by Pike, JJ
Patrice turned to leave.
“One other thing?”
Patrice stopped at the door but didn’t turn back. Her shoulders shook. She’d lost her fight against the sadness.
“Keep this to yourself.”
Once again the door closed behind a loyal and trusted Downer and Jacinta—butterflies in her stomach, the albatross firmly wound about her neck, jibbles running up and down her arms—felt as good as she had all day. It was coming together, this plan of hers. Now all she had to do was open the armory, secure weapons, lead her private militia (which she had not yet formed) out of Down, and rescue her people, sorting the wheat from the chaff and keeping the infected at bay. No biggie.
“Shoot.” She sat down, crunching her coccyx on her wooden chair. Weapons weren’t her biggest challenge. She was the leader of Down. She’d be permitted into the armory, no question.
How, though…how was she going to get a blowtorch and a welder to the door without anyone noticing? The ironmonger, Neil Hendy, wouldn’t go for it. He was a private man who’d never shared an opinion with her, let alone a cup of coffee. If she hadn’t known better she’d have said he didn’t like her. He kept her at an arm’s length. That was it. He wasn’t someone she could take into her confidence. Not now.
Could sweet little Chrissy wheel a welding torch and tank out of his studio and bring it to her?
Preposterous. The kid was still a kid. Wily or not, she wasn’t endowed with superhuman strength.
Who then?
Who wouldn’t raise any suspicion?
There was one man who fit the bill.
Hunter Hensworth Higgs; Triple-H to friend and foe alike.
The man was as kooky as his name suggested. He was a collector and a gambler. He could be bought, if the price was right. They’d only been in Down a month before his cave had become the most ostentatiously decorated. He’d demanded every last chicken bone in the kitchen and created a wall sculpture that depicted, he said (in a story that lasted several minutes if you’d only stand still and hear him out), the last great dinosaur battle. A centrosaurus (he’d laugh, “not a triceratops, I know you thought it was”) was impaling a brontosaurus on his horn, blood spilling onto the floor of Triple-H’s cave. “The joke you see…” Triple-H didn’t care who was listening. He told stories to amuse himself. “Is that they are both herbivores. Now, who can tell me when the centrosaurus roamed the Earth?”
She had no idea what his latest craze would be, but he’d be into something and she’d be able to tap into it. She had the ability to offer Triple-H anything he wanted, from food scraps to wrappers to organic material he could grow and shape into fantastic dioramas. No one would blink if he walked into the welder’s studio and walked away with an oxygen tank and all of Neil’s welding tools.
She opened her door and ran straight into Abbie.
“I prayed on it.” Abbie cut straight to the chase. “And Jon was right when he first spoke up. We have to bring them all inside.”
Jacinta nodded. It wasn’t going to happen, but she needed Abbie to go away so she could keep pushing her plan forward. “Okay.”
“You think you’re doing what’s best for Wolfjaw Down, I get that.”
She had that right. She’d lost many night’s sleep and fought hard for her clarity, but now she’d seen the light she wasn’t going to be talked out of her plan. They were going to rescue her people and leave the others to their fate. She couldn’t be responsible for everyone on the planet. That wasn’t how it worked.
“You are your brother’s keeper,” said Abbie.
Damn, it was like her friend was reading her mind.
“You are responsible for your fellow man. You’re no Cain. I know you. You don’t want to be responsible for their deaths. You’d never be able to live with yourself.”
Abbie was devout in a very practical way. She wasn’t a theoretical Christian, all words and no action. She walked the walk, every day. Jacinta had a lot of respect for her. But in this case, they were talking about some dying or all dying and she couldn’t allow it to be all. She wasn’t killing the Outers so much as “not killing” everyone else. There was a difference.
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?” Abbie stopped short, her hand on Jacinta’s shoulder.
“We’re going to vote.” Jacinta smiled, forcing herself to meet Abbie’s gaze. “I won’t make my opinion known until the votes are in. The cabinet has spoken, three to two. You win.”
