SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 27

  He kicked her in the ribs, making her yelp and curl into a ball. He pressed her face to the ground as he wrapped something around her ankles. A plastic tie came next, binding her wrists behind her back. The gag was next. The piece of fabric cut into the corners of her mouth.

  “You had to make it difficult, didn’t you?” Stanic said. “If you’d just kept your nose out of things, none of this would have had to happen. No one else would have needed to be hurt.”

  Eva shook with rage. She tried to pull her wrists free but knew it was futile. He’d used the same kind of ties she had once used in the line of duty.

  With no tools or sharp surfaces anywhere, she knew she’d be stuck there until someone arrived. How long would it take before Frank realised something was up and brought help? Probably not soon enough. She knew she had to remain calm, wait for an opportunity, and be ready to take it—if it came.

  She heard a moan from further back in the workshop. Not Duncan this time—Marcus. Stanic had brought him in. The sound of the “zip” from the plastic tie told her he was facing a similar fate.

  ***

  Stanic had bound her to the leg of the workbench opposite the one where Duncan was tied. With her hands behind her back, she felt around the floor with her fingertips, trying to find anything useful, any piece of metal she could attempt to use to free her from the plastic tie. There was a trick to opening the clasp within the catch. She found nothing beyond the rusted bolts that kept the workbench firmly in place.

  Her head rested against the cool steel of the leg. She breathed slowly, keeping her pulse under control. Now was not the time to panic. Although she hadn’t specifically trained to deal with interrogations, she had read up on the subject a great deal in her own time. That was when she thought she’d join the CIA. Felt it to be a good idea to swot up on the job in order to impress any potential employer.

  That opportunity never came, though. She had ended up in narcotics instead, which ironically, given that at the time she thought it was the end of her life as she knew it, had actually saved her life. Without being on that ship during the bust, she doubted she would have survived.

  Right now, though, bound and gagged, she had to wonder if that was a good thing.

  A metal cart trundled down the length of the workshop, its wheels rattling and wobbling against the floor. It stopped a few feet to her right. Her vision was still blurry from Stanic’s attack. Her head felt like an overripe melon, as though her brain was pushing against the inside of her skull.

  Stanic stood in front of her and lifted her chin with a piece of cold metal. She jerked away, fearing he would strike her again. He held a large wrench in his right hand. He knelt, the wrench resting across his thighs.

  “You’ve left me no real option, Eva,” he said, shaking his head as if he was disapproving the behaviour of an infant. “I liked you. More than most, in fact. I regret that it’s had to come to this, but if only you had left well alone; if you had taken your flesh wound as a warning and dropped the case, we wouldn’t have had to do this.”

  The gag prevented her from speaking out, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

  “No, no, no. There’s no need now,” Stanic said. “You just be quiet while I tell you a little story. After I’m done, you’ll have the chance to speak. Your response, however, will determine both your fate and Duncan’s.”

  Stanic stood up and placed the wrench on the top of the cart. When he pulled his hand back, he held a pair of long-nosed pliers. “One day,” he began, “a submarine captain was ordered to deliver a president to a secure underground facility. On this day, the world was drowning. The president was on a foreign visit and stranded.”

  As he spoke, he stepped back and forth like a college lecturer.

  “It was this submarine captain’s duty to make sure the president was delivered safely, and in that, the captain did a fine job. Do you know how the captain was rewarded? No? He was rewarded with a death sentence. He was left to drift on the seas with a crippled vessel and a set of final orders. There was no sanctuary for him as promised.”

  Stanic’s face contorted. He paced back and forth, gesticulating with the pliers to punctuate his sentences. “There could be no survivors, they said. None. I had learned too much. In exchange for my life, I had to take those of my crew. Now don’t think I found that decision easy. It took me months to come to terms with it, but I eventually realised they were right. No one could know. It was too risky… the infection couldn’t be allowed to get to them. We were sacrificial pawns.”

  Spittle flew from his mouth. His face had turned red. He knelt down in front of Eva, the pliers close to her face. “I thought we could start again. I thought we could make a go of things here, but you had to stick your nose in, didn’t you? You and Mike had to bring it out of the shadows when I already had sacrificed so much to keep it hidden. To give us all a chance.”

  He stood and turned away, pointing to Duncan and Marcus. “How many more of you know about the files? Think on that very carefully. I’ll offer you the same deal I was offered: you tell me who else is involved and you’ll live. Spare your own by condemning theirs.”

  Eva shook her head. She tried to somehow shift the workbench, find a way free, but it wouldn’t budge. Stanic leant over her, the pliers in his right hand. He loosened the gag, dragging it down her chin.

  She considered screaming, but she knew she’d pay for it. He held the pliers not far from her ribs. “What’s so important about the files anyway?” she said, trying to keep the tremble under control, showing him she wasn’t scared.

  “No. You answer my questions. Who else knows?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Eva said. “You’re insane. To think we trusted you all this time. How could you live a lie for this long, huh? How could you murder your friends, the sub’s crew?”

