‘You had your chance,’ Charlotte shot back. ‘Let Hank get back before we cut him loose, or is betrayal your new currency Cody?’
Cody flinched at the accusation and felt a sudden sense of shame as he glanced at his sleeping daughter. How would she see him in years to come? How would she feel about the things that he had done? Would she be proud? Would she speak his name with conviction or whisper it in shame? Cody felt a renewed vigour surge through his veins as he turned back to Charlotte.
‘Sawyer believes in Eden,’ Cody insisted, letting his voice rise up loud enough to be heard by other prisoners around them. ‘That’s what he wants. He’d dump these assholes in a flash if he thought he had a way out of here.’
Cody gestured to the henchmen at the nearby door. Brooding, shaved heads turned in his direction. Cody let his instincts do the talking, shielding his anxiety with a thin veneer of bravado.
‘Yeah, all of you,’ he said out loud as he looked at them. ‘We’re talking about you. You think that asshole Sawyer’s got your best interests at heart? Like hell. He’s out for himself just like all of you. You don’t follow him because you like him, it’s because he’s the only game in town, right?’
Heads rose up inside the other cages as Cody got to his feet. Some of the other prisoners hissed at Cody to shut up but he ignored them.
‘Be quiet, or I’ll twist your head off,’ rumbled one of the guards.
‘Sure,’ Cody sniped, ‘cause that’ll fix everything. We may be the ones in the cages but it’s all of you who are the real prisoners. We’re locked in but you’re free to choose your lives and yet you’re still acting like little sheep following an insane shepherd.’
The heavies lumbered toward him in a tight knot. Cigarette butts were flicked away, triggers fingered as the leader, a man with a pot belly and a thick Mexican moustache jabbed a thick finger at Cody’s chest through the bars.
‘Any more from you and you’ll be tomorrow’s lunch, you scrawny little shit.’
Cody stood his ground at the bars.
‘And if you slip up?’ he challenged. ‘You think you’ll be dinner? Got any family?’
‘None of your business.’
But the man’s hard expression faltered, a tremor of suppressed grief in his eyes.
‘If they turned up in one of these cages,’ Cody asked, ‘would you still kill and eat them?’
A huge fist snapped out and grabbed Cody’s shirt, yanking him against the cold bars as the thug’s face screwed up in hatred.
‘Fuck you.’
Cody breathed his reply. ‘Would you tell them that too?’
The thug glared at Cody but seemed suddenly unable to formulate a reply. Cody spoke more to his companions than to his assailant.
‘You’re doing this because you think it’s the only thing you’ve got left. It isn’t.’
‘What are you talking about?’ the thug growled, pulling even harder.
‘You think that it’s power and fear that control people,’ Cody gasped in reply, refusing to reveal any intimidation. ‘It isn’t. Every time that’s been used it causes people to rebel and they overthrow their leaders. Sawyer doesn’t own you - he’s too small and weak. He uses your own fears to control you just like he does to keep these people working. You’re all prisoners here, every one of you, just like us. Even Sawyer is, because if he shows a weakness then he’ll be overthrown so he acts just as crazy as he can to keep you all in line. You can’t escape because you think you’ll end up in cages just like us.’
The thug’s nose touched Cody’s, his eyes blazing with fury.
‘You callin’ me a coward?’
‘No, I’m calling you a human being. We all are and we’re all stuck in this goddamned hell hole together. We can either keep it like this, a pit of misery and despair, or we can toss Sawyer out and change it for the better.’
A voice came from behind the leader. ‘Like how? There ain’t nothing left for any of us.’
‘Not like this there isn’t,’ Cody replied. ‘Any of you enjoy living in here like medieval peasants, having to be cannibals when it suits Sawyer’s mood? Any of you think that you’re not better than that psychotic dwarf?’
The other prisoners, in his and other cages, were awake now and watching Cody as he faced down the guards. Hands were wrapped around bars, eyes peering out from the shadows, feet shuffling and the whisper of hundreds of breaths rising with each passing exchange.
‘I’d rather follow him than you,’ the thug muttered as he looked Cody up and down.
