Shadow of Nevermore

by Lilly Black

  "He's been whispering in everyone's ears that he doesn't think it would be too hard to overthrow the crazy queen who crucifies people. He might be a fucking moron, but if other morons join him, you could have a problem on your hands. He's talking about sneaking off to round up some guys he knows to help him."

  "What guys?" Liana asked.

  "There's a group at a prison north of here," she said, and both Olivia and Liana struggled to maintain their poker faces as they gave each other a quick glance. "They're the ones who sold him and his wife to the Widowmaker in the first place."

  "Why would he go to the men who enslaved him for help?" Liana demanded.

  "I guess he's more comfortable with the masters he knows than the ones he doesn't."

  "But we're nobody's masters here," Olivia protested.

  "I've tried to tell him that, but the solar farm didn't have zombies on crosses at the entrance."

  "What's your point?" Olivia demanded as Liana gave her a vindicated smirk.

  "My point is that he's a fucking misogynistic pig. Life here is way better than it was on the farm, but that's not good enough for him. Some idiots would rather be a slave to a king than a free man serving a queen," she said, but Olivia was too paranoid just to take Widow's word for it. Treason was a serious charge that required evidence.

  "Would you be willing to wear a wire?" she asked suddenly.

  "A wire?"

  "Yes, I'd like you to wear a wire and get him to talk about this so we can hear it for ourselves," she said.

  "Sure, no problem," she said, then she gave them a hard, serious stare. "Look, I know you all don't know me so you don't trust me yet, and that's fine, but after everything I've been through, I'll do anything to stop him from fucking this up for me. So far, you have been nothing but fair and reasonable, and that's all I ask for. I just want to live my life. I don't want to be anybody's slave, and I don't want to be anybody's master."

  At least not in this context, she thought, but she didn't say it aloud because she figured the queen was a little too uptight for a BDSM joke. Besides, it had been a long time since she felt like she was capable of dominating anyone.

  "I'm glad you feel that way," Liana said. "That's the reason we called you here in the first place. We found out about that group at the prison, and we were hoping you could tell us more about them."

  "What do you want to know? They're a bunch of assholes. They're the reason half of us were at the drug farm in the first place," she said, and as Olivia slipped her phone into her lap and texted Rena about wiring Widow to catch the traitor, Widow told a story from a friend who wound up in her exact situation at the farm. She and her husband had been hiding out in a grocery store near Princeton with another couple. Widow's friend's husband was wounded, and while his knee was healing, he was having some trouble getting around. The other guy was large and strong enough to carry him when it became necessary.

  Then a group of three men from the prison gang arrived at the store and found the two couples hunkered down in the back. Guns were drawn and threats exchanged, but the men quickly lulled them into a false sense of security talking about the group they came from that had made a safe place at the prison. They invited them to join their community, then as the four discussed it, their weapons down, the three men attacked, shooting the big guy in the head, then overpowering the other three, who found themselves tied up in a cart hauled behind a motorcycle. The surviving man and his wife were delivered to the solar farm in exchange for drugs, and the other woman was taken away when they left.

  "Men from that group would show up at Widowmaker's a few times a week and trade us things for drugs - people, food, ingredients for meth," Widow said.

  "I thought you told me that they came on a schedule," Liana said.

  "Different group," she said. "The guys who brought me and my husband in were really organized. They were the main reason we made the drugs. They set the whole thing up. The prison gang is just a bunch of crazy meth-heads and junkies."

  "...who could've shown up there while it was just you, me, and Jax," Liana hissed, angry.

  "Nah. It was already close to sundown, and Widowmaker had the militia under strict orders to shoot anyone who showed up to buy drugs after dusk. He was scared of those guys. He always expected them to try to come in one day and do what you all did, so he had his rules and he enforced them. The militia killed all three members of one of their teams one night for breaking that rule and kept the heads to show the next team that came to trade for our drugs."

  "And how is that any different than our crucifixions?" Olivia asked because she just couldn't reconcile Billy's feelings about her group vs. the one he was held captive by.

  "In my book, it's worse," Widow said. "I mean, you both carry out capital punishment, but the signs around the necks out front of the Deadfall say 'rapist' and 'murderer'. At the solar farm, they would have said 'late night shopper'."

  "And 'traitor'," Liana added. "Don't forget that one." Olivia gave her an irritated glare, but Widow had her back.

  "What else can you do with traitors?" she asked. "Billy wants to kill you two and take over everything you've built here. Once I prove that to you, are you going to pack him a lunch and send him on his way? What do you think he'll do if you let him leave?"

  "We'll drive him a hundred miles out if we have to. He was blindfolded when he came here, so he doesn't know where here is," Liana said.

  "If you think he can't find his way back, you're willfully ignorant," Widow said, and though Olivia felt vindicated by the comment, she didn't say it out loud, hoping it would sink in with Liana.

  "So, you're saying that we need to kill him? Do you really think he's dangerous?" Olivia asked.

  "On his own? No. But he knows where the prison is, and those guys would be a big problem en force," Widow said. "Then there's the other group Billy knows about; the Sinner's people - the ones who set up the drug ring. That whole solar farm had been a front long before the apocalypse. Those guys are organized, and they're dangerous."

