“In some cases, sending her back with a message that says ‘we’re not be trifled with’ can be effective. The problem is we know nothing about her group, their motives, their means...anything. I’m thinking the better message would be finding that every scout they send out against us completely vanishes without a trace, never to be seen again. That would seed fear and doubt and they will likely move on rather than provoke us further.”
Rose had become accustomed to the peaceful, detached father figure she’d seen so much of in her time at Rene’s house. She’d forgotten that he was the leader of this town and he had stayed that way by helping this city survive. Rene was shrewd when he had to be and had a keen sense of leadership tactics. Rose was caught off guard by how much the plan made sense, but in the back of her mind also realized that she’d have suffered the same fate had she proven not to be useful. It was a sobering thought.
“Go and ask Adeline to make some food for our guest, she’ll most likely be waking soon. Also tell her to get that boy out of here. He has overstayed his welcome.” Rene pulled out his book and began to read, sipping his tea, their discussion over.
Rose stood and walked upstairs. She could now hear the end of The Animals “House of the Rising Sun” as she reached the top of the stairs and knocked on Adeline’s door. Adeline answered the door wearing a black sweatshirt with the word “MAINE” on the front in neon green letters and pink sweatpants that said “JUICY” on the butt with white letters. The dark haired man was lying on the bed dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He sat up when the door was opened. “Hey Rose,” said Adeline. “I didn’t hear you come in last night, were you out late?”
“Yeah, had a late night, came back and went right to sleep,” Rose lied, blushing ever so lightly. Adeline seemed to sense the lie and smiled slyly.
“Your father told me to tell you, he has to go,” said Rose waving in the general direction of the man on the bed. “Your father also needs you to make some food. We have a guest.” The man, who seemed perfectly content to sit on the bed, virtually sprang off the bed at mention of a “guest” in Adeline’s father’s house. Without a word, he pulled on a grey sweatshirt, kissed Adeline quickly on the cheek, and then almost ran down the stairs, exiting the house.
Adeline sighed as the man left, annoyed at his quick departure. “You really know how to clear a room, eh Rose?” said Adeline, words dripping with sarcasm, but there was no malice behind it. She turned and walked over to her stereo unplugging Rose’s phone and ending John Lennon’s “Imagine” mid-song. “Sorry, I borrowed this again. I’m really getting into your music,” she said, smiling.
Rose smiled back. “I’m glad you like it. My wife Kate came around to it as well. The more she listened, the more she liked it.”
“You’ll have to tell me more about her sometime,” said Adeline, walking over to Rose, handing her the phone, and rubbing her arm. “I can tell you still miss her.”
“Thank you,” said Rose softly, pocketing the phone.
“Better get downstairs...can’t keep father waiting!” said Adeline, giving Rose a weak salute. “What do you think, bologna sandwich or cheese sandwich?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adeline had just about finished making a bologna sandwich for the prisoner when Rose could hear noises coming from the basement. Aaron had dried off and changed into some of Rene’s old clothes so he wouldn’t have to go home. He and Rene were sitting at the dining room table talking in French. Both stopped talking and looked over to the kitchen when noises from the basement could be heard below.
“Adeline, I’m going to have Aaron and Rose take the food down with me while I question her. You have guard duty soon, yes?” said Rene.
“Yup, I’ll go change,” said Adeline. She appeared to be relieved that she wouldn’t have to be a part of the questioning. She quickly disappeared up the stairs to the second floor.
Aaron grabbed the plate with the sandwich and followed Rene as he unlocked the door and started down the stairs with Rose following behind. Once Rose got to the bottom of the stairs, she found the woman not on the bed like Rose had been, but backed into one of the corners of the basement near the hot water heater. Rene walked toward the woman and Rose followed. Aaron put the plate of food down on the chair and then joined them.
“Would you mind sitting on the bed while we talk? We have brought you some food,” said Rene motioning behind him.
