by Linda L Zern
“Tessla.” Jamie’s voice again, quieter now, less certain. “Where’s Parrish?”
“It’s going to be okay.” She repeated his words back to him, wishing she believed them.
CHAPTER 47
There was more color in the muslin pillowcase under Ally’s head than in her face. She’d lost her babies and enough blood to leave her close to being see-through. Her hair spread over the pillow and down her shoulder, a swirl of white-gold fairy dust. She was a sleeping beauty, unconscious on patched muslin.
Jamie took the bucket away after Doc Midge changed the wad of rags between Ally’s legs. He was a silent prince carrying what amounted to a chamber pot, and Tess loved him for it.
The doctor swiped at the sweat trickling down her temple, stalling until Jamie was far enough away and out of earshot.
“I can’t tell you she’ll come back, with as much blood as she’s lost, without blood transfusions, glucose. Although, I’m fairly certain she passed everything: the babies, the placenta. Just one sack. Two babies.”
Identical twins. Tess reached out to run a finger down the silk of Ally’s hair.
“It was never going to be a good situation. Too young and twins. And yet, being young, she could bounce back tomorrow.” The woman’s hands were raw and cracked from her scrubbing them over and over again, trying to be sterile in a filthy time. Her nails were bitten to the quick.
“Thank you, for trying.” Tess reached out and picked up her sister’s hand. “It’s like she’s made of paper.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to save the babies. To save her.”
“Please, don’t make it sound as if she’s already—”
“Tess?” Gwen brought Jamie’s bucket back. At Tess’s raised eyebrows and glance, Gwen said, “Jamie’s outside with the men. They’re organizing the watch. It’s everyone to the ramparts or something like that. Doc Midge, you should sleep, and I’ll watch. Go on, it’s getting late. Take a break. Daybreak is not far off.”
The doctor smiled her thanks, gave Tess’s arm a pat, and left.
Gwen spun to Tess, her eyes filled with a brilliant panic. “ZeeZee? What has happened? Parrish and that boy you sent to us—Samuel? The children? Where are they?”
“The children are at the bunker with Kilmer. But Britt and her squad abandoned ZeeZee and Stone and my father—to the pirates. And they brought me here. I have to get out. I have to find out what’s happened to them. What can you tell me about this place? They brought me in through a tunnel, a culvert? And Samuel was with Parrish—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Gwen dropped the bucket, used it as a seat, and bent forward. Tess watched her face disappear behind her hands. “And my boys are here safe. I think. They don’t let us see them much. It’s women inside, the men and boys outside. Terry said he’d make sure they have a bed, food. This place, I don’t know how we can stay here, live like this. The Amazons are like prison guards.”
“And I’m sorry for that,” El said, dragging herself back into their discussion, one slow step at a time. El stood in the open doorway to the converted infirmary. “My sister,” she said, focusing on Tess, “Britt, she doesn’t understand moderation, not any more. It’s hard to keep to the right and wrong of things when you’re frightened. Britt’s been frightened a long time.”
“Can we get them back? How do we get them back?” Gwen jumped to her feet to pace.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how.” Tess looked to El and waited.
“Sorry again, Tess, but that answer, the ‘I don’t know’ default, isn’t going to work for you any more.”
El made her way down the inclined floor, picking her feet up and putting them down with a careful precision. She watched Gwen roam.
Tess ran her hands through her filthy hair, fisted her hands against her temples. “Stop. No more riddles. What do you mean by that? Why am I here? Why did Britt leave Parrish out there for nothing? Because of that, I’ve got nothing for you.”
El stopped in her tracks next to Tess, weaved. Gwen saw it, rushed to help. There was shame and embarrassment on El’s face at their kindness. She looked over at Tess, ignoring Gwen, who braced her up with an outstretched arm.
“You’re wrong. I wanted Britt to find you. Bring you. And Parrish.” El panted with effort. “I knew you’d never come without him. When I’m gone, I want you to lead this place. Make this place strong. In a book on your bed, there’s a letter. I wrote it all out. The reasons.”
