by Linda L Zern
If they weren’t going to help, she didn’t have time for this. Frustration crawled through her muscles. Her jaw ached. She forced herself to quit gritting her teeth. Enough of this crazy. What was Britt even talking about? Phantom smells, phantom enemies? All Tess could smell was the heady spice of a lot of people living together mixed with the cook fires that they must have had to keep going day and night to feed so many people.
She started down the metal steps.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Britt called.
“To find your brother. Where do I go to get my gear back?”
Before she could take another step, a hand grabbed the collar of her shirt and spun her around. Face to face with Britt, Tess braced herself. The escalator steps dropped away behind her. The other woman’s eyes spit fire.
“Listen carefully. I don’t like you. I don’t want you here. You’re a complication we don’t need. We need to finish what we’ve started.”
Britt pressed close enough to be able to grab a fistful of Tess’s shirtfront.
“You’re the kind that gets people killed. You rally people. I figured out a long time ago that getting sucked in by people like you is a good way to—”
“Britt.” Just that.
Britt bared her teeth, even though El’s voice held more than tenderness now. “Never mind. El seems to have other opinions on the subject. Just remember they’re not my opinions,” Britt said. She let go of Tess’s shirt, took a step back. Dismissing El with an impatient flip of the hand, Britt walked over to where Roy Terry sat hunched against the wall and, without preamble, slapped him across the face.
“Britt!” El sounded like she was fussing at a kid.
Stunned at Britt’s venom, it took a moment for Tess to register the sounds of scuffling below them. Scuffling became muffled grunts. A muted shout erupted. Someone wasn’t happy, but they were trying to be quiet about it. It reminded Tess of the way Blake and Blane sometimes fought when they were trying to stay under their mother’s radar. It was quiet fighting, but it was still fighting.
She saw the minute El registered the disturbance on the lower level; her eyes shuttered closed and then snapped open. She was all business again.
“Come with me,” El said, waving Tess forward. “It’s time to be the Lady of the Manor, which is a nice way of saying, Head Bully. Join me.” It wasn’t a request.
Tess hesitated, started to protest. El interrupted her, “Even you have to eat. Come on. Let’s take care of some business, and I promise you’ll get your things back.”
“What about him?” Tess said, pointing to Roy Terry.
“He’s not the first man to find his way here. You let me worry about him. Britt, can I trust you to pull yourself together?”
Britt nodded.
The argument on the first floor had died down, except for an occasional curse. El marched down the escalator without looking back to see if Tess followed. Guards parted to let them pass.
Two steps from the bottom, El jumped to the worn, cement floor. Tess tried to imagine the physical, mental effort that gesture had required. El was sick, very. That was obvious. But Tess understood it, El’s need to be seen as strong and in control, always.
Near the big main entrance, three women shoved and pushed at a young man trying to bull his way into the central atrium. Covered in muck and dirt, he wasn’t going to go easily. He grappled to cross the invisible line separating the men from the women.
He yelled, “Screw this. Screw you. You’re going to take me to see her—” His voice was cut off by a sucker punch to the gut; two women grabbed his arms while a tall, blond woman, wearing cracked, worn army boots and a sour expression, started to wail on him.
“Stop!” But it wasn’t El. Britt had followed them to step in as sergeant at arms. “Report. What is this?”
The guy hung between the two guards like an overripe orange. He sucked wind and jerked his head back when Britt reached out to tip up his chin.
“I need to see her,” he said. Blood streaked from a cut on his lip and one dark eye was starting to puff shut. His dark chocolate skin glistened with sweat. He thrashed against his captors and cursed. Tess knew that voice.
“Samuel. Sammy Holt. I remember. I know you.” She reached out the way Britt had. This time he stood for it. His head cocked at the sound of her voice. He was skinnier now than back when they were kids. When they were young, he’d been a round acorn of a boy: brown, plump, sometimes prickly, when he wasn’t trying to make Tess laugh in Sunday school class or summer camp. He was taller, thinner, all muscle and broad shoulders now; his dark tight curls were cut close to his head. He wore a filthy undershirt and jeans, and worry for his mother crackled in every look, every twitch. Worry.
