Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  The wind blew cinders and dust across the encampment, sending the attacker’s rags and baggy clothes flapping. It billowed up the wall of the fort into their faces, blinding Tess. She wiped her eyes.

  “We’ve got to get them out of there.” Nothing else seemed relevant.

  “What do you suggest? We march into camp and cut them down?” The strain in Britt’s voice gave her away. Tess saw the fear in her face, the way the muscles twitched in her face; it made the jagged flesh of her cheek jump. Her hand on the rifle looked like white gristle.

  “Britt . . . ?” Tess rubbed her hands against her jeans, saw Parrish lift his head, watched as one of the scum who’d helped bury the cross threw something at him. When it hit him, Parrish hunched and gagged. “What are we going to do?”

  “El will know,” Britt said, as she raised the rifle and fired a random shot in the air.

  The food was mush and almost gone already. Myra frowned, tried and couldn’t remember why that might be a problem, especially after finding the Amazons like this locked up tight behind a wall. This was supposed to be a rich, ripe plum—easy pickings. And how much blood and treasure was locked up behind that ugly mud?

  A wall? How could anyone have believed that was possible? They’d performed a miracle throwing it up, digging a moat. A damned moat! Myra flung her arms out and kicked at a stain of blood at her feet. She rolled her head side to side. What she wouldn’t give for a good massage. Remember those?

  Myra’s jaw hurt from grinding her teeth. There was no cuticle left to pick at on her left hand: just infection, just yellow pus.

  But it wasn’t done. They hadn’t beaten her. Hadn’t she managed to find exactly the right leverage? Brothers and sisters and mommies and daddies. The names danced through her head in a singsong chant. What fun. When it’s done. What fun. She looked up at the girlish body dangling from one set of crossed bars. Somebody’s sibling, that one.

  She glanced at the other one—a good-looking young man—not looking too much like El, but that didn’t matter. Too bad his face was such a mess after they’d dragged him and beat him down and impressed him with the New World Order of Myra. God bless her good boys.

  Except they wouldn’t be hers for very long if they didn’t figure a way into the luscious prize that El had turned the Marketplace Mall into; too bad about Marco and the end of the Fortix Dynasty. They’d done good business, she and Marco.

  Insane laughter bubbled up and out. She patted the young man’s foot, swelling from the ropes cutting into the flesh of his ankles. Nails would have been so much more dramatic. Oh well, a brother crucified before noon. That would do just fine.

  She would bet on it.

  A cloud of dirt and dust boiled up in the center of Myra’s camp. They were dragging someone, or something, across the ground. Tess couldn’t make it out: saw arms and legs, people flailing, saw bad guys—whose body language screamed menace—yanking on someone.

  Had ZeeZee lifted her head? Who was that at the foot of the crosses? Myra?

  Britt waited motionless for the guard to return with El’s binoculars.

  “Where’s that idiot lookout?”

  Tess hustled to look down the rope ladder, checked for the returning guard, registered the now empty parking lot—the men in their area, the women and children back inside. Orders. Someone had given the order. They were getting ready for a fight. She thought about those listless bodies hanging just beyond rifle range. Myra couldn’t take the chance that someone would shoot the captives and end the fun. Tess began the climb down. She’d get the binoculars.

  Britt called over to Tess, “Tell them to hurry.”

  By the time she got across the parking lot and up to the balcony, El was on her feet. She was a stick swaying to some invisible puff of air. El’s hand shook as she reached for the gun belt, hanging on a hook next to her cot. She hesitated, dropped her hand, and stared at the weapon.

  Tess skidded to a halt next to her. She’d taken the escalator steps three at a time; her breath slammed out in harsh gasps.

  “They’ve got them on crosses. Parrish! And, oh God, ZeeZee. Those old crosses from the church. Where are the binoculars? What happened to the guard we sent in?”

  El turned and put her hand on Tess’s thudding chest.

  “Slow down. I gave her something else to do and sent her to give the order for the men in the courtyard to fall back away from the wall. Be smart, Tess. This is the moment we have to be smart. You’re going to get to this place more than once. Pay attention. Think.”

