Michael nodded. “Consider it my way of apologizing. I’ve never been good at—you know…”
“I know,” Ian said. “I’m the same way.”
There was a moment of awkward silence between them.
“We’re not riding double,” Ian said.
“Got it,” Michael said. He had already begun to walk.
Chapter 17
Louis Blake took a deep breath before entering the Overseer’s office on the topmost floor of the town hall.
He already knew how many men Meacham had with him: six. Blake was on his own. He figured that was better. If he came with Dominic, it would send the wrong message.
He opened without knocking. They were expecting him.
“Louis,” Meacham said, not getting up from the chair behind his desk. The air was sweet with the sour tang of whiskey. Good whiskey, but there was no bottle in sight.
Warren and Elkin stood against the wall, behind Meacham. Four more of Meacham’s men sat or stood in various spots around the room. They watched Blake with a dangerous sort of boredom in their eyes.
“John,” Blake said, stepping onto the exquisite rug in the center. So many nice things in here, obviously purchased from caravans. But with whose money?
John Meacham winced a little as he spoke. “A few of my boys tell me they see you going up to the slopes every morning at two-thirty. You got something going on up there?”
“Exercise,” Blake said, already feeling a rattling cough trying to claw its way out of his chest.
The men around him laughed.
“Get him,” Elkin said. “Guy can barely breathe, and he’s going to exercise.”
“Hey, have some respect,” Meacham said, and the men were instantly quiet. “You’re talking to a former major, so how about a little decency, huh?” He fixed his eyes on Blake. “We all know about your dark past, Major Blake. You trained boys not much older than my son to be silent killers. Ghosts in the night. As far as I knew, you put those days behind you.”
Blake nodded once, keeping his eyes aligned with Meacham’s. He had no reason to worry. The man couldn’t prove a thing.
With his own challenging look, Meacham sighed and pushed himself out of his chair. “We built this town together, you and I, with our bare hands. Our sweat and blood went into these streets, and we both know I mean that literally. I’m no telepath like you, but every time I look at these villagers, I can tell they feel like a family. They even look at you and your boys like family, despite your condition.” He’d made his way around the desk and was now standing in front of Blake, a few inches shorter but about fifty pounds heavier. In a physical match, without telepathy, Blake would have no chance against this man. “Well? Aren’t we family?”
“You could say that, John. Depends on your definition of family, though. You see, as far as I’m concerned”—Blake sidestepped away from Meacham and began to pace about the room, eyeing all of Meacham’s men as he spoke—“family is about supporting and trusting each other.” He turned to Meacham. “Do you trust me, John?”
Meacham’s face hardened into a smiling mask. “Of course I do, Louis. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Then trust me when I tell you that I’m not your enemy. Whatever I do, I do for the good of this community. I’m sure you can say the same.” He looked Meacham in the eye. “Am I right?”
Meacham tilted his head a little to the left. Blake noticed the man’s neck was red, and then a flash of insight tore through him—that he was about to be hit.
He stepped back, but Meacham was quicker. The punch to his jaw sent Blake staggering backward as if a rope around his neck had yanked him. It wasn’t a hard punch, not enough to break anything, though possibly a tooth had been knocked loose…
He managed to keep himself standing, though his knees were wobbly. Warren and Elkin leaped toward him, took hold of his shoulders, and pushed him down to his knees.
“How dare you question my devotion to this town,” Meacham said, rubbing his sore knuckles. “Every drop of my blood and sweat goes to keeping these people safe. You bring these ment killers into my town. You’re the one who infects us with these ideas of moving east and merging with the NDR, plans with no guarantee of success that could ruin everything we’ve built here. The people are sick of it. You’re just a washed-up soldier, Louis.”
“Get off of me,” Blake told Warren and Elkin. They only tightened their grips. “Get off,” he shouted.
An invisible explosion went off.
Warren and Elkin were thrust back by the force of it. A sound like the building’s walls and roof being blown out over the town, the feeling of intense heat searing their skin. Blake was all too familiar with the effect of this command, how it felt when it caught you off guard. He rose into a standing position.
Meacham was breathing heavily and staring at him, his face a shade paler than before. Warren bared his teeth at Blake and looked ready to spring forward and attack. But he didn’t. He knew better.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” Warren said. It was his favorite threat.
“No,” Meacham said, reaching out to stop him. “Not worth your effort.”
“Son of a bitch,” Warren said, turning toward the window to brood.
Louis Blake stood, watching John Meacham and his men. It had been a long time since he’d used a pusher. It felt good despite the slowly approaching migraine that would plague him all night. Already it was settling its cold weight on his skull.
“I apologize,” Meacham said, rubbing his knuckles. “I was way out of line, and I shouldn’t have hit you.”
Blake scoffed in amusement. “During the war, I once had the enemy tie me up to a wooden pole and whip me for three days straight. They threw their own shit at me so my wounds would get infected. And you know what I did when I finally escaped?”
