"You think I'll be a burden," Ross said, reading his mind. "And I guess I will be, but not as much as you think. And I can be helpful, honest I can."
"I'm sure you can, son," Solly began. A knock on the door saved him from having to be blunt with the boy.
The door opened and, to his surprise, Vivian stood there. "Hello, Solly," she said as she came inside. She smiled at Ross. "Did you tell him?"
"Tell me what?" Solly said, his heart sinking.
"No, he's just about to explain why I shouldn't go with him. About how I'd be a burden and how it would be stupid to have a paralyzed boy riding with him."
Solly shook his head. "I was not going to say any of that," he lied.
"Well that's good then, because I'm comin' too,” Vivian announced.
"What?" Solly cried, leaping up and looking from one to the other.
"Yes, Solly, I am comin'. You know I can be useful, and I'll tend to Ross, so you don't need to worry about nuttin'."
Solly dropped back onto the bed, shaking his head. "Absolutely no! This isn't a kindergarten trip!" He regretted those words the instant they left his mouth.
"Oh, is that how you see us?" Ross shouted. "Children? We've lost as much as you have and maybe we need to be doing something useful too!"
"You can—stay here and help the community thrive!"
Vivian waved a finger at Solly, her pretty Jamaican face suddenly as hard as steel. "Not this time, Solly. This isn't your choice to make. We're comin' along because you need us. We're your posse. We got your back."
For a moment, derisive words formed in Solly's mind. Who were they kidding? They were just kids and they'd be nothing more than a burden if he took them with him. But he caught himself as he looked from one stern face to the other. Maybe they were kids, but when all was said and done, he was a mediocre app developer who couldn't hold down a job or a marriage. If the FBI had a set of criteria for flagging potential trouble makers then he, Ross and Vivian would hardly have registered. They were closer to Mr. Bean than Mr. Bin Laden.
"It doesn't seem as though I have a choice, does it?" he said, feeling a surprising relief.
Vivian smiled. "At last, you understand the state of affairs."
"And just in case you had a change of heart overnight," Ross said, beaming, "Viv's got the keys to the Humvee."
Chapter 3
Paulie handed the binoculars to Tucker. "It's quiet down there," she sighed. "Barely anyone on the streets."
"I guess they've all been taken to Seattle," Tucker said. "Maybe we should've gone there first, rather than coming back here."
Paulie retreated from the overhang and sat up. The last time she'd been up here, she'd witnessed Scott Lee—in his Pastor Smith disguise—speaking to the leader of the militia. They'd then turned around and left, but what she'd seen had started a chain of events that had led her nearly 5,000 miles in a big fat circle back to the beginning.
"We've talked about this," she said. Endlessly. "We need to find out what we can about what's going on in Arbroath before we go after our people."
"We are going to get them, then," Marvin said.
Paulie turned to him. She'd gotten to like the man over the weeks they'd spent together, and she certainly owed him big time for the way he'd looked after and protected Luna. But they needed a break from one another. It had been a long and difficult journey back west and too long spent in the company of one person—even with Luna acting as a buffer and peacemaker—was going to result in short tempers and cross words.
They'd managed nearly 2,500 miles across the continental US, hopping from vehicle to vehicle, and she'd been content to follow Marvin's lead most of the time. After all, whereas she'd crossed it eastwards by air, he and Luna had traveled on foot and, where they could, by car. But it was getting harder and harder to find working automobiles with fuel in their tanks and, in their desperation, they'd been forced to open up vehicles that still contained the rotting remains of their former owners. That had been grim work, and they'd been grateful to have their dog Dany with them to distract Luna while they did it. Nothing, however, could completely remove the smell, and they'd been forced to travel with the windows open, whatever the weather. In a straight fight between freezing and suffocating, the cold won every time.
