“Whatcha got in those bags?” the trooper asked.
“I, uh,” he stuttered. His brain felt slow and thick and stupid. Stoned, he couldn’t think on his feet.
“He’s got the same thing I’ve got, officer,” Ava interrupted. Her voice was a purr. “Lunch. Nothing in there but my PB and Js.”
Sliding her bag from her shoulder, she handed the satchel to a blushing Finn without looking back. She stepped forward then, pushing Parker out of her way and slightly past the bottleneck of the checkpoint.
Reaching the state trooper, she leaned in close. “But who knows what I’m hiding on my body.” She put her hands on her hips and smiled at the man.
Parker blinked. He wasn’t pretending to be something he wasn’t—he was a man and, despite his protective feelings of loyalty toward Ava, he understood she was beautiful. But she’d just transformed herself into some kind of stripper superhero with a few changes in body language and the pitch of her voice. For a moment, he believed she’d do whatever the trooper wanted, right there in the middle of the street.
“Uh, Ava,” Finn said.
Ava spun back to her. “Shut the fuck up, Finn. You may not see who has the power now, but I sure as hell do.” Finn stepped back at the rebuke, and Ava spun around to face the trooper again, and leaned forward; the curve of her breasts pressed against the thin material of her shirt. “And, officer?” she practically purred, “I find power very sexy.”
“Oh, you’re very naughty,” he chuckled. “And naughty girls are always up to something. You’ll definitely have to be searched.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Shall I assume the position?”
The officer grinned, making him look like a hungry shark to Parker. The state trooper was no longer looking at him, however, and so he caught Finn’s eye and waved her over. As Finn scooted past, Ava turned slowly and grabbed the front bumper of the truck parked at the curb. She spread her legs and slowly bent over, offering the heart-shaped globe of her ass up for the trooper’s inspection.
Catcalls whistled out and Parker saw the two National Guardsmen approaching, goofy grins plastered across their barely post-pubescent faces. Ava looked back over her shoulder and smiled, and the armed men crowded around the young woman like jackals on a kill.
As they swarmed around her, he saw the trooper running his hands across Ava’s ass and then up under her shirt. He heard her giggle in a sugary falsetto and his stomach did a slow flip-flop. He wanted to vomit at his own impotence, but if he were to step in now to stop it, they’d all be arrested and end up dangling over a lamp post until they shit themselves before dying.
“Come on,” Finn whispered. “She’s giving us time to get this food hidden; we can’t waste it.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’re right.”
Finn put her head down and quickly hopped on her bike. Parker made to follow her, but as she pulled away, the group of armed men behind them all started laughing. He closed his eyes. His hand slipped into his jeans pocket and pulled a small white tablet out. Popping it into his mouth, he jumped on his own bike. The pill was tasteless beyond its slightly chalky texture; he swallowed it dry.
Parker and Finn rode slowly, mixing in with the rest of the workers on their way to work.
“It worked,” Finn said. “She pulled it off.”
“Like a French Resistance guerilla,” Parker said.
Finn looked at him oddly for a moment, and he grew afraid he was slurring his words without realizing it. His heart beat faster at the thought, and at the realization that he’d responded with more fear of that than at the prospect of Ava’s potential harm by the overzealous soldiers.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Finn said, turning her head back to face the road.
They kept riding, neither of them feeling much like talking. “We have a plan,” Parker said at last, reminding himself of the fact as much as he was speaking to Finn. “We have to stick to the plan; we can’t run off half-cocked. You don’t do things without being methodical, crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Preparation is key to success.” He paused. “I know Ava doesn’t always understand that.”
“She must,” Finn said. Still, Parker heard the accusation in Finn’s voice as she spoke. “She’s been patient while you healed and has supported the plan, despite her wanting to be on the move weeks ago.”
Parker could understand Ava’s desire to be on the move, but every time he thought he was ready, there was something holding him back and telling him he needed more time.
Time for what?
The Council was filled with brutal, violent people, and they were changing what could only be referred to as the “corporate culture” of the emergency government forces. The so-called government became more like an occupying army every day. Killers with badges; criminals who operated under a veneer of civilization and authority, much as Stalin’s and Hitler’s followers had. A plan that relied on a young girl flirting with such men might work on a sanitized television episode, but Parker knew that, in real life, it was playing with fire, or at best it was an open invitation to gang rape.
Parker started to say something to Finn, to take charge of things, to be a leader, to be the man she’d known on the night of the Event, but now wasn’t the time. Plus, he felt lethargic, too calm in his Ativan-muddled head.
They reached the orchard in fifteen minutes and laid their bikes down a short space away from where other workers were gathering to pick up ladders and collection bags. Behind an idle forklift, Finn and Parker opened the top of an irrigation weir and hid their supplies. There was already quite a collection in the damp, hollowed-out space.
They heard a bike bounce off the ground hard behind them and turned. Ava was approaching them, her face far from furious at whatever had happened. Instead, her expression was cold as an ice field as she stared them down. Parker couldn’t meet her gaze. He knew he didn’t deserve to.
“Ava, I’m sor—” Finn tried to say.