The men in the room watched him, waiting to hear his next words. It was so quiet, he could hear the wind rustling the leaves outside. Blake reached into his coat and took out his cigarettes and lit one as he spoke. He savored it for a moment. The smoke kissed his lungs like an old lover, and he was glad he’d purchase a carton off the most recent caravan. Ashamed at his own impulsiveness, but glad all the same.
He continued, slowly.
“I came back to their base with a few of my telepathic operatives. We implanted a command into their brains to make them believe they’d been buried alive with nothing more than a walkie-talkie, which was actually a tape recorder. Over the next few days, they gave us a years’ worth of tactical information—hidden bases, planned strikes, everything we needed.
“When we went back to collect the survivors, we found every single man dead by his own hand. They had sliced their own necks open with rocks so they could die.”
Blake dropped the cigarette onto the carpet and made his way to the door, his footsteps loud against the floorboards. He turned and looked over at the men, smoke blooming from his mouth as he addressed them.
“You men aren’t my enemy. But you come after me or any of my boys, and we’ll just have to see how fast that changes. Enjoy the rest of your Scotch.”
He closed the door softly behind him.
Chapter 18
The candle threw soft light over the two naked figures lying on the bed.
Charlotte lay half on top of Ian Meacham, breathing softly and tracing a fingertip along his chest. Ian lay on his back, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling. They were both covered in sweat, and the windows had become foggy from their heated bodies.
“Did you like it?” she said.
Ian spoke without taking his eyes off the ceiling. “I don’t know. Did you like doing it with Michael?”
“We talked about this. Your father wanted me to get close to him.”
“Is that what ‘close’ means to you? Sleeping with him?”
“I didn’t sleep with him. I told you that five times.”
“You were going to. It’s the same thing.”
Charlotte got off the bed, breas
ts swishing from side to side. Ian didn’t like their heaviness. They reminded him of William, with his twisted foot, and how Charlotte had once nursed him in public like the other mothers in town, inspiring the strangest sexual fantasies he had ever experienced in his youth.
“Tell me about the sex,” Charlotte said. “How was I?”
“It was weird. I still knew it was you the whole time.”
“Of course you did, because I told you I’d be—”
“No.” He sat up and looked over her naked body. She didn’t cover herself. It was like she didn’t even notice she was naked, or she didn’t care. “It was something else. You were still aggressive. Like you always are.”
“Hmm.” Charlotte looked away, her lips gathering into a pensive pout. “Want to try it again?”
Ian lifted one eyebrow at her. “Now? I don’t even know why I’m helping you with this.”
“Because you can’t resist me.”
He shook his head.
“Who do you want me to be this time?” Charlotte said.
Ian’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. He had to admit, helping Charlotte practice for whatever this was—it had its benefits. And it was better than being cut off from sex completely like she had threatened.
“Be Rachel,” he said. “The redhead who works at the bakery. And I want you to knock on the door and come in like you’re bringing me a muffin, or something like that. Just to see how convincing you are.”
Charlotte made a tsk sound with her tongue. “You’re disgusting, you know that? She’s old enough to be your mother.”
She started toward the door, buttocks trembling with each step, a sight that got him back into the mood.
“Why are you practicing this, anyway?” he said.
Charlotte glanced at him over her shoulder and shook her hips suggestively. “Are you complaining?”
“No, I just—never mind.”
“That’s more like it.”
Ian lay back and watched. He admired Charlotte’s body as she made her way to the door. He admired it even more as it began to change shape and color before his eyes.
“Incredible,” he whispered.
Chapter 19
A brutal winter came to the mountains.
Icicles formed on the buildings of Gulch and the air became like sandpaper. People trudged along the streets, holding their jackets tight and puffing out steam that quickly dissipated. Only the children enjoyed the snow; they built snowmen and had snowball fights while their parents counted how much firewood they had for the day.
The Cold War Café became the warm, beating heart of Gulch, offering hot chocolate (for an extravagant price due to its limited supply) and cookies shaped like Christmas trees and Santa Claus. Michael finally learned what Christmas was, though he didn’t take part in the celebrations. They were too foreign to him, and the religious aspect unsettled him because the only gods he’d ever known were Harris Kole and his father, Harold Targin Kole.
The jukebox played old Christmas tunes by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and other long-dead, prewar singers. The atmosphere was jovial and engaging, and the booths were almost always filled. Arielle treated Michael with a detached sort of friendliness obviously stemming from the awkwardness caused by Charlotte’s nocturnal visit. He tried not to imagine what Arielle thought of him.
Blake and Dominic’s training sessions became even more rigorous as the boys were forced to go out into the snow, often without jackets.
“For the next few weeks,” Blake said one day, as they stood in the snowy, pre-morning darkness surrounded by forest and mountains, “we’ll be learning meditation techniques that will help you to suppress pain, adjust your body’s rate of metabolism, and enhance your senses by borrowing those of the people around you.”
The meditation sessions were long and rigorous and very cold. Part of learning combat telepathy was owning your own body and mind so completely that you could ignore distractions like pain and physical discomfort. But, more than once, threatened by hypothermia, the boys had to move indoors by the fire.
