He gave his consent by sitting down. The front doors opened and closed and the engine roared to life. He leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes behind his hood.
It seemed as if only a few minutes had gone by when they slowed and rocks crunched under the van’s wheels as the driver pulled it to the side of the road. Maybe they took fewer precautions on the return trip, secure in the knowledge that Coy didn't have the foggiest notion of where he'd been. Or perhaps the minutes passed faster because he wasn't terrified this time.
Rough hands grasped him by the arms and pulled him out. A finger poked him on the shoulder. "Are you okay in there?"
He nodded that he was okay.
"After we drive off, count to sixty. Once you hit sixty, take off your hood. You're standing on Francis Street, with a Burger King on your left and an empty lot on your right. Walk about a mile down Francis. You go down a long hill, across a set of railroad tracks, back up a steep hill, and you'll see your guard towers on your right."
As he spoke, Coy concentrated hard and listened for the sounds of the dead. "What about creepers?"
"Yeah, the biters. Don't get too close to any of those," he said to a round of laughter from his companions.
"Come on, man. They stripped me of my weapons. I have nothing to fight with. The point of this whole thing was for me to deliver a message. I can’t do that if I get swarmed before I get home."
His transporter snorted, then let out a resigned sigh. "Charlie."
A new voice spoke. "Yeah, boss."
"Take this, walk twenty-five feet past the van, and leave it in the road."
"Sure thing." Heavy footsteps clomped on the pavement.
A brief silence followed, presumably as Charlie walked ahead to leave the weapon.
The boss spoke to him one last time. "To recap- count to sixty. Take off your hood and you'll see a knife twenty feet ahead, laying in the middle of the road. Follow this road until you see your guard towers." He leaned close- Coy could smell cheap cologne over the odors of sweat and cigarette smoke. “We'll have eyes on you. You won't know if we leave a guy behind the Burger King or if we drive 100 yards, stop, and watch you for awhile. You don't want to take that hood off before you get to a sixty count. I'll drive back and put a bullet in you, message or no message. And this will all have been wasted effort." He tapped Coy on the head twice and his odor faded as he pulled away.
The doors opened and slammed shut, and the engine started up. The driver swung a U-turn in front of him. The engine growled as he accelerated, then it smoothed out and faded into the distance.
He was on number twenty-eight when the sound of the engine faded. Despite his best effort, his mind played tricks on him. He heard the shuffle of dead feet dragging across the pavement and the moans and snarls of a hungry creeper. He breathed in their foul odor, the stink of decay mixed with the coppery scent of blood. At forty-two his panicked fingers grasped at the rawhide around his hood, trying to find purchase. After a brief struggle he found the ends of the rope, tore it away from his neck, yanked off the hood and flung it away. His heart pounded in his chest as he spun in a quick circle, desperate to find the source of danger.
Nothing was there. He turned again, slower this time, to be sure. He ran the back of his hand across his brow and it came away sweaty, despite the February cold. His breath came in short, harsh gasps.
He forced himself to calm down and took control of his breathing. When it was normal, he walked to where the knife lay in the road and examined it. It was a steak knife, a cheap piece of metal with a wooden handle and a serrated edge. He picked it up. It was light and flimsy, with a dull point. He ran his hands along his waist, then remembered his sheath was back at the church.
He shrugged. Holding it loosely in his right hand, he began an easy jog toward home.
Seventy-Seven
* * *
Becky stood up straight and leaned her weight against the garden hoe she held in her right hand. Breathing hard, she peeled off a glove and wiped away the sweat on her neck and forehead, leaving swaths of dirt behind. She looked at the ground around her and tittered despite her foul mood.
She stood in six inches of tilled dirt, wearing a pair of muck boots, old jeans, and a gardening smock over one of Will's T-shirts. She was in the middle of the third of four identical garden plots. Various scavenging runs over the winter had landed them three tillers. A crew who oversaw such things got them in running condition and filled them with Cyrus's fuel. The engines ran loud and choppy and belched black smoke out the exhaust as if the choke needed adjusted, but they ran. They clanged and roared for six hours and attracted twelve creepers that wandered within hearing distance. A team tasked with protecting the equipment operators from the dead put each of them down with quiet efficiency.
Two weeks earlier, Will and Becky drove the Ranger up top and marked off the boundaries for the plots in the grassy areas on the sides of the entrance road. Last week, Jiri sent volunteers and the tillers up to turn over the soil in the sixty by one hundred and twenty-foot plots.
Twenty minutes ago, Becky came up to remove any clumps of grass or stubborn weeds that refused to yield to the tiller. Instead, she caught herself stabbing at the soil with a mindless savagery. She spent the last two days in a miserable funk caused by competing emotions- black, impotent rage at her husband and desperate worry for her son.
On a basic level, she understood everything Will said about why he couldn't send people to look for their boy. She knew they wouldn't have the first idea where to search. She granted it was a horrible precedent to start, and the next time somebody didn't return on time from a scavenging trip it would be impossible to justify not sending a team out to search for them.
But the mother in her didn't give a shit about any of that noise. Her only child was missing and the only acceptable response was moving heaven and earth if that's what it took to get him back.
