by Bobby Adair
“Faith,” answered Summer.
“What about her?” Tommy asked, determined not to let irrational anger take hold again.
“She was at the ranch. She was in that barn. She’s dead.”
Tommy felt a hollowness gape inside him. Grief. A perverse sense of relief, like maybe he’d been freed of a choice he hadn’t wanted to make, the truth about his relationship with her, picking the worst time to show itself.
Guilt.
Rage.
And then the circuit breaker tripped. Too many feelings, and he had need of none of them.
Determination remained. Duty as well. He needed to save Emma if she was still alive, and along the way, he resolved to kill anything wearing a 704 patch that crossed his path.
No, not anything, everything.
***
Tommy sniffed his hands as he walked out through Lugenbuhl’s front door. The gasoline odor was gone, replaced by a manly pine scent left from three separate washings in one of Lugenbuhl’s guest baths.
Outside, wrapping a bungee over a white cardboard box on the four-wheeler’s luggage rack, Summer asked, “Is he still in there? Did you finish him?”
“Karma will.”
Summer looked down at the bloodstains all over her 704 jacket. “You didn’t find any more inside?”
Tommy shook his head as he crossed the paved courtyard. “Just the ones those guys were wearing.”
“I guess these make us look like veterans, or something.” Summer climbed into the Razor’s passenger seat.
Smoke started to float out of Lugenbuhl’s open front door.
“Did you have any trouble packing those laptops and other stuff?”
“Everything’s in that box,” answered Summer.
Tommy climbed into the driver’s seat.
Inside the house, flames lapped toward the high ceiling in the foyer. If Frank Lugenbuhl lived long enough to come back home, he’d find nothing but a mound of ashes.
“Do you think they really nuked those countries?” asked Summer. “Or is it more disinformation?”
“If nuking them was a ploy to pull us all together under the rule of Hazelton’s military?” Tommy wondered aloud, “Then yeah. I believe they did it.”
“Me, too,” Summer admitted. “I was hoping it wasn’t true.” She looked over at Tommy. “How cold could it get?”
“A cold winter,” Tommy guessed, “then maybe we don’t have summer for a couple of years. Maybe longer.”
“Is that really true? Could that happen?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
Summer changed the subject. “Chad told me the significance of Battalion 704.”
“What’s that?”
“Independence Day. July Fourth. Seven-O-Four.”
“Clever.” It was another good day for sarcasm. Tommy buckled his harness over his shoulders. “Chad told me the cops are all down in the county jail. Emma’s there, too.”
“That’s where we’re going, then.”
“You ready?” asked Tommy.
Summer checked her safety belt and nodded.
Tommy started the engine and took a last look at Lugenbuhl’s mansion. He put the four-wheeler in gear, made a tight U-turn, and headed for the trail.
Chapter 24
After an hour on the trail, all the while taking turn after turn that led them farther from Spring Creek, Tommy asked the question, “How long before we get there?”
“The short way was over the pass,” answered Summer. “The way we came.”
If the 704s were hunting for them, that’s where they’d be. They couldn’t go back that way.
“Before dark?” asked Tommy.
Summer shook her head. “This takes us way out of the way, but its safe.”
“Understood. Just keep pointing out the turns.”
“Am I a bad person?”
“That’s not a question worth asking or answering.”
“Is that a yes?” asked Summer.
“Look,” Tommy told her, “you feel bad for what you did to Chad. That’s fine. Good people are supposed to feel that way when they do cruel things. It means you’re human. It’s okay.”
“You don’t feel anything?”
Tommy did, just not to the same degree as others. “We’ve been through this.”
“I think you’re a bad influence on me.” It wasn’t an accusation, more a realization.
“I’m not like most people,” Tommy told her. “I tell myself I’m pragmatic. Maybe it’s a lie I believe so I can live with myself.”
“That’s it, then?”
“Ugly things need to be done sometimes. It doesn’t bother me to do them. When this war is over, I’ll be the same person I am now. You and anyone lucky enough to be alive will be different, and probably in a way that will horrify the people they were two days ago.”
“You make it sound like there are no noble causes, no heroes.”
“I think most people are like me, in a way. They tell themselves the things they need to believe to justify the things they’ve done. Everybody wants to look in the mirror and see a good person looking back. People need that. Society does, too. The truth they all hide from is this—violence only has one face, and it’s death.”
Summer didn't want to accept any of that. "We're all just going to kill each other, and it doesn't matter how brutal it gets? It doesn't matter how many people are burned in a barn? It doesn't matter if we murder prisoners or ambush the enemy while they're sitting on a couch?"
“Only one thing matters,” said Tommy. “Kill them all before they kill you, or kill enough of them that the rest give up, utterly, without reservation, unconditionally. Then it’s over. The winners rewrite the past to put a silvery veneer on all the horrible things they’ve done. They paint the losers as monsters for doing the same things. Countries do it after every war. Drug kingpins spin the same kinds of bullshit for their soldiers and dealers after they survive a shootout with the competition. ‘We’re good, they’re bad,’ it’s that simple.”
