29° (Twenty-Nine Degrees) (Twenty Nine Book 3)

by Nancy Pennick

  The distraction helped take my mind off the meeting with Doug and after an hour of playing I got ready to leave for the hospital. “They might release her today!” I hugged my mom, filled with happiness.

  “She should come here to stay. I could take care of her. Tell Nate and Ashley I send my love.” Mom hugged me tightly. “Don’t worry. I’ll kill Doug myself if he harms one hair on Lucas’ head.”

  “Mom!” I leaned back, eyes wide.

  “Just saying.” She gave me a smile, then a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” I took one more look at my son and Tobias in a serious discussion over blocks and had to smile.

  The picture stayed in my mind all the way to the hospital. When my bus stop came, I followed the familiar trail to Ashley’s hospital room. As I stepped off the elevator, Nate was standing there.

  “Thank God you’re here,” he said. “Ashley lost the baby.”

  Chapter Twenty One

  “What?” I said as my eyes filled with tears. “No!” I slumped in the nearest chair, sobbing into my hands. “When?” I lifted my head and looked into Nate’s sad, golden brown eyes.

  Nate looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His reddish-blonde hair stuck out in all directions, and I swear he was thinner. I pulled him next to me and wrapped my arms around him, resting my head on his shoulder.

  “I should have been here,” I whispered.

  “Ashley said you’d say that.” Nate kissed the top of my head. “There’s nothing you could’ve done, Allie.”

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “When did it happen? Before I left? I would have cancelled the plan, found another time, another way.” I sniffed.

  “It happened as the plan was going down. You may have been on your way to Patriot Village by then. She’s having a hard time.” Nate hesitated. “They couldn’t stop the bleeding. She’s in surgery right now.”

  “What?” I pulled back, heart pounding. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I hope so.” Nate looked like he was in a state of shock. “Serena’s with her. If she wasn’t, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Where’s Ryan?” I looked down the hall.

  “I had Rosanne take him out for lunch. We told Oliver to go to the meeting at your hotel, then we got word Doug finally agreed to meet. It’s so damn hard to stay in contact with everyone!” Nate pounded his leg. “God, Allie! I can't lose her!” His face crumbled and tears ran down his cheeks.

  “You won’t. She’s strong.” I sat with my hand on his back, patting and rubbing to keep him calm.

  The minutes ticked away, Rosanne and Ryan returned, and still we heard nothing. Nate began to pace the floor. Rosanne walked next to him, speaking in a soft tone that I could barely hear.

  Ryan sat, head in hands, staring at the floor. “I wish we were back home. I hate this.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryan. Me, too.” I wished I had a better answer.

  He looked up, then his expression changed. “Serena!”

  We rose from the chairs in the waiting room, and all four of us rushed toward her from different directions.

  Serena held up her hands. “First, she’s going to be fine.”

  “Thank God!” Nate pumped his fist in the air, and his face drained of tension.

  “But there’s more.” Serena wore her serious doctor face. “I'm so sorry, Nate, she won’t be able to have any more children.”

  “Oh ..." His face crumpled then regained its composure. "That’s fine as long as she’s okay,” he said. He put his arm around Rosanne. “We’ll help her.”

  Serena gave him a sad smile. “But it might not be fine with her. She’ll need time to recover. The loss of a child, the time in the hospital, and the surgery, comprehending that she won't ever be able to conceive ...” She looked away.

  “What?” Nate grasped her by the arm. “Is there more?”

  “No,” Serena said.

  “I don’t believe you, Serena. I can tell you have more to say.” Nate stared at her.

  Serena looked at me, her eyes pleading for help.

  “Just tell us,” I said. “No secrets.”

  “Well,” Serena said as she stuck her hands into her doctor’s smock. “If we'd been in Montana, she may have lost the baby, but I could’ve prevented the rest.”

  Nate slammed his fist into his other hand. “Damn.” He looked at me and pointed. “Don’t blame yourself, Allie. Don’t you dare.”

