“We’re not the bad guys,” Caleb assured them.
“I hope you’ll understand if we decide for ourselves,” Sandy replied.
Caleb nodded and introduced his friend. “This is Parker, but everyone calls him Parks.”
“What were you doing inside that house?” Brooke asked, getting out of the truck before Sandy could stop her. Sandy then did the same, her hand ready to grab her pistol in case things turned ugly.
Caleb held a hand up to block the sun. “Same thing you were doing in that barn, I suppose. Looking for supplies or anything else of value.”
“I didn’t know you were in town.”
“We moved back about a year ago,” he explained. “Decided to stay with my parents while I saved up for school. Guess it was the right decision. I hear things are really bad in Tucson right now.”
“You staying at your parents’ place?”
Caleb shook his head. “They passed when the virus showed up. Might have been some of the first to go. Made me wonder why not me. Why I was spared.”
“We could use an extra pair of hands around our place,” Brooke said. “Maybe two if Parks is interested.”
“At Fortress Hardy?” Caleb said, grinning. “Don’t look so surprised. We know all about what you and your father have done. More than a few people in town think your dad’s a hero. Maybe because to others, he’s a villain.”
“Fortress Hardy,” Sandy said, amused. “Guess it makes sense. But who’s the ‘we’ you were talking about? Are you part of a larger group?”
“We are,” Caleb told her. “There are close to thirty of us, with new members joining every day or so.”
Brooke’s face squished up. “New members?”
Caleb straightened his shoulders. “We’re part of a resistance movement, Brooke,” he said. “Our leader, Nobel, decided to rise up when Sheriff Gaines’ men started stealing people’s properties. Now with the cartel in charge of Encendido, I expect our numbers will start to grow. Our symbol is the letter V surrounded by a circle. It represents victory through unity.”
Sandy recalled the spray-painted image on Dale’s pumphouse. “We’ve seen some of your artwork,” she said. “You two might have been shot for sneaking onto our land.”
Caleb shook his head. “That wasn’t us.”
“Maybe not, but no one back at what you’re calling Fortress Hardy appreciated you trying to lay claim to our water supply.”
“That wasn’t why they left it,” Parks said, his voice that of a boy in his late teens. “It was meant to tell you one of our agents was reaching out. Consider it a calling card.”
“Something tells me we aren’t meeting by chance,” Sandy said. “Is that what this was meant to be? The follow-up?”
Caleb nodded. “Let’s just say we share the same goals.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Sandy said curtly. “We just want to be left alone.” She saw that Brooke was ready to object, but a subtle squeeze to the arm was enough to silence her. Caleb noticed the move.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Caleb said.
Sandy’s left hand was on her hip. “Oh, do you?”
“You’re thinking that sooner or later, we’ll be no better than the cartel.”
“That’s how things tend to play out. At the beginning you stand for something honorable, but inch by inch circumstances force you to ignore your idealistic roots in order to deal with the real world. It’s a slippery slope and you wouldn’t be the first to take a slide.”
Caleb’s blue-eyed gaze settled on Brooke. “If you folks only want to be left alone, we’ll respect that.”
“I hope so,” Sandy said, getting back into the truck. She leaned her head out the window. “Brooke, let’s go.”
A few seconds later, they drove past the two young men, Brooke watching from the window as they pulled away. The rest of the drive home was quiet. Sandy was intrigued to learn that a resistance movement had taken root in Encendido, although not entirely surprised. Caleb and Parks had mentioned they were led by someone who called himself Nobel—a name perhaps borrowed from Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and founder of the famed peace prize. Whatever its source, something told Sandy she’d be hearing the name more and more in the coming days.
Chapter 14
Nobel
Vickie Meeks, who went by the code name Nobel, stared up at Encendido Community College (ECC)—a handsome late-nineteenth-century building with a red tile roof and a white cupola. She was admiring the place that close to thirty men, women and children under her care now called home. And home it would stay until the movement she had started succeeded in removing Encendido from the grasp of wicked men and returning it to its rightful custodian. The people.
If someone had told her two months ago she’d be living in the basement of the local college, bunking with over two dozen strangers and running a resistance movement, she would have assumed the person was barking mad. Not so long ago she had taught American history in some of these very classrooms. Those long hours spent preparing lessons and grading papers were little more than a memory now. Set against a world where every scrap of food, every sip of water was a small miracle, the memories felt distant and trivial. And yet she also knew that she needed to pass along the stories she herself had been taught. About the founding of the country and the two great wars which had forged over centuries with blood and strife what had been undone in mere weeks by a microscopic germ. She knew it was easy for folks seeking safety for their loved ones to let lofty ideals like freedom and the liberties afforded to them by the constitution fall by the wayside. Who cared about a piece of yellowing paper when your stomach ached for something to eat? And that was part of the challenge she faced. Overcoming it would start with regaining control of the town and reinstating honestly elected leadership. When bellies were full and the people’s desperate thirst had been quenched, Vickie could begin the work of helping them remember what so many had died to protect.
