by Connor Mccoy
“You’d be surprised what I’ve outlasted, Mister Drake,” Deaden said. “And you’re a fool if you think this is going to make me back down.”
Just then, Gin re-emerged from the house’s side door. “Captain!” he shouted, “We have the assets.”
Deaden nodded. “What was that about a winning hand, Mister Drake?” She pointed to the homestead. “Here’s my cards on the table.”
Conrad turned—and could not believe what he was seeing.
Sarah, Ron Darber, Tom, Camilla, Liam and Carla with baby Conrad in her arms were marched out of the home single file, with two skinny men behind them wielding handguns. Gin and a company of seven men surrounded them with rifles. They were trapped.
“What the hell is this?” Conrad asked, his voice raspy, as if he had been punched in the gut. “There’s no way in hell you could have captured them.” He turned to Deaden. “How?”
The captain chuckled. “What kind of fool did you take me for, Mister Drake? Do you think I’d come charging in here without knowing who I was up against? Days before I even showed up at your door, I had men canvassing your home. We watched your routines, learned when and where you stood watch, and how to get around without being noticed.”
“That shelter had a biometric lock on it. That door can stand up to heavy gunfire. You couldn’t have broken in even if you knew I had it in my home!” Conrad bellowed.
“Who said I broke in?” Deaden pointed to the two men by Conrad’s party. “Meet Hollister and Pi. My infiltration team. They snuck into your home and hid down in the shelter. They were already in there before you placed your family inside.”
Conrad trembled. How the hell did he miss this? No, he couldn’t have conceived that Deaden would be that on top of him.
“I gave them orders to hide in there for days if they had to,” Deaden said. “And no, they didn’t have to tell me about the shelter. I knew you’d have something like that built into your house, so I told them what to do ahead of time. I had you nailed the moment I finished talking to you yesterday. You think you’re the only rancher I’ve had to deal with? Someone with their own shelter or panic room? Someone who’s erected their own crops, irrigation, everything, and then defends it like it’s gold to them?”
Conrad tried his best to compose himself. “It’s called freedom, Captain. I don’t make any apologies for that, and I dare you to show me where in the U.S. Constitution it says otherwise.”
“Please. You built this place because you know the Constitution and every piece of law ever passed by a fatass politician is as worthless as the paper it’s written on once law and order goes down the drain. Then it’s just gathering together the scraps so that maybe, just maybe, we can put some semblance of civilization back together. Someone has to do that. So, who do you want in charge? Me, or maybe one of those lowlife thugs you’ve tussled with, like Kurt Marsh?”
“It’s not about making the choice, Captain. Freedom’s an inherent thing and ought to be protected. You and I can’t just go around picking the right overlord to handle it,” Conrad replied.
“Well, I’m afraid we’re going to have to save all the philosophy for later. As you can see, I have all your family and farmhands in custody. So, I say give this up, and we can talk about distributing your crops and food like civilized people.”
“Captain, you’re mistaken. Nothing has changed. All these crops are going up in flames unless you work this out with me.”
“Mister Drake, I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation. So, I will repeat. Your family is in my custody. They can be imprisoned for as long as I want to, or I can let them all go. You cannot dictate how this goes.”
“You’re sounding awfully nervous for someone who says they’re holding all the cards. Maybe the idea of dying doesn’t sound all that appealing to you. Now you want to talk reason? Well, here’s some logic for you. Your forces are spread thin, and you can’t patrol every corner of this land. Plus, you still need people to work these fields, or you don’t get the precious crops you want. You don’t need to garrison this place. Let us keep it and work it ourselves.”
Deaden paused. Perhaps she wasn’t expecting that Conrad would be reasonable, or that she actually would have to negotiate.
“You’re right,” she said, much calmer than she had sounded in a while. “I do have bigger fish to fry. Fine.”
Then Matthew spoke up. “Captain?”
