Schism (29 page)

“How long will it take to know if it works?”

“Hard to tell,” the Fixer answered Sean through his helmet. “But if he’s still in the same shape by morning, we’ll know it failed.”

Sean stared down at the trembling boy and wondered how excruciating the ordeal truly was. “When you find out, send someone to let me know,” he commanded before turning to leave.

Chapter XXII

01 August 2023

“T
his time turn your back to me.”

Bent over at the waist with her hands on her knees, Andy looked up at Ben like she wanted to give him a hard kick to the groin, but a real one this time. She was breathing heavily, as was he.

“C’mon, I’m not doing this to be a pain in the butt. I want to make sure you can defend yourself,” he insisted between breaths and beckoned her with his hands. “Let’s go.”

After slowly standing upright, Andy raised her hand. “Give me a minute.”

“No. Go now. If you can do it when you’re tired, you’ll be able to do it anytime.”

Knowing he was right, she took another deep breath. “All right,” she said hoarsely, and turned her back to him.

They were in the backyard. The cool weather enjoyed during those first days of their arrival had transformed into the persistent mugginess of summer, and despite it being nearly eight o’clock in the evening, their faces were red and glistening with sweat.

Andy prepared herself with another deep breath as the faint sound of Ben’s shoes walking on grass drew closer. A tense pause followed, then he grabbed her from behind, his arms bear-hugging around her chest and arms. The sweet scent of his sweat just barely hit her nose as she reacted swiftly to the attack by stepping one foot out to the side and squatting down to lower her center of gravity. Still moving fluidly, she jutted her elbows out to the sides, which loosened his grip just enough for her to break free.

“Good,” he said approvingly. “Let’s do it again.”

Andy didn’t complain this time, and they repeated the drill three more times before Ben decided she was ready for the next scenario.

“Now this time, raise your arms up, and my arms will go underneath them.”

As with the other scenarios, he would slowly walk her through the sequence of movements until she understood exactly what to do to defeat her attacker. With her back to him once again, she raised her arms, which allowed him to wrap his arms around her even tighter than before.

Ben caught a hint of the fragrance of her hair. “God, you smell…”

“What, I smell?” Horrified, Andy broke away, startling him, and she quickly sniffed underneath her arms.

“No, no…you don’t smell bad,” he said, laughing. “I meant to say that you smell nice.”

“Oh…” She self-consciously brushed loose strands of hair away from her face. “It’s this new shampoo that Maria and Carmen made. It’s got lavender and some other sweet things in it. Chamomile, I think,” she added hastily. “I don’t really know.”

“Well, whatever it is, it smells amazing.” And without warning, he stepped forward and leaned in to smell the top of Andy’s scalp again, catching her off-guard, and she instinctively backed away. “Relax. I just wanted to smell you again,” he said before shutting his eyes tight and looking embarrassed. “Sorry, that sounded weird.”

“Just a little.”

“Want to try again?” he asked.

“Okay, but after this one, I’m done for the day.”

“Fair enough.”

Andy turned around once more as Ben stepped forward to wrap his arms around her.

“Now do the same thing. Step out to the side and squat down.”

She followed the instructions.

“Good. Since I have a tighter grip on you, you’ll have to use your arms and feet to disable me. So look back and use your elbows to strike me in the face.”

“Oh, that sounds fun.” She looked back and smiled.

“Funny,” he smirked before continuing with the lesson. “You can stomp on the feet to further injure the person, but I would go for the face first, either with your elbow or the back of your forearm. Almost anytime you strike someone anywhere on the front or sides of their head, their instinct will be to close their eyes. If you’re lucky, they’ll grab their head. Either way, that’s your window of escape.”

Andy returned her gaze straight ahead as he released his arms and stepped back. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

After she lifted her arms, Ben stepped forward and grabbed her again. With impressive speed, Andy deftly maneuvered out of his grip, turned herself around, and threw the base of her right palm up within an inch of his nose. He blinked and took a step backward. “Nice work.”

They repeated this scenario a few more times and then ended the training for the day.

“We’ll do it again tomorrow.”

Andy nodded and unwrapped the rubber band that held her ponytail in place. She rubbed her scalp, which released the aroma of the homemade shampoo. It
did
smell good. “How big is he?” she asked.

“Who, Luke?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess he’s about my height and build.”

Andy studied Ben. He was a good eight or nine inches taller than she and easily seventy to eighty pounds heavier. “Is he as strong as you?” she asked, her eyes looking anxious.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he tilted his head to the side and then looked away. This made her uneasy.

“I won’t lie to you. Luke’s pretty strong.” Sensing her apprehension, he quickly added, “Just remember that he’ll likely be drunk or high or both. That will take away some of his advantage.”

She looked down at her feet and muttered, “Right.”

“You’ll be fine. You’ll be the last thing he expects.”

Looking up, Andy set her gaze to the rear of the house. Through the window that looked into the living room, she could see Susan and Charlie playing a game of cards with Maria and Carmen. Probably poker. Meanwhile, Morgan was reading a book at the kitchen table while feeding Katie. Candles flickered throughout both rooms, as there was no electricity. Princeton sat outside of the zone where power had been restored, and they were too far north from Philadelphia to receive it from that end.

“How did you learn all this self-defense stuff?” she asked

“You’ll laugh when I tell you.”

“Why?”

