by Joe McKinney
“No telling,” Ed said.
He looked across the grassy courtyard to the supply shed. The door was padlocked, but they knew that already, and Billy had said it wouldn’t be a problem. The problem was the door itself. It was facing the main courtyard, and there was absolutely nothing around it in the way of cover.
“I don’t like it,” Ed said.
Billy shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I got it.” He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and smiled.
“You can use that to open the lock?” Ed said.
“Not exactly,” Billy said. “I looked at the thing the other day. It’s a heavy-duty Yale. There’s no way in hell you’re popping one of those things open unless you have a bump key, which we ain’t got.”
“So how are we getting in?” Jeff said.
“People don’t think when they put locks on doors,” Billy said. “They buy nice shit—sorry, Ed—they buy nice stuff, but they don’t think about installation. The plate that holds the lock on the door is secured to the jamb with four regular screws. All you got to do is screw the plate off the doorjamb and you’re in.”
“Nice,” Ed said.
“Yeah, I thought you’d appreciate that.”
They sprinted across the field to the door. Ed and Jeff took up lookout positions while Billy went to work on the door.
From where he stood, Ed could see Jasper’s private quarters through a gap between the supply shed and the vehicle garage. There was a light on, and two figures stood talking in the faint moonlight. Off to his left, he could see the cottages. They were all dark except for the occasional sodium vapor lamp. He could see one patrol moving between the cottages and another coming up the dirt path that led to the communal areas.
“How much longer?” he said to Billy.
“Ten seconds.”
Ed turned and watched the patrol coming up the path. They were still a long way away, but getting closer.
“Billy?”
“We’re in,” Billy said. “Come on.”
A few minutes later, Ed leaned against the inside of the shed’s door and called out to Jeff, who was supposed to be standing lookout outside.
“Jeff, we clear?”
No answer.
Ed got low to the ground and tried to look out onto the courtyard from beneath the door. He couldn’t see much, but what he could see was clear.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said.
“Hope you know what you’re doing,” Billy said.
“Yeah, me too.”
Ed pushed the door open and they slipped outside.
“How long will it take you to replace the screws?” Ed asked.
“Just a second,” Billy answered. He took the screwdriver from his pocket and started working.
Meanwhile, Ed scanned the darkened buildings for any sign of Jeff. He couldn’t see a thing, and that worried him. Where was he?
A sound from the right side of the building brought him back into the moment.
He looked at Billy, who redoubled his efforts on the screws.
“Hurry it up,” Ed said.
“I am hurrying,” Billy hissed back.
Ed listened carefully. He had four radios in his hands, and there was no way he was going to be able to lie his way out of this if they got caught. He watched Billy twist the screws back into the faceplate. Come on. Come on. They had three in now, and Billy was starting on the forth and final one.
The tip of the screwdriver slid off the screw and struck the faceplate with an audible crack.
“Shit,” Billy muttered.
Ed and Billy looked at each other, listening. From somewhere behind the shed, they could hear the sound of footsteps getting closer, as though a pair of men were suddenly picking up their pace to a trot.
“Oh, no,” Ed whispered. “Billy, hurry up.”
“Almost done.”
Ed watched him put the last screw in and quickly work it into place.
“Done,” he said.
“Good. Sounds like they’re coming up behind us.”
Ed could hear footsteps in the grass just around the corner. The nearest building was sixty feet away at least, and there was no way they could reach it without being seen.
But he didn’t see any other way. “You ready to run?”
Billy nodded.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
But before they could break into a sprint, they heard glass breaking off to their right. The footsteps stopped. He heard frantic whispers from the patrols.
“The warehouse!”
“There he is!” a second guard said.
Ed scanned the darkness over by the warehouse. The patrols were sprinting into the clearing, chasing after a dark figure that looked like Jeff Stavers.
Ed let out a long sigh of relief.
“That’s one brave dude,” Billy said.
“You’re right about that,” Ed said, and together they slipped off into the night.
CHAPTER 46
The next morning was intensely cold. It was mid-September, and the sky was a roiling mass of dark gray clouds. A front was rolling in from the north. There was a thin crust of ice on the ground, and the promise of a wet, cold sleet to come in the midafternoon.
Jeff Stavers was scraping ice from the windshield of the pickup he was sometimes allowed to use to cart manure from the cattle fields to the gardens along the northern edge of the village. Though his hands were numb and the cold air hurt his chest when he breathed, he was able to turn off his mind and lose himself in the simplicity of scraping ice. It comforted him.
Colin was on the other side of the hood, doing the same thing to his side of the windshield.
He said, “Hey, Jeff.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up, man? You look tired.”
Jeff nodded. “Yeah, I was up most of the night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, not really,” Jeff lied. After losing the patrols down in the cottages, he’d spent most of the night curled up beneath the sewage pipes leading out of the communal bathrooms. The smell had been horrible. He kept scraping ice from the windshield, but gradually he noticed that Colin was still looking at him, waiting for him to look up.
“Aren’t you happy here, Jeff?”
