Devon patted Bekmann on the shoulder as he got to his knees and crawled out of sight before heading back to the truck.
He pulled a tarpaulin out of the back and spread it carefully over the cab, stretching and tying it until he could see no sign when Gil lit his flashlight.
Squeezing through the door and into the driver’s seat, he took Dorothy from Gil. She stunk. “Oh, nice one, Gil. Thanks a bunch."
"It's tough being a father, as you're about to discover," the old man said. Toto leaped up onto his lap and watched as Devon changed Dorothy's diaper, regretting the fact that they were sealed in an almost-airtight box.
Devon climbed up into the cab of Bekmann's truck. They were taking just the one vehicle into the town and watchers had been placed both in the camp and on the nearby hills: the first to respond to Bekmann's signal to follow him into the city, the second to light a beacon fire if they spotted trouble on the highway.
Half a dozen members of the CDF bounced around in the back as the sun rose and the truck made its way at barely above walking pace down the hill to where a gravelly track ran alongside a small creek. They emerged into a wide basin surrounded by distant low hills on three sides and a snow-capped mountain on the other. Apart from that white peak, the color palette was dominated by the greens of small woody plants and the grass they grew from. It had a feeling of fertility and life about it, quite different from the arid landscape of Hope and Ezra where it felt as though people lived in spite of nature and not in harmony with it.
Devon was gazing sleepily at the tall mountain set against a lightening blue sky when he was snapped awake by whistling from behind him and a head poked through to point away to their left. "It's Wendy's!"
"What's that?"
"It's a brothel! Ain't you heard of it?"
Devon looked across at a sign next to a turn in the track. Against the painted backdrop of the snow-peaked mountain, the words "Wendy's Ranch" had been written in flowing letters above the subtext: "Open 24/7" and a phone number. Beyond it, along a winding track, he could see a two-story building with white walls and a slate roof. It looked as though it had survived the firestorm untouched.
"I wonder if they're still doin' business?" the eager young man said.
Gert glanced across without moving his head. "It might explain why those brigands were so protective of this place. But we will not be visiting, Pianka. We have business of our own."
With a groan, the head retreated into the back and further moans of disappointment seeped out as he relayed the news.
Devon's gaze lingered on the sign as they drove slowly past.
"Don't tell me you would like to pay that place a visit, Mr. Myers? You do not strike me as a typical brothel customer."
"I'm a flawed human being, Gert, but no, I was thinking about the women working there—I can't imagine they're free to go anymore."
Gert nodded. "We have to keep our focus on our mission. Our own people rely on us."
"What makes the citizens of Hope any more deserving of our help than the women in that whorehouse?"
"Nothing. Except that we have promised to help them and we cannot give aid to every deserving case. Come now, we must be alert. We are coming into the town."
Sure enough, a row of gnarled trees lined the left-hand side of the track, their bare twigs spread like fingers on the ends of long arms of deep brown and moss green. Behind them, Devon glimpsed rectangular shapes rotting in the fast-growing spring grass.
"So, Springs got it after all. I wondered whether they might have been lucky like Hope, but it looks like the brothel was lucky."
Bekmann was leaning forward in his seat, squinting into the trees. "If you think it was luck, then perhaps you are being … naïve."
"That Hope survived, or Wendy's?"
"Both, but Hope especially. I saw what happened in Ezra, and you have traveled across the country—did you come across anywhere other than Hope that has survived so completely? Not just the occasional house, but a whole community?"
Devon shook his head, though Gert was not looking in his direction. "No, but Hope is unusual. It only has one power line into the town, and it's remote."
"Unusual, but not unique in that. I don't believe in coincidence. Oh, I accept that things happen that seem coincidental, but in my experience, they can always be explained if you look closely enough. I suggest that the survival of Hope depends as much on solving that mystery as it does on raiding expeditions like this, or Hickman's plans to get the farms working again."
He sat back up, then pulled the truck into a gap between the trees.
Devon saw his chance. "What do you make of our glorious leader?"
