The expression Amelia wore now was one Pablo would have recognized. It was the same slipping of the Amelia mask he had seen the day Maddie was shot. There wasn’t a different person beneath the mask, there was just more showing of the woman than was normally visible. Jessie was used to it now.
“We’ll have to find a way to kill him.”
Jessie nodded. The answer made perfect sense.
“Would you like to go to the hospital with me tomorrow? There’s someone I’d like you to meet. His name is Abraham but most people call him Thoozy. I think you’ll like him very much. He’s like us.”
Chapter 12
Dani stepped back to survey her handiwork. In addition to gigantic piles of road-blocking debris, they had posted signs on all the roads leading into their town:
STOP. YOU ARE UNDER ARMED SURVEILLANCE.
PLACE ALL WEAPONS ON THE GROUND BEHIND YOU.
WAIT. YOU WILL BE APPROACHED AND ASSESSED.
IF WE LIKE YOU, YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO STAY.
IF YOU MEAN US HARM OR CAUSE TROUBLE, WE WILL KILL YOU.
WELCOME TO LIBERTY, KANSAS.
“I think it’s perfect. What do you think?” She glanced over her shoulder at the ribbon of blacktop that was Interstate 70. Sam stood with crossed arms on the yellow stripe that stretched beyond him to the horizon. The flat topography made the curvature of the earth appear a thousand miles away.
“Did we have to use red paint? It looks like it was written in blood.”
“Yes. It’s supposed to be a subliminal warning.”
“Did you have to say that part about killing?”
“Yes. Again the sign is meant to be a warning. We may be in Kansas but this isn’t Oz, and the people out there aren’t adorable munchkins. They’re more like flying monkeys.”
He laughed. “You’re a flying monkey.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair.
“I’m no flying monkey. I’m the goddamned wicked witch that’s going to keep this town safe.”
He smiled as he pulled away, studying her with the adoring expression he always wore when he gazed at her. She never tired of seeing it. There had never been anyone who looked at her the way Sam did.
“Does this mean what I think it means? We’re staying?” he asked.
“Yes, at least for now. These people need us. They’re sitting ducks without us. Think about it. What they’re building here is going to be the envy of every scavenger, marauder, pillager, and plunderer. Liberty might as well have a giant bullseye painted on the plastic roof of that greenhouse. And if word gets out that we might get the power back on, it’ll be worse. So far the people that are coming here have been fairly benign...well, except for the Incredible Hulk.”
Sam frowned.
“We got him. No harm, no foul,” she said.
“But it could have gone the other way.”
“But it didn’t. Let’s drop it.”
“All I’m saying is you need to be more careful. You took a chance that night coming out here by yourself. I don’t think you were thrill-looking, but it was careless.”
Both pairs of eyes gravitated to the oily-looking patch on the blacktop – the residual viscera of the man who’d planned to do a lot more to her than just make her talk.
“I promise I’ll be more careful.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “That’s all I can hope for.”
She glanced up at the camera, which had been moved from the signpost to a hidden spot in the pile of debris. Nobody would see it, therefore nobody could mess with it and hinder the ability of Liberty’s security crew to monitor the activity at the edges of town. If the hunter-gatherers could locate more equipment, they could put more eyes out there in addition to the five locations currently monitored. The more eyes, the safer everyone would be. She would mention it at the meeting that was scheduled for later that day.
“How are you doing, Logan? Are you comfortable?” Dani yelled, turning away from Sam and shifting her attention to the young man camouflaged in the junk. It was Logan’s turn to stand guard at the eastern checkpoint. He sat in an armchair placed behind a door-less refrigerator. A hole, large enough for a rifle barrel and scope to fit through, had been bored through the back of the massive appliance. From the other side of the rubble, the direction from which outsiders would approach, the fridge appeared innocuous – just part of a mountain of junk. Their attention would be drawn past the manmade hill of rusting automobiles and kitchen appliances, to the corrugated tin shed off to the side. It was a decoy, intended to look like a guard station and draw scrutiny away from the Frigidaire where a sentry would be at all times. That is, if she were allocated more staff.
Similar structures had been constructed on the western edge of town and also northern and southern checkpoints positioned on State Highway 40. Liberty’s perimeter was reasonably secure in terms of paved ingress. Dani had given serious thought to transforming their real estate into a walled city of sorts, like medieval Carcassonne in France – a place she had visited with her parents one summer – but of course that wasn’t within the realm of possibility...yet. The debris piles had been put together in only two days. They were intended to be a stop gap measure and would be replaced with prison-quality fencing and razor wire when there was time to do so.
It was a more effective and efficient system than Chuck had come up with. The former head of security had abdicated his position without any arguments. Word on the street was that he had his hands full with his crazy-ass son. Chuck was still a member of the crew, though, and followed Dani’s orders without resentment. Perhaps he had been relieved to lose the burden of leadership, an alien notion to her.
“I’m comfortable, Dani!” Logan hollered back. She couldn’t see him from where she stood, which was what she wanted. She also couldn’t pinpoint the spot from where his voice emanated, which meant no one else could either.
“Do you remember what you’re supposed to do if strangers approach?”