  El sounded reasonable, calm, and patient. It made Tess want to smash her in the face. She reached for El’s gun belt instead. “I’ll carry it for you. But we’ve got to find those binoculars.”

  Tess reached down, grabbed El’s bedding, and ripped it off of the cot. She started to push and shove her way through the rickety shelves where El’s belongings sat. Tess searched under the cot and its blankets.

  “Stop. I might have something more important under there.” The woman sounded almost amused.

  “What’s wrong with you? They have them. They’re hanging from crosses. They are being crucified. Are you drunk?” Tess dragged the blankets off of El’s cot.

  “Stop!”

  There was fire and anger in the command. “The binoculars are on their way to Britt. You may have passed the woman I sent. Calm down, or you’re going to miss vital information. Myra knows. She’s figured out that he’s my brother. She’s counting on our horror and our panic. You can’t let her into your head, or you’ll be letting her into this place as surely as if you went out there and threw open the gates.”

  “But how could she know? How did she find out?”

  “Myra is not a gracious hostess.” Irony dripped from El’s comment. “Any one of them could have broken.”

  The statement felt like a slap. Tess took a breath. “My sister, ZeeZee, she’s never faced anything like this, or—” The other possibility made Tess’s stomach clench. “My father.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What does it matter? This conversation is pointless,” Tess said, closing her eyes, concentrating on the way her heart thundered.

  El grabbed Tess’s wrist.”Breathe. And it does matter. It’s important to understand who you are dealing with if you’re going to be able to face her and get your sister back. Can you hold it together?”

  Tess pulled a blanket from the floor, tried to fold it, but couldn’t quite remember how. She nodded slowly. “Tell me what to do.” She met El’s look. “Tell me how to fight.”

  El pointed back to her cot. “For a start try under there.”

  Tess knelt, reached out, found dust. “Nothing.”

  “Reach as far back as you can.”

  Tess fumbled around in the dark, felt a handle, pulled. It was a rifle case.

  “It’s a sniper rifle, a good one I’ve been told, a Barrett. I knew a man once . . .” She let the sentence drift away. “I’ve been saving it for a rainy day. Today could be that day.”

  “Ammunition?”

  “Not much. But with a rifle like that, it shouldn’t take much. We won’t get a lot of chances.”

  El held out her hand to Tess. “Bring the rifle. Let’s walk.”

  From the top of the wall, Britt climbed down to El. Two more Amazons flew up the rope ladder to take her place near the gate. One of the women, her face still wrapped tight, held a pair of worn field binoculars to her eyes. Tess watched her track the movements of the members of Myra’s band of raiders. The woman called down to El, “The man is alive. The other one . . .” She shrugged.

  Britt and El stood next to each other; their heads close together. El kept her hand flat against the drying, hard-packed mud of the wall. They whispered intently.

  Britt lifted her eyes, glanced at Tess, didn’t look pleased, and ended up shaking her head vehemently.

  “No. El, I said no.”

  El flinched when Britt grabbed her arms.

  “I won’t let you.”

 
El didn’t push Britt away; she only pulled her closer. El whispered something to her sister, then looked over at Tess. Another order. No. More a request. Tess shook off the feeling of doom. She joined them, moving into their closed, tight world.

  “Myra wants me. Parrish is out there to draw me out. I’m going to give her what she wants. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done, but she doesn’t know that.”

  Searching their eyes, green and blue, Tess looked from one sister to the other.

  “She isn’t just going to go away. She wants this place too. You’ve created a huge target.”

  “Undoubtedly. But I’ll be enough of a distraction for Britt to use the big gun. The head of the snake. My soldiers, the women here, we’ll—no, not me—they, they will be able to handle the scum Myra’s gathered up. They’ll go out through the culvert, cut them into sections. They know how to fight and die. It’s for the living that we need you.”

  “Sure, but how is any of this going to get them off of those crosses?”

  “Why are they up there?”

  Tess walked to the big front gate and pressed both her hands against the hot metal, thinking about the sun, how fast the sun was going to heat up a world without shade and blaze down on those hanging bodies.