When the virus had come to southern Arizona, the first to shut down had been the schools. The concern was they would become breeding grounds for the disease, vectors for rapid transit back to homes where it was feared the real devastation would begin. It was a fear that had proven meritless, since even with the schools closed, the virus had continued to spread, reaching out like the skeletal digits on the Grim Reaper’s hands.
The truth was, few people had stockpiled the type of food and supplies needed to keep them isolated and thereby safe until the disease moved on. A trip to the grocery store, a chore that once elicited boredom, had become the stuff of nightmares. The killer was too small to see with the naked eye, too small to detect on infected hands, on clothing or in blood—but large enough to lay waste to entire communities.
Ironically, although the schools were the first to go quiet, when the human race eventually recovered, they would be the last to start up again. And that was something Vickie was counting on. The day Mayor Reid and Sheriff Gaines had declared they were taking control of the town, her instincts had told her something wasn’t right. Reputations had a way of following a person around. The social order as we understood it might have collapsed, but the disintegration of law and order had done nothing to erase the history of corruption and deception both men shared. In a nutshell, Vickie had smelled a rat from day one, although finding the proof to back her allegations up... that had proven to be something else entirely.
The sudden appearance of the cartel had made her goals all the more pressing, all the more difficult. Distasteful as they were, at least Sheriff Gaines and Mayor Reid hid behind the tattered cloak of democracy. On the other hand, Edwardo Ortega and the hired thugs loyal to his father, the drug lord Fernando Ortega, cared nothing for pretense. Like the tribes that swept over ancient lands in the final days of the Roman Empire, they brought with them a violent autocracy that ruled by fear and intimidation.
Much to her surprise and dismay, Vickie’s vision of a new Encendido was not shared by all. While she had be
en growing her movement one member at a time, a former bail bondsman named Calvin Pike had started a group of his own. Far from championing the cause of democracy, Calvin believed the town needed a strongman, but unlike Mayor Reid, one who believed in justice. No doubt he envisioned himself as that enlightened monarch who could lead the community and maybe someday the state back to normalcy. But as Vickie’s teenaged son Thomas liked to say, his idea was good from far, but far from good. He was advocating a system with few if any checks and balances. Even if Calvin turned out to be a noble dictator, what guarantee was there that his successor wouldn’t be a tyrant? These were the very concerns which had pushed a young America into the arms of democracy in the first place. With Calvin, the tragedy wasn’t simply that the two groups hadn’t been able to find common ground in order to work together. It was that Calvin believed bloodshed and the death of innocent civilians was inevitable, perhaps even required. Vickie saw things differently. She was certain she could destroy the current dictatorship from the inside out, the way the virus had destroyed their country. And that was why she’d reached out to someone close to Mayor Reid, someone who she felt represented a strong first step in finally liberating the town and starting fresh.
The irony of Vickie’s less violent approach was that her husband, Bob Meeks, had been the proprietor of the town’s largest gun shop. H3N3 had taken him early, in part because of the crowds that had flocked to the store in search of weapons to protect their belongings. Within the first couple of days, the shelves had been stripped bare, but that was mostly because Bob hadn’t restocked them. He had decided to keep the bulk of the pistols and long guns—all in a variety of calibers—secured in the shop’s basement. It was no surprise that before long the store had become target numero uno for local townspeople worried they’d be left defenseless when society collapsed completely.
She and Thomas had spent most of the night loading up an old box truck and carting countless crates to the college’s sub-basement level. This stockpile, above all, was what Calvin and his followers wanted most. But he wasn’t the only one. The Encendido authorities had also caught wind of a clandestine nighttime move and wanted her weapons—if not for them to use, at the very least to prevent them from being used against the sheriff and his men.
Contemplating Calvin’s frightening vision of the town’s future, Vickie couldn’t help thinking about the items she’d seen on the nightly news before the televisions themselves finally shut off for good—the war in Syria and the disparate groups vying for control over that fragmented country. They were divided by religion and tribal alliances and in some cases by the same petty divisions that existed in Encendido. And it was their inability to unite against the dictator who ruled them that had ultimately led to their failure and eventual demise. She prayed the vying resistance factions in Encendido would not suffer the same fate.
Chapter 15
Dale
Another morning began with too little sleep. Dale swung his legs over the side of his bed and stretched his sore arms into the air. The space next to him in bed was empty, but he hoped it wouldn’t remain that way forever.
He’d been relieved when Sandy and Brooke made it home safely yesterday bearing gifts. He had asked them about their trip, but neither had said much, which told him either it had been uneventful or there was something they weren’t willing to divulge.
Soon after them, Zach had also returned, driving a dirty old Brinks truck, struggling to get the lumbering beast around the concrete pylons.
Dale had peppered him with questions, all of them well deserved. Where had he gotten the truck? What had he done with the pickup? Each of Zach’s answers had been vague and unsatisfactory, other than to assure Dale they now had the equivalent of a tank. Dale’s response had been to shake his head. A tank wasn’t what they needed most. The two men seemed to have very different ideas on how to deal with the present situation, which left Dale to wonder how much longer they could continue before the friction between them ignited a fireball.
