She'd found the keys to the beach house in their usual place and had just been about to go when an idea struck her. If Solly was still alive and made it back to Texas, he would first go to their home and then he'd be sure to come here to check on his mother. So, she scribbled a short note and left it in plain view. Only he would understand what she'd written, and she allowed herself to picture him arriving at the house and walking up the steps. Solid dependable Solly.
The house was on Redfish Lane, a light blue wooden building raised on stilts against the occasional freak storm. It had taken many hours to get there and Bella had been forced to pick her way around abandoned cars, trying desperately not to run over anything lying in the road. Al had taken over for part of the journey, but his eyes weren't what they had been, and Bella had decided it was safest to drive by moonlight, so they were reduced to crawling along as she squinted into the darkness.
She felt a sudden weight on her shoulders.
"Thanks, Pop," she said, settling down into one of a pair of chairs on the veranda and drawing the blanket around her. She reached up, took the glass and sipped gently. "Brandy?"
"Rum," Al said. "Jake says Silas found a box of bottles and gave him one."
Bella's mood darkened. Silas Roux was the de facto head of the community they'd found here when they'd arrived. They'd barely gotten out of the car after a long and exhausting journey when he'd turned up and welcomed them to the neighborhood. Since that night—three weeks ago now—more people had arrived to occupy other houses in Redfish Lane and the other beach front roads. They'd generally arrived in small groups that had formed through strangers meeting on the road and banding together for protection.
Silas had been a lifeguard and surfer and, whether by design or accident, the larger community had coalesced around him, attracted, it seemed, by his easy-going nature and “anything goes” attitude. He'd certainly had an impact on Maddie and Jake, who were spending an increasing amount of time with him.
"He's no shmendrik," Al remarked, reading her mind. "I don't see any evil in him and I think we have to trust to the kids to look out for themselves. After all, Jake isn't really a child any longer."
Jake's sixteenth birthday last week should have been a time of celebration, but he'd spent most of it with his newly found friends. Not that this birthday bore any resemblance to the last one. She'd argued with Solly over the phone about whether they should get their son the PS5 he'd asked for. Predictably, Solly had been on the boy's side and Jake had been granted his wish. The console now sat in his old bedroom, as dead as the country. That was assuming the family house hadn't been consumed by the fire that Al had ignited in the motorbikes parked outside during their escape.
"He's become so much wilder since we got here," she said.
Al let out an amused grunt. "You mean he's gotten harder to control. Welcome to the rest of your life, Tokhter."
The sun set behind gray clouds over the Gulf of Mexico as Bella and her father sat beside a guttering hurricane lamp and waited for the children to return.
"Mom!"
Bella was jerked out of a deep sleep, flailing around before grabbing her glasses from the little table by the bed and sitting up. "Maddie? What's happened?"
The girl stood beside the bed, a candle in her shaking hand.
"It's Jake, he's been hurt bad!"
Panic flooded Bella's mind, and she was fully awake in an instant. She swung her legs out of bed and stumbled around in the dark to find clothes. "What happened?"
"We were at a party over at the Sanchez's, and he got into a fight," Maddie said, her words tumbling out, "and he fell over the railing and onto the sand. He's not dead, but he's hurt, Mom."
Bella was now charging into Al's room. "Dad! Jake's been hurt, we have to go."
Maddie followed her downstairs.
"Has he broken anything?"
"I don't know, but, but..."
Bella stopped and grabbed her daughter's arms. "Spit it out, Maddie!"
"He landed on a deck chair and it broke and it stabbed him. I told them not to move him until you got there, but I don't know if they've listened to me. I came to find you as fast as I could."
Letting Maddie go, Bella pulled on her coat as her father hobbled down the stairs. "Fill your grandfather in, and follow me," she said as she flung the door open and ran into the night.
She found him lying in what remained of a wooden chair, draped in a blanket. Silas was kneeling beside him holding his hand, but he got up as he saw Bella approach and handed her a flashlight.
