And Finn watched numb with shock as Herb disappeared back into the shadows of Ely State Prison.
Larry
When he entered New Jamestown’s jail, Simon rose at once, oozing the guilty look of a man who’d been caught sleeping on the job. A look that wasn’t at all misplaced given he had been dozing off.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Simon stammered. “Is there something I can do for you, Sir?”
Larry glanced over at Bud, who was sitting up straight now. The expression there wasn’t all that different, except Bud wasn’t worried about being caught snoozing. It was the threat of retribution from Larry that was undoubtedly on his mind.
“I need to speak with Bud,” Larry said.
Simon nodded vigorously and began to sit down.
“Alone,” Larry added.
“Sure thing.” Simon shot out of his seat and was grasping the trailer handle when he said: “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
The door closed, and now Larry and Bud were alone.
“I’ve held off coming to speak with you,” Larry said.
Bud let his back rest against the wall. “I noticed. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You were working for this Alvarez character I keep hearing so much about.”
Bud nodded. “I was.”
“You also stole my C4, and if I hadn’t sent Dana off to get it back from you, you woulda gotten away with a triple homicide – if you count Joanne Blackwood that is. Do you know how precious life’s become since The Shift?”
“I was trying to save lives.”
“‘Course you were. For some reason, Dana saw fit not to execute you on the spot. She’s young and naive. Frankly, I woulda blown your fucking head off.”
“Compassion isn’t your thing, Larry. I still remember how you drove off and left me to die along I-80.”
“You broke rule numero one, Amigo. During an apocalypse, it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. You stepped out to save a bunch of retards who woulda only slowed us down. But I’m curious, what ever did end up happening to that cuddly little family you saved?”
Bud’s eyes fell to his bedding, crumpled up around him. “They were killed the next day when we stopped in a small town to get supplies. I told them to stay in the car ... ”
“But they didn’t listen,” Larry said. “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me? I think you’ll agree, however, that two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Bud glanced over from the corner of his eyes. “What’re you saying, we’re even?”
“Well, not entirely. I left you on the side of the road. There’s no denying that. For your part, you killed Johnson and tried to blow Finn to kingdom come, not to mention Joanne.”
“Alvarez lied to me – ”
“I’m sure he did,” Larry cut him off. “That’s what bad men do, Bud, they lie.”
Bud was watching him, wondering perhaps what was coming next.
“How well do you know this Alvarez?” Larry asked.
“Well enough to know he isn’t the sort to be fucked with. He’s building an army of Wipers and training them how to fight. The Shift did most of the work for him. Weeding out the sick and the weak and the compassionate. The meanest of the mean, that’s who survived, and those are the ones he’s after.”
“For what purpose?”
“It’s simple. He wants to make the world his own personal hell.”
“So far, he’s doing a mighty good job.”
“Just you wait. As soon as his men are capable, don’t think for a second he won’t come break down that gate and cart all of you off.”
“Including you,” Larry added.
“Don’t I know it. But I won’t go down without a fight, you can trust me on that.”
“I like what I hear. How familiar are you with the hotel grounds?”
“Pretty familiar.”
“Could you sketch them?”
“Why? Oh, you’re not thinking of attacking Alvarez are you?”
The grin on Larry’s face began to fade. “Why not?”
“He might look like a regular guy, but let me be the first to tell you that’s exactly what he isn’t.”
Larry sat up straight. “You’ve been drinking the Kool Aid, haven’t you?”
“I don’t think he can be killed.”
“Bullshit, Bud. If he breathes, he can be killed.”
Bud was quiet. “Maybe you’re right, but people are gonna die.”
“This Alvarez has nabbed all the food within a 50-mile radius, maybe more, and he’s got it stashed away for himself. I wanna set you free Bud, I really do. But there are two things I need from you. First, where do you think he’s keeping that food?”
Leaning forward to grab the bars, Bud let out a great sigh. “I couldn’t say for sure. I mean, I didn’t see anything like that when I was there. The Wipers weren’t capable of doing a whole lot more than grunting and cracking each other over the head.”
“Then give me your best guess.”
“Well, the hotel’s a big place, so in a sense it could be anywhere, but knowing Alvarez, he’d want it somewhere close so he could keep an eye on it. My best guess would be the ballroom.”
Larry knew perfectly well where the food was. Russell and the others had already told him that much, but what he really needed was to see if he could trust Bud. Now came another test. Larry went to Simon’s desk and got a pen and paper. The top page was thick with Simon’s doodles. Flipping it, Larry handed both to Bud. “Draw it for me.”
And Bud did just that. Including the areas he could remember where ambushes had been set up along the road leading to the hotel. Afterward, he handed the drawings to Larry, who stood to leave. “You said there were two things you needed before you set me free,” Bud said, trying to sound casual. “I did the first. Now what’s the second?”
“When we go in,” Larry told him. “I want you with us.”
Bud’s face went pale.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be armed. You’ll be a kind of consultant. And if you live, then I’ll set you free.”
