“The death toll.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, Beau, how many?”
“Hundreds?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. But things are worse now, compared to this time last year. And the Air Force Base people had most of a year to prepare for that. There’s more people now, still, and . . . too many rely on the Rations to survive. Wilhelm knows it. And so do you.”
It was about the most Beau’d ever said in her life, and that a robust defense of the City project was what inspired him left Lilianna curiously impressed and more mistrustful than ever.
“The Lefthanders almost crippled us,” Beau said and sighed. “You were there, at St Mary’s. Teddy was too.”
“What’s with these meetings then?”
“The Councilor’s making sure all the other factions, all the community leaders – even the Brotherhood – that they’re still behind us . . . before the cold sets in.”
“Geez,” Lilianna said softly. “You should stand for Council yourself.”
Beau only looked at her. Then his expression turned strange.
“Listen, I’m going to tell you something,” he said quietly. “I’m going to tell you my other secret, so you know I would do anything for you, Lil. I’d never hurt you. Or betray you to him, if it really is Wilhelm for some reason you’re worried about.”
Beau then told her about the Gray Hood – and the night her brother Lucas nearly died.
*
THE REVELATIONS FLEW thick and fast, and Lilianna tumbled between awe and confusion and shock and finally outright terror to understand the sheer scope of just how close to something even worse than an awful death her brother had come. Beau spoke quietly in that halting way of his, while Lilianna just clutched her face as she got swamped by it all, wishing fervently more than ever that her father’d picked up her call – or maybe just again wishing they were together.
“Don’t be angry with your brother,” Beau said.
“Angry?” Lila answered. “God, I don’t know what I am.”
“He promised not to tell, because of my. . . .”
Lilianna snorted mirthlessly. “Your secret identity?”
“If you call it that.”
“Some superhero.”
Beau looked stung at the remark, and she tried to put a softening hand on the knee he swept away the moment it appeared, rankled by her comment.
“I told you, so you would . . . understand me,” he said. “Not mock me.”
“I’m not mocking you,” Lila said slowly, stolen breaths in her reply. “I’m just struggling to understand, and take it all in, and you . . . you have so many secrets, dude.”
“‘Dude’.”
Beau glanced back at her unimpressed.
“I was starved, in bad condition when I reached Columbus,” he said. “I didn’t know if I’d live. They told me that too, when I was in the nursery.”
“Nursery?”
“That’s what they called it,” he said. “Recovery. On my . . . my death bed, if I lived, I promised myself I’d get stronger . . . never let myself get caught weak and powerless and . . . unprepared, ever again.”
“So you’ve been sneaking out, after Curfew?”
“Yes,” he said. “There’s a way. Most of the troopers know it.”
“Are they guarding that too?”
“I don’t know,” Beau said. “No one wants to be trapped. None of us.”
Lilianna nodded at that.
“I figured,” Beau began again, “I couldn’t save myself when the . . . when I was caught, but you know there’s still a lot of pain, and a lot of children, in the City. . . .”
“You knew about these guys?”
“I cased them several times, just to be sure.”
“And you didn’t go looking for Lucas?”
“No,” Beau said as if it were an admission of failure, which wasn’t right. “No,” he said again. “He and that . . . his friend got them in that by themselves.”
“Uh-huh.”
Lilianna’s head drooped. She desperately wanted to lie down. She got up and moved to the unoccupied bed, once of Beau’s roommate. Had Teddy known about the Gray Hood? Or that Beau was a gelding? Lilianna cursed herself for even using the term which came unbidden to her, one of those phrases she didn’t even know where she’d learnt it.
“Jesus,” she said at last. She turned a tear-brimming smile on Beau. “My brother’s a lucky little kid. Thank you.”
“You know I can fight,” Beau said.
“Yeah.”
“And I’m good on my feet.”
“Yeah.”
“If you really think I should be worried about Wilhelm, I can look into it for you.”
