Chapter 5 - The Safehouse
Smoke billowed from the crumpled hood of the van.
Rex kicked his jammed door open and stumbled out into the muddy ditch.
Betty was already awake and frantically unbuckling Hale from the passenger seat.
"Help me carry him!" she ordered with an authoritative tone that left no room for argument.
Rex grabbed the old man's legs and together they hauled him out of the wreckage.
"We cannot go to a hospital because Miller controls the local grids," Betty panted as they carried him into the thick woods.
Rex noticed Hale's breathing was becoming dangerously shallow.
"If we don't get this metal out of him he will die right here," Rex argued.
"There is a decommissioned bunker three miles north of here," Betty said.
They marched through the dense forest for what felt like hours.
The sky darkened and cold rain began to pour to wash the blood from Hale's suit.
Finally Betty stopped near a massive moss-covered boulder.
She brushed aside a pile of dead leaves and revealed a rusted metal hatch.
She punched a long sequence of numbers into a hidden keypad.
The hatch hissed open with a pneumatic groan.
They carried Hale down a dark stairwell into a fully equipped underground facility.
The bunker hummed to life as fluorescent lights flickered on row by row.
Betty laid Hale on a stainless steel medical table.
"I need to extract the shrapnel and cauterize the wound," she said while grabbing a surgical kit.
Rex stood guard by the reinforced steel door and gripped his rifle tightly.
He watched as Betty worked with terrifying efficiency to dig the metal out of the old man.
After an agonizing hour Hale finally gasped and opened his eyes.
He looked around the bunker and his gaze settled on Rex.
"You stayed," Hale whispered weakly.
"I need answers," Rex replied as he stepped closer to the medical table.
"If my grandfather killed your son then why didn't you kill me in the diner?"
Hale let out a long and painful sigh.
"Because your father reached out to me five years ago," Hale confessed.
Rex froze.
"My father died ten years ago in a prison riot," Rex said with his voice rising in anger.
Hale reached into his bloody jacket and pulled out a crumpled photograph.
May you like
He handed it to Rex with trembling fingers.
The photo showed Rex’s father alive and standing in front of the very bunker they were currently hiding inside.
