Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  A woman’s harsh voice grated into their awareness. “Come on! Believe me, there’s always more where that came from.”

  Tess recognized Hilly’s voice and then Britt’s quick, harsh order to get moving.

  “Go on,” he whispered.

  She nodded, if only to make his promise real and to keep the demons away.

  Campfires continued to flicker around the outskirts of the walled fort. It was all so predictable. The invaders hunkered down outside of rifle range close to their objective.

  Samuel had pointed out a sliver of unburned cover that edged right up to the main camp outside the fort. But they’d have to move fast to be able to use it to infiltrate. One hour. The timing would be tight. They headed out at a run.

  Samuel knew enough about the area to help Parrish backtrack their way through the lowest parts of the wetlands at the edge of the Black Hammock. The homes that had stood there were spread out: five-acre hobby farms and horse properties built on old watercress fields, but not much survived after seven years of neglect and mildew. The fire had spared a big chunk of the bottomland. The jungle smelled green after the destruction they’d traveled through. Animals, driven from their homes, skittered in the green undergrowth, spooked, seeking cover.

  Like the animals, Parrish and Samuel let the jungle shield them; it was plenty of cover to let them move in close enough to see the knot of attackers at the center of the encampment. If the prisoners were alive, they were there with the queen or nearby.

  The rest of Myra’s filthy group had settled in to wait, spread out around the fort’s huge triangle; there were more men than Parrish had seen, counted, expected.

  Parrish thought fondly of Jamie’s eyeglass—an antique monocle that his friend had collected from some pillaged museum. He hoped that Jamie had thought to jam it in a Go-Bag.

  Sure could use it now. They still weren’t close enough to be able to see faces; just postures, attitudes, the knife-edge of machetes against the backlight of the campfires. Samuel and Parrish belly crawled closer. It had easily taken an hour to get in position. They elbowed up to take cover behind a collapsed, half-melted storage shed.

  “Over there. That group near the one and only tent. The Fearless Leader and Friends. Samuel, can you tell,” Parrish whispered, “what they are pulling into the camp near the old water tower? I’m blocked. Are they dragging wood in for the fires? Maybe?”

  Samuel took the chance, pushed up to his elbows. “No. Too straight and even. What the—” He flopped back down flat against the dirt, swiped at sweat in his eyes. “Parrish, they’re beams. Poles.” He fell silent for a moment. “Why would they be dragging those old metal crosses from the Baptist church? Seems like a lot of work . . .”

  Parrish focused, shifted his position. A cross piece stood out in black relief against the glow of firelight. “I see it.”

  “Parrish, why?”

  “Why spend the time and energy making something, when you’ve got ready made.” Parrish rolled to his back. “We have to get ZeeZee, Jon, and Stone out of there, tonight before morning, before the crucifixions begin. Before Tess has to see her family crucified.”

  “Christ Almighty.”

  Parrish could feel the bubble of angry despair catch in his chest. “Yeah. Him too.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Britt watched the way her squad watched Parrish’s girl. Parrish’s girl?

  When had that happened? Thinking of Tess like that; thinking of him as Parrish, not Ryan? Thinking of them together, Ryan and his girl?

  Girls and boys and old-fashioned relationships with kissing and handholding and . . . Britt shook off the creepy unease the direction her thoughts had taken. Lock it down. Push it off. Too much thinking gave a person bad dreams: not of the present day pus and guts, that stuff Britt understood; but of the past, the dreaming that made her remember the soft things, from before, like her mother’s perfume.

  In nightmares, her mom always started out smelling of magnolia and sunshine. And then pennies, bright copper pennies, would cover her, but then that turned into her mother’s blood. It was an old, tired nightmare.

  She looked at the girl who’d made her remember and hated her a little more than before.

  Forget all that too.

  Britt watched Parrish’s girl move across the bare ground left by Myra’s madness. She held the rifle like a hunter, not a soldier, but she traveled fast, efficient, steady. They were making decent time. They’d be in position before the deadline. She watched Hilly shift into the point position.

  Tess dropped back, moving easily into the rhythm.

