by D. J. Molles
Hank looked up at Virgil. Eyes watering. Lips quivering. “Your uncle has my family,” he choked out.
Virgil’s lips twisted around unpleasantly.
He pointed the pistol at Hank’s head.
Hank didn’t even seem to notice. He looked right past the muzzle. “Virgil,” he said, quietly. “This was Richard. He knows. He knows about both of you. You and Tria and what you’ve been—”
Virgil shot him in the head.
The body slackened into so much meat.
By now the family had screamed themselves out.
Oddly, at this last, they simply gasped, no more emphatic than if they’d been surprised by a jump scene in a film. The children whimpered a bit. But that was all.
Tria said nothing.
Walter stared at her, his fingers tingling with the sudden terribleness of it all. But somehow—disgustingly—he felt relief. Relief that Hank’s death wasn’t going to be on his shoulders. It was Virgil that had killed him. Right? Virgil’s bullets. Not his.
Tria’s eyes were wet. She was shaking her head. “Oh, man. Oh, Jesus…”
“Guys,” Walter managed. “We gotta go.”
Something shot back and forth in Virgil’s brain, Walter could see it in his eyes, and he knew—or maybe just guessed, but it felt like the right guess—that it had something to do with Hank’s last words.
This was Richard. He knows.
Who the hell’s Richard?
And what does he know?
Questions for other times.
Virgil swung his pistol up and pointed it at the woman on the couch. “Keys,” he said without much emotion. He sounded like a man that would exterminate an entire family to find a set of keys. Walter almost believed it himself. But Virgil wasn’t capable of that.
Was he?
Any one of us is capable of anything right now.
The man half-stood, waving his hands in a desperate gesture for mercy for his wife. “They’re in the kitchen drawer! The top drawer! On the left! Both of the keys. Just take them. Please. Take whatever you need.”
The man extended his arms out, hovering them pathetically over his family, as though those arms could stop bullets.
Virgil swung away and holstered. “Tria, you drive. Me and Walter will bring Getty.”
Tria moved, but stumbled like she was drunk. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Hank’s corpse lying on the ground. Lying there emptying the contents of his head onto the ground like a broken pitcher filled with red-wine.
“Tria,” Walter said, gently.
Maybe it was the gentleness in his voice.
So out of place.
She snapped up and looked at him.
“Come on,” he said.
A flicker of irritation still managed to show itself. Even here and now. Even in this moment. She had a stubborn, prickly soul. Headstrong as a mule.
“Yeah,” she said, then moved past him, into the kitchen. She ripped open the drawer. Something from inside, some scrap of paper, went flying, and then she started snatching things out.
The rest of it became background noise. Walter could hear Tria asking something of the family, and he heard one of them respond. But he was looking around now. Looking at the windows.
How long?
How long until the spotlights hit us?
Maybe they wouldn’t even use the spotlights. Maybe they’d just hit the building like they had with the safe house where Tria had been holed up. Maybe they didn’t care about the family inside. In fact, that was pretty damn likely, wasn’t it? They’d already shut down the District. They weren’t playing by the rules.
Walter almost laughed at himself.
What a ridiculous thought.
“Walter!”
He turned.
Virgil was at the table with Getty. He’d sat the man up and was getting the wounded man’s arms draped over his shoulder. He jerked his head at Walter. “Come on. Help me out.”
The man in the living room stared, horrified, at the body on the other side of the couch. He began shaking his head and standing slowly, his arms waving in a no way gesture.
“You can’t just leave the body…”
“We ain’t takin’ him with us!” Virgil snapped.
Walter got to them, got his arm under Getty. The man was awake, but breathing hard and looking pale. They hauled him up off the table.
“I got the keys,” Tria announced. “Let’s go.”
And they went.
Stumbling out the door. Virgil and Walter both trying to keep an eye behind them at the family, wondering if one of them would go for some secret firearm hidden away in the house. But no one made a move, and then they were gone.
