by Alex Mersey
The country’s infrastructure was in tatters, but in Clint’s opinion, it was an EMP that truly finished them off. The car he’d been fleeing the backroads in with Vince and Bisson last night stopped dead at around nine pm. They had no signal anyway, but their cell phones all died right then, too. They set off to hike on foot, and passed too many cars stalled in the road, coasted off the side, bumped into trees, for it to be anything. If there’d been any planes still airborne, he insisted, they would have fallen out of the sky.
Sean said nothing about the blue fireworks over New York City around the same time, about his suspicions they’d been nuked. We’re alive until we’re dead.
Lynn visibly shrunk in on herself when she heard about the other motherships shown on the news: London, Beijing, Sydney, maybe more that hadn’t been reported. This wasn’t an alien invasion, Clint said, it was an infestation of Scum.
Where had Lynn said her husband was? Sean didn’t recall, but he knew that’s where her mind had gone. They’d spent a long day together. The kind of day that stripped away all their layers. Sean had seen her frustrated, angry, weary, doubtful, scared. But what he saw now, this was something else.
“Don’t do that,” he said quietly, reaching out to cup her chin, forcing her eyes to him. Her face was drained of color. Even the sunburn seemed to have washed off. “We’ve lost too much already. Hold onto every scrap of hope.”
“How?” she whispered, out of breath, out of will. “I really thought this was the one thing I hadn’t lied about to Johnnie today, that his daddy was safe, that he’d come find us soon, that we’d all be together.”
“You keep believing that,” Sean said. “You believe that like it’s the truth. That’s how.”
She gave a ragged shake of her head, but maybe she read it in his eyes, the lies he told himself. That Lara was out of harm’s way in Texas with a man who loved her better than he ever could. That his parents were safe on the water, that the captain would keep sailing the high seas until he located some perfect haven where they could wait out this war.
And maybe he sold it well enough, because finally Lynn said, “Okay, there weren’t any ships reported over Singapore. Matt will be smart about it, get himself out of the city, up into the mountains, until he can find his way back to us. I can believe that.”
He felt Clint’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look. The hard-assed man no doubt thought Sean was soft in the head, drumming up false hope like a cheerleader squad. But he needed Lynn strong, and this was the only way he knew how to do it. Clint’s way would definitely be different. Hell, he’d probably just shoot anyone who couldn’t keep up, put them down like an injured mutt.
And now for round two, he thought morosely when Beth and Alli finally put in an appearance. “Someone has to tell those two girls about London.”
“They’ve had a rough day.” Lynn rested a tentative hand on his arm. “Maybe it could wait until tomorrow?”
“No, drip feeding bad news just prolongs the agony.” Sean slid off the stool, shaking his head. He knew what he was doing when it came to dumping bad news. “Besides, they have a right to know.”
Beth walked straight to the couch by the window and sank down at one end with her knees folded in beneath her, her chin tilted to the rain pelting the glass as she stared out to the beyond. Her sister glanced around the room, gave them a weak smile as she settled in beside Beth and rested her head back, eyes drifting closed.
Sean stood there a minute, another minute, waiting for Beth to bring her attention inside, telling himself that he’d want to know the state of the world, no matter how bad it was, no matter what other crap was going down.
Alli stretched out with her feet curled on the couch, her head finding a resting place on her big sister’s lap. Beth smoothed her fingers through Alli’s hair, stroked it from her face, and just kept staring out that window into the stormy darkness, unaware that her home city was gone, her country under attack, her family and friends either scattered to the wastelands or dead.
She looked so young. Both girls did—were. He couldn’t remember their exact ages, maybe they’d never told him, but they weren’t executives who’d run their business into the ground, they weren’t decrepit, cranky CEOs who refused to move with the times or give up their chokehold on the company.
Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing.
Maybe he didn’t have a fucking clue.
“I guess you’re right,” Sean said, dropping heavily onto stool again. “It can wait.”
