She took a breath and tried to absorb what she was being asked to do. She tried to shake off the uncertainty, but questions kept whipping through her head like machine gun fire. What if something went wrong? What if the fire moved too quickly and their whole home was burned to the ground? Suddenly, she heard footsteps running toward her. She turned around, and Darius was standing in front of her. “Poe, they are looking for you. You need to come back now.”
As unsure as she was, she decided to do as her father asked. Despite the major error that put them in the position they were in, he had cared for them their whole lives. He had kept them alive that long and he deserved a chance to fix it. She pushed any doubt deep down inside herself, though she could still hear an echo of it in the back of her mind. “Tomorrow, at noon. That’s when everyone comes inside and we all eat lunch. They watch us. Everyone will be in one place.”
Drew nodded. “We will be there.” He reached in his pocket and handed her a small, silver key. “Hang back. Some will leave, some will go fight the fire, and some will stay guarding you. When they are all distracted, some of you take down the ones who don’t go try and fight the fire. We will be on the other side waiting for the ones who run outside. Arm everyone. Only come out after you do in case we get overpowered.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Be careful.”
Darius grabbed her hand. “We have to go. Now.”
Poe nodded at Drew as Darius dragged her away.
***
As they ran back to the house, Darius asked her what Drew was doing. “Something’s happening, isn’t it?”
“Yes. At noon tomorrow, be downstairs. Tell Cassius when you can. You won’t see me until you smell the smoke.”
“Smoke? Oh God, Poe, what are we doing?”
Before she could explain, one of their captors marched toward them with her gun drawn. She recognized her as one of the ones who had taken Blake’s body away. “Where the hell have you been? And where are the vegetables?”
Poe felt butterflies form in her stomach. In her excitement about seeing Drew, she had left the vegetable basket down at the edge of the garden.
Darius interjected. “There was a fox down there. We chased it up a tree. Before we could go back for the peppers we heard you all calling for us.” The woman stared at them for a moment then seemed to accept their explanation.
“Well now that we know where you were, go back and get them.” Poe started to turn around. “Not you, him.”
Darius jogged back toward the garden, and Poe thought she felt him periodically look back at her.
“I want to talk to you,” the woman said.
“Okay.”
“Come with me.”
Poe didn’t want to. Her insides were screaming that she didn’t want to be alone with any of these people, especially one of the ones who disposed of her friend’s body so disrespectfully. But she followed the woman to a couple chairs they had on the back porch. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap, squeezing them together to keep them from shaking, all the while thinking if you only knew what you had coming.
The woman slouched as she sat, and Poe noticed her black hair hung in pieces over her shoulders. It wasn’t a hot day, so she thought maybe the sweat could be blamed on walking the perimeter of the compound: another reason this new group was not suited to go up against them. “I need your help.”
“Why would I help you? Any of you?” Poe surprised herself with her own bluntness.
The woman sighed. “Look, if you just give me some information, I’ll try what I can to make this whole thing easier, okay?” Poe looked at her without responding. “Everything just got way out of control. As much as I loved Shannon, I do believe your father genuinely thought one of us had started shooting at you. If all hell hadn’t broken loose, maybe we could have all worked something out.” She looked down at the porch under her feet. “We just got desperate. Haven’t you ever been desperate?”
Poe folded her arms across her chest. Thanks to her father, she had never found herself in that position.
Until now.
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to know how much you think your people can produce, of all the meat and produce and stuff. I was thinking I’d present it to Justin that we start trading with some of the surrounding groups of people. If you did that, I could make the case for your group to be treated better, maybe even get some of your freedom back.”
Poe searched for her next breath. “What do you mean? Other people?”
The woman looked at her quizzically. “You didn’t think you were the only survivors did you?”
Poe considered the idea for a moment. “Yes…I guess I did.” She felt as if her mind had become three sizes too big. The new information came with more questions than answers. She supposed it had been silly of her to assume that they were the only people left, but her life of isolation hadn’t lead her to think any differently. Her world consisted of only her family, and that was before the disease had hit. “You mean to tell me there are other people out there? Communities that are functional like ours?”
“Wow…you really didn’t know.” She caught a slight smile on the woman’s face before it disappeared. “Yes. They are pretty far from here. Yours seems to be the only one in this town, but a couple hours in any direction and yes there are other people.”
Poe’s heart hurt. “I thought….I thought everyone was dead. I can’t believe it.” She hadn’t realized she had been aching for people she had never met. She wondered if that had been brewing before the disease hit too.
Now the woman smiled and let her see it. “Believe it. I’m going to be straight with you, not very many people made it. But some did. And those people need meat and produce too.”
Poe smiled. “I think we can handle that.” She made the agreement, knowing that very soon, they would never have to fulfill it.
“I’ll tell Justin.”
As the woman got up, Poe asked, “What’s your name?”