Neither Walter nor Virgil bothered to close the door on the way out.
They hauled Getty to the pickup truck, Tria ahead of them opening doors.
Walter strained to hear the sound of rotors coming, or perhaps the sound of a team moving through the woods, but the woods were too far away and the New Breeds didn’t make that much noise.
Chapter 17
The pickup truck rocketed down the long gravel road to the main highway.
“Slow down, Tria,” Virgil said from the backseat.
Tria had both hands on the wheel, her rifle cradled in her lap, and she was leaning forward over it, like a paranoid driver.
She was a paranoid driver. She was checking mirrors. She was fearing exactly what Walter was fearing.
Were the last seconds of their lives ticking down even now?
Tria let off the gas a bit.
Walter felt his heart beating hard. He was stuck now. Stuck in a car. Stuck on the road. Their headlights were a bright burning beacon. This was bad. So bad.
“Where am I going?” Tria said.
“We need to get Getty to a doc,” Virgil said.
“We can’t take him to the hospital,” was Tria’s reply.
“I know we can’t take him to the hospital.”
Tria was reaching the point where the gravel met the highway. She shook the wheel. “Well, where, then?”
“Fuck!” Virgil yelled suddenly. “I don’t know! Everything’s fucked!”
“Go to Pecan Avenue,” Walter said, silencing Virgil.
Tria eyed him in the rearview. “Who’s there?”
“A guy I work with,” Walter said. “He lives in a house off of Pecan Avenue. He’s not exactly resistance, but he ain’t no loyalist either. And his wife’s one of the SoDro field medics.”
“I don’t know that guy or his wife,” Virgil said.
Walter looked at him. “Well, then come up with someone, Virgil. Tell Tria where we’re going if you got a better idea.”
Virgil shifted in his seat.
Walter looked down at Getty. He was awake and responsive, but his skin was taking on a waxy sheen.
“Guys,” Tria prompted.
“Fine,” Virgil said. “Pecan Avenue.”
Tria held her hands up as they reached the main highway and she was forced to pull to a stop. “I’m not a grower, guys. I’m not from the District.”
“Left,” Walter instructed.
She made a quick left. Accelerated. Backed off a bit. Nervously checked her mirrors.
“I want a cigarette,” Getty announced with a weak voice that was nonetheless determined. He slapped a pocket on his coat and drew out a pack of them. His hands were a little shaky. Virgil watched him for a few seconds, then helped him get one out, get it into his mouth, and lit it.
Getty took a hitching drag, winced like it was hurting him. He spoke on the exhale and his voice had that muted, cloudy quality as it came through the smoke. “What about the others, Bossum?”
Virgil nodded, glanced up at Walter and Tria. “I’m gonna need to contact the rest of my team. See how they’re doing and where they are. If we can hook up with them, we might have a chance of making it out of the District with our asses still attached.”
Walter shifted in his seat. The rifle in his arms was beginnin
g to feel uncomfortable and unwieldy, but he still didn’t want to put it down. His gaze narrowed a bit at Virgil, then at Tria, though she was looking forward at that moment.
“We need to talk about who we can trust,” Walter stated. “Because y’all have some issues, and if it was issues between you, then that’s one thing, but it’s my life on the line here too.” And Carolyn’s, he thought, but didn’t say.
He didn’t say it because he didn’t want them to tell him that she was gone. He didn’t want them to know he was still holding out some forlorn hope. He didn’t want them to take that away from him. Not just yet.
“I can’t believe Hank,” Tria mumbled from the front. But that was all she said.
Virgil looked pensively out the window at the blackness beyond. He said nothing at all.
“What did Hank mean about Richard?” Walter asked, leaning forward a bit as though to put his face into Virgil’s line of sight and gain his attention that way. “Who’s Richard? Is that your uncle? The guy you work for?”
Virgil didn’t answer immediately.
