by Pike, JJ
MARCH 2022
“He’s working for Jeff Steckle. Meredith’s working for Jeff.” Jacinta laid it out as plainly as she could. They were racing against a very real clock. No time to waste.
Abbie didn’t respond. Her eyes, though…man…they were speaking volumes. If anyone had been able to shoot flames out of their eyeballs, Abbie Prosser would have done it.
Jacinta looked away. She didn’t want to get burned. “Meredith’s working for Steckle. Maybe Marcus and perhaps Jamie, too. All three of them possibly working for the enemy. Christine is part of his crew, but she’d never hurt a fly. She can’t know what he’s been doing. But the others? They’ve been working behind my back. I’ve sent them to evacuate section three by the hydrofarm, to keep them busy.” She tried to roll her hand, but the broken bone demanded she stop. “Shit, this hurts. You whacked me hard, lady.” Jacinta ratcheted around in her drawer with her good hand. She needed something to bind her wrist. It pulsed and throbbed and screamed for painkillers. Patrice would hook her up with some oxy when they hit the sick bay, but in the meantime she needed to do something to stem the swelling.
Abbie hadn’t moved. She had one hand on the hilt of the shovel and the other on the door handle, her knuckles so white Jacinta worried her hands might explode.
Jacinta found the first aid kit, plunked herself in her chair, and attempted to bind her bones and steady her nerves. Being hit by your best friend takes the wind out of your sails. She’d been gung-ho, ready to head to the doors and see how far Triple-H had gotten and then a single whack with a five-pound shovel and she was immobilized, reduced to shaking in her chair. She prayed Abbie couldn’t see how much of a wreck she was. She needed to lead, not fall back into her obedient-acquiescent-follower ways. People’s lives depended on it. If Steckle beat her to the punch, there’d be dead bodies piling up outside their doors. The bandage flopped around even when she lay everything on her leg to stabilize it. She needed help but didn’t dare look to Abbie who raged silently by the office door. “They’re planning a coup. I didn’t know that an hour ago or I wouldn’t have asked him to isolate you…”
“What would have made you ask?”
“Sorry?” Jacinta looked up, binding tape hanging between her teeth.
Abbie dragged the shovel behind her. It screeched on the rock floor, creating a small white line in its wake. “What would lead you—someone I have not only counted as a friend, but who I have defended against the naysayers and the plotters and the turncoats—to hand me over to a thug?” She was close. Close enough that Jacinta could smell the sweat from her recent struggle with Meredith Hoffelder. The tear at the bottom of her blouse said she’d put up a fight. It wasn’t until Abbie was right beside Jacinta’s chair that she could see the welt on her friend’s face and the small cut above her lip.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I just needed you out of the way.”
“You needed me out of the way?” Abbie’s normal, measured voice had given way to her don’t-mess-with-me-or-you’ll-regret-it tone.
Jacinta slapped a piece of tape over the edge of the bandage. It wasn’t tight enough to secure the bone, but she had other things to worry about now. “We’re going out.”
“Outside?”
Jacinta nodded. She retrieved a bottle of Tylenol from her drawer and fiddled with the top. She couldn’t pop the lid with her thumb.
Abbie took it from her and held on to the bottle. “You believed I’d stop you, so you set your dog on me?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight, Abbie. I just…” She gestured for the Tylenol, leaning forward in her chair.
Abbie held it out of reach. “You just? You just what? You just threw your friend to the wolves.”
Triple-H would be at the main door by now. Meredith would either be 1) evacuating people as she’d instructed, or 2) have run off with his tail between his legs to report to his master, or 3) both. She needed to get to the doors and unweld with Triple-H before Jeff found out what was happening. “Are you going to stand there and glower or are you going to help me?”
“I’m going to stand here and if you try to move I’m going to stop you. That was one bone. Know how many are in the human body?”
