The Abandon Series | Book 3 | These Times of Cessation Read online

  He sat in the lobby watching the masses congregate. It was like watching sharks swim. He was deeply curious about them, but at the same time, he wanted to step out into the street and pump all six rounds into six ugly skulls.

  After a while, he felt sleep pulling at him, but he resisted its lure. Then it pulled a little harder, the draw hypnotic.

  Close your eyes it said, just rest for a second.

  He did.

  Just for a second.

  When he woke up, it was daybreak. He sat up so fast, he felt the gun start to slide off his thigh. He quickly caught it, thinking of everything that could go wrong. Then, when the quick burst of energy burned off, he felt the sluggishness of being pulled out of such a deep slumber returning too quickly. The next thing he felt was how dang cold it was. That would explain the lack of feeling in his lips, fingers, and toes.

  Looking around, he was grateful that no one had tried to break in to the building. He stood, stretched, and looked outside. Other than the mess in the streets, the blown-up truck driver, and the woman who burned to death, everything was sandy freaking beaches and sunshine.

  Down the hall, he heard a door open, then close. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and tried to look alert. A guy he hadn’t seen before, except in passing a time or two, said, “Hey bro, what gives?”

  “I slept during the day in anticipation of staying up all night. You know how these guys are. They’re like freaking vampires.”

  He nodded and seemed to relax some. “Yeah. For sure.”

  “You taking the next watch?” Rowan asked.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  He handed the man the gun and said, “Do you know how to use it?”

  “Yeah, when I was growing up—”

  “No offense, but I’m wiped out. Can you tell me tomorrow? Or later on today, since it’s tomorrow already?”

  He frowned and said, “Sure, you bet.”

  “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” Rowan offered. “I’ve just hidden it for so long, sometimes it gets out on its own.”

  “I know the feeling,” the guy laughed. “I’ll see you later.”

  Rowan trudged upstairs, slipped inside the office, and saw the others sleeping. In his personal office, he checked his cell phone, saw it was still dead, then lay down on the floor and slept some more. He was only asleep a short while when the idiots in the streets below started blowing up cars.

  Dragging himself up off the floor, he shuffled over to the window and looked down below. For a moment, he tried to catch his breath. There were several cars burning, but more alarming was the size of the amassing crowds. Overnight, these guys had doubled their numbers.

  To his horror, all these HR morons were still harassing people in the streets. The people trying to escape weren’t fighting back or trying to assault anyone. They were simply people trying to get out of the commercial buildings and get to safety.

  A tussle broke out, catching his eye. A brave woman had broken loose from the pack, making a run for it. One of the black-clad goons took chase. He was carrying a bat; she was just trying to survive. When he caught up with her, he tore the shoulders of her dress down over her elbows, pinning her arms to her side. He then wound up and clonked her on the head with his aluminum bat.

  Rowan’s entire body jolted at the sight of the assault. For the first time in his life, he felt himself beginning to tear up. Over the next few minutes, the man beat this innocent woman to death in the middle of the street. This happened right out in the open and it didn’t give even one of these animals pause.

  “Oh, dear God,” he heard Dhanishka say from the other room. That was her version of dropping f-bombs.

  Brian burst through his office door and said, “These guys have lost their minds!”

  From just up the street, where he was thinking he and the team might be able to go to escape all this, came yet another mob, doubling their numbers yet again.

  “Where the hell are they all coming from?” he heard Clair ask from the main office.

  The better questions were not being asked. Their size was impressive and terrifying, but why were they there? And what were they trying to prove?

  “You have to be kidding me,” he heard Clair say.

  The second the next goon squad arrived, the existing troops stopped trying to corral the people. Instead, they started attacking them with lethal force. Half the people saw what was happening and made a run for it; everyone else was forced back into the smoke and embers of yesterday’s fires.