- 15 -
Chris
Vaguely aware of someone shaking his shoulder, Chris drifted in the fog of sleep until the past twenty-four hours rushed his consciousness. He lurched upright. “What?”
“Easy there.” The man who’d roused him threw a hand up and stood back.
Nathan Jefferies, Chris remembered. Doctor Nathan Jeffries, who didn’t quite look the part. Instead of the usual pin-striped suit or white coat with stethoscope looped around his neck, Doctor Jeffries wore jeans, a long-sleeve tee and cowboy boots. And he looked a little young to be fully qualified despite June’s reassurances when the Hendersons had dropped them off at the picket-fenced house at the top of Main Street. They hadn’t lingered, relieved to hear from the good doctor that their daughter was still in town, but desperate to see she was safe and sound with their own eyes.
Chris swung his legs to the floor, dismayed to realize he hadn’t just dozed off on a complete stranger’s couch, but he’d made himself real comfortable. He dusted at the mark his filthy sneakers had left behind on the cream upholstery, making it worse. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“That’s okay,” the doctor said. “I would have left you to it, but Williams is asking for you.”
“How is he?”
“He’s doing just fine, but I’d like to keep him under observation for a few days.”
Good luck with that. Williams hadn’t been thrilled about the detour to Little Falls, and it had taken them a whole lot longer than two hours to get here. Frank Henderson had kept to the back roads, but he’d still had to drive slow and careful to avoid the sheer number of vehicles abandoned by their owners where they’d stopped. Nearer the towns, they’d actually been forced off the road in places, by blockages and, once, by a group of people on foot who’d attempted to surround the truck instead of getting out the way.
Chris followed as the doctor led the way to the front of the house where he ran his practice from. They passed through a consulting room to the self-contained mini clinic which had two hospital beds and an array of equipment that would have been impressive before the lights went out. Now the machines were just ornamental deadweight.
Williams occupied one of those beds, raised at a forty-five degree angle so he wasn’t lying flat on his back. Fully dressed, except for his jacket and shoes, and one shirtsleeve rolled up where a tube fed into his arm from the drip bag hitched to an IV stand.
“How are you feeling?” Chris asked as he walked up.
“Not half as dead as Doctor Jeffries seems to think.” Williams scowled through heavily hooded eyes. “He wants to keep me hooked up.”
“A minimum of twenty-four hours, and then we’ll see about putting you on a regular course of antibiotics,” Doctor Jeffries reinforced, apparently accustomed to totally ignoring the whines of difficult patients. To Chris, he explained, “His lungs are inflamed, which indicates an infection. The antibiotics works faster and more effective when delivered straight into the vein, a precaution against further complications.”
“You’re being over-cautious,” Williams said.
“Yes, I am.” Doctor Jeffries moved around the other side of the bed. “The power outage fried most of our technology and all of my equipment. And while that war’s raging out there, our manufacturing options are limited. It won’t be long before all our medical advances are reset to the Middle Ages and that was a time when prevention was, in most cases, the only cure.”
His gaze zeroed in on Willia
ms. “If you develop pneumonia, I don’t have a pump to drain your lungs, I can’t even put you on a ventilator to help you breathe. So yes, I’m being overly cautious but trust me, I wouldn’t waste the antibiotics unless I deemed it absolutely necessary because God knows when—if—I’ll be able to restock essential supplies.”
The depressing forecast was met with silence, until Williams cleared his throat and said, “I appreciate everything you’re saying, doctor, but if I’m stuck here, so is Chris. He stays with me.”
“I assumed as much.” Doctor Jeffries shoved a hand through his hair as his eyes came to Chris. “There’s a guest bedroom upstairs; you’re welcome to it.”
“Thanks,” Chris said, touched by the doctor’s generosity, and slightly disturbed by how that reflected on themselves. Williams talked like it was every man for himself. Us or them. But so far, he hadn’t seen any evidence of that, only people willing to help where and how they could.
Williams added his thanks and swung his feet off the bed.
