Chapter Twenty-seven

“You drugged me last night?” Luc sneered, cutting through the room’s infernal darkness.

He had every right to be upset with me for drugging him; I’d be equally infuriated. The decision had been an impulsive one, but it had saved all of us. “Have you forgotten so soon what we saw on TV?”

“I remember clearly, Lily. That’s the problem, and drugging me is probably the tip of the iceberg.” A popping noise punctuated his words. He was probably working his way through his knuckles. “You told me about the guy last night, but who’s the other person you killed, and who else did you drug? I can’t believe they know you drugged me, so who was it?”

Pops again, as I tried to concoct any story that wouldn’t anger Luc for eternity. “It seems the greenies are more honest with me than you are.”

“You would have done the same thing, maybe even shot me if the roles had been reversed.” I was glad neither of us could see the other’s reaction, though my hesitation in answering had betrayed me.

“You didn’t answer the question.” His tone matched the raging blizzard outside, and Noah began to cry.

“I haven’t killed anyone other than the man last night. For the record, the greenies also listed you and a bunch of your cohorts as dangerous criminals. We both know that’s not true, yet you choose to believe their lies about me.” Hands in front of me, I stepped cautiously to the kitchen and pulled open the utility drawer to remove two flashlights. Once light illuminated the room, Luc walked over to me, blocking my path to the couch.

“Damn it.” He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the flashlight’s beam. “They specifically said they wanted you alive. No one else on that list got that caveat, so you’re either lying to me or hiding something. Which is it?”

There was no way he’d give it a rest. But how much should I divulge? How much could I trust him with? I knew one thing for sure. This wasn’t going to happen in front of Jessa. She needed no more ammunition in her attempts to undermine me. I stepped around Luc and turned my attention to her.

“Please take Noah to the other room. Your uncle and I need to talk.” I handed her a flashlight, but she rebuffed it, shaking her head as she hugged Noah closer.

“I’m not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I’d be making popcorn right now if the power was on.” She plopped onto the couch with Noah snuggled to her chest. I wanted to wipe the smirk from her face.

“Do as your aunt says.” Jessa rolled her eyes and left for the bedroom. I was certain she knew now wasn’t the time to badger Luc. A lump formed in my throat as he turned back to me. “Start talking and don’t leave anything out.”

“You have to understand that I’ve been doing what I can to suppress these memories. This is really painful for me.”

I took a deep breath. My voice cracked, and I began with the research assignment. Tears dripped onto the wooden floor as I told Luc about my activities with the church and watching my sister and boyfriend die. Arms folded to his chest, Luc stood emotionless as I mourned their loss and the loss of my former life.

“Starting over was the only way I could survive. It was the only way to protect my family.” Exhausted, I brushed my wrist against my cheek to stanch the tears.

“I didn’t expect that.” Luc pulled me into an embrace, his hands resting lightly on my back while I sought composure. “How did they find you?”

After all that, this was his question? Not an “I’m sorry for you loss” or an “I understand?” His lack of a reaction befuddled me. “I don’t know how they discovered me.  Maybe Ryan saw me, or Colonel Poison realized who I was. Heck, the church could have known I was alive the entire time. Regardless, dwelling on it isn’t going to help our situation. It’s just a matter of time before Mike or Carrie sells us out to gain better standing with the church. They’re going to lead the greenies straight to us.”

“You’re probably right.” He ran his fingers through his hair then remained quiet for a few minutes, seemingly on the verge of saying something. “You need to know that I’m not okay with your lies and omissions. I’m disappointed that you could have stopped this from happening years ago, yet you chose to walk away – and all this after having lived through 9/11. I’m going to need time to sort this out, but in the meantime, we’re going to work together to keep the kids safe.”

The last thing we needed was to be fighting each other as the world crumbled around us. “Let’s carry everything downstairs. We’ll be warmer and safer there.”

With a flashlight in one hand, and bags of groceries in the other, I descended the stairs as Luc wielded two boxes closely behind. The air was stale, but it teetered closely to tolerable.

“Everything goes in the secret room, but we’ll set it all here until we get the larger items in the room. You remember how to open the door?”

I set the bags onto the floor then felt for the door’s release. It slid open much easier than a few months ago. “Did you oil it?”

