by Ilsa J. Bick
“Claire Krueger.” Once so bluff and round, Ernst looked like the Michelin tire guy with all the air let out. “She wasn’t from Rule, but in the same year of high school as Ben.”
“So who the hell knows how long they’ve been hunkered down there?” Jarvis said. “We pulled at least five bodies from that crawl space, and we’ve got about a dozen missing in the past couple weeks, not counting the Landrys themselves. They disappeared day after that …” Jarvis shot a sidelong glance at the Council, then quickly looked away, the small muscles in his jaw clenching. “That thing with Ben Stiemke. Honestly, we thought people were sneaking out. Can’t blame them. Tell the truth, we haven’t been working real hard to keep people who want to leave. So if that’s all that’s come out of the mine collapse, it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“But it’s not all,” Chris said in his husky, rough voice. He sounded like a chain smoker. “That’s what Tom is saying.”
“There were a lot of kids in that mine, a couple hundred at least, and more moving in and out,” Tom said. “What Weller didn’t know was that Finn needed me to blow the mine to make it easier for his people to hunt them down, like herding cattle or buffalo. If only a couple have shown their faces here, I bet he’s rounded up quite a few, and if he’s doing to them what I’ve seen in those altered Changed? You don’t stand a chance, and neither do the children.”
“You saying he’d kill kids?” Jarvis asked. “Shoot ’em, or feed ’em to his Changed?”
“No. The kids are valuable, but for different reasons.” Chris had kept the details of his … dream? vision? out-of-body experience?… to himself. “He’d experiment on them.”
Tom nodded. “I think that’s why Mellie was gathering kids. This was never about raising an army to march on Rule. It was about finding guinea pigs, experimental subjects. Finn probably wants to see what happens to normal kids, or those he can catch in the process of Changing. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think Finn’s camp was always relatively close by, too. It’s the only thing that explains why Mellie fought so hard to keep us there and why the Changed never attacked. Finn protected the camp. He probably deployed men to guard our perimeter, especially once the mine was gone.”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. But … run?” Jarvis was shaking his head. “We’re barely holding on now. There aren’t enough supplies to go around for everybody.”
“Who said anything about everybody?” Chris said, hoarsely. His words hung there, and Chris was content to let them. Of all the assembled men, Chris thought that, from the sudden narrowing of his eyes, only his grandfather had any inkling of what they were proposing.
“But …” Jarvis turned a blank stare around the room. “But if we can’t fight and win …”
“He means the children.” Yeager’s gaze seemed to have regained some of its peculiar clarity. “And only the children.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You can leave Rule, or you can stay. But we take the kids, not you. You can’t come with us,” Chris said. “You can’t follow or try to find us either.”
“What?” Jarvis spluttered. “That … that’s crazy! You’d leave us here to die?”
“No. If most of you want to leave, go,” Chris said. “I think you should get out of here.”
“Get out?” Blue veins swelled on Jarvis’s temples. “Most?”
“Some have to stay behind,” Tom said, quietly. “If you don’t put on a show, Finn will know you’ve been warned. You have to buy the kids time to get out.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You just said we shouldn’t fight.”
“What I meant is it has to be the right fight for the right reason and at the right time,” Tom said. “You’ve gathered children, some by force and others not. You’ve told yourselves that it’s for their benefit. But a prison is not a home. Hanging on to these children serves no other purpose now but yours. They have the right to their lives. Please.” Tom looked at Jarvis and then the other men in turn. “Let Jayden and Chris take them someplace safer.”
“No place is truly safe,” Yeager said.
“But it will be better than here,” Chris said. “We’re asking for enough supplies and wagons to get the kids north, that’s all. Say, four days, five.”
“That’ll clean us out,” Jarvis said. “All we’ll have will be a couple sticks of Juicy Fruit.”
“If that’s true, then you’re already done,” Tom said. “You’ve got too many mouths and not enough resources. If you can even find seed to plant, it’ll be months before a harvest. Read some history. This is the Starving Time in Jamestown. The only thing you haven’t done yet is eat your dead.”
Jarvis was stony. “It would never come to that.”
