Devon tried to clear the ghastly image from his mind. He'd liked Crystal Hawkins. She'd struck him as a capable politician ideally suited to rebuilding Ezra. But she'd also been behind the persecution of people who'd come to her for help. And she'd conspired to have Hick killed.
Of course, she wouldn't have been alone in having that last item on her wish list. Hick gathered enemies like a bull gathered flies.
"Look, I don't want to talk about it. I did things I now regret to save her and it wasn't enough, so the gloves are off as far as I'm concerned."
Gert, whose face now bore a hardened, closed-off expression, said, "What are you planning?"
She looked up at him, a determined smile spreading across her taut face. "We're going to hit them where it hurts and help Hope at the same time. We're going to take out their vehicles."
Libby took them around the safe houses to meet the rebels she commanded. Most of them were basements or outbuildings and they were scattered over the western side of Ezra, as far as possible from the blocks that Crawford was rebuilding on Mayor Hawkins's foundations.
In each case, a voice challenged them as they approached. The doctor had died, Libby said, because the soldier on watch had fallen asleep. It had been a miracle that the others had escaped.
"This is my place," she said, coming to a stop.
Devon looked around. "Where?"
She pointed at the collapsed remains of a wooden house. It looked as though the walls had fallen, taking the roof down in one piece so it looked as if the house had sunk into the ground.
"Identify yourselves."
The voice was coming from the bushes to the right of the house.
"It's okay, Eric. It's me."
A young man popped up, shouldered his weapon and walked toward them. "Oh, you're back then."
He didn't bother to conceal his hostility as he approached Gert and gave his hand a perfunctory shake before turning to Devon.
"Good to meet you, Eric," Devon said.
"Are you here to join the raid?"
"Apparently."
"Then you're welcome," Eric said, aiming the greeting at Devon and not his companion.
Libby sniggered. "Pay no attention to him. Eric likes to play the big dog, and he doesn't like it when another one comes along. He'll be fine once they've sniffed butts a bit."
Devon followed them around the back of the house and in through what would once have been an upper-story window. She was a clever, capable young woman, he thought, but at the same time, completely clueless. Eric's problem was jealousy. He was younger and less experienced than Bekmann and if he ever got into a fair fight with the Dutchman there would be only one winner. And he knew it.
Aside from Eric, two others waited inside. "This is Scot," Libby said, gesturing to a bespectacled man who had the hollowed-out look of a someone who'd lost a lot of weight in a few months. But he got to his feet and welcomed them both warmly enough.
Libby gestured at a tiny young woman who'd been sitting next to Scot. "And that's Jade."
Jade had long black hair that was tied in a ponytail, and she wore a sleeveless jacket trimmed with what was presumably fake fur. Both the quilted jacket and the trim had once been white but were now filthy. "What's goin' on?" she said.
"She had a YouTube channel before the firestorm," Libby said as she directed them through what had been the attic and into an area at the end that had been separated off with a wall made of piled wood and rubble. "Two million followers. Instagram too."
"What was it about?" Devon asked as he glanced back to see her squatting in the corner behind Scot, fiddling with her hair.
"Makeup tutorials, hairstyles, that sort of thing. If you believe her, she earned thousands a month through advertising and then, bam, all gone in a few minutes."
A mattress and comforter occupied one corner of the space to create a makeshift bed and Libby threw her pack onto it with a groan. "Amazing to think so much of what we thought was important could just disappear like that. Heck, I signed the petition to get them to reshoot the last Game of Thrones. Never expected to see the fall of King's Landing at first hand."
The six of them ate together, although Eric excused himself as soon as he'd finished his can of chicken curry and returned to his station in the bushes outside after a final withering look at Gert and Libby.
They broke out two bottles of brandy Libby had discovered in the wreckage and sat around the gas lanterns swapping stories of their lives before the firestorm. No one wanted to talk much about what had happened since, or about their mission the following day. The past was another country of selective memories and a way of life that would never return, and, as they passed the bottle around, bathing in the yellow glow of the lanterns, they each took it in turns to give a guided tour of their lost history.
