by John L. Monk
He opened Greg’s barely touched book on rabbits and noticed it had been signed by the author.
Jack shook his head in resignation. The kid was all enthusiasm and no follow-through. Instead of rabbits, he was reading about sailing.
Sailing …
Jack went downstairs and grabbed one of Greg’s sailing books, then plopped down in his favorite chair to read it.
The next day, the Dragsters were all seated on their mattresses staring at him as he explained what he wanted.
“Every day,” Jack said, “for at least an hour, I want you to read something hard. Pick a subject, I don’t care which, but study it. Learn everything you can about it. Become an expert.”
“How about chickens?” someone said. The same boy Larry had punched a few weeks back for yelling something equally stupid. He still hadn’t learned his lesson. It didn’t help that his friends laughed in a way designed to encourage him.
Larry glared at the kid from across the room and glanced at Jack, who shook his head no.
Jack stared thoughtfully at the boy, noting his smug grin and challenging eyes. Those near him covered their mouths and glanced excitedly back and forth.
“What’s your name again?” Jack said.
“You talking to me?” the kid said.
“He is,” Larry growled.
The boy glanced furtively at Larry, then stuck his chest out. “Eric. Like you don’t know.”
Jack nodded and continued what he was saying. “We have books on just about everything under the sun. I recently read a really cool one, and it’s going to help us come spring. But I can’t read them all. The other captains can’t either. Much easier if everyone picks something and works through it. Even if it’s boring at first. Then, if we have a problem, need to know something, we can talk about it and see who knows what. Way more efficient.”
Jack rattled off the dozen or so subjects they had, assuring them it was fine if more than one person studied the same thing—that it was actually good to have backups. Starting with the captains, he asked each of them, one by one, what they wanted to study.
Olivia smiled enthusiastically, playing along. “Doctor stuff. So I can help Greg better.”
Several of the Dragsters laughed at that, insinuating something she hadn’t meant, but it was delivered good-naturedly and she laughed along with them.
“Sailing,” Greg said. “And fishing, too. Jack and I hope to—”
“Thanks, Greg,” Jack said with hopefully enough emphasis to get his point across. He didn’t want to reveal all his plans. Not right away.
Greg rolled his eyes and made little air quotes. His way of saying, Chosen One.
“Anyone else?” Jack said.
Molly raised a hand. “I like knitting and sewing. I wanna make clothes one day.”
Jack asked how she felt about working with leather.
“Would I have to cut the skin off animals?” she said.
“I think that’s just for the butchers and tanners,” he said. “Haven’t read enough on it. But keep reading and let us know.”
Molly made a face and said no more.
Steve was sitting on the second-floor stairs with Tony and a few others.
Jack pointed at him. “What about you?”
“Electricity,” he said. “Like Lisa. I know you think we gotta learn about pigs and corn and all that, but we should still know electricity.”
The annoying kid laughed obnoxiously, and his friends sniggered quietly.
“Good,” Jack said, pretending not to hear. “Lisa didn’t take any of those books with her, so there’s a lot to choose from. Tony, you’re next.”
Tony smiled broadly and stood up like he was formally presenting something. The mostly white audience watched him quietly. He was one of about fifteen black kids in the group. Of those, Tony and Brad were the only ones old enough to drive and shoot. They were also both officers, something that rankled a few of the more troublesome Dragsters—Eric in particular, who was trying to get his friends to laugh.
Tony either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “I’m reading a book about—”
“You can’t read!” Eric shouted, and his friends burst out laughing.
Larry started forward, but Jack cut him off, marching over and standing in front of the troublemaker.
“Okay, Eric,” he said. “What are you reading this winter?”
Eric looked a little nervous, smiling wider to prove how calm he was. “I ain’t reading shit, and you can’t make me. You’re not in charge of me.”
Jack stared hard at the still-sitting boy, then glanced at his friends. “What about you? You with him?”
One of them nodded smugly—a sandy-haired girl with braces. Another shook his head, and the rest sort of looked away.