“I need to tell my dad,” Lilianna said. “Can you sneak me out?”
“I’m telling you,” Beau said. “You can trust me, OK?”
“But you’re . . . in Wilhelm’s office.”
“Exactly,” Beau said. “If you think there’s people going missing, including the Council President, where better to be?”
Lilianna nodded slowly. Exhaustion pressed down on her.
“I have to go lay down,” she said. “Catch my breath.”
“Of course,” he said and smiled as she moved for the exit.
Lila opened the door.
“I’ll come find you tomorrow,” Beau said.
“OK,” Lila said. “Don’t do anything stupid, OK?”
“Trust me.”
Lilianna nodded and left.
*
IT WAS BLACK when Lilianna woke, the pale outside hall light from a single electric globe just as quickly shuttered as Aurora closed the door again. Sniffling and dejected, she moved into the room in the dark while Lila lay curled, submerged beneath her covers, rat-eyed and bleary, resurfacing into wakefulness only to submerge back beneath waves of grief.
Everything was too much. She felt pointless and weak – and alone. And the shock of Beau’s confessions had a stiff hold on her, as did all the rest. She was only dimly aware of her roommate’s tears, Aurora scuffing a toe on one of the other empty beds, their missing roommates just more names Lilianna didn’t want to think about.
“Sorry,” Aurora said loud enough to make sure Lila heard it even through the wall of sleep.
The older woman turned weakly to her ladder, started to scale it, and slumped there, yearning for Lila’s attention, her misery writ bold enough to trigger Lilianna’s alarm. She wiped her face harshly, blonde hair matted, and moved quickly from the bed to stand behind Aurora.
“What is it?” she croaked.
Aurora turned her a haunted look.
“I’ve been in questioning,” she said. “All night.”
“Questioning?”
Lilianna hated her befuddlement, but like the furniture in the dark, the words didn’t form themselves into any shape she could recognize.
“Who?”
“Greerson’s team,” Aurora said. “A guy called Sandler. Jesus, he was so fucking creepy.”
She burst into tears, which turned into a maternal hug making Lilianna wonder who the hell she’d become. Disorientation aside, Lila firmly took Aurora’s shoulders and turned her for the bed.
“You need to rest,” she said. “You’re in shock. You’re here now, so everything’s OK, OK?” Lila studied the other woman just a moment. “Are you hurt? No? Did they hurt you or anything else?”
“N-no,” Aurora answered and shook her head with difficulty.
Lila nodded, guiding her again to the top bunk.
“I don’t know what time it is,” she said. “Sleep. I’ll be here.”
Aurora stood unmoving with one hand on the stepladder.
“Aurora?”
The young woman gave a mighty sob, then hung there empty. Unconsciousness was the best thing right now – for both of them. She turned Aurora’s arm for the bed again. The young woman dropped her fringed eyes.
“Would you please, just for a little while. . . ?”
“Y
our bed?”
“I’m sorry,” Aurora said.
“No, it’s . . . OK.”
It was a small thing to sacrifice. Lilianna nodded and Aurora let her up first, squeezing beneath the overhanging ceiling and onto the edge of the narrow mattress and its bunched duvets, several framed pictures and a stuffed toy baby unicorn surprising Lila as she twisted into position and Aurora did the same.
It was tense, weird, sisterly – nothing Lilianna had ever experienced, at least not until she remembered years back, beyond the anesthetic of trauma to her half-sister Jasmine . . . and then tears of her own rose up. The trembling young woman beside her softened and Lila set a hand on her shoulder from behind, settling in behind Aurora, who started to fully shake with tears once again, reassured by Lilianna’s own, which took them finally to sleep.
And awakening to a nightmare.
*
THE DOOR BURST open and the men’s harsh voices preceded them like a hurricane into the dorm room. Lilianna froze, blanketed with covers behind Aurora who twisted about like a feral cat, revealing everything about the scene Lilianna couldn’t witness through her expression of terror.