Finally, Scot hauled himself to his feet and went to take his turn on watch duty. Eric slinked in, unrolled his sleeping bag in a corner and fell asleep with his back to them. Gert and Libby disappeared into her space at the end of the attic.
Jade touched his arm. "What happened to your face?"
Devon instinctively put his hand up to the scars on his cheek as if to hide them. Now that the pain had gone, he rarely thought about how he must look to others. "I got burned."
"On the night?"
He chuckled at that. "No, a couple of weeks later. Jumping out of a burning building." In his mind's eye he saw flames leaping out of the bedroom window as he clung to the window ledge, Margie's arms wrapped around his legs.
"Oh my God. I'd be, like, kinda losing my mind. Bummer."
Her eyes roved over his face, taking in the rough contours of his scars.
"I, like, I could probably hide that. You know, back in the day. Like, when we had actual electricity."
"Oh, it's okay," he said, feeling his face warm. "I'm told they make me look badass."
Her giggle was straight out of high school. "Totally! You got the man, I got the glam. Or I did."
"You look alright to me, just as you are," he said. "Sorry. Didn't mean that to come out all creepy."
She smiled. Slight, pale skinned and with cheekbones that were just the right side of mountainous, he could imagine how she'd have been a social media star. "It's ok, Dev. I got an instinct about these things and I can trust you. I feel it."
To his amazement, she pulled his arm out and draped it around her shoulder as she nestled against his chest. "It's good to feel safe," she said, her voice muffled into the fabric of his jacket.
He leaned back against the wall and pulled her closer, blowing stray strands of hair out of his face as she settled. It seemed like only seconds later that he heard her snoring. He felt a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes as he sat, unable to move for fear of waking her. Just as with Dorothy, he wanted—needed—to protect her from the evils of the new world and he wondered what flaw in his psyche this revealed.
For now, however, he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible as someone switched off the lantern and darkness came.
When he woke up, groaning at the pain in his back, she had disentangled herself and was now leaning against his shoulder, looking up at him in the dim morning light. Good grief, it could only be five a.m.
"Who's Jessie?"
"What?"
"You said the name in your sleep. Boy or girl?"
He straightened up, and she moved a little, her eyes fixed on him. "Oh, girl. She's my …" He paused for a moment as he searched in vain for the right noun. "Well, I'm not sure what she is anymore."
He hadn't slept well. It had felt like hours before he'd drifted off, only to wake up to find she'd folded herself onto his lap and was hugging his hand. That had been his last memory until Eric got himself dressed with all the consideration of a gorilla with a hangover.
"You had a bust up?"
"Yeah. She didn't want me to come."
Jade sighed and banged her head back, looking up into the rafters.
"What's up?" Devon asked.
"What about Scot?" Devon pointed at the snoring sleeping bag a few yards.
"Yeah. Maybe. But, like. Well. He's Scot." She leaned forward and looked at the recumbent figure as if that explained everything.
He took her hand. "Shall we be friends?"
"Cool. Sure."
"Sorry, was that the wrong thing to say?"
She shook her head. "No. It's just. Well. Like, you won't be here after today, will you?"
"I don't know. But we can be friends for today, can't we?"
Jade slumped back against the wall. She was silent for a moment as Devon dug around in his pack looking for his toothbrush and soap. Then she turned to him. "Take me with you, when you go."
He froze, aware that she was watching him as he searched for the right words. Too late.
She scrambled to her feet. "I get it. Just like all the others. My dad, all my boyfriends, everyone."
"Jade!"
"Get lost!" she snapped as she grabbed her pack and disappeared through the window.
Chapter 6: The Bomb
Hick couldn't resist watching from a safe distance as he waited for the car to explode. The sensible option was to hide somewhere across town, but he wanted to see if the people took the bait.