“It’s not a case of winning, Jace. It’s about doing what’s right.”
Jacinta wanted Abbie far away. The devout, practical mother of three made sense, which didn’t make her job easier. She needed to be down the corridor and into the living quarters and talking to Triple-H so she could get the show on the road.
“Can we talk about this later?” It was all she could do not to roll her shoulder to get Abbie to let go of her. “I’ll swing by before lights out and you can make us a pot of chamomile tea. We can pretend it’s scotch or hot chocolate or something good from the old days and I can play Risk with the boys, if they’re still awake. How does that sound?”
“You’re okay with this vote not going your way?” Abbie was so sincere. It broke Jacinta’s heart to know she was going behind her friend’s back.
“It’s a new day in Down. We’re making it our own. Alistair wouldn’t have done it this way, but I know you weren’t his greatest fan.”
Abbie didn’t let go. “Look at me, Jacinta.”
Jacinta did as she was instructed.
“Are you telling me the truth?”
Jacinta frowned. “Jeez. What kind of question is that? I told you, you win. We’re going to do it your way.”
Chrissy came pelting down the corridor and threw her arms around Jacinta. “I did it. I told M…” She caught sight of Abbie and cut herself off. “Hello, Miss Abbie.”
“Who did you tell?” Abbie bent down to Chrissy’s level. She was good with kids. Always had been. She talked to them like people, not idiots or subjects.
“I told Meredith…” Chrissy buried her face in Jacinta’s jacket.
“What did you tell him?”
Chrissy didn’t look up. She clung to Jacinta until her knuckles were white.
“What have you done, Jace?” Abbie was back up at Jacinta’s level.
“We’re having chocolate. The three of us.” Jacinta used a stage whisper, making it sound as outlandish and fun and childish as possible. “It’s a secret. Chrissy and Meredith have been working on crop yield and he thinks they’ve found a way to increase bean production by seven percent. Chrissy was so helpful, she…”
“Don’t lie to me.” Abbie cut her off and peeled Chrissy away from her side. “Go to your room. This isn’t your fault. You’re not in trouble. This is a talk for grownups. I need Jacinta to come with me.”
Jacinta nodded at Chrissy and released her. Abbie was right about one thing: The kid didn’t need to be involved. Chrissy took off down the corridor. Jacinta knew how it would go. She’d cry herself to sleep. When you have no people of your own—or they left you behind with a note on your jacket or were as nutty as a fruitcake—you needed people to approve of you so bad. So bad. She made a note to go to see Chrissy just as soon as she was free.
“Meredith Hoffelder?” Abbie hissed. “The ex-Marine?”
“They prefer ‘former.’ They’re always Marines. For life. It’s a point of pride…”
Abbie had her by the elbow and was dragging her back toward her office. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on or I’ll reconvene the cabinet and you can explain to all of us what you’re doing behind our backs.”
She couldn’t clobber Abbie over the head and leave her locked in a closet. That wouldn’t be right. She had no chloroform, so she wasn’t going to be subdued that way. She didn’t want to hurt her friend, but time was running out. The choices were: Subdue her or tell her the plan and hope she didn’t blow it sky high.
Meredith Hoffelder rounded th
e corner. He’d been a Marine for twenty years and had the physique of someone who worked out with weights every day of his life. He was almost as broad as he was wide. His biceps were so big, his elbows hadn’t touched his sides in years. If she asked him to subdue Abbie, it wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be quick and painless.
She looked him dead in the eye then cocked her head toward her friend. “Down, but not out. You understand me. She wakes in an hour and she’s not harmed.”
He had his hand over Abbie’s mouth, muffling the scream, before she had time to think about fighting back.
It was Jacinta’s lowest moment. She regretted it as soon as she heard Abbie’s shoes kicking against the walls.
She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. She had to corral a madman, secure a blowtorch, and open the doors to Down.
CHAPTER NINE
MARCH 2022
Finding Barb and making sure those assholes hadn’t hurt her meant taking the fastest route which meant getting close to the bodies Aggie had flagged for them on the map.
