Last Hope: Book 5 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 5)

by Kevin Partner

  The girl turned her tear-stained face to Zak. "Up that way," she said, gesturing vaguely behind her.

  "When?"

  "I don't know. Not long. I ran straight here."

  Zak held out the needle. "You will have to finish this, Sam. I need to gather the hunt."

  "What? I can't …"

  "You must. It's just like darning a sock. Not that you've ever done that."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To find Jay and bring him back."

  "Can't you let him go?"

  For the first time, she saw fear and anger pass across Zak's grizzly face. "Don't you understand, Sam? The only thing that keeps us safe is the fact we're hidden."

  "Jay wouldn't tell anyone where we are!"

  "You can't possibly know that, Sam," Zak said, as he fetched a hunting rifle from the armory. "And I can't afford to take the risk."

  "Don't … don't kill him," she said.

  Zak paused for a moment in the doorway, his back to her. "I'm sorry, Sam, but we can't let him go and we can't keep prisoners. I'm sorry." And he was gone. She could hear his deep, rich voice echoing in the darkness as he called the hunters together.

  If they caught Jay, they'd kill him.

  So, she left Said snoozing in the chair and slipped into the darkness.

  Sam stumbled through the darkness to the place she hoped Jay would be. She was only able to find her way because it lay along the banks of the stream, so she kept the chatter of the water to her right and tried not to trip on the larger pebbles as she moved as quickly as she dared.

  The moon was rising over the lip of the valley as she finally burst into the little clearing. It was the nearest stand of trees along the riverbank, at the very border of the region that had been stripped. The pale bark of silver birch reflected the lunar light and there, sitting on an ancient stump, she found Jay.

  He spun around at the sound of movement, then lowered the handgun when he recognized her.

  "Where the hell did you get that?" she hissed, before sitting on the tree stump as he shifted across.

  "He left the door open. Days ago. Thought it might come in handy."

  "Margie said you'd headed into the woods."

  He chuckled. "Yeah, well, it's not exactly hard to fool her, is it? I figured she would send them that way, and I'd follow the river. How did you know I'd be here?"

  "I didn't. I hoped you would. This is where we came for that picnic. Me and you."

  "And him."

  Sam sighed. "You're like a little child sometimes, you know. But, anyway, what are you doing sitting here? You should be miles away by now."

  He said nothing, merely rolling the handgun over in his hands.

  She glanced across at him. "Oh my God!"

  "I guess I was wondering whether it would be easier all around if I just ended it here and now."

  "You idiot!"

  "Well, you don't care. You'd be happy if I went."

  She turned to him, pulling on his arm so he was forced to look at her. "You've been a massive pain in the butt. I don't know what's gotten into you; you're not the Jay I knew. The one I … fell in love with."

  "What do you expect? Look what happened to me. And then, on top of all that … you …"

  "But I don't want you to kill yourself! I still care about you."

  Jay's shoulders dipped, and he seemed to curl in on himself. "Well, I don't suppose I've got a lot of choice now, have I? If Zak catches me, he'll do it. He won't want to risk me blabbing where you are. Come on, better to get it over with. You can't let me go or he'll do the same to you."

  "I'm not handing you over!"

  "You haven't got a choice. Unless you're going to shoot me dead yourself. I guess that would be poetry."

  "Idiot!" she said again. Her mind spun as she looked for a way out of the situation. She couldn't hand Jay over any more than she could shoot him, that, at least, was certain. But she only had a few minutes to make up her mind. They were bound to search along the river when they found no trace of him in the forest.

  "Go," she said, finally. Then she pulled him into an embrace. She felt him relax and begin to tremble.

  "What are you gonna do?"

  "Head up the slope to the trees and lead them away. I'll say I was looking for you. It should give you enough time to get clear before they check the creek."

  He pulled back, eyes glinting in the moonlight. "I can't let you take the risk."

  "You don't have a choice. Now get going, or it'll all be a waste of time." She pecked him on the cheek. "If you want to do something useful, go find my father and tell him I'm okay."

