Fight for Power (4 page)

Finally Herb had asked for a break because, he said, there were other things we needed to consider and he wanted everyone to clear their head first. I didn't even want to think what those things could be, but I was just grateful when Judge Roberts agreed. It wasn't that I hadn't wanted to be there—there was no place I would rather be—but three hours was more than I could handle, or stomach. We all needed to stretch, have a drink, and use the facilities. I just wanted to get away, go for a walk or a run or maybe even jump in my plane and go for a flight. Maybe there was something even better I could do.

I strolled down the street. After moving from their farm to the neighborhood weeks ago, Lori and her parents had stayed with Herb for a while. Now they were living in what had been a vacant house at the end of the block. The real owners had been away when the virus hit and had never managed to get back to the neighborhood. That had been the case for so many people—including my father. He was a commercial pilot and had flown out the morning before it all happened, and had not made it home. Yet. I could only hope for him—not simply that he'd survived but that he'd be able to return. I just had to believe.

Lori's new house was right beside the park. A parcel had been corralled off for their small herd of dairy cows, and the garage had been converted to a chicken coop. When they'd moved here—forced to flee their farm—they'd brought the animals as well as all the farm equipment that could be trucked over. Now her father, the one farmer living in the middle of our gated suburb, directed all of our efforts to grow food. I didn't think we could even dream about surviving without his knowledge and equipment.

I turned up Lori's drive and was surprised to see her and Todd sitting on the front steps. I gave a weak little wave. Lori got up, rushed over, and gave me a hug.

“Just so you know,” Todd said. “I think that Lori's been coming on to me a bit, but—”

“What?” She gave him a shove.

“It's a subtle thing,” Todd said. “So subtle that you probably didn't notice, but I'm so in tune with the ways of women.”

Both Lori and I laughed.

“But really, who can blame her when she has a choice between hamburger and prime rib?” he said, gesturing to me and then himself.

“Maybe I like hamburger.” She kissed me.

“No accounting for taste, although I'm glad you admitted that
I'm
the prime rib,” he joked.

“No question you are a prime something,” I said, letting go of Lori to give him a shove myself.

“Oh, man,” he said. “Why did I start talking about prime rib and hamburger? Do you know what I'd give for a good burger?”

“A lot. So would I,” I admitted.

“We should just be grateful for what we have,” Lori said. “At least nobody in the neighborhood is going without.”

“Maybe not completely without, but without enough,” Todd said. “I think they should feed us according to size. I
need
more than other people.”

I felt guilty. I
was
getting more than other people. We all shared in the community meals—a small breakfast and a large supper each day—but Herb had been giving my family some extras from the stock of canned goods he had stored in his basement. Although I had always thought there was more to Herb than him being some “old retired paper pusher”—his words—I had no idea just how much more there was. From the stockpile of food to the arsenal of weapons in his basement to his background working for the CIA, I was discovering surprises about him all the time. He was more than a neighbor; he'd been the primary reason we'd been able to survive.

“So is the committee meeting over?” Todd asked.

I was grateful for the distraction. I shook my head. “Just a break. We all needed one. All morning, it's been about the attack.”

“Shouldn't it be simple? We blew up the bridge. They died. We won.”

“There are a few more details.”

“Like the final body count?” he asked.

“We didn't lose a person.”

“I meant on the other side.”

“I don't know if I should talk about it,” I said.

“Come on, it isn't like I didn't see the results or what happened afterward,” Todd said. “You can still see the smoke rising into the sky.”

I turned around. There was a thin chimney of smoke visible on the horizon. I had to work to suppress a shudder.

After we'd refueled yesterday, Todd and I had gone back and done a number of big passes over the river valley. Even from up in the air we'd been able to see the growing pile of bodies. It was so much better to be high in the sky when the cremation had taken place, but of course even from that height there was still evidence of what was happening. Not just the smoke but the smell. There was a terrible odor—a combination of gas, burning plastics and materials, and of course the bodies themselves.

“Well?” Todd asked. “How many dead?”

I looked at Lori and she nodded ever so slightly, as if I was asking for her permission to talk about it. “Four hundred and eighty-three.”

My friends were silent.

“Wow, I had no idea it would be that high,” Todd finally said.

“It's probably more than that. Herb said he has no idea how many more bodies are hidden by the debris or have been washed downriver.”

“I don't even know why they had to count,” Lori said. “It just seems like they wanted to keep score or something, like it was a basketball game.”

“If we know how many are dead, we have an idea of how many are left, how many we didn't kill,” I explained.

“And?” Todd asked.

Now he was asking about something that I really shouldn't be talking about.

“Look, it's not like you're telling a bunch of strangers,” Todd said. “Tell us and we'll keep it to ourselves.”

I was too far in to turn back. “They think there could be well over a hundred who are still alive.”

“But I thought you got all the trucks,” Lori said.

“We got all the trucks but not the soldiers who stayed behind at their compound. They wouldn't have left it unguarded. That's why we had to count the bodies. As well, they had to be searched for valuables,” I explained.

Lori shuddered.

“I know it sounds bad, but it had to be done. There were valuables. Lots and lots of weapons. A ton of ammunition, five RPG launchers, dozens of grenades, a hundred sets of body armor, a few more sets of long-range walkie-talkies, and close to three hundred guns,” I said.

“But didn't all the soldiers have weapons?” Todd asked.

“All of them were armed, but not all the weapons could be recovered. A lot were damaged in the fall or in fires or trapped beneath debris or lost to the river. I think we did pretty well. We more than tripled the weapons and ammunition we had in stock.”

“That's good … at least for us,” Todd said.

“Better than good. Our survival depends on us having the weapons to defend ourselves.”

