Free Badlands Trilogy (Book 3): Out of the Badlands by Brian J. Jarrett

feet. He made it to his hands and knees before lifting his pistol, searching for anyone in a robe as a target. Another flash of movement and the gun flew from his hand, smacking the floor and sliding away. Strong hands gripped him from behind, wrenching his arms backward until he thought his shoulder joints might pop out of place.
    “Dad!” Zach called out amidst the confusion. Ed watched helplessly as more men in robes wrestled his son to the floor, piling on top of him, pinning his arms behind his back.
    Fueled with rage, Ed lunged forward, calling out his son’s name. He broke free for only a moment before another blow struck him across the temple, causing the room to spin. He spun along with it and went down hard, his head slamming against the unyielding concrete floor.
    Then Ed Brady knew nothing but darkness.
    * * *
    Ed opened his eyes. The world drifted in and out of focus as the smell of sweat and human excrement wafted through on a warm breeze. He blinked hard, forcing the world into focus. Above him a crosshatched ceiling of old wood held together by rusty nails looked down oppressively upon him. He felt nausea flood in and for a moment he thought he might vomit.
    When the feeling dissipated he sat up slowly, feeling the hardness of the wooden floor beneath him in every muscle of his back. As his eyes adjusted to the light he struggled to remember where he was and what had happened. Quickly it came back to him; the truck and the church, the men in the robes. The basement. They’d been attacked and then…he remembered nothing.
    He looked around for his family. He was in a cell, with a section of chainlink fence now serving a new purpose as prison bars. He scanned the room more quickly now, his head pounding from the sudden movement. A handful of people sat nearby, none of them speaking.
    “What the hell happened?” he said, not realizing he’d spoken out loud.
    “Ed!” Trish cried out, rising up from the group sitting on the floor. “You’re awake!”
    “What happened?” Ed asked again. “Where are the boys?”
    “They attacked us in the basement,” Trish replied. “Then they locked us up in here.”
    “Where are the boys?” Ed repeated.
    Trish pointed behind him. “In the other cell,” she said.
    Ed followed her finger to find only a wooden wall. He returned a confused look.
    “On the other side of the wall,” she said.
    “Are they…?”
    “They’re okay.”
    “Zach! Jeremy!” Ed called out.
    “We’re here, Dad,” Zach replied.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah,” Jeremy answered.
    Ed stood, stumbling as he did. Trish steadied him until he regained his balance. “You took a bad bump on the head. You should take it easy.”
    Ed barely heard her. “How did I let this happen?” he said. Fear gripped him tightly as the reality of their situation began to set in. “We never should have stopped. Not for anybody.”
    Jasper appeared beside Trish. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
    Ed shook his head. “No, it was. We should have run, but I hesitated. I knew this was wrong, all of it.” He brought his hands to his face. “Why did we ever stop here?”
    “If you’re looking for somebody to blame, how about starting with that bitch in the other cell,” Terry Wilkinson said, his baritone voice resonating off the walls. He pointed to the wall dividing them from other cell. “You can thank Alice for all this.”
    Ed felt his chest constrict as his breathing quickened. This was it. The end. They’d run out of luck. Who knew what Enoch and his band of true believers had planned for them? His mind ran through dozens of scenarios, each one worse than the one before it.
    “I have to think,” he mumbled to himself, “figure a way out of this.” The walls seemed to close in on him as he paced back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “This is bad. Really bad.”
    John and Alice. They’d stopped when they shouldn’t have. They didn’t follow the plan. They were supposed