Dead Reckoning (911 Book 3)

by Grace Hamilton

Parker blinked, his gut tumbling between fear that he was about to be made into a junkie again and happiness that he was about to be made into a junkie again—so he could forget Sara was dead.

  Involuntarily, Parker pulled down his cuffs to cover his forearms as Calhoun came in.

  “It’s okay,” she said, putting her medical kit on the bed and snapping open its clasps. “I’m here to dress your wounds. The only needles I’ll be giving you will be if you need anesthetizing before being stitched.”

  Parker said nothing, and Calhoun approached. He felt surprise, the first emotion to cut through his shock and grief, that another officer didn’t follow her in to cuff him while she worked. He tried to hold onto it as a sort of lifeline. Clearly, they didn’t think he posed much of a threat with the only exit from the cell blocked by a goon holding an M500.

  Calhoun worked silently, swabbing Parker’s wounds with saline, disinfecting them and covering those that needed it with gauze and tape. The wound that Parker had thought was beginning to become infected was closed with Steri-Strips, and she shielded his eye with one blue-gloved hand while she sprayed plastic skin onto it with the other. To make triple-sure the wound was protected, she covered it with a wound pad. But the first wound pad she tried to put on slid off and fell into Parker’s lap. Parker reached down to hand it back to her, out of instinct, but he felt Calhoun’s hands tense against his shoulder and he caught an almost imperceptible shake of her head as his fingers touched the fallen pad.

  Confused, but noticing that Calhoun’s body was blocking the view of the corrections officer with the M500, he left the fallen pad where it was and covered it with the palm of his hand.

  Calhoun finished and removed her latex gloves, dropping them into a yellow clinical waste bag with her swabs, used tray of plastic forceps, and cotton wool balls. She nodded to Parker just as imperceptibly as before and headed back through the door. “I’ll check in on your wounds in 48 hours, Parker. Leave the pads on, okay?”

  “Copy that,” Parker said as the cell door closed.

  He waited a good five minutes before examining the wound pad under his hand, and when he did so, he made sure he was lying flat on his bunk with his back to the door. The pad itself looked normal enough. Three inches square with a shiny side made from a permeable type of plastic that meant it wouldn’t stick to the scabbiest of wounds, and a non-shiny side that felt like the velvet nap on a pool table. Except this pad’s shine was different—two layers of surgical tape had been placed across its shiny side. Parker worked his thumbnail under one corner of the tape and inched it back across the surface of the pad. There was a folded square of paper beneath.

  Parker teased it out with his nail and looked at it in the cupped palm of his hand. Making sure the hatch in the cell door was closed, he unfolded the paper.

  In small, neat handwriting, a message read: “Not all is lost. It’s become clear Spencer is insane. Random executions have begun. We need your help to remove him from the game.”

  12

  Considering the exhaustion felt in the wake of the Seelyville battle and its resolution, Margret had most of the substation cell move back to Billtown for rest and recuperation. The work on the firetruck was to be maintained by a skeleton crew of welders, guards, and scouts who would work through until the conversion work was done. The F-250 was being driven on to Brazil, where a Ford service center would be raided for parts so the windshield and windows could be replaced.

  The evening was quiet, the mood subdued around the cell base. People sat at tables eating in near silence, keeping their own counsel. The fighters knew they’d won a satisfying battle against the FEMA troops in Seelyville, but it had only served to bring into sharper relief the enormity of the task ahead.

  Wiping out Lieutenant Solon’s patrol might yet prove to be a mistake.

  No doubt, they would already have been missed, and perhaps more patrols would be sent in their direction, maybe even coming from Indianapolis in a closing pincer. Suddenly, Forest Glade and Billtown didn’t feel so safe.

  Murmurs at the dinner table came from some who thought a tactical withdrawal out of the line of fire should take precedence over the planned attack on the federal prison in Terre Haute. In response, Ava saw Sara’s lips tighten and her fists clench in lieu of arguing.

