by John L. Monk
Glumly, he nodded.
31
Lisa swore quietly, lest she wake anyone still sleeping upstairs.
It was well and good for Jack to go off on foolish adventures, but someone had to be the full time adult, and that person was her. Again. His view of adulthood was limited to giving orders and risking his life. She knew what real leadership meant: soothing tempers, listening to problems, and making sure nobody killed themselves on stunts like this. It didn’t help that Greg had jumped right on the bandwagon.
She’d given her brother an earful. Fat lot of good it did. Ever since arriving at the cabins, he’d been itching for excitement—because he was a boy, and boys were stupid. Especially that boy. And that’s why early that morning after the salt run, Greg and Steve had snuck into town to execute their part of the plan.
Jack—no less stupid—had gone back to the cabins to rest before his trip later into Blaze’s territory. She’d tried to talk him out of it but he hadn’t listened. Kept going on about Winston Churchill and Shackleton. Maybe that rock Steve hit him with had done permanent damage.
At 8 a.m., she got on the radio. “Farm here. Checking in.”
Almost immediately, Olivia’s voice came back, “Big T, all clear.”
They didn’t talk after that, preferring to keep the airwaves free of unnecessary chatter. As a precaution, they now referred to Big Timber as Big T, for fear of eavesdroppers. Maybe someone in the Dragsters had heard of it, or maybe there were brochures out there someone might have seen.
While the boys were gone, Lisa, Freida, and Miguel slaughtered three more cows. Because of all the blood, she worried the meat from the first two was still too wet inside for proper preservation. A fully-grown cow weighed a ton, making it impossible for anyone to hoist and drain. Lisa’s solution was to bring in Freida’s tractor, tie a cable around the animal’s knees in a slipknot, and hoist it onto the sawed-off branches of the big tree out front. After they were up, they rubbed each carcass down with salt, drying the shiny fascia and sealing it further from decay.
They didn’t stop there. Skunks, rats, and other nocturnal predators and scavengers were a worry, so they kept Freida’s dog, Max, next to it in his doghouse, dragged from out back and packed with blankets. There had been a brief discussion about whether he’d go for the meat himself. In the end, they fed him some of Jack’s dried meat and an extra portion of gourmet kibble, which Tony had scavenged at Carla’s request.
Carla took the big dog’s face in her hands and said, “Now, Max, don’t you go eating these big ol’ cows. It’s people food, not puppy food. Okay, Max? You listening, boy?”
Lisa covered her mouth to keep from laughing. The dog was fit to bursting on dried beef and the girl was telling him beef was people food.
Just after dark, she got on the radio to see if Jack had left yet.
“Howdy, cowgirl,” he said, his voice coming back faint and grainy. “One second, I’ll pull over.”
“You left already?”
“A few minutes ago. How’d the work go?”
She told him in general terms what they’d done.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s brilliant. Never would have thought to use a tractor.”
Also in vague terms, Jack assured her again how fine he would be, and again she voiced her disapproval.
They didn’t say much after that, and ended the transmission with mutual wishes for the other to be safe.
In the morning, Lisa checked the carcasses and found them untouched by dog or critter, and they smelled fresh and healthy. She would have liked to hang them longer, but didn’t want to risk the meat freezing and thawing repeatedly.
For the rest of the day, she and the sisters butchered, smoked, and then packed the meat in trash bags. They did this without Miguel. He and his chatty brother had disappeared in one of the cars without telling anyone. The work was brutal, bloody, and exhausting, and now she had to worry about them, too.
A call to the cabins turned up nothing. A few hours later, Brad and Olivia went out armed, taking the preferred route to the farm and meeting Tony halfway. Thankfully, there were no grisly discoveries along the way.
Tony said he’d stay out and keep looking for them, and she relented, provided he got back before dark.
She tried not to let her worry for the two brothers add to her fears, and instead concentrated on the work, telling herself they were most likely out scavenging—something they weren’t supposed to be doing after the drive-by attack. In a way, she was happy they were gone. If she couldn’t make them work, at least they were out of her hair.
