May 13, 2440, 4:57 PM
“Excuse me,” Matt said, holding up a hand to interrupt Leonard for his Warden of the South. “Go ahead. You are on speaker.”
“This is Trina Chakrobarty. Rayya patched me in. I have Bobby Mills at my house, and someone has beaten the hell out of him. He can’t speak much. There is a clear imprint of a wrench across his face. I think his jaw is broken. Peter is on with Trudy. She is dispatching Oxana. Larry is on with Angelina.”
“Hold a second.”
Matt looked up.
“K’rem, air ambulance. Send Angelina as navigator. Go.”
He pointed through the kitchen toward Angelina’s office, then added almost as an afterthought, “Tell her I won’t be far behind.”
“Trina, I have medevac on the way with Angelina. I’m sorry you had to make this call. We’ll rally at your place.”
Matt disconnected and took up the radio.
“Attention, all Freehold citizens. Enforcement activity is imminent. Armory draw will begin in five minutes and end in fifteen.”
“You are welcome to watch, Leonard,” Matt said calmly as he stood, never looking behind him.
Matt walked down the hallway, touching shoulders and squeezing the hands of the forty-seven people who had lined up to be counted on this day. He did not know them all by name, and some of those he did know, he did not know well.
He would remember them all.
“This is our home, and all of you have a right to expect me to enforce the contract by which we live. Today, you are choosing to become part of that enforcement. I honor each and every one of you.”
He laid his palm against the reader. The rolling metal door creaked open.
Matt saw the last man he expected take up position at the end of the line.
K’rem and the other V’ren did not know why they were there, and they did not care. They had given their oaths to him in the loading bay of the Kalnareth yesterday afternoon.
This was their home.
Matt’s attention settled on the young V’ren woman who had brought him news that Janie Hart would be all right. Crell Wath stood with her shoulders squared and determination set across her face.
He wanted to ask whether she was sure.
A voice behind her answered before he could.
“She can shoot,” Creswell Bourbon Longuepée said, looking toward his cousin. “All four of them can. You also owe us for forty-three razorbacks.”
“Good enough.”
Matt pulled a Mossberg from the rack and waved Crell toward Pam, who was handing out plate carriers. Pam looked as anxious as he felt, which meant no one else would ever notice.
“Sorry I was late,” K’rem said. “I ordered a second shuttle with sensors and drones to launch and go wherever Angelina tells it.”
“Thank you.”
Matt handed him a shotgun.
Pam looked at Matt.
He nodded.
“Let me know when the puppies are available,” he said. “I have been informed that I improperly accessorized K’rem’s truck.”
“Next week,” Pam said, saying everything that did not need to be said.
6:06 PM
Matt had seen enough when Angelina sent the first picture.
Exile was off the table for Warren Craig.
He would have to decide what to do about Erica Mills, and whether any of the rest of her kin still living around the small trailer enclave on the next farm had failed badly enough to share responsibility.
“We do this together,” Matt told the solemn group.
The ambulance crawled slowly up the driveway, Elise McVey already positioned on its roof as spotter.
“Are you receiving the sensor and drone data?”
“In more detail than I want,” Elise answered through the radio.
She paused.
“No one in trailer one. Trailer two has a corpse reading slightly above room temperature. The family is in the living room of trailer three.”
Matt stared toward the enclave.
The first shot cracked across the field.
Elise’s return shot roared almost on top of it.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she snarled. “He set the trailer on fire!”
Matt broke into a run.
Three hundred feet disappeared beneath him. He bounded up the porch stairs and drove his full mass into the door. It burst inward as smoke began pouring through the frame.
“She’s dead,” Elise said, switching to the V’ren sensor display. “The children are warm, but I can barely distinguish them through the smoke. Two on your left. Three on your right.”
Matt found the playpen first. He scooped Barron up and passed him backward, glimpsing Crell Wath’s delicate green hands close around the infant before he turned for Wendell.
“To your left, five feet,” Elise called. “Careful. She’s injured.”
“I have Kendra and Phylis,” Harmony Zhao shouted through the smoke. “We get Cassidy together.”
She ripped a curtain from the window and spread it beside the girl.
Matt dropped beside her. Cassidy was breathing, but barely responsive, folded around the pain in her abdomen.
They rolled her carefully onto the curtain.
“That accounts for all the living,” Elise called. “Back out now. Fire suppressant in three, two, one.”
The V’ren drones deployed their canisters, flooding the trailer with directed bursts of compressed argon.
Matt hardly noticed.
He and Harmony carried Cassidy toward the second incoming air ambulance, the thirteen-year-old sprawled across the makeshift carrier. Two more sets of hands joined theirs on the way, one pair human, one green.
Matt watched Elise McVey roll from the roof of the ambulance and drop with practiced ease, taking the impact on her right leg before stepping toward the unannounced but quietly agreed-upon meeting place.
The group gathered in silence.
Matt looked at them and shook his head, unsure what he could possibly say.
“We have done what we could,” Elise said.
“Is this how justice is carried out here?” Leonard asked.
Elise turned on him.
“Fuck you, Mr. Boston.”
She walked away.
“I’m sorr…”
“Shut up,” Oxana said as she headed back toward her rig.
“Elise lost that leg standing too close to him the night he got shot in the stomach” Meyers Jensen snapped at the general before following the others.
“Asshole,” Quinn snarled at Leonard, but stayed. She would need to decompress later and the best person to do so with would be her mom, who would want this report.
Matt looked at those who remained, Leonard included.
“We came here not knowing what we would find. We still don’t have full answers. Trevor isn’t making much sense yet.”
He looked back toward the trailers.
“He and Cassidy went to check on Earl because no one had heard from him all day. They found him dead in the hallway. They went looking for Bobby, who was helping Warren in the tractor barn.”
Matt rubbed a hand across his face.
“Cassidy came in fast with the news. She startled Warren while he was under the brush hog. He jerked up and hit his head. Bobby jumped back and dropped the wrench. It broke Warren’s beer.”
His voice hardened.
“Warren lost his mind. He picked up the wrench and started beating Bobby with it. Cassidy tried to stop him, and he kicked her in the gut.”
Matt looked toward the ambulance carrying her away.
“Trevor followed Cassidy. He follows her everywhere. She has been more of a mother to him than Erica ever was.”
He paused.
“Warren realized what he had done and stumbled back toward the trailer, apologizing to everyone and no one. Bobby made his break for Trina’s. Trevor says Warren started screaming at the little ones to shut up. That was when Trevor ran out the back.”
Matt stared at the smoke lifting over the ruined trailer.
“Somewhere between the barn and that living room, Warren decided he was going to die for what he had done. Then he decided Erica was to blame.”
His voice dropped.
“In the end, I think he decided they were all going to die with him.”
“Drunken coward,” Quinn said, shaking her head.
No one answered.
“Bobby confirmed what he could, but he can barely speak.”
Matt shook his head.
“I don’t know where we went wrong.”
“We didn’t,” Matt said, laying his hand on George Reynolds’ shoulder. “If anyone failed at all, it was me.”
