by Connor Mccoy
Terror pointed a finger at her. “Am I boring you?” he sneered. Sally gasped, and she felt Christian stiffen.
A jolt of fear went through her, but she held her composure. “No,” she said, “it’s just been a really long day, and I’m tired. Do you think we could sit down?” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught an emotion run across the thug’s face. She thought it might be admiration. But surely not.
“You want to sit down?” Terror asked quietly, a deadly chill in his voice.
“It’s just that if I don’t sit down soon, I’m afraid I’ll…” She let her eyes roll back in her head, her eyelids flutter shut, and she wilted to the floor. She regretted closing her eyes because she couldn’t see their faces, but she’d just have to ask the others later. If there was a later.
A commotion followed, with Terror shouting orders, Sally sobbing, and then sharp breath in her face and a hand smacking her cheeks. Farther from her someone was radioing for the doctor. Terror ordered someone to lock them in separate rooms, and Mia was lifted off the floor. She could feel the crossed ammunition belts on his chest and knew it was the thug. She hadn’t seen anyone else using bullets as fashion accessories.
They stepped outside, and the cold air gave her goosebumps. “You’ve got balls, I’ll say that for you.” The thug’s voice was barely audible. “But be careful, or you’ll get yourself killed. The boss likes his women timid and obedient. I suggest you use your acting skills to keep yourself alive.”
She kept her eyes closed and pretended she hadn’t heard him. This man could not be sure she was faking it, and even if he was sure, that was no reason to give him confirmation. The question was why wasn’t he telling Terror about her duplicitous actions? Could he be an ally? This was something she’d have to consider.
He was carrying her up steps, a screen door rattled, and then someone opened the inner door. Once inside they went immediately up a flight of stairs. The thug’s footsteps were loud on the wooden steps. A door opened, and he placed her on the bed. She felt his breath on her face again.
“Remember,” he said, “timid and obedient.”
He left the room, the door closed, and she heard the lock click.
Chapter Twelve
Glen awoke to sunlight on his face. He was surprised to find himself in a comfortable bed with soft blankets and a pillow. This confused him, until he remembered he wasn’t living in a closet anymore. After the meeting in the barn the previous evening Eric had led him to one of the farmhouses used by the outcasts and had given him a room to sleep in.
He’d had a bath with water heated in a wood-fired boiler. A young woman named Nellie had brought him clean clothes and had taken the dirty ones away. There even had been clean pajamas to wear after he’d been fed. It felt like pure luxury after the past few days.
There was a tap on the door, and Glen called out that he was awake and sat up in bed. Nellie came in bearing his things and set them on the end of the bed.
“Good morning.” She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing faded jeans and a faded T-shirt with a picture of a blonde singer on it.
“Breakfast is downstairs in the kitchen when you are ready, but don’t take too long. The boys are due back from chores, and they eat everything in sight.” She smiled at him and left the room.
Not wanting to miss breakfast, Glen jumped up and got dressed. His clothes were clean and faintly warm. He wondered how they had been dried.
Downstairs he followed his nose to the kitchen, where a large table was laden with steaming plates of food. Glen was dazzled by the array. Pancakes were flanked by sausages, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and toast. Warm syrup and cold juice sat on the counter.
“Sit,” Nellie said, coming in through a door from the outside. “Eat.”
Glen obeyed. Piling his plate with foods he hadn’t seen in years. Even before the power went out, he hadn’t fed himself this well.
“Would you like coffee?” Nellie asked.
He nodded, expecting some approximation of coffee, such as he made at his cabin. But when it came it was the real deal. He looked at the girl in surprise, and she grinned at him.
“My uncle owned a coffee roasting business,” she said. “When the crash came he borrowed a couple of panel vans, loaded up his product and all the unprocessed beans and brought them up here to my dad’s place. I don’t think we’ll ever run out. And we use it to barter sometimes.”
“I’d forgotten how it tasted,” Glen said with a sigh of satisfaction.
The back door flew open, and a herd of young men came in. Glen guessed they ranged in age from twelve to twenty. He tried to count them, but they kept milling about, grabbing plates and food, and he couldn’t keep track of who was who.
He was surprised by the number of children. Why had Terror sent them away? What harm could these children possibly do to them? Then he realized something else, Nellie was the only girl he had seen so far.
He waited for the majority of the boys to leave again, tramping back out to help with the things that kept the settlement running, before he turned to Nellie.
“Where are the girls, Nellie?” he asked.
She looked crestfallen, and her lips thinned into a tense line. “There are a few here, the ones we could smuggle out,” she took a gulp of coffee, “but that bastard kept most of the girls, even the tiny ones. And, a lot of the women too. The men and boys were told to leave or be executed on the spot.”
She plopped into the chair across from Glen. “I had my hair cut short that summer, and I was dirty from playing in the fields, so they didn’t realize I was a girl. My dad grabbed me, and we ran. That was most of the men. Anyone who had children high tailed it out of there. Eric put me to work here in the big house. My mom escaped and now she runs the bunkhouse. We live with my dad, here in Eric’s home.”
