Fight for Power (26 page)

“Whoa,” Brett said. There was something about his voice that made me turn and look at him. His mouth was slightly open, and his eyes had a dazzled look. I'd seen that expression before—when he had killed the deer.

“It was just a matter of time until a fire happened in here,” he said.

“I've seen a lot of burned-out buildings from the air.”

“The air?” Brett snorted. “Being up in the air isn't much different from hiding behind the walls. You don't really know what's happening until you see it up close and personal.”

“I've been out.”

“Not at night. That's when the men are separated from the
boys
.”

I knew in his mind I was nothing more than one of the boys.

“Not that
you
should go out at night. Out there is like that fire. It's out of control, raw power, it's—”

“A rush for you.”

He smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. “At least you understand some part of it. It
is
a rush, being out there with my team, doing whatever needs to be done.
Whatever
needs to be done. Guaranteed.”

I didn't know what he really meant and I was too smart to even ask.

“Well, you be good, kid.” Brett slapped me on the back. “Much as I'd like to stay, I've got to get some shut-eye.”

I watched him go, feeling more unsettled by him than by the fire at my back.

 

24

I climbed out of bed to close the window. Then I got back into bed and shut my eyes. It was pitch dark, hours before dawn. The smell of smoke was still lingering in the air. The wind must have shifted in my direction because the scent seemed to be stronger than when I'd first gone to bed. If I hadn't seen the fire finally being extinguished with my own eyes, I would have been concerned that it had spread.

Like everybody else, I'd spent hours watching until the fire was put out. Thank goodness the family hadn't been inside at the time it started. Later that evening at the communal dinner I'd heard that it was a mother and her two kids. I knew them like I seemed to now know everybody, but I didn't know them well. That made it better. I was happy that they had been taken in temporarily by some neighbors. Efforts were being made to gather things—clothing and household goods—and set them up in one of the two or three remaining vacant houses in the neighborhood.

After the meal Lori and I had gone for a walk together, but she told me that if I wasn't going to talk and was only going to stare into space I might as well go home and get some sleep. I took her advice. But even though I could always go to bed, getting to sleep was a different and difficult matter.

My eyes popped open. I heard sounds downstairs and quickly got to my feet. Without thinking, I grabbed my pistol and clicked the safety off. Then, a bit more clearheaded the next moment, I put the safety back on. It was probably just my brother or sister getting a drink of water or my mother getting ready to go out on patrol. With the pistol hanging at my side I opened the door and peered down the stairs to the front door.

My mother was standing there, balanced on one foot, putting on her shoes.

She looked up, seeming not at all shocked to see her teenage son checking up on things with a pistol in hand. “Sorry if I woke you, kiddo.”

“I wasn't asleep. Where are you going?”

“There's some sort of disturbance.”

“There is? I'll get my shoes and—”

“It's nothing,” she said. “Just some movement outside the walls.”

“On Burnham?”

“No, the west wall.”

“I'll get my shoes,” I said.

“There's nothing to worry about. You should go back to sleep.”

“Do you really think that's going to happen?” I asked. “I'm coming with you.”

She smiled. “I'd enjoy the company and I guess the twins will be okay for a bit.”

I had fallen into bed in my clothes, including my holster, so I was ready to go. I slipped my gun into the sheath as I tiptoed down the steps. I grabbed my shoes and body armor and slipped outside behind my mom, pulling the door closed quietly.

“I'll drive!” I whispered after her. I pulled the keys from my pocket.

My beautiful beater of a car glowed in the moonlight. We both hopped in. I slipped on my shoes, then started the engine—it turned over on the first try and roared to life.

“I'm sure it's nothing,” my mother said as I eased out. There was an edge to her voice.

“People on the wall are getting jumpy,” I said.

“I just don't want it to become a boy-who-cried-wolf situation,” she said. “We might not respond quickly enough to real danger if we keep getting false alarms.”

I pulled up to the guard house and one of the guys waved at us, pointing toward the south. I quickly reversed and then headed back along Sawmill, circling the mall and heading to the southwest corner wall. Right outside the wall in that corner was the tent town.

I edged up as close as I could. Herb was there, as were Howie and a few other guards, but no Brett or any of his squad. They were already outside the walls on patrol and could have been anywhere.

“Update me,” my mother said.

“We're hearing noises, people thrashing through the woods.”

“But no discharge of weapons, right?” my mother asked.

“No, not that we've heard,” Howie said.

“What if you turned on the lights?” I asked.

“They wouldn't penetrate the woods. We'd only make ourselves a more visible target to people in the darkness,” Herb said. “I couldn't see anything with the night-vision goggles; the trees are too close to the wall. It's time for us to cut down more of those trees, push back the forest away from these walls even farther.”

“But the trees are sort of like the tent people's walls,” I said.

“It's our walls I'm concerned about,” Herb replied dismissively. “We have to—”

There was a loud, terrified scream—a woman's scream. A deadly silence followed. Then there was more screaming and yelling, and a shot rang out, and then a second, and there were more raised voices. Then came a fusillade of shots from what sounded like an automatic weapon, and still more cries and screams from the forest.

After a moment I could see flickering light—flames!

“We have to do something!” I yelled. “We have to go out there!”

“We can't,” my mother said. “We can't risk lives, but we will do something.” She turned to Howie. “Sound the alarm and start switching the lights on and off, repeatedly.”

Howie rushed into action.

Herb and my mother conferred in urgent whispers.

Then my mom spoke to the assembled crowd. “Okay, people. Let's spread the word that we need all the guards on this side of the wall to get back into position but keep their heads down. At my signal they are to fire a shot into the ground just outside the wall.”

