Maybe Christina wasn’t much good at making predictions after all. Maybe they weren’t alive as she said they were and instead only made wide-ranging predictions that didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Hill of beans. That’s what grandfather used to say.
Sad, depressed, and forlorn, she waited for the other weavers to leave and greet the new arrivals before heading in the opposite direction and rounding the castle grounds.
The twins’ matching wounds healed very quickly thanks to Nurse Hollis’s efforts. They helped chop wood for the fires. They swung their axes all day and never tired.
Occasionally, Christina came to marvel at them and said she’d never seen such brute strength in all her days. A group of nearby men liked to challenge them by trying to keep pace. After an hour, they quit, the twins winning despite not realizing they were in a race to begin with.
Katie waited for them to finish hacking their latest log before approaching.
“Hey guys,” she said.
“Hey Katie,” Ronnie said. “How are things?”
“Okay. How many trees have you chopped up now?”
Tanya wiped a meaty arm over her forehead and took a swig from her water bottle. “Must be, what, getting on for a dozen trees by now.”
Katie chuckled. “The forest will be empty by winter.”
“Earlier,” Tanya said with a grin.
They took a seat on the tree stump they used to chop the wood.
Katie couldn’t hold her emotions in any longer. “Guys, I’m not sure how much longer I can stick it here.”
“Right,” Ronnie said with a wink. “What’s getting to you? The nice warm beds and food and water on tap, or the group of happy people there to make your life heaven?”
Katie’s expression didn’t change.
Ronnie blinked. “Oh. You’re being serious.”
“Of course I was being serious.” She looked between the two of them. “You don’t really want to stay here, do you?”
The twins exchanged a look.
“We were thinking about it,” Tanya said. “Geronimo’s offered us a little cottage at the other end of the estate. We’ll be charged with maintaining the watch over the rear gate. He says we can chop wood as much as we want too. We’ll also get as much food and water as we need. It is pretty safe around here.”
Katie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But it’s not the lodge.”
Ronnie licked his lips before proceeding. “So maybe the lodge isn’t as good as it is here. I mean, does the lodge have a big community of people looking out for each other? They’ve got a good thing going here. I don’t see why we should give this place up. Not right now while everything is going so well.”
“And look at Ella,” Tanya said. “She’s got little friends to play with and she’s going to school. Did you ever think she would go to school again? Especially so near to what happened with the EMP? I sure didn’t.”
They had a point but it was still not one that Katie wanted to hear. They were a group, a family and they were meant to work and survive together.
“Our dad prepared everything in the event of the apocalypse,” Katie said. “The apocalypse is here. When the others get here, we’re going to set off for the lodge. You’re saying you want to stay here?”
“It’ll be a long, hard journey,” Ronnie said. “And there’s no telling what might be waiting for us outside those gates. The military for one. They’ll be trying to kill us as they did ever since we left your grandfather’s place. I think we landed on our feet here.”
Without a word of greeting, Camden rounded the corner and moved to pick up the axe.
“You want to be careful with that,” Ronnie said. “It’s heavy.”
“I can manage,” Camden said shortly.
He tugged on the axe but its tip was buried in the wood of the tree trunk and he couldn’t pull it free.
“It’s not the sword in the stone.” Ronnie seized the axe handle and yanked it loose with a single tug. “Try to bend your knees more.”
“It’s not his knees that are the problem,” Darryl said. “It’s his weedy arms.”
Katie folded her arms. “I was just talking to the twins. They’re going to stay here when we leave.”
“Hannah and Jodie are talking about doing the same thing,” Camden said.
Katie unfolded her arms. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was. But I tell you this, if they’re staying, so am I.”
First the twins, then the girls, and now her brother. And if he was staying, so would Darryl. Their whole family, the people who were going to make the lodge work, were staying behind. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious,” Camden said. “The lodge doesn’t have a patch on what they have here.”
“But the lodge is ours. It belongs to us. No one can throw us out or make us do anything we don’t want.”
“They won’t do that here either,” Darryl said. “And they have a good library of books too. Does the lodge have a library?”
No, Katie thought. It has a small stack of porno mags and a few old Empire movie review magazines. Some might consider that a library, she supposed… So long as we completely change the meaning of the word.
“Books aren’t everything,” Katie said.
Darryl shrugged. “They are to me.”
Katie looked their merry little group over and shook her head. “A few days here, and you’re ready to throw in the towel and get comfortable. I don’t get it. Yes, they have a lot here. I get that. But there’s such a thing as freedom too. The freedom to build your own community, to gather friends and allies and face down your enemies. And we wouldn’t be alone. Dad made a lot of friends in Pikehall. We can all live long, happy lives there. We just need to travel a bit further, that’s all.”
But she could see from the looks on their faces that they weren’t having any of it.