“But there are some other girls? Where are they? What do they do all day?” he asked.
She looked at him suspiciously. “My dad trusts you aren’t a spy, but you sure are asking questions like one,” she said. “We keep them out of sight. They live in a different house, have a sheltered place to play and work in the women’s house. I’m not sure it’s a good thing to keep them all together. If that house ever is raided, we could lose them all at once.”
“Well, let’s hope they are well hidden, then,” he said.
Why did Terror keep the women and girls? He had a good idea, having seen that poor girl Terror had beaten. He was sure, given her refusal to talk, that it had been Terror who had done it, and that she had clued Glen in. Terror had an appetite for violence against women that would require a steady supply of women to satiate. You could wear out a person quickly perpetrating that kind of abuse on them repeatedly. Terror would need a pool of women to choose from.
He found himself feeling vaguely ill and Nellie looked at him with concern.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Didn’t the coffee agree with you?
“The coffee is wonderful,” he said. “It’s the thought of all those children being pulled from their families that’s made me feel ill. We need to take your town back.”
“That we do,” said a voice from the hall.
Glen turned to see Eric enter the room, followed by another, Jonno, whom Glen remembered from the night before. Nellie went over to give Jonno a quick hug before he shooed her out of the house. “Go check on the chickens, Nell,” he said, and she did what he asked with a smile on her face.
“That’s a brave young woman you have there,” Glen said, watching Nellie leave.
“That she is,” Jonno said and smiled sadly.
Eric and Jonno grabbed clean plates and sat at the table with Glen. There still was plenty of food. Although the pancakes were gone, oatmeal, eggs, and sausage graced the table. Eric salvaged a couple of pieces of toast from a pile that had been dumped off the plate onto the table. He sighed.
“I never seem to get breakfast before those hoodlums,” Eric said. “One of these days I�
��ll get a pancake. Just watch me.”
“Nellie would save some aside for you,” Jonno said. “All you have to do is ask.”
“They need it more than I do,” Eric said. “And I’m afraid that with my luck the day I asked for pancakes would be the day that I didn’t make it to breakfast at all. Now that would be a shame, for any of Nellie's pancakes to be left uneaten.”
“S’truth,” Jonno agreed, shoveling eggs onto his toast. He folded the toast in half and took a large bite. A look of complete contentment crossed his face. “Lord, that girl can cook,” he said.
The men ate quietly while Glen sipped his coffee, and when their plates were empty, Eric pushed his chair back, stretched his legs, and sighed.
“Now,” he said, “what can you tell us that will help us get Terror out of our town?”
“First thing,” Glen replied, “is that you won’t win with brute force. They outgun you, they have more manpower, and they have physical fortifications. You are vulnerable during attack because you have to come across fields with little to no cover before you get to the town walls.”
“That I already know. The only reason we come in guns blazing is to create a distraction. This allows a small team of people to infiltrate the town, gather information and supplies, and then get out again. I know it’s dangerous. We almost always lose people. If they aren’t killed, they are captured. But then we usually kill or capture one or two of them. So, it’s even, more or less.”
He took a sip of coffee. “Not that we can afford to lose people. But yesterday, for example, we were able to bring back two women and four girls. That’s six people who are now safe from the violence that happens there. Six people reunited with their families.”
“What did you get in supplies?” Glen asked. He was curious what could be worth the loss of lives.
“Food, mostly,” Jonno said. “But we won’t know for sure what else we got until the last patrol checks in. One group always waits twelve hours before making their way back. Just in case someone unwanted follows us back home.”
Glen wondered what they would do with unwanted people, but he didn’t ask. Some questions you just didn’t need to know the answers to.
“Do you know how many people in the town are ones Terror brought with him?” Glen asked. “I guess the better question is, ‘How many of them are loyal to Terror and how many would switch allegiances if they thought it was to their advantage?’”
“In the beginning, he rolled through with about one hundred heavily armed mercenaries, but after he’d gotten rid of everyone who might challenge him, he sent most of those back to wherever he came from. My best guess is that he has a core of twenty-five of his most loyal people. Some have integrated into existing families and might fight on our side. But there are also many townsfolk who feel he’s improved living conditions and they would fight on his side.” Eric drummed his fingers on the table.
“And how many still living in the town are loyal to you?” Glen asked.
Eric looked at Jonno, who nodded.
“Between six and twelve,” Jonno said. “But to be safe, I’d say six. There are a few I have doubts about.”
“And how many here?” Glen asked, a picture of the settlement starting to gel in his mind.
“We have a hundred and fifty-six children, twenty-five who are old enough to fight, and thirty adults. We always leave ten behind to tend the children. That way there always will be a core of adults to carry on if we should be killed or captured.”
“And always one of the leaders,” Jonno said. “There are four or five of us who see to the running of the settlement. Last night we left Eric behind. Next time, it will be me, and on like that. So that those remaining won’t be lost. The logistics of keeping everyone safe, and with food and water, aren’t uncomplicated.”