Colonel McBride had given them supplies and fuel in exchange for their agreement to set up solar-powered relay stations at roughly 750km intervals along the westward road. She admired McBride as he thought beyond the purely local issues and knew that information was everything. Missions had been sent out in all directions, and each had a relay so that, like a spider at the center of an ever-widening web, McBride was able to learn more and more about the tactical situation out there. And it comforted Paulie, just a little, to know that she could contact Wright-Patterson in an emergency, even if there was nothing they could do, in practice, to help from two thousand miles away.
"Of course, we're going to help them, Marvin," Paulie said with a sigh. "They're our people. But we need to know what the situation is here first. They have to have somewhere to come back to."
Marvin rubbed his eyes and yawned. "You're right, Sheriff. I suggest we make our way down there in the morning. I'm too bushed."
Paulie fought back her annoyance. She wanted to see what was happening in Arbroath now, not wait until the following day. But there had been enough petty fights in the past days and the town wasn't going anywhere.
"Sure," she said. "Let's find somewhere to camp."
They had plenty of food, as Marvin and Luna had become expert foragers, so they made a hearty supper as they sheltered beside the rusty red pickup that had been their transport for the past couple of hundred miles. Paulie sometimes felt like an interloper as Marvin, Luna and Dany had established a routine over the weeks they'd been traveling together.
Marvin would begin warming up the contents of a can in the saucepan sitting on his little camping stove. Luna would ask what it was and, whatever the answer, complain. It was a little ritual that spoke to a deep connection between them that Paulie couldn't help being a little jealous of. Luna had always been something of a daddy's girl, though she could barely remember her father. Paulie had been complicit in the lie that he had been stationed in Afghanistan when, in fact, he'd been living with his new partner somewhere north of LA. She hadn't been able to bring herself to wreck Luna's rose-colored impression of her father and she sure wasn't going to do it now when there was next to no chance of her ever meeting him again.
Truth to tell, Marvin had been a better father to her than the man whose genes she carried. Truth to tell, Marvin had been a better parent, period. He seemed to have a way of handling her that corrected her misbehavior without causing any resentment. It would have been fascinating and instructive if Paulie could have gotten over herself, but she couldn't.
"Are we going to live here again?" Luna said.
Paulie, who'd been totally absorbed in her destructive self-examination, took a moment to work out what her daughter had said. "What? Oh. Would you like to?"
Luna shrugged as she swallowed a spoonful of canned beef stew. "I don't care where we stop, but I'm tired of moving every day. I just wanna sleep in a bed. President Christine gave me my own bedroom."
"Well, we'll have to see how things are down there in the morning."
"Can I come?"
"No, you'll stay up here with Dany until we come back to fetch you."
Luna screwed her face up. "I don't want to be left behind. Uncle Marvin, you'll let me go, won't you?"
She called him uncle when she wanted something from him. She knew he liked it.
"No, kid, I wouldn't. Your mom's right. We don't know what we're goin' to find and we don't want Dany under our feet. You stay here and look after her."
"Dany wants to go too."
"She's just a dog. She doesn't know what she wants," Marvin said. "She ain't comin' and unless you're happy to leave her up here on her own, you'll stay with her."
And that was that.
Paulie managed a tiny smile as Marvin glanced at her and they made their plans.
There was no sign of anyone patrolling the barricade, and Paulie's overwhelming impression as she and Tucker crept towards the town was of silence. Unnatural silence.
They hugged the cover until they reached the door Nicky Friedman had used to get into the department store basement. It was locked. They exchanged glances and Paulie nodded. Marvin's boot made short work of the door, the crash echoing around the walls as they tensed, waiting for the sound of rushing feet.
Nothing. Paulie went in first, fumbling in the darkness and cursing the fact that they'd found no batteries for their flashlight. The place stank and she prayed that it was nothing more than rotting stock as she made her way by touch through the darkness with nothing but the stumbling footsteps of Marvin Tucker for company.
She caught a glimpse of a light above her and almost fell over the bottom of a flight of wooden steps that ended in a door she forced open. She climbed up into the storefront she'd hidden in with Nicky Friedman before she'd decided to go to Seattle. The place was littered with empty cardboard boxes and empty shelves, all covered in a layer of dust.
