Relief washed over Sam’s face. Finch grabbed the tag chain from around his neck and yanked it away. He passed the tags to Ross and slid a hunting knife from his belt. “This is how to deal with disloyalty.”
He grabbed a chunk of Sam’s hair and pulled his head back, exposing his throat. Sam tried to struggle to his feet and twist away. Finch grunted, shoved him back down, and plunged the blade into his windpipe. Ross gasped and put his hand over his mouth.
Sam let out a gargled cry. Finch sawed at his neck with the serrated edge for five seconds before letting him slump to the ground.
Blood pulsed from the wound. He coughed and looked at Skye through his flickering eyes and reached out his quivering right hand.
Finch crouched and wiped his blade on Sam’s jacket. “This is the dawn of a new world. I will not tolerate treachery. He backstabbed me; I gave him the courtesy of doing it from the front.”
Skye knelt and grabbed Sam’s hand. His eyes closed and his grip loosened almost immediately. A mix of grief and anger rose up inside her. Finch wasn’t even pretending to be official anymore, and Ross watched on like a frightened child.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
Finch slid his knife back into his belt and stepped over Sam. “You can stay here and watch his body rot while I decide what to do with you.”
“Are you mad? Those are wastelanders coming, and they will slaughter all of us. They only work for Sky Man. Do you think he’ll have mercy on you?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Skye noticed Ross slip away. Rather than facing reality, he still remained a yellowbelly. Finch glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t seem concerned. He was probably confident in Ross’ ability, or lack of it.
He edged closer. “You have no idea what I have planned. This is only the beginning. I had such great hopes for you. But now you’ll have to watch Omega get slaughtered from your cell, just as you watched your settlement destroyed ten years ago.”
“Are you that obsessed with power that you’re willing to sell your soul? You’ll be killed like the rest of us.”
“I can assure you that I won’t be dying tomorrow. I’ve been delivered into this world to cleanse it of predators. The strongholds are full of rats, lizards, toads, wasps and parasitic flies.”
“You need help, Alexander. Release me and we can work through this together. Whatever you have going with Sky Man, he’s tricking you. Think about what happened to my settlement.”
Finch laughed and spread his arms. “You still don’t see it, do you? I am Sky Man.”
Chapter Twenty
Trader and Jake thumped down the ship’s stairs and headed straight for Barry and Beth’s house. At least Finch was still in Omega and didn’t seem aware they had his number. Stasis must’ve corrupted his mind, like the poor man they came across in the eastern bunker yesterday, but Finch channeled his insanity in a dangerous way.
“I knew he was up to something,” Trader said. “I never thought he’d lead the wastelanders here to destroy us, though.”
“Certainly takes a special kind of crazy. He’s either flipped or spent years planning this from the inside. I hope it’s not the latter.”
“What difference does it make? We should go for him tonight and put an end to his plans.”
Jake checked his watch. Six in the evening meant they still had enough natural light to reach Omega. “If he’s planned this for years, and Skye’s mention of his previous attack suggests he might have, we need to tread carefully.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That we don’t shoot immediately to Omega. Let’s convince Epsilon to join forces, travel first thing tomorrow morning, and capture Finch. He might have something up his sleeve, but won’t be expecting us to show up with three thousand people.”
Trader pulled at his beard. “Makes sense, I suppose. The guard will quickly turn against him once they find out.”
“Instead of putting out an all stations call, you can send Carlos out to the other strongholds to warn them tonight. Which other stronghold has the best defensive wall?”
“Sigma. I now see the logic behind Finch building the steps at Omega. He probably knew exactly what he was doing. Using us to build his infrastructure before replacing us with wastelanders.”
“Will Carlos have time to get around the other six places and direct them to Omega and Sigma?”
“Probably not. I’ll send Tess out to three—Omicron, Lambda and Theta—and tell them to go to Sigma. Zeta and Kappa can join us at Omega.”
“Do you think they’ll listen?”
“I’ll brief them both to spell it out. Individually we die; together we pull through. There’s nothing like a threat of destruction to focus the mind.”
They rejoined the paved road. Barry or Beth must’ve seen them approach. She opened the door and waved.
“Did you have any luck?” she said.
“We better go inside,” Trader said.
“That bad, huh?”
“Yes. That bad.”
She led Trader and Jake along squeaky floorboards, through a thin, magnolia-painted hallway to a gloomy living area. The crudely constructed wooden table and chairs were nothing more than functional. A painting of Jake’s ship hung on the wall. Beth lit three candles on a mantelpiece above an iron fireplace. Jake hadn’t seen a working one in a house for years. Underfloor heating managed to get rid of the last retro ones in the 2060s.
“Take a seat,” she said. “Barry’s making coffee.”
Jake pulled out a chair and sat at the table. Trader continued to pace the room, mumbling to himself about Finch.
Beth sat opposite Jake and fished a pair of glasses from her breast pocket. She breathed on the lenses and rubbed them. “Have you visited other strongholds?”
“I’ve been to Omega, Sigma and Kappa.”
