by Linda L Zern
Terry took a step toward El, his hands outstretched. The guard shoved by Tess, thumping Terry back against the wall. The woman raised her fist, furious at the man she thought threatened her leader.
Tess’s voice echoed when she shouted, “What are you doing?”
The guard rounded on Tess, tried to take her out with a wild right hook. Tess dodged and dropped her with an uppercut; the guard went down like a box of boulders, dragging Terry to the ground. Enough of this. Tess reached for the ugly police baton hanging from the women’s belt, and used it to wedge the guard off of the now purple-faced man. El jumped up from her seat, coming toward them. Tess pushed El sideways into the rocking chair. It hadn’t been as hard as Tess had anticipated. El was so weak. Something was very wrong about that.
“Stop it.” Tess pinned Terry with a look, then pointed the baton at El. “We don’t have time for this. I need your help. Or not. I don’t care what your problem is with him, or with this Myra person. If this threat is coming, we don’t have time to waste beating on each other.”
The guard quivered and curled into a fetal position on the ground. That one was going to have a headache when she got up. Mister Terry wiped his nose.
The alarm had gone out, had spread. The commotion had alerted the women warriors. The Amazons poured up the broken metal teeth of the escalator from all parts of the mall.
“El!” A shout came up the steps.
Tess knew the voice and the strain in it—Britt. She ignored it, walked to the rocker, and threatened to press the baton across El’s neck. El glanced up at Tess, studied her face.
“Help me find him. Please.”
El whispered, “I can’t. I don’t think I’m strong enough.”
Feet pounded up the escalator. “Stop them, or I’ll make it count,” Tess hissed.
Understanding passed between them. El dipped her head a fraction.
“Hold. Stand down!” El barked, dragging herself to her feet. She gave the others orders to help the guard on the ground, stepping in front of Tess at the same time. “Just hold up. I’m fine. We’re all,” she gulped air, “fine. Go on, get her up.”
El pointed to Britt waiting on the top step of the escalator. “Have them take her down to Lucy or Midge if it’s bad enough.”
Britt, the sister with Parrish’s green-gold eyes, turned to glare at Tess.
Tess fell to her knees, shifted back to sit on her heels, stayed down, raised her hands over her head and waited. There’d been a moment when she’d met El’s eyes over the threat of real violence, real betrayal, when they’d understood each other—just a heartbeat of unity. Tess hoped that’s what it had been, or she was about to get her skull cracked open.
Lowering her head, she held the baton out to El. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mister Terry slink back to the wall, hands at his throat, eyes darting. El dismissed her saviors with a flick of her wrist.
Britt pushed her way up the metal steps, snapping additional orders to the others. It all sounded sharp and practiced and controlled.
“Get up,” Britt ordered Tess and then gaped when she saw Roy Terry huddled against the wall. She fell back a step, pointing. “He isn’t here. He can’t be here. Why’s he here? El?”
Tess powered to her feet. “Never mind, El. I was wrong to think anyone here could help me. Just give me my belongings and—” Suddenly tired, she took a breath. “I’ll be gone. I’ve got get back home, to helping my family.”
El called out. “Britty, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. He can’t hurt us.”
Tess tried to walk past Britt, who’d squared off in front of her to block her exit. “I don’t think so.”
Something in Britt’s tone drew El’s quick, attentive frown. Tess tried to push by El’s younger sister. Britt moved to block the escalator with an outstretched arm then looked at El.
“Because it’s too late. Can’t you smell it?” Britt raised her head and sniffed at the air like a hunting dog.
Something about the movement was so wrong, so odd . . . Tess’s stomach clenched.
“What?” Tess asked. “I don’t smell anything. What’s she talking about?”
Ignoring Tess, El reached out to her sister. “No, Britty, it’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about. I promise. We’ve built a strong place here, and there’s no fire.”
But the girl’s eyes had gone empty. “It’s Myra. She’s burning her way to us. She’ll burn us down if she can, and she’ll take us back.” Britt cursed at someone only she saw, her gaze unfocused and bleak. “I’ll die first. We all will.”
