Bella swallowed the last mouthful of her roll and wiped her face. She'd often flirted with vegetarianism, but it was bacon that proved to be her Achilles’ heel each time. She'd also been obsessive about only eating food that was within its date, but that had gone completely out of the window after the apocalypse. These days, smell and taste were her diagnostic tools.
"Seems to me we have two main choices," Al said as he sipped on his coffee at the little camping table. "We either go back to the beach house where we stand at least a chance of hiding out, or we head away north. But then do we go to the east coast or the west?"
"I'd like to go back to Crystal Beach. It was nice there. You'd like it, Luke," Maddie said.
Luke returned her smile. "I'm sure I would, but is it safe there?"
"I guess that depends on how determined your father is to find you," Al said.
Luke's face dropped. "He'll never stop."
"He loves you," Bella said. "If my kids were abducted, nothing would stop me from going after them." She flinched at these words a little. She had, after all, abandoned her son to the care of the TLX military with only Nathan to watch over him.
"It's not love," Luke responded. "Well, I guess he does love me in his own way, but I've barely seen anything of him. He was in the military until last year—Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, places like that. No, it's his pride that'll keep him going. The official story will be that I was abducted, but he knows I wasn't happy with what he was doing or what he had planned for me. Though, to be honest, I almost went along with it when I met Maddie."
He glanced at Maddie and the two exchanged a smile that banished any lingering questions Bella had about how they felt about each other. Another complication.
"So, you don't think he'll give up?"
Luke shook his head.
"Then we have to get away—Crystal Beach is too close to TLX territory. He's bound to look there eventually."
"The question is, where do we head?"
"Now, what do we have here?" A drawling voice said.
Bella spun round, almost falling out of her chair, to see two men who'd emerged from behind the RV and were now standing, their shotguns locked and loaded.
"Stay still, cowboy," the first man said, swinging his weapon towards Luke as the boy went to get up. He was a well-built man wearing black denim pants and leather boots. He touched his wide brimmed hat in mocking salute. "Howdy folks. We was just camped over on the other side of the lake and guess what we smelled? I said to Tux, here, 'Is that bacon, I can smell?' and sure enough, here we are."
The other man, a short, scruffy African-American with a baseball cap on his bald head, smiled and nodded. "I didn't believe it. Ain't had bacon in years. They don't serve it in Walls. I said to Clint, 'We must be dreamin'.' But we weren't."
"Now, where is it?" the first man, Clint, said.
Al shrugged. "We ate it all, fellas. Now, why don't you put the guns down and I'll see what I can fix for you?"
"I don't think so, old man. I reckon we'll take a look for ourselves. We just about run out of provisions and it looks as though you'll be savin' us a trip into town."
Bella watched as the first man climbed the steps. Tux watched them, listening to the sounds of rummaging from inside. "Nice!" Clint could be heard calling. His head appeared in the doorway. "Know what? I reckon this is a nicer outfit than ours, and it ain't had no dead in it neither. Only question is, what do we do with these kind folks?"
Al tensed as Tux, who'd moved around to the door as Clint was speaking, came within arm's reach. Bella watched as he and Luke exchanged meaningful glances. Then, with a speed she could hardly have imagined him capable of, he reached up and grabbed Tux's weapon. At the same moment, Luke leaped at Clint, who was now on the bottom step, pushing him sideways. "Run!" Al called, and Bella grabbed Maddie's arm and flew blindly into the undergrowth.
A shot rang out and she almost turned, but that would take her daughter back into danger, so she ran into the trees, cursing the fact that winter had stripped the forest of most of its cover.
"Come back here!" It was Clint's voice behind them.
Splinters exploded out of the trunk of a tree, and Bella slapped her hand to her face only to bring it away bloody.
"Mom! Are you alright?"
Bella stumbled, and then pulled on Maddie's hand. "Come on, we have to get away."
