Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2)

by Chris Pourteau

  She blinked for a moment until she understood his question. “Five thousand … ish?”

  The Maestro regarded Simpson again. “Take the Scarecrow here and fifty of the men and secure fifty buses. Line both sides of Main Street, stack ’em up. And make sure they’re gassed up. No more delays,” he said, tossing a meaningful look to the Lady. “We need to move this army, and soon.”

  “What about the roads?” asked Maggie. “I mean, having buses don’t do no good without clear roads.”

  Marsten nodded.

  “The authorities will already be working on that,” Simpson assured them. “Restoring the transportation system—it’s one of the first priorities. I mean, you can’t fix a power grid if you can’t get the servicemen to the breaks, you know?”

  “Tomorrow night,” said the Lady. All eyes turned to her. “You have until then to fulfill your promise, Maestro. To get us where we need to be before … before the alignment occurs.”

  Simpson wondered what she meant by that, and he could see in Marsten’s face a similar lack of understanding. But, with Franklin’s example, the Maestro had impressed upon all of them the need to have faith. The need not to question.

  “You heard our Mistress,” Marsten said, returning his welted left eye to Simpson. “Have the buses here by morning. We’ll send scouting parties out on the bikes to see the progress of the road crews.

  “I have a mission for you, too,” the Maestro said, turning to Maggie, who lit up like a firefly. “Take half a dozen men with you and find guns. Hit pawn shops, Walmart, whatever.” To Simpson, he said, “Pick her and whatever she finds up on your way back. If you’re right and the world is waking up, I want this army outfitted for war. Understand me?”

  Simpson nodded and backed away a step or two, his knees finally believing that his moment of certain death was past. For now.

  “Oh, and Simpson?”

  The smaller man turned reluctantly to face Marsten again. It took all his self-control not to bolt in the other direction.

  The Maestro reclaimed the few steps between them and once again laid a heavy hand on Simpson’s shoulder. “I’m glad I didn’t have to kill you yet.” Marsten winked. “Keep it up.”

  Simpson smiled uncomfortably and nodded. Moving past Cackler, he grabbed the thin man by the arm, motioned to Maggie to follow, and hustled out of the courthouse.

  * * *

  The evening had passed with each of them taking guard duty twice.

  Stavros and Lauryn talked little as they traded shifts. It was odd, he thought, how they seemed complete strangers and yet also strangely intimate companions. The feeling of unfamiliarity was easy enough to understand. They’d only been acquainted for a day and a half. And still in that time, he’d come to feel oddly connected to Lauryn and her daughter, even protective of them.

  Except for a quick, cautious supply run to a nearby 7-Eleven yesterday, they’d hidden in near-silence since the roof. Eating meagerly, availing themselves of the washateria’s bathroom, which had no running water but at least afforded each of them privacy. With the help of gravity, they’d managed to pull water out of the hoses at the back of the washers to pour down the toilets.

  That won’t last long, he realized. Lauryn’s decision to move on was probably fortuitous. But would it be any better anywhere else?

  Stavros glanced at their forms, peculiarly uncomfortable with observing Lauryn and Megan while they slept. It was like that sense you get in an elevator packed with strangers, that natural tendency to raise the air shields around you and avoid making eye contact. The need to avoid the unknown danger of sharing intimacy with strangers. And yet, Lauryn and her daughter weren’t total strangers, were they? They’d saved one another’s lives. They’d shared death together. Hard to get more intimate than that.

  He shuffled quietly across the concrete floor and draped a blanket, light as a feather, over Lauryn. Both women were still in shock, he knew. Lauryn rarely spoke to him except to bark at him to be quiet. Megan hardly did anything but tend to her dog and sleep like the dead … like a teenager, he corrected himself. He’d finally dropped his friendly overtures and given them both their space.

  Stavros recognized the symptomology of grieving in Lauryn from his required coursework in human psychology—withdrawn to the point of depression, non-responsive, snapping at him. She’d even pointed her gun at him earlier, for God’s sake. Talk about frayed around the edges.

