.” He turned to look at her and said, “And now you know.”
She wiped her face against her shoulder, then said, “I know what you’re doing and what you are.” She glanced at the other men. “Do they?”
“We’re all part of a movement,” Boots said proudly. “A rebellion against the greedy, cruel actions of the American government and military. They’re the ones who started the war on terror, invading countries like it’s their right. Killing civilians and freedom fighters indiscriminately. Peaceful protests have done nothing. Less than nothing. It’s past time to wake the American public up.”
“By killing large numbers of your fellow citizens?” she demanded. “That makes sense to you? Really?”
“Sometimes it takes a very hard shock to wake people up to the truth.”
“The truth is,” she said very softly now, so softly every man but the driver leaned closer to her, “that you’re a spoiled sociopath who’s managed to convince enough disenfranchised, impressionable young people that somewhere in all your rhetoric, you’re right.” By the time she got to the last word, she was yelling.
Big mistake.
Their faces, which had been tense with worry, now settled…hardened.
“You’re gonna die, lady,” Boots said to her with a slick smile. “That’s the only truth you should care about.”
She opened her mouth to allow her anger and frustration to mock him, then thought better of it. She had to find a way to stop these foolish boys from doing any more damage. Getting shot before she figured out how wouldn’t help her. Of course, they might just want to shoot her in front of an audience. Video it live on the internet with the location of their choice as the backdrop.
“What about all the children who are dying, who are going to die because of the disease you’ve set loose?” she asked, letting go of the plug on her emotions, so fresh that tears streamed down her face. “They’re innocent.”
“No one is innocent.” Boots laughed, a cynical, sneer of a sound. “They’ll grow up to be as selfish and greedy as everyone else. Now, they won’t.”
One of the young men with her in the back sucked in a breath.
“Genocide isn’t the answer,” she said between sobs. “Education is. Stage an intervention. Show them what they should be doing. You d-don’t have to kill people.”
“Like I said before, peaceful protests went nowhere.”
“Ch-change is hard, and it doesn’t happen fast with a country as large and spread out as ours is.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You have to keep…keep trying. You need the majority of the population behind you to make the changes you seem to want. Killing them isn’t going to give you that.”
He pointed the rifle at her head. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to shoot you right now.”
She stopped talking, but she wasn’t quiet. She let herself cry and sob until Boots yelled at the two men in the back. “Shut her up!”
Ava waited for one of them to hit her, or for some other aggressive act to occur.
The guy to her left held out a tissue.
She stared at it without really understanding what it was or why he would give it to her. Offering your hostage a tissue couldn’t be part of the terrorist handbook, could it? He waved it at her when she didn’t take it right away. “Don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be,” he said softly.
As she wiped her face, the guy behind her said, “My little sister is only five. The only thing she’s guilty of is eating too much candy at Halloween.”
“So, what?” Boots asked. “You want to switch sides?” He pointed his weapon at the younger man. “Too late for that.”
“I’m not bailing on our mission. I just don’t think little kids are guilty of all the shit their parents do. Get them into a family that has the right values and teaches those values, and they’ll be great citizens of the world.”
Boots grunted and lowered his rifle. “Interesting. I never thought of that.” He appeared to consider the idea. “Take the kids and adopt them out,” he muttered under his breath.
She hadn’t thought these idiots could get any more reprehensible. Wrong. Worse, there was nothing she could do about it.
The van slowed. In the distance, flashing emergency lights caught everyone’s attention.
“Whoa,” the driver said. “There’s cops ahead.”
“Try another road.”
“Which one?” The driver’s voice shook. He was beginning to panic.
“Just turn right here, and we’ll figure it out.”
All four men craned their heads around to check for pursuit, but the roads were eerily empty and silent. The driver pulled over to the curb and parked.
Ava considered an escape attempt while they were stationary, but just as she made the decision to try it, Boots shifted his attention to her.
“Don’t even think it, lady.”
That drew the others’ attention.
A cruel grin spread slowly across Boots’s face. When he dropped his gaze to stare at her breasts, she held her breath and waited to see what he would do next. Or not do. As one second flowed into two, then three, her imagination gave her more and more unwanted possibilities, twisting her stomach until it was so painful she could barely breathe. Boots believed in his cause wholeheartedly. The others were followers, not happy about killing little kids, but they would follow his orders. If she pushed now, tried to talk sense into the followers, she’d only succeed in getting shot. Or raped.
