Chapter 179
“Where the hell have you been?!”
It was almost evening of the next day before I got home, and Winn was not happy to say the least.
“Picking up the pieces,” I told him before surprising him by walking into his chest in a wordless plea to be held.
“Uh … Babe?”
“Better go inside if Monty is still here. I don’t want to have to say this twice.”
“First, you’re going to get something to eat. Sherree made some stew with a couple of rabbits I got.”
I shook my head and nearly threw up acid. “Not on my stomach. Not right now.”
His arms tightened briefly before walking me back towards the house. Before we reached the porch I asked, “How much do they know? About our stuff I mean.”
“Cellar is still hidden and so is everything else. The stew is from the rabbits I snared, and the rest is out of the garden.”
“Let’s keep it that way please. I’ll explain …” Just then Monty jerked the door open so I changed what I was saying to, “… when Monty is here … oh … hey.”
“Have you seen Dad?” he asked in a rush.
“Seen him. Listened to him curse a blue streak when he told me that Celeste broke and ran in some kind of battle fever thing. Can … can you let me tell it from the beginning? I don’t want to have to keep going over this again and again to get things straight.”
I hadn’t been paying attention enough and Rutherford stuck his head around the door and asked solemnly, “Did Grammy … leave?”
I sighed and got down on his level with some difficulty. “Sorta. She’s been taken to a hospital for people that … that are broken. Your Grammy loves you, she’s just … so sad she is too angry to use good sense right now.”
“She’s not gone away forever like Daddy and my momma? She’ll come back like you did?”
“No, she’s not gone away forever. But it is probably going to take her a … a long time to come back. She needs a lot of help. Help from people that understand and can help her … work through all her sad and mad. Grown up help with doctors and stuff like that.”
“But she’s not gone away forever.”
“No,” I repeated.
He surprised me by running into me and starting to cry. I held him a little helplessly and looked at the others. While Winn bent down to wrap both of us in his arms I heard Monty and Sherree quietly saying that that was the first time they’d seen Rutherford cry about any of it.
Winn whispered after Rutherford fell into a sleep that was more collapse than nap, “The kids are exhausted. We could hear the noise from town all the way up here. A few times the wind seemed to carry … screams.”
He helped me to stand up and I managed to pick Rutherford up, and Teena who had come to join the group hug with eyes that reminded me almost too much of another Teena.
It took a few moments to get them in a puppy pile on the bed that Winn and I generally shared. I tucked Mr. Mophead between them and the both were holding onto it; and then we went back upstairs to find that Monty had pulled out his med kit and Sherree was fixing me something to drink.
“I’m fine. Little dirty and I stink but … no injuries.”
“Just let me do my thing Edie. And drink what Sherree gives you. It’s got electrolytes in it.”
I did it because it was more request than order. They’d both learned, even before I was stolen away, orders only made me ornery and resistent. Geez I just wanted to sleep. I was on the tail end of my last 2nd wind … 5th, 6th, 10th? … and could have crawled into the bed even with the kids already there.
I could tell they all needed me to say something but also knew that I needed to do it in my own time.
“Let’s get the ‘screams’ out of the way. There was too much artillery fire going on for you to hear people. I could barely hear myself think most of the time. The ‘screams’ were probably the hypersonic missiles the military was using to target … to target some of the weapons that the cartel had gotten ahold of.”
Winn slowly nodded while Monty gave him a look.
I cleared my throat. “What we have here lady and gents is a SNAFU.” I held up my hand and said, “I know you have questions, just let me get this out and hopefully some of the questions will be answered as I go along.” When all three finally nodded with Winn not letting me pull too far away I picked the thread back up.
“What I’m about to say better not leave this room. Monty, the only reason I am telling you is because … you need to convince your dad, if possible, to keep his own mouth shut about what he may have put together. The bastards are running scared and all that means is they are going to be more dangerous and ruthless and absolutely grade A stupid in their moves.”
I gave them a very brief overview of the Draft Day people and what had happened to us. I also explained that “somehow” they’d started running out of money. How the military had gotten suspicious of them over the course of time, some of it being jealousy rather than knowing what they were doing, and it wasn’t until the end that the military really found out what was going on or they would have gotten us out sooner.
“But you know how it is. It is hard to impossible to go home and people that make mistakes want to completely wipe them out … or at least their part in it. And because everyone you’ve been playing power games with are at least as dirty as you and as likely to turn you in if it means they escape … a lot of them apparently started working independently of the group hoping to come out as unscathed as possible, or at least having a frickton of plausible deniability. And what we have at the moment is not only a world war, but we have a kind of civil war.”
I took a sip of the drink Sherree once again pushed towards me and I made a face at the taste but didn’t complain. I’d had worse on the road and it was wet and that’s all I cared about at the moment.
“The military has been running on good intentions with those of us from the various Draft Day survivors. I don’t know about any of the other group locations,” I lied. “But I do know that it appears coincidental that a group of the Fort Lee personnel were nearby. Or maybe not so coincidental but there’s no proof they were intentionally herded in a particular direction.” I lied about that too and stretched my neck trying to give myself time to tell things without tripping over my lies. “One or more of the … I called them Overlords just to call them something in my head … that group that existed both in and outside of the federal government decided to keep their internal enemies busy so they could work deals with external enemies so that as the war wound down, they’d be the ones in power. To do this they’ve been ‘selling’ armaments to the cartels so long as they wouldn’t fight each other with them, but used them a little more strategically.”
Monty and Winn both had a few bitter words for that information.
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. It was a disaster waiting to happen, especially as the military took off their kid gloves and started using precision strikes to whittle that problem down. The problem is that the war has really heated up and this country is fighting the worst kind of multiple fronts. Terrorism on our home ground as well as the theaters around the world trying to keep worse from heading to our home ground. Then someone made a mistake somewhere along the chain of screw ups and the military got wind of a how the cartels were getting away and what they were getting away with … I mean the physical armaments. Then one of the Overlords got wind that the military had gotten wind, which meant the Administration currently in the White House would know and he has enough backing that if he decided to start arresting … geez, it is just a Chinese fire drill. Basically what has happened over the last couple of days is that one or more of the Overlords sent mercs in to retake some of the toys they’d been given but because the cartel had split, they only got half of it … but at the same time they took out half of the cartel. The other half took Dunnville to turn into into a base of operations.”
It was Winn that asked, “Why? That would box them in?”
“That’s exactly what it did. As for why? Apparently the town of Dunnville is sitting on a goldmine and the cartel leadership had in mind to take the citizens of the town and use them as slave labor to mine the gold.”
All three of them just sat there looking at me with their mouths hanging open. I said, “Yep. Seems ol’ Beatrice had been holding out on y’all.”
“You’re kidding me,” Monty said, though it was doubtful that’s what he meant.
More than a little irritated I said, “Of course I’m kidding you Monty. You know good and well that’s nothing but an ol’ wives' tale or legend or whatever you want to call it at this point. But the migrants in this area were apparently so knuckleheaded they believed the stories people around here told. And greed strikes again.”
. Or he is very hungry to eat the black shower bag. 