  After they were sure the handful of anorexics were gone, he and Lauryn settled into four-hour shifts, one watching while the other slept. He’d been dimly aware of Megan joining her mother during her second turn at guard duty, but now both women slept as Stavros watched over them in the pre-dawn darkness.

  As he sat listening to the clink and clank of debris against the buildings, Stavros considered adding to his narrative journal. But he’d received no flash of inspiration, no Archimedean Eureka! moment regarding Peter, and besides, he needed to keep his eyes on that front entrance, not wandering with his thoughts, distracted while he dictated into his recorder.

  Still, he had a couple of hours before sunrise, right? Megan shifted and Jasper woofed in his sleep. Let’s focus on that, then. A couple of hours was plenty of time to figure out the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl, wasn’t it? A diagnostic exercise in A-Minor, as it were. Stavros smirked at the pun. Realizing he could still make a pun after all that had happened promoted the smirk to a smile.

  Noting what he knew, Stavros settled into the scientific method. Megan seemed obsessed with her dog. It’d been her insistence that they find some low-dose aspirin to give Jasper for his ribs—and the practical need for non-perishable food, he amended—that had prompted their quick dash to requisition supplies from the nearby 7-Eleven.

  So, Observation One—obsession with Jasper. He jotted it on a mental checklist.

  Observation Two—and this didn’t take a degree in psychology or anything else—the girl grieved the loss of her father.

  Is there a pattern? he asked himself. Are the two observations related?

  Float a hypothesis and see if it rises. Maybe her constant care for Jasper was her way of processing, Stavros thought. Of dealing with her father’s death. Caring for the dog and marathon sleep sessions seemed all the girl was capable of.

  In one rare moment of openness, when neither Lauryn nor Stavros could sleep, they’d shared part of her watch. She’d told him what Megan said to Jasper on the roof, right after Mark Hughes had plunged to his death, holding fast to Peter Marsten.

  Megan had whispered in the dog’s ear. “Daddy’s gone. I need you now.” And, just when Stavros insisted they leave him behind to make their escape, the wounded animal had gotten up to accompany them. Each step down the stairs, each pad of a paw was painful. But the dog followed them with little whining, focused only on the next step and the next….

  Stavros wondered how Megan must’ve interpreted that. He took all he understood of teenage girls—which wouldn’t fill a thimble—and tried to determine just where Megan was at. This wasn’t just a diagnostic exercise, he realized. At some point they’d need to rely on the girl. What if the anorexics came back and noticed them this time? He let that awareness sink in as the frogs and cicadas sang outside.

  So, let’s think outside the box, he thought. What don’t the textbooks tell you? What’s the harmonic that occurs beyond the combination of notes you hear? Where’s the Lazarus factor here?

  Maybe she’d seen Jasper’s revival as some kind of spiritual response to her call to action. Maybe she’d interpreted the dog’s getting to his feet and padding beside her as his willingness to step up—literally, to get up and stand beside her in the place of her fallen father.

  The scientist in him scoffed at that. Romantic fantasy. The dog possessed no faculty for understanding Megan’s grief. Jasper was an unthinking animal, a creature whose loyalty was bred into him, conditioned behavior inherited from his wolfish ancestors who prowled the perimeter of human camps millennia ago, looking
for scraps.

  Or is that what you think you know, he thought. It’s the girl’s interpretation of reality you’re trying to understand, he corrected himself. Not your own perception of it.

  His scientist eyes lingered on Jasper lying on his side, wuffing in some dream, his paws jerking in a dream-run. Perhaps he was running in a field, the pain in his ribs a memory only for his waking life. Or perhaps he was running to Megan’s rescue. Was Jasper dreaming of the roof? Did he dream he’d gotten up after Marsten had knocked him aside, bruised ribs or not, and charged Peter himself? Could dogs wish in that way?

  Stavros rolled his eyes at the thought. Fatigue was making him lazy in the head.

  He glanced at his pile of things against the wall. Wrapped in his jacket, out of sight, was his recorder. Voicing more thoughts would bring him discipline again. The rigor of logical thought. He was still convinced that the secret to Serenity’s failure was more about understanding music than programming. “DNA—as much art as science,” read the bumper sticker in his head. His colleagues back at UT’s Center for Genetics Research and Human Application would have a field day with that.