“I can see that,” Glen said. “But now tell me. Why you are willing to give me all these answers? I could be a plant, for all you know.”
“We are telling you because we know who you are. We’ve had scouts patrolling the area since the power went out. A lot of strange and horrible things are happening in the world, and we wanted to know who our neighbors were. We know about your cabin, and how you live your life. But even more telling, you performed surgery on one of our elders many, many years ago. That man vouched for you, as did his daughter.” Eric took a photo from an envelope on the sideboard and slid it across the table to Glen.
He recognized the man instantly. “Harold Blackmore,” Glen said with a slight smile.
“I liked him. Some people are dicks, but you save their lives anyway because even dicks deserve to live. But Harry, he was such a pleasure to work with. I was delighted with his recovery. His daughter sat with him every day, and every time she saw me, she thanked me again for saving her father. They vouched for me? Well, I guess I’d do the same for them.” He pushed the picture back across the table with a sad smile. “I’m sorry they’ve ended up in such a volatile situation.”
“See to it you don’t make liars out of them,” Eric said. “Why don’t you come out and meet some of our people? See who you are fighting for.”
Glen followed Eric and Jonno out the door into a farmyard. They picked their way around a flock of chickens and were followed by two baby goats. One of them kept butting his head against the back of Glen’s knee, threatening to buckle it. But it made the children playing laugh, so he didn’t chase the little creature away.
In the barn, Glen met two men and two women who were putting up hay. They didn’t have bales, which is what Glen would have expected. Instead, two of them were using pitchforks to hoist the hay from a horse-drawn wagon into a large boxed-in area, like a basement room with no roof. Meanwhile, the other two were trampling down the feed to make more room. Eric introduced him.
“No bales?” Glen asked, puzzled.
“No fuel for farm equipment,” one of the women said. “We have to do what we can with Jack and Betty here,” She patted the horse closer to her on the flank. “We have what we need for cutting and raking, but not for baling. So, we gather it loose and pack it into the hay mow. It’s how it was done before fuel-powered farm equipment.”
Glen, Eric, and Jonno left the barn and passed by a garden where several boys were weeding. They waved as the men walked by and Glen couldn’t help but notice they seemed content, chatting and joking as they went about their chores. They walked past hay fields and pastures, and then through the woods for about twenty minutes before arriving at what could only be described as a stockade.
Eric pulled a rope hanging from a hole high on the fence next to fifteen-foot-high gates. A bell clanged inside the compound, and a small window set into the entrance opened. A woman with bright blue eyes peered out of a wrinkled face.
“Oh, it’s you!” she said cheerily and set about opening the gate.
The men slipped inside, and she closed the gate behind them, sliding a large branch into metal brackets to secure it. They were in a large compound, probably five acres in total, with a large farmhouse sitting on the back of the first acre. Glen could see a barn and several outbuildings located toward the rear of the fenced-in area, but the majority of the compound was hidden from view behind the house.
“You haven’t visited in a while,” the woman said, placing her hand on Eric’s arm. “I hope everything is going well?”
“You know why we stay away, Mille,” Eric said. “I’d hate to lead the wrong person to you.”
“Yes, that might be disastrous for them.” She laughed cheerily. “We’re contemplating pouring hot tar on intruders.”
“Millie, this is Glen Carter.” Eric gestured toward Glen. “He’s a talented surgeon. Is there anyone who needs seeing to?”
Millie shook her head. “Not at the moment. I thought for a moment that Father Clements might have appendicitis, but it seems to have resolved itself.” She turned to Glen. “Not only do we house the majority of the girls here, but also the old and infirm. Anyone who might not be able to defend themselves.
”
“Wise,” Glen said. “But what will happen if someone decides to swarm the compound from all sides? What will you do then?”
“We have plans,” Millie said and stomped a foot on the ground. A hollow sound came from below, and Glen realized there must be tunnels or at least bolt holes below them. “I was a civil engineer,” Millie continued, “I’ve put that training to good use here.”
She led them into the house, where several women were sitting around a large dining room table across the hall from a living room inhabited by the elderly, injured, and pregnant.
“Where are the children?” Glen asked, wondering if Millie would be willing to tell him that detail.
But she smiled warmly. “They are outside. Some doing chores, others playing. The older girls watch the younger children in shifts. Everyone has a chore here. Even these lazy buggers help with food prep or mending.” She gestured to the group in the living room, then led Glen and the others into the dining room.
Chapter Thirteen
The women in the dining room all were introduced to Glen, although he was unable to recall the names when he thought about them later. He was welcomed and offered tea, which he accepted. They were planning for the winter, bent over a diagram of a barn.
“We are deciding which animals to house here with us,” Millie said. “We have to consider not only our needs but the needs of the animals. We only have so much room for feed, and water freezes quickly. We are isolated out here during the winter, so it’s a balancing act. We need to have enough to survive, but not so much that we can’t take care of the responsibilities that come with livestock.”