So, he'd headed for what had been Corbett's Farm. The gnomes had entirely disappeared beneath a curtain of grass and weeds, but there was no sign of the Sons occupying it yet and the barn was still there.
He'd gotten tired of their prisoner's squawking as May used a needle and thread from her pack to stitch together the ragged edges of her wound. He guessed it probably hurt a bit, but that's what came of picking to fight for the bad guys.
Hick gazed around at what had once been a thriving farm. The burned-out remains of a pair of tractors lay among the rubble of the barns that had sheltered them as green and yellow vegetation sprang out of every gap in the concrete surface of the farmyard. Give nature a couple of years and the barn he was standing outside would be alone in a landscape of rampant plants and rusting machinery. But nature wouldn't get a couple of years—soon enough, someone would reclaim this place and get the wells working again.
He realized that the woman had stopped her screaming, so he ambled inside again to find her leaning up against a wooden post of the pen they'd kept the cattle in. He wondered what would happen to the cows under the new regime in Hope. Maybe they, at least, would be pleased with the change of management.
"I guess I should say thank you for not leaving me to die out there," the woman said. She had a deep voice and looked as though she had been inflated in every direction. She reminded him a little of Brienne of Tarth. "Though I didn't appreciate the knife in the back."
"I didn't appreciate being snuck up on."
Her face fell, and she sighed. "Yes, I understand that. I was following orders."
"Like a good soldier."
"I was, once. Before all this happened."
For some inexplicable reason, he felt sorry for her. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this new world was that his long-dormant empathy gene seemed to be very inconveniently coming to life. He got down into the straw beside her. "My name's Paul Hickman. I was mayor of Hope."
"Hickman?" She jerked back, eyes wide. "You're dead!"
"Evidently not."
She shook her head. "I don't understand. I was there when Crawford announced it. He said his operative had assassinated you."
"Apparently he failed."
"Crawford's going to be so mad," she said, her smiled widening. "He's just found out that Leader Mendoza has taken Hope. When he finds out you're still alive … well, I'd sure like to be there to see it."
"You don't like him?"
She leaned her head back, wincing as her wound stretched. "I'm used to not liking my commanding officers. I'm not so used to them being incompetent maniacs. The name's Kris, Kris Ritter." She held out her hand and Hickman shook it. "And no, I've never been a man. I've always been big."
Hick felt himself flush as she saw through his first reaction to her name. "Pleased to meet you, Kris. So, what are you planning to do now?"
"Well, seems to me I owe you one and, besides, I'm in no condition to go my own way just yet."
May appeared from outside the barn, dragging a trail of cigarette smoke in after her. "So, have we all made friends now? Only we need to decide where we go next."
"To Springs," Hick said, though without conviction.
"What do you think is going to happen when Commander West makes it back to Crawford?"
Hick shrugged. "Crawford blows his head off for failure?"
"Oh no. West is well connected. He won't be punished for getting my comrades and friends killed and running off."
"Well?"
She leaned in. "Crawford's taken enough beatings. But when West reports the direction your convoy was heading in, he'll put two and two together."
Hick cursed under his breath. "He'll go after Springs."
"Exactly. Ezra's been a disaster for him from the start. He shouldn't have strung up the mayor when he could have worked with her. She seemed almost as sociopathic as him; they'd have made a good pair. And that led to the attack on the compound. No, he wants a clean slate. He thought he had it in Hope, but Mendoza got there first."
Hick felt the weight of responsibility slipping like a ball and chain around his ankle again. "So I guess we have to go after Crawford."
"Hold on just a minute." Donnie's frame loomed from the other side of the cattle pen. "We're s'posed to be goin' to Springs. That was the agreement."
"Plans change, Donnie. There's no point going there just to wait for Crawford's forces to follow us. We've got the machine guns on the trucks, but we can't hold off a big attack."