Around 5 p.m., she got on the radio for the hourly check-in. It took ten minutes before someone answered, and that someone was Miguel.
“Hey, Lisa, how are you?”
“Good,” she said. “Uh … where’d you go to?”
“Eh, you know … Just had to go.”
She wanted to yell at him for worrying everyone, but kept it in check. “Where’s Olivia?”
“Helping Greg. Um … hey, listen. Some bad news. Greg got shot. In the leg. He’s gonna be fine, but you should definitely come back.”
Lisa felt the world drop out from under her, and she held onto the dinner table for support. “What do you mean he got shot? Put him on right now!”
“I would, but he’s asleep,” Miguel said, his voice almost pleading. “He’s got bandages on. He’s gonna be fine … I mean, you really ought to get back here. I’d hurry, if I were you.”
“Hurry? Is he okay or isn’t he?”
Miguel didn’t reply immediately. Then he said, “Um … I gotta go help, uh … Olivia. See you soon, all right?”
After that, no amount of pleading would get him or anyone to come back on.
Tony called in after that, saying he’d heard the whole thing. Lisa told him to get back right away to watch the farm.
“You want me to go with you?” Freida said after hearing the news.
“No, we need you here. Stay armed, watch the road.” She paused, struggling against a desire to protect the farm and a need to keep everyone safe. “If you have to, it’s fine to run.”
Freida’s eyes narrowed and she patted her new rifle—one of the high-capacity AR-15s they were all carrying. “I’ll blow their damn heads off, they try anything here.”
Lisa hugged her and Carla and then left, heading for the cabins. At the last minute, she turned off and took a road to 66, hoping to arrive at Big Timber that way rather than the usual route.
Her eyes swept the interstate for signs of Jack coming back with an army of greedy Pyros in tow, but didn’t see them. Either they hadn’t attacked yet or he was still spinning tales about the Dragsters’ supposed hoard of food. She tried to have faith that he could pull it off and get out before they discovered the truth.
Greg’s part in the ploy had been more worrisome—flooding the airwaves with propaganda, trying to get as many of Steve’s old friends to desert as possible. Jack said Hitler used to send operatives into cities he was about to capture, spreading propaganda and turning the populace against the city leaders. As much as she hated doing anything the horrible Nazi leader had done, it gave the plan the best possible chance of success. Jack hoped the deserters would join the Rippers. Then, whether the trick with the Pyros worked or not, he could force the rest of the Dragsters to join up, too—after Carter and his friends paid for what they’d done. Blood for blood, Jack said.
Lisa pounded the wheel in frustration. When her parents died, she thought she’d die too. It had been Greg who’d saved her—his sweet smile, his annoying brand of funny. He’d turned his own pain into a rescue mission and become her rock. It was a miracle they’d survived this long. The cruelest of blows if she lost him now.
She exited the interstate, and her thoughts drifted to Miguel. Until that last hourly check-in, nobody had known where he or his brother were. Then, an hour later, Greg shows up shot—and Miguel is there, too? Did he find Greg stumbling along a road somewhere? And where was Steve in
all this?
Smelling a rat, Lisa parked at the turn just before Big Timber. She got out, slung her rifle over her shoulder, and checked her pistol. Sure, Greg could be hurt and bleeding up there, but she didn’t like Miguel very much, and she trusted her instincts as to why.
Cautiously, she began the quarter mile trek of dirt road leading in, keeping to the side so she could slip behind a tree if someone drove by. She kept a steady pace and did her best to ignore the feeling her brother was dying nearby. Rushing into an ambush wouldn’t help anyone.
When she came in sight of the cabins, she stopped and waited quietly, watching for any signs of movement. Nothing moved, the meadow was quiet. This deep in the hills, it grew dark early. There was still enough light to see clear to the other side, but that wouldn’t last much longer.