“I can’t lead this place.” Shock made Tess’s voice empty.
El bent at the waist, dry heaved, and then collapsed, dragging Gwen with her to the ground. They fell next to Ally’s bed. Tess reached out to help cradle the unconscious woman. El felt like a bird with hollow bones in Tess’s arms.
“Gwen, get the doctor.”
All the lights in the night had faded, a sliver of moon moving on about its business, the stars continuing to spin away. Fog clung to what was left of the night. Tess and Gwen had brought Britt back to El. What else could they do? It was a countdown now.
“Tell it to me slow and straight—again. And no spin, Britt.” El knew that she talked in bursts and fits now, trying not to grind her teeth between comments. She wore her army jacket like a cloak of invisibility, to hide the bones, the sores, the way she needed the pockets to hide her shaking hands, the way she clung to her good luck charm—a hunk of shell worn smooth with touching, a tiny grinning skull. Darby had found it on a beach and given it to her big sister, laughing that even skeletons could be happy if they decided to be.
It was easy to see that Britt wasn’t going to make it easy for El—even now when time was so clearly running out. El pressed her lips together against the agony in her bones, her skin, as she listened to Britt’s halfhearted attempt to justify what she’d done: abandoning their Ryan to Myra’s marauders and bringing Tess to the fort without him.
She paced in front of El’s cot—back and forth—a tin soldier wound too tight, and wasn’t that the whole problem right there?
“Do you want it?”
The question brought Britt up short. “Want what? This? What’s left to want in this godforsaken world?”
“Exactly.” El raised her hand and pointed. “This. The fort. The job of making this into some home, a home with a future. Do you want the job of turning this place into a village? It takes one to raise a child. Isn’t that what they used to say? Do you realize you’re shaking your head no before I’ve finished asking the question?”
Britt crossed her arms across her chest, one hand covering a burn mark at the base of her throat. “No. God no. You’re the one who knows how to get them together, to listen to you, to dig ditches big enough to keep the bastards off of us.” Britt knelt next to El’s cot. “It’s what you do. Not me. I’ve got no talent for it.”
“Then who? Hilly? Sweet Sue? Glinda? Who, Britt?” El closed her eyes at the pain that pounded through her muscles with each heartbeat. “Who, Britt? Myra won’t stop until someone stops her, and no one will be able to grow olive trees until we do.”
El felt the back of Britt’s hand on her head, testing for fever. The doctor hadn’t bothered trying to keep El in the infirmary. There was no point. They’d made her as comfortable as they could on her narrow camp cot in a crumbly corner at the top of the escalator. That corner was all she’d asked for when they’d settled into the Fortix stronghold.
“I’m not delirious. You can stop that, Britt.”
“I’m not even sure what an olive tree looks like, let alone know how to grow one.”
“Olives. They’re, it’s a symbol.” She had to get this out, make her sister understand. “Olive trees. Peace, they mean peace. It takes years and years, and you can’t plant olives in wartime or oranges or bananas or, or anything else that matters when all you do is fight and kill and die. It’s time to plant olive trees or a village. Tess can do it. She still believes in the possible, and she isn’t broken. Not like us.”
El felt more than saw Britt’s obje
ction, the way her hand jerked away from touching her forehead.
“Stop fighting me. Listen.” El moaned and curled against a spasm. Britt took her hand. “You have to listen. Tess and her family, they aren’t like us. They’re still whole. The way they were protected, kept safe, it doesn’t make them weak, it means,” she paused to catch her breath, “it means they can still feel.” Britt’s hand tightened on El’s. Their fingers locked. “Golda, she brought her back to us. We would have left one of hers to die, and you know it.”
Voice heavy and slow, Britt said, “I just wanted to fight for you. To show you what it meant to me when you came for me. I never wanted to be a leader.”
A candle guttered on a small table in the corner. It was better talking in the dark of a future she would not live to see, El decided, opening her eyes to the weak light of the remaining candle. Her head hurt less without the light. Britt bent her head to rest it next to El’s on the pillow.
“I just wanted to show you,” Britt whispered. “I’m sorry about her Parrish. He’s not our little brother anymore. He’s not our Ryan.”
