by Linda L Zern
Tess froze under his hands, intensely still, listening. Here was something she recognized, the need to tell the hard stories. “After the government swept the high school kids into the Kid Militias, she was with me, in the group, along with El and Britt. We were together for a while, for some of it. El and Britt were snapped up by the leadership, made to fight and . . .”
He shook off the dread that came with the memories, refocused.
“Darby helped us in the infirmary in a place called Lake Monroe, near here. She was a kid. My sisters made me promise that no matter what happened, I’d get her out and safe to the S-Line.” He almost laughed. “Do you realize that even then I was heading for you, and I didn’t even know it? Do you think that’s stupid?”
She reached up and touched his face. He pressed his cheek into her hand.
“But I waited too long, thinking I could get us all out of there somehow, and that we’d all go together to Colonel Kennedy. They made me promise every single day when we were together, that no matter what happened, I’d get Darby out. I was young enough to think that saying something made it true.”
Tess’s whisper came as soft as dust motes in a shaft of light. “What happened? To her?”
“She died. The guy who led us raped her, was raping her all along, and then told her that if she said anything to me, he’d make sure I died of gangrene or worse. That he’d hurt me, kill me, and keep the medic away from me. She believed him. She was thirteen. Britt and El blamed me for not getting her out sooner before . . . the baby. She got pregnant.”
A single, harsh gasp told him that she had heard him, there in the dark. She’d made the connections, Darby and Ally, babies having babies. In the musk of old potatoes and beef jerky, they held each other. He made no sound.
Finally, he took a breath while she held hers. “I couldn’t save her. She labored for three days before she fell into a coma. The baby’s shoulders got stuck. She sent me away on the second day—a wild goose chase. I wasn’t there when she died. I’ve never heard . . . anyone . . .” He stopped. “I’ve never heard anyone suffer like that. She was hardly more than a child. Britt and El went mad. Helpless. We were all helpless. I think it’s why they were taken prisoner at the Saint John’s bridge fight, by the people who held this place before, who bought and sold women to the coast. Myra’s not the only threat out there. I think my sisters just didn’t care anymore after Darby. And then they were all gone.”
Tess pressed closer. “I wish I knew what to say.”
He wished he knew. “There’s nothing you have to say.” He fell silent again. “Helpless,” he repeated. “Until you and the S-Line.”
“And it’s gone. We’ve lost it. And you were almost gone.”
“Don’t.” He circled her waist with his hands. “But that’s just it. It’s not gone, the S-Line—home. Home isn’t the longhouse or this fort. It’s not. Home is wherever you are. It’s taken up residence behind a big mud wall. We need to do right by my oldest sister and your father, make their burial a grand gesture and show these people we will make this place safe. Next time the barbarians might not be so easy to defeat.”
He pushed her back into a wall, trapping her wrists over her head. It didn’t hurt, though she could feel his anger, his frustration, his fierce need to control her and this moment. She let him. “I’d forgotten. Up on that crucifix I could hear her again. Darby screamed for three days. I won’t forget again. I want this place. I want you to be safe.”
She heard his breathing turn ragged as he crushed her against the back wall. His lips found hers in the dark and tasted of salt and pain and fresh tears. “I want you so bad it makes me dream . . . You’re in my dreams, and Darby is in my nightmares.” He dropped her hands to trail his fingers over her face, down her neck, under her shirt to touch the bare skin over her ribs, her stomach.
He made it impossible to think. She arched into him. “Parrish.”
He froze at the sound of his name—low and husky—and pressed his forehead against hers. Confused, she tried to kiss him.
“You need to stop me.”
Struggling to think straight, she choked out, “Whaaat . . . what did you say?”
“I don’t want this.” Feeling her stiffen with insult, he added, “Not here. All I’ve got is a ratty sleeping bag to my name. Tess,” he whispered, staring into her eyes, “I want more for you, for us. Let’s make the next celebration here a wedding.”
She sighed.
“I mean it, and I’ve got some thoughts about the honeymoon.”
“When ZeeZee’s back.” Taking his hands and kissing his knuckles, she gave him a watery laugh. “Well, if you think I’m waiting for a house in town, you’d be wrong—listen. We’re not alone.”
A small, busy creature scratched among the stockpiles and then, over that, the distinct sound of two women arguing at the entrance of the storage room.
He dropped his face to the curve of her neck. He smiled against her skin.
He nodded, then put his hand up to the shelf over her head, reaching through the shelving, he thumped once. The wall echoed like an empty tin can. “It’s not a wall, it’s a shipping container. Come on. There’s something here I need to show you.” He pulled her along the ribbed container.
She heard the scratch of a fire starter and saw a twist of cardboard flare into a torch. He pulled open the rusty doors. Light puddled over the contents inside the metal box, beyond the sleeping bag he’d talked about, at the opening of the shipping container. He’d been staying here, away from her, away from everyone, away from the women who counted every bite and swallow of food at the Marketplace. She stepped into the open end of the metal box.
“What is all this?”
“It’s pallets, shipping pallets. I found them when I came looking for supplies. I have no idea why they’re here. Maybe emergency fuel? It’s a stockpile of kindling. Not needed when there was so much natural fuel around. Forgotten about.”