Jack raised his voice. “In Jamestown, when the colonists faced a cruel winter with no food, they had a lot of people like Eric who thought they didn’t have to work. They thought they could eat and sleep and act like they were better than everyone. John Smith made a rule: work or starve.” He looked around the crowd of kids and noted they were all listening carefully, not joking around or whispering. “I think it’s a good rule. Anyone here, including Eric, who doesn’t read for at least an hour a day—and who doesn’t do exactly as they’re told by me or one of the other captains—that person doesn’t eat. I’ve moved all the food to the officer’s cabin. Meals will no longer be left in a pot all day for you to help yourselves. They’ll be eaten in groups in the Abe Lincoln.” He paused, letting the reality of that sink in. “If you work, you eat. If you act like an idiot, you starve.”
Eric climbed to his feet, face red, hands clenched at his side. “You can’t do that! Larry’s the one in charge. Tell him, Larry!”
“You heard him,” Larry growled. “No work, no eat.”
Eric shook his fist. “This is bullshit! He can’t tell me what to do! How you gonna stop people from giving me food, huh?”
Jack smiled. “Anyone who does is officially stealing. Thieves will be thrown out, snow or no snow. If they refuse to leave”—he paused for dramatic effect—“they’ll be shot.”
Oh, God, please don’t let it come to that.
Eric snorted. “Yeah right. You try that, you’re dead.”
Jack slapped the kid so hard that the bones in his hands ached for the next few days, though at the time he barely felt it.
Eric lost his balance and fell over. His friends didn’t try to catch him, and when he hit the edge of the mattress he tipped over onto his shoulders and got stuck there a few moments before righting himself. Face red with embarrassment, he issued a wordless growl of rage and staggered to his feet. When he raised his fist to attack, Jack shot him with the taser he’d gotten from the Pyros on his last trip to Centreville. They’d had a whole box of the things, acquired from a group of mostly girls living at Dulles Airport. He’d kept the little device secret from everyone but Lisa, who’d declared it reasonably safe to use if he didn’t have a handgun.
The Dragsters shouted excitedly as Eric writhed on the ground keening in a long, vibrato whine.
“Everyone shut up!” Larry shouted, and everyone did.
“Threatening an officer is also against the rules,” Jack said calmly, as if nothing amazing had happened. “Anyone who does spends three nights handcuffed on the bus. Larry, please escort the prisoner out.”
“Yes, sir,” Larry said, leaping forward like that’s all he’d wanted to do since the meeting began.
Without being asked, Brad helped Larry drag the drooling, twitching boy from the cabin. From there, he was taken to the school bus and handcuffed to the bolted-in seats.
When Larry and Brad returned, the room was bubbling with excitement. It wasn’t every day they got to see someone zapped with 50,000 volts. Jack called for calm and noticed with some pleasure how quickly the room quieted.
“Tony,” he said. “You were saying?”
Tony paused a good five seconds with a big smirk on his face. Jack knew
he was just hoping someone would interrupt him this time.
“Economics,” Tony said, finally. “I’m gonna be the first rich person in New America. Ya’ll white kids gonna be working for me one day. Wait and see.”
Jack shook his head.
That night, a particularly mean girl Larry trusted was tapped to guard the bus. She was given the best winter clothing and blankets, and a metal trashcan for a fire. If someone tried to force their way on, she had orders—as well as the inclination—to shoot them.
In the morning, Larry pulled Jack aside and said, “Everyone’s real upset about you starving Eric.”
Jack snorted. “He’s not starving. Humans can go weeks without food … as everyone knows by now. I’m saving his stupid life. Can’t they see that?”
Larry sighed. “I ain’t saying I agree with them. I’m saying people are talking about you behind your back. It’ll get worse, long as he’s there.”
“Are they afraid of me yet?”
“More than before, sure. But now they don’t like you more, either.”
“There’s still room on the bus.”
Larry grinned.
