The Road to Wolfe (The Sanctuary Series Book 4)

by Nikita Slater

  "What’s not going to work?" Dolly, the tech wiz, asks curiously. "Are y'all clairvoyant, because she's barely said a word? I have no idea what's going on. But the baking is damn good."

  Dolly reaches out to take another cookie from the plate in the middle of the table. Christine, Tabitha’s wife, murmurs her thanks. She brought in the tray of baking, which she made herself.

  "Tabatha is correct, I do have an agenda. Maybe an impossible task but I'm going to ask your help nonetheless. We need change in the city and you are the right people to enact that change."

  Tabitha bursts out laughing.

  "Change," she says bitterly. "Change is what was supposed to happen in the New York Sanctuary. Instead, what we got was more oppression, more violence and a whole lot of death. The Primitives did us a favour by taking that Sanctuary down."

  Christine reaches out to take Tabitha’s hand, showing her support for her wife. There are murmurs of assent all around the table. No woman in modern times is exempt from the harsh realities of a male dominated world.

  "Tabitha has a valid point," I agree. "I’ve travelled to many Sanctuaries and I can promise you, the harsh patriarchal system that we've all gotten to know and despise is everywhere. What I'm proposing is radical and different, but it's not new."

  Again, murmurs rise up around the table. This time it's Dr. Sheela Summers who jumps in. "Hush please, I want to hear what she has to say. Bitching about an oppressive system and not doing anything about it isn't the right path and you know it. I love you Tabby, but shut up and listen."

  The voices fall silent and all eyes turn to me. The weight of responsibility settles heavily over me. Not just my responsibility toward the city, but toward these women. If my plan to form a female dominated city council using the talents in this room fails, then these women will be crushed.

  I force myself to continue, despite my trepidation over the scale of what I’m attempting to do. "Somehow, in a world meant to put us down and keep us down, you five women have managed to rise up and make careers for yourselves." My gaze travels to Hannah, an outsider in this group, but a valuable member just the same. “As far as I know, you are the most skilled in your professions in the city. We need you. What's between your legs doesn't make a difference when it comes to what's between your ears."

  "An idealistic sentiment, but ultimately worthless in a world completely dominated by warmongering men." Again, Tabitha speaks, her bitterness shining through. "I get what you're saying, I just don't think it's gonna work. Who'll let a group of women run an entire city? Impossible. Unheard of. Not going to happen."

  Anita, the engineer, speaks quietly, adding her voice to the mix. "Where is Warlord Wolfe in all this?" she asks, looking around the room as though he's about to pop out from the wall. "There's no way a powerful leader like him is going to let a group of ragtag women take over his city. I don't even know how you got us in the palace, let alone into the Warlord’s planning room. We’re all going to find ourselves arrested."

  Tabitha nods her head while Dolly reaches for another cookie, a look of concern bright in her pretty brown eyes. I open my mouth to speak, but it's Hannah who jumps in to defend our Warlord.

  "You don't know him." She pauses and then adds, "No one really knows him, except maybe Skye. She’s spent time with him. He's not the kind of person you think he is. Yes, he's brutal, intense, a killer. He's all those things. But he doesn't look at people and see things like gender, race, age or anything else."

  Tabitha snorts. "Yeah, he sees targets."

  Everyone laughs, including me, which eases some of the tension in the room. Tabitha isn't wrong.

  "Hannah's right though," I interrupt the laughter. "What Wolfe wants is a city that runs smoothly. He doesn't care who does it, who makes the changes, who runs the city. He may be the Warlord, but he’s leaving the task of putting the city in order in my hands."

  Now everyone's looking at me with a new kind of curiosity and I stand a little straighter under their collective perusal. I didn’t ask for this monumental task, but if I’m going to do it, then I’ll do it the way I want, which means pulling these talented women into my inner circle.

  "Who are you exactly?" This is from the outspoken Tabitha. Her straight black hair falls in a shiny waterfall down her back. She’s beautiful and delicate, but her spine is made of steel. "Why should anyone listen to you?"

