by Pike, JJ
There was stuff layered in there that she didn’t understand, but that was always true when Barb got to prognosticating. She could guess who the “she” was. Paul was so close to his mother he’d walked into a toxic nightmare to try to find her. On his own. While Manhattan fell. Alice was definitely the “she.” But the “lever?” No clue.
And it would stay that way. Barb didn’t explain her soothsaying/vision-thingies.
They should head out. The sun was up, Lexie was nursing well, the dogs no longer surrounded their leader and champion in their hoodoo-voodoo circle. All the signs were good, but Barb was bed-bound and there was only enough food to last a day. Hedwig felt like a heel leaving the woman to fend for herself when she was winged.
“No buts.” Barb had never claimed to be a mind reader, but she surely seemed like one at times. “Go. Death is on the prowl. My blood is too rich for his taste. He seeks simpler fare. He seeks the young. For if the young are taken…” She squeezed Hedwig’s hand tight. “If the young are taken, so is the future. Hear me and do as I say. Go. Do not engage with the trembling or the vomitous. They would end you.”
It was one of Barb’s less vague predictions but it was unnecessary. Hedwig wouldn’t have approached anyone who looked sick. Except she just had. And spent the night. But it was Barb. You helped the people you loved, right? Even if they could infect you?
Petra would say, “No” but Paul would say “Yes.” Always, “Yes.” It was one of the many reasons she loved him.
Hedwig was certain that she was supposed to step up and help those who couldn’t help themselves, no matter the cost to herself. Paul would do the same if he could, but he couldn’t, so she had to do enough good deeds for both of them. But she got it. Don’t engage with anyone who looks sick. And let’s not talk about the people who might be sick and hiding it. She patted Barb’s hand, stood, and signaled Sean.
“Did you find any guns?”
He shook his head. “Not to the east. Everything between here and Jim’s place has been raided.” Aggie’s map was a godsend; told them where to find what they needed: food, weapons, silver. “She must have moved them because of the leak from Jim’s place.”
“I haven’t moved anything.” Barb was propped up on KC again, her eyes at half-mast, her cup of whatever-it-was—green and brown twigs and leaves floating in a soupy mix of turmeric and ground poppy root—holding steady in her fist. “Perhaps they grew legs and walked away?” She chuckled and sipped her tea. Probably high.
Hedwig smiled at the thought of the straight laced woman of God being out of her gourd on natural medicinals. If anyone knew how to get a natural buzz it was going to be Barb.
“The powder burns, the leaden ball expands, the firestick discharges its wares. My flesh is singed, but alack-and-alas…” She lay back and laughed hard. “For them, not me. Alas-alack, it meets not its mark.” Definitely high. No question. These weren’t her usual “word of God” pronunciations. These were memories. The shooting.
Hedwig hovered by the door. Did it matter? Should she stay and listen? The soldiers had shot at her and missed.
“The day they kill KC is the day I lay down and die. For if I cannot keep mine own safe, what am I?” Barb stared at Hedwig and Sean, waiting for an answer.
“You can’t save them all,” said Sean. “You can only do your best.”
“If you cannot save them all…” Barb shifted on her dog-pillow which made KC grunt and grin. “Then you aren’t doing your best.”
“Woah…intense.” Hedwig took Sean by the arm and pulled him toward the door. Listening to a woman who was higher than a kite wasn’t going to help him. He already had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He didn’t need any more pressure.
She ducked out of the door, Sean right behind her. She unfolded Aggie’s map and drew her finger down the middle. “There are some guns stashed to the west. Not as many, but some…”
They grabbed a shovel apiece and tiptoed toward the stubby, burned-out remains of the Everlee’s house. The first set of trip wires between Barb’s camp site and the Everlee house lay flat on the ground. The charred bricks that had been balanced on a plank half-way up the tree—designed to fall on the unsuspecting heads of interlopers if they tripped the wire—lay in a pile to their right.
Same with the next set of wires.
And the next.
Whoever had come through here had tripped all the wires.