  "One thing at a time," Olivia said. She wanted to know more about the Sinner and his group, but she saw the prison as a much more immediate threat. Men from the prison gang had already come to their community. The Sinner knew nothing about them. "Is there anything else you can tell us about the men at the prison?"

  "Not really, but I can tell you that even if you take them and the Sinner out, they're not the only place Billy could go to round up enough men to attack you. If he wants to find an army of assholes to come after this place, he won't have to look too hard."

  "But none of those people know what assholes we can be," Olivia said with a smirk that sent a chill down Widow's spine as she remembered Liana's words back at the solar farm.

  She comes off like a fucking angel...but if you cross her...she's depraved and merciless.

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Liana said just as she heard a knock on the office door. It was Rena with a wire for Widow. She had already prepared for this eventuality, knowing there was no other way to trust newcomers.

  "Don't engage him tonight unless he brings it up," Olivia warned. "Since you met with us today, it might spook him."

  "Not a problem," Widow said. "I'll start working on him in the morning before they come to get us to build the wall." Now that the heart of the Deadfall was surrounded by stone, Aiden had begun building another wall around the entire middle ring, which was an incredible undertaking considering that the ring went up the mountainside to include the wellspring and down the mountain to include almost twenty acres of cleared land, plus it had a perimeter of more than five thousand feet. Trusted members of the community were sent out to collect stone, and the group staying in the cabin in the woods spent their days mortaring it into a high, thick wall.

  "Maybe that's what we should do with the men from the prison," Liana said after Widow left with her escort back to her post. "Aiden said at this rate, the wall is going to take forever. We could shackle them and make them help buil
d it."

  "Then kill them when they're done?" Olivia asked. "You didn't hear the details in Austin's story, but if what he told us is true, there is no way we are going to use any of our resources to keep them alive even if they are working for us."

  "What if we could rehabilitate them?"

  "Rehabilitate them? Tell you what, Liana, when we rescue the women from the section of the prison Austin says they call Death Row, you tell them you want to rehabilitate the men who were literally raping them to death and see how they feel about that."

  "I just don't see why it is always all or nothing with you. There are options other than the death penalty," Liana argued.

  "And when someone commits a crime for which the death penalty is too harsh, we'll explore those options, but not this time, not if it's as bad as the kid said."

  "You're not even willing to consider it?" Liana demanded.

  "You don't get to rape little girls bloody and live, Liana. Not in my world."

  Your world, she thought, her eyes narrowing as she gathered her notes to leave the office. Maybe Olivia was right about these men, but her sentences were so absolute that it wouldn't really matter. Dead was dead, and there was no going back once that happened. Liana was sure if she was in charge, things would be done differently. She could rehabilitate whenever possible and end up with productive members of society instead of more corpses. Historically, she and Olivia agreed on almost everything, but now she couldn't reconcile how the person who used to fight for the rights of others to her own detriment could be so cold blooded when it came to what she considered death penalty offenses. Olivia on the other hand, could not understand how someone so military minded was such a peacenik when it came to crime and punishment. It was the reason they needed each other, but at that moment, it was something neither was able to see.

  Day 51

  Ravi was patrolling along the top of the wall when he noticed June up ahead coming toward him with a plate in her hand. Last night, she got cold feet and canceled their plans, then around midnight when it was too late to do anything about it without Ravi's roommate - Liana's son - being privy, she really began to regret it, so this morning she had gone straight to the kitchen with a recipe for baklava she found in an old cookbook Olivia had put in her cabin as part of the decoration.

  "What's this?" he asked, eyeing the plate of very poorly executed dessert.

  "Baklava," she said as if he should have known, and Ravi laughed. In spite of the fact that she was trying, she had yet to realize that his heritage was not at all what she thought it was, but since her gesture meant a great deal to him, he was willing to try it even though he was not at all a fan of filo dough.

  "It looks delicious," he lied.

  "What were you laughing at?" she asked.

  "Nothing at all," he said as he picked up a piece and took a bite. It was terrible, but he smiled and swallowed.

  "You don't like it," she said.

  "No, it's great," he lied some more.

  "Well, I just wanted to say I was sorry for canceling our plans last night," she said. "And I wanted to see if maybe you would like to... I don't know... Maybe try again tonight? You could come over for dinner."

  "What about your children?" he asked because she had made it clear she didn't want them to know she was "dating."

  "We can have a late dinner after the little ones go to bed. I took your advice about the older boys, and Noah and Isaiah are going to be shadowing the guards tonight."

  "Then I would love to," Ravi said.

  "Great!" June chirped excitedly, then she handed him the plate. "You can share the rest of this with whoever you're working with today. I have more for dessert tonight."

  Great! Ravi thought, forcing a smile, and June was on cloud nine all the way home. Maybe Ravi wasn't Alek. He wasn't tall or blonde or blue eyed, but he was sweet and kind, more so than any man in June's past. He was really handsome in a way her upbringing had conditioned her to overlook until now, and she realized she was looking forward to spending more time with him.