"Mrs. Masters, I'm really sorry. I don't know how it happened. Everything was cool and then... it wasn't."
"I'll deal with you later," she said. "Now make yourself useful for once and get me some bandages."
She got onto the floor, crying out as she felt a cold slickness on her knee. "Oh, my poor boy," she said. She shone the flashlight onto his legs and saw that while the right one moved freely, the left leg was pinned to the wreckage of the chair somehow. Looking more closely, she could see that a wooden slat had fractured in the fall and penetrated the back of his calf.
She heard footsteps approaching. "I can't find any bandages, Mrs. Masters."
"Call yourself a leader?"
"Actually, I don't," Silas responded quietly.
More steps and a green first aid box appeared over Bella's shoulder. "Here... thought you could... use this," Al panted. "Oy vey," he added on seeing Jake's leg. "You're going to have to get that out."
"You think?" Bella snapped. "Silas, is there a doctor in the community?"
"No ma'am, they don't stick around."
She turned back to Al. "We need to get him home, so we can clean it. Get some bandages out and when I lift his leg, help me wrap them around the wound."
"What if it's cut an artery?"
"I think there'd be a lot more blood if that had happened," she said, keeping the thought that Jake would also be dead by now in that case to herself. "Honey, this is going to hurt, but we've got to get it out before we can do anything else. Okay?"
Jake looked pale and sweat ran down his cheeks as he nodded. Al took one hand and Maddie the other as Bella clenched her jaw and felt beneath the boy's leg until she found where the wood fragment punctured the skin.
Gently, she exerted pressure on the back of Jake's thigh.
"Aaaah!!!" he cried, his legs writhing.
"Hold him still!" Bella called, "This has to come straight out, or it may break off inside him. Or tear something."
She wasn't listening as Al tried to soothe the boy while he and Maddie pressed down hard on his upper body. She focused entirely on bringing the leg upwards as, despite all they could do, it shook in Jake's agony. Suddenly it went still as Silas knelt beside her and wrapped his hands around Jake's ankle. "We'll get you something for the pain soon, Jake," he said. "Just hold on in there."
"It's coming!" Bella hissed as she raised the boy's leg inch by inch, trying desperately to ignore his cries of agony. "It's clear!"
Al handed her two rolls of bandage. He let go of Jake's arm and helped her wrap it around his leg, pants and all. Blood soaked the first roll almost immediately, so he took off his belt. "Wrap this around the top of his leg," he said. "And you, Silas, find us a needle and some dental floss—bring it to our place and if you're not there before us, there'll be hell to pay."
Maddie ran into the party house and found two young men and a woman who'd been skulking in the shadows. Between them, they were able to lift Jake up and carry him the hundred yards to their beach house, get him up the steps and onto the kitchen table.
"And don't go far!" Al called as they exited. "We'll need help getting him into bed."
He wiped Jake's face, then looked at Bella. "You've done well liebchen, now let me take over from here. I remember my army first aid training well enough. You comfort the boy."
"Maddie, boil up some water, quick as you can. We need to get this wound cleaned."
Silas appeared at the door to the
kitchen. "Man, it was tough to find a needle, but I got it." He put it down. "I'll go help Maddie with the fire. I guess we ought to sterilize the needle."
"It's not his fault," Jake murmured. "He wasn't there when the fight started."
"What happened, son?" Bella asked as she gripped his hand.
Jake turned his pale face to her. "Sayed said something about Maddie. I don't reckon he knew she's my sister. I told him to apologize, and he swung at me."
"Good boy," Al said. He'd found a pair of scissors and was cutting the leg of Jake's pants away from beneath the improvised tourniquet. Jake winced as the old man then cut off the bandage and examined the wound. Blood oozed out. "Looks pretty clean. Ah, good timing, thanks."
Maddie placed a bowl of steaming water on the table. "I got it from the Walters' house—it's been boiled."