  “Because I fucking care!” Stanic shouted in her face.

  She felt his hot breath blast her face.

  “I always cared, that’s why I had to do what I did. You’ll never understand the pressure. If I couldn’t go back, then no one could. The time was over, you understand? We were cast off, exiled, left for dead. This is all we have. This is our entire world right here. I couldn’t stand by and watch it split apart. I couldn’t watch these people return to them, only to be refused and eliminated.”

  The veins in his temple throbbed as he continued to work himself into a frenzy. He stepped away, faced Duncan, then Marcus, and shook his head before returning back to Eva.

  “They were my friends. Even Ade, Mike and Jean. But like all of us, they were just pawns. I had to do it. Mike had let the genie out of the bottle, and there was only one way of stopping it. Stopping everyone from learning about… them.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t get the answers. You don’t have the luxury of asking questions here. The files, Eva, tell me who else knows. Your life or theirs? I’ll find out eventually. I already know Frank and Catherine know. I saw you all poring over the files, trying to understand the words. But you’ll never decrypt them, not without the USB drive.”

  Eva thought of Danny. He was with them. She couldn’t let him get embroiled in this.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why all of this for some files, orders, or whoever ‘they’ are? There must have been another way.”

  Stanic thrust the pliers into her ribs, driving the hard metal tips into the wound, splitting the stitches apart, making her gasp for air. The pain gripped her, and she clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth would break. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her back arched in an attempt to lean away, relieve the pain, but he kept up the pressure, kept driving and twisting until she cried out for him to stop.

  “Don’t make me do this,” Stanic said, withdrawing the pliers. “Tell me everything.”

  Eva sobb
ed with the agony and thrashed her legs against the floor, bucking back and forth, knocking her head against the workbench leg, but it stood firm.

  Stanic waited in silence for a minute, the pliers in his right hand. The tips dripped with blood. She felt the warm, wet sensation of blood oozing from the wound. When she looked up at him, she saw the beginnings of a smile on his face and knew then, without any shadow of a doubt, he was completely crazy. It went beyond whatever conspiracy he was embroiled in; he enjoyed this at some unnatural level.

  But as he bent down in front of her again, she saw a shadow move behind him, something by the door. She refocused on his face, not wanting to give away what she had seen. He just stared at her. The pain in her ribs subsided enough for her to catch her breath and get herself under control.

  “Okay,” she said, stalling for time. “I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you everything, but you have to meet me halfway. Before you kill the others, and me, I want to know more. I want to know what’s in the files. Who was it that made you do these terrible things? I can see how hard it must have been for you—”

  Her right cheek erupted with a sharp pain. Her head was thrust to the side by the force of a blow that made her skin burn. She closed her eyes and waited for the bloom of agony to pass.

  “No,” he said, quietly and simply. “We’ve covered this already.” While Stanic looked over at Duncan, she caught a glimpse over his shoulder of someone approaching the door. Someone poked their head through the blown-out window. Jim! Her heart leapt, and it was all she could do not to shout out to him.

  Her eyes grew wide as she made eye contact. How could he be here? Jim must have seen Duncan because his face twisted and twitched. Then he saw Stanic and placed his finger over his lips to indicate for her to be quiet. Like she was going to give him away.

  “I’m sorry,” Eva said, getting Stanic’s attention. “You’re right. I just wanted to try to understand. You’ve been with us so long. You’ve been such a solid foundation of this community. I can’t imagine why these people, whoever they are, would want you to do these things.”

  Another slap rocked her head violently to the side. She tasted blood in her mouth and spat it out on the floor. She turned her face back to him. Stanic’s nostrils flared, and his lips curled at the edges. He grabbed her chin with his left hand and squeezed, forcing her mouth open. With his other hand, he gripped her tongue between the pliers, applying enough pressure to make her choke and thrash. His hands were too strong; he continued to pull on her tongue, squeezing the pliers shut.

  Eva clenched her eyes shut in response to the pain, fully expecting Stanic to pull her tongue right out of her body. She could feel it stretching all the way down, tensing against the ligaments and muscle fibres that held it in place.

  She heard a loud crash and then Jim screaming, bellowing like a wounded beast.

  The pliers were no longer crunching down on her tongue.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw Jim beating Stanic’s head into the floor with the large wrench.

  The cart had collapsed, spilling out tools and the fragments of the USB drive.

  Holding the wrench with both hands, Jim raised it above his head and brought it back down with a sickening thud, cracking Stanic’s skull.

  A dozen more times, Jim struck down. Eva had to look away from the mess. Blood spattered over her with each blow.

  “Stop,” she managed to eventually say, finding it difficult to speak with a swollen tongue. Everything hurt, and she turned away, not wanting to see the mess that Jim had made of his former friend. She had seen many terrible things, but that was as brutal as anything. “Stop,” she whispered again. She leaned over and closed her eyes, breathing through her nose, and waited for Jim to release her.

  She could hear him sobbing over Stanic’s body.

  They had been solid friends for years; she didn’t blame him.

  But he did what he had to do.

