Melt | Book 9 | Charge

by Pike, JJ

  Every corner was a gamble. Was he around this one? That one? Waiting with his band of turncoats? Did they have long knives? Axes and sharp poles or worse? Did they have guns?

  When she and Trish finally broke free of the final straggler, Trish blurted it all out in one go. There was a plot. Jacinta was going to be deposed. Jeff and his men…She stopped. “You know already?”

  Jacinta nodded.

  “How? I just learned this. It’s not widespread gossip. Did someone break ranks? Do they have a turncoat? Oh, I’m relieved.” She hung off Jacinta’s arm with both hands, squeezing tight. “I couldn’t bear the thought of all those people being against you.”

  “How many people?”

  “From what I heard, there are thirteen rebels.”

  Jacinta knew better than to discount thirteen people. If they were true believers they could bustle her off scene and have a new man in power in a matter of hours. She saw what the people thought of her. She was a figure of ridicule.

  Chrissy came tearing down the corridor, dragging Meredith behind her. “I found him!” She dug in Jacinta’s pockets, but came up empty.

  “Later,” said Jacinta. “I won’t forget. I promise. Now head home and stay there. Don’t come back out tonight. It’s an important day for all of us tomorrow and I’m going to need you to be my runner for the whole day. You need to rest that big ole brain of yours.”

  Chrissy hugged her mentor and trotted off. She was obedient, like Jacinta. For all the good it had done her.

  Jacinta turned to Meredith. She’d sent for him. Used their code. She had to make her story a good one. He was nobody’s fool. If she fumbled this he’d be running off to Steckle to let him know it was time to make their move.

  “Fancy a shot?”

  He nodded. “Who doesn’t?”

  Jacinta smiled. It wasn’t as hard to fake it one on one. Smiling in front of the crowd in the canteen had been a real effort, but Meredith was ready for secret ops, so they were on more solid ground. “Your people ready?”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s rendezvous in the mushroom palace.” It was a pretentious name for Alistair’s favorite room in Wolfjaw Down. He’d designed a “place of wonder,” he said, “that we might not forget what it is we’re fighting for. For beauty and truth and the common good.”

  Meredith loped off while Trish and Jacinta wound their way about the underground compound toward the mushroom room.

  “What was that about?”

  Now wasn’t the time to confide in Trish. She was a good sort and, more likely than not, loyal. But what was about to go down required strong stomachs and staunch spines. She wasn’t sure Trish had either.

  “You’re drinking with Meredith Hoffelder now?”

  “We go back a ways,” said Jacinta. “He’s a Marine, I was Reserves. They’re not the same, but we share certain sensibilities. You’re more than welcome to come, but you’ll need to park your softer side at the door. The jokes are rude, crude, and off-color. You know how they are…”

  Trish grimaced. She got the message. This wasn’t a meet-and-greet for the cabinet. This was old-timers swigging back the hooch and comparing war stories and hyped-up tales of their (fictional?) sexual conquests.

  “Watch your back, Boss.” She wrapped her arms around Jacinta and hugged her close. “It’s a hard job. No one knows until they’re in the hot seat. You’re doing fine. Don’t get caught with your pants down.”

  Jacinta trailed her hand along the wall as she walked away from Trish. There it was again. Water. She cast her mind back to the plans she’d studied with Alistair. Was there a natural water source near here? She didn’t remember one. Someone had asked if they’d sprung a leak. Who was that? Patrice. The nurse. Was it gossip or was there something to it? She turned back and yelled, “Trish!”

  Trish trotted back to her boss’ side. “You rang?” She was all smiles. Just like her. Didn’t take offense even though she’d been disinvited to the party.

  “Heard anything about leaks?”

  “Three reports,” said Trish. “Jonathan Abuha reported water in his bathroom. We believe that was one of the kids, flushing something they ought not. Everyone knows the two-leaf rule, but some of them didn’t learn their lesson last year when everyone went nuts for toilet paper. I think we have a couple of rolls knocking about here and there. I’ve told them, ‘This is a septic system like no other. We need biodegradable materials only in the pipes. But Sara Abuha is a stickler for cleanliness and I’m guessing she’s passed that on to her kids…”

  “So, not a leak, per se? More like a blocked toilet?”

