by Pike, JJ
Aggie didn’t want to lose her temper, but she was tired of well-meaning adults talking to her as if she had no clue what was going on and hadn’t already thought several of the things they were taking pains to point out. Of course she wanted to do a risk-reward analysis. She wanted to know if she was risking her brother’s life or was going to be rewarded by his survival. “So? How risky is it to move him?”
“You want me to give you odds, but I think we’re beyond that now. With the threat of fallout we have to move sooner rather than later, even if we are exposing him to possible infection.”
That’s what she wanted to know. Would it have been so hard to say that up front?
“Agathon…you’re a tad crabby. Dial it down. You’re going to trip yourself up if you allow your emotions to get the better of you. Everyone’s tired. That means you’re going to make mistakes unless someone takes charge and keeps them on track. That someone would be you, Aggmeister. Y.O.U, you.” Right on the money, Dad. Aggie wiggled her shoulders in an attempt to release some of the tension that had been building since she watched him walk away.
There was a scream from the woods. No, not one scream. A stream of screams, all blending together, getting closer. Aggie grabbed her rifle and ran for the door.
“Betsy!” It was Mom. She was yelling at the top of her lungs. “Betsy! We need you. Now. Fran’s…” Alice emerged from the trees, huffing and panting, her hand on her side as if she had a stitch. She’d been running. Hard. She looked through Aggie as if she wasn’t there and towards the house. “Where’s Betsy? We need her. Now.”
Betsy was out the front door and at their side in a flash. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
“You have to come. Fran’s sick. I think she’s taken an overdose. We were talking and she stumbled and then Bill was saying we needed to make her throw up and she collapsed and we did it. We made her evacuate the contents of her stomach, but if he’s right and she was taking pills for a while I’m not sure if we were fast enough. Do you have a lavage kit? Charcoal? Can we manually pump her stomach? Come on. We need you. It’s terrible. She’s so pale. I don’t know what got into her. She made it all the way out here only to…”
A single shot echoed through the trees.
Aggie took off followed by Alice and Betsy.
“Please,” she said. “Please, please, please don’t hurt my dad. Please, please, please.”
CHAPTER TWO
Alice Everlee had trained for exactly this: Disaster on a scale most people never dream of, yet here she was scared to death that it would have all been for nothing.
There had been a shot. Someone in the vicinity had a gun and they had discharged it. It had been a single shot. Not a volley. Not a barrage. Just the one shot. And no answering shot in return. It hadn’t come from the road or the creek or the woods the far side of Betsy’s house. It had come from the direction she’d just been running. From behind her. From the place she’d last seen Bill.
Agatha had taken off immediately, running towards the danger. So like her middle daughter to take on the role of hero. She hadn’t blinked. She’d just run.
Betsy hadn’t hesitated either when she got the call to arms. She grabbed her medical bag and headed for the path that wound through the trees just as fast as her legs would carry her, but she didn’t have Aggie’s speed.
The old woman was doing her best to keep up with Alice, but she was neither sure-footed nor fleet of foot. Alice didn’t want to leave her stumbling in the woods when there was every chance she could trip and break a hip, which would mark the beginning of the end for the old woman.
Then there was the question of who had fired the shot. Were they still in the vicinity? What did they want? Were they looking for food? Water? Supplies? Oh, dear God, Aggie had run straight towards the shooter.
She looked to Betsy, then back at the path. Her heart raced and the world around her tilted and spun, threatening to blot out all consciousness. She couldn’t go backwards; couldn’t allow the darkness to take over. Her panic attacks had disappeared since the tunnel collapse under K&P. She’d come to think of that moment—when Barb pulled her to safety—as a kind of rebirth. The new version of Alice Everlee didn’t black out; didn’t skirt the difficult issues; didn’t hand off her responsibilities. The new Alice was present and accounted for, no matter how tough it got. She couldn’t go back to her old self. That meant facing facts, for one thing.
It should have been her at the front, leading the charge, rather than Agatha, but that’s not how it had played out. She was bringing up the rear with the old nurse who might—fingers crossed, please God let it be so—save Fran.