Ava cut her off. “Don’t worry about it,” she snapped. “Right, Parker? All’s well that ends well, right? As long as we’re prepared, as long as everything is going according to THE PLAN?”
Parker didn’t respond.
“Every time we go through that checkpoint and play ‘let’s-pretend-we’re-spies’ with stone cold killers, we risk people like Isla and Fernando stringing us up by chains off a goddamn lamp post.”
“We can’t take off unprepared…” Parker began.
“And now?” Ava cut him off. “I flirted and got felt up during a pat-down, but those sick sonofabitches think I liked it, Parker. I pretended to like it so we could dump food in a pile that could be found at any time.” Her voice had become quietly furious.
“I—” Parker started. His stoned mind couldn’t form words fast enough to keep up with her.
Ava cut him off again. “At any time, Parker. We could be walking into the crosshairs of a Council Small Kill Team every time we go back to the same drop point. And let’s not forget tomorrow or the day after, Parker. What happens when the girl who giggled while she was felt up goes back through the same checkpoint? Full body cavity search? And what, I’m supposed to be okay with that because you have a plan?”
Parker simmered quietly, casting a look around to make sure no one could overhear them. He did have a plan; he did have a purpose. Yeah, it left those who’d pledged to help him vulnerable, but his plan made sense.
“No. Parker, just fucking no.” Ava said before he could speak again. “We shouldn’t even be here.”
She turned and stalked away. Finn, her expression pained, started after her, but then turned back to Parker. She seemed torn, and he understood why. She and Parker had bonded tightly over the night of the Event, but she’d been in love with Ava for almost as long as she’d been old enough to understand what the word ‘love’ meant. And Parker knew he no longer seemed like the man he’d been that night.
Parker saw everything playing across her face and gently shook his head. “Go,” he said. “Go after
her. It’s my turn to drive the forklift anyway.”
“I know you feel you have to do this, this way,” she said. “I get that…” she trailed off and looked away, leaving Parker to wonder just exactly how much she really got it anymore.
He climbed up into the forklift and turned the ignition over. The tractor roared to life, its engine too loud for them to talk. Finn turned and followed Ava, leaving Parker to shuffle apple bins back and forth in the clearing. After a couple of minutes, he took another tablet out of his pocket and chewed it up.
2
Eli sat beside Parker on the porch of the ex-cop’s house, drinking the last of Parker’s beer stash, which was warm as piss but still good after a long day of working out in the fields. Silent, Parker savored the warm, soft comfort of his buzz. He wasn’t drunk, merely loose. He was relaxing after a hard day’s work, he told himself, and nothing more. Besides, given how the girls were feeling about him, this was as close to warmth as he was going to find, he figured.
The former Army infantryman was probably his closest friend, and had been a fellow prepper, but with the confiscation of all items deemed to signify hoarding by the Council, he now kept his head low, choosing not to make any waves that would call attention to himself.
Parker reminisced at his side silently, wishing for the old days, when the beers had been cold and the conversation lively. He tugged at this shirt, leaning forward to let the sweat run down his back. For almost fall, the weather had yet to cool off.
The neighborhood around them was quiet. Since the Event and the subsequent crackdown by Council forces had melded into the fabric of legitimate authority institutions, life had taken on the rhythms of nineteenth-century agricultural society—a society that was living in fear of its brutal overloads.
After a few minutes, a National Guard Humvee rolled slowly down the street, two soldiers inside. The passenger nodded at Parker and Eli as they drove past. Both men raised their hands in acknowledgment. They, and their homes, could be searched at any moment, for any reason. It didn’t pay to antagonize the men with guns.
“You ever hear the sheepdog versus wolf analogy?” Eli asked, finishing off his beer.
Parker nodded. It was a popular analogy in military and law enforcement circles. Society was separated into two groups, was how it went: people were either sheep or wolves. Wolves fed on sheep. There was a third group also: some people were sheepdogs, and they protected the sheep from the wolves.
“I believe it,” Eli said. “For broad depictions of personality types, anyway. But have to say, it bothered me. I was always in the group of folks who felt it left out a fourth player.”
“How so?” Parker asked. He hadn’t thought about the analogy in years, but he willingly listened to Eli talk about it.
“Well, putting aside the generally insulting comparison of American citizens to sheep,” he said, “and acknowledging that your various criminal elements, terrorist groups, hostile regimes, et cetera, are metaphorically wolves, and cops and soldiers and intelligence agents are sheepdogs….”
“Go on,” Parker said. “Remind me of this unnamed fourth player.” Eli tended to philosophize when buzzed, and Parker had no problem letting him ramble on.
“The shepherd,” Eli said. “Sheepdogs don’t guard sheep because they love sheep; they’re not even the same species. No, the sheepdogs follow the shepherd’s commands. They protect the sheep from the wolves because the sheep are the shepherd’s property. And, when it comes time to drive the sheep to the slaughter pens? It’s the sheepdogs who do it.”
The two men watched the red taillights of the Humvee drive away down the street.
“I take it,” Parker said, “you expanded the analogy because most of the government forces don’t have a clue about the Council?”