  Her question drives home a thought that I’ve had over and over again, especially since the death of my husband. Who am I? I'm nothing really. I don't have any extraordinary skills. It took a lot of hard work and practice to learn how to protect myself, to defend myself and my team from the zombies. Other than that, I don't have much to offer. Unlike the women in this room, I'm not a doctor, a teacher, an engineer, a tech wizard, or an agriculturist. I hate cooking and cleaning, children make me shudder, and the thought of trying to organize an entire city when I can barely manage my own damn self makes me feel so far out of my depth I may as well be swimming in the middle of an ocean.

  Instead of saying all this, I simply say, "I'm the person who Warlord Wolfe chose for this project."

  Despite the tension between us, I believe Tabitha and I will make a good team. She's willing to challenge me, and probably anyone else who gets in her way. That sort of thinking leads to better decision-making.

  "Look, I know that it won't be easy. We're challenging a system that's been in place for over 50 years. When civilization fell, after the initial Primitive attacks, humanity had to find a way to survive and they had to do it quickly. This patriarchal, brutal, unfair system is what they found. That doesn't mean that we have to live this way forever. We can question things. That is our right."

  "That has never been our right." Anita’s quiet voice interrupts. "We’ve been oppressed from birth. We’ve spent a lifetime being treated like cattle. How do we challenge a system like that? What if we fail?"

  I nod thoughtfully. "Maybe we do fail. Maybe the Sanctuary falls, like so many Sanctuaries before it. Maybe we get carted off by Warlords and soldiers and forced to live in harems, under the thumbs of our oppressors. It's happened before; we’ve all had terrible experiences. But that doesn't mean we don't try, that we don't face injustice and try to change it. I know we’re tired, that we’ve spent a lifetime challenging a system designed to keep us down. But it's time to stop hiding, time to fight for both our survival and our human rights."

  I sit down, let my words sink in. Everyone looks serious as they think over what I’m promising.

  "All right," Tabitha says, leaning back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest. "Tell us what you have in mind. I’m not saying I’ll agree to any of it, but I'm willing to hear you out."

  I outline my plan for the city's future, both immediate and long-term. As I speak, I can see their expressions gradually change from skepticism to excitement. "Dolly, I'll need you working on the water treatment plant. We need to get everything back online. We need to get clean water running through the city again. Anita can help you with that. With you two working as a team, I’m hoping you’ll be able to systematically start solving some of our more pressing engineering and technology problem." Dolly and Anita look at each other and nod. I get the feeling that they've already made a pretty good solid partnership.

  I look at Hannah, who’s looking back at me, her gaze dull. She doesn't have to say it, I can read her mind. Hannah is a sweet, gentle soul. Her entire job before the fall of Santa Fe had been to keep the harem in order. To keep the women fed, entertained, educated and happy. She’d done a fantastic job. I fell in love with Hannah long before I fell in love with our husband.

  "Hannah, I want you to work with Christine on creating some kind of school system. She knows the job, but you know the people of this Sanctuary. You can talk to them about what they want for their children, and together you and Christine can design and implement educational programs. Basic to start and then more comprehensive as the city rebuilds itself. We need to get kids in classrooms. We need
to teach the next generation our skills, history, geography, everything – before the older generations die and take their knowledge with them."

  Hannah’s face lights up with pleasure, and she turns to murmur excitedly with Christine, ideas already pouring out from both of them. This kind of project is right up Hannah’s alley and I knew that she would love the idea. I give her a quick smile and then turn my gaze to Tabitha, the toughest nut in the room to crack.

  "You'll be working with Floyd, our food production manager. I think he can learn a lot from you." She narrows her eyes at me and I can tell that she's met Floyd before. "I know he's not an easy man. He's older and set in his ways. I don't think I've ever seen him work with a woman. But the for the sake of our Sanctuary, you need to be on the same page with him. I know nothing about food production, so I would be useless to you. You think you'll be able to work with him?"