Donnie stood, looking from one to the other of them. "But how do we know we can trust her?" He jerked a finger at Ritter, who merely shrugged in response. "She could be leadin' us into a trap for her boss."
Hick sighed and rubbed his eyes, before glancing up at Ritter who was watching him closely. "I don't think so. And anyway, I reckon she can get us a lot closer to her boss than if we tried to go in alone. What do you think, May?"
May Petty got up, went across to Donnie and put her arm through his. "I reckon it's time we put Ezra out of its misery. Without him, maybe his fighters will melt away."
"There's only a handful of trained Sons still with him. The rest are just the scared and the bullies."
"Which camp did you fall into?" Hick asked, casting a shrewd eye at Kris.
She smiled. "I was a believer, but I've realized that sometimes the end doesn't justify the means. I'm on your side."
"Then let's kill the son of a bitch."
"You're not going anywhere until that wound has healed up a little. I suggest the first order of business is to scavenge up some supplies," May said, looking from Hick to Donnie.
Chapter 16: Slaves
Devon trudged onto the field with Jade grumbling alongside him. This was their third straight day working on the new canal that would divert water from the river running south through the valley and, eventually, on to Ezra. An old-timer had told him that this had been Hope's river until they'd been ordered to remove all the irrigation, so they didn't reduce the flow to the county seat, so they were just restoring what was rightfully theirs. Devon had listened as patiently as possible, while his heart sank. This old fool, at least, was starting to sympathize with the Sons. "A return to the old ways" was the insidious message that was now penetrating the initially resistant community of Hope.
Devon took a mattock from the pile of rusting tools then found a smaller one and handed it to Jade. "You sure you don't regret coming with me?"
She ran her sleeve across her nose, looking less the YouTube star and more a street urchin from Victorian London. "I guess I could be hiding in the rubble of Ezra, waiting to be picked up. Yeah, real cool." She took the wooden handle and dragged it toward their section of the trench.
The first thing he'd noticed about her had been how tiny she was. Somehow, all the sass of a twenty-five-year-old woman of the world was squeezed into the frame of what looked like a young teen. She hadn't had a spare ounce of fat on her, and this world, the stress and the lack of rations was taking its toll.
When they reached their trench, they found the other two sitting on the edge, tools by their sides. Joe Bowie waved wearily to him. Next to Joe sat Jordan Lacey—the young man who'd brought an RV full of kids from West Wendover. Just as with Jade, it had been a case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire". To both, the sanctuary offered by Hope had proven to be a mirage.
"Hey, Joe," Devon said, as he sat down beside him. "How's Martha?"
Bowie shook his head. "They found her."
"What?"
"Yeah. Second time they searched the house, they went straight upstairs. Someone must've snitched."
Devon leaned in close. "What did they do?"
"Nothin'. Just said she'd be gettin' no rations on her own account. Called her 'dead weight'."
Joe Bowie raised his head and looked out across the field as the stragglers filed into place. "Truth is, Devon, they're just about right. There ain't nothin' of the old Martha left. She didn't even say nothin' to 'em when they burst in on her.
Can you imagine that?"
"I'm sorry, Joe. I really am."
A car horn pierced the quiet of the morning and people instantly got to their feet as two Land Rovers drove onto the field and eight masked figures jumped out. They had cattle prods in their hands and assault rifles over their shoulders and the people of Hope had learned quickly that the Sons would not hesitate to use them. So they immediately got to work.
Each gang had a rectangle of land to cut out that, once finished, would connect with the one next to it. They'd then cut smaller channels at right angles to make a network of irrigation canals that would turn this arid corner to the north of Hope into productive farmland. He had to concede that the Sons were more than just land-grabbing terrorists—they had a plan. And, in many ways, their vision of self-sustaining communities living in harmony with nature was as alluring to him as the "it was better in the old days" message was to others. At least it would be if he believed that the ends could ever justify the means. Or if he thought they really meant it.
