by Noah Mann
Sheryl Quincy...
She had connected with Perkins. In more way than one, I realized, as he slid his hand around her and let it rest low on her hip. They were a couple, it appeared.
“You weren’t with Weatherly,” I said.
“At that fiasco of a battle on the river?” Quincy scoffed. “The man had gotten obsessed with you all. With conquering you. Bringing you into the Unified Government fold. He wasn’t thinking right.”
“Obsessed, you say.”
I spoke the words while looking directly at Perkins.
“Au contraire,” Perkins said. “There’s a difference between obsession and determination.”
“Right,” Quincy said, sidling up closer to Perkins. “We’re just determined to get rid of you and take what you have. Classic pillaging.”
She didn’t appear insane. Neither did Perkins. That wasn’t a prerequisite for murderous dictators, I knew.
“Why not just kill me, Perkins?”
“Fletch, I don’t care if any of you are dead or alive,” he said. “You can all scatter into the wilderness. But my people will know the life that you all have enjoyed. It’s our time. Yours is over.”
If it was more complicated than a bully wanting another’s lunch money because they had none themselves, I didn’t know. Perkins, for all his faults, was not letting the grandiosity of his self-awareness flavor or cloud the simplicity of his mission—to make what was ours, his.
“Again, Perkins, I’m going to caution you,” I said.
“Oh, please do, Fletch.”
“Yes,” Sheryl agreed. “Heap that caution on us.”
She’d been such a demur young woman when portraying a soldier in Schiavo’s garrison. It had been a supremely convincing performance. Only Martin’s ingenuity and tenacity had brought her treachery into the open.
“Sheryl,” I said. “You, better than most, would understand why four hundred people who’ve been marched across the country to the point of exhaustion will have no chance against a military force, and a population, who’ve been hardened by numerous battles. Bandon has fought for its survival before. It will do so again, if necessary.”
Both Perkins and Sheryl listened to my statement of certainty, smiling as I spoke. That reaction, particularly its uncharacteristic quietness, unnerved me.
“Do you want to be the first lady of Bandon, Sheryl?” Perkins asked her.
“More than anything!”
She grabbed his face and planted a long kiss upon his lips. When she’d finished, they both looked to me again. Though unsettled, I wasn’t going to let them get some mental upper hand in the exchange.
“If she’s your secret weapon, Perkins, you’ve miscalculated,” I said.
He feigned shock, looking between Sheryl and me, mouth gaping dramatically.
“Her?” he said, pointing, a sour expression plastered on his face. “You think she’s my secret weapon?”
Sheryl held it in as long as she could, then she doubled over, laughing, clutching her stomach.
“Oh, this is comedy gold!” Sheryl howled. “Oh, it hurts I’m laughing so hard!”
Perkins, though, didn’t break out in uproarious laughter. He simply grinned and fixed his gaze on me.
“I think it’s time we show our guest to his accommodations,” Perkins said.
Bryce and the two who’d joined him pulled me away from the flatbed as Sheryl continued to laugh, muttering something between the chortles about wanting to see my face when I found out.
When I found out what?
I was no longer just unnerved. Curiosity had crept into what I was feeling. And confusion. Just what sort of secret weapon could Perkins be speaking of? What did he have that could help him take over the whole of Bandon?
And why would the precise nature of it be such a surprise to me?
Forty Three
I was being taken to prison.
Or the version of it that Perkins and his followers had managed to construct in an old bank building, the cell block in the space where safe deposit boxes used to be secured. The vault door, which at one time had sealed the area against intrusion, had been cut away, maybe in some attempt at robbery as the blight raged. Now it lay on the floor, ten tons of useless steel on which a single guard had built a small fire to warm a cup of water.
“New prisoner?” the guard asked as Bryce and the others brought me in. “The one Earl was talking about?”
Bryce stopped, keeping hold of me, and nodded for the others to leave as he glared at the guard.
“Don’t ever call him that, Jake” Bryce warned. “Especially if he’s around to hear.”
The guard shrank slightly at the bigger man’s admonishment, nodding an apology.
“The one Mr. Perkins was talking about today?”
“Yeah,” Bryce confirmed. “Let’s get him squared away.”
“Does he know—”
“Shut up, Jake,” Bryce cut Jake off. “We just put him in the cell and let happen whatever happens.”
Jake nodded and joined Bryce as they led me toward the cells.
* * *
There was no light in the space, save a single candle on a metal stool that rested in the wide aisle between two welded steel cages, one of which had its door open. It reminded me of the cells we’d been placed in by Moto’s people in Cheyenne, though there was no stench of blood nor sounds of cannibalistic suffering here.
