Page 12 of Redemption (Devil Dogs of the Apocalypse #4)

“Son of a bitch!” The bugout bags. The weapons.

Even those big ass duffle bags the guys carried around for miles.

All gone. All taken by those vacation-ruining, cock-robbing, trespassing fuck twats!

I pace the length of the room, my arms flying here and there in frustrated fury. “They took it all. Everything. Even—”

I swear a fiery growl burns from my lips as I fling the door open and bound down the steps, my snarling tummy about ready to seek vengeance in immediate bloody fashion if they so much as touched anything in the kitchen.

I make it there in record fashion and bash the door in, the wood almost falling off its hinges in my haste.

But it’s no use. My rage hits me as soon as I open the door.

“FUCKING ASS-MUNCHING THUNDER CUNTS!

They took the food too. The last damn straw in my field of fucks.

They’ve done did it now. I was just gonna knock a few of them out.

You know, just the ones I’d need to in order to get the guys back.

But now? I’m pulling out all the stops. Gonna rain hell upon their whole damn village for taking my guys.

Level it all. I no longer have any fucks to my name.

A shrill whistle catches my attention, pausing my meltdown. Out of the corner of my eye, Aly-number-two reveals herself, pointing to one of the corners slightly covered by a curtain. Hidden within the shadows is...

“Oh my God.”

It’s Daisy. Right there, in all her glory, leaning against the wall. I rush over to her, lifting my beloved baseball bat in my hands and letting out a rush of relieved air.

“Not everything...”

“Thank you,” I say to... myself, to which she just smiles and skips off to the other side of the room.

Understanding dawns at her need to get out of my immediate vicinity as I lift the weapon and let my rage loose.

“MOTHERFUCKING, brAN-EATING, CULTIST ASSHOLES!” The various antiques, once held protectively behind pompous red velvet queue ropes, are the first to go.

“Beautiful destruction,” she croons, hopping up and down while clapping excitedly as I take a swing at a decorative vase.

Daisy connects with the priceless ceramic, shattering the heirloom into a thousand pieces that rain down all around the room.

I don’t stop to admire my work, however, instantly turning to find my next victim amidst the old pottery, the kitchen turning into my own personal rage room of chaos.

Glorious carnage surrounds me when my own personal ghost of Christmas past edges through the broken doorway.

His eyes slowly roam around the shambled remains of the room before landing on me, my arms still holding the bat in the air menacingly as I search for my next victim.

He looks as if a bomb was about to explode right in his face and it’s too late to find cover.

Sounds about accurate. He should be wary.

“We should probably get going. It’s a long way and, if they took the tunnels, they’ve got a huge head start on us.

” He tightens his lips, pulling them to the side, thinking a moment.

“Actually, either way, they’ve got a pretty decent head start, even if they took a vehicle back.

They prepped the roads to suit the encampment’s needs and, as such, for them it would be easy to navigate even with any unpredictable factors. ”

“So, we’re fucked in the ass either way with no lube to ease the damage. Awesome.”

I side-eye myself before I latch onto a particularly intriguing nugget of information. “Uh... ex-squeeze-me? Tunnels?”

He sets his jaw and heads back out the door with a sweep of his hand, indicating for me to follow him over to the main house.

Just before he reaches the steps, however, he turns right, jutting his jaw to the sidewall covered in climbing ivy.

Lifting his weapon to the foliage, he says, “Move the leaves to the side.” He stands guard as I do so, moving the winding vines over until. ..

“There’s... a doorway?”

He nods. “Don’t open it. There are hidden doors all over the place that lead to the lower levels, including a few inside the palace itself. Those then lead to various tunnels that then lead to other places.

A memory slams into me from when we visited this place all those years ago.

I remember the tour guide saying all sorts of stuff pertaining to the Masons who once resided here.

Apparently, there are interconnected underground tunnel systems, passageways, and all kinds of secrets hidden right under everyone’s noses. It all makes complete sense now.

“That must be how they got the jump on us.”

He nods silently to my theory. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The only thing that would actually have a chance of taking Jax and the guys by surprise.

The reality of the situation hits me hard. If they’re using the tunnels, they’d be able to avoid the traffic barriers, the natural elements like foul weather, and even the zombie hordes with ease. Realistically, they’d be able to return to the encampment within hours.

And we can’t follow them using the same tunnel system because they might be down there waiting for us to do just that.

Fuck. I’m at a serious disadvantage here.

Without wanting to delay any longer, I harden my gaze, standing tall with my decision. “Let’s go then. If they have that much of a head start on us, we have no more time to waste.”