Around the wooden pallets, the rusting container was stuffed floor to ceiling with crumbling and flattened cardboard boxes.
Parrish held his makeshift torch high. “Fuel for your funeral pyre, Mayor Lane.”
“And a grand gesture.” She glanced at him. “Mayor? Really? I don’t know.”
He looked like a wild pagan in the light of the torch: eyes glinting sparks, firm lips curving up, dark hair streaked by the glow—a wounded warrior, maybe—but still ready to fight, to dream.
“Tess, people need that kind of thing. They need ceremonies and traditions. You can bring these people together. Read El’s letter. Settle this. Settle it soon.” She tipped her head to the side as she considered.
“Wait a minute. Supplies? Why were you looking for supplies? What aren’t you saying?”
He turned away from her, blew out the torch in his hand. Mildew and rot filled the packed space.
“What do you need supplies for?” If only she could keep the worry out of her voice, but her voice cracked.
His voice echoed softly in the pit of blackness.
“I’m going after her. I saw ZeeZee when I was hanging up there like a fish on a hook. I saw the man who took her. She’s alive, and I’m going to find her for you. I swear it.”
CHAPTER 59
Dramatic and efficient, the smoke from the funeral pyre of Ella Summerlin and Jon Lane went up in a dense, dark column; it mixed with the rolling, black clouds of a winter storm over their heads. The wind whipped across the top of the fortress wall and carried the sparks of cremation away in a rush. The morning air held a hint of frost.
It was exactly the right thing to do, and they all knew it. Tess watched the people of the Marketplace stand taller at the drama of it.
Jamie and Ally stood close, always touching in some way—his arm around her, her hand on his shoulder. Gwen kept her boys next to her, insisting they bow their heads to pray as the fire was lit. Stone had gone sometime in the night, heading back to the bunker and his Doe Kids.
The funeral was a rare oppo
rtunity for the men and women to mix. Tess watched men shyly take their women by the hand.
Parrish stood at Tess’s back, not quite touching. He would leave her soon enough and in a way had already gone.
Britt stood with her Amazons, as contained and hard as Tess had ever seen her. Mister Terry waited to read El’s letter, his arm strapped tightly to his chest. Doctor Midge waited with him.
The women and girls watched Tess from under their lashes, giving her quick glances and then looking away when they caught her looking. The men pretended not to see her. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. There was so much she wasn’t sure of, and they were going to expect her to say something. The funeral pyre collapsed in a cloud of sparks.
Mister Terry nodded and stepped forward, then hopped up onto a chunk of concrete divider from the old parking lot.
With a flourish, he took El’s letter out of the pocket of his jacket with his good hand, flipped it open, and began to read:
To the People of the Marketplace Fortress:
I have nothing more to do in this world than to encourage and ensure the survival of this place. Because that’s what too many of us have been doing for too long—surviving. It is my greatest desire that the fortress become a place for more than that. That it becomes home. Until a government can be established and agreed upon, I am appointing Tessla Lane and those she deems necessary to lead. Her experiences over the last seven years have given her and her family a way of looking at the world that will give the fortress a steady way to grow up to be a haven—a home for our children.
Grow something. Plant something. Make something. And find others that want to do the same.
Ella Baye Summerlin
No one spoke. Some of the crowd didn’t know Tess’s name, and they looked confused when they heard it read out loud. Britt and the Amazons knew whom to look at, but they didn’t look happy about it.
Mister Terry nodded at her. If only she could remember what Parrish had said, it had made some sense last night, the whole incredible idea of her taking over control of the Marketplace. But why? She couldn’t remember.
She made a move to step up on Mister Terry’s perch when the sky opened up. Lightning flashed on the horizon.
Children scattered like baby deer, the men shuffled off to check the rain barrels, and women hurried back to the mall. Parrish grabbed Tess’s hand and pulled her to one of the remaining overhangs. Water sheeted off of the roofline. Lightning flashed, the sound of thunder crept closer.
“Well, so much for my first day on the job.”
He stared into the gray sheeting rain, arms folded over his chest. “The funeral was a good thing. It made the people feel important to be part of something.”
“But did you think it was good enough for them?”
The corner of his mouth curved up. “I do.” He stopped, obviously not in a talking mood. “My sister knew the importance of follow through, and so do I. I’m going as soon as the rain stops. I need to go get ready.” He hunched up against the rain, taking a step into the downpour.
“That’s it? No goodbye.”
“Don’t worry.” He backed away from her into the downpour. “I’ll find you before I go.” He left her to watch the rain.
Jamie kicked up mud as he slid into the space next to Tess. His blue eyes sparked worry. “Tess! I needed to tell you but with everything happening . . . anyway.” He shook his wet hair out of his eyes. “The Water Buffalo. I wasn’t sure before, but I checked on it today. Took me a while to knock the cap off. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing dragging that beast all this way, and something about it’s been bugging me.” He paused to wipe his face.
“And . . .”
“It’s a bomb, Tess.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s stuffed with fertilizer and diesel fuel. It’s a bomb. I couldn’t see where or how they were going to detonate it, though, or even if they could. Stuff is pretty old.”
