“Unfortunately, we’re not concerned with any society outside this one,” Jax replied, “to which your father has refused to contribute, I might add. That’s two minutes. Please step down from the stage.”
“But—”
Jacob was interrupted as Ludo’s security men took him by either arm and attempted to lead him away from Jove’s chair. He shook them off and stepped off the stage himself.
“Mr. Mason,” Jax said, raising her voice as she addressed Jove. “You now have two minutes to defend yourself. Is there anything you wish to say? Please keep in mind that derogatory remarks and defamation will immediately serve as reason to strip you of the privilege of these two minutes.”
“Privilege?” Jove snorted like an angry bull. “You call two minutes privilege? This whole thing—this tribunal—is a farce. What could you do to me, eh? What’s the punishment? Muck more toilets? Clean more shit? I will not stand for this treatment. Just wait until I can get in contact with my lawyer…”
On and on he went for the allotted time. The tribunal let him speak, watching him with amused smirks as the crowd egged on Jove’s temper. Two minutes felt like two hours, until Jax finally held up a hand to stop Jove from talking.
“That will be all,” she said over him as he continued on about his lawyer in Denver. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard both sides of the argument. It’s now time to vote. The matter at hand stands as follows: Jove Mason has proven himself a detriment to this compound. Your decision is this. Shall we allow Mr. Mason to remain here as a member of Camp Haven under the assumption that he will work to change his ways or shall we expel Mr. Mason from the security of our compound in order to protect the people within it?”
Jacob’s face fell. This was it. Either Jove stayed or went, and I had a feeling I knew which way the crowd was leaning.
“All in favor of giving Mr. Mason another chance?” Jax called. A few scattered hands went up. “All opposed?”
A sea of fingers reached toward the sky, accompanied by another roar of noise. For the first time, Jove looked worried. Sweat beaded on his red forehead and dripped down his temple as he looked out at the crowd as they condemned him.
“The tribunal will confer,” Jax announced.
The five members on stage put their heads together. For the longest minute of my life, they murmured their opinions to one another. The crowd was dead silent, as if hoping that the tribunal’s voices might carry on the wind. There was no need. Jax stood up once again.
“Unless Sylvester decides otherwise,” she began, “Jove Mason is no longer a member of this compound. He shall be banished from the premises as soon as we see fit.”
6
The crowd cheered with mass approval, but when I saw the look of horror on Jacob’s face, I wondered if I had given the people of Camp Haven too much credit before. Before the EMP blast, Jove would have considered being expelled from the compound a blessing. He would have fired up his Humvee and driven it down the mountain back into the city without a glance over his shoulder at what he’d left behind. Things were different now. There was nothing to go back to in Denver except for disastrous trouble. Jove had never been camping a day in his life. I doubted he even knew how to get a fire started without a blow torch, let alone set up a shelter for himself or find food. The animals were starting to burrow away in preparation for the incoming snow storms. It was rare to find one out and about these days, but if a rabbit did stick its head out of its cubby hole, Jove wasn’t keen enough to catch it. Camp Haven had all but condemned Jove to death.
“No,” Jacob shouted over the crowd. Ludo’s security guards kept the onlookers from climbing the stage. Jove, whose hands were bound to the chair, rocked to and fro in an attempt to free himself from the restraints. “You can’t do this!”
“Silence!” Jax said, and the crowd fell quiet. “The decision will be taken to Sylvester for the final review. In the meantime, I cannot condone this behavior while we wait for his confirmation. Please disperse. Return to your dormitories.”
The people of Camp Haven erupted into loud complaints. This was the event of the season, and Jax was cutting it short. I was grateful. The jeering crowd was making all of this worse. Jacob grew more tense with every shout. The whites of Jove’s eyes shone in the dark night as he yelled at the tribunal to cut the ropes around his hands. Jax put two fingers in her mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle.
“This camp will come to order!” she boomed. “Now! Unless you all want a demerit?”