Their training with pistols was much more exciting. Reggie turned his clothing store into an obstacle course four days a week and set up spring-loaded cardboard cutouts of tattooed slavers and cannibals with sharpened teeth for the boys to shoot with BB pistols. He taught them different formations they could use to storm a raider camp or a slaver base. Reggie’s training sessions were exciting and went by quickly.
Unless Dominic was there.
“Now try shooting those targets,” he told them one day with a grin across his face.
The training became doubly difficult as Dominic used telepathy to cloud the boys’ senses and disorient them. They had to practice getting into formation without saying a word, which required communicating with each other via telepathy while blocking Dominic’s subtle attacks.
The hardest part was keeping Dominic from overhearing their mental speech.
This is ridiculous, Michael told Peter one day, without opening his mouth.
You’re telling me. Dominic’s a real—
A real what? Dominic broke in. Two extra laps up the mountainside tomorrow, Rivers. And you too, Cairne.
Shit, Peter sent. Sorry, Mike.
It’s okay. Dumbass.
Twice a week they played poker under the observatory’s dome.
It was part of their training, though they liked to think of it as something they did for fun. Dominic supervised them, so of course it wasn’t much fun at all. He mostly yelled at them. They played with painted wooden chips on a table that had been left on the second floor of the observatory. It was cold and drafty up there. The boys stuffed themselves into their warmest jackets and boots and set themselves to the task of cleaning each other out.
But the point of the game was not really to gamble money. It was to learn a special sort of telepathy that Blake called “empathic reception,” a passive ability that allowed one person to pick up on subtle shifts in another person’s emotional state. Sometimes they played with masks to hide their faces, making it all the more difficult to read each other.
On a cold Tuesday morning, Dominic hit them with a special surprise.
“You’ll have a guest instructor one day a week. I expect you boys will keep the cursing to a minimum while she’s around.”
She?
“We’re always gentlemen,” Eli said, lifting his arms in protest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, “what are you trying to say, Dom?”
Ignoring the others, Michael turned to face the doorway. He had a sense—maybe telepathic, maybe not—that he knew exactly who was about to walk in.
The door creaked open to reveal a bundled-up Arielle in a brown coat with pink mittens and boots. Her face was rosy from the cold air outside. It made her hair look as yellow as corn.
“Hi, boys,” she said with a wave.
The boys were too stunned to do anything but nod and murmur. Since when was Arielle one of their trainers?
She turned out to be just as scrutinizing and demanding as Blake and Dominic. Michael now understood how she’d been able to start and manage the town’s most popular business. Arielle was more than just headstrong and independent—she believed she was better than everyone else.
She’s a snob, Michael sent to Peter. He blocked it so Arielle wouldn’t hear him.
Focus on the game, Peter sent back.
Right. Wouldn’t want to insult your girlfriend.
She’s not my girlfriend anymore, not since she caught me making out with Samantha, that chick who lives on Radium Road. I didn’t tell you about that?
No. I didn’t know you two had broken up.
Well, don’t get any ideas. She won’t be anyone else’s girlfriend while I’m around.
Or because she’s too stuck up to lower herself to guys like us.
Speak for yourself.
“Imagine that you’re synchronizing your heartbeats,” Arielle explained t
o them. “Try and tune into the emotional states of your opponents. Feel what they’re feeling, and you’ll be able to sense when they have a good hand.”
Eli broke out into chuckles. “Michael keeps rubbing his boot against my leg. I think he misunderstood the instructions.”
“Shut up,” Michael said, his cheeks coloring. “I was not.”
Arielle shot them a serious look. “Both of you, focus.”
Usually, when Arielle was with the boys on poker night, Dominic left them alone. No one knew where he went; they just assumed he was taking a much-needed break. The training often seemed as stressful on him as it was on them. One night, he came in and watched them for an hour, said nothing, got up and left. Michael later found out the reason; Dominic had a habit of taking midnight jogs. Maybe he just couldn’t sleep?
After enough training sessions with Arielle, the boys began to notice changes in their environmental awareness. They learned to sense when an opponent was lying, when his heartbeat had quickened in a risky situation or had calmed under the assurance of a safe bet. The stakes rose each week.
And every session, during the games, Arielle would pace the room and tune in to their emotional wavelengths. Michael could feel her digging around inside of him. He watched her sometimes, and his tumultuous feelings often overrode his responses to the cards or chips in front of him. In truth, he cared very little how much money he won or lost. But it meant the world to him when she was impressed.
“Damn this game to hell,” Peter said one night, as Michael collected everyone’s chips. He’d been on a winning streak lately. “How is he doing that?”
Michael shrugged, avoiding Arielle’s eyes. He could sense her knowing look, and maybe a hint of a smile.
It was only a matter of time before their training was discovered.
Winter turned into a damp, cool spring. Blake and Dominic moved most of their sessions into the Hollows, where the abandoned buildings offered possibilities for urban tactical training.
“As I’ve said before,” Blake told them, “combat telepathy is mostly defensive, and involves heavy use of telepathic communication and coordination.”
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