Eli went to take a drink of his beer, but found it empty and set it back down. “Most people who get into law enforcement, or join the military, or become first responders, function well in a hierarchal world. It appeals to them, intrinsically. Rank makes it easy. High ranks give orders and make the plans, and lower ranks carry them out. There’s an order and structure to it. Work hard and you’re promoted. It’s linear, dependable, easily understood.”
“And?”
“And most people want to be individuals. We’re Americans, for Christ’s sake; we flipped the bird to the King of England. We dumped tea in the harbor. We’re the Land of the Free; we want to be able to tell the police to fuck off without going to prison. The government should fear the people; the people should not fear the government.”
Parker shook his head. “What does being an individual have to do with sheep and wolves?”
“Keep up, Jim. For those people who like order, this feels right to them; it feels natural. Then, because they feel that way, they start getting a pack mentality of ‘us against them’ regarding the people they’re trying to help. A sort of pack-think.”
Parker knew his buzz wasn’t causing his confusion. “You’re mixing your analogies here. Besides, sheep are in herds, not packs.”
“But dogs are in packs and those are the ones I’m talking about.”
Parker could hear the smugness in Eli’s tone without having to see his face.
“That’s a pretty damning indictment,” Parker pointed out. As an ex-cop, he felt sort of defensive about the description, but he also wondered if he simply had some vestiges of pack-think, as Eli described it, still left in him.
“Not every cop, or soldier or first responder or whatever, is a Nazi waiting to happen—I don’t mean that,” Eli said. “I know better. But every human being is susceptible to pack-think. It’s in our DNA for survival.”
“So if they trust the system, because they’re part of the system, they don’t even notice that their role as sheepdogs is to bring the sheep to slaughter,” Parker finished.
“Well, only those that break away from the herd. It’s why the Council doesn’t need to be huge for this silent coup to work. They only need shepherds in key places to exploit natural human tendencies. Some soldiers and cops and whatnot will fight, of course. But most? Pack-think; the sheep versus the shepherds.” Eli sighed. “I may be a little drunk.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“Man,” Parker said. “Have I told you how much I hate picking apples?” He rubbed at the dry skin covering a popped blister on his palm.
“Could have fooled me,” Eli replied.
Parker stopped lifting his beer bottle when it was halfway to his mouth. He looked at his friend, the man who’d first walked into the hellscape of the city with him on the night of the Event, helping him as they’d gunned their way to the point where they’d each split up to follow their own pathways: Parker to heading off to save Ava, and Eli heading across the interstate to reach his wife, Jen.
“What the hell does that mean?” Parker demanded when Eli didn’t elaborate.
“It means, if you hate picking apples so fucking much, why the hell have you been doing it for six goddamn weeks?”
Parker couldn’t say anything. He hadn’t told Eli about his plan or that he’d let himself get derailed. Hell, Eli had been his oldest consistent friend since he’d let booze and prescription pills start to take over his life following the bad shoot that had flushed his LEO career down the tubes.
Maybe it was because Eli still wouldn’t talk about what happened after he arrived at his sister-in-law’s.
He looked at the beer bottle still hanging halfway to his mouth. Why was he still picking apples? He’d used his injuries as an excuse to stay where he was, but deep down, there was a voice in his head telling him it was something more. Had he developed a sheep mentality with each pop of an Ativan into his mouth? Surely not. Not now, when everything was coming together. I don’t have a problem.
He gave admitting he had a problem a mental middle finger and chugged down the last of the beer. He turned and looked at Eli.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
; “What?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Come on.”
“What about Finn and Ava?” Eli asked.
“They’re asleep. They’re both worn out from hating my guts.”
“They hate your guts?” Eli asked. He stood as Parker did.
“Well, I think Ava does,” he clarified. “Finn may still be in the ‘deeply disappointed’ phase.”
“Lovely.”
Parker nodded; opening the door, he tilted his head, indicating Eli should follow him. Once inside, he turned on a powerful 5-cell Maglite and led him through the dark living room of the little house and into his bedroom. Parker opened his closet and handed the flashlight over.
“Uh, what are we doing in your bedroom, brother?” Eli asked, taking the flashlight.
Parker smiled without humor. There had been a time when Eli was the only one who could tease him out of a dark mood, but he found little to be humorous about these days.
“Relax—I’m going into the closet here, not coming out of it,” Parker replied. “Hold the light along the back wall for me, smartass.”
“Sure.”
“I get smartass all day long with Ava, you know,” Parker told him.
“Unclench your panties, Jim,” Eli said. “What are you showing me?”
“This.” He finished prying the false wall out of the side of the closet, set it to one side, and stepped out of the other man’s way. Curious, Eli stepped in closer, playing the beam of the flashlight around the area.
The beam came to rest. Eli cocked his head to one side and let out a low whistle.
Within the hollowed-out section of the wall was Parker’s stash; at least what he’d managed to hold onto. He wasn’t a fool. When the marshals came through with the National Guard in tow, Parker obediently turned over the canned goods and supplies he’d had stashed around the house and under the beds—all in the name of civic duty—but he’d intentionally ignored everything he’d hidden behind the false wall.
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