Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (25 page)

“What’s that?” Tommy asked her, as though he hadn’t heard right.

“Hey, can I have my gun back?” Evan asked Thomas.

“It’s a rifle,” replied Thomas, “and no, you cannot.”

Evan decided it wasn’t prudent to voice a challenge with a dozen muzzles drawn on himself and his friends.

“What’s this about?” Riley asked.

“I knew it…” Evan smacked his forehead.

Anthony reached his hand ever so slowly down towards the Model 7 at his side.

“…I knew it.”

“Freeze the hand.” Red’s voice was ice cold. Anthony looked into the business end of the N4 and the three hundred round drum magazine framing it.

“Twelve seconds,” Tommy reminded him.

“Tell your brother to get his hand away from his weapon.” Red never took her eyes off Anthony as she spoke to Riley. “Or I will kill him here in front of you.”

“Ant…”

Anthony pulled his hand back.

“We got you outnumbered and outgunned,” Thomas described the situation. “So don’t try anything stupid.”

“We’re not going to,” said Riley.

“We don’t aim to kill you,” said Gammon.

“Why are you doing this? You want our guns?”

“We don’t want your guns,” Thomas reloaded his Winchester.

“Strangers aren’t exactly welcomed in these parts,” said Tommy.

“It’s not that we’re hostile…” his father spoke calmly as he thumbed shells into the tubular magazine. “But there’s a reason we’re out here. And that’s because all we’ve ever been met with is hostility.”

“People who call themselves ‘civilized’ have a premium on that,” said Gammon.

“What do you have in mind then?” Riley asked, willing herself to remain calm.

“A little game,” the old man answered matter-of-factly.

“A game?”

“Yep. A game.”

“Don’t toy with them, Thomas,” Red muttered.

“I ain’t.”

“What kind of game?” Anthony asked Thomas.

“The most dangerous game, though I trust you don’t get the allusion. Tell ‘em about the game, Tommy.”

“You think we’re cruel with what we’re doing?” Thomas asked Riley. “You think we’re inhuman?”

Riley thought of what she would say before she replied. “I don’t think you’re inhuman. I’m just here to ask you to let my brother and my friends go. I’ll run your game. You can hunt me.”

It was early in the morning. Riley, her brother, and their friends had been locked away inside a cabin. Exhausted as they all were, none of them had been able to sleep. Riley had asked permission to talk to Thomas, and it had been granted. The quiet man named Paulson and another man named Frankie had escorted her to Thomas’ cabin. They had shackled Riley’s hands behind her back.

Thomas was seated in a chair at his drill press, reloading dies and shell holders on the table before him. He’d turned his attention from the task at hand to look Riley over, studying the young woman standing before him.

“I can’t let your friends go.”

“Then, please, let my brother go. You don’t understand.”

Thomas looked at Gammon, who shrugged his shoulders.

“So explain it to me,” invited the old man. He crossed his arms. “I’ll listen.”

Riley went for broke, explaining the entire situation to Thomas from the arrival of Mickey in New Harmony to their present imprisonment. When she was done, Thomas was silent, as if he were mulling over what she said, and then he spoke.

“So you came out here to help your brother…
what
? This is all some kind of, identity quest, for you—for him—that took a wrong turn?”

Riley thought he had it about right and agreed.

“You know what I think? I think you’re more resourceful than you give yourself credit for. If anyone has a chance of making it through this game—and I gotta be honest with ya,
only
one
person ever has—but if anyone does, I think that someone is you.”

“I don’t care about me.” Riley knew she could take both old men out if she had to, even with her hands behind her back. With her feet. But then what? The men outside had the keys to her shackled wrists. “Just let Anthony go. Please.”

“Here’s what you need to know. Here’s why I can’t let you go.

“Most of us out here—the ones old enough, like me and Gammon here, ones older than you—most of us come from your society or one like it. And you know why we’re here?

“I had a wife and a daughter. And my daughter, well, she was different. The radiation.” Thomas raised a hand to the air and the unseen poisons in it. “She looked different than everyone else. Melanie—that was my wife—kept the baby hidden, lying to our neighbors and friends, saying Tanya had died being born.

