Graham turned his attention back to the surrounding forest.
“Why is he unconscious? Why the fuck is he bleeding so damn bad from his head? He got shot in the chest. Where else?” Visions of another man lying bloody in the dirt surged to the forefront of Graham’s memory.
“No gunshot wounds. And I’m not one hundred percent certain, but he might have been diving to miss the shot and cracked his head on this.”
Graham glanced back to see Beau holding up a fist-sized rock. Relief was a tidal wave sweeping through him.
The crunch of boots had the wave evaporating in a millisecond. Graham and Beau raised their M4s. Jamie. The rifles lowered. He was alone. No prisoner in tow.
“Where’s the third one?” Graham demanded. “Dead?”
“Gone, G. I don’t have a fucking clue how he got away from me. I think I winged him, though. It was crazy; he was there, and then he was just fucking gone. The trail just died out.” Jamie shook his head.
“Did you see any signs of anyone else?”
“No, but we need to fix the fence,” Jamie replied.
“He okay?” Ty called, hauling ass toward them. Graham lowered the rifle he’d instinctively sighted in on the man.
“Probably,” Beau replied. “But he’s knocked the fuck out. Let’s get him back to the clinic. Be nice to have someone bring a backboard out.”
Graham nodded. “Ty, get back to your loop. I’ll get Ryan to take Alex’s shift. Let Travis know that he needs to stay on his loop.” Graham lifted his radio. “Ryan, I need you to get out here and take Alex’s shift. And bring a backboard. Zach, give the women the all-clear, but have them stay inside, you copy?”
“Copy that, G. Be there in three with a backboard,” Ryan replied.
Then Jamie asked, “What should we do with the bodies?”
As soon as they’d helped Allison, Grace, Ro, and Lia from the bunker beneath the mess hall, Jonah and Zach took off, but not before reinforcing the order that Graham had given over the radio. They were to stay inside, with the doors locked, until further notice. Ro once again sat on a stool in the kitchen, watching as Allison worked on salvaging breakfast, although they weren’t certain anyone would actually stop to eat it. Grace played with a doll on the floor. Lia sat on the floor next to her, arms wrapped around her knees. The foray into the bunker had been Lia’s first trip out of the infirmary. Cam had broken protocol and left the command post to bundle her up and bring her to the mess hall to be stashed with the other women. Lia was still in rough shape, and shied away from everyone except Grace and Cam. When Jonah had reached a hand out to steady her on the ladder coming out of the bunker, she’d jumped back down to the bunker floor and wouldn’t climb a single rung until he’d backed off.
Zach and Jonah had stayed outside to stand guard when the women had been sealed away in the bunker. Ro couldn’t help feeling like they’d consigned them to a terrible fate when Allison had hit the actuator and lowered the hydraulic hatch. As Ro hadn’t gotten a look at the bunker under the range, she wasn’t certain how it compared as far as size. She had been shocked to see a porthole-style door—the type one would see on a Navy ship—at one end of the large room. According to Allison, when unsealed, it led to a tunnel that linked four underground bunkers together—the ones beneath the gun range and the mess hall, and then one beneath the infirmary, and one beneath the command post. Each had a separate door that sealed it off from the tunnels in the event one of the bunkers was breached. It was mind-boggling even to Ro, and she had grown up with a father who lived and breathed this type of preparedness. He’d love this place. They’d built an underground community that somewhat mirrored the one above. Kitchen, bathrooms, showers, bunkrooms, medical supplies, communications equipment, and every kind of other supply that Ro could imagine. When she asked Allison how and when this had been set up, Allison informed her that the bunker beneath the mess hall had originally been built as a bomb shelter during World War II, and the others had been added during the ‘50s. Graham’s uncle, a WWII and Korea vet, had stumbled upon them when he’d purchased the camp and modernized them. From what Allison had been told, the man may have had a somewhat irrational fear of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. But having grown up with Rick Callahan, things like that didn’t faze Ro.
The women waited anxiously for a report on Alex. The call for a backboard wasn’t good, but that meant he was alive, right?