Autumn in the Dark Meadows (The Autumn Series) (28 page)

“Have you seen Shad?  Did he come back with you?”

I shook my head.  “He’s on his way now with Ben and some of the people of Vegas.”

Tess nodded slowly and then smiled sadly at me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded again, then looked away quickly, touching her nose.  The corner of her eye glistened, and she delicately wiped the tear away.  “I just can’t believe this is happening again.  Not again.  We lost...” she paused, sniffling, and then continued, “We lost so many last time.  What if...”  Her voice cut off sharply, and she glanced at me.  Her blue eyes were wet and bright, and the tip of her nose glowed red.  “What if...” she tried again.

I took her hand in mine.  “Tess, everything is going to be okay.  You’ll see.  Hoover is much more protected now than it was before, and we have more people here to help.”

She nodded and squeezed my hand.  I suddenly didn’t want her to go.  I wanted Grey to take her somewhere safe, like Rissi, but I knew we couldn’t protect everyone.  We all had our parts to play if we were going to get through this.  Manny’s voice carried over the water.  It was time for her to go.

“Be careful,” I said, trying to smile.  “I’ll see you when this is all over later tonight.”

“Okay.”  She gave me a quick hug, and I watched as she darted down the dock to the last waiting sailboat.

At the stables, we quickly saddled a couple of horses.  I noticed how the rows of horses whickered and stomped quietly without the soothing mutters of Brody.  I looked up and down the main aisle of stalls, but there was no sign of him.

Brody cared for all of the horses and stables around Hoover.  Since he brought most of Hoover’s horses himself when he arrived, I was sure Brody felt they were his.  When the townspeople heard the news of the attack, I assumed Brody would be here, securing the stable or shepherding the unused horses to a safe location.  I tried to ignore the sick feeling growing in my stomach as I buckled the saddle into place.

“You don’t think Brody is part of The Front, do you?”

Grey shrugged.  “I don’t know.”  The three words hung in the air around us like falling missiles frozen in time, waiting to explode.  I didn’t like being forced to suspect my friends and neighbors.  And I hated Karl and his gutless followers for doing this to Hoover.

Grey handed me a backpack and threw the other over his shoulder.  “We need to be careful.  I hate saying this, but I honestly don’t know who we can trust.”

The nauseous feeling in my stomach grew, and I shivered, thinking about the possibility of Brody being loyal to The Front.  I thought back to all of the conversations I had with him. If he was part of The Front, we really couldn’t trust anyone.

“Let’s get going. It’s already dark,” Grey said. He mounted his horse and waited for me to do the same before nudging his horse into a trot.

I followed him outside and into a canter down Lake Mead Avenue, past the Rec Hall and the Mayor’s Office.  The street was deserted.  The plan was already in action, and everyone had mobilized.  As we left town, the road narrowed to a trail and began to go up steeply, winding through the hills.

No clouds were in the sky tonight, but the moon was dark.  Stars by the million glittered against the sky, and I slowed to look up at them.

Grey turned off the main trail, and I hurried to catch up as we climbed even higher into the hills.  Our horses stepped daintily around rocks and clumps of creosote.  It was that comfortable time of evening between dinner and bedtime.  I thought of washing the dinner dishes at the house I shared with Connie.  The windows would be open, letting in the nighttime air and the calls of birds flying low in the sky.

But instead of enjoying the smell of kitchen soap and feeling sleep creep toward me, I was on the doorstep of battle.  I suddenly understood what history’s soldiers must have felt, and the enormity of what we were doing.  We were making our own history.  And I was in the middle of it.

I would do what had to be done to ensure our survival and the survival of those after us.  When Rissi and her friends grew up, they would look back at their lives and remember more of the world after The Plague than before it.  And their children wouldn’t know that old world at all.  We had to keep as much of it alive as we could.  And we might have a chance at that, but we had to stop Karl and The Front first.

We crested a small hill, and suddenly the valley exploded into view beneath us.  There were a few lights on in the town to our right.  To our left, I could see the still waters of the reservoir, and beyond it, the black mountains on the Arizona side of the dam pressed against the starry sky.

After tethering the horses to a scrubby mesquite tree, we walked to the southern edge of the hill, and Grey put a steadying hand on my shoulder as we peeked over the edge.  The narrow stretch of highway containing the hairpin turn was far below us.  Just like the map said, a branch of highway peeled off west leading to the bypass bridge, which lurked in the distance over the chasm of Black Canyon.