Jerome, Sammy, the other kids in her grandmother’s class, from before the storms, she remembered them all. Jerome Fortix—dead—killed by her sister’s hand. And now Sammy—here and alive.
The other children, their faces flashed in her head, who could know what had happened to them? So many had not survived that first brutal year. Finding Sammy was too shocking to be an ordinary miracle; it was a church kind of miracle. If only she could believe in miracles the way her grandmother would have wanted: faith, belief, and marvelous works and wonders.
“Tessla? Tess?” He looked at her with his good eye. “You’ve changed.” He tried to grin and then winced when the smile hit the cut on his lip. The sting of it must have reminded him of his situation. He jerked free of the guard’s hands. “I want to see her. My mother. I brought her here because she was sick.”
“Men are allowed inside one time and then not again. You knew that,” El said, her tone brisk, professional, condescending. “You knew that. You’ve had your turn. Your mother is fine. She’s in the infirmary, and our medic is with her. You need to honor the service contract.” She sent a gathering group of worried Amazons away with a look. Nobody questioned or objected. Discipline was tight, nobody bucking El’s system, except for Sammy.
He ignored her and turned back to Tess. “You’re not part of this girl kingdom. I saw you come in—you and that man.” The sentence trailed off. “It’s my mother. We came for help. But the set up here, they haven’t let me see her,” he said, trying to look past the women, shifting forward onto the balls of his feet. “We’d been okay, didn’t need anyone until she got sick. I need to see that she’s all right.” There were tears in his voice, and Tess wanted to tell him to hold it together. She reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze.
El put her hand against his chest, pressed him back hard enough to make him stagger. “Britt, see about his mother.” She sent Britt off on another errand without a look. Britt shot her older sister daggers at the casual order.
Ahhhhh, cracks in the discipline then—family cracks.
“She’ll come find you, Samuel, give you a report. But I can’t let you in here. Women only. That was what you agreed to when you signed your mother in and committed to helping on the wall.”
Tess shifted her feet—stepped back—tension coiled in her gut. Seeing Samuel’s frustration was like a physical slap. She needed to get out of here. There were too many people, too many currents and undercurrents. She wasn’t used to it. It was exhausting. She didn’t understand it and didn’t want to.
Parrish, the way he’d looked at her at the Green Spring, the calm there, the sweet sound of spring water lapping at white sand. What she needed was to find Parrish and home. If only she were headed back there now. If only she knew where he was.
Samuel Holt called to her, “Tessla, I just need to know how she is.”
His urgency fed hers. She got it. She knew what it was to need information more than air.
El’s voice broke through. “Enough of this. You.” She pointed to Sammy. “Back on the wall. You’ll get your update on your mother. And you—” She turned to Tess.
An Amazon woman wearing a worn black hoodie grabbed Samuel by the elbow. His shoulders sagged as he let her lead him away. He gave Tes
s a last confused, angry look. She took a half step toward him, watched him from the gaping maw of the entrance.
El caught at Tess’s elbow. “Walk with me. Even you need to eat.”
Tess tried to drag her arm free. “There’s a little boy in trouble too. I have to go. They need me.”
El turned, shot out her leg and tripped Tess. She hit the ground with a grunt.
“What the—” Too shocked to fight back, Tess stared up into El’s flushed face.
“Will you let me think? So, just shut up and eat for now. Get up and stop grinding your teeth. We don’t have a dentist here.” She stomped off into the echoing halls of the marketplace.
Tess stood, brushed at her pants, followed El, and gave Sammy a last look as he climbed a rope ladder to the top of the big mud wall.
Tess followed El, but the woman couldn’t walk five feet before she had to handle dozens of requests, settle arguments, and bark orders. At one point she reassured Tess that she’d be getting her things back—soon. Tess tried to keep track of the people, the problems. Their walk dragged on in drips and drabs and petty squabbles, but El was right, Tess was wasting energy on anger, better to be watchful and smart.
