Downs smiled, the relief obvious. "I appreciate that, Mr. Mayor."
Mr. Mayor? Hick filed that away. Perhaps Downs had more promise than he'd initially thought.
So, he went to find Jenson Bowie.
Martha lived with her family in the southern part of the town, at the far edge of Avenue G, half a mile west of the school and on a spur that bordered the old copper extraction works on one side and the low mountains on the other.
Hickman parked the car a hundred yards along the road and walked the rest of the way. He'd never visited the Bowie residence, and they were one family he knew little about. They had next to no online footprint and all the information he had was from less reliable sources—word of mouth mainly.
They lived in a two-story house with whitewashed walls and a balcony that ran all around the outside of the top floor. The place had a somewhat dilapidated look to it, but taking in the wire-topped fencing that ran around the outside and the complete lack of vegetation on all sides, he reckoned it'd be pretty easy to defend.
As if responding to his thought, a figure pushed open an upper floor window and leaned out. "Mr. Hickman! You payin' social calls now?"
It was Leonard Bowie, Martha's father-in-law who only answered to his nickname. "Just came to see how the patient's doin', Dave."
The old man waved an acknowledgment and folded himself back through the window. Hickman quickened his pace so he arrived just as the rusty iron gate swung back. Martha's husband, Joe, looked past Hickman. "You didn't bring no one with you?"
"Who were you expecting?"
The gate screeched as Joe pulled it shut behind Hickman. "Maybe that Dutchman and his bandits."
This was unusually provocative for the generally passive Joe Bowie. Hick contrived to look shocked. "Now then, Joe, Mr. Bekmann is working under my mandate."
"Fer now."
Good grief. He really had grown a backbone.
Hick shrugged as he followed the wiry man through a courtyard that housed a pickup, an SUV and a motorbike. All were caked with orange-yellow soil, to the extent that he could only guess what make the bike was. The logo might have started with a Y.
Bowie pushed a pair of doors that opened into a large living room dominated by a central chimney. The room smelled of burning logs, though he could feel a breeze coming through until the doors were shut behind them. On the far side of the brick-built hearth, he could see that chairs and a couch had been pushed aside to make way for a bed.
And on the bed lay Martha Bowie. She was a shadow. The formidable woman—in both personality and build—had been replaced by a husk of a person. She hadn't had time to lose a ton of weight, but all the vitality had gone out of her and she barely moved. If this wasn't a deathbed, he'd never seen one. Joe Bowie slid past Hick and into a chair beside her.
He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Leonard Bowie gesturing toward an interior door.
Following the old man, he found himself in a smaller room with a dining table and chairs on one side and a couch on the other. The outer wall had been replaced with a set of folding glass doors that gave an uninterrupted view of the mountains. "This here's the garden room," Leonard said. "I built it when we still had such a thing, but we ain't got time for sentimentality. So, what do you make of Martha?"
Hick shook his head. Truthfully, he'd been shocked at how she looked and, for the first time, believed that she might not make it. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.
Leonard pulled a chair out from under the table and invited Hick to sit down. "It sure is shockin'. I told her to be careful around the sick. She had the jab last year, but of course that was a different strain. It is flu, ain't it?"
"Of course. That's what Pishar says. It's ’specially virulent and seems to be affecting both young and old."
The old man nodded. "It seems plain to me it ain't no coincidence that it's happened just after … you know."
Hick hadn't considered that. "You mean, you think it's deliberate?"
"Don't you?"
"I hadn't thought about it."
Leonard chuckled mirthlessly. "And I had you down as a big conspiracy theorist. Well, maybe it was deliberate, maybe it weren't. Either way, there's a lot of sick folk out there and not enough medication to go around. Not enough antivirals or antibiotics."
"Antibiotics won't help the flu, it's viral."
"No, but they help with the pneumonia that follows."