The residents of the compound recognized that she was not bluffing, and the throng finally began to disperse. I slipped in with a group of people heading back to the dormitories, but Jacob leapt off the stage, bullied his way through, and caught me by my coat.
“What are you doing?” I asked, tugging free.
“Me?” he said. “What about you? You brought us here, Georgie! To keep us safe, you claimed. Did you hear what they said? They’re kicking him out. He won’t survive out there. He doesn’t know how.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” I told him.
“You have pull with people here,” Jacob said, pleading with his eyes. “Everyone likes you. You could talk to Ludo or Jax. Tell them that he didn’t mean it. Tell them that we’ll make sure he toes the line from now on.”
Behind Jacob, Jove argued with the tribunal from his chair. Jax and Helen attempted to reason with him, but the other three members of the panel pointedly ignored him. The full extent of what expulsion meant to Jove was finally setting in. There was a note of panic in his deep voice, which carried to where Jacob and I were standing.
“This is all just a terrible mistake,” he was saying. I recognized that oily tone. It was the one he used when he was trying to close a business deal. “It’s the stress, you see? Once I become accustomed to the camp’s ways, I’ll be better. I swear.”
“You’ve had weeks to assimilate, Mr. Mason,” Jax said wryly. “And you failed to make that argument moments ago when we asked you to defend your place here in the compound.”
“I can’t lie to them,” I told Jacob. “I know your father, Jacob. If he gets a second chance, he’ll use it to weasel his way in and take advantage of every person here.”
Jacob fixed me with a withering stare. “He’s going to die out there, Georgie.”
“He should have thought of that before he decided to be an ass.” I tried to walk away, but Jacob seized me again and pulled me into the shadows between the Bistro and DotCom.
“This is what it’s come to?” he asked, whirling me around so that we were face to face. I hadn’t been this close to him in weeks, close enough to see the sparkling embers of anger in his light brown eyes. “Are you that angry at me for breaking up with you? Because this is really petty, Georgie, even for you.”
“Are you serious right now?” All of my frustration with Jacob that I’d kept inside during the five years of our relationship began bubbling to the surface. “That’s what you think this is about?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Jacob shot back. “You won’t help him. You’re forcing him out of the compound.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said loudly, catching the attention of a few passers-by. “Don’t you dare try to make this my fault. Jove made his own bed. His behavior is his own responsibility. Besides, I have problems of my own.”
“Oh, problems of your own?” Jacob challenged, throwing his hands up. “What could those possibly be?” He leveled up the pitch of his voice to mock mine. “Learn how to pluck a chicken, build working radios with golden boy Eirian?”
“Eirian does whatever he has to in order to keep this place running.” My face grew warm as I defended the other man, and I hoped that the lamps around the bonfire weren’t bright enough for Jacob to see the red in my cheeks. “And for your information, I do have other problems. My father—”
“Not this again,” he said. “Your father isn’t here, Georgie. That means one of two things. One, he
left because he figured you would never come back to him, or two, he’s dead. I’m betting on the latter, if the things you told me about your father are true.”
The anger boiled over. I shoved Jacob backward, and he stumbled over the uneven ground. He caught himself against the wall of DotCom, but it took him a second longer to rearrange his countenance. He stared at me, mouth open in shock that I’d laid hands on him.
“How dare you?” I whispered, advancing toward him like a tiger stalking its prey. “I brought you here to keep you safe, even when I knew that you and I were never going to work. Your mother and sister are alive because of me, but my family is gone, Jacob. I’m not a part of yours, remember? The thought of my father is the only thing I have left, and I will not let you take that from me.”
Jacob didn’t back down. “Be realistic,” he said. “It’s been weeks since we got to Camp Haven, and there’s been no sign of your father. No one’s heard of him, Georgie. You need to face facts. He’s gone.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, “and I won’t stop looking for him until I’ve exhausted every single possibility.”
“What other possibilities are there?”