“Abbie…”
“Do you? And do you know how hard and fast I can swing this thing? I birthed three boys. I’ve wrestled them, swung them onto my hip, carried them for hours when they had whooping cough. People think mothers are weakened by motherhood, because of all the screaming during childbirth and the tender breasts when they start breastfeeding, but I’m here to tell you that we’re warriors, one and all. I’ve put up with more shit, carried more baggage, done with less sleep than you’ll ever know. I’m invincible. I can stand here until the moon falls out of the sky and not falter. There’s no way you’re getting past me.”
Jacinta stood, but sat as soon as her friend lifted the shovel off the ground an inch and let it fall, hard and fast. The echo, pinging off the walls, went on forever. “I’m sorry. I messed up. I should have filled you in. But this is life or death, Abbie…”
“I know. We’ve been through measles, mumps, chicken pox…we know life or death.”
“But…”
“You’re going to ‘but’ me?”
Jacinta had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.
“You think MELT is different from all those diseases because there’s no cure.”
It was hard not to nod when someone was reading your mind, but Jacinta kept herself still and calm. The only way to get through that door was to let Abbie have her say, then win her over.
“Kids die of stupid, routine diseases every day. I love my husband but if someone had told me he’d be on the side of ‘let it ride’ once Alistair said we were going to ‘weather together,’ I’d never have married him.”
Jacinta had the vaguest memory of Abbie’s kids being covered in itchy welts during one of the Weather Together campaigns, but her friend had never outright complained about Alistair’s edict.
“Best to let these childhood diseases pass through the compound naturally,” Alistair had said. “If they have it now, their immune systems are set for life.”
Three families had left Wolfjaw Ridge during the measles outbreak, one during chicken pox, and three single men during mumps. Alistair wished them well and struck their names from the rolls. He didn’t need to say that they were now un-persons and never to be spoken of again. Once you abandoned Wolfjaw there was no coming back.
“Kids die of measles, mumps, scarlet fever…Why invite sickness in? Why? Tell me!” Abbie nudged Jacinta with her hip. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes…but…”
“But nothing.” Abbie raised her voice, which was unusual for her. Jacinta had never heard her friend shout. Not once. “You said we’d vote. Majority decision. That means no one person can sway us and no family fealty is running the show. It’s the only way to ensure this is fair.”
“I…”
“You’re letting Death with a capital D in through the doors. Everyone gets it, Jacinta. You open the doors and there’s a seventy-percent chance MELT will make it past all three sick bays and into Down.”
Jacinta didn’t know where the seventy-percent number came from, but she was listening.
“Maybe we can isolate it? We don’t know. We don’t know so many things. How is it transmitted? How long does it remain alive? Who’s vulnerable? Is anyone resistant? We don’t know. That’s the whole point, Jace. We don’t know.” She used her shovel to punctuate her point, leaving small white indentations in the floor. “This is not your decision to make. I’ve stood by you and argued your part with anyone who said you weren’t fit to lead, but this will not stand. Do you hear me? Going behind their backs when you’ve promised them a say in what happens to them and their children, not going to happen on my watch.”
Jacinta stood, slowly, carefully, eyes on her friend’s face and not the shovel that could part her from her limbs and inched her way towar
d the wall where Trish had sat only a few hours earlier. “We have a leak.”
“Bullshit.”
Jacinta ran her hand down the wall. It came away wet. Not “damp,” not “sticky,” but dripping wet. Had it always been that way? Surely not. She’d have noticed. The crack in the floor said otherwise. Water could have been streaming down the wall for weeks only to disappear without puddling and drawing attention to itself. She wiped her hand on her shirt then ran it down the wall a second time. She turned her palm toward Abbie and let the drips speak for themselves.
Abbie scanned the ceiling. “We’re in the wrong quadrant for water.”
Jacinta nodded. “It’s not the only place.”
“And you sat on this intel?”
“I just found out. Tonight. It’s why this has to happen. We have an engineering team, but are they any use to us without Liam? We can close sections, but for how long and at what cost?” She was improvising, but it struck her that what she was saying might be true. They might drown in Down.
