“Soon?”
She gave me a small if belligerent smile. “When he shows up here to kill that bitch, of course. I presume you are aware that this is our common goal? Of course you are. You just didn’t expect me to be a part of it.”
“Since I didn’t know you existed until ten minutes ago, no.”
“Get used to it.” She took a conspiratorial look around the bar, now void of anyone else but us. “Your window of time for actions is a short one. The girl has found a weakness in their defenses. She has set everything up to work, but you need to be the one to get the information about how to exploit it to your friends. Today’s disastrous outcome should give you an opportunity to do so. I hate to put this pressure on you, but I’m afraid you will have to act tonight.”
“And do what? Break out of here?” She didn’t respond, just kept looking at me evenly. “I hardly think they’ll let me leave, even if I ask nicely.”
Malory shrugged. “Marleen should be desperate for a win by now. She’s the one you’ll have to convince. Give her a reasonable lead and she will take it.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “I just did that. It got her forces annihilated. I doubt she’ll trust a single word I’ll say.”
“Then don’t.” I must have seemed as confused as I felt because Malory heaved a dramatic sigh as she leaned closer to explain. “The plan is already set in motion. Everything is ready. All that is required for you is to get my son and whoever will come with him as sheep to the slaughter into the same room as Guinevere. I hear he has changed over the past years but I doubt his ability to take out a foe that needs to be killed has been affected by that.”
For several seconds flat, all I did was stare at her. Part of me was already running with the information she’d just given me, churning out ideas of how to act on it. She was right in her assessments—of both Marleen and Miller. It wasn’t much I could work with, but maybe that was the solution in itself—a simple solution. Yet the far greater part of my mind was trying to make sense of what else she was saying—and what she had missed.
“You have no fucking clue what he’s been through,” I surmised when no other conclusion than that remained. What we’d been through, I felt like correcting. What had almost happened to me; what had made me feel like a fucking coward, a worthless piece of meat, best discarded at the side of the road. If anything, it had assured me that, right now, I wouldn’t even consider taking the easy way out. I had something to prove—not just to Miller or Lewis, but even more so to myself.
“I’ve heard… things.” She cocked her head to the side, as if her prompt would let me spill out all those secrets. “And yes, you are right with your unspoken accusation that some of what has happened has been… influenced by me, shall we say. I’m not confessing my sins to you. I had no choice, and if I hadn’t proven myself useful, I could never have wormed myself into her inner circle to be able to affect her decisions. Just like you did, I’ve done my very best to diminish her success wherever possible—only that I’ve had very few choices in doing so. Just like you, I’ve had to rely on the fact that my son is both damn hard to kill, and will never fold as long as he has an enemy to fight. The methods, while in part successful, have not always worked without collateral damage.”
It struck me as strange how she used the very same term I’d used myself when considering Bree Lewis’s fate. I had a feeling that, even more than her husband, Lewis would have had serious issues with that assessment.
“You don’t agree with me,” Malory observed when I remained mute.
“How could I?”
She offered a mirthless smile that kind of reminded me of her son. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” As did that very fatalism.
I needed a moment to wrap my head around this, returning to my trusty Patron while I stared at the wall of bottles behind the bar. Too many questions kept swirling through my head; too many thoughts to think clearly. The weirdest part—the one I had the most issues wrapping my mind around—was that the woman sitting next to me was Miller’s mother. Technically, I knew he didn’t magically appear in this world, but not in a million years had I expected to ever get to meet her, least of all under these circumstances.
“How exactly did you end up here?” Maybe not the best—or most important—question to ask, but I had to start somewhere. I hadn’t forgotten about her warning that I was on a deadline; I just needed to decompress a little more before I went to hunt down Marleen, and talking to Malory was as good an option as any.
Faintly amused that this was the part I questioned, she deigned to explain after another sip of her Scotch. “As I said, I used to consult with Decker. That made me a prime target, as if being the mother of the man she despises from the very bottom of her soul wasn’t enough. She had three of her soldiers pick me up from home, what I think amounts to a week before the widespread outbreak happened. I must admit, I didn’t question their motives at all when they claimed it was in connection with something my son was involved in.” She offered a sad smile. “I knew he was about to hit that biotech corporation his brother had been working for. My assumption was that he wanted me far away and out of reach of any possible fallout. I spent a month in one of the hotel-like prison cells you’re still living in, oblivious to what was going on around us. Once I was confronted with the facts, it was too late to try to do anything but play the long game.”
She grimaced, showing what looked tantalizingly like real pain.
“It helped that I barely had any contact to my son since his brother’s funeral. It hit me harder than I expected any event to ever have any impact on me. It worked out in my favor, of course, since it let me spin the yarn that I was blaming Nathaniel for Raleigh’s death and had little care in the world left for what happened to him down the line.” She paused, gifting me a wry smile. “Which is, of course, not true. I may not be swayed by what you consider your normal range of emotions, but I have always cared deeply for my sons. As deeply as I can. If anything, their deeds are living proof of my own accomplishment, least of all giving birth to them. I have made many mistakes—as have my sons—but I’ve always had the best for them in mind. That’s still true, even if it might not look like it from the outside.”