“He’s right, Corporal. I’d just as soon move on. But I have a lot of hungry mouths to feed, so I want half of everything this ranch produces,” Deaden said.
“Make it forty percent and we’re agreed,” Conrad said.
“Dammit, Mister Drake, you’re pushing it,” Deaden said.
“No, it’s assurance. We’ll likely have more mouths to feed, and in case you haven’t noticed, some of us are getting up there in age,” Conrad said.
Deaden glared at Liam, Carla and the others by the house. “It was stupid to have one kid in the midst of this madness and now you plan for more? Forget it.”
“Now, as I recall, Captain, we negotiated that ownership of this premises belongs to me and my family. Said ownership includes personal freedom to breed like rabbits if we choose. So, that’s not on the table. Now, you get forty percent, but we can make a pretty hefty forty percent, and if we expand the ranch, so to speak, you might just get more out of the bargain.”
Deaden stood there, looking almost disgusted. Conrad wondered what else was going in her head. Was she just peeved about raising kids in this blighted world, or was something else nagging her?
Finally, the captain composed herself and said, “That had better be a generous forty percent, Mister Drake.”
“It will be,” Conrad replied.
Deaden’s posture softened. Perhaps she believed him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Conrad spotted two soldiers, each grasping the ends of a cloth. Rifle handles stuck out. He recognized those weapons. Those were his, stolen from his own basement!
“Hey!” Conrad cried out, “What are you doing with my weapons?”
“We searched your home. You won’t be needing those,” Deaden said.
Conrad glared at the captain. “And how are you judging that? I fought two gun battles on my property. Stripping me of my weapons is an invitation for disaster.”
“My men and I have been pacifying the area. If you’re worried about another Kurt Marsh showing up, don’t worry,” Deaden said.
“Not good enough, Captain. I won’t have my family unprotected.”
“Mister Drake—” Deaden began.
Conrad raised his lighter. “You forget this? If I don’t have any guns, then you’d better be prepared to act as my personal security. Think your men are up for that?”
“Don’t be absurd. I can’t patrol every dirt road in this state!” Deaden said.
“Then we keep the weapons,” Conrad said.
“You have your home and a very generous sixty percent of your produce!” Deaden shouted, “I think you should take what you can get and let it go.”
Conrad lit the lighter. “Madame,” he said, coldly, “I’ve lived my life by what I can produce with my hands. And the day I can’t do that anymore is the day I take my last breath, and I take it gladly.”
Chapter Nineteen
Deaden looked at Conrad with the wildest eyes he had seen from this lady. “You are absolutely insane,” she said. “Do you give a damn about your family? Your son? Your grandchild? Or you just want to go out in a blaze of glory, a martyr for your so-called freedom?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you fight for, Captain? Holding guns to a group of simple farmhands? What do you think you’re accomplishing?” Conrad asked.
“Sarah!” Deaden called out, “Tell Conrad to give it up! I offer you or anyone in the group asylum. You will have my protection if you want to leave. Just tell him to back off.”
Asylum? Conrad’s eyes widened. That didn’t sound right. If she’s holding them hosta
ge, she ought to point a gun barrel right in their faces and demand they obey her. I might be more right about her than I know.
“Sarah!” Deaden repeated. “Liam! All of you! These are your lives we’re talking about!”
Sarah straightened up, even with the three imposing men pointing their weapons in her direction. “Captain Deaden!” she cried out. “Conrad is our friend. He’s our family. He only wants the best. So, I say give him what he wants.”
“I second that!” Tom shouted.
“I as well,” Darber added.
“We want our land,” Liam said, “This is where we want to raise our family. This is our home.”
“Captain,” Carla said, “I want to stay here. I want to raise my kids. Yes, I want more. I’ll do what I need to raise food for others who don’t have it as good as I do, but this is the life I want, not one in one of your camps.”
Deaden coughed again. “Damn.” She returned her gaze to Conrad. “Your family…friends…they don’t know where this is going to lead. This is all going to lead to disaster. So…I’ll show you.”