He took his place in one corner of the trench, checked that Jade was in hers and swung. They would swap in an hour so that their rectangle didn't turn into a rhombus and to allow Jade to take it easy in the corner his bigger muscles had excavated but, for now, she would have to swing as hard as she could.
One thing he'd learned about the Sons was that they weren't a monolithic organization. Sure, they worked together, and he'd seen little evidence of any sort of schism, but he'd now experienced three groups and they were all different. In Pennsylvania, the small team that had taken over the Amish seemed to him to be mainly motivated by their own religious beliefs. They had simply added a layer of threat and violence to an already working community. He found himself wondering what had happened to Noah and Anna.
In Ezra, the takeover had been entirely military. Though he'd seen no evidence that Crawford himself had a service background, he certainly had military delusions. Mayor Hawkins had already begun rebuilding the nucleus of the city when Crawford had taken over, his eyes immediately turning to Hope.
But the invasion of Hope had been of a different order entirely. Devon guessed that Salt Lake City had been the first to be occupied and that, again, the leader of that invasion had heard of the town that had survived—the last city—and it had been too tempting a prize to ignore. In the days since Hope had fallen, the occupying force had quickly begun to organize for the long term. The work he and the others were doing today would bear fruit next year, not this. They were putting down roots, and he wondered how much of this labor was to make that point as much as it had a practical purpose. We are here, and we're staying was the message and, already, he could see heads bowing to what felt like the inevitable.
"Say, Devon, did you hear about what they're doin' over at the mine?"
Devon glanced up quickly, but Joe had picked the right moment: all the guards were out of earshot. "No. What's going on?"
"When Pa was collecting our rations, they was talkin' about it."
"You sent Dave to get the rations?" Devon hissed. "Seriously?" Leonard "Dave" Bowie was in his seventies and not fit for work. He didn't, therefore, qualify for rations, though he did qualify for persecution.
Joe shrugged. "You try tellin' him that."
"So the three of you are living off just your rations?"
"Yeah."
"I'll bring round some of ours, after our shift."
Jade shot him a poisonous side-eye, but he ignored her.
"That's real kind, Dev, but I can't have you takin' that sort of a risk for us. If you're caught after curfew … But anyway, the mines. They've got folks in there clearin' the old shacks out."
"Why?"
"Dunno for sure, but word is they're making dorm'tries and sealin' the place up like Fort Knox."
"Hey you!" Devon snapped around to see a black-masked figure striding toward them, cattle prod held out. "You wanna taste of this?"
Devon ignored him, but he raised his mattock and brought it down as the others began work again. He cursed himself for not keeping an eye on the guards, as this particular one was known for his casual cruelty. It seemed that it was the way of regimes like the Sons, the Nazis and the Taliban: they wouldn't function at all without regiments of scumbags like this, whose only motivation was to make sure they were the ones inflicting pain, rather than sympathizing with those on the other end of the whip.
A searing bolt of agony sent Devon to the ground. Blood filled his mouth as he bit through the edge of his tongue. He resisted the impulse to leap up out of the trench and beat the beast to a pulp. He could do it, he knew. But then they might shoot him or hang him from a streetlight, and where would Jessie and Jade be then? So he swallowed his own blood, picked himself up and, without looking at the guard, he swung his mattock again.
The rest of the day was a torture of cramping muscles and devastating heat. They had three short breaks in twelve hours, during which they guzzled down water drawn from the river then boiled and poured into horse troughs. At noon, they ate what could only be described as a gruel, ladled into their enamel mugs. It was oatmeal boiled in river water with some added sugar and it would have been disgusting if they hadn't been starving. They had one more meal of cookies from the warehouse. Stale and soft, they seemed like a luxury, though Devon ate resentfully. They were being treated like beasts. Valuable, certainly, but beasts nonetheless.
When he finally put down his mattock, he was barely able to climb out of the trench. He glanced to the front to see that the gap between their cutting and the one in front was now no more than ten yards. Tomorrow, then, they would move on to something else, though he had little hope it would be any easier.