  “Correct.”

  “You said there were three reports?” The water had pooled in a little puddle while they’d been standing there. Jacinta watched it disappear into the rock. How long had that been happening?

  “Mark and Mandy Watson say their roof is leaking, which is ridiculous. They’re nowhere near a water source.” She stopped, the color running from her face. “Oh…”

  “And the third?” The wall produced another bead of water. Then another. They were leaking. Definitely.

  “Uh…” Trish had followed Jacinta’s gaze and watched the wall bleed water for a minute before she pulled herself back together again. “Abbie. Abbie said she’d seen water in the corridor to the west of the hydrofarm. They’re strict over there. They understand water. We shouldn’t be seeing leaks. Oh, my. We’re leaking. That’s not good. Is that why you’re talking to Meredith? Because we’re leaking? He’s good, but I don’t know that he’s that good. I mean, he has field experience, I’m sure, but he was tested and found not to be suitable for engineering. He doesn’t have that kind of discipline. He jumps the gun…”

  “Trish?” Jacinta needed her to calm down and stop babbling. If anyone heard her it could incite panic. “You’re to tell no one, you hear me? This is in hand. I’ve got it under control.”

  The woman’s eyes were stuck on the crack in the wall. “Has it gotten wider while we’ve been talking? I think it has? This whole place could collapse. Water on rock. It was always a gamble. Alistair talked about pumps and filters and ventilation, but no one has done anything like this before. We could be drowned in our beds. We’re sealed in.” Trish was borderline hysterical.

  Jacinta pulled her down the corridor and into the mushroom palace. In the far wall was a door which was off-limits to all Downers. Jacinta nodded at the guard and let herself into the liquor store. Alistair had stocked it to the rafters. He believed in everyone pulling their own weight, eating what they’d grown, using barter to get what they needed from their neighbors, but he was no fool. He knew the power of a quick bribe. Rum took years to ferment. Ditto whisky. He had some on hand for those moments when “simple, honest living” wouldn’t cut it.

  Jacinta poured Trish a shot of brandy—perfect for the nerves—and made her down it in one go. “Better?”

  Trish was still inspecting the ceiling, running her hands along the walls, tracing patterns in the floor with her feet. “We have no way out, Jacinta.”

  Jacinta poured her friend a second shot. Trish wasn’t given to drinking and two shots took her well over her personal limit. She’d calm, if she was just given time. “I want you to go home and rest. Trust me. I would never let anything bad happen to you. You know that.”

  Trish clung on tight all the way to the outer door. “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Don’t let Jeff Steckle win.” Trish was already glassy eyed and her tongue loose. Lightweight. “He’ll condemn us all to death.”

  “I know.” Did she need to walk Trish all the way back to her cave? She didn’t have time. She needed to be here when Meredith and the others arrived. She called the guard over with a swift gesture. “Your name?”

  “Alexander Jensen, Ma’am.”

  “Alexander. I need you to escort Ms. Taylor to her quarters.”

  “I’m not to leave my post, Ma’am.”

  “I’ll keep the liquor
room safe,” she said. “You take Trish home and return as soon as you can. There’s a reward in it for you.” She’d slipped into small bribes like it was her second skin. A side effect, no doubt, of deciding to circumvent the law.

  She watched Trish lean into Alexander and prayed the brandy hadn’t made her yappy around strangers.

  It wasn’t long before Meredith appeared. She knew he was one of Jeff’s men, but what about Marcus? Had he been turned? What did she remember about the man with red spectacle frames? He was funny, she knew that. He liked to make people laugh. A people-pleaser? No, more of a consensus builder. He didn’t have the smell of desperation about him that people-pleasers so often did. He liked peace and harmony. He wasn’t going to be on Jeff’s team.