The guy behind her spoke up. “According to my phone, there’s a route delivery trucks are supposed to take into the college.”
“That sounds good,” Boots said, finally looking away from her.
The boy with the phone gave the driver the first set of directions, and he pulled away from the curb.
“Hey, how come it’s so quiet?” the other kid in the back with her asked. “No cars, no one walking, everything looks closed.”
Boots turned and looked at her.
She couldn’t see how the truth could help them. “I think there’s a travel ban. Possibly a quarantine.” The depth of hate in his face constricted her throat, and she had to clear it in order to keep talking. “To try to keep the outbreak from spreading.”
“We’re gonna get pulled over,” the driver whined.
The kid beside her joined him in complaint-land. “They’re not going to arrest us, not after we killed all those people at the mall and the Army base. They’ll just fucking shoot us.”
“If you don’t stop bitching,” Boots said, “I’ll fucking shoot you.” He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “No one is chasing us now, so we’ll keep going.” He turned to the driver. “Follow the speed limit.”
“Okay, okay,” the driver said, but his tone told her he was close to panic. He probably didn’t know what to do, so he’d grab onto anything that sounded reasonable.
“Relax, guys,” Boots said in a tone that dripped confidence. “Our encore performance is going to send a message no one in Texas is ever going to forget.”
“Is it going to work, Sam?” the kid beside her asked. “Will it make the government withdraw troops from—”
“Shut up,” Boots said. “Not in front of her.”
So, his name was Sam.
“Who’s she going to tell?” the guy behind her asked. “It’s not like there’s anyone around.” He gestured at the empty streets and deserted sidewalks.
“I’m not taking any chances. She works for the CDC, probably one of those lab rats who creates superbugs.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but Boots sent her a look so filled with venom she choked on her own words.
“She’s smart.” Boots sneered at her. “Aren’t you, lab rat?”
Oh no, the only person who got to call her a rodent of any sort was River.
“Call me a rat again,” she said to Boots, uncaring of the bullet he could put in her head if he chose to, “and I’ll rip your balls off.”
His eyebrows went up while the two young men in the back with her leaned away.
It was the driver who spoke. “You do know we have the guns, right, lady?”
“Listen, assholes,” she told them, suddenly tired of it all. “You can take your self-absorbed, whiney, hey, let’s save the world by killing everyone bullshit and shove it. I thought the bureaucracy in Africa was ass-backwards, but you guys take the cake.”
“Africa?” the driver asked.
“Yes, the Ebola crisis, remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“I was there for four months, trying to save lives. What were you doing? Oh yes, planning to release your own plague on Texas and a few bombs, too. Was achieving your goals of world peace taking so long that you decided to just kill everyone instead?”
No one said anything, not even Boots.
“Have any of you even spent time out of North America on a humanitarian mission?”
No answer.
“I’ll bet you’ve never even gone camping without all the equipment known to man in your backpacks. You don’t know a damn thing about what people need or want. All you’re doing is trying to get an adrenaline rush by being rebels. Well, congratulations, you’ve achieved it. You’ve managed to kill several hundred completely innocent people, people who have nothing to do with the establishment you seem angry with. Just what have you accomplished today? Other than proving you’re lazy.”
“You’re thinking much too small,” Boots told her in a cold tone. “And peace isn’t what we’re after. We’re the instrument of change. Our government doesn’t govern anymore. They argue, yell, and piss each other off. No one negotiates, no one compromises, they don’t even talk to each other.”
“Selfish bastards,” said the guy behind her.
“Useless, greedy, and ignorant—that’s our government,” the kid next to her said.
“The only way to rejuvenate a great society like the United States is to put it under stress. Force the public and government to do something.” Sam smiled. “History is full of examples of civilizations that rose and fell in this way.”
“Like the Roman Empire,” one of the boys with her in the back said.
“The French Revolution wiped out an absolute monarchy,” the other added.
History was never meant to be viewed through lenses of only black and white. “You think inciting another revolution is going to change our culture for the better?”
“Yes.”
“But at what cost? Are you prepared to sacrifice not only yourselves, but your families as well?” She turned to look at the guy behind her. “Your sister?”
“Collateral damage,” Boots said. “History will remember us as freedom fighters. The instigators of change, and the events here in El Paso as the first of many that will usher in a new and better America.”
She looked around her. Aside from the driver, who was watching the road, they all wore the same expression of blind devotion and utter belief.
There would be no convincing them to stop whatever they planned to do next. These young men had been turned into living weapons.