Ground Zero (12 page)

“And we’re breeding chickens like crazy so we have eggs for the ferrets. Mom ended up rescuing fifty of them from three different shelters. You know what she’s like with ferrets. Anyway, we’ve been weaning them from kibble onto the eggs, so we don’t run out of food for them.

“I’ll show you where the shower is, and find you some clean clothes. Did you bring anything with you? Spare clothes or anything?”

“Yeah, but that guy took my pack and said he had to go through it first,” he complained.

“We’re pretty strict about security right now. We’ll get your clothes back and I’ll show you where you can wash them. Chuck or Gilles will probably have something that you can wear in the meantime. If you’re short on clothes we’ll have to figure something out, because mom and Neil only got kids’ stuff when they raided stores in Huntsville. We weren’t expecting anyone else.” Cam fell silent, part of her wishing she could tell him that her mother had written him off for dead, but she knew it was a shitty thing to say.

“Neil the new guy she hooked up with?”

“You mean married? Yes,” she said, her tone turning snotty. She wanted him to be very aware that her mother was no longer available to be used by him.

“That was fast,” he said with a derisive snort.

“Yes, it was. They got married five days after they met. And I’ve never seen her so happy,” she gritted out between her teeth. When he was finished his food she led him out back.

“Here’s the washer and dryer. We keep it here for a few reasons, but mostly so that everyone has access to it, and so we can wash clothing from the non-tested area of the ferret building. Anyone who comes in contact with those ferrets has to go through something similar to decontamination procedures, just in case one of them has ADV. It was a group that came from a shelter where we didn’t get their vet records. We have to protect the other ferrets, including Pickle and Squeaker, so they’re basically quarantined.”

“I can’t believe your mother did all this. Stupid,” he jeered. Cam’s temper hit the boiling point.

“And yet
we’re
not the ones who were starving to death, and begging for a fucking meal. You’re here only if Billy and I allow you to be, so you might want to be a little less cocky and judgmental about something you know nothing about.”

“Oh, please,” he said, and his condescending laugh was so infuriating Cam wanted to slap him. “So, what? I just bow and call you, ‘Your Highness,’ or something? Give me a fucking break.” He laughed again, and now the urge to sink her fist in his face was almost irresistible.

“You’re standing on land I own, with your gut full of food the people on this farm have all helped to grow, myself included. I have no idea what my mother ever saw in you, and I don’t think she’s going to be anything but disgusted when she gets back.
You
will be very lucky to still be here at that time. You’ve got one chance. If you stay here you work, just like everyone else. You show me and Billy respect, and you treat everyone with dignity. If I hear that even one bigoted or racist remark has come from your fat mouth, you’re gone, too. And believe me, I’m perfectly capable of personally making sure you leave. The last person I forced to leave had to be taken away in a body bag, so don’t test me.

“I’ve hated your ever-fucking guts for as long as I’ve known you, and even now, when it’s up to me whether or not you even get another meal here, you talk down to me and laugh at everything we’ve accomplished. I won’t be bullied by an asshole like you. You’ll do what you’re told, or you’re gone. For tonight you can sleep outside where everyone can keep an eye on you, and bathe in the river instead of getting a hot shower and another meal or two. Maybe you’ll be a little nicer after that. I haven’t forgotten the time you stole fifty bucks from me for a fix, when my mother and I were just scraping by. I’m not willing to turn you out to die just yet, but watch your step. We’ve got a couple dozen people here who would be just as happy to not have to share their food with you.

“And just so you don’t get any stupid ideas, we’re all armed. Believe me, my mother made damn good and sure I knew how to use my gun. Consider yourself lucky she’s not here. If she
had
been, she might have shot you herself by now. She’d already gotten used to the notion that you were dead, after all, when you were too stupid to come here before.” Cam took a few steps away, and spoke into her radio.

“Gilles, we need to talk about our new guest. Meet me at the house as soon as you can. It’s important. And ask Chuck to keep an eye on him in the meantime.”

“Yeah, okay. I was wondering about him. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

“Wait! Cam! What the hell did I do? I was just joking around.” Just the sound of Mitch’s voice had her clenching her jaw again, but she spun around and retraced her steps.

“You mean aside from stealing from me? Yeah, you’re right. It
was
only fifty bucks, though it was still pretty contemptible. No, it was the fact that you were dealing drugs for some of the worst slime in the city, and then stole from them so they came after my mother. You put
her
fucking life at risk. She was a mother raising a kid, and you thought it was perfectly okay to let scum like that threaten her for forty grand here, another thirty grand there. She went so deep in debt to bail you out, so they didn’t
kill
you, that we ended up getting evicted when we couldn’t pay our rent anymore.

