“It would destroy us,” Dr. Holly replied. “Destroy any chance of saving anything. Of saving ourselves.”
Meggan was back with a whole bottle of the local Wyoming Whiskey. Amber took it in two shaking hands, lifted it to her lips, and took a deep drink. Closing her eyes, she swallowed, then sighed as the warmth settled into her stomach.
They all watched in horrified fascination.
Dr. Holly took the bottle next, took a swig, and passed it to Meggan. She, too, drank, passing it Court, who sat at her feet on the buffalo rug. One by one, they passed the bottle around the room. It acted as a sort of communion. That pivotal moment. A bonding, after which, they were no longer strangers.
Bill had his head leaned back; eyes closed he rubbed his temples. “You’re not the only person who thinks that way, Evan. Tomorrow morning Fred Willson, Merlin Smith, Harry Farmington, Sally Hanson, Terry Thompson and I are having a meeting in town. Figure out what we can do.”
Amber dropped loosely onto the couch, her eyes gone dull now, mouth almost slack in her wedge of a face. A woman would look this way if part of her soul had suddenly turned dark. “How many troops are in the Basin right now?”
“None, so far as I know. They’re all down on the Colorado border, along with a whole host of volunteers calling themselves militia. If we get overrun, we lose everything. If the government takes it all? Well, that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
Bill shook a finger. “This guy is another Erich Koch. If he can get his claws into us, find enough toadies to build a base of support, he’ll become the iron boot that crushes us all. The officious prick almost promised it. There he sat up there at that table, dressed in his fine suit, smiling down on us like we were vermin.”
“Who’s Erich Koch?” Sam asked.
Dr. Holly said, “Hitler’s hand-picked Party monster, selected to govern the Third Reich’s eastern front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. A real piece of shit. Lived like a god, took what he wanted, and murdered anyone who even mildly annoyed him. Oh, and just in case you were starting to think he was warm and fuzzy, he also ran the concentration camps.”
“That’s him,” Old Bill agreed. “That’s what’s coming here.”
“So...your mister shithead just has his list of regulations and decrees to back him up?” Dr. Holly thoughtfully settled onto the couch, actually daring to tap a fist on Amber’s knee, as if in reassurance.
“That, a couple of the sheriff’s offices in the basin, and a bunch of slimy little shits who’ve latched onto his coattails as’—Bill mocked quotation marks with his fingers—“‘administrators’.”
“What about the Highway Patrol?” Frank asked.
“They’re in the governor’s pocket. No telling which way the local offices will align.”
“Then we’ve got to move quickly.” Dr. Holly tilted his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “We’ll need to get messengers to the other towns in the basin: Cody, Worland, Greybull, Powell and the rest.”
“What do you have in mind, Evan?” Frank asked.
“Cut the head off the snake before it can coil.”
“Doing that...” Bill didn’t finish but tossed off the last of his liquor. “Well, you know there won’t be no way back.”
“Any idea how Governor Agar is taking all this?” Frank asked. “Did Fred Willson say anything to give a hint?”
Bill arched an eyebrow. “Reckon most people know that Agar hates the Feds. He already ran the shithead out of Cheyenne. Told him he was either for the federal government, or Wyoming. When shithead told Agar the government was in charge, Agar ordered his arrest. Shithead wouldn’t have made it out of town but for some of his federal cronies.”
Frank laughed. “A couple of years back, a bunch of us were up at the Irma for a fundraiser in Cody. We all went up to Agar’s room for a drink afterwards. My take, given some of the things he said, and the fact that he had the Guard on the border before the shit really hit the fan, is that he’s about the last guy on earth who will sit back and let some federal official take over.”
“We should send someone to have a meeting with him.” Dr. Holly took the whiskey bottle from Pam and took a drink.
“My thoughts exactly.” Bill hitched his hip up, unsnapped the holster from his belt, and laid the pistol on the reading table beside his chair. “We’re talking about rebellion, people. You understand that, don’t you?”
