“No, Governor Booker—”
“President Booker.”
“Whatever,” Jodi responded, faking a lack of concern. “He got us out.”
“And you were then taken to Mr. Baxter’s residence where you stayed for a few days?”
“Yes.”
Again, Lefebvre consulted her notes. “And did you leave the premises at any time during that stay? Before your visit to this hotel, that is?”
Ellie’s stomach sank. “You put a tail on us?”
She could see the triumph in Lefebvre’s face.
“Did Baxter know?”
The agent raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Baxter is a special advisor. He has no authority over matters of security.”
“Does Booker know?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“So, he does.” Ellie got an iota of satisfaction on seeing Lefebvre color a little.
“I’m asking the questions.”
Wu steepled her fingers. “We are aware of what you witnessed on your little road trip, Ms. Fischer.”
“An army of occupation landing?”
The Chinese officer shook her head. “No. What you saw was the embarkation of a peaceful mission. Our forces were invited to help with the securing and distribution of essential supplies.”
“So why were they landing in secret?”
“Obviously because President Booker had not, at that time, made the announcement. It is essential, if we are to receive the cooperation of the civilian population and the military, that it is clear that we act with the full authority of your elected leader.”
Ellie rubbed her eyes and tried to massage some life into her face, before sighing. “Look, this is all very well, but what does it have to do with us?”
“It’s simple enough,” Lefebvre said. “You were sent here on a mission from Vice President Buchanan to spy on us. In your own ham-fisted way, you achieved this. But you will not be allowed to return. You will remain here until your trial. But don’t worry, you won’t be in our custody for long. We will extract all that you know, one way or another, then you will face a military court. And then, I have no doubt, you will receive justice. Final justice.”
#
Ellie sat on the edge of her cot and gripped her head between her hands as if she were trying to squeeze a lemon. Twice in the space of the week, she’d been thrown in jail and left to contemplate an appointment with a firing squad. Despite everything she’d seen in the months since the flood, this was so unlikely, so unbelievable that she knew her mind couldn’t get a grip on the reality of it. Even though she knew with certainty that she was facing execution.
At least this time she wasn’t alone. Jodi was lying on the other bed, facing the wall with her back to Ellie. They had barely spoken to each other since the door had been shut behind them and they’d been left to sweat by Lefebvre and Wu. Ellie knew that she and Jodi had been condemned as soon as they’d been caught. She couldn’t believe she’d been caught out by her own words again. But why would she check for bugs in her hotel room? It had never occurred to her. Which was what made her a hopeless amateur. She suspected Lefebvre felt sorry for the two of them, believing that they’d been manipulated into being spies, and were now being hung out to dry by Buchanan, who remained at a safe distance. But Ellie had no delusions that Lefebvre would show mercy. She did things by the book, even if that book had been rewritten.
How long had they been here? They’d been grabbed before nine in the morning, and she reckoned they’d been questioned, on and off, for four or five hours. She couldn’t see a clock—presumably because Lefebvre wanted them disoriented—but she had a sense that the night was passing. Though they were deep within the sheriff’s department, she heard people moving back and forth outside, and the activity had died down until it was now entirely gone. She guessed it was the early hours now.
What did it matter? She might as well get some more sleep rather than sitting here exhausting herself with destructive thoughts.
Ellie swung her legs around and laid herself on top of the rough blanket, then shut her eyes and tried to stop the wheels of her mind spinning.
The nightmares began almost immediately. She was underwater, trying to keep her mouth closed as she struck out for the distant surface. She saw a hand reaching down to her, but she couldn’t get to it.
Now she needed to use the bathroom, but none of the cubicle doors worked.
Then she heard the jail door open as they came to take her away. Lefebvre said something about an electric chair and she screamed, begging them to let her go. She hadn’t even had her trial! It was so unfair!
She wouldn’t get to see Maria again. Or Bobby. Or…
“Patrick?”
She opened her eyes then panicked as she tried to breathe, feeling a hand against her mouth.
“Quiet, love.”
The hand withdrew and she sat up.
“Patrick?”
She was dreaming. She had to be. Or was this his ghost, come to haunt her, fueled by the guilt she felt at leaving him in the hospital? If it was, she didn’t want to wake up. She’d take the guilt if it gave her a few seconds in his company before he was gone forever.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, smiling.
Beyond him, another spectral figure kneeled in the half-light. It had Jodi’s arms around its shoulders. She was sobbing quietly.
Then, quite suddenly, full awareness finally blew the fog away. “Patrick! What the…”
His smile widened, then disappeared. “We’ve got to go. When the Chinese get wind of this, they’ll be after us.”
“But you were in a hospital bed!”
“Now I’m here. I knew you couldn’t be trusted on your own so I decided to play the knight. I don’t have a white horse, I’m afraid, so I made do with Joel.”
Ellie got up and hugged Patrick tight, while she watched Joel and Jodi doing the same.
“I’m so sorry,” Joel was whispering to his daughter.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“We locked the sergeant on the desk in one of the cells.”
