by Vohs, J. W.
Jack made eye contact with Charlotte. “Is that what you did?”
Charlotte laughed. “Hell no, but I’m a people person. You’ve always been sorta aloof—Mr. Professor who lived in a castle with my redneck brother and made crazy medieval weapons—”
“Nobody thinks they’re crazy now—”
“True, but nobody who knew you ever expected you to find a woman you’d want to marry either, at least not until you were like 70. And you didn’t even know you had a son.” The expression on Jack’s face melted Charlotte’s heart. She sat down next to him and picked up his hand. “You know I’m just giving you a hard time because that’s how us Wilsons, and former Wilsons, let people know we care. You may have missed out on a few years with Luke, but you have him now, and he’s amazing. I remember when we all thought he was gonna die; I was here when he woke up.” She squeezed Jack’s hand. “For God’s sake, he survived a bite—and he survived all the folks around here who didn’t know what to make of his hunter eyes . . . he’s a one of a kind, Jack. Just like his daddy.”
Jack reached up with his free hand and lightly brushed Charlotte’s hair off her forehead. “How is it you and Carter can have such a strong family resemblance, but you look like an angel and he’s somewhere between a skinny Hulk Hogan and the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz?”
Charlotte felt a familiar flutter and leaned away from Jack. “We both know I’m no angel, and you’ve always known that I got all the good looks in my family.” She let go of his hand and distractedly ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at Jack sideways and sighed. “We’ve always had good chemistry, Mr. Smith. I never want that to screw up our friendship.”
“It never has—” Jack began, but he was interrupted when the door to the cabin flew open, followed by sixteen-year-old T.C. shouting, “Mom! Jack! You’re not gonna believe it—Luke’s here!”
“What do you think?” Maddy asked Zach and Gracie as they stood shivering beneath snow flurries.
“I think,” Gracie declared as she ran an appreciative hand over one of the tracks, “that this is the most beautiful piece of machinery I’ve ever seen.”
“What the heck is it?” Zach demanded. “I mean, it looks like a tank mated with a bulldozer.”
“That’s pretty much what this is, dummy,” Maddy jibed. “This, is a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer; made in America, perfected by the Israelis, then sold back to the US Army.”
“How many are here?” Gracie asked.
Maddy shook her head with mock sadness. “We’ve found four, but we can probably take just two with us. They need a special truck to be transported on, and my guys only found two of those.”
“My guess,” Zach offered, “is that even hauling two of these around the country will be difficult enough.”
Maddy sighed. “You’re right about that, but can you imagine what these monsters could do to a packed horde?”
“Look like they could crush anything in their path.” Gracie grinned mischievously. “They look like they could roll right through the White House if they wanted to.”
“One of your mechs found these,” Maddy explained. “He saw one in action once, said he’s sure they’d just keep rolling over the infected, no matter how many there were in the way.”
“I believe it,” Zach fawned over the impressive machine. “I want this one.”
“Nice try, Lieutenant Kinstler,” Gracie replied. “These will belong to headquarters company, not you and your infantry grunts.”
Zach made a frustrated noise in response, before Maddy patted him on the back. “Don’t worry little buddy, next Walmart we come to I’ll find you a Matchbox dozer so you can still get to play . . .”
A generously-sized log structure had been built to function as the main public meeting house on the western side of the settlement. When Captain Harden suddenly stopped talking, Luke looked up from the cup of coffee he was nursing, past the table where Jenkins, Bill, and the students were mingling with the locals. Standing in the doorway was Jack Smith, his biological father. Luke unconsciously rose to his feet. Jack smiled and quickly crossed the room to his son, wrapping his powerful arms around the teenager and nearly crushing him in an embrace.
Luke didn’t trust himself to speak right away. He had no trouble keeping his composure in the heat of battle, and he’d even managed to feel at ease when addressing large groups of people lately, but something about coming face-to-face with the man he now knew to be his father made him feel oddly child-like and vulnerable. He wanted Jack to understand him and be proud of him, and he was worried about how his transformation might change things between them.
Jack pulled back but kept his hands on Luke’s shoulders. “It’s good to see you,” he said quietly. “And you can take off those glasses; I’ve heard all about your hunter-eyes.”
“Hearing isn’t seeing.” Luke removed the glasses and gave what he hoped was a piercing glare.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be scary? Looks to me like maybe you’re constipated.”
Luke relaxed and laughed in spite of himself. “I would have expected that kind of high class reaction from Carter, but not Professor Smith.”
Captain Harden motioned for his friends to sit down. “I think you two have some catching up to do—”
Luke cut in as he pulled up a chair, “Tell me about Fort Wayne—what happened?”
“I’ll leave you two to talk things through,” Harden said with a nod towards the new arrivals. “I think I need to get to know our friends from Texarkana.”
As soon as they were alone, Jack stared at Luke for a long moment. Something in his father’s expression told Luke that he was struggling with how to share something truly awful, so the young man waited quietly as the butterflies multiplied in his stomach.
“Barnes went for Fort Wayne; we should have anticipated it, but we didn’t. We had a traitor among us who sabotaged our defenses; they couldn’t blow the bridge—”
“Who?” Luke asked with a mix of disbelief and anger.
