He opened the curtains. The radiator hissed heat and humidity into his room. He heard no other sound. Lander was quiet. A truck drove past on Main once in a while, but otherwise it felt like an early Sunday morning. Kyle realized maybe it was Sunday morning. He’d lost track of days of the week a long time ago.
Perhaps Lander was panicking. Most people had probably heard about Max the night before, and if Max was infected, at least one other person had to be infected because somebody had to have bitten Max. There could be a dozen infected in town for all Kyle knew. He couldn’t turn on the news to find out, and he couldn’t ask around. He didn’t belong to any local gossiping trees. He didn’t even know anybody.
A black Range Rover pulled into the lot and parked sideways in front of Parker’s room, taking up two spaces. Two men got out wearing desert camo fatigues underneath big hats and parkas. They weren’t carrying weapons.
Kyle opened the door and braced himself against the polar air.
“You Kyle?” the driver said.
Kyle nodded.
“Come with us, please. Mayor wants to see you.”
“My friends went out for a walk.”
“He only wants to see you.”
Kyle felt a slight pang of nervousness, but mostly he felt curious and a little important.
The two men waited while Kyle grabbed his coat, hat and scarf, and the driver held the back door on the driver’s side open for him.
Kyle took off his hat as soon as he climbed inside. It felt like Miami in there.
He gawked in amazement all over again as they drove through downtown. Half the stores appeared to be open. A handful of people were out and about and enjoying the morning. The town didn’t appear to be panicking after all. It was doing okay. It was doing better than okay. Kyle could picture himself living in Lander a long time.
He wondered what the mayor wanted and figured he probably wanted advice. Or, not advice, exactly, but a debriefing. Kyle and his friends knew better than anybody around what it was like out there.
The driver took Kyle through downtown, made a left off Main and stopped the Range Rover in front of the one-story brick City Hall building. City Hall shared the building with the police department. Kyle saw lights and activity through the windows on the City Hall side, but the police department offices were dark. Nobody was in there.
The two guys led Kyle through the front door. A young female receptionist sat behind a desk just inside. She looked like a college student. Kyle pegged her as a pre-med sorority sister.
“New guy to see Steele,” the driver said to her.
“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said and smiled.
Kyle expected her to pick up the phone. Instead she stood up and walked down the hall. The office—the whole town, really—looked and felt so close to normal in so many ways that it was easy to forget the phones probably didn’t work anymore.
The receptionist came back. “He’ll see you now,” she said and walked Kyle back to Steele’s office.
The nameplate on the big man’s door said, “Joseph Steele, Mayor.”
Steele sat in a reclining chair behind a metal desk with his hands folded behind his head and his elbows out like wings. He had no paperwork in front of him. Just a flat screen monitor, a keyboard and a small framed photo facing toward him.
The office struck Kyle as remarkably ordinary and plain. He wasn’t expecting a lawyer’s spread with oak paneled walls and a mahogany desk, but he wasn’t expecting anything quite so municipal either.
“Good morning,” Steele said.
“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” Kyle said.
Kyle hoped Steele would say, “Please, call me Joe,” but that didn’t happen.
“Settling in okay?” Steele said.
“Well,” Kyle said. “Last night—”
“I heard. The motel manager. But it’s under control.”
“Did you find the person who bit him?”
“We did,” Steele said, clipped and short, with a falling cadence indicating that part of the conversation was finished. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about, move along. “Reason I brought you in here today—and I’m going to bring your friends in, too, after we’re finished—is because I need to know your skillset. Everybody in Lander has a job.”
He didn’t want a debriefing?
“You interview every new person who shows up in town?” Kyle said.
“Not many new people anymore,” Steele said. “Anyway, this isn’t a job interview. I’m not trying to fill a position. I just need a vague idea of your skillset before I hand you off to somebody else.”
Kyle doubted that was the real reason Steele had called him into the office. Surely the man had better things to do. Higher-up things to do. Mayoral things to do. Kyle figured the meeting was a kind of second screening. The physical exam at the hospital was the first, a sit-down with the mayor was the second. He felt a little deflated, but it made sense. Plenty of survivors out there were almost as dangerous as the infected. Lander couldn’t—or shouldn’t—let just anyone in. How many survivors outside Lander could honestly say they’d never killed anybody?
Okay, so Steele wanted to get an idea if any newcomers in town were actually welcome or if they would cause trouble. Kyle wouldn’t cause any trouble. Neither would Hughes. Annie certainly wouldn’t. But Parker? Parker was a human time bomb.
Steele didn’t get into any of that directly. He took the long way around. He asked Kyle about his work history and seemed bored by the answers. Kyle had worked a few years as a software engineer at a start-up in Portland. Before that he was a college student and waited tables on weekends. What else could he do? Not much, really, he had to admit. He didn’t know how to fix cars, wire a house for electricity, hunt for food, set broken bones or do much of anything that a town like Lander needed right now.