“Hey.” Chris scowled at him. “What are you doing?”
“I need to check out those accommodations.”
A security sweep? Seriously? “You need to stay in bed!”
“Actually, he doesn’t.” Doctor Jeffries stepped forward to help Williams navigate the tube feeding into his arm. “Being upright and moving around isn’t a bad thing, although I wouldn’t recommend climbing a flight of stairs. The ‘accommodation’ is just your standard variety of spare bedroom, I’m afraid, nothing worth the effort.”
Williams grabbed hold of the IV stand and lifted it off the floor, iron-weighted base on wheels and all. “No effort.”
A look of irritation eroded into the doctor’s mild bedside manner. Chris was just surprised it had taken this long.
“Do you think you could use your other arm for demonstrations, the one not hooked up to the bag?” Doctor Jeffries said thinly. “That’s a gravity drip. The idea is to keep that arm hanging low down your side.”
“He won’t be going up any stairs,” Chris decided on Williams’ behalf.
“Chris, I’m not an invalid.”
“You’re not a doctor, either.”
“I should probably get a fire going if we want to eat tonight,” Doctor Jeffries intervened. “There’s a storm brewing.” He turned to go. “When you’re done here, come through the kitchen to the back yard.”
Chris reined his frustration as he looked at Williams, his face still drawn and off-color, his dark eyes glazed from pain—or maybe from all the pain meds. “Why are we even here? Why did you come to Little Falls, agree to stay the night…” He flicked a hand over the IV drip. “Agree to that?”
“The truth?” Williams said heavily.
The breath crushed from Chris’ chest, although he already knew, didn’t he? Williams was in worse shape than he let on, worse than the doctor believed, worse than Chris had seen with his own eyes on the long journey from the train wreck. If Williams thought he could get Chris safely to Colorado before dropping dead himself, he would never have allowed this extended detour.
“The truth,” Chris said and braced himself.
“This was the simplest way to restore your faith in me.” Williams wheeled the stand around the bed, head dipped to look Chris in the eye. “I could fight you all the way to Colorado, or I could do this and bring us back to a point where you trust my ability to protect you instead of second-guessing every decision I make.”
“What the hell?” Chris gawked at him. “I trust you with my life. That’s the problem! I know you’ll always put me before yourself.”
“But that’s not a problem, Chris, it’s my job.”
“Even if it kills you?”
“I wouldn’t be much good to you dead, would I?” The shadows in his eyes lightened, briefly. “That’s the part I need you to get back on board with. I wouldn’t put you at risk by being reckless, with my life or my health, beside the fact that I like living and don’t have any death wish. If I tell you I’m fine to go, that means I’m fine to go and I need you to believe it. If I’m dying, you’ll be the first to know… well, maybe the second.”
“Now you find your funny bone?” Chris muttered, wheeling about from the man. And yeah, feeling like an utter fool at the melodramatic scenarios his brain had concocted. Williams was on fine form, thinking two steps ahead to control every inch of Chris’ life. Seemed like the more Williams insisted everything had changed, the more it stayed the same.
The backyard consisted of a patch of badly tended lawn and a deck positioned to catch the last of the summer sun as it sank below the horizon. The sky darkened as they watched the fire slowly burn the wood to charcoal in the rusted half barrel that Doctor Jeffries—or Nathan as he’d asked them to call him—used for a barbeque. The slabs of prime steak were apparently courtesy of Annie Graham, the woman who owned the grocery store. She’d moved all her fresh meat into the freezers when the power went out, but even those were nearly thawed. Instead of letting everything go bad, she’d made the rounds to distribute as much as possible.
“When Annie heard I had unexpected guests,” Nathan told them as he slid the grill over the burned down logs, “she stopped by to deliver a little extra.”
“That’s pretty decent of her,” Chris said.
“Little Falls is a small place, less than five hundred people and that includes the small holdings and surrounding farms,” Nathan said. “We look out for each other, these are good folk…” He left that hanging and threw the meat on.