  “Dad?” Duncan said. He sounded groggy as though he had just awoke from an eons-long sleep. “Is that you?”

  “You’re safe now, son,” Jim said between heavy breaths. “We’re all safe now.”

  Chapter 42

  Eva nursed a headache. She sipped the steaming mug of tea and swallowed three codeine pills. They were officially out of date, but she no longer cared. Her body needed something… anything to dull the aches and pains. She looked out of the Bravo’s bridge windows and watched with satisfaction as Dietmar’s fleet disappeared over the horizon. What was more satisfying was not a soul had come to the deck to see them off as they normally would.

  Once the truth had got out about Stanic and what Jim had done, he was quickly accepted back into the fold and reinstated as captain.

  No one would miss the fanatics now. And with Marcus agreeing not to take over as leader, although still claiming the Bravo for his own, the flotilla once more felt united. Eva, like the others, was just glad it was all over, even if they didn’t have the full story or fully understand Stanic’s actions.

  Tom, having created a distraction for Jim to get onto the Alonsa, had recovered the broken USB drive and taken it with him back to the Excelsior to try to recover the data.

  She winced as she spun on her chair to face the others sitting around the bridge.

  Annette was there, checking on Marcus. A bandage and dressing covered his shoulder. Despite his grumbling, he was okay. Luckily, he hadn’t lost a lot of blood, and his unconsciousness had been brought about by shock more than any lasting wound.

  “You’ll be fine if you keep the wound clean,” Annette said when she had finished with him. They had set up a temporary medical bay in the bridge. No one wanted to stay at the Alonsa given what had gone on. Shaley’s body was sent off, like the others, earlier that morning with Frank, Cath, Tyson, and Marcus himself in attendance.

  “I’m sorry,” Eva said.

  Marcus gave her a nod of gratitude.

  Duncan came in with Danny by his side. The boy rushed to Eva and hugged her. She grunted with the impact but didn’t mind. “I’m glad you’re safe,” Danny said.

  “Me too, Dan,” Eva replied. “Couldn’t let you down now, could I?”

  Eva looked up at Duncan. “How you feeling this morning, Dunc?”

  “Like hammered shit, but I’ll live. It could have been a lot worse. You?”

  “Just a bit banged up. Jim still with Tom?”

  Duncan thumbed towards the Excelsior, which was now tied up next to the Bravo. “Yeah, he’s going over some stuff with Tom. Hopefully he’ll have some positive news. I for one would love to know what was on those files that drove Stanic to do what he did. Oh, here they come now.”

  Eva saw Jim pat Tom on the shoulder as the two man walked across the makeshift bridge between the two ships. A minute later, amid fevered conversation, the two men entered the bridge.

  Marcus stood with the help of Annette. He approached Jim and held out his hand. “I just want to say thanks, for what you did, and well, sorry about… everything.”

  Jim shook his hand. “Likewise, Marcus. I’m sorry about Shaley. I know we didn’t get on, but still, you’ve got my condolences.”

  “So?” Marcus said, looking at Tom. “Long time, no see. Do you have the key to this mystery?”

  “There’s good and bad news on that front,” Tom said, addressing everyone as they looked to him for information. “The good news is I managed to recover some of the data. The bad news is I can’t decrypt the documents fully.”

  “Show Eva the files,” Jim said with excitement in his voice. Tom took a set of papers from inside his jacket and placed them on a console in front of Eva. Duncan and the others, including Marcus, gathered around as Eva read the first piece of paper.

  It only contained five short paragraphs.

  When she read them, she turne
d to face Jim and Tom.

  “Is this legit?”

  “Yes. Thomas was Stanic’s first mate,” Jim said.

  Tom continued. “You see, I didn’t know he’d survived. I was hiding for my life when Jim and the others brought the sub in. After I came aboard, bringing the files and various other items with me—I didn’t know what they were at the time; I just recognised the seal on top—I decided to leave, not realising Benedict had infiltrated the community.”

  “Benedict?” Eva asked.

  “That’s Stanic’s real name,” Tom said. “Stanic is his mother’s maiden name. His full title was Captain Benedict Montgomery. He was one of the favourite sub captains of the navy. It’s how we got the mission to get the president.”

  “He was going on about that,” Eva said. “I didn’t understand. He kept talking about a ‘them’ and how they had used him as a pawn. But now… after reading this, it makes sense.”

  The unencrypted text was partial orders from an executive committee. Montgomery had been ordered to slaughter his crew in return for safe passage to an underground facility.

  “They are a group of world leaders,” Tom said. “And on that second page are the coordinates for their facility. That is what Benedict was killing for.”

  Eva rubbed her face, still feeling the bruise from Benedict’s attack. “That makes sense now,” she said, looking at the numbers on the sheet of paper. “He kept saying how if he couldn’t go there, no one could. He wanted to keep us independent and said this would split us apart.”

  Jim looked out the window. “He was probably right, a few days ago. But the flotilla is different now. With no Faust and her group, and with a united citizenship…”

  Marcus turned to Jim. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”