The Secret: A Thriller (27 page)

That brought a faint grin. “Yeah. Exactly. Look, Ashton, I haven’t been telling people about any of that. And
my
men kept dying, too. Finally I had only two men I trusted to operate the radio and keep their mouths shut. One of them disappeared. He’s probably dead. The other, well, Bob ate him early on. Smithers. Didn’t seem to want to live. I think he made sure he wouldn’t. So, it’s been a while since we even tried to find out what’s going on outside Henge.

“So, now you know. I ask you again, Mr. Ashton. As far as I can tell you’re the best option we have to lead these people, who for all I know are the last humans—or nearly—in the world. Henge was different. Whatever it is, it probably started here. And here at least, some people lived. Which makes everybody we have left a precious resource.

“Now. What would you have me do?”

I wanted to go hike in the woods, maybe even cry a little. Or yell at someone. Or maybe just kill fucking Slimy Bob Germain, then take a nap. But I wrestled my mind back to a semblance of focus. “First. We’re not the only survivors. At least one other group is still alive.”

His eyes lit up, but I shook my head. “They’re not friendly. They’ll be here tonight. I’m planning to use that to get rid of Bob. He can’t…we can’t let him continue.”

He stood there, blank faced. I thought about
pushing
him, but I was pretty sure he basically agreed with me about Bob. After a moment I continued, my voice as bland as I could make it. “Arm yourself as best you can. Help me round up anybody else you think might be useful, so Doc Sullivan can dose them. Or if we need to we can break some less-important fingers to get people riled up. With me?”

“Yes, sir,” he said after a moment, then gave me a quizzical look. “About the fingers…is it true you broke Doc Sullivan’s arm? He mentioned it before he stuck me with those needles…I didn’t dream that part?”

“Yeah. Not a dream.” I stood there looking at him. This wasn’t the time to go into that. So I gave a slight shrug. “Well. I thought of a better plan later.”

He gave me a puzzled look, then twitched a grin. “Got it. I’m going to guess there was a personal element?”

I shook my head. In the heat of the moment it had seemed like a good idea. “One more question, Captain. Tell me something—the radio operator who disappeared on you? Was his first name Jerry? White-blonde hair? Jaw that looked like it might be two feet long?”

McDermott blinked. “That’s the one. Good man.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “That he was.”

McDermott nodded and turned to leave. “McDermott?” I asked. “Can you tell people this dustup is Eisler’s plan? I’m trying to—”

He stopped, turned his head, and gave me the barely-there grin I was beginning to recognize as the most open expression he preferred to show. “Outstanding. Never liked
him
either.”

Then he left.

I went to go see who else could be irritated or broken free—at least temporarily—from Bob’s control.

The arm thing, I reflected,
had
been sort of excessive. On the other hand I figured Tim had it coming for the stunt he’d pulled to get me to let him leave the mountainside. He hadn’t seemed to disagree. Telling me I had a chance to get Robbie back had been…not okay.

Focus!
I told myself.
Later
for the interpersonal stuff. Tim and I could hoist a few beers and settle it some other time. Maybe. Today we had a rebellion to manage.

I
t was time. I got McDermott and his men moving first, then went to find Tim.

“Got those syringes ready?” I asked him, poking my head into the classroom he’d set up as a sort of clinic.

He held up a hand, checked the pulse of a woman lying on a pallet (she didn’t look good, but I recognized Mrs. Carmody, who had given me hell for walking across her yard as a teenager), and nodded in satisfaction. “This one’s going to—”

Mrs. Carmody shrieked, then writhed. Tim grabbed her arms. “It’s okay, Sherry,” he told her. “You’re waking up from something that’s been…like a dream. It’s time to open your eyes. It’s time to help fix things.”

I stepped inside, leaned against the wall and watched him work with her. He and I had some
things
between us, some
things
that we hadn’t talked about. And now wasn’t the time. But I understood why he’d done what he’d done, and right now it was good to see him working for what I was fairly sure was the right side. Mostly.