Normally Hedwig and Sean would have altered their route to avoid possible cross-contamination, but Barb was…well…Barb was Barb. There was no one like her. The silver she guarded, buried by the charred remains of the Everlee house, was important but nowhere near as important as her. She was their Jamaican Dr. Doolittle from Queens; the woman who sent them home with lotions and potions and herbs and words of comfort; the reason the abandoned animals of New York were safe; the only one who made Hedwig feel like there might be a real tomorrow, one in which they weren’t all running scared or crouched in caves counting calories and waiting for the nuclear rain to halt.
They moved as fast as the terrain, and the need to stay camouflaged, allowed. Which is to say, not fast at all. One Army patrol often meant two and it was exactly this scenario that lead to sloppy errors. Errors meant exposure. Exposure meant engagement. Engagement meant weapons free. And that always and only meant death.
Everywhere, death.
Just not theirs.
Not today.
The trees gave way to a stretch of open fields which backed up onto the Everlee/Asher properties.
They paused. No plastic meant no binoculars and no scopes on their weapons. They had to look without magnification and decide, one tree at a time, if the shadows that wavered in the distance were branches on the wind or humans lying in wait.
“We don’t have time for this.” She dropped to her belly and shimmied out into the open.
Sean swore under his breath but followed.
She didn’t need to consult the map. This part of the journey was as familiar to her—no, more familiar—than her own back yard.
She smelled them before she saw them, thick and sweet and bursting at the seams.
The bodies were exactly where Aggie had said they were, piled all higgledy-piggledy like toy soldiers. She’d strayed too far west in her haste. She was exactly where she didn’t want to be. At least the ground beneath them was hard. That was safer, right? MELT couldn’t travel over dry earth? No one knew. Or if they did they weren’t sharing. She’d scoured the airwaves in her private time outside the mines, hoping to nail down what was going on in the world beyond their tiny circle but all she found were bubbles of people just like them bleating into the dark. MELT had eaten their towns, their vehicles, their grandmothers. MELT was in the air, the water, the trees. MELT had reduced New York to a heap of burning ash. MELT had reached Iceland or Ireland or one of those places out in the Atlantic. They were guessing. Postulating. Pleading. They didn’t know any more than she did.
They lived, day by day, and hoped they’d wake without any sores or scrapes or gaping wounds.
She pulled herself forward on her elbows. She hated to slow to a crawl. It gave her brain too much leeway. And the second it got the chance it took her places she’d rather not go. Like how screwed they were (as a planet; as a species) and how no one was in charge (here or anywhere else) and how she’d never see her parents again (ugh, nonononononono, no! that wasn’t a thought she was going to allow).
Dial it down, brain, and think about the easy things, like what I miss.
Like…for example…crispy chicken sandwiches and french fries and Baskin Robbins with her dad after church on a Sunday and memes and Pokémon Go! and hanging with her girlfriends at the Mall.
That was never going to happen again. She wasn’t the same person. She couldn’t sit with Stephanie and Cheri and Dawn and talk about boys and prom and who’d gone to third base (or all the way; some of them had; shocking as that was in their little corner of the world where it still mattered that you “wait”). That was over. Not because the malls were gone, but because of the other.
Definitely don’t think about that, brain. You might be an asshole who likes to prod at the darkest corners of my memory, but I’m stronger than you are. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing and I’m not going to let you railroad me into depression just because you’re on autopilot.
She smiled. Sometimes giving herself a good talking to was just what the doctor ordered.
She kept crawling through the grass, concentrating on the dew and the dirt and the dead bodies to their west.
She was going to find Barb.
Barb was going to be alive.
They’d collect their usual stash of silver and sew it into their clothes and be on their way.
Sean’s friends, Caleb and Rowdy, would be at the meet.
They’d get antibiotics for Paul and prenatal vitamins for Petra and more (and more and more) iodine for all of them and whatever chemo drugs the twins had been able to score for Mimi.
