Ground Zero (19 page)

“Mighta been close to it from the looks of him when he got here, but he’s doing okay now. Over.”

“How long has he been there? Over.”

“A week maybe? Dunno. Been a while anyway. Slept outside the first night, but he’s got the tent now. Looks like he’s going to start work on his own cabin soon, because he was asking my dad for help. Doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about using tools, but Cam wants him to do most of the work himself. I guess he was kinda rude when he first got here. Dad heard Cam go off on him the first day, but from the sounds of it he’s been okay since then. Over.”

“Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Cam’s probably been waiting to have a go at him for years now, and it wouldn’t have taken much to set her off. I wonder what he said, though. Over.”

“Dunno. Not sure if my dad heard that part. If he did, he didn’t fill me in on the details. He just said something about him laughing right before Cam tore him a new one. Over.”

“Well, hell. Sounds like it’s been pretty interesting on the farm since we left. Anything else been going on? Over.”

“Cam and Chuck got some more building supplies, so we can finish the new girl’s cabin. Lisa, I think her name is. The one with the baby. And there should be plenty left over for the inside of your ex’s place if we use logs for the main structure. He’s got the plans for the one-room cabin. I guess Cam gave him a copy. Over.”

“Cam and Chuck went to get supplies? Over.” Mac had said it very slowly, just to be sure John heard the question right, and she got a full answer.

“Yeah. Carol gave her the keys to the hardware store, so they filled up the horse trailer and truck box with all kinds of stuff. As soon as they got back, though, Cam went over to see her friends. We didn’t unload until later. She looked pissed, but I don’t think she was mad at Chuck. He didn’t look like there was anything wrong with him. Of course, he’s no longer on patrol, either. I just realized that. Cam’s got him doing other things, like helping Mitch with the animals, and building a jail cell. He doesn’t seem like he’s upset about it, though. In fact, I think he’s got it in for that Mike guy, because he’s seems pretty happy to be building the jail. Over.”

“Jesus Christ! A jail cell? What the hell do we need a jail cell for? Over.”

“Something to do with Mike. I think there’s more to it than just him stealing and escaping, but I haven’t been told what it is yet. There’s been a rumour going around that they’re going to have some sort of trial. Sam was talking to Kelly, who said something about resuming her old JP duties, but she wouldn’t say anything more than that. Over.”

“Alright John. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. There’s no point in talking about rumour and conjecture. I’ll just get the story straight from Cam when she gets in touch. Over.”

“Sure, okay. I don’t think she’s gonna be back at the house tonight, though. She left about an hour ago, and wasn’t planning to be back until morning. She asked Billy to check on the ferrets while she was gone, but I’ll let her know you want to talk to her as soon as I see her. Over and out.”

Before Mac had a chance to say anything further, he was gone.

“So,” Neil began.

“Yeah,” Mac responded, shaking her head. She got up slowly from the tiny navigation desk, and the two of them were silent as they headed back into the galley and dining area.

“So, how’s it going at the old homestead?” Ian’s question had Mac shaking her head again, as though trying to activate some sort of coherent thought.

“Uh, they’re building a jail cell,” she finally said, still having difficulty taking it all in.

“For some guy named Mike,” Neil put in. “Oh, and Mac’s ex is still alive, because he’s there now. And Cam went off on a scavenging mission. And everyone who really knows anything is out on patrol. Looking for Mike. There’s more, but my head is spinning and I can’t remember it all right now.”

“I take it this is all news to you?” Ian asked, looking back and forth between them.

“I’ll say,” Mac replied in a wondering tone. She still could not wrap her brain around the concept of the jail cell, much less the fact that Cam had gone on a scavenging trip, or that her ex was still alive and had somehow managed to make it to the farm. Though she did feel a streak of pride that Cam had told him off.

“Well, it sounds like they’ve got everything under control then,” Ian said with a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Very funny. There was something about holding a trial for this Mike person, who is apparently a thief, but John thinks there’s something more to it. It was all very confusing, but they had apparently decided to drive him somewhere and drop him off, just to get him away from the farm. The guy escaped, which is saying something in itself, because he escaped from two former cops. They haven’t caught him again yet, but I guess they’re pretty sure he’s coming back to the farm, and they’re no longer talking about just taking him somewhere, so it makes sense that there’s another issue. I just don’t know what it is.