Cody managed a slight chuckle.
‘Great,’ he said, ‘a big guy like you is happy to take orders from a psychotic dentist.’
A silence descended over the watching prisoners as the guard scrutinised Cody. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I think Sawyer was a dentist,’ Cody replied. ‘You ever noticed how often he looks at your mouths when he talks to you? The habit of a lifetime while working on people’s teeth, he probably can’t help himself. And his teeth are perfect, professionally cared for. Sawyer pretends to be Mad Max on speed but he’s nothing more than a dentist and probably led a privileged life before all of this. Don’t believe me? Let me ask him when he turns up, see what he says?’
The thug examined Cody for a moment longer, then slowly relinquished his grip and took a step back from the cage. He turned his bulky head to look at his companions. They returned curious but non-committal gazes back at him.
‘He’s talking out of his ass,’ one of them said and looked at Cody. ‘There’s nothing else left out there but the Great Darkness.’
‘Isn’t there?’ Cody challenged. ‘We lost power, we lost technology and most people lost their minds, but look at the Amish. They’ll have survived the Great Darkness in their communities because they shun technology. Did they go insane or start eating each other because they didn’t have cell phones? No, they focused on growing crops and living in peace. Our world, what’s left of it, doesn’t have to be like this.’
Cody gestured to the misery surrounding them.
‘We heard your talk about the signals,’ the lead thug murmured as he looked at Cody. ‘What do you know about this Eden everybody’s talking about?’
‘What’s your name?’ Cody countered, eager to establish familiarity. It was harder to kill a man you had formed a bond with, however slim. ‘All of you, and none of those slang or gang names. What are your real names?’
‘Why?’ demanded the thug.
‘Because Sawyer has dehumanised you all,’ Cody replied. ‘No names, minimal contact with prisoners, all that prison camp stuff. You’re nothing but a number. Drive it into people and they forget that they’re human beings with a right to their own decisions. What’s your name?’
The thug seemed almost to have to think for a moment.
‘Cyrus,’ he said finally.
‘That’s a good name,’ Cody replied, ‘from the Persian.’ He looked at the men behind Cyrus. ‘And yours?’
Reluctantly, the three men behind revealed their names as Patrick, Gus and Scott, and as though a wall had been broken they spilled their histories for all to hear. All three had been members of a biker gang, but none were criminals. Patrick worked construction, Gus and Scott both in a hardware store down south Boston way. Cyrus built custom choppers for a local firm. All had children they hadn’t seen for months, all were divorced from equally absent wives.
‘You’re all people,’ Cody insisted. ‘You don’t need to follow Sawyer’s orders and you sure as hell don’t need to treat other people like this.’ He gestured to the other cages. ‘Ask yourselves: if you found your children being treated like this, what would you do?’
Their features darkened as one. Cyrus clenched his fists at his sides.
‘I’d kill each and every man I found.’
Cody nodded. ‘These cages are filled with somebody else’s sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. If their families find them, what do you think they’ll do to you?’
The four men exchanged glances but then Cyrus looked back at Cody.
‘What the hell difference does it make to you anyway? You just want out of here.’
‘Damned right I do,’ Cody agreed. ‘But I’m not sure where we’d go afterward. Alone, we’re all nothing. The whole world’s been hurled back into medieval times and only the smartest are going to survive. The more we work together the better we’ll do. That’s what America was, a democracy, people working together. This isn’t America, it’s a dictatorship. It’s China. It’s North Korea. You want a chance to find your own families, then we all need to get out of here because you’re not going to find them sitting on your ass or running around after Sawyer like whipped dogs.’
The guards glared at him but Cody turned and looked up at the crowded cages surrounding them, let his voice carry and echo around the gloomy hall. He saw Bethany, Jake, Sauri and Charlotte watching him as he spoke.
‘We are nothing as long as we sit here begging for mercy from psychopaths! Sawyer thinks that it is brutality and strength, the domination of man over other species that brought humankind to greatness. It was not. It was our ability to cooperate, to work together as groups and to protect both ourselves and our families that took us from living in caves to sending men to the Moon.’ Cody rapped the wall of his cage with one hand. ‘This is not who we are! This is what will bring our last remaining survivors down until not a single human being remains alive in this city!’