“No one thought the world would end either,” Kincaid said. “Jarvis, for God’s sake …”
“Kincaid, I can’t just decide. We got to put this to a vote. Get the village together …”
“You can’t,” Tom said. “You don’t have that kind of time, and people will discuss this to death. They’ll panic, and you don’t have the manpower to control a mob scene. Once it’s done and comes down to a very simple choice—leave or stay—you’ll have a much better chance of keeping people calm and maybe saving a few more lives. If I’m right, Finn is a half day behind me, but maybe a lot less. He’s got the full moon working for him, too, which means he can move in and be ready to storm this place by dawn.”
“Lenten Moon,” Yeager put in. “The last full moon of winter. Appropriate, given our situation. The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood.” He lifted his hands in apology. “Joel. Also apt, considering the earthquake. The boy is right, Jarvis. You wanted a seat on the Council? Well, you are the Council now. Make a decision and beg for forgiveness later, but for our Lord’s sake, make the right one.”
“My God.” Jarvis stared down at the table for a long moment, then nodded at something he saw there and looked up at Chris. “I heard what you said about the adults, but take Kincaid.”
The doctor stirred. “Jarvis, I’m not asking for—”
“The kids will need him. He’s probably the only adult here you can really trust.” Jarvis’s eyes shifted to Jayden. “He’s taken good care of your sick before, and he’s damned stubborn when it counts.”
Privately, Chris had hoped they might convince Kincaid. Now he and Jayden looked at each other, and then Jayden turned to Kincaid. “Would you come?” Jayden asked. “We’d like that.”
“I—” Kincaid’s throat clicked in a dry swallow, and then he nodded. “Got to take care of a couple things, but … okay.”
“Then you need to get moving,” Tom said. “Pack up the children, get your supplies together, and get out now. There’s barely enough time as it is.”
“And what do we do once you’re gone?” Jarvis asked.
“I’m not leaving,” Tom said. “Not yet.”
“What?” Chris heard the word drop out of his mouth. Beside him, Jayden said, “Tom, you can’t—”
“Yes, I can,” Tom said, still looking at Jarvis. “You have your kids, and Finn’s got mine. I can’t leave, not while there’s still a chance I can do something to help them.”
“Finn wouldn’t bring them,” Chris said.
“Not in the front lines. Chances are they’re in the rear, three, four miles back. There won’t be another or better opportunity to get them. Just have to keep Finn focused on Rule.”
“So how do we do that?” Jarvis asked. “Scream and run around like chickens?”
“No. Finn’s coming from the south. You have to mount a defense or put up a barricade … maybe an abatis …”
“What?”
“Trees. Cut them down so all the limbs face the enemy. Not only will your people have cover, but it will be much harder for Finn’s men to get through. They’ll have to go around. An obstacle like that will also keep him looking at Rule, not his rear.”
Jarvis glanced at the other men, who nodded.
“We can do that for you,” Jarvis said.
“Good. Then pick your men, Jarvis, the ones you can count on not to run at the first shot,” Tom said, “and buy me some time to get my kids.”
105
The secret about what they were doing and who was coming Rule’s way kept until about three a.m., just long enough for Chris and his people to retrieve the needed supplies and start packing up the kids, who were now gathered at the hospice. To Tom’s surprise, only fifty or so oldsters, most of them refugees in Rule to begin with, elected to take a share of what supplies remained and get out of town. Of the roughly one hundred and fifty elderly remaining, Jarvis had chosen ten to man an abatis from trees they’d felled and then hastily arranged to guard the southern road, the most direct approach from the mine, which cut through rolling, sparsely forested countryside.
“I got a couple other men working on trees to barricade the north road out of town once the children are gone. Everyone else wants to wait in the church,” Jarvis said to Tom, who’d visited the defunct school for a few, very special items before heading into the church’s bell tower. “At least until Finn’s in the village.”
“Wait? What for? You can’t be serious.” Tom was horrified. “Jarvis, you need to make people leave. They’ll be sitting ducks. They should get out of Rule. This isn’t Judgment Day. This isn’t Jonestown. For God’s sake, no one’s asking you to drink Kool-Aid. They’ll kill you.”
