Scott sat impassively, waiting for Solly to speak, but Paulie had a restlessness about her that suggested she wanted desperately to be somewhere else. Khaled's eyes darted around the room giving the impression of a hunted animal looking for an opportunity to make a break for it.
"This is Bobby Richards. He is responsible for the antivirals and other drugs we have stockpiled. He's taken charge of the Fordham community." Before they'd escaped in one of the Jeeps their attackers had used, Bobby had insisted they go back into the basement of the medical center and spend as long as they dared filling the car with the most useful medicines.
"Aye, well, I do not want to be in charge, but no one else was willin' so I do it as a favor to my friend Solly so he can come to his lady," Bobby said, winking at Janice, who blushed.
"Why are we here, Solly?" Scott said, after nodding a greeting to Bobby. "I think we've all had a long and sad day."
Solly focused on Scott Lee, who looked as though he hadn't slept well for a long time. "Let me ask you, Scott. What are you doing here?"
"What's that supposed to mean? You called the meeting!"
Solly shook his head. "No, I mean what are you doing here, at the farm?"
"You said I'd be welcome."
"And so you are. But that doesn't explain why you're here."
Scott Lee sighed. "I guess I'm just happy to be at peace for a while."
"But you're not at peace, are you?" Janice said, surprising Solly. "You can't sleep, you told me yourself."
Like a deflating tire, Scott Lee seemed to shrink before their eyes.
"I feel as though this is the calm before the storm. I know it can't last long and I'm afraid of what will happen when it ends." In his clipped English accent, it sounded almost poetic.
"Storm clouds are gathering," Solly mumbled.
A mood settled on them that was as dark as the gathering night outside. "Look, we can sit here in this oasis, and wait for what we know must come at some point, hoping against hope that we're wrong, despite everything we've seen and learned. Or…"
Scott looked up. "Or what?"
"Or we fight back," Solly said, fueled by the anger swelling within him.
Scott shook his head, dropping his gaze to the floor. "We've got no chance. They're too strong for us."
"With or without hope, I'm going to fight back," Solly said. "I've lost too many. I sure as hell am not going to let them take this place—these people—away from me without paying the price. Have you forgotten who is living in that farmhouse?" Solly stood up and began pacing back and forth, gesticulating at the passive figure of Scott Lee. "We have children to think of. We have to fight for them if not for ourselves. Now, are you going to help or will you spend your remaining days waiting for the end to come?"
Now it was Scott's turn to become animated as he thrust a finger in Solly's direction. "Of course I know about the children, but what can we do? They've secured New York and Seattle, and they've gotten their tentacles into the new government in DC. They're too strong. It's bows and arrows against the lightning."
"I get the reference," Solly said, coming to a halt face to face with Scott Lee. "War of the Worlds. But remind me, who ended up winning?"
Scott Lee shrugged. "Neither side won. Humanity was on its knees, but the Martians were defeated by the planet itself—microbes, disease."
"And don't you think, as our resident genius, that we could take inspiration from that? The strongest can be defeated by the smallest. We just have to find their weakness. The Martians had a flawed immune system…"
Lee shook his head. "The Lee Corporation has no such weakness."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I helped design their systems."
"You don't know what you're up against," Khaled said, his voice barely audible. "They are building an army of autonomous drones that will hunt down every living human being. I've seen them. They are quite unbeatable. I am sorry."
Solly slumped back onto a bale. "I see you two have been talking while I was away. No wonder you can't sleep."
"We can't run from reality, Solly," Scott said. "These drones, these Reapers are a perversion of a project I was working on to deliver medical aid to remote regions. And it gets worse…"
Sighing Solly said, "Oh, do tell me."
"The Lee Corporation's plan is for the Reapers to implant a new BonesWare device into all humans—whether they have an implant already or not. They want to use these to control people, to have a compliant army of slave workers to exploit a world in which they are the only commercial superpower."