Hickman leaned back and gazed out of the window. It was a bright day that ought to have been full of promise, and yet his feelings of misgiving weren't just because of the epidemic. He was so close to the total control he craved, so close to being able to bend this town to his will and make it into the perfect place for Sam to come home to, but he didn't feel as though he was on the cusp of victory.
"I'm organizing a foraging party. I'll add those drugs to the list."
"Well, that's good and all, but it might be too late for Martha."
Hick turned back to the old man who was gazing through the shut door to where she lay. "I'm sorry, Dave. If there was anything else I could do, you know I'd do it."
"Would you, Paul?"
"Of course. But … where's Jenson? I came to ask if he'd go back to work, but I guess that's not gonna be possible."
Leonard Bowie seemed to deflate, a decade falling on his shoulders and gnawing at his bones. "Oh, he's gone off on some damn fool wild goose chase."
"What?"
"I blame his mother. He was sittin' by her last night and she woke up. She asked him what he was doin', and he told her. Then she said why wasn't he lookin' for the sheriff and he said the sheriff was dead. Now, what d'you think she said to that?"
Hick groaned as his chest tightened. "I have no idea."
"She said he could still be alive, and Hope needs him. Maybe she was delirious, but she sure didn't sound like it. So, young Jenson was up on his feet like a jackrabbit on hot sand and he left the same night. Took the patrol car."
"But I was there—the bandits got on board the truck and shot Rusty. Don't you think I'd have gone after him if I thought he was alive?"
"Ask no questions, tell no lies, Paul. All I know is that Martha was determined and Jen seemed grateful to have something he could do. She told him not to go alone. Said to go find that fella …"
Hickman leaned in. "Who?"
"Can't remember … fella follows you about a lot. He was with you and Jenson at the farm. He paid Martha a visit yesterday. Big fella. Not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox."
So, that's how she knew. There was only one person who was at the hospital for the battle and who might have called on Martha Bowie with news of Rusty.
He could just imagine: "Oh, don't you fret now, Martha. Rusty aiten't dead. I sawed him, though I ain't supposed to say."
It was that idiot. It was Brain.
It probably didn't matter a whole lot. Martha would be dead within hours and Rusty's chances were slim at best. Hick would deal with Brain in his own time.
Hick was now the undisputed king of Hope. He heard the gate clang shut behind him as he walked away from the Bowie house, the sun dropping to the horizon and a smile on his face.
Chapter 12: Taken
Devon wrapped his arms around Jessie as they lay together in the hayloft of the large barn. It was dry up here, and he could feel the warmth of her body as he pressed himself against her, his nose tickled by her hair, breathing in a rich mixture of grass, body perfume and a hint of grease. The Jessie Summers he'd met and fallen in lust with would have been horrified to see how her future self had let her standards slip, but Devon thought the woman who'd emerged from behind the layers of makeup and hair conditioner was more lovely than any painted lady.
Not that he could see her at the moment. They'd been hiding here since the sun went down and hadn't dared to light a fire. Noah had led them to the barn when he realized they had no intention of returning to the farmhouse until they'd tried to contact Sam. It was on a neighboring farm
, abandoned on the night of the firestorm and safe enough unless they drew attention to themselves. He'd led them here and then slipped away to tell Anna what had happened.
"Are you absolutely certain it's her?"
She groaned. "Oh, Dev. How many times have I got to tell you? Yes, it was definitely Sam Hickman, there's not a scrap of doubt in my mind. And the last time I saw her, she told me about this boy who was sweet on her. His name was Jay."
"Poor kid. I guess we've seen what scared Marcus so much that he wouldn't come with us. I hate to think what they did to him when they came back and found the Land Rover gone."
Jessie rolled over, her eyes glinting in the light of the crescent moon coming in through the open hatch. "Yeah, I know. Utterly brutal."
"So, what are we going to do?"
"What do you mean?"
Devon ran his hand over her face, his fingers brushing her lips. "Well, if we had any sense, we'd get out of here, tell Hickman we didn't find his daughter and to hell with the consequences."
"We can't leave Sam, Dev. We just can't. You don't know her. She's not like her father—well, not much like him anyway. We've got to reach her somehow."