“But the Rev’s right: no place is truly safe.” Jarvis’s eyes were so far back in his skull, you needed a flashlight to see them. “It comforts us to gather; I can’t take that away. Besides, our grandchildren are finally coming home and …” His voice thickened. “They’re our responsibility, always were. If my grandson’s with Finn, I need to know he’s at peace.” No amount of argument changed the old man’s mind, or anyone else’s, and Tom finally gave up.
Later, crossing the square to the village hall, Tom spotted people trickling into the church. The stained-glass windows shimmered with color, something he’d have found calming on any other night. As he mounted the village hall steps, the faint strains of a hymn wound through the open church doors: I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless.
Bum leg nagging a touch from all the up-and-down—not to mention wrestling plastic primer buckets and bags of high-grade fertilizer into a back storage room just above the jail before humping back for cans of diesel and fuel oil and hoping he really did have the proportions down—he headed downstairs to check out the building’s air-conditioning ducts. He’d already found they were just large enough for him to worm through. (Thank God he wasn’t claustrophobic.) Now, to figure out how far he could stretch that det cord and if the math worked. All he needed to buy were fifteen, twenty lousy minutes on the outside.
And then the darkness will deepen, Tom thought. Whether we like it or not.
Two hours later, he heard the clump of boots.
“Tom?”
“Up here, Chris. To your left. Hold on.” He was flat on his back, on a high shelf, a partially dismantled alarm clock in his hands, the jail’s ceiling a foot from his face. Wedging a finger on the clock’s escape wheel, he carefully seated a sliver of whittled matchstick between one tooth and the lever’s entry pallet before slowly easing pressure on the wheel. The pallet bit into the wood but didn’t break it. The clock’s gears were still, the hands frozen. “So,” Tom said, gently laying the clock aside and picking up a pair of crimpers, “guys at the barricade set?”
“About as ready as they can be. Kids should be away in another hour.”
“Cutting it close. Going to be dawn soon.”
“Can’t be helped.” Chris was taking in the tanks of propane, cans of gasoline, premix. “I knew all this stuff was here, but what you’re planning? Gives me a whole different perspective.”
“Yup. Just got to hope it’s enough of a bang.” Coring a hole in the end of a grayish-white block, he slipped in a slim length of tarnished pipe—yes, close enough to pass for an M18, a lucky break—then used his teeth to tear strips of black electrical tape. “You got your guys?”
“What’s left. There weren’t many of us Spared to begin with, and even fewer now. Pru and Greg are the oldest. I’d send both, but I held Greg back to go with us. There are some guys, Aidan and Lucian and Sam … after I left, they went over to the dark side. You know, locking up Pru and Greg? I don’t trust Aidan and his guys but can’t leave them. Wouldn’t be right.”
“Your people, your call. But you really want them for the long haul? Eventually, you’ll have to choose.”
“I know.” Chris shrugged. “We’re all Spared. If we make it, that might be the time to give them a share and cut them loose. Anyway, Pru and three other guys’ll go after your kids when we say.”
“Excellent.” Tom gestured at a thermos on the floor. “Coffee, if you want. I’ve been mainlining for hours. I’m so jacked, I’m vibrating.”
“Thanks.” Uncapping the thermos, Chris poured out a cup, sipped, then blinked. “Wow, that’s strong. I think my teeth just curled.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. Found it in Weller’s stuff.” Tom returned his attention to his work. That sea of red hemorrhage in Chris’s eyes, so like Finn’s altered Changed, unsettled him. “You sound better.”
“Yeah. Kincaid said I was lucky my larynx didn’t fracture.” He heard Chris take another halting swallow. “How’s this going to work exactly?”
“Going to wire the block to an alarm clock the way I already have four others. Once I pull the matchstick, clock’s ticking. But this way, I can control exactly when we start instead of setting it now and then hoping we get lucky.”
“Won’t they hear it from the door? The ticking?” Chris gestured with a finger at a finished bomb attached to a bottom shelf. “That one’s in plain view.”
“Something interesting for Finn to look at. I’m betting they won’t have time to yank them all before one blows,” he said, amazed at how smoothly the lie flowed from his tongue.
“Wow, they really teach you guys a lot.” Chris ran a forefinger over the cup’s rim. “I saw this movie about this bomb disposal squad. You did stuff like that?”