“Why would they fire into the ground?” I asked Herb.

“We don't want them firing into the woods,” he explained. “They're just as likely to hit an innocent. We want only the threat of their weapons.”

My mom continued speaking to the group. “Then I need everybody—the guards, any rubberneckers from the neighborhood—I need us all to scream at the top of our lungs. I want it to sound like an army is here and rushing out into the woods. The idea is to get the attackers to flee.”

A number of onlookers nodded grimly and then sped off to spread the word down along the watchposts. My mother followed, leaving just Herb and me.

“And then we go out?” I asked.

“And then we wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until the first light. Then we go out—”

I tried to interrupt, but Herb held up a hand.

“I know you want to do more, Adam, but there's nothing else we can do without risking the lives of people we have a responsibility to protect. The lifeboat isn't big enough to hold everybody.”

“Then maybe we need a bigger boat!” I snapped.

The siren started to blare, and I jumped. Three long blasts—which meant the west wall—followed by two short blasts—which meant the south wall. Together it let people know that the problem was at the corner of those two walls, right where we stood. The noise was deafening and frightening and reassuring all at once.

Howie apparently pulled the switch, and the area in front of the walls was bathed in colors from the strings of Christmas tree lights hanging off the wall. They were powered by car batteries that were recharged after each use by bicycles hooked up to a series of generators. But like Herb had said, the glow of the lights didn't extend into the forest. It was so surreal, the blaring siren and the reds and greens and blues, plus the flickering of flames amid the trees. It was like Christmas in hell. The lights went off again and the darkness was overwhelming. Strangely, the siren now seemed louder. And it probably was louder, since both the lights and the siren ran off the same batteries.

People from the neighborhood were now rushing out to the walls from nearby streets. Above the murmurs and scrabble of feet I heard Howie's voice over the bullhorn.

“Weapons ready!” he called out.

I went to take my pistol from the holster, and Herb put a hand on my hand to stop me. I looked up and he shook his head.

“On my order!” Howie called out.

Again the lights came back on and the siren faded slightly.

“Ready … aim low … no accidents … and fire!”

There was a chorus of gunfire, sharp and loud, as guns along the wall discharged. Almost before I could even hear the shots being fired, the ground in front of us jumped up in dozens of places where bullets had slammed into the rocks and dirt.

“Now!” Howie called over the bullhorn.

In response, hundreds of voices screamed out and a chill went up my spine. It was louder, more prolonged, and more frightening than the sound of the gunfire. The screaming and yelling went on and on. I couldn't help but imagine what people in the forest were thinking, what people in our neighborhood still tucked in their homes were thinking. It was terrifying.

The lights went off again, and almost on cue everybody went silent. The silence was more overwhelming than the screaming. It was as if it hurt my ears. There was nothing. Nothing from the walls, nothing from the neighborhood, and then there was something—a small voice crying. It wasn't loud but it was piercing. It continued and everybody stood, frozen in place, listening.

“No, we can't,” Herb said to me before I even opened my mouth. “Not yet.”

The crying stopped. Either somebody had reached the child and offered him or her comfort or— Well, we had to hope the child was okay.

It was going to be a long wait until morning.

 

25

I looked at my watch. It was just before five-thirty; the sun would be up by six. I had been standing at the wall for a few hours, along with crowds of people waiting to see what had happened. Probably everybody in the neighborhood had been woken by the uproar, and many had made their way to the southwest corner. My mother and Howie had repositioned their people, putting extra guards on every wall. There was always the danger that getting us looking one way was nothing more than a distraction in order to attack from another.

It was still too dark to do anything, but I could see the outline of the trees more clearly at the edge of the forest and there was a hint of light in the other direction, toward the east.

The flames in the forest had died out almost as quickly as the voices—the cries. There had been just silence and darkness for hours. That wasn't much different from what was coming from inside the walls as well. My neighbors and I spoke softly so as to not disturb the night—or the dead. It wasn't just a fear, it was reality. Gunshots, fire, anguished cries. Something bad had happened. People had died. That was certain. The only questions that remained were who and how many and how bad was it, and those questions couldn't be answered until we went out there. What made it so much worse was that I knew these people. They weren't just anonymous strangers passing by our walls. I didn't even want to think how Lori would react if something had happened to Madison or Elyse. I looked at my watch again—another minute had passed.

Lori had arrived with her parents, who had worked to comfort her before they headed back to take care of the milking. She had fallen asleep, her back against the wall, and I'd wake her when it was time. Almost intuitively it seemed as if she knew I was looking at her, and her eyes opened. She got up and came toward me.

“Well?”

“Not long.”

“You've been saying that for the last two hours,” she said.

“Now I mean it. Ten or fifteen minutes.”

“And then somebody goes out?”

“People have already gone out. Herb made a decision to send out two teams, one from each gate, along Burnham and Erin Mills Parkway.”

“That's good, right?”

“That's
very
good. It secures the area.”

Howie was in charge of one team. Brett, who had returned in the middle of the night with his squad, was leading the other. He said they weren't even close to the neighborhood but had heard the gunfire and then our response, and came racing back.

“If the area is secure, why can't we go out now?” Lori asked me.

“Maybe we should ask somebody who's in charge.”

Herb and my mother were up closer to the gate, talking with some of the regular guards. We were going to go out with overwhelming force, as Herb called it. Every guard who wasn't going to be on the wall was going out—more than 150 people with weapons were flooding the area.

Lori and I stood slightly off to the side and waited for them to complete their conversation, the planning. Before we could even open our mouths, Herb turned and said, “Soon, we're going soon.”