  But there was symphony music and there was Jazz. And Stavros hated Jazz, the randomness of it, the often discordant notes overriding the precision of rhythm and the healthy harmony of a consistent key. Not a math equation, he insisted, listening to the somnolent rhythm of night pulsing beyond the laundromat’s fractured front door. But a discernible pattern. Ultimately, something that can be understood. Pure Jazz, by its nature, was sonorous chaos.

  “What are you looking at?”

  Megan’s tired voice shook the scientist out of his head. Her voice sounded irritated.

  “Nothing,” Stavros said quietly. He put his index finger to his lips, dropping his head toward Lauryn. She’d thrown the thin blanket off in the heat of the night, he noticed.

  Jasper raised his head and stared at Stavros, who looked deep into the dog’s eyes. Unbidden, the thought came to Stavros, I wonder if he knows what I was thinking. I wonder if he wishes—Stop that. Dogs don’t wish. Dogs don’t think.

  Jasper levered himself up on his side, panting in the sticky heat, still staring at the scientist. The dog won the contest.

  Megan sat up next to him, one hand hovering in the air as Jasper worked slowly to get up. “I was having a bad dream,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s hard to remember it now. I was at Dad’s office, bored as usual. All those TV screens, all that boring data stuff. Then it was raining and the rain turned yellow. And then there was a boy running from zombies, like on The Walking Dead. Only these were faster, and there were so many. He was terrified.” She looked at Stavros with guarded, sleepy eyes. “So was I.”

  Stavros wasn’t sure what else to say, so he asked, “Was it a boy from school? Someone you know?”

  Megan seemed to look through him for a moment, then her eyes focused. “Don’t think so. Don’t know him. Do I?” She shook with a chill, or a lingering image from her nightmare.

  Stavros smiled thinly, with no idea how to answer her question. Any dream seemed to be a nightmare now. Gesturing at Jasper’s restlessness, he said, “I think he needs to go out.”

  Jasper huffed as if debating whether or not getting up to pee was worth the effort.

  “Your mother wants us to move to a new place as soon as it’s light,” continued Stavros. “Maybe he can wait a little bit.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Megan, her dream pushed aside as she helped Jasper to rise. “It’s already dawn.”

  Stavros turned to stare through the front door of the washateria. The first reflections of sunshine angled through the broken glass.

  “Huh. So it is.”

  All that thinking and diagnosing and debating had certainly passed the time.

  Chapter 3: Tuesday, morning.

  “Bus Barn Road. Wow. Someone stayed up late thinking up that one, huh? I mean, this is a shithole town, but still, you’d think someone could’ve come up with something better than—”

  Simpson tuned out Cackler, something he’d learned to do quickly since marching out of the courthouse. The man’s name fit him to a T. He never shut up. Some people shook constantly, their muscles spasming; Cackler’s mouth seemed to always be twitching with words. Still, Simpson kept half an ear open in case the rambling turned into anything useful. For the most part, he relegated the non-stop babbling to the background of his brain.

  Walking down State Highway 75, which became South Frazier Street below downtown, they’d seen only a few survivors out and about. That surprised Simpson. The storms were several days behind them now. But coming out of the shock of what had happened, reconciling the mass devastation and death to their former lives, appeared to be a slow process for most. The few wanderers they encountered still wore that dazed look of unreality in their eyes. But all appeared aware enough to take one look at the half a hundred prisoners marching in two columns up the street, then fade quietly into the shadows.

  Experience in the state prison had come in handy, Simpson realized as they marched. The Weisshemden were used to being regimented, comfortable with following their fellows, organized and orderly, nuts to butts. A few balked at taking orders, and Simpson couldn’t blame them—they’d been granted freedom by fate and were loath to surrender their independence to anyone. Still, a job needed to be done, and orders were orders. They’d been branded with obligation, fettered with fealty along their left forearms. Simpson had merely to invoke Marsten’s name or mention the Lady’s dominion, and every one of them fell into line. Literally.