Tess listened to a young girl complain about her roommate’s bad habit of not bathing. How strange that these women, who’d freed themselves from hell and fought their way across a wilderness, ended up like this, worrying about who might have skipped out on kitchen clean up or had B. O.
Finally, Tess followed El down a long clean hall; someone had scrubbed the bloodstains off the floor that led to the old Sears department store, the evidence from the Amazon’s murdering takeover of the Marketplace Mall. Big gaps in the glass ceiling were open to the sky, but an ingenious system of barrels and gutters waited to funnel rainwater from the openings. Smart. It was impressive, the progress they’d made since she’d last been here.
Children peeped out at them from the blanketed storefronts. Their faces registered curiosity rather than fear. Yeah, there’d been progress. She wondered if Sammy Holt would agree. In the shell of the Sears store, they’d set up a busy kitchen center for feeding the growing population of the place.
The meat came in through the loading docks: venison, wild cattle, feral pigs, along with the little creatures: possums, armadillos, raccoons. Backpacks full of bloody chunks from the hunting parties waited on refurbished countertops. Fresh vegetables sat in heaps. Crops and fields somewhere, Tess realized.
The tens of thousands of square feet were subdivided into an efficient layout of butchering, preparing, cooking, and preserving. The glitter of precious, irreplaceable glass jars lined dented merchandise shelving. Younger girls stood near steaming kettles, their job to keep the stews and soups from burning. Their endless stirring felt oddly comforting.
Food. It was always about food, even here.
Scavenging had resulted in a motley collection of pots and pans and kettles. Piles of laundry waited near a huge cast iron pot of water steaming against the far wall. A makeshift hearth vented up and out and through the blocks, lining the wall. Someone had been clever with bricks and mortar.
A ratty mix of plywood and drywall lay across stumps and mismatched furniture serving as lunchroom tables. A few women sat on benches, eating. Another clever hand had fashioned those seats out of split logs on short tree trunk legs.
“Sit. Eat. I won’t let you leave until you eat.” El didn’t sit. She waved a hand toward the tables.
“Let me leave?”
El held up her palms. “If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that you have to take your moments for peace when and where you can find them. Sit, Tess. One of the girls will bring you something.” She lifted her head and breathed deeply. “The venison stew has been excellent lately.”
Tess slid onto a bench. A girl, whose pigtails jutted out from her head like broom straws, smiled a shy smile as she set a wooden bowl in front of Tess. The thick smell of stew hit her like a fist. El was right; she needed to take her peace where she found it. She picked up a spoon. It was sterling silver and polished.
“I’ll eat, but I’m not waiting.”
She looked up to see El nodding.
Tess spooned up the stew. “Aren’t you eating?”
El shook her head. “Later. I’ll have something later. You should know that this threat from the woman called Myra is real. You should prepare your people for anything.” She stopped speaking as if catching herself in a mistake. “But listen to me, I’m not following my own advice and letting you have your moment. And, Tess, I hope you know that we’ve done the best we could here. We have.” El straightened abruptly and walked away. At the entrance to the department store she turned and called back, “Eat while you can.”
CHAPTER 18
The Mercs caught sight of Parrish at the Saint John’s River Bridge. Their howls followed him like a pack of wolves that had caught the scent, and they were running away from the threat of wildfire like any animals caught off guard—panicked, angry, vicious. Not the ones responsible for starting the fire, or they’d been caught in their own trap; they were running inland like he was.
Too bad they didn’t seem to have much ‘live and let live’ in their thinking—even racing for their lives ahead of the blaze, they were still out for blood. Parrish dropped off the side of the bridge into thigh high water. Muck sucked him down. He reached for a pylon and braced against the pull of the mud. Dank water swirled over the cuts on his feet, searing.