“We have company,” Todd said, and pointed behind me.

I spun around. Herb and Brett were standing at the end of the driveway. Herb waved and then motioned for me to come.

“I gotta get going.” I gave Lori a kiss and started away.

“What about me?” Todd called out. I turned around. “Don't I get a kiss? Aren't I special? My mother always tells me I'm special!”

“No question you are
very
special.”

I hurried after Herb and Brett, who had started walking back. I quickly caught up to them midconversation.

“Take a dozen men you know you can rely on and enough food and supplies and tents to camp out for the next twenty-four hours,” Herb was saying.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Your mother, the judge, and I had a short discussion and decided to send Brett and a crew to the far side of the bridge. Within the next twenty-four hours the people left in the compound might send a scouting party to find out what happened,” Herb explained. “It's important that none of them go back to report.”

“We'll get them,” Brett said.

“
All
of them,” Herb said. “Letting one get away is like letting them all get away.”

“I understand. One way or another nobody is walking away.”

There was that certainty again. I had never really felt comfortable around Brett, and I didn't even like him, but I believed he was a good protector. Brett would do whatever it took. I was just glad he was on our side.

“Do you want me to go up in the air to scout around as well?” I asked.

“You won't be able to pick up a small party from the air very well. Besides, I have something important to discuss with the committee, and I want you to be part of it.”

Now I was even more curious. What was he going to talk about?

Brett gave Herb a little salute—and me a smirk—and headed off.

“We better get back inside,” Herb said.

“Before we head in, could I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“The people on the bridge … did any of them live?”

“You know there were no survivors,” he said.

“Did any of them live through the fall? Did you have to … have to…?”

“Kill somebody?”

I nodded.

Herb looked at me closely before replying. “There were three men in one of the last trucks we checked. It was the closest to the edge of the bridge, and they didn't plunge nearly as far as the others. They were alive when Brett and I got there.”

“And you killed them?”

“They were barely alive.”

“And you killed them?” I repeated. I wasn't going to allow him not to answer.

“We didn't have to. They simply died.”

“And if they hadn't?” I asked.

“If there had been hope, we would have called for the doctor. If not, I would have ended their suffering.” He paused. “As we discussed.”

“I couldn't,” I said.

“I understand. That's not who you are. We all have roles to play. That's why you were up in the air and Brett was at my side.”

That meant only one thing—he thought Brett could have pulled the trigger or at least been there when Herb did.

“Any more questions before we head in?” he asked.

There were lots of questions, but I didn't want any more answers. “I'm good.”

*   *   *

“Let's call the meeting back to order,” the judge said when we were back inside our living room.

Everybody took their seat. There was a sobering silence to the assembly, and I realized that I wasn't the only one nervously anticipating what Herb had to say next.

“Well, Herb, I guess the floor is yours,” my mom said.

Herb took a sip from the glass of water in front of him before starting. I thought that was more about drama than hydration. Herb knew how to play an audience. I'd seen him do it again and again, and I wondered if I was ever part of those being played.

Finally he began. “I know we all feel good about the success we had yesterday. At least the partial success.”

“Partial. It seems pretty complete to me,” Mr. Gomez said.

“We have four hundred and eighty confirmed dead, but as you know we had their forces pegged at closer to six fifty,” Herb said.

“But some are still buried under the rubble, and we did kill others when we attacked their base,” Councilor Stevens said.

“Both are true, but those wouldn't total the missing one hundred and seventy people. They still have a substantial force back at their compound. My best estimate is that they would have about a hundred men left.”

“Still, we've taken out over eighty percent of their force,” Judge Roberts said.

Herb turned to Dr. Morgan. “If you remove eighty percent of a malignant tumor, would you consider that a successful operation?”

“Of course not. It would be a failure.”

“Because?”

“Well, while it would provide temporary relief, it would only buy time for the patient. The tumor would simply grow back.”

Herb slowly got to his feet. Every eye was on him and it felt like nobody was even breathing. “If my understanding is correct, they are still a formidable force, equipped with more of the same weaponry that was in the trucks.”

“I agree. Although we are now much better able to defend ourselves,” my mother noted.

“From a frontal assault, yes, but they won't make the same mistake again. We are no more able to defend ourselves from a group of men coming out of the trees at night equipped with launchers and RPGs than we were before. They'd simply blow apart our outer walls.”

“But they wouldn't be able to overwhelm us, take us over. We'd be able to defend ourselves,” Howie said.

“Not without casualties. Again, I'm just making an estimate, but I would suspect that a sustained attack with RPGs would result in over a hundred of our people being killed and that those deaths would not simply be guards on the walls but innocents in their homes who would be hit by explosives.”

“But after all that's happened, do you really think they'd attack?” Judge Roberts asked.

“Right now they're probably not fully aware of what happened. They've not had any radio contact with their men, and it's been almost a full day. They will be increasingly suspicious, but it could take a day or two before they risk sending out a team to investigate.”

“Wouldn't they have seen the smoke?” I asked. “I know it was visible from a long way off … I've seen it from my plane when almost down by the lake.”

“If they did see it, they would have only interpreted it as evidence of an attack on us by their soldiers. They have no reason to question the success of the attack.”

“But once they do find out what happened, wouldn't that scare them away?” Howie asked. “Wouldn't they be afraid to face us?”

“Or they'd want revenge immediately,” Herb countered. “Or they'd simply wait, gaining strength, regrowing like a tumor, preying on smaller, more vulnerable communities until they felt that they were strong enough to move against us once again. And this time they'd do it in a way that we might not be able to stop. Our element of surprise, which depends on their arrogance and overconfidence, would be gone.”