“Cover him,” Bryce said.
Jake took a position to the left and leveled a sawed-off coach gun at me, its side by side barrels looking large enough to crawl into.
“I’m going to cut this rope away,” Bryce said, leaning close to my left ear. “If you try anything, Jake’s gonna give you both barrels. You got that?”
“I got that,” I said.
I wasn’t going to try anything. Not yet. Perkins had some sort of plan for me, it seemed clear. One that had to have been hatched when he learned that we would be scouting in his area. That didn’t give him or his people much time to prepare a welcome or formulate what it was I’d be useful for, but something had presented itself. Something where my presence would bear some fruit.
My secret weapon...
There was no indication what that was, though it brought much joy to Perkins and Sheryl. Whatever it was, my being there had given some added importance to it—for reasons I could not imagine.
“Hold still,” Bryce said.
He pulled at the rope binding my hands and looped around my neck and slid a knife between it and my skin.
“We call that the angel’s wing,” Jake said. “Makes you look like an angel when you’re all trussed up.”
“Jake...”
The guard quieted and Bryce finished removing the ropes, then shoved me into the back of the cage. He swung the door shut and took a pair of locks and chains from a nearby hook, using both to secure the cell. A quick tug on the door convinced him that I wasn’t getting out. That no one was getting out.
“You both have a good night,” Bryce said.
Both?
He nodded toward the entrance, then followed Jake out, leaving me...alone?
I lowered myself to the floor and looked across the aisle to the other cage. It was chained the same as mine.
Someone was in there.
“Hello,” I said.
I slid across the concrete floor until I was close to the door, thick steel bars just two inches apart allowing a fair view toward the other cell.
“Hey,” I called again, keeping my voice low.
I received no response. Then, I listened, turning my face so that one ear was pointed toward the other cell.
Breathing...
I heard that. It was wet and thick, and shallow, the sound of someone who was sick. In the grip of pneumonia, maybe, I thought.
“Are you awake?” I asked. “My name is Eric Fletcher. Who are you?”
The breathing changed slightly, some voice coming into it now, a small flourish of...weeping?
�
��Who are you?” I asked.
The sudden bout of crying, as soft as the breathing, ended as quickly as it had started. I turned again, looking into the cell, straining to see through the darkness that was cut only by the flickering yellow candle flame. As I did, and as my eyes adjusted to the low light, I began to be able to make out a shape. A human form, lying on the floor at the back of the opposite cell.
“I can see you,” I said.
It might have been a woman, but I thought it was a man. No features were discernible, though the figure appeared to be facing the cell door at an angle. The shadowy form seemed gaunt to me. That state was, or had been, a common trait among those who’d survived the initial onslaught of the blight.
But we were years past that. The person, the man, in the cell across from me looked worse than the population of Yuma who’d hoofed it from that desert town to this spot in the Pacific Northwest. He sounded sick and looked starved.
Tortured...
That possibility came to me. It probably was a thought which should have come quicker. A man like Perkins was easily capable of inflicting terrible treatment on a prisoner.
But why? And who was it who the dictatorial leader had imprisoned?
“Talk to me,” I said. “Please.”
“Life...”
I heard the word, almost a whisper. But not a whisper. Just weak. A man’s voice. A...
No...
The figure in the cell began to move, crawling slowly across the floor toward the door until one hand gripped the lowest steel bar.
“Life’s tough...”
Dear God...
The hand gripped the bar and pulled, hauling the rest of the man’s body to the edge of the cage.
“Life’s tough, Fletch...”
The man put his face right up to the bars and looked at me. My friend looked at me.
“Be tougher,” I said.
My friend Neil, who could not be there, flashed a smile of sallow teeth and nodded. He’d died. Before my very eyes. And yet he was here, talking to me. How was that possible?
“Tougher,” Neil said.
I fell back against the side of my cage and stared across the narrow gap between my oldest, dearest friend and me, and it was I who began to weep this time.
Thank You
I hope you enjoyed The Signal.
You can learn about my books, release dates, and my occasional newsletter by visiting my website:
www.noahmann.com
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Book 1: Bugging Out
Book 2: Eagle One
Book 3: Wasteland
Book 4: The Pit
Book 5: Ranger
Book 6: Avenger
Book 7: Hellfire
Book 8: The Signal
About the Author
Noah Mann lives in the West and has been involved in personal survival and disaster preparedness for more than two decades. He has extensive training in firearms, as well as urban and wilderness Search & Rescue operations, including tracking and the application of technology in victim searches.