  True to his word, Cackler led them straight to the Conroe Independent School District bus barn. Whatever else could be said against him, the man seemed to know every nook and cranny of the town. He claimed he’d done a stint as a journeyman mechanic locally for a while, work that took him into the underpaid service of the CISD.

  They broke the locks on the gates and Simpson detailed his troops to assess the buses lined up in the service yard like giant metal caterpillars. There were some three dozen of the full-sized vehicles, along with two short buses.

  He stared at those smaller vehicles while the Weisshemden fanned out to evaluate their new rides. He knew the term short bus carried with it a slangy disdain for the mentally challenged and handicapped passengers that usually rode them to school. But sitting here in the bus barn, among their longer, heavier brethren, the short buses looked kind of like army jeeps to Simpson. Like what a general might ride in across a battlefield, leading an army of bus-tanks … or rolling through town all the way to the courthouse. And he was a general, right?

  Let one of ’em say something funny, Marsten’s voice said in his head. All it takes is one example to serve the lot.

  Simpson watched Cackler for a while as he played at being in charge by showing the other whiteshirts how to do systems checks on the buses. Motors fired up and cranked down. Gauges were checked. Hoods opened and men stood on bumpers to check hoses and fluid levels. They looked to him like white worker bees flitting around yellow-orange honeycombs, preparing them for their queen.

  And here he came again.

  “Hey, the boys have checked out most of the ma-cheens, hefe,” Cackler said as he walked up, affecting a gringo’s Mexican accent. “Thirty-five buses in working order. About five no workee. But all good, yo?”

  Simpson took a deep breath. “First, stop talking like that. It’s offensive. Actually, most of the time you talk is offensive.”

  Cackler’s face fell. “Hey man, I’m just trying to lighten the load, y’know? Just trying to—”

  “Second, find out how many of these guys have truck-driving experience. Hell, maybe one or two even drove a school bus once. Anyway, I don’t want a bunch of rear-endings on the way back to the courthouse. If some don’t know how to handle a bus, I want the ones that do to hold a little driver’s ed class. Even if it takes all night.”

  Cackler turned his head to the side. “Maybe we should’ve taken a poll before we left, f
ound qualified drivers.” His tone was part matter of fact, part I told you so.

  Just one, growled Marsten again in Simpson’s head. Simpson wasn’t sure if Marsten were somehow talking to him telepathically—he’d seen enough lately to know that, these days, anything could be the case. Or was it Simpson’s own brain creating the Maestro’s voice, which took on the crooning quality of a mentor? Like Marsten was becoming his Miyagi, the Maestro of Simpson’s psyche, conducting from afar.

  “Just sayin’,” pressed Cackler.

  Just one. That’s all it takes.

  With Marsten’s voice and his own hand, Simpson reached out and swatted the gangly man upside the head.

  “Hey!” Cackler’s hand shot to the side of his face. Simpson hadn’t hit him hard enough to hurt him, but the contact, the violation of Cackler’s invisible bubble of personal space, surprised the little man.

  It surprised Simpson, too. But he liked the look on Cackler’s face, and the way the scarecrow’s expression made Simpson feel. He’d been a runner all his life, it was true. As soon as things got hairy, he cut out. That’s the way he’d survived. But now things were changing. Now it was Marsten’s way or become the latest member of the Former Franklins of the World Club.

  “Smart-assery is neither appreciated nor necessary,” said Simpson. The sound of his own voice surprised him again. The menace of it. The Marsten in it.

  He liked the way it tasted in his mouth.

  * * *

  Colt Atchison awoke in a cold sweat. His eyes flew open. What was that loud explosion?

  Wait, now he remembered—the bridge was blown but a horde was coming. Why was he lying down, sleeping?

  He felt the thrumming from the crisscrossing steel of the gangway pressing against his back. But the tremors were muted by his bedroll, so he put his hands flat against the metal to confirm his nightmare. It was vibrating all right. No bad dream after all. Just thousands of horde feet thundering on the earth.

  Had he cried out in his sleep? Had he given away his position? His ears caught up with his racing heart, and he noticed the rumbling sound was different than he remembered. Rolling like a symphony of drums, yes, and the gangway beneath him echoed with it, true. But different—mechanical.