Captives

by Jill Williamson

  Mason disagreed. No one was calmer in the face of conflict that Papa Eli. And no one knew more about the Safe Lands either. Should he speak up? Run and fetch Papa Eli on his own? But he simply stood there, frozen, gun trembling in his hand.

  Jordan sprinted into the square just ahead of his father and Penelope. “Enforcers?”

  “Looks like,” Uncle Colton said.

  Jordan spun around. “Pen, go get my mother and Shay.”

  “I want to fight!” Penelope said.

  “No one is fighting,” Uncle Ethan said.

  Mason adjusted the gun against his shoulder and hoped that was true.

  “The house is right there, crowbait!” Jordan said, pointing to his family’s cabin.

  Penelope scowled at Jordan. “You don’t have to call names!”

  “Penelope!” Uncle Colton raised one eyebrow, and his daughter stomped toward the Zachary home.

  Harvey came to stand beside Father. “How many men you think they’ve got?”

  “Can’t say,” Uncle Colton said. “Richard said three trucks.”

  “Could be they’re not coming to fight,” Naomi’s father, Sam, said.

  “Seeing as we haven’t seen them this close in years, we have no way of knowing. But they must want something,” Uncle Ethan said.

  Jordan looked off down the road. “Whatever they want, we can handle it.”

  “Two dozen against an army? How do you figure we’ll handle that?” Uncle Ethan asked.

  “One less than that,” Sam said, eyeing Mason. “He ain’t going to shoot.”

  Mason felt sick. Please, God, protect us. Let there be peace.

  “Let’s not jump to the worst-case scenario here,” Uncle Colton said.

  “We have to prepare for the worst,” Father said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Sam, take ten men and spread out on the east side. Ethan, you take ten west. Be my snipers. Harvey, you and Jordan get on the roofs and cover the square. Colton and Mason, stay with me. Go, go!”

  As the men ran off, Shaylinn and her mother fled the Zachary home and ran toward the outhouses.

  “Where you going?” Harvey called.

  “Susan can’t find Sophie,” his wife said. “We’re going to help look for her daughter.”

  “Well, be quick about it,” Harvey said.

  Penelope came out of the house and walked straight to her father’s side. “I know how to shoot. Levi taught me.”

  “I don’t care if Levi taught you to build a bomb.” Uncle Colton pointed to the water spout where Uncle Ethan’s young boys were getting a drink. “Your job is to get those boys into the hall, now!”

  Penelope stomped her way toward Jake and Joey.

  Movement in the trees above turned out to be Jordan creeping down the incline of his family’s roof, gun clutched in one hand.

  “There they come,” Uncle Colton said, nodding at the road.

  Mason looked past his father, expecting to see Levi and Jemma returning. Instead, he saw a convoy of strange trucks entering the village.

  The first truck was smaller, like an Old ambulance. The other two were as big as Old semitrucks but in one long piece. All three were yellow and silver with metal grids on the sides instead of windows and doors. Like the vehicle Mason had seen a few weeks ago, these were almost silent but for the crunch of their tires over the gravel.

  The trucks drove into the roundabout, one behind the other, and the ambulance-like vehicle rolled to a stop near the meeting hall. Mason backed against the fire pit, trying to get into a position where he could see all three vehicles at once, but they were too close.

  The metal grids of the ambulance vehicle slid up into the roof, and the driver and passenger climbed out. The back grid slid away as well, and enforcers trickled into the square one by one. There was no movement from the other two vehicles.

  Father lifted his gun. Uncle Colton followed suit, so Mason lifted his, keeping his finger away from the trigger. His body throbbed with adrenaline and heat. I can’t do this.

  There were a dozen enforcers total. They wore navy blue uniforms, gray helmets, and boots. All were emblazoned with the golden bell crest of the Safe Lands and a small name patch. The helmets had eye shades that hid the men’s faces from view. Holsters held handguns strapped to their hips.

  One man stood out from the rest, towering over the others like a monstrous bat. His eye shade had been pushed to the top of his helmet, though a pair of sunglasses and a thick beard covered most of his face. The skin that did show was pale and flaky. He had the thin plague, a disease that, according to Papa Eli, killed a person’s immune system over time.

