Jacob didn’t turn around or acknowledge what Will had told him.
***
Jacob traveled for weeks on foot. The freedom of living outdoors, away from the drudgery of Alice, was exhilarating at first. He often thought of the people there, and his anger would flare. If he were ever to return, it would be to see the town burn.
Food was becoming scarce, and although he could identify a few edible plants, it was not enough to keep him alive. Out of necessity he ate bugs: big plump earthworms, and some crickets that he roasted over a fire.
He didn’t know where he was heading; he simply started walking west and didn’t stop. There was nowhere to go. Not once did he see any people.
It was in Kadoka, South Dakota that he met Mark Rothstein and his group of survivors. At first, he had no desire to join them. But being alone for so long had made him yearn for human companionship. He was also starving, and the offer of food was attractive.
He saw with his own eyes the difference in Mark’s way of governing compared to how they did things in Alice. Mark’s people were all fighters first and foremost, and although they sometimes had to do the unsavory tasks of building and fixing things, they often conducted scouting missions and raids, which all took a part in. Mark allowed Jacob to mingle with his colony as he pondered whether to join them permanently. Ten days later, Jacob was told that they were leaving, heading south with the coming of fall. Jacob joined them, and became a member of the group. He was a great shot, and loved the thrill of warfare. It was in his blood, his DNA, as it was in all of humankind.
During their travels, he told Mark all about Alice and the people there. He drew maps, showing the Ridgeline River bordering the northern section, and the half-moon formation of trenches. He told Mark about Tom and Nick, and their plans to get fuel. He told them of Nick’s Dragoons, his fierce special forces of sorts, and of the Rangers and the Guards that made up their army. The people of Alice were the police officers, the judges, politicians, and prison guards of the world. They were the people who kept the likes of Mark Rothstein locked up and labeled a danger to society.
Jacob annotated the maps with lists of the people who worked behind the walls. He shared everything with Karl Metzger, who examined them all and let the story that Jacob shared roll around in his thoughts during the long march from Odyssey to the docks.
A plan was made prior to arriving at the shipyard, and readjusted with the Russian officers. Liam led the bulk of the military to Masterson, where the resistance was expected to be light. The town was in close proximity to Alice, and would serve as a suitable staging ground for the army to muster until Karl gave the order for them to advance.
Karl, along with a smaller force, made his way to Alice’s border. He told Mark as they marched, “I was right in my assumption that the hearts of men can be easily corrupted, for I see it now. The desires of one man in particular are different from the others. The key to getting into Alice will be thorough Nick Byrnes.”
Karl left his brigade in the woods, and heeled his stallion toward Alice’s gates, alone.
Chapter Twenty-two
Partners
The day Karl rode to Alice’s perimeter, wearing a crisp uniform and smiling down to the armed guards, he knew these people were of simple minds. “A dumb lot of peasants,” he later told Mark. It took a little persuasion, a bit of charm, and above all, a high degree of articulation indicating authority and confidence, for them to radio Tom and Nick Byrnes.
He spoke to the old, stout, and round-bellied man, and his tall, lean son. He offered them his army on a contractual basis, for them to command as they saw fit. He told them all the things that he knew Nick would want to hear: the army that Nick desired, hundreds of soldiers that would do his bidding without hesitation. These things were proposed with a degree of flattery, an indication that Nick’s rank and title were thoroughly respected. The young second in command scratched at his chin as Karl spoke, standing tall in a pressed uniform that seemed tailor-made to fit his frame.
After his speech, when his presentation had ended, Karl mounted his horse and rode off. The look in Tom’s eyes said it all: that Karl would never be allowed to enter. But Nick … he wanted more from this world … he wanted the power that Karl was offering.
Before Karl rode away, he told them that he would return in two nights so they could digest the information he had presented. It was no surprise that Tom did not show up two nights later, but after Karl had waited only five minutes, Nick appeared, and they met outside the gates.
A young soldier named Will was present, Nick’s personal guard of sorts, but he remained a few steps behind. Karl had brought the Priest along, and after a brief introduction, with the Priest issuing all sorts of praise, he fell back to let them speak. It was funny, Karl noticed then, how he had grown so accustomed to hearing the Priest ramble on about prayer that it no longer bothered him as it used to. The jabs of hot anger had lessened to something of a manageable glimmer of firelight.
Nick and Karl stood beside a tree.
“Sir Nicholas,” Karl began, “I hope my proposition excited you.”
Showered in moonlight, Nick’s slick-backed hair appeared dramatically black.
“It’s something to consider,” he said. “It would be useful to bolster our fighting force, and we have the resources to support your numbers.”
Karl smiled. “Indeed,” he said.
“It will be difficult convincing my father.”
“That can all be worked out, in due time. You come off as a strong leader. Please, do tell me a bit about your exploits?”
Nick told a fast tale of Alice’s establishment, and Karl acted surprised and enthralled. He produced two cigars and handed one to Nick. From a saddlebag, he found a bottle of whiskey and took a swig, then handed the bottle across.
“It isn’t easy commanding men, am I right?” he said.
