Julio nodded.
“Listen,” she said. “We’re on our way to finish this thing. But you need to go back with these two nice people.”
Margaret nodded.
“You know who did this?” she asked.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Lucy rose to leave. Margaret grabbed her tightly by the arm.
“There were children here,” she said with fire in her voice. “There were children here. You get them for what they did.”
Lucy took the woman’s face in her hands.
“I swear on my life.”
30
Kelly and Julio left with Margaret first. She had calmed down quite a bit, relieved that she would have a safe place to lay her head that night. Well, as safe as any place was these days. Safety was a relative thing.
She and Jack continued on a northeast heading. It was like riding through a nightmare come to life.
Tim was dead.
She could not believe it. Just like that, a huge void had opened up inside her. Scaffolding that had been keeping her afloat these last few weeks, perhaps even since she had met him five years earlier, had collapsed. This good and decent man was just gone. Her body was numb. Her hands gripped the reins tightly. She found herself struggling to breathe. As though it was a function she had forgotten how to execute. She didn’t bother wasting time on the abject unfairness of it all. Everything was unfair now. Everything. Instead, rage swelled inside her. Rage that the world had been deprived of Tim Whitaker. Rage that he would never know about the child that was growing inside her.
She would get justice for Tim, and she would get justice for her unborn child, who would now never know the father that would have her so much.
A heavy rain began to fall about an hour after they left the warehouse, soaking them to the bone. It fell in sheets, buffeted by strong winds whipping across the road. A strong cold front harkening the approaching autumn. Behind it loomed a winter they would be lucky to survive if they did not defeat the Haven. The rain spattered her parka. The world was quiet but before the susurration of raindrops showering the blacktop, dancing across the foliage in the trees flanking the roadside.
“You okay?” Jack asked, pulling up alongside her.
“No.”
He chuckled sadly.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t be.”
“We’re gonna get these guys, right?”
Jack nodded.
“You’re goddamn right.”
“I want him to pay for this,” she said. “I want them all to pay.”
Lucy had never been one for revenge. She supposed it didn’t matter if this mission was rooted in revenge. What she knew was that Simon and the Haven were a cancer. A malignancy that had to be extricated from their world. Unless they were stopped, it would continue to grow, spread its fingers into anything that was pure and good and ultimately destroy it.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Jack said.
“You would’ve liked him,” she replied.
Jack did not like many people, but she was confident her brother would’ve liked Tim. He would have liked Tim because Tim was the kind of man that Jack knew he wasn’t. Jack believed in the worst in people. He believed that most people were like him, and this world had done nothing to disavow him of this notion.
They rode in silence for a while.
“How much farther?” Lucy asked.
“A couple of hours.”
They rode in silence, the metronomic whopping of the hoofbeats lulling her to sleep. She napped off and on, but every time she fell asleep, her dreams generated a replay of what she imagined the massacre at the warehouse must’ve been like.
“Let’s go over this again,” Lucy said.
“Big golf resort,” he said. “There’s a main hotel and a number of smaller cottages lining the course. They’ve converted most of the course itself into farmland. Which, I have to admit, was a pretty good idea.”
“Where do we find Simon?”
“The kid said there’s a penthouse on the top floor of the main hotel,” he said.
Just the reference to the boy twisted Lucy’s heart.
“Let’s go over the plan again,” she said.
Jack took a sharp breath.
“I’ll create the diversion,” he said, gently patting the saddlebags holding the ten sticks of dynamite they had brought with them.
It wasn’t a great plan, she had to concede, but it was the best they could come up with. In the absence of a full-throated attack on the Haven, the best alternative was to create as much chaos as possible and force Simon to show his pretty face. At the very minimum, they could inflict enough damage to the Haven’s infrastructure to create a truce between them.
“And I go after Simon.”
“You know that this may not work, right?” Jack said.
“I know.”
“You really want to take this chance?”
“Do we have a choice?”
Jack didn’t reply.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said. “But our hand is forced. We won’t make it through the winter. This way, we control our own destiny.”
“And the baby?”
“I’m doing this for the baby,” she said. “As long as there’s a Haven, this baby has no future.”
She was prepared to die today. She was prepared to die because it would have been in furtherance of a cause greater than herself. Even if it meant her life, the life of her baby. They would go down fighting together. Sure, they could have stayed home and hoped for the best. Hope that they produced enough to fend off starvation this winter. But it was false hope. The only choice was to stand and fight. Simon had made his choice. There had to be consequences for his decisions.
She was drawing a line in the sand.
If they didn’t stop the Haven now, there wouldn’t be another chance. Even if they bided their time, made it through the winter. Simon would grow too powerful. She wished it hadn’t come to this, but she wished against many things about this world that had still come to pass.
A highway mileage sign ahead marked five miles to the Firethorn Golf Resort. Their current approach to the resort was too direct; the situation demanded a stealthier approach. Jack took the point, edging down an exit ramp toward an access road, separated from the main road by a long line of evergreen trees.
