Cold Valley (The Savage Horde Book 2), page 1
Cold Valley
CHRIS BOSTIC
First printing, July 2016
Copyright © 2016, Chris Bostic
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1533654034
ISBN-13: 978-1533654038
Cover Design by Chris Bostic
All characters and events in this book are fictitious products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
DEDICATION
For the fans who have read every word I’ve ever written, especially my niece.
Here’s to hoping you enjoy this story as much as the other ones.
CHAPTER 1
Brakes squealed as the transport descended a hillside not quite as steep as the ones where Joe had run for his life three days earlier.
Every time the outdated vehicle bounced over the hard ground, Joe was certain he’d bang his head on the low roof of the cargo bay. Unfortunately, it was so cramped he could barely move his arms to protect from the possibility.
“Shame the savages didn’t kill that officer,” he grumbled under his breath to his former sergeant, Constantine “Connie” Braddock.
Connie twisted around on the metal bench to shoot Joe a cautionary look. “Probably wouldn’t have mattered,” he whispered so the others wouldn’t hear him. “The whole upper echelon seems to want to punish us for their failures on the battlefield.”
There had been plenty of those. Ever since the supposed savages of the Kunuri National Army for Peace, K-NAP or K-Nappers for short, had entered the war in a big-time, unanticipated way, the Regulators had been in full retreat. Any hopes of escaping from captivity had been lost when the officer had returned from yet another rout to rush his prisoners into a waiting transport.
Not simply prisoners, Joe thought. Deserters. Though he’d spent the worst couple days of his life trying to get back to friendly lines after being overrun by the savages, after losing more than half his squad mates, he’d still been branded a traitor. All because he’d thrown away his battery-depleted weapon and dropped his high tech helmet along the way. A way filled with nothing but pain and death, and a slim hope of getting back home to his frail parents—if they were even alive anymore.
Now he wasn’t so sure he’d never find out, Joe thought with a sigh.
He looked up to find Connie still twisted around and staring at him. He couldn’t meet the older man’s eyes, not that his sergeant was much more advanced in years. At the most, Connie had only seven or eight years on the seventeen year old Joe, but that was all it took to be considered a grizzled veteran.
The road seemed to level out, prompting Joe to take another look out the foggy side windows of the antiquated transport. To his surprise, they’d slipped off the hillside into a wide valley unlike any he had seen since he’d been forcibly conscripted into the Regulator’s ranks.
A barren plain stretched out as far as he could see, as if he stood at the end of a brown ocean. He hadn’t remembered his homeland looking so much like a desert, and he really hadn’t expected to find a veritable mountain of wire in the middle of the valley.
“Sarge? You see that?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess we’re not going home.”
“Not yet,” Connie replied, but there was no reason for him to try to put a positive spin on the situation. When the savages had overrun the Republic’s troops up north past the town of Nochni, Joe’s life had changed for the worst. It seemed unlikely to improve.
“Not ever,” Joe muttered, but quickly wiped the scowl off his face. He’d promised himself that he’d remain positive. Even though Leisa wasn’t around to brighten his mood, he would continue working hard to make himself a better person. A more positive person, not that there was anything to be hopeful about. Especially since the prisoners had been separated by male and female for transportation, and Joe hadn’t seen or heard another vehicle following his own. For all he knew, she was headed somewhere completely different.
The transport’s brakes squealed louder, followed by puffs of air as they came to a halt. Joe noticed Connie leaning to the side, angling for a better look through the murky windows.
His old sergeant was a military man to the end, Joe thought. It was smart of him to get as much intel on the place as he could, and Joe followed his lead.
“Stay in your seats,” barked a green-clad guard from the front of the vehicle. “No one moves a muscle.”
Joe subtly shifted to the side anyway. It was easy to get away with the movement, given how there had been only one guard assigned to the group of twenty prisoners. But not easy enough to rush the man. His electromagnetic coilgun could throw out enough nickel-plated bolts to cut the whole group down in a second or two.
“You see that?” Connie whispered. “Solid row of wire around the perimeter…all with razor barbs.”
“Unfortunately,” Joe replied as the transport slipped past an open gate into the world’s largest livestock pen.
“Probably electrified too,” Connie added.
Joe wasn’t sure about that. He couldn’t see any telltale plastic insulators on a single wire strand like a cattle enclosure would have. Perhaps the entire fence was hot, he reasoned. That would definitely take things up a notch. Given the chance, he wasn’t going to touch it to find out.
As they drove deeper into the camp, Joe marveled at the lack of solid structures. There was nothing overhead to keep off the beating sun, and no buildings to house the typical services like an infirmary or mess hall. Shiny wire extended in all directions, and slowly wound its way around his chest with a steel grip.
Joe swallowed down a lump of stress that had been building in the back of this throat. When he spotted the first resident, he nearly vomited it back up.
In the corner of a dusty pen, a lump resembling a street urchin huddled under a pile of brown rags. Only calling the man a homeless beggar was arguably too kind. The prisoner seemed animalistic—and apparently fed like one.