“If you told them this…”
“You think Aleta Goin is ever going to vote for us to open those doors? Or Kim Kennedy? Or Hansen Smith? They’re going to campaign hard to keep the doors shut. They have kids down here. They’re not going to chance it.” She moved toward her friend. “I get it. We want to protect our kids. They’re more vulnerable to MELT. But we have to open the doors. It’s out of my hands now. It’s not a choice or an argument. It’s our new reality.”
Abby wasn’t moved or if she was it didn’t show in her face.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure MELT doesn’t make it down here.”
“How?” Abbie was no fool. She’d thought this through. The outer door was a billion pounds of steel, welded shut. The inner doors? More like bank-vault-thick, which wasn’t a guarantee against a microbial foe.
Abbie reached into her pocket and withdrew a handkerchief. She held the cloth against the wall and waited.
Jacinta eyed the door. No way she was fast enough to make it. Not even with Abbie being distracted. It really was a case of “watch and wait.” Abbie was smart; she’d come to the only logical conclusion left to them: They had to open the doors.
When Abbie took her handkerchief away from the wall it was sodden. She set the shovel against the wall and wrung her kerchief out and put it back in her pocket. She turned to Jacinta, face stony but brain obviously working overtime. “Who’s helping you? You’re not doing this alone.”
Praise Jesus. No kidding. Praise, praise, praise be. Abbie was going to agree to let her go. “Triple-H is borrowing equipment from Neil Hendy’s workshop…”
“Smart.” She took three steps toward the door and halted. “We’re not okay, you and me. What you did was a betrayal. Personally. What you plan to do may be a betrayal the Downers can’t come back from. I’m not sure they’ll forgive you.”
Jacinta nodded. It was a chance she had to take. She’d made her decision to open the doors for one reason but along the way found another. She was on the side of right on this one, she was sure of it.
“You’ve had an uphill battle. You’re not Alistair and you were never going to be an Alistair. I thought that was a good thing.” She had her hand on the door handle but didn’t open it. “I believed it was time for a regime change and I thought there were worse people for the job than you.”
Small compliment tucked in there, but Abbie only spoke the plainest of truths and Jacinta didn’t disagree. There were plenty of people more qualified than her to run Down, but there were those—Jeff Steckle being a prime example—who should never be allowed at the helm.
“You weren’t ambitious for power. That’s what made you an interesting leader. You listened. I know you thought you were falling down on the job most of the time, but that doubt…” She turned and jabbed her friend with one strict finger. “That voice that told you that you weren’t right all the time? That’s what would have made you a great leader. Eventually.”
Jacinta stomach rolled over. Abbie’d never said she believed in her. Not outright. Her actions said she had faith, but the words were so much more powerful. Alistair had been stingy with praise, parceling it out as if it was saffron during the Black Death or tulips in 1600s or gold during the California rush. She’d never had a straight-up compliment from the man, though she’d signed over her life to him for twelve long years. She had to look away so as not to let Abbie see her welling up.
“You ruined it with this.”
And with that, the praise was gone.
Jacinta sniffed and the tears were a thing of the past. She was back on familiar ground, feeling like a failure who’d let those closest to her down. Again.
They walked together in silence for some minutes.
The corridor was unusually busy. Dominic speed-walked their way. “All hands on deck. Jeff’s on the rampage.”
Well, dammit. She shouldn’t have allowed Meredith out of her sight. The man was a cross-eyed ratfink weaselly punk and he’d run off to his bossman just as soon as her back was turned.
“Close off the corridors at junctions three and seven.” She turned and walked away leaving Abbie to do whatever she planned to do. Jacinta had bigger fish to fry.
“You’re shutting off all access points to the main entrance…” Dominic was trotting beside her, which made her nervous. The man wasn’t known for being nimble. He’d broken more bones than she knew how to name and she didn’t need that complication now.
She stopped. “Go back and work with Abbie. She’ll fill you in. I need you to stall them.”
