Untitled Agenda 21 Sequel (9781476746852) (27 page)

They were wasting time. Even questioning the women would be beneath his dignity. They had gone far upstream and had nothing to show for it. They'd have to move fast and far.

“We will find the escapees in short order.” Steven spoke with confidence because he believed in himself, believed he could do this. “We will bring them back here, pick up the women, and then we'll all return to the Compound.”

Steven made the circle sign toward his captives.

The pale-faced women made the circle sign, slowly, reluctantly.

Nigel made the circle sign with a proud flourish.

Winston, standing outside the bus door, slowly brought his hand to his forehead. Guy, standing by Winston, his eye twitching, made the circle sign and fumbled with the straps on his pack.

They recited together: “I pledge allegiance to the Earth.”

There is comfort in rituals.

Sometimes.

Through the bus window, Joan watched Steven, Winston, and Guy head downstream. Her breath fogged the window. From the outside they looked just like ghosts.

“W
e're moving and moving fast. No more wasting time.” Steven made himself clear to Winston and Guy. They simply nodded.

Steven filled his water bottles at the edge of the river. The water was cold on his hands and wrists. He tightened the lids, shoved the bottles into his pack, and shook the water off his hands.

Winston did the same.

Steven slung his pack on his back.

Winston did the same.

Is he imitating me to annoy me?
Steven wondered.

Guy seemed to be aware of the tension between the other two men and his eyes darted back and forth.

“We sat around for a couple of days on that damn bus. So we're rested. You guys lead. I follow. Move out.”

The river to their left churned forward, little whitecaps curling over on themselves like gymnasts somersaulting on a gray-brown mat.

Bits of black asphalt were still visible through the grass. A metal street sign, pockmarked with rust around the edges, had fallen from its pole and was nestled in a patch of ferns. The words were faded.
Route 30
. Below that the words
Lincoln Highway
. Steven wondered what kind of a name was
Lincoln
for a highway? What the hell was a Lincoln? Tenacious vines curled around the useless, empty pole, tilting it sideways, pulling it downward.

Steven kicked the sign and flakes of rust fell onto the ferns.

They made good time. Winston easily kept the pace Steven wanted. His long legs were his best asset. Guy walked as though his life depended on it, keeping up but panting heavily.

The sun was directly overhead. “Time for a break. Head for some shade,” Steven said. He could see the sweat stain down the middle of Guy's back, like a stripe.

They sat beneath some large trees. The cool air felt good brushing across the backs of their necks. Winston's face was sunburned, red across his cheeks, nose, and the tops of his ears. The skin on Guy's face was already starting to peel. Steven's skin felt hot and tight. He knew he was probably sunburned, too.

Guy poured some water from his bottle into his hands and splashed his face with it. The silvery droplets dripped from his chin onto his uniform.

Steven looked around the area. Something wasn't quite right. Grass had been pulled up, leaving bare patches. Something or someone had been here eating it. Some ferns were broken at the base, and the fronds were dry and withered.

Exhilarated at finding the first clues he'd seen in days, Steven felt his pulse race.

“Let's go!” he said. He heard the excitement in his own voice, felt the adrenaline pour through him.

They moved out of the shade, back into the sun.

Winston and Guy hadn't said a word all morning. That didn't bother Steven. He didn't bring them along for conversation. He had brought Winston along because he didn't trust him. He had left his strongest man back with the women. He'd catch his prey—that's all
they were to him, prey—march them back, gather up the rest of his team and the women, and return to the Compound. His work would be done, and done well. He would be rewarded, and could return to the soft life, the life he deserved, at the Central Authority's mansion.

They walked the rest of the day and saw more signs of disruption: rocks with patches of moss ripped off and more broken cattails. They walked into the wall of dusk and beyond. Each clue Steven saw energized him and fed his fanatical zealotries.