Following a quick breakfast, everyone armed themselves, as was their habit before work, and headed off to complete their given chores.
Dale had spent a few hours continuing the trench out front when he was approached by Sandy. The expression on her face was strange and right away Dale’s heart began to gallop. Normally a look like that signaled bad news.
“What’s wrong?”
All she could do was shake her head and cover her mouth, making it hard to tell if she was fighting back tears or laughter.
“You better see it for yourself.”
He sighed, set the shovel down and followed her. As they rounded the front of the house, Zach’s latest acquisition came into view, accompanied by the sound of splashing water.
Dale’s jaw practically hit the ground when he saw Zach washing the grime off the Brinks truck. Ann and Brooke were there too, looking on disapprovingly.
“Are you out of your mind?” Dale shouted.
Zach stopped and regarded him strangely. “I know, she was a real mess, but I’ll get her shiny and new, don’t you worry.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is how much water you’re wasting.” Dale watched the large puddle of soapy water gathered around the truck with disbelief. “I don’t even have words for what you’re doing, Zach. Don’t you understand that people are dying of thirst?”
Zach let the sponge in his hand plop back into the bucket. “Who’d have guessed, the way you hoard every drop?”
The muscles in Dale’s jaw tensed. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. From now on, you don’t get so much as a cup of water to brush your teeth unless you check with me first.”
Zach didn’t like that, not one bit. “We’ll see about that.” Colton stood by the pumphouse, watching the scene play out. Zach regarded his son and walked past him toward the firing range out back. Colton and Dannyboy followed him.
Still speechless, Dale stood glaring at the pool of wasted water.
“That could have been a lot worse,” Sandy said, referring to Zach’s notorious tendency to fly off the handle. “Look on the bright side. No one got shot.”
“I won’t tiptoe around someone with major impulse problems who lacks common sense.”
“He stood by us when the cartel came knocking,” Sandy reminded him. “That’s gotta count for something.”
Dale nodded. “Of course it does. But should that give him carte blanche to run through the limited resources we have? I don’t want his help saving our lives if he intends to put them at risk by being foolish.”
“You’ve also got Colton to think about,” she said. Sandy had a knack for finding Dale’s blind spot in any given situation.
“How so?”
“For better or worse, Zach is Colton’s father.”
Dale laughed sardonically and pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “When Zach was off doing time in Florence, I was the one picking Colton up from football practice. When Colton failed woodworking, I was the one who showed him how to fit a mortise and tenon joint.”
Ann came over. “I believe Zach has never felt like he belonged anywhere before.”
“Maybe that’s for good reason,” Dale said, quickly regretting the comment.
“I came from a small, rather dysfunctional family,” Ann told them. “As a young girl, I fantasized about one day having a home bustling with little ones.” Her old eyes grew red. “After I married Walter, we tried for years to have children but I guess the Lord decided against it. Maybe it was Walter’s stubborn side, but he never gave up talking me into the idea of adopting.”
“Nicole was adopted?” Sandy said, leaping ahead.
Ann nodded. “That’s why Walter and I are so old. We nearly missed the window when a parent has the patience to deal with children and their shenanigans. Most of us aren’t surprised when a teenager acts the fool. Kids will be kids, right? But sometimes when something very bad happens to someone, they can get stuck, emotionally.” Her frail hand touched Dale’s chest. �
��They look and sound like adults, but inside is just a scared little kid.”
She was talking about Zach and Dale was about to respond when Ann glanced past him and shouted, “Jiminy Cricket, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
Dale and Sandy spun around to find Walter in the doorway to the house, his quivering hands gripping the frame as he struggled to stabilize himself.
They ran over to help him.
“I’m thrilled you’re awake, but you shouldn’t be out of bed,” Ann scolded him.
Dale was far too thrilled the old man was still alive. “Maybe we should bring you back upstairs,” Dale suggested.
“I came down for some fresh air,” Walter said, having trouble speaking. They brought him out into the sun where he raised his head, like a plant, eager for nourishment. When his gaze returned to earth, it settled on the Brinks truck.
“I see you made a trade-in.”
Dale laughed. “Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”
After a few moments of sunshine, Dale brought Walter back upstairs. Ann, Sandy and Nicole gathered at the foot of his bed, beaming with happiness.
“You thought I was a goner, didn’t you?” Walter said, always cheeky.
“I won’t lie,” Dale admitted. “You aren’t out of the woods yet.”
“Men from my generation were built to last,” he replied. “Not like the cheap plastic stuff nowadays that falls apart as soon as the warranty runs out.”
Wounded or not, the old man hadn’t lost his edge.
Walter looked at Ann. “Will you give me a minute with Dale?”
“Of course,” she said. “Just don’t go straining yourself.”
He laughed. “She’s one tough nurse, let me tell you.”
The three women left and Walter grew serious. “I take it from the fact that you and I are still standing here that we won.”
“We did, but the situation’s become”—Dale paused—“more complicated.”
“Were there any casualties?”
“Shane,” Dale said, fighting back a surge of emotion and the impulse to explain any further.
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