What Befalls the Children: Book 4 in the Troop of Shadows Series

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  The man gave him a relieved nod. “Thank you, sir.”

  As Carla headed toward her Subaru, he stopped her in the covert government-employee parking lot situated in a sea of self-storage buildings.

  “Carla, the same goes for you. You know I can’t say what the actual number is...the mortality rate...but I can tell you it’s bad. Take the rest of the week off. Stay home. Maybe stockpile some canned goods and water. Catch up on your recorded TV shows. Let’s see how this thing plays out. If everything gets better, I’ll see you next week. If not, then it won’t matter. At least you’ll be home instead of here or on the roads. I have a feeling it’s not going to be safe to be outside much longer.”

  She turned to face him. For the first time in the five years she’d been his administrative assistant, her eyes displayed actual emotion.

  Fear.

  “Thank you, sir. I have some PTO coming anyway.”

  “You won’t need to use it. We’ll keep this between us.”

  She nodded and scurried to her car. He watched as the Subaru turned the corner. Something told him he would never see her — or Charles or Tom or any of the employees — again.

  He pressed the electronic key fob, listening for the metallic click as the driver-side door of the rented cargo van unlocked. Sliding behind the steering wheel, he started the vehicle, and tapped an address onto the display screen.

  Anxiety blossomed again in his chest and belly. As the facility’s automatic gate opened with a click of the remote he carried, the Excel spreadsheets whizzed through his brain like old news articles stored on microfiche in a library basement. He mentally scanned the line items, then zipped on to the next list.

  In terms of helping with his anxiety, it was better to see those lists on his computer screen than to go through them over and over in his mind. But perusing them mentally was better than nothing. Once he purchased the remaining items and squirreled them away in the warehouse, he might find a bit of relief.

  Until then, the Tums and the Xanax in the glove box would have to suffice.

  Present...

  John Denver’s voice funneled directly into his auditory canal via the most expensive earbuds available at the time of his last supply run. It helped with the anxiety somewhat. The coffee didn’t, but he knew he needed to back off the bourbon for now, and he tended to do his best thinking with a mug in his hand. His mind needed to be clear, sharp, and objective, not mellowed and mushy from alcohol.

  He stood in the corridor outside Lizzy’s enclosure, head tilted, looking for the fiftieth time at the twelve-inch by twelve-inch opening. Squeezing through that opening was more than merely remarkable. It was side-show creepy. He imagined those bony shoulders popping out of their sockets, then Lizzy — wearing that ghoulish grin — slithering through the hatch like a black mamba.

  Twelve thumb screws. Twelve freaking thumb screws had to be twisted off from the outside. How had she gotten her fingers through the mesh? He pulled a small ruler from his shirt pocket and held it against the steel wire. The bands ran horizontally and vertically, leaving small square openings of exactly three-eighths inch in size.

  Closing his eyes, he forced himself to refresh the most recent mental images of Lizzy. He let his mind’s eye travel from those bony shoulders down to her fingers. Fingers that were slender, but not thin enough to slip through the wire. Those fingers somehow still managed to telegraph a subliminal message, like the retracted claws of a predatory cat.

  With his free hand, he smacked himself in the forehead.

  The fingernails. She must have been growing them out for months. She’d asked for an emery board shortly after her incarceration. The pretext had been to keep her fingernails and toenails neat and tidy. She didn’t expect him to provide her with metal clippers or small scissors, of course. Those could be repurposed into weapons. What harm was there in a small piece of cardboard glued to some mildly abrasive sand paper? She must have been filing her pointed nails down to slightly narrower than three-eighths of an inch.

  No more emery boards for Lizzy in the future.

  He blew out a disgusted breath, then headed toward the section of the warehouse that contained construction materials used for DRCs — Disaster Recovery Centers — during emergencies. Instead of steel mesh fencing, he would use solid panels made with a titanium alloy. On his way, he traversed the food corridor and surveyed the pallets stacked on metal shelving three stories high. He wondered if he would ever need to use the hydraulic warehouse crane to get to them. So far, everything he’d needed had been accessible with the smaller order-picking forklift. Fortunately, the Jolly Ranchers and Smarties had been stored on one of the lower-level shelves.

