“No objections to that,” she muttered, still considering. I knew I had her when she visibly shrugged off whatever complaints had remained in her head. “I like your style. I myself am a great fan of hubris and would have given them more of a fighting chance, but this is getting tedious, isn’t it? Come. Let’s pull the boss out of her funk.”
I followed her through the rabbit warren again, only that this time we turned down into a wing I hadn’t visited before. Guinevere’s private quarters, I realized, when Marleen led me through what could only be called a parlor or sitting room, grandly furnished and very representative. I expected more of the same to follow as she walked straight through and into another hallway, but the dome-like room beyond was all stark, unfinished concrete and not much more. A single figure was sitting, cross-legged, in the very middle. Meditating, I thought at first, until I realized that Guinevere’s eyes were open, watching us with the same hostility still present from earlier. It was only when we had already stepped into the room that I noticed how bloody her knuckles were, and became aware of the two lifeless bodies slumped on the floor next to the door, out of sight from the corridor. Both men—bodies—were naked, and even in the dim lighting it was impossible to miss the many cuts, scrapes, and parts missing under all the blood.
I had a certain feeling that sleep wasn’t what she usually came here for.
“Wonderboy here has a new idea,” Marleen declared without preamble. “It’s a good one, if he can pull it off.”
Guinevere didn’t move. We stopped maybe ten feet in front of her, close enough to smell the blood and sweat clinging to her. I waited until she gave me the smallest of nods before spilling my guts—hopefully only figuratively.
“We invite them, plain and simple. Miller, Lewis, Hamilton, that’s it. They’ll come because they believe they can negotiate. You can do whatever you want with them.”
Unlike Marleen, Guinevere seemed less than pleased, if her objection was the same. “And, pray tell, why should they be stupid enough to fall for that? A five-year-old could tell you that’s a trap.”
“I’m sure they know. But it’s too good a chance to resist.” When her expression didn’t change, I dipped deeper into the arguments I’d come up with walking through the corridors. “Lewis is a negotiator. She will try to talk her way out of this—but for that to work, she has to walk into your trap first. Miller and Hamilton still believe that they are after Decker, and why not show up for a pleasant conversation with their old mentor?” I was glad Gita wasn’t present to possibly give away my calculations. “Line up a firing squad, if you want. You have more than enough personnel in here to kill them ten times over. Twenty men should be more than enough to do the deed.” Not by a long shot—and that was calculating that at least one of the three remained alive. I’d had to put down two of my men who had died of grave wounds and had converted before we’d realized what had been going on, which had cost many more lives. Any of the three of them would be a lot harder to kill… and I had a certain feeling that Miller wouldn’t step into the bunker calculating to live to tell the tale. Did I feel like shit pretty much condemning my friends to their chosen death? Yes, but it wasn’t like I didn’t expect to share their fate.
“Thirty is better,” Marleen piped up from beside me. “But except for that, I support his plan.”
Guinevere still wasn’t game. “And you really think they’ll just traipse in here? I don’t want them in full force camping outside the gates.”
“Why not extend an invitation with specific instructions to them?” I suggested. “Tell them where to be when, and who is invited.”
“And how do you plan to deliver that?” Guinevere wanted to know.
Good question, and not one I had an easy answer for… except that I did, I realized, when another piece fo the puzzle fell into place. “Dispatch,” I muttered, turning to Marleen. “At the meeting to assault the slaver camp, Rita Connel knew. She warned Lewis about their quest not leading to the satisfying ending they were hunting for. And she lifted no finger to support them. Because she knew that Decker was dead.”
Marleen just gave me a “duh!” raise of her brow, while Guinevere chuckled darkly. “That’s because I extended the same invitation to her to join me as I did to the computer whiz. Only that she refused.”
“She wanted to remain independent,” Marleen explained. “Play Switzerland, if you want to call it that. Neutral ground. But yes, she knows—and I doubt she shed a single tear. That woman has a lot of baggage herself.”