Ben stepped over to a wooden bench that separated a small rock garden from the lawn that covered the majority of the backyard and sat down. Andy edged over to him but remained standing.

“From watching
YouTube
videos that I got from Danny.”

“
YouTube
?”

“Yeah. Danny has access to every video file that people uploaded on
YouTube
up to the days just before the outbreak. He’s also got access to all the files from
Wikipedia
too.”

“What?”

“Yeah, but get this. Within a year after the outbreak, Sean sent people to the headquarters of both of those companies to bring
all
of their servers back to New York. He didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on all that information.”

“Oh my God,” Andy breathed.

“That’s the kind of person we’re dealing with. While we were all scared and starving, Sean was busy transporting thousands of terabytes of data across the country. Do you know where
YouTube
and
Wikipedia
had their headquarters?”

“No idea.”

“California and Florida. Both thousands of miles from here.”

Andy rubbed her eyes as her anxiety returned. “And Danny has access to those files?”

“Yeah. Part of his job is to go through all the video files and delete all the crap that has no real value, at least to Sean. You know…videos that parents used to upload of their kids doing funny or cute things…useless stuff like that. But of course Danny keeps copies of the really funny things and then gives them to Liam and Dez to sell.”

“People buy old videos from
YouTube
?”

“Sure,” Ben replied with a shrug. “It reminds them of the old days, I guess.”

It had never occurred to Andy that such things would now be so important. She took a seat on the bench and hugged her knees to her chest. Her shoulder touched Ben, and she made no move to distance herself. “He’s devious.”

Frowning, he turned to her. “Who? Danny?”

“No, Sean.”

“That’s just one of about a hundred words you could use to describe him.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his right arm around her and pulled her an inch closer. Andy closed her eyes, and settled into him. Just a friendly hug.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell me ‘I told you so,’ but I’m beginning to think that this might not be such a good idea.”

“What, the nightclub?”

“Yeah.”

He swallowed hard. “Andy, you already know what I think of this whole plan, but I’ve been trying for weeks now to think of some other way to do it. So has Jim, but the fact is that neither he nor I can be involved. If Sean gets even the slightest idea that we’ve returned, he’ll either add so much security to wherever he’s hiding the virus or he’ll move it and we’ll never find it again. And since Luke is probably the only person who knows if Sean actually has the virus and where he’s hiding it, the only options are to either kidnap him and force the truth out of him with torture, or…”

“Or do what we’re doing instead.”

“Yeah.” Ben gently tussled Andy’s hair. “I just…I feel like I’m throwing you to the wolves. I feel like a coward.”

She abruptly sat up and turned toward him, her eyes burning bright. “Hey, we’ve been through this already. I insisted on doing this. You just have to accept that this is
one
thing that you can’t do.” Her voice rose in both intensity and volume. “I admit I’m scared, but if we’re going to succeed, we’ll have to do some dangerous things. You know that better than anyone. You’ve already sacrificed enough. Let some other people handle the burden for a while.”

Ben managed to smile.

“I don’t want you to worry about me,” she continued. “Maria will be with me the whole time, and between the two of us, we’ll get it done, especially after all these self-defense lessons you’ve been giving us. So stop worrying so much. You’ve prepared me well, Yoda.” She gave Ben a gentle punch into his arm.

“Yes ma’am,” he said with a smile.

She smiled back at him and their eyes met for a moment too long. Feeling the tension, Andy released her knees from her chest and planted her feet on the ground. “I need to wash up,” she said.

“Ahem, yeah, me too.”

Ben followed her inside. He went upstairs to clean up while she went to talk to Morgan in the kitchen. “What are you reading?” she asked.

“Calculus,” Morgan replied, looking up from her book. “Charlie found it at the library on campus. He said it would be a good one to start with.”

“Calculus? I didn’t know you liked math that much.”

Morgan grimaced. “It’s not that I like it, but I often thought that I should learn some more advanced math so that I could teach it.”

Andy’s thoughts turned to her medical books sitting in a box in her bedroom, and she felt a pang of regret for neglecting her own studies of late. “Sounds like a good idea.” She glanced down at her friend’s wristwatch. “When did Jim leave?”

“About an hour ago, right after you and Ben went outside,” Morgan replied without lifting her eyes from her book.

Andy offered her pinky finger to Katie who was lying in a vibrating chair positioned on the kitchen table. The baby latched onto her finger with her entire hand but without her usual vice-like grip. Her eyelids were beginning to look heavy.

“She’s getting close. Want me to put her to bed?”

Morgan released the pen she’d been using to take notes and looked up at her daughter. “Nah, I got her.”

While Morgan put Katie to bed, Andy wandered into the living room.

“Not again!” Charlie lamented as Susan raked in the pot of chips to her corner of the table while imitating an evil laugh.

“Ha! That’s right, sucker!” she cackled. “You can’t beat me!”

Both Maria and Carmen threw their losing hands of cards onto the table. Andy assessed the damage Susan had caused to everyone’s stack of chips. Hers was easily triple the size of the others.

“Wait, didn’t Susan win last night too?” Andy teased Charlie. He and Susan had had a longstanding poker rivalry since their days in Aspen.

“Why, Andy, I do believe that you are correct,” replied Susan, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Charlie made a face.

“Hey, you got a sec?” Andy asked him, her tone now serious.