They stopped creeping and started walking. Hedwig stabbed at the ground with her shovel every third step. It wasn’t rock hard, but it wasn’t yielding either.
Even from a distance the hole in the ground where the guns had been buried was obvious.
“Maybe she moved them? For real. I mean, she said she didn’t, but you’ve seen her…”
Sean shrugged. “She would have told us. Even in her current state. Barb could be halfway dead and she’d remember to tell us something useful.”
He wasn’t wrong, but Hedwig had to hold on to the tiniest sliver of hope. The men who’d passed them, smoking their dumb flavored cigarettes, didn’t have Jim’s rifles. She was sure of that. She’d have recognized the bag. Jim buried all his weapons in green duffel bags. Her stomach sank. They’d have discarded the bag. Her “hope for the best” neurons were stretched thin and didn’t keep her ticking over the way they used to. There’d been a time—before MELT and the camp and living in a cave for eight months—when she’d have looked on the bright side and found something to be happy about. But here and now? She had no “rain brings rainbows” thoughts no matter how hard she tried to conjure them. What she had trolling through her brain was more along the lines of, “We’re screwed. Royally screwed. Without more weapons we’ll have to move slowly. So slowly we’ll miss the meet. Barb says we have to keep Paul…”
Sean cut through the noise. “What about the…?”
Damn. He didn’t need to say the next word. She’d been so busy trying to get her mind into the right space she’d spaced on the obvious. The silver. They speed-walked as fast as they could, eyes on the ground in case any stray trip wires hadn’t been activated, toward the barrels beneath which the lifeblood of their barter capabilities was buried.
The ground had been disturbed in a thousand little ways, but the barrels hadn’t been moved. Even with deer and dogs and squirrels dominating the place the preponderance of discarded energy bar wrappers and MRE boxes and cigarette butts told her humans had been here. Searching. Recently. These weren’t rained-on, dirtied-up, worn-down leftovers. She could still see the bright colors and garish promise of a glittering Twix wrapper. Her mouth watered. They’d given up scavenging for “before” food. It messed with the mouth too much.
Aggie had left them a box of candy outside the mine doors, right before Christmas. It had crushed Bill’s heart that Aggie didn’t even come in from the cold for that celebration, but no one spoke of it. They concentrated their attention on the candy and didn’t discuss Aggie.
Mimi had been in charge of portion control which meant there was no portion control. She lay the bars out on a blanket in the main room where they had all gathered and read off the names. “Heath Bar. Snickers. Reese’s. M&M’s…”
“Can I have the M&M’s?” Midge was never denied anything. Mimi handed the bag over with a smile and a gasp; always with a gasp. She didn’t complain, but they all knew she was in agony. “I don’t like the brown ones.” Midge pulled the bag open, palmed a few rounds of candy and selected a brown M&M. Blind luck.
Hedwig didn’t say it out loud because they didn’t discuss Midge’s sight. Another one of those “if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist” things.
“And Petra loves the red ones. So, I’m going to separate those out, too.” Midge was deadly serious; a blind girl, sorting sugar-coated candy by color.
Hedwig threaded her fingers through Paul’s. When they were like this—everyone together, something to look forward to—she imagined a future might be possible. It was when she was alone at night on
her leaf-mattress that she lost faith.
Mimi gave her three squares of Hershey’s and a Mounds. She swapped with Bryony, her Mounds for Bryony’s Almond Joy and then, like everyone else, wolfed down every morsel.
The sugar was soooooooooooooo sugary. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was Christmas and everyone around her was laughing and talking—even Bill who rarely said anything these days—she might have stopped after the first bite. But she didn’t want to spoil their fun. The more she ate, the less festive she felt. The candy left her with a furry mouth and her toothbrush was a worn-down shadow of its former bristling self. She leaned against Paul who folded his wrappers into makeshift origami cranes for Midge, all crinkle and sparkle but not a lot of form. Still, he took care with every crease and fold. Midge would know, he said, if he got it wrong.
The crunch beneath her foot brought her back into her body with a jolt. She was in the woods. In the present. Her foot on a spring-loaded trap.