“Sylvester.”
For the first time since the argument began, Jacob paused to consider my reply before jumping in with a hurtful comeback. “Sylvester? What are you talking about?”
“I applied for a meeting with him,” I told him, more to prove that he was wrong about my father. Jacob didn’t need to know how slim my chances were of actually procuring the meeting. “If anyone knows what happened to my father, it’s him.”
“This is perfect.” He half-smiled as he turned around to check on Jove, who was still making a case for himself on stage with the tribunal. Jacob laughed, picked me up, and swung me around.
I thumped on his shoulder. “Put me down!”
He obliged, setting me on my feet. “Georgie, why didn’t you say something before? This is amazing. You can ask Sylvester to give my dad another chance.”
A coldness swept through my body, one that didn’t have anything to do with the chilly nighttime air. “Jacob, I’m not asking Sylvester about Jove.”
The happiness slid off of Jacob’s face in less than a second. “What are you talking about? Why not?”
“The tribunal already decided,” I reminded him. “Jove’s out. I need to find out about my father, and I’m not going to waste time fighting a losing battle.”
“Damn it, Georgie! You are so selfish!”
Eirian appeared behind Jacob, towering over my ex-fiancé. “Everything okay over here?”
Jacob started and whirled around to face the other man. “None of your damn business. Jesus, you’re everywhere, aren’t you? I’m starting to think you have a thing for my fianceé.”
“I’m not your—” I began.
“I just came over to tell you that the tribunal heard back from Sylvester,” Eirian said, holding his hands up in a gesture of innocence. “You seemed too busy arguing with Georgie to notice that they’re taking your father to the gates.”
Jacob spun around toward the stage. The tribunal and Jove were gone, and other members of the camp lugged the six chairs off the lifted platform to put them away. Jacob scanned the campground. Ludo’s security team dragged Jove, hands still tied behind his back, toward the massive gates that kept the riffraff out of Camp Haven. Jacob sprinted toward them, and I followed after him.
“It’s no use,” Eirian said to me. His legs were so long that he took one stride for every two of mine. “Once Sylvester decides that someone’s out, they’re out for good. Georgie.” He took my hand before I could catch up with Jacob fully, pulling me to a stop. “Listen to me. Defending Jove isn’t going to help anyone. If anything, it’s just going to ruin the positive relationships that you’ve worked so hard to build here.”
Ludo’s men worked together to operate the massive locking mechanism that kept the steel gates sealed. All the while, Jacob pleaded with them to stop. Jove had given up. His enormous form slumped over, his knees resting against the dirt, head bowed to his chest. For once, I actually pitied him.
“Can you talk to them?” I asked Eirian, clutching the front of his coat. “Please? I don’t give a damn about Jove, but he has a wife and a daughter here, both of whom are stuck in the med bay. I really don’t want to be the one that has to tell them that he’s been kicked out.”
“I already tried talking to Ludo and Jax.”
“You did?”
He unfurled my fingers from his coat collar and covered them with his gloved hands. “Of course I did. I know what kind of trouble this is going to cause between you and Jacob’s family. I did my best, Georgie, but once the tribunal gets confirmation from Sylvester, the decision is set in stone. I’m so sorry.”
Without thinking, I threw my arms around him, burying my face in the warmth of his coat. After a moment’s hesitation, he returned the gesture, resting his chin on the top of my head. I watched the gates from the circle of Eirian’s arms. The security team had pulled them open just enough for Jove to fit through, but they couldn’t get the man off the ground. Jacob knelt beside his father, hands clasped together, begging the other men to let Jove stay. Two of Ludo’s team dragged Jacob roughly away from Jove. Tears streamed down Jacob’s face, but Jove remained impassive, as if his expulsion had numbed all emotion. It took three additional men to lift Jove far enough from the ground to haul him across the camp’s border. Once he was outside the gate, they cut his hands free from the ropes. Jacob ripped free of his handlers and made a break for the doorway, but it was too late. The enormous gate slammed shut, and the team moved the locking mechanism back into place. Jove was officially no longer a member of Camp Haven.
