Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  The soldiers had come with him because they were disheartened or disenfranchised or disgusted with their lot. Even if none of that were true, even if they were only afraid for their futures, his job remained the same: It fell to him to inspire. He removed his shoes.

  “The coal walk is an ancient ritual.” He turned to Josephine. “Have you walked the embers before, Miss Morgan?”

  “I haven’t.” She removed her shoes. Good for her. She wasn’t going to blink. He remembered why he’d kept her around for so long. She’d been getting on his nerves today, but she was generally a good sport. It felt good to push her to her limits.

  “Don’t run,” he said. “The weight of your body presses your foot into the coals, which is not what you want to do. You need to keep an even pace. That way, the heat is dispersed.”

  “May I go first?” she said.

  What was her angle? She had to have one or she wouldn’t have made a point of it. Fine. Let her go and show her esprit de corp. None of these men or women were going to follow her back out those gates. Not if he had anything to say about it.

  Josephine walked the coals as if she’d been doing it for years.

  Alistair gave Jacinta’s deputy, Kurt, the nod. He threw water over the coals. They hissed, steam rising up from the angry embers. “You’d think this would make the walk easier, but it’s the opposite. The moisture adheres to the feet, which makes the fire reach up to lick away the water.” He walked onto the sizzling embers and stopped. He counted to three, then took another step. He stopped again. The faces around the fire said it all. He had mastered fire. At a primal level it mattered, this mastery.

  Herb pounded down the camp with Jacinta right on his tail. His tie was flapping over his shoulder, his cheeks rosacea-red and inflamed. He had something tucked under his arm. The wireless. Great. Alistair was going to be upstaged by a news report. He finished his fire walk with no eyes on him at all. What a waste of good soles.

  Herb cranked the handle and waited. Widget’s voice filled the avenue where Alistair’s hot coals faded.

  “…we’re looking at that left hook and we think she’s going to hit us with it, right in the smacker. It’s official now, people, she’s been named Hurricane Erin. So far, this little lady has behaved a lot like Hurricane Sandy, for any of you good folks who remember the Frankenstorm that delivered a one-two punch to our shores. Winds and storm surge like you wouldn’t believe. Erin’s already torn through the Bahamas, messed up Cuba, and been hovering offshore gathering strength for a couple of days. As I remember, back when Sandy was coming at us, there was what they called a kink in the jetstream over Greenland, which forced her towards us rather than back out to sea. Who knows if that’s what’s happening here? We’re not getting any satellite pictures and there’s no reliable reporting so we’re piecing this together from what little I remember from 2012 and the reports we’re getting from amateur storm chasers. I’m guessing the meteorological office isn’t too keen on sending anything up, now that we know what’s in the rain. Three private planes have fallen out of the sky. We have our own drone owners sending us reports from Connecticut and the southern end of New Jersey, but we can’t get close enough to New York without catastrophic equipment failures. She’s sucking up MELT-polluted water and slapping it down all over the place. If she comes ashore like Sandy, well…”

  There was a long pause. No one spoke.

  “If Hurricane Erin is anything like Sandy, the combination of MELT and radioactive isotopes is going to be like nothing any of us have ever witnessed. May God have mercy on us all.”

  Jacinta looked to the sky, then the gate, then the sky. Was she worried? The storm was miles away. Even if it made landfall it would be at least a day before their neck of the woods saw any radioactive fallout. In any case, she was one of the elite. She’d been dosed with thyroid blockers, like him. Not everyone needed potassium iodide. Only the people who were going to be outside. She nodded and looked to her right. She wanted to talk to him. Privately.

  Alistair strode back over the burning coals to join his trusted assistant.

  She turned her back on the crowd. “She’s FBI.”

  Alistair was pierced with a hundred bolts of lightning. His blood raged through his brain at such a pace it almost exploded out of his ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He gagged and spat, rubbed his face, clenched and unclenched his fists to get himself in order. Nothing dissipated the current running through him. What was he hearing? Could it be who he thought it was? No. Impossible. That would be…well…impossible.

