by Stone, Kyla
Hannah’s heart stopped. “What are they doing?”
Noah didn’t answer. He remained in the doorway. His face was pale, his expression taut.
Her blood rushed in her ears. Anger sprouted in her chest. “Those are the Millers. And that’s Mike Duncan and his son, Jamal.”
Across the street from the Millers, Darryl Wiggins stood on his front porch, his shoulders wrapped in a blanket. She couldn’t see his bruised face from here.
The militia moved on to the next house, leaving him be.
“The militia are kicking people out of Winter Haven,” she said, answering her own question. “Is that it?”
Noah gave a heavy sigh. “Yes.”
“But not everyone.”
“Yes.”
“Where are those families going to go? What are they going to do?”
“Come back inside, Hannah—”
Hannah turned and shot him a scathing look. “Tell me what’s happening right now, or I’ll march over there and ask Mattias Sutter myself.”
Noah rubbed his face. Deep shadows rimmed his eyes. “Rosamond gave these people their places here. She has the right to take them away.”
Hannah stared at him, so taken aback for a moment that she didn’t know what to say. “Are you serious?”
Noah didn’t answer.
“That doesn’t even make sense. The Stanleys were here when I first moved to Fall Creek. This is their home. Not borrowed, not taken over temporarily. Theirs.”
“The militia has decided that Winter Haven is too difficult to protect with potential dissidents in their midst. They’re redistributing housing to fit security needs—”
“Are you listening to yourself? Are those your words or someone else’s?”
Noah swallowed. “This is out of my control, Hannah. This is happening, whether we like it or not.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were the chief of police.”
“I am, but—”
“How is this not under your purview? How can you allow this to happen under your watch? These are people we know! This is Fall Creek. Your town. Your citizens. Your friends!”
Noah’s mouth thinned into a bloodless line. “The militia has been granted certain authority during this crisis—”
“The militia?” Hannah asked. “Or Rosamond Sinclair? Or are they the same thing, now?”
55
Hannah
Day Thirty-Eight
Hannah’s chest tightened. It was suddenly difficult to breathe. “They’re ridding Winter Haven of anyone not aligned with their goals. Rosamond Sinclair is on the warpath. She’s cleaning house. Like a tyrant.”
A muscle in Noah’s cheek twitched. “I understand why you hate Rosamond Sinclair. She’s Pike’s mother, the man who hurt you. It’s easy to lump them both together. But what you said before—you’re wrong. Rosamond is not her sons. She cares about this town. She’s been trying to do her best for Fall Creek since the beginning of this mess.
“Has she made mistakes? Yes. Has she been forced to make compromises to ensure our safety? Yes. You’ve seen what it’s like out there. Vulnerable towns and villages are being attacked. Lawlessness and anarchy reign. That hasn’t happened here, and the only reason is because of Rosamond’s quick thinking and strong leadership.”
Hannah shook her head, incredulous. “Do you even hear yourself? Look around you. Just who is she keeping safe tonight?”
Noah’s gaze darted to the militia and back to Hannah. Tension lined his face—and worry. “Keep your voice down.”
“Or what? Or they’ll label me a dissident and drag me away, too? Or just attempt to murder me like they did Liam and Bishop?”
Noah’s cheeks reddened. “No! I won’t let them.”
“Oh? You’ll stop them just like you’re stopping this?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Do you think I want to do this? Do you think I like this? That I agree with it?”
“That’s what I don’t understand. Help me understand.”
His face clouded. “I have to do this, Hannah. I don’t have a choice. We don’t have a choice.”
Finally, he was being honest. Finally, he was admitting it.
He took a step toward her, his left hand rising as if to touch her cheek the way he used to, once upon a time, a whole lifetime ago.
Ghost whipped around and pushed between them with a warning growl. He sensed the tension between them, sensed Hannah’s growing anxiety. He had no intention of allowing anyone near Hannah—not even her husband.
Hannah didn’t rebuke him.
“We always have a choice, Noah,” she said. “Always.”
Noah’s hand dropped to his side. He balled his hand into a fist. His shoulders slumped, his expression defeated. “I’m doing this for Milo.”
“What does Milo have to do with it?”
“His medication. The pharmacy is out. So is every other pharmacy in the county, probably the entire state, if they’re even still operating. The militia brings his meds. It’s at the top of their needs list. Because of Rosamond.”
“We could get it somewhere else. There has to be another option.”
“There isn’t,” he said flatly.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe that. You said you have five years of medication.”
“I do, but it’s not enough. We may need more. We need more, to be safe.”
She saw it in his eyes—he owed them, now. More like, they owned him.
His expression darkened. “I would do anything to protect Milo, Hannah. Anything.”
She reared back as if he’d slapped her. “So would I. But there has to be a line, Noah.”
His eyes turned fierce. “There’s no line except the one that keeps Milo alive. Milo and you. Don’t you see? That’s what matters. We’ll get through this. The three of us.”
“Four of us.”
He had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m sorry, Hannah. Yes, the four of us. You, me, Milo, and the baby. I’ll do the best I can for the town, but you are my priority. That’s it. I won’t apologize for that. I’ll do what I have to do to keep you safe.”