“Don’t move.” They kept saying things that didn’t need to be said to each other. She knew what she’d stepped on. And it wasn’t a candy wrapper.
Sean ran his hand above the wire, tracing its trajectory. The wire ran straight up, terminating in a platform, just like all of Barb’s traps. There’d be something heavy balanced up there; designed to maim, but not kill, an intruder. She was adamant about that. Less killing, more working out how to get along.
“Stay still. I’ll be right back.” Sean dropped his shovel and ran east. They needed something heavy to take her place. She grinned. He’d know what to do. He’d gotten them out of so many jams. He was back in under five minutes, his coat off and doubling as a sack. Rosie, the poodle who weighed no more than a small bag of apples, had followed him and was jumping on Hedwig’s leg, whining.
“Get her away from me, Sean.”
Sean dumped the bricks he’d collected a few feet from where she stood and assessed the situation. “Can you shift to your left?”
Hedwig moved a millimeter. Not more. The load above her creaked.
“That’s not going to work. The plate must be very small…”
Rosie jumped up again, begging for pets and loving. How had she gotten out? Why hadn’t they heard her following them? She was a liability. “Rosie…” The weapon over her head creaked again. She hadn’t meant to lean so far, but the dog. The dog was getting close to the wires. “Sean…walk her back. She’s going to get squashed.”
It happened so fast. One second Hedwig was talking to Sean and the next he had thrown himself at her, Rosie tangled in his arms, flattening all three of them on the ground while they were bombarded with metal from above. It wasn’t until the rain of hammers and pliers and thick, rusted nails had stopped that she was able to wriggle out from under Sean.
Her heart was racing, her brain doing double time. She didn’t like that weight on top of her. It reminded her of _____. Not now. Precisely not now. You can think about Pigs pinning you down later. Now you need to concentrate on helping Sean, who’s one of the good guys. Remember that. Save the good guys. Save them. Deep breath. Save him.
Sean was immobile and unresponsive but it was Rosie who made it impossible to understand what had happened. The little dog whined and licked and pawed at him. The blood might have been hers or his, Hedwig couldn’t tell. She pressed her fingers to his throat. He had a pulse. She rolled him over. Blood ran in rivulets down his cheeks and toward his nose. She mopped him gently with the hem of her shirt. His face wasn’t cut, but he’d been face down, so that made sense. She ran her hands through his hair and over his scalp. There were cuts, but no concave depressions. It wasn’t going to be blunt force trauma with a heavy object.
“Sean?”
No response. Not even eye movement under his eyelids. Nothing. He was out cold.
Rosie limped to the other side of the young man who’d saved their lives, whimpering. Hedwig had a terrible urge to tell her to go and get Barb, but Rosie was no Lassie. They had to get back to Barb’s. All three of them. Hedwig had band aids and bandages in her pack, but what use were they when Sean had a concussion? She pulled his coat from under the pile of bricks, wrapped the sleeves under his armpits and tied them tight over his chest. His head would be protected, even if the rest of his body was going to be dragged over roots and fallen branches. Thank goodness it was spring and the ground had softened up a little. If this had happened in December when everything was frozen solid, it would have been far worse.
She pulled his coat. Hard. He didn’t budge. She checked to make sure his jeans weren’t snagged on anything. Nope. It just needed more muscle. She heaved again. He moved an inch. She’d always thought of herself as strong, but there was no way she could haul 175 pounds of Sean across half a mile of uneven ground.
“Wheelbarrow.” She pelted back to Barb’s tent, Rosie limping along beside her and reporting their position at the top of her voice. Hedwig pushed opened the door, saw Barb struggling to get up, scooted the little dog inside, grimaced, thought about how to explain, couldn’t find the words, and closed the door behind her.
“It’s fine.” The warble in her voice said it wasn’t fine at all. She rested her hand on the outside of the flap. She didn’t have time to go in, no matter how much she wanted to. “Just a little mishap. I’ll be right back. Help Rosie. She’s sprained her leg.”
