In the soft grey silence of early dawn, Piper stood by the bed, watching Brody sleep and rubbing the pad of her thumb back and forth across the edge of the knife in her hand.
“So easy,” she murmured. Under his chin at an angle, up into his brain. He’d shown her the technique himself. Or rather, she’d learned it while watching him instruct the members of their group who were non-combatants. Amazing, what you could learn when people underestimated you.
She knew it was underestimation, rather than trust, that allowed her to rise from their bed and move around the cabin without waking him these days. Standing over him like this, knowing he was helpless, knowing she could remove him from existence whenever she wanted, had become the greatest pleasure in her life.
Actually killing him, though, would be the height of stupidity. That was another thing he’d taught her: Tactical advantage must be planned for and preserved at any cost. Piper was nothing if not an apt pupil, no matter what she turned her mind to. So Brody took his next breath, and his next, because keeping him alive worked to her advantage.
His eyes opened, staring straight into hers.
Piper tucked the knife behind her palm and forearm and let her “kinda dumb” mask drop into place. “It’s too quiet. No birds. Pretty sure there’s someone close by.”
Brody rolled out of bed without a word, brushing by her as he headed for the clothes he always had laid out, ready to go. While his back was turned, Piper slid the knife back into its sheath on her belt. She watched him dress dispassionately, noting that he still hadn’t put back on the weight he’d lost when an intestinal ‘flu swept through the camp a month ago. Normally bulky with muscle, he was far leaner now, the weight loss hollowing out his stomach and cheeks. His face was sharp and cold as a blade when he looked up at her.
“Who’s on watch?”
“Josh.”
Brody made a disgusted sound. “He’s still not back to full strength. Probably fell asleep.”
“I wanted to leave him out of the rotation for another week. He wouldn’t hear of it, though – he insisted he was okay.” She layered a little more “dumb” into her voice. “I guess he was tired of missing out on the alcohol rations. He hates going without.”
Brody frowned, and she smiled inside. Nothing set Brody off more than actions that endangered the group. Suggesting Josh would resume guard duty when he was unfit, just to score his ration of booze, was pushing it, but she judged the time to be right. She’d been subtly undermining Josh for months.
It was nothing personal. Just part of the plan.
Piper shrugged into her jacket as Brody finished tying his boots. They left the cabin in silence, both armed with military-issue AR15 rifles, and slid quickly into the cover of the trees to pause, listen, feel for strangers. Everyone in the group had trained for this before the intrusions even started. Brody predicted they would come, and as always, he had been right. Their cabin was the farthest outlying to the east, so more often than not, it fell to Piper and Brody to deal with the people who had started to stumble into their compound last fall, drawn by the smoke from their fires.
They made a good team. Piper could acknowledge that fact and store it away for possible future use, even though it stirred the secret rage deep in her gut. Brody could pinpoint intruders with supernatural accuracy. He never spoke of experiencing heightened senses as the others did, but Piper was sure he did. Once they were located, her own skills came into play.
The silence in the forest was heavy, thick with watchfulness. Brody took the lead, and the two of them moved through the trees with hardly a rustle, their footsteps further muffled by the snow that had fallen the night before. Piper’s ability to move quietly was one of the few things that had earned her Brody’s approval. They both heard the intruders long before they spotted them, and Brody altered their path to intercept. When they were close enough to hear the murmur of voices, he looked over his shoulder at Piper, gesturing to a pair of trees on the edge of a clearing. Piper nodded, and they both moved to stand behind a tree.
They moved into Piper’s line of sight first, two men and a woman. Piper made eye contact with Brody and communicated what she could see using the hand signals he had taught her for close range engagement: A thumb and two fingers – three people. Two fingers, and a pumping motion – both men were carrying shotguns. Three fingers again, and her hand in the shape of a gun – all three armed with pistols in holsters on their belts.
Brody made an OK sign with his fingers, then lowered his hand towards the ground, telling her to crouch down and stay hidden. Piper did as he instructed, and Brody stepped into the clearing, rifle at the ready on his shoulder.
