by James Hunt
Burch studied the piece of paper for a moment and then leaned over to Gregory Finks, and they both whispered back and forth to one another then nodded in agreement. Burch leaned up to the microphone, looking down at the paper. “Yea.”
Every ounce of tension in Lena’s body released, and she found Mark’s eyes in the crowd just as he looked up from his notebook, where she saw hundreds of tiny marks. He smiled, and Lena nearly burst into tears right there on the stage.
“And our last vote is also a yea.” Burch reached for the gavel. “That puts our final tally at one hundred ninety-nine against, two hundred and one for. The bill passes.” He smacked the gavel, and half the crowd inside erupted into thunderous applause, gasps, and cries.
The council walked over to Lena, shaking her hand in congratulations, and a few of the mothers in the crowd rushed the stage, thanking her, their reactions ranging from tear-soaked cheeks to bright-white smiles. Lena stepped down and walked into the swarm of her constituents. “Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. We did it!”
But through the sea of smiling faces Lena watched three of the deputies rush to the front of the building. And just as a crowd had gathered around her, another one had gathered at the exit. Shouts and jeers erupted from the tight circle, and she saw one of the deputies tossed aside.
Fists flew in quick blurs, the frustration of the past week spilling over as chairs were picked up and flung across the room, hitting bystanders and smashing windows. One of the deputies pulled his pistol, firing warning shots in the air, which only sent the crowd into a frenzied stampede.
“Lena!” Mark pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed hold of her hand. “We need to get you out of here. Now.” He looked to the others surrounding her. “All of you. Get home, quickly.” With one pull he yanked her toward the back exit.
“What the hell happened?” Lena asked.
“I don’t know.” Mark shouldered the side door open, and they both sprinted as fast as their broken bodies would let them. “I heard some shouting and then saw some shoving, and then people lost it.”
When they spilled outside at the rear of the building, the night air had grown thick with the howls and screams of the frenzied horde out front. They kept low and stayed off Main Street, where the majority of the crowd had begun their march, tearing up cars, storefronts, anything and everything they could get their hands on.
“We need to get back to the car.” Mark yanked Lena forward, but she dragged behind, the pain in her ribs forcing her to walk.
Lena clutched her side, the sharp stabbing pain digging into her body with every breath. “Wait. Just wait.” She leaned up against the back side of the building and felt the rumble and crash of the looters who’d smashed their way inside. She took a step forward and limped along, Mark close to her side.
One of the back doors flew open, and three men spilled out, the frenzied craze of the mob mentality flashing in their eyes. Two of them lunged for Mark and pinned him against the wall. “Let him go!” Lena flew to his aid, but the third man easily flung her to the ground.
“You think some piece of paper can protect you?” The darkness concealed most of his face, but she recognized the colors of the uniform as a product of New Energy. “I’m not going to let you take away my job!”
Lena reached for the pepper spray Jake had given her after the shooting and sent the stream directly into his eyes. He clawed the air blindly, screaming. She kicked him in the groin, and he toppled to the ground. One of the other men took off, and Mark punched the remaining attacker, and the two grappled until eventually he sprinted off as well.
The air grew thick and hot from the pepper spray, and Lena’s eyes burned along with a sting in her nostrils. She grabbed Mark’s hand, coughing and hacking. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Mark answered. “You?”
“Yeah.”
Orange glows illuminated the night sky, and it wasn’t long before Lena watched the small fires grow into ravaging flames. By the time they arrived at her office, they’d managed to put some distance between themselves and the front of the mob. She pulled out her cell phone, trying to dial her brother, but he didn’t answer. “Where the hell is he?”
“Lena, we need to get out of here. Now.” Mark looked out of the broken front windows, where he was bathed in the glow of the fires. “Take whatever you need, and get in the c—” Gunfire exploded, and he ducked below the window line.
Lena hit the floor as well. She craned her head around the desk and saw Mark still at the front, motioning her to come forward. She kept low, crawling on all fours, her ribs feeling as though they were snapping in half one at a time. She reached for Mark’s hand, and when she felt her fingertips graze his palm the mob stormed into the office.
The first two bodies inside knocked Mark over, and the rest nearly trampled him to death. But Lena had kept hold of his hand, and she pulled him away from the stomping boots. Desks were flipped, and chairs were smashed. The already-shattered glass was ground into dust, and the police tape covering the windows was torn down.
Mark and Lena limped over the wall and through the gaping hole of the window that had been smashed, nearly cutting her leg in the process. Outside, the chaos in the streets had reached a fever pitch. Car fires dotted the roads, and a few people had taken to looting some of the storefronts, while the rest simply smashed whatever happened to be in their path.
Their car had already been flipped to its side, and amongst the throngs of people in the mob, she could see the green uniforms of the deputies as they did their best to corral the masses back into order.
Hands suddenly groped her, pulling her toward the ground, and she heard Mark’s shout but then watched him become swallowed by another cluster of the mob’s long arm. Fists punched her, and boots kicked her. She was vaguely aware of the curses that accompanied the beating, but the sharp spouts of pain deafened her to their words.
