Families First: A Post-Apocalyptic Next-World Series Volume 6 Battle Grounds Lance Ewing (ebook e reader TXT) 📖

I hope Baker and his guards are all out, he thought, heading towards the back opening.

Peering inside, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Looking down at his watch, he had four minutes left.

Where would he keep it? he thought, heading straight towards the spot where the box was the last time he had been inside.

“Come on, come on. Where is it?” he said quietly.

“Where is what?” came a voice from another room—a female voice.

Mike stopped dead in his tracks, freezing for a few seconds without uttering a word.

“Where’s what, good lookin’?” came the voice again.

“I just forgot something, is all,” he said, as she rounded the corner.

“You forgot this?” she said, holding up the locked box Mike had seen before and now had only two keys.

“Maybe,” he whispered. “Who are you, and why aren’t you outside?”

“I am a lonely woman, with a 70-year-old man always trying to touch me, and my name is not important. I’m here because I don’t buy into the crap going on around here. Do you want the box, or should I scream out in three…two…one?”

“No—wait,” said Mike, not panicked but feeling a sort of anxiety he hadn’t felt in a long time. “I want the box,” he told her, as he looked down at his watch. Two minutes left, and he knew this was cutting it close.

“It’s easy. I give you the box for a kiss,” she said.

“What about Baker?” he asked.

“That short blimp of a man couldn’t excite the last woman on earth. But you, you’re the real deal, and I’m pretty sure your time is running out.”

“Set the box down, and if the book is inside, you have a deal.”

“How do I know you’re not playing me?” she asked.

“You don’t, but I have one minute.”

She set the box on the table, and Mike quickly opened it, retrieving the book and locking it shut before handing it back.

“Sorry, Sheila,” he said, embracing her for a Hollywood kiss like the old movies before the man is sent off to war, never to be heard from again.

“Twenty seconds” read his watch as he broke away.

“All good?” he asked.

 She only smiled, waving for him to leave the tent. He exited the south side just as the alarm sounded, ending the test.

* * * *

Mike made his way through camp, taking advantage of people walking around, and headed towards the vehicle yard. Strobe lights he assumed were generator operated shone back and forth across the yard. Getting his bearings, he remembered the location Sergio had pointed out where his Indian Motorcycle was fully gassed up. The lights crossed the bike every minute, maybe two, in the same pattern seen in every prison-break movie ever made. He remembered watching them as a kid, thinking the kid’s video game called Frogger, where the frog tries to avoid cars and logs to get across busy highways, could help in a prison break.

It’s just timing, he thought, like a kid skipping rope. Moving in close and out of the light’s path, he saw the bike ten yards out.

I’ll just move it in the dark and watch the path of the light moving out, he thought.

Sirens wailed from the camp, but not the same as before. He ducked back behind a truck as the floodlights illuminated the entire fleet of vehicles.

“No! No! No!” he said, seeing his bike in full light. Even in good shape, minus the gut shot that had him hobbling around like an old man, he still couldn’t outrun the guards’ rifle rounds.

Was it a fool’s errand, and would he be killed before delivery? he wondered—not afraid to die but not like this, when it meant everything for him to stay alive.

Men called out behind him, and the sirens never stopped. He ducked behind the truck, wishing he had a different set of keys as the spotlight illuminated him. Crack! Crack! Boom! he heard from rifles he couldn’t see, putting holes into the truck, one after another. The men behind him were yelling to each other. “Spread out, he’s here somewhere!”

He was reminded of his favorite movie, Rambo: First Blood, when John Rambo takes the 1982 Yamaha XT 250 into the mountains to escape his would-be captors.

I have to get to it, he thought. I’m not going down without a fight, not now.

Looking to his left, he heard a revved engine and saw a large utility truck, the Army kind that hauls gear for the troops. “Get in,” he heard, as it pulled up beside him, slowing but not stopping.

In the chaos, he wasn’t sure who was behind the wheel, but his options were few, if any, and before he could think about it, he ran. It took everything he had in him to run through the pain, and he felt his abdominal stitch tear from bottom to top, like opening a Ziplock® bag. Grabbing on to the tailgate, he climbed in, collapsing inside the back, laying still as possible as the rounds ricocheted through the bed of the truck. Five minutes later, the truck stopped, with the driver getting out of the cab.

Mike wished he had a weapon, not knowing who he would meet. One of Baker’s men? It seemed likely, but why try to save him when he was already trapped?

“Max, you came for me,” Mike said aloud, laughing. Of course—who else?

“I’m not Max,” said a familiar voice.

“Well, now that makes more sense,” said Mike, seeing Sergio’s face as he opened the green tarp on the back of the truck. And even now, he didn’t fully believe it.

“Young love is hard to part from, even someone with a goal like Max’s. He’s in the truck up front,” said Sergio, “and so is she.”

“I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that. Next,