“We lived in a society where my little girls’ very existence was criminal.
Munts
. That’s what they called them. Munts. The term itself sickens me. What kind of a word is that to describe a human being? It’s like…like
nigger
or
kike
or
fag
or something used to be. ‘Society’ looked upon Tanya like she was some kind of freak, some kind of beast.

“All I saw was my little girl.

“Mind you, this was at a time when we were busy fighting for our survival, when it wasn’t obvious that the human race was going to survive. I was a soldier. I mean, I wasn’t always a soldier, but my people needed me. My species needed me. So I went. And I fought. Gammon was with me then.” The other man nodded. “And when I came back—when
we
came back—I found out how my species had rewarded me.”

“Melanie and Tanya were dead,” disclosed Gammon.

“They’d come and taken Tanya,” continued Thomas. “She was only six. She was a little girl. She wasn’t no monster. She was my little girl. Just that.

“They came and they took her, these men and women who hadn’t answered the call, who hadn’t gone themselves and fought and killed and nearly died almost every day like me and Gammon here. These men and women, who wrote the laws and enforced the laws. These ‘civilized’ types. You got any kids?”

Riley shook her head.

“Yeah, I didn’t think you did. Let me give you some advice. You get out of this—you survive the game? You go and have yourself a kid. The love a child has for her parents? The love a parent has for his child…” Thomas sighed. “But I’ll warn you too. There ain’t no pain like losing a child.

“Melanie, my wife, couldn’t take it. The pain, I mean. They took Tonya and Melanie…well, Melanie wasn’t right after that. Here I was, out in the hinterlands, fighting Zed, fighting for them, and here they’d come and taken our little girl and Melanie…it was all too much for her. And I can’t say I blame her entirely.

“She killed herself. Left Tommy with some neighbors. He was only two or three at the time. Left Tommy with some neighbors and went and drank pesticide. You ever want to kill yourself?”

Riley admitted she had not.

“Me neither. Can you imagine what frame of mind a person must be in to want to take their own life? Can you imagine the state of mind it takes to drink pesticide? It doesn’t kill you fast, you know. Well, that’s what the loss of a child can do to you.”

“We came out here,” said Gammon. “Left the world and struck out for the wilderness. Several of us had children of our own, children who were different, who we had to hide.”

“Imagine the thing you’re most proud of,” Thomas invited Riley. “And then imagine you’ve got to hide that from everyone else because they will take it away from you and hurt it.”

“We came out here,” said Gammon, “and we been here ever since.”

“Once or twice, in the past, they come for us. I don’t mean Zed. Sure, he was thick out here in the early days, but we dealt with him like we could. Men and women came out here…”

“At first they only wanted us to come back,” said Gammon. “Or so they said. But who’d want to go back? What? Go back to a place where our sons and daughters would be called ‘munts?’”

“Then they weren’t coming out here to bring us back.”

“They came to kill us.”

“But that didn’t go so well for them, did it Ed?”

“No, it did not.”

“We lost a lot of good people, and we retreated further from their society. And you know what? Good riddance, I say.”

“So we’ve sort of peacefully co-existed ever since,” Gammon summed up. “As long as no one knows we exist, we been peaceful.”

“You’re not going to let us walk away from this,” concluded Riley. “Even if we survive your game.”

“
No
, that’s where you’re wrong.” Thomas was adamant. “Survive the game, you walk. But I’ll be honest with you. Chances are you won’t survive the game.”

Riley knew for her and Anthony and Troi and Evan to make it out of this, they were going to have to kill these people. She knew if any of them did manage to survive, then Thomas and his people were doomed, because she would come back. And she knew Thomas knew this as well.

“Most people,” Thomas continued, “don’t ever venture out this far. What with the radiation and all. You know the heartland—what they used to call the heartland—is all but uninhabitable now, right?”

“Will be for thousands of years,” added Gammon.

“She don’t know what the heartland is,” Thomas said. “This used to be a beautiful country, a powerful country, a cruel country. That was before your time.”

“They don’t hurt people anymore…” Riley tried, “…people who are different. You could come back with us. All of you. You’d be welcomed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“
Really
.”

