by Alex Mersey
He shifted lower to get comfortable. He could have rolled out his sleeping bag, but that would mean he was ready to bed down and he wasn’t. His body had other ideas about that, though, and he had no idea how long he’d been asleep when the commotion stirred him.
Beth’s worried voice. “She doesn’t feel hot.”
“Cold sweats.” Lynn. “Johnnie had it once when he got the flu bad, the fever came and went throughout the night.”
Sean popped one eye open to see Lynn and Beth crowded around Alli. When he tried to move, to pull himself upright, every muscle in his body ached. Even muscles that he knew for a fact did not exist, ached. He ground down on his back teeth and rolled onto his side so he could use his arms to help push him up. “What’s happening?”
Lynn threw him a worried look. “It’s Alli.”
“She’s not responding to the antibiotics.” Beth dragged her leather bag closer and unzipped it. “We should try a different one.”
“Beth, no, we don’t know that it’s not working,” Lynn said. “Antibiotics take time. Let’s just clean the wound again and redress it.”
Sean worked his muscles loose and stepped closer. Alli lay curled into a fetal position, shivering so hard that the sleeping bag they’d thrown over her trembled. “Have you given her Tylenol?”
“Yes,” Beth snapped, not looking his way. “Alli, can you sit up? We need to get more liquids into you.”
“Not thirsty,” Alli moaned, although she uncurled slightly and allowed them to prop her up.
Sean watched as they dribbled energy drink into her mouth, but turned away when they unbound her thigh and his stomach threatened anarchy. The wound was enraged, that’s the only word that came to mind, reddish purple and spongy. And it wasn’t like they needed one more person who had no idea what to do.
“Johnnie?” he called, not seeing him anywhere.
A mop of brown curls appeared above a bush top, then the kid. “I found a trail of ants. Do you want to come see?”
“Sure.” He walked around the bush and kneeled in the dirt with Johnnie, reading the time off the kid’s wrist as he went down. A quarter after four.
Johnnie poked a twig at the line of tiny brown ants, forcing them to disband and regroup, again and again. Then he turned his eyes up to Sean. “Alli’s not feeling well.”
“I know, kiddo.”
His face scrunched. “Is she going to die?”
“She’s got the medicine she needs,” Sean hedged.
In truth, none of them had a clue if they were helping the girl or making it worse. Maybe they should leave the wound alone instead of irritating it. Maybe the warmth from the extra sleeping bag wasn’t the best idea. He knew enough to let a body cool down with a high fever, but what the hell did you do about sweaty shivers? The antibiotics couldn’t do any harm, but that didn’t mean it was doing any good.
“Are you going to die?”
Sean swallowed his surprised laugh. “I don’t plan on it anytime soon, why?”
“You were moaning in your sleep,” Johnnie explained simply. “Just like Alli.”
“Ah, well…” He leant in a bit, lowered his voice. “Can you keep a secret? I’m not sure your mom would appreciate me telling you this.”
Johnnie nodded, earnest blue eyes widening.
“Okay, so when the Silvers attacked, the hospital exploded.”
“Exploded?”
“Bam!” Sean whispered. “And this giant ball of fire rushed out at me and threw me up into the air.”
“How high?”
Sean glanced up, then pointed at a high branch on a nearby tree, a small exaggeration for the sake of the story. “Then I fell from the sky, dropped like stone, onto a car.”
“No way,” Johnnie said in awe.
“Yes, way.” Sean grinned. “My body’s just a little grumpy at being banged about, that’s all.”
He reached over to ruffle the kid’s hair. “No one’s dying today,” he promised.
Johnnie chewed his inner cheek for a long moment, considering, and then he gave a solemn nod. “Okay.”
Okay. Now he just had to deliver on that promise.
Bones creaking, Sean pushed to his feet to look over the bush. They were dressing Alli’s wound, the girl sitting hunched with arms wrapped around her middle. He could see the tremors shake through her, felt them all the way to his spine.
He didn’t know what kind of help was out there, if he could find it, but he’d run straight into one of those damn Silvers human net traps if he had to.