Kyle didn’t get the sense Steele actually cared about any of that.
“What about your friends?” Steele said.
“Annie was a college student, I think,” Kyle said. “How’s she doing, by the way?”
“The doctors say she’s doing great,” Steele said. “We’ll have her out of there in no time.”
Annie wasn’t sick. There was no reason to keep her except that she was immune. Steele wouldn’t release her in no time. Surely Hughes was right about that much. And he was right about the cops, too. That was clear. They hadn’t shown up when Max was shot, and the lights weren’t even on in the police department next door.
Kyle did believe they were treating Annie okay. He wasn’t worried about it the way Parker and Hughes were worried about it. Treating her badly would make no kind of sense. Keeping her made perfect sense, though. She might help them cure this thing. And she might up and leave if they let her. She hadn’t planned to stay in Lander, and Steele seemed to sense that. Kyle wanted to ask if he could see her, but something told him to hold off for the time being and wait.
“Hughes was a bail bondsman,” Kyle said.
“The black guy?” Steele said.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “And Parker built cabinets.” He felt a twinge of embarrassment. Psycho Parker had a relevant skill set.
Hughes even more so. He had plenty of experience running down bail skips. He knew how to hunt and track people and, for all intents and purposes, arrest them. He had some of the same skills cops had even though he wasn’t a cop. Steele could and probably would give Hughes some kind of security job. He’d be a fool not to.
“Hughes is good with guns,” Kyle said. “Anything security related, he’s good at.”
“Tell me more about Parker,” Steele said and leaned forward in his chair.
“He’s…” Kyle wanted to tell Steele about Parker. Hell, he wanted to report Parker the way he’d report the sonofabitch to the police. But Lander apparently didn’t have a police department anymore.
“Yes?” Steele said and raised his eyebrows.
Kyle could just tell him. And maybe he should. He was safe now, at least relat
ively. He was sitting in a functioning City Hall. A remnant of civilization in a fairly well-ordered town.
So maybe Kyle should just say it. The mayor wanted to vet everyone, right? And it’s not like Parker was going to walk in there and say, hey, I’m a dangerous maniac.
“Parker is difficult,” Kyle said.
“Difficult, how?” Steele said.
“Well, he’s an asshole.”
“An asshole, how?”
Kyle blew out his breath.
“Out with it,” Steele said.
“Let’s just say he’s not suited for a security detail.”
Steele stared hard. Kyle squirmed in his seat.
“Son, I need to know what I’m dealing with here. Did Parker kill a kid, or what? Is he a rapist?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
“Did he rob people on the highway?”
“No!”
“What, then?”
Kyle looked at Steele’s hands as the mayor drummed his fingers on the desk.
“What are you not telling me?” Steele said.
Kyle wanted to tell him. Kyle did not want to tell him.
“He did something,” Steele said.
Kyle was still looking at Steele’s hands. He felt like a kid in the principal’s office, so he raised his gaze to give himself a little dignity, but instead of making eye contact, he looked at the wall behind the mayor’s shoulder.
“Parker has emotional problems,” Kyle said.
“My wife has emotional problems,” Steele said. No emotion in his own voice. He said it as if he’d said he had Cheerios for breakfast.
The office was very quiet.
Steele was not going to let it go. Kyle wished he was anywhere else. “Don’t worry about him. Just…”
Steele stood up and made a big show of pinching the blinds open and looking outside through the window. “You ever bully anybody in school?”
“What?”
Steele turned and faced Kyle. “When you were a kid. You ever beat up kids smaller than you?”
“No!”
On the contrary, Kyle had been bullied a little himself, and it still embarrassed him ten years later. He wasn’t going to tell Steele about it.
“Anyone ever bully you?”
“No.”
Parker had bullied him.
“Your dad ever beat you?”
“No.”
“Your dad beat your mom?”
“No!”
“What would you do if your dad did beat your mom?”
“If I was old enough, I’d kick his ass.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay, what?”
Steele sat back down and stared at Kyle hard. “If your dad was beating your mom, but you were too young to kick his ass, what would you do?”
“I don’t know. I was never in that situation.”
“Would you just let it happen? Live in fear while your mom is getting the shit punched out of her? Or would you tell someone at school? Or perhaps the police?”
Jesus. This man was relentless.
“What do you want to know?” Kyle said.
“I want to know what I need to know,” Steele said. “And I need to know what you aren’t telling me about Parker.”
“He’s just kind of difficult, okay?”
“Difficult, how?”
Kyle tightened his mouth. He wanted to tell the mayor. He did not want to tell the mayor.
“My chief of security is concerned about him,” Steele said.
“Who’s your chief of security?”
“He brought you to the hospital.”
Kyle said nothing.
“Is my chief of security right? Should he be worried about Parker?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle said.