“Lindsey. My name is Lindsey.” She paused. “You’re Poe, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You look an awful lot like my daughter.” Lindsey stared off the deck and down into the field below.
“Where is she?”
“In the bottom of a pit somewhere.” She had her hands folded in her lap much like what Poe was doing. Poe thought maybe she was trying to hide that she was trembling too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“She was my baby. It happened during the first part of the outbreak. They didn’t know what to do with all of the bodies so they just dug a big hole and dumped them all in. Like garbage. A landfill for all the loved, broken, and lost.” She sniffed. “She was the sweetest girl. Always made friends at school with the kids that had none. She deserved better.”
Poe remembered her terrible moments in the pit. She remembered the dead hand on her leg, and the vacant, foggy mist in all the eyes that were looking at her, but not at the same time. Something rose up inside her, and in spite of herself, she ignored the gun between them and threw her arms around Lindsey. “It happened here too. They all deserved better.”
Lindsey sniffed again. “Thank you.” Both women looked at each other for a brief second, realizing that maybe they understood each other a little more than they thought. “You better get back to work before the rest of them catch you.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Lindsey nodded and started to walk away, but turned around a second later. After looking around, evidently to make sure she wasn’t heard by the rest of the group, she said softly, “We didn’t dump your friend. When Justin wasn’t looking, we found some shovels in that shed. We gave her a proper burial. Tim even made a cross for her so maybe, when everything calms down, you can find her again.”
Poe’s throat hurt. The relief swelled up inside her like a storm and threatened to slip out, but she held it in, afraid she would attract unwanted attention and get Lindsey in trouble after she was so kind. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Lindsey nodded, going back the way she came, and Poe found herself alone on the porch.
Poe sat there for a moment, ignoring the fact that she would probably be on their radar even more than she already was if she didn’t get back to work. Let them watch me, she thought. Because Lindsey had just changed everything.
There were other people still alive, and nearby. A part of her knew it was a possibility (she wasn’t stupid), but she’d never fathomed that it could be a reality. Thinking that way would have been too painful if it had turned out she was wrong. With other people came other realizations: all things were now possible. Life was possible. Maybe, just maybe, she could someday have a love like Blake’s. Maybe she could be a mother. She hadn’t even realized she was interested in being a mother until that moment. And right then, she knew she would do anything and everything to make sure that would happen, even if that meant starting a fire in her own home.
Lindsey seemed to be a good person. She risked her own safety to do right by Blake, a person she’d never met. She was caught in a situation she couldn’t get out of just as much as the rest of them. Poe vowed that if she could, she would find a way to make sure her father spared Lindsey’s life. But if she couldn’t, after noon tomorrow, she would do whatever needed to be done to stay alive and live long enough to leave the compound and find the life that she hadn’t known she wanted, and now that she did, it fell upon her like an embrace that warmed her deep down to her bones.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CONNOR
Connor watched as Drew stared out into the middle of the barn. There seemed to be a mist of hay particles floating in the air and he could feel them as he inhaled. He listened to the sounds of the animals mix with the gentle splash of the water as the fish swam and thought about how he never expected to end up there, trapped in his own compound next to a man he thought he despised.
Their captors had tossed them into the pigpen: some sort of figurative point about their lack of moral character. They were both half sunk into the ground, a combination of mud and shit and leftover food that Connor and his family had prepared from their own scraps. He felt it seep under his fingernails, and he knew that when they got out of there, the smell would remain on them for days. They had tossed Gabriel in the corner of the stall, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as he tried to wriggle free.
Connor had never killed anyone before. He’d never had a need to. He always knew he could, and he would, when the time came, but thinking about it wasn’t the same as actually doing it. Pulling the trigger and ending Shannon’s life almost seemed like two different things, though he knew they weren’t. It would take a while for his subconscious to link the two: the slight, insignificant clenching of a muscle and the blood that came with it. He couldn’t have prepared for the moment after, the moment when he knew that he had snuffed out a life and it would never light up again.
Blake’s death wasn’t supposed to happen…a perfect example of why he was supposed to always be in control. He was the only one who they could depend on to make the most sound, rational decision, the one that was best for his family. If he had been there from the beginning, the people who were now occupying their home would have never made it past the front gate, and he would have subdued Brian before he had even made it past the steps by the door. And when he had found out what Brian had done, he would have sent him back from the direction where he came. He would have told Harper that Brian would be okay, knowing full-well he wouldn’t, and he would have felt almost at peace with that fact given the troubling emotional attachment she had to the boy. He was just that, a boy, completely generic and completely replaceable, though he knew Harper didn’t know that. Not yet. How could she? He had been the only one she’d ever gotten to know and Connor knew that was his own doing. Perhaps he had created the monster that left the door open for the bigger, meaner one. But no matter. He would fix it. He always did.
