by Kelly deVos
“Oh, come on! There’s actually a place called Pie Town?” I say. “Pie Town, what? Arizona? Nevada?”
Galloway waves his hand. “Keep going.”
Um. “New Mexico?”
Galloway gives me the thumbs-up.
I can’t help but feel relieved.
We’re going to Los Alamos.
We have to be.
A second later, Ramona returns, flanked by a group of people pushing a huge cart of supplies. The cart’s wheels squeak and rumble on the rough, dirt terrain.
“Don’t get too excited. They ain’t got no pie,” Ramona tells me.
Why is it that, no matter where we go, there is never ever any pie?
An older man is with her. “We haven’t had any pie since February. Do you know how hard it is to get butter? Even that damn vegan stuff? And fruit? Forget it. Last time we had a can of fruit was on February 18. A dented can of pumpkin filling.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ramona said. “Like I said. There ain’t no pie.”
Oh. My. God.
The old man. It’s Bob Healy. Ramona’s second husband.
We left him for dead in Wilcox, Arizona. He’d been shot at least once and was facing God only knows how many soldiers from The Opposition.
“You’re alive? In... Pie Town?” I stutter.
Healy grunts. “Everybody’s got to be somewhere, girl.”
“Yeah. Only I thought you’d be...like, six feet under or something,” I say.
To my surprise, Healy laughs. “Only the good die young,” he says.
Behind us, two men work on refueling the helicopter.
Ramona taps my arm. “We have to get moving.” She turns and walks back toward the building, her braid bouncing up and down. Healy follows at a fast pace. Galloway and I run along behind them.
Healy names pies as we walk. “The Pie-O-Neer used to be right proper famous in my day. They had a pie bar. All you could eat. Let’s see, there was blueberry. Cherry. Chocolate...ah...coconut...oh yeah and...apple and Hatch green chile. Delicious.”
The guy is busy naming every kind of pie on earth when we get to the building.
This is the Pie-O-Neer, all right. But unlike whatever Healy is going on about, this place is covered in dust. The windows are boarded up. He pushes the door open. I’m expecting an old restaurant. Maybe like Maybelline’s diner back at the crap motel in Gila Bend.
Galloway crashes into me as I make a hard stop.
The interior is lit by a bunch of green camping lanterns. There are portable desks arranged neatly, each with a soldier in fatigues at a laptop. Some are typing. Some are talking into headsets. Some are using small cell phones. Everything is operating on battery power.
LEAD: There is no electricity.
IMPORTANT FACTS:
-All we saw from the air were fires.
-No streetlights glow anywhere on the highway outside.
-No lights shine outside the building.
-Cases of batteries are stacked along the walls of the Pie-O-Neer.
Healy nods at me like he can hear my thoughts. “Power is rationed. If you’re lucky, you get four hours a day. If you’re in Pie Town, you get nothin’.” He turns. “You’re called Galloway?” Healy asks, nodding at Galloway. “Come with me. I’ll get you some fresh gear.”
They take a right and go to what was once the kitchen. The EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS sign has been covered by a handwritten piece of paper with Supplies scrawled on it.
“Okay, girl. There isn’t much time,” Ramona says.
“Are you gonna help me save my father?” I ask. “He’s walking into a trap.”
“That’s what you think,” Ramona says. “But it’s The Opposition who’s gonna be surprised this go-round.”
LEAD: Ramona Carver is working with my dad.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
-What the actual hell?
She leads me to a wall covered with maps and aerial photos. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.” Ramona has a long wooden pointing stick, and she taps a red dot placed on a huge aerial photograph of a square building. “Since you were hell-bent on getting yourself to New Mexico, I’m gonna assume that you know that Copeland is still working for The Opposition. His plan is to use the cold fusion bomb to take out two states that are loyal to The Spark, while making it look like the whole thing is a Rosenthal operation gone wrong.”
“It both hurts The Spark and interferes with its ability to get future support,” I say.
It’s a good plan.
Except The Opposition set a trap that my father and Jinx are walking into.
“But my father—”
Ramona interrupts me. “You must think your daddy is dumb as a doornail, girl? Jay Novak fought with Copeland in Operation Cedar Hawk. Anyone who’s ever spent ten minutes with Harlan Copeland knows that the general would sooner don a turkey costume and strut around in the Thanksgiving Day Parade than go along with a plan designed to prevent a war. He made contact with me right after you made contact with Copeland in Mexico.”
“Wait. What? How did he—”
The woman takes off her hat, tosses it on one of the desks and pushes her long heavy gray braid over her shoulder. “He got a message to someone loyal to Marshall, who got it to me. How? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him when you see ’im. The long and the short of it is that Jay Novak is gonna try and destroy the cold fusion bomb while the fusion material is inert. Unfortunately for my dear son, Ammon, I’ve got enough contacts and money left to help Jay pull it off.”
I remember from before that Jinx could barely get a word in edgewise when the old woman was talking.
“Okay, but...” And again, I can’t get my words out fast enough.
What are we going to do? What about Jinx?