Cody turned back to Cyrus and the other guards.
‘Sawyer is not the saviour of mankind,’ he said finally. ‘He’s the last nail in all of our coffins. We bring him down, we save ourselves.’
Gus, Scott and Patrick both looked at Cyrus, who was scrutinising the surrounding cages as his mind struggled to overcome months of denial and conditioning by Sawyer. Cody saw something shift in Cyrus’s gaze and he nodded.
‘And if we do this?’ he asked. ‘What’s in it for us?’
Cody felt relief sweep like a wave of warmth across his shoulders as the knotted muscles in his belly relaxed.
‘Freedom to determine for ourselves, together, what happens tomorrow,’ he said, ‘because we can survive in this world without putting innocent people in cages. And you’ll have the gratitude of every single person watching you right now in this hall. They’ll follow you if you set them free. I would.’
Cyrus stared at Cody for a long moment longer and then his big hand shifted to the keys dangling from his belt.
‘Stand back from the door,’ he rumbled.
Cody stood back as Cyrus reached out for the door, and then the crash of a gunshot shattered the darkness and Cyrus’s big head flicked to one side as hot blood splattered Cody’s face.
***
34
Sawyer stood at the entrance to the hall, his big silver pistol smouldering as he lowered it.
A half dozen shaven-headed freaks brandishing assault rifles flanked him and moved out through the amphitheatre, their weapons pointed at Gus, Patrick and Scott. Cyrus lay on his back near the cage door, his eyes staring lifelessly up at the ceiling.
‘Drop your weapons, boys!’ Sawyer flashed his brilliant smile up at them. ‘Daddy’s back!’
The guards kept their weapons trained on Sawyer, but Cody saw their faces pinched with anxiety. Outnumbered and cornered, they could not possibly win.
‘Now don’t be like that boys,’ Sawyer said as he regarded the three nervous guards aiming their weapons at him. ‘You won’t feel so offended when you hear what I have to say about our friend Cody Ryan.’
Cody felt a twinge of anxiety at Sawyer’s jovial demeanour. The three guards all hesitated but kept their weapons up, and Sawyer shrugged.
‘All righty then,’ he chirped. ‘You keep your weapons and I’ll let the evidence do the talking shall I?’
They made their way toward the cages and stopped as Cody, Jake, Sauri, Charlotte and Bethany stared blankly out through the bars at them.
‘A rousing speech,’ Sawyer said to Cody as he glanced around at the watching prisoners. ‘I nearly joined you myself!’
Sawyer gestured to the cage gate and one of his thugs unlocked it. The door swung open with a high-pitched squeal that echoed through the room. Sawyer gestured to Cody.
‘Out here, now.’
Cody glanced across at Maria in the next cage. She was awake and watching in silence as Cody stepped over Cyrus’s corpse and out into the midst of Sawyer’s most trusted enforcers. The cage door was slammed behind him and locked. The thug then turned and walked across to the next cage, unlocked it and stepped inside.
Cody’s guts turned to slime within him as he saw the thug make for Maria.
‘No!’
Sauri got to his feet and stood protectively over the little girl and Lena, then swung a hard right at the man’s big head. The thug blocked it with a huge forearm and swung his free fist into Sauri’s temple. The Inuit crashed into the wall of the cage as the other prisoners shrank away.
Lena leapt to her feet in the cage and launched herself at the thug. Her nails gouged into his face and he roared as he threw her off and into the cage bars with a clang of bone against metal. Cody saw the thick-set man’s shoulders swing as he batted the other prisoners aside with callous swipes of his forearm. They stumbled backwards and away from him as Lena lurched unsteadily forward again and swung a tiny fist at the man’s face.
The thug did not even attempt to block the blow as it cracked across his cheek, his big square head barely registering the impact as he stepped in and swung a stubby baton across Lena’s knee. She screamed and collapsed sideways as the thug picked Maria up under one thick arm, carried her out of the cage and dumped her outside. She sat on the cold floor and turned her dark eyes toward Cody as she raised her arms toward him.