  “The soldiers begged me to send her out to help them. They said she had a plan. A place for them to stay. They said she had contacts and was taking them to safety. They said that Jo Morgan was, and is, a Federal Agent.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Aggie feared the worst. Dad and Petra had pulled Midge out of the back of the Humvee and had her on the ground. She was stiff. Her arms and legs like sticks. Her back arched.

  “Cushion her head.” Dad was in control, directing people, telling them what to do. “Don’t let her bash it again. We want to protect her brain as much as possible.”

  Petra was on the ground with her sister, whispering to her. “You’re going to be fine. It’s all going to be okay. Hang in there, Midgelette. Come on. Come back to us…”

  Mimi held Bryony who held Mouse draped over her good arm. The trio looked down from the back of the Humvee, transfixed.

  Aggie watched, once again reminded of how little she knew and how useless she was. They needed Betsy. Why had she come in the van? She should have brought Indie. Horseback was always the fastest way to go when the terrain was uneven like this. She’d made the wrong decision. Again.

  She tried to calculate the distance home. The mines were closer. If she went there to get Indie was that faster than heading home in the van? Her brain was ready to overheat. What would ordinarily have been a simple math problem felt like an AP geometry course had collided with a MOOC on particle physics and exploded all over her mind.

  “I’ll drive.” Hedwig took her by the arm and marched her back to the van. “You want the nurse, yes?”

  OMG, mind-reader. Yes. I want the nurse. Aggie nodded.

  “I’m going to do my best not to wreck this vehicle but hang on tight because this is going to be a bumpy ride.” She wasn’t joking. Hedwig drove like a demon, taking every bump and turn and crease in the field as if it were the enemy and she the Viking hordes come to slay them.

  Aggie closed her eyes and prayed. Dad would die—like, actually stop breathing and give up entirely—if Midge didn’t make it. And if he died, she’d die. It would be a case of Everlee Death Dominoes. Who would die after her? Not Mom. No offense, Mom, but you always survive. It’s your thing. Petra would die if Paul died; ditto the opposite scenario. She and Mom would die without Dad. Everyone would fall apart without Midge. But no one would cease to be if Agatha Everlee left the planet for good. How awful. She’d done so little in the world, mattered so little, that no one would care if she died.

  Get a grip, Agatha. People didn’t die of sadness.

  She was just tired. She hadn’t known how dark her thoughts could get, but here she was wishing someone would die of a broken heart if she sloughed her mortal coil.

  “Do you want me to do the talking?” Hedwig brought her out of her mini-depressive indulgence.

  “I’m good.”

  “What are you going to say when we find them?”

  Um, like, what was there to say? Midge is having a seizure. We don’t know what to do. We don’t have medication to treat this or, if we do, we don’t know it. Dad’s back, but that isn’t going to mean much of anything if Midge dies. Like, that? Was she going to say that?

  No. Of course not.

  As always, what Aggie felt on the inside and said on the outside was not going to match up in a perfect line. “I’ll just state the facts. Midge is in trouble and we need a nurse.”

  “What about the doctor? Are you going to r
ecruit him, too?”

  Aggie was confused for half a second. “Oh, not that nurse. We can’t get Nigel. He’s done with us. He left. He said he couldn’t work with Betsy because she lied to him.”

  Hedwig took another ditch at warp speed. There was a crunch and a screech. Metal on metal. The van rocking more as it ran over the strip of aluminum or plastic or whatever. “Bumpers were made for bumping, I guess.”

  Aggie tried to find a marker on the horizon; anything that would tell her which way they were headed. Hedwig had misunderstood. She needed to go back to Betsy’s place, not go waltzing around the countryside looking for a random nurse. The trees were all familiar, so familiar they blurred together. She’d done this trip a dozen times but there was nothing to distinguish this bit of upstate New York. Once you’re in a field—or a ditch or a gully or halfway up an embankment—it all looks pretty much the same.

  “Look. I get it. There was some upset. But he’s good, right?”