That sounded a lot like an apology, but in a way, it also made sense. “You want to give your son the chance to right the wrongs done to him.”
She inclined her head. Now it was her turn to glance away and focus on the bottles. “He didn’t deserve the things he called down on himself; even less so the consequences we are all deeply mired in now. I never tried to directly influence or sway him, but sometimes I’m afraid I’m to blame for some of that.”
I had a feeling that “tried” was the pertinent word here. When I pointed that out, she gave what amounted to a helpless shrug. “It was different with his older brother. From a very young age, I saw a lot more of myself in Raleigh. That drive, that obsession… he used to claim that certain proclivities he discovered in Nathaniel made him choose a career in medicine that he then further tapered into biomedical research, but I think the truth is, he never truly trusted himself around people. Nathaniel never had that problem. He had the same brilliant mind yet without the…” She paused, the brief smile playing across her face seemingly surprising her. “Let’s call them interpersonal limitations. But therein lies the crux of the matter, doesn’t it? He saw me and his older brother on the one hand, and himself as clearly set apart. So rather than embrace what was different in him, he set out to dampen and destroy that part of himself.”
While her tone held, if anything, a note of regret, I could tell that she recognized the thread of horror her words evoked in me.
“You agree with me, I see. Just think—he could have set out to become anything he wanted. A lawyer. A doctor. Instead, he chose war, the one domain guaranteed to utterly traumatize and possibly annihilate what is fundamentally human inside of us, while being the most human of our possible expressions. He forged himself into a ruthless killing machine, seeki
ng out those that would only ever support him in that endeavor. And just when he was about to reach that ultimate goal, it was that very man who cut through all those layers of bullshit and forced him to face his humanity, to accept that, deep down, he still had a soul, and he could never cut out that very thing that made him function. While the circumstances were, without a doubt, horrifying, I always found that tragically beautiful.” She paused yet again, that smile resurfacing. “Like any mother, I will always be proud of my sons’ accomplishments, but seeing him step out from underneath the shadows others cast on him made me realize that, whatever wrongs we can inflict in the name of nurture, nature ultimately wins. You know my son; you know who he truly is. Wouldn’t you agree?”
That was a lot to mull over. As I did that, aided by another shot of liquid fire burning down my throat, I realized she’d inadvertently served me up the last remaining piece of the puzzle that was Nate Miller—and Bree Lewis, by extension. I could see it clearly now—that boy who had turned into a man, who had ultimately embraced who he really was… not over a decade ago when the events had transpired that had led us all down this steaming shit pile of a road we were on now, but much more recently, when he’d cast off the last pretenses of who others wanted him to be and now simply was. Savage, driven, demanding, but no longer under anyone’s yoke, almost as if he’d digressed to a much simpler stage, evolutionarily. A true caveman; not the societally skewed and biased caricature, but what man had been for millennia before our brains had gotten just a little too smart for our own good. The hunter in the savanna, the leader of his own tribe, driven by the need to be free and take care of his own. And by his side his mate, fiercely loyal and just as deadly as him yet complementing him in all the things he might have lacked. If anything, that described the vibe I’d gotten off both of them after they’d reunited once more…
… While I had been a whiny little bitch, first scared to death, then bemoaning my own fate while truly, I’d stood idly by, watching them live through and overcome so much worse. Yet rather than the near constant shame of before, that sense of self-doubt ebbed when I realized something else: I’d become a part of their tribe, striving for the very same things they yearned for. We all had our different parts to play. It was time that I played mine. And part of that was to finally accept that, all fascination with her aside, I’d never had a right to claim anything about Bree Lewis, least of all because no one on this earth had a right to.
“May I ask what exactly made you smile like that?”
Pushing the bottle away for good—but keeping the shot glass in my hand, mostly to have something to occupy myself with while my thoughts still ran wild and way too philosophical for what I knew I had to do once I got up from here—I turned back to Malory.
“I guess I just figured out my part in the ongoing events. And why your son’s wife is such an unlikely but utterly perfect match for him.”
Was that a note of distaste that crossed her features before she managed to rein it in? I almost laughed out loud at this so very human—and stereotypical—behavior of any mother getting confronted with another woman daring to steal her son away.
“She does strike me as a rather unusual choice,” Malory observed, not without a dash of self-directed humor. She grew pensive then. “But maybe not. I still remember my son—my other son—being unable to shut up about her. It was a week before he died when Raleigh called me in the middle of the night, downright raving about his new lab assistant he was about to hire. He didn’t call her brilliant but it stands to reason he wouldn’t have subjected himself to working with an imbecile. I of course couldn’t quite understand what about her academic qualifications it was that made him take an interest in her, but he was convinced that she would be able to provide what he himself was lacking to complete his passion project.”
“To further tweak the serum project.” I knew virtually nothing about Miller’s brother, but I knew how Lewis had gotten dragged into all of this.