  Ava knew that Sara wouldn’t want to leave their fellow citizens locked up, terrorized, and tortured by the Council and their quislings. Sara wouldn’t walk away from them just for her own safety, and that meant Ava wouldn’t, either. Plus, Ava still felt bad about circumventing Sara’s report on the defenses and patrols around the prison. Since Finn’s death, she had relied on Sara’s solid presence and sure focus to anchor her against the raging tides of her fight and flight responses. She had long ago admitted to herself that her growing admiration for Sara had turned into a strong affection in the time since Canada. Their clandestine journey back to Indiana to hook up with Margret’s ARM cell had only solidified those feelings. Sara’s determination to do something to help the people beneath the yoke of the Council’s oppression, and her fury at the injustices meted out, were also emotionally powerful hooks.

  As the talk at the table again turned to the idea of shifting the base, Sara threw down her napkin and stood up from the table too. Margret and Ava exchanged glances as Sara stalked out, Margret’s concern clear. Ava nodded, drained her glass, and followed Sara from the room.

  Outside, the night was chilly but not yet cold.

  The clouds were scarce, and the sky had filled with stars. One of the positives of the EMP Event, Ava thought, and perhaps the only one, was that now no light pollution from towns and cities could spoil the view of the heavens. The Milky Way—the backbone of the night, as people in southern Africa called it—was rising in all its majesty.

  Ava handed Sara a sweater she’d picked up on the way out. “Thought you might want this.”

  Sara looked at her arms poking naked from her vest top, seeing the goosebumps there as if from a distance. She took the sweater from Ava and put it on. Then she turned back to the stars.

  “Don’t blame them for thinking about their safety first. They lost Brian. Things could get a lot worse.”

  Sara’s jaw was set as if she’d chewed up all the words she had and all that remained were splinters of anger in her mouth.

  “If it helps, Sara, I agree with you. The prison should be our priority.”

  Sara turned from where she’d stood staring into the night. “I do get it, and you’re right—they are concerned for their families. If I still had a family, I’d be concerned for mine, too.”

  Sara had lost her mother, and probably her father, in far too short a time, and perhaps it had hardened her, Ava considered, or if not hardened, at least sharpened her determination not to let everything she’d lost be in vain. Ava wanted to hug her friend, tell her that she got it, that she understood, but there was a force field around Sara. A force field that was both keeping Ava away and holding Sara together. Ava felt instinctively that, if she hugged her, her friend might break. So, she tried something else.

  “Sara,” Ava said. Her voice was quiet. “Let me tell you what got me thinking you were right. It was this epiphany I had in Canada, but by the time I thought to talk to you about it… it didn’t seem to make sense to mention it.”

  Sara glanced sideways at her, her eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, remember the rec room?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I figured out that if I ate late, right before they closed the cafeteria line after dinner, I could get almost an entire hour of time on that game system they had. The one you told me I was wasting time on—remember?”

  Sara huffed out a breath, but Ava grabbed her arm before she could stalk away. Turning to her, Sara glared. “You’re talking to me about video games?”

  “Hear me out,” Ava replied. She loosened her hand on Sara’s arm, squeezing once before she let go. “Please.”

  Sara shook her head, but n
odded. “Go ahead.”

  “Anyway, they had plenty of combat games and sports games, but those have never been my thing. I don’t even know why I wanted to play; it’s not like I’m some huge gamer, or was before everything happened. But I needed to get away somehow; while I was playing, I wasn’t remembering so much. I needed that after what happened to Finn. That make sense?”

  Sara nodded again. “Sure, yeah, I figured it was an escape,” she allowed, taking a resigned seat on the porch step, Ava joining her a moment later.

  Ava wondered if Sara had the same image of Finn in her head as she did; it had taken months, but the pictures in her head—from Finn bleeding out and breathing her last breath—had at least reverted back to better memories. Her smile. Her laugh. Her brightness.

  “Well, I started playing this wizards-and-warriors-type fantasy game. Dragons, spells, chainmail bikinis for the barbarian women, the whole nine nerd yards. It felt silly, but in a good way, you know? I could figure out the problems of how to win in the game, and after a while I got a little obsessed. You saw that. It took me to this huge make-believe world and I could wander around chopping at things with my sword or having my magic unicorn burn them up when it breathed fire.”

  “You had a fire-breathing unicorn?” Sara asked, spitting out a laugh. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  Ava grinned. “Oh yeah, it was pretty cool. See, I started on this quest to turn my regular horse into a unicorn; then, once I did that, I could do another quest to either get Pegasus wings or dragon breath. I figured burning stuff was the way to go, and when I went after the necromancer, I—”

  “Ava,” Sara said gently, her eyes finally meeting her friend’s, for the first time since they’d come outside. “Focus.”

  Ava wondered for a moment if it had been a mistake to get into this, but it seemed to have brought Sara to the surface of her force field, so maybe it was worth persevering. Trying not to appear too self-conscious, Ava smiled, feeling her cheeks reddening a little. “I know it was stupid. But it was something I could get lost in for a while. If I got an ending I didn’t like, I could go back to a previous ‘save’ and get it right.”

  “I get it,” Sara told her. She squeezed her hand. “But what are you trying to say?”

  “I realize now, thinking of that game, of what we did, that you, me, your dad, Finn—we weren’t warriors.”

  Ava cut herself off from whatever she’d been about to add, biting her lip. Sara looked as if she’d been slapped.

  “Bullshit!” Sara said in a hot rush. “We fought like heroes; Finn was a warrior!”

  Ava took a deep breath and held up her hand in supplication. “Hear me out, Sara.”

  Still glaring, Sara bit off her words and gave a curt nod.

  “I don’t mean that, in real life, we weren’t brave, or that we didn’t fight hard. We did; I know we did. I mean in game terms,” Ava added.

  Sara met her eyes again, confusion bleeding out of them. “How so?”

  “Well, in the game, you could be all sorts of things, right? You could cast spells or pray to gods for some kind of divine power. You could be a knight or a barbarian, these massive, weapon-wielding tanks that went toe-to-toe with ogres or powerful witches and slugged it out… you see what I mean?”

  “And that’s not us?” Sara asked, sarcasm rippling in the comment.

  “We’re not wizards or warriors, Sara. Our primary characteristics aren’t magic powers or superhuman strength,” Ava explained.

  “Then what was our primary power?”

  “We’re assassins.”

  Sara looked at her. Her expression was nonplussed. “Like Lee Harvey Oswald? Like… murderers? That’s your grand revelation? That we’re villains?”

  Again, Ava shook her head. “No. Not assassins in the evil sense, assassins in game terms.”

  Sara shrugged, looking back out into the night. “I don’t understand.”

  “Assassins are stealth characters. If they attacked a knight or a magic user head-on, in their light armor with their knives, they’d get squashed or incinerated. But if they sneak around and attack from ambushes, they’re just as deadly as any creature or player in the game.”

  “Speed, surprise, aggression,” Sara said. Her voice was dull. “Exactly what Dad taught me.”

  “Right. That’s Parker all over. Focus and fight,” Ava agreed. “We weren’t marines storming a beach or whatever. We didn’t go head-to-head with FEMA units until today, and that’s just because we had no real time to plan. When we beat them before, it was because we caught them sleeping, by surprise, and attacked ruthlessly. There were times when we all should have died.” Ava was talking in a rush now, forcing this out before Sara could argue. “We ended up shooting it out with heavily armed patrols and we lived because they never saw us coming. That was the secret to us surviving.”

  “And when we were forced to fight head-to-head,” Sara said, “Finn died, and Brian died today. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “I’m saying that that’s what thinking about playing the game has made me realize,” Ava said. “Your dad showed us things, but he was never teaching us how to be soldiers. He was teaching us how to be guerillas.”

  “What’s your point, Ava?” Sara asked, her shoulders hunched in, guarded.

  “My point is that us leading a straight charge into a heavily defended prison compound—against a well-trained, well-armed enemy that expects us—isn’t the way we survived our journey to Canada. The resistance needs to know that the Council troops are ready for us, expecting us. We’re not going in with helicopters and tanks or fire-breathing unicorns, Sara. Parker would say our plan’s bullshit. That’s what I’m saying now. We have to find a way that achieves your goal, but at the same time keeps these people and their families safe.”

  Sara was silent, and Ava didn’t say anything else, watching her. Finally, Sara sighed, letting everything out in a pent-up breath.

  “You’re not wrong, Ava,” she said. “But I don’t know if it matters.” She reached out and lightly touched her arm. It wasn’t the hug Ava thought Sara needed, but it had come through her force field and it felt right. “Somehow, our surviving against the odds has made us heroes to these people. They’re looking to us, to my dad—if he’s still alive. Mace told me today he thought Dad had gone to ground and was whipping up an army. Can you believe that?”

  “Of your dad, Sara? Hell yes, I can. If he’s out there, I reckon that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Ava answered, grinning at the thought of it. It sounded right.

  Sara continued, “Yes, he would. But these people, they’re not fighting to simply get away from the Council; they’re fighting to defeat them, to build something. They’re not fighting only for survival—they’re fighting for freedom. I want to fight with them.”

  Ava blinked back a build-up of tears that had surfaced suddenly. She’d told Margret and the rest of the cell about the increased patrols and the executions to save lives, to get them to reconsider their plan of attack. But what Sara was saying was true enough; putting yourself in harm’s way was sometimes the only way to go. Her so-called revelation might mean something to her, and how she thought of what they were doing… but in the grand scheme of things, what did it change?

  “Part of me is screaming to leave, to get out and head back to the safety of the UN refugee camps in Canada,” Sara said, turning and putting two hands on Ava’s shoulders, near shaking her. “My hatred was focused on the Church for so long that even my run-ins with the Council seemed like a diversion sometimes, like background noise. My battle was personal, but now…” Sara fixed her eyes unblinkingly on Ava, the force field completely gone now—Sara was back in the present. “Now I’ve found myself enlisted in an army. An army that must win, must take the Council down. But this army wants to wait. Wants to go somewhere and regroup. And that must not happen. Not yet. And I’ve got to convince them of it.”

  Ava wanted to question why, but found herself nodding instead; somehow, she
felt the urgency in the moment also, for whatever reason. “And I have every faith that you will, no question,” she answered.

  Having said that, she pulled Sara into a tight hug. Ava had meant it. She’d meant it more than she’d ever meant anything in her life.

  Sara asked Margret the next day to convene a council of war in the clubhouse. Every local cell leader in the Billtown to Brazil area attended.

  The mood was somber, and Ava knew that Sara would have a fight on her hands in persuading the room that running and hiding wasn’t the best way to help their fellow countrymen.

  There’d been a general hubbub of conversation in the room when Margret called the meeting to order and asked Sara to open the discussion.

  Ava squeezed Sara’s hand as she stood, whispering, “Knock ’em dead, tiger.”

  Sara squeezed her hand back, turned to the room and began. “You all know me. I’m Jim Parker’s girl.”

  Nods of assent rippled around the room, and a couple of cell leaders clapped at the sound of Parker’s name. Mace’s assessment of Parker had been right, Ava thought. Evidenced yet again by the positivity in this room at the mention of his name.

  “And in the time I’ve been here, I’ve gotten to know many of you, not as well as I should, but well enough. You all want this Council and false government to fall. Correct?”

  More applause.

  Ava’s sight was caught by movement to the side of the room. Crow Michelson, in his late forties, built like a stack of bricks, and twice as rough as that around the edges, sat forward in his chair, pushing back a lick of graying hair that had strayed onto his forehead. He was a tough but cautious fighter who Ava respected, but she knew he was one of the prime movers in prioritizing the resistance’s flight out of Billtown.

  “That’s as it may be, Sara,” he said once eyes had been drawn to him, “but if we’re all dead, the Council and the government… well, they carry on, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”