She looked out at the street again. The cold stung her face and hands. Her eyes burned.
One of the townspeople was fighting back. He took a swing at a soldier. The soldier struck him with the butt stock of his rifle. The man crumpled to the snow. A woman and a teenage girl screamed and ran to his side.
The soldier gestured to two other militia, who grabbed the man beneath his arms, dragged him to one of the remaining trucks, and slung him into the back like a sack of flour.
Hannah’s stomach turned. Sour acid stung the back of her throat. It was all she could do not to run into the street and try and stop them.
She knew she was outnumbered. She was one person. They had all the guns and the manpower. For now.
“This—” she pointed down the street. “—is not safe.”
“It is for us.”
Anger surged through her. “How can you say that?”
Noah worked his jaw. “I’ll make sure each of these families gets situated in the best homes left in Fall Creek. We’ve had so many deaths that we have a few dozen empty houses with fireplaces or woodstoves, septic systems, and wells. I’ll make sure they have enough food and firewood. I’ll see to it personally.”
“Is that how you live with yourself? Doing a few good deeds to pretend you aren’t a part of this?”
He looked wounded. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? And when Rosamond and the militia decide not to feed them, too? What then? They control the food, Noah. Look how they’re controlling you with Milo’s meds.”
Noah glanced down, unable to meet her gaze. He looked like a man already beaten, a man resigned to a terrible fate. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
“What if she goes after Bishop again?”
“She won’t. Bishop was Julian’s enemy, not hers.”
>
“You don’t know that, either. And Liam?”
He stiffened. “Liam Coleman can take care of himself.”
She lifted her chin. “And what if I tell her that I killed her son? How safe do you think I’ll be then?”
He looked up sharply, panic flaring in his eyes. “You can’t do that.”
“You know she’s dangerous. You say one thing, but I can see the truth. You’re running around trying to put out fires, but you aren’t going to the source. It’s all going to blow up in your face, Noah.”
He looked bewildered, haunted. A man torn apart.
She recalled a phrase from her college days, in a Psych 101 course she’d taken: cognitive dissonance.
Noah’s mind couldn’t allow both truths to coexist: the very people he depended upon for his son’s life were the people destroying his town and endangering his loved ones.
To admit that his mentor Rosamond and his best friend Julian were corrupt was too terrible a reality to face. And so he didn’t.
Hannah had no such qualms.
She had defeated one enemy only to discover another rising from the ashes of the first. Rosamond Sinclair was as bad as her son, albeit in a different way. She was responsible for misery, death, and destruction. She would be responsible for more.
Just because Noah didn’t want to face it didn’t make it any less true.
Hannah shook her head wearily. “Who are you, Noah Sheridan?”
He stared at her, his gaze pleading, beseeching her. “Hannah, please. I’m your husband. I’m Milo’s father. I’m the same man I’ve always been.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Noah blanched. He looked stricken, as if she’d slapped him. He opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out.
“Dad?”
They both looked up.
Milo stood in the hallway outside his bedroom. He wore Spiderman pajamas. His dark curls stood up all over his head. He wiped sleep from his eyes. “Are there bad guys out there? I wanna help fight the bad guys.”
Noah stepped back into the house and stood between Milo and the opened door to shield his view. He rubbed his face with the back of his arm. “Everything’s fine, buddy. I promise. Why don’t I tuck you back into bed?”
Milo looked at Hannah. “Will you do it?”
She didn’t have to force a smile. Not for Milo. Never for Milo. “Sure, baby. I’m right here.”
Ghost trotted after them as she took her son’s small hand and led him back to his room. Milo clambered into bed and squeezed himself against the wall. He gave her a shy glance, the painful longing of a boy for his mother so apparent on his face that she nearly wept.
She climbed into the bed beside him, and he snuggled against her—his head on her upper arm, his warm body tucked into hers. He still fit perfectly.
He looked up at her with his big dark eyes. He hesitated, a little unsure. “Will you sing to me?”
“Always, sweetheart.”
He smiled. Then he said it, the words she’d longed to hear. “Thanks, Mom.”
Her chest squeezed so tight, for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She swallowed the lump in her throat, blinked back the wetness in her eyes, and began to sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
As she sang Milo back to sleep, Ghost settled himself in front of the open bedroom door. His head up, expression alert. Watching over them, like he always did.
For a long time, she lay there. Relishing the presence of her child beside her. Smelling the clean shampoo scent of his hair, feeling the little boy shape of him.
She stared up at the ceiling, her mind a jumble of competing thoughts, her heart a tangle of conflicting emotions. She hadn’t been sure what it would be like, but she hadn’t imagined this.
She hadn’t known it would all be so hard.
The entire time she’d fought and bled and struggled to get home, she’d envisioned home as a sanctuary, a refuge to shelter from the storm invading the rest of the country.
But it wasn’t. It had been naïve to believe it.
Nothing that truly mattered in life came easily. That was as true before the collapse as after. Nothing was owed to you. Nothing. Not love. Not freedom. Not even family.