“Where is she?” a man barked amid the thumping and footfalls.
“Who? What?” Aurora replied.
Lilianna started to move and felt Aurora’s forearm pin her to the mattress.
“The Vanicek girl.”
Greerson’s voice was unmistakable.
“We’ve got a present for her,” the Safety Chief said. “Her Beau.”
“Beau?”
“Beau.”
Greerson said something else Lilianna missed as she squirmed again. Aurora pressed more firmly down with panicked strength.
“Don’t,” the frightened young woman whispered.
If there was something Lilianna couldn’t see that gave good reason for the warning, she gave it several more tense seconds as the troopers milled about the room like competing shadows.
“I don’t . . . she’s not here,” Aurora told them.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Another man spat, “She’s lying.”
Aurora’s trembling took over and before she could fashion any other sort of reply, one of the troopers grunted, “Get her down from there,” and just as quickly Aurora was dragged slithering from the top bunk and onto the ground.
The trooper stared right into Lilianna’s frozen blue eyes and his mahogany face split into a grimace of pleasure as he barked a laugh, like a seal, and only pointed at her as his colleagues caught on. Lilianna flicked eyes to the M16 propped up, forgotten, down at the corner of her own bed, and a bedwetting trill of horror surged through her knowing she didn’t stand a chance.
So she started screaming.
“Get her the fuck down from there and shut her up,” Greerson jeered.
The metal rail along the edge of the bunk was no impediment to the pairs of hands which seized her through the bedcovers, and Lila caught her chin on the rail as they dragged her over the side, neatly bundled, her one free arm scratching madly at the lone black trooper’s face and suffering something akin to indignant shock when another of the men punched her in the side of the head.
*
THE SLOSHING DARKNESS never really made sense. Instead, at some point Lilianna grew aware she was moving, jostled in the back of a Humvee, and hooded like the female figure beside her so cold and still she feared if it was Aurora, then her roommate was already dead.
Unconsciousness crept back in to silence her recurrent panic, and when awareness came next she felt herself dragged bodily through some echoing space. Light filtered through the hood, though Lila couldn’t say anything. Silver tape filled her mouth. It was a struggle just to breathe, and awareness saw her hiss and fume to clear her nostrils, life returning to her arms and the hands taped together in front of her.
“Over here,” a man said.
They dropped her on barren concrete. Lila’s hands went together to her hood at once, and when no one stopped her, she pulled it off, narrowing her eyes in the morning sunlight made harsh.
Sunbeams fell far too prettily through the decay-roofed warehouse. Only the rafter remained, and places in the walls had collapsed into ruin giving a view onto rampant vines overtaking the verdant scenery. Small birds flitted around above them, nesting in the high wooden beams. They danced about in tit-for-tat rivalry, uncaring about the humans below as Lilianna blinked, still trying to comprehend and at the same time face the ultimate dead certainty.
“We found your boyfriend for you,” Greerson said.
He sniffed as if disappointed at Lilianna’s stunned non-reaction. His eyes flicked to the other men and back to her, then he snapped his fingers demanding her attention.
“Say hello,” he told her.
And then Lilianna dropped her eyes to the stained concrete before her.
Two men stepped forward to roughly force her uncompliant, unfocused gaze until she settled eyes at last on two big plastic garbage bags. Pain and shock fell away as Lilianna sensed the mysterious awfulness of whatever she now witnessed.
“It’s funny,” Greerson said. “Most people think they can withstand torture, but they can’t. Not really anyone can. He sang like a little birdie at the end. Told us all about your worries.”
Punctures in the recycled garbage bags leaked redly onto the ground.
Ants made their merry way through the blood as if it had lain there for some time.
Lilianna stared at it, still not prepared for what came next when Greerson grunted something and two of his men upturned the bags onto the hard concrete floor and the incomprehensible jumble of severed body parts that fell out completely failed to add up to a complete person until Lilianna spotted Beau’s head roll out amid the horror.