Ramona leans on the empty metal desk nearest the photo we’re both staring at. At the next desk behind her, a male soldier reads a long list of coordinates into a cell phone. “So, I’m gonna get Jay Novak enough troops to blow that facility back to God.”
Okay. Sure. This deluded old lady is gonna march on Los Alamos and destroy The Opposition’s ability to build the weapon of the future.
“With who?” I ask. “The thirty or so people in this room?”
Ramona snorts. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating me like my son does, Miss Novak. You do so at your own peril.”
Um.
“But what about Jinx—”
She doesn’t know about any of this.
I ran away before I could tell her.
LEAD: MacKenna Novak is the worst.
“I’ve got somebody on that team. Susan Marshall will be told what’s what when the time is right,” Ramona says.
“Somebody? Who?”
She ignores this too. “You got ten minutes to get yourself in new gear and grab something to eat. Then we head out.”
Precisely ten minutes later my belly is full of pink lemonade and a can of baked beans and I’m wearing a new set of green fatigues. My green T-shirt almost fits correctly. I shove a few granola bars into the pocket of my camo jacket.
Ramona waits for me near the rear door of the Pie-O-Neer.
We walk outside. The sun is beginning to rise over the flat, dry desert. The golden light rising might be beautiful.
Except.
As far as the eye can see, green jeeps and cargo trucks are lined up in neat rows behind the Pie-O-Neer. Soldiers in various types of fatigues call out orders to each other. Old gas engines turn on. People climb in and out of the vehicles.
Oh hell.
Ramona Healy has her own army.
It’s about to take to Los Alamos.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Ramona Carver Healy, now well into her seventies, served as trustee of the Carver Company for fifteen years after the dea
th of her husband Cornelius. When her son, Ammon, graduated from college, he gradually took over operations. During her time as trustee, Carver Healy successfully negotiated massively profitable land transfer deals with the governments of Russia, China and Iran. She became the world’s third richest woman. She successfully faked her own death and avoided contact with her powerful son for over a decade.
Back when Dr. Doomsday was still alive, Ramona had surrendered to The Opposition to save our lives. Back in Arizona, she had helped us escape.
But here she is. I touch her soft hand lightly. “How did you get away from Ammon Carver?” I ask.
She leads me through the back of the restaurant, past an employee break room and a small office. “Well. Let’s just say that my boy ain’t quite as smart as he thinks he is.” The old woman turns to me. She’s wearing a uniform that matches mine except she’s got her cowboy hat back on. Her hard face is etched with long lines of worry. “And now. I’m gonna teach my son a lesson he ain’t never gonna forget.”
My heart slows almost to a stop. “What lesson is that?”
“I brought Ammon Carver into this world, and I can take him out of it too.”
The Spark believes this is the best of all worlds.
The Opposition fears that might be true.
—PRESIDENT AMMON C. CARVER on the issue of Executive Order 17996,
Declaration of the State of Rebellion
JINX
Navarro’s eye is bleeding.
Again.
“I still think we should have brought the doctor,” Annika says for the millionth time.
We left Knudsen and the nurses in Astoria with all the supplies we could spare. Knudsen rebandaged Navarro’s eye one last time before we left. The three of them were hiding in a vacant house when we took off on foot.
They’re not wanted by The Opposition. They could stay on the coast. Forever.
“Knudsen was too slow,” Toby says.
“And he panics,” Navarro comments. “He once almost lost it during a drill in Ajo.”
Those who panic don’t survive.
I shiver.
It’s well past dark when we arrive at the vehicle Annika stashed outside an abandoned inspection station alongside the overflowing Youngs River. So far, she’s come through like Toby promised. The place is deserted. The vehicle looks exactly right, a light green SUV with a wide backseat and a large cargo area in the back. It’s old enough to not have autodrive or built-in computer monitoring but well-kept enough for it to make sense for it to be on the road. There’s an official Forestry Department seal on the door, but a couple of digits of the brown unit number have been casually scratched off.
Smart.
Now, we drive.
I remain on edge as long as we’re on the highway and relax a bit only once we’re able to cut into the Siuslaw Forest. Going off road is theoretically better.
But.
“It’s like the land that time forgot out here,” Navarro says, peering out the window with his good eye.
Since The Spark had this area closed off, no one has been maintaining it. It’s almost a marshland, everything wet and muddy. The headlights of our car pass over rotted tree trunks and a blackish moss that seems to cover everything. Once in a while, we pass old cabins and campsites. Overturned ice chests. Smashed canoes and kayaks. Paths of plastic trash. Thanks to all the water and mold and rust, it’s impossible to tell how long it’s been since anyone has been out here. Maybe a day. Maybe ten years.
We drive all through the night.
Toby’s driving and we give Navarro the front seat so he’ll be comfortable.
So. I’m stuck in the back with Amelia and Annika.
Annika Carver has elbows like sharpened pencils.
Amelia is trying to get what she describes as “establishing shots,” and she makes very little effort to stop from crashing into Annika as she stares at her camera screen. “It would be really helpful if someone would explain where we’re going,” she says.