“Is that enough for you? No, you probably still think you’re a stand-up guy, right? You were a spoiled, lazy, piece of shit, who was too good for a regular job, but you weren’t too good to hang out with bikers and mob guys. You sucked my mother dry, and nearly destroyed her. She had nothing left to give after you split up, because she was just too fucking tired. Even the
thought
of a relationship made her gag.

“It took her a couple of years before she even considered dating, and by then she was too busy working her ass off so that between the two of us we could afford to buy this place you’ve just been laughing at so contemptuously, despite the fact that we got it through honest hard work. Everyone laughed at her for the dreams she had for this place. Everyone. Including you. Everyone told her it was paranoid, stupid, ridiculous, impossible.

“I watched every one of you hurt her almost non-stop, even if I only heard the phone conversation at our end. And she
still
took everyone in. The people on this farm, with the exception of Neil and his son, Billy, are alive because my mother was smart enough to plan for this. You knew who it was that warned her, and that he was in a position to know what would happen, yet you still laughed. So, fuck you if you want to laugh now, because you won’t be staying here to do it.

“You’ve come back to use her, yet again, because you’re incapable of looking after yourself and making smart choices. You’re a heartless fuck who doesn’t deserve to be here, so if you want to stay you’d better make damn good and sure you earn it from now on. And if you do one single thing to hurt or betray my mother, there isn’t a force on this earth that will keep me from shooting you for it.

“Now wash your clothes and take a bath. You stink and we don’t need lice and disease here,” she said, disgust oozing through her voice, and when she turned away this time, she started walking and didn’t look back. She kicked off her shoes and then slammed the door behind her as she walked into the quiet kitchen. She let the cold from the tile seep into her feet and soothe the heat of her anger.

“Cleansing breaths,” she said aloud, reminding herself to chill out and calm down. It wasn’t just anger flooding her system with adrenaline at the moment, either. Exhilaration and terror were fighting for second place. She’d been longing to say that stuff to Mitch from the time she’d been twelve years old. She remembered hiding in her bedroom, holding a knife while she listened to him scream like a lunatic at her mother. It seemed almost a miracle to her that he had never actually resorted to physical violence. At least not with her mother.

Instead he had stomped around in a temper tantrum, destroying everything they owned, so that her mother would once again have to work herself half to death to replace everything. She lost count of the number of times the cycle had repeated itself, but eventually her mother had completely lost any feeling for him. One night she had told him she’d had enough and she wanted him gone. He hadn’t gone quietly, but at least he’d gone. Cam was only fifteen, and had already been contemplating murdering him in his sleep. Not that she would have been able to go through with it. As she had discovered, it was a lot harder to kill someone than she would have thought, but now that she had … well, if he became a threat she would do what had to be done.

“Okay, let it go. You’ve already said what needed to be said, so just breathe.”

“Cam? You weren’t talking to me, were you?”

Cameron laughed at the confusion on Lisa’s face, and shook her head.

“No. Just talking to myself. A habit I picked up from my mom, I guess. We’ll both hold entire conversations with ourselves, never mind just answering. We gave up on sanity a long time ago, I think.”

Lisa snorted.

“You’re not the only one. You should’ve seen me over the last few months. Of course, I could pretend I was talking to Jake, as though my sanity weren’t in question, but since I was the one talking back I don’t think the argument was a valid one.”

“Not surprising. I can’t imagine being stuck in town with a kid, hiding from a roving band of cannibals. You seem to have come out of it okay, but I wouldn’t blame you if you were a little bit crazy. Sometimes you have to be to survive. Anyway, I need to go talk to Billy and Gilles for a bit, so I’ll see you later.” Then she paused. She needed to warn Lisa first.

“My mother’s ex-husband just showed up here, after months of us thinking he was dead. They became friendly years ago, after my mom got over being pissed at him, but he’s not someone that can be trusted. Not with anything. I started out trying to help him, but he got really rude so I lost my shit. He’s not allowed in the house, or any other building. At least for tonight. I don’t think he’s physically dangerous, but he’ll steal things, or try to get his hands on the drugs over at the ferret building. That kind of thing. Just thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks for letting me know. I think I’ll keep Jake inside for the rest of the day anyway. Billy showed me how to access all the movies and stuff, and I think Jake would enjoy watching some Disney,” Lisa said tentatively, as though she expected Cam to say she wasn’t allowed.

“Alright. I’ll see you later probably. Have fun.”

