A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  An electronic rasp issues from somewhere across the property. Stops when he lowers the unit.

  The reply comes a few seconds later, loud enough for us to hear: “Car’s not here, but no way he’d take off. Probably back at the fire.”

  I blink as two thoughts crash through my mind at once:

  First, that they’re talking about Simon.

  Second, that if they’re only talking to each other . . .

  “There’s only two,” Chase hisses, leaping up.

  Buckeye rounds the near building, heads back up the southern side in conversation on the walkie-talkie, his voice rasping from the far side of the compound on the other guard’s handset, closer than before.

  “Go!” Chase says.

  We run low, across the street, and leap the ditch. Chase covers his nose with his arm and I fight back the urge to gag as we drop down beside the fence, the retreating Buckeye directly in our line of sight.

  Chase hooks his fingers through the chain link and tugs it up. I unsling my rifle, push it on the ground in front of me as I crawl through on my stomach in the muck, eyes on Buckeye’s back as he returns the walkie-talkie to his belt. I get to my feet, turn, and grab the wire links. Chase drags himself through beneath my legs and then covers me as I slowly lower the fence, grimace at the squeak of metal on metal as I let it go.

  An instant later, we’re flat against the building facing the street.

  “Ready?”

  I nod. And then he’s sprinting across the concrete past the gate to the motel block where the second guard should be rounding the corner any instant.

  He glances at me and nods.

  I bolt to the light tower, search the closest side, edge around it, bent low. Find the weathered switch.

  Kill it.

  The generator rattles to a halt.

  Half the facility fades into darkness.

  Across the compound, a walkie-talkie crackles.

  “. . . run out of gas again?” Buckeye’s voice comes through the unit on the other side of the motel.

  The swift clip of boot soles rounds the building. “I’m on—”

  A sick crunch cuts him short.

  A few seconds later, Chase returns, dragging the man by the vest with one hand. I grab the guard’s rifle, sling it over my shoulder, find a sidearm on a thigh holster, and hand it to Chase. Lastly, I unhook the sheathed knife from the man’s belt as Chase tosses the walkie-talkie beneath the silent generator.

  We drop him in one of the open units. Pull the door down with a clang.

  Static, from the concrete. “You get the gas?” Buckeye.

  “Wait for me around the side,” Chase whispers, checking the pistol as I slide the door bolt and snap the padlock dangling from it shut. And then he’s edging down the building toward the corner.

  As I round the other side, I’m already looking down the middle of the compound, trying to make out unit numbers in the fringe of the other tower’s light. Simon said he thought the Warden kept most of the meds in C Block—the building he’d appropriated for himself along the inside and out of sight of anyone receiving rations at the gate.

  Which means that anything else of value is presumably there as well.

  The walkie-talkie crackles from the direction of the dark light tower.

  “Munson. You there? Come in.”

  With the generator out, the sound carries clearly in the still night air.

  I glance at the “motel” building facing me. D Block. I’m on the end of A. We dumped the guard in Unit 6—where one of the trucks had presumably been parked.

  Three buildings, twelve units on each side, four on each end. That’s ninety-six in A through C alone, not even counting the motel.

  I tamp down panic.

  There’s too many. We’ll never find the meds in time to get out before the orderlies return.

  And Simon . . . but Simon and his daughter are safe and waiting for us at the rendezvous point. Worst case, we walk far enough from town for him to safely circle back and get us.

  No. Worst case, we get back to the silo without the meds and find Julie alive.

  I stare wildly around, try to come up with some kind of strategy.

  And then I notice: not all of the doors have padlocks. That narrows it down, but not enough. We’ll have to get lucky—fast.

  Footsteps stride down the far side of the complex toward the corner at last.

  I drop to a knee. Lower one of the rifles to the ground. Lift the other in my hands, ready to bash open every padlock on C Block if I have to.

  I close my eyes, bent over the automatic like a runner waiting for the gun at the start of a race—not to fire, but to connect with Buckeye’s head as Chase intercepts him at the opposite corner.

  But it doesn’t come.

  What does, are steps—too close, rushing toward me.

  11:52 P.M.

  * * *

  My eyes fly open as Buckeye emerges from the side of the building twenty feet from me, moving far more quietly than someone his size should be able to, rifle in his hands.

  He stops abruptly, eclipsing the glow of the tower. Clearly not having expected to find someone here, let alone kneeling on the concrete.

  He squints as though trying to make out my features, or place how he knows me.

  “You,” he says strangely. His eyes flick toward the rifle on the ground beside me. “How’s your retard friend?”

  The question’s a ruse. I know because the tower light from the back corner has thrown his entire right side into stark relief.

  Including his thumb as it slips down the safety.

  Like mine did when I opened my eyes in his shadow.

  Running steps come from the front of the building, gaining speed.

  Buckeye raises the rifle and I straighten.

  “Wynter!” Chase screams as he emerges behind me.

  The rifle kicks in my arms as a shot punches the air—followed in quick succession by two more.

  Buckeye doubles over and then spins to his side. Goes sprawling on the concrete, weapon crashing to the ground beside him.

  I push up unsteadily, barrel trained on the form writhing fifteen feet away.

