“You remember that tape we planted in the police trailer?”
Lou nodded, his mouth tweaked at a strange angle. “It’s gone?”
“Not only gone, but it might have just led us to a prime suspect. I don’t wanna say more before I know if I’m right.”
“And what if you’re wrong? If you’re caught in a place you shouldn’t be, then even I won’t be able to save you.”
“Right now, my father’s being accused of something he didn’t do, and if I don’t get proof of who framed him, then Larry’s gonna have him executed.”
“Can you tell me who?”
“Not just yet,” she told him, glancing around at a room brimming with half-conscious casualties. One of them was the newcomer she knew vaguely as Russell.
Dana stood and Lou took her arm. “Be safe,” he told her.
•••
The lock picking set was right where Lou said it would be, and Dana slipped it into her back pocket. She closed and relocked the drawer and was in the process of pulling open the trailer door to leave when she found Bud standing before her. He was smiling like the proverbial bird who swallowed the canary, the sun shining through a shock of wavy red hair.
“Why the look of disappointment?” Bud asked. “I thought you’d be happy to see I made it back in one piece.”
Dana slammed the door and moved past him. “Not when others more deserving weren’t as fortunate.”
“You look like someone who could use a friend.”
“Who, you?” she asked with disgust.
“Would that be so bad?”
“It might be for you when Finn gets back and sees you walking free.”
“Me and Mr. Coveralls have started working through our differences. I was hoping you and I could do the same.”
“Maybe some other time,” Dana replied dismissively.
He paused and kicked at a loose stone. “I got all the time in the world.”
“I’m sure you do.”
She was walking away when he said, “You know how I can tell you like me?”
Dana stopped and turned, arms crossed over her chest. “How I like you? Really? Please enlighten me.”
“It’s a simple calculation, really. I take the great pains you go to, pretending to hate me, then minus the fact that you asked Larry whether I’d made it back or not, and the equals part, well you know all about that without me having to say a word.”
“Who told you what I asked Larry?”
“New Jamestown’s a small place, Dana. Could’ve been anyone.” He was grinning now, and his cockiness made her all the more indignant.
“But don’t worry,” Bud said, moving away. “You’re not really my type.”
She was storming after him now. “Not your type? Is that so? I didn’t know you had a type.”
“I do, and it isn’t you, but I’m flattered nonetheless.”
“Was it because I beat your ass? ‘Cause I’ll do it again, if you think that’ll settle things.”
Bud laughed. “No, it’s got more to do with your lousy ability to hide stuff.”
“Excuse me?”
“Take the lock pick you got in your back pocket. The second you walked past me, I could tell what it was.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, if I’m not your type, what are you doing looking as my rear end?”
Bud smiled. “We call them asses nowadays, not rear ends. You do raise a good point, though. Looks like we’re even then. But don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
•••
Dana entered the compound through the basement, still fuming over her encounter with Bud. He had some special way of getting under her skin. First, when he took her SIG, then turned and handed it back to her with a wry smile. Now, with the lock pick. It was true, when she’d spoken to Larry she’d asked if Bud had made it back. But to jump from asking a simple question to “wanting” him was a real stretch, wasn’t it? Besides, she didn’t just dislike the man, she hated him. Sure, he wasn’t horrible to look at, perhaps even handsome. And he certainly was sure of himself, a quality she’d been drawn to with Keiths and most of the other men in her life. In spite of everything she’d been through: dealing with Alvarez, fighting her way free of Jeffereys, and building a new life for herself here in New Jamestown. Could that hold men with an air of authority had on her still be so strong? Or were the tastes formed for the opposite sex in our youth, somehow fired by life’s kiln into an immovable structure? She had every reason in the world to hate Bud’s very guts, so why didn’t she?
Dana was still busy shuffling those intrusive thoughts from her mind when she reached the stairs leading to the compound’s main floor. In the distance, she caught the sounds of a bell ringing outside the gym doors. It was beckoning the people of New Jamestown to the banquet, and she knew the sound had the power to trigger a veritable stampede of starving folks.
In all her years, she never imagined that a plate of beans and canned ham could make her stomach grumble, but the proof was in the pudding. The battle to steel her mind against the temptation of filling her empty belly was a difficult one. But more was at stake than satisfying the needs of the body. Her father’s life depended on her resolve and so, too, did the memory of those who hadn’t been so fortunate.
A group of children ran through the common room, giggling and pulling at one another. She spied them from the top of the basement stairs, watching the way their clothes hung loose about their emaciated frames, the way their bones seemed to click together as they ran. The trick to keeping the food down would be to ensure they didn’t eat too much or too fast.
After they had passed, Dana hurried through the commons and up the stairs that lead to the first floor. This was where Timothy’s room was. She approached it, knowing the chances were good it was empty. Larry had commissioned his former comrade to help prepare the feast. A symbolic and rather passive-aggressive way of shoving the success of the raid and the food they’d secured directly down Timothy’s throat. She’d learned from others who had overhead the exchange that the look of anger on Timothy’s face had been more than apparent.