The truth under that truth? Aggie could take care of herself. Her middle daughter was a mix of the best of her and, better yet, the quintessence of all that made Bill Everlee such a good, kind, decent human. Alice had to trust that and release Agatha, mentally. Her own job, in this moment, was to keep Betsy safe. They had to move as fast as they could while maintaining cover, keeping their eyes peeled for snipers or sharpshooters, and attempting not to fall.
She couldn’t think too much about the gunshot. If she did her brain immediately went to Bill and his terrible injuries. If she spent too long thinking about those—his missing right hand, his mangled left—she might come apart at the seams. Crazy dog-loving Barb had said he would survive.
That wasn’t all Barb said.
Alice tried to shut down the thought, but in the usual way of icky-sticky-tricky thoughts, the harder she tried to get it to go away, the harder it insisted it should be allowed time and space in her mind. She couldn’t remember exactly what Barb had predicted—probably closer to “prophesied” in Barb’s mind—but the fact that Bill would make it was branded into her brain.
Then, as if she was bent on mocking her, Barb’s voice played in her head, as clear as if she’d been standing in front of her. “You’re going to find your family. I’m sorry about the deaths. Not all of them will make it. But you will and your husband will.”
No blacking out. Stay in the moment. You’ve got this. You’re a new woman. Come on. Say it with me: I am Alice Everlee and I can do this. I am not going to mess up, fall down, or lose it. I’m going to pull through. Or push through.
In Spanish she would say “va a voltear la tortilla” she was going to “flip the omelet” or the “tortilla” (they meant the same thing), but the English equivalent didn’t come to mind.
Her insides—from the back of her throat which was simultaneously dry and filled with iron filings, all the way down through her churning gullet, to her acid-swirled stomach, and her spasming intestines—were in a state of riot.
The shot had come from the direction where her mutilated husband sat in the underbrush, cradling a sick girl who’d spewed up a frothy mess of half-digested pills.
Bill—her dearest darling only Bill—had saved Fran’s life. She had been staggering and slurring when they set off down the path towards Jo’s place. Alice had put it down to exhaustion. They’d all endured so much. She’d barely begun to ask Fran her story, but if it was anything like her own experiences over the last ten days, the young woman would have seen things that no one ought to see: the dead and dying, their life’s work brought to ruin; the world on fire and no solution in sight. Bill thought she’d overdosed but that was impossible. Fran wasn’t the type. She was feisty, fierce, opinionated, smart. She’d never do anything as cowardly as take her own life. Even if she’d ripped the lid off Hell itself and looked into Satan’s pit she wouldn’t have taken the easy way out.
And yet…
Alice had stuck her fingers down Fran’s throat, causing her to gag and retch and empty her stomach out onto the ground, because Bill had seen what she had not: that her assistant was in desperate need of help.
Please, she thought, please, please, pleasepleaseplease don’t let anything have happened to him. They’d come all this way. He’d raced down to Manhattan to save her (so stupid, so lovely); she’d nursed him in Charles’ mansion (no, mansio
ns, plural. She was grateful Charles Sullivan III had gotten her off Manhattan even though his people had tried to blow her and Bill out of creation, but the man ranked up there as one of the strangest humans she’d ever encountered); then they’d fought their way from one danger to another (military men, bikers, bombs, etc.) to make it home to their children. He couldn’t leave her now. Not like this. They were a team, she and Bill. They’d never let the other one die. If they had to go, they’d go together.
Betsy was having trouble keeping up.
The two women paused behind a tree.
“We came out into the open without weapons,” said Betsy. “We’re vulnerable out here. Visible. I don’t like it.”
She was right. They were unarmed. Alice had let her guard down when Fran had appeared. The happiness she’d felt when she heard the K&P team—battered and bludgeoned, but still standing—was just down the road had made her forget herself.