“That’s far enough,” he said calmly. “Do not raise your weapons, or I’ll shoot all of you.”
In spite of the warning, one of the men made an abortive move to bring his shotgun up; his companion slapped it down, and the three of them stood rigidly, staring at Brody, waiting. Not one of them glanced around, nor did they move to guard each other’s backs. No training, Piper thought with contempt, and no discipline. Not even any common sense. Sooner or later, they were meat.
Without lowering his weapon, Brody started asking questions, the kinds of questions that would seem normal under the circumstances, but that were designed to give Piper the information she needed.
“Where are you from?”
“Brent and I are from Aurora. I’m James.” The man who had pushed down his companion’s weapon did the talking. “We picked up Elise –” A nod towards the woman, “- just outside of Golden on our way through.”
“What’s the situation in the Denver area?”
“Terrible. Rival gangs of looters taking everything, controlling the water supply, killing people that try to stand up to them. Fires burning out of control for days on end. Downtown is totally gone, and whole neighborhoods have burned to the ground. Disease. People starving to death. There are rats everywhere, and packs of feral dogs. We were going to wait ‘til spring to get out, but it just got too dangerous. We didn’t even dare light a fire to stay warm – couldn’t risk drawing people to the light and smoke.”
As they talked, Piper let her perceptions open, broaden, expand. Her eyes stayed trained on the trio, but went unfocused as she concentrated on seeing what they weren’t saying. Faintly at first, then stronger, she began to see what she was looking for: The color-bond- lines of connection between the three, conveying information about the social dynamics at work.
The men were either brothers or very old friends, the lines that pulsed between them strong, established, the blue-green of love and communication. The woman was connected to them both sexually, but not emotionally – red lines, faint and flickering, from her to them, stronger orange lines from the men to her. She was probably bartering herself for safety or…no. To protect her children. At least two, Piper decided, though she was surprised. From what little information they had gathered, the plague appeared to have hit the young hard, and not many kids had made it this long. But sure enough, there they were: Two distinct, brightly-colored bond-lines emanating from the woman to some spot back behind the trio, predominantly the green and pink of love, with flickers of violet. She loved those kids, and made decisions with their benefit in mind.
Brody shifted into a new line of questioning, this time directing his inquiries at the woman, Elise. “Do you have military or medical training?”
“Me?” The woman glanced at the two men, and Piper saw the exact moment she started to consider a new allegiance. Her eyes flickered over Brody from head to toe, and her body shifted subtly, conveying both question and invitation. “No, but I can cook. And I can…do other things.”
“How old are you?”
The woman hesitated. “Thirty.”
Piper barely resisted a snort – she was close to forty, easy – and Brody grunted. Piper knew without looking at him that the woman had already been dismissed. He returned his attention to the men.
“What about you two? Military or medical training?”
The men exchanged a glance, and James spoke for them both again. “No. But we’re strong and willing to work. We’re looking for a place to settle, somewhere safe. We’d do our part.”
“How many others are with you?”
Elise spoke before James could. “None,” she said quickly. “It’s just us.”
This time, Piper did snort. Brody’s eyes shifted to hers, and he gave her a short nod. She rose, and stepped into the clearing, rifle at her shoulder.
“I understand lying about your kids,” she said, speaking directly to Elise. “But why lie about your age? That’s just dumb.” She shifted her attention to the men, noted the similar bone structure, the same brown eyes. She spoke to Brody without taking her eyes off them. “The men are brothers, with really strong bonds. No other lines of allegiance, either to the woman or to the two kids she’s trying to hide. They’re somewhere off to the south-east, fairly close by.”
The last piece of information was irrelevant to Brody, she knew, but she wanted to see the looks on their faces. Sure enough: shock, incredulity and more than a little fear. She allowed herself a tiny smirk. That was always fun.
The other man spoke for the first time. “How did you –”
Brody didn’t let him finish. “You all can go back the way you came. There’s a road due south of here that’ll take you farther on to the west. There’s a small group of survivors in Walden. You may find what you’re looking for there.”
