“Tom,” Carlotta said as sincerely as she could. “I didn’t thank you for saving my life. I wouldn’t be here, if not for you.”
Tom felt more embarrassed than anything else, given Karla and Attila stood awkwardly beside them. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and shrugged.
“I appreciate that,” he said. “All the more reason to stay safe, OK?”
“It’s fine,” the dark-featured woman said and smiled warmly. “We keep a secret side exit a few of us know. Comes in handy, times like these. I’m just slipping in to grab a few things. I’ll be fine.”
Tom nodded.
“Cool,” he said. “I’m sorry about you and Wilhelm. Magnus seems like a good dude.”
Carlotta softly laughed as their companions checked back the way they’d come, anticipating departure. Tom nodded to Attila that he was coming.
“You never took to Ernest, Tom,” Carlotta said. “It irked the crap out of him.”
Tom shrugged eloquently. Carlotta smirked, gave a pretend salute, and hurried across to the other side of the road to skirt the huge exposed front gates of the Enclave. Tom watched her a moment, as well as the path she took, until the former Council woman disappeared out of sight.
*
THEY ATE ONE of the strangest soups in existence that night, and settled in as a thunderstorm rolled through the City putting an end to Lilianna’s ongoing protests. By morning time, with an illusion of cleaner streets courtesy of the downpour, Tom’s daughter returned to her insistence on heading back to what she now called home base.
“I would be happier with you here,” Tom said plainly.
Lila wore a heavy coat and backpack, the M16 reloaded and her recently-acquired Glock in a holster she’d liberated from Ortega’s stores. More than anything else, it was the quietly defiant cast of her aquiline features which showed she wanted out.
“It’s because Beau’s there?” Tom asked when his duaghter didn’t answer. “I told you already, he can stay here.”
“Dad, there’s work to do,” she said. “I have a role, there. The Greenland colony? Helping comms with the expedition? Any of that ring any bells?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Alarm bells.”
“Predictable.”
“Don’t tell me I don’t have just cause.”
“No,” Lila said. “You said yourself enough times, winter is coming. I don’t know Ohio, but I’ve heard the stories they tell about last year. We should be weeks off from any snowfall. That’s why there’s so much to do before it gets here.”
“Honey,” Tom said. “The City’s –”
“There will be elections,” Lila said.
“You think that’s the priority, after what you just said?”
“Either way, there’s work to do and people needing help,” Lila said. “It’s not just about us three any longer, right?”
She gestured at Karla, Ionia, and Erak beyond the doorway outside working optimistically in what they now apparently called the Garden.
“I’d still prefer you stayed here,” Tom said. “With me and Lucas.”
His daughter nodded and it was quiet a moment.
“You know I’m not asking for permission, right?”
Tom exhaled. He looked around as if for something to hit, but it was the Ak47 he no longer possessed he sought. He strode into the hallway and Lila followed him into the side yard, the old weed nursery now their future food bowl. Tom unlatched the weapons rack and chose the M4 carbine and a pair of extra magazines he stuffed into his belt beneath his coat. The metal locker boxes held precious few more spare.
“Alright,” Tom said. “I’ll walk you.”
“OK,” Lila said. “That would be great.”
“Go say goodbye to your brother first.”
“He’s . . . upstairs with Kevin.”
Tom sighed tightly. Their eyes met in mutual discontent.
“I’ll send him your regards.”
“Dad,” Lila said to him. “That kid’s creepy.”
“I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“By Kevin?”
“No,” he said. “By your brother. They’re . . . friends. The City’s a weird place for someone like Lucas. He’s not as grown-up as he wants to be. Not yet.”
“Friends like Kevin could get him killed.”
“Leave the Kevin situation with me,” Tom said. “I’m still thinking on it.”
“OK.”
Lilianna gave the other women hugs and Gonzales a fey wave. Attila had guard duty, and in the background came the sound of Kent’s children laughing from the improvised bedroom in the open foyer outside Tom and Luke’s quarters.
“On the plus side,” Lila said, “you won’t have any more campers outside while you’re sleeping, now that I’m gone.”
“No,” Tom said. “They’re fine where they are. I’m keeping a room for you . . . and Beau too.”
Lila dropped her eyes and sighed, looking utterly maudlin, though her smile just as quickly turned up, begrudgingly, as she said to Tom: “If you have to.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “You’re getting . . . you’re being careful with him, right?”
Her face blanked.
“It’s not like that, dad.”
Tom knew his daughter could see him strangling half-a-dozen other things he wanted to say, like a robot, instead adding, “I thought you two were getting serious?”
“Yeah,” she answered with none of the girlishness he’d expected.
Tom closed the gate behind them as they surveyed the road.
“Are you . . . OK?”
“You told me, dad, everyone has scars.”
“And?”
She looked back at him, front-on, trying to be clear-eyed.
“Sometimes I hate it when you’re right.”
Tom trod water, trying better to understand what she meant – and maybe even how to get her to explain it – but Lila motioned west, her jaw set, and started marching that way.
He knew things could be a lot worse than Lilianna hitched to Beau.
He still didn’t like it.
