Eliot Pattison by Ashes of the Earth

Author:Ashes of the Earth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-10-08T19:56:08+00:00

He was on a train, holding his grandfather's hand as he nodded off to the regular hissing, chugging sounds of the wonderful antique locomotive. He could smell the hot dog the boy in the next seat was eating. His grandfather had promised him ice cream when they reached the station.

Gradually other sounds and smells began to stir Hadrian from his slumber. He groggily nestled into his grandfather's shoulder. Suddenly something cold and slimy pressed into his cheek. He sniffed and nearly gagged from the stench of putrid water and long dead fish, regaining consciousness in a fit of coughing and retching.

Someone pulled his shoulder up, lifting him out of the foul air along the bottom of the dark chamber. He shook his head violently from side to side, trying to regain his senses, feeling now the throbbing aches on his shoulders and back where he had been beaten.

"If that's how you rescue me," came a hoarse voice, "remind me to apply for a new hero."

"Sergeant?" He struggled with his words. "You weren't supposed to be in the camps."

"I didn't know where the boy was bound when I started following him. You said he was carrying secret messages. I certainly didn't know he had discovered me tracking him."

"Dax turned you in?"

"I am such a fool." Her tone was bitter. "I watched him hail someone working at a field by the woods, watched the two of them speak, even saw the stranger run toward the waterfront. I never imagined it was about me. They gave him a fresh loaf of bread and some dried herring after four of them cornered me at the edge of the village. That's what I'm worth. A fish sandwich."

A sudden violent lurch that sent Hadrian reeling against the wall left no doubt where they were. On a boat that was out in the swells, straining its engine. "What direction?" he asked as he looked at the partially open hatch overhead. Without a ladder they had no way out.

"North."

"You should have turned back when you saw the camps, Sergeant. You have no idea what you stepped into."

"And you do?"

"They are conspiring to take over Carthage. Buchanan and his police have become their sworn enemies."

"That's the trouble with you old survivors. You overdramatize everything. Feast or famine. Utopia or apocalypse. If this was a war, I'd be dead."

"The most convenient killing ground is the middle of the lake. Did they take your gun?"

She gave a resentful nod.

"In the old days a policeman losing a gun had to get it back to restore his honor." Hadrian regretted the words even before he felt her baleful stare.

Waller muttered a curse and stepped to the far side of the hold, making sure with a stomp of her boot to splash bilge water on Hadrian. He leaned against the bulkhead, knees bent, burying his head in his folded arms. He could not understand why he always felt compelled to taunt the woman.

The sturdy vessel was steadily picking up speed as she moved out of the shoreside currents, settling into a rhythmic heaving motion as she crested low swells.

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