by T. W. Connor
My mind went back to Angie, and I shivered again. We’d come so close to losing it all in that cabin in the woods. I was damned lucky we’d gotten out of it alive. Damned lucky Angie and I had both managed to get out.
Bob threaded through two closely-spaced tents and we made our way into a more open, well-ventilated area, where whoever had been in charge had placed a number of picnic tables, surrounded by free-standing barbecues.
“The dining hall,” Bob said wryly, interrupting his description of Randall’s history. “We do breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a set schedule here for those who haven’t brought enough food for themselves.”
“Are you letting people go back to their houses for supplies?” Marlon asked abruptly. “Letting people out of this building to do…other things?”
It was a question that obviously meant more than it sounded like it meant, and I frowned. I hadn’t thought Marlon had any connections—or any concerns—in this town. Why would he care if he could get outside?
Bob snorted. “Of course we are. We can’t afford to keep everyone locked up in here when there’s still food and water to be carted in from their houses. Besides, it’s not like we’re hiding from anything. We haven’t been overrun by zombies. This place is just the only one with power right now. And in the middle of the winter, that makes it the only place where I can keep my people warm and alive.”
My people. The phrase brought a thrill to my blood, and I nodded. I hadn’t been born or raised here, but this town—and its people—had come to be mine, as well, and I knew I’d do whatever it took to keep them safe. From both the cold…and Randall.
“So you kicked Randall out because he was causing too much trouble?” I asked, getting the conversation back on track.
Bob nodded. “More or less. They started building up a weapons store in one of their houses. Along with chemical weapons. Biological stuff. I had no idea where they got it, but as soon as one of their friends came and told me what was going on, I knew I had to put my foot down. Having a rifle or two, that’s one thing. Hell, collect antique handguns for all I care. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone and people take personal responsibility, I’m fine with it—I’m a big supporter of exercising your Second Amendment rights. But when it comes to stockpiling automatic mil-grade weapons in your basement, I draw the line. There is absolutely no reason for that, not out here. We’re a small, peaceful town. We’ve never had any trouble with anyone. And when I found out he had chemical weapons down there—stuff that could kill everyone if it got out—I told the rest of the town council that we had to get rid of them. Randall and his cousins, I mean.”
I let out a low whistle. “Where the hell would he have gotten chemical weapons?” It didn’t make any sense. That stuff wasn’t available to anyone outside of the military—and even then, it was very, very closely held. Only the weapons departments had access to it.
I supposed you could make some things yourself, if you had the right ingredients—and a lab to cook them in. But that would take chemists, biologists, hell, even nuclear engineers, probably. Randall was none of those things.
Someone must have given him those weapons. But why? How?
I glanced at Marlon, wondering if he was coming to the same conclusions as I was, and saw a combination of expressions on his face. Concern. Anger. Lack of surprise.
Marlon had known about all of this, I realized. Maybe because he lived in the area and had heard that it had happened.
Maybe because he’d been more involved than he was letting on.
“So you kicked him out?” I asked. “And, I suppose, took over his weapons stores?”
“We did,” Bob confirmed.
“Then he’s trying to get them back,” I concluded, the stories coming together in a crash of understanding. “This invasion he seems to be planning. It’s not about the people. Hell, it’s probably not even about the town itself. It’s about getting the rest of his weapons back.”
Bob had stopped now at a door in the back wall of the large hall, and turned to me.
“I think you’re right,” he said.
He unlocked the door and swung it open, then stepped out of the way to let me enter.
I stood in the middle of the room, having already moved through the boxes and boxes of goods, cataloging in my mind what we had. It wasn’t as much as I had thought it would be. Certainly not as much as I’d hoped, given what Bob had said.
Then again, I guessed that one small group’s idea of an armory wasn’t necessarily enough to account for an entire town. It certainly didn’t hold a candle to what I’d seen in the military, when we’d been assigned our own guns, grenades, shields, armor, and other small accouterments of war.
But again, I lectured myself, I wasn’t dealing with a military man. Wasn’t dealing with anyone who would have known anything about what it actually took to defend a town—or a fort, as he was trying to make this place.
I was dealing with some backwoods hillbilly who had thought he’d known better. Who had actually thought he’d be able to hold this place if the military came calling.
“But he had chemical weapons, too,” Marlon said, turning in a circle and surveying the small armory—and mirroring the path of my thoughts almost exactly.
“What happened to them?” I asked suddenly. Were they here, in this room? Were they something we needed to dispose of?
I didn’t like the idea of them being so close to this many people. I didn’t like the idea of them being this close to my family.
“No, they’ve already been…removed,” Bob said in that shifty way that told me he was withholding information. The glance he cast at Marlon told me even more.
And some pieces started to fall into place. Though they still didn’t tell me who Marlon was—or how he had the means to dispose of chemical weapons.