“Then show me. Help Tess. In the morning find her Parrish, find Ryan. Help them start something. Show me that way, and that you’re grateful. Help them with whatever she’s going to need.”
The candlelight softly colored Britt’s skin. Her eyes glowed green and gold. El reached over and ran her hand through the thick pelt of Britt’s dark hair. She was so like him.
“You look like him. You know that? And you find the world wanting the way he did.”
Britt nodded—barely.
“Promise me you’ll help me, help them. Promise. That you’ll do whatever they need done.”
The night was strangely silent, considering that an invading army surrounded them. El waited in the dark for her sister’s answer. She wished she had the strength to shake the answer out of Britt. There was no time left. “Promise me.”
“Yes. Okay.”
The last candle flared out.
Tess wandered back to her bed after helping El to her cot. There was a book, some kind of autobiography, and a letter, in an actual old-fashioned envelope, waiting for Tess on her sleeping bag.
Tucked away in the corner of the balcony, away from the crowd downstairs, Tess stared at the note. Hadn’t El wanted Tess to read it? But it would have to wait. There wasn’t a coherent thought left in her mind.
CHAPTER 48
It had not gone according to plan. It had been like falling into a pot of boiling water; without Britt’s diversion, they hadn’t had a chance. A man on the way back from taking a leak had stumbled over Sam, set off the alarm, and tried to take the boy’s head off with a rusty machete. There’d been no time for delicacy. Parrish had shot him dead. The rifle shot booming out like a cannon ball.
They’d beaten Sam unconscious. He looked dead. Parrish saw him twitch, once, twice. He’d make it, hopefully. The boy looked so beaten down; they hadn’t bothered to tie him up.
He thought he’d seen a glimpse of Jon. They were keeping him more toward the center of the encampment where the heavy hitters were set up, where they’d dragged the metal crosses.
Parrish was tied up next to Stone, who had the gall to fall asleep on the ground like he did it every night, in an armed camp of murdering thugs. Stone had two black eyes and a gash across one cheek where peach fuzz had just started to grow. He was snoring. Could have been worse, a lot worse. He shook off the crazy urge to laugh.
Filthy groups of men sat in the glare of the cook fires, firelight casting shadows and turning eye sockets into black holes. No women—and no ZeeZee. He’d seen nothing of her, heard nothing.
Not knowing what had happened to Tess and Britt and the rest made the slow pitch of nausea in his stomach worse. If they’d never gotten to the point to be able to create a distraction, if something had gone wrong, if Tess had fallen . . .
He held back the curse. There was nothing to be gained by this. He pushed the fear away. He sucked in a breath against the pain, rolled to his side, and tried not to vomit.
“Sam,” he hissed. “Sam, come on man. Time to rise and—” Parrish flicked dirt toward Sam with his elbow. His side screamed. “Shine. Come on, Sam, you need to shine.”
Someone behind Parrish slammed a steel-toe boot into his spine. He lost his fight with his gut and vomited into the sand in front of him.
“Get him up and bring him.”
He was still retching by the time they dragged him to his feet. The shadows around him shifted and swayed, then became hard-eyed men. A sharp, wet wind full of ash and a coming rain slapped at the woman who stepped out of the dark to stand in front of Parrish. Middle-aged and lumpy, she looked like someone’s homeless aunt. Her hair hung off her head like a wild nest of Spanish moss. She smiled at him with yellowed teeth.
“You don’t look much like Ella. Maybe some around the mouth. Although it’s hard to tell what with all that blood on your face. Oh well, who cares? It’s not you and your mouth I’m after. It’s her. Ella. And here I have her long-lost brother. I’m Miss Myra, your sisters’ employer. You can call me Lord Myra.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He raised his eyes to her face. Keep her focused on him, not Samuel. Questions burned and raced through his head. How had she known? Who could have told her? ZeeZee or Jon. Had to be. Not Stone. That kid would die first. Who else would know the truth about who he was and his sisters?
She rammed her fist into his face. He tasted blood.