“Lieutenant Heder—Brittany’s boyfriend from Middle Bass.”
Luke was incredulous. “Red? Are you sure? I mean, we fought together—I saved his life . . .”
“He admitted it, talked about how valuable he was to Barnes and how I should treat him with respect because he outranked me. I didn’t tell you yet that he had Andi kidnapped. Heder delivered her straight to Barnes.”
Luke went white. “Are you sure?”
Jack voice was emotionless when he responded, “A crowd of us watched him dump Andi from a helicopter into a pack of hunters. I can still hear her scream, but it didn’t last long.”
Luke felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Andi’s dead? That son-of-a-bitch Barnes is even more psycho than I could have imagined. And Heder—if I hadn’t saved Heder—”
“It’s not your fault, Luke. There’s no way you could have known.”
“I’m so sorry . . .” Luke couldn’t find words to express what he was feeling. “What about her girls?”
“When they evacuated Fort Wayne, a couple hundred kids and their relatives got out by train and were brought to Vicksburg. My sister and her family—I guess I should call her your Aunt Sarah—helped pull that off. Andi’s girls are here; they’re staying with Carter’s mom. She’s been like a grandmother to them, and Carter has other family here too. They’ll be well looked-after.”
“So Fort Wayne was completely evacuated?” Luke was having trouble putting all the pieces together.
“Here’s the summary—in the middle of a blizzard, Barnes sends in his army. The settlement fights as best as it can, but they don’t have a chance thanks to Heder. Andi is taken sometime during the battle. Deb and Hiram somehow manage to get most of the kids and some of their family members to the train, the rest evacuate by boat. Middle Bass was the rendezvous point, but Barnes wasn’t far behind there either. That’s where he dropped Andi, after having a little conversation with me. He would have finished all of
us off, but the Canadians—the ones Father O’Brien had been talking with—came with an army of their own. They literally saved us. Turns out, Christy’s woman’s intuition was right after all—her cousin Michael led the charge.”
“So where is everybody now?”
“Our survivors are wintering with the Canadians, on Manitoulin Island.”
Luke swallowed before asking his next question. “Who else didn’t make it?”
“A lot of people, son. Father O’Brien, Hiram Anderson—”
“No, dammit . . .” A breath caught in Luke’s throat. “Give me some good news, if you have any.”
“David and Christy are fine—the due date’s only a few weeks off, and there are actual hospitals on the island. It’s a good place for them to be right now.”
Luke cocked his head. “Shouldn’t we expect Barnes to figure out a way to attack the island?”
“Someday, yes, but it presents some unusual challenges. It’s actually the largest freshwater island in the world; it’s incredibly well-organized and resourced, plus they’ve purposely not been drawing any attention to themselves. We know that Barnes has tried to transport the infected over water, and I’m sure he’ll try again, but I don’t think he even knows any specifics about where the Canadians came from.” Jack looked incredibly tired as he explained, “Barnes has other tricks up his sleeve we have to worry about—we know for a fact a settlement in Maine was told that the government had developed a vaccine, then when everybody lined up for the cure, they got infected instead.”
Luke stared at Jack with an expression of disbelief mixed with rage.
“My point is,” Jack continued, “I think Manitoulin is probably one of the safest places to be right now. We were all about to die on that lake, son; it was over. Those Canadians—”
“You said it was Christy’s cousin that led them?” Luke interrupted.
“Yeah, and the crazy thing is, Trudy had sent the message that we were evacuating the islands under pressure but got no response before we left. Hell, none of us really even considered the possibility of help arriving until those Canucks came roaring out of the Detroit River.”
“Good fighters?” Luke knew they were from everything Jack had said, but talking about battle tactics and fighting was a welcome distraction. He didn’t want to think about grieving right now.
“Damn good fighters,” Jack replied with obvious admiration. “Amazing cold weather tactics.” He leaned back in his chair. “But what about you? What have you been up to? T.C. says you arrived in style.”
Luke shrugged off the compliment. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. We’re leaving the Fox here—thought it might come in handy someday. Besides, we have three more.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “You have three more? Where’d you manage to get your hands on those?”
“We’ve made camp at the Red River Depot. With the inventory there, our mechanics can afford to be choosy.
“Your mechanics?”
“I’ve raised a small contingent for the Allied Resistance. Zach, Maddy, and Gracie are each in charge of a company. We’ve recruited at settlements along the river, and trained folks to stay behind too.”
“So what’s your plan, son?”
“I had one of my feelings—at first I just knew that we needed to head west. I didn’t have a plan, but things just sorta fell into place. As of now, we’re armoring up and creating a massive mobile fortress. I think Barnes is going to hit Utah hard, and I want to stop that if I can.”
Jack nodded. “I agree that Barnes has his eye on Utah—not only are they allies of mine, but I think they’re probably the largest and most organized area in opposition to him. Plus, I can only imagine what he could have rounded up on the west coast if he has any organization out there—that army of hunters could be bigger than anything we’ve seen.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Luke agreed.
“So, no offence, Luke, but do you really think you could stop something like that with your new recruits?”
