Avenger (The Bugging Out Series Book 6)

by Noah Mann

  “Most,” she said, tipping her head toward the open door.

  Most...

  This was the real world, after all. Not some gathering of saints. Our town had its share of residents with less than stellar moral fiber. But not many. I could count those on a single hand and still have a couple fingers left over.

  Hart went through first, Schiavo and I right behind. Gina followed us and pointed to a long table. We laid our weapons out there and shed the scant amount of gear we’d had on us when bailing from the Humvee.

  “Right through there,” Gina said, pointing to a doorway with no door.

  Even in the scant light of a single bulb glowing above I could see that stairs descended toward some brighter location. Before we moved I let my gaze play over the space we stood in, reconciling it with what I’d seen of the structure outside, which appeared to be a modest sized gymnasium, or a multi-purpose room. Some serious modification had clearly taken place to what should have been a very open interior. It had been segmented, at least the part I was able to see.

  “They’re waiting,” Gina said.

  Schiavo moved first. Hart followed her through the opening and down the stairs. I hesitated just a bit, fairly certain that no school in this area had been constructed with a basement beneath their gym. Such a space could be a place to hide. Or to hide things that were done to others.

  Nineteen

  They hadn’t seen the blight coming. No, their planning was for the end of the world in a more general sense. Economic collapse. Nuclear war. A North Korean EMP burst. The cause of civilization’s unraveling wasn’t important—their preparation for the result was.

  “How many of you are there?”

  Schiavo posed the question to the lean, tall man seated across from us. He was not armed, nor were the two others who stood to his right, one man and one woman. Then again, neither were we, giving this meeting without arms the feeling of some tense, benign summit. He’d started off by sharing that vague description of the how and why they’d managed to survive, hardly enough to explain the success they’d had at not being discovered by our patrols.

  “You want information on our numbers,” the tall man said, suspicion plain in his restatement of the captain’s inquiry. “You want to know our strength. Is that it?”

  There was bait in the man’s challenge. But there was also justifiable wariness. Before him were three strangers, two of them wearing the uniform of the country many believed had abandoned them. Or worse.

  “This isn’t some reconnaissance,” Schiavo assured him. “Mr...?”

  She was trying to shift the tone of the exchange. Bring it back from the verge of some accusatory confrontation.

  “I’m Captain Angela Schiavo,” she said, gesturing to me and Hart next. “This is Eric Flet—”

  “Eric Fletcher and Specialist Trey Hart,” the man said.

  “We know who you are,” the woman standing next to him told us. “We know all about you.”

  The expression of knowledge halted the conversation for a moment, the admission of the seemingly impossible more than a little unsettling. I flashed back to the detailed, annotated map found with the radio in my house after my confrontation with the intruders.

  “My name is Dalton,” the tall man said, breaking the raging silence. “This is Moira and Ansel.”

  Singular names, and nothing more, to add to Lo and Gina. But it was something he was offering. A tiny window into their world. Their isolated, darkened world.

  “We have just over eight hundred residents in Bandon,” I said, and Dalton’s knowing gaze shifted to me. “But you know that, too, don’t you?”

  “We’ve been watching you,” Moira said, some restrained ferocity in her voice, her manner. “Since the collapse.”

  “You have the cure,” Ansel said.

  “It’s not our cure,” Schiavo told him. “You’re welcome to it. We have seeds. Livestock.”

  Over the time since Bandon had begun its recovery, with deliveries of animals and plant stock from the Rushmore, a few things had gone missing. A half dozen chickens over three months. A goat. Two pigs. A fruit tree toppled and its bounty gone. All were things we’d assumed were just unfortunate events. Animals escaping their pens and coops. Wind uprooting apple trees. Not to mention the intrusions into private homes, including mine.

  Now, though, we knew better. Or I did.

  “I believe they already have what they need,” I said. “Or want.”

  Schiavo thought for a moment on what I was suggesting, her gaze fixing hard on Dalton again as she made the same connection I had a moment earlier, a subtle disappointment about her. Our town had been penetrated, covertly, on numerous occasions. Likely more than even we realized.

  “You stole from us,” she said. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  Dalton fixed hard on me, his look somewhere between harsh and angry. After a moment he simply shook his head.

  “We don’t need to steal,” Dalton said.

  “We’re supplied for years,” Moira told us.

  A slight shift of Dalton’s head, his gaze angling obliquely toward her, expressed some displeasure at the information she’d just offered. She quieted and straightened, coming to some self-imposed attention as her leader, their leader, looked to us again.

  “The hiders have been stealing from you,” Dalton said.

  “The hiders?” Schiavo asked.

  “You didn’t think you were alone,” Dalton said, allowing just a hint of a grin. “That’s precious.”

  “Who are these hiders?”

  Schiavo’s repetition of her question, not quite to the level of a demand, turned Dalton’s expression slack again just as the single lightbulb in the room flickered, drawing all gazes to it.

  “Ansel...”