A poorly aimed mortar had taken out a chunk of the center bridge, leaving a thirteen-foot gap, too big to get a wagon across, but a man, a man could make the jump. Parrish had ordered that shot. His unit had been one of the lucky ones with a big gun for a while, found it tucked away in an ancient armory in Titusville and then dragged the monster around behind an ancient WWII jeep—until the gas, oil, and spare parts had run out.
The wannabe warlord trying to set up a choke point on the bridge had cut and run pretty quick after they’d lobbed that shell. Kept the hand-to-hand combat down to a minimum. Parrish had been okay with that.
From the edge of the bridge, twisted wreckage trailed down into the water. A center pylon rested like a giant broken tooth against the far bank. The heap of concrete and rubble dammed the heaviest current of the river, catching broken limbs and logs and, at some point, the bloated body of a wild pig.
He couldn’t see the men who’d ambushed Blane at the Last Fence, but he could hear them. The morning breeze picked up, driving the smell of burning in front of it. He could hear them on his right, cutting across the open field, heading to the broken bridge. The shooting hadn’t started, yet.
On the opposite side of the river, another field full of saw grass and sand spurs waited for him—three football fields’ worth. He’d never be able to outrun them. They were going to have the high ground if they succeeded in jumping the gap to cross the bridge, and they were armed. Time to get lost.
The dead pig worried him more than the tangle of concrete. Gators hunted lazy. They would be attracted to the fat, rotting carcass caught in the snarl of garbage under the bridge. He didn’t need to swim into a bunch of hungry, submerged gators.
Behind him, the raiders and slave hunters shouted and cursed.
Cursing felt right. With his own oath, Parrish pushed away from the muck of the bank and headed to the thickest of the wreckage. Let them think the gators had gotten him. Let them think whatever they liked until he could slip by the band of human scum.
The chill of the filthy water, the thought of fire, the horror of being hunted again, sent a wave of hatred through him that bubbled up like the blister of a branding iron.
Tess. The idea of her centered him. Did the S-Line have an evacuation plan? He despised not knowing. Feet thumped. What he needed was to end it with these butchers and get back to her. The river would slow the fire some. He wanted to believe it like he wanted to see her again. Please, please don’t let Tess be looking for him. He prayed for rain and a weapon.
Smoke d
idn’t drift in front of this blaze, not from this fire. It sheeted across the river, flat out, like a smothering cloak. The men on the bridge dropped to their knees to escape the way the wind pushed it over them, coating them in it. North of them the sky vomited black. The fire line had jumped the Saint John’s farther downriver, following his friend the fisherman, sweeping across the open fields, but it was too far away to know how bad it was. If only it turned away from the S-Line, spared it. Highway 46, the bridge, the ditches lining the road would slow it in spots. Parrish waited for his kidnappers.
Parrish could hear one of them yelling, “Drop!” Smoke caught them mid-bridge.
Someone else cursed, and the coughing got worse. If it got bad enough, his kidnappers would come over the side of the bridge and into the water to escape the smoke. Parrish shoved harder into the deadfall of waterlogged trunks and rotting cattails. On his right, he saw the screaming glow marking the eastern skyline, eating its way toward the river that threaded into the marshes and swamps that drained into the Saint John’s—straight into the heart of the S-Line.
A man jumped over the side of the bridge into the water. He hit a submerged log; his hacking turned to howling. He’d dislocated his shoulder. Slime caught in the man’s filthy beard. Parrish reached out and forced the man’s head under the water. His eyes went huge. He hadn’t expected death to be waiting this close and that he wouldn’t be able to fight back.
Parrish waited for the others.
CHAPTER 19
Tess skipped the goodbyes. What else could be said? They weren’t going to help.
At the front gate, Tess saw that they were heaving half of it into place: eventually it would be two sections constructed of patched and mismatched chunks of tin and sheet metal, riveted together with an odd collection of nuts, bolts, and screws. The panels covered an understructure of wooden logs, lashed side by side. The gate looked tough and strong—formidable. Tess waited for her gear, watching the teams of men pulling the panels into place. Like ancient Egyptians, they moved the gate with ropes and sweat and muscles.