  The candy reminded him of the children. Fergus had told him little about them, so his mind had to fill in the blanks. What kind of lives were they living? Had people reverted to brutal bare-bones survival? Were children used as slave labor? Fergus said they were being cared for, but what did that mean in terms of quality of life? Kids should be allowed to be kids. They needed to be educated, and not just in the ways of staying alive. They needed to feel safe. They needed to feel loved. They needed to feel treasured. If the children growing up in a post-apocalyptic world were denied these necessities, they might turn into monsters as adults.

  He had never been in a long-term relationship, had never fathered children of his own. Maybe that was for the best. He couldn’t begin to imagine the suffering of parents seeing their children succumb to the ravages of Chicxulub. It would be even worse to watch children who had survived the plague die of something as treatable as an infection, dysentery, or malnutrition.

  Walking past the pharmaceutical facility prompted him to refresh the mental inventory lists. Just about everything a small community would need to fight disease or heal injuries lay in his warehouse. Should he try to find these mountain people? Share his embarrassment of riches with them? He could even bring them into the warehouse during the cold months. How much easier their existence would be with electricity, ready food, and clean water, rather than out there battling the elements, wild animals, and violent people.

  He stepped inside the formerly secured area, contemplating what that scenario would look like. It wouldn’t be an easy adjustment for a hard-core introvert to house strangers, but it would be the right thing to do. Helping people in an emergency situation was precisely what this place and his job had been created for. Now, finally, there might be an opportunity to actually implement the protocols for which he had been trained.

  The notion was profoundly appealing. But there was still the Lizzy situation to contend with. What if she were captured and returned here? It would be a relief to have help with the figurative and literal burden of restraining her. But wouldn’t that also put the children at risk? Were they at an even greater risk out there with her lurking about?

  Damn it. He knew what he should be doing, and instead he was creating busy work to avoid doing it. With a surge of determination and clarity, he changed course and headed toward the weapons sector of the warehouse.

  Chapter 12

  Willadean

  Life sucked like a giant Hoover. Willadean, Harlan, and Cricket were basically under house arrest, or maybe village arrest would be more accurate. The shortest leash she’d been tethered to since their arrival in the holler was siphoning all the joy from her existence. And there was nothing to be done about it. Yet.

  Wriggle room normally presented itself in these situations, but Mama knew how to close all possible loopholes. She hadn’t simply said, Don’t stray outside the village. She had said, Don’t go beyond the privies to the north, the clotheslines to the south, the schoolhouse to the east, and Pops’ cabin to the west. Not only that, Serena Jo had embedded a timeline in the rule: In effect until I specifically tell you otherwise.

  Still, ways to circumnavigate rules always presented themselves.

  “You reckon it’s that scary lady Mister Fergus talked about?” Cricket said, his mouth full of cornbread and honey.
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  The cooking ladies had been especially generous at breakfast that morning. And since the village beehives set a record for honey production in early September, everyone seemed to have sticky fingers that morning. In the literal sense. But the notion of figurative sticky fingers gave her an idea.

  “Who knows?” she muttered, pondering how she might get access to Mister Fergus’s mysterious jacket. She hadn’t forgotten her mission to uncover his many secrets. And if she couldn’t go adventuring outside the village, she would have to scare up some entertainment within.

  “What do you suppose Mister Fergus has in those pockets?” she said, mostly to Harlan. Cricket wasn’t known for his powers of observation. “He’s pulled some weird stuff out of them, more than once.”

  Harlan nodded, then signed: Maybe he’s a sorcerer and his pockets are full of bat wing and eye of newt.

  Willa snorted. “Right. More like a fairy king with pixie dust in his pockets. He’s really short. I kind of like that about him, though. Makes him feel like he’s one of us.”