I didn’t doubt that. “Let her extend the invitation,” I proposed. “Miller trusts her, at least as far as not to want to kill him outright. We’re, what? Two days’ drive away from Dispatch? If we leave at first light tomorrow morning, we could be there by nightfall and physically hand her the instructions that we want relayed to Miller and his gang.” And somehow include whatever Gita had planned in there as well.
It was Marleen’s turn to be skeptical. “I presume you’re volunteering for that trip?”
“Why not? I’m not exactly useful here, and Connel knows I’ve been Hamilton’s right-hand man for years. Besides, if she’s neutral, there’s no reason for her not to play along. In fact, she’ll likely reason it won’t hurt her and might even cement her neutral ground. She’s never given any indication that she cares much about what happens to Miller, and she detests Lewis. She’s the easy, obvious choice. No need to make this harder than it has to be.”
Guinevere continued with her staring but suddenly relented, getting to her feet in one fluid motion. Several bloody handprints remained on the floor where she’d sat. “Then let’s do this. If anything goes wrong—or they don’t bite—I’ll have your head on a spike instead.” That said, she walked past us into the corridor, disappearing into the foyer and wherever she pleased to retreat to beyond it.
I did my best to swallow the lump in my throat.
“You know she means that literally,” Marleen let me know.
“I figured.”
She waited for me to say something more—like reveal that I had only been kidding—but when I didn’t, she signaled for me to precede her out of the room. “Let’s crack the numbers. We want to give them a reasonable amount of time, but not enough for an extended detour. How are your copywriting skills? She’ll want those instructions to read like the generous offer they absolutely are.”
And I’d have to track down Gita so she’d let me know what else to relay to Rita… however I would manage that, with Marleen a constant presence at my side. Since I didn’t plan on sleeping any time soon, I was sure I’d come up with something until it was time to leave—because there was no other option. I was quite happy that my mind took that more as a “challenge accepted” than a reason for certain defeat.
It turned out, I needn’t have fretted so much. In the middle of finalizing the possible routes Miller’s party might take from Utah to Dispatch, Gita showed up, letting Marleen know that something or other required her immediate attention. I absent-mindedly explained to her what I was doing. Two hours later, she returned, bringing in the bona-fide printed invitations, on three different card-stock options, for review—and I found a different if similar envelope dropped into my lap as she waited for Marleen to show Guinevere the proof copies. No words were exchanged but Gita looked strung-up enough that I was afraid she’d have an anxiety attack from all the tension. Marleen noticed as she returned but quickly chalked that up to caffeine when Gita artfully spilled a fresh mug all over the cards, giving her the perfect excuse to scurry off to print the finalized, approved version.
By daybreak, I was back behind the wheel of the car we’d liberated from Dallas, if without the cable ties around my wrists this time. Marleen still didn’t trust me with a weapon but allowed me to roam freely, leading our three-car group heading north. While we paused for a short midday break under the sweltering sun, she called ahead, hashing out details with Dispatch for Rita Connel to meet us at the gates, personally, pretty please and thank you—n
o actual thank-yous mentioned. Since we’d gotten the call earlier from the bunker that satellite footage revealed that Miller’s people were involved in the cleanup effort of the century and unlikely to leave the Utah settlement today, Marleen decided tomorrow was early enough to drop off the invitation, turning our trip into an almost-pleasantly paced affair.
We rolled into Dispatch without further issues the next morning, beating the usual trader crowd clogging the roads, although I didn’t miss the guard vehicles ahead of us, shooing people away to make room for us. That wasn’t that out of the ordinary; the last two times I’d had to drop by Dispatch, they’d done the same for the army convoy as well. Rather than lead us into the settlement, Rita was already waiting for us by the gate with her second in command, a grizzled bear of a man with little regard for personal grooming habits, at her side. She motioned us to park in one of the allotted spaces usually used by traders who weren’t keen on entering the settlement, in clear sight of the guards but well out of earshot.