Bekmann flashed a smile as he opened his door. "Oh, he's a clever one. He doesn't trust me, so he sends me out here on a dangerous errand while he arranges matters to his liking in Hope."
"And is he right not to trust you?" Devon said, stomach tightening as he realized how exposed he was here, in the middle of nowhere in a truck full of Bekmann's soldiers. How easily he could suffer an "unfortunate accident".
Jumping down, Bekmann looked back up at Devon. "Perhaps, but then I am not sure that Hickman's loyalties are only to the people he has sworn to serve. But I tell you this, my friend: I do not renege on my promises without good reason. The people of Hope need supplies and I intend to get them if I can. After that, who can say? Now, will you come with me?"
Devon released the breath he'd been holding. Bekmann's answer hadn't exactly been straightforward, but it would do for now. He nodded and jumped down.
At his call, Mara and another soldier climbed out of the back of the truck and followed Devon and Bekmann into the trees.
Chapter 6: Springs
It looked little more than a shack, but it was the only building they'd seen so far that hadn't burned down. Nestled between three mature beech trees, it was a long, one-story building with whitewashed walls and a corrugated sheet metal roof rusting at the edges. It was on a corner where the road turned from dirt to asphalt and a handful of dilapidated sheds clustered at the end of the backyard. It was the sort of place Devon wouldn't have walked into without a weapon before the firestorm, but it looked inviting enough compared to its neighbors, all blackened shells that had once been homes.
"Don't you come no closer. Y'hear me?"
Devon froze, eyes scanning for the source of the voice. Then, out of the shadows of one of the trees, he saw the barrel of a shotgun moving smoothly left to right, covering them all. She was a woman: mid-thirties, dark hair and used to handling a weapon. He guessed she'd been in the fields opposite when she'd become aware of them and hadn't been able to get back inside in time.
Gert gave a tiny nod as Devon glanced across at him; it seemed the Dutchman was content for him to negotiate this time.
Devon raised his hands and called out to the woman. "We're not here to cause any trouble. We just want to talk."
"About what? I ain't got time for jawin'. You don't look like Warner's men."
"Warner? He's the boss here, right?"
She lowered her weapon a little, but her eyes kept flitting from one to the other of them. "How did you get here without runnin' across them? They've staked out every approach. Turn away those they can't steal from and keep those they take a likin' to."
"We ran into a gang on 80. Long beards and biker clothes."
"That'd be Eddy's gang. He works for Warner. And a nastier piece of work never crawled on the face of God's green Earth."
"You don't need to worry about him anymore," Devon said. "Now, can I put my arms down and talk?"
Again, the rifle swung from one to the other of them before she finally nodded. "You can, but you leave your weapons outside. Your friends can wait out here, too, where I can see them."
Gert went to protest, but Devon got there first. "Gert here's in charge—can he come in with me?" The Dutchman made a show of handing his sidearm to the man behind him.
The woman nodded, and they followed her inside.
The interior was as chaotic and unloved as the outside of the house, and the woman led them into a room that looked out onto the patch of grass where the other two waited and watched.
An old wooden table sat in the center of the room, oak cupboards lining the walls opposite a long window. At one end, they gave way to a kitchen where she filled an old kettle from a pitcher and put it on an ancient iron stovetop.
"It'll take a while to warm up; I wasn't expecting visitors."
She gestured to them to take a seat each, and slipped into the larger chair at the head of the table.
"Are you alone here?" Gert said.
Devon rolled his eyes as the woman's mouth dropped open. "I'm sorry. My friend is Dutch, and very blunt. My name is Devon and this is Gert. We're from south of here."
She smiled and her face opened up, giving a glimpse of the human being behind the protective mask. She had brown eyes deep set beneath a somewhat heavy brow and a nose that looked as though it had been welded on rather than growing naturally out of her face. It ought to have made her plain, but somehow it worked, giving her a powerful beauty that came from strength and independence.
"I am Anne-Marie," she said. "And no, I'm not alone. My brother is out in the fields and my son with him. Now, before I tell you anything, I want to know about what's goin' on outside. I ain't met a single person from beyond the county border since the night of fire."