Marvin knelt at the window and peered out. "Nothing," he muttered. "I reckon the place has been emptied. Everyone's been shipped off to Seattle."
"Not everyone," Paulie said, pointing.
"Well, I'll be," Marvin said. "Looks as though old Custer's still in business, anyway."
Two figures stood outside the department store entrepreneur Custer Petrov had allowed to be turned into the main community building in Arbroath after the Long Night. They were leaning against a wall, sheltering from the chill morning wind, plumes of smoke rising from their cigarettes.
"Maybe this place isn't as dead as we thought," Paulie said. Another figure was moving from a building opposite towards the guards, who straightened up. Paulie could now see that the newcomer was a woman carrying a heavy box. The two figures opened the top of the box and, laughing, sent her inside, struggling with the weight of it.
"I think everyone's in there," Marvin said. "Everyone who's left, that is."
"Which means we've got to get in. Come on."
But they couldn't move until the sun had come around far enough to cast a deep shadow on the front of the shop. They waited until the guards seemed to be facing in a different direction, then crept out of the front door and followed the sidewalk, hugging the walls to keep out of sight until they could dart onto a side road.
Paulie knew these streets intimately, so she was able to lead Marvin along roads that skirted the department store while keeping them out of sight until they finally arrived back at the far side of the building. They'd not seen a living being, just streets littered with blown leaves and dirt.
Just as they were creeping out from cover, a voice called out and they froze. "Hey, is that you, Sheriff?"
Paulie swung around, gun in hand, to where the sound had come from. Then she realized whose voice she'd heard. "Wally? Is it you?"
Walter Hammond, Vietnam vet turned guerrilla, waved at her from an open second floor window. "Come on up," he hissed theatrically.
They found him in a dark little room and he ran up to Paulie and shook her hand warmly. "I sure am pleased to see you, Sheriff! I ain't no leader, that's for sure. Who's this?"
"Marvin Tucker," Marvin said, holding out his hand.
"Walter Hammond, sergeant, Red Devils," he said, saluting. "And you've served, I can see it."
Marvin smiled. It had been a lifetime ago. "Gunnery sergeant, Marine Corps."
"This here's Maggie," Hammond said, pointing to a figure that had been crouching, unnoticed, in the shadows of the room's corner. With effort, the woman got up and approached them.
"I don't recognize you," Paulie said, taking her hand.
"I came here looking for safety," the woman responded. She looked as though she was in her late sixties and her face had a haunted look. "Found the place had all gone to pot just before I arrived. The others all got took. Walter saved me."
"It wasn't just me," the old man said, with a smile. "Nicky and Jack were here."
"Jack? Jack Rutz?" Marvin said. "I thought he'd run for the hills."
Wally opened his mouth, but Paulie interrupted. "Wally, where's Nicky?"
He pointed through the window at the wall of Alldays Department Store. "She went in there with Jack. We'd seen most of the guards leave and she said she could handle the rest, so they went inside to let the folk in there out."
"How long ago?"
"Eight days now. Maggie and I were fixin' to go in after them tonight. Then you showed up. I won't deny I'm relieved."
Paulie pulled up a chair. This looked as though it had been a little apartment above a shop, with an old table, some chairs and, through a doorway, a small kitchen. "And everyone from the town's in there?"
"Everyone that's left," Wally said. "Most were taken off to Seattle, but the sick and many of the kids were left there. Custer Petrov's in charge, so heaven help them."
"And heaven help Petrov if he's harmed any of them," Paulie said. "Wally, I've left my daughter, Luna, up on Cove Road…" She realized, as she said this that the old man wasn't a local. "Follow the river road out of town then head up the hill, it's signposted."
"Sure," he said, his head wagging. "And what do you want me to do when I find her?"
"Look after her, and her dog. Stay out of Arbroath, stay safe. Marvin and I will see what we can do in there."
Nicky Friedman, the deputy leading the resistance, had gone in through the loading bay at the back of the department store, according to Wally, so Paulie decided on a more straightforward approach. She and Marvin would jump the guards and enter through the front door.