  What could El possibly want with Parrish’s girl?

  Hilly led them out and around the rotting hulk of one of those big box stores: ramshackle concrete skeletons, full of leaves and rat crap. The bones of the toll road twisted just beyond the collapsed warehouse. The campfires spit sparks. There was enough starlight to see the edge of the camp and the men who faced outward, watching. Myra still had that much sense and discipline.

  Hilly, her long legs moving fast, kept the pace brisk; she took them behind the curve of an on-ramp, waiting for Britt’s signal. Britt watched them pretend to wait for her signal.

  “It’s pretty impressive what they’ve managed in a couple of months,” Tess said, her focus on the ugly mud of El’s vision. Britt grunted.

  The walls of the fort rose up from the ground like a black void in the distance.

  Night spun out with the sounds of the encampment: angry muttering curses, a braying laugh, camp pots clinking. Silence lay over everything else. There were no crickets left to call to each other, no hoot owls.

  “There’s no ‘they’ to it.” Britt’s voice held a hint of pride. “The people who live there now didn’t manage anything. They’re just warm bodies. Good for slapping mud around. It was El. She put them on it. Kept them moving. Day and night.”

  Tess gave her a look before turning back to the watchmen of the camp. “El.” She paused and then whispered, “What does she want? With your brother? With me?”

  Britt made a show of counting the enemy. “Now there’s a question I’ve been asking myself. How would I know? I’m just a foot soldier if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  Tess sounded faintly curious, not mean about it. Here we are, just two girls talking in the night? Britt tried not to grind her teeth. She heard an Amazon named May whisper to someone. “Pee break.” Britt almost laughed. Just us girls in the night.

  “Does it bother me? No. Why should it?”

  “It might bother a lot of people. Never being the one to be in charge.”

  The innocence of Tess’s question, her stupid, sheltered innocence—God.

  Britt reared back and punched Tess in the face—hard. When Tess rolled to her back slapping a hand to her mouth, Britt slung her leg over and straddled the taller girl.

  Britt felt the words grind out of her throat like barbed wire. “El found me. Found all of us. She pulled me off a garbage barge that was working the Indian River, rigged up like one of those Roman slave deals. Garbage. Except there wasn’t any garbage. It was us—me. We were human garbage, used like plumbing. She came for me!” Britt slapped her hand over Tess’s split lip. “Shut up. Nothing El has done bothers me.” Starlight gleamed in Tess’s eye, Parrish’s girl. No tears here. That was tougher than Britt had expected. “It never will. And while we’re at it,” Britt whispered next to Tess’s ear, “we should get going. El wants you. Parrish too, but that’s going to have to wait, I guess.” Britt rolled to her feet and braced for Tess’s counter attack. It didn’t come.

  “What’re you talking about? What’s wrong with you?” Tess shivered. Shock did that sometimes. Made you feel cold. “We need to start our part of this plan—the diversion.”

  A single gunshot echoed from the far side of the camp. Someone screamed. Men and guns surged to the sounds of violence, iron shavings dragged by a magnet’s pull.

  “Get up. Hilly, we’re movin
g.”

  Britt reached down, dragged Tess to her feet by her hair. Someone murmured to the others that they needed to go. Noises in the camp drowned out their movements. Someone else grabbed at Tess’s arms. They shoved a rag in her mouth, tied her hands. Tess’s curses disappeared behind the gag. When she tried to fight back, they slammed her into submission, made her ears ring.

  “Take us around back. We’re going through the wall.” Britt gave Tess a shove.

  There was a tunnel.

  Someone inside the monster fort understood the physics of mud and the building of holes through mud pretty well. They’d rolled a culvert into the wall, braced by the useless frame of the swamp buggy the Amazons had ridden to their triumph over the Fortix family. Britt’s squad of Amazons slipped between the distracted raiders, stretched thin on this side of the berm, pushed Tess forward into the cement tunnel under a heap of mounded earth. The gag tore at the corners of her lips. Her mouth was full of the metallic taste of copper.

  “Duck. I don’t want to have to carry your unconscious butt through here,” someone behind Tess ordered.