Staging his own death had taken a lot of setting up. His supposed assassin, Evan Bird, had placed the explosives beneath the car, but they'd routed the car's ignition to a trigger switch he could activate from inside the garage. It was still a risky assignment because, though Hick knew his way around a soldering iron—he had run a computer shop, after all—he knew nothing about the power of C-4. But, he reasoned, it was fair that Bird should take the risk. He was the double agent, not Hick.
Hick was hiding in an empty house across the street. It had been owned by the Witherspoons—an elderly couple who'd had the misfortune to be on a Caribbean cruise when the firestorm had happened. Hick had long since given up hope that the disaster was confined to continental North America.
The place stank of must and mothballs, but it was set back from the road and overshadowed by a monkey puzzle tree that made it easy for him to watch from an upstairs bedroom window. There was the pickup, sitting on the drive awaiting its fate. Bird was crouching in the garage with the switch—taken from a table lamp—in his hand.
Stealing a quick look at his wrist, Hick gripped the windowsill. Any moment now.
Then he heard it. The unmistakable rumble of Sheriff Kaminski's patrol car as it turned the corner. Right on time.
WHOOMF!
And so he missed the detonation. By the time his eyes had turned back to the house, it was hidden behind a fireball that expanded and dimmed as it grew. The window rattled, and he shrank away from the pittle-pattle of debris hitting it, expecting at any moment that the glass would shatter.
It took milliseconds, and Hick only just got back to the window in time to see Kaminski's car screech to a halt and the sheriff perform his Oscar-nominated role of "shocked first responder", jumping out of the car and running to the still-burning remains of the pickup. Hick was looking beyond it to evaluate the damage to the front of the house. His only concession to emotion was to move the car down the drive a little, but the explosion had been more powerful than any of them had anticipated, lifting the vehicle sideways and, no doubt, smashing every window on the front of his house.
He watched Kaminski run toward the twisted remains of the garage door as people began emerging from the houses all around. The bravest of them began edging toward the burning car, but most remained at a safe distance.
From an operational point of view, it wouldn't be a disaster if Bird had died in the explosion. There had to be a spy in Hope who would confirm to Crawford that the bombing had succeeded, but it would be better if the assassin could take the news himself and, if his promise was to be believed, act as their man in the enemy's camp.
All that depended, however, on his survival and Rusty being able to secrete him before any members of the public got there.
Prickles on the back of his leg told Hick that Roger the cockerel was climbing up to get a better look.
"Do you reckon they'll fall for it?"
Roger the rooster shrugged.
First, the people of Hope had to be convinced that Hickman was dead, and then Crawford. Because there's nothing more dangerous than a dead enemy who is still alive.
Hick stayed by the window until the small fire that had spread to the garage was out. After about an hour watching the vultures descend on his house, repelled only by the ring of deputies that Rusty had positioned around it, Hick spotted the sheriff emerge and, while not looking directly up at him, give a surreptitious thumbs-up.
He settled down beneath the window and sighed. It had been more emotional than he'd expected to watch the car explode and, especially, the reaction of his neighbors. Some seemed to be genuinely shocked. Not the people who lived right next door, however. They'd never forgiven him for what had happened to their daughter's rabbit.
Hick wasn't certain exactly how he would use his apparent demise against Crawford. So far, his plan was to lie low and see what his enemy intended to do once Hick was out of the way. It might have been nothing more than petty revenge or to unsettle the inhabitants of the town ahead of another attack. But if Crawford didn't act quickly, Hick would go looking for him. He didn't have the patience to serve his revenge cold.