“And what about other weapons?” I asked, jumping to the next point. “Is there anything else? Another room full of stuff?”
Bob shook his head. “This is it. Though the townspeople will all have their own personal weapons, of course.” He cast me a worried glance. “Are you thinking we’ll need to use them?”
It was a pointless question, and I let it pass. Of course we would need to use them. Randall was crouched outside the town right now, looking every bit the invader.
And with the amount of weaponry I’d seen in that shack, compared to the weapons in here, I didn’t think it was going to be a fair fight.
But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be as prepared as possible.
“We’ll have to go through the people, figure out who has what, and who can use what. Whether they have military backgrounds. Whether they have skills we don’t know about,” Marlon said quickly, running his fingers over a box of grenades.
“And start building a plan,” I agreed grimly. “But most of all, we need to know what Randall’s plans are. We need to know when he’s going to attack, so we know how much time we have. Not to mention, we need to know what he’s bringing with him and how many men he has.”
Because he looked like he was going to attack soon, and we were going to have to be ready for that. But it was going to be a whole lot easier to get ready if we knew the timeline.
Marlon and I looked up from what we’d been perusing, our eyes meeting in perfect understanding.
He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “We have to get into his camp.”
4
I stared through the binoculars once again, my eyes on the camp in front of me, my body this time hidden by one of the cars sitting on the street. We’d returned to the city of Ellis Woods to a predictable lack of people on the streets—and a total lack of electricity. No lights and no heat, making it almost unlivable in the houses and buildings, which couldn’t be saved by any amount of insulation in the walls.
There was, after all, only a certain amount of time for the heat to hold out against the cold. And it was the middle of winter. In Michigan. The people wouldn’t have had a prayer if it wasn’t for how prepared the
town had been for this sort of disaster, with gas-powered generators already hooked up to a large enough building for everyone to fit into.
But we’d found one additional aspect, which I hadn’t exactly been expecting. The town itself had been full of cars that had just stopped working wherever they were when the EMP—since that was still what we’d figured had happened—had gone off in the sky. Any vehicle that was built after the mid-1970s was depending on some sort of electricity in its engine, which meant that the bomb that had fried all electrical circuits had also fried most of the cars in town. Sure, there was still a classic car here and there, and those were still functioning, but they were also rare.
And every car that had stopped working had been deserted right where it had stopped.
It made the town look messy and deserted, like there had been some sort of zombie apocalypse. But it also really came in handy right now, when we were seeking cover as we moved closer and closer to Randall’s camp.
Marlon and I hadn’t even had to talk about it. We’d agreed without discussion that we didn’t want to be spotted again. That it would be dangerous, even, to be spotted again. Sure, Randall knew that we knew he was there. He had to know that we knew he was planning some sort of invasion. Hell, he’d seen us looking right into his weapons stores.
So he knew we were preparing.
But he didn’t need to know that we were coming back for another look. And he certainly didn’t need to know that we were considering doing a whole lot more than just that.
I brought the binoculars down from my face and turned toward Marlon, who was peeking over the hood of the car we were hiding behind. We were still several blocks from the edge of town, having crept on our hands and knees over the last two blocks, to maintain our cover.
We didn’t want to get too close to the edge of town—or Randall’s sharpshooter’s range—until we knew more about what was going on out there.
“I don’t see one damn person in that camp,” I told Marlon, relating what I’d seen through the binoculars.
And that was weird, really. Sure, it had looked deserted when we were here before—but then men had come rushing out of some of the buildings, and the place had suddenly become incredibly active. We knew there were over sixty men down there.
Where the hell were they now?
“Me either,” Marlon said, his eyes still on the encampment, a frown creasing his forehead. “And I don’t know about you, but that makes me real nervous.”
“Me too,” I replied grimly. “Where are all those men, and what are they doing?”
Were they already on their way here? God, I hoped not. It was the middle of the day and bright and sunny out—which made it the stupidest time possible for an invasion.
But we’d already confirmed that Randall wasn’t the smartest man ever born. He’d also never been in the military. There was no guarantee that he would see the futility of trying to conduct an invasion in broad daylight—when the people you were invading knew you were doing it.
Marlon held out a hand for the binoculars, and I turned them over quickly. There was nothing more to see down there. Not from this view, at least. But I had no problem with him confirming that for himself.
Maybe he’d notice something I hadn’t. Maybe he knew to look for some additional clue.
A few moments later, Marlon dropped the binocs from his face and scowled. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Where the hell are they all?”
“Holding some sort of Outcasts Anonymous meeting in one of the sheds, maybe,” I replied.
Marlon cast me a sudden and very surprising grin. “Do you think it would be anonymous if they all know each other? And if they all know they’re outcasts?”
“Outcast Pride, LLC?” I asked, grinning back. “‘We’re outcasts, and we’re proud!’”
