Into the Fire

by Kyla Stone

  She couldn’t help it; she smiled. Hawthorne could always make her smile. She popped a piece in her mouth and savored the sharp, minty flavor before handing one to Hawthorne. “Spearmint. Great choice. Thank you.”

  Hawthorne took a piece and scrunched the wrapper into a little ball. He rolled it around on the table beneath his finger. “So, where would you be if you weren’t here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, if the bombs hadn’t happened. What would you be doing? What was your life like?”

  A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I am—I was—a third-year nursing student at the U. I spent most of my time studying, honestly. I was blessed to get a scholarship, though I still worked twenty hours a week in the admin office. What about you?”

  “Back in the day, I had an athletic scholarship to Florida State. Had a chance to go pro, even. Then a bum knee knocked me out of the game for good.”

  “Basketball?”

  He grinned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? No, it was table tennis.”

  She snorted a laugh around her gum. “What? That’s not even a sport.”

  “Sure is. It’s in the Olympics and everything.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He shrugged. “It worked out for the best. I finished my criminal justice degree and got stationed in my home state. I love my job. Investigations, surveillance, kicking down doors. Every time I nail another drug or weapons dealer, it’s another scumbag off the streets.”

  “Way better than the Olympics.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, back to you. How about music?”

  “Of course.” She flushed. “I actually, um, like country.”

  “No way.”

  “Yep. Guilty as charged. I love Tina Turner, Shania Twain, Charley Pride, and Garth Brooks. All the classics.”

  “Well, hey, I like Shania, too. There you go. Now I’m gonna have to take you to a concert.” The light in his eyes dimmed a little. “After things get back to normal, I mean.”

  A cold chill crept over her. Her gum lost its flavor. “Are things going to go back to normal? I mean, can they?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, growing serious again. “I really don’t know.”

  She looked out the window at all the grounded planes sitting on the tarmac. Dozens of planes just sitting there, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Tears stung her eyes. It was getting harder and harder to forget, for even a moment, what things were like now.

  “How can it get so bad so quickly?” she asked.

  “Transportation of goods is the lifeblood of this country,” he said. “Without it, everything grinds to a halt. Our major ports are crippled. Most of our highways are still clogged with millions of stalled cars. Heck, in the first week, hospitals ran out of basic supplies. Gas stations ran out of fuel. ATMs and banks are running out of cash or refusing to process transactions. Have you seen the news footage of the garbage mountains piling up in some cities? In three weeks. It’s crazy.”

  “What about the aid from other countries?”

  “It’s going directly to the FEMA camps full of millions of refugees. But the millions more still living in towns and cities across the U.S. are the ones in serious trouble. Hundreds of manufacturing plants were burned to the ground or contaminated in the blasts. Without a means of production or a functioning method to deliver the goods that hundreds of millions of people depend on, America will slide into a medieval reality.”

  “But that seems so…impossible.”

  Hawthorne gave a helpless shrug. “Ask Venezuela how impossible it is.”

  She pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids, forced herself to breathe deeply, to accept this terrible new reality. “I know. You’re right.”

  “My uncle always said Americans had grown too soft. We’ve gotten complacent and too dependent on our comforts. Most people never had to deal with anything like this. They’re used to everything on demand at a moment’s notice. I’m afraid we don’t have the knowledge or the fortitude to adapt to this harsh new world.”

  She swallowed hard, accidentally swallowing her gum, too. The enormity of the situation was mind-boggling. Her brain kept wanting to shy away from the facts, to believe Hawthorne was exaggerating, to wrap herself in a bubble of oblivion.

  That was what her mother had done her entire life. Shay couldn’t do the same. Denial only did more damage in the end. If she was going to get through this, she needed to face it head-on.

  But that didn’t mean she was going to give up, either.

  “Then we’ll just have to learn.” She lifted her chin, her chest swelling with fresh determination. “We’ll get stronger and tougher.”

  Hawthorne flashed her a brilliant smile. “I like the way your mind works.”

  “We’ll make it,” Shay said. “There’s no other option.”

  27

  Maddox

  “There you go,” Sister Rosemarie said.

  Maddox sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, angled sideways and leaning forward, his fingers clawing the sheets into his fists as he bit back a growl of pain.

  Sister Rosemarie stood behind him, administering strips of cloth soaked in some topical antibiotic over the fresh slashes striping his bare back. Her little apprentice, a quiet black girl named Ruth, was helping soak the cloth.

  “Done yet?” he hissed.

  “Patience, Maddox,” Sister Rosemarie admonished him. “Isn’t that what I always taught you?”

  “I have a task to accomplish. Haven’t you heard?”

  Her hands stilled against his back. “I’ve heard…rumors.”

  “They’re true. I have my orders from the Prophet himself.”

  “It’s only been two days since the mercy room, Maddox. And you have radiation sickness besides. Surely, it’s too soon—”

  Maddox jerked away from her. Gritting his teeth at the pain searing his back, he forced himself to stand. He would endure it like he’d endured everything else.

  His body might be battered and bruised, but he was still standing, which was more than half of Miami could say for itself. His pain made him stronger than anyone else, even the Chosen among the Shepherds.