Jack sighed. “Who’s doing the talking?”
“Elsie and Robert. Robert’s the worst.”
“Is anyone listening to them?” Jack said.
“Not really. Some laugh when they make jokes about you. Not too serious.”
Jack thought for a minute. “Robert’s the one with the—”
“Pizza face, yeah. Ugly as shit.”
“Who’s guarding the bus tonight? Same girl? Beth?”
“Yep. She’s a good friend, and she likes you.” Larry paused long enough for Jack to realize what he meant by likes you.
Jack tried not to blush and wondered if he’d succeeded.
“Anyway,” Larry said, “I got her one of them sub-zero sleeping bags for when she gets tired. Told her to sleep on the bus and kick Eric if he runs his mouth.”
Jack tapped his chin. “Tell her she’s feeling sick. Ask for volunteers to take her place.”
“If I do that, Eric’s friends will all volunteer.”
“Yep,” Jack said. “I’m counting on it.”
10
The night was clear, the temperature a little below freezing. The world seemed incredibly bright under the three-quarter moon shining off the mounds of recently shifted snow.
Eric’s friend, Robert, volunteered to guard the bus that night. Jack searched him for contraband food or tools, but didn’t find anything. He’d then left him inside the bus wrapped in extra clothes and blankets. That was two hours ago.
“I see something,” Greg said excitedly, shaking Jack from his doze on the couch. Greg had been peering nonstop out the window following the shift change.
Jack got up and looked. “Where?”
“Behind the Jeep,” Greg said, limping next to him.
Jack strained to see, searching every shadow for a human figure or sign of movement. A moment later, he noticed someone skulking from the Jeep to one of the trucks near the bus. By height and frame, he knew it was Eric’s friend, Elsie.
Jack hadn’t seen the annoying girl do anything more than laugh a lot and sit on her ass—and beg him to start the generator so she could play games on her old phone. He fielded three to five requests a week from people like her, and that fueled his reluctance to replace the generator at Big Timber. He didn’t want people playing games and not working or studying.
“I’ll go out the back,” Jack said.
“Want me to come?”
Jack looked pointedly at Greg’s bandaged leg. “Probably a bad idea.”
“Least I can wake the others,” Greg said in a resigned tone and eased onto his good leg. “Can you get my crutch? I dropped it.”
Jack picked it up and gave it to him. “Wait till I’m outside. And tell them to let me handle it.” He thought for a second. “Unless I can’t handle it. Then … you know, feel free.”
“Be careful. Something happens to you, Lisa’ll kill me.”
Jack felt weirdly happy about that, her caring if he died. After she’d sort of dumped him, he’d alternated between stoic acceptance of his lonely fate to embarrassing lows of self-pity. Now he could add smug martyrdom to his ever-growing emotional range.
The back door creaked open louder than he remembered it sounding before. The air smelled of wood smoke from the constant fires, and a shift in the light breeze brought a whiff of sewage from the outhouse—originally dug for thirty people, now servicing close to a hundred children and fifty teenagers.
Jack slunk around the side of the cabin in the direction of the parking lot with the sales trailer, school bus, and hotrods. He didn’t see anyone, but the bus was rocking a little, and the folding glass door hung slightly ajar.
He waited in the dark, heart pounding, mouth dry, legs and arms rubbery. He replayed the likely scenarios in his mind, looking for flaws in his plan and finding way too many.
Feeling suddenly exposed, Jack stepped into the moon shadow cast by the Bunyan’s tall roof and waited. A quick glance back at the big window revealed nothing, though he was sure the other officers were up by now and watching him.
Bright light flared from inside the bus, throwing reflections that lit up the outside for a good twenty feet. Jack saw a figure inside standing near the back where Eric was chained. Would he or she unbolt the seat? Cut through the chain?
A minute later and he had his answer.
The bus rocked back and forth steadily and kept it up for a good ten minutes. The night was quiet enough that he could hear the metallic scraping through the vehicle’s frame.