“The scary part is, our kids are out there on patrol for this person. They’ve got some sort of formal security detail happening, and John was told not to contact them on the radio because it might give away their position. Now tell me, does that sound like something we should be laughing about?” She raised her eyebrows at Ian, who sobered immediately.

“No, it doesn’t. Sorry. It was just the stunned look on your faces when you came back in here. It takes a lot to shock you like that. Your kids are armed, right? I mean, they’re not going out there to look for someone who may or may not be dangerous without weapons of some sort, are they?”

“Cam’s got her Glock. Billy will have a rifle or shotgun most likely. Not everyone has a handgun, but there are plenty of weapons on the farm. Both Chuck and Gilles have their service pieces still. And then there’s the knives, too,” she added.

“Knives?”

“Yeah, from my store,” Neil answered. “My whole stock is there. I ran a knife store which is how Mac and I met.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Mac told me that at the time, but I forgot. Anyway, they’re armed at least. Doesn’t Cam have a bow, too?”

“Yup. That’s how she killed that Gerry guy last summer,” Mac reminded him. “I’m not sure how much she’ll be using it, but she had just started carrying it around with her again before we left, which was when she ran into Brian. That’s the situation I was really worried about when we came to get you, even though we talked to both Brian and Geraldine and everything seemed okay there. Hard to say for sure, but John didn’t mention anything about them.”

“Who’s John?”

“My friend Gilles is married to Felicia, whose daughter, Melanie, is married to John. John’s parents are also on the farm. I knew Jim from the gas station in town, but I didn’t meet his wife, Donna, until they got there.”

“How many people are on this farm of yours, Mac?”

“You know, I don’t think I know anymore. I would have been able to tell you a couple of weeks ago, but there seem to have been a couple of additions since then, invited or otherwise.”

“Trying to start your own town or something?”

“I really wasn’t. I don’t know what the hell happened,” she said helplessly. Ian laughed at her again.

“I do,” Ian said.

“Yeah, yeah. Shut up. You’re one of the people I’m trying to help, so you’ve got no business complaining.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining. If you want to go rounding up all the survivors in the world, that’s up to you. You should put up signs, though. ‘
Need help? Call 1-800-4-Mac-Mac
.’”

“Oh, go to hell,” she told him, having to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of Ian’s laughter. Then she pointed her finger at Neil. “
See
? The rest of my life he’ll be doing that. I guarantee it!”


   
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

She didn’t hear back from Cam by three, so Mac finally decided to go to bed. Neil was already in bed, waiting for her, and she could hear the sounds of Ian’s snores coming from the other end of the boat.

“Still no word?”

“No, but then John said she was probably going to be gone all night. I’m better off just getting some sleep so maybe we can get there a little faster. It’s the only way we’re going to know for sure what’s happening there. That’s assuming I can sleep, of course.”

“I think I might be able to help you with that,” Neil said, and she could hear the warm promise in his voice.

“I’ll just bet you can, cowboy. Wanna take a stab at it?”

“A stab? If that’s what you want to call it,” he teased, as he rolled over to cover her with the warmth of his body. Her quiet laugh turned to a gasp as he slid inside of her. It wasn’t long before she was sinking her teeth into his shoulder to keep from crying out at the intensity of her release, which instantly had him following her.

Despite the warm contentment she felt in her physical being, her mind was unwilling to let go of the thoughts that spun around inside it. She put on Neil’s t-shirt, which covered her to mid-thigh, grabbed shorts and underwear, and went to the tiny bathroom that didn’t have the shower to use the toilet and clean herself up. She pulled on the panties and shorts, but didn’t worry about a bra. The t-shirt was dark, though she couldn’t remember if it was black or navy, and even if Ian woke up she didn’t have to worry about giving him a show. Not that it sounded like he was getting up any time soon, since his snores continued unabated.

Mac went out onto the slightly tilted fibreglass of the deck to lie on her back and look up at the stars once again. It made her wonder why the hell she had never made it a priority to buy herself a boat. Then again, the boat they were using probably cost just as much as their whole entire farm and everything on it, but she would have been happy with something much smaller. In fact, it might have made for an interesting choice if she’d gone with a houseboat instead of a farm, though it might have made gardening something of a challenge.