Ellie followed him out of the door and along the corridor. “You didn’t have to hurt him, did you?”
Joel, who was now peering through the half-open door to the main offices of the department, said, “Not everyone likes the way things are going. Let’s put it this way: he didn’t put up much resistance. But we bound and gagged him so he doesn’t get into too much trouble. He said there’s a door out back we can go through. Chances are we can slip away without anyone noticing.”
“What then?” Ellie said, glancing first at Joel and then at Patrick, who looked drawn in the light coming through the half-open door. Then she realized, as she got blank looks from both of them.
“You haven’t got a plan, have you? Jeez, I should have known!”
“That’s gratitude!” Joel said. “Pat said you’d know what to do once we broke you out.”
Ellie sighed, then looked in Jodi’s direction just in time to catch her rolling her eyes. “Let’s get out of here first. Then we can worry about how we’re going to get away with a city looking for us.”
She followed Joel through the door and emerged in the open-plan sheriff’s office, which was thankfully empty of people. “Where is everyone?” Ellie whispered as they ran toward the fire exit sign.
Patrick, who was holding on to her arm as he struggled to keep up, halted as they reached another door. “As far as I can tell, they’ve been deployed.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Something like that.”
“You okay?”
He grunted and forced a smile. “Better for seeing you.”
“Me too.”
Joel listened at the door for a few moments, then cracked it open a little before signaling for them to follow him through.
They ran through a long corridor until they reached the fire exit.
“Are we ready?” Joel said.
&
nbsp; Ellie nodded. “We haven’t got a choice. They’ll be after us any minute.”
Pushing the door open, Joel swept the outside of the building with his pistol, but Ellie could see nothing other than the dim shapes of vehicles.
“Power’s cut off overnight,” Joel said. “Saves electricity.”
Ellie helped Patrick down the steps as Jodi vaulted over and put her hands out to take his other arm. “You know the white knight is supposed to carry off the princess, not the other way around?”
“Be fair, I was in bed three days ago. Had to discharge myself.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Around the front.”
“Are you kidding me? How are we going to get to it without being spotted?”
They were making their way across the parking lot until Joel turned, holding up a set of keys. “The sergeant gave me his keys.”
“So, we’re going to escape in a sheriff’s department vehicle? That’ll be inconspicuous!”
Jodi opened the door of the car. “Yeah, but we’ll be able to move a lot quicker in one of these. Maybe we can get across the state line before anyone comes after us.”
Ellie got in the front alongside Joel, then turned to look through the plexiglass at Jodi, who was helping Patrick onto the back seat. “You’ve been watching too many movies.”
Then she shrugged and put on her seatbelt. It wasn’t worth arguing. She was in a conspicuous car with two actors playing the role of heroic rescuers. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 17
Kansas
They left Otis and the kids where 49 met 44 just east of Joplin. Buzz watched from the passenger seat of the truck as the Fiat picked its way along the highway, following the tracks left by earlier vehicles, sliding left and right as it went.
“This is insane,” Pope said from behind the wheel. “They won’t get five miles in that.”
It had taken them two days to drive the seventy-five miles from Springfield, largely because they’d been forced to stop and push the little car out of each snow pile it slipped into. So at least they should be able to make better time now. But Buzz felt a sense of foreboding as the Fiat finally disappeared among the white dunes.
“As long as they make it to Joplin, they stand a chance.”
“How do we know there’s anything there for them?”
Buzz shrugged. “We don’t. Not for sure, anyway. But they can’t come north with us.”
“They could have made it to Kansas City.”
He felt Max stir from the back seat. “It was flooded. Not by much, but enough.”
“According to your map,” Pope said.
Buzz was finding the man’s increasing negativity was grinding on his nerves. “Max’s map is accurate. We’ve got to let them go their way. At least they have a chance now.”
“Yes,” Yen said. “Now they get to die in their car, not under a bridge.”
Groaning with frustration, Buzz wrapped the coat around himself and looked out of the window. Pope insisted on keeping the heating in the car low to preserve fuel: he, at least, seemed to be thinking beyond their arrival in Chicago. Maybe that was a good sign that he was finally coming out of the darkness he’d fallen into after Maisie’s death.
As he watched the landscape slip by, Buzz found himself yearning to see something other than white and light grays. They were traveling through a flat landscape, following a single pair of tracks along the highway that were now filling again with snow. Every now and again, they saw a big truck moving along the road, most commonly fuel tankers and food trucks presumably heading toward Kansas City. Where from, though? Who was organizing this?
Probably nobody, he thought gloomily. These were chancers who had somehow acquired a sixteen-wheeler full of gas or dry groceries and were heading to the place where they thought the price would be highest. Most of the countryside and cities around here would have been underwater for over six months. It wouldn’t have been nearly so deep here, but a couple of dozen feet was as good as a mile: drowned is drowned.
The people of this part of the country, however, would have had a better chance of getting away before the water arrived. So, where would they have gone? Perhaps they’d find out.
