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

to, but they didn’t.
    “They didn’t follow the plan,” Ed said out loud, hardly aware of himself. He turned toward the group. They stared back at him, their faces weary and beaten.
    “They didn’t follow the plan,” Ed repeated like a mantra. His voice rose as he turned toward the other cell. “You didn’t follow the plan!” he yelled. “Why didn’t you follow the fucking plan?”
    No response came from the adjoining cell.
    “You might wanna pipe down,” a voice said from behind him.
    Ed whirled around, chest rising and falling. Eyes wild, he fixed the owner of the voice in a piercing stare. A man in his late-thirties with brown, unkempt hair and a beard reaching down to his chest put up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, man, just slow down.”
    “They take the troublemakers,” a woman said. Dirty streaks smeared her face. Ed could smell her as she approached. “The loud ones are considered trouble.”
    “What do you mean ‘take’? Take them where?” Trish asked.
    “They take them and they don’t come back,” the woman said. “You don’t want to know what they do with them.”
    “They ain’t taking me,” Terry said. “Not without a goddamn fight.”
    “They have guns,” the bearded man said. “It’s no use.”
    Terry puffed up his chest. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather take a bullet than wait for these creeps to do to me whatever it is they got planned.”
    “I don’t care anymore,” the woman replied. She walked away, taking a seat against the back wall of the cell, her gaze locked on the floor.
    “Tina lost her daughter,” the bearded man said. “They took her right after they locked us up.”
    “Who’s Tina?” Trish asked.
    The bearded man pointed toward the woman sitting against the wall.
    “Jimmy, don’t talk about it,” Tina said, her eyes still on the floor. “I can’t do it all over again.”
    Jimmy leaned in closer, lowering his voice. “They take the kids first,” he said. “Tina saw what happened, but we don’t know what they do with them. She won’t tell us.”
    The sound of keys jangling on a ring broke the taut silence. A door opened at the far end of the room and three men stepped through. Once inside the room, the two men in front parted to allow the third through.
    Ed swallowed hard. He recognized the man immediately.
    Enoch.

Chapter Sixteen

    After another couple of miles of Lester talking and Sam listening with rapt attention, Lester stopped and pointed ahead, Sam’s broomstick handle stretched across his shoulders. “We’re going to want to avoid this stretch of road,” he said. “Bad patch.”
    “What do you mean?” Chloe asked, balancing her own pillowcase and broomstick contraption.
    “Road gangs and the like. What they used to call highwaymen. They’ve claimed the next couple of miles as their own. You don’t want to get caught by these guys.” Lester looked toward Chloe and then back to Sam. “Especially a young girl like you.”
    “What’s that mean?” Sam asked.
    “These men are anything but gentlemen,” Lester replied. “I surely don’t need to tell you what they’re capable of, even as young as you are.”
    Sam stopped and considered for a moment, his eyes registering the moment he understood. “Oh, yeah,” he replied, glancing toward Chloe. “Do you know a way around then?”
    “This is your lucky day,” Lester replied, “because I do.” 
    “How?” Chloe asked. 
    “I’ve been living along this roadway for the last year or so.  A scavenger needs a large territory if they want to survive. Only so much food left and it’s not concentrated in one place anymore. I made the mistake of running into these men during one of my runs. I barely made it out alive.” He raised an eyebrow. “But if the two of you are determined to go through, then by all means, don’t let me dissuade you. You’ll just have to do it alone. Coming that close to death is something I never want to do