  My heart pounded against my chest, and I felt faint. “I won’t.” I placed my hand against my forehead.

  “It’ no one’s fault. It’s circumstances. Allie,” Rosanne said and took my hand. “Doug had the capabilities of pulling this off with the help of four Niners. It had nothing to do with you.”

  I looked at the dark circles under her pale blue gray eyes. Her blonde curls hung limp, and her face was almost translucent white from stress and lack of eating properly. We’d all suffered, one way or another. I wanted to say it was my fault but realized I couldn’t carry the burden for my brother any longer. “You’re right.”

  “You can see her in about an hour,” Serena told us. “Keep your visit short. She needs her rest.”

  The strong antiseptic smell of the hospital filled my nose, making me want to vomit. I rushed for the ladies’ room to splash water on my face. I leaned on the sink, gazing into the mirror. My brunette hair looked dull, lacking its usual shine and curl. We were all beaten down, and had to find a way to end this, to get back to the way things had been. I scrubbed my face with my hand, and realized I hadn't contacted Lucas yet.

  The meeting was our one last hope in this awful day. If Doug agreed to trade the serum for our release, and the president was found and returned to his rightful place, we could go home and regroup there. I’d dote on Ashley every day, make her my number one priority. She’d wanted to help with the museum and the building of the new one. I’d make sure she’d be included in it all.

  For a busy hospital, not one person had come into the bathroom during the time I took at the sink staring into the mirror, washing my face and literally going crazy. I paced the small area and finally sank onto the avocado green plastic couch on the wall opposite the sinks and brought up my screen. Lucas, come to the hospital when you’re done with the meeting. I couldn’t tell him the news in a text. I’d wait until he got here.

  Every time I moved, the plastic on the couch went with me, making a crackling sound. “How old is this thing?” I stared at the ceiling, trying to clear my head and think of nothing.

  “Allie?” Rosanne’s voice broke the silence.

  I jumped to my feet. “Ashley? Is she okay? Is the hour up?”

  “Yes. She’s awake. You can see her now.” Rosanne held the door back, letting me exit. “I’m proud of how you’re handling the stress, Allie,” she said as we walked down the hall.

  I looked at her and blinked back tears. “I’m glad you think I am. I’m falling apart inside.”

  She took my hand. “Of course you are. How couldn't you not be?” Rosanne squeezed my hand. “I’ve had my turn with Ashley. She knows she lost the baby, but we’ve decided to not tell her anything else for now. She’s very fragile.”

  I nodded. “I won’t say anything.” We were almost to her room, and I stopped before going in. “I sent Lucas a message to come to the hospital. If he comes while I’m in there—”

  “I’ll tell him,” Rosanne said.

  “Thank you.” I took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

  Ash’s brown hair flowed over the pillows propped behind her head. Her eyes were shut, and her skin was so pale she reminded me of an angel.

  I slipped into the chair next to the bed and took her hand. “Hey.” Her long slender fingers felt smooth and cool to the touch. I brought them to my lips and kissed the top of her hand. “I love you.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Allie?” She turned her head in my direction. “I love you, too.” She gave me her ‘tell me the truth’ face.
“What happened to me?”

  “I don’t know the details.” Always tell a form of the truth. I’d stuck by that rule and hoped it would work now. Besides, I really didn’t know what had happened in the operating room.

  “It’s not good, is it?” Ashley stared at me, waiting.

  “Ash, please.” I chewed my top lip.

  “I think I got my answer. They told you not to say anything, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah.” I hung my head, and tears dripped from my eyes.

  “I have Ryan. He’s enough,” she whispered.

  “But he’s a teenage boy, Ash. Not a …”

  She slapped her hand on the bed. “Don’t say it!”

  I petted her arm, trying to calm her. “Sorry. It’s just that it’s not the same.”

  “Allie,” Ashley said as her eyes pierced through mine. “We’ve experienced a life so different from kids our age. I feel ten times older than them. You and I have been through so much together, but you don’t know how I feel and never will. So please don't tell me how old a child must be to love him. Can you understand that?”