CHAPTER 14
Ally had warned Jamie that he wouldn’t make it to the deep water well from the barn before he collapsed. He hated that she was right, hated that Tess had marched off with that Roy Terry person to try to negotiate with those Amazon fanatics for information, hated the worry in Ally’s eyes.
Jamie slid down to the ground onto his butt, letting his legs stretch out in front of him. He slumped in the dirt and felt sorry for himself. Tired to the point of exhaustion, just from walking a few steps for cripes sake. He wanted to smack his fist against the ground. But it seemed like too much trouble and a silly sort of protest. He’d never been so run down. Even when he and Parrish were in the Kid Militias, half dead and always hungry, even then he couldn’t remember feeling like this; it was like being chained to a tractor tire and having to drag it around—under water.
Closing his eyes, he let his head drop back, felt the sun on his cheeks. The warmth made him feel better. It always did. He’d been cooped up in the fishing shack by the river too long. It had gotten easy to let Ally coddle him. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to have someone fuss over him, not even his mother.
He pressed back against the tree trunk that served as a bench next to the deep water well. The bark on the log had long since been worn off by people sitting and waiting to take their turn pumping the hand pump. A bucket of water sat next to the pump. It was a rule that the bucket stayed filled to the brim or you had to take a hike to the river to get water to prime the pump. On the surface of the water in the bucket, a deer fly flopped and flapped, trying not to sink.
I know how you feel, fellow.
Jamie’s thoughts started to whirl. Where was Parrish? And Gwen’s kid? Tess would need his help. That was a given.
“Help me up.” He didn’t bother opening his eyes to see how Ally would take the order.
Silence.
He started to roll to his right, his “good” side. “Okay, don’t help me.”
“I’m not going to, and you’re not going to go and look for Parrish.”
Ignoring Ally, he finished rolling to his knees in the dirt; his hands braced on his thighs. A wave of black nausea swamped him. He tried not to let her see how sick he felt. But she knew.
“Jamie, just wait.” Her hand rested softly against his hair. “Let it pass.”
Difficult to fool, this girl. She saw too much with those electric eyes of hers. Even when he thought she’d sunk back into her worries, he knew she watched him. How could he be worth that much caring from anyone? It was starting to make him feel funny. He couldn’t make himself deserve what she offered to give him.
Biting the inside of his cheek, Jamie dragged himself to a half crouch, using the ragged end of a tree branch on the log as a handhold. He stood up, turned to face her. The wave of sickness became a flood. He swallowed down a curse. If only he were over this part. He knew how it went; he’d been hurt before, wounded and beaten. Not this bad, but he knew.
When the world shrank to a dragonfly eye’s worth of light, he stumbled—off balance—went over backward, tripping over the tree trunk onto his back. It was like sinking into black tar.
The water might as well have been ice when it hit his face. He was on his back, legs draped over the log, staring into Ally Lane’s horrified face.
He blinked water out of his eyes and looked up at her. His heart skipped. There was a trip wire in his heart when it came to this girl.
“You’re as white as I feel,” he said.
“Don’t joke.” Her voice caught. There were tears on her cheeks.
“Oh, Ally, don’t cry. Sorry for hitting the dirt.” He looked at the bucket in her hands. “And now someone’s going to have to go to the river to get more water for the pump.”
“Stay down. Just stay there. Please. You are not better.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s my friend. Your sister might run into trouble with that Terry. I’m going to at least see what spooked Tess so bad about the Last Fence. See where they were. I can track.”
She tossed the bucket toward the lonely, green water spigot. Anger sparked and crackled out of her. “Tess has gone to find him. The Marketplace sends out scouts—they must. Blane and Parrish probably tumbled into a ditch. Blane twisted an ankle, chasing those horses. The horses that are still missing. They—”
“Stop. You don’t think they fell in any ditch. I have to find them.”