  He was. Nigel had been an exemplary nurse. Betsy had said so many times.

  “He’s closer. Like, at least half an hour closer.”

  She made a good point.

  “I’m no expert but the longer she seizes the worse things can be in the long run.” She took her eyes off the grass ahead for a couple of seconds to check in on Aggie.

  Aggie forced a smile. Hedwig was trying. Full points for thinking out of the box. Please don’t let the out-of-the-box-ness cost us Midge’s life.

  “If you don’t want to talk, I can shut up. I’ve got plenty of thinking of my own to do. My folks are going to be mad with worry. I’ve got no idea how to get home. I spend all my time being as busy as possible because I’m worried if I stop I might be filled with homicidal rage and kill someone.”

  That was news.

  “Here’s what I think we should do…” Hedwig steered around a muddy sinkhole and headed for the trees. “We should think about who we’d like to kill.”

  Aggie smiled in spite of herself.

  “I’ll start. I mean, should we even bother with the obvious ones?” She squinted and turned her head every couple of seconds, scanning for medical personnel in the wilderness. “Hitler…”

  Aggie laughed. It was that kind of game. She could deal with that. It was better than thinking about her own death.

  “Stalin. Mussolini…”

  “Shall we just agree all dictators should hang?”

  “Hanging’s too good for them,” said Hedwig. “But, yes, let’s agree that all dictators are on the list. Who else?”

  “Like categories?”

  “Sure.” She hit a bump that sent them both towards the roof of the van.

  “Serial killers.”

  “I can get myself straight with serial killers, sure. Except Dexter.” She leaned on the horn, tooting out a burst of sound that would alert everyone in a two-mile radius to their location. “Dexter was cool. He took out the trash.”

  “We’d sort of be like Dexter if we went all vigilante on the world.” Aggie had only seen a couple of episodes of the show. It wasn’t standard Everlee fare and given that their viewing time was limited she’d opted for more upbeat material, like Buffy and Vampire Diaries and, a guilty pleasure she never discussed with anyone, SpongeBob.

  “You’re very quiet. Are you doing okay?”

  “Trying to think of more categories.” It was a lie, but she didn’t want to tell Hedwig what was really on her mind.

  “Huh. So easy. Categories of people who should die. Let’s say: Rapists. Child molesters. Anyone who hurts animals. And Vlad the Impaler.”

  Aggie snickered, mostly from nerves. This was heavy stuff. “Vlad is not a category.”

  “Fine, we’re back to individuals. Vlad the Impaler, Pol Pot, the Belgian King who ordered the slaughter of the Congolese. I forget his name. Queen Victoria, the Sherriff of Nottingham, Cruella De Vil, and Princess Azula.”

  “Now you’ve gone into fiction.”

  “If you have another game we can play—something good, something that will keep me from losing my mind—I’m game.”

  “Eugene H. Krabs, aka Mr. Krabs, from SpongeBob. Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Ummm…Darth Vader…”

  “Oooh, good. Films. That opens it up nice and wide.” Hedwig checked on Aggie again. “Don’t worry. If we don’t see them in the next five minutes we’re going to head back to Betsy’s place. I get why you’re so scared. But think about this: If your dad is half as brave as your brother, they’re all going to be fine.”

  “He’s the best.” Aggie had to fight the tears. Her dad had finally made it back to reality and she’d left him immediately.

  “You know what? I’m really sorry about this, but I have to stop.” Hedwig pulled over and put the van in park. “I’m dying for a pee.” She jumped out, moved to the back of the van, took care of her call of nature and was back in her seat. “Sorry about that. I’ve been trying to stay hydrated, but it comes at a cost.”

  “Were you like this before?” Aggie’d had time to reflect on how deeply weird their conversational game had been.

  “Like what?” Hedwig started the van.

  She couldn’t say “like, thinking about who you wanted to kill” to someone she’d just met.