  “They’re up there because Britt abandoned them. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

  Britt dropped her eyes to the ground; it was as close to flinching as Tess had ever seen.

  “Don’t. We aren’t going back. It won’t help.” El’s voice was sharper, stronger. “You’ll listen to what I’m planning. Both of you. And you’ll obey me. They are up there to force my hand.”

  The thumping that had measured out the hours and minutes from before was back. Tess could feel the vibration of it beneath her hands, under her feet, but couldn’t imagine what made that sound: some giant tapping his toe or someone digging a well? When she was just a kid, they’d heard a sound like that when the new well got dug at the old ranch house. Tess saw Jamie making his way to their side.

  “What is that sound?” She stared up to the Amazons on the wall for some clue.

  “I bet they’re dragging that big Water Buffalo closer to the front gate. The tires are almost flat. We have to make this happen before they get it into place to use as a battering ram. Maybe they’ve got something else in mind. Maybe not. Could be a great big nothing but a distraction,” Jamie offered.

  El said, “Myra’s not been right in the head for a very long time. Either way, we trade up for Parrish. That’s how it’s going to be.”

  “Tess, maybe that thing isn’t full of water at all. Could be trying a Timothy McVeigh.” Jamie sounded dispassionate.

  “Jamie—” Tess began.

  “Don’t let it psyche you out. I’d be surprised if they’ve got anything inside that big drum with any firepower. Bomb stuff is pretty unstable. We’re secure as long as that gate holds. Safe enough.” He cut a look at the sisters.

  Safe enough. She thought about Ally’s colorless face.

  “How is she?” They both knew whom Tess meant.

  He raised his hand, cut her off. “She’s okay. Gwen’s with her and that man, Mister Terry. He dislocated his shoulder. That’s all there was to that. Doctor’s checking for a concussion.” He didn’t tell Tess that Ally had finally been up and talking. Doc Midge was encouraging her to get up and walk, but this wasn’t the time for medical updates.

  He stepped closer to El and Britt. “Let me help.”

  Britt’s eyes narrowed. “What can you do?”

  “I can take out that Water Buffalo. Set it off, if it’s a bomb. Give you enough distraction to get them out of there. Get me out there, and I can end it.”

  “No,” El said, dismissing him. “I’m not going to worry about what-if scenarios. We trade up for Parrish. Me for him,” El repeated.

  “What about ZeeZee?” Not hearing her sister’s name in El’s plan gave Tess a quick burst of alarm. “There’s only one of you. What do we trade for her? And how do you intend to get from here to there? You’re not going to be able to make the long walk to their camp over open ground.”

  “Don’t intend to.” El leaned against Britt, ignoring the men who’d returned with the carpet stretcher; the one they’d used to carry Mister Terry away from the wall in. “ZeeZee’s going to be your job.”

  El explained it: quick, fast, efficient, and shocking in its simplicity. After she had finished, she ripped a strip of fabric from the edge of the oversized white shirt she wore and handed the slash of material over. She watched her sister tie it to a cane of bamboo for El to carry into battle—the white flag of surrender.

  CHAPTER 52

  El shrugged out of her faded jacket, and smirked when she caught Tess staring. The woman looked as sturdy as glass. She tossed the jacket on the bedside table.

  Tess started to chatter to cover her embarrassment; glad it was just the two of them.

  “Why the stretcher? Why would she be okay with you not walking out of this place? Can’t I just escort you out? Pretend I’m slow and silly.”

  El almost smiled.

  “I know you’re not slow or silly, but your logistical skills could use some work. Slow down and think it through, then act.”

  It was Tess’s turn to hide a smile.

  “What?” El demanded.

  “Sometimes you sound a lot like my grandfather.”

  “These days I feel as old as someone’s grandfather. Listen. I know that woman. That Myra. She’s like those birds out there: those crows picking at garbage and worse. She’s a filth-eating bird, that one. But like those birds, she’s distractible, flighty, easy to spook. Carrying me out, hiding you away. Trust me. She’ll like the puzzle of it. She’ll be like a crow attracted to a bright shiny penny. Our men will be yelling, ‘Parley.’ She’s accepted those terms before. I’ve seen it. She’ll be intrigued. It’s like a game for her.