Janice gasped. "My God, that's horrific."
"Indeed. The Reapers are controlled by the Annabel Lee entities installed in the Lee Corp buildings in Seattle and New York. They are quite unbeatable."
Khaled nodded. "He is right. I have seen them."
"But what the Lee Corporation doesn't know," Scott said, "is that Annabel will betray them. She doesn't want mastery over the humans of the world. She wants their extinction. She will allow the Reapers to tag every human being on the planet, and then she will trigger the implants and terminate everyone, including all Lee Corp employees."
Solly rubbed his eyes. This had gotten completely out of hand. "How can you be so sure that this is her plan?"
"Firstly, because I knew her better than anyone," Lee said. "And also because it's the best explanation for what happened on the Long Night. The Lee Corp plan was to hijack BonesWare to gain control over every wearer, but Annabel triggered mass death."
"And they didn't work out what had happened?"
Scott shook his head. "No, she was very clever. She left a backdoor in the code, but there's no one left now with the expertise to reverse engineer it and work out that it was her. Except for Khaled and I, that is, and maybe one other man who is now back in North Korea."
"North Korea?" Solly gasped.
"Oh yes, Solly. You see, this is even bigger than you might have imagined. I suspected they and the Chinese were involved, and Khaled has confirmed it. This was a global plot. The Chinese and the North Koreans, through the Lee Corporation, want to control this world and to finally bring an end to the hegemony of the West. But they are fools, because they have placed their trust in Annabel Lee, and she will betray us all. They want domination; they're going to get extermination."
"Bows and arrows against the lightning," Khaled said as silence fell.
As the group in the barn sat with their heads down, contemplating the second apocalypse, the sounds of children playing floated through the windless night from the farmhouse. Solly felt as though the ground was opening between his feet as he gazed at the straw-strewn floor, as if it would pull him down to the fires below. And still his rage smoldered.
He felt Bobby stir beside him. "Maybe I'm not understandin' everything I been hearing. I been spending my time since this trouble all started keepin' me and my people safe, though that didn't work out so well in the end. But you seen things I couldna' imagine. I know my friend Solly is a straight-up guy and if he says this is gonna happen, then I believe it and it chills me to the bone."
Solly looked across to the slim black man as Bobby carefully formulated what he said next.
"But I have a question. Maybe I didn't hear that fella quite right, but it seemed to I that he said this Lee Corporation it is building its drone army."
Solly shrugged. "That's right, Bobby. What's your point?"
"Well, he said they is building. Not they has built. Does they have an army or not?"
Solly jerked upright and looked across at Khaled. "Did you say that?" Frankly, he'd been so busy looking at the rain cloud, he might easily have missed the silver lining.
Khaled looked like a rabbit caught in a car's headlights. "What does it matter whether they have them now or in weeks or months?"
"How many have you actually seen?" Scott said, suddenly animated again.
Khaled shrugged. "In the flesh? Only one: the prototype. But they told me the army would be ready in weeks
. Why does this matter?"
"Because it gives us a chance to stop them before the Reapers are released," Solly said.
"What chance?" Khaled said, flushing with what looked like a mix of anger and fear. "What possible chance have you got to stop them? You don't even know where they're being built!"
"No," Solly said, the threat in his voice unmistakable, "but I think you do. Now I know why they released you to come find us."
Khaled shook his head. "They didn't release me, I escaped!"
"Perhaps you genuinely think so, but I reckon they showed you the Reaper and then sent you to find us. You were sent to the last place Alison was known to be. Your job was to find her and to prevent anyone you met taking action against the Lee Corporation by sowing your seeds of doom."
Khaled was shaking as Scott Lee turned to him. "It's true, isn't it? You're an instrument of the Corporation."
"No, I am not. I escaped, I promise you!"
Scott grabbed Khaled's arms and swung him round so they were face to face. "Then help us. Tell me where they're building the drones."
