“No. Finn’s coming from the south. You have to mount a defense or put up a barricade . . . maybe an abatis . . .”
“What?”
“Trees. Cut them down so all the limbs face the enemy. Not only will your people have cover, but it will be much harder for Finn’s men to get through. They’ll have to go around. An obstacle like that will also keep him looking at Rule, not his rear.”
Jarvis glanced at the other men, who nodded. “We can do that for you,” Jarvis said.
“Good. Then pick your men, Jarvis, the ones you can count on not to run at the first shot,” Tom said, “and buy me some time to get my kids.”
105
The secret about what they were doing and who was coming Rule’s way kept until about three a.m., just long enough for Chris and his people to retrieve the needed supplies and start packing up the kids, who were now gathered at the hospice. To Tom’s surprise, only fifty or so oldsters, most of them refugees in Rule to begin with, elected to take a share of what supplies remained and get out of town. Of the roughly one hundred and fifty elderly remaining, Jarvis had chosen ten to man an abatis from trees they’d felled and then hastily arranged to guard the southern road, the most direct approach from the mine, which cut through rolling, sparsely forested countryside.
“I got a couple other men working on trees to barricade the north road out of town once the children are gone. Everyone else wants to wait in the church,” Jarvis said to Tom, who’d visited the defunct school for a few, very special items before heading into the church’s bell tower. “At least until Finn’s in the village.”
“Wait? What for? You can’t be serious.” Tom was horrified. “Jarvis, you need to make people leave. They’ll be sitting ducks. They should get out of Rule. This isn’t Judgment Day. This isn’t Jonestown. For God’s sake, no one’s asking you to drink Kool-Aid. They’ll kill you.”
“But the Rev’s right: no place is truly safe.” Jarvis’s eyes were so far back in his skull, you needed a flashlight to see them. “It comforts us to gather; I can’t take that away. Besides, our grandchildren are finally coming home and . . .” His voice thickened. “They’re our responsibility, always were. If my grandson’s with Finn, I need to know he’s at peace.” No amount of argument changed the old man’s mind, or anyone else’s, and Tom finally gave up.
Later, crossing the square to the village hall, Tom spotted people trickling into the church. The stained-glass windows shimmered with color, something he’d have found calming on any other night. As he mounted the village hall steps, the faint strains of a hymn wound through the open church doors: I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless.
Bum leg nagging a touch from all the up-and-down—not to mention wrestling plastic primer buckets and bags of high-grade fertilizer into a back storage room just above the jail before humping back for cans of diesel and fuel oil and hoping he really did have the proportions down—he headed downstairs to check out the building’s air-conditioning ducts. He’d already found they were just large enough for him to worm through. (Thank God he wasn’t claustrophobic.) Now, to figure out how far he could stretch that det cord and if the math worked. All he needed to buy were fifteen, twenty lousy minutes on the outside.
And then the darkness will deepen, Tom thought. Whether we like it or not. Two hours later, he heard the clump of boots.
“Tom?”
“Up here, Chris. To your left. Hold on.” He was flat on his back, on
a high shelf, a partially dismantled alarm clock in his hands, the jail’s ceiling a foot from his face. Wedging a finger on the clock’s escape wheel, he carefully seated a sliver of whittled matchstick between one tooth and the lever’s entry pallet before slowly easing pressure on the wheel. The pallet bit into the wood but didn’t break it. The clock’s gears were still, the hands frozen. “So,” Tom said, gently laying the clock aside and picking up a pair of crimpers, “guys at the barricade set?”
“About as ready as they can be. Kids should be away in another
hour.”
“Cutting it close. Going to be dawn soon.”
“Can’t be helped.” Chris was taking in the tanks of propane, cans
of gasoline, premix. “I knew all this stuff was here, but what you’re planning? Gives me a whole different perspective.” “Yup. Just got to hope it’s enough of a bang.” Coring a hole in the end of a grayish-white block, he slipped in a slim length of tarnished pipe—yes, close enough to pass for an M18, a lucky break—then used his teeth to tear strips of black electrical tape. “You got your guys?”
“What’s left. There weren’t many of us Spared to begin with, and even fewer now. Pru and Greg are the oldest. I’d send both, but I held Greg back to go with us. There are some guys, Aidan and Lucian and Sam . . . after I left, they went over to the dark side. You know, locking up Pru and Greg? I don’t trust Aidan and his guys but can’t leave them. Wouldn’t be right.”
