Page 92 of Beyond Redemption

I looked to Zeke and could see he wasn’t at all surprised.

“What is that?” I asked, pressing my palms flat to the ground. “Is that vibration coming from the bunker?!”

“It’s the Kraken,” he answered, frantically waving a medic in.

“The what?”

“The Kraken,” he repeated. “The General’s daughter is bleeding. He’s going to end this. Keep your head down and don’t move.”

I scanned the area, settling on a transport storage building roughly seventy yards away. Marcel, Brooks, and a few of their officers stood in the doorway, directing men toward something buried near the motor pool. Reinforced doors opened and platforms rose.

Marcelhadbeen holding back. Not something as simple as a diversion or a flanking maneuver, but with something far worse waiting beneath the surface.

Three large trucks barreled from the building, not on wheels but caterpillar tracks, militiamen manning a large weapon in the bed of each. Once they reached position, the sound that followed didn’t come from a single point but from all three, each one staggered just enough to overlap. The first round struck the breach hard, tearing through vehicles and barriers the Carlisis had been using to hold ground. A second followed from the opposite side, cutting across bodies. The pattern held, controlled and sustained, leaving no space for them to recover.

Men who had been advancing a second earlier dropped where they stood, others pulled back behind what remained of their protection, only to have it stripped away as rounds chewed through it—and them. The space they had taken collapsed inward, their push undone in seconds. Marcel’s men held where they were, letting the pressure do its work until the Carlisis had nowhere left to go. Then, they advanced.

A medic fell to his knees with his bag next to Naomi, tearing through his gear for something to stop the bleeding.

“Get down!” I said, aiming my rifle. I leaned past the medic and squeezed the trigger, dropping a man trying to fight his way clear of the Kraken and militia crossfire.

The next phase was sustained suppression, rounds eating up anything that moved, and plenty that didn’t. Every attempt to regroup collapsed under pressure. West held. North tightened. The breach turned into a choke point instead of an opening. I tracked movement in pieces and didn’t miss the renewed vigor in the expressions of our defenders. Heads came up. Men and women who had been merely holding were now committed to the offensive. Eyes kept drifting to Naomi, then back to work, each time fiercer than before.

Something deep in my chest felt wrong, urgent, nothing I could describe but I felt it in my bones. My attention snapped back to the bunker. The entrance wasn’t as quiet as itshould have been. There was too much movement, too much disorganization atypical from what I’d seen from Marcel’s men all night.

I scanned the area, looking for Thomas, Travis, Trent, the twins, anyone to direct to the door that led to our children.

“Maddox!” I yelled, hoping anyone would answer. They didn’t.

I couldn’t wait. I broke away from Zeke and Naomi and ran, pushing my already exhausted body to the limit. It took me less than a minute to reach where I’d just seen Bodhi, two lifeless bodies behind their cover coming into view.

For half a second, I felt panic well up within me, but then I recognized them as Carlisi men. The closer I came to the entrance, the more bodies I stepped over. I kept my rifle ready, observing the clothing of each one I passed.

At the entrance, one man lay sprawled, much like the one at the base of the tower. Another was slumped against the wall, weapon still in his hand. A third lay on his back, throat open. And then there was a girl. Young, beautiful… Novak. The female soldier in desert fatigues that had come to the Longhouse on our first morning at the compound to watch over Stella, Olive, and Bodhi when we went to speak with Marcel for the first time.

She was still in those fatigues, but this time, they were soaked in her blood.

Bodhi sat just beyond her, alive, but just barely. His back was against the entrance wall, one hand pressed to his side, his shirt dark crimson. His other hand still held his borrowed rifle, not one he’d gotten from Marcel, but a dropped combatant.

“Hey, Liis,” he said with tired eyes and a weak smile.

I dropped beside him. “I’m here,” I said, ripping the bottom of my shirt to form a pressure bandage.

“I tried to save her,” he said, his bottom lip trembling. “She was ordered by Ibarra to help me protect the bunker. She tookout that guy”—he nodded toward her victim—“and that guy, and slit that guy’s throat just to get hit by a stray round. She didn’t even see it coming.”

“Where’s Ellie?”

“Abby showed up and said there’d been a breach, so I sent Ellie down with her. She didn’t want to leave me alone, but I kind of yelled at her to get her to go down where it was safe.”

“It’s fine,” I said, nodding as I worked.

He glanced at Novak and then closed his eyes tight, a tear streaking through the dirt on his face. “It was fast, but for those last few seconds, she was scared. She was calling out for her dad.”

“Is he here?”

His face crumbled. “I don’t know. We didn’t have time to talk. She got here and everything blew up around us. I put pressure on her neck, but… there was just too much blood. It was just pouring out of her and then those other guys showed up and I couldn’t do both, I…”

“Bodhi,” I said, trying to hide my emotions. “Look at me. You did everything you could. You did everything right. Was there anyone with Novak?”