“Yes,” Tria said from the front seat. “Richard Honeycutt is Virgil’s uncle. And his boss.”
“Yours, too,” Virgil said quietly.
Walter looked quickly between them. “Still not making sense to me. Your uncle is resistance, isn’t he? He’s on our side. Hank said that Richard had done all of this. He said that Richard had sold us out. It couldn’t be your uncle. Right?”
Walter didn’t get an answer.
There was an uncomfortable silence in the car.
Just the sound of the engine at a steady fifty miles per hour, and the blacktop thrumming beneath the tires.
Getty twisted a bit to flick ash on the floorboard, then grimaced painfully and swore.
“Someone?” Walter said, growing irritated. “Anyone?”
“Everything’s factioned off,” Getty announced, tiredly. He cleared his throat and swiped greasy-looking sweat from his brow with trembling fingers. “You wanna know why a majority of the people in this country can’t kick a foreign power out, even though we outnumber them a thousand to one?”
“Because of the New Breeds?” Walter guessed.
Getty shook his head, stuck the cigarette back in his lips. Spoke around it. “No, it’s because none of these people in the resistance can agree on the time of day, let alone how to proceed with taking our country back.”
“Getty,” Virgil said with a warning tone.
Getty’s generally-calm eyes flashed angry for once. “Well, y’all ain’t speakin’ up, so I am. Walt’s right. We’re in this shit together right now, we’re gonna have to find our way out together. He needs to know the truth of how things are. They got the District closed off, Virgil,” Getty said, pointedly. “We don’t have the luxury of playing games anymore.”
Virgil’s jaw worked.
“You don’t tell him, I will,” Getty said quietly.
Virgil kept staring at his friend for a long moment, but then after a few slow, steady breaths, he spoke: “My uncle’s policies are shit. He’s playing a cautious game at a table-full of cautious players. You remember that, Walt?”
Walter nodded. Playing cautious at the poker table was the best option. Unless you were playing other cautious players. And then you were in for a marathon poker game where no one’s pot ever grew or shrunk.
Eventually somebody had to nut up and do something daring.
“The resistance has been in a stalemate for years. Not moving forward, not going back. And my uncle’s syndicate…” Virgil shook his head bitterly. “He’s more concerned with gathering intel now to increase his cash flow than he is in actually fighting a war and getting the CoAx out of here.”
And here, Virgil stopped and exchanged a moment’s glance with Tria. The look ended with Tria making a derogatory snort and turning back to stare out the windshield.
“I’ve been working against him,” Tria said, her voice heavy-laden. “You knew, Virgil. So I guess it’s no big shock that Richard knew as well. And you were doing it too. Both of us. Shit. Having us together must have looked like a winning opportunity to stabilize his syndicate again.”
Walter shifted his gaze between Virgil and Tria. “What were you doing? How were you working against him?”
“He’s got a network,” Virgil said. “A valuable network, and he’s squandering it right now. Doing nothing with it but hording information and leaking it out to the highest bidder. I couldn’t abide it anymore. I was—we both were—undermining him. Trying to turn his top people against him. Trying to make them support me instead of him. So that I could take control of the network, force him to step down, and actually do something for a change.” A sidelong glance at the woman next to him in the front seat. “And Tria was doing the very same thing. I’m assuming because she learned what I was doing and didn’t want to work for me if I succeeded.”
Tria nodded resentfully. “You got that right.”
Walter blinked in the darkness. “Jesus,” he said. “You people really can’t get along.” He felt a flash of temper, flaring up like a dying flame that gets a breath of oxygen. “How do you people expect to unite this country against the CoAx when you can’t even work with the people on your own damn team?”
Getty smiled a painful-looking smile and let out a phlegmy chuckle. “Haha. Ol’ Walt here ain’t quite the knocker you make him out to be, huh?”
Virgil gave Getty a harsh look. “Stop talking. Focus on not bleeding.”
Walter looked at Virgil. “Who are the Eudys?”