“Your people, your call. But you really want them for the long haul? Eventually, you’ll have to choose.”
“I know.” Chris shrugged. “We’re all Spared. If we make it, that might be the time to give them a share and cut them loose. Anyway, Pru and three other guys’ll go after your kids when we say.”
“Excellent.” Tom gestured at a thermos on the floor. “Coffee, if you want. I’ve been mainlining for hours. I’m so jacked, I’m vibrating.”
“Thanks.” Uncapping the thermos, Chris poured out a cup, sipped, then blinked. “Wow, that’s strong. I think my teeth just curled.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. Found it in Weller’s stuff.” Tom returned his attention to his work. That sea of red hemorrhage in Chris’s eyes, so like Finn’s altered Changed, unsettled him. “You sound better.”
“Yeah. Kincaid said I was lucky my larynx didn’t fracture.” He heard Chris take another halting swallow. “How’s this going to work exactly?”
“Going to wire the block to an alarm clock the way I already have four others. Once I pull the matchstick, clock’s ticking. But this way, I can control exactly when we start instead of setting it now and then hoping we get lucky.”
“Won’t they hear it from the door? The ticking?” Chris gestured with a finger at a finished bomb attached to a bottom shelf. “That one’s in plain view.”
“Something interesting for Finn to look at. I’m betting they won’t have time to yank them all before one blows,” he said, amazed at how smoothly the lie flowed from his tongue.
“Wow, they really teach you guys a lot.” Chris ran a forefinger over the cup’s rim. “I saw this movie about this bomb disposal squad. You did stuff like that?”
“Yeah.” Tom used his knife to flay electrical cord. The more juryrigged this looked, all the better to fool Finn. “I know the movie.”
“Did they get it right?”
“Some. Most of the time we sent in robots and built water charges or used a hunk of C4 to blow IEDs. The suit’s a last resort.” He paused. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I really don’t want to talk about it right now. I have to stay focused. Going back there in my head . . . it’s nowhere good.”
“Okay.” He felt Chris’s eyes. “What did Weller say?”
He knew what Chris meant. “Nothing very nice,” he said, ripping another long piece of electrical tape. Thank goodness, there was plenty. He’d worried he might not have enough for the real thing. “This isn’t how I imagined we would meet.”
“Oh?” Chris’s voice grew cautious. “How was that?”
“I was going to kill you.” He smoothed tape with the flat of his thumb. “For what Weller said you did to Alex. After the mine went, killing you was all I could think about. It was a . . . poison?” He felt his tongue test that, then shook his head. “That’s not right. It was the only thing I had to hang on to, that hate. Hate makes you feel more powerful, like you can keep yourself pumped, so you put one foot in front of the other, thinking that you’re going somewhere even if all you’re doing is looping the same movie over and over in your head.”
“Of how you were going to kill me.”
“Technicolor.” He nodded. “This afternoon . . . well, yesterday now . . . when Jayden called you by name, I thought, Jesus, it’s him; this is the guy I’ve come to kill.” Sighing, Tom folded his hands over his chest. When he was a kid, he used to lie like this in sweet-smelling grass and study clouds. “There was a second there when I thought, fine, let him die.”
There was a long pause. “What changed your mind?”
“Ellie.” He rolled his head to look down. “She was frantic. It finally dawned on me that Weller told so many lies, what he said about you might be just one more.”
A brief smile flickered over Chris’s lips. “Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”
“You’re welcome.” Despite the weeks nurturing the monstrous blight in his soul, Tom liked this boy. In another time and place, they might be good friends. He felt a brush of sadness that, now, the chances were nil. He had so many questions, and no time. He wanted to ask about Alex: each memory, how she looked, what she said. He even thought he could take it if Chris and Alex . . . but did that matter now? Nothing could change how he felt about Alex, nothing, and he still had the miracle of Ellie, too: so sweet, a final gift.
Hang on to that. Everything that happened next would hinge on Chris, a boy he’d dreamt about so often and barely knew. Hold on to Ellie and Alex until the very last second.
“Kids are about ready,” Chris said. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” Showing the other boy a tight smile, Tom tore off a few strips of electrical tape and began strapping the alarm clock to the gray-white block he’d fashioned. Not a bad looker, if he did say so himself. Ought to kick-start a couple hearts. “Few more seconds.” “Okay.” Chris was quiet a moment. “You ever wonder who did it?”