Dana
The object sitting on the police trailer stairs looked like a gift at first. But as Dana drew closer, she realized it wasn’t a present at all. It was a large brown envelope. The kind you use to store important documents or to mail a favorite book to a friend. The tab was sealed shut, but it wasn’t addressed to anyone. She entered the trailer, shaking the package. There was something small and hard in there. Lou was nearby, putting on his gun belt, getting ready to make the rounds to ensure everyone in New Jamestown was doing what they were supposed to. Mostly that meant working on finishing that wall, digging the mantraps Larry ordered placed around the perimeter, or off the colony grounds hunting game.
“What’chu got there?” Lou asked.
“Not sure,” Dana told him. “Was on the stoop. You hear anyone knock on the door while I was away?”
“No, Ma'am.”
She looked around for her other two deputies. “Where’s Ethan and Tanner?”
“Tanner’s out helping keep watch over the folks chopping the trees, and Ethan’s gone out with the hunting party. Makes more sense given the food situation for him to be using his God-given talents with a rifle. I taught him myself from a young age.”
“Makes sense,” Dana mumbled in reply, still eyeing the envelope. She didn’t like receiving mysterious packages. Especially not lately. The planned attack on Alvarez’ stronghold, not to mention the ongoing murder investigation as well as the latest revelation that Timothy might have once worked for Tevatron, kept her nerves on edge.
It was only with the greatest difficulty that she’d convinced Lou to step aside and allow her to handle the investigation. Her argument that he was too emotionally involved to remain objective had proved very persuasive. And undeniable after he nearly strangled Romeo during the kid’s supposed exile.
Dana tore the top of the envelope off and let the contents slide onto her desk. Out came a
single cassette tape. The same type and brand she’d seen in the cassette recorder.
“So, what is it?” Lou asked, peering over.
“A tape,” Dana replied.
“Haven’t these people heard of CD players?”
The tape player was already on her desk. Out came the old cassette Romeo had found. In went this new one. Dana pressed play and listened as she heard a pair a voices begin speaking. But the volume was too low to make out any details. She turned it up, just as Lou began closing in to hear it himself. Both of them stared at the machine, confused at first as they tried to make sense of what they were hearing. Each one struggling to figure out why the two voices sounded so familiar.
“I been meaning to ask if you’d gotten any more information out of the kid?” a male voice asked.
“Matter a fact, I have,” the female replied. “He’s already produced a few leads I’m following.”
“So whatcha think Larry would do if he ever found out Romeo was still here?”
Dana snapped the tape recorder off. She and Lou stared at each other, dumbfounded.
“That’s you and me,” Lou whispered, glancing around as though someone might be looking over his shoulder right now.
Dana’s heart was hammering against her ribcage. “But how’d they manage to tape us?” She padded over to one of the windows and scanned the grounds outside. Most of the work being done was toward the rear of the fence line. Over by the main compound, a handful of workers were taking a break, chatting with one another.
“Someone musta bugged the trailer,” Lou said in a low voice. “I can’t think of another explanation that makes any sense.”
Already, Dana was checking the light switch on the wall. “Pass me that screwdriver on my desk,” she asked Lou, who tossed it to her and watched as she removed the face plate and found nothing out of the ordinary.
“Check those light fixtures,” she told him. “It’s got to be in here somewhere.”
Off he went to the other end of the trailer.
“Too far,” Dana shouted. “It’s gotta be fairly close or it wouldn’t have picked up our voices.”
“Whatcha think this means?” he asked, no longer seeming sure where to keep his hands. “Could Larry be behind this?”
Dana thought back to the strange conversation between the two of them not long ago. Larry had asked if he could trust her. ‘Course she’d said yes, and she’d meant it. Larry could trust her, but why pose the question unless he knew otherwise?
Lou asked again, about Larry being behind this, and Dana shrugged her shoulders. Quite frankly, she wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Someone was playing a dangerous game of chess, and she didn’t want any of her people getting caught in the crossfire.
Both of them looked up at the air conditioning unit at the same time. It hadn’t worked since she’d first set her office up in here. The broken unit itself was on the roof, but a latch on the ceiling opened up to expose the guts of the thing. When Dana turned the knob and lowered the door, a microphone dropped through the opening. Inside, a green light stared back at her from a battery-powered tape recorder. She removed it and put it on her desk.
“Someone wanted us to know we were being watched,” Dana said.
“That much is clear, but who?”
“Whoever it is, they were telling us that they know we defied Larry’s orders.” Just as she said the words a sickening thought suddenly occurred to her. She turned to Lou.
“When’s the last time you checked on Romeo?”
Finn
“Do you believe it?” Joanne asked.
They were in one of the prison’s security hubs, Finn busy connecting the desktop he’d taken from the warden’s office to a monitor and keyboard on the desk. The generators outside ran for an hour during the day and three hours when the sun went down. If they wanted to see what was on the warden’s hard drive, they’d only have a limited window to get that done.
“You mean Herb’s story that I saved his life?” Finn asked, fiddling with wires and trying not to curse.
Joanne blushed and waved the subject away with the flip of her wrist. “No, never mind, it’s silly.”
