Once full daylight had come and the red tail lights didn’t stand out as much, they had no choice but to move closer and hope they weren’t spotted. This remained a confusing point for Dex, who still wasn’t completely sure why being spotted would be so bad. By his way of thinking, a confrontation was just what they needed. But Linda had other ideas, and she was in charge, not just because she was the one driving the truck. The guys weren’t kidding when they called her the “alpha female.”
“What was that?” he shouted when gunshots rang out, interrupting the hypnotic sound of tires on the road. Not knowing the answer and unsure what to do, Linda rode the brake as they continued toward the van, which looked to be stopped on the road about a half a mile ahead. There were several people on foot around the van. As the shots continued, however, each of them dropped to the pavement one by one until there was nobody left standing. Only then did the eerie silence resume as the van sped away.
Moments later they reached the site of the shootings. Seven men, each looking more scrawny and unkempt than the other, lay motionless, their blood seeping out onto the road. “Whoever they are, there’s probably more of them close by,” Dex said. “Probably watching us. I feel bad for them, but we better take off. Nothing we can do for them, anyway. The last thing we need is for them to think we’re the ones who did this.” Linda didn’t need to be told twice.
An hour later, just as the mid-morning sun was fighting to break through the clouds, the van they were chasing pulled to the side of the road and stopped. Jamming her foot on the brake, Linda swerved to the side of the road and cut the engine. They were a little closer than she’d have liked, but there was nothing to be done about it now except watch and wait. With any luck, the occupants of the van hadn’t found anybody else to shoot at.
“Why’d they stop?” Dex asked.
“Don’t know,” Linda answered. “Ask them.”
“We’re almost at the parkway,” Dex told her. “We passed a sign a mile back. Course, I’d have known we’re gettin’ near the shore just by the open sky.”
“Look, they’re getting out!” Linda said suddenly. They both watched as the men circled to the back of the van and opened the doors. Seconds later it was clear that they’d retrieved a can of gas, reminding them of their own predicament. One man opened the gas cap on the side of the van and appeared to be refueling. The other disappeared into the woods.
“How’d that get in there?” Linda asked. “I know for a fact that Carly wasn’t stocking the vans with extra gas. She’s doing the opposite, now that we’re rationing for winter.”
“Were they carrying gas cans when we saw them at the lake?” Dex asked. “It didn’t look like it.”
“One of many things that aren’t adding up,” Linda agreed. “But maybe it was.”
“So how’s our gas supply?” Dex asked. “In the tank, I mean.”
“We’re just about on ‘E’,” Linda answered.
“Are we gonna’ keep following them?” Dex asked.
Linda nodded. “We need gas no matter what we do. Even if we’re going home.” It was clear that she’d already thought this through. “There was a car a mile back,” she said. “Let’s tap it.” Without waiting for an answer, she did a one-eighty and drove back until they came across a Dodge Durango that had been driven halfway onto the shoulder of the road, probably by a confused driver who couldn’t understand why the RV had simply shut down for no apparent reason on that sunny July morning. Unlike most abandoned vehicles, this one looked undamaged. All four tires were still inflated and every window was intact. All Linda and Dex could hope for was a full tank, since there wasn’t another car in sight.
“You know how to do it?” Linda asked. “I don’t.”
“Yeah, I’ve done it many a time,” Dex answered as he placed the empty can on the asphalt. “Too many to count.” He fumbled at the gas cap access door until Linda found a lever under the driver’s seat and popped it open. Dex unscrewed the cap, tossed it into the road, and fed the hose as far as it would go. “I smell gas, anyway,” he said, before inserting the hose in his mouth.
“Don’t breathe the fumes in,” Linda said with an uneasy smile. ‘I don’t want to lose you out here.”
Dex couldn’t answer; his cheeks were locked into a pattern of sucking and holding. Suddenly, with a sputtering cough, he yanked the end of the hose from his mouth and slipped a thumb over the end. “Agh!” he gasped, spitting gasoline onto the ground before jamming the other end of the hose into the can and releasing his thumb. Almost immediately they heard the flow of gasoline as it passed into the can. “I’ll be tasting that for the next month,” he complained as he continued to spit.
