Behind Our Walls (17 page)

"I don't disagree," Rowen said. "But we still need to come up with something."

"We assume the worst." Lot stared off into space, as if some higher power were dictating his thoughts. "If Daniel or Nairi show up safe, great. But we have to be prepared for things to go the other way. We need to get weapons into people's hands, get more of them trained and ready to defend themselves. We need to make sure everything is nailed down tight."

"So it's a siege mentality then?" Sophie asked.

"I'd rather be ready unnecessarily than to stick our heads in the sand and wait until it's too late."

"We need to at least have something to tell people," Meredith said. "Becca has been practically attached to my hip this whole time, and I think it could be worse if people see us doing nothing and start freaking out."

"I can think of about six people we can tell exactly what is going on," Lot said. "They've been with me since before this all started, and I know they can keep their mouths shut. The others here, I wouldn't trust to keep everything we say out of the rumor mill. Sorry Meredith, I just don't know your people that well."

Meredith nodded to show that she hadn't taken offense, but Sophie still squirmed around in her chair, finally resorting to coughing in order to get everyone's attention. When they all turned to look at her, she did her best to keep the thoughts in her head simple and organized. "Look, I think that in the long run, it's a mistake to hide things from people."

"Sophie, we don't like it any more than you do," Lot said.

"I know. You're just trying to do the right thing. I get it. What I'm saying is that the people who came in here with us all agreed to put in their fair share, as a part of something. If we've learned anything, it's that we need to be honest with each other."

"You don't think we're doing that?" Meredith asked.

"I think what we're doing is establishing a line between us and them. We put ourselves above them because we might have more information that we aren't sharing, and we think we're doing it for everyone's good. But I have a feeling that most of them wouldn't see it that way."

Lot looked at Rowen and then back at the other two. "All right. Let's say we bring in the people we want for extra guard shifts. Once they are up to speed, and we actually have something in place, we can discuss this with everyone else. That way we at least have something we can point at to show what our plan is. Sound all right?"

"And if they're both dead?" Meredith asked, barely loud enough to be heard. No one wanted to answer. Sophie didn't even want to consider the possibilities or the impact of such a loss.

"Look," Sophie said, "I think we're wasting our time and energy somewhat. This is our reality now. People are going to be hurt sometimes, and sometimes they're going to die. I don't want people going crazy over this, but we also need to be somewhat hardened to it."

"We're starting to go around in circles," Lot said. "Let's just leave it at this. I think we should keep on with the plan to fortify the stadium a little bit more. It would probably be a good idea for people to be in a more defensive state of mind. Other than that, I think we need to stop driving ourselves crazy trying to prepare for something when we don't even know for sure what's coming."

There was a sharp knocking on the door and Clive rushed in, clearly upset.

"There are rovers out in the parking lot."

-39-

The second floor administrative offices looked out over the east parking lot where the rovers had been spotted. Early on, the windows had been painted over, so that the parking lot could be observed without anyone from the outside being able to see in. Rowen and Sophie looked out through peepholes, cut into the paint, at their unwanted guests. Sophie had been expecting to see a motorcycle show, but what she saw instead was three men, staring up at the building. One of them kept pointing in their direction, jabbing a finger through the air at something.

"How long have they been out there?" Rowen asked.

"No way to know for sure," Clive said. "We spotted them about twenty minutes ago."

"Get the word out that everyone needs to get to their suites," Lot said. "Sliding glass doors stay shut, and keep the noise down. This needs to look like an abandoned building."

Clive nodded and ran off. From the hall they heard him snapping at people to come along and help.

"So what's the best possible outcome we can see coming from this?" Meredith asked.

"They decide the place is empty and move on," Rowen said. "But the way they're scrutinizing everything, I doubt that's going to happen."

"What can we do?" Sophie asked, unable to control herself from speaking in an unnecessarily hushed tone.

Rowen shook his head before peeking out the window again. "I don't think there's anything we can do yet. We have to wait for them to make the first move. But I tell you, I don't like this happening right on the heels of Daniel and Nairi going missing."

"If this is connected, then you realize that they're probably dead," Lot said.

"I know. But we need to focus on what we're going to do if these guys don't decide to move on."

"We don't even know if there are more of them or if this is it," Lot said. "Look, we're dancing around this, but we need to talk clearly about something. I think we can all agree that the fewer people out there in the world who know about us, the better off we'll be. So are we talking about killing these guys if we need to?"

The others all looked at him, shocked at the suggestion, although Sophie suspected that they all had at least been considering the possibility.

"We aren't murderers," Rowen said. "I can't be a party to that. If they're posing an obvious threat, that's one thing, but I can't get behind just killing them as some kind of preemptive measure."

"Me neither," Meredith said.

"Or me," Sophie added. She leaned down and peeked out again. The men all had their backs to the stadium but were clearly in some kind of deep conversation. One of them was considerably older than the other two, and seemed to be in charge. He looked heavy set but the way he carried himself, Sophie guessed that it was mostly muscle. There were overflowing saddle bags attached to their bikes, which suggested that they probably weren't searching for supplies. Her stomach clenched at the sight of one of them taking something from his jacket and lifting it to his lips to speak.

"Is that..." she started to say.

"Looks like a radio," Lot said. "I think this is pretty much a moot point now. I'm sure that whoever is on the other end of that transmission will be headed this way pretty soon."

