Terri Packard, who led the Evacuation Committee, stood up and began directing dozens of residents out of the cafeteria. The evacuation plan had been on the books for some time. It was chilling to see it put into effect. Lucy watched with a heavy heart as scores of her fellow residents left the room. She hoped to see them all again soon.
Within minutes, there were only about two dozen people remaining, all members of Jack’s Security Committee. After Jack shared his intelligence, he begged off the meeting to begin gathering Promise’s arsenal. The Haven had confiscated many of their weapons, but he had stashed a few in a silver case buried in the woods behind his tent. No one had known about them until now. They could not take a chance that someone’s loose lips would reveal their existence. Especially knowing there had been a traitor in their mix.
They debated attack strategies. A number of ideas were discussed and quickly dispatched. A frontal assault was out of the question. They simply did not have the numbers, and even if they did, Lucy was not sure they’d want to send so many to certain death. For better or worse, they were not like the Haven. They would not be cavalier about the loss of their people, as the Haven surely was. It was how places like the Haven could thrive. The needs of the many outweighing those of the few and all that. The bottom line was that they did not have enough bodies or weaponry for such a strike.
Still, some argued for such an attack, buoyed by the insane belief that right made might. That the morally superior position would somehow carry them to victory. Lucy scoffed while the man, Ethan Shea, made the plea to the council. Had he not been privy to what had been happening here for the last several months? He even offered to lead the attack, which made Lucy laugh out loud.
This enraged Ethan.
“You’ve got a better idea, I suppose?” he bellowed.
As a matter of fact, she did.
He waved his hand mockingly toward the podium. She got up just as Jack returned to the room with the case. At last count, it had contained four nine-millimeter pistols and one semi-automatic assault rifle.
“We take a small strike team,” she said. “Five people. We sneak into their compound and destroy it. If they’re going to come here, their place may be not well-defended right now.”
Murmurs from the group.
“But we have to go now.”
29
A dozen people volunteered for the attack on the Haven. Jack selected Lucy, Julio Loaiza, and Kelly Dale. All were young, fit, and strong. All had shown skill with weapons. Two had some experience with martial arts, which could come in handy in a stealthy attack on the Haven. Lucy readied her gear. They agreed to carry two bottles of water and a little flatbread each. No more. Truth be told, they wouldn’t need more because by this time the next day, they would be either victorious or dead.
As Jack had said, the past was never past.
Once again, she was preparing to go to war with Simon. But this time, she was going in as a soldier, as a fighter, rather than as a decoy. The last time, they had been extremely lucky to get away with their lives. She would count on no such luck this time. She took Norah aside to bid her farewell.
“No need to say goodbye,” she said. “I’m going.”
Lucy smiled.
“No, sweetie, you can’t,” she said. “I can’t let you.”
“I’m not asking,” she said with an angry heft in her voice.
“And I don’t care,” Lucy snapped back. “I am not risking your life. I don’t know how this ends.”
The girl’s shoulders sagged as the finality of Lucy’s decision settled in on her.
She was looking at something over Lucy’s shoulder, a blank look on her face.
“I have a confession,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I remember Alexander’s father.”
Lucy’s eyes widened in surprise. She had not mentioned remembering Simon.
“His face was burned on my brain that day,” she said, referring to the day Simon had held them both hostage and planned to trade them for supplies.
“I didn’t know if you remembered,” she said. “It was dark, and you didn’t spend much time with him.”
“You don’t forget a man like him.”
Lucy had no reply to that.
“Anyway, it was about a month after I met Alexander,” she said. “He was really sweet, you know. Not a mean bone in his body. He didn’t even like killing bugs. He would move them. No matter how ugly or creepy-looking. He would just pick them up and move them.”
Norah shuddered; it brought a smile to Lucy’s face. The girl had a pathological fear of insects and bugs. Sometimes, it was a real problem in their rural lives.
“Anyway,” she continued, “one day I asked him about his family, and he told me his mother had died when he was little and that his father was a hardass but that he took good care of everyone.”
“Did they get along?”
“I think they just stayed out of each other’s way,” she said. “Alexander knew how to keep his father calm. He didn’t hate him, he didn’t love him, he was just this guy who had raised him.”
A flash of memory. During their sole conversation, Simon had told Lucy that he had a son. She couldn’t believe a man who was so cavalier about other people’s lives could be a parent to a child, but that, of course, was silly. Anyone, no matter how evil, could be a parent.
“Did you ever go to the Haven?” Lucy asked.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t have kept that from you.”
Lucy nodded.
“Anyway, that day you followed me,” she said. “Alexander brought some pictures with him. Mostly of him and his mother. But the last one in the stack was one of him with his father. It was like a punch in the face. I wanted to scream. I started shaking. Alexander asked me what was wrong. I told him I had just gotten chilly, which was a dumb thing to say because it was like eighty degrees out.”