“That can only holds five gallons,” Linda warned. “You might have to do it again.”
“Let’s hope we can fill it,” Dex said. “I don’t want to do this again anytime soon.” But it was not to be. They could see the gas level in the can as the flow tapered off. It was well past half-full, but it wasn’t five gallons. But that’s all there was in the Durango. Dex carried the can over to the truck and poured it in without a word.
“It’s just as well,” Linda said as she threw the hose into the back. “If we don’t get going, we’ll lose ‘em. We’ll just have to do it again whenever we can. It’s not like it’s hard to do.”
“Great,” Dex said. “Easy for you to say.” But he made sure to have a smile on his face when Linda whirled to face him.
They finished gassing up and made it back just in time to see the two thieves climb into the stolen van to resume their journey. They looked at each other with sober expressions as they watched the van roll up the ramp onto the Garden State Parkway. The pursuit had just reached a turning point, but both Dex and Linda wore the face of somebody who felt they’d come too far now to turn back. Without a word, while maintaining distance, Linda weaved up the ramp and merged onto the barren parkway. It was the closest either of them had come to seeing their old civilization in a long time, but nothing about what they were looking at looked very civil.
“We’re in Barnegat,” Dex announced.
“You know where we are?” Linda asked incredulously.
“Yeah, sure,” Dex told her. “We were on Route seventy-two for a while. Right over there’s where our bike shop is,” Dex said, pointing east toward the shore. “Across the water, I mean. On Long Beach Island. Guess we’re not headin’ there right now, though.”
“But where are we heading?” Linda asked. “This is starting to creep me out. Maybe we should go back. It’s not like we want to get into a shooting match with these guys. We saw what can happen. No thanks. We don’t need to do that.”
“Don’t you want to know what they’re up to?” Dex asked. “Or at least where they went? Otherwise we go back empty-handed. It won’t look good after all the gas we burned.”
They drove on. It wasn’t easy going. The parkway was packed with abandoned vehicles, especially on the southbound side that they were on. That made sense, Linda told herself. These cars were probably full of vacationers and day-trippers heading to the beach. Wait, the shore, not the beach, she reminded herself. Because even though she came from Pennsylvania, this was Jersey.
Unlike the Durango, these vehicles were battered. They’d been looted and picked clean. Linda wondered if that included gasoline. She thought not, because there weren’t many people out there lucky enough to have running vehicles to put gas in like they did.
“So much for Harvey Cedars Bicycle Shop,” Dex said, interrupting her thoughts. “That was the last exit for the island.”
They continued south, threading their way through the obstacles, watching for attackers, and keeping their eyes on the van. Dex, who as it turned out knew the area well, did a running commentary on the various towns that appeared on the exit signs. But he didn’t know where they were going either.
“Maybe you’re right about turning back,” he said. “This is Absecon. We’re way down the coast now.”
“Atlantic City
, next four exits,” Linda read from the next sign. “Do you feel lucky?”
“Check it out,” Dex said. “They’re getting off at Route 30. You watch. They might actually be going to AC. I didn’t see this comin’.”
Soon after the van made its way from the Parkway onto Route 30, it pulled into the parking lot of a half-burned shell of a diner. Linda noticed the pit stop just in time to pause halfway down the ramp. Once they stopped they were hiding in plain sight, looking just like the half-dozen wrecks strewn haphazardly around them.
“There’s another van there!” Dex said. “I think they were waiting for our friends!”
“I got news for you, Dex,” Linda said. “And it isn’t good. That other van is ours, too. I recognize it. What’s going on here? Who are these guys?”
Before he could answer, the two vans shot back onto Route 30, so Linda did the same. They found themselves on a two-lane blacktop with a couple of yellow lines running down the middle, lined with chain motels, gas stations and strip malls. Linda decided she liked the Parkway better. Here, there was a higher chance of running into unfriendlies. She reached down for her rifle and laid it across her lap. After she glanced over at Dex, he did the same.
