“Why, thank you.” He looked around at the empty campground then back at me. “What are you doing out here alone? Where’s Jacob?”
“In the med bay.”
Eirian’s eyes widened. “What happened to him? Is he okay?”
I waved away his concerns, eyeing the bowl of soup that he balanced between his gloved palms. “He’s fine. It’s Jove. He picked a fight with someone and got his nose broken.”
“This is going to keep escalating, isn’t it?” Eirian sighed. He noticed my laser sharp focus and lifted the bowl of stew. “You want to share this? You look like you could use a pick me up.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
He sat down on the top of the compost lid and patted the space next to him. “Remember what I said earlier about not taking care of yourself? Refusing to eat definitely falls into that category. Come on, they served me way too much anyway.”
He waved the spoon at me until I snatched it out of his hand and took a bite of stew. It warmed me all the way down, and I moaned in relief.
“Hold this,” he said, offering me the bowl as he dug in his coat pocket. “I have something else for you.”
I lifted the bowl, letting the steam warm my frozen nose. “Honestly, I don’t need much else.”
A metal flask glinted in the moonlight. I traded Eirian the bowl for the flask, uncapped it, and took a whiff.
“Is this moonshine?”
Eirian beamed proudly. “My own recipe. That’s the last of it though. We won’t have any more maize or barley until the spring.”
“I can’t believe Camp Haven allows that,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like something they would want in the compound.”
“They don’t,” Eirian said. “But it’s also unrealistic to keep the camp totally dry.”
“Does Ludo know you make that?”
“He buys it from me.”
“No kidding!”
“Have a sip,” he offered. “It’s a decent remedy for a cold night. Keeps you warm.”
I tipped the flask to my lips. The smell alone was sharp, but the taste was even more potent. I coughed as the homemade whiskey burned my throat but relished the flood of warmth through my bones.
“Thanks,” I said. “I needed that. The stew too.”
“I figured.” He finished off what was left of the meal, tipping the bowl to drink the leftover broth. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about your father. You still want to find him, right?”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s kind of a long shot, but there is one person who might know something about where he went,” Eirian said.
“Who?”
“Sylvester.”
I slumped against the wall of the Bistro. “It’s no good. I asked Ludo about Sylvester weeks ago. He told me that no one gets to talk to Sylvester face-to-face.”
“That’s mostly true,” Eirian said. “Actually, I don’t think anyone has ever seen him in person, but you can request a meeting in the cabin with him. It’s a long list. Plenty of people want his advice, and most of them get denied the privilege, but you could at least try.”
“How do I request a meeting?”
“There’s a box in one of the offices at DotCom,” he replied. “Just write your name down and put it in the box.”
“Really? It’s that simple?”
“Like I said, it’s a long shot,” he said. “We could go now if you want.”
I hopped off my seat on the compost bin, took one more sip from the flask, and handed the moonshine back to him. “I’m down.”
I waited for Eirian to return the bowl to the Bistro, then the two of us headed into DotCom. The night’s event, a trivia contest, hadn’t started yet. Everyone was still eating dinner. We found the office with Sylvester’s box. It was nondescript, an old ammunitions tin with a slot drilled in the side. I’d seen in a few times without knowing what it was. Now, I jotted my name down on a small slip of paper, folded it in half, and jimmied it through the opening in the box.
“That’s that,” I said. Outside the office, DotCom began to fill up with those who wanted to participate in the trivia contest. “What now?”
“Now we wait to see if your request gets approved,” Eirian said. “In the meantime, what do you say to a round of trivia? We could team up. I’m hopeless at pop culture.”
“Whoa, I can’t have an amateur dragging me down,” I joked, leading him out of the office and down the hall toward the main room.
“Excuse me, but there is an entire category on scat, and I don’t know if you know this, but I am the master of—”
“Shit?” I finished for him. “You’re the master of shit. Yeah, you’re really selling me on this whole trivia partner thing.”