They decided to loop around to the back of the resort. There would likely be less activity than near the front, thus facilitating a stealth entry onto the property. They followed Route 238 for a few miles, passing a small lake to their right. Ahead, Lucy could make out the odd-looking farmland, cut to the design of a golf course that had once drawn duffers for a hundred and fifty bucks a round. Lucy conceded it was a good idea; golf courses had eaten up so much land. When they took over this place, she would make sure to maintain the farmland.
In the distance, farmhands worked the land, harvesting the late summer crops. They looked like little ants from this distance. She felt exposed and looked forward to the cover of the coming twilight. They decided to break for a snack and water while they waited for night to fall. A creek paralleling the road made for a good break point; they guided the horses there to drink. The horses would wait here while they executed their raid on the Haven. Left unsaid was the decision not to tie them up. If she and Jack both died, the horses would be trapped, condemned to death by thirst or starvation. She would not allow that.
“Okay,” she said. “Remind me how many sticks we have?”
“Ten.”
“Good,” she said. “Can you set them up to go off at intervals?”
“Yep, I can manage.”
“Once they start blowing, I’ll go after Simon.”
“You remember what he looks like?”
Lucy nodded.
“Do I ever.”
Simon had been handsome in a classical sense. She didn’t deny it, nor did it change the fact that he was a monster. She was reminded of a documentary she’d watched about Te
d Bundy, the notorious serial killer. He was handsome, charming, intelligent, witty, and a complete psychopath. Simon was no different. No respect for human life. People were commodities. Freight to be bought and sold. With Bundy, it had been bought with his own murderous desires. With Simon, wealth and power.
And he had to be stopped.
They rested in the cover of the deep brush as the afternoon wound down and evening fell. The moon rose over the eastern sky, first a shiny dinner plate breaking above the horizon before climbing into its perch and shining down on them like a gigantic spotlight. They shared some flatbread and salted meat from their pack. It wasn’t much. Enough to curb the hunger pangs but not so much as to weigh them down. They wanted to feel light and agile.
Using a stick, Jack sketched out the Haven’s layout in the dirt while Lucy finished her snack. He pointed to a corner of the crude drawing.
“These are the stables here,” he said, marking the spot with an X. “The tree line behind them is pretty thick. It smells terrible here. They don’t do a good job cleaning the stables, so it’s pretty unattended except at feeding time.”
“We’ll come in here, then,” Lucy said.
Jack nodded.
It was a calm night, overcast. Clouds ran across the sky like ghost trains, silent and foreboding. Rain was in the offing.
The horses whinnied when Jack and Lucy eased by, but not loudly enough to alert anyone. They took position behind the resort. The main hotel rose up into the sky. Candles and lanterns illuminated dozens of windows, making it look positively medieval. That was where Lucy would find Simon. The grounds were relatively deserted at this hour, although a couple of sentries were on patrol.
“Weird being back here,” Jack whispered.
Lucy felt good. Taking action felt good. Just being here made the Haven seem less scary, less formidable. An enemy to be taken seriously, but one that could be defeated. They reached the edge of the stables. It was time to go their separate ways.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah. You?”
She nodded. Her heart was racing, but she felt strong and full of purpose.
“Take care of that baby,” he said.
Her hand covered her belly instinctively. For her. She was doing this for her.
“Never piss off an angry mama,” she said.
It was meant to be a joke, but there was a tremor in her voice. She was nervous. Well, of course, she would be. She thought about Emma. Lucy wished so badly that she was still with them. In her, Lucy could see the future. In her, she saw the good that people were capable of.
And when she had died, it reminded her that the world could be a terrible place full of terrible people. The Pulse had distilled that world down to its very essence. Day in and day out, a flood of terrible people doing terrible things to one another. But perhaps tonight, they could change that a bit. Nudge them toward a different destiny. It wouldn’t be perfect. But it would be better.
“You sure about this?” he asked, perhaps detecting the shimmy in her voice.
“Yeah.” Now her voice was firm again.
“Okay,” Jack said. “The kid said his dad rarely leaves the penthouse. Helps build the aura, make him more myth than man.”
“Gotcha.”
They bumped fists.
“Be careful,” she said.
“You too,” he said. “You’ve got the harder job.”
“Take out as many as you can.”
He winked and shot her a finger gun before moving on. She took cover in the shadows of the stable, waiting for her moment.
Jack ran silently for the first building, going over the route they’d mapped out. Ten sticks of dynamite. If he could get them all in place, they might actually have a chance. Good old fashioned dynamite. Even in this dead world, it was still there for them, ready to ignite, to bloom, to become the thing it was meant to be.
The pro shop was his first stop on this tour of destruction. He carefully removed two sticks of dynamite and placed them at the center of the store. He affixed the fuse to the blasting cap and made his way to the exit. By the door was a small propane tank, the kind you’d see on a backyard gas grill. It gave him an idea. He opened the valve, triggering the faint hiss of the release of gas.
