Larry
Driving up to the gates of New Jamestown, Larry couldn’t help but feel euphoric. They’d taken the fight to an enemy who had invaded their land, kidnapped their people, and continued to harass them ever since. Not to mention an enemy who’d emptied the city of just about everything still edible; a strategy designed no doubt to starve them into submission while they prepared for a final assault.
Instead, here they were, returning in triumph, just as Roman Emperors had done nearly 2,000 years before. And like their Roman counterparts, their convoy was packed with booty. Nearly every last pallet of food from the ballroom had been loaded into vehicles and trucks.
In one of the hotel rooms they’d also found a handful of survivors from the Wiper’s initial raid, the one where Larry himself had nearly lost his life. They’d been treated brutally by their captors, and any form of rehabilitation would take weeks or months.
The message, however, was loud and clear for any to hear. If you’re taken, we’ll come save you, eventually. Tied and gagged on the pickup’s bed was Alvarez. He’d come along easily enough. Not that Larry was one bit surprised. All those stories the survivors told about this bad ass turning people to ash turned out to be the kind of hocus-pocus charlatans use to trick the weak minded. If anyone should know that, it should be Larry, charlatan supreme.
One thing was clear after attacking the compound. Most of the Wipers hadn’t been there, which made taking Alvarez hostage, rather than killing him on the spot, all the more important. A move that would act as an insurance policy against any future attacks from the Wipers they’d missed.
The guards in the towers above New Jamestown’s walls raised their weapons and cheered as the convoy rolled through the now-open gates. The children and elderly who’d stayed behind streamed out from the compound’s main building as well as from Tent City, and Donavan honked the horn as they entered.
These jubilant smiles wouldn’t last, however, and Larry knew that perfectly well. Sure, they’d accomplished a great deal today. But the raid itself hadn’t been a bloodless affair. Surely nothing close to the antiseptic Desert Storm from 30 years before. More soldiers died of “natural causes” there than by bullets.
In Larry’s war, 40 vehicles had left on the raid, and 40 came back, but the last three were filled with the bodies of the dead and many more of the wounded.
Among those who stayed behind was Timothy, trying his best to appear thrilled the attack had been a success, although it didn’t take a genius to see the cocksucker was fuming on the inside. Prolly wished Larry hadn’t made it back in one piece. Or that the food had been carted off by the Wipers, leaving them bloodied and empty-handed.
Donavan parked in the field next to Tent City, and Larry got out heading directly for Timothy.
“Congratulati – ” Timothy began.
“Save it,” Larry snapped, cutting in. “We’re having a victory banquet tonight, and I want you to organize it.”
The muscles in Timothy’s face tensed like he’d just sucked on a lemon wedge.
“Also, organize a group to unload and stack this food in the gymnasium, would you? I’ll see to it that a handful of guards accompanies you, so that no one’s tempted to take anything that doesn’t belong to them.”
“How kind of you.”
Donavan came to Larry as Timothy walked away. He and another cult member were holding Alvarez under each armpit. “What you wanna do with him?”
“We’ve got a rather comfy prison cell waiting for you,” Larry told Alvarez with an acidic smirk.
“What about the dead and wounded?”
“Have your men start unloading them at once. And don’t leave the dead out, or the dogs will squeeze through the palisade to get at them. They’ll need to be buried.”
“And the wounded?”
Larry had already lost interest. “I don’t care, use your imagination. Commandeer extra tents if you need to. I’m sure we can shuffle people around to make room for everyone. Most of the poor slobs don’t stand much chance of pulling through anyway. Look what happened to Carole.”
Just then, Dana pulled up in a pickup and jumped out without stopping the engine. “Where’s Lou and Bud?”
“Well, that’s one way to greet your victorious leader,” Larry replied. “Lou’s with his son, who was wounded.” Then Larry’s expression shifted. “What do you care about Bud anyway?”