  He raised himself to his full height and loomed over Sister Rosemarie and tiny Ruth, who only came up to his elbows. Ruth shrank back against the Sister’s side.

  She feared him. Good. Let her be afraid. She should be.

  The Shepherds of Mercy were a force to be reckoned with. They’d irrevocably changed the landscape of America forever. And they weren’t finished yet.

  “This is my God-ordained mission,” he said. “The sooner I get Eden back, the sooner the Prophet can marry her and receive the Lord’s blessing for the next stage of New America.”

  The woman looked like he’d slapped her. She stared at him, blinking hard, her lips pursed. She recovered quickly. “You aren’t ready yet. Maddox, you’re still weak—”

  “Don’t call me weak!” he screamed in her face.

  She didn’t flinch. “You need to recover your strength fully.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? There’s no time.” He still had three days, but there was no reason to tell her that. “The next step is already in motion. Bring me my shirt,” he snapped to the girl. She scurried across the room to the counter, retrieved his neatly folded army-green shirt, and brought it to him.

  He snatched it from her hands and shrugged it on, wincing. As Ruth reached up to help tug it down, her fingers grazed one of his wounds. Fresh pain seared through him.

  Maddox pivoted and backhanded her across the face.

  She stumbled back, nearly falling over her long skirt, one hand pressed to her cheek, her mouth a round, startled O. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “Are you stupid, girl? Don’t touch me!” he hissed through his teeth. “Get the hell out!”

  Sister Rosemarie steadied Ruth and patted her shoulder gently. “Go, child. Get some lunch and bring me an extra wedge of that delicious whea
t bread your mother makes, okay?”

  The girl nodded and fled the room, barely closing the door behind her.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Sister Rosemarie said. “She was just trying to help.”

  “She deserved worse.” He jerked his shirt down and smoothed the wrinkles. “You should train your apprentice better. The next Shepherd in here won’t be as kind or accommodating as I am.”

  Sister Rosemarie bit her lip as though she had plenty more to say, but needed to restrain herself. Finally, she gave a resigned sigh. “When are you leaving?”

  “Whenever I choose to do so.”

  “Maddox, please. Think this through.”

  For a moment, he softened. As a child, he’d adored this woman. With his own mother dead and his stepmother cruel and dispassionate, he’d sought affection from wherever he could get it.

  Sister Rosemarie had always been patient with him, had shown him kindness and mercy—real mercy—on many occasions. She’d endured his cruel streak, his temper tantrums, his reckless disobedience. Even while disciplining him, somehow she’d never made him feel lesser or unworthy.

  “Don’t make me do something I’ll regret,” he said softly.

  She clenched her hands in front of her long, dusky blue skirt until her knuckles whitened. But she didn’t look afraid—she looked determined. “You’ll regret this, son. I can promise you that.”

  Anger flashed through him, obliterating whatever warmth and affection he’d just felt. She was just a woman. She had no right to give him advice like she knew better than him, like God and the Prophet hadn’t chosen him for a special purpose.

  Suddenly, the room was too small. The walls were closing in on him. He couldn’t breathe properly. There wasn’t enough air.

  “You don’t have to do this, Maddox. You can let them both go. You can figure out a way to let them escape and get your father’s men off their trail. You’re smart enough. I know you are.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what to do, woman. Your words are the words of a heretic.”

  She shook her head adamantly, strands of gray hair slipping from her bun and falling around her worn, weathered face. “God is a god of love. Of love! He would never ask you to do this.”

  He shot her a derisive glare. “One day, your blasphemy will cost you.”

  “One day, your arrogance will cost you, Maddox. Your pride is getting in the way. I know you know the truth.” Her voice lowered, her intense gaze wild with desperation. “You’re smarter than this. You’ve always been too smart to be taken in by pretty words and promises of grandeur. You know the truth about your father, about the Prophet.”

  He should report her for that. He had every right. More, it was his holy duty.

  What would the Prophet do to her? Probably order her to be whipped or scalded to within an inch of her life. She’d never stand straight again.

  Part of him wanted to see her get her just desserts for all the doubt and confusion she incited inside him, for the weakness of his own treacherous emotions. “Shut up! Just shut up.”

  But she didn’t. She took another step toward him, determined and relentless. “I helped raise you. I know you better than anyone. There’s a conscience inside you.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you still care about what happens to Eden.” She reached out and dared to lay her hand on his shoulder. “And Dakota.”

  He flinched from her touch. Her fingers burned like the radiation, but so did the guilt. His mind flashed to his sister—her soft, eager smile, those blond curls and vivid blue eyes, the way she’d adored him no matter what he did to her.

  And then he thought of Dakota. He swallowed the acid stinging the back of his throat. Dakota’s fate was sealed. The words of a silly old woman didn’t matter. Even if he wanted to change things, the path was set in stone now.

  And yet…

  No. There was no second-guessing things, no place for doubt. Doubt was a flaw, a defect he couldn’t allow himself to tolerate. Not for a Chosen one.

