Kenn's eyes went to the bodies on the floor and then to the door, where Kyle and Chris were getting the small fire under control. He keyed the mic on his belt. "Freedom. Mission accomplished. Let's do some cleaning and get these people back to camp."
It took Kenn and Kyle under an hour to evacuate the filthy American school; would have been one hour exactly if the Marine had swept every room, but they didn't bother with the basement, where the dead had been placed. As they pulled away, no one saw the hysterical blonde woman running up a nearby road, her arms waving frantically. They never looked back.
3
The constantly growing camp seemed almost empty to Adrian once Kenn and the Eagles were gone, and the leader threw himself into the work, forcing a faked optimism that only his men noticed.
Adrian didn't like the feeling of being incomplete, but never doubted that they were. He hated to have people out of camp, only relaxed when the entire flock was under his watchful eye, and he knew they'd been lucky so far that everyone who had gone out had returned. He'd increased their chances with the addition of armed escorts, but looked forward to a time when he could settle them down and show them how to provide for their needs, instead of scouring this broken land like scavengers.
Now camped in the heart of the Thunder Basin National Grassland, they were only fifteen miles from the South Dakota state line. The tall pines, blue grass, and Forget-Me-Nots were a comforting sight after all the horror along 387. If not for the heavy fog, they would be on the road now, sheep gawking out the windows at the vividly-colored lightning flashing in the sky over a muddy landscape that included a crashed government chopper.
Adrian tensed suddenly, feeling that uneasy mix of power and magic fill him. The landscape wavered, changed, and for a moment, he could see a survivor of the crash, her outline tall, thin and tough. He looked away from the vision, thinking it had been so long since he had one that he'd forgotten how it made his heart feel squeezed.
Hoping she was one of his, Adrian got moving again, feeling a little bitter with Fate. He had been promised magic, and so far had only gotten a gifted teenager who was too young to really be much help.
Adrian lit a smoke, telling himself it didn't matter. When the boy was needed most, at least he would be here, already under the discreet eyes of the Eagles, who had been told to watch him right after the restless teenager had gotten his own tent. The result of a noisy fight where Charlie had almost hurt one of the other boys he was bunking with.