She paused.
“But he believed it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He believed anything I said, the big dummy.”
Her eyes watered at the memory of her sweet, naïve boyfriend.
“I asked him if I could have the pictures. I told him how cute he looked with his parents. It would have looked weird if I asked for just the one with his father.”
“Why did you want it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I couldn’t believe it was really him. I needed to look at it some more. Part of me didn’t want to believe it. I kept looking at the picture, looking for ways to convince myself it wasn’t him. But I never could. It was him. The father of this boy I loved.”
Hearing the lament in her voice broke Lucy’s heart even more, if such a thing were even possible.
“And that, Mama, is why I want to go with you.”
“Listen to me, Norah,” she said. “You’ve already lost too much. If this goes badly, Promise is going to need you to lead.”
“Okay,” she said. “Will you be careful?”
“You know it.”
“One more thing,” Norah said.
“What?”
“I know about Emma.”
Lucy’s stomach flipped. She looked for something to say, but the words would not come. She did not know how Norah had known about her. At this point, it probably did not matter.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I wish you had told me about her.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to compete with her. With a ghost.”
“When you come back, will you tell me about her?”
Lucy’s heart soared.
“You bet.”
Thirty minutes later, the group of six was ready to go.
They had one stop to make.
Lucy did the math as they rode. Tim’s community was ten miles to the north. According to Jack, the Haven lay another fifteen miles to the northeast. It would cost them a few hours, but it was worth the side trip. Tim would have weapons. And he deserved
to know about the baby.
The trip was risky, and the outcome was uncertain. But not doing anything was dangerous, too. Perhaps even more so. Especially now that Alexander was dead. Now that the Haven would be coming.
Now that hell was coming.
They would have to be first.
The sun had begun its slow descent toward its nest. They had a few hours of daylight left. Lucy liked the way this was shaping up. The side trip to Westerberg would bring them to the Haven after dark, which was exactly what she wanted.
As they rode, her thoughts were focused on the baby growing inside her.
A baby.
It was still hard to believe.
Her best guess put the pregnancy at about ten weeks. This tracked toward a late winter or early spring delivery, assuming she lived that long. Her mind drifted. To another time, another world. She pictured herself holding a newborn, wriggling and grunting, unsure of anything other than everything it had ever known, to the extent a newborn could know anything, had been destroyed.
Perhaps this time, she would get a happier outcome as a parent. She had suffered so badly. The trauma had never healed. And she had to let it heal. She would always be Emma’s mommy, and she would always love her more than anything in the world. But she couldn’t stay in the shadow of the past.
As it was, the odds would be stacked against this baby. She would be born in a world much different from the one in which Emma had arrived. Two siblings, separated by time and worlds. She wondered how Tim would react. Probably be thrilled, knowing the guy. This would be his first. He would be a good dad. She could see that. He gave of himself. He put the wellbeing of others ahead of his own. He would find a way to make the kid’s life normal.
It was an admirable trait, one that didn’t get you far in their world. But the world needed people like Tim. Otherwise, it would continue down this path toward brutishness, toward survival, toward baseness. The world needed fathers like Tim. Fathers who would raise their kids to be kind and generous, raise kids to work together to solve their many problems. It couldn’t go on like this, this constant state of war.
Then she wondered how they would manage raising a baby. She couldn’t leave Promise any more than he could leave his community. But the baby would need both parents. She put the issue aside for now. They would cross that bridge if and when they got to it. There were so many other bridges to cross between here and there, and some of those bridges were going to be rickety indeed. If those bridges were even there at all.
Someone sneezed, breaking her out of her daydream.
They were less than a mile from Tim’s distribution center. It was late afternoon. As they drew closer, the butterflies in her stomach multiplied. They would be dropping a lot on the poor man. He’d probably been planning on a routine day, an ordinary day. There was something to be said in the ordinary. It meant that nothing terrible happened, that no one died, that you had enough to eat, enough water. An ordinary day was a beautiful one indeed.
“Hey Luce,” Jack said.
“Hmm?”
“Was that trailer burned the last time you were here?”
They had drawn near the western edge of the warehouse complex. A small trailer south of the main warehouse had been consumed by fire in the not-too-distant past. Black soot covered the roof where it had caved in, making it look like a ruptured abscess. A flutter of anxiety rippled through her. This damage had not been there.
As they turned onto the access road, more evidence of some dramatic event revealed itself. The anxiety tickling Lucy’s stomach was now morphing into fear. She slowed the horse’s pace; the others followed suit. The guard station had been destroyed. No guard was on duty, as there had been during her two previous trips here.
Something had happened here.
Something terrible.
The group’s chitchat started, pulling back the cloak on the immense silence pressing down on them. There were no muted murmurs, no sounds of life drifting from beyond the fence. An owl hooting in the trees was the only sound. The group froze in unison, all sensing trouble. Lucy feared the worst. The Haven had found this place. Lucy removed the field glasses from her pack and surveilled the area. Nothing was moving. A number of the buildings bore signs of damage, both fire and firearms.