“You know what?” He dove forward, tickling me around the waist. I laughed and tried to bat him away. “That’s what you get. Who’s the trivia master now? Huh?”
“Still me!” I gasped, grinning from ear to ear. “You’re forgetting that I grew up in the woods too.”
Eirian’s fingers danced playfully at my sides. “You’ve wounded my ego. I can’t go on like this.”
“Oh, shut up!”
Someone cleared their throat, and we both looked up from our playful tussle to see Jacob standing in the doorway to the main hall. At once, Eirian dropped his hands from my waist and took a step away. I straightened the hem of my sweater and smoothed out my ruffled hair.
“I just came to tell you that Dad’s doing better,” Jacob said, though his eyes remained on Eirian. All of his muscles were pulled taut, the tendons in his neck standing out against the skin. “Nita splinted his nose, and he’s sleeping now. Jax checked on him too. She said he got lucky. No concussion.”
“I should let the two of you talk,” Eirian said, trying to pass Jacob in the doorway. “I’m glad your dad’s all right, Jacob.”
Jacob didn’t move, blocking Eirian’s exit. He stared up into the taller man’s face. “Are you?”
Eirian, confused, replied, “Of course.”
“Let him go,” I told Jacob. “He’s supposed to be helping with the trivia contest.”
Jacob finally stepped aside to let Eirian pass, but Eirian lingered a moment longer before exiting to the main hall.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he told me, glancing at Jacob with a worried tilt to his lips.
“I will.”
When Eirian left, Jacob folded his arms across his chest and stared at me from across the hall. “The two of you seem awfully friendly.”
“Yeah, because we’re friends,” I said coolly. “Am I not allowed to make any at Camp Haven?”
“Like you’ve had any trouble in that department,” he returned. “Do you ever get tired of pandering to these weirdos? The only reason they’ve survived this long is because they’re just like your father. Paranoid and probably a little sick in the head.”
“I’m not pandering to them.” My hands began to shake, not from the cold, so I balled them up and shoved them into my pockets. “And you have no right to talk about my father.”
“Why not?” Jacob challenged. “You talk about mine.”
“Yours is here,” I told him. “And he’s causing trouble. If Jove calmed down and started acting like a civilized human being, I wouldn’t have to talk about him.”
Before Jacob could reply, the door opened again, and Ludo butted into the hallway. “Hey, folks. Eirian said you were back here. Aren’t you coming to play trivia?”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Oh, Eirian sent you back to check on us, huh? No, I don’t want to play any damn trivia—”
“I do,” I said, raising my hand. “Want to be partners, Ludo? I bet we could kick some ass together.”
“Sure thing, sweetheart,” Ludo said, “but before we head out there, I wanted to clue the two of you in. Jax reported your father’s fight, Jacob. Originally, we were going to call the tribunal next week since this camp a few miles over looks like they might be on the hunt for supplies soon, but we can’
t ignore your father’s behavior. The situation has escalated too far. He’s causing harm to himself and others, and that’s one thing that Camp Haven does not condone. We moved the tribunal meeting up.”
“For when?” Jacob asked.
“Tomorrow.”
THE WORD of Jove’s tribunal meeting spread like wildfire through the camp. People talked about it all day long, discussing Jove’s misgivings at length while they worked around the compound. Storytime was cancelled that evening in order to leave DotCom free for the event. Children were not allowed to attend. Apparently, the camp had witnessed some pretty violent reactions to the tribunal’s orders in the past. The tribunal itself was a bit of a mystery. Ludo admitted that he had used to have a seat in the panel, but after a particular grueling meeting, he gave it up to another high-ranking member of the camp. After working with several different department heads within Camp Haven, I could guess which ones were involved with the tribunal, but I would have to wait until the actual event to see if I was right.
I tried to avoid Jacob as much as possible during the day. Ludo had excused him from his miscellaneous duties to sit with Jove in the med bay and prepare his father for what might happen during the tribunal meeting. I wasn’t sure what Ludo expected Jacob to do. He didn’t have any knowledge of the camp’s judicial system either. No matter what, I had no plans to join them. At this point, the entire Mason family was holed up in the med bay, and playing pretend engagement with Jacob was getting tiring, but of course, while I was working at the Bistro, the servers asked me to bring lunch trays to the med bay.