Luc nodded as he returned upstairs. “We need to bring a bed in here. I also have to get water from the well, and knowing my luck, it’s already frozen over.”

A couple of hours later, my back ached, but our supplies lined the walls. The girls were chasing each other around the basement. Jessa was still giving me the stank eye while she held Noah, and Luc was refusing to talk to me other than the occasional order for me to do something. It was almost like normal.

*                                                            *                                                            *

The blizzard had stopped a few days ago, yet waist-high snowdrifts prevented any forays into the thick mountain woods. The power had not returned. Five dark days had passed when a soft hum jolted me awake. I carefully pulled my arm from under Maggie, stood up, and headed to the light switch. The room brightened with more light than we’d seen in days. “We have power,” I said, louder than intended.

From the recliner, Luc slowly opened his eyes. He flung the comforter onto floor as he jumped into action. “Hook up the rechargeable batteries, put the laundry on to wash, and get the stove ready to boil water. I want to do what we can in case they cut the electric again. We’ll watch TV while it’s boiling.” Luc put on a coat and grabbed a bucket before he climbed the stairs.

I carried a basket of clothes to the washer and stuffed what I could inside, disregarding whether whites would pink. Maggie squealed that she could see for the first time in days as Rosie did a cartwheel off the hideaway bed. “Jessa, when the washer stops, transfer the laundry to the washer and start the next load. Keep the girls down here for now,” I said as I trudged upstairs to the kitchen to pull four pots from the cupboard.

Perhaps the ‘good guys’ regained control of the country while the power was out, I thought as Luc handed me the first bucket of water. I wanted to believe that the power outage had been storm-induced and not the work of a bunch of kooks, but I knew that wasn’t the case. The greenies had the guns, the food, the power…. They hadn’t bluffed that they were in control of everything but the very soul of America. I placed a lid on the fourth pot and walked to the television, unable to keep my curiosity at bay for any longer.

A man wearing an emerald robe stood in front of an auditorium full of people. A line of men in dark green uniforms formed the perimeter of the room. AK-47s rested at their side as they watched the priest’s every move.

“All rise,” the priest commanded. The audience obliged nearly in unison. “You have committed no crime against the Order, but the time has come for you to make your decision. Those who will join us, come forward now.”

A middle-aged man stumbled out of a row and staggered up to the stage. His dark ponytail swished from side to side as he twisted his head to look back at the crowd. “No one else is joining up?” he slurred.

“Just you, my friend.” The priest removed a pair of metal cuffs and slapped them onto the drunk’s wrists. “These are to keep track of you during your servitude. If you remove them, it will be considered an act of treason. Do you understand?” The man nodded. “Good. You’ll report to duty in five minutes.”

The priest scanned the crowd, taking a deep breath. “Now, soldiers.”

The soldiers fired into the crowd. When the last bullet was spent, he looked at the drunkard. “Bury them. You have eight hours.”

“But, sir, the ground is frozen outside.” His face paled as he scanned the bloodbath.

“Then you’re a waste of our time. Soldiers,” he said with a gesture to the man, “take care of them.”

Blood and brains oozed from the man’s head before I could close my eyes. The screen faded to black and I ran to the bathroom to empty my stomach. When I returned to the room, Luc was sitting on the couch, scrawling something onto paper. Colonel Bradley-Hemlock was on TV detailing the past few days’ events. She was made-up, looked well-rested, and seemed almost giddy about the church having gained twenty-five thousand new recruits who were ‘ready and willing’ to do their part in serving Hitlerica. She gave a warm smile as she said that all state capitals and cities with populations greater than fifty thousand had been secured, and their undesirables exterminated.

Her numbers didn’t jibe with me. “She’s bluffing. I can’t believe that many signed up. They’re getting maybe one in a thousand people. Americans aren’t going to take this lying down.”

“I don’t think she is bluffing, and you might be surprised at what a guy will do when his loved one’s back’s against the wall. ” He handed me a paper and pen as though I had any clue what I was supposed to do with them. “When they start reading through their fugitive list, you’ll write the names and I’ll write their city and state. I’ve already numbered them, so it should help keep it organized. We’ll combine the information later.”

