Finding Shelter

15

Grant opened his eyes to sunlight peeking in through the rudimentary window.

It was early morning.

His head hurt. Throbbing pain. A splitting headache.

Other parts of his body hurt, but his head was foggy and he couldn’t identify what they were.

For a second, Grant didn’t know where he was.

His mind jumped to conclusions.

Had he been kidnapped? Taken hostage? Someone intent on capturing the great leader of the most powerful militia on the East Coast?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Then he saw it.

Something moving outside the window. It was a tree. A tree he’d seen before, its branches gently swaying in the breeze.

Then it came to him in a flash, and he realized where he was.

Grant was in the infirmary.

He turned his head, looking around.

He was in a rudimentary hospital bed, probably scavenged by one of his reclamation teams.

There was an IV running out of his arm up to a clear plastic bag. Some kind of saline solution, probably.

The militia wasn’t short on supplies, not even hospital supplies. And it was all thanks to Grant’s own initiative, sending teams out to scout the areas both far and near, searching for anything that could be useful.

“Nurse!” snapped Grant, his voice loud and commanding.

A flurry of tiny footsteps in the hallway. Someone was scurrying towards him.

Two heads popped in, appearing in the doorway.

A man and a woman.

Both nurses.

He recognized them as nurses. Real trained professionals from before the EMP.

They weren’t messing around here at the militia camp. Grant wouldn’t have stood for anything less than the real thing. He’d made sure that the nurses were real, that the equipment was as good as they could get it without electricity, and that there was even one real doctor.

“How are you feeling?” The woman snuck through the doorway and into the room. She acted as if she were doing something wrong, as if she shouldn’t be there. She walked with a bit of a stoop, hunched over, her eyes downcast.

Grant understood well what was going on here. She was scared of him. And the male nurse was too.

Good. They had good reason to be scared of Grant.

“What happened?” barked Grant.

He needed answers. He needed them fast.

The last thing he could remember was that Wilson had betrayed him.

That bastard. After all Grant had done for him.

Grant would get him.

Grant wouldn’t tolerate threats to his authority, whether internal or external. He’d squash them the way he’d always squashed them.

Wilson had served him well for a long time, but it was clear that he wasn’t the man Grant thought he was.

It didn’t matter, though. Wilson had done his job. There’d be another man to fill his place.

Knowing what he now knew, that Wilson was nothing more than a common traitor, Grant was glad that he hadn’t kept Wilson informed of everything.

He was glad that he’d kept Wilson in the dark about Grant’s more ambitious projects, as well as his more underhanded, but necessary, dealings. Grant had personally seen to dozens of assassinations. He’d handled threats, or potential threats, to his power, personally, without ever letting Wilson know.

Grant knew how to clean up after himself. He knew how to use others. He knew how to recruit a man for one part of a job, and another man for another part, keeping them all in the dark about the whole project.

No one at the camp knew as much as Grant did. And he liked it that way. It was going to stay that way. It was partly how Grant kept an iron grip on the seat of power.

“Well?” shouted Grant, as neither nurse answered him.

The male nurse had entered the room. His arms and hands were shaking. Actually quivering.

“You were attacked, sir,” said the male nurse.

The female nurse stood behind him, as if he’d protect her from Grant.

“Give me the facts. Don’t prance around it. Spit it out.” Grant was nearly shouting. He could feel the anger building up in his chest.

He glanced down again, noticing that he still had on his own clothes.

There was a chair in the corner, by the window. His holster and gun lay on the chair. It seemed that the rest of his gear, his knives, his compass, and everything, had been laid out neatly by his gun.

“Your personal secretary, Wilson, is missing,” said the male nurse, speaking haltingly, apparently due to nerves. “The man guarding the stockade is dead. Gunshot wound. Name…”

“I don’t need his name!” shouted Grant. “Give me the rest. Quickly!”

“We presume that Wilson, or his accomplice, attacked you. Perhaps they acted together.”

“Accomplice?” said Grant.

The word triggered a memory. Something he’d forgotten.

There’d been someone.

A man named Max.

The memory came flooding back to Grant. The information he’d gotten from his informant. Information about a power struggle.

“So they’re together? Have you caught them?”