They put on their torches, fastening the bands tightly on their foreheads. The torches hadn't been recharged since they left the Compound, but luckily they hadn't used them very much. The light was still bright enough to show a smoother path.

They were safe using the torches for now. No one was around to see their lights. Steven felt like he could walk all night.

Later, when the torches lost their charge, they'd have to rely on the moon and stars.

When they finally stopped, Steven took a pair of shiny handcuffs out of his pack and dangled them in front of Winston's face. They clanged together with metallic harshness.

“I don't need those. I'm not going anywhere,” Winston said firmly.

“You're right. You're
not
going anywhere. Sit over there with your back against that tree.” He motioned with his gun to a large silver maple.

The ground under the maple was riddled with large gnarled roots protruding above the surface. Winston found one small, smooth area and sat there with his back against the tree, wondering what Steven was going to do.

“Put your arms back on either side of the tree. I'm going to handcuff your wrists together behind it.”

“Are you cuffing him, too?” Winston motioned with his head toward Guy, who sat huddled some distance away with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around them.

“Him? No need. He'd pass out if a cricket landed on his foot. He's not about to go off on his own.” Steven turned to Guy. “Go fill our water bottles and make it snappy.”

“You want me to go out there?” Guy's voice was high-pitched and annoying.

“Don't question me. Don't
ever
question me,” Steven said. “This one did and he earned these handcuffs. Do you want the same?”

Guy quickly rooted through the packs, pulled out some empty bottles, and scuttled down to the river to fill them. In the moonlight he looked like a crab going down the steep bank, knees bent and arms akimbo.

Steven managed to get one cuff on Winston but the tree was too big, and the cuffs too short for both wrists to be manacled together behind the tree.

“Damn! Move over there.”

Near the maple was a slender birch, its paper-white bark luminous in the moonlight.

Winston spent the night tethered to that birch.

The next day was a repeat of the last one. No conversation, no sense of trust in each other, just three men in the wilderness.

When they stopped for the night, Steven pulled a strange device out of his pocket, a two-inch-square metal box. When Steven pressed a switch, a small red light began to blink. He held it in front of Winston's face.

“Bet you wish you had one of these,” Steven taunted. “But you wouldn't even know how to use it.”

Winston ignored him.

“It's a heat detector. Set up to detect motion fifty yards away, and only on moving things about the size of a human or larger. Squirrels can't set it off. And people near me can't set it off. There's no point in having to be told my own team is standing right next to me, now, is there? But if it detects a person within its radius, the light stops blinking,
and stays a steady red. And it vibrates. I can feel it through my clothes when it vibrates.”

Winston continued to ignore him.

“So you're not interested in learning? No skin off my teeth.” Steven pointed to a small tree. Another birch. “Get over there.”

After he handcuffed Winston's wrists behind the birch tree, Steven continued talking. His voice had a jubilant, almost maniacal tone. “See, I think we're this close, this close!” He held his thumb and forefinger close together and peered into Winston's face. Winston turned his head away from Steven's foul breath. “The clues! They're everywhere. I see them all.” He talked rapid-fire, breathing hard, his face flushed. “And I will be triumphant.” He raised his fist to the dark sky. Nobody of any consequence could see that small-minded man's fist raised in the darkness of the night.

Steven, caught up in his own theatrics, never took the time to realize that birch trees, like people, could look normal on the outside, but be rotten to the core.

J
oan's first reaction had been denial.

“No! No! He can't be gone. He's out there somewhere. I know he is. You're lying.” She had pounded her fists on the seat of the bus.

Steven had just smirked. That little
poof
sound, that snapping of his fingers, dismissed her husband entirely.

And then Steven, Guy, and Winston left the bus.

Time passed. Joan waited for John to return.

But he didn't.

That's when the anger built in her. Not just anger but red, hot rage. If she was bigger, stronger, and faster, she would have ripped that man, Steven, with his smirk, into ribbons of flesh and bone. Emotions pulsed through her faster than she ever thought possible.

