Behind Our Walls

by Chad A. Clark

  Lot snorted. "Right. Because they would waste the batteries in those walkies just to let their people know that there's nothing to see here. Does that make sense?"

  "Is there a reason why we aren't considering just going down there and talking to them?" Meredith asked.

  Rowen twisted around to glare back at her. "How would that help? All we'd be doing is confirming what they probably only suspect. It puts us at a huge risk."

  "We're already at a huge risk. That's not going to change."

  "But what do we gain by going down there?"

  Meredith shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe we can convince them to move on. You never know."

  Sophie paused but she was surprised to find herself actually agreeing with the logic. "We're pretty entrenched in here," she said. "Maybe it's time to stop being so afraid of everything."

  Lot shook his head as he maintained his watch out the window. "World being the way it is anymore, my opinion is that it's never time to stop being afraid. Of anything."

  "That's great, but—"

  "You know what I'm afraid of right now?" Meredith cut her off. " I'm afraid that they think they're seeing this big, empty stadium and how sweet it could be to just take it over for themselves. Then what do we do? Aren't we just putting off the inevitable?"

  "I think we need to go out there," Rowen agreed. "We need to present a unified front because if we don't, if those rovers out there pick up on any kind of dissension between us, they will exploit that and we'll end up dead."

  The declaration hung over them for several minutes before Lot finally shook his head in resignation. "Fine. Let's go down there and see what they want."

  -40-

  Clive went with them into the parking lot where he waited, while they walked out to meet with the new arrivals. The question of whether or not the men suspected that people were inside the stadium was pretty much sealed by the lack of surprise on any of their faces at seeing them emerge.

  "Don't say anything about Daniel or Nairi?" Lot asked as they approached, pitching his voice low so that they wouldn't hear.

  "Why?" Meredith asked.

  "We don't know if they have them or not. If they do I want them to be the ones to tell us about it. If they don't have them, we'd just be giving them a way of holding something over us."

  The man who Sophie had guessed was in charge shouldered up to the front of the pack.

  "Morning," he said. His voice had an air of fake joviality that made Sophie immediately feel defensive.

  "Morning," Lot responded without saying any more.

  "Surprised to see you all out here like this. You got more people up in there?" He nodded at the stadium as he spoke.

  Lot smiled politely as he answered. "Yes, we have more people in there. My name's Lot, by the way. This is Rowen, Meredith and Sophie."

  The man nodded at all of them briefly but otherwise didn't take his eyes off of Lot. "I'm Jerry. Looks like you all made some modifications to the building there. Keeping people out?"

  Rowen shrugged. "It's nothing personal Jerry, but it's a dangerous world now, I think you realize that."

  The two men standing behind Jerry smirked at the comment, and Jerry actually chuckled. "Don't need to tell me that, my friend. I was just impressed with the work. How many do you have in your group?"

  Rowen shook his head. "Couldn't tell you for sure. At least a hundred, but it got to the point where we stopped counting. We have what we need in there, we're just trying to stay out of the way."

  "What's the matter?" one of the others asked. "You think we're going to try and steal something?"

  He said it with a donkey bray of a laugh as he looked around for the others to join in. Jerry glanced back at him and when the man met his gaze, he stopped laughing and looked away.

  "So what are you guys after, anyway?" Rowen asked after a long pause.

  "Nothing in particular," Jerry said. "It's just rare to find big groups like this. The stadium looked like it had been sealed up from the inside, so we were just trying to figure out why."

  "So now that you know, you plan on moving on?" Lot asked.

  Jerry nodded slowly, his lips curling up somewhat. "I guess you can't be too careful these days. Never know who you might come across since it's a might bit dangerous out here, isn't it?"

  Sophie didn't think she had ever seen Rowen look more uncomfortable. He kept glancing around as if he expected a small army to roll in through the gates. "Yeah, you're right about that," he said as he continued to glance around at the others. Sophie wasn't sure what was happening, but the electricity in the air around them was a little too much for her to handle.

  "So you really don't have room for any more in there, huh?" Jerry asked as he looked up at the stadium. "You must have a lot of people to keep track of."

  Rowen nodded as Lot took a step or two forward. "We don't want to come off as inhospitable, but we do have a lot of people to take care of, and we need to conserve what we have."

  Jerry's smile never fully departed from his face, but it also failed to extend all the way to his eyes. Sophie repressed a shudder at the sight. Somehow he was able to communicate to them what he was going to try and take from them while saying the exact opposite.

  "You think maybe we could see inside?" Jerry asked. "Get a tour? See what you're doing? Maybe we could look for a setup like this."

  Rowen and Lot glanced at each other before Lot answered. "Look, I really don't like turning anyone away, but the people in there are nervous enough as it is. I just don't think it would be a good idea to—"

  Jerry put a hand up to stop him. "Say no more. I understand."

  It was several moments before Sophie realized the smile was gone, and that the steel in his tone now matched the look in his eyes. His body language and the sneer on his lips spoke clearly enough that they had no intention of going anywhere.