The woman answered by spitting at Rene’s feet. Rene, Aaron and Rose formed a half circle around the woman as she stood in the corner. Rose wondered if the woman had attempted to fashion a weapon from anything she could break off of the nearby hot water heater. Rose couldn’t see anything in the woman’s hands, but she knew better than to assume she was unarmed.
“I will ask you one more time. Sit on the bed please,” said Rene. There was a steeliness to his voice that made no doubt that he was deathly serious.
The woman snarled something in French. Rose understood enough to know she wanted them to stay away.
“We just want to talk,” said Rene, still in English. “You won't be harmed.” Rene motioned for Aaron to move back and Rose followed suit moving over to the base of the staircase. There was now a clear path to the bed. Reluctantly at first, the woman cautiously made her way to the bed. She sat down, grabbed the sandwich, and accidentally knocked the plate onto the ground, breaking it into five pieces. Rose could tell that despite her outer appearance, her hands were shaking. Rene moved over and sat in the chair opposite her.
“Don’t worry about the plate,” said Rene. “We would like to know why you were in our woods when you were captured.”
The woman sat in silence as she continued eating her sandwich slowly and for an extended period of time. Rose could tell by his body language that Aaron was getting agitated by this, but Rene seemed very calm and content to wait as long as the woman needed to eat. When the woman finished eating, she wiped her hands together knocking off any remaining crumbs. She glanced over at Rose and Aaron briefly before answering calmly in French with a question back at Rene, a smug grin on her face. Rose wasn’t sure what she’d said but despite the smugness, she could see the woman’s hands were still shaking.
“These woods are under my control. I’d like to know why you were in them,” said Rene unphased by her attitude.
She answered again in French, her voice full of smugness and attitude that was obvious to Rose despite her lack of understanding. After answering, the woman found a piece of dust on her sleeve, picked it off, and let it drift to the floor, all the while avoiding Rene’s eyes. She added another quick comment in French, which by the tone, sounded like a threat. Aaron seemed to become more and more agitated with every word the woman spoke.
“Where’s it you come from?” asked Rene, still in English, his calmness bordering on indifference.
Rose listened intently to the woman’s answer, but the only thing she could understand was “Montreal” before another long string of French. The woman followed the remark with a broad sneering smile.
“You say you’re hunters?” Rene roared with loud laughter that startled everyone including the woman. “You were easy enough prey I think.”
The smile faded from the woman’s face. The woman’s responses were quicker now and less arrogant, fear starting to eat away at her wall of confidence despite her best efforts to disguise it.
“Any others sent will find the same fate as you,” said Rene, rising to his feet. The fear now plain on her face, the woman started to pepper rapid fire questions in French at Rene.
“I hope you enjoyed your sandwich,” said Rene, turning and walking toward the stairs.
“Wait! What will you do with me!” said the woman in English with a heavy French-Canadian accent.
“How many?” said Rene stopping and glancing back over his shoulder. “How many in your group of ‘hunters?’”
“Twenty! A little less-we lost some of us recently...My son, he’s just a boy! Please!” said the woman, voice fil
led with panic. She’d moved toward Rene but was stopped by Aaron. “Let me go! I will warn them! I will tell them not to come this way!”
“We will discuss this upstairs. You will wait here,” said Rene, turning and continued up the stairs. Rose followed and was joined shortly by Aaron who locked the door behind him. Once the door was locked, Rose could hear sobbing coming from the basement.
Rene had moved into the living room and sat in a chair near the window, the lines in his face seeming to be more deeply etched than normal. “Thoughts?” he said, not looking away from the window.
“We should stay with the original plan” said Aaron. “The more scouts that disappear, the less likely they’d be to move against us.”
There was silence while Rene thought. After a few moments though, Rose felt she had to say something. “If this is a close group though, and they keep losing members, they’re going to come after them regardless. If either of you lost someone close to you, I’m sure you’d retaliate, not be scared off and never return. This isn’t an invading army looking for weak points in our defenses. They’re likely bands of people who used to do lots of different things who now have to survive in this world.” Rose was a little surprised by the words coming out of her mouth as she was saying them. Was she defending this woman?