"I'm comin' for you!" The crooning words echoed through the forest as Bella and Maddie ran on, the only other sounds being the squelching of their feet on rotting leaves.
"Oh no!" Maddie cried, pointing ahead.
A hundred yards ahead, a creek cut across their path. Bella darted to the left, not waiting until they'd reached the bank, then looked behind to check whether they'd left any tracks. They had, so she stepped back and rustled the leaves, hoping that their hunter wouldn't spot the disturbance.
They cut diagonally across, aiming for the creek now so that they'd have something to navigate by. Suddenly, they burst into a clearing and almost fell over a tent that was half buried by fallen leaves. In the distance, Bella could hear Clint stomping through the forest - he'd guessed right and was on their trail.
She ran around to the front of the tent and recoiled, almost stepping back into the creek in her horror. A body lay half in, half out of the tent's opening. It looked as though something had dragged it that far before feasting on it. The upper torso was almost entirely missing, the head nothing more than a hunk of blackened bone on the end of the exposed spine. The lower part had been ripped and what remained had decomposed, so that what had once been a living human being now looked like a pickled prune in tatters. And it stank. A sickly, rich miasma that brought bile into Bella's throat. But it was also the only chance they had.
"Get in!" she hissed, reaching down to widen the opening a little.
"I'm not going in there!" Maddie said, biting back the vomit.
Bella responded by climbing in herself and pulling on Maddie's arm. After resisting for a moment, she appeared inside the tent and moved to the furthest point from the feet of the dead man, holding her nose. Bella pulled the zip down as gently as possible, sealing them in.
As she moved back, she accidentally knocked one of the corpse's legs and it slid sideways to reveal a wriggling, noisome mass of maggots. She put her hand over her mouth and barely choked back the rising nausea as she sat alongside her trembling daughter.
Some of the leaf covering had fallen away, so a dim blue light illuminated the inside of the tent and its grisly montage. They sat together, straining for any sign of Clint.
There it was. A tramp, tramp of boots on the forest floor. They ceased as Clint emerged into the clearing, then started again as he approached the tent.
"Goddam!" he called out. "There must be some well-fed gators in these parts."
Bella and Maddie held their breath. Clint's shadow fell on the tent and they could see his head looking back and forth as if he was deciding which direction they'd gone in. After seconds that seemed like hours, the shadow moved, and they heard his footsteps stamping around the tent towards the trail that led along the bank of the creek. Silence again.
Then, without warning, a knife ripped through the fabric and sliced down. "Gotcha!" Clint cried in triumph.
Like a striking snake, Bella grabbed Clint's arm, wrenched it sideways and sunk her teeth in. With a scream, the weight shifted, and the arm was pulled away. Bella sprang through the rent in the fabric and landed on Clint as he lay on the ground holding his bleeding arm.
Hurling curses at her, he twisted to where his shotgun lay in the grass and brought it around like a club, slamming into Bella's side before he pointed it at her.
"Take this, bitc—"
"Mom!"
Maddie burst through the tear behind Bella, and, in one desperate movement, plunged Clint's knife into his leg. The shotgun jerked upwards and, with a bang that reverberated through the forest, the shot went wide. The gun jumped out of his hands and onto the forest floor.
Clint rolled over and over, trying to get away from the women, and gripped his leg to stem the flow of blood. It was no good. By sheer chance, Maddie had cut into his femoral artery. Even if they'd wanted to, there was little chance of saving him.
"Go! Wait for me where we left the path," Bella said as she stooped to pick up the discarded gun.
Maddie shook her head, looking down at the stricken man. "I killed him!"
"Go, I said! Do as you're told, for once!" Bella yelled, pushing her daughter away.
Finally, Maddie stumbled off along the path and Bella turned to Clint, whose skin was now deathly pale.
"Ain't ya gonna do nothin' to help me?" he whispered.