  "So..." Rowen started to speak, but trailed off. Jerry just stood there, letting the silence hang over them without speaking until Meredith finally pushed past them and spoke up.

  "What is it you want?"

  Sophie was more than a little surprised. She had always seen Meredith as shy, the reserved one. Still, she stood toe to toe with Jerry, lips pressed together into a fine, white line.

  Jerry, who looked like he had about a hundred pounds and at least a foot of height on her, gaped down for several moments before answering. "Why do you think we want anything?"

  "Well, you're still standing here. You're acting vaguely threatening, so I assume that there's something you want."

  Jerry glanced back at his friends, and then up into the clouds. "Well if we did want something, it sounds like you wouldn't be open to it, so—"

  "You're right, so why are you still hanging around? I mean, other than to intimidate a bunch of innocent people?"

  "Careful," Jerry said, leveling a finger at her. "We've been polite with you and I think we have a right to expect the same. There's no need—"

  "I think you're full of shit."

  Sophie drew in a breath, as discreetly as she could manage, but even the others looked shocked as they watched the two square off.

  "You might want to watch your language there, lady."

  "My name isn't lady, any more than your name is asshole. We've been polite to you too, so spare me the song about your hurt feelings. We don't have room for you. You can accept that or not. That's up to you but it doesn't change anything."

  "Lady—"

  "Stop calling me lady, ass-hat. I'm sure you're used to people just rolling over and giving you whatever you want but I'll tell you this. I would respect you a lot more if you would just sack up, and tell us what you want so we could skip over the idiotic 'aw shucks,' routine."

  Jerry stared at her, clearly knocked out of his delivery. His two companions shifted uncomfortably as well, as if this tongue lashing of their boss was something they hadn't seen before. Jerry took in a slow breath and when he spoke, it was so low that they could barely hear him.

/>   "You'd be making a mistake if you're assuming it's just us you're dealing with. This is just the start here, lady."

  "And I'm sure that we're just supposed to start shitting ourselves now. We've told you everything we need to say, so this is your chance to walk away and everyone wakes up tomorrow happy."

  "No, you're the one who's missing out on a chance here," Jerry fired back, stabbing a thick finger in their direction. "You have two options. You can open up them doors and we can all figure out a way to get along, or I can bring more people back here and you can start wishing you had gone with option number one."

  "You sound almost convincing when you say that," Meredith said. "The problem is that no matter what option we choose, it's all going to just end up being a version of number two. No way we could ever trust you in here, so we're done. How far you choose to take this isn't up to us." Meredith turned and started back towards the stadium.

  Sophie had never been so proud of anyone before in her life.

  They ran to catch up with her. Sophie glanced over her shoulder, sure that an ambush was about to come, but the men just stood there staring for several minutes before the sound of their bikes revving filled the air and they pulled out onto the road.

  "Jesus, Meri," Lot said as they turned down the ramp. "Where did that come from?"

  She shrugged, and already seemed to be retreating back to her more pensive self. "We need to start thinking about fortifying that garage door better. Right now, I doubt what we have would be enough if they've got a hydraulic lift or some damn thing."

  "I wish we had a better idea of where Daniel and Nairi are," Rowen said as they walked.

  "It doesn't make any difference at this point," Lot said. "I hope that the three of you have been getting ready for this, because you should have seen it coming. We aren't alone anymore. This isn't just some hypothetical conversation about what we might be willing to do in order to defend our home. Before long, you're going to find out what you're actually willing to do."

  He continued walking in silence for a moment and before they reached the entrance to the garage, he paused and turned back to face them.

  "We've got a lot of work to do."

  -41-

  The crowd was already shouting questions at them before they had the chance to finish explaining.

  "We're saying that there isn't any indication of what they intend to do," Rowen said. "But we have to assume that they will pursue this. We need to plan on there being trouble very soon."

  "This is fucking stupid," Fiona yelled out from the back of the crowd. It was like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room as everyone turned to look back at her. Sophie also glared, wondering what it would take for her to try and soften the edges around her attitude even a little. "Why don't we just let them in? We've got over fifty suites that aren't being used. There's more than enough food growing down there. More people means more to keep things safe. Why are we making this so complicated?"

  "Because it is complicated, Fiona," Lot said. "We have no idea what their real intentions are. You've seen just as many people killing each other as the rest of us, don't you think it's naive to assume that everyone out there is trustworthy?"

  "Has it ever occurred to you that if you just treated people decently, they might actually behave that way?"

  "Honestly? No, I can't say that I have. There are still plenty of people out there whose only interest is in setting the world on fire. I'm not saying everyone is like that, but unfortunately there isn't really any way to tell the difference."

  "You weren't out there Fiona," Rowen interjected. "These guys have no interest in living here as equals. They're looking to hurt people and take as much as they can for themselves."

  Fiona shook her head. "You know, just because we have this great little enclosed paradise, that shouldn't be a reason for us to think that we're any better than the people out there."

