“You fucking bitch!” Willie lunged forward and grabbed her by the neck. He squeezed hard enough to choke her and then lifted her high enough to where her feet kicked and dangled. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Carolina held onto Willie’s arms for dear life, and her lips started to turn blue.
“You touch me like that? Me?” Willie squeezed harder and then shook her like a rag doll. He had never felt this strong before, never this powerful, and the harder he squeezed, the more life he saw drain from her eyes, the more excited he became.
This was who he truly was. This was the person he was meant to be, not somebody who hid behind conventional social norms. He was too good for that now, and he hated that he had wasted so much time, trying to pretend to be something he wasn’t.
Just when he thought the light was going to fade from Carolina’s eyes, Willie watched as a final burst of strength erupted from Carolina, much like the final spasm in a body after it dies and the brain is still sending electrical signals through the muscles.
Carolina struck Willie in the groin, and both of them crumpled to the ground, with Willie groaning in pain and Carolina drawing raspy gasps of breath.
Willie rolled to his side in just enough time to watch Carolina stumble to her hands and feet and then crawl back toward the main building.
“You bitch! You fucking bitch!” Willie wanted nothing more at that moment than to kill her. But the pain radiating through his body didn’t cooperate with the demands from his mind.
Willie gagged a few times and then vomited; the pain was so intense. The hot bile dripped from his lips, burning his throat and tongue. He spat, unable able to get the taste of puke from his mouth, and eventually managed to stand up on his own two feet.
But when he rose, he saw that other women had emerged from the tents and had seen what he had done and, more importantly, what Carolina had done.
The act of defiance from one of their own seemed to have triggered a level of courage in all of them as they marched toward him.
“Get back!” Willie waved, still hunched forward from the pain. “All of you!”
But they kept their steady walk toward him, a look of determination on their faces, and Willie continued his retreat. He eventually found enough energy to stumble away, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it very far.
Unsure of where to run, Willie headed for the woods, disappearing from the compound before anyone else could sound an alarm. He didn’t think they would chase after him. They would simply be glad he was gone.
But as Willie collected his thoughts, his embarrassment and shame compounded his anger, and he knew what had to be done. He reached into his pocket and removed the pistol he’d kept on him since the EMP had been detonated. He didn’t like using a pistol. He always preferred his hands to do the talking, but he was willing to make an execption.
Willie looked back to the camp with hot tears in his eyes. If that bitch Carolina thought she was going to have a life without him, she was dead wrong.
14
With the new information given to Ben and Jackson from the nuclear physicist, they didn’t waste any time trying to move slowly or quietly on their way toward Johnson City. The only thing that mattered now was recovering that device before it fell into the hands of the leaders of The New Order.
Ben hoped they would catch up with the people who had taken the item, but the farther they rode without running into anyone, the more worried Ben became that it was too late to catch up.
Still, Jackson didn’t relent his pace, the man looking more comfortable in the saddle as they galloped down the highway. But when Ben noticed the white foam at the corner of Jackson’s horse’s mouth, he knew they needed to slow down and take a break.
Ben rode up next to Jackson, catching his attention. “We need to find water! For the horses!”
“Can’t it wait?” Jackson asked.
“Not unless you want to walk the rest of the way,” Ben answered.
Jackson nodded, but he grimaced in frustration. He slowed the animal, and then he and Ben pulled over. The horses huffed with exhaustion, and Ben led them down to a creek off the road. The ride down was steep, but the animals were surefooted, and they descended without incident.
Jackson and Ben dismounted while the animals drank, but Jackson couldn’t sit still. “They could already be in Johnson City by now.”
“We don’t know that,” Ben said, even though he had a similar thought only moments before. “We’ll catch up to them.”
Jackson grunted and then walked down to the creek bed a few steps away from the horses. Ben understood the colonel’s fears. The fact that the enemy they were fighting had managed to set off an EMP was incredible on its own.
But to have the same people who did all of this also have the ability to obtain a nuke was the most dangerous and frightening thing he could imagine. He had seen these people up close, he had fought them, and he knew that their zealot ways would not be deterred no matter what stood in their path.
And caught in the middle of it was Ben’s own brother, someone with whom he had a bad relationship, but also secretly wished that they would one day be able to overcome their differences and begin anew. But it didn’t look possible now. Whatever small pieces of Mark that Ben had hoped were still in him had been dissolved by the hateful rhetoric of the group he had joined, and Ben had to come to terms with the fact that his brother was