Only the Skyline showed any activity—a thin trail of smoke from the chimney. The long shape of the school bus sat abandoned in the little parking lot for prospective cabin seekers. Behind the cabins, the half-circle of cars used for gas storage seemed a little thicker than last time. Two scavenging trucks were parked out front, but not the car Greg and Steve had taken for their mission. Either the car had come and gone or her brother had walked from Front Royal with a bullet in his leg.
Or maybe it’s all bullshit.
The longer she looked at the scene in front of her, the more satisfied she was with her cautious approach.
Lisa ranged wide around the meadow, avoiding the pond and the outhouse near the northern tree line. She angled behind the cabins at a far enough distance to feel safe, yet still be able to see if anyone came outside. Nobody did.
“Dammit,” she said quietly, her worst fears confirmed. Up ahead, just behind the circle of gas cars, seven new cars were parked end to end, hiding in plain sight. All of them were sports cars with those silly checkered flags.
Seven cars—mostly two-doors—could carry seven people or twenty people. Lisa’s gun had thirty rounds, no backup magazine, and iron sights. Difficult to aim in the lengthening shadows. Her pistol carried fifteen rounds and was even less accurate. She wasn’t a great shot under ideal circumstances. She could hit the target, sure, but her shots tended to scatter, whereas Jack’s were always close together.
It could be the kids in the cabin were tough, but she didn’t think so. She still remembered the faces of the three she and Jack had scared off outside the library. Their innocent terror.
Lisa, on the other hand, was neither innocent nor afraid. She’d been in two firefights, and had trained with rifles and pistols. She understood just how devastating a rifle could be in the hands of a killer.
That’s what she was, after all: a killer. She didn’t shy from that fact, like Jack. What’s more, she knew why.
She loved and missed her parents so much it sometimes took her breath away, but in the new way of the world, her mom may as well have been a stranger. Over the last few years, Lisa had spent a lot of time in the company of the Ferris family, and Jack’s mom had lavished some of that doomy realism on her that she’d tried to instill in her son.
“Why are women physically weaker then men?” she’d once asked Lisa.
The answer had been as disturbing as it was insulting, and Lisa had briefly contemplated telling her mother about it. Instead of that, she’d sought out Mrs. Ferris on hiking trips and other outings for more of the same.
Standing alone in that field of abandoned vehicles, Lisa mourned the girl that died with her parents and embraced the one that lived.
The door of the Skyline opened. Someone popped a head out and looked down the road, then ducked back and shut the door.
Though it was cold out, Lisa opened her knife and set to work cutting her pants down to shorts below the knees. Then she went to one of the Dragster cars, crawled underneath, and pounded a hole in the gas tank. It took her a while, but she eventually worked one of the strips into it. Hard to do, upside down with noxious gasoline dripping down her arm. Afterward, she went to three more and holed their tanks, too, not bothering to block them. She let them leak.
After her arm dried, she took out the matches used during the smoking process, lit a strip of cloth, and set it down near the first car. Though she’d managed to block the hole, a trickle of gas was still leaking out. She hoped it would be enough.
When blue and red flames spread out under the car, Lisa tore off toward the trout pond, running for her life.
A minute later, when nothing happened, she wondered if maybe the flames had gone out and she’d have to—
The car lifted off its back wheels in a terrific WHUMP! and dropped her concussively onto her back. The heat from the blast was scorching hot, and when her wits returned, she got up and frantically checked to see if she was on fire.
Satisfied she was all right, she readied her weapon and waited.
The front door opened, and several boys she didn’t recognize spilled out clutching pistols. Lisa began firing, dropping five in no time at all, hitting them before they even saw her. More came, and more fell. Shooting from this close was easy, even with iron sights at dusk.
The few she’d missed fled back inside or ran behind the cabin. She flinched at the crack of returned fire and—
WHUMP!
Lisa fell sprawling again when the next car went up in a blast of flames.