  "What about Daniel?" Becca interrupted, standing up to face Lot and Rowen. For once, Fiona actually shut up and shifted her gaze to the floor. For the briefest second, Sophie thought she might have even seen guilt in those eyes. "Does any of this have to do with Daniel going missing? Are they holding him and Nairi? Did they hurt them?" Her voice rose in pitch and intensity, so much that Rowen put his hands up as he answered, to try and get her to slow down.

  "We don't know anything, Becca. I think that the guys out there might be connected. It stands to reason that they could have found out about this place from either Daniel or Nairi. But if they grabbed up the two of them, they aren't saying anything about it yet. They might be waiting to use them against us, we just don't know for sure."

  Lot nodded. "At this point, we need to assume that there are people out there watching and waiting for us to come out into the open. We need to hold strong and wait."

  "Wait for what?" Becca asked. She looked frantically from one face to the next, pleading silently with the committee members to help her, to take some kind of action.

  "If you can't protect people, then aren't we all just waiting to end up the same way?" Fiona jumped back into the conversation, ignoring the glare that Becca shot back at her.

  "What are we going to do to fortify the place?" Clive asked, cutting off another flurry of verbal attacks from Fiona.

  Meredith stepped forward to explain everything, since they thought it would sound better coming from her instead of Rowen or Lot.

  "We have the three main entrances as well as the garage door in the receiving area to defend," she said as she stepped forward. "That's where we are going to be the most vulnerable. The plan is to have extra people guarding all of those areas. Those guards will be armed and posted in shifts around the clock."

  "Who's going to take guard duty?"

  Sophie scanned the crowd but couldn't tell who had asked the question.

  "In the past, we've asked for volunteers," Meredith said. She looked down at her feet awkwardly before going on. "With the situation as dangerous as it is, everyone is going to have to pitch in and work guard shifts. Basically, we need every able body we can put out there."

  "And what about weapons?" Clive asked.

  "All the guards stationed around the entrances will be issued guns in order to help—"

  Her sentence was drowned out in a sudden uprise of protest from the crowd. There had been a lot of dissent against bringing the guns into the stadium in the first place and it always seemed to be a hot button issue.

  "All right, everybody needs to calm the fuck down!" Lot yelled at them. He picked up the chair that he had been leaning on and began banging it on the floor. Sophie saw Fiona shake her head and yell out something she couldn't quite make out before turning and stomping away from the assemblage. She tried to temper her frustration, reminding herself that Fiona had to be just as worried about Nairi as Becca was about Daniel.

  The meeting devolved into disjointed screaming and finger pointing but in the end, everyone dispersed, putting their names down on the sheets that Lot spread out. He and Clive left to start getting guns out of storage. Sophie and Rowen began walking around the stadium, checking to make sure everything was secure.

  "We should probably try and find anything in storage we could use to block up these halls," Rowen said as they strolled around the outer walkway.

  Sophie nodded and continued walking in silence for several minutes before turning back to him.

  "How do you feel about things, really?" she asked.

  He shrugged in answer. "No way to know. They might never come back. They could show up with two hundred people. There are things we'll be able to handle, and things..." He trailed off, but Sophie didn't really need him to say it. Only time would answer her question and that was the one thing she had no patience for. The irony was that the stadium that had provided the first feeling of safety and stability in a long time now made her feel trapped and hopeless.

  "We should have expected this," Rowen said as he yanked on the handle for a door to make sure the weld was holding. "It's not li
ke people are going to just walk by and assume that nothing is going on in here. And I'll tell you this, if we want to keep this going, we'd better be prepared to defend it."

  "I know," Sophie said as she gazed down at her feet. "I just..."

  Rowen stopped and turned to face her, again reading her thoughts. "You need to understand something. There was a time when people would act a certain way because they were part of a society that had structure and rules. People who went outside those boundaries faced consequences because of people who were there to enforce them."

  "Okay."

  "Well, now we basically have the exact opposite. The only thing forcing people to behave and do the right thing is their own self-restraint and moral center. We don't have cops or soldiers around anymore to keep people in line. If we want to stay safe, we can't depend on anyone's ability to do the right thing. We have to act on our own, to prevent them from doing the wrong thing."

  Sophie looked away and it was impossible to not see the building around her for what it used to be. She saw crowds of fans, maybe filing past during halftime, arms loaded with beer and nachos, taking up the spaces with loud jerseys and even louder voices. She saw these people as ghosts, shambling past her as a part of a society that would never truly exist again and she felt a tear rising to the surface.

  "We have a peaceful society in here," Rowen said, not noticing. "And this is just my opinion. But if you want to know, I think that the only way for us to live here is to treat the outside like it doesn't exist anymore. This is our world. This is our society, our culture, our country. And those walls there might as well be the edge of the universe. There are monsters out there, and there are going to be times when we have to stand up and fight those monsters. I don't like it any more than you do but that's the price for what we have here."

  Sophie looked up as he turned to walk off, apparently stepping down off his soapbox. She took off after him, jogging to catch up and when she did, she reached down to take hold of his hand. He jumped at her touch and glanced over at her. She wasn't really sure why she had done it. It just felt right. Besides, she couldn't help but think that over the next few days, his theory and their community were going to be put to the test, like an ocean wave crashing down over rocky shoals.