Dominic didn’t turn. “You’re going out, aren’t you?”
No point lying now. It had fallen apart because she lacked leadership. Or guile. Or both. “I am. And I need Jeff Steckle and his rebels to be far from the entrance to Down. Do you hear me? Under no circumstances is he to be allowed through.”
“I want to come with you. Send Abbie to block the corridors. No one’s more capable or more trusted. The people will fall in line if she tells them it’s necessary. Jeff might have his band of minions but they’re in the minority…”
Had everyone known before she did? How long had Jeff been conspiring against her? Why hadn’t any of her cabinet mentioned it?
Dominic wrapped his arm around her in an uncharacteristic show of tenderness. “Trust me. I’m more use to you on the front lines than I am in the trenches back there.”
Abbie stood in the doorway to Jacinta’s office, her shovel back in her grip. She didn’t smile in their direction, but Jacinta knew her friend would forgive her. Eventually. If they made it through to the other side and her children weren’t infected and didn’t die horrible deaths.
“He will have been to the armory already.” Dominic shouted down the corridor. Did it matter? Everyone knew what was happening now, surely? So, if he shouted their business? So what? “Don’t even bother going there.”
Abbie held her shovel over her head. “Gardening tools,” she said. She wasn’t shouting, but her voice carried. “My people will arm themselves with gardening tools and kitchenware.”
An army of mothers, then. Jacinta wished she had the words to tell Abbie how sorry she was. She’d gotten it wrong so many times in the months since Alistair had left them, but never more so than now. She’d put her faith in brawn when she should have backed brain. Her mouth flapped, but no words came out and then Abbie was gone.
“Onward and upward,” said Dominic.
The two of them marched to the train that would take them up to sick bay and thence the front doors. Triple-H had had the good sense to send the carriage back down to their level when he went up, so there was no long wait or nerve-wracking screeching of the pulley system. Dominic opened the doors and the two of them took their seats and ascended.
You never want the smell of smelting when you’re underground, but in this one instance it meant Triple-H had made a start and things were finally turning her way. They were headed into chaos. They were going to need we
apons. What might Patrice have that they could repurpose? There were no gardening tools or kitchen knives in the infirmary. There was a fire axe at the head and foot of every corridor. They could collect those. And of course the gun rack by the doors. That meant they’d have a couple of rifles and a handgun. She wished she’d allowed people to carry in Down. It had seemed like a good idea to restrict access to weapons seeing as they were going to be cooped up in small spaces where spats could turn to fights and fights to turf wars and the like, but that meant she didn’t have a standing militia or weapons of her own.
The trolley juttered to a stop. Dominic got out and held the short door open for her, holding his hand out to steady her though the step was only a few inches from the train and there was no danger of her falling onto the tracks. She took his hand, grateful to have a friend at her side.
It was only when she’d taken her first step toward the infirmary door that she felt the gun in her back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MARCH 2022
“Want a hand?” The soldier stepped forward. A twig broke under his foot, the sound louder than a freaking gunshot. How had Hedwig not heard him approach? He wasn’t quiet or careful. How had the dogs not heard him and sounded the alarm? Where had he been hiding? He grinned. That made it worse. Don’t grin at someone in the middle of the woods when they didn’t hear you coming. Not cool. She couldn’t speak. Everything was jammed up behind her thick, lazy tongue.
“He’s heavy. I can see that. I can help.” He was from the Midwest. Maybe. Iowa or Wisconsin or Michigan. One of the places that sounded like over-fat vowels and weird inflections. He had that creamy complexion born of plenty of milk and cheese and fresh air. She saw no MELT marks on his hands or face. The fact that he was apparently unscathed didn’t mean much. She’d seen people standing upright and talking complete sense one day and falling down the next. The outside and the inside didn’t always match up to tell the whole story.
“Sorry.” That smile again. Wrong. Off-center. One side higher than the other. Not reaching his eyes. Fake. “Let me help.”