  Around nine, June put her two youngest boys to bed as the two oldest got ready for their shift learning to patrol the top of the wall. With temporary, narrow, wooden catwalks built upon scaffolding between the stone towers where Rena had rigged the appearance of guards, Noah and Isaiah would follow Gary and Rey as they patrolled the perimeter of the inner ring. June was nervous as Rey came to pick up the boys, but he assured her that the worst thing that ever happened was the occasional zombie target practice or a stray opossum or raccoon using the small wildlife passages in the wall jumping out and startling them. Though it made her feel somewhat better, she would have preferred it if they had finished building the secondary inner wall to make the sturdy, stone walkways since Isaiah was her clumsiest child. The additional stonework was on hold until they found a new source as they had depleted the local supply to the point that they were now using brick and cinderblock on the back half of the wall around the second ring. From the front, it would look very castle-like, but anyone approaching through the mountains would see a damn mess. At least it was a damn mess that would keep people on the outside if they came to the Deadfall with ill intent.

  Trying not to worry about the boys, June set the table and took the dinner she had prepared out of the oven. She hadn't cooked much at home since Jobe and Jimbo died, preferring instead to join the community in the lodge, but she was excited to cook for her first official date tonight with Ravi. She even felt butterflies when she heard him knocking.

  "Hi," she said shyly as she opened the door.

  "Good evening, Miss June," he said, handing her a bouquet of evergreen branches since there were no flowers to be found this time of year. It smelled Chistmassy, and it made her wonder what the date actually was and if anyone would celebrate the holidays now that the world had ended. She was pretty sure they had already missed Halloween, not that she had been allowed to participate in that Satanic celebration after her parents joined the Labor of Faith Ministries.

  "Thank you," she said as she took the bouquet into the kitchen and used a mason jar as a vase. "But I think under the circumstances, just June would do."

  "My apologies. I didn't mean to imply anything other than respect," Ravi said, but he realized that since she had lived in the south for so long, calling her Miss June probably illustrated their age difference when that wasn't how he meant it at all.

  "Apology accepted," she said as she held out a hand to offer him a seat at the table. "I hope you like vegetable lasagne. Meat is getting hard to come by, and there's very little cheese in it, but we have a stockpile of pasta."

  "It sounds lovely," Ravi said, smiling as he watched her in the kitchen, slipping the oven mitt over one hand to hold the pan while she sliced the lasagne. She was so beautiful in his eyes with her fawn-like figure and strawberry hair, and even though she was eleven years his senior, her lack of worldliness and youthful looks helped bridge the gap.

  She placed the lasagne on the table and served it, and while they ate and talked, the same gap began to close for June as well. Ravi had far more experience in his twenty-four years than she had in thirty-five, and as she hung on his words, she could almost feel the dynamic shift. There was so much more to him than she realized, and she was fascinated by his past.

  Before they met him that night on their way south, Ravi had been in an arranged marriage, though it wasn't typical as he and his bride-to-be had arranged it themselves. They had never met in person, only knowing of each other through family connections, but because arranged marriage was expected in both families, she contacted Ravi online to set it up before her parents could promise her to anyone else. Both she and Ravi were strong proponents of women's rights in India, and together, they had planned to become a political power couple. Of course, that was the extent of their connection as Ravi's promised bride had a girlfriend, something her parents never would have accepted.

  "Anika was a truly remarkable woman," he told June. "I hope she somehow managed t
o survive over there."

  "Me, too," June said. "But if you knew she was a...lesbian..." she said, whispering the word "...why did you want to marry her? That doesn't seem fair to you."

  "I've been in America since I was six. My parents came here and set up the convenience mart so they could get my brothers and myself educated here. I watched each of my brothers have to give up women they loved to go back home and marry strangers, so I struck this bargain with Anika because if I did fall in love, I would have options."

  "You wouldn't have found too many American women who would have been willing to go back to India as your long term mistress, Ravi," June said with a giggle.

  "I was young and naive when I came up with this plan," he admitted, laughing with her. "But it seemed like my only choice at the time. I've always been more attracted to fair haired women. I was sure I would meet the woman of my dreams before I left the states. Of course, I'll probably never see India again now, but at least I've found a red-haired beauty in the apocalypse." He winked.

  "Penny has red hair, too, you know," she said, the compliment making her feel awkward.

  "Penny is childish. I'm not attracted to little girls," he said, and the heat in his deep brown eyes as he stared at her chased her gaze away. Nervous, she got up and started clearing the dishes, then she placed a plate between them on the table - the rest of the baklava from earlier. She picked up a piece as she tilted the plate toward Ravi, who forced a smile and did the same. Then she bit into it and froze for a second before spitting it into a napkin.

  "Oh, good Lord!" she scowled and swished her drink around her mouth. "Why didn't you tell me how terrible this was?"

  "It was pretty terrible," Ravi confessed with a warm smile, "but I was flattered that you made the effort for me. I didn't want to discourage you."

  "Please! I should be discouraged from ever doing this again," she said, and as they laughed, Ravi slid from his chair to the one right next to her.