Amber asked, voice cold, “What are you going to do when they come to take your guns and vehicles and all of your cows and horses? Just stand there? Hand them over with a smile?”
Bill chuckled dryly. “Reckon we’ll die right here, trying to keep what’s ours.”
Amber—as if in a trance—whispered, “How bloody fucking heroic. Better to kill the piece of shit before he comes knocking at your door with an armed squad of two-legged filth to back him up.”
“Amen.” Pam tightened her hold on her husband.
Sam’s heart was pounding, an eerie nausea in the pit of his stomach. Jesus. Could this get any worse?
Shyla met his anxious gaze with one of her own. She tightened her grip on his fingers, a fragile desperation behind her pinched expression.
“Does this ‘shithead’ have a name,” Dr. Holly asked.
“Kevin Edgewater,” Bill said as if the mere utterance sullied his lips.
Dr. Holly turned his attention to the owl-eyed and stunned crew where they huddled on the floor. “As for the rest of you, none of you signed on for this. If worse comes to worst, that camp up on the hill will be your safe haven. Your retreat of last resort. No one knows it’s there.”
For a faint second, Sam thought he glimpsed Nynymbi in the shadow of Old Bill’s chair. Just a faint flicker of those curious concentric eyes, the waving three-fingered hands. As Bill shifted, the image vanished as if it had been a trick of the light.
He glanced at Thomas, whose evaluative gaze was already locked on Sam. Thomas nodded, a faint and knowing smile on his lips.
Sam took a deep breath. The words, they just sort of slipped out. “I’m with the Tappans.”
“Me, too,” Shyla said.
“And me.” Court raised his hand where he sat on the buffalo rug. The others, however, seemed too shocked to react. Nor did Sam blame them.
“Why back us?” Bill studied Sam thoughtfully.
Sam nodded his head back toward Bill’s library. “Maybe because when Alaric marched on Rome, everyone expected someone else to stop him. Maybe because there’s something worth saving here. Maybe because you’re ready to take us in when people are being shot in the streets looking for sanctuary. The line’s got to be drawn somewhere, doesn’t it?”
Sam couldn’t help but glance at Amber, sitting hunched on the couch, her hands clenched into rock-hard fists. She knew.
So, Sam asked himself, what lengths would he go to in order to keep Shyla from ever suffering the kinds of horrors Amber had?
Hard question to face, isn’t it, Sam Delgado?
Would he damn himself?
Answer: It’s no longer hypothetical. You’ll do whatever you have to. And live with the consequences for the rest of your life.
Mini
Three friends opted to get out of Denver with me. We all rode motorcycles, or we’d never have made it as far as the suburbs. Bikes could wiggle their way through the abandoned cars and trash-clogged streets.
Mini was nineteen. A vivacious blonde with a round face and forever-effervescent personality. She was a sociology freshman. Wanted to go into teen counseling. She’d grown up in affluent Castle Rock, south of Denver. The one time I’d been to her parents’ house, it was like a mansion atop a hill with an incredible view of the Rockies.
She made it a couple of miles—to the first dead bodies— before she turned back. Ultimately, she just couldn’t believe that the government would fail to fix the situation. Her choice was to head back to her apartment, wait for the police, the National Guard, or the Marines come restore order. Any other outcome was beyond belief
.
We watched her wheel her Suzuki around and start to thread her way back toward her fifth-floor apartment.
That was the day after the electricity went off.
It never went back on.
— Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Sam?” Frank called when Sam stepped off the porch. Shyla stopped as he turned back. Slushy rain was now falling, coating their hair and shoulders.
“Yes, sir?” Sam’s breath rose in the air.
“You know that little cabin next to Evan’s? The one with the white trim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You and Shyla. That’s yours.”
“Uh...”
Frank gestured back toward the house. “What you said in there. You and Shyla, you’re with us now.” He paused. “There’s four bunks. And a divider for privacy. Just let the curtain down from the ridgepole. Best I can do for the two of you. And beyond that...well, it’s just plain none of my business.”
And with a final wave, he stepped back into the house.