“We can watch the highway from here,” Grey said.  “We’ll set up over there, behind that big boulder, so the horses won’t be spooked when we light the fireworks.  Though they’re not going to like the noise.”

“No, they won’t,” I agreed, shaking my head and remembering the feeling of Snicket rearing up underneath me the night of the dance.

Just then, a scuff of footsteps on gravel startled me, and Grey grabbed my arm, pulling me behind him as a figure emerged from the darkness.  It was a man in a pair of coveralls.  I didn’t recognize him.

“Dr. Alexander and Miss Winters?  Sorry if I scared you,” he said, stopping a few yards from us.  “I don’t think I’ve met either of you yet.  I’m Hanson.  I work at the plant inside the dam.  Pretty much live there, so that’s probably why we haven’t met.”  He smiled, his ponytailed blonde hair bright in the moonlight.

I relaxed a bit, recognizing the electrical plant’s logo on his coveralls.  His name was formed in careful block letters below the logo, the blank ink faded on one side.

“Westland filled me in a little about your plan and tasked me with setting the charges in the hills,” he said, peeking over the sharp edge of the overlook down to the road far below us.  “There’s one right below your cliff here, so make sure you stay well away from this ledge when you tell me to light the fuses.”

“We will.  Where are you set up?” Grey asked.

“There’s a little hollow between these two hills.”  Hanson pointed in the direction he’d come from.  “I can’t see anything from where I hid the ends of the fuses, so one of you will need to run to let me know when to blow the hill.”

“I can do it,” I volunteered.

“Look for a dead mesquite tree down there.  I’m set up behind it.”

“I’ll come tell you when it’s time.”

“Jones is up that way,” he said, pointing west, toward the bypass bridge.  “He’s got the charges for the bridge set up.  Westland said he should watch for the second series of fireworks to let him know when he needs to blow the bridge?”

“That’s right,” Grey said.

“Guess we’re getting our Fourth of July early this year, eh?” Hanson chuckled, disappearing back into the darkness.

Grey looked down at me, and I could tell he wanted to argue with me.  “I don’t like you going down there by yourself.”

“Someone has to,” I argued.

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off, saying, “You can’t do everything yourself.”

We set up the fireworks and prepped their fuses.  Then we moved to the side of the hill facing the reservoir and sat down with our binoculars to watch the East Tower.  We leaned against a tree root sticking out of the dirt, its free end trailing into the darkness below the overlook.

We sat in silence for a while.  The night was dark and still, as if it were sitting down to wait with us.  The tower remained a black shape in the distance, and nothing moved around us.  We had no idea when the attack would happen.  We only knew they were coming.

Grey’s voice broke the silence suddenly.  “So if you could have anything for your eighteenth birthday, what would it be?”

I looked at Grey in surprise.  My mind was so far from a topic like this, I struggled to understand his question.  “You already got me something.”

“For the sake of conversation, let’s say I hadn’t.”

I thought for a moment, then smiled and said, “You?”

He laughed quietly and ducked his head, then looked at me.  “You already have me,
Fòmhair
.  Pick something else.  Something you would have asked your parents for.”

My dad’s promise popped into my head.  “A car,” I answered.  “My dad was supposed to take me car shopping on my eighteenth birthday.”

“What kind of car did you want?”

I thought back to more than a year ago when thoughts of car shopping consumed me.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.  “Something cool?”

“What’s cool to you?”

I eyed him.  “You’re not going to go out and acquire a car for me, by any chance, are you?  This is all hypothetical, right?”

“Hypothetical,” he promised.  “I’m just curious.”

I looked up at the dark sky for help and shook my head.  “I... have no clue anymore what kind of car I think is cool.  It seems so pointless now.”

He nodded, agreeing with me.

“Well, what kind of car do
you
think is cool?” I challenged him.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.  “Um, I’m not sure.  I see what you mean.”

“Did you have a car before The Plague?”

He nodded.  “It’s probably still in the parking garage at UCLA Med Center.”

It was so bizarre to think Grey had been in my city, driving a car down a freeway near my home, sitting in traffic and listening to the radio, and I hadn’t known him at all then.

“What kind of car was it?” I asked.

“A navy Toyota Corolla.”

I stared at him.

“What?” he said, offended.

I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I guess I thought you would have driven something else.”

“Like what?”

I shrugged again.  “Something fancier, like a silver Volvo or something.”

He leaned in close to me.  “Why?  Because I’m an alien?”

“No, because you’re 900 years old, and you’re supposed to have more refined taste in cars.”