Her feet felt heavy as they took her up the circular stairs. Her hand gripped the railing the whole way up, as she pulled her sluggish body upwards. Gilles was waiting in the room when she got there. He must have come in the house through the front while she’d been laying into Mitch.

She was glad the ferrets were in her room for the time being, because she didn’t like so many people tromping through her mother’s bedroom to get to the monitors upstairs. It was too easy for a ferret to sneak out through a door, even when someone was used to them, let alone people like Gilles who probably wouldn’t even notice them. The last thing she needed right now was another crisis, and losing one of the boys would kill her mother. Cam knew she’d never forgive herself either.

“Hey Billy. Gilles,” she said, nodding wearily at them. “Like I said to you a few minutes ago, Mitch isn’t someone we can trust. My mother might care what happens to him, but she knows what he’s like. She wouldn’t allow him to put other people on the farm at risk. He’s selfish, careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, dishonest, and lazy. He’s a former, and perhaps current, junkie, liar, and thief. He used to hang out with bikers and mob guys, but only because he’s a total loser, not because he likes killing people.

“I can’t stand a single molecule of him. I gave him a small meal to keep him from getting sick, and took him out back to show him the washer and dryer. Then he got rude, like he was planning to sit around here for a free ride and do whatever the fuck he wanted, and laugh about it. Seems to think he can live off the hard work of others his whole life. I told him he’d either work or he’d leave, and if necessary I would shoot him so he left the hard way. I made sure he knew we were all armed, too.”

“Cam, you’re too soft. You’ve got to open up a little and tell us what you really think,” Billy said with a smile, making Gilles laugh.

“So, what are we doing with him then?” Gilles asked.

“I told him to sleep outside and to make sure he bathed in the river. I did say I’d see if there were any clean clothes around here for him, though that’s more for our benefit than his. He’s filthy, and I don’t want to see him walking around naked. It would scare the crap out of me, never mind the kids. We’ll need to find out if he’s the one who’s been setting off the sensors, but I’m too mad to go near him right now. And we’ll need to watch him.”

11 ~ Keel-Hauled

The loud scraping and crunching noise sent fear searing up her spine. Obviously they’d bottomed out, which couldn’t be a good thing. Despite Neil’s earlier demand that she remain in bed while he got them the rest of the way to Cleveland, Mac bolted from the bed and struggled up the steps to the cabin.

“What happened? Are we okay?”

“Mac! You’re supposed to be resting,” he scolded.

“You’re kidding me, right? You give every appearance of sinking the boat, and I should just lie around in bed with my smelling salts?”

“Okay, well, maybe not, but I don’t think we’re sinking. We just scraped a sandbar. Probably sounded worse than it is,” he said soothingly.

“I sure hope so, because from where I was sitting I figured there had to be at least an iceberg involved. Then the rich people would all have to leave while the orchestra played on deck to calm the peons,” she returned, still shaking a bit, and not entirely convinced everything was okay.

“Well, the world such as it is these days, we’d probably be considered pretty damn wealthy right now, so I think we’ll be okay.”

“You know, I could still sell off the family jewels. You won’t think you’re so wealthy then, will you?” Then she had to laugh as he cringed. Worked with every male she’d ever encountered. They all made the same face, even when it wasn’t their own balls that were threatened. Mac remembered watching
Commando
in a room full of guys, way back in her early teens. The scene where Arnie used an axe on another guy’s nether regions had had every single guy in the room groaning, and nothing had changed since. Apparently not even her husband was immune.

The scraping and grinding hadn’t lasted long, but it had her concerned all the same. Neil might not think it was a big deal, but from what she’d been reading about boats, the keel was vital. If it was destroyed, they might as well say goodbye to the boat and set off in the dinghy.

“Neil, I think we need to check and make sure nothing is wrong under there. Switch over to the diesel for a few minutes, and then shut down the engines. I’ll get ready for a quick dive.” Before she’d even finished speaking, Neil was shaking his head.

“No way. You’re still recovering from a head injury,” he began.

“And you’ve never gone diving,” she interrupted. “Not to mention the fact that you’re perfectly capable of hauling me up out of the water if something goes wrong, whereas the reverse wouldn’t likely be possible. Maybe under normal circumstances, and with adrenaline to help me, I could, but my muscles are shaky right now. This is easy stuff for me, okay?”

“You took a damned introductory course. You said so yourself. You don’t have enough time or dives logged to be certified. Whichever it is they use for that.”