  The new arrivals, these modern-day Brownshirts, weren’t focused on hurting the people. Rather, they had their sights on all the cars rendered useless by the EMP. Rowan watched several of them pulling rags out of their pockets. Other guys had crowbars they were using to pry open the fuel doors on the cars. As soon as he saw the first guy stuffing a shirt into the gas tank, Rowan knew what they were doing. They were creating a war zone.

  “Why aren’t those cars leaving?” Dhanishka asked.

  “Because, in all likelihood, we’ve been hit with an EMP,” Rowan said. “Didn’t anyone explain what that does to electronics?”

  “An EMP is really the only plausible explanation,” Brian agreed.

  “There are people still in some of those cars,” Tommy said, eyes now glued to the scene below. These people had cowered in their cars all night long, unable to leave without being mobbed, or worse, killed. Why none of the HR turds broke the glass and pulled them out was beyond him. Now he understood.

  Following his earlier advice—refusing to sink down to the level of cowardice, or take on the role as the scared observer—Rowan said, “I can’t just sit by and watch all this. I have to do something.”

  He didn’t say another word to the others. He just grabbed his car keys and headed down the stairs, all three flights. Along the way, he passed a trio of terrified people from the third floor. Others below the third floor were congregating in their cliques, some wearing concerned looks on their faces, others with wet eyes and bodies that wouldn’t stop trembling.

  He opened the metal stairwell door and found two men standing guard by the tempered-glass door leading outside. It was Dave and another guy he neither knew nor recognized.

  “I need to go,” he told Dave, his eyes like a hurricane.

  Dave looked at him and took pause. “I don’t think they know we’re still in here. But I don’t really want to test that theory. We should all stay inside. You included.”

  “They already know everyone’s in here,” Rowan shot back. At this point, his adrenaline was off the charts and he was all about retaliation. “They just haven’t decided we’re their targets yet. And when they do, you’ll know that chickenshitting your way through this was the wrong strategy.”

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Dave said, taken aback. If he and his guys really did read The Dissident Weekly, as he suggested, he wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at the statement.

  “I’m going out.”

  “That’s not a good idea, Rowan.”

  “I’m just going to the parking garage,” he said. “I need a few things from my car.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I’m not going to get my car, I’m going to get my gun from the car.”

  Dave picked up the long revolver from the desk where it lay and said, “Six shots is enough to fill a man’s heart with fear and still have rounds to spare.”

  “Six rounds won’t put a dent in that crowd!” he roared.

  Outside, the levels of noise amplified. Cars were still exploding, followed by the kinds of cheering sounds you could hear for miles in either direction. Then came the screaming, the wailing of people being beaten, and even more explosions from more cars being turned into bombs.

  “Lock up after me,” Rowan growled.

  There was a set of keys dangling from the lock on the door. Dave got up, eyeing him the whole way. He said, “Are you sure?”

  Rowan nodded.

  Dave turned the key, bu
t before opening the door, he said, “Whatever you do, once you’re out, if they see you, don’t lead them back to us.”

  “You can’t hide from this, Dave. And you can’t run.”

  “I’m not running, Rowan. I just wanted you to know that all these people in here matter, too.”

  “If I come back,” Rowan said before leaving, “you’ll either let me in, or I’ll shoot my way in.”

  Frowning, setting his jaw, he said, “That would be bad.”

  “Look outside, friend. It’s all bad.”

  With a final nod, Dave said, “Godspeed, brother,” and then he opened the door.

  Rowan inhaled the late morning air, frowned at the disorderly masses, then made a beeline for the entrance to the parking garage. The metal door was twenty feet away, but it felt like the longest twenty feet of his life.

  Eyes on the prize, listening for any anomaly, Rowan slid his key in the lock, then turned it. It was like turning a loose bolt. He twisted and turned it again to no avail. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he realized that he’d been seen.

  He pulled the key out and saw that the lock was loose because it had already been broken. He slipped into the garage, his heart pounding nearly out of control. Without a second thought, he broke into a sprint, running up the concrete ramps like his life depended on it.