“I’m sorry,” Tanya said. “We came to help you and the others find somewhere safe, and we found it. It’s not where we thought it would be, but we found it anyway. You must see how good this place is, right? Why risk our lives out there when we can become a part of something they’ve already built here?”
Katie gritted her teeth and shoved through the twins. “Then I’ll go alone.”
“Katie…” Tanya said.
Ronnie braced a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Leave her be. Give her time to adjust. She’ll come around.”
45
The wall of tears built behind her eyelids, preparing to cascade down her cheeks any moment. Her breath hitched in the back of her throat and her chest swelled with heat. She wasn’t prone to crying often or easily but this was taking the biscuit.
She kept her head down and marched down the corridor, focusing on following the red carpet like a magic carpet that would take her wherever she wanted to go. She didn’t look up at anyone who passed. She didn’t want them to see her weakness.
She passed the large dining hall where she and the others ate their meals each day. She heard voices in there now. As usual, Geronimo was overly excited to greet them. Katie glanced out the corner of her eye and caught Geronimo extending his arms out to the side in a friendly embrace.
“Geronimo is pleased you made it.”
“So am I,” the new arrival said. “Though it was a close-run thing.”
“Close-run thing? Geronimo sees no wounds, no injuries. Unless you count the missing hairs on your head.”
“Charming as always,” the new arrival said gruffly.
Katie grabbed the bannister, curled her fingers around it, and swung herself up the stairs.
She would run up the stairs and get to her room. Then she would fall on her bed and pummel the pillows and bawl her eyes out until there were no tears left. She would bury her face in her blankets to prevent any sound from escaping and alerting others in case they wanted to comfort her.
She didn’t want to be comforted. She wanted to be angry.
What chanc
e did she have of starting again when everyone else was committed to staying there? Though she hadn’t known the twins long, she couldn’t help but feel they somehow fit within their crazy little self-imposed family.
“Are the others here?” the newcomer said.
“They are. Geronimo rescued them from the jaws of certain defeat.”
“You always did know how to blow your own horn.”
“It is a big horn to blow, no?”
Above her head, high somewhere in the belfry, the bell tolled.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!
“Here Geronimo is, jabbering like a fool when you must be famished. Please, come sit by the fire and get warm. Christina will bring you food and drink.”
“Water will be fine,” the voice of the second newcomer said.
Katie missed a step, tripped, and banged her knee against the step. She ignored the pain that flared up her shin and focused on that voice.
There was something about it, something she recognized…
No, she thought. It can’t be…
But it was. She was sure of it.
She shuffled down a few steps and peered between the bannisters.
A dozen or so pairs of eyes turned in her direction, distracted by the banging noise. Katie wasn’t concerned with the welcoming party. All her attention was focused on the two bedraggled men in the stained coats and scuffed boots.
Bill. Aaron.
They were alive. And they were here.
Her heart leapt into her throat and tears burgeoned once again in her eyes, but this time the tears were not in despair but hope and love, that the two men she’d worried about for the past two days were alive and well.
She sprinted down the steps, almost losing her footing as she did, clattered across the bottom step, and spun around and ran into the mess hall.
The long tables were half-full of workers, soldiers, and the dozens of apprentices that worked this place, but Katie didn’t care. Where just a moment ago she wanted to hide her tears from the world, she was now more than happy to share the ones that slipped effortlessly down her cheeks.
She’d been so consumed with her sense of betrayal – and yes, even self-pity – that she hadn’t recognized the voices that were so plain if she’d only just listened. Her heart even managed to overflow with love for her grandfather, who she’d never felt particularly close to before, and yet, now, seeing him there in the flesh brought it out of her in a deluge.
She launched herself at him and enfolded him in her warmth and, although grandfather didn’t raise his arms to hug her back – he never had, and she doubted he ever would – especially with so many people watching, it was okay because it was her grandfather, the only relative on her father’s side she had left.
“I heard the bells toll but I didn’t think… I didn’t know…” No words, too many words, tumbled out of her mouth.
She gripped him tighter, firmer, and only then did she open her eyes. Aaron stood before her, a smile on his lips that promised danger and excitement and breaking the rules. Although he was exhausted, she doubted he wouldn’t carry those actions out right now if given half a chance.
Beside him, another figure, this one less welcome.
The old woman who gave her a taste of the future. Christina. She lowered her head and smiled, and it turned Katie’s insides to water. She felt like a lamb in the midst of a wolf staring her down and the love that had, until a moment ago, so consumed her, now flooded freely from her and was gone.
46
The others came soon after, and their welcomes were just as emotional as Katie’s had been.
Camden, trying to maintain some semblance that he was the man of the house and needed to keep his emotions in check, only nodded at his grandfather, but Aaron rushed him and gave him a nutmeg and a hug. Then he shook hands with the twins and gave them a half-hug, with a single arm slap on the back.