“I’m not
that
old,” he said.  “And I was supposed to be a poor med student.  I couldn’t be leaving an Aston Martin in the parking garage.”   He paused, thinking.  “Though I did have an Aston Martin DB5 in the 60s.  To risk sounding like Shad, that was a sweet car,” he said wistfully.

“Isn’t that the car they used in the James Bond films?”

He didn’t answer.  He was staring across the reservoir.  He stood suddenly and peered through his binoculars.

I stood as well and brought up my pair.  Through the darkness, I focused on the East Tower.  A light was in the window.  I sucked in a breath and held it.

“There’s only one light.  Does that mean they’re coming on land?” I said, surprised.

“I guess Sam was wrong, or lying – wait... there’re two lights now.”

I looked again at the tower and saw a second light shining small in the inky blackness.  Sam was right.  They were coming by boat.  Grey looked down at me and said, “They’re here.”

I didn’t lower my binoculars and remained staring at the tower.  “Grey?”

“What’s wrong?”

Chills broke out over my skin, and my voice shook as I spoke.  “There are three lights in the window now.”

“What does that mean?  They’re coming by land
and
sea?” I asked.

He looked through his binoculars once more.  “It would seem so,” Grey said, then shook his head.  “I still don’t see anyone.”

Before we could ponder it any more, a single pop of gunfire broke the deep silence.  It echoed softly through the canyon below us.

“Keep watching for them,” he said.  “I’m going to check on the rockets.”

I studied the dark shape of the dam and listened hard for any noise to indicate an advancing army.  I scanned the rocky hills around us to the east, then heard a distant buzzing sound, like a motor.  I focused on the swath of black velvet that was the reservoir in the distance.  I gasped.  Dark black shapes cut swiftly through the water toward the wide, white band of the dam.  Motorboats.  A small burst of orange light flashed from one of the boats.  The sound of another gunshot ripped through the air, and I realized the orange ball of light was the flash from the muzzle of a gun being fired.

A feeling of helplessness ran through me, and I itched to jump on my horse and race down to help.

“What’s going on?”  Grey appeared beside me suddenly.

“I think The Front knows we have boats tailing them,” I said, not taking my eyes away from the scene.  Another line of vessels advanced swiftly behind the first group of boats.  Then one of The Front’s boats was lit brightly with a flickering yellow light.  A scream reached us, and I saw figures on the boat scrambling around the small deck.  A few jumped into the water.

“Molotov cocktails,” Grey muttered beside me.

“Which direction do you think the people on land are coming from?” I asked, scanning the road across the dam.  It remained empty for the time being.  It would be only another minute or two before The Front’s motorboats reached it.

“I’m not sure.  They could still be a mile or two out.  The East Tower is pretty high, so they can see over some of the hills.”

I didn’t like not seeing what was happening.  I wished we were up in a tower, too.

“The boats are here,” Grey said.  I looked toward the dam and saw the boats bumping against the wall of the highway that crossed the top of it.  People jumped out of the boats and swarmed past the statues of the Winged Figures, heading for the pass beneath us.  More gunfire erupted, and a second boat bringing up the rear of The Front’s charge went up in flames.

Grey grabbed my arm.  “They’ll be in the pass soon.  Go find Hanson down by the dead tree.  The charges need to be blown in the next couple of minutes.  And take this,” he said, pulling something from the waistband of his jeans and putting it in my hands.  It was a gun, dense and black.  It felt awkward and heavy in my hands.

He indicated a switch on the side of the gun and said, “The safety’s on.  Just flip it up, and then all you have to do is aim and pull the trigger.  Aim for the torso, it’s the biggest target.”

I shook my head, trying to give it back to him.  “I don’t think I’ll need—”

“Take it anyway, just in case.  If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming after you.”

I nodded, made sure the safety on the gun was still on, then gingerly tucked the muzzle through my belt and covered it with my shirt like I’d seen in the movies.

Grey nodded.  “Run,” he said, grimly.

I spun and raced toward the gully wedged between our hill and the next.  I gingerly pressed my hand against the gun under my shirt as I ran, worried it would come out of my belt or somehow go off.

I slipped and slid down the side of the hill in the darkness.  A dead mesquite tree, I thought.  Look for the dead mesquite tree.  That’s where Hanson said he would be.  I had a flashlight tucked into my back pocket, but I didn’t dare turn it on.  Any member of The Front could look up into the hill above them and see my light bouncing around like a beacon in the darkness.  I continued until I reached the bottom of the ravine, then looked around.  A spindly mesquite tree was to my right.  Its branches were bare and rotting.  This had to be Hanson’s spot.

