As he walked into the garage again, he probably looked hilarious to Emily. She gave him a sideways glance. “What are you doing?”
“Pop the hood!”
“What?”
“Pop the hood!” he repeated, moving his supplies toward the truck.
She did as requested.
“Close the garage door!” he added, throwing the frozen food onto the engine. He poured the ice as close to the engine manifold as possible. Then, without waiting to see the results, he ran back into the kitchen.
The door was closed the next time he came out. He threw a frozen chicken, a big lasagna dish, and bags of corn into the engine bay.
“What in the name of God are you doing?” Emily asked, finally catching up to him.
“Help me! Find some water. Pour it on there.”
Ted ran headlong into the kitchen again, thinking how he wished they had a few extra minutes to put some cold items in the back of the truck to cover the exhaust system. The plane was probably already on top of them—
He caught sight of the woman’s dress on the linoleum floor a fraction of a second too late. His foot hit it perfectly, acting like a banana peel and sending him flying off his feet.
His whole world went black.
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
After being shown what was going to happen to her if she crossed David again, Charity took Tabby to a different part of the complex. It still looked like an office building interior, but the doors weren’t open cages, like the prison cells. For that, she was grateful. However, when Charity knocked on the wooden door, she was disappointed at who answered.
Victor.
The redhead smiled profusely. “Look who I brought back for you.”
The tall young man smiled, but Tabby recognized the fake sentiment behind his glassy eyes. He wasn’t happy to see her.
“I’ll leave you two to it. Remember your lessons, Tabitha.” Charity’s smile was a mile wide, as if sure she’d been put in her place. She strode off with a pair of guards in tow.
She was left alone with Victor. “Can I come in?”
He stood back from the door. “Sure.”
Once inside, he closed it, making her feel like a lab rat trapped in a terrible experiment. To counter the feeling, she looked around for a place to sit. There wasn’t much in the repurposed office. A small cot sat against the far wall. A green cook stove was open on a cheap folding table close by. A pair of office chairs were the only places to sit, so she hopped on the one furthest from the stove.
Victor remained on his feet. “They said you were coming back, which is great, but I don’t understand why you left. Was it something I said?”
She almost felt sorry—no, she refused to feel sorry for him. Sure, he seemed nice enough, but his entire reason for being there was to be assigned a wife in this weird new country currently strangling the remains of her America. Still, to get what she wanted, a certain level of compassion was required. “Would it make a difference if I said it was me, not you?”
He brightened. “But you’re perfect. I couldn’t have picked a better companion if I had the catalogue of homesteaders to choose from.”
She was taken aback. “A catalogue? You actually have a book of potential wives?”
“And husbands. It works both ways. We all get to make a few choices, in order of preference, then the Legion makes the final decision. I came up short from being matched, originally, due to some deaths during transit. When you showed up, it was like a gift from David. He really knows how to pick them.”
She thought back to how David said he’d watched her on the TV broadcast back in St. Louis. Was he blowing smoke about why he’d selected her to survive? She fought back the feeling of flattery at being picked for her beauty at all. She’d never considered herself top-shelf boyfriend material. She worked in a mine, after all. But having men talk about her as a catch was as image boosting as it was disgusting.
Tabby stood up, getting angry. “Well, for your information, I didn’t sign up for any of this. Me and my friends came here against our will. They’re still being held prisoner by your people. I want no part of your homesteading whatever.” She had no interest in touching his cot, so she went into the opposite corner and sat on the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She put her head down and closed her eyes, willing him to leave her alone. As the minutes passed, and he puttered around his small pad, she dozed off.
Seemingly seconds later, her eyes popped open. The lights were low. Victor snored in his bed. A blue light cast a dim aura through the room, giving her enough to see her way around.
“Sorry, friend,” she whispered as she unlatched the door. “But I’d rather die than be assigned to someone.”
In seconds, she was outside Victor’s apartment. The lights of the hallway were set to about half brightness. She figured this was to simulate nighttime while inside the mountain. Whatever it was, it made her feel as if she was sneaking through the darkness.
While she’d been marched around the complex, she’d been keeping track of the twists and turns, much as she would when learning new passages inside the Bonne Terre mine. She was proud of her navigation skills when she saw the elevators. Based on her conversations with David and Charity, the elevator would take her far into the earth, or up to the surface. They didn’t appear to have key codes or any type of security, but there were two guards standing by the doors, much closer than the pair who’d let her slip by near the EXIT door.
“It’s night. Go to sleep,” she mumbled in their direction.
Tabby waited at the bend in the tunnel for several minutes, praying the