  And Christine? She’d been in Wolfjaw almost as long as Jacinta and Alistair. Could she have been wooed over to the dark side? No way. She’d helped out when they first came into Down. The trial of the FBI agent had made them all suspicious of each other. Were the new guys moles? Had they allowed traitors to infiltrate their midst? Christine smoothed the way; showed the soldiers who’d defected from the General’s ranks how to fit in; made Jacinta’s life infinitely easier. She was a good egg.

  Jacinta stopped herself. Triple-H had warned her about this tendency. She couldn’t roam around inside her own thoughts when people were waiting on her to make a decision or show some leadership.

  “Guys…” This was her moment. She had to get it right. “Tomorrow’s a big day. First day that every adult Downer gets to vote.” She paused. Was it enough? If she invited them to run security? No. There were a hundred people who’d step up for that detail. She needed something alarming enough to distract them, but not so alarming that Wolfjaw would devolve into mass panic. Could she use the leak? Would they get it? They were military. That counted for something. They’d followed orders when they needed to, whether they liked them or not. That was the way to go. Water. Like oxygen. Too much or too little and you’re dead.

  “Follow me.” She lead them back to the liquor room and poured four healthy glasses of Dorymen Rum. It was Alistair’s favorite. A limited edition. Very classy. “Round, with oak notes and chocolate undertones,” he’d said.

  The silence weighed heavy, but she let it hang. The longer she said nothing the more substance her words would have once she did speak.

  She held her glass aloft. “To Down.”

  They toasted Down and swallowed hard.

  “We need to close off the hydrofarm.”

  “Thieves?” Christine Gasberg had never lost her accent. She’d come over from Denmark when she was a teenager and her voice had a melodic quality that many (most?) Americans found beguiling. She barely needed to speak to have people falling over themselves to help her. Not that she used it, necessarily.

  Jacinta wished she had an accent that made people want to do stuff for her. But she didn’t. She was just a regular old New Yorker, with the remnants of a Bronx drawl especially when she’d had a few drinks. She topped up their glasses, being careful to make her shot the smallest.

  “It’s not thieves,” she said. “I wish it was.” She sipped her drink.

  Marcus had lost his smile. No quips when the chips were down. Was he on her side? She hoped so, but this was no time for gambling. She had to assume they were with Meredith, who was with Steckle, which meant they wanted her out of office. Or worse? Surely not. This wasn’t a coup and an assassination, was it? It occurred to her—a bit late—that she’d walked into a small room with three people who might have been tasked with taking her out.

  “Is there a leak?” Marcus made it a question, but he knew something. His inflection said he’d heard the same rumors Trish had heard.

  “We don’t’ know.” Jacinta put her drink, barely touched, on the floor. “What we do know is everyone is going to be on the move tomorrow. We’ll have them come to the stables in controlled numbers, but anyone who’s due west of the stream…” She paused. Alistair had made sure everyone knew the geography of Down. They’d know which stream she was talking about. It was integral to the health and wellbeing of their crops, but it was also a source of great anxiety for the engineers. “Anyone who lives due west will need to be routed east and kept there until we have conducted a full inspection.”

  Liam Bradstone had almost walked out on the project when Alistair had first floated the idea of integrating the stream into the design. It was only when they’d built in a series of failsafe measures, which included flooding entire sectors if they needed to, that he’d signed off on the design. Jacinta wasn’t sure whether they were going to have to invoke one of those measures. She didn’t have the data to back a plan that radical. But she needed these three people out of her hair and this story—that there was a leak—was rooted in truth.

  Well, gossip.

  Well, reports, but light reports, not anything that had made it as far as the council, but gossip that would at least serve her purposes on this strange and terrible night. The leak ruse would take the three of them far from her operation at the front doors, with reason to stay there until they were relieved.

  “Meredith?” She turned to the traitor. “Would you organize the evacuation? I want it to be orderly. This is a Grade Two, Blue evac, so people have time to gather their bug-out bags and essentials and move to secondary accommodation.”

  Meredith nodded.

  “Christine, I’ll need you to gather a few trusted people to stand guard once we have the hydrofarm contained.”