They had done vertical container gardening at the apartment in Hamilton, so she knew how to grow a lot of food in a small space. It wasn’t impossible to be self-sustaining on a boat. Just a lot more difficult. Instead of chicken eggs and goat’s milk, fish would have provided their protein, but she didn’t like the idea of killing fish either. She’d done it as a kid without a second thought, though she’d at least knocked them out before gutting them.

It was just so peaceful on the boat. Day or night. She loved diving because of the serenity, but even lying up on deck by herself was eerily quiet. Or at least it was until she heard the footsteps shuffling across the deck toward her. She was surprised to see Ian standing there.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she said.

“I was until a few minutes ago. Got a little shaky, so I grabbed a glass of orange juice. Hope that’s okay.”

“Of course! Take anything you want. Bella still asleep?”

“Yeah. I saw you through the window, so I thought I’d come out. Or maybe I should call it a porthole, since we’re on a boat?”

“Don’t ask me. You’re the only one with any boating experience. I feel stupid even using the correct terms, like I’m some kind of poseur. Makes me think of Joe Pesci in
Lethal Weapon 4
, where he was ranting about them getting ‘all nautical’ when they were around boats.”

“Haven’t seen it,” Ian said, even though he laughed at her discomfiture.

“Yeah, you’re not much for movies. You don’t know what you’re missing. You’ve got plenty of time to catch up now, though. We’ve got a zillion of them on the server.” Just then she heard Cam’s voice on the radio through the window. She jumped up and instantly tripped over her own feet trying to rush to the cabin. Ian caught her by the arm just as she was about to fall.

“Thanks!”

“I think you need training wheels,” he called after her, but by then she was pushing the button on the mic to talk to Cam.

“What the hell is going on there, Cam? Over.” She was going to get answers this time, whether Cam wanted to give them to her or not.

18 ~ Answers

Cam looked at the radio in misery. She had really been hoping no one would be there to pick up. She thought maybe she would be able to avoid talking to her mother until at least the next night, when hopefully Mike would be caught. Apparently not.

“What do you mean? Over.” Cam wanted to find out what her mother knew, before she started spilling her guts.

“According to John you’re building a jail, going on scavenging trips, setting up security patrols, you’ve got an escaped convict, Mitch is there, and you’re going to be holding a trial. There might be more that I’m forgetting at the moment, but that’s quite enough to be getting on with for now, don’t you think? Let’s start with all that. Over.”

“Well, if you know that much, why are you asking me what’s going on? It sounds like John’s told you everything. Over.”

“Right. Why don’t you start by telling me who this Mike person is? He was apparently stealing and setting off the sensors. You caught him, but then he got away when you were trying to send him somewhere else. Now there’s something else, because you’re suddenly building a jail to put him in, and Kelly is apparently going to preside over a trial. Have I got everything right so far? Over.”

“It’s kind of a long story that involves Chuck’s daughter, and I’d rather sit down and tell you the whole thing when you get back here. I’ll just say that it’s a possibility Katherine is pregnant, but we don’t know the whole story. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to just let Chuck cut off his balls, if we didn’t even know for sure if she was telling the truth. We do know that she made it possible for him to escape, though. Over.”

“Oh, God! She’s fourteen! Is this a grown man we’re talking about here? Over.”

“Yeah. Do you remember those people from the Ottawa shelter? Mike was the husband. He brought the van back here, so I’m guessing he lied about how much gas they needed to get to her parents’ place. He’s got to be around thirty years old, so even though Katherine is calling it lovemaking, we’re treating it as rape. It’s statutory rape if nothing else. Over.”

“Jesus. I don’t know what to say. You seem to be handling it the right way, though. I can’t imagine how bad things would get if we just started chopping off balls without some sort of due process. Over.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured, and Kelly agreed with me. She’s the nearest thing we have to a judge, and I guess JPs used to hear actual cases as long as they weren’t criminal cases, so she’s not that far off. At least she understands how the legal system is supposed to work, and can keep things respectable. Over.”

“Yeah. Wow. I still don’t know what to say. How long has this situation been going on, though. This can’t have just been in the last couple of days. Over.”

“Well, no. We were getting sensor alerts for a while, but nothing was showing on the cameras. It turned out that he found one of the cameras and moved it. He was getting through the inner sensors because a tree fell over in front of it, which meant the sensor was blocked and wasn’t picking up his body heat. It was just luck that the tree fell the way it did. We’ve moved it now, and the camera is back where it’s supposed to be. We took screenshots so we know exactly how each camera is supposed to be positioned. Before it was hard to tell, because they all just looked at trees. Nobody was going to remember exactly what the trees looked like for each camera. Over.”