Her face dropped and Devon recognized the signs of someone reliving a bitter experience. He told her of Hope, though he could sense Bekmann grimacing as he did, and he summarized his journey east. He talked of the Sons of Solomon and, as he did so, he saw her face darken further.
"I thought we'd seen the worst of it here already," she said. "So many folks dead that night, and then Frank Warner rode into town with his good-for-nothin' bandits and made their home at Wendy's. Poor girls, I sure feel sorry for them. They been runnin' Springs ever since. Been here more'n once, but we got little enough, so they let us alone for now. I guess there's a good side to not being perty."
Devon almost said he thought she was pretty, but good sense came to his rescue just in time. "How many men has this Warner got?"
The kettle began whistling on the stove, so she got up and padded into the kitchen. "It's hard to say. When he first came, I guess maybe twenty, twenty-five. Since then, some of our menfolk have joined them. Livin' in a brothel has its attractions for husbands who've lost their wives and families, I suppose. No, mine didn't die that night. He took off years ago, right about the time I got pregnant with Sammy."
"So, how many do you think in total?" Devon asked, not willing to get sidetracked with her personal story.
She blinked at him, as if surprised by the question. "Oh, I don't know. He's maybe got fifty, and most of them will have guns."
Bekmann groaned. "Too many. Even if you take off the ones we killed at the roadblock."
"Well, you've sure done us a service in taking out Eddy Maynard. Him and his gang was enough trouble before the firestorm, but Frank's let them run off the leash since he came into town. And I don't think, when it came down to it, you would be fighting all his men. I reckon most of them would melt away if you dealt with Frank."
Devon smiled as she handed him a steaming mug of tea. "Sounds to me like you've been giving that some thought."
"Well, a girl can dream, can't she? I seen enough of Frank Warner's fat face ridin' up and down the streets like he's the king of it all. More'n once I've wanted to fetch my gun and knock him out of the saddle. But I know what'd happen to Joss and my Niall if I did."
"So, if we want to trade with the people of Springs, we need to deal with Warner."
"If you mean put a bullet in his head, then yes. But you gotta get close to him first, and that'll take some doin'."
A shape moved out of the shadows at the far end of the room where an open door led to the rest of the house. Devon reflexively went for a weapon that wasn't there as Gert leaped up, knife in hand.
"I'll help. I'll get you close enough."
"No, Joss. You don't need to have no part in this."
The gangly young man wearing black glasses, a dirt-stained white T-shirt under a gray jacket and jeans that didn't look as though they'd been washed in weeks shook his head. "No, it's time I did my bit. Warner has tried to recruit me, after all, so he won't be suspicious if I offer to join him."
"Won't be suspicious? You may have the brains in this family, but I got all the common sense. Frank Warner don't trust his own shadow. If you turn up out of the blue, he's gonna know somethin's up."
Joss took a seat at the table and turned his attention from his sister to the two visitors. "I haven't been much use to Anne-Marie since I got back from MIT, and then the firestorm happened and all I could do was drag a few people out of their homes. I do my bit in the fields, but I just haven't got the strength. Ma and Pa treated me with kid gloves and poor Anne-Marie was left to care for them when they got old."
Devon could see that Gert was both impatient and doubtful of this young man. "What do you suggest, Joss?"
"Mr. Warner approached me the last time he was here and asked me to join him."
"Doing what?"
"He wasn't specific, but he said he has plans for Springs and he needs someone with math skills to help. I studied quantum mechanics at MIT, so I figure he thinks I'm the best man for the job," Joss said, puffing his chest out a little. "I can go see him and set something up. Maybe leave a door open for you?"
Anne-Marie snorted. "And maybe go see Gloria while you're there?"
Joss's pale skin flushed red. "So what if I do? Those girls are in a tough situation. You should be glad you're not locked up with them."
"Uncle Joss!" A young boy—maybe six or seven years old—tore into the kitchen and threw himself at the gangly man. "I heard you was home from outside where Mommy told me to hide. Who are these men, Mommy?"