The captain then pulled out something small. From this distance, it was hard to see. It looked like a pink ribbon, but the bottom half was black, almost like it was charred.
“You want to know what this is? This belonged to a little girl. A couple of months ago, I was in a standoff with a rancher. Same smug attitude. He wouldn’t give up anything. I tried to reason with him. He didn’t give a damn. Then he, or one of his sons, somebody opened fire on my men. So, we defended ourselves. We shot back. He used rapid-fire automatic weapons. He used grenades. God knows what else. And then there was an explosion in the back of his house.” Deaden trembled more than Conrad had ever seen. “There were five children in there. The bastard didn’t care about them. They, everyone, everyone in the house burned to death!”
She waved the ribbon around. “That’s not the only fight I’ve run into, but it was the worst. Hollister, Pi, Sam, some of us have been through hell together, both in the cities and in the countryside. I’ve tussled with scum that enslaved and tortured innocent people just because there’s no police to stop them. So, if you think I’m impressed one damn bit by your posturing, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Conrad turned his gaze from the ribbon to Deaden’s face. In that instant, he realized everything he had gambled on had paid off. She had been making mistakes that helped confirm his suspicions, and this moment just capped it in full.
So, there was no point in continuing the standoff any longer. He took one final glance at the party by the house, friends and family all. He would keep that moment in mind for these final moments.
“Oh Joanne.” Conrad smiled, tiredly, but happily. “Telling me all that was a big mistake.” He raised his lighter high. “You just tipped your hand, and you were holding nothing but a joker.”
He tossed the lighter in Deaden’s direction.
The soldiers opened fire.
Several things happened in an instant, the gunfire, the screams from the house, and the lighter zipping toward Deaden. The captain expected to be engulfed in flames from the field just behind her.
But instead, the lighter spun around, over and over, past Deaden’s shoulder, until it hit the ground.
But the field did not go up in a blaze. The lighter just smoldered in the grass for a moment before the flame died out.
Deaden gazed down at the lighter. Then she squatted over the grass and sniffed the blades. No gasoline. With all the smoke and gasoline fumes in the air, she couldn’t tell unless she was right next to the grass that it wasn’t soaked in gasoline.
“He wasn’t going to torch his own home after all,” she whispered. It was a bluff. He was bluffing this whole time. He likely just soaked that one field just for show. Based on what she had seen of this farm, losing that field was likely a small loss.
She picked up the lighter. Several of her soldiers were rushing toward her from the road, but she wasn’t paying attention to them. Instead, she turned toward Conrad’s still form in the grass.
Once she approached him, she held out the lighter. His eyes were closed, a look of great serenity over his features. He must have known this was going to happen.
She inhaled deeply. “Looks like you had the winning hand after all,” she said softly, before dropping the lighter onto the grass near his open right hand.
Five soldiers stood at her side, but she didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, she marched through the field up to the house. Liam and Carla clutched each other. Sarah clung to Tom, on the verge of tears. Camilla and Dr. Ron quaked.
Gin joined Deaden. “Orders, Captain.”
“Yeah, guess we take these losers away with us,” Matthew said, licking his lips.
All of a sudden, Camilla leapt away from the others, diving right for Matthew and punching him in the face. “Damn you! You bastards! I’ll kill you! I’ll skin you assholes alive!”
“You bitch!” Matthew, regaining his footing, swung his rifle around.
“Stop!” Deaden shouted. “Arms down!”
At the same time, Sarah grabbed Camilla from behind and tried pulling her back toward the house. “Camilla! Stop!” Tom jumped in to help restrain Camilla.
“Let me go! Just let me die with him, please!” Camilla shouted with racked sobs.
Deaden tried to remain composed, but even she had a hard time digesting the death of the man her soldiers just had killed. Odds are he died before he even hit the ground.
Then she turned to Liam, his eyes wet, yet he had not broken down in sobs yet. She spoke directly to him. “The home is yours,” Deaden said. “It’ll all be as we agreed.”