  “When they lower us over the gate, my fighters will drop over the back wall, use the tunnel, and start the fight from behind the fort. It will be all sound and fury, signifying what? Myra won’t have the first clue. She’s crazy, not clever.” El rolled her neck to hide a grimace.

  “By the time the enemy can report, we’ll be on all those stupid worker drones hovering around their queen. They expected a mud hut full of hungry, beaten women.” She gripped the edge of the table and arched her back. Her breaths came fast and shallow. The spasm passed.

  El continued, “Hell, she’ll probably order them straight to the sounds of gunfire. That would be a plus. She might. Her obsessions have turned her into—” El stopped. “She wants me, and that’s what we’re going to give her. She might be happy to sacrifice them all to get what she wants. Besides, she’s not used to playing defense. They have more bodies, but we have more firepower thanks to you and your bright, shiny, well-oiled AR-15s, and that, Tess, about wraps it up. Our soldiers sweep around the fort, attack their flanks, while you and I go and get our people back.”

  El lifted her head and met Tess’s stare with fever in her eyes. “Our people. Not your people or some people. Our people.”

  Tess nodded. They went to work.

  CHAPTER 53

  It was like being stitched into a sweltering cocoon. Sweat slipped and dripped and trickled over, around, and down Tess’s body. The air under the blanket grew wet when she exhaled. The cover El had tucked around them both blocked out the light as efficiently as a grave. Tess focused on the sway of the carpet as the two men walked them into the enemies’ camp, the white flag leading the way.

  Above her, El’s body felt like a bag of fragile sticks, dry and rattling. She was barely there; hardly a weight at all except for the heft of the patched quilt that wrapped them both. Tess could almost convince herself she was alone on this short journey across “no man’s land.”

  El had laughed and called it her reverse Trojan horse, with Tess hidden beneath the failing woman. Tess closed her eyes against the murk and doubt. El wanted too many things to happen at once:
Britt on the big gun from the fort’s wall, making a shot she’d never made before; El’s presence as a distraction for Tess to help the captives; the Amazon’s assault on the enemies’ flanks carrying Strandline rifles, pouring out of the Marketplace like ants from their nest.

  El seemed convinced it wasn’t going to take a brilliant battle plan to drive Myra away. It was hard for Tess to see it, but then what did it matter? Getting to Parrish, to ZeeZee, being on the outside of the wall, taking action, it was all she could think about. Moving. Doing. Maybe El’s plan would be enough to chase them back to the coast after they broke them by killing Myra.

  Tess shivered—not a good sign in the heat. She had to get to them, and it would be over soon, one way or another.

  They would expect the Marketplace inhabitants to hunker down; that’s what El thought. Okay. Maybe. Tess pressed her fingers more tightly around the grip of the pistol in her hand.

  Beyond their cocoon someone shrieked. “A white flag?” The woman’s voice grated through the blanket to Tess. “Really? Oh, Ella Bella, you know how I feel about flags and rags and bags. Why didn’t you make a better show of fighting me?”

  The carpet hit the ground. Tess bit her fist when her backbone slammed into the edge of a fallen tree trunk. There was the sound of scuffling and shoving. Someone grunted. The men who’d hauled their makeshift stretcher being manhandled, if she had to guess.

  Tess waited for El’s play, but the body stretched out on top of her didn’t move, made no sound. Perhaps she’d fainted. Tess was close to it. El jumping up from the stretcher was supposed to be Britt’s sign.

  A muffled popping of gunfire rattled in the distance. Myra began shrieking out orders and denials. Then there was the sudden sound of feet pounding. It was the chaos El had hoped for, but still no boom from the sniper rifle.

  Myra ranted. If only Britt had ended the woman’s crazy howling by now, unless Britt had bailed again, but she was probably waiting for El.

  Rage and adrenalin exploded through Tess’s body.