  Only Ashley could put me in my place and open my eyes to become a better person. She was right. I was thinking of myself, not her. I didn’t know how she felt. “I’m sorry. Ashley. I don't know what I was thinking. You're right. I don't know how you feel, but I do know I'm in awe of you."

  “And I’m in awe of you,” Ashley said and took my hand. “Tell me what happened yesterday. What’s the latest chapter in our cold war?”

  By the time Lucas entered the room, Ashley sat propped up in her bed, asking her usual questions. “Lucas!” Her eyes lit up when she saw him but there was a sadness behind them. I’d honor her request and let her heal at her own pace.

  “Ashley, you look well,” Lucas said and stood next to my chair. “Allie, could you step outside so we could talk?”

  “Oh, no,” Ashley said. “Everyone comes in here.”

  “They said one person at a time, Ash,” Lucas said. “I shouldn’t even be in here.”

  “Lucas.” She stared at him. “When did we ever play by the rules?”

  He held up his hands and walked to the door. “Everyone?”

  Nate and Ryan entered first, followed by Rosanne and Oliver, then Julian and Serena. Serena closed the door behind her and stood in front of it.

  Suddenly, I felt excited. We needed good news, and this had to be it. I couldn’t sit still and rose from my chair to join the others. “Go ahead, Lucas. We’re all here,” I said.

  “Well …” he said as he looked around the room. “I don’t know where to start or how to say this.”

  “From the beginning?” Ashley said.

  Lucas gave her a sad smile. “Maybe from the end. We never gave Doug the serum or had a chance to talk about it.”

  “Why?” I found myself next to him, grabbing his arm.

  “It seems Doug had his own plan. That’s why he kept stalling and didn’t schedule a meeting when we originally requested one. The first thing he did when we got there was take us into a screening room and show us a film.”

  “You watched movies?” Ashley asked.

  “No. Propaganda.”

  “That son of a bitch!” Nate yelled as we all looked at him. “I helped make that film. Doug had me bring a film crew to Patriot Village a few weeks ago and instructed us where to shoot. I had a sick feeling while I worked on it, but couldn’t come up with a reason why he wanted the footage. I wasn’t in on the editing or otherwise I could’ve warned you.”

  “Kim was the voiceover. I recognized her …” Lucas covered his face. “I was in shock the whole time.”

  “We all were,” Julian said. “After the show, Doug stood in front of us, making his pitch as to why we should join the STF. We could live at Patriot Village and work as a team.”

  “Every time we tried to introduce our plan, we were shut down,” Oliver added. He shook his head. “When Doug saw we weren’t interested, he asked that we think it over, and meet again. Maybe in a week, maybe not. He left the room, letting his goons usher us out of the building.”

  “We were escorted back to the car and dropped off in the middle of Times Square,” Lucas said. “I got your message, Allie, and we came straight here.”

  “Did he say anything about President Roth?” My throat felt dry, and my head hurt after hearing the news.

  “On the way in, I asked,” Lucas said. “He gave me one of those grins that makes you want to punch him. I didn’t think he’d tell me, but he finally said the President was fine and could be found tomorrow if we agreed to his conditions. Do you believe the audacity of that man?”

  Yes, I could. “It’s been a long day, and I think we need to let Ashley rest,” I said. I went around the room, giving my friends a hug then stepped back so I could see everyone and said, “We will find a way. We won’t stop trying. And I will never let Doug win. He thinks this is a chess match between us. I’ll let him have this move. But the next one is mine. And I plan to win the whole game.”

  * * * *

  That night during dinner, Greg came into the atrium to make an announcement. “We’ve been instructed to turn on the televisions. The President is making a speech in five minutes.” He searched for the remote, then a picture appeared on the screen in one corner then on the other TV stationed in the opposite one.

  Throughout the atrium, I heard grumbling and chairs scraping against the floor. We’d been eating with the TV off for over a week. One night, a Niner had walked up to the sets, pulled their plugs and everyone had cheered.