Bella pumped a shell into the chamber, as Al had shown her, and pointed the gun down at him. "No," she said as he put his hands up to cover his face. "You're going to die, and I'm sorry that has to happen. There are few of us left, but the world will be a better place without you in it. But I don't want my daughter thinking she's a murderer."
Bella squeezed the trigger, stepping back as the recoil took her by surprise. The shot had excavated a small crater next to Clint's head, and he looked up at her, tears in his eyes.
"Trouble is, neither am I," Bella said. "Look out for the gators."
She left him there and ran to join Maddie.
They headed back along the track, keeping low once they'd gotten close to where the RV was parked.
"Thank God," Bella whispered. Luke and Al were on the ground beside the RV, hands tied behind their backs. Luke's face was covered in bruises and Al had a bloody streak running down his face, but they were moving, wriggling against their bonds. "At least they're alive."
The figure of Tux appeared in the doorway. He walked down the steps, looked at his two prisoners, then scanned the forest. Tux, it seemed, was reluctant to take any action without Clint's say so.
"Can you hit him from this distance?" Maddie said as they hid behind a fallen tree.
"Are you kidding me?" Bella said. "It must be a hundred yards. I can’t risk it."
Maddie gestured at the RV. "You might not have a choice."
Tux had stopped scanning the forest and was turning his attention on his prisoners. He swung his boot and Al cried out. As the thug moved beyond her father, Bella saw the blood spread and Al's head dropped as if he'd been kicked unconscious.
"I'll have to try," she said. "You stay hidden—if I miss, it'll turn into a firefight."
She leaned the shotgun on the trunk and looked along the barrel. She probably only had a couple of rounds left, and her hand shook as she took aim. Breathing deeply, she tried to relax herself. Tux had given Luke a kick for good measure and was coming back out from the canopy to look for his buddy. It was now or never.
Bella held her breath. She had to do it. This man was going to kill her father. But to do it in cold blood? She'd shot someone before, back at the gas station on the first night, but then it had been to protect her children from imminent danger. What was different this time? Nothing. She had to do it.
She put her finger on the trigger.
A report ripped through the trees and Tux fell sideways in a shower of blood.
"You did it, Mom!" Maddie said, her voice a mixture of horror and relief.
Bella looked up. "No, I didn't," she said. "He did."
Maddie followed her pointing arm. "Skulls!"
"And he's hurt," Bella said.
Chapter 6
It was like arguing with a particularly stubborn teenager. Solly kept his eyes on Paulie's tail lights but his mind was on Alison. Today was the second day of their journey to Arbroath and Solly was beginning to wonder if he truly would be able to get back to his own personal priorities once they'd arrived there.
The previous night had been spent in the basement of a large house where he'd felt confident he could remove Alison from her protective sheath and talk openly. It was easy, so easy, to forget that she was anything other than a real person. To him, it felt more like the long arguments he'd had with Maddie as she grew up. Jake had been a little more easygoing, or perhaps Solly found him simpler to understand because he'd once been a teenage boy himself. Dealing with a girl had been tough enough. Dealing with an artificial intelligence with the personality and maturity of an adolescent female was proving entirely beyond him. Something had definitely changed when Paulie had inserted the key. Some sort of upgrade that had the effect of maturing Alison from young child to adolescent while, at the same time, inserting terabytes of data into her—almost as if she'd had, in milliseconds, ten years of education. She was the same basic “personality” when he talked to her, but her depth of knowledge and understanding had increased so that there was very little she needed to ask him anymore.
But she would not let him leave her. That was what they kept coming back to. She couldn't physically stop him, of course, and the sort of threats a teenager might use—which, in Maddie's case revolved around leaving home and going to live with people who understood her—cut no ice. Solly wanted nothing more than to get rid of the burden and then head back east. He felt the pull of the farmhouse and especially Janice. Beyond that, he knew that he needed to go south and find out, once and for all, what had happened to his family. Images of the home they'd shared flashed into his mind. He wondered if Bella, Jake, and Maddie were still there, waiting for him to find and bury them.
