Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  “See what you missed yet?” Josephine was enjoying herself. She waved at the men by the gate.

  One of their ranks loped over but stopped short.

  Plastic. It was plastic wrap hanging from his uniform. Jacinta hadn’t killed them. The betrayal was like a freezing ice bath to his heart. He hung his head and swallowed hard. The lump in his throat threatened tears but he couldn’t cry. Not until his people were safe.

  “Let them go. They’ve done nothing to you,” he said. “They’ve planned for this for years. Let them go below ground and join their families. You don’t need them, you need me.”

  “Not my decision,” said Josephine. She leaned in close so he could feel her breath. “I can punt as well as the best of them. The decision will be made by these people…” She gestured to the Everlee contingent.

  “Your people stole from us, Alistair. How are they not culpable?” Agatha Everlee was confident as well as precocious. “Culpable” was a very grown-up word for so young a person. “We planned all our lives. We stocked our cellars and our pantry. You took it all. That was years of prep. My parents worked their asses off…” She looked at her mother. “Pardon my French.”

  Alice nodded. She was just a notch shy of smiling at her daughter.

  “They worked their asses off so we’d be safe if this shit ever rained down on us.”

  Alistair didn’t know what to say. He’d been caught red-handed. There was no getting out of this one anytime soon.

  “Do you know who my mother is? Do you understand what she sacrificed? Do you have any idea how smart and hardworking and amazing she is? Without her we’d be down in New Paltz with all the other civilians, wondering what had happened to our world. Instead we’re out here with the skills and nerve and, until a week ago, the supplies to make it through pretty much anything. Because of her. Look at her.” Aggie took a step closer to Alistair. “I said LOOK.AT.HER.”

  Alistair looked up at Alice. She wasn’t, as the saying had it, just a pretty face. She was a force of nature, just like him. With one marked difference. She’d won and he’d lost.

  “All I ask is that you give them a chance.” He bowed his head again.

  The Everlees moved into a huddle. Would they decide here and now? Would his people be released? Would his last act on Earth be a selfless one?

  On Alice’s command they moved further away.

  Alistair lifted his head. “Before you go. I have a question for you, Josephine.”

  “Try me,” she said.

  “Just tell me why. Why did you come here all these years?”

  Josephine Morgan bent down so they were eye to eye. “You know what, Alistair Lewk?” She smiled and waited. Was he supposed to reply? She didn’t speak.

  “What?”

  “You’ll never know.”

  She turned and walked away, her arm linked through Alice’s on one side and Agatha’s on the other leaving Alistair with his mouth hanging open.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Aggie held herself back as the grownups yakked it up.

  “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.” Jo rubbed her wrists. She had been locked in the stocks. The Wolfjaw whackos had thrown their dirty laundry at her.

  “We didn’t know you were in trouble.” Mom didn’t smile, but she wasn’t quite as weird and spacy as she’d been back at Betsy’s place.

  Herb took off his tie.

  Aggie had seen him when she’d been in the Council chamber, he was some kind of Wolfjaw lawyer.

  “Fat lot of good that did me.” He threw his tie on the ground.

  “No, no.” Jo hugged him.

  What in the world? Jo was hugging a Ridger?

  “If we had ever stormed the ramparts we’d have been able to pick you out of the crowd instantly. This is one instance of the ‘old school tie’ being used for good.” The two of them were grinning like crazy people. “Alice…meet Herb, also known as Herbert Pupérè. He’s one of us.”

  What did that mean, “one of us?” Aggie had one eye on the Wolfjaw prisoners, kneeling in the dirt a few hundred feet from them, but the other on this unfolding drama. Jo knew Herb. From before. Like, as in, they were friends or something.

  “We worked together in South America back in the day.”

  Herb had his arm slung around Jo’s shoulder. “You’re a madwoman, you know that?”

  “He was my husband Cory’s best friend.” Jo hugged him again. “Which is why…” She nudged him with her hip. They really were buds. She wasn’t kidding. They knew each other from way back. “I kept tabs on Wolfjaw because I didn’t want this idiot to land himself in more trouble than he could handle…”

  “Woah, lady. Who was the one slapped in restraints and facing a death sentence?”