  His name patch proclaimed his name was Otley, and despite the illness, the man appeared formidable. Gold rings looped through each eyebrow and the center of his bottom lip, and a gold spike curled out of each nostril like a section of the barbed wire that topped the Safe Lands walls. He also had a white number eight tattooed to his cheek.

  “Help you boys?” Father asked.

  Otley ambled around the stage. “We’re having a membership drive. Wondering if your people are ready for a life with a little more … fun.”

  “Not interested,” Father said.

  “Not surprised, but I’m afraid I can’t take that answer. See, we need people to join us in the Safe Lands. Need them to join now. But since I’m a nice guy, I’m going to give you a choice.” Otley reached toward his holster.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Uncle Colton said.

  He and Father both aimed at Otley, which caused half of the enforcers to draw their weapons as well. All those guns made Mason’s nerves so jittery he about wet his pants. But that would be normal, he told himself. A neurobiological response to a life-threatening situation.

  Otley raised his hands and chuckled. “Cool off, shells! Just trying to show you that our pistols hold sleepers and killers. The guns have a switch. Blue for sleep, red for kill. Question is, which way do you want us to flick the switch?”

  “Can’t imagine the dead would make good members for your commune, Safe Lander,” Father said. “We only shoot one way in Glenrock, and it ain’t for sleeping.”

  “And you refuse to come take a look at our fine city?” Otley asked.

  “That’s right,” Father said.

  Otley sighed. “Remember what I said, men.” He turned in a circle, pointing and panning his finger over the enforcers. “One kill each. Sleep the rest of the village.”

  Otley spun and fired twice. The discharge was like the pop of an electric nail gun. Father crumpled. As did Uncle Colton.

  Mason screamed and raised his rifle, but gunfire rained over the enforcers from above. Jordan and Harvey! Mason hit the ground and crawled under the stage, dragging his rifle into darkness. Sharp rocks stabbed his knee caps and palms. Gunfire spat into the dirt behind him, and he crawled faster. All around him men were crying out. Glenrock rifle fire exploded against the airy pops of Safe Lands handguns.

  Mason stopped once he reached the middle of the stage. His arms were shaking badly, but he pushed to a kneeling position and looked back. Sunlight lit the edge of the stage. He could see the toe of his father’s boot and the top of Uncle Colton’s head as both lay on the ground. He threw up without realizing it was coming. The first of it landed in his lap. He leaned over and heaved and heaved, his mind a blur of questions.

  One kill each, Otley had said. How had he drawn so quickly? Had he fired sleepers or killers? What did a sleeper do? Should Mason go back? Try to help? He didn’t see any movement from his father or uncle, but he had to know. He crept toward them, got close enough to look …

  A girl’s scream pulled him out of his daze. He forced himself to look away from his father. Suddenly, he was crawling to the back of the stage. He had to help her. Needed to.

  “Get away from me!” the girl screamed.

  Mason peeked out from under the stairs. Shaylinn, running from an enforcer toward the tree line. The enforcer shot his gun. Shaylinn fell. The enforcer continued toward her. She
pushed up to her hands and knees. Fell. Writhed and tried again to rise. Screamed for help.

  Mason could only stare from his safe haven. Accusations assaulted his mind in time with the gunfire. Coward. Sissy. Gutless. Weakling.

  The crack of a gun brought the enforcer to his knees, then to his face, prostrate in the grass a few yards from Shaylinn. Jordan. But Mason could still help.

  He pushed out from under the stage and sprinted toward her, his muscles tense, knowing he could be shot at any moment.

  “Shaylinn.” He knelt beside her. “Can you move?”

  She panted in a few long breaths. “I think … so.” She got to her feet.

  Mason pulled her arm around his shoulders and helped her stand. “Behind the sick house,” he said.

  They started for it, but after a few steps, Shaylinn sagged against him. Mason held her up and dragged her along.

  “My legs won’t work,” she said. “I can’t make them move.”

  Mason squatted and lifted her the way men did in Old movies. A groan escaped him at how heavy she was. He sucked in a deep breath and staggered to the sick house, certain he’d drop her, but somehow he managed to reach the far side of the structure before collapsing.

  “Shaylinn? Talk to me. Where does it hurt?”