The brief look of confusion on Finn’s face cleared. “Oh, you mean us.”
“If we were, you know, married, like those papers said we were.” Joanne paused. “I mean, wouldn’t we have known ... somehow?”
Finn thought back to the light and tingly feeling in his stomach the very first time he’d seen Joanne. He sensed she wanted him to say something romantic, like “I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you.” And who knows, maybe that woulda been the truth, too, but for some reason Finn just couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Did he feel like he’d known Joanne before? That was one explanation. She was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it, and he hadn’t felt a woman’s caress since he’d come to on that cold, hard floor covered in slime. She was still staring at him, looking more and more like she wished she’d never brought the subject up.
“Pass me that flathead screwdriver, would you?”
“Sure thing,” she replied sharply. Finn felt her place it in the palm of his hand, and when he turned to thank her, she’d already left the room.
It took him another 10 minutes to get everything set. He turned on the computer and waited as it booted up.
After a moment, the words Ely State Prison flashed across the screen.
The warden’s desktop was cluttered with folders, and it took Finn a few minutes to sort through them.
Pardons from the governor. Transfer orders. And then a folder off to the side with a single word: Arrow.
Finn clicked it. Inside were more folders. One of them bore his name, and that’s where he went. Looked like the documents here were more of the same. Finn’s vital stats. Time served. Conviction for murder in the first degree. Those words hung in his mind with deadly weight. At the bottom was a description of the crime. This was something new. He read it over and shook his head. He was involved in a bank robbery. He, Joanne, and a third person named Kevin Butler. He and Kevin led four tellers into the back while Joanne made the customers kiss the ground. According to the police report, when they refused to open the safe, Finn shot and killed them all. Four people dead all because of him. He felt the blood drain from his face, the palms of his hands grow sweaty.
Could this be true?
Then another file marked, The Innocence Project, about a group of law students who went over capital murder cases. A document recounted how during the trial, Kevin Butler had turned state’s evidence and blamed the murders on Finn. But Kevin’s psych evaluation had showed he suffered from psychotic episodes as well as schizophrenia. Not to mention that gun powder residue was found only on Kevin’s hands, and the ballistics report showed the shots came from his gun. The Innocence Project members believed the D.A. was sure that a conviction against Kevin would mean he’d simply be shipped off to a mental ward, while Finn could be put to death. A move that would really jumpstart the D.A.’s career.
Apparently, Finn’s true guilt or innocence took a back seat to some sleazy lawyer’s political aspirations. Four people had been killed, and the community wanted blood, and this D.A. was gonna give it to them, one way or another.
Robbing that bank certainly wasn’t the right thing to do, but the file did say he and Joanne were losing their house to foreclosure after Finn got canned from his job at the chemical plant in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas.
The blood was starting to return to Finn’s cheeks. By the looks of it, he and Joanne were decent people, caught up in a desperate situation. They took matters into their own hands, and there wasn’t any excuse for that, but knowing he wasn’t the one who killed those people eased a weight that had been on his shoulders since accessing the Tevatron mainframe with Johnson.
Finn backed out and into a folder labelled Expenses. Here, a ledger with 4 million dollars deposited by Tevatron into offshore accounts owned by the warden.
The bastard had been
paid one million for each of them and tried to whisk them away before the wheels of justice could get his murder convictions overturned. And who was going to stop him? The D.A. who had recently become the state governor? The very man who stood the most to lose by the news of Finn’s innocence?
Then another folder with a strange name caught his attention.
Limitless Energy.
He clicked on it and hadn’t gotten further than a paragraph in when he suddenly realized he may have just discovered the key to bringing everyone’s lost memories back, including his own.
Dana
Dana and Lou rushed to the trailer where Romeo was being held. She grabbed for the keys in her pocket to unlock the door when she noticed it was slightly ajar. The only one with a pistol was Lou, and he drew it now. A terrible feeling was churning in the pit of Dana’s belly. They entered the trailer and were greeted by stony silence.
“Romeo,” she called out. But there was no answer. The air inside was warm and thick and smelled of meat stew.
They pushed ahead, past stacks of furniture and piles of canvas. At last, they found Romeo, seated at the back of the trailer, slumped against the wall. A thin trickle of blood ran down the side of his mouth. There was something else as well. A kind of frothy foam around his lips, as though he’d had a seizure. Dana laid her fingers along his carotid artery and felt for a pulse.
“Anything?” Lou asked, dread in his voice that the news was all bad.
She shook her head.
On the table before Romeo was a bowl that explained the smell in the room: deer stew. The kid’s right hand was even clutching a spoon. But the smell coming off Romeo that Dana picked up as she drew closer wasn’t broth or even the sick sweet smell of death. Hell, rigor mortis hadn’t even started to set in yet. That delicate smell wafting up from Romeo’s lips, however, was the same one she’d come across when examining Patty Mae’s things. The smell of almonds. Someone must have come in and offered Romeo a bowl of delicious-looking stew. The kind of offer a hungry young man just couldn’t refuse. And there’s no way he would have known the thing was laced with cyanide.
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 15