Schism (24 page)

“He didn’t deal with Sean as much, but he didn’t like him from the beginning.”

They were quiet for a bit as the bottle of wine quickly emptied. Ben offered the last sip to Andy. Her body felt warm all over and her vision was a bit unsteady, made worse by the increasing darkness. When she leaned over to stand the empty bottle on the ground, she nearly fell out of her swing and started to giggle.

“Wow, you’re drunk!” and he began to laugh as well.

“I am
not
,” she replied a bit too loudly as she steadied herself in the seat. “Just a little tipsy.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m sure you’d love to take advantage of me!”

“Why would I do that? I’d never take advantage of a friend.”

“A friend?” she repeated, blinking. “Is that all I am to you?”

“Uh, yeah. What else would you be?” He gazed off into the distance, his mind probably far away.

Feeling suddenly rejected, Andy looked down and kicked at the rocks at her feet. “So what are his weaknesses?”

“What?”

“I said, what are his weaknesses? Sean’s. His vulnerabilities,” she slurred the last word.

“Why?”

“Just answer me. How could he be beaten?”

Staring down at the ground in front of him, Ben became pensive and inhaled a deep breath. “Well, he’s too confident. Thinks he’s invincible. He’s very careful of who he trusts, but once someone’s in his inner circle, he’ll trust them with everything.” He paused. “But maybe not after what I did.”

“What else?”

“He underestimates women. He thinks you’re all less intelligent than he is. He has surrounded himself with girls who don’t question him.” Ben glanced sideways at Andy. “He wouldn’t know how to handle someone like you.”

She released a derisive laugh, and as its sound faded, an idea slowly formed in her mind. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the key.”

“What are you talking about?”

She ran her fingers through her hair in the same manner he often did. “I’m not sure of what I’m talking about right now. Must be the wine.”

“It’s not just the wine. You’re really serious about going to New York, aren’t you?”

“Did I say that?” she replied, feigning comprehension.

“C’mon, Andy, I know you. You get an idea into your head and you turn into a bulldog.”

“I do
not
.”

“You just proved my point. You’re the most stubborn person I know.”

“Oh, like you’re any better,” she snapped as she attempted to shove him by swinging sideways, but with her diminished reflexes, she missed her mark and hit him on the side of his ribcage instead.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” he teased as he deftly grabbed her hand, proving that despite the wine,
his
reflexes were fine. He didn’t let go of her hand right away.

“See, I told you it was the wine,” she managed to say between giggles. “Give me my hand.”

“Not until you tell me why you want to go to New York.” His grip tightened. “Tell me,” he repeated, his voice lowering to a more serious and somewhat desperate tone.

Her giggles stopped. She looked at him in the last remnants of daylight. “Stop it,” she declared with drunken wistfulness. He let go of her hand. Frustrated by both her lack of mental clarity and the sudden stirrings of emotions, she stood up.

“Wait, where are you going?” he called out to her in the dark.

“To bed,” she said as she stepped forward. But then she stopped and muttered, “No, not bed…I don’t know.” She put her hands up to her forehead. Feeling dizzy, she took a stumbling step backward.

Ben quickly stood up and placed his hands on her shoulders to give her balance. “Slow down…slow down.”

“I’m fine. It’s just the wine.”

“Let’s head back home,” he said.

Without further argument, she began to walk cautiously forward. They made it halfway home when she abruptly stopped.

“What is it?” Ben asked her.

Andy’s eyes first fell to the ground before she lifted her gaze to the vanishing horizon. “It’s not that I
want
to go to New York, but I just have this nagging feeling that I’m
supposed
to go. Does that make sense?” But before he could answer, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I mean anymore.”

He grasped her shoulder. “If you want to go to New York, I can’t stop you. If there was anyone who could beat Sean, it’s probably you.” He released her and looked away. “You’re…you’re an extraordinary person.”

She stepped closer toward him. “Then come with me,” she urged him, nearly whispering. “I need you there.”

Staring at the ground, he shook his head “I can’t.”

“You can. And you’ll see how
extraordinary
I can be.”

Chapter XIX

“M
aria, we need drugs. As much as you can get your hands on.”

She glanced up from her plate of food and looked at Andy. “Which ones, specifically?” She knew what Andy was asking, but she wanted her to be clear.

“Heroin, marijuana, cocaine…if you can get it,” Ben rattled off the items as though he were delivering a grocery list.

A week earlier, Maria had travelled to Albuquerque and back to meet up with friends from Juarez. She went alone, leaving Julio and Carmen behind, and when she returned, she made the decision to leave Santa Rosa.

In an attempt to undo some of the sins of her father, she had been secretly working to free survivors forced into slave labor to continue the production of heroin and marijuana throughout northern and western Mexico. The children of her father’s enemies, those from the rival drug cartel, had been kidnapping survivors in Juarez and other cities and enslaving them to cultivate cannabis and poppy plants. The luckier ones avoided this backbreaking work and instead were used to transport cocaine still being produced in Colombia to Mexico.

“The outbreak hardly affected the drug trade between my country and yours,” she explained. “After the first six months, everything was back to how it was, except easier without borders to worry about.”

