Autumn in the City of Lights (3 page)

“And I’m fine, by the way,” Shad said.

Connie pursed her lips and looked him over. “Your head looks bigger, if that’s even possible.”

Daniel peeked in the bag on Connie’s shoulder. “What on Earth do you have in here?”

She let the bag fall onto an empty bed, which creaked under its weight. “Well, when I heard there’d been an accident at the meeting and people were being brought to the hospital, I thought some food would be appreciated. So Rissi and I–”

“Emptied the kitchen cabinets?” Daniel finished for her as he pawed through the bag. Shad hurried to the bedside and unearthed a package of Twinkies.

I touched the side of Connie’s bag. The leather was caramel colored and felt buttery soft under my fingertips. I touched the silver emblem on the front of the purse and raised my eyebrows at Connie.

“Do you realize you’re using a thousand-dollar designer bag to haul snack cakes?”

She shrugged, smiling. “What else was I going to use?”  She reached out and brushed my damp hair with her fingers. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and gestured to the side of my head. “I bumped my head, but I’m fine.”

“Concussion?” she asked sharply.

“Um, no,” I started to say, but Connie’s eyebrows went up so quickly, I knew she caught the hesitation in my voice. “Well, I’m not sure yet. Grey’s going to look at my CT scan later.”

“Later?” Connie asked. “Why, what’s he doing now? What’s happened?” Connie was as perceptive as always. She knew something big must have gone down for Grey to put off any health concern of mine. “Where’s Ben?”

I looked at Shad and Daniel, then back to Connie and Rissi, unsure how to tell them.

“Ben’s been hurt,” Daniel said.

“Hurt? How bad?”  Connie asked, looking down at Rissi, who looked confused.

“We don’t know yet,” I said. “Grey’s in surgery with him now.”

“He’ll be okay, though. Right, Autumn?” Rissi asked, looking up at me.

“I hope so,” I said, hunching down to hug her.

Shad, Daniel and I took turns telling Connie and Rissi about the explosion and digging Ben out. Connie pulled a fistful of candy bars from her purse’s depths, and handed them out.

“Eat,” she commanded everyone. “We’re all worrying ourselves sick. The food will do us good.”

“I can get you multivitamins if you’re concerned about deficiencies,” said a deep, calm voice behind us. We all stiffened, and my breath caught in my throat when I looked past our little family and saw Karl.

“I have stores of supplements you’re more than welcome to,” Karl continued, his voice friendly. “Vitamin C, vitamin D, B-12, fish and flax seed oil, prenatal. I even have gummy vitamins for the kids.”  He smiled at Rissi.

Daniel half-turned toward Karl. “No thank you. We appreciate the offer, but we’re doing just fine with what we have.”

“I’m sure you are,” Karl replied.

The gigantic man standing behind Karl wasn’t dressed in his signature green camouflage cargo pants anymore, but I’d recognize him anywhere. Hart was Karl’s number one henchman. I hadn’t seen him since our escape from the underground hideout beneath Hollywood High School. Hart’s chest was roughly the size of the rain barrel at my grandparents' house, and by the girth of his upper arms, I bet he probably could have lifted that barrel, full of rainwater, and then carried it across the county.

As he watched me now, I noticed just how small and close together his eyes were. Beady and dark, they flicked between me and Rissi, who still hugged me around the waist. Uneasiness crept down my arms, and I situated myself between Rissi and Hart’s roving eyes.

“Is there something we can help you with, Karl?” Shad asked. His voice was quiet, but the threat was audible.

“I’ve come to check on the men and women from The Front who are here receiving treatment. Remember, there were injured people on both sides this morning.”

“You never appeared to care about your people in the past,” I said. “Why start now?”

Karl looked stricken. “I’m deeply sorry for any lives lost, on
both
sides. And to set the record straight, I have never taken the loss of my own lightly. Despite what you think, I’m not a monster.”

A scream swelled inside me. Only a monster could have unleashed The Plague that claimed the lives of billions. But I couldn’t tell anyone I knew Karl did it. I was part of Karl and Grey’s secret; I couldn’t betray Karl without him betraying Grey.

“Please go,” I said to Karl, too weary to deal with him any longer.

Karl looked at me for a long moment, then, motioning to Hart, turned and walked away.

“I can’t believe he actually thinks we’d be all chummy now, just because the peace talks are moving forward,” Shad said.

“Are they moving forward now, though?”  Connie asked, her eyes wide. “I mean... the bombing. Wasn’t that The Front?”

