“How can you be sure, though?” said Cynthia.
John knew her well enough now to know that she thought she could convince Miller that there wasn’t a fight to fight anymore. She thought that somehow she could save him if she “fixed” him psychologically. But John knew that there wasn’t a fix. He could see it in Miller’s eyes. Miller would go down fighting. John had never been more sure of anything in his life.
“I dug up some of the bodies,” said Miller. “Didn’t take long. Shallow graves.”
Cynthia shuddered at the thought.
The truth was, they hadn’t even really “buried” the bodies at all. Shallow graves was an exaggeration.
Miller was silent for a while. No one else dared to speak. Not with the intensity he was emanating.
“I’m going to get them,” he said finally. “Maybe not the same bastards who did it. But I’m going to destroy them from the inside out. I’ll go after the leader. That’s what I’ll do.”
“But,” said John. “It’s… the whole thing is set up just like a government at this point. I don’t know how it happened so fast. But that’s the truth. I think part of it is that the prison gangs already had their hierarchies. And that just sort of continued once they gained control of the whole Main Line area.”
“I don’t care,” said Miller. “I’ve got to try. I’m going back there. Tell me more. I need details. I need to know how to find this bastard Kor or whatever he calls himself.”
“I… I don’t know,” said Derek, looing nervous as Miller bore down on him with his gaze. “It’d probably be really hard to track him down. I think they keep moving. He keeps his inner circle tight, and there’s some kind of crazy complicated chain of command.”
“You were telling me,” said John, “that Kor was after this shielded shortwave radio, right?”
“Yeah,” said Derek. “One shielded with a Faraday cage. That’s the main thing he’s after.”
“A shortwave radio shielded with Faraday cage?” mused Miller, rubbing his chin.
For the first time since John had met him, Miller looked almost… happy. Well, you couldn’t call it happy really. But there was a smile on his face. A horrible kind of smile. The kind of smile that a man has when he knows he can get what he wants, but when what he wants isn’t a good thing.
“You’ve got a plan?” said John.
“If that’s what he wants,” said Miller. “Then that’s what he’s going to get.”
“You have a radio?” said John. His mind instantly went to a thousand places. If he had the radio, maybe they could use it themselves to communicate with whoever else was out there with the same device. If there really was anyone.
“No,” said Miller, smirking. “But I’ll pretend that I have one. I’ll get close to him and take him out. And whoever else I can in the process.”
John nodded silently.
“When are you leaving?”
“Now,” said Miller. “I have a small box that I’ll say is the radio. I won’t let anyone look at it but Kor himself, the mighty leader of the shit-eating monsters who took my family from me. It’ll get me close to him.”
“Won’t they just take it from you?” said John. “Why would they bring you to him?”
Miller paused. “You’re a smart man,” he said. “I’ll tell them that I’ll reveal the location only to their leader. That’ll get me a meeting with him. If there’s one thing I know it’s that you can get what you want by giving a man what he wants. And he wants this, right?” He looked at Derek and Sara, drilling into them again with his fierce angry eyes.
“Sounds like it,” said Derek.
“More than anything,” said Sara. “He’s sending raiding crews all over, looking for it.”
“Good,” said Miller. “Now I’m a man of my word. You’ve helped me. What can I do for you?”
He stared right at John.
“Tell me about Max,” said John.
“He’s gone west,” said Miller. “He and his group. There were… I don’t know, six of them with him?”
“Six?” said John.
Who could they have been? One was Chad, which didn’t make any sense.
“Fine people,” said Miller. “They were the last ones aside from me to see my wife and son…”
Miller looked like he was about to start tearing up. But he didn’t. He had no more tears left to give.
“Any idea where they were headed exactly?” said John.
Miller shrugged. “I don’t think they knew. They knew, though, that they couldn’t defend the farmhouse.”
“They couldn’t?”
Miller shook his head. “And they were right to leave. Look at what happened to me. In my hubris, I thought I could defend my house. I had everything set up perfectly. I thought I was so clever, and look what it got me. Max did the right thing. He took them all away. Where they ended up, I haven’t the slightest clue. And whether they got there safely, I have even less of an idea of that.”
It was tough news to swallow. John had been hoping that Miller could have given him something more specific.
It also meant that John and Cynthia were likely going to have to abandon the farmhouse. Max would have been better prepared. He knew more about this sort of thing than John. If Max couldn’t do it, with his small army of six people, then what chance did John and Cynthia have? Even if their new acquaintances Derek and Sara stayed along with them?
Not much of a chance at all.
“Well,” said Miller gruffly, getting up. “I’m going.”
For a moment, John didn’t know what to say. His mind was reeling. Headed in a hundred directions at once.
“Good luck, Miller,” said John.
Miller walked out the front door, letting the screen door slam behind him.
“How could you let him go like that?” hissed Cynthia. “He’s marching to his death.”
“What did you want me to do?”
“You could have not told him about the shortwave radio, for one thing. Now he has a plan.”
“They’re going to kill him,” muttered Sara, covering her face in her hands.
“Who are we to tell him what to do?” said John. “He lost his family. This is what he wants to do. He’s not going to be happy until he gets his revenge.”
“You’re just saying all that ‘a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’ stuff,” said Sara.
John shrugged. “Sometimes that’s the truth.”
“He made it sound dangerous here,” said Sara. “Like people are going to be coming back.”
John nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “And it sounded like my brother knew he wasn’t able to defend this place. And that was with more people. Even if you two stayed. I was hoping I’d be able to convince you to stay. Strength in numbers and all that. But now, frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Yeah,” said Derek. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea if we stayed.”
“Can’t blame you for that,” said John. “I think we should be leaving ourselves. What do you say, Cynthia?”
“I don’t think we should stay,” said Cynthia, sighing as she looked around the relative comfort of the living room. “But this place has started to really feel like home. I hate to leave it. And where would we go?”
“West,” said John. “Where else? Follow my brother. What do you say, Derek and Sarah? Want to join us? There’s strength in numbers, even out on the road.”
Derek and Sara looked at each other. They were one of those couples that could communicate with a single glance.
They both looked back at John and nodded together.
“We’ll come,” said Derek. “But we don’t know for how long.”