“Lynn,” he called out. “Do you mind if I take Johnnie for a walk?”
She glanced up, a tight smile. “Don’t go too far.”
“We won’t.”
Johnnie sprang up like a jack rabbit. “Where’re we going?”
“To see what’s on the other side of this thicket.”
A natural path took them through the press of scrub and stubby trees. They’d gone maybe a hundred yards, when Sean heard the unmistakable rumble. Not the deep-throated growl of a motorbike.
“Johnnie!”
He urged the kid into a run, ducking beneath low-hanging branches and crashing through bush. Adrenaline loosened his stiff limbs, numbed the aches as he pushed harder. The engine noise scaled louder and louder, and then the scale reversed.
Sean pumped his legs and burst out from the shrub onto the black top.
He spun right, and found himself staring down the tail end of a jeep. An honest-to-God army jeep.
“Hey!” He ran after the vehicle, arms raised high and waving. “Hey!”
The driver would never hear him over the engine noise, wouldn’t see him unless he glanced in the rearview mirror, and even then, why would he stop? He’d probably been flagged down by every desperate traveler he’d come across along the road.
Sean slowed, brought his arms down, and Johnnie overtook him, waving and yelling.
“Johnnie!” he shouted, lurching forward again to catch up to the kid. “Johnnie, it’s no use, he doesn’t—” His heart nearly popped when the taillights flashed red.
The jeep reversed a direct line to him and swerved onto the hard shoulder, skidded to a stop in a spray of gravel.
Johnnie backed up into Sean’s legs and grabbed onto one.
Leaving the engine running, the driver stood on the seat and turned, a middle-aged man in fatigues. He put one foot on top of the door, one hand clearly positioned over the pistol holstered at his hip, gaze flickering between Sean and Johnnie. “Everything okay here?”
“We have a girl,” Sean said, his words coming quicker than his panting breaths, quicker than the questions flooding his head. “She’s hurt. Is the army still operational? Is there a base camp around here? Can you help us? She’d in a bad way. Anything, a doctor, hospital, nurse—”
“Whoa.” The man put both hands up. “Slow down, sir.”
Sean took in the clean shaven jaw, pristine uniform, polished boot, and realized that the real question was, “Will you help us?”
The man’s mouth flattened. “Captain doesn’t want us bringing in strays.”
“Then why the hell did you stop?”
“Well, looked to me, you were chasing after the boy.” The man rested an elbow on his squared thigh, regarding Sean with lingering distrust. “Nasty business happening all around. Some folk think it’s the end of the world and that gives them the right to do as they like.”
“Including turning their backs on young girls in desperate need of medical attention?” He knew he’d gone too far when the man’s eyes blanked, jaw hardened. “Please, you don’t have to take all of us, just the girl. If you let us know where, we’ll make our way on foot. We have supplies, we won’t get in the way, and we’ll leave as soon as she’s gotten some help.”
“Where you folks from?” Not considering. Just stalling.
“New York City.”
“You’re shitting me.” A statement, not a question. “That was ground zero. The first city to go up in dust. No w
arning.”
“I know,” Sean said grimly. “We were there.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, but Sean was in home territory now. People made the company and he knew how to work that system, how to win over the distrusting and the difficult. Disbelieving or not, he had the man’s attention and he knew he had to keep it.
“In Manhattan,” he said, wrapping an arm around Johnnie, watching as the father-son gesture drew the man’s gaze. “I saw the Base Ship appear from a swirl of clouds. Right across the Hudson from where I stood. It was…surreal, and then a nightmare from hell. Manhattan fell around us, turned to flurries and dunes of dust.”
The man shifted, the hand by his gun lifting to scrub his jaw.
He almost had him, but not quite. “We saw the strike attack from our own forces. One pilot, he just kept coming back, took down about a dozen Silvers fighter jets and damaged the battlecruiser good. Saw the missile, too, saw what happened when it hit the Base Ship.”
“Missile?”