A few minutes later, after they passed a ransacked Home Depot, the Atlantic City skyline and the ocean beyond it appeared in the distance across a bay. The two vans were still going strong, so Linda did too. But when they approached a humped bridge that would take them onto the barrier island and into the city, Linda eased the truck to the side of the road and put it into park.
“There’s a barricade on that bridge,” she told Dex.
“Yeah, I see that,” Dex answered. “It’s a drawbridge. Did they go through the barrier?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she said.
“Is anybody on the bridge?” Dex asked. “Did they just push their way through?”
“I couldn’t tell,” Linda answered. “I don’t see anybody. But I’m not sure we should chance it.”
“You just wanna’ let ‘em go?” Dex asked. “After we chased ‘em all the way down here?”
“We don’t know what we’re looking at here, Dex,” she said. “If we go in there, I don’t think we’re coming out. There’s something in there, or somebody, that these guys are going back to. I’m not ready to find out what it is. Now we know where they went. That’s what we needed.”
Dex nodded as he inspected the huge wind turbines a mile or so ahead on the left. Not surprisingly, none of them were turning. “Yeah, I hate losing them, but I can dig that,” he said. “We don’t know what we’d be walking into. It was one thing when we were just chasin’ the one van. Now that I see they got more than one, I don’t know what to think.”
“We’d be crazy to keep following,” Linda said. “Let’s go back and report this. They can decide what to do about it.”
“Wait, I see somebody!” Dex said. “All the way to the left!”
They squinted into the distance and watched as several figures crossed in front of the barrier. “It looks like they’re closing it up,” Linda said. “Can they see us?”
“They might have seen us before we stopped moving,” Dex replied.
“I really don’t want anybody knowing we’re here,” Linda said. “Even if they can’t do anything about it.” She thought for a moment. “It gets dark kind of early this time of year. How about we wait until the sun goes down before turning around and heading back?”
“Okay by me,” Dex agreed. “If they didn’t spot us already, it’ll be a clean break. But if we see anybody heading our way before then, we high tail it out of here, right?”
Five
Despite its lofty name, the Meetinghouse was merely a long extension, hastily built onto the back of the Armory, that was wide enough only for a custom-built but plain narrow table with bench seats along both sides. Designed to host meetings of The Committee, it was hopelessly undersized for a group as large as the Sentinels. Consequently, by the time Nick and Roethke had arrived, all chairs except for a few near the far end of the table were occupied, as was most of the floor space. Roethke quickly abandoned Nick to take one of those empty chairs, leaving Nick to fend for himself.
That was okay with him. Still in a daze over what he’d been told on the way over, he moved to the emptiest space he could find without a word to any of the other attendees. There was no need to draw attention to himself. Based on what he’d just learned, he had the sinking feeling that there would be plenty of that coming his way, and it wouldn’t be long in coming. Grover Monroe and the rest of The Committee members were already parked at the head of the table where Roethke had joined them.
Just as he’d settled himself against a wall in the middle of the room and locked his eyes on the floor between his feet, he felt somebody grab his arm. “Yo, Nick. Any word from the waterworks guy yet?” It was Dwayne Griffin, the former electrician with whom Nick worked with frequently on Construction. Dwayne was a fellow veteran of the Lockwood expedition. Nick couldn’t help wondering if everybody else who’d been there would be held equally responsible for the debacle that Roethke described. He didn’t think so. It had been idea, and he was the only one with an enemy on The Committee. He’d get most of the blame.
“No, Dwayne,” Nick answered. “As of dinner time, he and his whole family are still missing.”
“Really?” Dwayne asked. “The whole family? I didn’t know that part. So, you know, what are—” he stopped in mid-sentence when Grover rose from his seat at the head of the table. For better or worse, the meeting was about to begin.