The men capitulated immediately, both of them stepping back, but the woman wasn’t going to give up so easily. She took several steps towards Brody, saw something in his face that made her reconsider, then turned pleading eyes on Piper.
“Please. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my kids. Their names are Sam and Becca. They’re both eleven, fraternal twins. They can work, too.” She raised her wringing hands to her chest. “Please. We’ve got to get off the road. It’s too dangerous.”
Eleven. Macy would be eleven this spring, Piper thought, and emotion twisted and fought for freedom in her chest. She battered it down, keeping her face locked and impassive. “Sorry. You don’t have any skills we can use, and your kids are too young. Too many mouths to feed.”
“Please!” Elise repeated, and this time, she dropped to her knees. She darted a glance over her shoulder at the two men, and whatever was in her face made both of them take another step back. “I can’t go on with them. My daughter’s only eleven, but she’s mature, physically. I heard them, when they thought I was sleeping – they’re talking about –” Her face contorted, and a desperate sob heaved out of her. “They’re talking about selling her. She’s a virgin, and they want to sell her for –” She couldn’t finish, her face twitching.
The spit of weapons-fire made Piper flinch violently, and the woman scream and hit the ground. Two sets of three quick bursts, and both men dropped where they’d been standing. One of them never moved again; the other moaned once, convulsed, then was still.
Brody spoke to Piper as he walked over to the corpses and knelt to start stripping them of their gear. “Take her to get her kids, then wait there. Ethan will have heard the shots. When he gets here, I’ll send him after you and he can take them on to Walden.”
Piper was too surprised to obey right away. Just when she thought she had Brody figured out. Why had he shot the men? Why was he helping this woman and her children get to Walden? He never did anything without a reason. She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him, brain clicking through possibilities. There was valuable information here; she just wasn’t sure what it was yet.
Brody looked up sharply. “I told you to move.”
Piper bent to take the now-sobbing woman’s arm and help her to her feet. “Come on. Your kids will be scared. Let’s go.”
“Oh my God! Oh my God !” Elise was in serious danger of hyperventilating. “He shot them! He shot them, just like that! Why did he do that?”
To Piper’s amazement, Brody answered the woman’s question. “There are rules. A code.” His voice was as clipped and brusque as usual, but underneath, Piper heard rage. She squinted at him, and saw that his hands were actually trembling. He looked up at them both, and his arctic-blue eyes were white-hot. “What happens between grown men and women is not my concern. But any man that would rape a child is lower than an animal and needs to be put down. No exceptions.”
“Thank you, thank you so much. I wish there was some way I could repay you.”
Brody didn’t even acknowledge Elise’s sobbing gratitude. Piper took her elbow, and this time, the woman allowed herself to be led away. They worked their way through the still-silent woods, following the trio’s obvious backtrail, Elise stumbling over and over as she tried to overcome her shock. Part of Piper’s mind stayed focused on the task at hand, monitoring the surrounding forest for signs of trouble or additional intruders, while the other part whirred and processed.
She knew that Brody could kill in cold blood. Her friend Noah’s death had branded that knowledge into the deepest part of her being. And she’d seen him kill since then, when he judged intruders too dangerous to be allowed to go on their way. What she hadn’t known before today was that Brody could actually feel. Those buffoons hadn’t posed any kind of threat. Brody had acted on emotion, and that emotion had been triggered by a threat to a child, specifically the rape of a child.
Piper felt her face stir in an unfamiliar way, and realized she was smiling, actually grinning, as they walked along. Brody had just handed her a weapon of enormous power. Now all she had to do was plan how to use it.
By the time they approached another small clearing, Elise had started to pull herself together. She paused before they stepped into the open, wiped both hands over her cheeks, and took several deep breaths. The remains of a campfire smoldered in a shallow fire-pit, and five backpacks were stacked in a heap nearby, though there were no children to be seen.