“Yeah, the…” Lynn was going to kill him. But this was interesting, interesting like a golden ticket. He’d swear the man didn’t know about the missile. “A nuke, I’d bet my life on it. But the Base Ship seemed to absorb the explosion and the fallout. Lit the sky up like blue fireworks.”
“Well, hot damn,” the man drawled, slow shake of his head. “Cap’s going to wanna hear about this. How many are you?”
Sean glanced at the jeep. Passenger seat in front, three squashed into the back with Johnnie on a lap. It would be tight, but, “We’ll fit.”
- 24 -
Chris
It was a just after five before Farmer Brown brought over a jug of cool lemonade and then sent them off with one last job to end the long, back-breaking day. Stop by Jeb Brown’s farm and collect a cart of milk and eggs to take to the village.
“Another Farmer Brown?” asked Chris skeptically as they walked down the dusty road, the sun as sweltering hot as it had been at noon. Not a breath of wind.
“Don’t be a goose.” Rachel slapped a hand out into his chest. “There can only be one Farmer Brown.”
“Yes, goose,” Bran smirked.
Chris wiped his brow and gathered the hair away from his sweaty nape. Corn fields stretched out along one side of the road, intermittent stretches of ploughed brown fields and ready-to-harvest green fields on the Mill Creek side. One thing was for sure, this town wouldn’t starve if the supply route dried up.
“So,” he said, “what do we call the dairy farmer guy?”
“Jeb Brown,” Rachel said. “That is his full name, or so I’ve heard.”
“Ha, ha, and what’s Farmer Brown’s full name?”
“Frank Harvey.”
“Frank Harvey Brown?”
Rachel shook her head. “Just Frank Harvey.”
“So that makes sense,” he said.
“Course it does,” Bran said with a laugh, threw a beefy arm around Rachel and pulled her into a tight, walking hug. “That’s just one of the reasons we all love Rache here, for her special kind of sense.”
“It’s too hot, you idiot.” She struggled out of his hug and skipped up ahead.
Chris’ gaze slid over those really short shorts and down long legs that had spent the day soaking up the sun. She was so damn cute and quirky and…and there was definitely something going on between her and Bran. And he’d be gone in the morning. His gaze went wide, but the feelings she stirred in him were less easy to redirect. His timing really sucked. And then there was Bran.
Get over it.
The dairy farm buildings weren’t visible from the road, just pastures surrounded with chain link fence and the turn off to a gate beneath an arched wooden barrier that read Sunrise Farm in bright orange paint. The gate wasn’t locked and they made sure to latch it behind them.
A rutted gravel road led them to a copse of ancient oaks that sheltered the dilapidated farmhouse, screen door hanging off the hinges, paint peeling off the wood, grimy windows. And a wraparound porch with the man slumped on a rocker chair, shotgun across the lap and Stetson pulled low on his brow.
He tipped the hat back as they approached, slowly rose to his feet. A skinny guy with a neatly trimmed goatee, wearing denim and a leather vest. Not exactly what Chris had expected from Jeb Brown, dairy farmer.
“That’s far enough.” He lifted the shotgun single-handed, stock tucked loosely under his arm. “State your business.”
The three of them came to an abrupt halt.
“Are we sure he’s expecting us?” whispered Chris.
“How should I know?” Rachel said. “That’s not Jeb.”
“Is this the right farm?”
Bran shot him a dirty look, then called out, “We’re here to see Jeb Brown.”
“Jeb’s a little busy right now,” the man said.
“Doing what?”
“None of your business.”
“We were told he had a cart loaded for us.”
“Then I guess you were told wrong.” The man shooed them on with the barrel. “I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by.”
The wild west act and sloppy shotgun handling didn’t raise any immediate alarms. Assuming this was a little misunderstanding best handled between the town and farmers, Chris backed up. “Guys, come on.”
And everything might have been okay, except a second man emerged from the open doorway, a thick-set bear of a man with steel-gray hair and grizzly eyebrows that dominated his frown. “What do we have here?”
“Just some kids,” the first man said. “I’ve got it.”