“I guess it’s a damn good thing he wasn’t there to kill anyone. Over.”

“Yes. And now you know the big news. Anything else? Because I’m really tired right now, and I still have a lot to do before we try to recapture this guy tomorrow. Over.”

“What do you mean? How are you going to do that? Wouldn’t he be far away from there by now? Over.”

“Katherine left him a note, telling him to meet her at his van, and we think there’s a good chance he’ll show up. She offered to bring him food and stuff, and obviously he thinks he can continue molesting her, too. Over.”

“So you’re going to surround the van at the appointed time and then put him in jail once you have him? And you didn’t think I should know about all this, Cam? It never occurred to you that I might have something to say, or that I should know you were putting yourself at risk? How the hell did you convince Gilles and Chuck not to tell me about this? Over.”

Cam let out a long sigh. She had known this was coming, but it would have been so much easier to do this in person. It was a pain in the ass communicating over the radio.

“Look, I’m doing the best I can here, and making the choices I think are the right ones. You aren’t here, and there’s nothing you can do to help. You’ll hear all about it when you get home, but for now I really have to get going. Talking to you is taking up time that I could be using to sleep later. How long before you’re back? Over.”

“If we’re not back before nightfall, it’ll be the following day. And you and I are going to have words when I get there. I don’t like being kept in the dark. Over.”

“Yeah, well, neither do I really, but you still went traipsing off through the streets of Detroit without discussing it with me first. So, yeah, we can have words when you get back. Until then, I’ve got work to do. You brought most of these people here, and then left them for me to deal with, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll talk to you when you get back. Over and out.” She release the mic button and turned off the radio.

She knew she was going to pay for that, but Cam was just too tired and irritated to give a shit. She was sick of being given the responsibility of an entire group of people, only to have her mother treat her like a child and second-guess everything she was doing. Besides, she really did have more important things to be doing.

Mike hadn’t shown up at his van the first day, so Cameron figured he was going to get there in the afternoon. She’d been up all night as part of the patrols, and she still had to go out and figure out how to fix the sensors on the far side of the bridge. Once she was done that, she might actually be able to get some sleep. Assuming Pickle and Squeaker didn’t decide to dig at the base of her door for an hour, like they had the last time she’d been trying to fall asleep. They wanted out, and they most likely missed her mother. Usually she missed her mother, too, though that wasn’t the case at the moment.

Nobody knew about the situation with her dad, except Kirk and Leigh, and until her mother was home there was no way she was telling her about it. If she was freaking out over the situation with Mike, she was going to be a lot more upset about Geraldine sleeping with Cam’s dad. Her mother wasn’t stupid, any more than she was, and Cameron really didn’t believe Geraldine was the kind of woman that would find her dad irresistible.

Now Cam was at odds with both her parents, which was not helping her state of mind in the slightest. Her dad had damn near blown a gasket when Cam had told him he needed to stop seeing Geraldine, and he hadn’t spoken to her since. Her mother’s reaction was going to be even worse, but at least it would be directed at her dad, rather than at Cam.

Her dad would be lucky if he still had a place to live after this, and Cam was more than happy to let her mother make that decision at this point. The fact that her dad considered getting laid more important than whatever risks he was exposing his daughter to, had hurt Cam a lot more than she was willing to show. He was acting like a selfish prick, and he wasn’t even trying to be there for her when she was shouldering so much responsibility she wanted to scream.

Making a noise of disgust, Cam shoved away from the desk and stomped down the stairs to let John know he could go back to watching the camera feeds. She wasn’t too happy with him at the moment either. He should have kept his mouth shut. But then, in Cam’s experience men were worse for gossiping than women. They just didn’t call it that.

It was an hour before she got back to the house, and just to give herself some peace and quiet later she decided to take the ferrets to her mother’s room for a while. They could play themselves out from the excitement of it all, and then she might be able to get some decent sleep before they went back to surround and watch the van. They had temporarily mounted a camera to keep an eye on it anyway, but they wanted to be close by so they could move in when he showed up.

“You guys really miss her, huh?” Cam asked the ferrets as they wandered the room, sniffing and searching. Every once in a while they would tilt their heads way back to look up at her, as if to ask her where she was hiding their mama.

