by Ric Beard
Rumbling outside ripped the image of Sean’s face from her mind and snapped her eyes from the empty cot, where they locked with Nina’s.
“Enforcers,” Nina said. She jumped up, placed her human hand on the teenager’s head, and shook her own when he tried to rise from his seat.
Mustiness from a nearby outhouse assaulted Jenna’s nose as she peeked out the flap of the tent, the thumping pulse in her ears competing with the escalating growl of the truck engine. Engines of any kind were rare in Ripley, even less engines that sounded like a distant earthquake. With the tent concealed in the back corner of the town, the wide, bug-eye headlamps of the truck bearing down told Jenna the ugly truth.
“Someone sold us out. It’s coming right toward us.”
Filcher. I knew it!
“Well, shit,” Nina replied. “C’mon!”
Jenna glanced over her shoulder to find Nina leading the boy toward the flap at the back of the tent. Waving a finger in the direction he should scurry, she crossed the tent to hover behind Jenna as the truck came to a halt. Jenna’s eyes scanned the area across the street and found a few people milling about. Her view was blocked by four men wielding rifles as they filed off the back.
Jenna reached back and laid her hand on Nina’s chest. “Stay here.”
“No way!” She pointed a thick, prosthetic finger, “if you’re going out there, I’m going out there.”
Jenna released the flap, shrouding the tent in darkness, and poked her own finger at Nina.
“No. You aren’t. Stay. You can cover me from here. That’s an order.”
Sunlight again bathed the sandy floor of the tent as Jenna stepped through the flap, leaving Nina no opportunity to argue.
If the new recruit had proven anything, it was that she respected the chain of command. She couldn’t say the same for Lexi.
Thick arms and the boulder chest of the man in the lead dwarfed what was actually a large rifle. His hair was cut so close Jenna couldn’t be sure if it was brown or dirty blonde. Thin lips revealed no expression as they formed a straight line across his face, matching level eyebrows.
“You the doctor?”
“I am,” Jenna said. “Do you have an injury that needs tended to?”
“No.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
Jenna cocked her head to the side and masked the deep breath she pulled into her lungs. A glance over his husky shoulder revealed a handful of townspeople standing around in the shadows of buildings and in the alleys across the street, watching. Her inclination was to come at him a little hot, give an example of the kind of spine it was going to take to affect change in the MidEast. These assholes who brazenly distributed the drugs of which Sampson claimed to have no knowledge wore on her last nerve. Still, she was one woman, with one gun behind her, and her actions would impact the people of this town. Focusing on them was the mission.
That was when she saw the addict she’d spoken with early that morning, standing across the way, hands shoved into his pockets instead of occupying his dry-out room in the hotel up the street.
Filcher. Benedict Arnold.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” the man asked.
Jenna locked eyes with him and tilted her head slightly to one side.
“I don’t know what you want. You don’t seem to want to tell me.”
The man’s eyes ticked down to her hip and back up.
“Nice pistol.”
Jenna straightened her head and shrugged. “Um. Thanks?”
The man looked over his shoulder at the men spread behind him in a semicircle. “Looks like our new friend has a mouth on her.” He chuckled and the others smiled as he whipped his attention back to Jenna. “Let me tell you why you’re stupid.”
“That would be…interesting.”
One eye squinted at her before he spoke. “You got the boss’s attention. Sampson thinks maybe you’re trying to slow down productivity, spread bad ideas among the people. I happen to agree. What do you have to say to that?”
Jenna suppressed a smile as she placed her hands on her hips, feeling the handle of her pulse pistol against her pinky finger. The enforcer’s eyes followed her hand to the gun butt and returned to hers.
“I’d say you and your boss have the wrong impression, entirely. I’m a doctor. So, I came here to help your people. It would seem a smart person might be able to reason that healthier people means more productivity and more taxes for your boss’s coffers.” She hid the clenching of her teeth with a light-hearted shrug.