  “Homicidal, you mean? Nope.” Hedwig honked the horn again. “I volunteered at a bird sanctuary and a suicide hotline. It started as a way to earn brownie points for my college application, but I liked it. It was…I don’t know…good to make a difference, or at least feel like you were making a difference. I worked with the broken things of the world. We had owls that had flown into cars, fallen out of their nests, eaten rat poison…”

  “I was different, too.”

  “How so?”

  “I wasn’t so in my head. Like, I did things. Now I feel like I have to turn everything over and over and over in my mind because the smallest decision can have these huge, far-reaching consequences.”

  “Yeah. But, to be fair to us, the world wasn’t imploding last month. I mean, maybe it was. I don’t know. For some people, I’m sure this isn’t all that different. Like, if you live in a war zone or whatever. But I had an ordinary life. I was about to graduate high school. I had a place at college. I knew where I was going and what I was doing. Now all I can think about is how I’d like to put a screwdriver through Gideon’s eye.”

  Should she ask? It was out there—this man’s name with no explanation—kind of begging for a question. They were going to live together in the caves. At least for a while. She should try to make friends. She wasn’t very good at it. She had no “fluff” to talk about, no “popular culture” in her vocabulary. Her mom and dad had thought they were doing them all a big favor by keeping them away from “all that trash” but it meant they had very little in common with their peers. Then again, Hedwig didn’t seem like any of the eighteen-year-olds Petra had brought home. She was action-oriented, capable, and didn’t talk garbage-nothingness. Aggie decided they’d be friends. Like, for real.

  “You’re wondering who Gideon was?”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “He was the lowlife who ran the camp where Jim and Bryony and Paul and I were held.”

  “I’ll stick him in the eye for you, if you like.”

  Hedwig held her hand up in the air, palm facing Aggie. “High five.”

  The girls smacked their hands together, giggling.

  “You know who else could do with a poke in the eye?” Hedwig was grinning.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever did this.”

  Aggie nodded. She had nothing she could say. It had started at her mom’s company so, in a way, all those people she knew from Mom’s work (Mom included) were sort of responsible for what was happening.

  “There they are!” Hedwig leaned on the horn and stepped on the gas and flew towards Nigel and Fred. Or two men Aggie hoped were Nigel and Fred.

  Hedwig was out of the van, smiling and talking as soon as they reached the guys. “You’re needed.”

  “Ta
ke a hike.” Dr. Frederick Handel, aka Dr. Fred didn’t bother to stop.

  Aggie slid out of her seat. Should she take her gun or not take her gun, that was the question.

  “I wouldn’t ask but we have a genuine medical emergency.”

  “You held me at gunpoint and tied me to a tree. What makes you think I’d help you?”

  “It’s Midge.” Aggie looked to Nigel even though Fred was the pediatrician.

  “What’s going on with Midge?” Fred moved his backpack from one shoulder to the other.

  “She’s having another seizure.” Aggie didn’t try to make it any more or less dramatic than it already was even though she wanted to scream and throw them in the van and get back there as fast as she could. They’d only been gone for ten minutes, but if her sister had swallowed her tongue or bashed her brains or whatever you did when you had a seizure, while they were joking about dictators, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  “How many has she had?” Nigel was a couple of steps closer to the van.

  Aggie shrugged. “I’ve been doing supply runs and getting people organized. I think they would have told me if it had been more than two, but it looked serious. She was as stiff as a board.”

  “There’s not a lot you can do unless you know what the root cause is,” said Fred. “Does she have a brain bleed? A blockage? Some other insult to the brain that we can’t see or test for?”

  “I’ll give you a whole blister pack.”

  Fred nodded, threw his pack in the van, and climbed in the back.

  Why hadn’t she said it right from the start? She already knew Fred had a price. He’d made that very clear. She would have given it to him, but Mimi had insisted they needed to keep as much as possible in stock, just in case they got trapped for months.

  Nigel followed Fred and the four of them sped back to the Humvee. No games. No fictitious murders. No chit-chat. Aggie wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Seeing the Humvee in the distance was the worst.