"Well done. Could you get me another bowl for the final clean up? And get that idiot Silas to make him a sweet tea," Al said. "Proper tea, mind, not that new age rubbish you lot drink these days."
Al took wadding from the first aid box and dipped it in the hot water; then, working by candlelight, he gently dabbed it into the wound. The wadding turned red, and the boy moaned as Al worked, but after a few minutes he declared himself satisfied. "I can't be certain there's nothing left inside, but we've got to just hope for the best. Now for the worst part. This is going to hurt, son."
Maddie returned with the tea and Jake took several sips before he allowed himself to be rolled onto his front. The next ten minutes were utter torture for him and for Bella.
The needle Silas had found was larger than Al would have like and with every stitch, Jake cried out and his limbs shook. In the end, they'd called for reinforcements so that each part of him was held down by one person and so the process sped up until, finally, it was over.
"Not exactly a neat job," Al said. "But it'll hold together, I think."
They rolled Jake over and Silas handed something to him. "Here, this'll help."
"What are you giving him?" Al roared, snatching the packet from Silas's hand. "Oh. Sorry."
"It's just a Hershey bar. If it's good enough for fending off Dementors, it should be cool for leg wounds," Silas said with a smile.
"Fending off what?" Al responded.
Bella put her arms around him. "It's okay, Dad. You've done brilliantly. Now, let's get him to bed."
A few minutes later, Jake was asleep, and the house had emptied of beach bums. "Well, he's not going to bleed to death, but I've told Silas to find some antibiotics," Bella said. "Are you going back to bed?"
The old man shook his head. "No, I'm wide awake after all that. I'm going to have another go at the controller."
He took a candle and went downstairs into the room that had been built in between the stilts holding up the house. Solly's father had installed a wind turbine a few years before, partly to provide backup during the power cuts that hit this exposed coastline occasionally, and partly for the challenge. Al shook his head as he settled down at the workbench. Like father, like son. Although he didn't generally admit it, he had become fond of Solly over the years, though he'd been puzzled by his decision to move across the country for a job fiddling with computers when he could have done the same thing in Houston.
Solly's father hadn't finished the installation before inconveniently dying a year or so ago. Al had discovered the half-built rats nest of wires, plastic and metal when he'd first come down here and had made it his mission to get it working. But there had always been other things to do, and he wasn't a geek himself. If he got it working, then it'd charge up the bank of batteries that sat on a raised platform near the roof and they'd be able to run the radio and, perhaps, the TV from the inverter. There might be nothing to hear or see, but maybe the government was reestablishing itself and they were deaf to the announcements.
Al sat at the bench and raised the instruction manual for the charge controller to the candle. One last step and he could get the system working. One last step to reconnect them with the world outside.
Chapter 3
Solly watched as Jeremiah walked out of the farmhouse and then west along the creek road. He felt the burden of responsibility lift from his shoulders, and yet he was also nervous. Jeremiah had told him less than he knew about the events of five weeks ago, that much was obvious, and yet Solly was convinced that the little cylinder he'd handed over was indeed critical to preventing some future disaster. So, he followed Jeremiah.
Solly was now familiar enough with the lay of the land to be able to shadow Jeremiah without being seen. The creek ran on one side of the lane and on the other, the farm side, lay a sloped meadow of soggy grass and mud lined with trees and it was this cover that Solly used to watch Jeremiah as he walked along. He was heading for the Eisenhower highway where he would find a car and begin his journey to... wherever.
They'd talked for hours after the removal of the cylinder from the safe had triggered Jeremiah's alarm, but Solly hadn't learned much more about why it was so important, only that it was.
In the end, Solly had been forced to make a decision with limited information since Jeremiah could, or would, tell him no more. There was an endgame here that Solly couldn't see and he suspected that even Jeremiah lacked some critical pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. It had been the safety of the children that had been the deciding factor, ultimately. The cylinder had a tracking device and, though it could be shielded in the safe, that didn't alter the fact that its last known location was the farmhouse. If Jeremiah could find them, then so could others. Though he insisted that the Lee Corporation didn't know the cylinder was missing, let alone how to find it, Solly wasn't so confident. It was hard to imagine that an organization with the power, it appeared, to kill 95% of the world's population could be outwitted by a few individuals with good intentions.