I took the paper and listened intently as Colonel Bradley-Hemlock blathered on about smaller cities being the next target. When General Bryant came onscreen, I uncapped the pen as I took note of his haggard appearance. Black ringed the general’s eyes and yellow tinged his left cheek. He didn’t exchange pleasantries with Abi and a sneer straightened his lips when she gave him permission to read his list. Two hundred names later, I massaged my fingers while Abi reiterated the importance of apprehending us.

“I’m going to organize a resistance as soon as the weather lets up.” Luc said as he helped me pour boiled water into the vat.

“So you’re going to leave us when we need you most?” I’d known it would be only a matter of time before his being a soldier kicked in. He always had to be so damned noble, even to the detriment of his family.

He took a deep breath. “Don’t make this any harder for me than it already is. You may be able to watch people die and do nothing about it, but I can’t.” The words seemed to echo around the room. Luc’s eyes locked on mine, then widened with comprehension. “Oh, god, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

I wanted to scream at him, shake some sense into him, but he was right. A jackass for pointing it out to me in that fashion, but it didn’t lessen its truth. Nor did it make him leaving us any less idiotic. “We need you here with us.”

“Our best chance is in fighting back. If we don’t strike while the iron’s hot, we’re all going to end up dead.”

“You just don’t want to be here when Mike and Carrie reveal our whereabouts. Or is it that you want to join them?” Not waiting for his reaction, I stormed off to the bathroom.

The door squeaked open as I bent to turn on the shower. Luc grabbed my arm and spun me around. He lifted my chin to force eye contact, but I cast my eyes downward. “I’d walk through fire for you and the kids. Not sure why you’re so quick to believe I’d want to leave you or that I’d betray you.” His eyes were steady as he relaxed his grip on me. “You don’t fight fair, Lily.”

“It’s not about fair and unfair. It’s about us surviving.” My voice rose an octave as he pulled me into an embrace. “If you leave, we won’t see each other again. I know you’re still angry with me, but I love you. And the kids do, too. We need you here with us.”

“That’s where you and I differ. I don’t just want to survive. I want us to live.” He brushed my hair out of my face. “If we stay here and don’t fight back, we aren’t really free. The only thing we gain is being our own prison guard until we meet our executioner. That’s not living.”

“But it buys us time, and we’ll be together.”

“It buys us nothing except the possibility of watching each other die.” He sounded like a general, but then his voice softened. “I’ll stay for a couple more days, teach you how to hunt and fish, but after that, I’m finding a way to make these bastards pay for what they’ve done.” He walked out of the bathroom.

His decision was final.

I stepped into the shower. The water washed away the grime of the past several days, but it couldn’t ease my mental anguish. Luc’s leaving would be a death sentence for all of us, especially if he revealed our whereabouts to other fugitives. They didn’t have anything to lose by revealing our location, yet they had everything to gain. I couldn’t have our welfare resting squarely on the shoulders of strangers.

But the only way I’d keep Luc here would be to injure him. Or to kill him. I bristled at the thought, and tried to push it out of my mind, but it lingered, omnipresent as the scalding drops of water were replaced with cold. I turned off the faucet and reached for a towel.

If we were going to be alone, then it was better to make sure no one knew our location, better to keep Luc quiet. Killing him was the answer. But how?

The woods, after he’s taught me to fish. I could tell the kids he’d left, that it was too hard for him to say goodbye. No one would be any the wiser if I could keep up the act. It would almost pass for easy, except this was Luc, not some guy holding a gun to my head.

How had murder become my solution to the problems of this world?

The greater good. I was only killing to protect those I love, to ensure their survival.

Who are you to decide what is the greater good? I could almost hear Jack sparring with me in sociology class.

You gave me the right to decide the greater good when you demanded that I research the Order, when you didn’t stop me from going into that hellhole.

Is that how you rationalize what you do? His voice seemed so clear.

I let out a gasp as I tried to maintain a grip on my sanity. Why did my conscience have to take on his voice?

I slipped into my clothes and walked out to the living room. Luc was huddled on the couch watching the newest program on the psycho channel. His eyes pinched into slits and I turned my attention to the TV. Before I could focus, Luc began to scream. I couldn’t make out his words. The room turned dark, save for a ray of light peeking through the window above the door, but Luc’s screams did not falter. After a couple of seconds, it registered what he was saying.

“They’ve got Mom.”