"Okay. We'll keep watch tomorrow and work out their routine. Maybe the—what did they call them? New Pilgrims?—are left unsupervised at some point." He realized how unhopeful he sounded, but he couldn't fake it. Not with her. "I'll help on one condition."
He felt her head move in his direction, her warm breath on his face. "Oh? And what would that be?"
"You stay hidden."
She exploded. "What? Jeez, Devon. Just when I thought you weren't like all those other creeps."
"Don't fly off the handle. But there's more than your life at stake." He ran his hands over her belly as if to reinforce the point. It was far too early for there to be any evidence of her pregnancy, but he imagined the embryo beneath his hand and stroked the place where it would be.
She deflated like a burst balloon. "Are you going to use that joker for the next seven months?"
"Yep."
"Well, we'll see. I'm not agreeing to anything until we've worked out a plan … what is it?"
Devon had jerked upright, staring into the darkness. "I heard something. Down there." He felt for his handgun then crawled as quietly as he could along the rafters toward where he knew the trapdoor to be. "Stay here," he whispered, and this time she didn't protest.
Wincing at every creak and bump, he climbed down the ladder. He could hear it clearly, now. Someone was fiddling with the catch on the barn door. Whoever it was out there was sniffing, as if they had a cold.
He flattened himself behind the door hinge as it inched open and a shape, dark against darkness, emerged. Devon raised the gun.
"Don't move," he said. "I may not be able to see you properly, but I won't miss from this range."
The shadow drew in a deep breath. "Devon? Is that you?"
"Noah? What the hell are you doing here? You're not due back till the morning."
The shape turned around and the dim light from outside caught the side of Noah Kurtz's face, glinting as it caught the tears flowing down his cheek. "Oh, my friend. They have taken Anna and the others. The Sons, they've got them!"
They sat around a lamp turned low, the only sound the hissing of the gas. Devon had gone outside and checked that no light escaped and, satisfied, he'd returned and joined the other two on the ground floor. It smelled of animals, but none of them felt like using a gas lamp in the hayloft.
"I knew something had happened as soon as I reached the front gate," Noah said. "I was carrying the lamp, so I could see it had been left open and I know Anna would never go to bed without shutting it. They were waiting for me, but I shut off the light and ran. I know the countryside better than they do, so I was able to get away into the woods, though it took me a long time to find my way back to a lane I recognized."
"I'm so sorry, Noah," Jessie said, putting her hand on his.
Devon ran his hands down his face, wincing at the sudden pain as he absentmindedly touched a half-formed scar. "What about Amanda and Margie?"
"I don't know," Noah said, shaking his head sadly. "But I hold out little hope. They obviously came after dark, so they must have surprised Anna and the others. Oh, my dear. My poor dear. May God protect her."
Sighing, Devon said, "Don't they say that God helps those who help themselves?"
"Some say that, but it is not in scripture. Our elders would say that we must rely on The Lord to save them or not, according to his will."
"And what do you think?" Jessie asked.
Noah shook his head. "I will not resort to violence. But I will do what I can, if it is in my power. I know it makes me a poor man of God, but I cannot bear the idea of being without her. And as for little Margie, I don't wish to imagine what her fate will be at the hands of the Sons."
Devon didn't want to imagine it either, but he couldn't help himself.
"Tell me, what do you know of their plans? The Sons?"
He shrugged. "I'm sorry, I can tell you little except that they are evil. Perhaps the end times are coming, at last."
"We met someone in Salt Lake City who thought that."
Noah glanced up at Devon. "And you? What do you think?"
"I don't know. It seems to me that whatever the reason for the end of the world, this is surely it. What happens next? That's the question."
"We hope that Christ will come again."
"But in the meantime, your wife and our friends have been taken and we must decide what to do about it."
Jessie rubbed her legs as she sat with knees under her chin. "What can we do when we don't even know where they are?"
"There is a jail in Wareham. That is where they will be, but we have no hope of getting them out of there."