He set out after her and caught up with a brief jog.
*
CLEAR SKIES STRETCHED across the sanctuary zone as the pair of them trudged the back streets circling around in the direction of the Enclave.
“Doesn’t it unnerve you a little, dad, living in the compound where you nearly got killed?”
Tom looked askance at his daughter, her eyes focused on their surroundings. The streets were filling again. Slowly. It was worth a trip back via The Mile. Tom regretted trading the prized, heavy-firing assault rifle, and wondered why the hell it left him so anxious. Citizens might be venturing out of their hovels, but the palpable sense of risk remained. The weapon was reassurance, if nothing else.
“It’s not the first place I’ve nearly died,” Tom replied. “It made sense. It’s secure.”
“It’s not that secure.”
“It’s a work in progress,” he acknowledged. “And another priority.”
“Good.”
“I’m the one worried about your safety,” he said.
But Lila’s brow furrowed in a way showing her still attached to the previous thought.
“You never really explained how you got in to see Ortega,” she said. “Nor how you survived.”
“It’s not much of a story.”
Nothing showed on his face – not if he could help it. There was no point wasting his time with guilt. He’d lied to Ortega, been ready to sell out to get his family to safety, and now his silence lied for him yet again.
“You still believe in what we’re doing here though, right?”
“The Enclave?”
“The City,” his daughter said.
Tom crinkled his gaze at her, moving them through an intersection within sight of the Enclave walls, the road half-eroded and running with water from the rains. Whatever his daughter guessed at, Tom only thought more highly of her than ever. To know she remained shrewd
and questioning, even of him, showed a vital life skill for survival after the Fall.
She would survive, even if he didn’t. That was the token he held onto most of all.
Armed guards manned the sandbagged enclosure outside the broad Enclave gates, with the machine-gun on its turret casually aimed their way as Tom and Lilianna crossed the open space demanded by the militarized zone. A dozen-or-so other civilians hedged their bets beneath the awnings of the last variegated dwellings before the Bastion’s cleared gateway, with children among the Citizens, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes while holding dead iPhones they still checked sporadically.
The gates clanked open as the newcomers approached. A few workmanlike shouts rang out from beyond. A fresh squad of male and female troopers hit the bricks, and Denny Greerson and a Kevlar-clad Ernest Eric Wilhelm III followed. Wilhelm wore a pistol in a Velcro holster and glanced Tom’s way while Greerson was still speaking to him. The chance sighting stalled the politician slipping on the plastic-masked police helmet he carried under one arm.
“Tom,” he said from across the short distance and slowly smiled. “And Lilianna. I hope all’s well?”
“Just reporting for work,” Lila said. She hugged her father. “I’ll call you, dad.”
She nodded to him and slipped through the gates as they closed.
“‘I’ll call you’,” Tom mused aloud.
“The phone system is still operational,” Wilhelm said.
“Just the words . . . not the words I expected,” he said.
It wasn’t the occasion for a reverie, and it was doubtful the Councilor would understand Tom’s wistfulness anyway. Such a farewell was expected, once upon a time, and its re-emergence only underscored the pang he felt at his daughter’s transition to woman from girl, and also the world she’d inherited. It was like he’d failed her.
Tom fixed his eyes back on the quietly smiling man, wondering what was Wilhelm’s expression when he punched his friend Magnus in the head. But Tom had bigger fish to fry, and taunting Wilhelm for losing his cool wasn’t on Tom’s agenda for the morning – which right now consisted of getting the hell away as soon as he could.
He offered Wilhelm and Greerson a weak salute.
“I’ll let you two get on with your patrol or whatever it is you’re doing.”
He turned, but Wilhelm stepped in to block him with his hands and smile spread wide.
“Tom,” he said. “I am glad to run into you. I can go with Denny another time. Do you want to come back with me? I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Thanks,” Tom said. “But you should go with the Chief. You’re such great company.”
Wilhelm sniggered at him, allowing Tom the taunt.
“Really, Tom, there is so much to discuss,” the Councilor said. “It is not like I want to interrupt you, but the truth is, I was hoping I might convince you to throw in with us. So much needs to be done.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I need to debrief you on the Council attack and what it means, going forward,” Wilhelm said. “And of course, there is the cattle shipment we need to discuss, and how that’s going?”
“Elections, too?” Tom asked although he already knew the answer. “We going to talk about those as well?”
“Tom, I did not think you cared.”
“And I don’t.”
“Good,” Wilhelm said. “I meant what I said at that meeting. And with the damage caused, there’s no time to be wasted on elections until the summer. That’s why I want you to come inside and work with us. Relocate.”
“You built an ark,” Tom said and motioned behind them to where his daughter now lived with all the Bastion’s other best and brightest. “Waiting for the flood?”
“The Administration is going to get the City through the winter and we cannot protect everyone, Tom,” Wilhelm said. “You know that as well as I.”
“What about Lowenstein?” Tom asked. “The President wanted elections.”
“We are on the same page with this, now,” Wilhelm said. “The attack . . . It shook her faith. Woke her up a little, too.”
“Handy, that.”