He limped toward the exit fence and the minibus, dropping his mattock into the pile and rubbing the soil off his hands. As he turned to check that Jade was behind him, he tripped and fell face down in the sandy soil, his lips crusted with grit. He heaved himself onto his knees to see the guard who'd prodded him earlier smiling down at him.
"You wanna watch where you're going, boy," he said. And then, before Devon could react, he allowed a gob of spit to roll out of his mouth and onto Devon's hand.
Devon leaped up and lunged, sending the guard flying backward with a yell. Hands grabbed Devon, but in his rage he pulled them with him as he tried to get to the guard who was lifting his cattle prod. Other guards were running toward them with their rifles drawn as Devon felt himself released and the other workers withdrew. He turned to see Jade being pulled away by Joe, both of them looking at him with horror.
Then agony upon agony. And darkness.
He awoke to find his face pressed against cold iron bars as he lay on his side. It took a few moments for his memory to rewind and then fast forward again, but he couldn't remember anything after the fight in the field. He must have been brought here unconscious and left. Here was easy enough to pinpoint. He was in one of the two cells of the Hope police house that he'd reopened only a few months before. Only the building was no longer occupied by officers of the law.
"Ah, you're awake then?"
He sat up as a large man with a long bushy beard ambled in from the office.
"You're lucky I was all out of rope when they dragged you in here. Standing orders are to string up anyone who assaults a guard, but I got word you're to be spared the hangin' the likes of you deserve." The man spoke calmly enough, but there was no disguising the loathing in his voice. More than anything, he reminded Devon of someone who'd been living in the wilderness for years, until the promise of unremitting violence drew him back to what passed for civilization. He wore no mask, nor did the sand-colored military surplus jacket conform to any police uniform this side of the Middle East. No, Devon had met his type before. Like flies around a cow pat, evil attracts evil.
"So, what's going to happen to me?"
"You shut yer damn mouth! They said I had to keep you alive, but they didn't say nothin' about how alive. How many broken legs d'you reckon a man can survive? I got a mind to find ou
t. 'I got a mind to find.' That's poetry right there."
The man was obviously insane. Devon went to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, only to find that his ankles had been cuffed together. Ready for the hangman, presumably.
"Yeah, trussed up like a pig you were. I'd have hung you right there and then, but she stopped me."
Devon wanted to ask who this she was, but he also didn't want to give his captor the satisfaction.
"Are you hungry? Thirsty? Well, are ya?"
Devon shrugged. Truth was, his mouth was dry and his throat constricted. He'd have given anything for a glass of river water. Anything other than his self-respect.
The man stood for a moment as if working out what to do next. Devon knew that his captor desperately wanted to hurt him, but was being held back by … what? It had to be fear of what might happen if he went too far. Perhaps the thug wasn't as stupid as he appeared.
He turned around and left Devon on his own. The first order of business was to use the bucket in the corner and, that achieved, Devon settled back and tried to still his mind. He saw Jessie and Jade there. What were they thinking? What were they doing? It was a workday, so Jade at least should be in the field, digging the trench.
But then the door swung open and there she was, the jailor looming behind her. He gave her a shove inside and she went sprawling to the floor.
"Jade! No!" Devon said as she jumped up and made to retaliate. The beast could have snapped the girl in two, and they couldn't rely on whatever had saved Devon working for her.
She froze, then got up, brushed herself down and came across to where Devon stood. Surprisingly, the guard didn't come into the room, but merely threatened from the doorway.
"Thank God you're alive. Everyone said, like, you'd be dead by now."
Devon shrugged. "I don't know why, but they didn't hang me."
"Yeah, well I got a message, right from the top. Said I gotta deliver it exactly how she told me."
"Who? Jessie?"
Jade's face fell. "No, not Jessie. She's gone."
Last Freedom: Book 4 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 4) Page 13