"Well, hope or no hope, we've got to try," Devon said.
They were woken from a fitful sleep by the sound of a voice echoing along the lane outside. Devon and Jessie disentangled and sprang up, each grabbing for their weapons.
"People of Wareham, there is to be a public meeting today at noon. All are required to attend on pain of the severest sanctions. Meet at St. John’s." The voice was tinny and moving, and Devon realized it was being broadcast from a car. The message repeated a few seconds later, though quieter.
"Oh dear Lord," Noah gasped. "They are going to be publicly punished."
"How do you know this is about them?" Jessie asked.
Noah wiped the tears from his eyes. "Because there has only been one other public meeting and … and at that … a young man was … was … executed. He had defied the Sons." He whispered the last word as if he couldn't bear to say it out loud.
Devon felt a wave of shock run down his body. "Good grief, surely not? What can they possibly accuse Anna of that would justify such an extreme punishment?"
"They will accuse her of harboring fugitives, but they will execute her as an example. They wish for total domination, and Anna's life is a down payment on that. Look what they did to that boy yesterday. Brutal. My poor, poor Anna." Noah collapsed into a heap and sobbed as Jessie put her arms around him.
Getting up, Devon paced across the barn, clouds of dust blossoming in his wake, and peered through a gap between two planks. "Well, things were already impossible, but now we've got no choice. We've got to do something."
"What do you have in mind?" Jessie was holding Noah's head to her shoulder as he heaved with grief and hopelessness.
Devon shrugged and turned back to the gap in the boards. "I don't know, but I want to check on the Land Rover. If it's still there, we can at least get in and out quickly."
"You're going to try and rescue them?"
"I don't see what else we can do."
"You know it might be a trap to draw us out? They obviously had suspicions that there were people hidden among the Amish and I don't suppose they're going to be convinced that Amanda and Margie were traveling on their own."
Devon turned away, the early light run
ning like war paint down his face and seeming to pierce his eye. "A trap? Maybe. But I think Noah's right—it's mainly a show of strength. They probably think no one would be stupid enough to try and rescue their prisoners. Let's prove them wrong. It's just a pity …"
"What?"
"That the Amish won't help. I mean, Noah said the Sons are anathema to the very core of their beliefs. There are hundreds, thousands, of Amish, and how many Sons have we seen? A handful?"
"They are enough," Noah said, pulling himself away from Jessie and sitting with his back to the barn wall. "But I will come with you."
The Land Rover was where they'd left it, so they drove it around to Noah's farmhouse and he wept again at the devastation inside. But it was one small thing, lost among all the discarded detritus, that told Devon that Margie had also been taken and wasn't hiding somewhere.
Elsa lay on her face under the kitchen table.
He bit his lip and checked the clip on his Glock again. Yep, seventeen rounds. He had a spare magazine in his backpack but he doubted he'd have time to reload it in the heat of battle. There was every chance he'd be dead before he got that far.
When Noah had calmed a little, he and Jessie sat at the kitchen table while Devon watched from the back door. They didn't have much of a plan, but it began with Noah gathering some clothes for himself and his wife because if they did manage to free her then she'd have to flee. Their life in this cottage was over and Devon felt the weight of guilt settling on his shoulders. He bitterly wished he'd stood up to Hick—or that Jessie had—and he hated the man for setting in motion the events that had led to this desperate situation.
St. John’s was a Presbyterian church in the center of Wareham, and the only building big enough to hold a substantial proportion of the town's surviving population. Noah guessed it would take twenty minutes or so to drive from the farmhouse. "I have only ever walked in or gone by buggy."
So, they got into the Land Rover and set off with an hour to spare, picking their way along the back lanes. Noah had pinned together some black cloth to make hoods for himself and Devon so that they would look like Sons to anyone glancing at them. Given that most Amish would look away when they heard the rattling diesel of the old car's engine, Devon hoped this disguise would allow them to get close enough to be able to monitor what was going on at the church.
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