Williams picked it up with, “But?”
In the distance, the storm clouds that had thankfully blown east dropped its payload of lightning strikes and torrential rain. Fat sizzled into the embers and flamed as Nathan flipped the steaks with a long-stemmed grill fork. Chris sucked on his warm coke, his stomach rumbling at the taste of barbeque in the air.
It seemed like there was no ‘but’, and Williams didn’t force the issue, and then there it was.
Nathan studied Chris over the smoking grill, eyes narrowed. “You’re Christian, Christian Merrick, right?”
Last time I checked. But all Chris said was, “You know?”
“I wasn’t sure, but…” He grimaced at Williams. “No offense, you have secret service written all over you.”
Williams’ expression blanked.
“I’m sorry, this is going to sound callous,” Nathan said with a fleeting glance at Chris, “but seeing as you’re running around the countryside, I have to ask…” He looked at Williams. “Is the president alive? Do we still have a working government?”
“Yes,” Williams answered tersely.
“Could you elaborate?”
“No.”
Chris sighed, wondering how long it would take Williams to declare the entire town one big security breach and signal an immediate extraction of his primary. “Can we at least eat before we go?”
“You don’t have to go,” Nathan said.
“Tell that to the big guy,” Chris grumbled.
An angry sizzle and flare claimed half of Nathan’s attention. “Nothing has changed and no one’s leaving, but I do think Mayor Preston should be informed.”
“That would be a firm negative,” Williams said.
Nathan cocked a brow at him, which Williams overrode with, “We won’t be here long enough to concern local government.”
“Chris, would you please get the plates?” Nathan said. “I left them on the kitchen table.”
Chris had been here before, too often. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that as soon as I’ve heard what you don’t want me to hear.”
“I’m not trying to keep—”
“Yes, you are.”
Nathan blew out a harassed breath, swiping a hand through his hair. “People are just scared, that’s all, and some folk aren’t too happy with President Merrick and the government right now.”
“My dad’s done nothing wrong,” Chris exclaimed. “What do they think? That it’s his fault the Silvers invaded?
That’s not fair.”
“It’s human nature to put a face to blame,” Nathan said. “The Silvers aren’t down here with us. The president is. The defense forces and their trillion dollar budgets that didn’t save us are. Our great country was supposed to be infallible.”
“What about you?” Chris demanded. “Is that how you feel?”
“No, that’s not how I feel.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “I’ve stood in your dad’s shoes…to a lesser degree, I’ll grant you that, but I worked in the ER of County Howard General for several years and I’ve had to share bad news with grieving family members. I’ve been there, where people demand miracles that no man has the power to deliver on.”
Williams lurched to his feet, almost ripping out his tube as he knocked the IV stand over and fumbled to catch it. “Are you saying that Chris is in danger here?”
“Good God, no.” Nathan looked taken aback, as if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. “Tempers are riled, and attitudes could turn ugly, but these people aren’t a lynch mob. All I meant to say is, there’s an argument for the mayor to be made aware of the situation.”
“Sounds to me,” Williams said, “that the less people who know Chris is here, the better.”
The glamor of Little Falls was rapidly fading for Chris, but seeing Williams stumble, his superb reflexes shot to hell, put his own disgruntlement with the town in the shade. They weren’t going anywhere until Williams had fully recovered.
“I’ll go get those plates now,” he said and stalked off.
When he returned, Williams was seated once more and the steaks were done to medium rare, chargrilled on the edges. Chris was hungry and he finished every morsel, but he was too busy stewing over this town’s judgement to enjoy.
What did they know about the sacrifices his dad had made for this country? They were all sitting down to dinner with their families tonight, not separated by miles of road and years of unavailability.
Their mothers and wives hadn’t slipped into their final coma, alone in their family home outside Baltimore because she’d refused to let her son sit deathwatch and the president had been recalled to Capitol Hill for an emergency summit.