“Commanding them is the easy part,” Nick replied. “For me, it’s getting past the bureaucracy that’s the challenge.”
They spoke at length about the struggles of leadership, of battles waged, of mishaps and narrow escapes. They spoke about war and disease, the whys of the world, and when they finished, over an hour had passed, and with it a good portion of the bottle.
“They need the whip sometimes more than anything else,” Nick said, in reference to his men. “They’re liable to grow lazy otherwise.”
“I couldn’t agree more. To be frank with you, sometimes losing a few in battle is essential to strengthen the resolve of the rest. It reminds them that they are fragile, and this world is an inhospitable place. A bit of blood spilled on your own side is encouraging.”
Nick nodded. “Never thought about it that way, but you’re right. I think”—he paused to take another swig—“we’ll be able to work something out.”
“Mister Byrnes, I do wholeheartedly agree. It is no coincidence that we have met. Fate has put us together. I knew it when I stumbled upon your town and saw the majesty of your defenses. We are destined to be partners.”
They shook hands and went their separate ways.
***
It was during their second meeting that Nick confessed his dissatisfaction with Hightown, and how they were demanding more than their fair share of Alice’s water and food in trade for only a trickle of their abundance of fuel. This was something Nick was passionate about, and Karl assured him that with a larger army, Hightown would have to supply more fuel or face the might of their forces. It became apparent that Nick was keen on the second choice—he wanted Hightown to face his wrath. Especially the elder general of the town, Albert Driscoll, who held his soldiers in higher regard than Nick’s Dragoons.
During their third meeting, Nick secretly brought Karl into town. The guards on the line were commanded to another sector as Karl was led over the threshold in the darkness of night, and brought closer to the center of the community. They sat alone at a folding table in a massive storage warehouse, with a lantern between them. They shared a
bottle of whiskey and smoked cigars as Karl explained his plan.
“No, it won’t work,” Nick said.
“Please, Sir Nicholas, I beg you to reconsider. My army works like a well-lubricated machine. No mistakes will be made, I assure you.”
“I’m sure that it does, and to be honest, I would like to see your men in action to get a feel for their potential. However, sending a small brigade against the walls of Alice, with you swooping in to offer assistance, is not enough to sway my father’s decision. There needs to be more.”
Karl nodded. “Go on.”
Nick took a drink of whiskey, breaking off eye contact and speaking more to the floor than to Karl. “We need to scare him—scare them all. Make them feel that they need you and your army to enter Alice. Like you’ve said, a bit of spilled blood on your own side does wonders at motivating the masses.”
“Indeed,” Karl said, a bit surprised and happy to hear Nick speak so frankly.
“I think … I have an idea. Every day like clockwork my father makes his rounds, checking on the line, the trade grounds, the various posts, and the water filtering plant. One of the communication centers is set far away from the center of town, and could be sacrificed, with an attack occurring a few minutes after my father would be leaving. I will supply the coordinates, and you could lob off a few mortars to coincide with his departure. The explosion will have to be close enough to my father so that he knows he was targeted—but he must be at a safe distance. At the same time, you could unleash the small attack on Alice—the prisoners you have to sacrifice. Then you and your men would swoop in and flank the enemy, helping our defenses. My father would surely open the doors for you then.”
“Interesting,” Karl said, and brought his glass to his lips. In the end, when this was all said and done, Nick might make a worthy lieutenant. But that was yet to be seen.
“To pull this off, we’ll have to be exact. The attack has to be precise, and the timing must be perfect.”
“It will be. Sir Nicholas, I assure you. Has anyone ever told you that you would make a capable general to this town?”
Nick huffed out a chuckle. “Well, one day perhaps.”
“Your strategy is well devised. We will work out the details in full over the coming days, and the plan will be set in motion.”
They shook hands. Partners at last.
Chapter Twenty-three
Alice Betrayed
Karl marched into Alice sitting tall on his buckskin stallion. To his left and right were his lieutenants, Mark Rothstein and Sultan. The Priest rode one over, adjusting his eye patch and humming a light tune. Behind the riders marched two columns of the Red Hands, all in clean uniforms, with their weapons oiled and glistening. In between the columns were the prisoners: the five men left alive after they had stormed Alice’s gates and were apprehended by Karl’s brigade.
The whole entourage was led to the police department to drop off the captives, who were bleeding and battered, and had gags tied tight in their mouths. The people of Alice gathered, boiling with rage. These men were responsible for killing Tom Byrnes, or so they were led to believe. And Karl was responsible for bringing them in to face punishment. The group that had attacked Alice were all prisoners taken from past forays, selected out of the cells in Odyssey, and told that any who survived the battle would be offered their freedom.
Earlier that morning, before the sun rose, Karl met with Nick, and once again snuck in—for the last time. After today, he would become a most beloved member of Alice. They met in the warehouse, and Nick was just as angry as Karl had predicted.
“You were five minutes early!” Nick shouted again and again.
It took some analysis, along with a gentle touch of aggression, to explain to Nick that this was the best way for them to achieve their directive. If Nick wanted to attack Hightown, Tom needed to be eliminated. It was impossible with him still alive. “With your father in charge, we would never be able to achieve our goals. This is something you know—something you have always known,” he told Nick.