Tom squinted at the politician. There’s no way he believed Wilhelm was in league with the surviving Lefthanders, even if Madeline Plume did escape so easily. But it didn’t hurt to instill a little paranoia in the Councilor, who still seemed too cocky for Tom’s liking.
“We need to consolidate,” Wilhelm replied. “Help us to do it. I cannot promise you the Greenland mission was not compromised by the Lefthanders as well. They made radio contact with the Washington first. Greerson got nothing out of Plume that we could use.”
Tom looked to Denny, standing a respectful distance within earshot. His six squad members loitered behind him like unemployed extras, wondering what happened to the urgency of their patrol. Greerson read Tom’s look and shrugged.
“They’re zealots,” he said. “And she’s a fanatic.”
“A fanatic of what?” Tom asked.
Neither of the men could answer. Tom sighed. He wanted to walk off right then and there, but Wilhelm’s altercation with Magnus, and the smugness rolling off the man in waves, made it impossible to quit without saying something.
“So it’s martial law?”
“For now,” Wilhelm said.
“Remind me why I fought the Lefthanders again?” Tom asked and peered right up close the way he knew Wilhelm wouldn’t like. “Isn’t it because they wanted to rule the City under military law?”
Wilhelm’s polite grin finally slid from him. He drew an unappreciative breath, face like chewing raw onion.
“Well, your daughter believes in what we are doing,” the Councilor said. “And do not forget your dear friend Iwa Swarovsky is out there in the middle of all this too, Tom. I would like you to join us, and stop all this negativity. But if you are not with us. . . .”
Wilhelm blew out his cheeks and motioned emptily, hand slapping back down against his thigh. The implied threat was as insubstantial as Wilhelm himself.
Tom growled and walked away, mindful of the gun turret tracking him as he went.
Chapter 5
THE AWKWARD NECESSITIES aside, Lilianna tried sharing a pained smirk with Beau, which failed because her poor boyfriend was too locked into cringing his way through a performance as one of her father’s lesbian housemates doled out additional bedding, and Lila and Beau then made their exit for the stairs to the last remaining free bedroom in the upper house feeling like eyes were on them every step of the way.
The voices behind them receded, but not all. Lucas was busy chattering something to Beau as they made their escape and it soon became clear he was following them too.
“In the morning I thought you could show me your workout,” Lucas said.
Beau glanced around as they ascended, confirming nowhere to run as Lilianna sniggered, enjoying his discomfort as a deep weird contentment coursed through her, and her relief and gratitude that her boyfriend “just happened” to come across her missing little brother welled up through it all. She caught up to him on the stairs and ruffled his short brown hair from behind. Lucas positively beamed – and completely failed to notice they were headed to the room across the hall until Lila opened the door for Beau, his hands full, and then turned cheerily around to block the doorway with one arm.
“I’m so glad you made it back, little brother,” she said.
She grabbed him in a tight hug that was over almost as soon as it began. Lila stepped back, her hands on Luke’s upper arms though they were the same height now and no need for her to bend as she maintained her warm sisterly eye contact.
“Go hang out with your friend now, OK?”
“Beau’s my friend as well as yours.”
“Sure,” she replied. “But it’s different.”
Surely Lucas knew what the hell she was talking about, but it didn’t show on the dumbstruck look on his face still feeling thwarted in hanging out with his new idol.
“Luke,” hi
s sister muttered, releasing him. “Don’t make this awkward.”
“You’re coming down to us though, later, right?”
“To the room?”
Her heart broke a little, but the urgency in her fluttering pulse pushed Lilianna through it. Her face peeled into a loving smile, speechless really, and she patted her brother’s head like an adorable pup and still didn’t know what to say.
“Baby. . . .”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You know Beau and I are together now?”
Lucas didn’t need to hear anymore – hopefully didn’t want to.
“Alright,” was all he said.
“You want to go hang out with Kevin anyway, right?”
An anxious look crossed Luke’s face and disappeared again. Taciturn frustration remained. He snorted something, wheeling away as Lila could only watch him go. Then she shut the door on the scene to find Beau spreading the blankets ineptly across the room’s single cot. A stack of old paint drums were the only other thing in the room beside a single wooden side table with a thick-ass copy of something called The Silmarillion used as a base for one equally thick, half-melted candle. The wax glistened by the weak single flame Beau lit, and the white goop dribbling over the book made Lilianna swallow hard given how much she was thinking about Beau and what she wanted next.
Lila fastened the bolt on the door and turned back to her boyfriend with her best smile.
Beau was blank-faced as usual, though he caught on and offered a shy smile in return, clearing his throat awkwardly and turning his back to her as he peeled off his coat, looked around, and tossed it atop the stack of drums.
“It’s cold,” Lila said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t sleep in that. Stinks of smoke.”
“How are you feeling?”
She took her own jacket off despite the chill, then straightened out the blankets.
“Tired?”
Beau smiled properly then, and Lila circled around the bed. Beau looked away, abashed, and she gently placed her hand against his chest, palm on the collarless shirt over Beau’s heart. His own pulse racketed along, and feeling it, Lila smiled, broke the eye contact, and rested her head against his collar.
After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution Page 13
