Lou pointed to his cheeks. They were flushed cherry pink, another telltale sign left by the poison. The foam and blood at his lips also seemed to indicate the seizure had forced his teeth to clench down on his tongue. She wasn’t going to go fishing around in there just now, but Dana would be willing to bet he’d nearly bitten it off.
“Poor young fella,” Lou said, reaching over and closing his eyes. “What was the point of killing him?”
Dana’s mind was reeling. “To keep him quiet. Maybe to send us a warning at the same time.”
That last thought seemed to give Lou pause.
“He’s telling us to back off.”
“Yeah, that may be it. Larry came into the trailer the other day and was asking a bunch of weird questions about whether or not he could trust me.”
“And what’d you tell him?”
“That he could, of course. He didn’t come right out and call me a liar, but I couldn’t help but feel like he knew we’d gone against him somehow.”
“So, you think he came and poisoned the boy?”
Dana was looking at Romeo’s hand, clutching that spoon. “Larry doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, but it’s clear enough whoever was behind this was the same person who bugged the police trailer.”
“They wanted us to find Romeo,” Lou surmised. “Wanted us to be know they’d caught wind of what we were up to.”
“I think so. Make us feel like our every move was being watched.”
Lou looked over his shoulder, perhaps wondering the same thing Dana was at this very moment. Whether this trailer also had a secret tape recorder listening in on their conversation.
“There’s one other thing to keep in mind,” he said in a low voice. “This sick sonbitch may be trying to send us scurrying off in the wrong direction. Get us chasing Larry’s tail so the real killer can have free rein to operate.”
Lou did have a point. Larry had every reason in the world to be behind this, but she had to keep a clear head and not allow her mind to seize on the first possible suspect. There were nearly 200 people in New Jamestown, and theoretically, it could be any one of them. And the very thought gave Dana an idea.
“We gotta put the tape recorder back where it was. Pretend like we never found it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. Then you and I have a conversation where we say something crazy, the whole time making sure the recorder’s picking it up.”
“So, that whoever repeats it has to be the one who put the recorder there in the first place.”
“Exactly.”
“But what should we say?” Lou asked.
“That there’s a serial killer in New Jamestown and that he murdered All Father.”
“Whoa, murdered All Father?”
“Maybe not as far out as you’d think. But it isn’t a theory I’ve ever heard anyone mention since we’ve been here.”
“So, if rumors of a serial killer start floating around,” Lou says. “All we gotta do is trace them back to the source, and we find our killer.”
“Or killers.”
“And what do we do with him?” Lou asked, motioning toward Romeo’s body.
Dana sighed. “We’re definitely up a tree if anyone else sees him. I mean, it’d be proof positive we defied Larry. I also figure whoever’s responsible won’t rat us out or they’d risk exposing themselves as the killer. One of us will have to load him into a car and bury him out there somewhere.” She was pointing beyond the colony’s walls as though it were on the other side of the planet.
They got busy wrapping Romeo in canvas. Then they dragged him to the front of the trailer, placing his remains behind a jumble of plastic chairs. It was a horrible thing to have to do, and Dana hated every minute of it. Fact, the act almost made her feel guilty, as though she was Romeo’s killer, trying to hide the evidence of her crime. Here his body would stay until they could find a safe time to move him. The truth was, someone in New Jamestown was murdering people, and no one besides her and Lou seemed to know what was going on.
Once they felt Romeo’s body was safely hidden, she and Lou returned to the police trailer and replaced the tape recorder up in the air conditioning unit, just as they had found it. But not before Dana scratched the edge of the tape with her pocket knife. After that they let it run in silence for a while and then slammed the trailer door as though they’d just returned from finding Romeo. It was all rather elaborate and to Dana’s ear a little over the top, but a certain amount of continuity would be required if her plan had any chance of working. So, too, would their acting chops, and as she and Lou began that fake conversation in which they theorized that New Jamestown was beset by a serial killer, all she could do was hope it sounded natural enough.