Evening passed by and still Hick sat beneath the window with Roger. He was so bored as he waited for the streets to empty that he found himself with nothing better to do than to ruminate over the past and to wonder where Sam was. He didn't regret sending her away although, as it turned out, she'd have been safe enough in Hope once the first attack failed. He'd sent a message via courier to Springs, but she'd either ignored it or moved on. She was probably heading for the West Coast. She'd often talked about it; fantasizing about a shack on a Californian beach, and by heading west she could keep moving farther from Hope, and from him, until she reached the sea.
He knew she'd get in touch when she was ready. If she hadn't gotten herself into trouble in the meantime. Hick grunted to himself as he remembered that she was, after all, his daughter and she had many grudges against the Sons. They'd better watch it if they ever caught up with her.
"Come on then," he said to Roger. Darkness had finally fallen, and no one had passed along the sidewalk for twenty minutes or so. It was as if, in the absence of streetlights, the residents of Hope had reverted to a simpler time when sunlight determined how long their day was.
He crept downstairs, gently opened the front door and peered outside. Hick picked Roger up and jogged as quietly as he could to the gate. This was the most risky moment of the entire operation, but Hope was silent as he crouched beside the gate and looked up and down the road.
Hick plunged into the darkness, glancing at where he knew his house to be, but focusing mainly on not falling over as, like a blind man, he felt his way step by step toward safety.
"At last!"
"Shush!" Hick said as the light of a gas lamp flooded onto the threshold.
Joe Bowie gave a shy smile and beckoned Hick inside. "Sorry. Go on through, they're in the main room."
This was the first time Hick had been inside the Bowie residence since the attack on Hope. Joe had been wounded, and his son, Jenson, had died. Martha Bowie's bed was still in the living room, surrounded by candles, having been moved there when she'd first become sick with the flu. These days, however, her malady was of an entirely different sort. The place had a dusty, confined smell as if fresh air hadn't been admitted for weeks.
Hick was beginning to wonder whether it had really been such a good idea to choose this mausoleum to hide in while he was dead. But it was too late to change his mind now. He approached the bed and sat down in the chair. It was still warm from where Joe had been sitting. "How are you doin', Martha?"
Physi
cally, she looked more like the woman he'd known for decades. Cheeks that had hollowed out when she'd almost succumbed to flu and then pneumonia were now filling again, and he reckoned she'd put on thirty to forty pounds since he'd last seen her. But her eyes were glistening pools set within deep sockets ringed with black.
She didn't answer his question but focused on the floor beside his feet. "Do y'all see that? I been off the morphine, so I shouldn't be seein' things no more."
Hick picked up the ten-pound bundle of feathers and put it on his knee. "This is Roger."
"Roger the rooster?"
Suddenly, her dead face became animated as she reached out to pet the chicken. Roger took one look at her pasty hand and pecked her.
"Ow! Yes, he sure is real enough. Typical of Paul Hickman's pet to be a mean son of a b—"
"He's all yours," Hick said. "Look after him, he's a good guard … bird."
"Here you are, Martha." Leonard "Dave" Bowie placed a steaming mug on the table next to the bed. "Hick."
Hickman nodded to Martha's father-in-law and accepted a second cup.
"You're gonna have to make yourself comfortable in the attic, I'm afraid," he said. Then, as he made to go, he leaned down and whispered in Hick's ear. "Martha don't want no one sleepin' in Jenson's room."
Hick grunted an acknowledgment, but cursed his luck. It was bad enough that he was going to be holed up here, but he had, at least, expected to have a bedroom.
Joe Bowie jumped up, scampering to answer the front door and, a few moments later, Rusty Kaminski came in, glanced at Hickman and sighed. "You made it then?"
"Obviously."
"No one see you?"
Hick shook his head. "Where's Bird?"
"Dead. Seems you might have miscalculated."
Hick cursed. "But everyone bought that I'm dead?"
"Oh yeah. It's been quite the education. Turns out some folks actually like you, Paul. You need to work a little harder or lose your reputation as a two-faced heartless con man. I do believe I saw tears. Though whether they was tears of sadness or joy, I wouldn't like to say."
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