“Yes! I use the walkie-talkie to tell everyone.”
“That’s right. Let’s have a drill. Pretend that Sam and I are strangers and we’re walking toward you. What do you do?”
###
Using his right hand, Logan sighted the girl with his Konus scope. Her face, which looked like Julia’s but without the worry lines, appeared in the cross hairs. With his left hand he gripped the walkie-talkie. He didn’t push the button on the side because this was just pretend. Dani had explained earlier about drills. They were just playing a practice game. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to wait too long before he could shoot somebody for real. Pretending wasn’t nearly as much fun.
“Stop! Hands in the air! Drop your weapons! Okay, I have the walkie-talkie in my hand but because this is just a drill, I won’t push the button.”
“Very good, Creeper!”
Logan still wasn’t sure that he liked his nickname. At least the way Dani said it now no longer reminded him of the mean kids on the playground. He thought back a few days ago to when he’d made his one-in-a-million shot. He was proud of it, even though he didn’t think it had been that special, but he was more proud of the decision he’d made to kill the big man instead of Dani. He had become an Important Person. Word had gotten out about how he’d saved her life, and he enjoyed how everyone smiled at him and patted him on the back. Julia had also been proud of him. That was the best part.
He had always felt alone, even when his mother was still alive. Now, he thought he understood how the popular kids at school had felt. What was the word? Oh, yes. He felt that he belonged. He was right in the middle of things rather than watching from a distance. He’d never been accepted into any group before. The guys at the gun range weren’t truly his friends, even though they had also patted him on the back. He could tell when someone was being phony. That was a word Mr. Cheney had taught him. It meant when people pretended they liked you but they really didn’t. He’d known lots of phony people in his life. Julia wasn’t phony, but her
brother sure was. Steven acted like he smelled something rotten every time Logan was around.
He set the walkie-talkie down on the pavement and sniffed under his arms. Kansas was colder than California, so he didn’t think he sweated as much here, which should mean he didn’t stink too much.
The Bad Thoughts still talked to him, but now it happened mostly at night. He’d been so busy during the last few days moving junk around, watching the TVs, and standing-guard-at-his-post (even though he didn’t actually stand but sat on the comfy chair), that they hadn’t been bothering him too much. At night though, before he fell asleep, they got loud. Lately they had been asking: What are you waiting for? And then they would say: Kill them! Kill them all!
He knew he didn’t have to do what they told him, but they got pretty mad when he didn’t.
“Logan! Did you hear me?”
Dani’s yell snapped him back to the comfy chair. He realized he’d been daydreaming again.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” he yelled back.
She didn’t answer but he heard her and Sam coming back to his side. He hoped he wasn’t in trouble for daydreaming when he should have been listening to her.
“I asked if you remembered what you’re supposed to do if the people don’t stop.”
Dani could be scary when she wasn’t happy. She was wearing her unhappy-but-not-really-mad face. Julia had one of those too. Ever since Logan had shot the big man, he and Dani had sort of become friends. Still, it bothered him that her colors were exactly the same as Julia’s.
He could see the purple and green all around her now as she stood next to her boyfriend. Sam’s colors were the prettiest he’d ever seen. There wasn’t just one or two either; every color in the rainbow and about a million more were all around Sam. Logan smiled because he thought it was funny that a boy’s colors were so pretty.
“Creeper, snap out of it. Quit ogling Sam. What do you do if they don’t stop?”
“Oh, I’m supposed to fire a warning shot...in front of them. I should aim for the road. Then I press the button on the walkie-talkie again and tell everyone to hurry-the-hell-up-code-yellow-at-the-eastern-checkpoint.”
She nodded but didn’t smile and didn’t say anything. That meant she was waiting for him to keep going. He was learning to read her like he’d learned to read Julia. His mother had tried to explain this before...reading people like they were a book without words and pages. It had confused him at the time – how the heck could you read a person if they didn’t have words and pages and lots of pictures? But now he thought he understood what she had been trying to teach him.
“Then I yell THE NEXT SHOT WILL BE IN YOUR SKULL MOTHER FUCKER! Is that right?”
She nodded again. There was the smile now. She was pleased with his answers.
“Yes. Now do you remember about a code red?”
“Yes. I say code-red-at-the-eastern-checkpoint into the walkie-talkie when there are more than five people.”
“Do you remember why that is?”
“Yes, because I might not be able to handle more than five people, although I’m pretty sure I could shoot a lot more than that.”
She laughed, which made Logan smile.
“Of that, I have no doubt. But it’s a good number for the rest of us, so we’ll just keep it at that. Simple rules that apply to everyone and that everyone can understand. Right, Creeper?”
“Right, Dani!”
“Okay, we’re out of here. You’re on until ten tonight, right?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing for the hundredth time at his new digital watch. He needed it for his job now. Of course he had always known how to tell time, but there hadn’t been any need to since he no longer worked at the doughnut shop.
“And who is relieving you?”
He gazed up at the clouds that looked so low he might be able to touch their bumpy gray bottoms if he could jump just a little higher.
“Annie Oakley!”
“Good. Remember to be vigilant and use the Folgers can if you have to take a leak. No wandering off for privacy.”