Wits addled, bones aching, she stood again and brought her gun up. Or tried to. A boy came out of nowhere and kicked her a glancing blow to the head, and then she was down again. She shook it off and got a knee under her. Someone kicked her from behind and followed it with a painful kick to her side that knocked the wind out of her. A moment later, it seemed like everyone was kicking and punching her.
Helpless to stop the barrage, Lisa curled into a ball, covered her head, and waited for either their legs or her life to give out, whichever came first.
“Guys, stop!” Carter shouted. She recognized his voice from when they’d taken the grain and brought back Trisha. “Grab her arms and drag her inside. Get her guns, too.”
The blows stopped, but Lisa’s pain seemed only to grow.
32
The morning before Jack left on his clandestine mission into hostile territory doing Chosen One stuff, Greg and Steve snuck into Front Royal by way of a back road. Steve knew where all the Dragsters lived, and most didn’t live near Carter. Only his favorites were so honored.
Greg taped handwritten notes to their doors:
Introducing Radio Free Front Royal! Broadcasting live on channel 19 all day today! Be sure to tune in for the latest news, sports, and entertainment! Make sure to tell Carter (because he can’t read)!
Once the deliveries had been made, they pulled into the driveway of an abandoned house in the center of town and broke in through the back. Then they hauled in food, water, sleeping bags, and the equipment they’d need for the show.
“You’re putting that stuff together,” Steve said, eyeing the radio equipment dubiously.
“No sweat,” Greg said. “So long as you do the talking. I get stage fright.”
After Jack brought back that first CB, Lisa had taken to the technology like a long lost hobby, reading the manuals and everything. Since then, she’d managed to increase the range of the house units by an additional ten to fifteen miles through a variety of tricks.
As Jack was fond of saying, “Tough break, bro: your sis got the beauty and the brains.”
“Muscles too,” Greg always said, mock sadly.
In truth, he was more proud of his sister than anything. Every time she did something cool, he technically shared in the credit. They had the same genes, didn’t they? On those occasions when he felt like showing off his cerebral prowess, he did so in math, or looking through telescopes with his astronomy club, or writing short stories. After his parents died, he’d stopped writing. Too painful—his parents had been his only readers.
These days, there wasn’t a whole lot of use for calculus, and the astronomy folks—mostly adults—were dead and gone from the Sickness
. His sister and Jack only wanted to look at the moon, or Jupiter or Saturn, which got boring real fast. Deep sky stuff—that’s where the action was. He’d tried to get Tony to find him a good telescope—a big cassegrain or dobsonian—but all he’d brought back was one of those cheap toys they sold at Walmart.
Steve interrupted his thoughts with a nudge. “You daydreaming or something? Be careful with that stuff—you’ll get shocked.” He was staring at the wires, batteries, and the CB on the table like it all might suddenly explode.
“Nah, I’m totally safe,” Greg said, stacking the batteries side by side. “It’s the voltage you have to worry about. If we screw up and put it in a series, it’ll blow out the radio. So we stack them this way, see?” He connected them in parallel using thick copper wire, being careful not to complete the circuit with his other hand. “This way we get more amps for the same voltage. More amps means more range. Come on—let’s go run the antenna.”
The antenna was a five-foot-tall car-mounted unit with a magnet on the bottom. Great for clamping to the roof of the rusty shed in the back yard. After that, they connected it to the radio with a twenty-foot length of coaxial cable fished through a gap in the window.
Greg attached the final cables, turned it on, and smiled at the glowing display and static hiss coming from the built-in speaker.
Steve, who’d been cringing the whole time, said, “Holy cow. It worked!”
“Course it worked. Easiest thing in the world.”
“Yeah, well … electricity freaks me out.”
Greg snorted. “You ready for the big show?”
Steve didn’t answer immediately.
“Well?”
“Actually,” he said cautiously, “can you do it?”
“I just risked my life attaching all those wires!” Greg said. “You said you’d be the DJ. Like I said: I get stage fright.”
“Stage fright? I thought you were homeschooled. What kind of stage have you ever been on?”