Dana arrived before the door to Timothy’s room and reached for the lock-picking tools in her back pocket, pausing in the act. The smart thing would be to knock first, just in case Timothy was still in his room. Getting caught inside would be embarrassing, albeit explainable. A simple case of having entered the wrong room, she could say. But picking a lock, well that was another story altogether.
She rapped quickly at the door and waited. Outside came a second chime of the dinner bell. Then footsteps from down the hall. Someone a few doors over was walking around, maybe getting ready to head downstairs and join the others. If she was seen hovering in front of his room, word might spread to Timothy that the sheriff was snooping through his things. And that was a chance Dana couldn’t take.
On her right was a broom closet no larger than a foot and a half deep and about as wide.
Hurrying over, she squeezed herself inside the cramped space at about the same time that the door down the hall swung open. She’d been fast, but not fast enough to close the door behind her.
But it was too late. If she pulled it shut now, then whoever was there would know for sure someone was inside, an explanation that would prove even more difficult.
From down the hall, two voices began to approach, a male and a female, both young. They sounded like cult members. Dana held her breath and prayed that nothing inside would shift or fall until they’d passed.
The voices and laughter died off as they drew nearer.
“That’s weird,” a male said.
“Come on,” the female replied, annoyed. “I’m hungry.”
“Looks like Brother Timothy’s broken his own rule about keeping that closet door shut.”
He was either going to open it and discover her or ...
A firm push and a click as the latch snapped into place.
“Feel better now?” the girl as
ked and giggled. “Sometimes I swear you’re more uptight than he is.”
Dana listened as their voices trailed off. She waited another minute before coming out.
Reaching into her back pocket, she removed the torsion wrench and the half-diamond pick and slid them into the lock to Timothy’s room. The trick was to apply pressure to the pick while it pushed at the pins until they rested on the sheer line. Each successful move was met with an almost imperceptible click. There were five pins in all. Dana moved the last one into place, the lock turned easily, and she let herself inside.
Larry
That euphoric feeling of triumph Larry had felt swelling within him on the way into New Jamestown still hadn’t gone away. He watched the gymnasium fill as groups of hungry colonists streamed in.
The room was set with long, cafeteria-style tables arranged in a giant U. At the head was Larry, Donavan, and a handful of his most trusted lieutenants. Many of them former cult members. And the reason for that was simple. Regular colonists asked too many questions. Cult members did as they were told.
Timothy was perhaps the single exception to that rule. Putting him in charge of prepping the banquet had been designed to drive home a message:
Make sure you’re on the right side of history.
There wasn’t room in New Jamestown for naysayers and doubting Thomases. Another table was set up closer to the stacks of canned goods that now filled half the gym. There was Timothy, overseeing the selection and preparation of the food. For once, the sour expression on the man’s face was absent. He no longer looked like he’d just taken a swig from a bottle of lemon juice. Perhaps the festive spirit was rubbing off on him.
But there was one thing missing, wasn’t there?
One of the cult members was passing with a tray of food when Larry reached out and caught his arm. “I’ve got a bottle of Dom Pérignon up in my office, tucked away under my desk. Run up and grab it, would you.”
“Sure thing,” the cult member replied, handing his tray to a woman beside him.
The stream of cultists and colonists entering the gym had died to a trickle. The lack of echoing chatter wasn’t surprising either. These people hadn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks. Nevertheless, there was another thought on Larry’s mind. As strained as their relationship had become over the last few weeks, he couldn’t help but notice Dana’s absence. Who could possibly pass up a celebratory meal at a time like this? And on the heels of that thought, came another, far darker question. Was Dana staying away to make a point, or was she up to no good?
Dana
Her heart doing a merry jig inside her chest, Dana knew she didn’t have long. This wasn’t how detectives searched for evidence in the old days, where a court order would buy them as much time as they required. No, this needed to be fast and dirty. A quick in and out. The only silver lining was that her hands weren’t tied with concerns over what would or wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law. This was far closer to frontier justice, although under the circumstances, how could it be otherwise?
Timothy’s room was sparse and impeccably clean. A simple mattress lay on the floor. Next to that, a night table and against the far wall, a book case. She went to the closet and found a dresser surrounded by over a dozen blue pants and gray shirts, the cult’s favorite getup. Timothy had continued wearing the former Rainbowland uniform even after Larry had changed it from the slacks and button down to military fatigues. The first sign the two men were not exactly on the same page.
Dana went in each of the drawers, flipped through all of Timothy’s nearly identical outfits and even slid the dresser away from the closet wall. She’d figured the closet would be the best place to hide anything incriminating. She’d almost given up when a pair of work boots in the corner caught her eye. The sight of them was strange, especially given that Timothy wasn’t one for manual labor. She picked them up to get a closer look, and that’s when she noticed the spot on the floor where they’d been sitting. It was sprinkled with dried mud. She flipped Timothy’s boots over, brought the sole to her nose and realized what she was smelling wasn’t mud at all. This was top soil. The same top soil that had ended up in the river. They’d found a pile of it by the shore along with the bags it was packed in.