“Karl’s telling the truth about a few of his men being hurt in the blast,” Daniel said. “I overheard the Marshal talking earlier. They don’t think he’s behind it.”

“There’s no way Karl’s
not
to blame here,” I said, thinking of all the evil he’d brought down on us in the last year and a half.

“Preaching to the choir here, Pastor Winters,” Shad said.

I sighed, moved back to my curtained cubicle, and dropped down onto the hospital bed. Rissi followed and crawled up next to me, laying her head in my lap. I played with her brown curls and stared at the diamond pattern on the light blue plastic curtains surrounding us.

How had things become so complicated? In the past, Karl was evil. Everyone knew this. Now, Karl was a necessary evil to endure in the name of peace. It didn’t matter that our leaders didn’t trust him, that I didn’t trust him. If we wanted to move forward, making a truce with The Reconstruction Front was the only way.

And it made me sick to consider it.

Hours passed as we waited for Ben, none of us ready to go home. To keep Rissi entertained — and both of us distracted from worrying about her brother — I showed her how to play M.A.S.H., the fortune teller game from my elementary school days.

When she predicted I’d end up living in a shack with a pet penguin for the third time, I tossed the pad of paper aside and looked up to see Diego, New Burbank’s mayor. He was having a quiet conversation with Karl that didn’t seem to be going well. Diego sighed and slouched against the wall, and Karl shook his head in what appeared to be resignation, and left.

I couldn’t keep my curiosity at bay, so I asked Rissi to wait on the bed and went to talk to Diego.

“Excuse me, Mayor?” I said tentatively. I knew I wasn’t one of his favorite people. Neither were any of my friends, for that matter. We had spoken out against his attempts at a peace treaty with The Reconstruction Front. Surely now, I thought, he’d have to understand this was why peace would never exist between us and The Front.

“Yes?” His mild Spanish accent was more succinct than usual. He raised his head, and I saw just how weary he looked. His dark eyes were puffy, and soot had settled into the lines on his face. A dirty bandage was wrapped around his forearm.

Guilt quickly squashed my desire to draw out every bit of information about his conversation with Karl, and instead, I offered him a bottle of water from Connie’s bag.

He accepted the bottle with a nod. “Thank you.” He unscrewed the cap and drank heartily, tipping his head back. When he’d drunk his fill, he tried to hand the half-full bottle back to me, but I waved it off.

“Again, thank you, Autumn,” he said, appearing to be somewhat rejuvenated. He dampened a corner of his bandana with the water, then began to clean his face.

I perched on the arm of a nearby row of chairs and waited. When he was done, he took another swig of water, then looked at me expectantly.

“Go ahead,” he said.

I gritted my teeth at his presumption that I was waiting to jump on him. I decided on a different tactic and said, “Is there anything I can do to help find the bomber?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“What?” I demanded, my voice harsher than I’d intended it to be.

“I assumed you wanted to further educate me on the destructive power of The Front, using this morning’s events as Exhibit A.”

“Right now I’m more concerned about my friend.”

“We’re all concerned about our friends here today.” Diego gestured to the bustling hospital hallway, his meaning clear.

“What did Karl want earlier?” I asked, changing the subject. I didn’t expect Diego to actually tell me flat out, so I was surprised when he didn’t hold back.

“He objected to having the New Burbank Guard question all of his people about the bombing. He seems to think there are some within our ranks who might... frame them.”  Diego raised an eyebrow at me.

“What? You don’t think I’d...”

“No. Of course not. Not you. But your grievances with him and The Front are well known.” When I started to interject, he cut me off. “And not entirely unwarranted. Please believe me when I say I understand. I fought at the Battle for Hoover, too, you know.”

“I know.”  I remembered seeing him during the clean-up after the battle. He’d taken over the reconstruction of Hoover, and his popularity had grown until he was the natural choice to lead us back to Los Angeles.

“But we have to set all of that aside if we’re going to move forward,” he said, repeating the same speech I’d heard him give time and again.

“It’s a mistake.”  I shook my head. “I’ve seen so much evil in the last year and a half, and all of it stems from Karl. He’s behind the bombings today. I know it.”

“I appreciate your input, Autumn. I really do. And I understand where you’re coming from, but a feeling just isn’t enough. By all accounts, Karl is making every effort to reform, and he’s bringing his people in line. And honestly, he has manpower and supplies, two things we’re sorely in need of. We’re trying to rebuild our city. We need all the help we can get.”