  “Maddox,” Sister Rosemarie said, a pleading in her voice he’d never heard before. “Please. You know what’s right.”

  She was just a woman. She didn’t know a damn thing.

  “Shut up!” Maddox took a swift step back, jerking the old woman’s hand off his shoulder.

  Dizziness washed over him. His gut clenched with undulated waves of sour nausea. He sank back onto the bed, flushed and weak.

  He wouldn’t be leading any holy missions today. But there was always tomorrow, and the day after that.

  He imagined Dakota on the other side of this damn swamp, waiting for him to come for her—stressed, anxious, and terrified, never knowing when he would strike. She’d be thinking of him, every second of every day.

  Another day or two might be a good thing. He could take his time, make her suffer. The more stressed and tired she was, the more likely she’d make a mistake. He imagined her defeated, begging for her life, completely under his control.

  He closed his eyes—shutting out Sister Rosemarie, shutting out the pain, shutting out everything but Dakota.

  28

  Eden

  The next day, Eden spent most of the morning checking the ham radio frequencies and practicing Morse code. She was getting pretty good at the code, and she enjoyed it.

  Like sign language, it was another way for her to speak without words. Maybe substituting dots and dashes and units of duration for letters came easier when you were used to finding alternative methods to communicate.

  After a late lunch, Eden made lemonade with freshly squeezed lemons, sugar, and filtered water from the pump, and brought the tray outside to the others. Beneath the spreading live oak draped with Spanish moss, Ezra, Logan, and Park sat at a picnic table a hundred feet from the dock and the fishing boat.

  It was the only big tree Ezra allowed in the clearing. He liked it too much to cut down, he’d told Eden once.

  Ezra had covered the picnic table with newspapers and set out their array of weapons for cleaning, inspection, and field stripping practice. His security video monitor lay beside him, the small screen divided into quadrants that showed different parts of the property.

  Dakota was across the clearing at Ezra’s makeshift range, practicing with the AR-15, aiming at various paper targets tacked to haybales stacked at fifty, one hundred, and one hundred and fifty yards. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a pair of noise-canceling headphones over her ears.

  Eden handed out the cold, sweating glasses.

  “Thanks.” Park sipped his and gave her a thumbs-up sign. “It’s good.”

  Logan swallowed his down in several large gulps.

  Dakota took a break from shooting and stalked over for a drink, her headphones around her neck, sweat gleaming on her forehead.

  Eden motioned for Julio to come over too, which he did with a tired sigh, the satphone Hawthorne had given him in one hand. “I got ahold of my wife and Shay. Everyone is okay. Things are getting pretty bad out there, though. And Shay’s working herself too hard.”

  “That’s not surprising at all,” Park said with a roll of his eyes.

  Dakota took a long swallow and set her glass down in the center of the table. “Shay’s stronger than people give her credit for.”

  Eden nodded and signed, I agree.

  Julio crossed himself and closed his eyes for a moment, like he was saying a prayer for Shay. Eden hoped he was. Shay was in the midst of the madness, trying her best to save people’s lives. That made her a hero.

  Eden waited respectfully for him to finish, then handed him a lemonade glass.

  “Thank you so much, Eden,” Julio said.

  You’re welcome, she signed.

  Ezra glared at their sweating, empty glasses leaving rings on his newspapers. Eden swooped in and grabbed them up, stacking them on the tray balanced against her hip.

  He gave her an indulgent smile. In that moment, with his furrowed brow lifted, his eyes gentle
d, he looked like a completely different person. Like the Ezra she remembered.

  She beamed back at him. She wanted to be useful, and she wanted him to be happy again. She hated all this tension between everybody.

  “It’s so hot out here, all I want to do is jump in that lake and cool off,” Park said, gazing longingly at the placid, inviting water.

  “You could, but you’d be swimming with that gator’s momma.” Dakota hooked her thumb at the three-foot gator sunning himself lazily on the grassy bank.

  Park blanched. “Alligators aren’t aggressive, not like crocodiles,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “Go ahead and test that theory out,” Julio said. “We’ll watch you from here.”

  “There are American crocodiles in the Glades,” Dakota said. “They’re rare, but we’ve got them. They’re huge and ornery as hell. A giant fifteen-footer almost tipped my boat once.”

  Park shuddered. “Maybe I’ll stay on dry land.”

  Ezra let out a derisive snort. He glanced up at Eden, and his expression softened. “Eden can draw gators better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “Just don’t get too close,” Park muttered.

  Her drawing pad and pencils lay on one end of the table, each pencil lined up neatly vertical in the center of the cover, waiting for her. Ezra had brought them out for her. Only Ezra would care about ordering the pencils.

  But she didn’t want to draw today.

  She walked around the table and studied the mix of shotguns, rifles, and handguns, hesitantly at first, then with determination. They looked intimidating, but she wasn’t a little kid anymore. It was time to grow up.

  Last night, after she and Park had fed and watered the chickens and the rabbits, Ezra had put her to work in the ham shack, scanning the radio frequencies for updates on the outside world.

  She wrote down everything she found, which Ezra reported to the rest of the group at dinner: