Dead Reckoning (911 Book 3)

by Grace Hamilton

She sped through Seelyville, momentarily thinking of stopping to see if Mace and Jessica had clothes she could change into, but realized those clothes would probably have belonged to Mace’s dead wife. With that in mind, she thought better of asking.

  Ava reached the golf club and parked her stolen vehicle behind a building where it wouldn’t be easily seen. There had been a skeleton crew of defenders left at the club, with the majority of families living life as best they could in the nearby towns and settlements around Billtown. The lack of anyone challenging Ava was evidence of complacency, and perhaps hubris—no one had spent any time considering that the mission could fail. The two or three usually solid guys who should have been on sentry duty had wandered off to relax elsewhere.

  Ava had been able to drive onto the golf course and get into the clubhouse without anyone stopping her, and the ease of it made her blood cold. The resistance, if indeed there still was a resistance, one with the belly still to take on the regional authorities, would require a higher level of paranoia.

  Cozy resistance was over.

  Ava went inside the clubhouse, sat at the meeting table, and tried to conjure up the words that would convey how their world had shifted terrifyingly on its axis.

  Sara figured she’d made a good ten miles from the Wabash along the banks of Clear Creek. As she began to walk again, her chin buried in her chest against the worsening rain, she resolved to get to a road as soon as she could.

  Meanwhile, she’d look for shelter in any abandoned property she came across. She estimated the time was after four in the afternoon, which would give her a good four hours of light before darkness fell again, but as the wind whipped up at her back, the sense that she would need shelter long before nightfall sharpened her thinking.

  After another thirty minutes of slogging through the grass and brush, the rain started to fall in sheets. In no time at all, Sara was drenched, and no amount of army gear would have saved her from the onslaught. The wind had picked up, too, and Sara considered finding a tree to sit beneath, but even if she did, the rain was gusting in horizontal lines, splashing off the tree trunks and whipping at foliage. Wherever she sat now, there would be no respite. So, the only thing to do was to keep walking.

  The rain battered her back and whipped her hair, but Sara’s legs moved like clockwork. The only comfortable parts of her body were her feet in the standard issue army boots. The boots were tight, secure, warm, and proofed against the rain. What she wouldn’t have given now for a pack containing wet weather gear, rations, and a means to get a fire going. Another thing her father had gifted her with—the know-how to make do with the barest of supplies. But she didn’t even have those at the moment.

  She didn’t see the house until she was almost upon it.

  It was a one-story, ranch-style dwelling, probably built in the sixties. There was a curving dirt road leading from it into the wood, heading toward the nearest highway, she guessed.

  The windows looked secure, and on the porch were two rocking chairs being lashed by rain.

  Although the windows were unbroken, the house still had a dilapidated look about it—as if the owners hadn’t cared that much for it before the EMP hit. It had a homely but tired air. There were no ready signs of occupation, so Sara approached across the overgrown yard and climbed the three steps to the porch.

  Because of the driving rain, Sara knew that she wouldn’t be able to hear if there was anything going on inside the property, but she placed her ear against the door anyway and tried to listen.

  Nothing.

  Tearful, cold, hungry, exhausted… she could either take the risk to see if the house was unoccupied or move on into the worsening weather, hoping she might find a shelter before nightfall.

  Sara took a breath, steeled herself, and knocked on the door with three curt raps.

  Then, she waited. The porch roof served up no protection against the pelting rain, and from inside the house, there came no answer. Sara knocked again as her skin began shivering beneath the freezing moisture; she was soaked through. This time, she hit the door louder and harder, hurting her already bruised knuckles.

  Nothing, still.

  Lightning split the sky overhead and thunder boomed almost immediately, heralding the proximity of the storm.

  Sara decided she wasn’t going to wait any longer. She opened the unlocked door.

  The inside was dark; the windows had blinds drawn and only their edges showed any light. Beyond the front door, as the light from outside spilled into the room, Sara saw a large family room which didn’t show signs of abandonment. In fact, as her eyes grew accustomed to the grayness, what she had initially thought was an empty pair of boots suddenly moved toward her, revealing blue jean-clad legs. And a shotgun.

  A man was bringing both barrels up, cocking the gun. He was aiming the gun at Sara’s heart.

  Ava sat with the now-woken sentries and families of the people who had been killed in the raid.

  She knew they were in shock, but after that would come the inevitable anger—and she was preparing herself for it. She had been one of the greatest supporters of Sara and her mission to release the people of the prison. At some point, these families would turn on Ava. Not because she embodied the failed action, but because she had survived.

  Ava’s apologies had sounded thin and lame. The words that she’d used seemed, even to her, not to offer an ounce of comfort to the assembled groups. Two or three people had already stormed out of the clubhouse, gotten into their cars or onto their horses, and made for their homes.

  And, of course, all the while, Ava had been trying to hold down the grief in the room, to be a presence and anchor for these people. She was hurting deeply, too, but there was nothing to be done for it. Not for any of them. Ava didn’t even know if Sara and Crow had survived, or the extent of their injuries if they were still out there and breathing. She’d asked if anyone would come with her in the Blazer to look for any signs of them, but no one would even consider the idea.

  Carol Meeks had stood for all the people when she said, “If you want to go back there and get killed finding their bodies, you go. I won’t be going with you.”

  Carol had lost a husband and many friends, so Ava understood the sentiment and wished that she hadn’t asked. These people were broken, and there was little she could do to put them back together.

  Carol turned to the others. “Before Sara came up with her suicidal plan, we were going to move. We’re too exposed here. I know you’re all grieving—my heart has been destroyed—but we have kids, elderly, and sick here, and if we stay, the government is going to find us in a heartbeat. We need to get away from here now. Not as a group, but as individuals.”

  There was almost complete agreement in the room. Ava stayed silent; she didn’t feel she had the right to say anything. She wished she had Sara’s confidence and power of persuasion—she wished she could stand up like Sara would have and told these people not to give up.

  But… she wasn’t Sara. Only Sara was Sara; in that moment, thinking it to herself, Ava realized she missed her friend more than she could say. Her heart ached, and her belly turned at the thought of never seeing Sara again.

  Carol Meeks was using the shock of losing John, her husband, as a motivator, and she was getting through to the people around her. Watching, observing from the depths of her own form of shock and grief, Ava couldn’t help but marvel at the thin, thirty-year-old woman’s emotional aikido—using the weight of the grief against itself, to pivot it into a plan. The plan was that Carol and Kim Randle—a wiry, middle-aged black woman with homespun wisdom and an eye for detail—would set about dividing the supplies of food, fuel, weapons, and ammunition fairly among the remaining fighters. They would suggest routes out of Billtown for everyone, with a view to the whole cell being scattered to the four winds within the next twenty-four hours.

  Everything that Margret and her deputies had fought to create would be gone by dawn.

  Ava closed her eyes to the inevitability of the en
d. In this region of the U.S., at least, the Council had won.

  20

  “Please don’t shoot. I’m not looking for trouble.”

  There was nothing else Sara could do but ask, and she had nowhere else to go if she did turn around, so she raised her hands.

  “Perhaps coming into my house uninvited was not the best way to make that clear, young lady.” The man took another step out of the gloom; he was in his mid-fifties, running to fat, and had a halo of wispy red hair around his head. He wore a grubby button-down tucked into his jeans, and his brown boots had heels that added at least two inches. His eyes, though, they were different—the clear hazel orbits were his strongest feature. They pierced the air, gloomy as it was, and assessed Sara with the precision of a laser beam.

  Sara returned his gaze evenly, knowing there was no point in looking at the gun. His eyes might tell her if he was going to shoot first and ask questions at the funeral. Although the muzzle of the weapon oscillated with a near Parkinson’s vibration, the man’s eyes were steady, suggesting a control that helped Sara breathe more easily.

  “Step inside and shut the door,” he said in a flat, accentless voice.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” she asked first.

  “I might, if you keep the door open long enough to ruin my rug.”

  Sara lowered one hand, felt behind her for the door handle, and shut the storm out.

  But he didn’t lower the gun, and if he did mean to shoot her, Sara had just shut off her only means of escape.

  “Who are you?” the man asked, taking a step closer and looking her up and down. She imagined she presented a pitiful picture, soaked and under-dressed for the weather as she was.

  For a moment, she considered lying. If her father’s name was spreading around the country as a major irritant to the Council, disguising her name might well be prudent right about now. Then again, if the man with the gun already knew who she was, it wasn’t the way to engender trust.

  Is this how it’s going to be for all time now, because of the failed raid… second-guessing myself at every turn?

  The hesitation she felt was new, but she gulped down her nerves and took another moment to consider her options. She’d screwed up at the first hurdle—there were good people dead because of her. She had to figure out if she even wanted to be Sara Parker anymore. But could she do that? Slough off her name and identity like a snakeskin and begin a new life? Invent a life-story? Become someone else?

  As the man grimaced at her, waiting for a response, she blinked and a flash of intense gunfire sparkled across her memory…

  Her father driving the SUV at the roadblock; bullets spitting off the bodywork as the battle raged; the SUV going forward, never deviating—rushing into the hail of machine gun fire. James Parker. My daddy.

  She might not have the confidence to lead, but she still had a name.

  “My name is Sara Parker,” she said. “I was just looking for somewhere to escape the storm, and thought your place was empty when nobody answered. Who are you, sir?”

  “Before I tell you anything, please lift your sweater. I can see the bulge of a handgun there. I’d like you to carefully remove it and put it on the floor.”

  Sara did as she was told.

  “Kick it here.”

  The gun skittered off the rug, bumping across the floorboards at his feet. Sara put her hands up again. The man held the shotgun in one hand and bent to pick up the Beretta with the other. He put Sara’s gun in the waistband of his jeans.

  “Well, you’re cooperative, at least. That’s to your credit. You can lower your hands. Come and sit. I’ll make us some coffee and light the fire.”

  Sara lowered her hands and sat on the sofa nearest the fireplace, conscious that rainwater was dripping from her clothes and hair.

  The man lowered the shotgun and stared at Sara with those endless hazel eyes, not blinking or wavering, making thirty seconds feel like hours. At last, he blinked. And smiled.

  “I’m Doctor David Reynolds. Pleased to meet you, Sara.”

  Reynolds made a smart 180, so much so that Sara flinched at the sharp scuff of his boots on the floor. Then he began walking away toward the kitchen, turning his back on her as if she wasn’t there, ignoring this new, unknown stranger who had pretty much broken into his house uninvited in the middle of a storm. He put the barrel of the shotgun casually over his shoulder as he walked away.

  Sara didn’t understand. In the space of thirty seconds—her putting down her gun when asked, and the doctor staring at her—he seemed to have completely relaxed, as if leaving her alone on his sofa was the most natural thing in the world. She stared after him and shook her head. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Oh, don’t get too comfortable,” said a sixty-a-day female voice out of nowhere. “He’s far too trusting. I, on the other hand, am not, and if you do anything I don’t like the look of, young lady, I’ll shoot you in the face.”

  21

  Parker was released from his cell after three days.

  Castillo and Rodgers came for him at 7 a.m. and took him to the recreation area, where he was served breakfast with Kleet and the other Mandingo Warriors.

  Parker wasn’t in the mood for company, though. He couldn’t work out what Spencer was up to, other than making sure there was no routine he could adhere to, and thus look for chinks in it that he could exploit. But today, after being left in his cell for three days, seeing no one other than Castillo bringing him his food, he was out. No discussion or preamble or explanation to it.