“Getting into bed with Karl will only benefit
him
. He’ll make sure of that.”

Diego sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to do here. Arrest him? Send out riding parties to round up all the rest of his people and arrest them, too? We don’t have the manpower or nearly enough public support for that kind of action.”  He sighed and stroked his forehead, wearily.

“No. I’m not asking for that,” I said. “But I am asking you not to give him a pass just because he’s gotten better PR lately.”

“We’re not. Peace talks are being suspended for now. We’re going to make sure he wasn’t behind this before we move on. There’ll be a representative from my department and someone from The Reconstruction Front questioning everyone who was at the peace talks today. Even you.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to hide. But I hope you find the people who do.” I reached out a hand and shook Diego’s.

When I turned back toward the waiting area, I saw Rissi had joined Connie, Daniel and Shad. They were all watching me, no doubt curious about my conversation with Diego. I walked over to sit next to Connie.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, nothing,” I said, slumping into my chair. “They’re going to investigate – with The Front – and resume peace talks after they know more.”

“Only if they find out Karl’s not behind this, though,” Connie said.

I put my head in my heads. “This is ludicrous. I’ve had it with The Front! We’re trying to make peace with a group that is inherently not peaceful. There are other groups out there we should be making friends with: the Grand Coulee group in Washington State and the Bath County people in Virginia, not to mention the huge group at Niagara Falls in New York.”

These were groups we’d recently been in touch with via shortwave radio. In the same fashion that Hoover had been founded, groups around the United States had migrated toward hydroelectric dams for the natural power source. None of these groups were as organized and far along as Hoover, but they weren’t far behind either. Though I worried Karl could have infected some of those groups as well. He’d said he was “everywhere” when Grey and I fought him in Hoover. And we had evidence he was in Paris.

Grey appeared, and I took a step back, my anger immediately subsiding.

“I only have a few minutes to update you,” he said. “I need to get back into surgery, but I didn’t want you all waiting through the night.”

“Through the night?” Connie gasped.

“Marissa, do you want to hear this?” Grey asked.

“I want to know,” she said. “He’s my brother.”

Grey took a deep breath, then pressed ahead. “The good news is I think he’s going to live. He’s sustained massive internal damage, but we seem to have that under control now.”

“What’s the bad news?” I asked, scared of what was coming.

Grey paused, staring at me for a moment. Then in a quiet voice, he said, “The bad news is that it’s possible his spinal cord was damaged.”

“Oh, God,” Connie gasped.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” I asked, as a cold sliver of fear cut through me.

“Ben may be paralyzed,” Grey confirmed.

I let that thought crash around in my head for several moments before looking up at Grey. “Ben might be paralyzed? Forever?”  Saying the words myself immediately brought tears to my eyes, thinking of what this would mean for him.

“We won’t know for sure for a while yet,” Grey said, taking my hand in his and squeezing it.

“What about his arms?” Connie asked. “Is it full paralysis or only partial?”

“It’s possible he could recover some movement, but I can’t tell right now. This isn’t my area of expertise. Either way, we’re going to be working on him through the night. I doubt I’ll be able to come back out and update you again.”  He turned to Rissi. “Do you have any questions?”

Rissi didn’t answer immediately, so Connie bent down and took both of her hands and tried to explain.

“I know what it means to be paralyzed,” Rissi said, a tone of annoyance in her voice. She bit her trembling lip and jerked away from Connie.

“Autumn,” Grey said. “I had a second to look over your CT scan before coming out here. You do have signs of a concussion.”

“I’m fine,” I said, still staring at Rissi. A concussion was nothing compared to what might lay ahead for Ben.

Grey took my hands, squeezing them. “I know, but I want you to talk to Jen before you leave and follow her orders to the letter, okay?”

I nodded but still didn’t look at him, too stunned to turn my head from Rissi.

“I need to get back to Ben.”  Grey kissed my temple and disappeared down the hallway.

The night ahead passed at a snail’s pace. We went home, and after a silent dinner, Rissi suddenly started weeping as if she’d never see her brother again. In the wee hours of the morning, she calmed down enough to say she was thankful Ben was still alive, even if he may never be the same.

Connie sat up with me, claiming she couldn’t sleep either. It was insanely frustrating that there was nothing any of us could do.  Every time I heard a noise outside, I hopped up to see if Gideon was coming home with Grey on his back. Once, it was Shad coming home, but the other times, it was always just the wind, and the street remained dark and empty.