“I believe you,” replied Thomas. “But I’m older than you, sweetheart. Things have a way of coming back around. It’d only be a matter of time before the pendulum swung the other way, and then…well, I don’t want to be there for that.”

“We’re old men,” said Gammon.

“We just want to die out here, peaceful-like.”

Riley gave Thomas a look, and the old man knew she would kill him if she could. This game would prove interesting, Thomas thought. He hoped so.

“There’s nothing I can say to you,” Riley gave it one last shot. “Nothing that will make you let my brother go? Nothing I can
do
?”

“Don’t cheapen yourself.” Thomas’ tone was sharp. “The answer is an emphatic
no
. Now you go and rest. You’re going to need it.”

“Paulson,” Gammon called out loud.

Paulson and Frankie came in and took Riley away.

“I like her,” Thomas said when he and Gammon were alone again. “There’s something different about that one. Mark my words. She’s got spunk.”

“She’s dangerous,” warned Gammon.

“Yeah, that too.” Thomas thought about the way the girl had stared at him, willing to beg for her brother, willing to give herself up as part of the bargain, but never intimidated. Her eyes had sent daggers through him. Gammon was right. This one was dangerous.

This time around, Thomas thought to himself, the game should be very interesting.

The windows were sealed, the door locked, and the cabin itself was guarded on four sides.

“They been eating?” Red asked Dalton, who was stationed outside the front door.

“Some.”

She nodded.

“Keep telling them they gotta eat,” offered MacKenzie. “Keep their strength up. But they don’t listen.”

“Would you, Mac?”

“No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

“Let me in, Dalton,” said Red. “I want to see them.”

Dalton eyed Red. Sure, she was probably the most dangerous human being ne had ever encountered. And, granted, she had all her blades on her, even the chop sticks in her hair. But there were four of them inside there.

“You sure about that, Red?” MacKenzie had the temerity to ask before Dalton could.

Red silenced him with a look.

“Okay, then…” MacKenzie looked away.

“You need anything,” Dalton said as he unlocked the door, “you just call.”

Red ignored him and stepped inside the cabin.

The four friends were huddled close together against the far wall of the cabin. They’d been allowed to keep their sleeping bags and other items from their packs, things that could not be used as weapons or utilized in an escape. Red thought they looked pathetic.

“How are you all holding up?” she asked them.

They looked at her.

“How old are you?” asked Riley.

“Dalton said you’re not all eating the way you should be. And you should be. You’re going to need your strength for the game.”

“The game, huh?” Evan shot back insolently. “That’s what you people call it? Why not the hunt? Isn’t that more like it?”

“Yeah, well,” said Red, “let’s call it what it really is, which is murder. How’s that?”

“You admit that?”

“I’m not stupid,” said Red. “But you have to understand what the people here have been through. What
we’ve
been through. You can’t just walk away.”

“Why not?” Troi said.

“Because you wouldn’t stay away. You’d say you would. You’d tell me and Thomas right now that you’d walk away, that you’d forget about us, about this place. But you wouldn’t. You’d come back, or others like you would come back, and then…well, that would be the end of us.”

“You’re damned right about that,” snarled Evan.

“See? At least you’re honest about it. Like me.”

Red noted the way Evan was eyeing her, like maybe he was thinking he could take her out. As she watched, Evan nodded to Anthony.

“If you’re thinking of rushing me here, bad idea. Save it for the game.”

“What if we don’t want to play your game?” said Evan. “What if we want you to play
our
game? Yeah, you got a lot of knives on you, but there’s four of us. How many of us do you think you can mess up before we mess
you
up?”

“I could kill you all, right here.” The way Red said it made Riley grip Anthony’s arm. “But I’d rather that not happen. I’d rather you have your chance out there,” she nodded beyond the room, beyond the house, “in the game.” Red did not say it to these people, but she’d rather Thomas get to play the game at least one more time, if what she and Gammon suspected about the old man’s health was correct.

“The game.” Riley sighed. “Right.”

“You
could
win.” said Red. “Not likely, but possible.”

“I bet you people tell that to everyone you force into this. Don’t you, Amy?”