Elise called out. “Sam! Becca! It’s safe to come out! King Tutankhamun!” She glanced at Piper, and gave her a watery smile. “Our code words for safety. If I were being coerced, I’d use ‘pumpernickel.’”
Maybe this woman wasn’t quite as dumb as Piper originally thought. A few moments later, two children emerged from the underbrush, both of them looking at Piper curiously. The girl was slightly taller than the boy, with long, coltish legs and a way of moving that hinted at the physical maturity her mother had spoken of. The two shared the same sandy hair and hazel eyes, and they moved like a unit, turning slightly as they walked so that their backs were protected. The bonds between them were brilliant rainbows of color, the strongest Piper had ever seen. Both of them scanned the entire clearing before they walked into their mother’s arms, three becoming one as she bent her head and began murmuring to them.
Now these two had instincts, Piper thought. For a moment, she thought about trying to convince Brody to change his mind. There was amazing potential here. These two could be trained in no time –
Trained to do what, Piper?
Her mother’s voice sounded in her ear, as clearly as if she was standing beside her, and Piper winced.
There wasn’t much left of the moral structure Naomi had worked to instill in her daughter, though Piper could still hear the words. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Love thine enemy and drive them nuts! Piper remembered the twinkle in her mother’s eyes as she’d said that last, and the memory left her breathless with longing.
Piper’s moral code was much simpler now: Do whatever was necessary to survive. She didn’t permit herself to feel remorse or guilt. There were only necessities and decisions, and so far, she hadn’t found any means she couldn’t justify. Occasionally, though, she stepped too close to a line, and her mother’s voice would murmur in her head.
Piper didn’t know if it was a form of insanity or if Naomi had actually found a way to monitor her behavior remotely, but when that voice spoke to her, Piper obeyed. She did so, because to disobey meant becoming less-than human, a predator without conscience or soul. Like Brody. If she stepped off that edge and allowed herself to be remade in his image, the rape of her being would be complete.
So recruiting eleven-year-olds as co-conspirators was out. Her mother said so.
Elise and her children separated, and the kids’ faces had hardened; whatever their mother had told them, there’d been something of the truth in it. The boy glanced at Piper with gratitude, and she was left to wonder what the two of them had been forced to watch their mother endure. The three of them began to sort through the backpacks and redistribute their supplies.
Piper glanced around the clearing, wondering how long it would take Ethan to arrive. A chance like this was too rare to pass up; never before had she been left alone with someone from the outside. She stepped closer to Elise. “What else can you tell me about what’s going on? Is there any news from other parts of the country, or the world? Any official response to the plague from the government?”
“The government. Right.” Elise rose to her feet, and shook her head in disgust. “Seemed to me they were the first ones out of Dodge. Rumor was that the state’s bigwigs were all holed up down at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, but that could just be speculation. People make things up when they don’t have information. In the Denver area, things went to hell fast. People were looting and rioting in the streets, and they didn’t even try to control it – no police, no national guard, nothing. It was pretty much the same all over the world, or so the media was reporting, until all the stations quit broadcasting. It’s like the dark ages out there now. No one knows anything. We’re all just trying to survive.”
Piper’s hopes sank. “So martial law isn’t even in effect.”
“There’s no law at all, not where we’ve been, anyway. I don’t know about other places.”
Piper was quiet for a moment, thinking, then asked, “Is that how you came to be traveling with those men?”
Elise looked down and swallowed hard. She angled her body so that her back was to her kids and spoke low. “A woman alone out there is dead, even if you know how to handle a gun. And if you’re trying to protect kids, well.” She swallowed again. “That’s just one more way for them to make you do what they want. Sam and Becca were gathering firewood when those assholes walked into our camp. I agreed to cooperate if they promised to not touch Becca.”
Her eyes swung back up to Piper’s, brimming now with angry tears. “I can’t give my kids back their childhoods, either one of them, but I’ve got to protect my daughter from that. The world is so screwed up now, and I know I can’t keep her safe forever, but her first time shouldn’t be rape. I can’t stand the thought.”