“I heard you ran into a spot of trouble down the road,” Aaron said. “It’s funny because we took all the real heat from you. You must be losing your touch.”
“You want to feel my touch?” Ronnie clenched his fist and waved it under his nose.
“Or mine?” Tanya made a lewd gesture with her hand.
Aaron raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t know which one to be more afraid of.”
“You’ll come out with fewer injuries with me,” Ronnie said.
Tanya winked. “I can guarantee that.”
Katie smiled, happy their little family was together again. But her happiness was edged with a fringe of sadness that blew like the icy tendrils of a cold wind on a warm summer day. They might not be together like this for much longer, and when that day came, that wind would become a thunderous storm.
47
Laurie took a deep breath and entered the captain’s tent. Burgess spun around and addressed him before he was even fully inside. “Well? Do we know where they are?”
“They’re inside the compound, sir,” Laurie said.
“So, go in there and break them out,” Burgess barked.
“It’s not as simple as that, sir. They’re civilians.”
“They’re harbouring fugitives and terrorists. If they don’t step aside, we must assume they’re in collusion.”
“There’s another problem, sir. They’re well-organised and well-armed.”
“We’re the government’s military. They can’t hold out against us.”
“But they can, sir. They’re well fortified, entrenched, with a wide perimeter. They’d see us coming long before we did any significant damage.”
Burgess jabbed a finger in Laurie’s face. “Are you saying we don’t have enough men to mount an effective attack?”
“We did at the beginning of the campaign, sir. Now… Well, we’ve lost a third of our capacity since we began hunting these men.” He took all the emotion out of his words and reported only the facts. He knew that doing anything else would only make Burgess think he was attacking him.
Burgess’s ice-blue eyes scanned Laurie’s face and tossed a hand at him. “Bah!”
Laurie took this to mean he understood and wouldn’t send their men to fight a battle they couldn’t win. It was a personal victory, if only for a short time.
Burgess dumped the contents of his whiskey glass down his throat. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
“Form a perimeter. We watch we see if and when they try to leave, and when they do, we’ll be ready for them.”
“And if they never leave?”
“I’ve already sent for reinforcements. By the time they get here, we’ll be ready to mount an effective attack.” Which also gives me time to find another way into the compound without killing these innocent people.
Burgess threw his head back to drink his whiskey and looked surprised to find it empty. He fell back in his chair. “The colonel isn’t going to be happy about this.”
“No, sir. But it’s better than suffering a catastrophic defeat.”
Finnegan entered the tent and saluted. “Sir? There’s someone here to see you.”
“Leave me in peace,” Burgess said. “I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
“It’s… rather important, sir,” Finnegan said.
Burgess opened his mouth to repeat his command, but Laurie responded first. “Perhaps it might be best to see who this person is. It will only take a moment of your time, and if they’re of no significance, we can send them away and you’ll never have to see them again.”
Burgess pursed his lips, sighed, and nodded.
Finnegan turned to the door and pulled the tarp back so the man could step inside.
He was a small man with a full head of black hair. Laurie sensed he was a man used to being listened to and getting his way. He bowed flamboyantly with a fluttering of his hands.
“Well, what is it?” Burgess barked. “We don’t have all day.”
“Geronimo Reyes has a mutually beneficial business proposition if you are willing to be… flexible.”
&nb
sp; Laurie felt a deep gurgling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t feel good about this, and he doubted it was the sausages from lunch that produced the sensation.
48
After dinner, Katie headed outside and wandered the gardens. Young saplings struggled for purchase on the newly-installed trellises as they wound their way up it. The gardener was attempting to build a miniature maze with little private areas in a place which was usually so open and communal.
The castle’s candles blazed in every window on the ground and first floor, and most of the second floor too. It was the kind of thing trendy upper-class magazine covers were made of.
Katie heard a footstep behind her and the crunch of gravel underfoot. He came, she thought. She did her best not to show her excitement. Aaron was like a bee, and that made her the honey. She blushed at the analogy, but it was what she’d intended when she first stepped outside.
“Stalking me, huh?” Katie said. “You should keep your dangerous habits outside the community gates.”
“I’m sorry. I can leave if you want.”
Darryl stepped into the moonlight. His eyes darted side to side, struggling to find the courage to face her.
“Darryl?” Katie tried to hide her surprise. “What are you doing out here?”
Darryl edged a little closer. “I’m not Darryl. I’m somebody else.”
“But you’re still Darryl, my brother’s best friend.”
“Physically, yes. And… Well…” The words were difficult for him to say. “I… I would like to be physical with you too. Uh, baby.”
Katie just stared. She couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I would like to be physical–”
“I understood that part.”
“Oh. Good.”
“What I meant was, why are you doing this?”
Cut Off (Book 2): Cut Throat Page 15