He looked over at Summer as he drove. “So yes, I am a bad influence on you. I don’t believe any of that noble shit. No horror is ever justifiable under any system of morality. I’m different, because I don’t pretend they need to be. For me, all of this is simple. I’ve picked my side, and I’ll do anything to win. I’ll kill anybody in any way. It doesn’t bother me to do it. I think you’d be better off if I got you back to Barry so you can fight with them like a real bunch of true-believer insurgents.”
“Barry?” scoffed Summer.
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s not doing anything. The whole reason we had to slip away with Dan and Aaron was because Barry said he was resting up his people for an attack the next day.”
“Only he never attacked.” Tommy knew that. There was no evidence of it when they were in Spring Creek.
“He’s still up there in his hillbilly fortress, diddling over not having enough strength, not having enough guns, not knowing enough about the enemy.”
“You told him we found out most of the police and sheriff’s deputies are alive, and they’re in the county jail downtown?”
“I did.”
Tommy could hardly believe it. “Were they able to access Chad’s cloud-based folder and see everything?”
“They were,” answered Summer. “Every roadblock in Summit County is on a map in that folder. The locations where they’re keeping the detainees. The command structure, with Frank Lugenbuhl right there at the top just as we expected, and Malcolm Crosby as one of Lugenbuhl’s top men. They even list the addresses of the houses where they’ve been hoarding their weapons and ammunition. We have everything. Barry’s second guessing it. He says it can't be that easy. He thinks it's disinformation.”
“Barry liked prepping for the apocalypse,” Tommy realized, as he told Summer his guess. “That was his game, the fantasy of it. The reality, though—” Tommy shook his head in disgust. “If Barry is your general, you’re going
to lose. What about all those people you rescued with me up on the mountain?”
“Allan says half won’t fight,” said Summer. “Some took off and headed back to town.”
“That’s stupid. Do they think they’ll be able to go home and what, pack up and leave? Pretend this isn’t real? Try to be invisible?”
Summer shrugged. “Trying to find their families, maybe. If they’re smart, they’ll escape.”
“Only they won’t find anybody,” said Tommy. “We were E-listers up there, low priority catches for 704.”
“You’re right about that,” said Summer. “I looked at the high-priority lists. Those people are mostly captured, or—” She glanced over at Tommy.
“I’m fine. Tell me the numbers.”
“They’ve killed nearly two hundred already.” said Summer. “One hundred and eleven in that barn—”
“That many?” It was hard for Tommy to believe so many charred corpses had carpeted that floor.
“Another site had forty-three deaths, and the balance died resisting arrest.”
“Arrest?” Tommy couldn’t believe it.
“Like you said, people like to have their lies to justify their horrors.”
“They never intended for this to be a peaceful thing,” Tommy spat. “The violence was baked in from the beginning.”
“They murdered all those people when they blew up the town hall meeting,” Summer reminded him.
So much death to serve the ambitions of power-hungry liars. Tommy made a pair of vows to himself, he’d save Emma, and he’d kill Frank Lugenbuhl, too. There was no way Tommy could never dream of killing all the liars in the political circus who were dragging his country into ruin, but he could murder Summit County’s venal Liar in Chief.
Of that, he was certain.
“Take this left.” Summer pointed, “Look for a trail that heads up the mountain. It’ll take us over a pass and put is back in the Blue River Valley.”
“You’ll need to decide, then,” said Tommy.
“Decide?”
“I’m going to Spring Creek. I’m going to find a way to get Emma out of that jail.”
“By yourself?” asked Summer. “You saw how many 704s were downtown.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“What if you get Emma and those other girls killed?”
“You can come with,” offered Tommy, “or you can drop me near town and take this thing back up to Barry’s do-nothing, jerkoff cabin.” Tommy realized he’d been too harsh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I forget sometimes—”
“You keep driving and don’t worry about me.” Summer took out the sat-phone she’d stolen from Chad, and dialed. “I’m going to shame Barry into doing something.”
***
After a treacherous climb where the Razor skidded dangerously and nearly rolled more than once, they reached the summit. Tommy parked on a sloping patch of dirt rutted with the tracks of other off-roaders who’d braved the dangerous trail to get there.
Summer let go her white-knuckle grip on the headache bar and looked at her hands.
“Sorry,” Tommy told her. “I had to take it fast to keep from sliding back down.”
Summer unlatched her safety belt. “I forgot how bad it was coming this way.” She climbed out of the four-wheeler and looked west at a sky that was on fire with brilliant oranges and reds all across the horizon. “Did the nukes cause that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s from the fires we see in every city on TV.” Tommy climbed out of the Razor and his eyes followed the ribbon of the valley road far to the north where the lights of civilization started to sparkle and cluster in the mountain’s deepening shadow. Way down there, the valley curved west and hid most of Spring Creek from view. What wasn’t hidden was the smoke, billowing out of the valley, catching in the updrafts and blowing over the mountain peaks.
“Frank’s house?” asked Summer.
Tommy shook his head. “Frank’s house is on the western slope. That fire is on the east of the mountain.”
“It is on the mountain,” guessed Summer, out of unsupported hope. “Not in town.”