  They nodded at each other, suddenly serious.

  “We owe you one, Alice.” Jo gave Alice a squeeze and a big smacky kiss on the cheek. “Nothing like death knocking at your door to sharpen the senses. Like I said, I owe you my life.” Jo gave Alice another squeeze.

  “Not me.” Alice looked to Aggie. “She was the one who came up with the game plan. We have her to thank for this bloodless coup.”

  The wind was hammering the trees, forcing them to bend and groan. Aggie didn’t need to tune in to Widget to know the hurricane had turned inward. Erin was coming to get them. “We have to go.” She felt like a broken record. But the clock was running down. If she had to say it a billion times and march them all out of there at gunpoint she was going to do it.

  “What do we do with them?” Alice pointed towards the prisoners.

  “Are they pigs?” said Hedwig. “Because if they’re pigs there’s only one way forward.”

  Aggie had played that game with Hedwig. She wasn’t messing around. If she thought that Alistair Lewk was “a bad man” she’d shoot him in the head and not lose one second of sleep.

  “Not all of them,” said Jo. “There are a lot of scared people in here.”

  “I’ll second that,” said Herb. “There are the true believers—I’m not sure I’d call them ‘pigs’—but they’re far outnumbered by the ones who’ve been blackmailed into staying.”

  “Hannah and Chloe said they were forced to come to our place.” Aggie didn’t want to defend the women who’d robbed their stores blind, but she had to tell the truth. “Chloe said her mother would be shot or hurt or something if she didn’t do as she was told.”

  “Yep. He’s been ramping up the threats since Manhattan began to melt.”

  “Is this new?” said Alice. “He hasn’t been keeping them prisoner for years?”

  Jo shook her head. “Yup, this is new. I mean, there are hundreds of people here, and they were here for a whole bunch of reasons, but most of them wanted to get away from it all. They weren’t true believers like him. They are a lot of hippie-dippie farming types who signed up; people who couldn’t afford to go it alone and figured they might as well throw their lot in with a bunch of neighbors. There’s a tiny handful who go for Alistair’s ‘rewrite the Constitution’ and ‘we’re the only way forward’ and ‘here’s a new set of laws which reach a higher standard’ schtick. But, mostly they’re ordinary people who got sick of seeing their neighborhoods get eaten up by the rich, their kids fall into oceans of debt, and their livelihoods dwindle to a fraction of what their parents were making in ‘the bad old days’.”

  Herb was nodding along. “I think the idea of Armageddon went to his head. He was going to save them all. And the other thing is a practical consideration: He couldn’t let anyone leave. He’s built a city. He needs people to run it.”

  “He’s really built a city?” said Alice. “That’s not some exaggeration?”

  “It’s stunning,” said Jo. “He had to show it to me. How could he not? It’s a masterpiece. The man’s a delusional narcissist, but he knows how to organize a construction crew.”

  “And build a water filtration system that could be used in a clean room,” said Herb. “Don’t forget that one. We had to lis
ten to him praise himself to heaven and back, on a nightly basis, about that achievement.”

  Herb sounded different. When Aggie had been a prisoner he’d been a kind of nothing presence; all wibbly and worrying, but he was neither of those things. He was an ordinary FBI agent, just like Jo. Wow. What was her world like? Her doddering neighbors, Jim and Betsy, were war heroes who could, just because it was necessary, sedate a dog and do surgery on its leg. Their other neighbor, who she’d written off as a flake and an airhead, was an FBI agent who’d been working undercover at Wolfjaw. Herb was just the latest in a long line of surprises.

  “We’re losing light,” said Hedwig. “What are we going to do with the mostly-not-pigs-sounds-like-there’s-at-least-one-in-the-mix? Because I want to get back to Paul.”

  Aggie smiled to herself. She hadn’t called that one wrong. Hedwig was sweet on her brother.