The man looked over each shoulder in turn again and then down at his rifle, which he hefted up and down in his hand as if it was a twig. Maybe he was threatening her, but Jenna wasn’t impressed. He wasn’t here to shoot her. Something told her that Sampson wouldn’t be happy if he did that. Intel indicated that Sampson projected a softer persona. No, this brute was here for something else, entirely.
“The boss thinks different. Sampson thinks you’ve come to—,” he looked over one shoulder again. “—What did he call it, Ross?”
“Sowing the seeds of discord,” the thinner man next to Muscle Boy said.
“Right! The boss thinks you’re here to sow the seeds of discord.”
Jenna didn’t hesitate. “I’m a doctor. I’m treating people with lung disease, scurvy, headaches, sores, and teaching them about remedies taken from plants.”
“You helping them with drug addiction, too?”
“If they come asking for help, why shouldn’t I help them? Does your boss think drug addiction is a good thing?”
Lawkeeper Jones appeared from around a corner and took up position behind the men. He might have been giving the impression he was standing behind allies, but Jenna knew better. Her eyes flicked to Benedict Arnold across the way and it occurred to Jenna that it was Jones who brought him to her tent for help. That didn’t bode well for the lawkeeper, who was placed here, and would be seen as a traitor.
“The boss thinks you’re trouble.”
Not that she’d expected him to have a better answer to the question. After all, he was a lackey, a stooge, an enforcer.
“You can safely tell your boss that he’s wrong about me. I’m here to help your people and I don’t see how that interferes with his plans to civilize the MidEast. I welcome evolutionary progress.”
Civilize the MidEast. That was the phrase Lawkeeper Jones had told her Sampson used in his speeches to the people, the same speeches where he promised work and a better life…a life free of conscription into an unorganized military and dead sons and daughters.
The man smiled at her. “Why don’t you come and tell him yourself?”
Jenna’s knees locked. A glance over the man’s shoulder revealed that Jones had now raised his hand to his side arm. She wanted to shake her head, back him off, but the men would see it. It wouldn’t do well to look like they were in cahoots.
“Sorry, I have a full slate today.”
The man raised the rifle enough to show he meant business but didn’t point it directly at Jenna.
“It wasn’t an invitation. The boss would like you to come and visit.”
Motion caught Jenna’s gaze from the left as five men and a stocky woman stepped out of an alley, the short, thick barrels of their pulse rifles raised, each bearing on a different target. Standing at the front, towering over Muscle Boy, was the one with even thicker arms who had him by at least six inches.
Scruff.
Shit.
The four men standing with Scruff all bore the furrow-browed expressions of people who’d tolerated enough. Things were about to get really hairy if Jenna didn’t do something.
“Drop the rifles,” one of the men standing with Scruff said. He blew long orange bangs out of his eyes as he peered through the scope—which, of course, wasn’t necessary at point-blank range.
Jenna’s adversary peered over his shoulder a third time, looked back at Jenna, and shook his head.
“Bad move, lady.”
“I wasn’t the one who came here looking for trouble.” Jenna said.
“We’ll be back,” he said, his eyes darting around at the townspeople. “Tomorrow’s a new day.” He swirled two fingers in the air. “Mount up!”
The men followed the order, volleying death glares at Jenna as they stepped onto the truck bed. Lawkeeper Jones had extricated his revolver from his holster and was pointing it at the muscle-bound man as he stepped onto the truck. The two men shared even stares as the truck backed out and made for the entrance to the town from which it had come. Jenna wished he would’ve just held his hands up and stepped back when Scruff’s men appeared instead of showing the solidarity that would probably cost him his life.
Chapter Eight
THE SHIT
8
The governor’s new bungalow was smack dab in the middle of absolutely nothing. Open fields stretched across rolling hills in all directions. There were no manmade structures anywhere. A wide, sprawling lake reached like a thick finger to the outer edge of a forest.