The bus was hot, stuffy, and smelled of sour bodies, death, and the green smell of vines growing through the holes in the floorboards. Tiny black insects crawled up and down the stems.

John had promised that he would stay with Joan, that he would never leave her. He had tried to keep his promise. Truth is, he
had
kept his promise—he hadn't left her. He was taken from her, stolen
and ripped out of her life. She was left with a huge bleeding hole in her heart and a cramping pain in the pit of her stomach. Nothing she could think of would fill that hole or heal that pain if she couldn't find John.

Julia kept glancing at Joan, soft glances that were a mixture of fear and sympathy.

Nigel stood and stared at the women.
Does he ever blink?
she wondered. His eyes were narrow, with a spray of lines like crow's feet fanning out at the corners. The sun coming in through the windows made his blond hair look almost white, his sunburned scalp shining through. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were white and looked cold as ice.

Joan saw the trees, the stream, and a few thin clouds drifting by, lazy and formless as smoke, through the dirty windows. She was still crying.

Julia coughed a tiny little cough. Joan glanced at her. With her hands below the level of the seat in front of her so Nigel couldn't see her motions, Julia made a small gesture toward her waistband. Then she pointed at Joan.

Julia did that twice.

Signals. She was sending Joan a signal.

The gun. Joan still had a gun. In her angst, she had forgotten about it. Now she put her hand on it. She gripped the handle, sliding it from her waistband.

Julia watched her, then stood up. “I'll go get water. Our bottles need to be filled.”

Nigel looked at Julia for a second, and started to reply.

In that fraction of a second, Joan rested her arm on the seat back in front of her to keep her hand steady.

In that tiny second, she pulled the trigger. The sound rattled around the metal bus like rolling thunder.

In that tiny second, she shot him.

She had never shot a gun before.

She felt no remorse. She felt only victory.

He fell, crumpling down upon himself in stages, like a fan being folded. She watched it in slow motion: knees, chest, arms, head. Finally, there was no movement at all.

Julia picked up the gun Nigel had dropped, and tucked it into her waistband.

Joan and Julia stepped over Nigel, grabbed all the packs, and left the bus. The air outside was cleaner, cooler.

Julia was barely limping anymore.

“Your ankle seems to have gotten better,” Joan said.

“Sitting on the bus with it elevated helped a lot.”

“But when Nigel took you outside to test your ankle, you were still limping and looked like you were in pain.”

She smiled. “My ankle still bothers me, but I made it look worse than it was. It worked, didn't it? We got left behind, and didn't have to march with Steven. I call that a win.”

Julia is an impressive woman
, Joan thought. They'd make a great team. “Good. We'll head downstream and try to catch up with Steven and Winston. Try to stop them from hurting anybody. If they do find and capture anyone, well, we'll do anything and everything we can.”

Joan looked at the wilderness all around them. The overwhelming greenness of it, the absolute beauty of the rolling hills, soft and rounded, the sky a protective blue dome overhead, and yet there was inescapable loneliness in this vast Human Free Zone.

“Pray we find John. My son and his family are out here somewhere, too. We'll search for them. I'm not giving up on anybody. And we
will
survive.”

Steven, Guy, and Winston were mere hours ahead of them. Joan knew now that there was no looking back. One way or another, their old way of life in the commune was gone forever.

W
inston's shoulders throbbed because of the strained position of his arms; the handcuffs cut into his wrists. Physically, he was miserable. But he was even worse mentally. He believed no good would come of this mission. When all was said and done, everyone involved would be at risk for terrible outcomes. If the escapees were captured, they would face the wrath of the Enforcers. If they weren't captured, they faced an uncertain future in this vast Human Free Zone. Julia and Joan were definitely at risk. Steven would show them no mercy. Winston shuddered to think of Steven with those women. And even if the women survived Steven, an Enforcer would deal with them harshly and order them to be recycled.