“Poor babies. She’ll be back in a day or two, though, and then you can get all excited about her for an hour or two before falling asleep again.”

Pickle looked up at her just before nipping at her sock-covered toe. As soon as she yelped, he made a huffy, laughing sound and bounced backward, wagging his head from side to side.

“You’re such a little shit, Pickle,” she said, but she was laughing. He was so ridiculous. He did the exact same thing to her mother all the time, if she happened to be wearing socks. Something about socks just got ferrets going. Squeaker wasn’t as bad for nipping, though he did tend to grab the socks and try to pull them off with his teeth.

Cameron pulled off one of her socks and dropped it on Pickle’s head, who went absolutely nuts attacking the offending item. All four paws were gripping it as he rolled around on the floor, ‘wrestling’ with it. Every once in a while he would bounce onto his feet only to start rolling around with the sock again after pouncing on it. Squeaker decided to get in on the fun, and pounced instead on Pickle, who yipped at him and forgot all about the sock. Until it touched his fur, of course, and then he forgot about Squeaker to attack the sock again.

She sat on the bed and watched them play until her head started rolling on her neck. Then she yanked her sock away from Squeaker, who had apparently commandeered it, and put it back on her foot. She got a whiff of her own foot, which wasn’t pleasant, but Cam had no interest in a shower right then. All she wanted was her bed. Scooping the ferrets into her arms, she trudged off to her own room, trying to keep the wriggling bundles from falling to the floor as they struggled to get down.

“Nope. You guys have had all the fun-time you’re getting right now. And if you start digging at the door again, I’m locking you up.” It was an empty threat. They didn’t even own a cage for them. Her mother had gotten rid of it years ago.

The instant she closed her bedroom door behind her, however, and set the boys on the floor, they ran straight to their bed. They curled up like a couple of quotation marks and went right off to sleep.
Probably depressed now
, she thought. They weren’t used to spending this much time alone, and her mother had never been away from them for more than a few hours at a time, so Cam felt sorry for them. It wasn’t like she got mad at them anyway. Still, it was a relief to be able to strip off her clothes, slip into shorts and a t-shirt, and let her body ooze between the sheets. She really was falling in love with her bed lately, she realized, which was her last thought before she passed out.


   
 
   
 


“You’ve been keeping a close eye on Katherine, I take it?” Cam asked Chuck.

“You’d better believe it. That girl isn’t allowed to leave the house right now. Hasn’t been out since I took her back the other night. She can get fresh air when the front door wafts it in,” he said bitterly. Cam wasn’t surprised. It had been a very rude wake-up call for him to find out what his daughter was really like.

The price of spoiling your kids
, she thought. It was one of the reasons she didn’t really like kids. Or at least other people’s kids. And why she had thanked her mother more than once for not letting her turn out like that. They might have their disagreements, but being raised to be responsible and independent, instead of expecting everyone to give her whatever she wanted, was something she was grateful for.

If she had ever shown any signs of behaving the way Katherine had done, she’d have been stomped on for it. In fact, the closest she had come to that had been going out on her own the day she met Brian, and adult or not, her mother hadn’t let her get away with it. Most of the arguments she had with her mother came about because they were too much alike, though. Lately the tendency for them both to rely solely on themselves was getting to be problematic. They each had a hard time operating within a team, which was what they had to do now.

Not that Cam wanted to run the show on the farm. Far from it. It was just that she had been given the responsibility for a short period of time, and she was damn well going to do it. Once her mother was back, and knew everything that was going on, Cam would feel nothing but relief. She kept wondering when someone was going to ask her who the hell she thought she was, giving them all orders. She could easily see someone like Katherine saying, ‘You’re not the boss of me!’ The thought nearly made her smile, but she contained it. She didn’t want Chuck to think she was laughing at him.

“Cam?” Chuck’s query startled her.

“Sorry. Did you ask me something?”

“I just said we need to find a way to lock our new containment cell so that asshole can’t get out again.”

“For now we can just bar the door. We can angle a beam from the ground to the door. Dig a pit, and maybe line it with fast-drying cement, to brace the beam. Sort of like those metal door bars you see in movies of people living in apartments in shitty neighbourhoods. For now anyway. We can think of something else later. Just make sure your daughter doesn’t go anywhere near the building once we have him.”