Construction teams had repaired the guard tower that the marauders blew up, and once again they had a tower on each side of the entrance. The guards in the southernmost tower yelled something at her but they were too far away for her to make out their words. She shrugged to herself. If the dead threatened, let the team handle them- that was their job. And anything else they had to say she didn't care to hear right now.
She returned to working the dirt in her plot, moving it around with the hoe and looking for weeds. The guards continued to yell, and she saw with annoyance that one of them had climbed down from his post and was walking toward her. He said something about the hill and pointed to the road. She followed his finger and looked where it crested at the top of a long, steep hill. A man walked over the crest and an electric jolt of recognition jolted her. She screamed.
"Coy!" She cried his name and ran in his direction. He left the road and veered through the grass, sprinting to meet her.
Seventy-Eight
* * *
Will sat at the head of the long conference table and leaned back in a thick, comfortable, executive chair. The community’s decision makers sat around the table with him, their faces gray and worried-looking.
Coy stood at the opposite end. He had just finished relaying the details of his capture and Kayla's ultimatum.
"Stupid." Will's voice dripped with anger and disgust. "You can fit fifty thousand people down here, easy. And this woman's willing to commit mass murder to make room for twelve hundred?" He directed the question at no one in particular but gave Coy a nod when he cleared his throat to speak.
"You need to understand their leader's psychology. It's not a matter of making room, she doesn't want anyone around who isn’t loyal to her. She knows there's no way we would ever give her our loyalty, so we have to go. Also, she’s already had hundreds of people killed. The loss of life won’t upset her for one second." He stood at attention with his hands clasped behind his back.
Will pointed at a spare chair leaning against the conference room wall. "Have a seat, son. I'm sure we have more questions. Y
ou might as well relax."
Coy moved the chair to an empty spot at the table and took a seat.
Jiri leaned forward. "Just how dumb is this woman? She went through all that effort to make sure Coy didn't know where they took him or how to get back there." He studied the teen. "But you saw the church, what it looks like and what it's surrounded by. You can describe the place."
"I can draw you a near-perfect picture of it and make a map of the surrounding land."
The ex-professor held his hands out in front of him in disbelief. "Then I don't get it. What does she think, everybody down here came from out of town?" He looked across the table at The Judge. "Are you familiar with the big churches in town?"
"Yes, but more than that, I can tell you he was at one of only three possible places based on what he has told us to this point."
"That's my point." Jiri looked down the table at the Doc, sitting three seats away. "And what about you? Would you recognize the church he's discussing if he drew you a good picture?"
Coy interrupted before the Doc answered. "I'm sorry, but there's a more pressing point. She's got a… spy, or a mole here at the quarry. Somebody feeding her information."
They met that statement with a stunned silence. Will looked at each face around the table, then focused his attention on Coy. "Are you sure of that, Son?"
"She admitted it. She talked about it, a lot. That’s why I wanted the Judge here, unless you guys don’t want to discuss this in front of him.”
"I’d say we can trust everybody around this table."
The Judge wore a look of righteous indignation. "I would certainly hope so."
"But, and Jody, I say this with all due respect; that doesn't change the fact that the leaker has got to be someone on your side."
"If there is a leak," the Judge began in a prim voice. “I don’t-”
Coy cut him off. "There is a leak. She said my Dad's name, she said my Mom's name, she talked about you, Your Honor. She mentioned Danny and Jiri. She knows we're producing fuel." Coy emphasized his next sentence. "What’s really interesting is that she knows we are poorly armed."
Will raised his eyebrows and Terrence broke out in an evil-looking grin.
Jiri leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. "That’s an interesting piece of information. Nice get, Coy."
"Take it easy," Danny said. "You don't want to praise the boy too much. He'll puff up like a horny toad and be miserable to live with."
Will took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. He fixed his gaze on The Judge. "Jody, I don’t want to offend you. But none of my people, or Terrence, or the Doc have been here long enough to establish a connection with this lady. My people are fanatically loyal to me, and none of them would try to establish new leadership here. But the simplest way to put it is this- none of us are from anywhere near here. There's no way anybody in my crew has ever met this lady before.”
The Judge had removed his glasses and polished and re-polished them while Will spoke. He placed them back on his head and clasped his hands in front of him. "Those are valid points. I’ll concede it does appear someone is sending information, and logic says the person is one of mine."
That was easier than I imagined, thought Will. "Terrence, you're the peace officer here. What do we do?"
Terrence rubbed his bald head in contemplation, then looked up. "You smoke him out, give him a piece of news he has to pass on in a hurry. He’s not calling her up on his cell phone, not anymore. He’s probably making a drop somewhere, leaving a note behind. We announce a huge piece of news, news so big the spy has to inform this broad the same day he hears it. When he leaves to make the drop, we nab him. We’ll need eyes out there, so when he leaves we’re aware of it. But you can’t do it in a way that alarms him or tells him you're on to him. There's a solution, I'll just need to ponder on it."
Tara, who almost never spoke during these meetings, surprised everyone when she asked a question. "Are you using the generic he, or are you assuming the spy is a man?"