Drew looked as if his brain had left his body entirely, and all that was tied up alongside Connor was his outer shell. He imagined if he had seen someone else’s child grow up, he would feel the same love, and the same biting loss that Drew was feeling now that Blake was gone. But Drew would need to recover, and quickly. That would be something he would need to learn if Connor was going to count on him to be in charge. He couldn’t let the grief swallow him. There would be time to mourn Blake, but today, they needed to save their families, and today, that meant getting themselves free, and making it to the weapons cache that Connor had hidden just outside the property. “Drew, we need to get out of here. They could come back any minute and then we’re done. We need to get out and we need to do it now.”
No answer.
“Drew, please.” He hesitated. He was never good with words: Poe and Kate were always knew the proper thing to say. When most people spoke of unpleasant things, he would stay silent, hoping he could communicate the right things with a look or a glance.
It nearly never worked.
This time, he would have to try harder, he thought. “Drew, I know this is awful.” He took a deep breath. He wasn’t accustomed to saying something positive about anyone but his family. He couldn’t remember the last time he praised someone who was not related to him…then he realized he probably never had. “Blake was a strong, lovely girl. It seemed like she really cared for Poe, and that’s something she’s never had outside our family before. It’s safe to call them friends. Poe never had that, even before we stayed here. I’m truly sorry that she is gone.” His stomach churned a bit, but he felt like those were the right words, at least the closest he could get. He was shocked to realize he may have really meant some of them too.
Drew finally looked at him. “I feel…so much hate inside of me. I feel like I may explode. I’ve never felt anything like this. The ugliness.”
“Then use it. Use it to help me get us out of here.”
“What are we going to do? There’s too many of them.”
“We know what we’re doing, they don’t. They don’t know this place like we do. They only made it this far by luck alone. They aren’t thinkers.”
“How do you know?”
Connor smiled. “Because they needed us.”
Drew’s face changed. “How do you deal with it?”
“What?”
“The rage. The all-consuming anger. I don’t feel like there’s room for anything else.”
Connor paused for a moment. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Drew stared. “The whole town turned against you. The things I heard…it had to just make you so angry.”
“That’s why we left.”
“Sure you left, but the feeling is still there. It’s obvious. The way you acted when we first got here…after today, I can’t blame you for it. How do you walk around with that feeling every day? Doesn’t it eat you alive? I already feel like something’s taking little bites out of my soul, and it’s been what, an hour? What am I going to be like a year from now? Two? The grief, of course it will never stop. But the rage…the magnitude is so huge I don’t know how to carry it.”
Connor considered arguing with him, but couldn’t come up with anything to negate what Drew had said. He couldn’t deny it. The evidence was in every wrinkle on his face, every step that he took, the way he carried himself. It had become a part of him, a memory and a presence as much as his wife or his children, a companion that was his and his alone. The feeling was there as they made dinner at night, there when he kissed Kate on the forehead, even there when he smiled listening to Harper and Poe laugh as children. It was there. Always there.
“You just do. It sits there, and you move about your day, and it just curls up inside you and stays there. It’s a part of you just the same as the oxygen in your lungs or the blood pumping through your veins.”
Drew didn’t respond.
“What?”
“I don’t want to live like that.”
“Sometimes something happens and it’s so bad that there’s no other way t
o live. It’s either carry it with you or die to escape it. And no one wants to die.”
Suddenly, Gabriel’s voice echoed out from the corner of the stall. “Maybe we should try and get out of here and chat later.”
Connor’s focus shifted to his son. “What do you think I’m doing? And what the hell were you doing putting yourself at risk like that. They could have killed you. I’m going to beat your ass when we get out of here.” Connor snapped, slowly trying to loosen the rope on his hands. His skin was becoming raw with the effort, and he worried that it would be difficult for him to hold a weapon with such frayed flesh and aching wrists. Even a small knife would become heavy in weakened hands.
Gabriel grinned. “Do you think this might help?” After he spoke, he scooted around so that his father could see the razor blade he was holding between his fingers.
“Did you come up with that yourself?” Connor stared at him.
“Yeah. It dawned on me that if we ever got caught, we might want something that would probably be missed in a pat-down. I’ve been keeping it in the small pocket in my jeans.” He paused. “I came up with it trying to think like you.”
For the first time since his knife attack, Connor smiled at him. “Well done, son. Well done.” And for the first time in even longer, he meant it.
After scooting over to his father, he began to run the blade down the rope that tied his father’s hands. When he was free, he took the blade from Gabriel and repeated the process. When they were both free, they went over to Drew. As Gabriel worked the blade over the rope that bound his feet, Connor pulled the knot free from the rope that tied his hands. Without a word exchanged between them, Connor held out his hand. After only a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel took it and smiled.
As Drew kicked his feet free from the rope that now only sat loosely around his feet, he said, “Promise me that they will pay for what they’ve done. Promise me that.”
Looking at him and seeing something of himself in the other man’s eyes, Connor said, “They will.”
The Ocean in the Fire Page 21