“What do you think?”
Jake didn’t feel the need to hold back after picking up on Barry’s previous comment about the clock. “I think the theory overrides the practicality.”
Beth put on her glasses, making her eyes almost double in size behind the thick lenses, and leaned toward him. “Would you care to explain?”
“I understand the theory behind the clocks, trade and curfews, but don’t think it’s the right way to build a new society.”
“These rules have kept us together for a few decades. Why do you think you know any better?”
“I’m only calling it as I see it. Artificially keeping the population down will mean possibly condemning people to death outside of your walls. Nobody has been clear with me about the policy on that. Trade agreements and balance are fine, but if you keep producing the same things and don’t advance, it’s crushing aspiration. It sounds like people are prisoners in their own homes too. What do you people do to unwind?”
Beth smiled and slapped her hand on the table. “We’ve been telling Trader and the other strongholds the same thing for years. They seem to think it makes us soft.”
“I would say it makes you the opposite. Going against conventional wisdom to point out the potential problems.”
She turned to Trader. “Did you hear that? You can’t keep telling us we’re wrong.”
He stared out of the window and grunted a reply. Jake could understand his distraction. All of them faced a big problem.
Barry carried in four steaming mugs and a bowl of sugar on a metal tray. He placed them on the table and sat next to Jake. “One lump or two?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“Are you going to tell us what’s happening, Trader?” Beth said.
Trader sat at the table and sighed. “There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll come right out with it. Alexander Finch is leading thousands of wastelanders to our strongholds. We can only defend ourselves if we fight together at the larger, better protected strongholds. Tomorrow morning, we all need to move to Omega.”
Barry dropped his teaspoon on the table.
“Where did you get this information?”
Beth said.
“Carlos found two of our SUVs encouraging them north. They mentioned Sky Man, who we found out is Finch.”
“He led a group of local wastelanders to a bunker and murdered sixty of my colleagues,” Jake said. “It contained rocket launchers, rifles and pistols.”
Beth took a deep breath and held her chest.
“He was the guy who killed Tom Reed, wasn’t he?” Barry said.
Trader nodded. “We need to start preparing tonight and move first thing tomorrow morning. Do you have plenty of weapons and ammo in your stores?”
“We’ve got a good stockpile. I just can’t believe it.”
“We’ve got children here,” Beth said. “We can’t risk moving them on the open road.”
“I think you can,” Jake said. “The alternative’s not worth thinking about. It won’t take a large force of motivated wastelanders long to scale your walls and overpower you.”
Barry and Beth looked at each other. He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Finch’s offering them our strongholds as a reward, and is feeding them,” Trader said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he came here first. Picked off the smaller places to build up weapons before hitting the larger strongholds.”
“Which is why we need to take as much as possible with us,” Jake said. “We can defeat them together. After that, I’d be happy to support your ideas about how we can move forward to create a better society.”
Jake didn’t throw out the last suggestion as an olive branch, he genuinely meant it. Epsilon were being held back and didn’t like the restrictions of the stronghold treaty. If they were to come out victorious, he didn’t want to lose the progressive part of society.
“You realize what you’re asking us to do?” Barry said. “This has been home to a lot of good people for all of their lives. Don’t tell me there’s no risk of us never returning.”
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Trader said. “We don’t know how many thousands of wastelanders we’re facing, but if you can’t return here, that means we’re all screwed.”
“We’ll force their hand,” Jake said. “If they want to defeat us, they’ll have to take heavily armed ramparts packed with thousands of armed men and women. You can’t cover enough of the Epsilon wall with the population you have.”
“Do you mind if we discuss it in the kitchen?” Beth said.
“Not at all,” Trader said. “I understand it’s a big decision, but please consider the implications.”
Beth and Barry left the room. Trader paced the floor again.
They returned two minutes later.
“Tell us what we need to do,” Beth said. “Our priority is to protect our citizens, and if that means moving to ensure our survival, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
* * *
While Beth and Barry went to call the citizens together outside the factory, and Trader briefed Carlos and Tess about their immediate mission to the other strongholds, Jake took a spotlight out of the SUV and returned to the ship. He wanted to look around for extra weapons and see if the computer held any more clues.
Dusk had set in when he approached the woodland. A single cowbell tinkled outside the factory, calling the population out of their homes.
His plan was to get back to the meeting before it finished. Maybe he would spot Mills in the crowd. Perhaps he was staying low profile until establishing contact. Whatever his reason, he knew Jake would be around, he’d seen to that himself.
He clicked on the spotlight and returned up the stairs to the cockpit. The comms console cast a thin green light around the walls. Jake crouched on the stool and input his password. The screen glowed into life, and he accessed the ship’s logs.
It continued on a normal pattern until January 2077, a month before his cycle. All ground communications ceased. The ship deployed its missiles at Russia. Mills never woke him for duty; instead, the young lieutenant programmed all stasis pods to permanent mode, apart from his own in 2165. He landed the ship before waking all but one of the crew.
