Now Carlotta stood and hugged him. The human contact eased the static a little. In the dim glow of the dying day through the barred window, Peter could see that she had a black eye. “They’re not letting us go,” she said in his ear. “They already told us that.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “They’re planning to execute me at midnight. At least the French Foreign Legion waited until dawn.”
Ellie sat slumped on the cinder-block bench. “Dude, this rescuesucks. Did you get the speech from that freak show who calls himself the Messenger? That dude is bananapants.”
Peter took a seat beside her, pulling Carlotta closer. “Manny and Lewis are coming for us. I’m not sure when, but it will be tonight. We need to be ready. Get some sleep while you can.”
He tried to project confidence. But he was having trouble feeling it. Even if June could locate the compound, then find the stockade in the heart of it, almost everyone he’d seen was carrying a firearm. Manny and Lewis and June weren’t going to bring this place down bythemselves. That would take a Marine battalion. Breaking them out was the only option. But it had to be before midnight, when he was scheduled to die.
And if they somehow managed that?
They’d still have to figure out what the Messenger was planning.
Then figure out how to stop it before the shit hit the fan.
Thinking, hoping, he sat with Ellie and Carlotta on the bench in the dark, the three of them huddled close for warmth. The cell grew colder. The night deepened. Outside, the wet snow pattered down.
—
After a while, Vance unlocked the door to admit a young woman with a dirty face and plastic plates. White bread sandwiches with American cheese and mustard, congealed mac and cheese, carrot sticks. No utensils. The young woman was silent as a mouse and kept her eyes on the floor. She filled paper cups with water from a plastic jug, then took the jug with her when she left. Vance stood in the doorway for a moment, eyeballing Peter as if daring him to try something. He didn’t.
Ellie looked skeptically at her plastic plate. “If this is dinner after the apocalypse, I don’t know if I want to survive it.”
Carlotta looked at Peter. He shook his head. He didn’t trust the Messenger or his people. The food might be drugged. Carlotta took their plates and dumped everything in the toilet bucket so they wouldn’t be tempted to eat it. Ellie scowled.
Peter went to the window. The big man stood before the door, arms crossed. “Hey, Vance.”
The big man didn’t turn. “Shut up.”
“Come on, Vance. I’m a condemned man, talk to me. You really believe the Messenger’s bullshit?”
Vance turned to face him with a cruel smile. “The man is a visionary. You have no idea how many people think the way we do. Weshipped those black-tips all over the country. The Messenger has contacts all over the world. Once we get things started, the others will join in.”
Peter felt his heart sink. “The Messenger said something about the lights going out. All that talk about the Dark Time. He means it literally, doesn’t he? You’re taking down the electrical grid. But it’s all controlled by computer, so that must mean you have a hacker. Is he already inside the system?”
Vance’s face went blank. “That’s enough talking. Shut your mouth or I’ll come in there and shut it for you.”
Peter had hit a nerve. “Just tell me the fucking plan. I’m locked in a cell. You’re going to kill me at midnight. What can I possibly do?”
Quick as a snake, Vance reached through the bars and tried to grab him by the neck. Peter danced back, feeling those thick fingers brush his skin, then caught Vance’s wrist with his cuffed hands and pulled the big man hard against the rebar, torquing the elbow. For a moment he imagined breaking the arm. But that would get him nothing but a quick jolt of satisfaction and maybe an early death.
He let go. Vance pulled his arm back, rubbing the strained joint. “Midnight can’t come soon enough,” he growled.
52
The night deepened. Another guard came and Vance left.
Peter stood by the barred window, trying to keep the white static at bay. It didn’t like the cell, or the fact that he was, for the moment, powerless to do anything useful. He stared out at the compound, hoping to see a friendly face.
Instead he saw a flurry of activity under the pole lights. A pair of four-door pickups pulled up beside the big stone armory. The trucks were rigged for rough travel with oversized tires, heavy-duty winches on their bumpers, and four rectangular five-gallon fuel cans mounted in each bed. Wherever they were going, they’d need more than one tank of gas to get home.
Men got out of the trucks. Peter recognized Hollis, Vance, Nickels, and Boxall. There were three more men he didn’t recognize, and also a boy, Ellie’s age or younger. They went into the building and returned carrying rifles, ammunition boxes, and other equipment. Getting ready, Peter thought.
Boxall and the boy made a second trip inside and emerged with a pair of black spidery-looking contraptions that Peter couldn’t identify. As Boxall passed his contraption to Vance in the back of the truck, it was momentarily turned on its side and Peter saw the rotor arms and propellers. Two large drones. Probably the ones Reed had built.
The boy made a third trip into the armory and returned with a small case on a strap over one shoulder and a big smile on his face. Peter couldn’t figure out why he was part of the group.
Two of the men got back into the trucks and drove forward toward the second building and under a high open roof that jutted out from one side. Beneath it were an old gas pump and what looked like the round end of a propane tank the size of a semitrailer. The wooden roof structure would keep the rain and snow off the equipment and the people using it. The other men walked up and began to pull the fuel cans from their racks and fill them from the pump.