  But it wasn’t the woman who had betrayed her, that honor went to Britt—the crazy idiot. And it was crazy—leaving this way, abandoning Parrish and Samuel . . . Stone, ZeeZee, father.

  The sounds of gunfire from the front of the fort disappeared as they slipped through the tunnel—an excellent distraction after all—just not the one Britt had promised. Something had set Parrish off. They hadn’t waited for Britt to fire the first shot. Tess’s gut roiled.

  Myra’s men had answered the call of gunfire like chickens discovering a pile of worms.

  What was happening? To Parrish? And Samuel? It was only the two of them against that mob. How could Britt have done that to her brother?

  In the gloom of the tunnel Tess could hear a grating whine, and then they were through the grinding metal door and back inside the Marketplace, next to the latrine.

  Tess tumbled over the ridge of the culvert, rolling into the feet of a girl whose brand was still new, still raw. She looked about twelve and a half, and the machete in her hand looked new too. Her blank, blue eyes got big at the sight of Tess tied and gagged. Like a hinge, she pulled her leg back and swung a kick into Tess’s side.

  Britt shoved through the culvert, slammed the girl back into the dirt. “Back off.”

  The girl shrunk into herself, a collapsing paper doll.

  Britt’s voice turned soft and smooth as she ordered, “Go. Get up. Tell El we’re here, and not to worry anymore.” Turning to Tess, she pulled her to her feet. Tess jerked back, ripping out of Britt’s grip.

  Inside the fort, men moved into the coming morning routine as if no one and nothing was waiting outside their compound hoping to drink their blood. The shooting had stopped. Night hung over the torch-lit men’s courtyard, fresh and clean in its order. Inside the fortress, life moved in familiar patterns, but the world outside had become a question mark.

  Tess had to get up on the wall and see for herself. Hilly shoved her forward. Tess spun on the woman, dropped her head and tried to ram her in the gut. Laughter greeted her attack. Two women stepped up, grabbed her arms, and pulled the gag free. Tess spit into the dirt.

  Hilly said, “That man, that Parrish, probably already getting himself strung up to, well, good golly gosh, I was going to say a tree, but that’s not going to happen. No trees left.” She ended the sentence with a short, hard laugh. “I’m sure they’ll make do. Myra’s inventive, if nothing else. They’ll beat what they want out of him first.”

  Clouds piled up over the stars.

  They walked her across the parking lot into the mall, good soldiers following Britt’s orders.

  El rocked back and forth in her porch chair, her arms wrapped around her middle. The way she held herself made Tess think of her sisters when they’d had stomachaches: too many elderberries, too many blackberries. Keeping on eye on them before they hogged themselves, it had been a big job when they were small.

  Tess wiped at the blood that trickled from the corner of her mouth. “I need to get up on the wall, see what Britt’s done to your brother. And I need to see Ally. And Gwen and her boys. And Jamie. They’re here. I know they are.”

  El continued to rock, ignoring Tess. She looked at Britt. “Where is he? Following her out of here to the Strandline was the plan. I thought I was pretty clear about that? Didn’t I tell you that I needed him back here too? Two for one.”

  “He was with us,” Tess snapped, ignoring Britt. “But he wasn’t going to leave anyone behind.”

  “What does that mean?” El said. Her skin glowed a thin yellow in the light of a single candle. The room smelled of honey and wax. Shadows sucked up the light.

  “It means that she agreed to run interference for Parrish and then left him. Those shots. You heard them?” Tess rubbed hard at her raw wrists.

  “Is it true? Who wasn’t he going to leave behind?”

  Britt rolled her head, jerked her shoulder up. “More of the princesses. They have the sister. Maybe the father, but no one’s sure on that. Some kid.”

  Tess marched to El. “My sister. My father. Parrish and Samuel wanted to get them out of that viper’s nest. She agreed to help, and now we’re here, without them. And that kid’s name is Stone.”

  The rocking chair squeak slowed. “Britty? Help me here. Weren’t you the one who snuck the drugs to him when he was dying? When we first took over, sure, you remember, right? Weren’t you the one who said that it wasn’t going to be okay to let him die? That’s how I remember it.”