Tommy didn’t know and didn’t guess. One thing was sure, it was close to town. Too close. Too damn close to the county jail where Frank Fucking Lugenbuhl had locked Tommy’s daughter in a cell.
“It’ll burn up, not down,” she calculated.
Tommy didn’t fully believe that, either. “Nobody’s going to fight it.”
Summer looked at Tommy with hopeful eyes. “Maybe not. Maybe—”
“—maybe both sides will come to their senses to confront the common danger?” Tommy’s tone belied his thoughts on that.
“No,” agreed Summer, “I don’t think so.”
Tommy hurried back to the vehicle. “No more taking the ‘long way.’ We have to get down there as fast as we can.”
Summer all but jumped into the passenger seat. “I know a fast way down to the valley road, but—”
“But nothing,” Tommy revved the engine and jammed the four-wheeler into gear. “Hold on.”
***
The sprint down the mountain was a video game race with the valley dimming to night and the light bar on the Razor's roll bar making the road into a winding obstacle course that made it easy to ignore the fatal dropoffs and the dead-stop tree trunks. The wheels floated over the dirt road, tagging bumps before flying over rocks while the engine buzzed strong, ready to give more.
All the way down, Summer held onto the bar in front of her, keeping her eyes open for hazards.
When they reached the highway, Tommy wrapped the Razor's little engine out to eighty-eight, the fastest it wanted to go on pavement. With the fields blurring by on both sides of the road, and a sporadic stream of cars coming up the highway from Spring Creek, Tommy relaxed, or tried to. His neck and back were knotted from the stress of careening down the mountain and so flagrantly tempting death to snatch them both away.
"What do you think?" Summer hollered through the wind, nodding at the oncoming headlights. A steady trickle of cars were on the road headed out of town, by far more cars than at any time since the 704s’ revolution began on Friday.
Tommy didn’t like what the fleeing cars implied. The glow of the inferno down the valley was growing as the sun retreated. “If the fire didn’t start in town, it’s headed that way.”
“Do you think Barry found his balls and took out the roadblock?” asked Summer. “These people might have seized on the opportunity to escape Spring Creek.”
Coming up behind some slower moving cars and being unable to pass, Tommy braked the Razor, cutting his speed down to forty. With the worst of the wind noise gone, he asked, “Why don’t you call Barry and see where they are?”
Summer dug out her sat-phone and dialed. She waited and listened. “Dammit.”
“What?”
“No answer.”
Tommy pulled onto the shoulder as the seeds of a plan in his imagination started to sprout into something usable. "If we can get inside the sheriff’s office, get through whatever security they have in the lobby, and make our way to the jail facility at the back half of the building—“The guesses and hopes piled up fast at that point, and the odds against success shot off the chart. Tommy looked over at Summer.
A truck passed them by, in a hurry to get wherever it was going, and Tommy had to ask himself if in other times, would the driver have stopped to ask questions and offer assistance? Would he have at least tapped his brakes while he contemplated it? Or were the days of favors for strangers so many decades gone they only existed in the imaginary country Tommy wished he lived in.
“I was on the Citizens’ Advisory Committee when we renovated the jail four years ago,” said Summer.
"I'm listening.” Tommy checked the mirrors to watch another vehicle coming from the rear. It didn't appear to be slowing, so he decided it might not be a danger, and inside, he laughed at himself for the irony of it.
Summer saw that Tommy
’s attention was on the rearview mirror and she took a glance behind them to see what had his attention. “Frank’s company won the bid for the renovations and—”
“Lugenbuhl’s company?”
“Yes,” confirmed Summer. "The jail is laid out with two tiers of cells along the back wall of the building with the common area on the first floor. On the front wall of the common area is the control room. The room’s not large, because it's not a big jail—the room’s maybe ten by ten feet. All of the cell doors are controlled electronically from that room. A single entry into the jail is in a hall that runs alongside the control room with an inner door and an outer one. Both doors are controlled from inside the control room, and only one can be open at a time. The upper half of the walls in the room are made of reinforced bulletproof glass.”
“How do we get in?” asked Tommy.
“The door is in the hall and is controlled from within.”
“So the control room always has to be manned?”
“They can disable the locks on any of the doors,” answered Summer, “but otherwise, yes.”
“And if someone’s inside, we have to bust through two steel doors?” Tommy looked over at Summer.
“Yes,” she answered. “Steel.”
“We have to bust through both without explosives.”
“Except,” said Summer, "the specs called for all of the walls to be built with reinforced bulletproof glass. Only, Frank didn't install it all the way around. On the out-facing wall, he installed cheaper, thinner, laminated glass."
“To save money?” asked Tommy.
“Exactly.” Summer nodded. “To increase his profits on the job.”
“How’d he get away with that?”
“The county supervisor and him were fishing buddies from way back. It was swept under the rug.”
“So you’re telling me that the outer glass won’t stop bullets?”
Summer nodded again.
“How certain are you of this?”
"I worked with Sheriff Bingham when we raised the issue with the county supervisor. We took samples of both kinds of glass out to the range and shot at them. The glass on the front-facing windows is basically auto glass. It might stop a rock or a baseball, but not a bullet."