“Jamie, you can’t. Let’s go back to the longhouse. Gwen will make you something for the pain—a morphine bomb,” she gulped. “You don’t understand—”
“No. You don’t.” He was on his feet now, letting his frustration harden him against her concern and his weakness. “You don’t understand. None of you do.” He fisted his hand, pressed it to his mouth, willing away the fatigue. He raised his free hand, jabbing a finger at her. “He saved me, before in the militia, when I was so scared I couldn’t think, so hungry I couldn’t think.”
She watched him through her lashes, suddenly self-protective, ready to bolt. The way she looked at him reminded him of a newborn fawn when it caught a scent it didn’t like. She’d seen him, finally; the part he kept hidden. The anger that was a secret boil that grew inside him, a boil that filled, hardened, and dripped pus if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t smile big enough, didn’t smile often enough.
Forcing his hand open, he reached for her, not surprised when she stepped back. He let his hand drop, then changed his mind.
“Look!” He grabbed her arm. “Look at my hand.”
She stared at him, confused.
“The mark in my hand. Look. This one too.” He pushed his palms at her, made her look. “He saved me from them, from myself. He. Saved. Me.” It hurt his arm to show her.
She caught his hand in hers. It looked huge in her much smaller hands. She turned it over and ran her thumbs over the puckered mark in the center of his palm.
She’d seen them before, those old scars. Had to have. He wondered what fantasy she’d made up to explain away the wounds, even now, even pregnant with that bastard Jerome’s child. Jamie knew she still tried to find rational explanations for the senseless insanity of this new world.
“When they caught us stealing food, they’d nail us to wooden fences, gates, stumps.” The sickness was back. The memories filming across his mind like scum on a pond.
“When the nails go in, your fingers curl.” He tried not to gag. “And the others. They let the others piss on us; beat us with the flat of their machetes. We were always hungry. Always. I know I was. I stole food. Parrish made sure I didn’t die from being a hungry thief. They could have beat him to death after he pulled me off the nails. They didn’t. They needed him too much.” He let the weight of his words settle.
Somewhere over their heads, a pair of sandhill cranes boomed out their hollow, wooden call.
“I have to help Tess find him. I have to find him, Ally. He found me.”
“Then rest tonight, and we’ll look in the morning. For me? Please?”
Reluctantly, he nodded, reached to take her hand.
“Okay, tomorrow. Because you found me too.”
CHAPTER 15
Jon Lane came to the branch in the river above the Green Spring fork, far above. He couldn’t remember ever having walked this far from home. Was the ocean much farther? Probably not. His legs felt like lead. He was hungry. Maybe starving. But that was okay. There was food out here if you knew where to look. He’d been searching for the horses, his girls’ horses, for a long time. He’d lost track, but Ally and ZeeZee would be so sad if he gave up, he had to find them—their pretty white horses—the present Jamie had given them on their birthday.
Their birthday, it had been the same day that crazy girl had shot Jamie. Ally hadn’t even cried when she’d pressed her hands against the rush of blood from Jamie’s chest, but Jon’d seen that terrible look in her eyes—
A look he remembered from a long time ago: Ally just a baby, and ZeeZee just a baby, a matched set, just two small girls in the back seat of a car. It was the look of hollowed-out hope.
And Tess sitting next to them: older, wiser, watching, judging, condemning, condemning, condemning . . .
Jon shivered, re-grouped.
But today he was looking for horses. Jess T had filled him in when Jon had wandered through the goat fields. There was a stranger at the S-Line, the horses missing, the big search. When? Was it just today? Jess T said they’d sounded the alarm. When? He hadn’t heard it. Had he? Jon shrugged off the vague notion that he should be able to remember something like that.
If only he could find their horses, both of them, and fill up the hollow, echoing parts of his girls’ lives. He’d fill up their hearts. He could.
The sky turned dark above him. There were clouds, but not rain clouds. The wind teased the treetops, picking through the leaves with invisible fingers. He could smell ash now—wildfire. Had there been lightning on the coast? An explosion because of some aging stockpile of varnish in some ruined garage? Fire? Coming to the S-Line? Why hadn’t he noticed it sooner?