Cody reacted without conscious thought and rushed forward, swept Maria up into his arms as though she were the only thing on Earth that could keep him alive. He felt her arms wrap tightly around his neck and squeeze him as his heart melted inside his chest and he dropped to his knees, hot tears trickling down his cheeks against her hair.
Maria released her grip on him and stared into his eyes, a smile melting through her grimy features. Cody felt as though he could kneel there enveloped in joy for the rest of his life.
‘Are you okay, daddy?’ she asked him.
Cody nodded, almost laughed as he squeezed her tightly against him again. Sawyer’s brittle voice shattered the warmth of the moment like a bullet through glass.
‘Cody Ryan.’
Cody, still holding his daughter, climbed to his feet and turned to face Sawyer. The insane militiaman spoke softly but his voice carried to the farthest reaches of the hall.
‘I knew that I recognised your name,’ he said. ‘It took me a while, sure enough, but then it all came back to me.’
Sawyer was holding his sabre and examined the bright edge of the polished blade as he spoke.
‘Why don’t you show him, Jimmy?’
One of the thugs stepped forward, and in his hand he held what looked like a page pulled from one of Boston’s broadsheets. Aged and torn, Cody watched as the man unfolded it and held it before him. There, on what had once been the front page of the Boston Globe, was a picture of his brother’s face and a broad headline.
REMAINS OF WAR VETERAN FOUND NEAR RESERVOIR
BOSTONIAN SOUGHT FOR FIRST DEGREE MURDER
Cody swallowed as he briefly scanned the article beneath, words flashing through his mind: climatologist, break and enter, distraught wife confesses all to police and triggers a manhunt, DNA evidence in lonely woods.
Cody looked at the top corner of the page and saw that it was dated the day after the storm. The paper had reached circulation, but by then the population of the entire planet had bigger problems on its mind. Within days most newspapers would have been burned for fuel amid the freezing temperatures, erasing all evidence of the crime. All but scraps, one of which Sawyer had evidently found.
<
br /> Sawyer stepped forward and tapped the wicked tip of the sabre at the article.
‘Who’s been a naughty boy then?’ he asked.
Cody remained silent as Sawyer turned away and spoke loudly, hundreds of prisoners watching him from the surrounding cages.
‘What a wonderful story Doctor Ryan has woven! The great, the good, the all-knowing and reasonable Doctor Ryan, wanted for the cold-blooded murder of a vagrant. Bludgeoned him to death, so he did!’ Sawyer cast a glance at Cody, a wicked twinkle in his eye. ‘And there was I, believing him to be such a gentle soul. There were you all, believing him to be a man of virtue and humanity long lost to the rest of us, your new saviour.’ Sawyer’s gaze turned cruel. ‘But no. Instead, we find him to be as murderous as the very worst of us, because the victim was none other than his own brother!’
Jake, Charlotte, Sauri and Bethany all stared at Cody, eyes wide with disbelief.
‘The Internet, back at Alert,’ Bethany whispered. ‘You were always watching the news, waiting to hear what had happened?’
Cody held Maria as he replied, her face buried in his shoulder.
‘We were being robbed. He was armed and a drug addict.’
Gus, Patrick and Scott all lowered their weapons. Cody knew without a doubt that Sawyer was giving them the excuse they needed to extricate themselves from their mutiny without fear of punishment. They had made a mistake, been misled. Without Cyrus to lead them, their courage had deserted them.
Cody saw Jake staring at him from within the cage, a strange kind of betrayal shadowing his gaze as he spoke.
‘The body,’ he whispered.
‘What body?’ Bethany gasped as she looked at the old man.
Cody felt his guts plunge and he held Maria tightly as Jake spoke.
‘I found a head and hands buried in the snow behind the observatory,’ he said, ‘looked like it had been dead a while. The polar bear must have smelled the remains and dug them up. Then Bobby must have attracted its attention, and….’
Cody squeezed his eyes shut as pain seared them, kept his face buried beside his daughter’s as he slowly rocked her from side to side.
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