“Not yet, sir. But we’ve dispatched Unit B. They’re working on it as we speak, I’m sure.”

Unit B was supposed to be the crack unit. The unit that did the special missions. The unit that was under Grant’s personal control.

“Working on it? What the hell does that mean?”

“They’re working on tracking Wilson and the escapee.”

Grant didn’t like the fact that Unit B had been dispatched without his own personal orders.

“Who dispatched Unit B? All their orders are supposed to be cleared by me, if not given explicitly by me.”

“Saunders, sir. He installed himself in Wilson’s place, after Wilson absconded.”

Grant grunted his disapproval. He had never liked Saunders. He was a weakling. Someone who never stuck up for himself. He was just supposed to be there as a placeholder.

Grant had never expected that anything would actually happen to Wilson. After all, Wilson had hardly ever exposed himself to danger. He was an office man. A clipboard man. A paperwork man. A man who should have died from old age.

And Grant certainly had never expected that Wilson would betray him.

His blood was starting to boil at the thought of it. He felt the anger in his stomach. The hot anger was in his chest too.

His whole body felt energized. Hot. Angry. Ready for action.

Grant glanced down at the IV. He reached down and ripped it out of his arm.

“Sir!”

The male nurse was over at his bedside in a flash, grabbing the IV. Apparently he was about to attempt to put it back in Grant’s arm.

“You’re dehydrated, sir. You need to replenish your fluids,” said the female nurse.

The male nurse was coming at him with the IV.

Grant felt the anger rising in him. He formed his right hand into a fist and backhanded the male nurse with a single, powerful blow. The male nurse reeled and staggered backwards, colliding with the wall.

The male nurse regained his balance and stood there, stunned, the IV still in his hand.

In a flash, Grant was up on his feet.

It felt good to be standing up. Standing was the position of commanders. Lying down was for suckers.

Grant’s brain was working in flashes. Flashes of insight. Flashes of anger.

In a single stride, he reached the quivering male nurse who clung to the IV as if were a life raft.

Grant grabbed the man’s neck with his left hand. His fingers tightened all the way around the neck. Squeezing.

Grant’s right hand formed a fist and slammed into the man’s face. Blood on the knuckles. Blood on the nurse’s nose.

The nurse’s head swung back, smashed into the wall. His eyes rolled back. Unseeing.

Grant released with his left hand. The male nurse, unconscious, slid down to the floor.

The female nurse shrieked.

Grant turned to her, his body big and menacing.

He felt as if he took up the whole room. That’s how he felt when he was angry. Good and powerful. Full of possibility. As if the world was his. As he deserved everything he wanted. As if he was always right.

It was riotous anger. Good anger. Just anger.

“If you know what’s good for you,” growled Grant, “get me the following men…” And Grant named a half-dozen last names. They were the best of the best. The men who Grant had kept off Unit B so that he could use them when he really needed them, when something really crucial came up. They were men who’d proven themselves. Not just their skill. But their willingness to do whatever Grant asked. They were men who’d gladly put their lives on the line for him, no matter what.

And, most importantly, they were vicious. The kind of men who took pleasure in extreme violence. The kind of men who got a kick from killing, and an even bigger kick from killing in the most brutal way possible. Grant had personally seen all of the six kill. And all six, under Grant’s supervision, had brutally tortured prisoners. Grant had watched them dismember a man, one limb at a time, until he was nothing but a torso and stumps for legs.

Grant and the six had chuckled as they’d watch the man bleed out onto the dirt.

Those had been good times. The kind of good times that not every man could appreciate. Wilson, for example, had to always be kept in the dark about such matters.

It had been several weeks since Grant and the six had had their fun.

Well, now was there chance.

The female nurse stood there, quaking in her slip-on shoes.

“Well?” shouted Grant.

She just gave a meek nod, turned on her heel, and scurried away.

Good.

She’d get the word out. She was too scared not to.

The six would be ready.

They’d be seven with Grant.

Normally they worked on their own and brought the hostages back to Grant so that he could watch the fun.

This time would be different.

They’d be surprised.

But Grant was coming with them.

This time it was personal.

This time he’d relish in the hunt itself.

He was going to find Wilson and deal with him personally.

No one betrayed Grant.

Not without consequences.