More gunshots rang out, and just as quickly as the mob had attacked her, they dispersed. She lifted her head to the sight of two members of the gang on the pavement, clutching their arms or legs. Another pair of hands grabbed her shoulders from behind, and she flinched.
“Hey, it’s all right.” Jake cupped her face, his hair wild and his face dirty. Behind him were dozens of other deputies, their uniforms reading Stark County, which was to their north, and a caravan of militarized police vehicles. “We need medics over here!”
The ache in her body mirrored the pounding in her head, and she reached for her brother’s face. “Where were you?”
Jake scooped her off the ground and carried her to the end of the street, away from the crowd being doused in tear gas, the reinforcements dispersing the mob and slowly beginning the process of restoring order. He set her on the back of a truck, where a paramedic examined the cuts and checked her vitals. He left then quickly returned with Mark limping by his side, his arm slung over his shoulder.
Lena and Mark leaned into one another, burying each other’s faces into their shoulders, clutching one another desperately. She pulled back and kissed his face, one eye swollen shut from the attackers, and then looked to her brother. “Thank you.”
Jake nodded, but that was when she noticed the stains on his shirt. It was hard to tell in the night, but the dark-crimson blotches speckled his cuffs and sleeves. “What happened to you?”
“Hit a deer.” Jake shook his head. “Can you believe that?”
“Sheriff.” Longwood tapped Jake on the shoulder. “What do you want us to do with the suspects we’ve arrested?”
“Put them in the drunk tank—we’ll deal with them in the morning. And call the fire department and let them know they’ll need both trucks.” Longwood nodded and then trotted off, while Jake lingered behind for a second. He kissed Lena on the cheek and then squeezed Mark’s arm.
One by one, others who were injured from the chaos of the mob were brought over. For the most part the injuries treated were minor, but when Raymond Burch was brought over he was unconscious, an
d two of the paramedics went to work on him immediately.
“This is insane,” Mark said, his jaw slack as he watched the remaining fires illuminate the carnage along Main Street.
“Yeah,” Lena said, but in her mind she breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that this was the worst that would be thrown their way. It was over now. They were safe.
9
Ken’s jacket hung on the back of the chair. It’d been in his office all night. Just like him. He looked out the window where he had a clear view of the burnt wreckage of rig number eight. It would set the company back a few million trying to get it back up and running, but the real damage had been done back in town last night.
While he spoke to his contact on the city council, he didn’t stick around for the after-party that wrecked nearly all of downtown. He received the news of the bill via text, and he was surprised at how calm he felt. It stayed with him all the way to the office, but when he opened the door and looked at his desk and the opened mail he had forwarded from his home address back in D.C., the calmness was quickly replaced by an overwhelming dread.
Bills stacked at least six inches high, bills that he didn’t have the money to pay. He looked over the mortgage payment that was past due by three months and the medical bills from his son’s visit to Europe. He’d cashed in everything to save his boy. Stock options, 401k, cars, boats—all of it was gone now. The experimental treatments in Finland weren’t cheap, and the plane tickets overseas were just as bad. He was in the hole, and the only way out was to burrow himself deeper. That was why he’d returned to the job he hated.
Ken turned around, his cell phone buzzing. He knew who it was, and he’d known who it was the first seven times they called. But he wasn’t ready for them. He returned his focus to the charred wreckage of rig eight and wondered how the man who’d been nearly burned to death was doing at the hospital. Someone told him the man had a daughter, one of the children who were sick and was part of the families that was included in the civil suit last year.
His stomach churned sour at the thought, and he walked back over to his desk, where the phone still buzzed, humming loudly and rattling the piles of bills. A picture of his wife and son rested on the table. It was three years old, before Tommy was sick. Before everything turned to shit. Mr. Alwitz’s words echoed in his head. You don’t get paid until the job gets done.
And this was the only job that would take him. When he left the lobbyist industry the first time he’d burned too many bridges, pissed off too many higher-ups. The phone continued to buzz. So he made his deal with the devil, and when that happened there wasn’t any going back.
Ken reached for the phone and answered. “Yeah.” He leaned forward, placing both hands on his desk. “I know. I’ll get it done.” He paused, his face scrunched in pain. “I know.” The call ended, and he flung the phone on his desk, harder than he should have, and it bounced off and landed on the floor.
“Dammit!” Ken slapped the desk, which tumbled the stack of bills and rattled the stationery. He pushed himself out of the chair and paced the office floor. It was doubt that was creeping into his mind now. But he knew if the bill passed that this was a road that they might have to go down. He just didn’t think he would be the one who had to make the call. But that was what a guy like him did, that was why he was hired. To do the job nobody else wanted to do.
Ken picked the phone up off the ground and dialed the number. He waited for the other line to pick up, and when it did he felt the sour pit in his stomach return. But he forced the words out. “Do it.” And with only two words spoken he hung up, knowing there wasn’t any need for more conversation. The wheels were in motion.
Jake watched the bookings through the window of his office. The two top buttons on his collar were undone, and dark bags hung under his eyes, dragging his face downward. It took all night to get everyone off the street, and then all morning to put the fires out. It’d be weeks before all the repairs to the storefronts would be completed, which meant that businesses were closed, which wasn’t going to help the multi-million-dollar price tag they’d need to fix the damages.
