Before I check on them I do a quick sweep of the rest of the garage, making sure the other vehicles are empty. Still, I approach the back of the delivery truck with caution, ready for anything.
The delivery truck is parked with its nose toward the garage door, its back end facing three concrete steps that lead up to a door. Before I can go through that door, though, I need to check the truck.
It’s slight, but I hear movement inside.
The surrogates.
I take hold of the lever which is locked in place. I lift the catch, spin the lever, and push up the door.
I expect to see women. Young women eighteen years or older. All of them pregnant.
But all that’s in here are children.
White children, black children, brown children-there are nearly a dozen of them in all.
They’re completely soaked, water dripping from their hair, from their clothes. They stare back at me, their eyes not wide at the gun in my hand, but indifferent, bored.
Not sure what else to do, I lower the gun.
And watch as one of the children stands up and aims a gun at me.
I realize at the last second that it’s not a child, but a woman, just like the driver, a small, petite woman with short brown hair.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t say a word, as she shoots me in the chest.
seventy
They’d parked the U-Haul a quarter mile down the highway. Ashley had retrieved it and driven it here to the entrance of the drive leading back to the building. The plan, if everything went accordingly (fingers crossed), was that John would bring the surrogates down the drive to the truck in a vehicle. If there was no vehicle, he would call her and she would drive back to the building, but since the drive was a quarter mile long, they didn’t want to take any chances. That was why she was supposed to wait here, just wait, while John might be getting himself killed behind the grove of trees.
The windows were down and she could hear the distant gunfire. Fortunately there were few buildings on this section of the highway. A tiny strip mall a half mile away, a tire store across the highway, and that was it. The traffic passing back and forth was sporadic, and she hoped it would stay that way.
At one point there came another explosion, what sounded louder than the ones before, even through the trees.
She closed her eyes, offered up a silent prayer.
After a minute or two or three, she spotted flashing lights, and something dropped down deep in the pit of her stomach. It was the police. They were here, finally. Only she and John had hoped to be long gone by the time they arrived. Because otherwise they would be held for questioning, and it was a safe bet that the people behind all of this-people like her parents and even those further up the chain-would be able to get to Ashley and John if they were in custody, or even held for questioning. That’s why they needed to be long gone with the surrogates.
As the flashing lights grew closer, Ashley realized they didn’t belong to a police cruiser at all, but rather to a pickup truck, a Toyota Tundra to be exact. Its paint was red, gleaming in the sun like it had been freshly washed and waxed, and it slowed as it began to make the turn onto the drive but then stopped abruptly. The red bubble light kept flashing on the truck’s dash.
The driver wore sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes as he stepped out of the pickup, but she saw his solid chin, his massive chest, and pegged him at once for a cop.
He approached her. “Ma’am?”
A silver handgun rested on the passenger seat. Her fingers wrapped around the rubber grip as Ashley used her other hand to open the door, all the while keeping her gaze on the cop. She stepped down out of the cab, her right hand still on the handgun, just to be safe.
She stood that way then, her two feet planted on the ground, the door open, her left hand at her side, her right hand squeezing the gun.
“Ma’am, can I see your hands?”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Woods, ma’am. I’m a state trooper. Can I see your hands?”
He was reaching for his gun, holstered to a black leather belt with a Sam Browne buckle. He wore jeans and sneakers and a polo shirt. Hardly official police attire, even if he was a state trooper. It was almost like … like he was working on his day off. Like he had been called here for a specific purpose.
Ashley said, “Are you here stop the legion?”
Woods hesitated a beat, his lips slightly parted, his eyes hidden behind the shades, but it was all Ashley needed to confirm the truth.
She brought the silver handgun out just as Woods unsnapped the gun in its holster.
She aimed at his chest and squeezed the trigger.
The distance between them was barely forty yards. More than enough space for her to get off a good shot. And still the bullet went wide, taking out the Tundra’s headlight.
Woods barely even flinched. He glanced at the pickup, stared a moment, then turned back, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“You stupid bitch,” he said, and started toward her.
Ashley squeezed the trigger again, and again, and again, leaving the hulking shadow of the U-Haul and advancing toward the trooper. Her second bullet missed its mark just like the first, but the third and fourth bullets struck the trooper in the shoulder.
He didn’t stop, though, just kept coming, pulling his own gun from the holster.
Ashley fired off another round, this one hitting the trooper square in his chest. By then the distance between them was less than ten yards and he ran straight into her, knocking her to the ground.
She lost control of the gun during the fall. The trooper was on top of her, his weight almost too heavy. Despite being shot, he was still alive, though barely. She could hear him gasping for breath. She could feel him trying to hold her down as he moved the gun toward her head. Even as he died, he was attempting to finish his task and kill her.
Ashley bucked beneath him, trying to push him off, but the man was too strong. Her own gun was just out of reach, and she knew better than to waste time trying to go for it. She would never have the chance, not with the man holding her down, blood now dribbling from between his lips, his sunglasses askew, one eye staring back at her filled with rage, and before Ashley knew it, she reached up, knocked the sunglasses off his face, and plunged her thumbs into his eyes.
The trooper did not scream, or shout, or even make the slightest sound. But he dropped the gun and grabbed at Ashley’s hands, trying to pull them away.
Ashley barely even struggled. Her main objective had been met-the trooper dropping the gun-and she grabbed it off the ground and pressed it against the trooper’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The trooper’s body jerked on top of her, and she squeezed the trigger again. The trooper’s body jerked once more, the rage disappearing from his eyes as they went completely blank.
She pushed the trooper off of her and scrambled to her feet. She just stood there then, the gun in her hand, staring down at the dead man.
She realized she was shaking. The gun in her hand trembled. She let it go, like it had just burned her, and backed away toward the U-Haul. Then she thought, no, she couldn’t leave the gun, not with her prints on it, and she scrambled forward again, scooping the gun up from the ground, then remembering the other gun and scooping that one up, too.
And the trooper-what was she supposed to do with him? He was just lying there, splayed out on the ground for all to see. And there were people who could see, weren’t there? Yes, there were. The sporadic traffic passing back and forth for one. Plus there was the tire shop across the highway, and despite the fact its parking lot was empty, there was still a chance someone inside-a bored clerk, for instance-might have witnessed the entire thing and was right now calling 911.
Move the body-that’s what she needed to do. She would have to grab the trooper’s arms and drag him from view. She would hate having to touch him after having killed him-killed him; it made her nauseous to think about it-but she knew she had no choice.