Jake could understand his actions as far as not immediately landing, but Mills should have consulted him. He also couldn’t understand why the rest of the crew left him. Some of them might still be alive. Hopefully not in the same deranged state as Finch, who must have also spent time in stasis.
Without any further leads on the console, Jake searched along the starboard side of the ship. Just like Beth said, all of the storage spaces were stripped of goods. The living quarters resembled a shell compared to his memory of the rooms. The six metal bunks were missing their mattresses, all lockers were empty, and the bathroom hadn’t seen water for years.
None of the doors to the rest of the ship worked, and the edges of the engineering hatch to the hull had welded with rust. He would need more time and tools to carry out a proper inspection, if wastelanders didn’t colonize the stronghold after they left. That was a concern he didn’t want to air in front of the others.
Jake clambered down the stairs and headed back to the factory. He hugged the houses on the left and slowly approached. The citizens crowded around Beth and Barry, who stood on the hood of an SUV, giving them a speech. Something about securing their future.
All turned and faced Jake.
Barry waved him over. “Come here. We’re just explaining about the wastelanders.”
Jake pointed to himself, hoping he heard him wrong, but knowing deep down he didn’t. One thing he was never good at was public speaking. Flying bombers, fine. Tactical planning and organizing an assault, good too, although he only ever went through simulation training and never fought a real ground war. They didn’t need to know that.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” Beth said.
The crowd parted in the middle. Jake walked through them to the SUV. A few whispered to each other as he passed.
Barry reached down. Jake grabbed his wrist, stepped onto the bull-bar, and hauled himself up.
Beth put her arm around him and faced the crowd. “This is Epsilon’s own Captain Phillips. He is going to lead us to victory tomorrow. We are moving to Omega to help defeat the invading force, and after that, we will redefine our relationship with the other strongholds to create a better community.”
A ripple of polite applause followed. Jake hoped every word was true. He would certainly do his best, and hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Twenty-One
Skye stretched her back after spending a sleepless night in her chilly cell. At six in the morning, Omega citizens woke and carried out their usual activities, unaware that an attack might be coming later today. Finch was Sky Man. The words didn’t sound right in her head. The man who took her in after the worst moment of her life that he made happen.
She glanced over at Sam’s lifeless body. Finch had positioned him facing the bars and opened his eyelids. An undignified end for a good man and a friend. She vowed to avenge him if she had a chance. Her hopes lay with Trader, but they were slim considering Finch throwing him off his scent by forcing her to send a radio message.
Finch used to lecture her on justice. He told her a system required designing to protect humanity, building toward a new future, and learning from their past mistakes. At the time it sounded like he meant the strongholds; thinking back, she could see the chilling double meaning to his words.
Skye wrapped her fingers tightly around the cold steel bars and shook them in anger. “If anyone can hear me, you have to let me out. Finch is Sky Man. A wastelander army is heading to Omega. We have to act or we’ll die.”
She knew most would dismiss her as insane and pass off her words as the wild ramblings of a broken mind. People who'd lost their tags had snapped before. She sounded exactly like the desperate cries she had heard from the cells over the last ten years, and always assumed they were taking a bitter parting shot at Finch. Citizens had no reason to believe she wasn’t just another criminal that abused the system.
A man walked around the side of the pigpen and poured a bucket of veget
ables into the wooden trough.
“You have to listen to me,” Skye said. “Your life is at risk.”
He shook his head and walked away.
“Come back,” Skye shouted.
The siren at the front gates intermittently warbled. Vehicles entering the stronghold. Skye hoped it was Trader and his team. He had the best group of fighters, and they wouldn’t put up with Finch’s nonsense. Not with so much at stake.
She peered through the gap in the sheds and hoped to see eight vehicles rumble past, straight to the mansion.
A low cloud of dust crawled toward Omega on the distant horizon. Another type of storm heading their way. Fewer people patrolled the ramparts during low visibility, as the wastelanders generally didn’t attack and sought out shelter instead. This would leave them even more exposed in conditions of poor visibility.
Skye heard the distant buzz of vehicles. More than eight. Maybe Trader arriving with plenty of backup. That would be a smart move. Finch had two SUVs leading the wastelanders north, meaning others were involved in the plot.
A guard ran from the closest house, pulling on his jacket as he headed for the front of the stronghold.
“What’s going on out there?”
He glanced at her and disappeared toward the road. Men and women shouted in the distance. She caught glimpses of them moving between buildings but had no clear sight beyond the sheds and a few of the houses.
A woman left the same house in her farming coveralls. Skye recognized her as Helen. They’d played together as children but drifted apart after she joined the force.
“Helen, come here.”
She approached but stopped twenty yards short and glanced in either direction. “You know we’re not supposed to talk to you.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve been ordered to converge on the front fields.”
“Who has?”
“Everyone. Something big is going down. The whole of Zeta and Kappa has just shown up in a huge convoy.”
Skye’s heart raced with excitement. “Who ordered you?”
“I’m not sure. Bob received a call five minutes ago.”
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