  Harlan and Cricket nodded. Everyone under the age of thirteen understood the chasm that existed between the realm of grownups and that of children. Grownups dealt with boring reality day after day, while kids could travel at will between stark absolutes and fabricated make-believe. She sensed that Mister Fergus could still manage those types of journeys, and it made her like him even more. But it didn’t get him off the hook.

  “Come on. Let’s go see if Pops is home,” she said.

  “Willa, you know your Pops is out with Mister Fergus and Otis. They’re on one of those...what do you call ‘em?” Cricket said, his face scrunched up the way it always did when he didn’t know something. Sometimes Willa found that dumb-scrunch amusing, but other times it was just plain annoying.

  Today it was the latter.

  “A reconnaissance mission. Duh, Cricket,” she hissed, then took off at a run.

  She heard the boys’ boots pound against the hard-packed dirt behind her. Seconds later, they stood on the porch of her grandfather’s cabin. She knocked on the door, loudly, so anyone within earshot would hear. Turning to give Harlan a wink, she sighed when she saw the confusion on Cricket’s face.

  “This is what you call a pretense,” she said in a low voice. “We’re acting like we don’t know whether Pops is home. He won’t answer his door, and then we’ll go in and search the place. If anyone catches us, we’ll pretend we were just here for Pops. Got it?”

  The dark head dipped slowly. “What are we looking for?”

  “Won’t know until we find it. Right, Harlan?”

  Harlan nodded. His eyes were bright with excitement, and perhaps a bit of trepidation. Harlan wasn’t as fearless as Willa. She grinned, remembering what Mister Fergus had called her: Anne Bonny, the pirate lady.

  Well, a pirate lady could also be a clever spy when it served her purpose. She lifted the door latch and stepped inside Pops’ tidy cabin. She took a deep breath, smelling the familiar herbs he stashed inside cupboards and cushions.

  Harlan tapped her shoulder and gestured toward the empty hook by the door. Jacket isn’t here, he signed.

  “Right,” she said. “I guess he’s wearing it under the coat Pops gave him. I thought he might leave it behind.”

  “He been sleeping on the floor?” Cricket said, standing on the braided rag rug Pops had made. Her grandfather prided himself on being able to do ‘women’s work’ as well as any woman.

  “Where else would he sleep? Pops isn’t the spooning type.”

  Harlan snorted.

  It didn’t take long to search his tiny cabin. The woodworking tools Pops used to create furniture, toys for the smaller kids, and miniature works of art were stored in a cabinet next to the front door. Kitchen utensils filled the cupboard beside the water jug and basin. Clean, neatly folded, oft-patched clothing populated an armoire built by Pops himself. The carved forest scene was supposedly from the Bible, but Mama said it resembled a Roman bacchanal...that was a word Willa had first heard two years ago after the infamous Night of Moonshine. Nobody in the holler was allowed to talk about the raucous events which took place after she and Harlan had gone to bed that evening.

  “Nothing interesting here,” she said in disgust. “Cricket, quit stomping all over Pops’ rug with your dirty shoes.”

  Cricket’s head tilted to the side, like a dog listening to one of those special whistles. “There’s a hollow spot under them boards,” Cricket said. “See?” Stomp, stomp, stomp, thud.

  “You’re right. Pull up that rug,” Willa ordered.

  “There’s a nail missing here,” Cricket said. “Bet we can pry it up.”

  “Do it carefully, Cricket. We can’t leave evidence we’ve been spying.”

  Cricket lifted the loose board. Three pairs of eyes opened wide at the hidden items in the space.

  “What the heck is this stuff?” The dumb-scrunch was back on Cricket’s face. This time it was understandable.

  “I’m not sure about those.” Willa pointed to some silver cartridges imprinted with numbers and letters. “Or that.” A pharmaceutical bottle filled with clear fluid. “But I do know that’s a revolver and those are syringes.”

  Did possession of these items mean Mister Fergus was a bad guy? She desperately hoped not. Surely there was a logical explanation for their presence...hidden under the floor...where Pops probably didn’t know about them.