  “Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Chase says, coming to stand beside me, pistol still raised in front of him.

  “I’m fine,” I say, lowering the rifle, and then notice the trickle of blood slipping down his cheek.

  “Chase, you’re bleeding,” I say, panicking as I search his face, his torso, but find nothing.

  “Just a little spray,” he says, swiping at it as though it were an insect. And then I see the place missing several shards of concrete as he moves to kick the rifle away from the orderly sucking in a breath like a drowning person breaching the surface. He curses and tries to push up, two new holes in his Kevlar vest.

  “This guy won’t quit,” Chase mutters.

  “Gonna kill you,” he grits out. “And if I don’t, the Warden will.” He grins then.

  Until Chase cracks him across the jaw.

  DAY 183: OPEN DAY

  * * *

  We go after the most durable-looking padlocks first. Discover two vintage cars, a motorcycle that makes Chase take a step back with an appreciative sigh. Units stocked with alcohol, pallets of canned food that remind me of the storage level in the silo. MREs, sacks of rice labeled in Chinese, buckets of prepper food—including more cheesy pasta. Inventory sheets stuck to the inside walls list dates and running tallies, all in the same hand.

  When we discover the bottled water, we tear the first case open. It doesn’t matter that it’s warm enough to take a bath in—we each drink two bottles in quick succession as the walkie-talkie sputters volleyed orders from the fire, orderlies looking for more fire extinguishers. Someone saying they’re trying to raise Munson but he isn’t answering.

  And then we drag a Coleman lantern from a stash in C4 to each successive unit—including one set up as a break room, complete with a coffee percolator and stack of mugs and a big o
range watercooler like they have on construction sites.

  We search a collection of radios, flashlights, road flares, and walkie-talkies. An entire unit of Snap-on tools. Tents, kerosene lanterns and cooktops, sleeping bags, and fishing gear. Tugging things from shelves, toppling rubber totes, and upending bins. There is no art to desperation. Just the white noise of purpose that drowns out all else.

  My heart leaps when I come across a stash of red emergency aid backpacks and first aid kits, but falters when I find nothing in the way of meds—just bandages, splints, and field dressings.

  “Here!” Chase shouts, just seconds after breaking open the next padlocked door. I carry the lantern into the unit. It’s lined with bins in alphabetical order.

  Allergy . . . Analgesics . . .

  Antibiotics.

  We grab and drag it into the light.

  “I’ll get the truck,” Chase says as I dig through the box and then dump its contents out on the ground, and swiftly rifle through it.

  But it’s all blister pill packs and old-looking prescription bottles—including some pink stuff that looks like something a kid would take.

  Where are the glass vials? I search the shelves for another bin with the powerful IV meds. I finally go to the inventory on the wall, scan down the page of antibiotics.

  They’re not listed.

  Chase brings the black truck around and gets out, the driver’s side door chiming. “Ready?”

  He looks at my empty hands.

  I shake my head.

  Chase scans the shelves again, though I already know it’s not here.

  “Hey,” he says, crouching near the corner. “There’s a pit beneath this shelf.” He gets to a knee and pulls up a small cooler like the one Julie and Ken packed cans of pop in the time we went to Indiana Dunes. Stares at the label on the lid.

  “Insulin!” he says, pulling it open. He lifts out a box, studies it, and then adds the entire cooler to the army green duffel he’s dragged from unit to unit and has been filling with supplies. Grabs a package of syringes.

  I wander out between B and C Blocks, hands to my head. Trying to think.

  Maybe the Warden doesn’t want anyone to know he brought in a fresh haul. Or he hasn’t had time to inventory it. He could have stashed it in his personal apartment.

  But none of the locked units on this side of C Block was an apartment.

  I turn and look behind me, where Chase has started down the end of B Block. Take in the padlock on B6 near the middle, the awning over the door.

  From which the Warden would have a perfect view of his resources.

  I cross to the lock, rifle raised. Batter it till it breaks. Roll up the door.

  I scour the sparsely decorated apartment—from the desk’s shallow drawers to the books on the shelf hung behind it to the clothing on the rack, finally dropping down to flip up the blanket from the edge of the bed and drag out the three storage containers beneath it. I pry open their lids.

  The first is filled with old letters and pictures. The one on top of Elcannon with a woman in the hospital. Even with a scarf on her head and no eyebrows, she’s pretty.

  The second is full of shoes.

  The last is crammed with ledgers. “Personnel Records.” Payments to his orderlies. Who, when, how much.

  The one beneath it is a log of every gun, bottle, and bullet in the jail.

  I sit back hard, wondering what I’ve missed.

  And then go very still.

  The VNA’s stash was looted some time between seven-thirty and ten. A window of two and a half hours.

  We started the fire less than an hour after that.

  I glance at the inventory hanging from the pharmacy wall, pages thick. Carefully crossed out and dated whenever an item comes or goes.

  Chase comes back, jaw tight. “Wynter. We’re running out of time.”

  “It’s not here,” I say, my voice hollow.

  “What do you mean? You think he stashed it somewhere else? Or that we missed it at the—”

  But the Warden has a meticulous system born of a kind of obsession I understand very well. That doesn’t allow for half efforts.