“Jamie, it’s a hundred feet from our front gate. How dangerous is that?”
“Well, maybe farther away than that. But what I know about this kind of bomb, it’s not dangerous, unless there’s a detonator. You have to set it off like lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite. Does that make sense?”
At her nod he continued. “But I can’t imagine they thought this would work.”
“Could a lightning strike detonate it?”
His mouth dropped open. “I don’t know. The odds of that are . . . I don’t know. Slim to none. But all it would take is one slim strike.”
Silence fell between them as they watched the lightning crawl across the sky.
“Either way, we need to move it out of here.”
He smiled down at her. “Well, it should probably go to the top of the list, and there’s going to be a list, Madame President.”
CHAPTER 60
The smoke coming from the heart of the Marketplace Fort was a massive signal fire. It seemed to be saying, “This way, ZeeZee, time to come home.” Or it was a warning that something had gone very wrong at the place where most of her family was living.
“Come on, boys; we’re going. It’s been hours since we heard anyone tromping around. Grab your stuff,” ZeeZee whispered. “We need to eat soon, or we’re not going to be able to crawl home.”
“To where? To that big mud mountain?” Big Hawk did not look happy about her decision.
“Wall. It’s a wall. And there’s food and water and clean clothes inside. And we are going.”
“I’m hungry,” Little Hawk said, voting with his stomach. “And besides, she promised that we could hunt with Mister Parrish.”
She smiled at the younger boy, then nudged Big Hawk with her foot. “Come on. We’ll go slow and careful.”
Someone’s stomach was rumbling loud enough to give them all away when the rain settled the matter. Their hiding place flooded in minutes, and the sheeting wall of water provided excellent cover.
The boys led the way through the wreckage of a housing development, using the chimneys and half walls for protection. Traveling with the Hawk Brothers was like traveling with a pair of canny mice the way the boys wound their way through the scraps and patches left by the fire.
Traveling fast, they wound back into the old section of Oviedo, where the brick buildings had held up somewhat better.
They didn’t talk much. And they didn’t wait. They scurried.
When they did stop to rest, it was in the corner of the old church on the hill.
The rain tasted like wine after having to lick plastic, but as the temperature dropped it was impossible to get warm. Even the Hawk Brothers sat with their arms crossed tight across their chests.
ZeeZee grabbed Little Hawk’s hand and said, “Come on. Hug me. This is miserable.” He scooted closer.
The rain hadn’t slacked off, but they were still able to see the man when he walked up. He stood in the middle of the road in front of the church. He wore a torn shirt, the sleeve dangling from the shoulder, his face empty of emotion except for a goofy, icky grin. He carried a machete in one hand and a gun in the other.
ZeeZee pushed the boy behind her, hissing the word, “Run!” The Hawk Brothers slipped around the corner of the church and were gone.
Parrish pushed hard as soon as he was clear of the wall. The rain covered his movements as carefully as a force field. He traveled light, and he traveled fast. They’d be heading back to the coast—ZeeZee and her kidnapper—and they had a two-day lead.
He’d left Tess preoccupied with the business of the fort, she and Jamie with their heads together about some new concern. It was better this way. She’d had no time to pick at the worry of being apart—again—of thinking that she might want to go with him, to help him search.
Rain slapped at the ground as it turned to sludge, splashing up in filthy spurts. Water was a good thing: putting out the last of the hot spots, washing ashes from whatever had managed to survive, starting the rebirth process. Spring would be a re
velation as the forest came back. He’d be glad to see it with Tess and the others.
In front of the old high school, a mother possum splashed across King’s Street, her babies clinging to her fur. Seeing her made him hesitate. It was here that it had all gone to crap, and he was back to the beginning, the day Colonel Kennedy had issued his invitation to find him at the Strandline. Tess hadn’t been there yet, but she would be.
Voices in the rain startled him. The storm made the sound bounce, hard to pin down, hard to tell if the voices were men or women.
Parrish hustled to the bones of a truck chassis and then onto his belly in the mud.
The group who marched along the road struggled with carrying a body on a makeshift stretcher. Children. They were children bundled against the weather, wrapped in canvas and plastic tarps. Two figures fought against the pounding rain, heads bowed. Their body language shrieked fatigue. The lead figure stepped into a pothole filled with mud, tripping when he tried to step up and out of the depression.
The movement made the hood slip back on the figure’s face: Samuel. The second figure grunted when the stretcher tilted. Stone. Samuel adjusted his grip on the handles.
Parrish pulled himself to his feet. Staying low, he called out, “Samuel. What is this?”
The children backed away from the sight of a mud-covered figure running for them. Stone called to them. “Hold up. It’s friends. It’s Parrish.”
“What are you doing, exposed out in the open like this? With all these kids?”
The body on the stretcher was covered head to toe with plastic sheeting.
“What is this?” Parrish reached out to grab at Samuel’s arm. “Not Kilmer?” Fresh pain in Samuel’s face greeted his question.
Samuel nodded his head, blinking rain out of his eyes. “Help us get him to the fort. The old man collapsed bringing the kids here, at the edge of the river.”