They sat in the little room after Wally and Maggie had left, waiting for night to fall. Their plan was to try to get in during the early hours when, hopefully, the people inside were sleeping, and so they had many hours to sit and stew.
To her delight, Paulie found a little shower behind the kitchen and, in the bedroom beyond, she opened a wardrobe to see a spare deputy's uniform. And it was clean. She emerged, truly clean for the first time since she'd left Wright-Patterson weeks ago and painfully aware that, although she smelled of the rose-scented soap in the shower, this served only to accentuate how fragrant Marvin was. She ordered him to remove his shirt, vest and pants, and threw him a spare pair of Wally's underpants to put on while she hand-washed his clothes.
"I can do that for myself," Marvin said as he wrapped his coat around his naked body.
"Maybe," Paulie responded, surprised at the sharp tone in his voice, "but I've got nothing better to do, and I'm pretty sure I can do a better job than you. You're quite the new age man, Marvin."
Tucker snorted. "I don't even know what that means, but I always did my own washing. Only way I could be sure it was clean."
Paulie smiled at him and half-filled the sink from a bucket before tipping in water heated on their camping stove. She lost herself in the simple, physical task of rubbing the sweat and grime out of the uniform with soap and a dish brush.
Paulie slipped around the corner and pressed her gun against the back of the first guard's head as Marvin leveled his shotgun at the other. "Quiet!" she hissed.
It was almost midnight and the only light was provided by a burning brazier on the steps outside the store. Within seconds, Marvin had tied up and gagged the second guard while she watched the other. He looked to be of oriental appearance, though it was too dark to say any more than that, and he didn't say a word as Marvin pulled out a pair of cable ties and secured his arms.
They were led to an empty shop opposite, ordered to lie down and their legs were bound before Marvin tied them to a radiator for good measure and Paulie took their keys.
"That went well," Marvin said as they ran back across to the front door of the department store. "Quiet as mice."
Paulie tried three keys before finding one that worked and she pushed gently at it
, praying it wouldn't squeak. Once it was wide enough, they crept into the darkness.
She formed an image in her mind's eye of the layout of the store, but was quickly reduced to feeling her way in the hope of finding the door that led to the makeshift hospital she'd set up. The plan was to liberate enough people to enable her to take over the store and bring Custer Petrov to justice.
Her hand wrapped around a door handle and she pushed down. The door opened onto blackness, but she didn't feel the flow of air that would suggest she was in the corridor she was expecting. Paulie was just about to close it again when a red flash caught her eye. Before the Long Night, she'd have written it off as nothing more than the random flashing of, say, a smoke alarm but in this new world, it was incongruous. What powered equipment could be in here?
They hadn't dared use the flashlight Wally had left for fear of attracting attention, but Paulie decided to risk it. She tugged on Marvin's arm to bring him inside and silently shut the door behind them, sealing them inside. She pointed the flashlight at the blinking red light and flicked it on.
There, on a small table in the center of what had once been a storage room, sat a black glossy object with four arms, each of which ended in rotors.
"Oh my God!" Paulie gasped. "No. Not here too!"
"What is it? A drone?" Marvin said.
"It's a Reaper," Paulie said. "Come on, we've got to get out of here now!"
"What about Nicky and the others?"
Paulie went to open the door. "We'll think about that later. Now, we must get out. Come on Marvin!"
A door behind the drone was flung open and they heard the unmistakable click of safeties being disengaged.
Paulie swung round.
Three figures in olive uniforms with red stars on their chests stood there.
"Tingzhi!"
Chapter 4
The final five miles to the Las Cruces base almost killed them, and Nathan was reduced to half-carrying Su-Mi as he fought to keep himself upright. His throat was as dry as the desert he stumbled through, and his stomach felt like a shriveled bag, but still he thrust one booted foot down after another.
Betrayed: Book 5 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival series: (The Long Night - Book 5) Page 3