I raced toward it and found an electric lantern tucked into the tree’s deep roots, the lantern’s dim glow hidden from sight.  There was a line of fuses and a box of matches, but no Hanson.  I looked around.  I wished I could call out to him, or use my flashlight, but The Front was too close.  I ran for the narrow opening that led to the highway and skidded to a halt.

Hanson was lying face down in the dirt.  I dashed to him and shook him gently.  He didn’t react.  Paranoid, I looked over both shoulders, expecting Karl to launch himself out of the shadows at any second.

I felt for a pulse on Hanson’s wrist but couldn’t find one, though I wasn’t sure I was calm enough to search for it properly.  I grabbed his shoulder and pulled with all my might to roll him over.  Dirt was caked on his cheek and temple, and his eyes were open and empty.  A dark patch on the ground caught my eye, and I knew immediately it was blood.  My gaze dropped to his chest.  His coveralls were soaked with blood, glistening in the weak light.

I scrambled backward in the dirt, putting a few feet between us.  I sat in shock, all other thoughts emptying from my head.  Who had killed him?  How had they even found him up here?  A cold realization dawned on me.  Someone knew we were here.  Someone knew about our plan.  Which meant they knew Grey and I were here, too, as well as Jones, the other electrician from the dam who was in charge of blowing the bridge.  I glanced quickly up at the dark smudge of the hill where Grey was.  I had to get back to him.  We were all in danger.

Before I could move, I heard a noise further down the gully leading to the road.  It was a wet, gurgling sound.  Every particle in me screamed to run in the opposite direction, but I forced myself to draw the gun from my belt and creep quietly toward the noise.  I couldn’t see anything in the darkness.  I rounded a corner slowly and came upon a figure crumpled on the stony ground.  It was Brody.

The noise stopped by the time I’d crept to his side.  His long, lanky frame was stretched along the ground, not moving.  A small folding knife was buried in his neck.

I took a step backward, looking between the two gruesome murders.  My throat spasmed, and I swallowed repeatedly to stop myself from getting sick.

Who had done this?  Why had Brody been up here?  Had he killed Hanson?  If he had, then who had killed Brody?  Or did Hanson kill Brody?

A crashing noise back through the gully near the dead mesquite tree made me jump.  I remembered the heavy gun in my hand and held it more firmly, feeling for the safety switch.

“Autumn?” came a strained whisper from the darkness.  I let out a sigh of relief as I ran for him.  Grey materialized out of the darkness by the dead tree as I rounded the corner.  He looked up from inspecting the fuses at the sound of my footsteps and rushed for me.

“What happened?” he demanded as I threw my arms around him in relief.  “Are you okay?”  He pulled away to see for himself.

I pointed through the gully toward the road and said, “Hanson’s dead.  Brody’s dead, too.  His body is a little further down.  Someone knows we’re here!”  I pushed away from him and knelt by the fuses.  “We need to get these lit now!”

“That may be a problem,” Grey said, crouching next to me.  He grabbed the lantern and brought it closer to illuminate the area.  I saw the issue immediately.

“They’re not connected!” I wailed, grabbing one of the wires.  I followed Grey’s example and managed to attach two before he started lighting them.  He held the flame to each of the fuses until they crackled and popped and raced away into the darkness.

“Four will have to do,” he said, grabbing my hand and hauling me to my feet.  I looked forlornly at the remaining six unlit fuses.  “We need to get back up there to see if any of The Front’s army makes it through the pass!”

We were halfway up the side of the hill when the first blast went off.  The ground shook beneath us, and I stumbled to my knees, surprised at how close it was.  Before I could get my feet under me again, the second and third explosions went off in close succession.  Grey grabbed my wrist as we both began sliding backward down the hill again.  He caught himself on the branch of a creosote bush and pulled us back up.

The last explosion went off as we crested the hill, filling the air with smoke and dirt.

“Are you okay?” he asked, grabbing for me.  I nodded, breathing hard and coughing in the swirling dust.  My heart pounded like a jackhammer.

“Come on, we need to check the road.”  I started toward where we sat earlier, but he grabbed my hand to stop me.

“Don’t get near the edge; the C4 Hanson planted under it might have weakened it.”

We skirted the ledge, hurrying further along the top of the hill.  When he was satisfied we were far enough away, we neared the edge and peered over it with his binoculars.  I didn’t need binoculars to see what had happened to the road several hundred feet below us.  It looked like a rock quarry where the highway used to be.  The pass was wider now that the sides had been blown away from the hills, and not a speck of asphalt was visible underneath the piles of rock and settling dust.