She had so many questions. Not just the big-picture questions: How did this happen? What went wrong? Is this truly the MELT we manufactured—not possible, there had been too many tests and checks and dummy runs—so, was Christine Baxter right, had some maniac tampered with the formula? Far more pressing were the intimate, small-picture worries that had infested her heart: Are we safe? We, as in, us. The Everlees. Me and my children? Are we safe?
“Should we double back?” said Betsy. “We’ve had some brigands and ne’er-do-wells turn up since you’ve been gone.”
There hadn’t been another shot, but that might be because their assailant was picking them off one by one. Go back? Go forward? Head to the house for guns and ammunition? No, she couldn’t let Aggie go it alone. No matter how grown-up and capable her daughter, she shouldn’t be the one to carry this load.
“We press forward,” she whispered. “Have you caught your breath?”
Betsy nodded, shifting her medical bag from one hand to the other.
“Good grief,” said Alice, “let me take that for you.” She didn’t listen to Betsy’s protests. The bag wasn’t heavy, but if anyone should carry it, it should be her. If Betsy tripped she’d need both hands to break her fall.
“You go on ahead,” said Betsy. “I know you’re anxious to see Bill...”
Alice shook her head. “Safety in numbers.” She picked out the next large tree trunk, showed Betsy where they were headed, then hunkered down and sprinted. She flattened herself against the tree.
She turned in time to see Betsy catch her foot in a root and go sprawling onto the hardened ground.
Alice ran into the middle of the dirt path. “My dear, are you hurt?” She wrapped her arms around the old woman and helped her sit up.
Betsy’s pants were torn and her calf was bleeding. The skin of the old is so fragile, so prone to breaks and tears. If Betsy had been 20 years younger Alice wouldn’t have been worried, but a gash like that—on someone who’s immune system might not be running on all cylinders or whose circulation might be a little sluggish—could lead to infection, sepsis, gangrene, or death. She cracked Betsy’s bag and together they cleaned and bound the wound.
Betsy didn’t wince, cry out, gasp, or complain. Her generation—hard-scrabble war heroes who’d done everything in their power to make a life for themselves—weren’t bellyachers. Even so, there was no way she wasn’t in a great deal of pain.
The meds bag was crammed with painkillers. As in, honking great horse pills that could knock a giant off his mountaintop. Since when did Betsy and Jim have a supply of oxy? She offered a bottle to Betsy, but the old woman pushed it away.
“I don’t take what I don’t need,” said Betsy. “And I never touch narcotics. It’s part of the program.”
Alice knew Betsy was a teetotaler but it had never occurred to her that the ban on alcohol included a ban on certain medications. She popped the bottle back in the bag and brushed herself down.
They’d been out in the open, right in the middle of the walkway, for several minutes—perhaps as many as ten—but there’d been no shots, no footfall, no people creeping up on them. Was it possible the shot had been from a hunter, rather than a predator?
What was this? A new way of looking at the world around her?
Bill said she saw the bad in all things, but that wasn’t strictly true. And here she was, having a positive-possible thought, rather than her usual doom-is-inevitable one. She tried it on for size—flexing the hope that things weren’t about to get much, much worse—this way and that. What if—and there was plenty of data to support this hypothesis—what if there was a man or woman out there looking for food? Wasn’t that much more likely—especially seeing as there had been no more gunfire—than her “sniper on the loose” theory?
Did New Alice see the glass half full of crisp, clean water rather than filled with mud and dirt and worms?
Instantaneously, there was an avalanche of scoffing and tutting way in the back of her mind.
If New Alice honestly believed they were “safe”, Old Alice wasn’t too sure this new version of herself would make it to the end of the day, let alone the end of the weeks and months to come. The world was full of treachery. The odds were stacked against them. Betsy herself had said they’d been overrun with looters in the week since she and Bill had been absent.
Better to think both things were possible: it could have been a hunter who had fired that shot but it might have been a killer, looking to wipe them all out and live in Jim and Betsy’s house. Or, for that matter, Jo’s place. Betsy had hinted that there’d been more than one incursion. They couldn’t let their guard down now. Fifteen minutes of “no attacks” didn’t mean there were none to come. She had to get Betsy to the safety of the trees and plot from there.