Sam turned, another level of anxiety added to his unsettled core. “Look, I can throw out my—”
“There’s a divider,” she said wearily. “And four bunks. I don’t think you’re the type to come slithering into my sleeping bag in the middle of the night. Besides, there’s only room in it for one.”
“Why’s it always the guy? What if you come slithering into my bag in the middle of the night?”
“Because guys think with their dicks.”
She took his hand, leading the way to the bunkhouse where all the gear had been stowed. Sam and Shyla had been among the last to leave, listening to Dr. Holly, the Tappans, and Court—of all people—talking about the Bighorn Basin’s resources.
“Can you believe this?” Sam asked. “It’s as if there’s no solid footing. Like...everything is spinning into chaos. Chinese on the west coast? And those stories about what happened at the border...?”
Shyla opened the bunkhouse door. The rest of the crew had claimed bunks, there being enough for all now that Shanteel, Kirstin, Dylan, and Shyla weren’t in the mix. She recovered her backpack with its rolled sleeping bag and the sack that held her tent.
Sam picked up his own, telling the rest, “We’ve got other quarters. No need to hold bunks for us.”
Jon, his expression a mask of disquiet, just gave them a thumbs up and went back to strumming something sad on his guitar.
Outside, in the freezing rain, Shyla said, “God! I can’t fucking believe it! States patrolling their borders? Americans in refugee camps? Because they want to get the hell out of burning cities?”
“Part of me says, ‘This is impossible. It’s not really happening. You’ll see.’” Sam fought back a sense of welling despair.
Side by side they walked to the little cabin with the white trim, and Sam opened the rattly doorknob. Flicking the light switch revealed a cozy log structure with a window beside the door, a second window above the table with its three ancient-looking chairs, a wardrobe cabinet, two double bunkbeds set against either wall, and a little wood heat stove in the back. The “facilities”, of course, would be the outhouse at the end of the path that led off from the front door.
“Paradise on earth,” Sam said, tossing his pack on the lower bunk to the left. “It’s freezing in here.”
“Would you rather be in one of those refugee camps?” Shyla asked soberly, dropping her gear onto the right-hand lower bunk.
Several pictures were hung on the walls, the first of a cowboy on a horse; another of autumn-yellow aspens and a bugling elk; and a third...
Sam stopped short. Behind the glass frame was Nynymbi. Photographed on brown sandstone, his little hands were waving, his three-toed feet protruding from the corners of his corpulent body with its breastplate. The eyes seemed to mock Sam.
Did you beat me here again?
Shyla rubbed her arms and bent to turn on the knob on the electric baseboard heater under the table.
Sam shook his head at Nynymbi and dismissed him as a coincidence before he pulled out a chair and sank into it.
Shyla rummaged in her pack for a bit, then turned, pulling out the second chair and seating herself. The bottle she thunked onto the old wooden table was something called Remy XO. With her slim hands, she broke the seal. Uncorking the decorative bottle, she handed it to Sam, saying, “Welcome to the end of our world.”
He took a sip, marveling at the smooth taste. The label said it was cognac. He’d never had cognac.
She took the bottle, lifted it to her lips, and Sam watched her smooth throat as she sipped. He wondered what it would be like to run his lips and tongue along those sensual contours.
She set the bottle down, eyes closed, as she worked the cognac over her tongue. With a sigh she swallowed. Then fixed her turquoise gaze on the bottle.
“Parting gift from Jim.” A distant tone filled her voice. Then she met Sam’s eyes. “When you sided with the Tappans tonight? You surprised the hell out of me, Sam Delgado.”
“One minute I was standing there. The next the words were coming out of my mouth. But you remember up on the rock, above camp last night?” He rubbed his face. “Was that really only last night? I said that this was our world now. It has to be. I can’t think about home. Mom and Dad. The restaurant. All of my friends. I’ve got to block it, you know? All the people, the places, the...” He swallowed hard, fighting tears.
She said nothing, watching him intently.