Barb was shouting from inside the tent but Hedwig couldn’t understand a word. She grabbed the wheelbarrow and wheelied it back the way she’d come, oblivious to the noise she was making. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they’d been subtle. If there were enemy combatants in the area they’d have smelled last night’s dinner. Or Barb snoring. Or the three of them talking. Or whatever.
Sean was where she’d left him. The blood was pooling on his jacket beneath his head. Hedwig reminded herself that scalp lacerations were the worst when it came to blood.
“Let him be okay, God.” She wrapped her arms around his upper body and heaved him into a seated position. “Petra will never forgive me if I don’t come back with Sean. He’s the only one who gets her. Also, there’s the baby. You can’t let him die before his baby’s born. That would be too, too, too...” She tried to lift him, but she wasn’t even capable of getting him more than an inch off the ground before he slumped back down again. The tears rose, but she fought them off. “You can do this, Hedwig. You’ve coped with a lot worse.”
Immoveable object meet wheeled box. Right. Yes. The wheelbarrow. She lay it on its side. She wanted to protect his head, but she also wanted the bulk of his torso to be in the center of the barrow. She pushed the lip of the wheelbarrow toward him like a scoop heading for the bulk items a health food store. Sadly, Sean wasn’t granola or mixed nuts. He was one big blob of human, with arms and legs that totally got in the way of her scoop plan.
A splat of water landed on Sean’s coat. Hedwig looked to the sky. “Not rain. Not now, God.”
There was no water coming from above. It was falling out of her eyes and she hadn’t noticed. She wiped her face on her sleeve and went back to solving her problem.
“Put him in the recovery position.” It was her dad. They were at the swimming pool. He’d been an excellent teacher and she’d won all her swim meets. She rolled Sean back onto his side, pulled his legs up toward his chest, folded his arms in as tight as she could get them, then pushed the wheelbarrow under his back.
Plan fail.
Sean moved but not into the barrow, just a few centimeters away from where she’d curled him into the fetal position.
“Don’t give up. You can do this.” Her dad’s voice again. He’d said it so many times it was part of her imprinting.
“I can do this.” The shovel wasn’t far from where Sean lay. If she made a little moat around his back she’d be able to get the wheelbarrow lower than him and tip him inside, rather than pushing at him like one of those penny-fall machines at the arcade.
She dug hard and fast. She didn’t need much of a moat. Too deep and she wouldn’t be able
to lever him up once she got him in there.
She lay the shovel on the ground and lined up the lip of the barrow. It wasn’t elegant, but it was at least where she wanted it to be, in a shallow depression behind her friend.
She pushed him. Pulled him. Angled the barrow this way and that.
His arms were in the wrong place.
His legs were too long.
She banged his head so many times she lost count.
But she got him into her makeshift ambulance and ready for transport.
She stood and brushed the leaves off her knees and elbows.
The slow clap of an indolent soldier, leaning against a nearby tree leering at her, sent bursts of ice water up and down her spine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DECEMBER 2021
Michael stepped forward. This was his moment. “Alice is my colleague. My friend. I should be allowed to go.”
Somewhere behind him someone snorted. Maybe Sandrino. Maybe one of the other grunts. Michael knew what they thought of him. He was soft in all the wrong places. Not military.
There were eight volunteers willing to head out onto the trail in search of Alice, so Michael was surprised when Hoyt selected him along with Sergeant Emily Klyon and a kitchen worker named Vincent Taylor for the mission.
Klyon was some kind of crack-tracker; an Eagle Scout or something with ribbons and medals and awards up the wazzoo; able to spot coyote scat at a distance and create fire with nothing more than wet twigs and dryer lint.
Taylor didn’t seem to have any special skills or if he did he never spoke up and said what they were. Michael had never interacted with him before. He didn’t have a uniform or insignia which meant he was a civilian.
It wasn’t until after the briefing that Michael realized Hoyt ranked him and Taylor as equally useless and had selected them because he didn’t need them on hand. They were dispensable. Hoyt was relying on Klyon to find Alice, adding warm bodies to her posse just so she’d be able to spread the net wider.