No one said anything for a long moment.
Walter finally peered over. “Kenny, that was crude as all get-out. An’ I reckon Alan had a reason for posin’ the question, and ’twernt to hear all that nonsense you jus’ retched. He’s askin’ ’cause he’d like to know when we can get back to followin’ his plan. Ain’t that right, Alan?”
Alan tucked his upper lip. “No, it’s not that. I mean, it is, but there’s no rush. And I certainly don’t expect either of you to go injured or unable.”
“Who said anything about unable?” Ken quipped. “We might be down, but we’re far from being out. Just let us know when you’re ready to get going and we’ll pack our shit and pop smoke.”
“That’s more like it. Tell ’im, Kenny,” Walter praised. “Cuts, scrapes, abrasions and gettin’ buttshot don’t change nuthin’. We’re with you, pard, or will be…soon as I can walk again and not before I git done whoopin’ ole Kenny’s ass in this here game.”
“Walk again?” Alan parroted under his breath, sending Jade a curious glance.
“Wishful thinking, Walt,” Ken said. “You’d better pack a lunch.”
“Jokes on you, same as usual. I’m havin’ you fer lunch.”
“Okay, guys. We’ll…leave you be a while so you can sort out…whatever this is.” Jade smirked and reached for Alan’s arm. “Come on, I’m dog-tired and I know you have to be.”
Once in the hallway and out of range, Alan queried, “Did you catch what Walter said?”
Jade nodded while peeking into offices on either side of the hall.
“What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know for sure. They could be hurt worse than they’re letting on. And if so, they’d never tell you to your face.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Alan asked.
“Pride.” Jade smiled gravely and tugged on his elbow. “Come on. I’ll get the full story from Butch tomorrow. Let’s find some suitable spots for some shut-eye.”
Chapter 1
DHS Shenandoah Outpost
Woodstock, Virginia
Friday, December 31st
Doug Bronson slid to the bedside and placed a foot to the floor. He leaned forward and strained himself upright, feeling an immediate throbbing in his balding head. He groaned, reaching to a collection of pill bottles on his nightstand, and coughed through a dry mouth over a similarly parched, raspy throat.
Locating bottles of generic ibuprofen and acetaminophen, he tucked them under his right arm and went digging for more. Wheezing, he finally came across a bottle of aspirin, but he pushed it away upon sighting an orange-hued prescription bottle of oxycodone, bearing a name not his own on the faded label.
Bronson then staggered to his feet. Using his free hand for balance, he ambled to the bathroom, his vision becoming less blurry as the room got brighter, but the brightness of day caused his head to pound even more. Someone, very thoughtlessly, had left the blinds open the day previous to allow in the sun, for whatever reason. And now, to top it off, his bathrobe belt had come untied. Great. He was now exposing himself to the world in all his glory.
Cursing under his breath, Bronson stomped inside and dumped his armload of pill bottles into the sink. He then stretched for the window and adjusted the blinds, cancelling out the intruding, menacing daylight. He regarded the door and considered giving it a kick to close it, but a second later, thought better of it. It was early, and all this morning-routine nonsense was taking far too much effort.
Bronson had felt this way about a thousand times before: unable to discern if he was more hungover than drunk, or more drunk than hungover. Either way, he went about closing the door in a gentle, less flamboyant fashion, one presenting a reduced chance of injuring himself.
His bathrobe still agape, Bronson waltzed to the commode and relieved himself in hands-free fashion with the seat down. Once finished, he adjusted his bathrobe and retied his belt, then turned to look himself over in the mirror. He scowled, gave himself the middle finger, and went about popping pill bottles open.
He twisted the faucet all the way to the blue and held his fingers under the stream to ascertain the temperature. He then made a bowl with his hands, filled them halfway, and splashed cool water on his face. Coughing and wheezing, he dried his face and hands with a towel, then arranged eight ibuprofen caplets on the counter. He added two tablets of naproxen sodium to the mix, then finalized the concoction with two white, circular Percocets. He filled a cloudy glass with water, scooped up the blend of pills, and dumped them on his tongue, forcing them down with multiple gulps and nearly spitting a few up in the process.
Bronson rubbed his eyes and took his leave of the bathroom, glass of water in hand. He forced his tongue between the dry skin of his inner mouth and gums, through the foul paste that had accumulated there while he slept. He poked at his teeth with his fingernails and rubbed his nose. Then his eyes fell onto a curvy, effeminate form beneath the silvery satin sheets covering his bed, and the bundle of tousled, flowing, golden hair on the pillow near the headboard.
Bronson was accustomed to entertaining companions of the female persuasion. Doing so was requisite for a man in his position, standard operating procedure for a person retaining his level of authority. Since the beginning of his post-collapse tenure as regional DHS commander, he’d taken pleasure in having his pick of the litter and had rarely spent a night alone. His initial options hadn’t exactly been lowbrow, but had vastly improved as time passed, permitting him to give precedence to quality over quantity. Still, Bronson was no idiot. He knew both quality and quantity had their perks.