The charade was just about over when the door to the trailer swung open and Tanner appeared, out of breath, but clearly with something to say.
“What’s wrong now?” Dana asked.
“You better come. They just caught the food thief.”
The news was surprising enough since whoever stole that food might also have been behind the murders. But it was something about the way Tanner refused to look her directly in the eye that worried her most of all.
Larry
Attacking the Wipers at the Grand America would, in a single stroke, solve three of Larry’s biggest problems. First, it would help to weaken and perhaps remove the threat of hostile natives that were constantly scheming for a chance to destroy them. But more than that, it would end the food crisis and the major source of his political instability. A move that would undoubtedly castrate Timothy’s plans of launching a coup d’état. Larry counted himself fortunate that All Father hadn’t done the same to him. Had the old man allowed weapons in what was then Rainbowland and begun to erect proper defenses in earnest, Larry wouldn’t have had a solid reason to oppose him. But Timothy’s attempt to plunge the colony into further chaos by destroying the food supply and then organizing segments of the population against him had taught Larry an important lesson. Having faith in the loyalty of others is the quickest way of getting a knife stuck in your back. It didn’t matter that the proof of Timothy’s theft hadn’t been found yet. In Larry’s heart, he knew the sneaky bastard had done it, and soon enough the opportunity to strike back would present itself. The first step was knocking out the Wipers, and it was with that in mind that Larry left his office and headed down to the gymnasium where Donavan was waiting for him.
Larry arrived moments later and smiled when he saw the tables laid out with the weaponry they would use in the attack. Kel-Tec KSGs, a dozen AKs, and plenty of AR-15s.
One of the early scavenging parties had even found an old M60 and a box of belt-fed ammo to go with it. This they would mount on the lead vehicle. ‘Course, there wasn’t time or the resources to “up armor” any of the cars and trucks, so the convoy would need to rely on lightning speed.
Word about Larry’s plans had spread through the colony like wildfire as soon as the meeting in the police trailer had concluded. As Larry had expected, the reaction had been mixed to say the least, but many here had already suffered at the hands of the Wipers in one way or another. Many even relished the chance to strike back. Without a doubt, gnawing hunger helped them arrive at that decision much more quickly. But even as nothing more than a distraction, the attack was sure to pay dividends. Dead New Jamestonians meant even less mouths to feed.
As part of the preparations, Larry recalled the hunting parties and put them back on finishing the remaining few feet of the palisade. A job he expected them to complete before sundown. After that, only the guard towers along the rear wall and the mantraps beyond it would be left. A thought that made Larry smile. If everything went to plan, they wouldn’t need to hunt for deer meat again until at least the spring. Ever since his secret stash of premium food had been looted, like the rest of these poor slobs, Larry had been forced to eat whatever he could find. Sometimes, that meant eating dog. But soon, that would all be behind him.
> Donavan had just finished ordering a group of cult members to see that the cars were gassed up and running smoothly when Larry called him over.
“I’ve been thinking about our strategy going in,” Larry began, pulling a scrap of paper from his back pocket and flattening it out against one of the tables. “We’ll approach from Main and State streets in two separate columns. That way, we won’t be flanked by groups of Wipers that may be outside. At the first hint of our approach, I expect they’ll start streaming out the front of that hotel like a swarm of ants, and that’s where we’ll cut them down.”
Donavan approved, and Larry knew he would. That book Timothy had given Larry on the tactics of Julius Caesar had become something of a bible for him. It informed the way he ruled with an iron fist, the sorts of defenses and antipersonnel traps he would use to keep his enemies from overrunning New Jamestown. And it was also the philosophy upon which he based his attack strategy. But there was one more way in which this was true. The lesson Julius had picked up from Alexander the Great and which had been passed down to every great general since then: the idea of holding back a reserve force. A group you could call on in case things started to go cock-eyed.