“No. No. No. We’re not going to dance around the mulberry bush on this, young man. You are Ryan Summerlin, brother of Ella Summerlin, son of Margaret and Robert Summerlin, once of Oviedo, Florida, when that stupid crap still mattered. That’s who you were once upon a jingle-jangle time, and that’s good enough for me.”
“You’re mistaken. My name is Richmond Parrish. My sisters are dead.”
“Isn’t everyone’s sisters dead, Mister Summerlin?”
She turned to a man wearing the greasy remains of a cop’s uniform. “We’ll have to tie him to the old rugged cross unless you can think of a way to nail him to the metal. Too bad about the trees. But it couldn’t be helped. Isn’t that right, my good man, Mort?”
Greasy Cop Uniform said, “Always right, Miss Myra.”
“Too right that is. Go! Make sure Boy-O knows that the fun is starting.” She eyed Parrish. “Let’s see now. Two crosses and one brother. Who shall we dangle from the other one? Who, oh, who? Maybe a girl will crack the fortress of girl rebels wide open? Maybe a kid? Or maybe a baby?” Her voice turned breathy and shrill when she talked about crucifying a child. The men around them chuckled. It was a dry, companionable sound.
Parrish’s stomach rolled—once and then again.
“Too bad we’re fresh out of babies, right Brother-Boy? Nothing like the sound of baby crying to drive people crazy.”
“Yeah, looks like you’ve heard your quota of sounds to drive you crazy, you looney nut.”
Pain exploded in his head and then the dark became total.
CHAPTER 49
Morning began to stain the edges of the world a gentle shade of pink. The Hawk Brothers uncurled from the corner of the pump house where they’d hidden. The fire had swept by, ignoring the rusted metal tank of the pump and the spiders living inside the concrete box.
Big Hawk kicked at the tank, trying to decide if there was any water left inside, probably too rusty and stale to drink anyway. Little Hawk sat up and scratched.
“I’m thirsty.”
Big Hawk harrumphed an answer, “Well, duh, who isn’t?”
“Come on. There’s a pond next to that old, big school. And maybe frogs. I’d eat some frog’s leg right off the frog, I’m so hungry.”
Big Hawk understood his brother’s morning routine, but there was nothing routine about today. From the cover of their hiding place, they’d listened to the short-lived shootout last night. Mister Parrish and that black guy had not come back. Nothing about that felt good or
right.
“We need to see what we can about Mister Parrish since Miss Tess went off with those mean girls. Forget your stomach.”
Little Hawk stood up to pee against the wall of the pump house. Ammonia burned Big Hawk’s nose.
“Hey. Outside, you butt. What if we have to use this spot for a hideout? It stinks. You stink.”
“What are we even going to do to help them? There are a lot more man-catchers here than where we found that old mule. And it’s straight-up day time outside.” Little Hawk did not look hopeful.
The bigger boy sighed, thinking about the options. He pulled his fillet knife out of a loop of his Power Ranger belt. “Pretty sure they could use my knife right now, though.”
“How you plan on getting that where it needs to be?”
Chewing the inside of his lip, Big Hawk looked at Little Hawk and considered.
CHAPTER 50
El and Britt and the brave women of the Marketplace Fort sat and watched and waited and did nothing—for the entire morning, while Tess raged. They’d ordered the guards to keep her off the wall. When she’d tried to protest, she was informed that El was too sick to see her. Britt had been nowhere. Who cared? It was El that made the decisions around here—not Britt.
Tess kept to herself, pacing the base of the wall, watching the people as they watched the women on the wall and waited. The guards had been doubled since the last time she’d been there, the iron grate on the culvert padlocked, chained. Jamie strolled over to her—hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.
“How’d you make out?” Tess whispered.
He patted the front of his shirt where she could see the top of some binoculars. He’d probably stolen them. “Did okay. They’re here to stay.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughed. “I mean our guests outside the wall. They’ve managed to drag a 400-gallon Water Buffalo with them, behind a couple of ratty looking draft horses. They’ll probably eat that pair before this is over. Couldn’t say why they brought it.”