Rage surged out of Piper’s gut, and before she knew what she was doing, she had stepped forward and slapped Elise full across the face, snapping her head violently to the side. A heartbeat later, she was looking down the barrels of two pistols, both of them rock-steady. She ignored them, ignored the stone-faced children holding them, and let her gaze drill into Elise’s shocked eyes.
“You want to protect your daughter?” she hissed. “Then stop being a victim! Stop crying! Learn to watch your backtrail for fuck’s sake! Your kids are more aware of their surroundings than you are!” She shifted her gaze to Becca’s hard eyes. “Cut your hair and wear boy’s clothes. Learn to move like your brother. Don’t talk to other people, especially men, but don’t look down. Don’t cower. You get me?”
Becca eyed her a moment longer, then nodded. In unison, she and her brother lowered their pistols. Elise was still staring at her in shock, cradling her cheek with her palm, when a low whistle announced Ethan’s approach. Piper stepped away from the trio, and turned to watch him step from the trees.
Ethan’s sharp eyes locked immediately on the un-holstered pistols in the kids’ hands, then zeroed in on the bright red handprint on Elise’s face. He didn’t bring his rifle to the ready, but he stopped walking and looked sharply at Piper. “What’s the story here?”
She turned first to the kids. “Put your weapons away.” When they had done so, she turned back to Ethan. “Just giving the kids a lesson or two in wilderness survival.”
He didn’t buy her story for a minute, but he trusted her not to endanger him. Regardless of the alliances, grudges, friendships, likes or dislikes in their group, they all knew their backs were covered. Piper had been the last one allowed inside that network of bonds, but she was in.
Piper turned to Elise. “This is Ethan. He’ll take you to Walden and introduce you to the group there.”
Elise looked up to meet Ethan’s gaze, and Piper heard a soft, hissing, crackle – like a naked electrical wire going live. A line of pure white light arced between Ethan and Elise for the space of three heart-beats, then went out as quickly as it had zapped into existence. Piper’s eyes darted between the two of them, but neither one seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. They nodded at each other politely, leaving Piper to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing. The bond-lines were one thing; that had been something altogether different.
Piper shook her head slightly, and turned to Elise. She found the other woman watching her with the strangest mixture of anger and hero-worship. Elise took a deep, shaky breath, and tried one last time. “If we could just stay with you. We’re all hard workers, I promise –”
“No.” Piper didn’t try to soften the harsh bark of her voice, and Elise and her children all jumped. She glared at Elise – God, could she be this thick? Was she going to make her spell it out? “That situation you’re so worried about? It’s everywhere. Everywhere. Tell me you understand.”
If she had seen pity in the other woman’s eyes, she would have slapped her again. Instead, she saw comprehension. And a grim sisterhood. “I understand,” she murmured. She bent to shoulder her backpack, her kids following suit, then squeezed Piper’s arm on her way past. “Thank you.”
Ethan spoke over his shoulder as he led the trio back into the forest, towards the road to Walden. “Brody’s waiting for you. Said to tell you to meet him at your cabin.”
Piper’s stomach clenched. A return to the cabin could mean only one thing. She squared her shoulders, and headed back through the woods, using the rhythm of her steps and her breathing to drop to a place of still silence.
The old Piper could never have endured this life. She would have raged against the injustice, would have shouted about laws, and rights, and the barbarism of “might makes right.” The new Piper had learned to lock her throat around words that could not be said, to turn that silence into a fortress. In silence she survived, and she planned.
She was deep in that quiet refuge when she opened the cabin door. Brody waited until she’d removed her rifle, then he was all over her. She obeyed his hoarse instructions, moved when he told her to, how he told her to; long since, she’d learned to cooperate, so he’d hurt her less. This time, though, he was out-of-control with a strange desperation. He didn’t climax until he wrung a cry of agony from her. Then he left her immediately to shut himself in the bathroom. Piper stared at the ceiling through tears of pain, listening to the sounds of water splashing behind the closed door, and all the pieces clicked together.