Relationships weren’t a given. They weren’t a right. They were made. They were forged through blood, sweat, and tears. Through time, energy, and commitment. Through good times and bad, through hope and despair.
Love had to be earned. So did freedom. Sometimes it had to be earned again and again. If you weren’t careful, it slipped right through your fingers.
Hannah had suffered and lost too much not to live free. She knew what oppression looked like. Chains weren’t always visible.
She wouldn’t go back to that. She wouldn’t raise her children in bondage.
She would fight with everything she had in her—with teeth, nails, and blood. With her own life.
It was worth the risk. Worth the cost. It had to be.
56
Liam
Day Forty
“Get your butt inside where it’s warm,” Molly said to Liam as she opened the front door wide. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Liam paused in the doorway. Beneath his coat, he wore the plate carrier he’d confiscated from Desoto, along with his M4, which he carried on a two-point sling.
The gash in his ear stung, but it had scabbed over and was healing well. His back ached with a dull pulsing pain, but it was endurable. He would endure.
It had been forty days since the EMP attack. Forty days for the country to unravel into complete anarchy. It was the beginning of February. In southwest Michigan, that meant another month of hard winter, maybe even two.
Quinn motioned for him to come inside her grandmother’s house. Liam stepped inside, and Quinn shut the door behind him.
Warmth from the crackling fire soothed his chapped cheeks. He took off his hat and gloves and stuffed them in his pocket. A few cats curled around his ankles, meowing plaintively.
Ghost greeted Liam with a brief muzzle press against his palm, then returned to his patrol of the house, moving from the living room, kitchen, hall, and bedrooms before returning to the living room again.
Liam looked around the circle of tense faces that greeted him. Hannah sat on the sofa, holding Charlotte, with Annette King on one side of her, Molly on the other. Molly’s cane rested beside her Mossberg 500 shotgun.
Dave Farris, Samantha Perez, and Mike Duncan and his son Jamal sat in wooden chairs that had been brought in from the kitchen.
Bishop stood sideways near the window, checking the street and yard, the modified AK-47 Liam had given him carried low in his hands. Jose Reynoso leaned against the framed archway between the kitchen and living room so he could keep an eye on the back door. He held a shotgun.
Noah Sheridan was conspicuously absent. Liam couldn’t say that he minded.
“What’s all this?” Liam asked.
“Quinn’s been busy,” Bishop said with a wry smile. “She’s been recruiting.”
“I’m aware,” Liam said.
Quinn had tracked him down daily, showing up at Hannah’s old house, bouncing on her heels on the front porch like a giddy puppy until he relented and opened the door. Twice she’d found him on his solitary walks and pestered him for two hours.
So much for a bit of peace and quiet to think.
She wanted him to teach her to fight, just like Hannah had. The kid had grit and spirit; he’d give her that. She was sarcastic and mouthy, too. He kind of liked her.
“Enough is enough,” Hannah said, steel in her voice. “What’s happening is wrong. It’s beyond wrong. We have to stop it.”
Two nights ago, the militia had raided Winter Haven. Twenty-seven families were rousted from their beds and driven from their homes. Only the militia and those few citizens who’d proven their loyalty to Rosamond Sinclair had been allowed to stay.
People like Darryl Wiggins and Noah Sheridan.
The community food
bank remained open—and well-guarded—at the middle school, but the militia maintained an updated list of who was approved to get supplies, and who was turned away.
At least a quarter of the town had made it on the blacklist for one reason or another. With the Crossway church supplies gone, people were already going hungry.
No further attempts had been made on Liam or Bishop’s lives. Liam wasn’t naïve. Another assassination attempt was coming. It was only a question of when.
Mattias Sutter would not let this go. Neither would Rosamond Sinclair.
Liam didn’t fear them. He’d be ready.
“What are you saying?” Liam asked.
“We gathered you here tonight to ask for your help,” Molly said. She locked eyes with Quinn. “It’s time to do something.”
“You said you couldn’t fight the militia by yourself,” Quinn said. She spread her arms wide, gesturing at the people seated around her. “You need soldiers. Here they are.”
Liam stared at her.
“I’m in,” Bishop said without hesitation.
A few people looked at him in surprise.
“I didn’t think you were a man of violence, pastor,” Mike Duncan said.
“In this fallen world, violence is an unfortunate necessity,” Bishop said. “The question is not whether violence is good or bad. But what is violence in service of? Is what you’re fighting for worthy?”
He half-turned from the window, his expression grave but determined. “No one else should lose their family. To me, that is worth fighting for.”
Quinn dipped her chin at him in acknowledgement and turned to Reynoso. “Officer Reynoso?”
Reynoso scratched at the stubble on his jaw and nodded. “I’ll admit it, I didn’t see it at first. But I hate what this town is turning into. It’s time to end this.”
“Same,” Perez said fiercely. “You can count on me. Hayes will be in, too. He’s a bit lazy and liked his donut runs too much, but he’s good people. He’ll be on our side.”
“I’m not a soldier, but I know my way around a hunting rifle,” Dave Farris said.