“This is bullshit,” Bran muttered.
Rachel grabbed his hand. “Let’s just go.”
He slipped her grip and lurched toward the porch, shouting out, “Where’s Jeb?”
Floorboards creaked as grizzly eyebrows shifted his weight. “One more step and trespasser laws apply.”
“This is Jeb Brown’s land,” Bran scoffed, kept going.
“Bran!” Rachel flew after him.
What came next was a blur, a handful of seconds dragged through a mile of hell. The last thing Chris knew with any certainty was the glint of sunlight striking off metal, the reflex that launched him over Rachel and wiped them both out.
An explosion of sound and pain and acrid stench. Fire, an inferno, blew through the back of his left shoulder. The metallic taste of blood and smoking sulphur coating his tongue. Thumping from beneath, the ground trying to swat him away. White static and mind-slating shock.
And then he was halfway back, his heartbeat pounding at his temples, his mouth thick, his head underwater.
The ground bucking him—Rachel! Raised voices from the porch, stetson hat in some kind of standoff with grizzly eyebrows, their voices garbled through water, their images swimming.
Bran! Bent double, clutching his side, stumbling toward them. Chris blinked to focus the fuzzy vision and saw the blood, seeping over Bran’s clutching fingers, a growing patch staining…no, soaking his t-shirt.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Metal glinting. Noise exploding. The bastards had shot Bran.
Rachel spluttered out from beneath him before he’d fully rolled off her.
“Go.” He pushed her toward the trees before she could find her words or thoughts.
His shoulder was on fire, dripping hot sweat that stuck his t-shirt to his back, but he had to get Bran, help Bran, before stetson and grizzly remembered them. His head seemed to be throbbing in slow motion, bloating out, shrinking, gathering up the dull ache throughout his entire body, squeezing it into his shoulder like a lightning bolt with each throb.
When he saw Chris coming, Bran shook his head, mumbled, “Get Rachel out of here.”
“We’re not leaving you behind.” Chris gave his shoulder, the good one. “So put that energy into your damn legs and let’s do this before we’re all dead.”
Bran shut up and hung an arm over Chris’ shoulder, heaving breaths as he pushed himself harder. The ten paces to the cover of trees felt l
ike a hundred. The pain at his shoulder was so intense, it had taken on a life of its own. Smelled like burning tar. Tasted like metal. Sounded like obnoxious bells clanging against his skull. And Bran’s lumbering stride, pulling this way, jerking that way, didn’t help, but they made it to the trees and Rachel was there, recovered enough to greet them with a thunderous expression.
“That was the most pig-headed, idiotic move you’ve ever pulled, Brandon Clysdale.” She shoved herself under his other arm to share the weight as they walked, out the other side of the copse and back onto the rutted road. “Rule number one. Do not piss off the thugs with guns. How many kinds of stupid are you?”
Through the gate.
They didn’t bother latching it behind them.
Along the main road.
And Rachel was still spewing venom at poor Bran. “If you weren’t…if weren’t all bloody and hurt, I’d punch you!”
“I love you, too,” Bran said and dropped like a stone to his knees, pulling them both down with him.
Shit.
“Bran!” Rachel hissed, sounding more furious than worried, “don’t you dare pass out!”
“Sorry.” His head lifted an inch. “I don’t feel too good.”
“Do I look like Doc Nate?” she shot back in that blistering tongue as they attempted to heave Bran off the ground. “Stop whining and get to your feet.”
“We have to go, man,” Chris said, fear pumping sick into his stomach. Stetson and grizzly hadn’t come after them yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t, shotguns blazing. And Bran, there was only so much blood he could leak before he ran dry…ran dry.
“Wait.” Chris extracted himself from the deadweight hug. “Shit, we need to bind his side, slow down the bleeding.”
“He’s not bleeding!” Rachel slipped from beneath Bran’s arm to scowl at the bloodied mess at his side. “He’s friggin’ pumping. Did you hear that, Bran?”
“I heard you,” Bran said weakly.
“That’s what happens when you get yourself shot!”