Shooting the men. Trembling hands. The brutal sex. For the second time that day, her face lifted in a smile. He’d been abused as a child. It was obvious. And she’d find a way to use that to her advantage before this war was finished.
She was dressed and seated at the tiny kitchen table when he emerged from the bathroom, watching her birds. She didn’t need the escape these days, but their flitting movements still captivated and soothed her. When he had finished dressing once more, she followed him in silence to the mess hall. Her mind touched on Elise and her children as she walked, and she wondered if they’d listen, if they’d learn to be smarter. Safer. Fifty-fifty, she decided. It made her so grateful that Macy had both a mother and a father to protect her; she missed her mother desperately, longed for her, but no way could Naomi alone keep Macy safe. No possible way.
Naomi was the embodiment of kindness, of nurturing motherhood. Before the plague, those qualities had driven Piper nuts; she had seen them as weaknesses, as a lack of intelligence and ambition. How her perspective had changed. Now, she could see the value in Naomi’s choices, and the courage it had taken for her mother to choose a path society did not necessarily respect or value. Naomi had chosen to raise her daughters with thoughtfulness, attention, security, and above all, love. And her father had valued the same qualities. They made a beautiful team, Piper thought. Her father provided safety and security for her mother, who provided it for her daughters. World without end.
“Amen,” she murmured, earning her a sharp backwards glance from Brody.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘amen.’” The truth, when possible, was always safest. “I just said a little prayer for Elise and her children. I hope they find safety.”
Brody stopped walking and turned fully to face her. Under the hard features she had come to know and hate so well, a younger, more vulnerable face flickered. He lifted his hand to trace a bruise on her cheekbone, one he’d put there himself. “Do you think that works? Praying for children in danger?”
Oh, this was treacherous ground. He had never before asked for her opinion or her thoughts. She didn’t want him to think of her even having thoughts. She gazed at him, willing her expression to cow-like dumbness, and really did pray this time – that she’d give the right answer. “Well, sure. God protects little children, doesn’t He? I’m pretty sure it says so in the Bible.”
Brody’s disappointment was a beautiful thing. It drove the young face away, and made him press his fingertips, hard, against the bruise he had been caressing so tenderly. “He protects fools, too. How’s that working for you, Piper?”
He turned away in disgust, leaving Piper to mentally pat herself on the back. “Just dandy,” she answered, though this time she was wise enough to speak the words inside, into the silence, rather than out loud.
They arrived at the mess hall, and as always, their entrance was greeted by a moment of silence. Unlike before, though, it was followed by calls of greeting to both of them. She and Brody both nodded in acknowledgment, then moved through the chow line together and took their usual places to eat, Brody with Levi and Adam, Piper with Ruth and whoever she was sitting with that day. Today, it happened to be Max, which suited Piper just fine. They were old friends, and it was interesting, watching the kaleidoscope of colors play between them.
The bond-lines had started to become visible to Piper late the summer before. If others hadn’t already been talking about experiencing changed perceptions, she would have been convinced she was hallucinating. Even then, she had hesitated to share what she could see, not sure which path offered the greatest tactical advantage. Some members of their group weren’t experiencing any change at all, and it took some time for a group attitude to emerge and solidify. People who had changed were believed and accepted, and experienced greater respect and social standing. When she was sure that attitude was held by the majority, most particularly their leaders, she revealed what she was learning to see: The bonds between people, and information about the social dynamics that existed between them.
When the whole group was together, it was like a living tapestry, with lines that ebbed and surged in intensity and color, always changing, depending on who a person was interacting with. She had watched the group for hours, observing, learning, and analyzing. Over time, she had begun to associate the colors with certain emotional states and bonds. The green-pink of love between Jenny and her son Caden; the green-pink-orange of love with a sexual element between Jenny and her husband Aaron; and strong lines of survival-security red between every person in this room and Brody. Similar, though lesser, lines connected most of the group to Levi. They saw him as second-in-command, which was the group dynamic that troubled Piper the most. Levi hated her. The fact that the group looked to him for leadership was a constant detriment to her status.