Luke leaned forward and stared directly into his father’s eyes. “You ever think the string of miracles we’ve survived by are more than just a series of coincidences?”
“I know you think they’re more,” Jack replied bitterly, “but it was no miracle when Andi fell from that helicopter.”
Luke couldn’t even bear to imagine having to watch Gracie suffer such a fate. For a moment, he wondered how Jack could go on, and he wasn’t sure if this was the time to share his plans for Utah.
“I trust your instincts, Luke. If you’ve got something in mind for Barnes, I want to know,” Jack responded, reading his son’s mind. “Hell, I need to know, for a lot of reasons.”
Luke nodded pensively before opening up about some of the things he hadn’t even shared with Gracie. “Jack, I’ve got a connection to them—some of them anyway. Not like before, when I could sort of sense when they were nearby.”
Jack studied his son. “You’re talking about the hunters?”
Luke nodded. “Most of them are still pretty mindless, running on instinct and being led around by Barnes’ choppers and biotechnology. But you know they’re evolving—they always have been.”
“What are you trying to say, Luke?”
“I’m not completely sure; it’s more of a feeling than anything. Like when I knew we had to head west. But it isn’t only a feeling—I’ve been able to communicate with some of them. And I have dreams—”
“Dreams are just dreams,” Jack interrupted. “Your brain has to dream or you’ll go crazy, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
“I think I get what you’re trying to say, but I’m telling you I’ve got some sort of subconscious connection sometimes. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s there.”
“Just when you’re dreaming?” Jack sensed there was more to Luke’s story.
“No, I’ve had a couple, well, I don’t know what to call them—encounters? Like I said, most hunters are mindless, and I don’t question why they need to be eliminated. It’s doing them a favor; it’s doing all of us a favor.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Change is coming, Jack. Barnes has taken too much for granted. He’s going to lose control of his hunters.”
Jack looked thoughtful, then troubled. “I’m not sure that would be good news. At least with Barnes herding them up, and using them for his purposes, we know where they are. We know what their objective is. If you’re trying to say that the hunters are becoming smarter and autonomous and that they will be able to communicate with us . . .” He paused and rubbed his temples as if trying to will away an approaching headache.
Luke didn’t want to add to his father’s stress. “Geez, Jack, it’s not like I’m having conversations with every hunter I see. I just can get a sense of them, and they’re not going to be susceptible to Barnes forever. My gut tells me this is an opportunity—not a problem. At least not for the foreseeable future.”
“So you’re basically saying that this will be an issue for Barnes—something he’s not expecting, that we might be able to take advantage of?”
“It’s just one of my feelings right now, and I haven’t shared it with anyone else, but yeah, that’s the sense I get.”
“So in the meantime, you and your forces are planning to give Utah some back-up,” Jack summarized.
“Our forces,” Luke corrected. “We’re part of your Allied Resistance Army. Ultimately, we all answer to you, Jack.” He wondered if it would ever feel natural to call someone other than Jerry “dad.”
Again, Jack seemed to read his mind. “I know that Jerry raised you, and from everything I’ve heard, I know I couldn’t have asked for a better man to be your stepdad. But I’m also your father, and any time you feel comfortable with it, I’d be honored to have you call me Dad too.”
Luke smiled uncomfortably. “Ok, um, Dad? Dad two? What, uh, are your plans for the immediate future?”
Jack laughed out loud. “I think you should stic
k with Jack for now. And we’re keeping most of our fighters on Manitoulin, in case Barnes decides to make an appearance after all. Right now, Tina and Marcus are planning a trip back to the Castle; Redders and some others were trapped there, but well-hidden. We’ve lost contact with them, but the Castle’s resources should hold out as long as they can get to them.”
“I would’ve thought you’d send Carter since he knows that place better than anyone,” Luke commented as the door to the meeting house swung open.
Jack shook his head, “Speak of the devil . . .”
Carter Wilson spotted Jack and Luke the instant he walked through the door. The rangy Kentuckian let out a whoop and sprinted across the room, nearly knocking over the table as he skidded to a halt next to Luke. “Ya made it, kid. I knew if anyone could do it, it’d be Luke Seifert, and here ya are.” He stepped back a little when he noticed Luke’s eyes. “Whoa Nelly, they weren’t lyin’ ‘bout them hunter-eyes of yours, not one damn bit.”
Jack winked at Luke, who understood exactly what to do. “Arrggh,” he growled, snapping his teeth together several times for added effect. Carter jumped back as Luke snarled at him, until the snarl turned to wheezing gasps for air as both he and Jack collapsed into fits of hysterical laughter.
“That ain’t funny, Luke!” Carter complained, though a smile was slowly spreading across his reddened face. “Ain’t funny at all.”
CHAPTER 19
Thelma was relaxing on the patio, under a cantilever umbrella, watching Andi swim laps in the pool. “My dear, don’t you ever get tired? I’m exhausted just watching you.”
“You should get in—it’s refreshing,” Andi countered.
“You mean cold, and I don’t swim anyway.” Thelma adjusted the brim on her floppy hat. “Besides, with fair skin like ours, we should be avoiding the sun. You’re likely to burn out there—come join me in the shade.”