  “Give them a choice,” said Jo. “See who wants freedom, who wants to stay, and what they want to do with Alistair.”

  “You mean, let the people he hurt decide his fate?” Hedwig was really invested in this argument. She wanted justice in a big way.

  “Exactly. Let’s give him a real jury of his peers.”

  There was a lot of nodding going on.

  “Herb, you head for Wolfjaw Down. You. What’s your name?”

  “Sean.”

  “Sean, give Herb one of your guns.”

  Sean unwrapped a rifle from his back and handed it over to Herb.

  “Herb will deliver the news to the people who are already underground.” Jo nodded at Sean. “You go with him. You’re young and fit. He’s going to need back up. Try not to shoot anyone. I’ve worked hard to keep this place free of violence. I don’t want it going up in smoke at the last minute.”

  Herb and Sean headed west, towards “Wolfjaw Down”, whatever that meant.

  “You and you.” Jo pointed to the professor and the general. “Decide what we’re going to do with the sick soldiers. They’re by the gate. They haven’t come in and they haven’t gone out. I thought they’d be at my place by now, but it seems not.”

  “Oh, there are sick soldiers at your house,” said General Hoyt. “These are the soldiers who came with you to Wolfjaw. They were taken into the woods to be massacred, but it seems Alistair’s 2IC wasn’t able to carry out her orders.”

  “Jacinta didn’t follow one of Alistair’s orders?” Jo was bug-eyed. She knew these players. By name. Something had just happened that shocked her out of her gourd. “Find that woman and give her a medal. Wowza! Jacinta! You go, girl!”

  Professor Baxter held up her hand. “I don’t know what she looks like and I don’t have a medal.”

  “No, no,” said Alice. “It’s an idiomatic expression. Jo was being hyperbolic. You don’t need to do either of those things.”

  Aggie had heard her mom’s stories about translating for Professor Baxter but she’d never seen it in action. She was good. Like fab, actually.

  “Okay. Well. Back to business,” said Jo. “Direct the sick soldiers to my place, I guess. They can’t go into Wolfjaw Down. Whoever’s left standing won’t allow it. Even if they’re the good guys. They’re fanatical about not letting sickness inside Wolfjaw.”

  The professor and the general turned and made their way to Wolfjaw’s gates. Aggie wasn’t sure if she was imagining things, but it looked like the professor was holding the edge of the general’s sleeve; like holding his hand without holding his hand. Well. Heck. Everyone was pairing off. She had not seen that one coming.

  “You. Hedwig is it?” Jo had taken charge, but no one seemed to mind. “I want you to come with me.”

  “I’m good,” said Hedwig. “I’m going to stay here for now.”

  “I need your help,” said Jo. “I’m going to give the prisoners—apart from Alistair, he’s a special case—a choice. I can’t take on that many people on my own. I need you to help me separate the sheep from the goats.”

  Oh, shoot. Pippy. Barb, the Kind and Strange Loon, had said she had to get Pippy back to Midge.

  “We have to get going, now,” said Aggie. “I am literally going to shoot the next person who derails me. I’ve been trying to get you numbskulls to safety for my entire damned life it feels like. Now, go!” Aggie wasn’t sure she’d ever shoot anyone again—killing Arthur had been enough for her—but she sure wanted to.

  “Honey?” Her mother took her by the arm and led her away from the crowd. “I’m not coming back.”

  Aggie was shocked into silence.

  “I have work to do.” Alice sighed. “I know it sounds like every other time I’ve ever said this to you, but this time is different.

  “It’s always different,” said Aggie. “There’s always someone else who needs you.”

  Alice’s eyes filled with tears. “The world is melting; folding in on itself. If it was just buildings and roads and cars and planes, it would be one thing. But it’s bigger than that. Everything that melts is melting into the ground and making its way into the water. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the seals and gaskets and valves and locks that hold all the world’s most dangerous chemicals at bay are going to melt, too. It’s not just the radioactive isotopes pouring out of Indian Point that are going to kill us. It’s the infectious diseases at the CDC; it’s cargo ships carrying who-knows-what; it’s deep sea drills and municipal sewage plants and every medicine in every home and hospital and dispensary around the world. Release all that into the mix and we’re all doomed. MELT is eating the plastic on land and sea, being spread through the air by birds, working its way towards us.”

