“Not a bad position to be in,” the man said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re basically writing your own ticket out of here.”
“Hey, man, your call.”
“You’re a good brother,” the man said. “Most folks don’t get along with their brothers and sisters. Seems like sibling rivalry never goes away. Always fighting for the scraps of the most important love there is.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
The man stood up and made his way to the cell door.
“To be honest, my sister’s had it pretty rough,” Jack said.
Time for the coup de grace.
Time to appeal to this man’s humanity by making it clear how truly motivated Jack was to help, to buy safe passage for him and his poor, woe-is-me sister. He hated to do it, but they could leave no stone unturned.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s already lost one child.”
“Well, these are tough times.”
“No, this was before. Cancer. Ten years old.”
The man froze at the door, his hand on one of the bars.
“What did you just say?”
“My sister. She lost her daughter to cancer.”
Something about the way the man responded made Jack’s stomach flip. He didn’t know why. The words had resonated with him somehow. Maybe he’d lost a child to cancer himself. It was possible. Often, as he’d found in his days with the syndicate, tragedy pushed people to deviant behavior. They’d lived good lives, and what had they gotten in return? Heartache.
“Yeah,” Jack said, wanting to probe a little farther. He had connected with the man at some fundamental level. This could be good news, or it could be bad news. “Really makes you question things, seeing a thing like that. Seeing a child with cancer.”
He rapped his knuckles against the bars. They twanged ominously in the strange acoustics of the cell.
“We’ll speak again soon, Jack.”
23
Jack had been gone for three days. Lucy told herself not to worry, but it was getting more difficult. Anything could have happened. Even if the Haven had bought his story, they could have just held him captive. Jack told her not to worry about this prospect. He assured her that he could escape; it was what he was good at. He was trained to do it.
Things were tense in Promise. No one knew about Jack’s covert mission but Lucy and the other Council members, but there were other things to worry about. Like the coming autumn. The leaves were starting to fall. A good breeze sent the brown-tipped leaves fluttering to the ground like little messages from the future. A future of barren trees and barren cupboards.
The coming winter was going to be difficult, but the good news was that they’d be heading into it reasonably healthy. Folks were looking a little leaner in the face, but traffic in the clinic was normal. The day job was routine for once. Calm before the storm, she supposed. Before long, illnesses related to nutrition deficiencies would begin to crop up.
But that was a problem for Future Lucy. For now, she was worried about Jack.
And Norah.
Their relationship was mending. But today, Lucy was going to have to add another lash to its back. She had no choice. They were reaching a crisis point, and she couldn’t function unless she knew that Norah was safe. She had continued to sneak out to visit her mysterious boyfriend. Lucy had looked the other way as they addressed the problem of the Haven.
But with no easy solution to that issue on the horizon, Lucy had to take charge. She had to be a mom. Lurking in the background, of course, was Lucy’s pregnancy. Sometimes, it retreated from the forefront of her mind before storming in like a hurricane. A baby. She was going to have a baby. And seeing as she was the senior medical officer for their community, it would behoove her to make sure her charges were properly trained on childbirth techniques. If everything ran smoothly, it wouldn’t be too difficult. If there were complications, well, that would be something else entirely.
There were other concerns. Autism and Down syndrome were very real risks in babies born to mothers over the age of forty. Mother Nature, she was a real bitch. She wanted women to have babies earlier than later. Lucy understood that from a biological perspective. And in the old days, it had been such a burden on women. Lucy was only twenty-four when she’d become pregnant with Emma. And the practice of nursing was well-suited for dealing with a new baby. She had worked three twelve-hours shifts a week, which left her four days a week with Emma. She didn’t sleep much, but did any new mother, really?
She hoped Emma wouldn’t mind a new baby. Because Lucy already loved the child more than she could have imagined. She wondered how Norah would handle the news; she’d been looking for the right time to tell her. Maybe tonight after dinner. Yeah. Worrying about telling Norah about the pregnancy would take her mind off Jack.
That wasn’t the only item on the agenda either. Now that Lucy thought about it, it was going to be a difficult discussion. She had decided to bar Norah from leaving Promise for the immediate future; it was simply too dangerous.
Lucy was sitting under the awning outside the clinic. She had just finished the evening medication pass for the four patients that were in house. It was a nice night. A passing thunderstorm in the middle of the day had broken the vise of humidity. A cool breeze was blowing. A hint of fall in the air. In the old days, this might have been the week that Octoberfest beer offerings began dominating the beer aisle. She smiled at the memory. Good-natured arguments about which season of the year was the best.
Winter for all its fireplaces and hot cocoa and movie nights spent under a blanket. Summer for trips to the beach and frozen margaritas and catching a movie at the drive-in in Goochland County, not too far from where she now sat. She wondered what the place looked like now. The Pulse had hit in the middle of the day, so the place was probably empty. That would have been a freaky image. People having to hoof it home from the theater; it was out in the middle of nowhere, and a walk home would not have been an enjoyable jaunt. As though that would have mattered in the grand scheme of things.