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah, of course.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing. Seriously, is everything okay?”
Jeff looked at him. “Colin, you know what I miss? I miss driving my car down an empty country road, the windows down, a cool March breeze in my hair, my favorite song on the radio. I miss books and movies and being able to go to a bar anytime I want. I miss the world.”
“Jasper says the world outside of the Grasslands is evil.”
“Yeah, I heard the lecture, too.” Jeff stopped scraping and with a snap of his wrist flung the shaved ice from his scraper. It landed with a wet-sounding plop in the hard dirt next to his feet. When he looked up at Colin, his old roommate was looking at him. The expression on his face was an odd mixture of pity and contentment, like one of the faithful staring at a bum on a park bench.
You don’t have to have this conversation, Jeff told himself. He knew the smart thing to do would be to walk away, but he couldn’t help himself. He was angry at himself and angry at this place and angry at Colin, and he couldn’t leave it alone.
He said, “Remember reading Hermann Hesse, Colin? Siddhartha said the same thing right before he had his awakening and rejoined the world.”
“Siddhartha was just a character in a book, Jeff. This is real life. This is our life, our future. What’s outside those walls is not worth having. Jasper says most of it is gone, and what’s left just wants to tear us down because we’ve found happiness and they haven’t.”
Jeff went back to scraping ice.
“Jeff?”
“Yeah, Colin?”
“I wanted to ask you about something.”
“Shoot.”
“Can you stop doing that a second and look at me, please?”
Jeff stopped. He put the scraper on the hood and looked at Colin. Really looked at him. He’d lost weight since all this started, gotten leaner. He didn’t look so soft. He’d gotten a tan from spending so much time in the fields, and he looked more focused. Jeff wondered if it was because Colin was sober for the first time in his life.
“Kyra and I have been talking, and we’ve got something we want to ask you and Robin about.”
Jeff thought, Oh shit, tell me he didn’t ask her to marry him. Please don’t let it be that.
“Sure,” Jeff said. “What is it?”
“We want to join the Family. We talked it over, and we want to take the oath. We were thinking today at lunch. And we wanted you and Robin to take it with us. What do you say, Jeff? We could make a home here. Together, with Jasper’s guidance, we can take what’s left of the world and make it good again.”
Straight out of Jasper’s mouth, Jeff thought. It was depressing, seeing Colin this way. The man was never a deep thinker, but he had a natural intelligence that had always allowed him to squeak by. Still, that aside, Colin was not the kind of person to completely subjugate his will to somebody else, especially some country-fried Mississippi preacher. Something had snapped inside Colin’s mind, Jeff decided. That was the only explanation.
Jeff said, “I can’t speak for Robin, you know that. But me personally, I think you’re fucking nuts.”
Colin looked stunned.
“What did you say?”
“Colin, do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? What you’re getting Kyra into? This place, Colin, there’s something terribly wrong going on here.”
Colin stepped around the front of the truck.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” he said. “And so does Kyra. Jeff, we’ve found something good here. Can’t you see that? The things Jasper has done for us”—he motioned around him with a wave of his hand—“can you deny how good this is? Jeff, it’s a paradise. We’ve got all the food and clothes and supplies we need. We’re becoming self-sufficient. We’re happy.”
Jeff started to argue, but Colin put up his hands and shook his head.
“Jasper took us in when the rest of the world was falling apart. Our government failed us. Our military failed us. The only person who hasn’t failed us is Jasper. How can you stand there and tell me that something is wrong here? How do you do that?”
Walk away, he thought. You’re not going to make him see. Jasper’s pulled the wool over his eyes.
But a moment later, he was talking again, unable to make himself stop. “Colin, look, I don’t think you’re seeing what’s going on here. I think you lost more than anybody. You had it all. You had wealth beyond measure. You had beautiful women and booze and drugs and everything you could have ever wanted at the snap of your fingers. But you lost all that. I think it left a vacuum in you, Colin. And I think Jasper stepped into that vacuum and he filled it up with a lot of pseudoreligious, pseudopolitical crap. None of this is as it seems, Colin. The Family, Colin, they’re not sane.”
Colin thumped him in the chest with his finger.
Jeff took a step back, his palms up to make it clear he didn’t want to fight. “Colin, please.”
“Take it back.”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, Colin.”
“You’re telling lies. It’s just like Jasper said. People tell lies.”
Colin turned away from him. Unwilling and unable to let it go, Jeff put a hand on his shoulder and tried to turn him around.
“Colin, wait—”
Colin spun around and punched him. Jeff never saw it coming. One moment he was standing, and the next he was on his butt, looking up at Colin, who was standing over him with his fists balled so tightly that the color had drained from his knuckles.
“You don’t want to join the Family. Okay, that’s fine. But Jeff, don’t you ever tell lies around me again.” He jabbed a finger at Jeff. “Don’t you ever.”
Then, as though he were lost, he turned and walked away.
Jeff watched him go, feeling like something important had just ended.
CHAPTER 47
There was a knock at the door.