  Dalton’s simple speaking of the man’s name sent him from the room. As he left he looked toward me, a covert obviousness in the way his gaze tracked to mine. I’d noticed the same hidden interest when I’d entered the room with the others, and again when he’d directed us to our chairs. This last look he gave me, though, I sensed something in it. I wondered if we’d met somewhere in the old world. There had been enough men about his age who’d crossed my path in the business I was in. Workers, subcontractors, clients, inspectors. He could have been any one of those. Or, just some nameless guy I’d had a random conversation with in line at the grocery store.

  Or, he could be no one at all.

  “We have power issues at times,” Dalton said. “The whole world’s become the third world.”

  “Not Bandon,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Dalton countered.

  After my brief exchange with the man who was either our savior or our captor, or both, Schiavo laid her arms on the table and leaned forward, toward him, annoyance now clear in her manner.

  “If you wouldn’t mind answering my question,” Schiavo said. “Who the hell are the hiders?”

  Dalton let her insistence simmer for just a few seconds, then nodded to Moira.

  “Some are like us,” Moira explained. “Survivors who laid low. Went underground. Just hung on and clawed and scratched to stay alive.”

  “But they’re not our problem,” Dalton said. “They’re yours.”

  “And why is that?”

  Dalton regarded Schiavo for a few seconds after she posed the question, as if he was mildly astonished that she even needed to ask it. Then, his air of judgment eased, and he nodded, confirming some conclusion he’d just come to.

  “You’ve been in the bubble too long,” Dalton said.

  “Excuse me?” Schiavo pressed him.

  The light dimmed further, then turned bright again with steady brilliance.

  “Things have been good for you,” Dalton said, allowing a slight modification of his statement. “Relatively. You have numbers. You have authority, perceived as it might be. You have food. Medical personnel. Vehicles. Fuel. Power.”

  He paused there, seeming to wait for Schiavo, Hart, or myself to sig
nal that we understood the premise he was laying out. None of us did.

  “I could go on, but there’s no point,” Dalton said, relaxing against the backrest of his chair. “You’re too busy trying to recreate the world to realize you’re drawing a target on your back.”

  “How are we doing that?” Schiavo asked.

  Dalton smiled, shaking his head as he glanced briefly away.

  “Any survivors, this is Bandon, we have food, shelter, and medical services,” Moira said. “Come to us. We’re waiting.”

  She’d parroted perfectly Krista’s daily broadcasts.

  “It’s no different than when that boy was squawking on about Eagle One,” Dalton said.

  The dismissive way in which he spoke of Micah, of her husband’s late child, brought a visible pique to Schiavo’s expression. She seemed on the verge of challenging Dalton, of setting him straight about the boy, but I was the one who could not dam my response.

  “That squawking boy is the reason we’re alive,” I said. “And the reason you’ll be alive a few years from now if you have any sense.”

  His attention had been almost laser-focused on Schiavo, but now Dalton very obviously angled his gaze to me. Anything resembling a smile, or any hint of amusement or joy, was gone from his face, just a harshness left in its place. A stare as cold as any I’d ever experienced.

  “Is that so?”

  His challenge to me was brief. Simple. And, I suspected, attached to some consequence which would befall me, maybe all of us, if I was not able to justify the verbal slap I’d just lobbed his way.

  “Your supplies aren’t unlimited,” I told him. “I don’t care how many cans of tuna and beans you have cached, it will run out.”

  In the short time we’d been in his presence, Dalton’s subdued authoritarianism told me most of what I needed to know about his, and their, one glaring weakness—isolation. That state of being was their choice, even their plan, and he was clinging to it as if it were a lifeline. It was, in actuality, an anchor, one that was slowly, but certainly, dragging them toward the fate the rest of civilization had suffered.

  “I don’t see any green fields around here,” I said. “I don’t smell livestock. Or hear chickens. And I’m not even going to mention that cut on Moira’s shoulder.”

  The woman reached up with her hand and laid it over the small bandage that had been affixed over some apparently minor wound just visible where the collar of her coat had shifted. A wound whose angry infection had reddened the skin beyond the sterile covering which attempted to protect it.

  “We have doctors,” Hart said. “Two of them.”

  Dalton didn’t respond. But he did react. The look about him changed. In some way, I thought that it softened. Perhaps it was the recognition by a leader, however slight, that they could not provide all that their followers needed. That some necessities were beyond his ability to secure.

  “Specialist Hart here is a medic,” Schiavo said. “If you get him his gear, he can take a look at her wound.”

  “I don’t need any—”

  A simple raised hand cut her off. There was no anger in Dalton’s gesture. Nor in his gaze. Instead I sensed contemplation. And Curiosity. And, very plainly, a wondering.

  “And what do you want in return?” he asked.

  I’d expected Schiavo to reply quickly. To assure him that there was no quid pro quo. No agenda in the offer.

  But she did not do any of those things. She sat quietly for a moment, mulling his question. I was at a loss as to what she was doing. Or thinking. She seemed to know that, at that very instant, she was in a position of power, and for a person in her position, a leader, such an opportunity was impossible to ignore.

  “All I want is for you to listen,” Schiavo told him.

  “To what?” Dalton asked.

  Schiavo drew a slow breath, her chin rising ever so slightly.

  “A proposal.”