The security team dispersed, leaving Jacob at the gates. He yanked at the mechanism, but it took more than one man to move it out of place. Fruitlessly, Jacob pounded on the gate. There was no answer from the other side.
“Should I—” I began, pulling slightly away from Eirian.
“It’s probably better not to.”
He was right. After several minutes, Jacob finally gave up. He straightened his coat, wiped his eyes, and turned from the gate. I drew away from Eirian, but not before Jacob spotted our embrace. When he stopped in front of me, his nose inches from mine, Eirian shifted his stance into a more defensive one, but Jacob only had a message for me.
“I’ll never forgive you for this.”
THE NEXT SEVERAL days were torture. I slept on the floor of my office in DotCom, unbeknownst to Ludo or any of the other campers. I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing that tiny cottage with Jacob, not after everything that had happened. He ignored me entirely. If we passed each other at the Bistro, he pretended not to see me. If that was my only punishment for not coming to Jove’s defense, I would have been able to handle it. Unfortunately, Penny and Pippa had heard word of my actions. Pippa had asked that I stay away from the med bay, as she no longer had any desire to see my face. Penny, during her limited waking hours, sobbed into her pillow. If I had to drop off supplies to the med bay or run an errand for Jax, I did not go inside. Nita met me around back and finished off the errands for me. Even my friend was being short with me. She had only gotten one side of the story, the side that made me look like the villain.
Alternately, the rest of the camp was displeased with me simply because I was related to the Masons. No matter what department I worked with, I couldn’t escape judgmental stares and whispered accusations. It was easier when Jove was around for me to publicly denounce his poor behavior. Now that he was gone, people seemed to forget that I’d never been a huge fan of his in the first place. I stopped asking where I was needed. I stopped offering to lend a hand to different departments. Instead, I holed up in my office and worked on my equipment for hours on end, emerging only for meals and to update Ludo on my process.
Eirian was one of the few campers that still spoke to me as if I wasn’t a leper. The more I kept to myself, the more he made himsel
f available to work in Communications. He brought food from the Bistro and moonshine from his personal stash, and we hunkered down to get the radios and solar panel working. Occasionally, the moonshine was too effective as a remedy. More than once, we found ourselves tipsy and laughing over some inane joke rather than working. It was a good thing that Eirian was so well thought of in Camp Haven. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have received a demerit each for wasting time in the communications office.
A week after Jove’s expulsion, Ludo found the two of us at DotCom. Thankfully, we were actually working rather than shooting moonshine.
“Bad news, Georgie,” he said, examining the bits and bobs on the desk that were supposed to make working radios.
“Ludo, I’m not sure I can take any more bad news,” I replied, accidentally clipping a piece of wire too short. “What is it this time?”
“Your request to meet Sylvester has been denied.”
I dropped my wire cutters. “Why?”
“He doesn’t give a reason,” Eirian explained. “He doesn’t need to.”
“I want a reason!” I said hotly.
Ludo rested a heavy hand on my shoulder, preventing me from rising out of my seat. “If he denied your meeting, chances are that he doesn’t have anything to say on the subject. I’m sorry, Georgie.”
“It’s fine,” I said, though clearly it was not fine. I picked up the wire cutters again and went to work on a new strand. “I have work to do, Ludo, if you don’t mind.”
THAT NIGHT, I lay on the floor of my office wrapped in the blankets from the cottage, staring up at the ceiling. The rest of the camp had gone to sleep hours ago, but I was wide awake. I heard every rustle of the breeze through the crunchy leaves outside, every scrape of trees’ dead branches against the roof. An owl hooted into the lonely night, calling out with its melancholy voice. I rolled over, squeezing my eyes shut in an attempt to trick myself into slumber, but it was no use.
Blackout: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 1 Page 9