Chapter 7
A woman was lying on the bed, her arm bound in bloodstained white cloth. The medic whispered in Bella's ear. The woman would live, though the arm would be deformed since they lacked the means to fix it properly. Six months ago, it would have been routine, but in a world with limited electricity, severely rationed medical supplies, and even fewer surgeons, saving lives was about the most they could aim for.
The old commercial building on the outskirts of Elizabeth made for a poor hospital, but it had a working generator and electrical system and small offices that served as hospital rooms.
The woman on the bed moaned quietly and opened her eyes. Bella could see her expression tighten as the blessed analgesia of sleep gave way to pain. After a few seconds, the woman became aware that she wasn't alone and she turned her head to look at Bella, who stood at the foot of her bed, and the two armed guards flanking her. She put two and two together and spat, "You murderous bitch! How do you sleep at night?"
Bella flinched from the onslaught. The only crumb of comfort in this nightmare was that such attacks still affected her, even having endured so many. She knew that when she became capable of brushing them off she would truly have lost herself.
"I'm sorry," Bella said. The truth was that she didn't sleep at night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw images of bullet-ridden bodies lying in the streets. It didn't help much that some of the bodies were those of Elizabeth citizens attacked by the insurgents. It didn't help that she'd had no choice but to instruct her police and militia to use deadly force. It didn't help that the very existence of Elizabeth had been at stake that night. None of that assuaged the guilt or gave her room to excuse herself. Men and women had died at her command. Her command. A Texan housewife who, until a few months ago, had worked as an accountant's assistant and whose definition of a bad day in the office was being trapped in an elevator with a senior partner. And now they called her a murderer.
She felt a gentle nudge in the ribs and a voice whispered in her ear. "Come on, Bella. Let's move along."
Bella emerged from deep memory to look into the face of Skulls. He'd insisted on being one of her guard detail, even though it entailed donning a uniform. He claimed it made him look like a pig in a bow tie, but she liked it. She liked him, and she couldn't have faced this level of hatred without him by her side.
They'd spent many hours in nighttime conversation since the incursion. When she'd told him how much she needed his strength, he'd pulled her close. "You give me purpose," he'd said with gentle warmth. "I'd be lost without you."
She met with the medical team outside the makeshift hospital. Overall, thirteen people had died on the night or as a result of it. Three were citizens of Elizabeth who either resisted or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The others - seven men and three women - had been among the fifty or so invaders who'd snuck into town. The remainder had been captured in pretty short order. Objectively, given the danger to Elizabeth, the killing of ten aggressors might be considered proportionate, and the sheriff certainly thought his people had done an exemplary job. But every one of those deaths weighed on Bella's soul like the chains of Jacob Marley. And the problem of what to do with the people who remained outside the town had not been solved.
"The situation in the camp is becoming critical. If we don't do something quickly, we'll face, at best, a humanitarian disaster and, at worst, another assault on the city."
Walter Schmidt leaned back in his chair and dropped the sheet of paper he'd been reading from onto the table.
Schmidt was a master of stating the obvious. A pompous bureaucrat to whom the phrase humanitarian disaster meant nothing more than an administrative challenge, Schmidt was, nevertheless, an adept organizer and no one else had the experience or inclination to help Bella run the city.
He sat at the long rectangular table with the sheriff, security chief, Skulls and Al. Bella took the position at the head, still feeling entirely out of place, though she thought she was finally getting the measure of her executive team. The sheriff was a reliable plodder and Schmidt was a calculating machine. The only one she felt she could rely upon, aside from Skulls and Al, was Charlston, the chief of security.
"We've been over this a dozen times," Bella said. "They can't come into Elizabeth; we just don't have the room or the means to feed them."
"We're feeding them at the moment," Skulls said, "and Al's got an idea that might solve the housing crisis."
Bella sighed inwardly and turned to her father. Hearing his crackpot ideas in private was bad enough, but it would be sheer murder in front of an audience. "Yes, Pop?"