A noise broke her out of her daydream.
Speak of the devil.
Norah loped gracefully toward her. She had finally stopped growing, topping out an inch taller than Lucy. She was so achingly beautiful that it scared Lucy a little. She saw how the men looked at her, and even how they tried to not look at her. Like they knew better, but they still had to work hard at it. She kept her hair cropped close. The cut accentuated her high cheekbones and beautiful brown eyes.
Lucy hadn’t seen her all day. The older Norah got, the less she saw of her. The less she was an extension of Lucy. More a full-fledged member of the community. She didn’t even know what say she had over the girl anymore. What, just because she was under eighteen, Lucy had the right to dictate the contours of the girl’s life? That was an anachronism of a world gone by. Norah had spent her formative years in the crucible of the post-Pulse world. She had grown up fast.
If Norah just decided to ignore her, Lucy really didn’t know what she could do to stop her. In some ways, they were still running on the momentum of the old world. The way things used to be. Norah was used to the way things were, although that was changing.
Lucy lay an absent hand on her belly, now sporting the faintest of bumps. It would be invisible to anyone else, but Lucy felt it in the slight snugness of her clothes. Again, her thoughts drifted to her baby’s life ahead. She (she? Why did she think it was a she?) would come into a world knowing nothing of their previous lives. Would she believe her momma when Lucy told her about cars and airplanes and even something as basic as electricity? There were so many things that would be nothing but history to this child. Lucy decided she would start a diary, a journal, to document all the things they had once had but had since lost.
Assuming, of course, they survived the coming war with the Haven.
“Hey, Mama,” Norah said.
“Hey, your
self,” she said. “How was your day?”
“Good.”
“Hey, we need to talk,” she said. “Can you sit for a bit?”
Norah rolled her eyes a little. Not a lot, just a little. It was automatic by now. Teenagers just rolled their eyes whenever an adult in their lives decided they needed to talk.
“Okay,” she said with a breath of annoyance.
They sat for a bit in silence as Lucy wrestled with which item to begin with.
The lockdown. She could finish with the good news of the pregnancy.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Couple of things,” she said. “They’re both pretty important.”
“Is this a good news, bad news type thing?”
“Uh, maybe?” she said. “I guess you might prefer one over the other.”
“Well then start with the bad news.”
“So you’re not gonna like this,” Lucy began, “but I want you to stay inside the borders for Promise for a while.”
“Why?”
Lucy clicked her tongue for a second as she considered her response.
“Things have gotten dangerous out there.”
“Why?”
“You know we’re struggling to keep up with the Haven’s demands.”
Norah nodded.
“And there may be trouble coming.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Not sure yet,” she said. “It could get messy.”
Lucy regretted the words as she said them. Talking about war with a child.
“Good,” she said. “I hate that they take so much from us.”
Lucy felt a tickle of relief. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as she expected. Kids, man, they always surprised you. It was a mistake to underestimate them.
“That’s the bad news?”
“I thought you’d be upset,” she said. “With your friend and all.”
“Actually, his dad gave him the same rule,” she said.
“Sounds like a smart dad.”
“Can I see him one more time though?” Norah asked. “We’re supposed to meet up tonight.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “Like I said, it’s too dangerous.”
Norah huffed but raised no additional objection. It was like negotiating a minefield. Lucy hoped she’d carefully made it to the other side without setting one off.
“So what’s the good news?”
“So this is gonna seem like it’s out of left field.”
“Okay.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“What? How?”
Lucy raised a single eyebrow.
“Right,” Norah said, looking away embarrassed.
Lucy had taught Norah about the birds and the bees not long after she’d become her primary guardian. She had known nothing about the business of men and women, and Lucy wanted to get that out of the way early.
“Who’s the father?” Norah asked.
“Do you remember Tim?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
Tim and Norah had only spent a little time together during their chaotic escape from Simon’s clutches. Strange to think Norah had such little recall of a person from such a critical moment of her life. The beautiful amnesia of childhood.
“Well, he’s the baby’s father.”
“So since you’re tired of me, you decided to have your own baby?”
Norah’s words were like a punch in the face.
“No, of course, not,” Lucy said, reaching out and squeezing Norah’s arm. “I love you more than anything, like you’re my own flesh and blood.”
“But I’m not your flesh and blood, am I?”
Lucy didn’t know how to respond. And it was this delay that seemed to enrage Norah even further. This had gone off the rails so quickly.
“Yeah, you don’t give a shit about me anymore because you’ll have your own baby now. That baby will just do whatever you program it to do.”
Lucy laughed at this. The idea that a baby she carried herself would be any more pliant or less difficult as a teenager was rich indeed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Norah,” she said. “This baby will need a big sister. That will be your job.”
“I don’t want the job,” she snapped. “And I don’t want you!”
She fled, leaving Lucy sitting alone on the stoop.