  “What does it mean, Willa?” Cricket whispered.

  “I don’t know, but I aim to find out,” she replied. Thoughts of pirate ladies and clever spies vanished, replaced by images of that revolver pointed at Pops’ bald head when he was sound asleep.

  “You gonna interrogate him?”

  Willa’s eyebrows lifted at Cricket’s word choice. Maybe he was actually learning a thing or two. “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

  Maybe we should just tell Mama. She’ll know what to do, Harlan signed.

  “We can’t tell Mama. She probably wouldn’t even ask him about this stuff. She’d just put him in the cemetery straight away, without due process.”

  “What’s due process?”

  The dumb-scrunch annoyed her this time, which probably wasn’t fair to Cricket, but she was very worried about the contents of that hiding place and the possible repercussions of exposing them. Mister Fergus was the most interesting person who had ever shown up in the holler.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t say anything to anyone until I have time to think about this. Agreed? Do I need to get the blood oath knife out?”

  Cricket and Harlan shook their heads.

  She reached for one of the silver cartridges, turning it slowly to read the print on all sides.

  “I think this is tear gas. See that little graphic? I think that’s what cops throw into a rowdy mob to get them to disperse.”

  Harlan nodded, then pointed with a questioning look to the pharmaceutical bottle.

  She set the cartridge beside the revolver and reached for the small glass vial filled with clear liquid and topped with a rubber lid. “Midazolam, injection. Can cause paranoid or suicidal i-de-a-tion...there’s a new word...and impair memory, judgment, and coordination. Combining with other substances, particularly alcohol, may slow breathing and possibly lead to death. Wonder what this stuff is for?”

  “It’s for sedating pesky children who meddle with other people’s personal property,” a deep voice said from the door.

  Three children spun to face a visibly displeased Mister Fergus.

  They must have been so distracted with the hidey hole that they hadn’t felt the chilly air waft in. Plus — Willa had noticed this before — Mister Fergus moved as quietly as a mouse. Almost as quietly as Harlan. Most grownups, except for the best game hunters in the village, weren’t so quiet.

  “We were looking for Pops,” she said defiantly.

  “You think your grandfather could fit in that hole under the board? Is he a shapeshifter?”

  Will
a couldn’t help but grin. What other grownup would have used a word like that? She decided to come clean.

  “Sorry, Mister Fergus. We were bored and decided to investigate you. We wanted to go through your jacket, but since you’re wearing it, we thought we’d toss the cell. Do a shakedown.”

  She watched the red beard twitch. Just once. He was undoubtedly displeased, but also a bit amused by her jailhouse terminology.

  “Those items are incredibly dangerous. You’re smart children. You should know not to handle such things.”

  “What are they doing there, Mister Fergus? You know you’re not allowed to have stuff like that. If Mama found out...”

  A crimson eyebrow arched. “But she won’t. Just remember, I may end up in the cemetery, but you could end up grounded to the village until you’re twenty-one.”

  He wasn’t wrong. So, mutual blackmail was how this would go down. The notion was intriguing.

  “Just explain this stuff and we won’t tell anyone. Right, boys?”

  Harlan nodded.

  Cricket was in full-blown conflict mode. It was written all over his face. “It don’t seem right not to tell your mama about a gun, Willa. I don’t want to get no one in trouble, but I don’t want to be in trouble with your mama neither.”

  Willa smacked her friend’s greasy dark locks. “Snap out of it, Cricket. Just because you’re in love with Mama doesn’t mean you’re going to snitch.”

  “It ain’t about that. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s one thing to swipe an extra piece of cornbread. It’s somethin’ else to not tell about a gun.”

  Willa narrowed her eyes, ignoring another of Cricket’s goody-two-shoes speeches. “You know what happens to snitches?”

  “They get their tongues sliced off and stuffed down their throats in the middle of the night?”

  “Correct. Not a word or you’ll be ingesting your own tongue before daylight tomorrow.”