Drugs had become the new form of currency in the post-virus world. With cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and all their dangerous combinations, survivors could temporarily escape their miserable existence. Maria understood this grim reality and that drug production would never stop, so she and a small group of trusted friends still living in Juarez decided to exploit the drug transport system as a way to rescue the slave laborers from their plight. Like before, every gram of every drug was still tracked, but when it came to keeping track of their laborers, the cartel was sloppy. If someone went missing, they could easily find another as a replacement.

Because of her forced exile to Santa Rosa, Maria had only been able to minimally assist her friends, who had carefully maneuvered their way into the roles of the drivers of the trucks that transported the drugs north to America. They would falsify the numbers detailing the amount of drugs they were carrying and keep the difference for themselves, which they would then use to trade for other necessities, like food and gas. And within the cargo they would hide a person or two, whatever they thought they could get away with, and head to Santa Rosa. Once there, Maria would house and feed them until they regained their strength before sending them on their way, sometimes alone and sometimes with another shipment of drugs heading deeper into the States.

“That’s what you saw me doing that morning last year when that truck was driving away from my house,” she recalled for Andy. “Those were my friends in the truck, and we had just put two young girls inside. It took nearly a week for the wounds on their backs to heal enough so they could stop sleeping on their stomachs.”

Nearly half of the drug shipments that came from Mexico passed through Santa Rosa on I-40, and many of these shipments were bound for New York. Maria further revealed that she had heard rumors about what was going on there, but hadn’t pieced the puzzle together until Ben and Jim had told their story. “Unfortunately, the cartel in Juarez has only gotten stronger in the last year. Their numbers have increased and lately they’ve been keeping better track of their laborers, which has made our work much more difficult.”

But what ultimately made her decide that it was time to leave was learning during her trip to Albuquerque that the cartel had stopped keeping handwritten records detailing each shipment and had started using computerized ones. This now made it impossible for her and her friends to continue falsifying the shipment records. “In a way, it’s probably for the best. We were fighting a losing battle, and the fact that we were still helping the cartel transport the drugs was only keeping them in control. And every time we saved one, another person was taken to replace them.”

Her decision made, Maria vowed she would never have anything to do with drugs again. But sitting now at her kitchen table, she considered Andy and Ben’s request carefully.

“I have to know exactly what you need the drugs for. If you really need them to help take down this Sean person, then I’ll make an exception.”

“We need them to bribe people in Sean’s network. People that might know where he’s keeping the virus. And to buy some supplies that we’ll need once we get to New York.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Andy assured.

“Well,” she began, “since this is the last time, you might as well take advantage of all my connections. I’ll get you more than just drugs. I’ll get you to New York by the end of next week.”

***

“We can keep trying to convince ourselves that Sean will simply disappear and never send people to find us again,” Jim said to Ben, “or we can figure out a way to finally destroy him. But we’d be fooling ourselves if we think he’s a problem that’ll just go away. This is our fight, so let’s finally finish it. For Karen, if not for us.” He rarely mentioned Karen by name, but he knew when he could use her memory to make a point.

Ben thought about the decision to go to New York long and hard, but ultimately he had no choice. He had to destroy the virus forever.

Concerned about Katie and Morgan living in the dangerous city, Jim suggested staying in Princeton. “It’s only fifty miles from the city, and it’ll probably be empty with all the students and professors being dead.”

“And the university library has got a ton of books that would be great for gathering information,” said Charlie with a blush of excitement.

Brian remained strangely quiet about going to New York. He didn’t seem to have an opinion one way or another on the matter, which struck Andy as odd. He had been pretty quiet in general since coming to Santa Rosa, and she wondered if he regretted leaving Aspen.

The night before they were planning to leave, he came to talk to her. She was organizing her medical books when he knocked on her bedroom door. “Come in,” she called out.

Brian entered and closed the door behind him.

“What’s up?” Andy asked distractedly.

He leaned against her desk. “I, uh, I was wondering if you could look after Susan for me when you all get to New York.”

She stopped her sorting and looked up at him with confusion. “What are you talking about? You’re not coming with us?”

“No, at least not right now.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I need to go back to Aspen for a bit. There’s some stuff I need to take care of first.”

“Umm, okay,” she muttered slowly. “Does Susan know you’re not coming?”

“Yeah, I already told her.”

“And she’s okay with it?”

“She’s fine. I know Charlie will take care of her, but I’d feel better if you looked out for her, too.”

“Well, of course, but I have to admit that I still don’t understand why you need to go back to Aspen, especially after what happened to me there.”

“It won’t be forever, I promise. But I left some really good friends behind.”

“Okay…is it because you’re worried about going to New York?”

“No, I’m not worried, and that’s actually why I need to go back to Aspen.”

“I still don’t understand.”

He took a deep breath. “I know. I’m not explaining myself well. See, I really believe in what you’re all about to do because in a small way, I was trying to do the same thing in Aspen. And now I feel like I’ve abandoned my friends, so I’m going back to convince them to come with me.”

“Oh…”

“I don’t know exactly what you’ll all be up against in New York, but you’ll probably need more help.”

Taking a step toward her, Brian gently tapped Andy on the side of her arm. “I miss my friends, Andy, and if I’m going to do this thing with you all…take on this Sean character and destroy the virus, then I need to give them a chance to start their lives over again too. Or at least offer them the choice.” His eyes narrowed. “Does that make sense?”

Andy’s mouth curled upward into a smile, and she nodded. “Makes perfect sense, but what you should’ve said is that you
are
coming to New York, but you need to make a detour first.”