  “He hasn’t checked it in yet. Because it’s still in his car.”

  Chase stares at me a second, and then turns away, spitting out a curse. He picks a padlock off the ground and hurls it into the pharmacy directly across the drive, where it bounces off the wall and falls inside a bin.

  Chatter crackles on the walkie-talkie.

  “Weezer’s burned pretty bad. He’s not looking good.”

  “—let the fire burn itself out.”

  Chase comes back as I get to my feet. “We need to go. Now.”

  I shake my head.

  “I can’t.”

  “Wynter, you know he’s not going to let that stash out of his sight!”

  We’ve come too far and lost too much to leave empty-handed.

  “Take the insulin and food. Get to the rendezvous point,” I say, grabbing the bag and pushing it into his arms.

  “What?” he says, his voice up an octave. “I am not leaving you here!”

  “I’ll hide. I’ll get to his truck—” I glance around.

  Chase drops the bag and comes toward me. “No. You stay, and he’ll kill you. And I will not let that happen.”

  My gaze falls on a prescription pill bottle. One of the pink liquid ones rolled away from where I dumped out the bin. I blink. Take in the Rx on the label.

  Chase steps over the bag and comes toward me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Wait.” I fumble in my front pocket. Terrified for an instant that what I’m looking for is in my old jeans until my fingers close around the folded paper beneath the pistol.

  “What’s that?” Chase asks.

  “A prescription from the doctor in Sidney. In case we couldn’t find the other stuff.”

  I unfold it with trembling fingers.

  Trimethoprim

  Sulfamethoxazole

  I cross to the pharmacy. Check the inventory, find neither. Glance down at the slip as Chase comes to look over my shoulder.

  “He said if we can’t find anything else, look for this,” I say, thumb beside the last drug on the slip.

  Dicloxacillin

  I flip a page, scan the ledger.

  “There,” Chase points.

  Dicloxacillin (4)

  We get to our knees beside the spilled contents of the bin and search.

  Dicloxacillin. I barely breathe as I check the contents of the box.

  I search for more but find only the one, but it’s got four bottles in it.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “That’ll do it?” Chase asks, looking confused.

  “The doctor called it a fifty-fifty chance.”

  But it’s the only chance we’ve got.

  12:25 A.M.

  * * *

  We grab every gas can with anything in it, toss them in the back of the truck. Fueling the night, our future.

  It’s enough to get to Wyoming.

  “YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK?” Elcannon’s voice suddenly cuts through the walkie-talkie on Chase’s belt, crisp and clear, sending a chill down my spine.

  “What’s that, Warden?” someone else says.

  “I think someone’s been sampling my PORRIDGE,” Elcannon says.

  “Uh, come again?” the orderly says.

  “I think SOMEONE’S been sitting in my chair . . .”

  Static from the other side. “Sir?”

  “I think SOMEONE’S been in my compound. AND THEY’RE STILL THERE!”

  Chase and I stare at each other.

  “Time to go,” Chase says.

  I move toward him, closing the distance between us.

  Kiss him slow and full on the mouth and then look up at his eyes, his lips still parted as I step back, his walkie-talkie in my hand.

  “Gold-i-locks . . .” Elcannon intones over the unmistakable sound of a car door closing. “You’re there right now, aren�
�t you, Goldilocks?”

  What are you doing? Chase mouths as I lift the handset, eyes on his.

  “But it’s such good porridge,” I say, walking to the tanker. I turn the makeshift valve. Hard, as far as it will go. “And such. A nice. Chair.”

  Chase chuckles as gas pours onto the concrete. I cross to the light tower, power it off.

  “And such a nice compound!”

  I kick it over. Bend down and unscrew the gas cap on the generator tank in the darkness.

  I hand Chase my handset set to Simon’s channel as I carry his to the truck and get in. High beams on.

  And then I’m accelerating toward the entrance, Chase on the Harley behind me.

  I blast past the gate, send it flying back on its hinges. Roar down to the corner, turn up the side street, and onto the empty lot beside the compound as Chase pulls in beside me, engine rumbling.

  “I’m comin’ for you, Goldilocks,” the Warden intones. “You’ve done poked the bear.”

  I reach into the open duffel and then climb out my door.

  I give a slight smile as I pull off the bandolier and load the shell. Clap the breech closed. Aim high.

  Fire.

  We watch the flare arc up into the darkness like a shooting star.

  “You know, you have a bad habit of blowing things up,” Chase says, not looking at me.

  “Twice is not a habit,” I say, as the back end of the compound bursts into flames. Two seconds later the tanker explodes, sending an orange and black fireball into the sky.

  Chase and I look at each other, eyes wide.

  And then he whoops and turns the bike to the road.

  I climb back in the truck and take off after Chase. Pick up the handset.

  “For the record, my name isn’t Goldilocks. It’s Wynter Roth,” I say, and then push the button again:

  “Come and get me.”

  12:32 A.M.

  * * *

  “Thank God,” Simon says when I raise him on the other channel from the edge of town, a new VOX headset in place on my ear.

  “Sorry, we had a slight delay,” I say.