His most recent conquest was becoming his all-time favorite by a long shot. The woman was a ripe peach, a certified looker. She had a supple, curvaceous figure, ripened lips and a waist shaped like a dessert wine decanter. Her skin was unblemished and she had a full head of sunrise-gold hair, a rare, authentic blonde bombshell. And he couldn’t remember ever having met someone so exquisite, calculating, and charming, who also happened to be an absolute firecracker in the sack.
The corners of Bronson’s lips elevated into a sneer. He sniggered to himself and took a sip of water, swishing it through his teeth. The sculpted body beneath the covers made purring sounds like a newborn kitten. The woman rolled over onto her belly, and the sheets slid from her, exposing a portion of her lower body. Bronson didn’t know when she’d wake up, but assumed she was dreaming, probably about their previous night together. As it had been one for the record books.
She had approached him in the weeks leading up to this to discuss topics on a strictly professional level. Bronson had thought her attractive since the moment he’d first perused her personnel file and noticed her head shot. She could’ve been a model, for all he’d known then. As it turned out, she was married, but he wasn’t about to let that hinder their relationship as colleagues from taking the next fruitful step.
Bronson was in command. This was his world now and the Plantation was the apple of his eye. The region belonged to him, and what he said goes. But she’d worked her way in and he’d been powerless to stop her. The woman had a way about her unlike any other, and he could feel himself being pulled in for the kill. With simmering galaxy-blue eyes, glowing skin, a toned body and flawless breasts, Bronson had become obsessed with her in no time, and the rest was history. She had since become a frequent visitor to his home and a recurrent participant in his bed. He used to spend so much time in his office that sleeping there had become standard, but having her around made doing so impractical and foolhardy. Their interludes together had thus taken place in his home for privacy’s sake.
Bronson watched her body stir again. She rolled to her side and slid the well-manicured fingers of her left hand onto her hip. Through moderately blurred vision, he noticed she’d left her wedding band on. Had the blasted thing been on her finger all night? The bitch. Alas, try as he might, he couldn’t remember. The majority of the night had been a distortion in time, partially due to drunkenness, but mostly ecstasy. He
inhaled, blowing a sigh of disgust from his nostrils, then left the bedroom and closed the door.
Bronson went to the kitchen and opened the freezer to remove a frost-covered glass bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. He dumped his glass of water in the sink and tossed a handful of ice cubes in it before filling it, capping the bottle and returning it to the freezer. He then opened the refrigerator to search for a suitable mixer while he yawned periodically and tried to remember what day it was.
After mixing himself a semi-decent Bloody Mary, sans the celery and garnishes that had become nearly impossible to find in this day and age, Bronson left the kitchen and sauntered into the living room, where he sat on a plush leather sofa, propping his feet on an ottoman. He reached for his laptop with his free hand, opened it and began perusing his office intranet, deciding to put off checking his messages after seeing the mail icon blinking in the taskbar with a two-digit number overtop.
Bronson took a drink, swishing the liquid around his mouth before downing it. He knew it wouldn’t be long before he began feeling the effects of the narcotics in his system, especially after the addition of distilled liquor to the mix. But he knew even more how incapable he was of functioning at any capacity while hungover, and anything was better than feeling like this. Without being narcotized, drunk, or a combination of both, the stress of life in the post-apocalypse was oftentimes too much for him to bear.
Bronson took another drink before setting his glass down and fumbling for the television remote and clicking it on. A menu of windows soon appeared on the sixty-inch screen, and he navigated to one that presented a list of motion pictures available to watch. He then scrolled through the catalog of westerns.
Bronson had always been a fan of them. He enjoyed seeing the typical good guy versus bad guy plots that depicted the latter as being a rich, heartless, power-mad oil investor, railroad owner, or cattle baron who committed atrocities to assert and retain his power over a town. He did so with the help of a group of dingy, nefarious men who were anything from professional gunslingers to common criminals, all willing to kill with impunity at the drop of a hat. And the law didn’t apply to them because their boss owned local law enforcement.
There always seemed to be a fair maiden or damsel in distress, who’d been victimized somehow, and then there was always a hero—a poor, lonely traveler who migrated from town to town, possibly a Civil War veteran or someone who’d had his family savagely murdered by Indians, or perhaps even by other power-mad ringleaders in other towns. The hero always kept to himself initially, with no intentions of getting involved in town business. He was oftentimes looking to start a new life, but always managed to find himself wrangled into the plot, most often due to his decision to play Dudley Do-Right and rescue the damsel.
In the past while watching westerns, Bronson had often compared himself to the hero in the plot. He was the one who’d been brought in to help people deal with circumstances and save them from bad things, because bad things happen to good people. Now he believed he was more like the oil investor or the railroad owner, or even the power-hungry cattle baron, because he’d come to the conclusion that no good people were left in the world. And no heroes were, either. There was only a job to do and a mess to clean up; a mission to accomplish and problems to hinder the process along the way.
The bedroom door swung open. Bronson turned right to see the woman who’d occupied his bed in one of his freshly pressed button-up shirts, and it appeared to be all she was wearing.
She yawned and tiptoed into the living room in her bare feet, combing through lengths of her hair with a brush. She smiled at him and squinted as she pranced over and took a seat cozily beside him.