"We don't know that for sure," Sophie said, although the words sounded absurd, even to her.

Lot snorted. "Right. Because they would waste the batteries in those walkies just to let their people know that there's nothing to see here. Does that make sense?"

"Is there a reason why we aren't considering just going down there and talking to them?" Meredith asked.

Rowen twisted around to glare back at her. "How would that help? All we'd be doing is confirming what they probably only suspect. It puts us at a huge risk."

"We're already at a huge risk. That's not going to change."

"But what do we gain by going down there?"

Meredith shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe we can convince them to move on. You never know."

Sophie paused but she was surprised to find herself actually agreeing with the logic. "We're pretty entrenched in here," she said. "Maybe it's time to stop being so afraid of everything."

Lot shook his head as he maintained his watch out the window. "World being the way it is anymore, my opinion is that it's never time to stop being afraid. Of anything."

"That's great, but—"

"You know what I'm afraid of right now?" Meredith cut her off. " I'm afraid that they think they're seeing this big, empty stadium and how sweet it could be to just take it over for themselves. Then what do we do? Aren't we just putting off the inevitable?"

"I think we need to go out there," Rowen agreed. "We need to present a unified front because if we don't, if those rovers out there pick up on any kind of dissension between us, they will exploit that and we'll end up dead."

The declaration hung over them for several minutes before Lot finally shook his head in resignation. "Fine. Let's go down there and see what they want."

-40-

Clive went with them into the parking lot where he waited, while they walked out to meet with the new arrivals. The question of whether or not the men suspected that people were inside the stadium was pretty much sealed by the lack of surprise on any of their faces at seeing them emerge.

"Don't say anything about Daniel or Nairi?" Lot asked as they approached, pitching his voice low so that they wouldn't hear.

"Why?" Meredith asked.

"We don't know if they have them or not. If they do I want them to be the ones to tell us about it. If they don't have them, we'd just be giving them a way of holding something over us."

The man who Sophie had guessed was in charge shouldered up to the front of the pack.

"Morning," he said. His voice had an air of fake joviality that made Sophie immediately feel defensive.

"Morning," Lot responded without saying any more.

"Surprised to see you all out here like this. You got more people up in there?" He nodded at the stadium as he spoke.

Lot smiled politely as he answered. "Yes, we have more people in there. My name's Lot, by the way. This is Rowen, Meredith and Sophie."

The man nodded at all of them briefly but otherwise didn't take his eyes off of Lot. "I'm Jerry. Looks like you all made some modifications to the building there. Keeping people out?"

Rowen shrugged. "It's nothing personal Jerry, but it's a dangerous world now, I think you realize that."

The two men standing behind Jerry smirked at the comment, and Jerry actually chuckled. "Don't need to tell me that, my friend. I was just impressed with the work. How many do you have in your group?"

Rowen shook his head. "Couldn't tell you for sure. At least a hundred, but it got to the point where we stopped counting. We have what we need in there, we're just trying to stay out of the way."

"What's the matter?" one of the others asked. "You think we're going to try and steal something?"

He said it with a donkey bray of a laugh as he looked around for the others to join in. Jerry glanced back at him and when the man met his gaze, he stopped laughing and looked away.

"So what are you guys after, anyway?" Rowen asked after a long pause.

"Nothing in particular," Jerry said. "It's just rare to find big groups like this. The stadium looked like it had been sealed up from the inside, so we were just trying to figure out why."

"So now that you know, you plan on moving on?" Lot asked.

Jerry nodded slowly, his lips curling up somewhat. "I guess you can't be too careful these days. Never know who you might come across since it's a might bit dangerous out here, isn't it?"

Sophie didn't think she had ever seen Rowen look more uncomfortable. He kept glancing around as if he expected a small army to roll in through the gates. "Yeah, you're right about that," he said as he continued to glance around at the others. Sophie wasn't sure what was happening, but the electricity in the air around them was a little too much for her to handle.

"So you really don't have room for any more in there, huh?" Jerry asked as he looked up at the stadium. "You must have a lot of people to keep track of."

Rowen nodded as Lot took a step or two forward. "We don't want to come off as inhospitable, but we do have a lot of people to take care of, and we need to conserve what we have."

Jerry's smile never fully departed from his face, but it also failed to extend all the way to his eyes. Sophie repressed a shudder at the sight. Somehow he was able to communicate to them what he was going to try and take from them while saying the exact opposite.

"You think maybe we could see inside?" Jerry asked. "Get a tour? See what you're doing? Maybe we could look for a setup like this."

Rowen and Lot glanced at each other before Lot answered. "Look, I really don't like turning anyone away, but the people in there are nervous enough as it is. I just don't think it would be a good idea to—"

Jerry put a hand up to stop him. "Say no more. I understand."

It was several moments before Sophie realized the smile was gone, and that the steel in his tone now matched the look in his eyes. His body language and the sneer on his lips spoke clearly enough that they had no intention of going anywhere.

"So..." Rowen started to speak, but trailed off. Jerry just stood there, letting the silence hang over them without speaking until Meredith finally pushed past them and spoke up.

"What is it you want?"

Sophie was more than a little surprised. She had always seen Meredith as shy, the reserved one. Still, she stood toe to toe with Jerry, lips pressed together into a fine, white line.

Jerry, who looked like he had about a hundred pounds and at least a foot of height on her, gaped down for several moments before answering. "Why do you think we want anything?"