  Silverware clinked against plates as people finished their dinner. The room smelled of cooked food and too many people in one enclosed space. The air conditioning couldn’t seem to cool the room down to an acceptable temperature. We had entered into a hot, humid weather spell the week before, and we were all uncomfortable. No one wanted to hear a speech from Doug.

  “Good evening.” The top half of Doug’s body could be seen on the screen. He wore the STF uniform as he did for every speech. “As your President, I’ve promised to be transparent and truthful. I will keep you informed of any and all developments. I had a promising meeting today which sadly ended in a stalemate. I’d hoped to bring the shields down and send everyone home by the end of the week. But the threat is still out there. So instead, I ask you to rally behind me and keep making improvements to the places you live. Soon we will have an agricultural co-op ready for some of you to live and work in outside your city limits, making our cities self-sufficient. Each city will begin to take applications and process people for positions in these co-ops. This is one of the first steps of making our country better. And because we are starting anew, I feel it’s time to rename our country. Make it stronger. Make it better.” Doug sat straighter in his chair, eyes locked onto the camera. “Welcome to New America.”

  The End

  PREVIEW – Twenty Nine Forever Prologue

  Grade school. A faint, distant memory came to me as I stood in the dark, dingy apartment I’d been assigned to live in with Lucas. Just a tiny blip in my memory, but it roared front and center for some strange reason.

  I could see my third-grade teacher standing in front of the class, wearing those half-glasses propped on her nose. She’d taught a writing lesson and scribbled something on the board. I wiped the cobwebs from the memory and strained to make out the letters. The title slowly came into focus. How Something Came to Be. She had read the class a story about how the lion became the king of the jungle, and I assumed she wanted us to choose an animal and write our own story.

  Panic overtook me. I couldn’t think of a story for the life of me. I was eight or nine and my creativity juices hadn’t kicked in. Then I relaxed. The teacher started to list animal names on the white board. She suggested we pick one and use our imaginations, let our minds go to places where anything was possible.

  I searched the list carefully until I came upon one I liked. Bird. I pictured a robin, head cocked to one side, listening for worm
s. A blue jay screeched, announcing its arrival. Then I heard colorful yellow finches, chirping like squeak toys, on a feeder. I saw a flock of blackbirds soaring through the sky. Which bird could I use? My mind dug deep for the creative spot the teacher told us we had.

  My journal lay on my desk in front of me. I opened it to find a clean page, and a story began to form. I imagined a little brown bird flitting through the sky. It landed in a tree, on the tiniest of branches. Because the twig could not hold it, the bird fell into a bucket of red paint someone had left below the tree. It struggled to escape, flapping around in the red goo. When the brown bird finally emerged, it had a brand-new look. It had turned red during its fight to escape and a new species had been created—a cardinal. I had found my story of how something came to be.

  I didn’t know where to begin on how New America came to be. I searched every part of my brain trying to find an answer. It could be as common as brother versus sister, the age-old sibling rivalry dating back to Cain and Abel. Brother wanted to prove to his siblings he was the king. Or it might be more complex as in evil mastermind takes over the world.

  Regardless of which theory I wanted to believe, it all started with my brother, Doug. I had no idea what he fell into that made him that way. It sure wasn’t a bucket of paint. All I know was he wanted to be King of the Jungle.

  I looked back on the last five years, wishing for the simpler times. In high school, I thought small town life was boring and wanted more excitement from life. I’d give anything to go back to those days now.

  I never believed Doug’s pipedream of creating a country called New America would ever become a reality and had chalked it up to one of his obsessions. A fool’s dream as my dad would say. But I always underestimated my brother. The signs had been there since I was in high school. We chose to ignore them and wrote Doug off as an overzealous soldier.

  But here I was. Somehow, I ended up in a crowded tenement in New York City, all part of Doug’s master plan for New America. He had the STF move everyone to the cities where they could be watched and controlled. No one got in or out without their knowledge.