Marlon stifled a laugh at that, and shook his head. Then his eyes went back toward the camp in the distance. “We have to get closer. I need a better view of the entire camp. For all we know, they could be just out of our view, hidden by one of these buildings.”
When we got closer—all the way to the edge of town, in fact—we saw that the men hadn’t disappeared after all. Instead, they were all grouped to the side of the camp. They’d been hidden by one of the buildings, but now that we could see them, we could see that there did in fact seem to be some sort of meeting going on. Randall was at the front of the crowd—joined by the one useful cousin he seemed to have, Logan—and I could see his other two cousins, Ben and Sandy, slightly to the side.
“Terrific, he’s been joined by his family,” I said with a grin, handing the binoculars to Marlon. “Now we’ve got the whole quad together.”
“Not like that’s going to make a difference,” Marlon responded. “Logan’s the only one with half a brain in his head. The other two are completely useless.”
“Still two sets of hands to hold a gun, though. And that makes them a hassle,” I answered.
I stared into the crowd. I could see well enough from where we were, though I’d be counting on Marlon to pick up the details as long as he had the binoculars. I could see the men and their basic features, but nothing else.
I could also see that Randall seemed to be making some sort of speech to his ragtag crew. He was gesticulating madly and pacing back and forth, and I could see from his face and the aggressive set of his shoulders that he was screaming. He was either really angry or really impressed with what he was saying.
“Riling them up,” I noted quietly. “Getting them ready.”
Marlon nodded and handed the binoculars back, the frown on his face carving deep grooves into his forehead. “He’s definitely working them up,” he agreed. “Giving them the pep talk. Though I suspect it’s less pep and more threat.”
“But they have to agree with what he’s doing,” I said. “They’re here. And there’s only one reason for them to have come. They must be willing to support him.”
Marlon gave me a long, considering look, his eyes hooded.
More secrets, I thought. I just hoped he was telling me the things I needed to know for right now. The things that would keep my family—and my town—safe.
“They might be willing to support him,” he agreed. “Or they might have been ordered to come here.”
“Ordered by who?”
Instead of answering, he turned back toward the camp and narrowed his eyes to give himself a better view.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which it is,” he said. “It only matters that they’re coming.”
Right, ignoring my question it was, then. I stared toward the camp as well, squinting against the bright glare coming up off the snow.
“Pretty useless to be watching them when we can’t hear them,” I noted. “We’re never going to find anything out unless we can hear what they’re saying.” I paused for a beat, my words having brought on a very dangerous—but very obvious—idea, and let it formulate for a second.
Then, without thinking, I said, “We need to get closer. We need to be able to hear what they’re saying.”
Marlon and I were making our way quickly back toward Town Hall, our mouths moving almost faster than our brains could as we worked out the kinks in the plan.
“It’s simple,” I said. “I get down there, get close enough to listen to someone conveniently talking about the plan, figure out what they’re doing, and then get back here in time to help the town prepare for what’s coming.”
“Simple,” Marlon said with a snort. “Obviously. And I’ll go with you. As your backup.”
I shook my head sharply. “You’ll stay here. The people in town need a leader, in case I don’t come back. They’ll need someone to tell them what to do, and how to do it. To keep them safe. If I don’t come back, it’ll still mean that Randall’s coming for the town. The people here will need someone to defend them.”
“The town already has people to lead,” Marlon argued. “The mayor. The police chief. The fire chief.”
I
stopped, turned, and grabbed Marlon’s arm to bring him to a halt. Then I stared into his eyes, my expression deadly serious.
“I don’t know who you are, Marlon, and I don’t know what you’ve done in your life. Yet. But I know it’s bigger than what the mayor, police chief, and fire chief have done, combined. When I say the people will need someone to protect them, I mean someone better qualified than Randall. I mean someone with military experience. Someone who knows what protection really means.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at me for several moments, his eyes probing mine as he no doubt tried to figure out exactly how much I knew—or how much I thought I knew. Then he nodded once.
“You’re right,” he said, turning to continue toward Town Hall. “On all accounts.”
Well that answered one question, at least. He’d had military experience. I suspected he was also a part of the intelligence community, but that must have come later. Or maybe at the same time; there were plenty of people who served both communities concurrently.
Somehow, knowing that I’d guessed right on that account relieved a part of the pressure I was feeling. Knowing that Marlon was going to be here to watch over the situation while I was gone—to watch over my family, and keep them safe from Randall—relieved another piece of pressure.
Because I’d seen Marlon work. I knew how good he was. And if there was any man out there who could outsmart Randall in a fight, it was the one walking next to me.
5
I crept down toward the river, a man named Henry O’Connor right behind me. There was a steep embankment down to the river here, so I was going slowly, taking my time as I made my way down through the deep snow. No one had come down here since the snow had fallen, and though it was icy on top, it was deep and treacherous underneath, and going slowly might have meant we were sinking further, but it also meant we were less likely to fall.