  Christine nodded. “Not a problem. Everyone wants to help. And they’re not afraid to die.”

  Jacinta cut in. “No one’s going to die. We’re not looking at a flood. We have a light trickle here and there. We’re being aggressive in our response in part because there will be so many people moving around Down tomorrow.”

  “You mean sabotage?” Christine tucked her hair behind her ear and sipped her rum.

  “Sorry?”

  Christine swallowed the end of her drink and put her glass next to Jacinta’s on the floor. “You think someone might have cut the pipes?”

  “No.” Jacinta was lost. Nothing she’d said—or heard from Trish—led her to believe that this was a case of sabotage. Who would be mad enough to flood the place they lived? A chill ran down her spine. Jeff Steckle might launch a soft attack on the infrastructure in order to undermine her authority. Was this his doing? Her eyes darted to Meredith. If he was thinking about sabotage it wasn’t written on his face. He had his eyes on Jacinta’s unfinished drink. “Help yourself.”

  He did, with a wide and goofy grin.

  “I have no reason to think this is sabotage.” Best look like she had no suspicions. “It’s going to be a leak. We expected this. Not this soon, but we expected it. Pipes age. They corrode. Water always wins. Alistair talked about this many times.”

  Everyone in the room nodded along with her. They were buying it. And buzzed, no doubt. She’d done what Triple-H had asked her to do. Two big gestures: The play and now a secret meeting, complete with contraband.

  No way Meredith wouldn’t boast to his buddies about having rum in the mushroom palace.

  “What are my orders?” Marcus had barely touched his second drink. Was he on alert? Watching her? Reading her lies and half-truths? She wanted to take him with her on her sortie outside. He was an excellent shot. But there was no way she could chance it. She had to assume he was one of Steckle’s men

  “I need you to gather the engineers and escort them to the west side immediately. Explain there are reports of leakage. They’ll know what to do.”

  They had their orders. What were they waiting for? They needed her permission to leave. “Dismissed,” she said.

  The three of them left and went their separate ways. She’d set something in motion that was going to have far-reaching consequences. They’d never had a forced evac. All their drills had been make believe. Here they were, doing it for real.

  Whether it was by accident or design, Jacinta had averted t
he eyes of Down so she could go about the business of unsealing the doors and rescuing her people.

  She left the mushroom palace and strode toward her chambers, congratulating herself on a narrow escape.

  At least her plan was more humane than Jeff’s. He was going to kill the Outers. She was going to leave them with a fighting chance.

  She saw something coming at her, but she wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way. Her hands came up in front of her face in time to stop the shovel from breaking her nose, but the reverberation of the crack told her she was looking at a broken wrist.

  Abbie pulled back inside Alice’s office, breathing heavily. “You left me with that goon?”

  Only the truth would do. Jacinta held her throbbing left hand with her right and let the door close behind her. She had two minutes to get her best friend on board and then she needed to leave. For real.

  She was sweating. The room was swimming in and out of focus. The pain made her want to throw up, but she held it together and looked Abbie square in the face. “We’re going to bust open the main doors, Abbie. Tonight. Right now. You with me? Because if you’re not, you’re against me and if you’re against me, we need to decide what to do about that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MARCH 2022

  “They’re coming back.” Barb’s eyes were wide and serious. The smile that usually graced her face had been replaced with a grim, straight mouth that made her look like…well...the most generous way of putting it was “not-herself.” (“Muppet” was what Hedwig struggled not to say out loud.) Barb was gentle, kind, funny, even kooky.

  Not serious.

  Not ominous.

  Except now, with everything turned upside down, she was. “They’ll never get me, no matter how hard they try. But if they get you, Paul dies. And if Paul dies, bad things happen. Paul keeps her sane. And we need her sane. She doesn’t know it, but we need her sane. She’s the one who goes in and pulls the lever…”

  A shiver ran up and down Hedwig’s spine. Nigel had been adamant that they needed antibiotics for Paul. Now Barb was saying the same thing. Between the two of them they had religion and science covered.