“It’s cute that you think this woman deserves mercy, but if we hadn’t caught her, she could be bringing her entire group down upon us as we speak,” said Aaron, his face turning red with frustration. “She needs to go, plain and simple. And if anyone else comes looking, they go too.”
“You both make good points” said Rene, rubbing his chin. “On the one hand, letting her go might deter this group when they realize our size and ability, possibly even bring new useful people into the fold, should they want that. However, they could take our mercy for a weakness and attack. On the other hand, we could kill her, she’d disappear completely, and they’d have no idea what happened to her. They might send more scouts, who’d also disappear, they might get the message and move on. Or, they’d come looking for answers and, more likely, vengeance.”
Rene was silent for a long time while he weighed the options. Aaron leaned back on the couch, making himself comfortable. Rose got up and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Rose could hear the sobbing in the basement had gotten a little quieter now. Rose returned to the living room and sat down on the couch near Aaron. He was openly annoyed that Rose hadn’t agreed with his course of action giving her an angry sideways look when she sat down.
Rose had long since finished her glass of water when Rene let out a long sigh. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to release her back to her group.” Aaron sat up, anger plain on his face, and opened his mouth to protest. Rene lifted a hand and shook his head. “However,” Rene continued, “we’re going to track her back to her group. Aaron, I want you, Rose and another one of your men to silently follow her back and get a good assessment of her group’s threat to us. Once we have that, a better decision can be made. Aaron, you and your men have gone on several of these threat assessment missions and you know what to do once their threat has been assessed, correct?”
“Wait, what does that mean?” said Rose, confused.
“You’re now familiar with this town and our abilities” said Rene to Rose. “Once you and Aaron have determined the threat they pose, your group will take appropriate action.
“Appropriate action?” asked Rose, still confused.
“If their risk to us is too high or too low, then we don’t do anything. If it’s too high, we return and prepare to defend the community at all costs. If it’s too low, we just make sure they move on. Each time I’ve done these, the groups have been small and they never even came near town,” said Aaron.
“What if they’re not? What if her group is exactly what she described to us?” asked Rose, a familiar sense of dread starting to creep into the edges of her mind.
“Then they will need to be eliminated,” said Rene coldly, his tone somber and his eyes hard as stone.
Rose didn't respond, but rather sat on the couch in silence. Could she do that? Could she just blindly eliminate them? Surely there needed to be a third option. Maybe they all could join the town like Rose had?
But if just one of those people was infected, that would spread quickly. Rose had a bad feeling about this mission. Killing the woman in the basement was probably the best solution even if Rose didn’t love the idea, but killing the whole group that sent her? Rose wasn’t sure if she could do that.
Chapter 13
They waited until the next morning when the rain had stopped. Rene had spent the night at home and had knocked on Rose’s door at first light. “Eat some breakfast, you’ll be leaving shortly.”
Rose got up and dressed quickly. She passed Adeline’s room and the door was open. Rose peaked in, but the room was empty and the bed was still made. “Must still be on patrol,” Rose thought to herself walking down the stairs. Aaron and one of his men, Henry, were already at the house and both were sitting in the living room. Henry was probably in his early to mid-thirties, had a skinny, wiry build, and a pockmarked face, likely from bad acne when he was younger. Henry’s long scraggly tan hair was barely contained by the Cincinnati Reds ballcap on his head. If Rose didn’t already know Henry and experience first-hand how skilled he was at moving through the woods unseen, she’d be skeptical of his selection to their team. She knew that behind Aaron, Henry was likely the best tracker in town. Rose grabbed a couple slices of bread that Adeline had baked the other day, spread the last of the peanut butter on them, and then joined the men in the living room.
“So we will cover her face again and bind her” said Rene sitting in a chair. “Once we’re on the outskirts of town, we’ll let her go. Once she’s out of view, you three will start after her. Standard tracking. Once she gets back to where she’s from, evaluate their threat and then act. I’m leaving this up to you three. Make the best evaluation you can then take appropriate action.” Rene looked around the room slowly at all three of them. “The last thing we want to do is provoke a larger group. That could spell the end of this community and I won’t let that happen. I trust your judgement, but Aaron has the final say, this decision will ultimately rest with him.”