  He nodded, went to move away and then turned back and kissed her full on the lips. "I love you, Sam."

  She wanted to say what he so desperately needed to hear. But the best she could do was to take his hand and kiss it. "I know, Jay. Take good care of yourself."

  And he slipped away, just as a shout went up a hundred yards away. She ran at ninety degrees to the stream, up the slope and toward the tree line where Margie had claimed Jay was heading.

  She didn't look back. If she had, she might have noticed a round face peeping out from behind a silver birch before disappearing again.

  Chapter 10: Plot

  He'd slept for a few hours after leaving the message behind the church, his mind still spinning like a hamster in a wheel, waking him with images he would never be able to erase. By the time he got out of bed, the sky had lightened, and Jade had already gone. He had no appetite, no interest in anything other than revenge. But there was something he had to do right now, so he got ready to head for the Bowies', the very last place in the world he wanted to be.

  No one spoke to Devon Myers as he stalked through the streets of Hope, wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, coat flapping, looking every inch the villain of a post-apocalyptic western. They didn't shun him because he was a collaborator. Somehow, that version of him had vanished, to be replaced by a smoldering assassin. He was a wolf, and they were sheep. And now he had to give the best people he knew the worst possible news.

  He could tell from Joe Bowie's face that he suspected the worst when he opened the door to see Devon standing there like the angel of death. Devon hated lying, but this was one of those situations where telling the brutal truth would be much worse. So he told Joe his father had died in custody, but that was all the information he'd been given. And as he talked to Joe, Martha sat beside him looking lifelessly into space, the only sign that she'd heard him at all was the single tear running down her cheek.

  "I'm so sorry, Joe," Devon said. He didn't add that he'd watched the man's father die while he hid in the shadows, helplessly gripping a kitchen knife.

  "How much more are they gonna take from us, Dev? First Jenson, now Dave. When's it gonna stop? When every Bowie's dead and buried?"

  Devon took his friend's hand and gripped it. "I promise you, Joe, I will make them pay."

  "And how do you plan to do that, exactly, Mr. Mayor?" Martha said. "You're part of the problem, you and folks like you who work with them. It's cos of you Leonard's dead, just as much as whoever pulled the trigger."

  Devon held back the wave of anger that threatened to overwhelm him. The woman was grieving. She'd lost her son and father-in-law in the space of a couple of months and probably the rest of her family outside Hope as well. They had a daughter who'd lived somewhere else. Pittsburgh, maybe. Briefly, Devon wondered where his own mother was and whether she'd survived. He marveled at how shriveled his soul had become since the firestorm. At his core, he was the same man, but all the soft edges had been burned away, leaving a flint dagger looking for a target.

  "That ain't fair, Martha, Devon's …"

  "It's okay, Joe. Martha's right enough. I thought I was doing the right thing by pretending to collaborate, but it didn't stop Dave being killed. One more week and it'll all be over."

  Joe glanced up, red, tear-stained eyes looking for a glint of hope. "What do you mean?"

  And so, Devon
told them about the plan to attack the leaders of the Sons of Solomon when they arrived in a few days.

  "The only problem is, Gert wants to use mine explosives and …"

  "… that'll kill a whole bunch of innocent folks right along with the guilty ones."

  "Yeah."

  Joe's eyes cleared, as if he'd found something other than his grief to think about. "Why not use guns?"

  "Because that would mean getting the shooters in position and security is bound to be tight. I could plant a bomb on my own, once I know where they're going to hold their meeting. It's much easier to keep a plot secret if there's only one person who knows about it."

  Joe shook his head. "Right, but you'll kill too many other people. I'm guessin' none of you is a expert on explosives, so you'll have to go big to be sure of getting them all. And innocent folks get caught in it."

  "Yeah, that's about the size of it."

  "So we have to find a way to sneak people in, get them in place and shoot the b—"

  "Once we know where they're gonna be," Martha said. "Seems like our collaborator has a job to do."