Steele sighed. He stood up again and pinched open the blinds. “It has occurred to me more than once,” he said while looking out the window, “that if I had the resources I might build a wall around this town. Not to keep people in, but to keep people out.”
He let the blinds snap shut again and turned to face Kyle. “Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t. Do you know why?”
Kyle shook his head.
“Because I don’t want any enemies. Turning Lander into a gated community would make Lander a target. This isn’t the only town that’s held on. There are others, and we’re all starved of resources. We have no natural gas. No gasoline. No fresh fruits or vegetables. We’re going to run out of ammunition, which means we’re going to have to hunt with bows and arrows again like the Indians used to. We’ll be defenseless. We aren’t defenseless right now, I assure you, but we will be. If survivors are allowed to gather here instead of somewhere else, they’ll be with us instead of against us.”
Kyle said nothing.
“That does not mean I can let just anyone in,” Steele said.
Steele sat down again.
“Should I let you in?”
Kyle nodded and wished he was anywhere else.
“Should I let Annie in?”
“Of course,” Kyle said and nodded again.
“Should I let Hughes in?” Steele said, more loudly this time and leaned forward in his chair.
“Y-yes,” Kyle said and gulped.
“And what about Parker? Should I let him in?”
Kyle opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what to say.
“You don’t think I should let him in.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You also didn’t say that I should.”
Kyle said nothing.
Steele just looked him for a couple of moments, then rose from his chair. “Excuse me. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Steele left the office and quietly shut the door.
Kyle breathed a sigh of relief. He’d have a couple of minutes to figure out what to say. Should he rat Parker out? Or should he protect him?
What, exactly, did he owe the sonofabitch?
Steele slipped quietly into the next room where Temple waited for him. The two offices were connected by a door, which had been left open a crack.
Temple nodded and Steele gestured quietly with his head toward the hallway.
The two men walked several doors down and shut themselves in a conference room where the kid wouldn’t hear them.
“You heard everything,” Steele said.
Temple nodded.
“I know what I think,” Steele said. “What do you think?”
“Way I see it,” Temple said, “we have five options. We shoot all three of them. We arrest all three of them. We send all three of them on their merry way wherever they were headed before they washed up here. We leave all of them be. Or we treat them separately. Deal with Parker first, see how the others react, then decide. Two steps instead of one.”
“And?” Steele said.
“And what?” Temple said.
“What do you think?”
“Shooting them is the easiest. Leaving them be is the riskiest.”
“All that matters is the girl,” Steele said.
“So shoot them,” Temple said.
“That’s a big step. One we haven’t taken yet.”
“You said it. Yet.”
“You think it’s inevitable.”
“It might be.”
“Then it’s not inevitable. It’s a possibility.”
Temple said nothing.
“We’ve never shot innocent people,” Steele said.
“What do you always say?”
Steele nodded. “But once we take that step, we’ll have taken it. I don’t think we’ll ever go back.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. I’d torture every single man, woman and child in this town if I thought it would do any good. But it wouldn’t. So I won’t.”
“There’s no way they’ll get the girl. We have twelve men on that hospital and two on her door.”
“They could try.”
“They’ll lose.”
“But we’ll be down a couple of men.”
“And you think Parker’s most likely to try.”
Steele nodded.
“I agree,” Temple said. “He’s the one who scoped us out this morning.”
“So what do you think?” Steele said.
“Like I said.”
Steele sighed. His wife Nadia thought he was turning into a fascist. Nadia was wrong.
Nadia wouldn’t know if he shot Annie’s friends, but he would. He’d always know. If he did it once, he’d do it again. She’d find out eventually.
His boy Charles would eventually know, too, if he came back.
“Kid doesn’t seem to like Parker much,” Steele said.
“No, he doesn’t,” Temple said.
“Think his friends see things the same way?”
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”
“So we take care of Parker. It might go down easy. They might even thank us.”
“And then?”
“It will go easier with the girl,” Steele said.
“She’s not going anywhere,” Temple said.
“No, she’s not,” Steele said. “She could be here for years. You want her against us? For years? Because we whacked her friends?”
“She’s not going anywhere.”
“She might cooperate with us for years. This doesn’t have to be difficult.”
Temple said nothing.
“Like you said,” Steele said. “Two steps instead of one.”
“So we pick up Parker,” Temple said. “If the other two pitch a shit fit, we deal with them. If they don’t, we don’t. We’re all good.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Steele said.
Temple blew out his breath and nodded.
“Take the kid back to his room,” Steele said. “And pick up Parker.”
“You want him in the—”
“Yeah. Bring Hughes to me here later this afternoon after he’s had time to process it. I’ll feel him out. Maybe he’ll work with us. If I don’t like the way it’s going, we’ll take care of it right away. This doesn’t have to be difficult. It will be wrapped up today.”
“Okay then,” Temple said.
“So go do it,” Steele said.
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Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 12