With that, Rene stood and walked to the basement door followed by the group. Rene grabbed the brown sack and a pair of handcuffs off the kitchen table and unlocked the door. He slowly opened the door in case the woman was at or near the top of the stairs. She was not.
The group walked down the stairs and found the woman sitting on her cot. Her eyes were still red and puffy from crying, but her face was dry. She didn't say anything as they approached but her eyes were fixed on the sack and handcuffs in Rene’s hand. Rene moved to face the woman while Aaron and Henry went to either side of her. Both men went in at the same time to grab her arms. Aaron arrived first and clamped down hard on her left wrist and bicep with his hands. Henry got there a second later and paid the price. The woman was holding shards from the plate she’d broken the day before. She slashed at Henry. Before he could grab her, the woman had sliced a three inch gash down his left forearm. The woman had another shard in her left hand but Aaron was holding her too firmly for her to cut him with it.
As Henry recoiled from the woman, she continued her momentum taking a step toward Rene swinging the shard for his neck. Rene took a step back with the ease and grace of someone who’d expected this all along. The shard in the woman’s hand missed his neck by a good six inches.
After the shard had swung past his neck, Rene moved in close to the woman and gave her a back-handed slap that sounded like a crack of thunder. The woman immediately dropped the shards from both hands and went limp in Aaron’s arms, semi-conscious. Judging by the sound of the slap, Rose was sure half the woman’s face had been ripped off, but that wasn’t the case, she was just bleeding from her bottom lip. Henry, recovered from the initial shock of his injury, started to move in to inflict punishm
ent on the woman. He was stopped with a stern look from Rene. “Bind her and get the sack over her head,” ordered Rene and both men complied without question.
After the woman was bound, she was unceremoniously dumped in the chair next to the cot. “Henry, go upstairs and bandage that cut,” said Rene. “Aaron, you and Rose take her upstairs and secure her to the ATV.”
Rose and Aaron half walked, half dragged the woman up the stairs, through the house, out the front door, and across the lawn to the ATV waiting by the street. They both lifted the woman onto the flatbed on the back and then Aaron tied her bound wrists and both her feet to the ATV. “What a bitch,” said Aaron as he finished tying the last knots.
“You can’t blame her for defending herself,” said Rose, shrugging. “I can’t say I wasn’t looking for weapons when I was down there.”
Aaron frowned at her. “Well tell that to Henry, I’m sure he could blame her.”
They waited in icy silence until Henry and Rene exited the house. Henry had a wrap around his arm but otherwise didn't seem worse for ware. “Not deep,” said Henry. “Doubt I’ll need stitches.” Henry jumped up onto the ATV and sat down on the woman heavily. There was an audible “Oomph” from the woman, but no other sounds. Rose climbed up and squatted down in a small open section of flatbed holding onto the roll bar over the front seats of the ATV. Aaron jumped into the driver’s seat and Rene into the passenger seat. They drove to the northern side of town where the woman had first been found. They didn't talk as they drove through town. There weren’t many people out this early in the morning, but the few that were couldn't help but stare as they drove past, curiosity and possibly a little fear on their faces.
They followed the main road to the first large pile of cars at the northern border of town. There were guards there that moved obstacles so they could pass by. They drove onward down the road to the second, outer pile of cars. Once they were about two hundred meters past the second pile, they stopped in the middle of the road. Everyone exited the ATV and Aaron got to work untying the woman. Once done, Rose and Aaron helped the woman off the ATV and walked her to the middle of the road. Rene removed the sack from her head. She was awake and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the daylight. “You will kill me now?” said the woman to Rene in broken English. Rene didn't answer but instead removed her handcuffs so she was completely unbound. Rene took a step back toward the ATV. “You’re free to go. Should you or anyone in your group return, you’ll be killed on site. You’ve seen a small part of our abilities so you know this to be true. The choice is yours.”
Break Away (Jordan Rose Duology Book 1) Page 17