“Food,” I announced to the Mason family as I entered the room with a stack of trays. “Where do you want it?”
“I’m not hungry,” Jove said. His face looked nasty. His nose had swollen to the size of a tomato, and Nita’s splint looked ineffective compared to the damage. “Can barely eat anyway with this damn thing on my face.”
Jacob relieved me of the trays and placed one each on Jove, Penny, and Pippa’s beds. “You need to eat, Dad. We don’t know what’s going to happen tonight.”
“Bah!” Jove knocked the lid off of a steel camping bowl. “Stew again! God, do these people know how to make anything else?”
“It’s leftovers from last night,” I told him. “No waste, remember?”
“It’s garbage,” Jove spat. “Leftovers are for rats and homeless people.”
“And on that note, I’m out of here,” I announced. I stopped by Pippa’s bed. She, unlike Jove, did not complain about the food that was delivered to her. “How are you doing, kid?”
“As good as I can, I guess,” she said, slurping broth off of her spoon. “Have you heard anything?”
“About your dad? Not really?”
“What about Mom?” Pippa looked over at Penny, who was asleep once again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her awake and alert. Penny’s lunch tray lay untouched at the foot of her cot. “She’s barely coherent, Georgie. Nita won’t tell me anything. I know that’s not good.”
“I’ll ask Nita about it when I get the chance,” I promised her. “For right now, you should focus on yourself. Keep your stress levels down. That baby’s coming soon.”
“Thirty-eight weeks,” she grumbled. “I wish he would move it along. I’m beyond uncomfortable, and this place is boring as hell. At this point, I’d rather clean the toilets than spend another hour in the med bay.”
I grinned and patted her shoulder. “Be glad you’re assigned to work with the kids. You don’t want to know what your dad smelled like when he got out of work each day.”
I SPENT the rest of the day toying with the solar panels and walkie talkies. Eirian was busy setting up DotCom for the tribunal meeting, so he couldn’t make it to Communications for his usual lesson in handmade, solar-powered electronics. I fell asleep on the desk, my cheek pressed to a coil of copper wire. When I woke up, night had fallen, and a cyclical imprint decorated my cheek like a poorly cut doily pattern. As I rubbed my face to restart the circulation, voices carried down the hall from the main room. I stood up, grabbing my coat on the way out.
“What’s going on?” I asked when I found Eirian, Ludo, and a few other camp members talking animatedly in DotCom’s vast meeting room. “Has something happened?”
“The tribunal wants to meet outside,” Eirian announced. “By the bonfire.”
“It’s freezing outside,” I said. “Why did they move it?”
“They’re anticipating trouble,” Ludo explained. “They’re expecting the whole camp to turn up. If Mason gets too belligerent, it could encourage unfavorable behavior. The tribunal figures that if we hold it outside, the cold will subdue some of the campers. Less people will show up.”
“Camp Haven has its shit together in every area,” I said. “You’re telling me it turns into a riot as soon as someone sits in front of the tribunal?”
“It’s the nature of the event,” Eirian replied. “That’s just the way it is.”
I sighed and threaded my arms through the sleeves of my coat. “Outside it is. What time are we starting? Do you need help?”
“It starts in ten minutes,” Eirian said. “And you can carry one of these warmers out to the square for me if you don’t mind.”
I accepted the free-standing warming lamp from Eirian’s grasp. They were an invention of the camp’s, made to burn coals at about shoulder height to heat the air around us. Together, Ludo, Eirian, and I lugged a few of them to the square. The bonfire had already been lit, and a crowd gathered, craning their necks for a look at the small group of people hidden behind a room divider in the corner of the main square. Six chairs had been placed on the stage that the camp usually used for outdoor events. Five of them were arranged in a semicircle, facing the sixth. The sixth was alone.