  Her eyes were glassy, liquid with unshed tears. “My back.”

  Mason knelt beside her and rolled her body against his knees. He patted her back to look for a wound and found a small hole in the back of her dress, just to the right of her spine. “There’s no blood.” A sleeper?

  “What’s that mean, no blood?” Shaylinn asked, her voice slow.

  Best guess? “I assume it means you’re going to go to sleep.”

  “What if I don’t wake up?”

  “You’ll certainly wake,” Mason said, struggling for something uplifting as he rolled her onto her back. “Whether you wake on earth or in heaven, I can’t say. Either would be good, though, right?”

  Her eyes flew wide. “But I don’t want to die! I’ve … never been in love.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Never kissed … a boy. Always dreamed I’d be beautiful when I … grew up. Everyone here thinks I’m … I’m ugly. Omar said …”

  But Mason didn’t discover what Omar had said, because Shaylinn’s eyes drifted shut.

  Mason sank back against the wall of the sick house, listening to the sounds around him. It was quieter now. He could hear men talking but couldn’t tell what they were saying or whether they were friend or foe.

  Mason looked out onto the square just as the front door to his house swung in. Papa Eli stepped onto the porch, clutching his rifle in one hand. He wore a plain white T-shirt and a pair of black shorts that bared his knobby knees.

  Mason scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward his great-grandfather. The old man started to lift his gun in Mason’s direction then seemed to recognize him.

  “What’s going on out here?” Papa Eli asked.

  “Safe Lands enforcers asked us to move into the compound. Father refused and they shot him and Uncle Colton. The men fought back, but I don’t know who won.” Mason sucked in a quick breath. “Some are dead, but some are only sleeping. The enforcers had two kinds of ammo, and I … I don’t know which kind they used on each person.”

  Papa Eli looked over Mason’s shoulder. “Why didn’t someone come get me?”

  A sob stole its way out Mason’s throat. “Father said to let you sleep.”

  Papa Eli pursed his lips and sighed out his nose. “Get your gun, and let’s go take a look.”

  Mason ran back to where he’d left Shaylinn and picked up his rifle. Papa Eli met him there, and they peeked around the edge of the sick house. Enforcers milled around the square. Two lifted Jordan’s body off the ground and carried it toward the back of the second transport.

  Did that mean Jordan was alive? “What are we going to do?” Mason asked.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Father sent the women into the meeting hall, thinking that was enough to keep them safe. He split up the men and told them to shoot from the forest and the roofs.” Mason took a deep breath, feeling a hint better with Papa Eli by his side.

  “So the women are all trapped and no one’s shooting.” Papa Eli stepped out from behind the sick house. “Cover me.”

  Mason grappled with his rifle until he was holding it correctly, though the barrel quivered like a branch in the wind. Behind him, footsteps rustled through the ferns. Mason glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see one of the village men or even Grazer. But it was Otley and an enforcer whose name badge read Lemuel.

  “Papa Eli!” Mason yelled.

  Papa Eli spun around, gun ready, and he and Otley held each other in their sights.

  Otley frowned. “You’re an abomination, old man! How long have they let you live?”

  “I was there when they built your Safe Lands, boy,” Papa Eli said to Otley. “I didn’t want any part of it then, and I still don’t.”

  “Men like you disgust me,” Otley said. “To take resources from the young and refuse liberation …”

  Papa Eli chuckled—a gun pointed at his head and he laughed! “You’ll think differently someday.”

  “Not likely, you stimming Ancient,” Otley said.

  Otley and Papa Eli fired at the same time. The bullet’s impact sent Otley flying, and he landed on his back a few yards away. Papa Eli crashed against the sick house wall and slid down it. Blood swelled red and bright against his white shirt.

  “No!” Mason pointed his rifle at Lemuel, the barrel a blur from his shaking or from his tears, possibly both.

  Lemuel raised his pistol to Mason’s head. He too had a number tattooed to his cheek. A number three. “I don’t think you’ve got the juice to pull the trigger, shell.”

  “Don’t kill him!” Otley whispered. “We need the young ones alive.” He was still lying on the ground, and though his hand clutched his stomach, he seemed relatively fine.

  How could the man still be alive?