“Shyla, if I go down that road, I’ll die. So I’m here. Making this my world. Making you my world. This place is something to save. And to protect it and you, I will do whatever, however, and whenever. That’s all that I am now. That’s my promise.”
He saw her pupils enlarge in pools of turquoise, noted the slight quiver of her lips. Then she blinked, as if on the verge of tears, and looked away.
To lessen the yawning sense of despair, he grabbed the bottle and took another drink, this time doing as she did, savoring before swallowing.
Setting it down, he added, “Meet the new Samuel Delgado.”
When she looked back, her eyes seemed to deepen like bottomless wells. Maybe it was the effect of Meggan’s whiskey mixed with Shyla’s cognac, but they seemed to suck him into an eternity.
“If this doesn’t get better, we’re going to have to do things to survive,” she said in an ironically tender voice. “Terrible things. You know that, don’t you? Things we couldn’t have imagined even last night. Will doing those things make us...? I mean, like those camps on the Colorado border, will we still be human afterwards?”
“I don’t know.” He ran his fingers down the side of the ornate bottle. “You know, after this is gone, there won’t be any more.”
“There won’t be any more of a lot of things. Coffee, pepper, pineapples, bananas, mangos, oranges, ginger, cumin, tuna, salmon, coconuts, sugar—”
“We’ll have sugar. They grow the beets here. I overheard Frank say that.”
“Lot of fresh meat. Beef. Elk. Deer.”
“You’ll end up like Pam, you know. All whip-thin and muscles.”
“God, I’d be happy to be half the woman she is.” She smiled absently. “Never seen a man and a woman as perfectly matched as she and Frank.”
“If you’re going to be a Pam, I’d have to be at least as tough and capable as Frank.” He made a face. “Tough call there. Those are pretty big boots to fill.”
“Size ten if I’m to guess.” Shyla pursed her lips, an intensity like an electric current between them. “It’s in you. Down at the core. But I think I want you to become an old Bill.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s wise as well as tough. Like tonight. Think of the way he delivered that news, what it had to cost to tell his family that their world wasn’t just at an end, but that some bureaucrat was coming to try and take it away.”
“That’s when I made my decision to stay and help them.”
> She took his hands, rubbing her thumbs down the backs, her delicate fingers tracking across the palms. Sam’s physical reaction caught him by surprise. He barely stifled a gasp, the tingle was so powerful.
She laughed then, throwing her head back, exposing that elegant throat, her white teeth. Her hair went tumbling over her shoulders.
Sam had gone stiff, heart thumping like a frantic rabbit.
Her voice was filled with music: “Wow. Guess I found your switch.”
He swiveled his hips to remove any visual evidence of just how electric her touch was, could feel his ears start to burn.
She clenched her jaw, tightening her grip on his hands, expression serious. “Don’t. Please.”
“Hey,” Sam tried to laugh it off. “What do you expect when I’m sitting with—”
“A most mutually interested woman,” she interrupted with a smile. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the curtain that was pinned up along the ridgepole. Let loose, it did divide the room.
To break the tension, Sam sipped the cognac again and took a deep breath.
He was falling into her stare, letting himself drift in a universe of turquoise, when she asked, “You meant that, didn’t you? That I was your world. That you’d fight for it. For me.”
He nodded, emotions too roiled and confused for words.
“Hard to know if this attraction is the real thing, or just that we’re sitting on top of a volcano and desperate to find some kind of reassurance.”
“No doubt in my mind,” he told her.
She took a deep breath, swelling her breasts against the flannel shirt. Letting go of his hands, she stepped to the wardrobe, opened the cabinet, and cried, “Ah, hah!”
Tossing Sam’s pack on the bunk next to hers, she dropped the folded blankets and sheets atop the mattress. When she turned to face him, a slim blonde eyebrow was arched in challenge.
Sam stood, throat feeling like it had a knot pulled tight down deep. Every nerve in his body was tingling.
“I assume you’ve undressed a woman before?”
Sam’s chest on the verge of exploding, he admitted, “Actually, I, uh, don’t have much practice in... Well...”
Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One Page 17