I squinted toward the dam and saw dark sailboats scattered across the water. I couldn’t tell how many were there because of their painted black hulls and sails.

Grey swore quietly under his breath, and I looked at him quickly.  He was staring further up the road toward town.  He passed his binoculars to me, and I held them up to my eyes.

A host of dark figures moved on the far side of the pass, beyond the pile of rubble on the highway.  We’d been too late getting the fuses lit.  Half of The Front’s men made it through the rock slide area and were advancing to Hoover.

I glanced up at Grey, and his blue eyes looked back at me.

“Time to call in the Vegas riders,” he said.  My heart lurched, thinking of Ben and Shad.  They would have ridden hard all afternoon and evening, and if they’d arrived on time, they would be hidden in the hills just east of the Central Tower.

“They’ll be okay,” Grey assured me, and he pressed the palm of his hand against my cheek.  “They’ll stop Karl from getting to the town.”

I nodded, and we ran to the fireworks beyond the large boulder.  Grey immediately struck a match.  Without pausing, he held the flame to one of the fuses, then stood up and motioned for me to stand back.  A sparkle traveled up the fuse until it disappeared into the rocket.  It flew into the air suddenly with a shrill screech that sliced through my eardrums.  I clapped my hands over my ears and watched the rocket arc high into the black sky above us.  It exploded with a startling pop and rained down white sparks that briefly lit the barren hilltop we stood on.  The horses tied to the mesquite tree whinnied and pulled at their reins.

“Where will the Vegas riders meet The Front?” I asked.

“Probably halfway through the hills.”

The familiar nighttime noises blurred with the sounds of distant fighting.  A canyon wren’s call became someone’s scream; the low pulse of water coursing through the dam’s turbines became the thunder of horse’s hooves.  Gunfire peppered the night like Fourth of July firecrackers, and with each blast, my heart lurched in fear of who was on the receiving end.

Grey slid his arm across my back, pulling me against his side.  I looked up at his face in the moonlight.  He was staring sharply into the distance, listening.

Grey’s arm suddenly left my back, and he stepped toward the edge of the overlook, focusing his binoculars on the distant bypass bridge looming in the darkness.  He handed me the binoculars as I joined him.

Chills ran down my back as I held them up to my eyes.  Though it was far away, I could make out a line snaking its way through the hills on the Arizona side of the bypass bridge.  There were riders on horseback leading the way.  Behind them rumbled trucks.  Lots of them.  I could already hear the truck’s engines humming in the darkness like nocturnal insects.

“It’s the rest of The Front,” Grey said.  “And my bet’s that Karl is with this group.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He wouldn’t be with the first charge.  He’d stay near the back, where it was safer.  We need to send up another rocket, so Jones can blow the bridge.”

Ten seconds later, Grey shot off the second rocket into the nighttime sky, and the lone white streak briefly lit the barren hilltops around us once more.  I waited at the ledge, binoculars trained on the bridge.  I held my breath, expecting a massive explosion, but as the seconds went by, nothing happened.  The riders at the head of the advancing army reached the bridge and began to cross Black Canyon.  Their silhouettes were only visible against the dark sky because they were moving. Where was Jones?  Had he missed our rocket?  Had he been killed like Hanson?

I looked up at Grey, confused.  He was still, though a muscle in his cheek moved as he clenched his teeth together.

“Maybe we should shoot off another rocket?” I asked nervously.

A distant gunshot split the silence, the flare from the gun small and sudden on the distant hill where Hanson had pointed out Jones’s position earlier.

Grey pushed away from me.  “Stay here.”

“Where are you going?”

“To blow the bridge.”

I leaped after him and latched myself onto his arm.  “No, please don’t!”

“I have to, there’s no one else.  We don’t stand any chance in beating The Front if that force crossing the bridge isn’t stopped.  I won’t be long.  I promise.”

I had an ugly feeling growing inside me.  Tonight wasn’t going nearly as well as we’d planned it.  Had we been foolish to think we could fight against The Front?

Grey stood still, arms at his sides, eyes closed, concentrating.

“Don’t tell me you’re leaving so soon.”

The voice came from directly behind me, and I jumped in fright, whipping around.  Karl stood less than a foot away from me, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight.  How had he gotten so close without being heard?  I stared at him, dumbfounded and frozen.  He was way too close for comfort, and the edge of the overlook loomed behind me.  Grey was several steps away, too far to grab me and astral project to safety.