They sat in silence as the miles rolled by, the only sound being the tap-tap of Max’s laptop which became like a form of drip torture for Buzz. They’d had little opportunity to talk about his progress during the journey, but Buzz knew Max wouldn’t be simply filling in time. He was working on something. And, as a bonus, it was keeping the boy closer to mental normalcy, so Buzz left well enough alone.
“What d’you reckon that is?” Pope said, pointing through the windshield and into the distance beyond.
Buzz leaned forward and screwed up his eyes. He was distracted by Yen also stretching forward from the back seat, her long, fine hair tickling the back of his neck.
“Looks like fire,” Yen said.
Buzz tore control away from his hormones and wiped the window down so they could see better. Sure enough, he could see a tinge of orange in the gray clouds where they touched the horizon.
“Better keep watch. Perfect place for an ambush,” Pope said, gently pushing his foot on the gas.
They had just passed a sign to Jasper when suddenly, Buzz could see clearly. “It’s a cross. A huge flaming cross.”
As they approached an intersection with a down-ramp, they saw a hand-painted banner: Food. Fuel. All welcome. Alongside this was a crude line drawing of a church with a crucifix on top.
“We must go,” Yen said.
“No way! It’s an obvious trap!” Pope said.
“It’s a sign.”
“Yeah, a hand-painted one.”
“Stop the truck. I will go.”
“On foot? That’s insane!”
“I warn you. Stop the truck.”
Buzz looked across at Pope, whose face had stiffened. Yen was immediately behind him. She didn’t have a knife in her hand, but they all knew it was within reach.
“Let’s take a look, Ted. Yen’s got as much right to decide where we go as any of us. And I don’t want to leave her behind.”
Pope glanced at Buzz, obviously tempted to contradict him. But he knew as well as any of them that if they were to survive, they’d all be needed. He didn’t like the Vietnamese woman, but he respected her military skill.
“Jeez. This is crazy,” he said, but he turned the truck off the highway anyway. Buzz noticed that the tracks cut into the snow going this way were deeper than those that remained on the highway itself. That was either an encouraging sign, or perhaps meant that they weren’t the first to fall for this.
They followed the road as it cut through a drift so deep that they couldn’t see anything on either side. As they emerged, they passed a gas station with a cleared forecourt, though it didn’t have any lights on and no one moved.
Immediately ahead, they saw a yellow Dollar General sign with a couple of trucks parked outside. A hundred feet or so along a turning to the left, a white single-story building stood alone, its modest spire contrasting with the gray tiled roof. A cross-shaped pillar of fire burned on the lawn in front.
A figure in white emerged from the door of the church and walked toward them with his hands high as if welcoming the return of the prodigal son. He was flanked by two men in camouflage carrying assault rifles.
Immediately, Pope swung the car around, wheels spinning in the snow.
“Wait,” Yen said. “Look.”
The armed figures had been waved away and the priest had reached the road, his arms held in an imploring gesture.
“We should go,” Pope said.
But Buzz was already out of the car, following Yen, who’d left her rifle on the back seat. He watched as Pope accelerated away, stopping the truck behind the Dollar General and watching them.
“My friends! I called and you came. Welcome, welcome!”
The priest grabbed at their hands and shook them with genuine enthusiasm. “I am Fath
er Key.”
Yen got onto her knees and pressed his fingers to her lips.
“My child, please get up. In these times, we must all be humble. There is no hierarchy in the end times.”
Buzz felt his heart sink.
The priest caught his expression. “You do not believe that the Rapture is imminent? Then how do you explain this?” He spread his arms out wide and swept them around the snowy landscape. “The old world was first drowned and now lies buried beneath the snow. We await only the fire to finally cleanse and deliver us. But will you not come inside?”
“I wish to pray,” Yen said, and so Buzz felt obliged to follow her into the white building.
Inside, he found a small church with white pews facing a small altar, a statue of the dying Christ behind it.
“Miss Yen tells me she is a practicing Catholic. Are you also part of our family?” the priest said as Yen kneeled at the altar.
“No, I’m not,” Buzz said. “And I don’t think these are the end times. That’s just defeatism, as far as I’m concerned.”
Key laughed good-naturedly. “Perhaps it is wise, when one is on one’s knees to acknowledge that one needs a hand from a higher power. What is your explanation for the second flood and what followed?”
“We did it to ourselves. Humanity.”
“Then we need help all the more, surely?”
“If I thought there was help to be had, I’d ask. But, as things stand, I’m doing what I can. If there’s an answer, we’ll find it in science, not fairy stories.”
The priest’s face flickered with momentary anger, but then he regained control.
But Buzz beat him to it. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend.”
“And yet you manage to,” the priest said, before breaking out into a wide smile. “And I agree with you, to some extent. I am doing what I can to keep the souls who remain here alive until we see the flaming sword in the sky. I light the cross each day to draw the needy to us and I help those I can.”
Yen crossed herself and got to her feet. “Thank you, Father.”
“And will you stay here and join our congregation?”
Yen looked from Key to Buzz, then shook her head. “I agreed to help my friends to complete a task. But when it’s done, I will return here to await the rapture.”
Lost: Deluge Book 5: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 15