  Down one floor, he heard the door open and a guy say, “Yeah, I just watched him run in here. He’s in gray dress pants and a white Oxford.”

  “He’s a freaking suit?” another guy asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  Rowan picked up his pace. His car was in his designated spot on the fourth floor, but he knew he couldn’t keep the pace for all four flights. He was running out of steam. Once upon a time, he’d been in better shape, but ground-fighting and long-distance running were two different things. He’d never been a runner, only a fighter. He slowed to a jog, tried to catch his breath. As he ran by the long rows of cars, however, he started seeing lots of five-gallon gas cans lining the parking ramps. He ran by one such container, tapping the top. It was full.

  What the hell?

  He had another floor to go when he heard the sounds of pounding feet behind him. He turned and looked, saw a few of the guys trying to catch up. They were slowly gaining on him, and he felt the weakness in his lungs. If he slowed his pace much further, he’d lose too much ground.

  On the fourth floor, as he rounded the garage, he spotted a guy siphoning gasoline into cans like those he’d seen below. He stopped slapping his heels and started running on the balls of his feet. Right then, he knew what had happened. The guy had broken the lock on the door and was now siphoning all the gas.

  From where he was kneeling, the gas thief looked up in time to see Rowan bearing down on him. Rowan drove a flying knee right into the side of the guy’s head, knocking him out. In the process of attacking, however, Rowan slammed into the car, his ribs suffering the brunt of the impact.

  The move cost him time, but it likely saved him from either fighting or having to kill another person. He was about to head to his car when he saw the gas thief stirring. He was with the Hayseed Rebellion, clear as day. And even though he wasn’t the thug who had beaten the woman to death in the street, Rowan saw it as guilt by association. He punched the guy in the face extra hard, sending him back to sleep.

  Pissed off at this whole thing, at the years of violence and harassment, he needed to send these bags of shit a message. Wasting no time, he dragged the unconscious creep to the edge of the waist-high concrete wall, hoisted him up, then grabbed his ankles and pushed him over.

  Rowan leaned over the wall and watched the unconscious man torpedo straight into the sidewalk below. The second he hit, his face smashed into the concrete beside a crowd. His back immediately broke in half, folding him over the wrong way. People started screaming.

  One floor down, one of the guys said, “He just threw Owen off the roof!”

  “You sure it was Owen?”

  “Positive.”

  Rowan looked up in time to see the two fastest guys bearing down on him. Right then, the voice inside his head started telling him what an idiot he was, how he should have gone to the car, gotten the gun, and just shot the guy. He was sure that in the end, he’d pay for this grave miscalculation, but all he could think of it that moment was getting the gun.

  He glanced up the aisle at his car and realized he couldn’t get there in time. The two goons would be on him before he could open the door and fish his weapon out of the glovebox. Besides, he was no longer interested in running. The charge of rage had been burning holes inside him for hours now and he realized he wanted to fight.

  Rolling his sleeves, he stepped out into the open lane. The two guys saw he wasn’t running, so they slowed to a walk, considered the situation.

  “Why did you do that?” one of the guys barked.

  “Do what?” Rowan asked, rolling his shoulders and making fists of his hands.

  “Why did you throw him over the edge like that?”

  “You kill one of ours, see what I’ll do to one of yours.” Gritting his teeth, he said, “I’m about to even up the score with you two donkey dicks.”

  In his head, this was a version of Walker’s saying, Take my stuff, see what I do to your hand.

  Chapter Eight

  Constanza Navarro

  Constanza woke up in a rickety bed with her head all foggy and the most excruciating pain radiating throughout her midsection. She didn’t know where she was, where Rowan was, or if she needed to go to the hospital to deliver Rose.

