Crank palace re-adapted

4. Crank Palace

The next hour was a lifetime of headaches, nausea and strange movements. Newt stayed awake for all of it. The hyper enthusiasm he had experienced for all of two minutes had completely vanished. Spent. He had no energy whatsoever, in fact didn't lift a finger to defend himself as reinforcement soldiers did whatever they wanted with him. At least they didn't separate him from Kath and Dante.
He couldn't bear the thought of losing the small connection he had with those two after so short of time.
A truck rumbled up, much smaller than the behemoths they'd seen earlier by the massive wall of Denver. Two people picked him off the ground with not the least amount of gentility and threw him into the back of the open bed of the vehicle. He expected to land on the pile of writhing bodies, a dozen Cranks fighting and clawing and trying to get out. Instead he landed on the hard steel of the truck bed and lost his breath for a moment. Kath came next, still no sign of voluntary movement in her limbs. But her eyes, her eyes were lit with awareness and understanding- the purest panic Newt could imagine, but that eased a bit when Dante was plopped right next to her, offered a little more care than they had been given. The kid still cried, but it had almost become a constant, a background noise like a strong flow of a rapid, rocky river nearby.
He laid his head down on his sister's shoulder and wrapped his tiny arms around her neck.

"She's okay," Newt murmured, though he doubted the kid heard or understood. "She's just resting. she'll be okay soon."
Every word he uttered rang in his head like a broken bell. A soldier jumped into the back of the truck with them, squatted with his back to the window of the cabin. He held something that looked more like a machine gun than an energy weapon and Newt figured they had less than one chance left for misbehaving. The next time would be rewarded with a few bullets in the brain to end things.
The truck roared its engine, then set off from the quiet neighbourhood. Probably quiet because the sweep up of Cranks had already been through that area.
Newt had the distant thought that spying eyes might have reported them from within the windows of one of those seemingly innocent homes. Frightened eyes that spied from the darkness, from behind torn curtains and broken glass. Surprised at himself, Newt found that he didn't care. Maybe the virus had eaten that part of his brain first, the part that worried and agonized over what lay in his immediate future. It just didn't matter. Madness awaited him at the end of track and there was no slowing that train. He couldn't bring himself to care how bumpy the ride might be.
Newt relaxed onto his back and looked up at the sky as they drove. Blue and white, more clouds than not. The kind with no shape or substance, just scratched across the azul heavens by a painter with no discipline. Some people said that the sky never had quite the same colour once the catastrophic sun flares struck a couple of decades earlier. Newt would never know. Could never know. What he saw seemed natural enough and despite his sudden indifference to the world, it gave him a small squeeze of comfort that saddened him a little. Saddened that he'd never have a chance to live a full and meaningful life under the skies above.
The truck jostled to a stop some time later. How long, Newt didn't really know. Maybe a half hour. They had parked between two platforms of cement, both seeming to hover just a few feet above the lip of the truck bed, bordered by steel railings. Several people stood up there to each side, dressed in bulky, overbearing protective gear that looked like something you'd see at WICKED on a bad day.
Newt quickly glanced at Kath, who had her back to him, her arms wrapped around Dante. She might have been dead. He saw her back rise and fall with even breaths. He sighed in relief.
Glancing skyward at the stranger staring down, he shifted his elbows to prop himself up. He opened his mouth to say something, ask something. But a fire hose appeared at one of the railings, its nozzle pointing in his direction. It was enough to silence him. Water, he hoped it was water, abruptly flushed out of the hose in a torrid stream, wetly smacking into him so hard that he slammed against the truck bed, yelping at the slicing, biting cold of the onslaught. The force of it was painful enough but the frigidity made it feel acidic. Stinging like a million slaps against his skin. He tried to scream against it but water filled his mouth and set him off to choking and coughing instead.
The person above directed the stream at Kath and Dante then, just as he thought he might drown. Kath seemed completely back to normal because she squirmed and kicked and shielded Dante as best as she could while Newt tried to recompose himself to shield the both of them. This torture lasted another minute or two before someone turned it off.
Newt and Kath were left to sputter and spit and catch their breath, all amidst the backdrop of Dante's high-pitched screams.