Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy) (32 page)

Sara’s hand flew to her mouth.
“What the hell is that?”

“That, my sister, is a much more level playing field.”

It took them some time to investigate their living space, but in the end they figured out that they could pry up the floorboards with Sara’s daggers. The boards creaked, so the next time that Luke fussed, Sara worked like a Tasmanian Devil. With a few thrusts, she managed to get an entire board up. She put her hand into the space first and then, finding no bottom, she put her head in.

Only Sara
, Fi thought affectionately.
Most of us would assume that the less you know about a dark hole, the less you should shove yourself into it.

“No wonder it’s so freaking freezing in here,” Sara whispered, pulling her head back up out of the crawl space.
“These cabins are built on air instead of ground. The space goes under the entire cabin, I think.”

“Goo
d. Then there’s plenty of room.” The girls got to work moving the ammo under the cabin. “I just wish,” Fi said, grunting as she reached to the bottom and set her boxes down, “that I’d been able to take more.”

“Or that we would’
ve been able to use them.”

Fi
considered this. The thought had occurred to her in the armory, that she could steal ammo that they could then use themselves. But it didn’t seem practical. First of all, the Lobos has most of their AK-47s now. And if she were trying to steal the other ammo there was the question of how they would smuggle it all out without the Lobos noticing.
And more importantly
, her mind had finally decided,
why would they use it if they could hide it instead?

That was only thought she’d had as she grabbed boxes and shoved them in her pants.
They were trying to reduce bloodshed, period. Fewer bullets, fewer dead people. The decision was easy once it was made. “You know what, Sar?” she said, “I wish I could have gotten more too, without anyone knowing. I wish I could’ve gotten it all. And then we could have buried it all beneath the cabin where no one would find it. And then maybe, just maybe, we could all sit down and talk this shit out.”

Sara brushed her hair from her face, leaving a dusty streak.
“Wow. What a great idea, Fi. Why didn’t we think of that sooner?”

Fi sat up and
grimaced. Sara’s sarcasm was too dark for laughter. “I know,” she added, faking a huge smile, “let’s turn back the hands of time to before the Truthers decided to hunt us down like dogs. Then maybe we can talk.”

“Oh yeah,” Sara muttered,
leaning through the gaping floorboards again, shoving the boxes of ammo farther into the darkness. “I must’ve forgot that part.”

---------- Sean ----------

Sean and Asher sat at the river crossing, waiting for Darryl in the lavender light of dusk. Venus glittered above, the only heavenly body bright enough to penetrate the blanket of clouds sweeping in from the west. The wind was picking up and Sean zipped his jacket all the way to his chin. “Is it me, or does it feel like a storm is coming?”

“No,” Asher said.
“It’s coming. I can’t decide if it’s worse if it’s snow or freezing rain.”

“Freezing rain, definitely.
I’ll take snow any day over freezing rain.”

Asher grunted.
Sean took that as agreement. Or perhaps just agreement that either sucked and the coming storm was unwelcome. He shifted in his crouch and settled his weight against a boulder at his back. “C’mon, Darryl, where are you? It’s dark…it’s dusk. We have blankets and food and the liquor…”

There was no sound but
the slurping and burbling of the water. Sean shut up. His prattle was annoying even to him. They waited, as they had every night, just in case Darryl showed up with more news from the girls. Most nights he couldn’t sleep anyway. Not without Sara. So he might as well cool his ass by the river waiting for Darryl. At least then he might get more news of her.

Right now it was
“so far, so good,” but you never knew. At least, it was “so good” if he could drive the thought of the Lobos cutting Sara’s hand from his mind. Unfortunately, he wasn’t have much success with that. It was like with each piece of good news, each validation that the girls were well, he only grew more anxious for the next. His nerves were definitely fraying.

There was a snap and
he stiffened, his hands tightening on his staff as a shadow moved against the faint glow of the water. There was a whistling bird call and Asher responded. It was Darryl.

The man melted from the darkness.
Over the weeks of sneaking back and forth he seemed to have transformed into a creature of shadows, more comfortable in the inky, formless world of night than the glare of day.
Almost like he’d become nocturnal
, Sean thought.

“Hey guys,”
Darryl said, breathless from his run. “What have you got for me?”

“The usual
: blankets, food, small weapons. And the liquor the girls asked for,” Asher said, handing the goods over.

Darryl knelt and starting cramming his backpack.
“The girls and the little guy are still good.”

Sean grabbed the nearest tree trunk and slumped against it, praying the others didn’t see him in the darkness.
He tried to pretend that he wasn’t dying to hear Darryl say those magic words each time he came, but it was getting harder with each passing day.
Each day closer to war.

There was another crack and all three of them froze.
Sean heard the soft “shush” as Asher and Darryl drew their blades simultaneously. They crouched, weapons ready. There was a second crack from the other side and then a quiet curse. Sean’s nerves jumped to life, the adrenaline pumping through him.
Not animals.

They waited, listening, while cracks and snaps continued moving in their direction.

“What do we do?” Darryl whispered.

“Shhh!” Sean and Asher
hissed at once.

“Dammit,” a voice said, no more than twenty yards from their position.

There was a shift as
Asher coiled beside him. Sean’s hands tightened around his staff.

“I can’t see a damned thing anymore, Trill.
Maybe we should stop until first light.”

Sean stood bolt uprig
ht at the same moment as Asher.