It takes a lot of discipline not to push her from the moving car.
“You want your little show, you go where we go,” Toby says.
“I still think we should shoot her,” Navarro mutters.
We’d already had this conversation too. The truth is, we need her. She’s in charge of gathering video footage that The Opposition wants. Having her with us increases our odds of survival. But it runs counter to the drills.
Dad said, Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies in the morgue.
I wish Dad were here to help me deal with all this stuff.
I wish Dad were here. Period.
“You should get some sleep,” Toby tells the three of us.
I try but end up staring at the dark forest beyond our headlights.
When we’re about three miles from Coquille, Navarro says, “We need to hide the car and stay out of sight until sunrise.”
He’s right. There’s the curfew. And even though the sun will be up in an hour or so, our vehicle becomes compromised if anyone sees us in it. Also, we don’t know what we’ll find in town. We need the element of surprise.
We hide the car behind a dumpster of a Walmart with boarded up windows and a parking lot full of overturned shopping carts, coffee cans full of water and even a smashed-up couch. One of the pieces of wood has the words NO LOOTING spray-painted on it in loopy orange letters.
Toby takes a flashlight out of his pack. We’re able to creep along through unfenced backyards of houses ruined by bullet holes and broken windows. We pass a stray dog who gives us a low, single bark before settling back down next to the trunk of a wide, bushy tree. Everything we see is broken. A picnic table with benches that have fallen to the ground. An outdoor playset with the swings torn off. A row of boat motors in various states of breakdown.
Our light coats aren’t much of a match for the cold morning, and I catch myself shivering. Blades of long, icy, overgrown grass brush my ankles the farther we get into town. As the sun rises, gray smoke rises from the rooftops of a few houses.
The air is full of the citrusy, smoky scent of smoldering pine, which is odd. Wood burning fires have been illegal for a long time.
Right around sunrise, we crouch behind a row of bushes that have grown as large as a school bus and stare across the street at the house where Charles is supposedly being kept. During its heyday, it must have been a mansion.
Annika confirms this when she whispers, “This place was once owned by a timber executive. It’s old. Probably built in the late nineteenth century.” She points. “See the Queen Anne architecture. The Dutch gable roof. It must have been quite beautiful.”
Queen Anne architecture. Right. Sometimes I really miss MacKenna.
Navarro rolls his one eye.
Amelia is panning her camera all around. “Yeah. Now it’s quite a mess though.”
She’s right. It’s like the wind has blown off half the shingles of the roof and the rain took care of the rest. A bunch of broken, gray tiles are strewn in the mud in front of the house. The porch railing has been busted through in several spots, and the concrete steps that lead to the door have large holes gouged out. Not much is left of the building’s white paint. A citrus tree has grown so large that it almost covers the front door.
The place has all its windows though, which makes it an improvement over the other houses in town.
“Okay, we’ll go around to the back,” I say.
We take turns creeping across the street and snaking around the side of the house until we flank the sides of the rear door. Navarro, Toby and I all have our handguns drawn. Annika wears her usual panicked expression and stays a foot or so behind.
Amelia’s arms stay tense as she points her camera at the door.
“On my count,” Navarro says.
“1, 2, 3.”
Toby kicks
open the door with an impressively powerful strike to the area next to the old brass knob. I’m the first in the room.
Breathe. Okay. I’m ready.
Do whatever you have to do to survive...
Breakfast?
We crash into a cheerful kitchen, where Charles is sitting at a pinewood table with a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a pile of fresh fruit in front of him, his spoon frozen midway to his mouth. And sitting across from him...
Ammon Carver.
Did my mom set one last trap?
My father’s old army pal. The man who ruined my family. Ruined the world. Here he is. At the breakfast table in a chair across from my brother. Reading a paperback book and eating oatmeal. He’s wearing a long-sleeve red cotton shirt and a pair of neatly ironed khaki slacks. His silver-gray hair and beard are perfectly trimmed, and a pair of gold metal-rimmed glasses are perched on the end of his nose. He looks like the guy in line behind you at the grocery store. Or the dad that tells you to stop playing loud music at a slumber party.
He could be in a paper towel commercial.
There’s a square, cast-iron wood-burning stove a few feet behind the table, creating a comfortable warmth. From elsewhere in the house, a radio softly plays polka music.
I feel equal parts terrified and ridiculous.
“Jiiiiiiinxxxxx,” Charles says with his mouth full, his gaze traveling to the broken door. “You could have jussssst knocked. We would...have let you innnnnn.”
My brother is calmly eating breakfast with a mass murderer.
Charles casts a pointed stare at my gun, which I hastily return to the holster. Everyone else files into the kitchen as I rush to Charles and scoop him out of his chair. His spoon falls to the ground as I hug him tight.
“Wow!” I hear Amelia say. “We’re lucky we’re not doing this live. That was pretty embarrassing.” She mumbles something about making some edits.
I lean back from Charles, keeping my hands on his shoulders. He’s grown since I last saw him. He’s heavier, and a tiny bit taller than I remember. But he’s clean and well-fed and smells like lavender soap.