“What do you think?” Jack asked.
“Not sure,” she said, her voice a whisper. Her thoughts raced to Tim’s wellbeing. She was not ready to lose him. Not now.
“Should we check it out?”
“Yeah,” she said. “There’s no one here. Safeties off though.”
The group drew their weapons as they made their way down the short access road to the perimeter fence. The main gate hung loosely from its hinge like a bird’s broken wing. There were tracks here. Tire tracks. She put that to the side for the moment.
Jack took the point, Lucy behind him. Kelly brought up the rear, keeping an eye on their six. They found the first body near the trailer. Shot in the chest. The body had swollen in the heat as it decomposed. It was a man, maybe in his early thirties. The stench was stronger here.
“Holy Mary, mother of God,” muttered someone behind them.
Dozens of canned goods were strewn about the ground. More bullet-ridden bodies dotted the perimeter. If Westerberg had only a been home to a few dozen people, they would have been outmatched and outgunned by an enemy like the Haven. The deep stench of death hung over the place like a cloud.
Near the back, Lucy spotted movement. There was a small fire burning. A woman was seated by the fire, her back to them. Lucy cleared her throat. The woman jumped, badly startled. Upon seeing Lucy’s group, she scrambled for her pack, presumably going for a weapon. Jack and the others drew their guns. The woman froze, as though she were resigned to her fate.
Lucy held out her hand in peace.
“Take it easy,” she said. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
The woman was Asian, middle-aged, perhaps five or ten years older than Lucy. Her hair was mostly white, but her facial features belied a woman closer to Lucy’s age. Hell, they all had aged a lot these last few years. She crumpled back to the ground and broke into tears. Lucy approached her gingerly, careful not to show aggression. A survivor of the attack could tell her what had happened here.
Lucy kept her hands up and open to indicate that she came in peace. She gestured toward the open space next to her.
“Can I sit here?”
The woman nodded. She was filthy and smelled terrible. Her clothes bore old, dark stains. Probably blood.
“Are you okay?”
“Do you have food?” she said, her voice raw and raspy. It had been some time since she had spoken. She was staring into the distance, not really focusing on anything.
Lucy retrieved the flatbread from her pack and handed it to her. The woman devoured it greedily.
“I’m Lucy,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Margaret.”
“Margaret, what happened here? Where’s Tim?”
She shuddered.
“They came while we were at dinner,” she said. “There must have been a hundred of them. They killed everyone.”
Exactly what they had done to Everton. The decision to evacuate Promise had been the correct one. She could only hope they had not left a trail for the Haven to follow. She would worry about that later. She could only deal with this problem now. Destroying the Haven was the only way through this nightmare.
“Why did they do this?”
“I don’t know,” Margaret said. “I never saw them before.”
“Did they take anything?”
“No.”
They hadn’t even taken the food. This was just a massacre. A show of force.
“Did anyone else survive?” Lucy asked gently.
“I don’t think so.”
She nodded her head tightly.
“How did you survive?” Lucy asked.
“I hid.”
“Maybe some others are hiding?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve looked.”
“What happened?” Jack asked sharply.
“Jack, give her a second.”
“No, it’s okay,” Margaret said to Lucy.
She turned back to Jack.
“I was at dinner, and I got chilly. I went back to my trailer to get a sweater. On my way back, I heard gunfire. I thought someone was taking target practice, but then I saw them pouring into the cafeteria. There must have been fifty of them. I guess they didn’t see me. I watched through the window on the side of the building. Tim tried to surrender, but they just shot him where he stood.”
She paused and closed her eyes, the trauma flooding back to her.
“I didn’t know what to do, but then I heard them calling out to search for anyone else,” she continued. “I was so scared. I ran back to my trailer and hid under my cot. I thought for sure they would find me. They even came in the trailer, but they didn’t find me. They moved on. I didn’t come out until the next day. I had no idea who had lived, who had died. It took me the rest of the day to figure out I was the only survivor.”
She wept a little. Lucy gently closed a hand on the woman’s forearm.
Tim was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
The woman looked up at her and wiped tears away from her face.
“You’re Tim’s friend, right?”
Lucy nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Lucy’s chin dropped. Absently, she pressed her hand to her belly. Tim was gone. The work of the Haven. They were making their final move now. Consolidating control over the region. She could only hope their gambit worked. Before it was too late.
“What do I do now?” she asked.
Lucy chewed on her lower lip as she considered her options. She quickly came to a decision.
“We’re gonna send you back to our place,” she said. “Our community is about ten miles from here.”
Lucy motioned for Kelly and Julio to join her and Margaret.
“This is Margaret,” she said to the pair. “Take her to the rendezvous point.”
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 22