Norah’s explosion had left Lucy shell-shocked. Her reaction had been totally unexpected. She had always wanted to believe that Norah had never viewed herself as some kind of consolation prize, good but not good enough because she wasn’t Lucy’s biological daughter. All these years, those feelings had been bubbling under the surface, and the pregnancy had been the perfect spark to ignite them. Maybe she should have told her about Emma long ago.
Norah did not appear for dinner, which was highly unusual. Her metabolism burned hot, and she never skipped a meal, especially these days as the food rations grew thinner. Lucy ate her cabbage and potato soup by herself and then got up to look for Norah. Knowing the girl, she had probably decided to defy Lucy and go meet her boyfriend for one last rendezvous.
But what could she do, short of locking her in their cell?
She had to trust that her lessons and the values she held dear had taken root inside her, that they were enough to keep Norah on the straight and narrow.
After dinner, Lucy went back to the clinic and worked on paperwork by lantern light. Ordinarily, it was times like this she really missed electricity. Even by computer under the fluorescent lights of her old emergency room nurse’s station, charting had been a gigantic pain in the ass. Now it was just a tedious nightmare.
But the mindlessness of the work was a welcome distraction tonight. It was mindless work that had to be done, and it let her focus on the blowup with Norah. She was at a loss of what to do; it was another stressor at a time she could ill afford it. So she continued working, cleaning up charts, looking for warning signs in her patients she may have missed at first blush. The work carried her late into the evening, until the last bit of revelry had died down.
That was why the sudden burst of shouting and screaming that came late, probably close to midnight, had been so alarming. Her heart racing, she set down the chart she’d been reviewing and picked up her lantern. Outside, the wailing continued.
She rushed outside, spotting a small crowd of people that formed near Promise’s main entrance. A group had circled a skittish horse, its rider in obvious distress. The woman aboard was yelling and shouting unintelligibly.
As she got closer, she recognized the rider. Her name was Amelia. She was from Barrett’s settlement. Initially, Lucy could not understand what she was saying. As Lucy drew closer, her words, choked with tears, came into a better focus. She was saying the same thing over and over. Then Lucy understood.
“They killed everyone,” Amelia was saying. “They killed everyone.”
“Everyone quiet!”
Lucy’s sharp words cut through the chatter.
The group fell silent.
“Amelia, what happened?” she asked in as calm a voice as she could manage.
“They came this afternoon,” she said. “The ones from the Haven. They started killing everyone.”
Lucy’s stomach flipped.
“Come on down,” Lucy said. “You need to rest.”
The woman’s face, which had been frozen in panic and terror, illuminated by the dozens lanterns swinging the others’ hands, suddenly relaxed. Lucy could only imagine the woman’s terror-soaked midnight ride here.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Okay.”
She shimmied down to the ground. Someone took the horse by the lead and walked it to the stables for water and hay. Amelia crumpled to the ground, holding her head in her hands. Her shirt was splattered with blood. The sobbing restarted in earnest. She wailed.
That’s when Lucy remembered Norah had not appeared for dinner. She grabbed Terri by the elbow.
“Terri,” she said, her voice panick
ed. “See what else you can find out. I have to find Norah.”
Terri nodded.
Leaving Terri to tend to Amelia, Lucy turned and sprinted for her lodge. She burst through the empty common area. She banged into the wall in a desperate sprint to reach Norah’s room, praying she was in there, praying that she would see the dim glow of candles that Norah liked to burn while she was in her room stewing.
But the room was dark.
Norah was missing.
And the Haven was on the rampage.
She set the lantern on the bureau and began digging through Norah’s belongings. She didn’t love the idea of rifling through the girl’s private things, but she had no choice. Norah was her daughter, and she had to do whatever she could to help her. And this invasion of her privacy could give her a clue as to the girl’s whereabouts.
There was nothing on the top of the bureau. Norah was a fastidious girl, different in that respect from the average teenager. To be fair, Norah’s teenage years were much different than they had been for any teenager of the last century and a half. Perhaps she found order in the upkeep of her room when her life and her world were wracked by chaos.
She next turned her attention toward the nightstand. Lucy opened its single drawer and began rifling through the contents, looking for anything that might shed light on where she’d gone. A note, a journal. Perhaps she had returned to the spot they had had their terrible fight, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t afford a wild goose chase; she needed actionable intel, and she needed it now.
At the bottom of the drawer lay a thin stack of photographs, maybe half a dozen in total. These were new to Lucy. She set her lantern on the nightstand as she flipped through them. The first five were childhood pictures of Norah’s boyfriend with a pretty woman, presumably his mother. He was young in the shots, no more than eight or nine years old. But he looked the same, even now. Some kids were like that. Even in adulthood, the face of the child they had been lurked just underneath.
The pictures were heartbreaking and wondrous in their ordinariness. A shot in the park. One from Halloween, with Alexander dressed as a ninja. A third at the beach, his mother’s hair whipping behind her in what must have been a strong breeze.
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 18