“Let’s get started,” Grover said in his usual baritone. The room instantly went quiet. “We learned today that we’ve had a significant number of defections. To be exact, forty-two Tabernacle residents are unaccounted for as of one hour ago. All of this happened since the last count was made, which was last night at dinner time.” The room erupted in raucous conversation. Nick realized that except for him, nobody who wasn’t on The Committee had any idea of what had happened.
Grover stood passively and let the noise that filled the room fade away before resuming his remarks. “Our position is that they’ve left voluntarily,” he said. “That will continue to be our position until we learn otherwise. I’ll talk about who they are in a moment. First, I want to tell you that it appears the defectors did not leave empty-handed. A significant amount of equipment, food, and supplies has gone missing at the same time. We can only assume that these two events are not unconnected. Ted Roethke will--”
The room erupted again. This time Grover took a seat, and Roethke stood. With arms folded and a smug expression on his face, he waited for silence before speaking. It came quickly.
“First, the numbers. Of the forty-two defectors, thirty-six came from Lockworth. You might recall that some of us – wait, one of us – argued relentlessly to convince The Committee to take these people in. They’d be so grateful that we’d have no reason to question their loyalty, the argument went. They’d do anything to stay here and contribute, yada yada. Well, as it turns out, they were less grateful than we were banking on, weren’t they?” Roethke said. Nick knew not to take his eyes off the floor. He could feel Roethke’s eyes boring into him. Probably those of a lot of others as well.
Grover gently tapped Roethke on the hip just as Nick sneaked a quick peek. When Roethke looked over, Grover shook his head ever so slightly. The gesture was not lost on Roethke, who picked up a sheet of notes and scanned it.
“Who were the other six?” a voice demanded. “The ones who weren’t from Lockwood?”
“Aha!” Roethke answered. “Excellent question. Four of them are the water boy and his family. The Shardlakes, I believe?”
‘No way!” shouted Penny Hellikson. Nick had forgotten she would be there. Until recently it would have been her husband Tom at a Sentinels meeting, but of course he hadn’t survived the Lockworth mission. “No way they would do something like that! There’s something else going on
!”
“Where are they, then?” Roethke asked icily. Penny had no answer. “That’s what I thought,” Roethke said.
“Who were the others?” the voice came again.
“I’ve accounted for forty so far, am I correct?” Roethke said as he squinted at his notes. “Excuse me. I believe I misspoke. There were thirty-seven Lockwoodians among the defectors. That leaves five locals.”
“Who was the other one? Besides the Shardlakes?”
“Linda Brown,” Roethke said simply.
“What?” Nick asked, looking directly at Roethke. “Linda went with them?”
“Yes she did. She left her guard post this morning,” Roethke told him. “But she wasn’t alone. The other guard on duty at that post slipped away with her. It was one of those heavyset brothers with the wraparound beards. Dexter Bailey. As of the time this meeting started, both of them are unaccounted for. And that makes forty-two.”
Once again the room exploded. This time the outrage was over Linda Brown and Dex Bailey, both of whom were on everybody’s short list of unlikely defectors. Same as the Shardlakes. Something wasn’t adding up. Nobody in the room could believe what they’d just heard.
“There’s more than meets the eye here!” Con Bailey bellowed, silencing the crowd. “There’s no chance my brother did this. None. Are you hiding something from us?” he shouted at Roethke. “There’s got to be more to this than what you’re sayin’!”
“Settle down, everybody,” Grover said without rising from his chair. “We’re still piecing this together. There’s a lot of speculation here. Probably too much. Tell them about the supplies,” he directed Roethke just as the room started to get loud again. “They need to know.”
“Yes, there’s more,” Roethke said. “These people did a lot worse than just slither away. Somehow, they managed to smuggle out large quantities of food, supplies, and fuel. We’re talking about tons of material. So much, in fact, that we are going to be hard-pressed to survive the winter. Life just a got lot more difficult here in Tabernacle for everybody who’s still here.”
Super Pulse (Book 4): Defect Page 4