He ducked inside the dry cleaner and took position behind the counter. From his vantage point, he could see clear across the street to the town hall’s front door.
He settled in and began to wait.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Adam was missing.
Adam was missing.
Adam was missing.
This tiny factoid ran on a loop in her head like a Vegas billboard, those three little words, and her heart shattered over and over. It was happening again, you see. Yet again, she’d been spared, and yet again, someone she cared about had been taken.
She and Charlotte were sitting back-to-back on the floor of the public hearing room, their legs crossed, their arms bound together with shoelaces. She shed no tears, not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t want to give Freddie the satisfaction of witnessing her grief. He did not get to see that. Not one single millisecond of it. That would be in her own time.
Her mind was working, looking for a way to get out of here, but she discarded plan after plan after plan. There was no way she would risk an escape attempt, because she knew what would happen. She’d survive (again), and Charlotte would die, probably in her arms. No goddamn way was she going to let that happen.
Freddie was still pacing the room, but his movements had become smoother, more graceful, less panicked. Like a spooked horse starting to calm down, its heart rate decelerating. Was that a smirk on his face? She wondered. A smile? Was he starting to realize that he’d gotten just what he’d wanted? She’d give anything to smack the smile off that overgrown Neanderthal.
The air in the room had grown stale in the last two hours, and it was becoming uncomfortably humid.
“You got what you wanted,” she said, seasoning her words with as much self-defeat as she could. “Adam’s dead.”
“I didn’t hear anyone say he was dead,” Freddie snapped.
“He went inside that building,” Sarah said. “The one you set on fire.”
“Trust me, you’ll all be better off without it,” Freddie said. “That plant was going to cause you more misery than you’d know what to do with. It was like a Band-Aid over a cut that wasn’t ever going to heal. That cut, it couldn’t get enough air, it stayed warm and damp, and kept re-opening, over and over. Consider this my ripping off the bandage in one fell swoop.”
“I guess we’ll never know now, will we?”
He laughed, a guffaw that sounded all the more terrible because it sounded genuine.
“No, I guess we won’t. You’re right. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.”
“Now what?”
“Now we begin our lives,” Freddie said. “For real this time. We begin anew without the chains of the old world weighing us down.”
Sarah shivered. Her right hand spasmed. Her symptoms were worsening. She rushed to cover her hand, but Freddie had seen.
“What’s wrong with your arm?”
“Nothing.”
Another spasm, this one more sustained, her arm flailing about like it had a mind of its own.
“Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, “just a muscle spasm.” Even as she said it, her arm locked up, and she was unable to lower it. She didn’t want to tell him. She’d rather die than tell him. This was her private grief, the thing she would share with no one but Adam until she had to.
“Tell me what’s wrong with you.”
“None of your business.”
He raised the gun and aimed it squarely at Charlotte’s head.
“Tell me, or Charlotte dies.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened with fright. She didn’t say anything, but Sarah could just hear a tiny whimper from her, the kind of sound a puppy might make when smacked with a newspaper.
So she told him.
And he smiled.
The son of a bitch actually smiled.
#
Adam snacked on a jar of cashews he’d found under the counter of the dry cleaner. As he ate, he felt his mind sharpen and his body stabilize. He felt almost calm. Not because he was confident of prevailing over Freddie, because he sure as hell wasn’t, but because the die was now cast. He knew that he was ready to lay down his life to protect Sarah and these others. In a way, he had Freddie to thank for this little bit of self-discovery; it had been the man’s unraveling that had sussed it out of Adam. He had forced Adam to become the man he needed to be in this new world.
He hated him for it.
Adam did not want to die. He wanted to survive in this new world. He wanted to keep these people as safe as he could. He wanted to live long enough to find Rachel, no matter how long it took. But Freddie had nothing to keep him going. He’d kept part of himself in the old world, and as the gulf widened between that world and this one, it had ripped him apart. The tragedy of it all was that Freddie could see what a new world might look like, what it would take to survive it. He just hadn’t been able to practice what he preached. For that, Adam was truly sorry. Freddie wasn’t a bad man. He was a good man who’d been overwhelmed by the new world washing over them, even as he’d been the first to understand it.
This was all his fault.
He never should have run for mayor. He knew that now. He’d done it not because he was the one with hope. He’d done it because he’d lost hope. Because he could hide from the truth he feared. He could stay here and play doctor and pass laws and he could fill his head with the rote work of rebuilding society and he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that the search had been a failure. He had even started to believe his own press clippings, that his search and his leadership of the town would fuel each other.
Bullshit.
It couldn’t be both because doing both meant cheating both. Rachel deserved better. Evergreen deserved better.
Hot shame flooded through him.
It ended today.
Adam had waited for nearly ninety minutes, with nary a sign of life from the town hall building. A handful of residents were scurrying about, occasionally huddling together like a clump of cells, talking, planning, pointing, and then disassembling once more. No one seemed to know what to do.