The bond-lines also told her things she didn’t have any business knowing. Though the bonds of love were steady between Jenny and Aaron, the blue of communication was an occasional flicker at best. The death of two of their children at the outset of the plague had clearly damaged their ability to talk to each other. And then there was the yellow-orange of sexual desire between Tyler and Adam; either they were doing an award-winning job of hiding their relationship, or neither one had acknowledged their feelings yet. The group as a whole accepted Ruth’s homosexuality – except for Josh, who was an asshole no matter what he turned his attention to – but that acceptance could very well be conditional. Ruth was a woman, and older. Her sexuality was basically irrelevant to the much younger men of the group. Piper wasn’t sure what would happen to the group dynamic if Tyler and Adam ever decided to act on the attraction between them; so much would be decided by the reactions of Brody and Levi, and she couldn’t venture a guess as to what those reactions would be.
“Penny for ‘em.” Ruth smiled at her as she rose. “You haven’t said a word this morning. Watching the color show?”
Piper smiled back. “I was.” She stood, then held out her hand for Ruth’s breakfast tray; she never missed a chance to make herself useful. “I’ll take yours, then join you in the clinic, okay?”
Ruth smiled her gratitude. She, too, had been hit hard by the ‘flu. The weight loss had aged her a decade, and her skin still had a grayish-yellow cast that hinted at liver stress. “I appreciate you saving me the steps. See you in a bit.”
Piper walked towards the kitchen, carrying both their trays. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brody talking to Josh, who had just come in from his watch shift. She slowed her steps, watching their gestures, noting how they supported what the bond-lines were telling her: No lines from Brody to Josh, and what looked like a vibrating spider-web of desperate red emanating from Josh towards his leader. She couldn’t hear Brody’s voice at all, but Josh got louder and louder, until he was nearly shouting.
“I tell you, I wasn’t drinking! I don’t know how they got by me, but I wasn’t sleeping either!”
Another low comment from Brody, and Josh’s face flushed as red as the lines he was clinging to Brody with. “You got no right to take away my privileges for one mistake! Other people have gotten through. It ain’t right, and I –”
Brody’s command was brief and harsh, and Josh shut up, some of the florid color leaching out of his face. He listened as Brody spoke, face locked in stillness, then nodded. He turned away to leave and saw Piper watching. For a few seconds, Piper considered bringing this part of her plan to its conclusion right here and now.
Josh had been lusting after her since the day she set foot in this camp, and her position as Brody’s woman had just egged that lust on. He saw Brody as a father figure, and it had been pathetically easy to feed his little Oedipus complex thing for her. Combine that with the subtle suggestions she’d been feeding the group about Josh’s incompetence, and she had created a lovely powder keg. Piper dropped her eyes in coy submission – Josh’s favorite female expression – while she weighed the pros and cons. He was so primed, a single word could set him off. Another chance like this might not come along.
No. The timing just wasn’t right. Piper turned away, continuing on to the kitchen without making eye contact with Josh again. He would try to convince himself she hadn’t seen his humiliation, but a part of him would wonder. It was perfect, really. When she finally pulled his trigger, he’d blow so high, there would be no turning back. Besides, she needed more time. There were a few other people she wanted caught up in that explosion.
It was hard to keep a satisfied smile off her lips as she sorted her dishes into bins to be washed. All in all, it had been a very productive morning. News from the outside. Discovering a major chink in Brody’s armor. And the situation with Josh, which couldn’t be stacking up to play out better if she’d planned it. She hadn’t, not this time – not like the intestinal “’flu” she had created via spicy chili and Sulfur Tuft mushrooms.
Ethan had pointed out the poisonous mushrooms last fall, when she had gone with him on a perimeter patrol. It hadn’t been easy, slipping away to collect them, finding a secure place to dry and powder them, then experimenting on herself to get the dosage right. But the results had been worth the effort.