We stationed the warming lamps and got them lit. I shivered in the moonlight anyway, though I think the chill was more from anticipation than the biting mountain air. Eirian rubbed my shoulders to warm me up.
“Need a shot of moonshine?” he asked in a low, teasing voice.
“More like five,” I replied.
A roar went up from the crowd as the tribunal emerged from behind the room divider, stepped onto the stage, and took their seats in the five chairs. I had worked in so many departments of the camp that I recognized each member of the panel. Jax sat on the far left. Next to her was Helen, the strong-armed woman who ran the kitchens. In the middle sat Randall, Ludo’s second-in-command for security. To his right were Todd and Terri, who were brother and sister. They were amongst the oldest living members of Camp Haven, and so were considered the wisest.
Jax stood and the crowd cheered again. She waved at them to be quiet and cleared her throat. “This tribunal has been called together to question the behavior and intent of one Jove Mason. Bring him out, please!”
The doors to the med bay opened and two of Ludo’s men escorted Jove to the stage. The crowd jeered as he passed by, making faces and calling names. I spotted Mitchell, the man that Jove had punched yesterday, standing quietly away from the others. Jove yelled back at the crowd, spittle flying from his lips as his face turned bright red. Little did he know that he was giving the crowd the exact scene that they wanted. Jacob followed behind his father, his head bowed to avoid the glares of the campers. Pippa, blessedly, remained inside.
“This is barbaric,” I muttered to Eirian as we watched Ludo’s men heave Jove into the final seat on the stage.
“I agree,” he said. “If it were me, these tribunal meetings would be held in private, but they allow the campers to vote on the outcome.”
“The campers decide what happens?” I asked him.
“In a way,” Eirian explained. “The tribunal takes their concerns into account, but Sylvester has the final say.”
“Jove Mason,” Jax said, facing Jove from her chair. “You have been called here today because your integrity has been challenged. Randall will read you the list of complaints set against you. Randall?”
&nbs
p; Randall cleared his throat and unfurled a short piece of paper to read off of. “Mr. Mason has been accused of the following: failure to arrive to work in a timely manner, failure to complete obligatory tasks assigned to him, failure to comply with Camp Haven’s regulated safety standards, failure to resolve personal disagreements without physically harming the other party, and failure to respect those who make Camp Haven’s mission possible. Mr. Mason, do you admit guilt to these accusations?”
“Go to hell,” Jove snarled.
“We’ll take that as a yes,” Randall said. “Now we’ll hear from members of the camp on their opinion of Mr. Mason. We have Jacob Mason to speak for his father and a number of campers to speak against him. Let’s get started.”
The proceedings were lengthy. There was a long line of people who wished to express complaints about Jove’s behavior. Each of them was allowed two minutes to make their case, during which the tribunal took notes. In a manner of weeks, Jove had managed to offend nearly a fourth of the entire camp, and they had not taken kindly to his attacks. Jacob was the last to speak. When he did so, his voice wavered as the night swallowed it.
“I know that my father has not been the most helpful addition to Camp Haven,” he began, immediately eliciting boos and hisses from the crowd. He ignored them, focusing on the tribunal instead. “I implore you to remember that we come from a different world than this one. It’s been difficult for my father to adjust, but I think we can come to a compromise that would be agreeable to everyone.”
“What kind of compromise?” Jax asked.
“Move my father out of the sanitation department,” Jacob suggested, and once more, the crowd roared with displeasure. Jacob raised his voice. “He can work elsewhere. Anywhere.”
“Mr. Mason Junior,” Jax said, peering over the top of her glasses at Jacob. “If we allowed every person to switch jobs simply because they didn’t like it, we would have chaos on our hands.”
“I understand that—”
“Do you have anything to say about your father’s character?” Jax asked him. “Have you discussed possible solutions to these issues?”
“He’s a good man,” Jacob said. “He’s spent the last thirty years contributing to society. He should have a chance.”
Blackout: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 1 Page 8