“Nnn –”
She couldn’t moan and breathe at the same time. For a long moment, she went without either and simply stared at the eldritch mess of her lovely poor friend disassembled like just another bloody human puzzle.
And then his eyes flicked open.
And then Lilianna screamed and screamed and screamed.
*
Chapter 6
THE TWO BOYS moved through the kitchen well aware Tom watched them. Luke’s father stood, ankles crossed, already in contemplation at the sink as they happened on through. Kevin studiously ignored the older man, but Lucas, trailing almost like he was keeping his distance, flicked his eyes back to see Tom raise a meaningful eyebrow.
“Hold on, you two,” he said.
Kevin halted as if he had a one-second delay processing instructions. Tom was glad, because his options after that weren’t great if the boy kept walking – and mostly because of the reason Tom stopped them.
The handgun at Kevin’s waist.
“So . . . what are you two up to?” Tom asked.
Lucas gave Kevin one of those quick checks that looked a lot like asking permission to speak –but maybe it was to speak for him. Tom couldn’t tell which.
“We were just . . . walking around,” Luke said.
“Everything OK out there?” Tom asked. “After the other night, you know, and you two getting caught out there like that, technically there’s a Curfew in place.”
“The troopers aren’t stopping people though,” Lucas said.
“That doesn’t make it safe,” Tom said.
Kevin grunted and said, “Yeah . . . and I’ve got a gun.”
“Ah-ha. . . .” Tom tried his best showman’s smile. “Exactly what I thought we should just quickly talk about,” he said, focused mostly on Kevin. “It’s a little soon for you two to be out again on the streets, don’t you think? Maybe you were out there too much before, too. I don’t know. Things are different now.”
It was a lot of verbiage. Tom shut his mouth hoping some of it might sink in. The boys exchanged camouflaged looks that made Tom’s hackles rise. He exhaled mightily, through his nose like a bull, and kept his arms crossed unmenacingly across his broa
d chest.
“What do you mean by ‘different’?” Lucas asked his father. “There’s more trooper patrols out there than ever.”
“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “That’s part of what I mean.”
He now looked to Kevin.
“And you being out there with a gun is an invite for trouble,” Tom said.
He held out his hand.
“I’m sorry, dude. It’s still your gun. I’ll hold it for you.”
Tom stood there like an asshole. Kevin only stared at his hand.
“Uh-uh,” the boy almost grunted.
“Dude,” Tom said. “I’ll even say ‘please’, cool?”
He drew himself up taller and gave the strange young boy his most serious scowl.
It didn’t seem possible, but he only then noticed Kevin’s hand already rested on the back of the shucked gun’s grip. The boy’s expression didn’t change. Tom let go of the staring competition because it was hard to tell if Kevin even saw him. The boy’s transparent eyes bored through him without effort, and Tom slowly lowered his hand to his side.
“Do you understand about gun safety, Kevin?” he asked softly. “We all have to live here too.”
“You’re not going to make us stay here, are you, dad?”
Tom couldn’t conceal his look of annoyance that Luke’s interruption gave Kevin the slightest leeway the boy needed to simply melt backwards into the corridor and be gone. Tom snapped his eyes back after him, Kevin already a shadow halfway down the hall, and the point of pushing the gun thing any further gave even Tom’s recklessness pause.
“Lucas,” Tom growled. “Please.”
“We can’t just stay here and hide,” his son said.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Tom felt strangely flustered at his son’s irate tone, made worse for knowing he didn’t exactly have much in the way of solid answers. He blew out his cheeks and rested his hands on his hips, astonished and disturbed to find his fingers trembling.
“I’m just talking about right now, Lucas,” he said. “Jesus, I don’t know what’s what out there. If you can just . . . just listen to me for another couple of days, I’ll take you two with me when I go see my friend Magnus next. I can’t stay cooped up in here either, but there’s things I have to do . . . to prepare for the cattle, when they arrive.”
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 41