Malory inclined her head. “I like to think that he was right, and that in the meantime she has managed to contribute what she could, besides everything else that she accomplished.” Her gaze took on a far-away quality as she glanced away. “I know it’s highly unlikely that I get that chance, but I’d love to spend an uninterrupted hour with her. With both of them, really, but I don’t think my son would look very kindly on what questions I would love to ask her. Over the years, I’ve heard a few things about her but none of that makes any sense to me, least of all in connection to my son.” Her attention snapped back to me. “Maybe you can shed some light on that?”
I probably could—but considering where my loyalties lay, I didn’t feel tempted to make Lewis a subject of discussion now. “I guess all I can say about her is that she completes him, in ways that I doubt either of them completely understand. She’s fiercely loyal to him, just as he’s to her. She accepts him for who—and what—he is, possibly more so than he does himself. She’s impossibly demanding of herself, and constantly makes him strive to be the best version of himself that he possibly can. They share that same kind of determination that does not accepts failure as an option. I think that’s all you need to know.”
Surprisingly, she took my rebuke well, seeming downright satisfied. “Good. That’s all I could have asked for.” Picking up her tumbler, she finished the slightly watered-down drink. “Then let’s hope that some of that dogged determination has rubbed off on you because you will need it. Unless, of course, the girl and I have been wrong, and your sole purpose for being here is not to hold the door for them to charge through and finish what others started.” There was no doubt in her tone but a clear demand for confirmation.
“It sure is.” Getting up, I craned my neck and rotated my shoulder, stiff from spending far too long cooped up in here, tense as hell. “I’d better get to it, then.”
She regarded me gravely instead of offering a cheerful smile. Somehow I got the sense that pep talks weren’t really her thing. “You understand that there’s only one likely outcome to this, and it doesn’t involve your—or my—continuing survival, right?”
Yes, she must have been a very cheerful presence in Miller’s youth indeed. “I get that.” And for the first time ever, that didn’t make me want to curl up in a corner or run away screaming. “But what needs to be done, needs to be done.” With that, I turned around and left, determined to play my part in this.
It didn’t take long for me to hunt down Marleen. I found her lurking around the conference room that was serving as a tactical headquarter, glaring at the last satellite photos of the day before the sun had gone down, chronicling her devastating defeat. She noticed me as soon as I stepped into the room but chose to ignore me after a brief glance.
Rather than chitchat—that wouldn’t have worked to put her at ease, and only would have made me look as if I was scheming, which of course I was—I went right over to her to pull her away from the table, pushed her against the wall, and proceeded to devour her mouth while my hands were all over her body. Let her believe I was desperate, and hedonistic pleasure was a fleeting yet much-needed outlet. True enough, she was more than happy to indulge in something she enjoyed rather than continue to beat herself up over what she couldn’t change.
It occurred to me that, considering how they had spent their day, Miller and Lewis were likely right now engaged in similar activities—hooray for not being quite dead yet, inside or out! For the first time in what felt like too long, that thought didn’t leave me with the bitter taste of resentment in the back of my throat. I still felt like a whore, but a lot more Mata Hari than, well, red-light district dame.
How having your perspective shift can change things around.
My actions left Marleen slightly disheveled and with a glazed look in her eyes that had—mostly—replaced the frustration from before. Nothing like the present to ruin the moment, right?
“I need to talk to Guinevere,” I said pretty much in the same breath it took to put my junk away once more.
>
A different woman might have been hurt mentioning another woman’s name so soon after coitus. Marleen gave me a shrewd look instead. “That eager to beg your way out of the line of the firing squad?”
“Always,” I offered, only half joking. “I have an idea how we can turn things around.”
My enthusiasm wasn’t contagious. “Remember how your last bright idea went?”
Pursing my lips, I leaned one shoulder against the wall next to us. “We both know that neither you nor I are to blame for that.” I paused to give her a chance to protest. She didn’t. “But this is different. It’s very simple, and downright foolproof.”
“Those are the plans that always go wrong.”
“Not this one. Trust me.”
Marleen was still hesitant. “Want to run it by me first?”
My turn to consider, but it wasn’t like I was afraid she would run with it without involving me. No, I was sure that she’d want me to stick my head out with this one.
“Okay. Why don’t we invite them to come to us? Just the three of them—Hamilton, Miller, and Lewis. We can line up the entire regiment of guards—and there’s still you and me, too. No way this will go sideways.”
She pursed her lips, still doubtful. “Why would they be so fucking stupid to fall for this? All egomaniacal bullshitting aside, they must know that this would be a one-way trip, no return tickets issued.”
“Exactly because they are that full of themselves,” I explained. “Just look at their history. Remember our stand-off in Colorado, or at the slaver camp? Lewis always goes for the truce when she knows she can’t best overwhelming odds otherwise. And Miller will be high on his own supply, thinking he’s coming here to parley with his old mentor. They’ll waltz right in, and they won’t realize they’re beat until way after it’s too late.” I paused. “Unless you don’t want to execute them head-on once Guinevere is done doing whatever she wants to do?”
Beyond Green Fields | Book 6 | Red's Diary [ A Post-Apocalyptic Story] Page 18