The longhouse, he had to get back to them, warn them.
Fire—unforgiving, unstoppable—far enough away still. There was time, but how much?
Jon couldn’t take his eyes off of the sky. Turning, he stumbled in the depression of a gopher hole and froze. Stupid to break an ankle now. A black cloud curled over the horizon like an ominous fist.
But if there were enough warning he’d be able to help; he knew things about the S-Line the others didn’t, things the old man, Colonel Kennedy, had told him before the stroke. Jon hadn’t wanted to listen to his father-in-law, hadn’t wanted to admit that the old man had been right all those years ago when his crazy preparations were an embarrassment to Cybill, his wife and the Colonel’s daughter, to the whole family—back before prophecy had become fact.
Jon hadn’t wanted to have to hear about secret underground stashes of food and ammunition. It made his head hurt to have to remember places, landmarks, and X-marks-the-spot details. The world was going to go back to the way it was before they would ever need to find some squirrel’s nest full of food and weapons. Jon knew it, dreamed it. He’d been waiting for seven long years, and still the lights stayed dark, the skies silent, except for the wind . . .
If only more people would read the newsletter he wrote, words being mightier than any sword, and ‘a word fitly spoken was like apples of gold.’ He’d forgotten the rest of the quote, but it was on the masthead of the newsletter.
He brushed dirt from his pants.
“Jon!”
The sound of his name made him jump. He searched the underbrush and felt guilty. No one there. There was never anyone there. But still, he heard a voice, heard his own name.
“Be their leader, Jon; be their father. I’m telling you this because I won’t always be here.” The old man’s voice, the expectation in it, the weight of responsibility. Colonel Kennedy would never take no for an answer.
“Yeah, okay.” If he agreed out loud, the voices went away. Sometimes.
“Hurry, Jon, hurry.” Again his name—but it wasn’t Colonel Kennedy talking. It was her voice this time, Cybill, his wife, before the horror, before he’d lost her to those men with the guns on the bridge.
Yes, okay.
“You’re right, Cybill. They need me.”
He started to follow the curving path of the river.
A first, faint dusting of
ash fell onto the tea-stained water as it calmly continued to flow toward the ocean.
CHAPTER 16
The wind had picked up, slapped at the leaves, started gusting harder since he’d sent Georgie the Fisherman on his way.
Parrish headed toward the bridge. There’d been a fish camp, a public dock, a ratty bar where the highway crossed the river. Nothing much was left, except the bridge and the boat ramp, its concrete crumbling at the edges. He remembered a pitched battle there once when such contests still mattered. His militia group had been given the job of clearing out the squatters who’d set up shop in the area, extorting food and weapons and sex from the refugees fleeing the collapse of the coastal cities. Pirates, sure. Warlords, absolutely. And in the end, it was every man for himself—and woman and children dead in ditches—or worse.
The wind shifted, began to pick at his clothes. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched ash roll through the air in a big, lazy swirly cloud. God. Fire. Not enough rain this season and no one to run the controlled burns that kept the dead brush and fallen trees under control. This fire would burn as far and as fast as it could, and if it jumped the Saint John’s . . .
It took a minute for Parrish to realize that the morning noises of water and sky had changed. He could hear the soft babble of flames. Distant explosions. Turpentine inside the pine trees exploding, sounding like mortar fire, exactly like mortars. He knew what would come next. He’d seen it near Jacksonville, when the city had burned, when the Dixie Warlords had burned it all.
Explosions followed by the whooshing noise of the firestorms that shot eighty feet in the air—creating their own weather patterns—storms made of flames. He began to pray that the river would slow it down. Please, God, please.
Parrish started to run.
CHAPTER 17
Two Amazons waited at the bottom of the steps—an armed, blank, blockade. Behind Tess, Parrish’s sisters talked, their heads close together. Tess’s heart jumped when El stroked her hand over Britt’s hair. There was a tender strength in the moment as Tess saw Britt visibly relax. El whispered something to her sister. They both looked at Tess.