Terrence took a moment before he answered. "I guess I used the generic he. Do you suspect it could be a woman?"
"It's possible. She could have sent a friend in here. Girls trust girls."
Coy shook his head. "Not this one. Tara, you would despise Kayla on sight. Any normal woman would. No, you're looking for a man, probably one she slept with. Sex is a weapon for her and a way to get what she wants."
Danny brightened. "How hot is this woman? Is she somebody I need to go see for myself?"
"Bubba, she'd eat you alive. She is a black widow."
"But still. I wouldn't mind going out that way, depending on the woman in question."
"Knock it off," Will barked. "Let's go over what we know. In two weeks, a twelve hundred person army will march down the hill to smite us all if we don't give up the quarry. But the army's leader is dumb and never considered people here would recognize a description of her church and lead us there."
Coy caught his dad's eye. "She's not dumb. She's a murderous psychopath, but she's not dumb. If she let me see the church, it was for a reason. Maybe to draw us out, get us to attack before the two weeks are up. Fight on her ground instead of ours."
The Judge squirmed in his seat. "I'm sorry, but is that what we're talking about? Marching out and attacking these people? Because that may not be the best idea."
Will slapped the tabletop. "Yeah, but you don’t have a say in these matters anymore, Jody. Besides, that's not on the agenda now, because we are armed to the teeth and she thinks we don't have any weapons. We have to find the spy before he has a chance to tell her we’re armed. He writes a message that causes her to let her guard down even more and delivers it like normal."
The Judge still looked confused. "Then what do we do?"
"When they get here, we hit them with the fury and force of God's own thunder."
Seventy-Nine
* * *
Rohon Graves concentrated on his breathing as his eyes took in the surrounding room. He had been in a state of panic since two figures stepped out from behind a house as he walked to town an hour ago.
His heart jumped into his throat when they materialized from around the corner. He thought they were a pair of creepers, but his fear turned to terror when the moonlight revealed Willa and one of the new guys- and Willa held an automatic weapon on him.
They ordered him to the ground, disarmed him, and tied his hands behind his back with a zip-tie. They wouldn't answer any of his fearful questions, only give commands. Roll over, move here, spread your legs, shut up. He tried appealing to his and Willa’s friendship. Well, maybe not friendship but they had shared plenty of smoke breaks and he'd hit on her a time or two. All that got him was a whack on the back of the head the third time he said, "Willa, you know me! There's no reason for this!"
His panicked mind kept screaming the same thought on a loop. "Caught! You're caught! It’s over. Caught!”
But a small part deep inside him remained calm and kept track events. They hadn’t found his note and the odds they would find it were slim to none, for one. Hiding in in the heel of his boot had been an ingenious idea, one Kayla shared with him. He laid there, bathed in post-coital bliss when she showed him that trick and others before she sent him over to spy for her six months ago.
“What if they torture me?” he’d asked.
She blessed him with a devilish smile. “They won’t torture you. They’re the good guys.”
Now, sitting buck naked, his wrists and ankles bound to a chair, he wasn’t so sure.
They had him in a room up near the new people’s tunnel, far from his friends and familiar faces. A whole cast of characters came and went. Their main asshole, Will, and his dicksucker second-in-command walked in, stared a minute, and left. Some bitch-ass dyke (she was a hottie, though) held a gun on him while Willa ordered him to strip. The dyke had the nerve to snicker when he stepped out of his underdrawers. Leave it to a lesbo to not understand what stress and fear doe
s to a man’s junk, he thought.
Doc Joseph walked in with his little black bag in hand and Rohon's hopes soared. A doctor wouldn’t let anything too bad happen to him, would he? Didn’t they have to take an oath or something? And besides, he had a relationship with the Doc. The man had treated him twice, once when a mosquito bite got infected, turned red and tender, and filled with pus, and the other was when he caught a case of the clap. They got along like a couple of bro's- the Doc had even laughed at some of his jokes.
The Doc placed his cold stethoscope on his bare skin and listened to his heart and lungs and fastened a blood pressure cuff to his arm. Rohon peppered him with questions and entreaties the entire time; the Doc's only reply was to hush him while he used his stethoscope.
Rohon grew alarmed when Doc Joseph put his equipment back into the medical bag. He gawked at the older man. "You have to help me, Doc. Tell them I didn't do whatever they're holding me for. You gotta tell them I'm an okay guy, Doc. I don't understand why I'm here!"
Doctor Joseph gave him a withering stare. "My advice is that you answer their questions. My job is to keep you alive until you do so, and I have real patients I need to care for. The longer you lie, the more of my time you waste."
The Doc turned and walked away; Rohon fought his rising panic. He examined the room they held him in to give his mind something to do. It used to be a warehouse, but he couldn't place which the tunnel it was in. The floor was drab concrete and the cinder-block walls were at least twenty-five feet high. Two battery-powered lights sat on the floor on each side of him. His chair sat near the back. There was a table to his right and his peripheral vision could just make out both ends of the kind of curtain they used to use in Emergency rooms behind him.
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