Dana suddenly seemed at a loss. “Uh, he was my prisoner.”
“Well, not anymore. Now we have a new prisoner.” And Larry pointed to the men leading Alvarez away, his arms tied behind his back. Her eyes transfixed on the man as he passed, and all the blood drained from her face.
“You know him?”
She nodded emphatically. “You should have killed him when you had the chance.”
“And ruin a perfectly good insurance policy against the Wipers? Are you mad?”
“Having him here will only draw them closer.”
“If it does, then we’ll simply hang his head from the wall as a warning to all of them.”
She was starting to ruin Larry’s mojo. There was about a dozen other things he needed to take care of right now besides talking to her. Larry didn’t get farther than a few feet when she called out to him.
“There’s something very important I need to talk to you about.”
Larry raised a hand, certain she was either about to try convincing him Alvarez being in New Jamestown was a bad idea or that her father somehow wasn’t guilty of theft. Either way, it didn’t matter. Sooner or later, both men would face justice for what they’d done, and there wasn’t a thing Dana could do to stop him.
Nikki
Aiden sat across from Nikki, still clad in his black leather outfit. She’d ushered him into her the tent as soon as they’d returned, worried that Lou might try to seek vengeance for the bullet that nearly killed Ethan. His eyes were fixed on the cup of filtered water in her right hand.
“You thirsty?” she asked, holding it out to him.
He didn’t make a sound at first, and Nikki was in the process of withdrawing the offer when Aiden snatched it from her hand and gulped it down.
“You’re welcome,” she grumbled.
He finished shaking the last drop into his mouth and let the cup fall to the floor.
“What is this place?” he asked her, glancing around at all the beds and the nooks crammed with people’s meager possessions. For some that meant photo albums, family heirlooms, for others bundles of useless cash, most of it wrapped in withering plastic bags. It looked like a homeless shelter and must have seemed positively alien to her brother given where he’d just spent the last few months.
“You’re in New Jamestown,” she told him, scooping the cup off the floor.
He wiggled his torso to make the cot bounce, but there wasn’t much give. “This your bed?”
“No, mine’s up there,” she pointed to the top bunk. “This one belonged to Mom.”
Aiden grew quiet for a moment, as though he were contemplating whether or not to tell her something. “She came to the hotel, you know.”
Nikki nodded, fighting back a stream of tears threatening to get through. “Russell told me.”
Hearing it made Aiden’s head tilt slightly. “I didn’t know his name. Mom saved his life by going into the pit.”
Nikki had seen the pit by the hotel as they pulled in. The grass around it was torn up, so that it looked like a patch of dried hellish mud, straight out of some freakish nightmare. “I’m not surprised she went in there. Mom was stubborn and brave.”
“You keep talking about her in the past tense.”
Her eyes suddenly couldn’t meet his no matter how hard she tried. He still didn’t know. Carole’s duffel bag was still tucked under her cot. Inside were some of Aiden’s clothes she’d brought from the house. Not much, but anything was better than the Wiper leathers he was wearing now. “Here,” she said, handing him jeans and a shirt. “After you get changed, we need to take a wal
k.”
A few minutes later, they were leaving Tent City, past the three medical wards filled with patients – people she’d be helping to care for as soon as she was done with Aiden – through the parking lot, bustling with more people carting shopping bags stuffed with cans, and into the gymnasium. They approached the back gate, and she knew what she was about to do would need to be quick. There was so much work and not nearly enough hands to do it.
A narrow door had been cut into the rear wall, and she motioned to a guard who was manning it. He nodded and opened it for her.
“We won’t be long,” she told him.
“I need to follow you all the same, Nikki, least until we get those towers up back here.”
That wouldn’t be a problem, and Nikki told him so.
All three stepped out beyond the wall into what had once been a meadow behind New Jamestown. Following the logging and construction of the palisade it now looked more like the outdoor venue for a U2 concert. Deep muddy grooves were cut into the earth where the giant logs had been dragged and then raised into place. Mud seemed to be a consistent theme in her life these days.