Anne-Marie sighed. "So much for tryin' to protect you both. The less you know, Niall Dayton, the better. Now, you run along back to your room and I'll be along presently. And as for you, brother, I only hope you ain't stupid enough to go through with your fool plan. I ain't ready to lose anyone else on account of Frank Warner, and I'll thank you gentlemen to leave us. We'll help as we can, but it stops short of my idiot brother walkin' into the lion's den on some fool mission."
Joss opened his mouth, but she jumped in with both feet before he could say anything. "No! Gloria can look after herself, but I can't manage without you. Your place is here and don't you forget it!"
She grabbed her son, who'd seemingly frozen to the spot, and dragged him out of sight.
Devon didn't see Anne-Marie again before heading back to the truck with Bekmann and the others. He'd spent an hour in the kitchen with Joss in a vain attempt to change the young man's mind, but he was determined.
"It's insane," Bekmann said as they rode the truck back up to the bottom of the hill where the others waited. The original plan to signal for them to come into town had been abandoned and one of the younger soldiers had been sent scurrying up to the camp with instructions.
"I agree, but he's going to do something. The question is whether we back him up."
Bekmann grunted. "I think this Gloria has more of a hold on him than he admits."
"Yeah, but there's more to it than that. He needs to prove himself. In this new world there's not much place for the intellectual beta male. I think this is his way of becoming someone his sister would be able to rely on. I've met plenty of geniuses in my time and not a single one had the sense they were born with."
They were leaning against the front of the truck as the remaining soldiers kept guard. Bekmann lit a cigarette and sighed as he exhaled, sending up a cloud of white smoke that was taken by the wind as it rose.
"You know that's bad for your health, right?" Devon said, feeling a sense of deja vu.
"I figure I could either have a heart attack because of stress or cigarettes, my friend. At least if it's the fags, I'll h
ave a little enjoyment while I wait."
Devon smiled. "You spent some time in the UK, then?"
"I was assigned to the Met for a time. My colleagues enjoyed teaching me how to speak proper English. But I'm not comfortable about this, Devon. That … boy in a man's body; he's gonna get himself killed. I can't see him fooling this Warner fella."
"Yeah, that's what worries me."
Bekmann blew out a lungful of smoke. "But is it wise for us to get dragged into it?"
"I don't know, Gert. But I feel as though we have to do something. From what Anne-Marie said, they've got supplies here, and not that many people survived. There's a grocery store here that didn't burn down, and Warner's gang has been raiding places nearby and hoarding what they take. Seems to me we can help the folks out and take our fair share in payment. And anyway, why are you going along with it if you've got doubts?"
He shrugged and gazed up the slope. "Call it a moment of weakness, but since we got ambushed, I want to take action instead of waiting for crap to happen to us. In battle, it's usually the decisive side that wins. And we've come a long way and used up a lot of gas—we can't go back empty-handed."
"So, we'll go ahead with Joss's plan?"
"As far as it takes us and no farther."
They had left one truck at the camp on the hill. Gil Summers took charge of it and the four soldiers Gert had left with him—all inexperienced and young. The others took the second truck down to meet Gert. If all went well, they would signal to Gil and he'd come down. If it went against them, he'd return to Hope, taking his escort and Dorothy with him.
The trucks were hidden among the trees near Anne-Marie's place and the contingent of soldiers jogged back along the dirt track toward the sign to the brothel. The sun had set behind the white-capped mountain and they used the last of the light to get themselves into position.
There had been a Super-8 next to the brothel, but the firestorm had reduced it to a pile of blackened rubble, except for an outbuilding where fresh sheets were stored. Joss had said he would meet them here after dark and lead them in through a door he planned to leave open. He hoped to talk his way into Warner's confidence: he had, after all, at least forty IQ points on the brigand chief. How hard could it be? Devon had recognized his claim as pure bravado that hid a genuine terror. He admired the young man for it—true courage, he knew well enough, was facing fears rather than denying them.
The Last City (Book 3): Last Stand Page 5