Outside the pen, Joe watched as a green-uniformed guard rode on the back of what looked like an electric-powered wheelbarrow. He hopped off, shovel in hand, and scooped a small pile of a brown, grainy substance that reminded Joe of the granola he had survived on the last several days.
Without giving the prisoner a second look, the guard pushed the shovel against the fence and flung the feed in and around a brown basket. As Joe’s transport pulled out of sight, he noticed the prisoner didn’t even look up as the guard scooted on to the next tent.
“I can’t stomach any more of that gravel,” Joe whispered to Connie. “Lucky for you, you like that stuff.”
“I was lying,” Connie replied. “Just wanted to make sure you guys would eat it. You’ve gotta do whatever you can to keep your strength up. Out on patrol we weren’t going to get anything better.”
“You got that right.” Joe scowled as he thought about all they’d gone through. After a couple long, painful days on the run, the survivors had finally fought their way back to friendly lines to find out they weren’t so friendly. And now he was separated from the squad’s only other survivor—Leisa.
Joe kept looking out the window, hoping he would see some female prisoners. He had to know that she was close, but nothing other than a few bearded drifters and man-sized lumps of clothes greeted him.
“Sure looks like a cheery place, Sarge.”
“I noticed that. Just keep your head down and we’ll make it outta here.”
Before Joe could argue, the transport stopped again. This time, he was well inside the compound, and a few nervous murmurs from the prisoners filled the vehicle.
“Everybody on your feet!” the guard bellowed. “Welcome to Dojeko!”
Joe traded a look with Connie, which the older man acknowledged with a crisp nod.
“Told you,” Connie whispered.
Joe wrapped his arms around himself and tried to exhale the fear. It was as bad as it could possibly be. Dojeko, also known as Old Stony Lonesome, had to be the toughest military prison in the whole Republic, or so Joe had heard.
Before he could linger on that thought for long, the guard gestured with his coilgun from the closest prisoners to the narrow doorway of the transport. “File out one at a time.”
Joe stood and stretched out his tight muscles, but he was in no hurry to trade the stuffy tin can for a cage of wire.
The guard bellowed insults. Joe looked up front to see him brandish his weapon at a thin boy who looked barely fourteen.
“You maggots wait here until I tell you to go!” the guard hollered. When the scared kid froze up in the doorway, the guard slammed him in the gut with the butt of his weapon. With a kick, he propelled the terrified boy out the door.
“I said one at a time!” Dark eyes blazed across the interior of the transport, setting Joe on edge. As he gripped the back of his bench seat with white knuckle intensity, the guard spat, “Follow orders and you might just live to see another day.”
“Who would want to?” Joe mumbled under his breath.
Connie seemed visibly shaken. In addition to all the combat, Joe knew his sergeant had seen brutality before. He’d practically dished it out to his own squad for the sake of making them tougher, but he’d never beaten one of them for not following orders.
“So much for the welcoming committee,” Connie muttered.
Thus far, everything had confirmed Joe’s suspicions. If the guards had no trouble beating down a helpless kid a few years younger than him, then they’d
Joe stayed right behind Connie as they slowly worked their way to the door. From the outside, he could hear parts of each mini interrogation as the prisoners filed off. It seemed to be the typical stuff: name, rank, and serial number. That was followed by a listing of infractions, and some kind of sarcastic welcome to the camp that he couldn’t quite make out.
Connie got the grunt from the guard, and stepped off the bus onto the hard, brown ground. From the doorway, an oddly cold breeze rustled through Joe’s hair. Rather than provide limited relief from the stuffy transport, it made him shiver as he watched as the sergeant stride across the desolate ground at gunpoint. Twenty feet away from Joe, Connie stopped to face down a sharply uniformed officer and a couple more menacing guards.
One of the guards was significantly bigger than the other, making the stocky Connie seem shorter and more insignificant than Joe had thought possible. The other guard was an exact opposite; a thin man with an even thinner black mustache. But it was the officer that really drew Joe’s attention. Perched below dark eyes was a hooknose that reminded Joe of a vulture’s beak.
As the officer flipped through pages on his tablet, Connie stood with crossed arms like he was bored. Although he appreciated his sergeant’s tiny act of defiance, the aching in Joe’s gut ate away at what little confidence he had left.
The officer looked up at Connie and titled his head to the side. With eyes beady as a snake’s, he offered a crooked grin. “What? No salute for your superior officer?”
“Didn’t think I was on duty anymore,” Connie replied.
“You have no idea, soldier. We have all kinds of duties for you. Now let’s have your details.”
“Constantine Braddock. Sergeant, First Class.”
The man thumbed through screens on his tablet before looking up again. “Serial number?”
“I forgot.”
A vein throbbed in the thin man’s neck. He took an aggressive step closer to Connie, leaving the other two thugs behind. “You forgot your numbers?”
“I forgot to say them.”
“Well…”
“Well, what…sir?” Connie spit the last word with more venom than Joe would have dared. From behind Connie, Joe noticed the way his sergeant nodded his head to indicate the tablet. “Shouldn’t you have everything you need in that thing?”
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, boy. Confirm your numbers.”
“The mind’s still a bit fuzzy.” Connie tapped the side of his head. “Took some wicked shrapnel to the helmet, sir.”
“Shame you didn’t bring that helmet back home with you. Now the enemy has it.”
Rage burned inside Joe as he watched the man berate Connie. This officer apparently really did know everything about the two of them, but somehow not the right details. No one wanted to hear their side of the story. Sure they’d lost gear behind enemy lines, but they’d lost buddies too. The words flew out before Joe could stop them.
“Unholy alliance! We did everything we could to get back home…to be treated like this. It’s-”
A sharp blow crashed between Joe’s shoulder blades. He pitched out of the transport onto the ground. Rolling to his side, he looked up at the butt of a coilgun inches from his unprotected face.
“Speak when spoken to or I’ll flatten your head,” the guard grumbled.
“Leave him alo-” Connie hollered only to be cut off with a grunt. Joe looked back to see the sergeant doubled over. The officer stood next to him with a gleaming metal baton in his claw-like grip.
“Looks like we have a couple feisty ones.” The officer strolled over between Joe and Connie, tapping the baton on his leg. “I’m gonna have fun breaking you both.” He waved over the two guards and pointed across the compound. “Take them to the B Block, and let’s get started right away on their reeducation.”
Joe really didn’t like the sound of that.
CHAPTER 2
“Nice job,” Connie said. “That worked out well.”
“Yeah, right.” Joe looked through the wire of his cage to find an unexpected grin on the sergeant’s face. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“Well, yeah. It’s better than I hoped.” Connie scooted over closer to the edge of his pen so he could whisper across the dirt path to Joe’s little enclosure. “I knew you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean there was a risk that they might separate us, maybe give us a week in solitary. Maybe shoot us on the spot.”
“That’s some risk, huh?” Joe sat next to the wire and drew in the sand absently with a dirty finger. “So what exactly did this accomplish?”
“We’re together. I can keep an eye on you.” Connie looked around to make sure no one else was listening, not that there was anyone too close. The neighboring cages across an aisle to Joe’s left were all empty, though he thought he noticed a couple tattered lumps in the pens behind him and to the right. “It was worth a beating.”
The aching in Joe’s back wanted to dispute the point, but he was certainly happier to have the veteran soldier close by. For a grizzled sergeant, Connie wasn’t too bossy all the time, which helped make him seem as much of an older brother as a superior. With Joe’s father, sickly mother and a younger brother all back home, hopefully, Connie had been the only thing close to family he’d had for a while—except for Leisa. He missed her chestnut hair, her pretty green eyes, and the way she moved, not to mention how she reassured him, and the way they hugged and more.
“…need to start preparing.”
Joe realized Connie had been talking to him, and tried his best to catch up without admitting to his daydreaming. “You bet, boss.”
“You bet what?”
“Uhm…planning our escape, whenever you’re ready.”
“Planning?” Connie replied. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you? You thinking about that girl again, loverboy?”
There wasn’t any point in hiding it, Joe decided. Now that they were locked up, forbidden fraternization between male and female soldiers was the least of his problems. “Maybe. Like always.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I want to escape.” Connie pulled a dusty gray blanket around his shoulders. “But I’m talking about something a little more long term. If we’re gonna make it, we need to prepare our minds. You have no idea the kind of brutality they’re gonna bring down on us. Not just physical. This is going to be a mental battle…a battle of wills.”
“I’d rather just get outta here now. Find a way to cut the wire. Start a riot or something.” Joe gazed across the prison, but every direction seemed to stretch endlessly with wire pens. The wide valley was flatter than anything he’d seen before.
Off in the distance, green peaks reached to where they touched the swirling clouds. Somewhere on the other side, the savages also swirled, pressing down on the Republic’s troops with a vengeance.
“There has to be a weak spot we can exploit.”
“Probably,” Connie offered, but it wasn’t energetic agreement. “But it won’t be soon. It will take days to learn the patterns of the guards, the routines, the things we can exploit. And we need to stay strong until the chance comes.”
A voice hissed behind Connie. A leathery man with sagging skin rose to his knees from a pile of rags and scooted closer to the sergeant’s cage.
Joe couldn’t hear what the man said initially, but Connie replied, “Are you sure about that?”
A gravelly voice replied, “Bet my life on it.” His yellowed eyes like a rattlesnake’s turned to Joe. “If you want out of here, you’ll have your chance…soon.” His voice rattled as it rose. “Isn’t that right, fellas?”
There was no chorus of cheers. Instead, a collective hum built and quickly ebbed. It reminded Joe of the sound the savages’ leaders had made to keep their soldiers in line. They had a way of soothing tensions with a moan like a farmer humming to his cows to keep them calm in a storm.