Someone without Walter’s talent would have been blind to it.
But Walter saw it clear as day, like turning on an ultraviolet light and seeing the things that you couldn’t see with the naked eye. He could see the stillness in the car that the name brought. Like walking into a room and knowing that the sudden awkward silence was because the conversation had been about you.
Everyone in that car knew something about the Eudys.
And they all thought that it was something Walter should not know.
Walter felt that little hot ember flare up inside of him again. It never took much to clear off the ashes and give it a little air to start burning again, but this was stoking it with a bellows. This was adding kindling to it.
He jerked irately in his seat. “What is that? Huh?”
Virgil glanced at him. “What is what?”
“What is this?” Walter jabbed his hand at them. “What is this thing that just happened? I ask about the Eudys and everyone gets quiet. What aren’t you telling me? I asked you before and you wouldn’t tell me then either. Who are these people and why is it that I can’t know, huh?” He pointed a finger into Virgil’s face. “You specifically questioned that Chicom captain about who had been busted out of DTI. You wanted to know. It was important to you. And you weren’t happy when he said it was the Eudys. I saw it all over your face.” Walter smiled hazardously. “Yeah, Virgil. You forget why you hired me in the first place. How do you think I knew what Hank was up to when the rest of you had your heads up your asses?” He pressed a finger to his temple. “’Cause I see that shit that you don’t see, or can’t see, or won’t see.”
Virgil sniffed. “Why don’t you calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!”
“Heads up,” Tria called from the front, her voice tense.
Both of them snapped their heads forward.
On the long, lonely highway, ahead of them, a trail of large headlights were speeding toward them, going the opposite direction. Walter felt the truck slow down just a bit, almost like the vehicle was suddenly cringing, just like every single person in the car.
“What is it?” Getty mumbled, trying to strain up to see.
Virgil pushed him back down. “Guntrucks. Stay down. Look normal.”
Walter had just a moment to glance down at himself. The strap of the rifle across his shoulders and chest. The battlerifle itself sitting their plain and obvious in his grip. He shoved
it down at the last second.
The convoy roared by, going twice the speed they were going.
One-two-three-four-five of them.
Walter refused to look. Pressed himself back into the seat.
“They’re gonna know,” Tria said. “They’re gonna fucking know.”
“Where do you think they were going in the first place?” Virgil ground out.
Walter broke from his paralysis. Turned his head to look out the back glass of the truck.
Red brake lights bloomed in the night, almost all of them at once, and the snake of them compacted in on itself, and then the lead guntruck jigged right just a bit, just enough to give it room to pull its bulk into a U-turn.
“Comin’ after us,” he tried to say, but his voice caught.
“Oh shit,” Tria mumbled.
Walter coughed, and said it louder. “They’re comin’ after us!”
“I can see that!” Tria yelled back.
“Then go!” Walter kicked the back of her seat. “There’s a farm trail up here on the right. Go fast. It’s right after a curve, you can cut off visual.”
“What if they got drones on us?”
“Then they got drones! There ain’t shit we can do about it now! Go faster!”
Tria stomped on the gas. The truck lurched forward. “I’m going! Don’t fucking yell at me!”
“Turn off the lights!” Virgil yelled at her.
She switched them off.
They were in darkness.
Lights coursed across their rearview mirror.
They hit the curve and the lights disappeared.
Walter peered into the darkness. “It’s comin’ up, it’s comin’ up, right there! Right-right-right!”
The brakes groaned under the load. The tires chirped impatiently. Walter felt the truck list to the left a bit.
Tria yanked the wheel hard to the right. They hit gravel and the forward momentum kept carrying them through it, grinding, crunching, and Walter watched the sides of the forest rush at them.
And then Tria had the truck righted, and she hit the gas again. Virgil hit his head on the front seat. Getty nearly toppled into the floorboards, groaning with effort and then yelping with pain. Walter pressed himself against the door.