Page 78 of Once Upon an Apocalypse

A branch snaps in the distance, likely from the dampness from a week’s worth of rain. I know it’s just the sound of nature, but I rush over in the direction of the sound and look through my scope. Nothing.

Before I can breathe a sigh of relief, a voice calls out from the ground. Three men approach the tower, looking directly at Jonah and me. I quickly glance up to the landings above my head, but can’t see the others. When I look back down, the three men have guns pointing at us, so I point mine right back at them. But Jonah doesn’t.

“Took you long enough!” Jonah shouts.

“What?” I gasp, losing my breath at the shock of Jonah’s betrayal. He doesn’t even have the decency to look at me.

“Legatus Jonah Rosenberg! We thought you were dead,” shouts the grizzly looking man with hay-blonde hair wrapped tightly in a man bun. The beard covering his face is a shade darker, making it look like he rolled around in the dirt. The other two men are lanky but just as menacing.

“Nah. I’m too tough for death.” Jonah has transformed into a completely different person. Shoulders back, looking confident, like he has no care in the world.

“Who do you have there?” the grizzly looking one asks.

“You don’t recognize her? Doctore’s prized gladiator that ran away?” Jonah pulls me to his side and I’m too shocked to push myself away. “I found her in a little survivor colony not too far from here.”

I look up at Jonah, so close to his throat that I can hear his pulse throbbing.Is he scared?As if sensing my internal question, Jonah turns his eyes to me and winks. “Play along,” he whispers before kissing my cheek. “We got married there. It was fucking adorable.”

Jonah pulls me along, guiding me down the stairs. With our hands tangled, I can feel the slight nervous shaking of whatever fear he’s trying so hard to suppress. As we walk down the stairs, he asks the men on the ground how many more of them are in the area.

“Why?” lanky man number one asks.

“Because there are others nearby, Seb.” Jonah halts, pretending to see one of these “others” in the distance. “I knew someone would be out here, so I led them straight to you.”

“How do we know you haven’t joined them?” grizzly man asks, squinting his eyes as he scans the surrounding trees. “That you weren’t the one who sold us out?”

“Waylen, you know me. You know I am loyal to Doctore. I swore to him I would find his gladiator and I have. I had to play pretend with the locals in order to get her out. There was no other way. Bonus is that I got to fuck her whenever I wanted to, so maybe I took my time getting us out.”

Jonah squeezes my hand. An apology for the things he is saying perhaps. My body moves with him, but my mind is miles away.How are we going to get out of this?I squeeze back in understanding, keeping my face from giving him away. When my feet hit the grass, it takes everything in me to not look up.

Waylen takes a step toward us, examining me with suspicious eyes. “It’s just the three of us here. The others are back at base.”

Jonah nods. “Do you have a radio?”

“Negative.”

“We need to move fast then. The team I was with will be closing in any minute.”

“How many are with you?” lanky man number two asks.

“Three others.”

“We can take that number.”

“Not when we are at a disadvantage, Hank.” Jonah’s outrage feels so authentic. The hairs on my arm freeze.

“How did you get them to come all the way out here?” Hank asks, suspicion brewing in his seafoam green eyes.

“Are we done with the stupid questions?” Jonah sighs, grasping my hand tighter.

“Answer the question, Jonah,” Waylen demands.

The two brooding men stare at each other for an entire minute. A minute filled with a dreadful tension that makes my skin shiver. Before I can take another breath, Jonah shouts up to the sky, “Now!”

The sound of gunfire ignites the air around me as Jonah pulls me to the ground. What little breath I had inside my lungs gets caught in my throat as I attempt to yell at Jonah. He helps me crawl under the base of the tower as the gunshots echo around me. Not just from above, but from all around us. Waylen lied to us. There are more Praetorian Guards hiding out of sight in the woods.

I look up just in time to see Hank get a bullet right between the eyes. Waylen is already halfway to the trees, dragging a wounded Seb. I make my way under the tower, crouching low as I try to balance myself and point my rifle at the woods. Looking through the scope, I see a militia approaching us. I shoot. Each pull of the trigger lands with a bullet in an arm, leg, throat, wherever I can get them. But we are grossly outnumbered. They must have found us wandering the woods long ago, or perhaps we are much closer to the lab than we thought.

Jonah collapses to the ground next to me due to having the butt of a rifle slammed into the side of his head. I try to whip my gun around, but I’m not fast enough. Waylen is back, grabbing my arm and pulling me out from under the tower as someone else grabs Jonah’s limp body. Out in the open, I look up to see Amos at the top of the tower, his rifle aimed at Waylen’s head.

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