Betsy patted Alice’s calf to draw her attention. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you. I bet Aggie has scared them off. She had her rifle, remember? She’s something to be reckoned with.” Betsy looked a little green around the gills. She swallowed a couple of times and forced a smile. “Your middle daughter has been remarkable, but you wouldn’t expect any less, I’m sure. You know what she’s like. Utterly remarkable. We wouldn’t be in such good shape without her.”
A snapshot of her family popped into Alice’s mind: Paul spread out on the breakfast table, Midge with her damaged brain and surgical helmet, Petra and her yet-to-be-born baby, Aggie charging towards a bullet without a second thought. Add in a damaged Bill and a frantic Alice and what did you get? Not the family most people dreamed of, but to her it was a vision of loveliness. Her children hadn’t given up. They’d done as she’d taught them and fought back.
Aggie had mentioned invaders; they’d been sent packing. Someone had shot Paul but he’d lived to tell the tale. Then there was the question of their cabin: How had that become a charred, flattened piece of nothing? No one had bothered mentioning it since she and Bill had returned. Was it so low on the list of calamities that it didn’t warrant a mention? Now wasn’t the time to shower Betsy with questions, but she had a million.
She slid her arm under Betsy’s armpit. “Shall we?”
Betsy heaved and puffed, tilting her weight to the right, but her leg gave out under her and she went back on her butt with a nasty thump and a harrumph. “I think I’ve sprained my ankle. It hurts something fierce.”
Alice crouched and undid Betsy’s laces. For the first time since she’d fallen, Betsy made a noise. It was tiny—just the most miniscule intake of breath—but that meant she was in agony. Alice did her best to take Betsy’s shoe off gently, but by the time she was done her neighbor had her eyes closed tight and was visibly sweating.
Her right foot was already swollen with bands of green and purple streaking across the arch.
“I’m going to feel for a break.” Alice put her hand on top of Betsy’s foot.
Betsy swore, then apologized, then put her head back so she was looking at the treetops, rather than at her neighbor, and swore some more.
Both women laughed, though Betsy’s laugh was between gritted tee
th and tears. “Son of a gun,” she said, “that’s broken alright.”
“Let me run ahead and see how they’re doing then come back and get you.”
“I’ll be fine.” Betsy pushed herself onto one side. Crazy broad. She was going to try to get up and limp to her patient.
Alice knew it was useless to argue. If she left Betsy to her own devices she’d put pressure on that foot. She couldn’t let that happen. She hunted through the undergrowth but could find nothing straight enough to act as a splint. Eventually she found a fallen branch that could double as a crutch. She took Betsy’s sock and wound it around the top so she wouldn’t have a jagged piece of wood jabbing her in the armpit, but it was a sorry excuse for a prop.
Together they got Betsy upright. She was hopping, not walking. It was going to take them forever to get anywhere.
The howl that rolled down the path towards them splintered the trees, cracked the branches, set the leaves on fire. It was Aggie. Howling.
The dread darkness, thick as tar and sickly-sweet as molasses, ran down Alice’s spine and back up, threatening to part her from her limbs and turn her into a stringless puppet who flopped to the floor, useless to all.
“Go!” Betsy pushed her, bringing her back into her body. “Go! Now! Don’t let them hurt Aggie! Go! Run.”
Alice did as she was told, though her mind was a blank and her heart a steam engine. She ran.
CHAPTER THREE
The sound of an automatic weapon being discharged bounced around the bluff that overlooked the highway. “Which idiot’s still firing? Tell them to stop, immediately.” Alistair Lewk, the leader of Wolfjaw Ridge, had a following that bordered on a cult. What he said was gospel. That was the way he liked it: taut and tight. No room for questions meant no room for error. He had a plan and he intended to see it through to the end. He and his squad had been guarding the stretch of highway closest to the Wolfjaw turnoff, waiting for passing traffic that they could pick clean. With the arrival of the military convoy they’d hit the motherlode.