  “Don’t worry, general. My gun’s on sleep,” Lemuel said, squinting one eye.

  Mason pulled his trigger, but it didn’t budge. The safety. He fumbled with the switch, certain he was about to feel a bullet enter his skull; instead, a gun went off, the report cracking through the air. Mason cowered, and his ears rang. The enforcer Lemuel fell, a hole between his eyes.

  Mason whipped around. Papa Eli’s arm fell, his pistol clutched in his hand. Mason lunged to his great-grandfather’s side and helped him lie down. The bullet had entered just below Papa Eli’s right shoulder and looked to have pierced his pectoral muscle and possibly his right lung. He lifted Papa Eli until he spotted the exit wound in his center back.

  Control the bleeding, staunch if possible. It didn’t matter if his hands were dirty. An infection could be treated later. There was no pressure point for the shoulders, so all he could do was apply direct compression and pray God sent a miracle. He tried to pull Papa Eli’s shirt up. No good. He shrugged off his own cattail vest, folded it up, and pressed it over the entrance wound.

  Papa Eli gasped. “Careful, boy!”

  Good. He was talking, which meant his airway was clear. But that didn’t mean Papa would survive. There could still be issues with his lungs and his breathing, and the exit wound was extremely close to the spine. “Turn your head to the side, Papa, so you can breathe better.”

  “I can breathe fine.”

  The blood quickly soaked through Mason’s vest and coated his hands in a glossy sheen of red. He needed something else for the exit wound, and fast. All the blood was likely draining out the back. He tucked his vest under the exit wound on Papa Eli’s back and pressed his hands over the shoulder wound. “Can you move your hands and feet?”

  “You’re worse than my Hannah.” A dreamy smile claimed Papa Eli’s face. “You would have liked your great-grandmother, Mason—tenacious in her ministrations, she was. And I’ll tell you the same thing I’d tell her; if it’s my time to go, your efforts won
’t matter.”

  Tears flooded Mason’s eyes. He didn’t want anyone else to die. Get it together, Mason —focus! What else could he do? His body suddenly felt heavy with the realization that until the bleeding stopped or until another pair of hands came along, there wasn’t anything else he could do.

  His great-grandfather shivered and sucked in a series of weak breaths—he was going into shock. Mason needed to get a blanket, something, but he didn’t dare leave Papa’s side.

  A sting between his shoulder blades knocked him forward, and he barely kept himself from collapsing on Papa Eli. A burning tingle throbbed out from his center back. He looked over his shoulder and felt his head swim.

  Otley was watching him. Smiling. Pistol in hand. “Nightie-night, shell.”

  Mason turned back to Papa Eli, bloody, blurry … two Papas, three.

  The sky was bright blue above him. Fat white clouds. How had he gotten on his back? He needed to help Papa Eli. Stop the bleeding.

  But Papa Eli’s face appeared above him, dark, backlit by the light of day. He grabbed Mason’s hand and squeezed. “Don’t let them change you, boy. No matter what. Stay true to …”

  Mason’s eyelids slid closed.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The motorcycle jerked over the ruts of the mountain trail. Omar tried to steer carefully, but his efforts only seemed to make the ride bumpier. He liked the feel of Jemma’s arms around his waist though, and how they tightened whenever he hit a bump. He hoped it wouldn’t be long until he found a fiancée of his own.

  Omar slowed to turn onto the valley road, and the ride became much smoother. He sped over the thick treads the Safe Lands vehicles had dug into the dirt and wondered if the tracks were one-way or two. Were the enforcers still in the village? He hoped so.

  He also hoped Jemma hadn’t noticed the treads as they passed.

  Once they entered the forest, the shade cooled him, which made him shiver despite the heat from the muffler warming his leg. The question of what was happening in Glenrock overwhelmed his mind. What would the people say when the enforcers made their offer?

  It was a mad good idea, relocating. He’d been inside the Safe Lands only at night, but that had been enough to see that the city was amazing. So modern. To have to work only a few hours each day? To not have to hunt or grow your own food? The ability to do whatever you wanted? And the conveniences! Surely the people of Glenrock would at least want to go inside to see for themselves. Omar couldn’t be the only one who’d wondered about the place.