The dwelling’s whitewashed exterior had shone bright in the sun as Ruby stepped across the wide porch and over the threshold, onto polished wooden floors. They were products of the lumber mills Sampson had staffed with laborers. The smooth cloth on the bland, gray couch upon which she sat was proof of a functional textile mill. The window through which she stared was recycled glass, but if there was a practical way to make the stuff, Ruby had little doubt Sampson would find it.
Rows of books stacked on the built-in shelving behind the governor’s chair were the lone adornments, aside from the furniture. Their firm bindings were well-preserved, and it was commonplace to find the boss with his nose pointed between the pages, but never here.
Instead, the governor read on the road as his posse of protectors wound its way from mill to mill and from town to town to witness the rebirth of the place in which he was reared.
Ruby fantasized about finding him on the porch in the spring, the sun igniting only the tips of his golden hair beneath the shelter, as he absorbed Faulkner. She’d sit there too, with her shoulder pressed against his as they shared the peace of a quiet valley while the newly-restored MidEast thrived on the systems they’d establish together.
Ruby’s eyes shifted to the towering man leaning against the bookcase behind the boss, the common, superior expression painted on his face as he watched the proceedings.
Bradshaw.
She suppressed a sneer.
The boss’s fingers drummed on the wide arm of his chair as the man standing before him shifted from foot-to-foot on the soft wool rug while he spouted very limited credentials. Ruby eyed a fidgety foot as it danced only an inch in the air before shifting to the other. Restlessness wouldn’t play well. Sampson preferred men who took life by the balls, and even the enforcers who patrolled the MidEast on the trucks were expected to keep a clean nose.
Otherwise, they’d use up the powder imported to the region to keep the laborers at work, and Sampson couldn’t have that. The governor’s success in the amazingly productive first couple of years was largely due to his intuition about people, his knack for surrounding himself with the competent while consigning the less-adequate to the mills designed to employ the unskilled.
Beneath the high-cut cuffs of his pants, Ruby spied a patch of pale skin peeking through a gap in the back of one of the man’s socks.
“You think they’re with the ones killing my lawkeepers?” Sampson asked. “These Black Ghosts?”
Lawkeeper Simms, Ruby thought. A popular lawman among his people. Sampson seemed really tweaked about the murder of his man there, the dark threat to law and order. The boss had told her that morning that sentiments were already volatile, and the last thing the new government needed was revolt.
If they wanted to stabilize the region, they couldn’t have rogues running around in the shadow of night killing the very symbols of the new government. Even if the people in Simms’s town didn’t take to the drugs or produce as much as others, the lawkeeper was one of Sampson’s people.
That didn’t bode well for whomever had murdered him. Sampson had men all over the territory hunting for the killer.
“She don’t strike me as the sort, sir. Plus, she ain’t left the town in weeks. Been there the whole time.”
Sampson rolled his eyes.
Strike one, dirtbag. Ruby rolled her eyes in solidarity as Sampson’s fell on her.
“What does her being there have to do with it? Just because she’s their ally doesn’t mean she has to be with them.”
“I don’t know, boss.”
Sharp one, this guy.
“I don’t expect you to.” Sampson crossed his legs. “Tell me, what’s she like?”
“Yellow hair, nice chest, real pretty—”
Sampson held up a hand. “I meant, what’s she like! I don’t care how big her tits are!”
“She was real nice. Soft. Gentle type.”
“This is why you think she’s disqualified from collaboration with The Ghosts.”
Though Ruby couldn’t see Filcher’s face from her perspective, it wasn’t a reach to assume his response was a glare of confusion.
Sampson patted his crossed leg at the knee. “We have usurpers among us. People who would unravel the ties we’ve bound. This woman and her friends in Ripley are a fine example, as are these Black Ghosts, who have commandeered one of the farms in the south and threatened violence upon us if we return.”