  And after everything, Parker was numb. The sounds and the smells of the prison had been shut out as he’d ridden waves of desperate misery over the fate of his daughter and the exterminated civilians. He’d taken to cracking his knuckles and rubbing his palms together constantly, as if there was endless dirt on his skin, and he was trying to scrub out the memory of the ash long after the physical presence of it had gone. He wished he could wash his heart clean in the same way. It was clogged with Spencer’s muck, and he wanted to be free of it.

  With everything that had happened, he’d spoken little since coming to the recreation area, only nodding along as some response seemed needed, but finally Kleet wanted to know what was eating at Parker, and leaned in as if to demand it of him.

  “You gotta face like a nine-dollar whore’s asshole, man. They let you outta yo’ cell. At least that should make you feel better.”

  Parker had forgotten how to speak, it seemed. He shoveled more dire gruel into his mouth and pushed its gristle over his tongue, down his throat. He didn’t look up or make eye contact.

  Kleet put down his spoon, pointedly, and stared hard across the table. Disrespect could be a killer in jail, Parker knew from his training so long ago, and Kleet was a proven killer. But Parker didn’t need added aggravation; he’d had a heap of it already. He raised his hand without taking his eyes off his plate.

  “Sorry,” he said simply. “Been a tough few days.”

  “You expected it to be easy for an ex-cop in here?”

  Parker’s head snapped up, and he stared back at the other man.

  The amusement on Kleet’s face was clear. He shoved his thumb over his shoulder to where Castillo was pacing, swinging his baton like an extra in a cheap prison movie.

  “You know? Castillo told you?”

  “Sure the duck did. They want to make it as purger-tory as they can for you in here, man. Of course, they told us. They want you broken.”

  Parker tensed, unsure where this was going. “I’d worked that out for myself.”

  Kleet picked up his spoon and took another mouthful of the food substitute from his tray and chewed with an open-mouthed grin, gold teeth flashing through the mush.

  “I don’t like being played,” he said through his food. “If they want me or my crew to dance on your blacktop, brother, they gonna have to come up with something betta than ex-po-lice. See, I figure if they be lockin’ up cops, that’s either because this cop have been a bad muthafuc
ka as a cop, or they been bad muthafuckas to the muthafuckas runnin’ the country. Either way, we gonna need bad muthafuckas to get this shit back to how it was.” Kleet paused to swallow, and said conspiratorially, “Betcha didn’t think I’d be so… public-spirited, eh, Parker?”

  Parker shook his head, the tide of misery receding a little. Not enough to stop him drowning in it, but enough for him to get a glimpse above the waves.

  “No, Kleet, I didn’t think you’d be so… politically minded.”

  “She-it man! You think they niggaz operate in a vacuum? Politics allows us to operate in the way we want to out there, man. What kind of lame-ass nigger are you, Parker? You think, because I chose crime, I don’t know what goes on? If I want my business to thrive, I have to anticipate the prevailing conditions, employ flexibility in my markets, diversify—be proactive, not reactive, you get me? Just because I run drugs and not numbers on Wall Street, you think my concerns are different in any which way? I work in a service industry, man. The rules aren’t any different for me than they are for the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.”

  Kleet reached forward and slapped Parker on the shoulder. “Nigger, you got a hell of a lot to learn ’bout how the real shit-world works.”

  Parker nodded, offering a quick grin to show he understood, and with that Kleet and Parker finished their meals as some Mandingo Warriors played table tennis—Parker noting the agility of Gace and some of the others at the tables… huge men they might be, but lumbering hulks they were not.

  And with the meals done, Kleet wanted to know where they had taken Parker three nights before.

  “We heard shooting,” he commented after asking.

  Cold hands clenched at Parker’s guts. He was back at the window suddenly, looking down onto the open pits and the falling bodies.

  “You don’t know?” he asked Kleet quietly. Somehow, he’d assumed everyone would have known by now. Seeing those bodies fall… it had been one of those moments that seemed like it ought to have changed the world, and not just how he felt about it.