Larry circled two groups of five cars. “Twenty fighters from each column will remain outside to guard the perimeter.”
“Roger that.”
Larry grinned. “We leave at the crack of dawn.”
Donavan said he’d be ready.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Larry added. “When we come back, I want you to keep an eye on Dana for me.”
“The sheriff?”
Larry nodded. “I wanna know what she’s up to.”
“Not a problem.”
There was a commotion at the gym entrance just then, and the two men turned to see what was going on. A mixed gang of regular colonists and culties tussled through the doorway, holding a man who’d clearly been beaten.
“We found the thief,” one of them cried in triumph, and that’s when Larry recognized who it was they were bringing before him, and suddenly all of his suspicions seemed perfectly justified. The thief was Dana’s father.
Dana
At least 30 colonists were gathered in the gymnasium by the time Dana arrived. Seated on the floor before Larry was her father, Richard. The side of his face was bruised and swollen. Hostility and anger surged from the crowd. They were chanting things like “Hang him!” and “death penalty!” Dana and Lou pushed through the throngs of people till they reached her father. She bent down to see if he was all right.
A torrent of emotion hit Dana all at once. First, confusion over how he could possibly be guilty of such a thing and then just as quickly, anger at what these people had done to him.
“The hell is going on here?” she shouted. “Since when have we endorsed lynch mobs in New Jamestown?” She was looking directly at Larry as she spoke, and he didn’t seem to like the insinuation.
One of the cult members in the crowd pointed at her father. “We found some of the missing food in the footlocker at the end of his bed.”
“I didn’t do it, Dana,” her father said pleadingly. “I swear to God, I didn’t do it.” A thin line of blood ran from the corner of his eye where someone had punched him. The men and women surrounding them came closer, and Dana leaned over to protect him with her body.
“He deserves a fair trial,” she said to Larry, who was looming over both of them. “We can’t just run around executing people on a suspicion of guilt.” She turned to the crowd. “If any of you were accused of this crime, wouldn’t you want a chance to defend yourself?”
“I was digging in the ground to find worms yesterday,” one woman said. “Do we want a society that protects criminals and punishes the innocent?”
The anger in the voices around her grew louder.
“What more do you need?” another man asked. “He had the food in his locker.”
Dana’s father was many things growing up. Often drunk and mostly lazy, but she’d never known him to be a thief. If anything, his honesty often baffled people. Once a clerk had mistakenly given him a 20 instead of a 10, and her father had given it back. As a child, she remembered the startled and almost derisive look the young cashier had given him. Like he was an idiot for being honest. Take the money and run, man. Those were the governing philosophies in the Old World before The Shift. The circumstances of the world often change, but rarely do the people locked within it. Once a thief, always a thief. If so, then shouldn’t the opposite be true?
Larry did his best to quiet down the simmering anger. Dana was suddenly sure that if he told them to, the crowd would reach down and tear her father to shreds.
“What would this world be worth without the rule of law?” Larry asked. “Nothing, I say. None of you need look any further than the Wipers to see the results of their flagrant disregard for human life and decency. There is no room in New Jamestown for criminals. The theft of the colony’s food supply has put all of our lives in grave danger. Mark my words, Richard will have a fair trial, that I can promise you. If he’s found guilty, it’s only fair that the punishment should fit the crime.” Larry was looking over the crowd now, hushed in silence to hear him. “And let it be known that the consequence for such an act will be a swift and immediate execution.”
The gymnasium exploded in a roar of enthusiasm, and Dana felt tears welling up behind her eyes. Everything in her heart said her father was innocent, that he’d even been framed. The thought of having to execute her own father was absolutely unbearable. As much as Dana believed in the rule of law and the need to uphold it, she knew she wasn’t heartless enough to carry out her duty should it come to that.
