“Shit,” Rider said, and the other guys agreed.
Trip shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“Nothing to like,” Hop said.
Bud headed back into the room and grabbed a computer. “We need to figure out what went wrong.”
“Yeah, what happened?” Q asked.
Their contact looked worried. “We’re trying to figure it out. We’ll share whatever information we have with you.”
“They heard somehow,” Zip said.
Rider shook his head. “We don’t know that. It could have been anything.”
“Shit, this wasn’t just anything,” Zip said. “This was a place we were planning on raiding going up in flames.”
Q joined Bud with a laptop. “I hate this.”
They would have to figure out what the hell was going on. They were screwed on this mission. They had to decide if they stayed or left. If they stayed, they could be here for a long time. If they headed home, they probably wouldn’t catch this guy for another year or two, giving him a good chance to do something terrible.
He blew out a breath, angry he’d left Flora for this. None of them knew something like this would happen, but someone had known. He was tired of leaks. Something needed to change because they were having too many missions that were called off at the last minute. He just hoped the culprit was caught before they did some real damage.
16
Flora sat beside Ellis, her stomach tightening. “I don’t have any records. I have nothing. Our community didn’t trust outsiders. And honestly, we were told most people were dead, and there was no government to report to.”
“How could you believe that? Didn’t you see other people? What about television or radio?”
“We didn’t have those. At least the women and children didn’t. Maybe the men knew what was going on, but the women and children had no clue about the truth of the word. We didn’t know.”
The woman shook her head, staring at Flora like she didn’t believe her. Living in this world, she understood how unbelievable it was that some community existed that didn’t know about the rest of the world, but it was the truth.
“I don’t see how that is real. How?”
Flora shrugged. “Not following the rules meant you were punished harshly.”
“So they abused you?”
Flora nodded, not even sure if the woman would believe what kind of punishment.
“They buried them in the dirt for punishment,” Ellis said.
“What? How would anyone survive?”
“Some people died, but most survived,” Flora told the woman how they were buried and about the other punishments. She described how they lived and how their community was set up. Every few minutes, the woman shook her head.
“There have been a few other people like you. We need to see if we can find that community. Do you know where it was?”
She shook her head, worry filling her. “No, I have no clue. But do you really have to contact them? If they find me, they’ll kill me. I’ll never be able to go back. I know too much.”
“We need to have some sort of clue where you were.”
“Once Q gets home, he can tell you where he was camping, but I don’t know where we were. Northeast of here is all I know.”
“When will he be home?”
Flora felt pressure building. “I don’t know.”