“Trill?” Asher called.

There was a snap and then silence.
Sean’s heart pounded. “Trill, it’s us. Sean and Asher.”

There was a quiet whoop and then a wave of whispered cheers arose from the darkened forest on all sides.
Sean’s heartbeat shifted from a canter to a full gallop. Lakeland had arrived.

#############################################

The next morning Sean tried to concentrate on his Commander, but his mind kept drifting. All he could hear in his mind was ticking. The girls hadn’t found a way yet to stall Carter, and Diaspora’s arrival was still a week off. His mind was going all Telltale Heart on him. With each new dawn it grew louder…
tick,
tick
,
TICK!
Even if they managed to stall long enough for Diaspora to arrive, it was almost worse, because then it meant that the day had finally come.

“So with Asher’s platoon taking the armory and releasing the ‘hostiles,’ we would have our heaviest fighting force here.” Julius marked his makeshift map, a battered whiteboard they’d found in the office building above the parking garage where the Army was sheltered.
Too bad we can’t really be meeting in the offices
, Sean thought, his eyes traveling over the Army ranks, “parked” in the dank garage, their small fires filling the musty air with a permanent smell of soot.

Zykeem had been the one to find this space,
to Julius’ great relief. The problem of hiding several hundred people for weeks had been a major concern for their Commander. The Wal-mart had been too far from Camp Truth and was too conspicuous. Any stores were still likely to draw marauders. But an enormous underground parking garage…that was relatively safe and easy to defend.

That’s what goes for luck these days
, Sean thought wearily. He turned his attention back to the strategy meeting. The leaders of Lakeland’s security, and the Seeders’ closest friends, Trill, Sadik, and Jack had joined them to get up to speed on the plan. They’d seemed pleased with the Army’s goals of preserving life, though everyone had their doubts about the realism of such a plan.

“So your sniper thinks he can take out all the cliff guards without raising the alarm?” Trill asked, incredulous.
“Who is this guy, uh, Commander?”

Sean noted both Trill and Julius’ discomfort with the title.
Julius never seemed to have gotten used to it and Trill wasn’t really a formality kind of gal.
Though she had been a cop
, he thought.
A good soldier.
Probably better than me.

“Well, the General didn’t
exactly have a way to give me his dossier,” Julius said, deflecting as he often did, with humor. “But I gather that Rasmussen was a top flight sniper. And if he does it right, the alarm won’t be raised until the Seals make it over the cliff.” He tapped the board with his marker. “Here.”

If,
Sean thought. Everything was “if this” and “if that.” Nothing was sure. If the girls got the colonists out…if the sniper was as good as he claimed…if the alarm wasn’t sounded until the last second…

“Sean?” Julius
broke into his thoughts. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah
. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drift off.”
I’ve just been freaking out since Lakeland arrived, is all. Now this whole thing was getting really…real.

Julius scrubbed
a corner of the map. He liked to redraw it each time. Said it would help them all to commit it to memory when it counted. “That’s ok, Sean. We’ve been over this stuff enough. For now. But you can never…”

“…G
o over it too many times,” Sean finished. “We know, Julius. And we know that we need to go over it again for Diaspora when they get here too.”

“All right,” Julius
said. “I get it. I’m a broken record. I just want to make sure we’re as prepared as possible for the big day.”

“The big day,” Sean repeated.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”

All heads turned toward him at once.

Julius frowned. “What the hell’s your problem, Sean?”

“I don’t know, Commander
.” Sean frowned, running his hands through his thick hair in frustration. “Somehow I was hoping that the ‘big day’ in my life would be college graduation, or getting married, or the day my child was born…you know, something like that. Not this, not…”

“
War?” Asher filled in the blank quietly.

Sean nodded.

“Oh.” Julius startled. “That.”

“Yes,
that
.”

“Maybe it would help,
” Asher said, “if you told us something about it.” His eyes flew to Sadik, who seemed to have curled in on himself, just slightly. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Maybe we shouldn’t ask.”

Julius’
frown deepened. “But you guys already know about war. You’ve fought.

“No
,” Sean said quietly, his head down. “We don’t know. We’ve had
fights
. And of the two of us, Asher’s had the worst of them, but we don’t really know war.”

“So you want me to tell you what war’s like?”
Julius rubbed his forehead, pressing his index finger between his eyebrows until it left a mark. “Shit.”

Sean sat back, f
eeling guilty. But his guilt was quickly assuaged by his need. They
needed
something to get through what was coming.

Julius
put his foot up on a nearby milk crate and stretched his neck. He gestured, a half-hearted wave in Sadik’s direction. “I’m not sure how to describe it. That’s why vets don’t talk about it with anyone but each other, if at all.”

Sadik nodded
, his eyes sliding away. “It’s...hard to explain. In some ways, this part, the part leading up to it, this is almost the worst. Almost.”

“You mean the waiting?”
Asher asked.

Sean was sur
prised by the tremor in his voice. Asher never seemed to be scared of much of anything except something happening to Fi.

“Yes, the waiting,” Julius replied.
“And the ‘what ifs.’”

Sean was incredulous
. His Commander felt it too!
So he wasn’t an action-figure after all. It always seemed like he was planning, planning, planning, but without any fear. “So what’s the worst part?”

The group was silent. A wisp of smoke fluttered and curled above them, hanging Sean’s question in the air.
Sadik shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “I’m no good with words.”