  She thinks about it and then tilts her head to the side and shrugs. "I like to eat. I'm assuming he likes eating. I think we'll be able to find some common ground."

  "All I ask is that you try." I look around the room at the faces, still hopeful, still skeptical. These are the people that are going to help save our Sanctuary. I hope to god I know what I'm doing. "You all can go now. I’ll check in with each of you tomorrow. Set up meeting schedules, offices, job sites. Take the night to rest, spend some time with your loved ones, as we have a big job ahead of us and you're all going to be very busy." My gaze moves to Dr. Summers. "Doctor, our conversation needs to be a little longer, if you can stay behind for a few minutes, that would be great."

  "Of course," she murmurs.

  Everyone else gets up and leaves and I take the chair next to Dr. Summers.

  "It looks like you're settling into your situation pretty well," Dr. Summers points out. The last time she saw me I was raging against the Warlord and his soldiers, demanding to be let out of the harem and insisting that I would leave the city the first moment I could.

  I look at her and sigh heavily. "I have no idea what I'm doing. Wolfe has implied that if I do this, if I try my hand at putting the city in order, he'll…" I don't actually know how to finish that sentence. What will he do? He hasn't said he’ll let me go. He essentially told me that he wouldn't force me to have babies if I did this. I close my eyes for a second. Having a baby might be easier than rebuilding an entire city, with limited technology, a few supplies and only a handful of ragtag women who are completely skeptical that this can happen. What am I doing?

  Dr. Summers seems to understand my hesitation. "So far as I can tell, you're doing a great job. You've chosen some of the smartest people you have available to help you with the rebuild. It's going to be an uphill battle, but you're on the right track."

  I nod and thank her. "I needed to hear that."

  She smiles back at me. "What did you want to talk to me about? I already act as the city's doctor. There's another one here, a younger man, who handles the people that don't want to see me. But Wolfe has placed me in a position where I get final say over healthcare in the city."

  "I have a special job for you, if you're willing to hear me out." The doctor indicates that she wants to hear more so I continue. "Back in my sister’s Sanctuary, in Tucson, an accident led us to injecting a freshly turned Primitive with the blood that the vaccine is made of. She turned back into a human, but the toll the Turn took on her body eventually killed her."

  The intelligent Dr. Summers realizes where I'm going almost immediately. "You want me to work on a treatment, don't you?"

  "I know it's a long shot, but we already have the vaccine and soon, hopefully, it’ll be well on its way to being distributed throughout the world. What we need next…" I trail off as I think of my encounters with Primitives. They’ve destroyed our world, my family, everything. I have trouble separating the actual victims of the virus from the virus itself. To me, they are one and the same, though I know otherwise. I’m angry at all that they took from me, but also sympathetic. They didn’t choose the awful existence they’re now forced to endure.

  Dr. Summers seems to understand. "If we can find a treatment, we owe it to the poor people who were infected. No matter what they've done, they were human once. They were our family and friends."

  "Exactly." I'm relieved that she understands.

  "The only problem is, I'm not a virologist. Though I would've loved to specialize, my area of medicine is general. I figured that more people would benefit from that, living in the world we do."

  "I anticipated that, so I propose that we contact my sister’s Sanctuary and speak with the doctor there. I got the chance to get to know him over the course of a few months while he was coming up with the vaccine and he’s a brilliant man. I don't know if he's a virologist either, but he definitely knows a lot about the virus. Especially this one. I think he made it his personal mission to study it."

  She nods thoughtfully. "It can't hurt to ask. I'll start compiling a list of questions tonight. I suspect my conversation with Tucson’s doctor will need to be long and detailed."

  I smile my relief at her. This meeting has gone better than I could have possibly anticipated. I'm a warrior, not a diplomat. When Tabitha argued, I wanted to argue back. When Dolly ate the cookies, I wanted to take a handful too. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing and I think Wolfe is half insane for putting me in charge of this. But so far, so good.

  We stand together and I promise the doctor that I will get in touch with her when I’m ready to attempt radio contact with the Tucson Sanctuary. I leave the meeting room and glance around for my guards. They’re never far away.

