“Maybe she left with them on purpose?”
“No. They left a note tacked to the door of Longhouse Five. They want five Bikezillas loaded with food. We’re supposed to leave them at that wrecked bank near Stockton. And Alex, there was…
a pinkie finger attached to the note. It looks like your Mom’s.”
I ordered Nylce to detach her twelve fastest Bikezillas carrying forty-seven soldiers plus me. Nylce stayed with the remaining soldiers and the refugees from Worthington while I raced for Speranta, finishing the roughly forty-mile trek before dark. Darla met me at the door of the longhouse.
“I sent out scouts to try to track them, but we lost their trail on an icy stretch of Highway 78. I’m sorry.” My legs were rubbery from the exertion of the long ride. I held open my arms and stumbled into Darla’s embrace. “It’s okay. You did exactly what I would have. Get five Bikezillas loaded up with food, would you? I want to leave at first light.”
“You’re going to give in to them?”
“Sort of. Have someone find Ben and send him to the kitchen, please. I’ve got to sit down and eat something.”
I went over my plan with Ben. He made a few tweaks, and then we went over it several more times, thinking through everything that could go wrong. Finally, I excused myself to go to bed. I had to be at one hundred percent the next day, which meant I needed to sleep.
As I stood up from my late, working dinner, I saw Mayor Petty wheeling himself across the floor toward me. “Who’s watching Alexia?” I asked.
“Alyssa and Wyn,” Petty said. “Are we leaving now?”
“Is she okay?”
“She wasn’t there when they took your mother, thank God. When are we leaving?”
“Not now. First thing in the morning.”
“We need to go now. God knows what’s happening to her out there!”
“They want to make a trade. They won’t hurt her.”
“What? Chopping off a finger doesn’t count?”
He had a point. “Regardless, there’s nothing we can do until the morning. And Bob, I’m sorry, but you can’t come.” Petty stared at me for a moment, his face turning a progressively deeper shade of purple. Then he banged his hands on the armrest of his wheelchair so hard that the whole thing rattled. “Goddamn these legs!” He drew in a heavy breath and seized my right hand. “You’ll bring her home, right?”
“I will. Now let me get some sleep. We’re leaving before dawn.”
But I was still awake when Darla came to bed more than two hours later. “Everything’s ready,” she said. “We can leave at first light.”
“You’ve got to stay and run things here.”
“I already worked it out with your uncle. I appointed him vice-vice mayor. I’m going.”
“There’s no such thing as a vice-vice mayor!”
“There is now.” Darla silenced my further objections with a kiss.
I split our forces into three groups. I’d gutted Ed’s defensive force, commandeering five Bikezillas and seventy soldiers from him. Two groups left at dawn, traveling across country. My group would take up a position on the hilltop at the northeast corner of Highway 20 and Highway 78. We could hide amid the stumps and deep snow up there and observe the ruins of the bank on the east side of Stockton. The second group with Darla would swing wide around Stockton, hiding behind the car wall on the south side of the city. We took the portable shortwave and the transceiver from Longhouse One so the two groups could coordinate. The third group—five Bikezillas loaded with food—would leave an hour after us, taking the direct route to Stockton. They were supposed to follow the directions on the ransom note and leave the Bikezillas at the ruined bank. Then they would hightail it back to Speranta on skis.
The plan went off perfectly. We all got into position, the Bikezillas with their ransom of food parked just inside the bank’s mostly collapsed brick walls—and nothing happened. We waited, and waited, and waited. After a couple of hours, I set up a watch schedule and went to check on the scouts I had posted. There was nothing I could do but try to stay calm. I wasn’t, of course, but I thought I did a pretty good job faking it.
Late that night I had fallen into an uneasy slumber, when Trig Boling shook me awake. “Lights, Mayor,” he said, “on the road below us.”
I leaped up and crawled to our forward observation post, taking the binoculars from the soldier posted there. Trig was right behind me. The lights were almost directly below us, approaching the intersection. Five or six hooded lanterns or flashlights leaked just enough illumination, I could see that a group of about twenty people was moving along the road toward the bank.
“Radio Force Two. Tell them to get ready,” I murmured to Trig. He crawled away, back to the main part of our camp.
I waited another five minutes until they were well clear of the intersection below us and crawled back to camp myself. I picked up the shortwave mike, mashed the lever, and said one word: “Go.”
“Roger,” Darla replied.
My name is Alex, not Roger, I thought. Some people deal with tension by breaking down; others get angry. I think of stupid jokes.
We mounted our Bikezillas—six of them—and whooshed almost silently down the hillside in the darkness. It took almost a minute to drag the Bikezillas across the snow berm onto the road, and then we were flying toward the group on the road. I could see their lights now, even without the binoculars.
Each Bikezilla switched to attack mode—the back two riders kept pedaling, one of the front riders managed the steering and brakes, and the other lifted a rifle, ready to fire. Four riders on each load bed also prepared to fire. We hugged the south side of the road—Darla’s group would do the same—so that we could fire at anyone in the middle of the road without hitting each other.
The men in the road didn’t notice us until we were close—less than 150 feet away. Some of them turned, holding guns. “Freeze! Drop your weapons!” I bellowed. Three of them turned to aim at me, but without any light, I was only a voice in the dark. Rifles boomed from the west—Darla’s group. I couldn’t see them, but the muzzle flashes were clearly visible.
A short, chaotic battle ensued. Rifle shots seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. They had lights, and we were in near-total darkness, but they returned fire at our muzzle flashes. Some of the Reds ran; we shot at them, but without lights they melted away into the darkness, and I was sure we didn’t hit them all. I hoped they wouldn’t show up on our flanks. I hoped my mother had the sense to throw herself flat if she was out there. People fell on both sides, and the reports of the rifles were augmented by screams and moans, a chaotic symphony of suffering.
Someone yelled, “We surrender! We surrender!”
I bellowed, “Cease fire!” A few more rifle shots sounded. Then everything fell quiet.
A new voice rang out, “Shine a lantern over here.” It was Red.
When the light swung onto him, I saw that he had one arm wrapped around my mother, holding her tightly against his body. The other hand held a knife at her throat.
Chapter 77
“Mom!” I yelled.
“Alex!”
“While this reunion is no doubt touching,” Red said, “I have business to attend to. You are going to allow us to walk over to that bank, pick up our food, and bike out of here. Or I will give your mother a very messy tracheotomy.”
I looked around the battlefield. There were only nine or ten Reds left. I had almost fifty soldiers with rifles backing me up, and there were more in the darkness on Darla’s side of the battle. A sudden stab of fear nearly paralyzed me: what if she’d been hit?
Behind me a couple of our guys—field medics—were scurrying around treating our injured.
“No,” I shouted back at Red. “You’re going to put your weapons down, come back to Speranta, and stand trial for your crimes.”