He shook his head and focused on the road ahead.
"You okay, Sol?" Ross said. He was sitting in the front while Wally snoozed on the back seat.
"Yeah. I'm just not sure how this is all going to work out."
"Is it Alison?"
Solly glanced across at the boy. "Yep. She says I can't leave her. I'm her father, apparently."
"But she's only a computer. I mean, you wouldn't worry about leaving an Alexa behind, would you?"
"Despite what Amazon might have you believe," Solly said. "Alexa won't save the world. Alison might."
Ross shrugged. "I still don't see how. She's just a talking tube."
"She? Not it?"
"Well, yeah…" Ross said, his voice trailing off.
"Exactly. Spend five minutes talking to Alison and you forget she's not flesh and blood. That's a hard connection to break. And as for how she's going to prevent this supposed second wave, I haven't got a clue. But she is next generation tech, Ross, so she's going to be capable of things we can't imagine. I worked with AI during my app development days, did I tell you?"
Ross smiled. "Once or twice."
"Well, that stuff was stone-age tech compared to Alison. Whoever created her was a bona fide genius."
"Doesn't sound as though you want to leave her behind. I reckon you've gotten attached, Sol."
Solly glanced again at the boy and saw the slight smile. "Very funny. Yes, I would find it difficult to let her go, but I need to get back to the farmhouse."
"I miss that place," Ross said, wistfully.
"But if by leaving her behind I compromise her in some way, so she doesn't work properly or refuses to work, then maybe I've condemned everyone, including our family."
"Maybe we'll meet the dude who created her when we get to Arbroath? Maybe he'll take over."
Solly nodded. "That's what I'm hoping. We need to go home, son."
He was half asleep when Paulie slammed her brakes on, flooding the gloom with bright red light. Cursing, he watched her get out and look along the road.
"What is it?" he said, joining her.
"Smoke," she responded, pointing ahead. "Good grief, I think it's coming from Arbroath."
Solly could see a thick, black column rising into the air ahead of them. It was late in the day, but there was no mistaking it against the darkening sky.
"We need to move," Paulie said. "If you can't keep up, follow the signs and meet me there. I can't wait for you."
With that, she jumped back in her car and was pulling away before Solly made it back into his seat.
"What's goin' on?" Wally said, wide awake now, hi
s rifle resting on his lap.
Wally and Ross lurched back as Solly jabbed his foot on the gas and tried to keep up with Paulie. He didn't want to get separated having finally found someone to share the responsibility of Alison with and he felt that whatever they might encounter in Arbroath, he'd rather do it with Paulie by his side.
It took ten minutes to reach the approach road to the town and there was now no doubt where the smoke was coming from. Paulie had parked up and turned to watch as Solly and the others joined her.
"I've been away for less than a week. What have they done?"
"We'd better go and find out," Solly said, checking his weapon before slipping it back into his inner pocket. "Why not drive in?"
Paulie shook her head. "Because I don't know who's in charge. It might have been a hit and run, but it might just as well have been a takeover. We've been threatened a couple of times. And Solly, my daughter's in there."
"Let's go," Solly said, and the four of them marched along the approach road to the rear barricade.
They were within a few hundred yards of the entrance, about where the militia vehicles had parked that day she'd watched them from above, when a voice called from one side.
"Sheriff!"
All four of them went for their weapons. The light had almost entirely gone now and they didn't dare use flashlights so close to the town, so they were reduced to squinting into the darkness, pointing their guns vaguely in the direction the sound had come from.
"Who is it?"
"Nicky. Nicky Friedman."
Paulie turned to the others. "It's okay, she's a deputy."
A shape emerged from the gloom by the side of the road.
"Thank God you're here, Sheriff," Friedman said, before collapsing into Paulie's arms. "It happened yesterday. I've been hiding out here. I just didn't know what to do. He's dead, Paulie. Jon. He held them off while a few of us got away."
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