  #

  Rusty Kaminski sat at the table and scratched his head as he looked down at the piece of paper. It contained letters, sure enough, but they made little sense, except for the first lines:

  To: Rusty Kaminski

  Add: The Mayor of Hope

  After that, it was nothing more than a sequence of seemingly random characters with spaces in between. It began like this:

  MK UDJ VMXE

  One of Mara's people found the message in the trunk of a car containing four refugees from Hope. They were all old and none had any idea how it had gotten in there. They were just relieved to be somewhere relatively safe, and Rusty found himself with another four souls to weigh him down.

  He'd sat and pored over it for what seemed like hours—actually no more than twenty minutes—before he realized it was beyond him. It was obviously a cipher of some sort, but he was no Sherlock Holmes.

  Mrs. Dabkowski shook her head as she looked over his shoulder. "It isn't Polish, I tell you that. It looks like codes the Służba Bezpieczeństwa used back in bad old days at home."

  "The what?"

  "Secret police. Bad people. Who is that at this time?" she said, bustling off to answer the door.

  Kaminski was still looking down at the message when the man came in.

  "I've got it!"

  Otis Weppler pulled the chair out beside Rusty and sat down. Duck had suggested asking the loathsome toad when Kaminski had shown him the message. His logic was that Weppler was some sort of a nerd—everyone who used words of more than two syllables received that epithet from Duck—and, after all, though he was a lousy mayor, maybe he'd be good at crosswords.

  So, Rusty had copied out the first two lines—the ones that were in plain English—along with the initial groups of random characters and asked Weppler to take a look. The man's eyes had lit up at the prospect and he'd scurried away. Rusty had then distracted himself for a couple of hours doing useful things like checking on the neighbors and brushing the yard, before dinnertime found him at the table again.

  "Really?" he said, realizing that this was the first time he'd ever wanted to hear what Weppler had to say.

  Otis slid Rusty's copy across the table and stabbed a finger at it. "It's a cipher."

  "Well, even I know that, Otis! What does it say?"

  But he wasn't getting off as easy as that. "The trick with any cipher is to work out what the key is."

  "What d'you mean?"

  "Well, look at the first two lines. What do you notice about them?"

  Rusty sighed. There was no getting around it, he would have to play along. "It's addressed to me, and it's from the mayor of Hope. So what?"

  "No, what does it actually say?"

  So, Rusty read it out. "To Rusty Kaminski. From …"

  "No!"

  "Oh. Well, that don't make sense. It says To Rusty Kaminski, then it says Add: the mayor of Hope. Does it mean 'address'?"

  Weppler smiled. For once he had the upper hand. "No! It means to quite literally add the mayor of Hope. That is the key!"

  "Look, Otis, I ain't got time for this. Get to the point, will you?"

  "Who is the mayor now?"

  Rusty shrugged. "Hick told me they've blackmailed Devon into it."

  "Devon Myers?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, give me an hour and I'll have the message decoded."

  And the little fat man ran from the house.

  He returned within the hour holding a couple of sheets of paper covered in scribblings. Rusty immediately knew he would have to endure an explanation before he'd be shown the actual contents of the message.

  "It was quite simple, really," Otis said with fake modesty. "The compiler took the position of each letter in the mayor's name and added it to the position of the corresponding letter in the message. So, the first letter in his name is D which is the fourth letter of the alphabet and we deduct that from the position of M," he stabbed a finger down at a table he'd drawn on the paper. "It is the thirteenth letter, so we're looking for the letter at position nine, giving us I. 'Add', you see, on the second line, was the clue. The coded letters had the number of the key added to them. The second coded letter is K and the second letter in Devon's name is at position five, so we count back five from K and get F. The first word, then, is IF."

  Rusty shook his head. "Wow. Well done, Otis. So, what's the message?"