“I did three out of four open water dives, though, so I know what I’m getting into. It was on Lake Ontario, rather than just some small town lake, so Lake Erie won’t be a stretch. You don’t know how to use the equipment, and me muttering a few instructions to you won’t be any help if you find yourself in any sort of emergency situation. It’s too likely you won’t remember what to do.

“Not that I’ll be going more than a few feet under, but you can get hooked by things, or smack a valve on something. Kelp, or whatever else might grow in the water here, can tangle you up. There are just too many variables for three minutes of instruction, okay? We’ll hang a guide rope from one side to the other. We can let it go under the hull, and tie it off on both sides. I’ll even let you tie a rope to me, and I can use that for a signal if necessary. Now stop arguing with me and let’s get this done so we can get to Edgewater Park when we said we would. It’s too late to contact Ian now, to tell him there’s been a delay.”

Neil apparently couldn’t summon any additional arguments, but his jaw was rigid. She knew he didn’t like it, and felt like he needed to protect her, if for no other reason than the fact that she was already injured. Mac couldn’t say anything else to make him feel better, so she headed to the back of the boat and started getting ready. She was duct-taping her knife to her calf, when Neil’s voice startled her.

“What the hell do you need a knife for down there?”

“See? This is exactly the kind of thing that would get you in trouble. A knife is vital. And generally speaking you should have everything in redundancies. Spare regulator, spare dive light, et cetera. This isn’t considered a dangerous type of diving, like wreck or cave diving, but you still have to have proper equipment. A KA-BAR isn’t a dive knife, obviously, which you would know better than I. It’s kind of overkill, but I don’t have a dive knife. If I get tangled in something, which is the most likely danger for me in shallow waters like this, I have to be able to cut myself free. Kelp and seaweed may not look very strong, but don’t let appearances deceive you. There’s no way in hell I’m getting killed by a fucking plant.”

“Alright, you made your point. You ready to go then?”

“Almost. Just some last-minute checks to do on the equipment,” she replied.

“Is there a list or something?”

“Yup. Thankfully I won’t need a dive computer or tables, because I won’t be diving deep enough or long enough to have to calculate decompression or anything. That makes things a lot easier, but I still feel funny going under without them. Being tied off means I can’t get pulled away by an undertow, but I don’t like not having everything on me. Say hello to life after the end of the world as we know it,” she said with a shrug.

“Great. Thanks. Now you have that song stuck in my head, and I never particularly liked it,” Neil said sardonically.

“Well, try to pay more attention to what we’re doing than to your earworm, so we can get this done safely. Now, loop this rope once around one of the cleats, so it’s loose enough for me to move around, but will take some of my weight if you need to reel me in. Great. I’m a fish. Call me Flounder.” Even Mac couldn’t resist making wisecracks, though. It was in her nature.

She went down her mental safety list. Once she was done checking both regulators, breathing deeply from each, made sure the dive lights were working and would be bright enough, and was certain nothing on her person was flapping around unnecessarily that might get caught on something, she sat on the low back rail of the boat and put on her fins. Then she tied one end of the rope Neil would be holding to a strap on her buoyancy compensator vest, leaving a long tail that she wrapped around her waist and tied again, making sure her weight belt wasn’t caught up in it, just in case she needed to drop it for some reason.

Mac knew she was being overly cautious, but Neil was right about her head injury. If something went wrong, and for some reason she wasn’t conscious, the rope needed to be secured to her body and not just equipment that could come off. It wasn’t likely it would, but she had the damndest luck with injuries. Being a total klutz didn’t help matters, and her general state of impatience put her at risk more often than not, because her body just couldn’t keep up with what she usually tried to make it do. Her brain was often twenty steps ahead of her feet.

“Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” she said once she was ready.

“What?”

“Nothing, sorry. It’s kind of my way of saying ‘Right-o,’ or, ‘A-okay,’ or something. I’m surprised you’ve never heard me say it before, but maybe I don’t talk to myself around you as much as I do when I’m by myself.”

“Probably a good thing. Bad enough to be ignored, but to have you prefer to talk to yourself than to me, I think I might take offense,” he said.

“I doubt it. If you haven’t been mortally offended by me by now, I doubt there’s much I can say to put you off. Alright. Let’s get this show on the road.” With that she popped in her main regulator, waved at him, and slipped backward off the boat and into the water a couple of feet below. She would have laughed at him instinctively grabbing for her if she’d been able, but the device in her mouth made that difficult, and she was also mentally cursing the pain at the back of her head from her still-healing scalp. Mac popped her head out of the water and pulled the regulator from her mouth.

“What were you trying to do? Save me from drowning? How the hell did you think I was getting into the water?” Then she laughed at his sheepish expression.