  Twenty

  Dalton listened to her, as we all did. When Schiavo was done, there was silence. And surprise. From all who’d heard her propose a formal alliance between Dalton’s Camas Valley colony and Bandon.

  “You don’t have the authority to do what you just did,” Dalton said.

  He wasn’t wrong. But in that knowledge, Schiavo had her opening.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Our civilian leadership would have to formally offer what I have. We’re not a dictatorship. But my word will carry weight.”

  Dalton had to know what Schiavo was saying was true. They knew enough about our town, its leadership structure, the way we adhered to basic laws, to realize that any suggestion by the military leader assigned to protect Bandon would be considered without hesitation. And likely acted upon.

  “So?” Schiavo pressed.

  “Throwing in with you would be throwing in with the institution that abandoned everybody,” Moira said.

  Dalton did not cut her off this time, giving credence to her wariness.

  “We’re not the government,” I said.

  Quickly, though, Schiavo clarified the statement I’d made.

  “We’re not that government,” she said. “The institution you hold responsible is gone.”

  Dalton snickered.

  “I wasn’t making a joke,” Schiavo told him.

  “Not intentionally, I’m sure,” Dalton countered, leaning forward and regarding Schiavo with something between pity and disbelief. “Do you seriously think that that bureaucratic behemoth just faded away? To be replaced by those pretenders that laid siege to you? If you do, then that bubble you’ve created to live in is thicker than I thought.”

  I couldn’t tell if Schiavo was accepting his premise that some semblance of the United States government, president, representatives, judges, still existed somewhere, in some recognizable form, or if she was simply done trying to engage with the man. Whichever it was, she chose not to belabor the point.

  “If our leadership approves of this, what can I tell them about your position on the proposal?”

  It was a direct and simple question that Schiavo posed to the leader of the Camas Valley survivors. But the manner in which Dalton seemed to weigh his response, and the long, silent moment in which he did, hinted very strongly that any choice he made would be final. No committee, no council, no vote of his people would be required to give it the full effect of law. Apparently, he was the law.

  “An alliance,” Dalton said, nodding. “We help secure the area around your settlement at Remote, and you provide us with seeds and livestock.”

  “Agreed,” Schiavo said.

  Once more, Dalton went silent as he considered what he was agreeing to, some doubt creeping into his manner.

  “It’s not fair,” the man told us.

  For an instant. Schiavo let the frustration of his response show, her chest heaving with a breath that attempted to calm.

  “Dalton, what we’re offering is—”

  “No,” he said. “What you’re offering is fair. What we’d be giving in return is not.”

  The three of us from Bandon exchanged quick looks, not certain of what Dalton was suggesting.

  “Balance is important,” he said. “It’s crucial in life. In all things. Keeping your new settlement secure is not difficult. You saw what my people did today. We saw the smoke that was baiting you, and we knew what the hiders were going to do once you took that bait. So we acted.”

  I was beginning to understand what his point was, and where he was coming from.

  “You’ve caused us no harm,” Dalton said. “The hiders have. To allow them a victory over you...”

  “It would upset the balance,” I said.

  “In their favor,” he confirmed. “And that is not right. Just as this arrangement between us would be if we take more than we give.”

  Schiavo realized what he was saying now. We all did. More importantly, we were coming to see that there was something about Dalton we hadn’t expected when first facing him just moments earlier—he was a man of ho
nor. A deep honor, closely held, but foundational to his existence as a man. As a person.

  “We have something I believe you you’ll want,” Dalton said.

  It only took him a few minutes to tell us what that was, and how it was possible. When he’d finished, he stood, as did Schiavo, each reaching across the table to shake the other’s hand.

  “We’ll have your vehicle repaired,” Dalton said, glancing to his left. “Moira...”

  She left to see that his promise was carried out.

  “You’ll be able to leave by morning,” he told us.

  “Our people will be worried,” Schiavo said. “They’ll definitely send a patrol out to look for us when we aren’t back by nightfall.”

  Dalton nodded, understanding.

  “Your radios can’t reach from Remote,” he said.

  “And definitely not from here,” I said.

  “We have a transmitter and repeater you can use. It’s tied into an antenna we concealed on a hill just west of here. That’s how we’ve monitored your radios.”

  From beginning to now, the tone of our meeting had turned from confrontational to conversational. The man had been testing us at first. Feeling us out. His people had obviously watched our town, listened to our broadcasts, investigated our perimeter, enough to glean an impressive amount of detail relating to who we were, and what we stood for. He might have chosen to go just off of that when encountering us, but he didn’t. Face to face was how he operated. He wanted to know any potential friends as well as he did any certain enemies.

  “We have somewhere you can sleep tonight after you notify your friends,” Dalton said, looking to Hart next. “And if you could look at Moira’s wound...”

  “Certainly,” the medic said.

  He and I stood, joining Schiavo and Dalton.

  “Thank you,” the captain said. “I get to see my husband again because of what you did today.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Dalton told her.

  I imagined that Schiavo knew just how profound a statement that was, particularly in the world as it now existed, a place where wrongs were sometimes necessary to survival, and right could very well be exploited as a weakness.