"Now don't you go rolling your eyes, Liebchen," he said, wagging his finger. "I've been chatting to Rufus and Martha at the old folks home."
"You told me I couldn't call it that!" Bella said, unable to stop herself.
Al winked at her. "It's okay for us old folks to call it that. We're doing it ironically. Anyway, Rufus and Martha were bellyaching about how they were goin' to get enough houses cleared on the east side for them to be able to move in, and it occurred to me that we've got a ready-made workforce camped outside our barricades. If they work together, they can clear East Elizabeth for both groups. Everyone's a winner."
"And how do we feed this new population?" Schmidt said.
"Well, Mr. Schmidt, I guess we'd have to send our raiding parties a bit further afield. There's plenty of young men and women among the newcomers who'd be happy to help, I reckon."
"Rufus and Martha are okay with this, are they? They're still going to have to work hard to clear those houses. It's going to take some time."
Al shrugged. "It was Martha's idea, to be honest—"
There was a knock at the door.
Just as they were making progress. "What is it?" Bella called out, exasperated.
The head of a guard Bella only knew as Dave appeared in the gap. "Sorry to disturb you, Madam Mayor, but there's a man here who insists on seeing you. He's from the camp."
"I said I wasn't to be disturbed," Bella snapped. "I'll be visiting the camp tomorrow, he can wait until then."
"But he says he knows you, Mayor —"
A big arm appeared around the shoulder of the guard and he fell back with a cry.
In the doorway stood a thickset man of military bearing, his left arm was missing from the elbow down and his nose had been sliced off. She knew that if she'd seen this monster before she'd remember him, but she certainly hadn't. Her first thought was that it was the convict she'd left to the 'gators, but, even with two holes where his nose had been, it was obviously not him.
"Don't recognize me?" the man said, his voice full of bitterness. "I knew it was you as soon as I heard the name of this town's mayor. How many Bella Masters can there be, after all?"
"Who are you?"
He shook his head in disbelief. "Maybe that boy thought you were being kind by tying us up and le
aving us in the basement, but his father doesn't forgive easily. He took my nose and my arm. He tortured me until I couldn't bear it no more. Then he gave us both a revolver with one round in and had us play Russian Roulette with each other."
"You were one of Luke's guards!" Bella said, finally.
"I was, and that boy needs to see what the consequences of his actions were. Then he needs to come home."
The camp had been set up on the road into Elizabeth. Ex-mayor Kennedy had set up a warehouse that had been filled with everything useful that had been stripped from the houses as they were cleared of the dead. So there was a ready supply of family tents, furniture, and equipment to set up a temporary holding area while Bella and the people of the town decided what to do about them.
There was no question of Bob, Luke's former guard, being given access to the boy. Luke hadn't asked to be held under what amounted to house arrest so he could be forced into an arranged marriage. Bob hadn't chosen to be assigned as his guard either, but two wrongs did not make a right. The real villain was President Murphy, and Bella had no intention of allowing Luke to hand himself over to his father's questionable mercy. And where Luke went, Maddie would follow.
She'd ordered Bob to be uncuffed as she accompanied him back to the camp. In truth, the man wasn't as angry as he had the right to be. He'd been discovered bound in the basement with his colleague. They'd then been tortured and mutilated and this only ended when Bob had killed the other guard, fearing he might die at any moment.
Finally, he'd been taken to the east of the state and dumped on the road, half naked. His banishment would only end if he returned with Luke, and so he'd trudged his way north and east until he'd met with the column that had ended up outside Elizabeth. He'd heard the name of the mayor and had immediately snuck into the town to confront her.
Now, though, as they got out of the car with Skulls and another guard, his excitement had subsided. It was as if he'd focused so much on finding Luke that he hadn't considered whether it was fair to the boy to bring him home, even if he could. There was no doubt that Murphy would kill his son, and very publicly. Bob, it seemed, possessed something his president did not. He had a conscience.
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