I could tell that she recognized me as I got out of the car next to Marleen. That certainly explained the pinched expression she quickly wiped clean as soon as she was face to face with Marleen. I could tell that there was no love lost between the two women, but then I’d yet to meet a female on this earth that Rita deigned to accept. I wondered if the two of them had history, remembering that Miller’s people had known Marleen before the shit hit the fan, and Rita wasn’t exactly outside of those circles... to a point.
Marleen sounded downright pleasant as she relayed the instructions to Rita, including a warning to make sure not to spill her guts about anything or anyone not strictly related to said instructions. Rita looked like she’d bitten into a foul lemon but readily agreed. She accepted the envelope I handed her, not batting an eyelash as she let it disappear inside her jacket. Whether she’d realized that there was a second envelope shoved underneath the flap of the first, she didn’t indicate.
As soon as we were done and our cars trundled south once more, I saw the guards rallying behind us, closing the roads and ushering people inside the fortress they had built over the last years. Marleen smirked as she listened to the radio calls going out on all frequencies, warning people to stay off the roads as much as possible, particularly for the Midwest. An hour later, Rita herself called in, letting us know that she’d delivered the message. Shortly after that, the radio operator from the bunker reported that two convoys were leaving Utah—the much larger one heading north, presumably to the Silo, while the second, drawn out to the point where it hardly looked like a group, was headed toward Dispatch. An hour after that, a chagrined voice let us know that they had lost the vehicles somewhere around the border to Wyoming, but Marleen didn’t look concerned. It was the right direction, and we would know once they arrived in Dispatch.
Apparently not keen on spending a second night in the car, we drove straight back to the bunker, arriving just after full dark hit. I did my best not to appear suspicious as I tried to keep track of where the cars were stashed and how we entered the bunker. After over a week of roaming the corridors freely, I now had a better mental map of the place, trusting I could escape if the opportunity presented itself. Except that I didn’t plan to, knowing that my sudden absence would be highly suspicious and possibly threaten whatever plan Gita was ready to enact. No, I hadn’t checked the envelope, and I also didn’t ask her once we were back and I passed her workstation on the way to my cozy hotel prison cell.
Nothing to see here. Nothing suspicious at all.
I should have crashed after not sleeping the other night and barely getting any rest yesterday, but my mind was on fire as soon as my body powered down. I had nothing to do but wait—and that was a terrible thing right now.
I found myself wandering the corridors into the common area in the middle of the night, half hoping to run into Malory once more, but the bar was empty, the lights turned off for the artificial night cycle. Why they still kept daylight hours in here, I had no idea. The tequila was calling to me again but I ignored it, instead hitting the gym for a late, long workout.
Marleen was waiting in my room when I returned, idly leafing through situational reports she must have gathered earlier. “They’re still heading toward Dispatch,” she let me know after I’d unfrozen from drawing up short, finding her there. “It looks like they passed by but didn’t head into the Wyoming Collective’s central town. Any comment on that?”
I shrugged. “Likely to say goodbye. I doubt they’re stupid enough to think they’ll survive this.”
“I remember they had that bunker close by,” she mentioned, way too casually.
I didn’t have to feign my utter lack of knowledge about that. “Lewis mentioned they spent the first winter there. No idea of the exact location. Somewhere in the foothills of the Teton range. She mentioned long hikes in several feet of snow that still give her nightmares.”
Marleen kept scrutinizing me, the reports all but forgotten. I held her gaze evenly, until she looked away to put the papers onto the side table by the bed. “Looks like all we can do is wait now.”
“You say that like that’s a bad thing.”
She laughed. “I hate being bored. One of the reasons I joined Guinevere in her crusade was because it sounded like I’d hardly get bored in all the chaos she was about to unleash. And look at me now, bored in my bunker.”
“I’m sure I can think of a way to keep you occupied,” I offered, going as far as to do a lewd eyebrow raise.
“You’d better.”
I thought I’d successfully thrown her off any possible trail she might have followed—not that I’d had much of a chance to leave one—until, seconds after my orgasm, with my mind swimming in blissful nothingness, Marleen whispered into my ear, “She dies, you die. You know that, right? I’ll make sure of that.”