Eventually Mrs. Carmody (I’d never known her first name before this, or even suspected she might have one) calmed, insofar as she was capable under the influence of a massive dose of stimulant, and Tim gave her what sounded like a well-rehearsed spiel. The world had changed, people had been in her mind, she could fight back. It was Eisler’s plan. She should think about how much better things would be with the Chief in charge.

He got her up and walking out of the room, weaving slightly as she walked down the hallway, and sat down himself with a heavy sigh.

“First, do no harm,” he quoted.

I studied him. “Think she’ll be okay?”

A shrug. “Maybe. She’s got an irregular heartbeat. Shouldn’t be a problem, but we’re all under a lot of stress—actually the people who seem calmest, the ones in an apparent stupor? I think that’s mostly Bob’s influence, and beyond that I think they’re fighting it all the time. Their heart rates and blood pressure are awfully high. Underneath that zombie demeanor, I think they’re fighting with all they have. They’re just…not good at it. Or maybe they’re so good that Bob can’t let them recover.”

I nodded. “So why’d you pick her?”

Short laugh. “You kidding? Sherry Carmody ran the PTA for twenty years. Never liked the woman—she’s vicious and takes no prisoners once she gets going. She only retired when her daughter took over.” He paused. “Actually I’d try to recruit the daughter too, but I haven’t seen her since this started.”

I rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment, surprising both of us. “So, the syringes?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. They’re ready. You sure about that part?”

“Tim, I’m not sure about a damn thing. But this is the best chance I see us getting. Bob’s going to figure us out eventually. If he hasn’t already.”

He met my eyes. “You sure you can use it? If you get the chance?”

Could I? I considered for a second, then shook my head. “It’s not about me, man. What’s going on just…isn’t right. People ought to be able to make up their own minds.”

“Yeah? Looks to me like you could be the next Bob, if you wanted to be. You sure you can stop yourself?”

I grinned at him. “Hey. One thing at a time. If I try to become some kind of evil overlord, it’s your job to stop me. Later, when we have time.”

He laughed, sourly, and went to a cabinet and pulled out two loaded syringes. Handed one to me. Stood there with the other in his hand. “Ash? I’m not sure I can do this. Don’t…don’t count on me, all right? I’ve been a doctor for a long time.
Helping
people.”

“Sure you can,” I told him. “For Felicia, if nothing else.”

Not to mention that he’d apparently killed at least a couple of guys Bob had sent out with him at one point. But Tim had made a couple of good points. I couldn’t stand having Slimy Bob in my head all the time, draining my energy and directing me as if I were his meat-puppet. And I wanted to take everyone
else’s
minds and bodies away from him too. I was…offended and scared and more desperate to
end
all this than I’d ever want Tim to know.

But how much of what I was doing was to save other people, and how much was just for myself? What if Bob’s dominance was just another thing that would soon change? How much risk could I justify inflicting on what was left of Henge’s citizenry just because I saw an opportunity to get rid of a problem that for all I knew might solve itself?

After a while I shook my head.
Maybe
I was doing the wrong thing.
Maybe
I was saving us all.
Maybe
Tim’s question had been right on, and I’d become a worse monster than Bob had ever been.

No way to know. But meanwhile I was going to do what I thought was right. It was that, or stand by.

Also, I wanted my daughter back. With me. I wanted my son and my wife and Rose back, too, but with Abby there still seemed to be a chance. If I was right about Sam. But I couldn’t exactly
ask
him.

“Hey Tim?” I asked him, nodding at the syringe he’d handed me. “Give me another couple of those, will you? You never know. And the epinephrine too—I want to dose myself right at sunset.”

* * *

T
he teens were out patrolling as usual. I’d told Sam it was important that no sort of bug swarm invaded the festivities. He’d nodded, given me his blank look, and left me wondering as always.

Sam stood with me now, his bland expression giving away no more than I could get from his strange, eerily smooth mind. I still had no confidence that I was fooling him in any way. The best assurance I could get that I wasn’t killing Abby today was that I also had no evidence Sam cared at all about Reverend Bob—other than as a threat to the kids Sam seemed to think were under his care. If Abby was one of
those
, and not so much the prisoner Bob wanted me to believe she was…I knew of no other exceptions to Sam’s loyalty to his peer group. But I couldn’t be sure.