It was all going to turn out just fine.
She pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth. If she didn’t get the rot up her nose perhaps she wouldn’t gag this time. You never wanted to gag when you were on a stealth mission. Vomit told the enemy where you’d been. They’d learned that the hard way. She didn’t keep a kill tally, but in the back of her mind she knew there’d be a reckoning when she met her Maker. She could at least say that every one of her kills had been in self-defense.
Like…how would that go?
Imagining the afterlife was a smidge better than thinking about the decomposing bodies a few hundred feet to their right.
You turn up at the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter tells you God wants a word. (God always wanted “a word” in these scenarios. She never just duked it out with the gatekeeper. And, weirdly enough, she never imagined talking to Satan. She knew God would see it her way in the end so it made sense to keep talking to Him.)
GOD: Thou Shalt Not Kill. (Always the same opening. He was nothing if not predictable.)
HEDWIG: He was going to kill me, God. (No jury on the planet would vote to convict.)
GOD: Thou Shalt Not…
HEDWIG: Yeah, okay. I hear you. So, I just take it? Lying down? Like an idiot. Because if that’s the case then life isn’t sacred…
GOD: … (He didn’t tut, but he might as well have done.)
HEDWIG: Okay. What about defending someone else? Someone good? Someone like Sean here who’s, like, a vegetarian and doesn’t harm anyone even when it makes sense to pull the trigger?
GOD: Side eye. Eyebrows. Shrug. Points to the top of the argument but doesn’t repeat it.
HEDWIG: I still think that guy who shot up the convoy deserved what was coming. More people lived because of what I did…
GOD: No comment.
HEDWIG: And this time? What if they’ve got Barb? I mean…BARB, man. She’s one of yours. She talks to you. Right?
Up ahead the branches came into focus in the shape of a human. Hedwig felt for her weapon. They’d learned to be stingy with ammunition. Only fire if you’re life depends on it and only if you mean to kill. Sorry, God. I get it. You want me not to. And I’ll try. But if they’re coming for me or they try to take Sean out, I’m going to pull the trigger. We can debate it when we’re done.
It could be Barb leaning against the tree. Or Aggie. No. Too
tall. And wounded. Broken. Wrong.
She shot a look over her shoulder. Sean had seen the enemy, too. They lay as still as they could. Play possum if you get the chance. Let the other side expend energy. The guy might be passing through.
Or one of the walking wounded.
They were the worst.
People who’d been infected but had no idea how to take care of themselves. Cut it out. That was the only way. Cut it out. Burn it out. Get MELT off you as fast as possible. Don’t let it dig inside you.
The man by the tree might have crawled out of the pile of maggot-infested corpses that dominated one side of her brain. He might think he was only slightly wounded. You know, like a flesh wound (shudder) or a broken bone (not good; much worse now there were no hospitals and very few painkillers available). He might be waiting to be rescued. Or, shoot, why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? He might have been left behind by the patrol. Deliberately. Because he was a liability.
He wasn’t moving. Just kind of propped up and rocking. She squinted. He wasn’t rocking much. A little this way. A little that. Something on his chest glinted in the sun. The longer she looked the more unsettling he became. A puppet on a string. Heavy puppet. Thick string.
Ugh.
The vomit rose in her throat and she had to bury her face in the dirt to prevent herself from hurling.
Elbow over elbow she moved forward.
Sean sighed so loud the birds took off from the trees. (Not really, but he might as well have taken an ad out in the paper to signal their position.) But, as always, he followed.
Five feet, crawling on her front. Head up a little. Check the guy. Rock, rock. Five more feet, check the man. Definitely a man. He was tall. No. Had been tall. His arms never moved from his sides. His legs never kicked out. But he moved.
Dead, but moving.
So much ugh.
Forward, still on her belly, but confident now that she was looking at a hanged man. But why the motion? What was it that made him move about like...
She froze.
His arm.
It jerked.
She waited.
It didn’t move again.