By sunrise, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m going back to the hospital,” I said to no one in particular.

“Good. I’m coming with you,” Shad said, standing up from the table.

“I think we should all go,” Connie said, looking for her purse. “I can bring Grey and Jen some breakfast, too. I bet they’ve been on their feet with Ben through the night.”

It wasn’t long before we walked through the hospital doors. We took seats in the waiting room and sat patiently for another three hours.

Then I saw Grey walking down the hallway. “Grey!” I shouted.

He made a beeline to me and wrapped me in a firm hug.

“How is he?” I whispered.

“We only just finished with him.”

“Can we see him?”  The others had joined us.

“He’s not awake, but yes, you can go in. Please, don’t disturb him, though.”  Grey eyed Rissi, and she nodded.

Grey showed us to the ICU. I wasn’t prepared for what we found. Monitors surrounded him, and so many lines and tubes were connected to him, including one down his throat.

“Oh, Grey,” I said, looking at Ben, who was black and blue.

“He’ll be like this for a while. Even after he wakes, he’ll be attached to various monitors and aids until we’re sure he can function without them.”

I nodded, watching Rissi. She was holding Ben’s thumb, which seemed to be the only part of him that was unmarked.

Hours later, as the sun was setting, Connie spoke up. “I think it’s time to head back. We can take turns sitting with Ben, but there’s no sense in us all being here the whole time.”

“I can take the night watch,” Shad offered. “I don’t have patrol duty tonight.”

“I’ll come and relieve you in the morning,” I said. Then we quickly made a plan so that Ben would never be alone, and the rest of us left.

We were quiet as we rode home through the gathering darkness, each immersed in our own thoughts. Connie rode her dapple-gray horse, Coach, her huge purse hooked over the saddle. Rissi, despite numerous riding lessons since we arrived in Hoover, still clutched her pony’s saddle horn awkwardly.

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Gone was the excitable little girl with dirty hands and feet I’d met a year and a half ago. She still had the same big brown eyes that had stared at me through the grate back at The Water Tower. Her hair was still unruly as ever, but had lengthened so it fell in a chocolaty, shimmering mass halfway down her slender back. In another few years, she’d be a stunning teenage girl. And sometime in the future, she’d fall in love and marry. I just hoped Ben would be able to walk her down the aisle when the time came.

When we turned onto the tree-lined lane where our house was, the horses’ hooves went almost silent on the dirt and weeds concealing the concrete evidence of an era of human history gone forever. I looked up at the street sign as we passed by. When we moved in, Ben had repainted it to say “Hoover Hollow” because the street housed most of the Hoover Settlement people who came with us back to California.

The ancient, knobby trees arced over the street, creating darkness within the pitch black of night. I wasn’t frightened. Wildflowers and tall grasses bearded the disappearing curbs and sidewalks, and the wind sighed through the trees, their great gnarled branches creaking quietly.

The house we chose was a large Tudor with peaked roofs and dark shutters. A behemoth sycamore towered over the front lawn, keeping the house in perpetual shade. Rissi once said it looked like it was out of a fairy tale, and I agreed with her. It had three bedrooms upstairs, where Rissi, Ben, and I slept; an enormous master suite on the ground level for Connie and Daniel; and a finished basement apartment, which Shad took over. There was a massive fireplace in the living room, and the long table in the kitchen sat at least twelve people. There were a couple acres behind the house with a stable and a guesthouse, where Grey lived.

Daniel was waiting for us when we turned onto the grassed-over bricks of the driveway. He followed us to the stable and helped remove the saddles, brush down the horses and get them ready for the night. Snicket’s stall was in the back, and as I fed her a carrot, I thought I heard Connie and Daniel quietly arguing in Coach’s stall.

“We were fine,” she murmured. “Everything is okay.”

I peeked over the boards between the stalls. Daniel faced me, but his eyes were on Connie. His face was pinched with worry, but he looked a little angry, too. After yesterday, he was probably worried because she, and the rest of us, had been out after dark. He knew I didn’t carry a gun, and Connie flat out refused to carry one. I felt sheepish thinking how, even after yesterday, I still took our safety for granted.

I gave Snicket the rest of the carrot, tugged on her butterscotch-colored forelock and whispered goodnight to her, then secured her stall door. I helped Rissi finish with her pony, whom she’d named Nugget. When we were done, I sent her on to the house while I stopped at Connie’s stall, where she was methodically combing Coach’s black mane.