About 20 yards away was a grave marker, and suddenly it all clicked into place for Aiden. His mother was dead, and Nikki could see he wanted to cry, maybe even ball his eyes out, but instead he simply bit his lower lip until a drop of blood rolled down his chin. He’d told Nikki the last he’d seen of his mother was her running away from the pit, a virtual army of Wipers after her. He must have known she probably wasn’t going to make it, but it was hard to gather what thoughts settle in a child’s mind who’s been through hell. Maybe part of him wanted her to die.
Behind them, the man with the rifle kept a respectful distance, surveying what was left of the tree line.
The grave marker was simply two pieces of wood with Carole’s name carved into the crossbeam.
“It was them, the Wipers, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“They shot her. Russell and the others brought Mom here, but by then it was already too late. The bullet had destroyed her liver and one of her kidneys. She didn’t have a chance.”
Nikki went to put an arm around him, and Aiden pushed it off. “She tried to save me, and I wouldn’t let her. I wouldn’t ‘cause I was pissed off you both left me at the airport to die.”
“Aiden, we looked for you, I swear to God we did.”
“Yeah, that’s the same load of crap Ma tried to feed me.”
“We saw that cart near the entrance and were sure you and Alice had made it out. When we realized you hadn’t, Mom even convinced a group of men to go back and look for you.” A memory of the airport flashed before Nikki’s eyes, the man in the pilot’s shirt, his sneering face as he prepared to rape her.
He was about to reply, but Nikki wasn’t done. “You’ve always been a spoiled, self-centered brat,” she barked.
“How would you know? You can’t remember a thing before that plane crash.”
“Maybe not, but I saw the way you were after, and all you ever cared about was yourself. Mom spent the last two months doing everything she could to make sure we were safe. The truth of the matter is she went back to that hotel looking for me,” Nikki said. “Not that she didn’t love you. It was that she’d lost the two people who meant the most to her and was determined to do whatever it took to get them back, even if it meant giving her life to do it.”
Now, Aiden was crying. He fell into her arms, and she caught him, his body convulsing with violent sobs. And that’s when something strange happened. That unusual ability Nikki had for seeing lost memories buried deep within a person’s mind, memories covered by layers of time and traumatic injury. With Finn, she’d seen tiny snippets of past events he could no longer remember, but with Aiden things were different in a way she hadn’t seen before. There were memories locked deep within his subconscious. More than she could count. And none of them belonged to him.
Finn
It wasn’t long before the dirty work got underway. Burying the dead, caring for the wounded. There were almost no wounded Wipers, however, and Zhou expressed some concern that his men might be killing the survivors they came upon.
“It’s not the right thing to do,” Finn said. “But can you blame them?”
Zhou wasn’t buying it. “Let me remind you, we still stand for law and order, a respect for human life.”
Finn scanned the hole being dug in the chalky ground by the backhoe and the Wiper bodies stacked beside it like cordwood. It was hard to hear civilized talk in such an uncivilized world.
“What do you think they were after?” Finn asked. “Resources? Weapons?”
Zhou touched the bandage on his head and looked at the blood on his fingers. “A force that large and organized? This wasn’t a simple raid. Those boys knew we were here. Had specific intel.”
“Your men scouting Salt Lake City, do you think they were intercepted? How else would Alvarez know you were out here?”
“Alvarez?”
Finn explained who he was.
The look of concern on Zhou’s face was suddenly magnified.
The change wasn’t lost on Finn. “You know what they were after, don’t you?”
“If he’s as you describe, what else would a man like Alvarez want besides the launch codes to a nuclear submarine?”
Sailors wearing rags over their mouths began pushing dead Wipers into the pit.
“You can’t stay here,” Finn told him. “You’ve lost too many men. Come to New Jamestown. There’s safety in numbers.”