“Got it!”
She clapped his shoulder, then got on her bicycle. Sam got on his, which was even better than Dani’s. Logan wondered how many people he would need to kill to get one as nice as Sam’s. Logan’s bicycle had a basket on the front, which made it look like it might belong to a girl. It didn’t look like a bike someone with x-ray vision would ride.
Maybe he could just shoot Sam and take his.
He watched them pedal away and pondered how he might go about doing it.
###
Dani could tell Sam was deep in thought. She let him take his time as he worked through whatever was troubling him. The light was fading and a frigid wind blew dozens of icy porcupine quills into the exposed skin of her face. Sam’s replacement bicycle for the one abandoned in Oklahoma was a sleek, ultralight racing machine. He didn’t need an all-terrain version here in Liberty. On his new Fuji Altamira, he could jet about Liberty almost as fast as when they rode the Vespas. The man was a damn Olympian. She struggled to keep up with him, knowing her slowness would be the reason they were late to the town hall meeting.
Two blocks from the municipal building, he came to an abrupt halt.
“You took one of the scooters from Steven’s house to the eastern checkpoint? That night when the camera was glitchy?”
“Yes. I didn’t feel like getting a workout in the middle of the night. They can take the gas expense out of my paycheck.”
She stopped next to him on the street, forcing herself to be patient with his thought process. In the interim, she basked in the nineteenth century feel of the downtown district, with its Victorian streetlamps and tidy red brick streets. Downtown Liberty was polar opposite from the opulent, nouveau riche, history-less suburb where she had grown up.
“How long were you out there before the guy came at you?”
“Just a minute or two. I surveilled the area when I first arrived, but not well enough, obviously.”
“How long did he have you...pinned...before Logan shot him?”
She could see how painful it was for him to talk about the danger she had been in.
“I don’t know. Five minutes? Ten? It’s weird how time kind of slows down when you’re in a situation like that. Couldn’t have been more than ten minutes tops, though. Why?”
“How long do you think it takes Logan to ride from Steven’s house to the eastern checkpoint?”
“Sam, we’re going to be late.”
“It’s important, Dani.”
“Well, I know how long it takes me, but then I’m not you, Lance Armstrong. Let’s say fifteen minutes.”
“Right. So if he saw the guy on the monitor and came to help, how could he have gotten there so quickly?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he pedaled extra fast. What difference does it make? We need to get going. I’ll be lobbying for more worker bees today.”
She left him sitting on his Fuji Altamira, wearing an exaggerated frown that did nothing to mar the handsomeness of his face.
Chapter 13
“Let’s come to order.” Steven was exhausted and in no mood to waste time. He wondered if cold weather affected people the way it did dogs. The population of Liberty, which had burgeoned to more than eighty souls last time they had counted, were acting downright frisky. At this rate, the afternoon would turn into evening before they finished with all the bulleted items on Marilyn’s legal pad.
“Please, let’s all take a seat and get started.”
Everyone continued to mingle and talk in raised, excited voices. It occurred to him that some might be inebriated. Booze had not been on the requisition lists, so if anyone was holding out, they were within their rights to do so. The decision had been a split-second one; he knew better than to try to pry alcohol out of the hands of people it belonged to.
A shrill whistle echoed through the courtroom. All heads turned to the young woman who stood on one of the wooden benches. The warm
glow of the kerosene lanterns softened the sharp angles of her face – a kind of archaic Photo-shopping which airbrushed the harsh beauty into something softer...more delicate.
He knew better. There was nothing soft or delicate about Dani.
“Thank you. Let’s get started. Marilyn, what’s the first item?”
“Some matters regarding the commissary crew.” The bifocals perched on the tip of the hawkish nose turned the librarian into a caricature of her former occupation. If she pinned her hair up in a bun, the picture would be complete. The bulky sweater she frequently wore had been replaced with a fitted version in a deep crimson that suited her.
“We prefer the original title,” Pablo said from the second row. “‘Hunter-gatherers’ sounds capable, tenacious. Primal even. ‘Commissary crew’ could be a geriatric social club that does grocery shopping on Sundays.”
The young man’s smile was self-deprecating and quite likeable. His staff respected him, and his recent rash of successful forays had scored points with Liberty’s residents. Just this morning they shot a two-hundred-pound hog which had been butchered and was being smoked over hickory logs in Ed’s massive homemade smoking contraption. Steven caught whiffs of the scintillating aroma on the way to the meeting. They had also captured five feral piglets, the fate of which would be discussed next.
“Marilyn, would you please change it in your records? Back to the HG crew it is. Will you be raising the piglets or butchering them?”
“We’re going to raise them. Butchering them now is like eating our seed corn,” Pablo said.
Ah, we have another ant in our midst. He liked the young man even more now.
“Anyone have a problem with that?” Steven asked the room.
“I don’t mind feeding the pigs from which we’ll get more food in the long run,” Natalie said from the last row. It was an odd place for someone who seemed to crave the limelight. “What I do have a problem with is taking food from the mouths of humans to feed cats and dogs...unless we plan on eating them too.”
Beauty and Dread Page 7