“Ah,” said Jasper. “That’s my eleven-thirty appointment.”
Aaron put his iced tea down on the table and Barnes followed his lead. When Aaron rose from the table, Barnes did, too.
Barnes said, “You keep appointments this late?”
“Even later sometimes,” Jasper admitted. “There are a good many folks here who need my guidance.”
Barnes nodded. He could believe it. It had been a few weeks since his arrival, and in that time, Jasper had done wonders for him. He felt as though he had shrugged off a heavy weight, and not just the weight of command, but also of loss. Sitting here, drinking tea with Jasper, talking to him, it was the first time in a very long time that he hadn’t thought of Jack and the senselessness of all that death. Things were coming together for him here.
He followed Aaron to the door.
“Aaron,” Jasper said. “Will you see Misty and Carla in, please?”
“Of course,” Aaron said.
“Good night, Michael.”
“Good night, Jasper.”
Aaron opened the screen door and he and Barnes stood aside to allow two young girls to come inside. One looked about sixteen, a brown-haired beauty. The other was a little older, chunky, but still pretty. They smiled at Aaron, but didn’t meet his eyes.
“Come on in,” he said. “Jasper’s in the kitchen.”
The girls mumbled their thanks and went in.
Aaron pointed Barnes to the door and said, “Come on, I’ll see you out.”
They stepped out into the night air, and the sudden chill felt good against Barnes’s face. He breathed deeply. A constant, howling wind moved over the prairie, sending waves through the grass that moved off into the darkness. The sky was alive with stars.
“I’ve never seen so many,” Barnes said, his head craned back to admire the view.
“Yes,” Aaron said. “It’s beautiful here.”
Barnes looked at him, a middle-aged man who should have been radiating the joy of being one of Jasper’s privileged lieutenants but instead seemed distant, preoccupied, troubled.
“You’ve been with Jasper how long? Nearly twenty years, isn’t that what he said in there?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I’d found him twenty years ago,” Barnes said. “It would have saved me an awful lot of wandering.”
Aaron didn’t respond right away. He looked back at Jasper’s quarters. Inside, they could hear one of the teenage girls talking.
“Listen,” Aaron said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling well tonight. My stomach. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Sure,” Barnes said. “Good night.”
Aaron nodded, and walked away.
Alone once more, Barnes leaned his head back and watched the stars. One of the girls inside giggled, and it brought Barnes out of his reverie. He put his hands down into the pocket of his Windbreaker and started up the trail that would lead him back to his dormitory.
He saw one of the patrols heading from the vehicle storage lot behind Jasper’s quarters over to the utility well and smokehouse, and he waved. The two men waved back. Though the curfew was in effect, Jasper had given him permission to wander the camp whenever he wished, and the patrols knew to let him be.
He reached the main road and walked toward the pavilion. The wind coming in off the prairie moved the swings on the playground and sent a chill through him. Soon, it was going to get extremely cold. He’d already seen ice on the grass in the mornings and small snowflakes in the air on cloudy days, and he realized he wouldn’t be able to enjoy these nightly walks much longer. He’d have to find some other way to meditate about the changes he was going through, which was a shame. His midnight walks were so calming, a chance to reflect
on all Jasper had taught him so far.
He heard a faint crack to his right and stopped. In the darkness, he could see the outlines of the supply room and the vehicle garage on the other side of the office. In the starlight, their roofs looked touched with silver. He stood still and watched and listened. Nothing moved. He couldn’t hear anything but the wind and the faint creaking of the swings behind him. But his cop instincts had gone on alert, and he glanced at his watch to note the time. Then, as quietly as he could, he walked that way.
There were three of them. They were trying to remove the screws where the dead bolt fastened to the door frame. Besides the one screwdriver, he didn’t see anything else that could be used as a weapon.
Barnes stepped around the corner and came up behind them before they had a chance to react. One of the men noticed him when it was too late and tried to make a break for it, but Barnes was too quick for him. He shoved the guy into the wall, and the man hit it hard enough to shake the building.
By that point, the other two had turned to face him. They watched their friend hit the wall, then slump to the ground, rubbing the back of his head.
The guy with the screwdriver stepped forward, wielding it like a knife. He said, “All you gotta do is step aside, man. It ain’t worth your life.”
Barnes just stared at him.
“I mean it, man. I’ll fucking run you through.”
“Put your weapon down and get facedown on the ground,” Barnes said. “Or I’ll kill you.”
The man Barnes had knocked against the wall stood up. The other three seemed to take that as some kind of cue, and the man with the screwdriver lunged forward like he was going to stab Barnes in the belly.
Barnes stepped outside the man’s thrust, grabbing his wrist with his right hand and pulling the arm straight while at the same time pivoting his body so that he could strike the back of the man’s elbow with his left hand. The man’s arm broke with an audible crack and he screamed. At the same time, Barnes bent the wrist back to the man’s shoulder and kept downward pressure on his doubled-up arm, walking him around in a circle until his momentum forced him to fall face forward on the grass.