Their relationship would be strained for a while, but it was not lost. Despite his protests and anger, Nick’s eyes gave away his true feelings. He wanted power. He wanted control of Hightown. And he needed Karl to see his objectives met. Nick was led to believe he now shared command of the Red Hand army, and yes, the army was told to obey Nick’s orders, but Karl could supersede those orders at any time. For the plans to work, Karl needed Nick. He needed Nick’s men, the Dragoons, who were capable soldiers. Combined with his army soon arriving from Masterson, they could attack Hightown before they became aware of the scope of their presence.
The day the prisoners arrived, Nick addressed the people of Alice on a stage behind Alice’s volunteer fire department, offering condolence over the loss of his father and their beloved leader, Tom Byrnes. Karl was soon introduced, and he took the stage and spoke to the assemblage. He praised Nick and referred to him by his new title: “General.” Nick retook the stage and finished off by driving home the most important point, that someone in Alice—one of them—a traitor—gave the exact coordinate of the recon office and the time when Tom would be present. Keeping the population apprehensive was part of the plan, and the people looked from one to the other, formulating guilty parties in their minds.
Nick told them that it was Tom’s plan for Karl and his men to join their own, to take over the soldiering so that the people of Alice could focus on constructing the defenses. From there, as the people became comfortable with their new position in Alice, they would take away their weapons, and trick or force them into imprisonment inside the school gymnasium before the attack on Hightown. It would be much easier to simply kill the majority of them now rather than later, but Nick would never agree to such terms. He actually thought that he was doing all of this—attacking Hightown, even participating in the death of his father—for the advancement of Alice as a society. Pure rubbish.
The prisoners were brought onto the same stage the following morning and executed before the townspeople. They received no proper trial, and yet the people cheered as the five corpses swung.
It was after the executions that Karl became aware of his predicament. A forward detachment of the Red Hands entered Alice—all in clean uniforms, combed hair, beards trimmed—and a scout came running forward, explaining to Karl in private that the fighting in Masterson was fiercer than anticipated. Several miles to the west of the town was an unknown settlement, which had an alliance with the people of Masterson. They counterattacked in the dead of night.
Karl took the Priest aside. “Go now with a few men. Ride to Masterson, and help Liam. Win this goddamn fight, and get yer ass back here with the army. Send Liam to the docks, and have him ready the ships. We attack Hightown as soon as the men are mustered.”
The Priest turned away, and was soon seen riding out of Alice in haste. Karl wore a smile as he doled out shiny new pistols to Nick’s Dragoons, along with brown leather chest holsters. It was time to differentiate the men deemed worthy, and let the peasants of Alice see who was really in charge.
The festivities went on into the night. His forwarding men brought crates of hard liquor, bales of marijuana, and a variety of narcotics. Karl drank his fill, mingling with the men, praising the people of Alice, and offering sympathy over their lost leader. Above all, he commended Nick on his ability to lead, and the virtues that Alice would soon attain under his guidance.
After dinner was served, which consisted of freshly slaughtered livestock that the Red Hands brought with them on the back of a pickup truck, Karl took Mark aside and passed him a cigar.
“We may be in,” he said, passing a lighter, “but victory is far from certain.” He told him of the fighting in Masterson.
Mark lit his cigar and scratched at his beard. “’Ya think we should fall back, help the efforts in Masterson? The men never fought without you by their side.”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “Fall back? You’re smarter than that, Mister Rothstein. Capt
ain Briggs is a capable leader. This is only a delay, nothing more. Soon—days, not weeks—we will lock these idiots away, or slaughter them all. Alice will fall; I swear it. I don’t care if it takes a year, this town will be crushed under my heels. Do you remember our conversation, all those months ago when we first met? Do you remember what you said to me?”
“I … umm—”
“It’s the world that I want, Mister Rothstein. The world. And it all starts here, in Alice. We’ll have enough food and water to last a lifetime, and best of all, we won’t have to lift a finger. Their people we let live will do all the labor for us.”
Karl gazed at his lieutenant, his eyes holding on to Mark as if he were gripping him tight. He could see Mark quiver, could feel his tension. Then he smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. “Ha!” he said, holding his cigar between his teeth. “Lighten up—this is a party, after all!”
“It’s a mourning, sir.”
“Same difference.”
Karl grabbed a bottle of whiskey off a nearby table and took a swig. He handed Mark the bottle, and looked to the sky. “Beautiful evening, is it not?” he asked.
Mark looked up and scratched at his beard. “I guess.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Unravel
The fighting in Masterson was about over. The resistance dwindled down to a fraction and fell back to their settlement, five miles to the west. The Priest led the bulk of the men to finish them off for good, while Liam and a contingency traveled to the docks. A forwarding detachment arrived in Alice in the shroud of night, and marched straight to the lawn of Nick Byrnes’s mansion—a home that Karl ordered his men to clean up, and install massive generators. Nick and his girlfriend of sorts, a strange girl who didn’t venture outdoors often, were allotted a private wing, and the rest of the house would be used to lodge the ranking officers.
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