At about three o’clock, Charlotte appeared in the open doorframe of the town hall, her hands on her head. Adam’s breath caught in his throat. She cleared the door and continued down the steps. Behind her followed Sarah, her hands also on her head; both looked unhurt. Freddie brought up the rear, his gun pressed to the back of Sarah’s head. Mike was nowhere to be seen, and Adam hoped he’d had the good sense to hide once Freddie had emerged from the hearing room.
He said something to Charlotte, but Adam couldn’t hear what it was through the glass. The girl nodded and then fled down the steps like she was on a mission. Adam was well hidden, but if he emerged from behind the counter, he would be right in Freddie’s line of sight. He couldn’t chance a rescue attempt here. He also couldn’t chance Sarah seeing him either; knowing her, she might well sacrifice herself to give Adam a clear shot at Freddie.
Dammit!
He’d just have to wait.
And for another thirty minutes he waited, as the smoke thickened, giving the sky a grayish, washed-out pallor. As the minutes ticked by, the residents drifted in toward the town hall, presumably rounded up by Charlotte. Eventually, it looked like the majority of the town had assembled at the base of the steps, their necks craned upward at Sarah and Freddie, who looked like a man not entirely in touch with reality. He began to speak, his voice booming across the town, loud enough that Adam could hear him clearly.
“My fellow citizens!” he bellowed. “The fire at the plant was no accident!”
Murmurs from the crowd.
“Sarah set the fire! With your mayor’s help!”
Adam’s blood ran cold.
Wait. Everyone knew Freddie had set the fire.
Didn’t they?
He thought about the chain of events that had unfolded since this morning. He met some others on the way. Surely they had
discussed it. Surely everyone knew that Freddie had been on a slow boat to Crazytown. But as he lay hidden, crouched, behind the counter, he wasn’t so sure.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” he continued. “But Sarah’s not in her right mind. She’s very sick.”
Oh, no, Adam thought. He knew about Sarah’s illness.
“That’s not true!” Sarah screamed. “He killed Gwen!”
“She’s terminal, and she’s very angry about it,” he said.
The crowd began to simmer, heads bobbing, people looking at each other, like a pan of oil starting to sizzle. They were buying it. And why wouldn’t they? Who wrote the history books, if not the victors? And Freddie was writing it. He was in charge. Already, public opinion would be hardening into something resembling truth, if not necessarily fact.
Dammit, Charlotte, say something!
But in looking at her, Adam knew she wouldn’t. She was frozen with fear, her eyes fixed out at some point beyond the crowd, across the park, in the direction of the burning plant.
“Fire!”
Dozens of heads turned, following the point of Charlotte’s finger; everyone looked, including Sarah and Freddie, leaving Adam unexposed, if only for a moment. He scampered from behind the counter and through the door, taking cover behind a brick pillar.
Now Adam could see what the crowd was looking at.
The wind had quickened and whistled between the buildings. The entire western side of town fronted a giant wall of flame. The bubbling crowd boiled over, and several Evergreeners began to run.
Now. He had to act now.
After making sure the safety on his gun was off, he broke from his hiding spot at a full sprint, quietly, assimilating himself into the angry, frightened crowd, never taking his eyes off Freddie. As he drew near the stairs, he saw that Freddie had made a tactical error. During his speech, he’d drifted closer to the top step, letting Sarah slip just behind his right shoulder.
If he could just get there, he might get a clear shot at him.
If he could just get there.
Fifty feet. Then twenty-five. Then ten.
That was when Freddie must have picked Adam up in his peripheral vision, because he swung his arm around, and he was already firing. The first bullet missed Adam but struck an onlooker behind him. The shooting precipitated a chorus of screams as the crowd devolved into a stinking, terrified mob.
As Freddie prepared to fire again, Sarah delivered a roundhouse kick to Freddie’s left flank. Her explosive pirouette wasn’t enough to bring the big man down, but it knocked him off balance. He staggered to the edge of the step and just barely caught himself.
He and Adam were less than ten feet apart; Adam wasn’t going to get a better shot. He steadied his hand as best he could and squeezed the trigger twice at the ample target Freddie provided. The first bullet struck him in the upper thigh, the second in the stomach. He toppled forward like a fallen sequoia.
“It was Freddie!” Charlotte screamed. “It was Freddie! He killed the mayor. He killed Jeff! He set the fire!”
Adam carefully approached Freddie, who lay unmoving. His arms were splayed out above his head, his right leg twisted at a strange angle. Adam bent down and checked for a pulse; Freddie was still alive, but only just so. His heart was beating erratically, and he was barely conscious. Adam put the gun to Freddie’s head, his finger sweating on the trigger, but he couldn’t do it. Even if it might have been the humane thing to do, he couldn’t do it. He waited by Freddie’s side, waited as the man’s pulse grew fainter and fainter until it was gone completely.
Freddie Briggs was dead.