  Then, just below her vagina, she felt like someone was stabbing her incessantly. A ragged mewl escaped her mouth. She opened her eyes, saw that she was in a tent, and that someone had their head in between her legs. Even worse, there was a draft riding right up the middle of her. As in, she was naked below the waist.

  Trying to sit up, feeling like she was on a table with a futon mat, she looked around and saw a man holding a candle. Her gaze shifted back to the person between her legs. This person had women’s hair, thankfully.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, groggy and hurting.

  The woman didn’t bother to look up. “I’m just sewing you up, sweetie. You’ve been bleeding pretty badly. It looks like you…like you had a baby?”

  She laid her head back down and started to cry. The big man holding the candle was just sitting there looking at her privates. Strangely, it didn’t matter.

  Her baby had been stolen.

  Rose was gone.

  “If Bernard hadn’t brought you to me,” the woman said, still in there working, “you might have died of blood loss. Do you know how lucky you are?”

  “I don’t feel lucky,” she sobbed. “My baby girl…she’s gone. And Bernard is staring at my…my…”

  “He’s half blind, so it’s probably just a bloody splotch to him.”

  Glancing over at Bernard, Constanza saw him nodding in agreement.

  Another woman stepped into the large tent. She was heavyset with bad hair and teeth, but eyes that knew sadness and pain. She sat down next to Constanza, took her hand, and said, “Oh, honey. We’re so sorry. Our hearts are breaking for you.”

  She turned and looked at the woman, saw a tenderness in her eyes that touched Constanza’s heart. She had misjudged these people. But more than that—far more important—she feared for her future, and for little Rose’s life.

  Thinking of Rowan, how badly he’d wanted this child, she was soul-crushed, the pain almost too much to bear. Her anguish reached a new volume now, the fear and agony so bright and shameful, her eyes wouldn’t even stay open.

  “Let it out, honey,” the woman said, brushing damp strands of hair off her forehead. “That pain wants a home, but if you let it live inside you, you’ll lose your way. Let it all out.”

  The sobbing became a hiccupping wail, and then sniffling exhaustion. She’d never let her emotions out before, only with Rowan, and usually only when she was mad. With all thi
s grief upon her, however, she could no longer contain herself. Nearly eclipsing her emotional pain was her physical pain. It was so intense she felt herself wavering on the edge of consciousness.

  “The skin split back to the muscle, but this should allow you to heal right,” the woman working on her said. “You’re not a dancer or an adult entertainer or anything, are you?”

  The question was so unbelievable she didn’t know what to say. “Why would that matter?”

  Bernard said, “Think about it, young lady. Sex, stretching, salt from the sweat.”

  “I don’t do all that,” she said sternly.

  The woman next to her took her hand, smiled again, and said, “Bless your heart.”

  “It’s gonna be a little…rough-looking down there,” the woman said, finally glancing up at her, “so you’ll need to let your body heal for at least six weeks before engaging in significant activity. We’ll try to feed you, but you need to get your strength back so your body can start to mend those wounds.”

  “I can’t stay here six weeks!” she said, panicked.

  “I know,” the woman beside her said. “But you need to be careful for six weeks.”

  “My child is out there,” Constanza said, holding back her emotions.

  “You need to get some sleep,” the woman pressed, draping a dirty blanket over her.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “Shhh,” Bernard said. “Your body’s been through a lot. You’ll need to do as Sheridan says and get some sleep.”

  The big woman next to her added, “I’ll lay in here with you, just so you don’t have to be alone.”

  “I want to be alone,” she cried.

  “That’s not wise.”

  “Am I being kept here against my will?” she asked. They all shook their heads, no. “Then, can one of you help me up?”

  The big woman said, “I’ll help you with your pants.”

  Her pants were pulled back up, but everything was sticky and wet, and very uncomfortable. She sat up with Bernard’s help. Then gently, she slid off the table, allowing herself to stand on her own two feet. When she was sure she would be okay, she gingerly started to walk toward the tent’s unzipped opening.