She stood then and with Lou’s help got her father to his feet and led him through the mob and toward the jail. In a strange way, it was the safest place for him. He’d be spared having to join the attack on the Wipers and certainly kept away from any nut job who felt the sudden urge to take the law into his own hands. He continued to plead his innocence as they led him away, but she couldn’t help another thought circling through her head. Was a fair trial even possible in a small community that had already decided his guilt?
Finn
“What is it?” Joanne asked, responding to Finn’s frantic summons. He could tell she was annoyed and not simply because he’d shouted for her come over. She’d stormed off in the first place because of the way he’d wiggled past answering her question about their relationship. But if what he was seeing in this file was to be believed, then there was a way to unlock the memories buried deep within them. Then they would know for sure. Know everything. Even the painful memories best left unexcavated.
“It appears that when The Shift occurred, it didn’t wipe people’s memories clean, not completely.”
“That makes sense,” Joanne replied. “Didn’t you say you were starting to recall bits and pieces?”
The dream he’d had of Johnny tattooing those numbers into his wrist and of meeting Thomson. That was the memory she was referring to. ‘Course, he hadn’t given her details, anymore than to say fragments were starting to surface.
“Tevatron bribed the warden so they could use us as guinea pigs. Paid him millions of dollars.” Finn explained about the robbery and how he’d been pinned with the murders during the heist. “Then I found this,” he said, rolling his chair out of the way.
Joanne stepped closer to see what was on the screen. “It looks like research data on memory suppression.”
“Apparently, Tevatron’s got a facility somewhere emitting a low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound pulse that’s keeping people's lost memories from surfacing.”
“To maintain the amnesia?”
“According to this, the tests to weaponize the mass amnesia wasn’t holding for more than a few hours, so they started playing around with using low-frequency sounds to maintain the effects. They set up transducers designed to generate acoustic waves.”
“But all the power’s been shut off for weeks,” Joanne s
aid, curling strands of her dark hair with her fingers, a habit Finn had seen her do when she was thinking. “How could it still be running?”
“Good question. Even the solar plant at the Tevatron lab where I came to had gone offline after the quake.”
“So, you think if we can shut that signal off somehow, then our memories might start to return?”
“Not just us,” Finn said. “But the Wipers, too. And maybe following a guy like Alvarez won’t make nearly as much sense once they remember they’re really an accountant from Ohio who lost track of their family after The Shift.”
“They’ll stop being animals.”
“Maybe not all, but most of them will. But there’s a bigger problem. I’ve been over these files three times, and nothing here gives a hint of where this place might be. We can’t flip the switch if we don’t know where they’ve hidden it.”
Larry
The next morning, 148 colonists shuffled into 37 cars. Except for colonist number 149, however, who was sitting in jail for theft. It seemed unlikely to Larry that a dumpy old man had been the one to actually commit the crime, but there was a power in making an example out of someone, anyone, that far exceeded the truth of who was really guilty.
Larry would ride in the lead truck with Donavan. A pickup they’d outfitted with the M60 manned by Callahan. It had taken some work, but in the end, Larry had managed to convince the young soldier that getting some retaliation on the Wipers for contributing to his friend’s death would help to set things right. Once they were done, he could return to his people.
Cramped in the back seat were Bud and Russell. Both men had firsthand knowledge of the hotel’s layout. He was relying on them to be his scouts in the same way that General Custer had relied on his Crow and Lakota trackers during the Indian Wars. Although Larry was quite certain this campaign would turn out far better for him than it did for Custer.
Lou’s black battle wagon was second in line. Inside was his son, Ethan, along with Tanner and Nikki.
Remaining behind was a small contingent of men and women tasked with manning the walls and keeping things at home running smoothly. Among them was Dana. Larry’s need for people with military experience was paramount for this operation, but given Dana’s current state of mind after her father’s arrest, he thought it best if she stayed behind to watch over things. The note on his desk insinuating that Romeo wasn’t banished as he’d ordered was unsettling and had fed into his growing distrust of her.
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 16