He could feel their eyes on him, the others who’d heard Charlotte’s plea. They closed in around him slowly, tentatively, as though they were worried that Adam might shoot them for almost believing Freddie. He returned their nods, accepted their pats on the shoulder, the squeezes of the elbow.
Adam continued up the steps to the porch, where he and Sarah embraced like soldiers after a terrible battle. As he held her tight, he reached his hand out for Charlotte, who was sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” she said between heaves of tears. “I should’ve said something. I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Take my hand,” Adam said.
She gingerly grasped his outstretched hand, which Adam squeezed reassuringly.
“It’s OK,” Adam said. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Thank God you’re OK,” Sarah said, brushing his face with the back of her hand. “I thought you were dead.”
“I thought you were.”
“If we don’t get moving,” Charlotte interrupted, “we might all be dead.”
Adam released Sarah and looked west. The fire was feeding off that part of town like a hungry demon, taking its time now after its quick rush across the tasty grasses of the open plains.
“Listen up!” Adam called out. “We need to get out of town! Grab what you can, meet at the town limits on 815, headed east!”
His command galvanized the troops, and they began scattering across the town, plundering and scavenging what they could.
Then he remembered someone had been shot behind him, and he hurried down the steps.
Oh, no, he thought.
Donna Tanner lay dead in the street, missing most of the top of her head.
He ran his hands through his hair and wept.
#
Forty of them hit the road that afternoon in a caravan of six cars, the burning remains of the town at their back. They had salvaged what they could while the fire chewed across town. Not everyone was accounted for, and Adam didn’t know if they’d scattered to the other points of the compass or if they’d fallen victim to the flames. Either way, he never saw many of the Evergreeners again. Derek and Jeff and Lisa and so many more.
They drove east across desolate scrubland. When it was full dark, and their backs ached and the children were in full meltdown, they stopped to make camp along the highway. Mike Stills built a fire, and they cooked what little they had, barely enough for a few spoonfuls per person. Adam worried that a fight would break out, but no one seemed to have the energy. People ate. They yawned. Then they slept in a tight cluster of bodies near the fire, relying on body heat to stave off the deepening chill. Adam and Sarah were tending to the fire with a stick when Mike Stills sat down beside them. He lit a cigarette.
“You know, I never smoked before the plague,” he said, eyeing the orange filter. “Never. So I was in a 7-Eleven getting breakfast one morning after it was all over. I was still having a hard time dealing with what had happened. And I thought to myself, ‘I bet this is the kind of thing cigarettes were made for.’ So I took a pack. Looks like nicotine and me are just two peas in a pod.”
Adam liked Mike.
“Want the old standby lecture?”
“Not really.”
“Mind if I bum one then?”
As Mike lit Adam’s cigarette with the tip of his own, he asked, “so what do we do now, Mr. Mayor?”
“We try and get some sleep,” Adam said. “No big decisions tonight. Today was a hell of a day, and I can barely make sense of it.”
They sat quietly for a while, smoking their cigarettes. Adam rubbed the back of his neck, the stress of the day settling deep inside him, in every cell, in his marrow, until he could almost taste it. Evergreen was gone. He had no idea where Rachel was. Never had the world felt so dead and buried as it did that night.
“I should’ve known,” Adam said. He rubbed his icy nose between his finger and thumb. It was cold, but not terribly so. The sky was clear, the stars bright, like diamond dust on black velvet.
“Known what?” Sarah replied. “That he was going to go completely fucking bonkers? You’re not the one at fault here, sweetie. There was nothing you could do to stop him.”
“There’s nothing I can do to stop anyone anymore.”
The words fell out of his mouth like hot, angry coals from an overturned grill.
“Sort of a pes
simistic attitude,” she said.
“Just the way it is,” he said.
“I think most people are good at their core,” she said. “It’s the one thing that gives me hope that this won’t be a terrible world to live in.”
“Very Anne-Frank-ish of you,” he said.
They were quiet a moment. She took his hand in hers as he considered her take on the world and balanced it against his own. Theirs now was a world without rules, without consequences. You could rape and murder and pillage to your little heart’s content. Were there enough people left who were good, who’d leave the dollar in the honor bucket when taking a cold pop from the unattended cooler? If there were now, would they stay that way? Would they continue that downward slide, realize how much easier it would be to simply take what they needed?
A race to the bottom.
All in the name of survival.
He glanced at Sarah.
How close he’d come to losing her today.
Just the thought made him seize up with panic, and despite the fact they’d survived, that they were still here, he still couldn’t help but think how easily it could’ve gone the other way. How quickly it had all unfolded, an entire universe of actions and reactions packed into just a few seconds, decisions that he’d barely been conscious of making. How close he himself had come to dying. He wondered how many chances he’d used up to get just this far.
He couldn’t let these people rely on him anymore because his fate did not lie with them right now. They had their own way to go, their own trail to blaze, and he had his.
How right Freddie had been, after all that.
Part IV
Citadel
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-Edmund Burke
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 42