Longwood poked his head inside the office. “Hey, Sheriff, the guys from Stark County are wondering if they can head home.”
“Yeah. Tell ’em we appreciate their help.”
“Will do.”
If it weren’t for Sheriff Calhoun’s backup, Jake didn’t think he would have been able to bring the mob’s rampage to an end. He was glad he made the call. He tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves, the specks of blood still dotting around his wrist. He flipped them up, rolling them until he couldn’t see it anymore.
“Sheriff?” Jackie chimed in over the intercom. “You have a call on line one.”
Jake reached for the phone. “This is Sheriff Cooley.”
“Sheriff, this is Scott Ambers. I think I might have something over here you want to take a look at.”
“And what would that be?”
“Reese Coleman’s body.”
Jake slammed the phone down and reached for his keys. Once he was in his truck he didn’t let up on the accelerator until he reached the oil company’s property, skidding to halt and sending up a cloud of dust.
Scott Ambers met him in the makeshift grass parking lot. “Morning, Sheriff. Looks like you had a hell of a night.”
“Where is he?” Jake followed Scott to the center of their bustling oasis in the middle of nowhere, and when he stepped inside the compound he was greeted by a wall of monitors with live feed from security cameras. On the back wall were computers, dozens of towers connected to one another.
“Welcome to the command center.” Scott spread his arms wide. “From here we can monitor every stretch of our two-hundred-acre property.” He walked over to a particular monitor, which revealed two guards standing next to a body. “And this is where we found Coleman.”
Jake squinted at the screen. “When did you find the body?”
Scott walked over to one of the control consoles beneath the monitors with a thumb drive in hand, inserting it into the port. “We have security here twenty-four hours a day, but at night it’s a skeleton crew, and there’s no way one guy can watch all of these at the same time for seven hours. So every morning we have the team clocking in do a quick review of the feed from the night before with fresh eyes. And that’s when we found this.”
The center monitor played the video. For a moment there was nothing on the screen except grass. But a few seconds later the image of someone carrying a body wrapped in a plastic sheet came into view. The figure wore a black mask, concealing his face, and kept glancing around to make sure no one was looking. The body was unwrapped then dumped right where they’d found it in the morning.
Scott paused the video. “Now, whoever that was walked a very long way with that body, because we have cameras that stretch out in the field for three miles. And we followed this guy all the way to the end, and we didn’t see a car anywhere.”
“You think the person knew about the cameras?” Jake asked, his eyes glued to the screen and the suspect with the mask. “Could be an inside job.”
“Well, that’s for you to find out, Sheriff.” Scott unplugged the drive and tossed it to Jake, who caught it with his left hand. Scott smiled. “I’ll let the warrant slide on that piece of evidence.”
Jake returned to his car, where he radioed dispatch. “Get Longwood with the meat wagon to the New Energy property. Tell him I found Reese Coleman’s body.”
“Roger that, Sheriff.”
Jake set the receiver down and rubbed his hands. He eyed the glove box then reached for his keys and started the truck. He let the engine idle for a moment, drifting his eyes between the white portables and the glove box. He looked around, making sure he was alone, then opened the glove box. Inside was a black piece of cloth, and when he spread it out in his fingers it revealed the three small holes of a mask.
“Officer down! Officer down!” The deputy’s voice shrieked over the radio, and Jake reached fo
r the receiver, slamming the mask back into the glove box and sealing it shut.
“This is Sheriff Cooley. Is that you, Mack?”
“Yeah. Sheriff, you need to get to your sister’s house now!”
Lena sipped the coffee gingerly, more for her swollen lip than for its temperature. She rolled the liquid around on her tongue, letting the bitter caffeine wake her from the nightmare she still seemed to be walking around in. Her view from the front door of her office was a front-row seat to what looked like doomsday.
Mark came up behind her, his eye still swollen from the night before. “All of this over a vote.” He shook his head when she offered him some of the coffee. “I’m going to sleep pretty hard when we get home. I don’t need that stuff keeping me up.”
Sleep. Lena couldn’t remember what that was like. Ever since she’d been clean she hadn’t been able to get more than four or five hours a night. Something in her brain changed when she sobered up, and she just figured it was her penance for all of those years she would black out, never remembering what happened. “I’ll call the insurance adjuster. Then I need to set up a press conference to do some damage control for what happened last night.”
“A little too late for that,” Mark said, glancing at the shattered storefront glass that lined the sidewalk on both sides of Main Street.
“If this is going to be what it’s like in every town, the governor will need to bring in the National Guard—”
“Mrs. Hayes!” Deputy Longwood sprinted from across the street, his long legs making the strides look effortless, but when he skidded to a stop right in front of them, his face was beet red, and he struggled to catch his breath. “Something happened at your house.”
Without another word Lena hobbled to the squad car that had taken them into town, with Mark close behind. Longwood climbed behind the wheel, and the tires screeched as he floored it. Lena slapped Mark on the arm and pointed to her purse. “Get my phone out!”