Matthew rubbed his cheek where Camilla had struck it. “Wait, what are we doing?”
“You heard the Captain,” Gin said.
“You’re free to live here, come and go as you please, work the fields, just as long as you provide the promised forty percent.” Deaden then looked down at the pile of guns and ammunition. “We’ll take twenty percent of that, and let you keep the rest. Of course, I get the feeling Mister Drake probably has hidden some more weapons somewhere on this property, but I think I’ll just overlook that.”
Then Deaden turned to her men. “Alright, pull out. Let these people be.” She started walking. “Just let them be.”
The group departed. Carla finally collapsed in sobs on Liam’s shoulder.
Liam walked into the living room through the front door. Each step was jerky. He still wasn’t sure this whole hellish experience was not a dream.
Sarah had helped Camilla in first. Camilla refused to go anywhere to mourn alone. She insisted on talking to Liam first, but it was clear she was torn up inside. When she spoke, her voice stammered. “Conrad made a tape. Sound. Audio…audio tape. It’s in your room,” she said, “You can go…go listen to it.”
Liam didn’t turn to look at her. He just muttered, “Thanks,” and shuffled off down the hall toward his room.
Carla followed Liam, but stopped short of the door threshold. “I think you should listen to it alone,” she said.
Liam nodded. He stepped into the room, then shut the door behind him.
The tape player looked old, with its faded paint and worn metal. His dad likely had hidden this way someplace safe, perhaps in a faraday cage, before the solar event occurred.
He almost didn’t want to press the play button. It would be the final time he’d hear anything from his dad. But there was no way he could not listen, to not get closure on what just had happened.
Liam pressed the play button.
The voice of his father poured out of the speaker. “Hey, Liam. If you’re listening to this, then I bet everything went as I hoped it would.” Conrad exhaled softly. “But, as I’m sure, I don’t survive. It’s alright. Quite frankly, Liam, I wasn’t expecting to live past today, and even if I did, my days were numbered far more than you knew.”
Dad’s days were numbered? Liam leaned a little closer.
“I’ve g
ot a confession to make. I didn’t get Ron just for Carla. I’ve had some unexplained pains in my arm for a while, and I knew Ron could diagnose it for me. It turned out to be a malignant tumor. That little illness I had? I was recovering from surgery to remove it.”
Liam bit his lip. So, that’s what happened! No wonder Dad had been in such sorry shape for so long, but surgery? He never would have guessed.
“Ron took out the tumor and a piece of my arm muscle, but that didn’t kill the bastard inside me. It migrated into my bone, so we were looking at having my whole arm amputated. I’m sorry, but without a working hospital with working tech, the odds were looking grim. At best, I’d have lingered for a while, but I knew I was a dead man walking.”
Liam cringed. Cancer! “Dad, why didn’t you tell me?”
“There wasn’t anything you or anybody could have done. If I’d have told you, you never would have left my side. Carla and your son need you. Me, I’m done. Shane’s got to leave the valley, but at least I left it in better shape.”
Liam’s eyes welled up. “Dad…”
Conrad loudly sighed before continuing. “I want you to know that having you back in my life has brought me greater joy than I’d felt in ages. This last year has been full of challenges, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Seeing the man you’ve become, the woman you’ve found, and the grandbaby you’ve given me, well, what could have topped that? Oh yeah, I got to marry you and Carla, and play Santa Claus for your kid. Damn, this past year was something, wasn’t it?”
Conrad chuckled. “I even was able to forgive your mother for the past. In the end, I left this life without any regrets. My house is now yours. Raise your family in it. It’s the second-finest thing I ever built. You were the first. I love you, Liam. You, Carla, little Conrad, Camilla, Sarah, all of you. See you around.”
The tape went silent.
Liam crumpled to the floor. Then he broke out in sobs. He was barely aware of Carla hurrying into the room to comfort her husband—and to join him in grieving.