You sneaky son of a bitch!
Those were the words she kept whispering over and over. But the implications were greater than a few bags of soil. The person who did this had also emptied the food reserves, planting some of it in her father’s footlocker.
But why frame her father?
He wanted to drive a wedge between you and Larry.
There was that little voice again, and now things were starting to fit into place, but dirt on a pair of boots wasn’t murder. Dana would need more than that, and she was sure it had to be in here somewhere.
She went to the mattress and flipped it over, searching the floor underneath for any sign of a trap door or a loose plank of wood. Next, she turned to the night stand and pulled out the drawer entirely. Wedged underneath what looked like a handwritten prayer book, was Timothy’s Tevatron ID tag. The picture on it was a younger version of the man she’d come to know. Below that was his title: Electronics Supervisor. Dana slipped the badge into her pocket and continued searching. She didn’t have much longer before someone noticed she wasn’t at the banquet and came looking for her.
A quick scan of the bookcase made it clear nothing was out of place. All the books were lined up spine to spine and organized by height and depth so there wasn’t any room to hide items behind smaller books. Ancient Greek democracy, the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of these were about the classics, and many of them were large volumes. ‘Course, Timothy might have hidden something inside by carving out the pages, but there just wasn’t time to go through each and every book.
That’s when the dresser in the closet caught her eye again. There hadn’t been anything underneath it, but she hadn’t thought to look behind the drawers. Out they came, one by one, remembering as a kid how knickknacks would sometimes fall to the bottom of her drawer and remain there for years. Her breathing quickened as she yanked out the bottom drawer. Even in the dim light she spotted something there. She reached in and was disappointed when all she came away with was a weathered old notebook.
Flipping quickly through the pages, she could see this was the closest thing the cult had to a bible. The words of their prophet, Abigail, as dictated by a spirit named Aletheia. The teachings were about love and peace and the kinda stuff that tends to get people killed, but here she was seeing something different. Something about a battle between good and evil and a pair of saviors who held the key to ushering in a new beginning. This wasn’t at all what she’d heard All Father preaching about when he seemed to go on and on about love being the only good and evil being nothing more than an illusion.
She would take this notebook as well and was about to put the drawers back, somewhat disheartened, when something at the bottom of the dresser caught her eye, something she had overlooked. Dana reached in and found a small glass bottle. The inscription on the front made all the muscles in her face go slack.
Sodium Cyanide (granular).
Below that:
Tevatron Laboratories.
“I’ve got you now, you murdering prick.” And that’s when she saw that the bottle was empty and a darker realization struck her with blinding force. Timothy was going to poison the food. She had to get downstairs and warn them, but no sooner had she struggled to her feet than the room was rocked by an explosion the force of which flung her against the far wall. She opened her blurry eyes a moment later and saw that part of the ceiling was gone. Larry’s office was right above her and she could look into it and she saw now that it was on fire. The explosion hadn’t been in Timothy’s room after all. Nor was it meant for her. That much was clear. There was little doubt that the real target of the attack was Larry. But whether or not he was still alive, she didn’t know.
Larry
Timothy had just laid down Larry�
�s food in front of him when the explosion went off. The gymnasium shook, but it was only when the lights went out that people’s startled cries turned to panic.
We’re under attack.
Those were Larry’s first frantic thoughts.
They’ve brought heavy artillery, and this time we won’t be able to stop them.
Terrified colonists fled out the push doors, filling the room with much needed light. Others followed. That’s when Lou ran up to Larry and took him by the arm.
“Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Larry replied. “Where’s Donavan?”
“No idea, but we have to get you out of here.”
They were leaving the gym and getting ready to cut through the main compound when Larry looked back and saw the strangest sight. One of the cult members, a young girl named Sister Margaret, had climbed into his chair and was gobbling up as much food as she could. A handful of others were doing the same to a half dozen abandoned plates, and for a moment they reminded Larry of wild animals, cramming their faces as if it were their last meal.
They went down into the basement and then out through the exit there, half expecting to find slavers swarming the compound. What Larry saw instead as he looked up, left him just as cold. The compound was on fire, and it looked like a chunk of the building had been bitten off by a giant. But what really sent the chills racing up his spine was the realization that the hole with the flames shooting out had once been his office.
With the power down, and the water pump offline, the bucket brigade once again flew into action. Donavan emerged a second later and took control, organizing the colonists into long lines that stretched to the river’s edge. Others braved the flames to try smothering them with blankets soaked in river water. Some did their best to help douse the fire using the few extinguishers they’d collected from the surrounding houses.
It would be another 10 minutes before the flames were completely under control. The full implication of what had just happened, however, didn’t begin to settle in until Larry saw Dana, limping out from the main compound. Her clothes were torn, and streaks of blood ran down her face. In her hand was a pillowcase, although it wasn’t clear what was inside.
Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 21