  The little man's chest puffed out, though he was obviously irritated at the interruption. "Well, I've only decoded the first sentence. I thought you'd want to hear it before I do the rest as it'll take me another couple of hours. It says, 'IF YOU WISH TO DEFEAT SOS FREE DEMILLE IN SLC. HE HAS COORDS OF CACHE. TAKE HIM AND HIS PEOPLE TO SPRINGS.'"

  Rusty closed his mouth when he noticed it going dry, then mutely nodded and took the scrap of paper from Weppler as he rushed out the door.

  "So, what does it mean, this message?"

  Rusty looked up at his landlady, startled to find her standing there.

  "Yes, I can be very quiet when I want. Now, who is DeMille?"

  "Not a clue, Teresa. I feel as though I've heard it before somewhere, but I can't place it."

  She leaned over him. "SLC is Salt Lake City, no? And SOS is Sons of Solomon? And, what is that? Catch? Catch what?"

  "It's cache."

  "Like dollars and zloty?"

  "No, usually weapons. Can't imagine what else it would mean."

  "So, what will you do?"

  Rusty shrugged. "I'll wait until Otis has decoded the rest of it. But if that don't help, I guess I'll have to call in the cavalry."

  "Who is cavalry?"

  "Paul Hickman, and he ain't gonna be happy if this is all some wild goose chase."

  The old woman laughed. "I'd give many zloty for any goose, wild or no. You tell Mr. Hickman that Teresa will cook his if he does not help out."

  #

  Elliot DeMille put the scissors down before padding across to the door and listening for any sounds of movement outside. In the two weeks since his daughter had ordered him imprisoned, the watch on him had slackened. He didn't know how many of the black-masked devils were still in Salt Lake City, but his care while behind lock and key was entirely in the hands of his own people. And they were clearly terrified. One man, in particular, seemed to have them in thrall: a general called Mendoza. He had moved on, DeMille was certain of that, but he'd left enough of his followers to keep SLC in an iron grip. And he'd left blood and death behind.

  Nevertheless, Elliot had noticed that he was generally being watched by a single guard, these days. A sour man called Rebus. And that made it much less likely he'd be disturbed. So, he sat down at the table and set aside the ruins of the green book. He'd cut out every word Marianna had highlighted and placed them on the table surface—at least, he prayed with all his heart that these were her markings, otherwise he was pursuing a phantom. It was perfectly poss
ible that his search for a message was a mere fantasy because he couldn't bring himself to believe his daughter was a monster.

  His theory was further shaken when he'd come across numbers and punctuation marks highlighted in yellow. How could those be part of a message? And even if they were, how could he possibly decode it?

  He picked up the green book again, seeking reassurance, and turned to the end. There, on one of the final pages, he found a concluding essay that summarized the book and its message. It was a mix of laudable aims and pure evil. And near the end was a line in which the words "go backwards" were highlighted.

  That had been when he'd finally allowed himself to hope that this was a deliberate message left by his daughter. He had carefully laid out the snippets in the order they'd appeared, and they occupied most of the small table from the top left corner to the bottom right; scraps of paper of many sizes, some with single marks on them, some with complete phrases. This would be a bad time for someone to interrupt him. Bad for him, bad for his daughter.

  Heart thumping against his ribcage, he got up again and crept across to the door, pressing his finger against it and straining for any sound. He could hear the rhythmic step of the guard moving back and forth, but he wasn't due food for another hour. It was now or never.

  He stood over the table, then took the chair and moved it to the opposite side so the top left was now the bottom right. As quickly as he could without disturbing the order, he spun each of the now upside-down message fragments around and then, this done, he took a deep breath and read what the scraps said.

  Elliot DeMille read it again, elation flooding his body as if the Holy Spirit were coursing through his veins. A joy borne of relief tempered with fear. So, he pulled a random book from the shelf and turned to the blank leaves at the back. Then he copied down the message, making sure to get every dot and every numeral correct. That done, he swept up the fragments and pushed them under the couch, followed by the remnants of the green book.

  Tears rolled down his face as he sobbed, thanking God with every exhale, rocking back and forth under the exquisite torture of hope.