“Yeah.” Tom used his knife to flay electrical cord. The more jury-rigged this looked, all the better to fool Finn. “I know the movie.”
“Did they get it right?”
“Some. Most of the time we sent in robots and built water charges or used a hunk of C4 to blow IEDs. The suit’s a last resort.” He paused. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I really don’t want to talk about it right now. I have to stay focused. Going back there in my head … it’s nowhere good.”
“Okay.” He felt Chris’s eyes. “What did Weller say?”
He knew what Chris meant. “Nothing very nice,” he said, ripping another long piece of electrical tape. Thank goodness, there was plenty. He’d worried he might not have enough for the real thing. “This isn’t how I imagined we would meet.”
“Oh?” Chris’s voice grew cautious. “How was that?”
“I was going to kill you.” He smoothed tape with the flat of his thumb. “For what Weller said you did to Alex. After the mine went, killing you was all I could think about. It was a … poison?” He felt his tongue test that, then shook his head. “That’s not right. It was the only thing I had to hang on to, that hate. Hate makes you feel more powerful, like you can keep yourself pumped, so you put one foot in front of the other, thinking that you’re going somewhere even if all you’re doing is looping the same movie over and over in your head.”
“Of how you were going to kill me.”
“Technicolor.” He nodded. “This afternoon … well, yesterday now … when Jayden called you by name, I thought, Jesus, it’s him; this is the guy I’ve come to kill.” Sighing, Tom folded his hands over his chest. When he was a kid, he used to lie like this in sweet-smelling grass and study clouds. “There was a second there when I thought, fine, let him die.”
There was a long pause. “Wh
at changed your mind?”
“Ellie.” He rolled his head to look down. “She was frantic. It finally dawned on me that Weller told so many lies, what he said about you might be just one more.”
A brief smile flickered over Chris’s lips. “Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”
“You’re welcome.” Despite the weeks nurturing the monstrous blight in his soul, Tom liked this boy. In another time and place, they might be good friends. He felt a brush of sadness that, now, the chances were nil. He had so many questions, and no time. He wanted to ask about Alex: each memory, how she looked, what she said. He even thought he could take it if Chris and Alex … but did that matter now? Nothing could change how he felt about Alex, nothing, and he still had the miracle of Ellie, too: so sweet, a final gift.
Hang on to that. Everything that happened next would hinge on Chris, a boy he’d dreamt about so often and barely knew. Hold on to Ellie and Alex until the very last second.
“Kids are about ready,” Chris said. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” Showing the other boy a tight smile, Tom tore off a few strips of electrical tape and began strapping the alarm clock to the gray-white block he’d fashioned. Not a bad looker, if he did say so himself. Ought to kick-start a couple hearts. “Few more seconds.”
“Okay.” Chris was quiet a moment. “You ever wonder who did it?”
“Did what? The EMPs?” He shook his head. “If this was a book or movie, there’d be some guy who’d explain it, give you all the answers. Tidy everything up, wrap it with a bow. We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter. This is like war, Chris. When the soldiers come marching in, all you care about is protecting your family. When you’re boots on the ground, all you think about is the mission and your buddies, your brothers. It’s not political. There’s no big picture. You don’t agonize over the morality. Everything narrows down to the essentials. Yeah, some days—the impossible days when no matter how careful you are, someone will die—you wonder what it’s all for. But in the end, there are your brothers, your people, and only that. You’re not looking to die, but you’ll sacrifice it all for them. I lost that for a while, too. When I went on leave, got stateside?” He paused, wondering if he really wanted to admit this, out loud, and then thought that, hell, in a few more hours, nothing he said now would matter. “I was on the fence, maybe a step away from never going back. Deserting. Had it all mapped out, too, how I would lay tracks in Michigan but then work my way over on the sly into Minnesota and then Canada. Big country, easy to get lost. But my best friend, Jim—we were on the same EOD team—I bet he knew something was up when I mentioned the Waucamaw. My family was in Maryland; there are plenty of nice places to camp there. So why was I going to the U.P.? I think that’s why Jim invited himself along: to remind me of my brothers, my people. But then … the world died and it just wasn’t an issue anymore.”