  For the first time, Britt looked uneasy and not just angry. “Sure. And he didn’t die. Did he? But bringing him here into our lives . . . “ She didn’t seem aware that she was backing away from El with every word. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. You built this place. You told me that we were going to stay firm. Here. Against all of them, the ones who carved their symbols in our flesh . . .” She stopped.

  El stood, tried to straighten up to her full height—failed. She grabbed the arm of the rocker for balance, waved Tess off when she moved in to help.

  “Britt. You have to help me. I believe all that I said about this place. It was real. But I can’t hold it together from the grave.”

  Britt turned her back to the vision of her dying sister. “But what about Darby? He’s never even told her about Darby. I know he hasn’t.”

  El’s head came up. Her eyes held a white-hot flame deep inside their solid blue. In her bony, maimed face, her eyes were the only things left. “We can’t let Darby stop what we’re doing here, or the memory of the others. We can’t. Or they’re all going to turn into Darby. I need Tess, and she won’t stay without Parrish.”

  The conversation ping-ponged around her, they ignored her presence. Tess spit the words out. “All I want is my family. My sis—”

  Britt spun in her direction. Tess met her toe to toe. She was done letting this witch smash her in the mouth, shut her up.

  “Family? You want your family.” The girl with gold-green eyes started laughing. The sound carried hints of rage and something raw. “We’re a family made from stitches and burning flesh. Don’t you talk about wanting your family—”

  “Britt!” El’s eyes might have flashed fire, but her voice pulled lightning out of the sky. “Shut up. Listen.”

  The rat-a-tat-tat of a semi-automatic rifle drummed through the dark. The guards near the gate yelled to each other. Downstairs the guards on watch rolled away from the building into action. Britt looked at El, waited, and at her older sister’s nod, Britt made her escape down the escalator.

  A long, careful silence fell over El’s darkened corner of the balcony.

  “It’s what she does best—follow orders, lead her squad, nurse her hate.”

  Tess wiped cold sweat from her face and strained to hear anything else from outside. Quiet crept back into the night. A vision of ZeeZee broken and bleeding on the ground flashed, banged, and flopped inside her head. />
  “It’s what she does best because they destroyed her, out there. She wants to be able to give her brother medicine to save him and not think about Darby. But she can’t.”

  That name again. Something inside of Tess had started cringing, hearing it. She started backing away from El, not wanting to hear more. All she wanted was ZeeZee back and to see Ally, hold her.

  Did they expect her to take on their nightmare past?

  “I don’t know what you want. I don’t care. I just need my sisters.”

  “Come on; I’ll take you. I need to keep walking for as long as I can.”

  El led her to the infirmary, her steps a scuff, scuff, scuff reminder of how bad she’d gotten.

  Jamie turned when he heard them; his face broke apart like a bag of beans. A relieved smile transformed him.

  El slipped away, saying nothing.

  Gwen cried out, “Tessie. You’re here.” She rushed from the back of the room, reached out for Tess. There was the warmth of solid hope in Gwen’s arms. Home.

  Jamie folded up next to them like a giant, redheaded stork. Tess reached out and patted his clean-shaven cheek. He’d shaved. The Marketplace had lots of water and sharp edges. She thought about Parrish’s face, the scruff of days of captivity and danger. Stop.

  “Oh, Jamie, where is she?”

  He reached for Tess and put his arms around her.

  “Here. She’s here. Let her rest for now. Soon, she’ll be up.”

  Tess tried to move, but Gwen tightened her grip on her. “Don’t. Not yet. Let me just hug you tight. She’s here. It’s going to be okay.”

  “What’s happened? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Jamie put his mouth near Tess’s ear. “Tess? Stop crying.”

  “I’m not. I’m not crying.”

  “Okay good, because it won’t help Ally to have her see you crying. She’s going to be okay, but she’s really tired. No more drama for now.” They held each other until Tess felt the muscles in her arms and her shoulders unkink. She sank into exhaustion and closed her eyes.