This was the slowest-burning fuse. It would take about fifteen minutes to burn its way to the ordnance. He lay the end of the fuse on the outside of the door and set a match to it, birthing a tiny corona of flame creeping toward its destiny.
The clock was running now. He had just minutes to set the final five set of charges. The golf cart garage was next. A few carts were likely gas-powered and would still be clogged with stale, useless fuel, but they would likely light up just the same.
From the porch of the pro shop, he scanned the vicinity for the sentries. Seeing none, he made a beeline for the garage where he’d been held hostage. It was a short jaunt to the garage. He leaned against the wall, risking a peek through the window, but it was too dark to see anything but the dim outline of the golf carts. He edged around the corner to the door just to the left of the garage bay. He turned the knob slowly and pushed it open. The peppery tang of burning marijuana filled the air. He froze. Someone was in here.
“Hello?” came the call.
He didn’t reply. Footsteps headed toward him, coming from the corner.
“Lewis, is that you?” said the frightened voice. “Don’t mess around.”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Jack replied in a harsh whisper.
“Cool, cool,” the man said. “You scared me, you asshole.”
“Sorry.”
The man appeared in between two golf carts. Jack could only see his silhouette in the dim light cast by the gibbous moon.
“Hey!” the man called out, his voice suddenly firm and sharp.
Shit.
Jack rushed at him; the man, quite high from the weed, reacted slowly. Jack plowed into him, driving him squarely into the concrete flooring. He snaked his arm around the man’s throat, cradling his throat in the crook of his elbow. Before the man could even make a sound, Jack had snapped his neck, violently torquing his head over his bicep. Jack eased the man’s body to the ground. He waited a moment for his breathing to stabilize, for the adrenaline rush of this deadly encounter to subside. When he felt calm again, he set two more sticks of dynamite on the driver’s seat of the centermost golf cart. Then he lit the fuse, this one about three minutes shorter than the first.
He made shorter work of the remaining three buildings, a storage shed, a dining hall, and a larger, nondescript warehouse, but time was becoming an issue. The encounter with the man in the garage had really slowed him down.
He finished unspooling the last fuse, a short one that would blow in less than thirty seconds. Sweat slicked his body as he worked, and his hands were trembling. He was really cutting it close.
He lit the final fuse and ran into the darkness.
31
Lucy’s mind was blank as she waited for her brother to shove her toward her destiny. If Jack’s gambit had been successful, the buildings would start to blow any minute now, and it would be time. Her brother would come through. He would not back out or lose his nerve. He was like a machine, a program that once you executed could not be stopped. So this was it. Their last stand.
Perhaps it was always destined to end like this. In this world, it was hard to imagine growing old and happy, sitting on your porch, sipping lemonade. Like most everyone else, she found it hard to believe that their powerless status was not permanent. Perhaps in the early days and weeks and months, it was reasonable to hold out hope that whatever needed to be fixed would be. Even if you still were, the lemonade was likely to be piss-warm and unrefreshing. A reminder that there were no more cold drinks to be had except in wintertime, when you might remember to dunk a six-pack in an icy stream for an hour.
No, this world was brutish, one that was going to do its best to chew you up and spit you out. And it was likely to get worse in the coming years. Tha
t was why you had to get while the getting was good. You couldn’t sit around waiting for things to be good. You had to make them good. And if a place like the Haven, if people like Simon tried to take it away from you, you punched them right in the mouth. You bloodied them, or you went down fighting because a life wasn’t worth living unless it was worth living. And a life spent in bondage, subservient to another, was no life at all.
She would not stand for it.
Not for her.
And not for her unborn baby.
She was doing this for her child.
Even if it cost her everything, even if it cost them both their lives, it would be worth it. To die on her own terms. Not plucked out of a line, forced to her knees and then shot in the back of the head.
No sirree, Bob.
Lucy Goodwin wasn’t going out like that.
She would fight to the last.
So would Jack.
She and her brother were as different as any two people, much less two siblings could be, but an innate belief in justice was the thread that tied them together. Their father had instilled in them an understanding that you had to fight for what was right at all costs. He’d fought in Vietnam, saw terrible action, took a bullet in the lung that had nearly killed him. Quickly, he had understood the war was a lost cause, a terrible cause at that. But keeping his brothers and sisters in arms alive, that was right. And so that’s what he had done from 1970 to 1972, keeping them alive, giving lip service to command, going through the motions of the specific missions. The experience had scarred him permanently, driving him to relief in a bottle of whiskey and then to an early grave, but even at the end, it had been his prime directive. Their father would be proud of them today. His son and daughter were standing up to true evil, true tyranny because it was the right thing to do.
As the minutes ticked by, she grew increasingly anxious. Her jaw was clenched, her head starting to ache. Imagined scenes of Jack meeting disaster rippled through her mind like a horrific home movie. He had to succeed, he had to succeed, he had to--
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 23