“Damned if I know, but yeah, it was kind of stupid. Just reflex, I guess. You see someone falling off a boat, you grab for them,” he replied.

“Alright, loop the rope so you don’t lose me to the five foot abyss here,” she said sarcastically.

“Very funny,” he said, but complied all the same. “You know, you look kinda goofy with that mask on. Does weird things to your face.”

“Like my face isn’t already weird and distorted right now. I’ll be back in less than ten minutes, probably. I’m going to take my time and check everything.” Mac stuck the regulator back in her mouth, and adjusted the air in her vest. Then she flipped over into the strangely noisy peace of the lake, where she was deaf to the world outside the water, but overly aware of the sound of air passing through her regulator, and the bubbles that escaped when it flowed in the other direction.

As she inhaled, the pressure from the tank gently pushed air into her lungs. Not forcefully, but enough that her lungs expanded in her chest more quickly than usual. Exhaling felt different underwater, too. Slightly more difficult, because she had to breathe against the valve trying to release air. One of the best things about diving, aside from the serenity, was the purity of the air she inhaled. She always felt so good after she got out. If they could scavenge a compressor from a dive shop, she could have some fun messing around in rivers and lakes, she thought, but rolled her eyes behind the mask. She needed to start paying attention.

They were pretty far from the sandbar that had scraped at the keel, so at least there was no silt or sand stirred up to impede visibility. It was dark under the boat, though, which meant Mac had to turn on her light. Then, with a shrug made awkward by her diving equipment, she turned on the second light she’d brought with her. Now she was grateful for the redundancy, because she wanted to be sure she didn’t miss anything.

Air hissed and burbled as she used her fins to propel herself down to the bottom of the keel. The manual had said the boat had a maximum draft of just under five feet, which meant they couldn’t go into waters shallower than that without running the risk of serious damage. Running aground would likely mean using the dinghy for the rest of their journey, just the same as catastrophic damage to the boat would.

From what she could see, there was nothing worse than scraped paint to mar the keel. Not that she thought the owners would be happy about that, should they be alive to complain. Still, that sort of damage wouldn’t cause them any problems on this particular journey. Mac ran the light over the entire keel, front to back, and bottom to top. It wasn’t until she got to the front, right where the keel curved down from the hull, that she saw anything to concern her.

Just barely visible, a line, possibly a crack, ran back about six inches from the front, on both sides. She would need to keep an eye on this. To conserve what oxygen she could, for future forays into the water to check the hull, Mac decided to return to the surface. She had already been submerged pretty close to the ten minutes she had planned on taking.

“Well, you broke the damn boat, Neil,” she accused as soon as she spit out the regulator.

“Seriously?”

“Actually, I don’t know what you’ve done. There’s visible damage, but it might not cause us any problems. I just don’t know. We’ll have to keep checking it. Here. Take these,” she said, and tossed her fins up to him so she could climb back into the boat without them getting in her way. She heard him curse as they slapped him in the chest, probably soaking his shirt. She reached up and waited for Neil’s hand, placing her foot on a small rail. Neil mostly hauled her up over the back railing, though.

“Okay, explain what you meant,” he said, after giving her damp mouth a relieved kiss. Then he stripped off his sodden t-shirt, giving her an idea. She grinned wickedly.

“Nope. Not until you explain the tattoo,” she bargained. She’d been trying, on and off, since he’d been shot, to nag the details out of him, but he wouldn’t give them up. He had a compass rose covering part of a shoulder blade. Thankfully it hadn’t been damaged by the bullet that had punched through his lung, because she actually really liked it.

“You’re kidding me, right? You realize you can’t win that argument, I hope. Every time you try we end up in bed together,” he reminded her. Her shoulders slumped.

“Damn it. Fine. There’s a really fine crack, but I can’t tell if it’s serious. It’s fibreglass, so I don’t know what it will do. There’s no force on it right now, because it’s not travelling forward. Then again, maybe it was already there and it’s a normal thing. I doubt it, but it’s a possibility I suppose. Whatever it is, I won’t feel comfortable unless we’re keeping an eye on it, and by that I mean me. I can show it to you next time I go down to look at it, though.

“We should go into the lowest part of the boat and lift up all those panels in the floor. Make sure there’s no water inside. I have no idea if that’s possible, either, but I’m still going to check all that on a regular basis. If I use the tanks to check the hull, I’m only going to have enough air to check it a few times. So I’m thinking I’ll space out the more thorough checks, and then occasionally free-dive to take a look at it with just the mask on. I can hold my breath long enough for that, no problem,” she finished.