The Ellison Farm, Ruby thought. The Black Ghosts’ untimely intervention relieving the Ellison family of their duty to pay taxes when Sampson’s unit showed up to collect the corn the family had canned for winter. Questions abounded as to where the mysterious figures hailed from and if their timing was a coincidence, or if it was related to the massacre one of Sampson’s men had inadvisably caused at the Churchill farm, near the Ellisons’. One thing Ruby knew for sure was that Sampson didn’t believe in coincidences.
A voice called out in her mind. I did what I was told.
Ruby pushed away the words as Sampson ran his fingers across his scalp, drawing neat lines in his yellow hair with a flair at the end that brought it all to rest, neatly on his shoulders.
Every motion, poetry.
“Disqualified,” the man said, still shifting from foot-to-foot. “Right, boss.”
Sampson sighed and slid further into the oversized chair. Setting his elbow on the arm, he rested his face against his unfolded fingers.
“Seems to me that this woman giving succor to our citizens in Ripley while her coconspirators undermine our authority by killing the men placed to protect said citizens, is good strategy.” Ruby watched Sampson’s eyes rotate to his lap. He wasn’t talking to his guest anymore. “This Jenna can tend their cuts and bruises with her matronly touch, soften them up—like women often do, present company excepted,” Sampson threw Ruby a nod and she returned it, “—while her cohorts murder and cause mayhem…sow the seeds of discontent.”
His words, just so…elegant. Ruby felt her face warming.
“That’s good for now.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “Let’s talk about your petition to work for me.”
“Petition?”
“Application.” Apparently reading further confusion on the man’s face, Sampson said, “Your wanting to work for me.”
The man nodded and shifted again.
“Show me your teeth,” Sampson said.
“I’m sorry, what?”
The governor’s head turned and his eyes flicked up and over to his second, towering in front of the shelves with his palm on the butt of the polished hand cannon that might cause smaller men muscle aches.
Justice D. Bradshaw’s nose raised on one side, stretching wide pores and accentuating the chicken pox scars that lined his cheeks.
“Am I speaking English, Justice Bradshaw?”
Bradshaw raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Rang pretty clear i
n my ears, governor.” His eyes trailed to the man with the hole in his sock. “Boss said show him your teeth.” His index finger tapped the silvery sheen of his massive revolver.
Bet he’s got a tiny prick, Ruby thought as she eyed the weapon.
“D., grab this man a chair.”
Justice Bradshaw stomped over to the corner in just a few long gaits, and grabbed a wooden chair with a woven seat, which he shoved unceremoniously behind the visitor, knocking it into the back of his knees.
“Sit,” the justice said.
The response was reflexive.
The governor’s fingers tapped from pinky to index finger in a speedy roll on the arm of his chair.
“I don’t hire tweakers. As a rule, they can’t be trusted.” He waved a hand. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. I bring the product into the area and distribute it, so why should I care if my boys use it like everybody else? Right?” The man shrugged in response and Ruby doubted he’d gotten that far inside his lacking head. “See, the men who work for me keep clean because I wouldn’t want them to be tempted to use the product when they’re supposed to be ready to protect towns that come under attack. Oh sure, there have been some exceptions, guys who heat the shit and inject it where people can’t see, but I always find out. I can’t have them stealing from us. Right?”
“Of course not,” the man said readily.
The boss looked up at the justice with a sideways smile. “Of course not.” Bradshaw returned the half grin. “I also can’t have men who travel from township to township distributing to the lawkeepers all wigged out. Shaky hands are imprecise instruments.”
“Huh?” the man asked.
Bradshaw tapped the chair leg with his foot and the man’s head ticked up. “You don’t say ‘huh’ to the governor, boy.”
Sampson waved a hand. “Oh, that’s all right, D. Don’t be such a hard ass.” He revealed a clean, white smile to his potential recruit. “What I meant to express was that shaky hands in the proximity of firearms are a bad idea. Shaky hands steering a truck? Well, that’s a good way to put a truck in a ditch and the MidEast is just rife with ditches.”