  Aggie nodded. Barb had told her the decision would be hers. She hadn’t understood what it meant at the time but here she was with the biggest decision of her life. Should she guilt Mom into coming back with her? She could. She could argue back and tell her mother what it was like to be motherless. Or, worse, have a mother who was serially absent. If she told Alice Everlee how scared she was that Dad might slip away from them, she’d come. She’d have to. She was driven to save the world, like Michael Rayton had said, but she wasn’t heartless. If she told her mom that Agatha Everlee actually needed her help…

  No, it was stronger than that.

  If she told her mom that she wanted her to help her save their family, Alice would put the whole world to one side and come back to the mines with her.

  Alice reached out to touch Aggie, but Aggie pulled away. She hadn’t decided if she could say what she wanted. If her mother touched her it would be unbearable. Why want something you could never have? She wanted to know her mother loved her more than anything; more than the world; more than THEM OUT THERE. That was all. It was selfish and petty and childish. She had to let it go.

  “The worst of it is this, my porcupine.” The tears ran down Alice’s face. “This is my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” Hedwig had been hovering.

  Aggie didn’t care. She’d lost the argument. Mom wasn’t going to come with her.

  “It’s a long story,” said Alice.

  “That’s cool,” said Hedwig. “The end of the world is the right time to tell all. Make it short. Give us the thumbnail. If this is down to you—if you brought about the end of mankind—I’d kind of like to hear it.”

  Oh, wow. Was Hedwig going to judge her mother one of her “pigs” and execute her? Aggie wasn’t that mad at her mother. Mad, yes; murderously furious, no.

  “She doesn’t mean it.” Aggie pushed Hedwig away from her mother. “She’s always saying she’s responsible for everything. It’s just her thing. Take no notice…”

  “In this case, it happens to be true.” Alice wiped her face.

  “Hit me,” said Hedwig. “I’m all ears.”

  “I was raped when I was eight.”

  Aggie stopped dead. Her back was to her mother, her hand in the middle of Hedwig’s chest. She could feel her friend’s heartbeat speed up.

  “Go on. So far it doesn’t sound like you’re the villain of the piec
e, but I’m listening.”

  “The man who raped me had a daughter.”

  “Ugh. I bet her life was shit,” said Hedwig. “Child rapists don’t tend to stop at one.”

  “Correct. He’d abducted and raped many young girls. I was one in a line of twenty or more.”

  “There’s a pig who deserves to die,” said Hedwig.

  Aggie couldn’t deny that. In fact, given the chance, she’d have pulled the trigger herself.

  “Bill—my husband, you’ve met him, the gentlest man on Earth—he wanted to save me. When he found out what happened, he went to Guatemala, found my rapist and killed him.”

  Aggie’s own heart had outstripped Hedwig’s now, though they were both in danger of going into cardiac arrhythmia.

  “Okay. Still doesn’t sound like your fault, but I get the sense you’re not done.”

  “Fran, my assistant, was Mateo’s daughter.”

  Aggie spun around. “Fran?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Fran was related to the man who raped you?”

  Hedwig stepped around Aggie and walked towards Alice. “I think I know what you’re going to say. The daughter did something to you or your family and you’re blaming yourself because she blamed you? Something like that?”

  “Far worse,” said Alice. “She released MELT into the world because of me. If I hadn’t run away. If I’d done what my mother told me to do. I wouldn’t have been up that tree. He’d never have found me. He wouldn’t have raped me. Bill wouldn’t have found out. He wouldn’t have killed Mateo. Fran wouldn’t have been orphaned and MELT wouldn’t have been released.”

  “May I?” Hedwig opened her arms. “Are you a hugger?”

  Alice shrugged.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes. If it gets too much, let me know and I’ll back off.”