All I could do was stare at her, too befuddled to come up with anything to say for several seconds straight. She stared right back, unblinking.
“As soon as they hit Dispatch, they’ll know I’m with you, all the way,” I finally managed to get out. “Miller doesn’t deal in second chances. If you don’t kill them, I’m as good as dead myself.”
Marleen ignored my protest. “I know you’re plotting something. I don’t know what, but I’m not gullible enough to buy your act.”
Had Malory ratted me out after all? But that would have implicated herself more than me. Had the bar been bugged? I doubted it, or else Marleen wouldn’t have had to fish like this. I realized it didn’t really matter what I said since I wasn’t quite sure how good of a liar I truly was—or whether she’d believe anything I said now. Or had, ever, for that matter.
When it became obvious that I wasn’t trying to defend myself, Marleen shoved me off, getting dressed without another word or even a glance back at me. The door closed behind her, yet didn’t lock like it had in the first days of my stay here.
I was truly and utterly fucked.
Or was I?
Fuck if I knew.
I had a feeling that, a week from now, it would all be over, one way or another.
There was nothing to do for me while we waited for our guests to arrive except to follow their progress across the country. They kept switching tactics, sometimes going as a group, sometimes dispersing to the point where it took Gita and the new tech guy hours at a time to find them again. They could have stopped and picked up support or gear several times along the route they took, leaving us none the wiser—not that we had good intel in the first place.
Marleen ignored me for the most part, cutting interaction down to bare necessities, but I could tell that she kept watching me. I didn’t quite understand the strategy behind her behavior. If she really suspected me of foul play, why warn me? Or did she expect me to rat out my conspirators? For the first time, I was glad that I’d been downgraded to little more than a message boy; that way, even if she tried to beat the truth out of me, I could hardly sell anyone out.
Four endless days later—and t
wo days ahead of schedule—we got confirmation from Dispatch that the invitation had been handed over. I expected Marleen to send the entirety of the bunker into some kind of lockdown or state of emergency, but the rest of the day passed without any changes to business as usual. Surveillance confirmed that they were taking their time, opting for a different route than Marleen had mapped for them, and needing an extra day to reach us. I couldn’t hold that against them. They weren’t stewing in a bunker, bored out of their mind, locked in with a bunch of madwomen hell-bent on destroying the world. The last dregs of what the people here considered civilization weren’t much better. When I visited the common area during the day, I saw Malory from a distance, but since she chose to ignore me, it was just as well. If anything, my prison cell at least felt familiar, if just as much out of this world. I thought about returning to the command center and chatting with Gita, but since she did her best to ignore me as well, I went back to watching nature documentaries and munching sandwiches.
What a way to spend what was quite possibly going to be the last day of my life.
We lost track of the small convoy advancing on our position pretty much as soon as they left their resting spot, but that was just as well. Mid-morning, Marleen finally raised the security status; not that it changed much. There were a few more guards patrolling in the corridors, but that was about it. It was a shame, really. Set up as the bunker was, twenty well-trained men could have easily held it against any number of opposing forces. From the way a few of the still-sentient soldiers watched me, I could tell that they could have done a passably good job at it, had they still given a shit. What I still didn’t get was why they let Guinevere run her dictatorship as it was, but I had a feeling I’d missed years of soul-crushing events that had reduced their souls to the bare will to live. It was borderline funny to me to consider that while they still thought they’d hit the jackpot, they were virtually the only people alive not making the best of it. I’d seen bone-deep despair over and over in so many people I’d crossed, but they were the only uniform bunch who’d accepted defeat. Compared to the garishness of the scavengers—or even the more toned-down “we got this” attitude of the settlers—it was rather more obvious than not that the others were locked out, but they were just as imprisoned as I was.
Beyond Green Fields | Book 6 | Red's Diary [ A Post-Apocalyptic Story] Page 19