Solly peered from behind the trunk of a tree, taking care to direct his breath into the ground so that the mist didn't reveal his location should Jeremiah look this way. The man had his head down and was going at a great pace—hurrying to reach the highway, it seemed. Solly crouched down and ran across the field, his boots squelching in the boggy soil. Reaching the next stand of trees, he paused for a moment to catch his breath. Ironically all the exercise of the past weeks had left Solly fitter than he'd ever been, but he was no superman and he could barely keep up with the dark figure striding along the lane.
He crossed a track that ran at right angles to the river and hid behind the wall of a neighboring farm. They'd checked it out soon after moving in to the farmhouse, and Solly was careful to avoid the barn where the rotting remains of the dairy herd lay.
He was just jogging along, wondering how long he would continue to follow Jeremiah, when he heard the sound of a car revving followed by the pop pop of small arms. Solly accelerated, keeping to the questionable cover of the trees that ran along the side of the road until he reached a bend and peered around it.
There, where the road widened as it joined the highway, a station wagon was parked with both doors open. Solly could see someone sheltering behind the nearer door, firing across the road. He caught sight of another figure, dressed in black military fatigues, moving away from the vehicle in a wide arc and guessed that while his colleague kept Jeremiah pinned down, he would attempt to outflank him.
Solly pulled the Ruger semiautomatic from his pocket and flipped the safety. Keeping himself as low as possible, he crossed the road and closed in on the figure sheltering behind the door. He could see past the car to a low brick wall that Jeremiah was hiding behind. The attacker was wearing armor, so it would take a decent shot to fell him and Solly took aim. Then, after a moment, he sighed and called out, "Put your weapon down!"
The figure spun around and was bringing his carbine to bear when a red mist exploded from his head and he fell to the ground. Solly saw Jeremiah crouch back behind his cover and then, in a blur of movement, the second soldier appeared and fired at Jeremiah at point blank range. Solly sprinted toward the car and, as the so
ldier turned toward him, fired three times. The soldier fell to the ground and, after a moment's pause, Solly ran across the road and pointed his handgun down at the fallen man. One of the shots had punched through his jaw and smashed half his face. Solly put his hand over his mouth to hold back the bile rising in his throat, then turned to Jeremiah.
He'd taken a bullet to the side of the head and lay looking up at the sky. Solly looked again at the soldier he'd killed and saw the Lee Corporation logo on the man's chest. So, they did know about the cylinder and they could track it, though their resources must be stretched if they'd sent a two-man squad to retrieve such an important device.
Solly went to move Jeremiah's head to a more natural angle but, as he did so, Jeremiah took a breath, looked him in the eye and whispered, "Take it to Arbroath..." Then he was truly gone, and Solly closed his eyes.
He hoped he'd never get used to being in the presence of death, but he also had to be practical, so he pulled Jeremiah's satchel from his shoulder and put it to one side then checked that the cylinder was inside. There was nothing in his pockets, so Solly covered Jeremiah's face with his hat, picked up his handgun and then knelt beside the nearest Lee Corporation soldier.
Keeping his gaze away from the ruined face, Solly took the carbine and two spare magazines, along with an ID card that was hanging on a chain around the soldier's neck.
The other attacker was lying face down behind the open door of the car in a pool of blood. Solly gasped as he rolled the body over and looked down into the face of a woman. She had short brown hair tucked into her combat helmet and no sign of an exit wound on her face. He choked back the tears as he looked at her. What kind of twisted reality allowed this?
He ripped the ID card from the chain around her neck. Ellis Summers followed by a series of numbers. The picture showed a serious looking young woman wearing a kepi. Just another victim of whatever her employers had unleashed on the world.
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