Eric and his friends—and anyone like them—were a kind of poison. An eye roll here, a smirk there, and suddenly everyone was eye-rolling and smirking, spreading it around and making an already miserable situation worse. Why couldn’t they do what they were told?
Jack remembered what happened to Blaze, the Pyro’s volatile leader. Not a bad guy, as it turned out. Well, yeah, technically a murderer, but not a psychopath like Jack had assumed. He’d had poison in his group, and one of his own guys had killed him. Gunned him down not ten minutes after laughing and joking around with him. The lesson was clear: when they turned on you, you wouldn’t get any warning at all.
The sounds from the bus died, the rocking stopped, and the flashlight went out.
Despite the cold, Jack felt quite warm. Hot, even. He unzipped his coat and waited. Not long after, the glass door opened and three kids came out.
“Time’s not up yet,” Jack said, stepping into their path. “Back on the bus. You others get back to your cabin and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”
The three conspirators shared a collective gasp.
Eric recovered first—grinning from behind a familiar pistol. Jack had asked Larry to smuggle it to him while most of the Dragsters were eating. It would cock, but it wouldn’t fire without the firing pin. Robert and Elsie’s guns were similarly modified, though their hands were currently empty.
“What you gonna do now, asshole?” Eric said, shaking the useless lump of metal at him. “Three of us, one of you.”
Elsie said, “I’m not part of this. I was just visiting.”
Robert glared at her. “Backstabber!”
Elsie opened her mouth to say something and Eric said, “Everyone shut up. I gotta think.”
“First smart thing you’ve said yet,” Jack said. “You still have another day on the bus. Drop the gun and get on and I won’t add another.”
Eric’s smug expression faltered briefly, then came back in force, tempered in the fire of his own stupidity. “I’m tired of you bossing me around. My teeth hurt from what you did. Zapping me like that. Coulda’ killed me!”
Jack took off his coat and let it fall to the snowy ground. His pistol rested on his side, unclipped, the band tucked between belt and holster so as not to get in the way.
“I got you stuck, moron,” Eric said, stepping from behind the others, who backed away
. He held the gun high like a talisman … and now sideways, for some reason. “Man, you’re too stupid to be in charge. Carter was way better than you.”
“Last warning,” Jack said with a calmness he didn’t feel.
Eric’s lips compressed into near invisibility, breath steaming in the cold January air. It wouldn’t be long.
Elsie said, “Um … Eric, I don’t … maybe you should just stay on the bus. One more day won’t hurt. I’ll get you more blankets. Do you have enough pillows?”
“Shut up!” he yelled. He cradled the gun with both hands and squinted against the upcoming blast.
Click … Click … Click.
Jack’s draw wasn’t lightning-fast, like Clint Eastwood, but it was fast enough.
BANG! BANG!
Eric screamed, hands in the air, gun flying away into the snow. His friends screamed too, each scattering in a different direction and begging Jack not to kill them. But Eric wasn’t dead. He may have thought he was for a second there. He’d even fallen down like you were supposed to when you died, but that was it.
“I could have shot you,” Jack said loudly over his suddenly ringing ears, “but I let you live. Not sure why, seeing how you tried to kill me.”
“What? No! I didn’t. I—”
Jack pointed. “Back on the bus.”
“Okay, I will! Don’t shoot!”
The kid practically flew up the steps in his haste. Jack followed cautiously. He was pretty sure Eric was as scared as he seemed, but wasn’t about to risk his life on a guess. He needn’t have worried—Eric stood way at the back of the bus, where he’d been chained.
“I’m sorry I cut them, Jack, please. I’m sorry!”
Jack examined the cuffs—one cuff affixed to the seat, the other shining in the moonlight on Eric’s wrist. The floor was covered in blankets, a few cookie wrappers Elsie probably snuck in, and a sleeping bag Jack had donated. There was also a hacksaw lying on the seat. If he wanted to chain the boy up again, he’d have to find another set of handcuffs.