Either way, I had to keep moving. I couldn’t risk us all by talking openly to Sam. Even if he was more Bob’s creature than I felt him to be, maybe after Bob was gone we could come to a new arrangement.

I’d managed to strip about two-thirds of the inhabitants from the high school. I’d hoped Bob’s guards would come out of their wing, but hadn’t been optimistic about it. And they hadn’t.

I looked around in satisfaction at the happy faces getting ready for a welcome feast. I wasn’t leaving any of Tim’s injectees, or the more volatile citizens I could cajole into accompanying us, back here at the school.

I needed them farther out.

I set up small groups along the highway to the north, telling them the arrival of the Pennsylvania refugees would be a sort of parade and their job was to welcome the newcomers.

When we were all set up, a couple of hours before dusk, I sat on a rock and fidgeted.

Then I got the word via Sam that our guests were a couple of miles from the point where I’d planned a rendezvous.

I took my welcome party, composed mostly of people Tim had injected and who were ideally less likely to be wholly Bob’s creatures, and headed out.

* * *

A
t what used to be Bob’s church, where we’d first met the Pennsylvania group’s advance scouts, I called a halt. We strung up a nylon banner with the words “Welcome to Henge!” between a couple of telephone poles—we’d found it in a supply closet in the school, and I figured it was a nice touch.

We’d brought plenty of food and water, and I figured the smell of cooking stew would help to project our friendly intentions. Also, it gave me an excuse to pull a couple of hundred people out with me. Over half the human population of Henge was either with me or strung out along the road. I’d left a few troublemakers, including McDermott, back at the school. If I could get Bob overextended, and get him to lose focus on his immediate surroundings…

“They are coming,” Sam told me suddenly. “We are watching. Fifteen minutes.”

“Make sure everybody stays back,” I reminded him. “And
no bugs
.”

He didn’t respond, his eyes unfocused. I patted him on the back. “You with me, man?”

He turned his face toward me, but his eyes still didn’t focus. “Sure, Ash.”

I looked at the kid, then turned away. Maybe, after tonight, we could try something else with the young ones. Something other than sending them out to live by themselves, in tunnels. I wanted to work that out with Sam, if I could. In spite of everything, I liked him. He looked out for his people.

They’re our future
, I found myself thinking, and my face twisted. There was more than one way to interpret that.

Well, we’d do what we could. Pretty soon everything would be different around here, one way or another.

* * *

“T
here!” Tim said a little later, jarring me from a less-than-pleasant reverie.

I turned. He was right.

“Everybody stay put,” I told my people, and started walking forward.

As I got closer my steps slowed. Not
one
of the newcomers looked as if they had physically changed. My lips twisted. Not one. How many of their people had they killed?

Or had they? “Bring the teens in closer,” I told Sam, who was following along and staring at me. “I need to know who’s in the woods.”

I stood in the center of the road, doing a mental inventory of the people in our welcome party.

* * *

B
LAM!

I flinched and stared into the woods to the left of the road. Gunshot!

The newcomers started to huddle together. Then one of them started shouting orders and they all moved to the left side—toward the gunshot—and I could see them preparing to defend themselves—which might have meant attacking us—and at the same time I saw flights of birds barreling out of the woods to the north.

“Damnit!” I yelled. “Somebody get that white flag up!”

Then I turned to Sam. “I said to hold back.
What…?
”

His eyes swirled. His mind was agitated. Maybe a little lost. “They’ve shot us.” His eyes focused on me. “A girl. She found a scout in the woods and let him approach. He smiled. Then another saw them as they were about to speak. And fired. The swarm
will
come.”

“Damnit!” I said again. This was all happening too soon. I’d wanted Bob here, barely awake…

“Pull the kids back, Sam!” I yelled over my shoulder as I strode forward. “Back!”

But I could see more teenagers moving through the woods, and the bugs were starting to swirl even at our distance. The newcomers were cursing and swatting and lighting torches, waving them in the air to ward off the bugs.