The fragrant scent of light roses wafted past Bronson’s nose. He recognized her perfume from the night before, although he had to admit, it wasn’t nearly so pungent then. He assumed she’d either put on more this morning, or it’d been attenuated by perspiration from the night before.
“Do you mind?” Beatrice Carter asked, reaching for a two-tone box of Virginia Slims on the coffee table. “I presume this isn’t a nonsmoking room…”
Bronson slurped his breakfast pick-me-up. “You presume correctly, as made evident last night, maybe even the night before, after all the fumes the two of us generated.”
Beatrice sat back into the couch and lit up. “Hmm…you mean, from all the…friction? Would that be an accurate statement?”
Bronson slid his hips forward, reclining his body further. “Indeed.” He gestured to the ceiling. “I’m surprised that scorching hot ass of yours didn’t set off these smoke detectors.”
“Ha! Now, that would’ve been a trifle embarrassing.” Beatrice giggled, exhaling smoke from her nose and mouth. She placed her cigarette neatly on the edge of a glass ashtray. “You’re a riot, Doug.”
As the seconds slid by, Bronson’s companion made slight efforts to glide her body closer to him. She was giving him plenty to look at, but the only thing with which he concerned himself was the wedding band on the hand she was now using to rub his inner thigh.
Bronson took another sip of his cocktail, then reached for Beatrice’s hand, curling his fingers around hers. He then held it in the air. “Looks as though you might’ve forgotten to take something off before you came to bed.”
Beatrice’s first instinct was to recoil and defensively pull her hand away, but she refrained and relaxed. “Oh, hell. I do apologize for that. It must’ve slipped my mind in the…heat of the moment. Of course, I take it you did pick up on how I managed to take off most everything else.”
Doug Bronson burped inadvertently after a valiant effort to hold it in. “Oh, I noticed all right,” he said. “There’s clothing and whatnot scattered all over the bedroom floor. Looks like two grown adults just walked in and exploded in there.”
Beatrice slid her hand away from his, placing it beneath Bronson’s bathrobe. “Well, that might be how it looks, but I know of only one of us who did any exploding in there.” She squeezed his thigh, slid herself even closer and placed her lips inches from his neck. “And I relished every millisecond of it.”
Bronson smirked and shook his head. This woman was undeniably good. His attraction to her had only begun to heighten, but he couldn’t help that something still bothered him, even with the delicate touch of her hand perilously close to the point of no return. “I think the time has come for the two of us to discuss the ramifications of our affinity with one another.”
Beatrice pulled her hand away in an instant. Reaching for her cigarette, she brought it to her lips and scuttled her butt away from him, taking a few puffs. “Well, since obviously you aren’t in the mood for anything else, might as well get it over with, then,” she quipped. “Though, Lord knows, last thing I wanna do is spend all day long harping over it.”
Bronson snorted and swallowed a wad of phlegm that had built up between his throat and lower sinuses. “Don’t worry about that. This should be a brief chat. All I’m looking for from you is some reassurance.”
“Pertaining to what?”
“Pertaining to your plans…for the unavoidable. The day your husband finds out about us.”
Beatrice scoffed. “Really now, Doug. I don’t see any point in discussing that.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Douglas, I’m here right now, with you, for a reason. I hold nothing against August. He’s a good man, but he’s not a great man. And the relationship you and I have is far too recondite. I assure you, he hasn’t the aptitude to figure us out.”
“Are you kidding me? Did I just hear you right?” Doug retorted. “Your husband was a DHS special investigator, Beatrice—a highly decorated one at that. He worked for Customs Enforcement and his career is replete with positions not handed off to just anyone. I’m sorry, but I respectfully dispute your competence appraisal of Special Agent August Carter, significant other, spouse or otherwise.”
Beatrice slid her hindquarters to the other end of the couch, pulling her legs in close, covering hersel
f with a pillow. “Doug, if you intend to speak to me in that manner, then I intend to bring this discussion to a close, toot sweet. You and I have started something here, and I find that I now care about you deeply. I do not want to allow this frivolous nonsense to come between us.”
Bronson jerked his head in her direction. “Why? Why wouldn’t you want anything to come between us? You’re a married woman, Beatrice. You’re still married to August and you even forget you’re wearing his wedding band on the rare occasion you spend the night. And I’m sorry, but that bothers me.”
“Well, it shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
Beatrice blew out a puff of smoke and produced an ivory-coated smile. “Because…you’re the boss, Doug. You are the man with the plan, and everyone here, up to and including myself, must answer to you. There’s no one else. You run the whole kit and caboodle, and there isn’t a reason why you should be intimidated by any man.” She sucked out another drag through the filter. “Or woman.”
Bronson knew full well what Beatrice was doing. She was catering to his ego, something a woman does when she wants her man to toe the line, follow her lead, or become docile, unassuming and submit. He was an alpha. Normally, he would take the standoffish approach to being treated this way. He’d assert his position, become verbally abusive, and things would escalate, eventually opening a doorway to physical harm and violence. The same, repetitive, abusive scenario that caused his wife of many years to finally pack her things and leave his ass.
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