The crisis had given Piper a chance to vastly increase her social standing in the group. A few days before the others, she’d faked a milder version of the illness on herself and two other members of the group – Tyler and Caden. In Tyler’s case, the move had been strategic. It would look strange if every member of the group came down with an illness simultaneously. She knew Tyler didn’t have any medical training, nor any patience with illness, and would likely be worthless when the rest of them were sick. She wanted the group dependent on her, beholden to her.
As for Caden, well, there was enough humanity left in her to not risk the boy’s well-being. He was small for his age, his parents’ only surviving child, and she wanted to spare him the wringer she put the others through.
For four days, she had kept them all as miserable as she could make them. She dosed them with tea and chicken broth laced with more of the mushroom powder, then worked tirelessly wiping their faces, cleaning up their vomit, and emptying their bedpans when most of them got too weak to stand. Tyler helped her convert the mess hall into a sick bay – there were too many ill to use Ruth’s quarantine cabin – then cleared out and kept his distance. He claimed just the sound of vomiting would make him follow suit, and volunteered to keep tabs on Caden instead. Having his sharp eyes out of the mess hall suited Piper just fine.
The line she walked was a precarious one, and she drew heavily on the medical training Ruth had been giving her to judge when to back off. Both Jenny and Max got so dangerously dehydrated, she had to start saline IV’s for them. And on the fourth day, Levi suffered a seizure.
She’d been on the far end of the mess hall when it started, and by the time she got to him, he had already vomited, then aspirated some of it into his lungs. It took all of her strength to get him onto his side and hold him there while his big body shook with violent convulsions. And it had taken an even greater effort to keep her face set in lines of concern, when all she wanted to do was laugh.
Served him right, sanctimonious bastard. He had never forgiven her for his brother’s death, had continued to turn a blind eye to Brody’s treatment of her. All of them had turned away. Not one of them cared enough to really look, to see what was happening to her. Only Ruth had tried to help, but even she deserved this suffering. She should have used her good standing with the others to make them see what Brody was. As Levi’s seizure gradually subsided into slower and slower convulsions, she pondered how much mushroom powder it might take to push Brody into a seizure, or Josh, for being a Bible-thumping hypocrite whose eyes ran over her like hands, or Aaron, whose unrelenting, dazed grief for his lost children irritated her no end…
How could you, Piper? Naomi’s voice. I know you’ve been hurt, but it’s wrong. None of this is going to make things right, or make you feel better in the long run.
Piper had looked down at Levi’s slack face, at his blue-tinted lips, slick with blood where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek, and had respectfully disagreed with her mother. But Naomi had spoken, and Piper had set about bringing her little drama to a close.
Now, four weeks later, they were all on the mend. Levi did not seem to have suffered any long-term damage from his seizure, though he had a lingering cough and his skin, like Ruth’s, was sometimes tinged with the yellow of liver stress. The rest of them were in varying stages of recovery, and Piper was their hero. She could see it, in the new, vibrant green lines of trust and esteem connecting her to the people she’d poisoned, then nursed back to health. The bond-lines were the key to implementing her plans. They told her where she stood with the rest of the group, and showed her what still needed to be done.
Piper had a single, crystalline goal: Join her family at their cabin on Carrol Lakes. Before the intruders had started bringing them news of the outside world, she had intended to cut Brody’s throat and take off in one of the compound’s vehicles. With that in mind, she had started to squirrel away supplies, targeting early summer to execute her plan, when chances were better the weather wouldn’t complicate the 200-mile journey through the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Then, information started coming in via the refugees who stumbled into the compound. Thanks to them, Piper now knew it wouldn’t be practical to steal a vehicle; even if the roads were open, and many of them weren’t, the sound of a motor would draw people from miles around. In times like these, people were trouble. Therefore, she’d be walking the distance, but she wouldn’t be doing it alone.
The bond-lines had helped her decide who her companions would be, and who would get left behind. With a carefully chosen escort in mind, Piper had been manipulating the group every which way she could manage. She undermined bonds here, strengthened them there, tugged, hinted, twisted words and lied. When the time came, if she had prepared properly, the people she didn’t want would be severed from the group.
And only one of them would have to die.