Finn told him where the colony was located and the safest way to get there. “Dividing our strength would be playing directly into Alvarez’ hands. Don’t think he won’t try this again. Besides, you said yourself you were hoping to head east.”
Finn could see Zhou was skeptical. “There’s still a lot to do here before my men will be ready to make that kind of move.”
“Just think what will happen if Alvarez’ men return and finally get what they’re after. Then no place would be safe.”
Finn hoped his words were getting through to Zhou, but he wasn’t sure if even common sense would be enough. Staying behind to help out wasn’t an option either for Finn and Joanne. Discovering that Tevatron had a secret facility emitting some kind of memory-blocking pulse had changed things entirely. A new hope had emerged of freeing himself and the world from the hand keeping them in darkness. And if Finn was right, then maybe Zhou’s naïve hope of re-establishing order and civilization actually stood a chance of becoming real.
Dana
Nurse Kim was tending to Ethan’s gunshot wound when Dana entered one of the three medical tents. Lou was by his son’s side, holding his hand. This wasn’t the first time Ethan had been wounded. She still remembered vividly how the Wipers had nearly killed the boy as he’d tried to keep them from taking Nikki.
Tanner stood by the entrance, arms hanging limply, looking like a cross between a Terracotta soldier and someone suffering from PTSD.
“Callahan head back to Nevada already?” he asked.
“First thing this morning,” she said, eyeing Lou with concern. “How’s the big guy doing?”
Tanner glanced over at her and smiled weakly, a streak of soot down his face, his blonde hair uncharacteristically dishevelled. “‘Bout as good as can be expected.”
“What about you?” Dana asked. “Most everyone who’s come back from the raid in one piece looks like they left a part of themselves back there.”
Pulling in a deep breath, Tanner said, “When I went to the airport to help find Carole’s son. That was bad. This was worse. The stench and the way they came out at us. Makes it hard to remember sometimes they’re still human beings.”
She nodded knowingly, but the truth was Dana hadn’t been to either of those places. Sure, she’d experienced her own horrors after The Shift. Who hadn’t? But she couldn’t pretend to really understand what it was like.
With a few careful steps, Dana navigated between beds laid out with the wound
ed and settled down beside Lou. The big man’s gaze was locked on his son, and for a moment she wasn’t entirely sure if he knew she was still there.
Ethan was breathing steadily, in spite of the bandage covering his leg.
“One inch to the left and it woulda hit his femoral artery,” Lou said without looking up at her. “You know how long it takes for a kid his size to bleed out from a major artery, Dana?”
“No, I don’t, Lou.”
“Less than three minutes. One inch and three minutes. That’s how close he came.”
“Will he walk again?”
“With time.”
She rubbed the middle of his back, knowing the gesture wouldn’t do much to take away the pain.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Lou said, matter-of-factly.
“Who, Aiden?”
“If anything happens to Ethan, I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands.”
“Lou, I know right now the rage is piling up inside you, but for everyone’s sake I need you to keep your cool.” He didn’t answer her, and his silence worried Dana. “The kid was being brainwashed, Lou. Not like Patty Mae, but in a more subtle way.”
Lou’s head dropped at the mention of his wife, but it was too late to take it back. The normally sweet teddy bear of a man with a charming Southern drawl had been dealt a hand lousier than most. He’d been allowed to keep his family and had watched as, one by one, they were taken from him.
“I feel your pain,” she said. “I’m just asking you to focus on Ethan right now. Trying to even things will only send you down a path there’s no coming back from. Besides, Aiden’s only a kid who’s got a head spinning with crap.”
Lou turned to her now for the first time. “Something tells me you didn’t come here for the sole intention of talking me off a cliff.”
“The lock pick we took off Romeo during his arrest,” Dana said. “Where is it?”
He removed a key from a ring in his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Top drawer of my desk. But I’m starting to feel like it may be my turn to talk you out of something stupid.”
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 20