  I spot Kingston and wave him over. "Where's the Warlord?"

  "He's working on the wall."

  I nod and head toward the door. "Then take me to the wall."

  Twenty

  "What are you doing?" I ask, approaching Wolfe from behind.

  He turns around, his golden eye roving over me from head to toe. He always does that, like a private inventory. I want to tell him that yes, all of my limbs, fingers, toes, ears and nose are still intact.

  "We're strengthening this section of the wall so the rebuild in the sections that fell will be stronger, sturdier. We don't want this to happen again. The Primitives shouldn’t have been able to overrun the city. Silas did a poor job of wall maintenance."

  At the mention of my husband’s name, I’m instantly annoyed. "Silas was a strong leader. You have no right to say otherwise."

  Wolfe says nothing and I’m forced to stew on my anger alone. I hate that he’s right. In some ways, Silas was a strong leader. He was patient and fair. He loved his people. But Wolfe is right, he didn’t put enough resources into security. He assumed his second-in-command, Wolfe, would take care of everything, but Wolfe could only do so much with the resources he had.

  I move to stand next to him and look out across the construction zone. We’re on the western section of the wall, facing the destruction caused by the Primitives as they forced their way into the Santa Fe Sanctuary. The men working construction are scattered across the wall. They look like tiny ants as they reinforce and reconstruct the wall using metal beams, the shells of old cars and concrete from fallen buildings.

  "I want to know why you're putting me in charge of fixing this city. I'm a terrible choice. I don’t know anything about anything."

  I can feel the heat of his gaze he looks down. Goosebumps of awareness rush up my arms and I try to rub them away. I rarely think of Wolfe as overly tall or big, maybe because I've gotten used to him. But when I'm standing next to him, his size suddenly seems to matter. He is a huge, broad and tall man. He has long limbs, hard slabs of muscle, and no fat on him. Veins rope his arms and hands, showing that he's had a hard-working life. I know he has, because I've often seen him working in the city. When I lived in the harem, Wolfe was a very hands-on second-in-command. He was always doing something. He was not one to give orders and then step back while others did as he demanded.

  "You had a meeting today. Did it go
badly?"

  I'm not surprised that he knows about the meeting, though I didn’t clear it with him first. Knowing Wolfe, the kind of man that he is, he would just assume I was doing the task he assigned, putting the city in order. He wouldn’t care how it got done. He's the type of person who likes to see action instead of words.

  Suddenly, his last words to me before he left the Tucson Sanctuary leap into my head. "Come find me when you're ready."

  He likes to see action. Maybe I wasn't giving him the right actions back then? I thought that by learning to be a warrior, by working by his side, I could give him everything he needed. But, at the time, I didn't know what I wanted from him. Not until he left. Then I realized I’d been looking at him as my protection. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe he wanted something more. Or maybe, yet again, I'm overthinking.

  "No, actually, the meeting went very well."

  "Then I fail to see the problem." His words are simple and dismissive.

  I stand rigidly next to him, fighting with myself. "Well done, soldier. You just backed me into a corner, didn't you? If I continue to complain about the burden you've dumped on my lap, I'll look petulant and difficult. Yet, if I lie and say that the meeting went badly, you’ll think I'm incompetent."

  I tip my head back to look at him and find him staring down at me, an inscrutable expression on his face. Again, he doesn't say anything, but moves his gaze back to the work progress.

  "What if I don't want this responsibility?"

  "Anyone who wants this kind of responsibility shouldn't have it."

  I frown. "Silas loved being Warlord. He loved running the city. Are you saying he shouldn't have had the position?"

  He doesn't speak and once more I find my frustration growing. Yet, often Wolfe’s silence speaks louder than words. I know that he's saying Silas shouldn't have been Warlord. And the more I see of the city, how easily it toppled, how badly protected it was when the Primitives arrived, I begin to agree. But it's hard for me to separate the love I felt for my husband from the disrespect I'm suddenly feeling for our former Warlord.