The Valley: A Lee Harden Novel, page 48
“They’re back there,” he said, obviously addressing someone’s concern about the pack of infected. “Freya’s holding them back, but I don’t really wanna hang out.”
Bran blinked the tears out of his eyes, separating from Kat before it got weird. She hadn’t hugged him back. She’d just stood there. Stiff at first. But then she’d slowly relaxed. Accepted the first modicum of human affection she’d ever received.
There was no room in the cab, so Jax pulled himself into the truck bed, groaning and cursing like an old man as he did. When he’d gotten himself in the bed, he raised a hand, and Bran knew he was about to slap the top of the cab and get them going.
“Where will you take me?” Bran blurted.
Jax paused. Looked at him. “Back to the Redoubt.”
Kat shifted so she could look between Jax and Bran, her eyes worried and curious.
Bran swallowed thickly, that odd wave of emotion sinking into something much more familiar: Dread. “Am I being taken prisoner?”
Lee considered Bran’s question for probably longer than he should have. The second Bran asked it, Lee could see all eyes turn on him. His team? Well, they just looked mildly curious. But the Redoubters? Their eyes had a bit of bloodlust in them.
This man who they’d just kept from bleeding out, who stood swaying on his feet and looking like he might pass out at any second—he’d tried to kill them. He’d tried to kill every person in this truck. Lee’s team could take it in stride, as they were doing at that very moment. But the Redoubters wanted justice.
How much ill will would Lee create if he let Bran and Kat go?
But…
“A deal’s a deal,” Lee said, loud enough for everyone in the cab and the truck bed to hear him. “Kat helped us. I gave her my word I’d help you.”
One of the guys from the Redoubt huffed and shuffled his feet. “You said you’d keep him alive,” the man growled, glancing at Kat, clearly concerned that his unfriendly opinion might result in her trying to tear his face off. “And you did that. He’s still alive. But he needs to pay for what he did.”
Lee completely understood where the man was coming from. He’d been there a time or two himself. He’d extracted his revenge—or justice, if you prefer—and despite the admonishments of wise minds the world over, it hadn’t left him feeling empty. On the contrary, it’d felt pretty damn good.
But Lee was a man of his word. And that still meant something to him. And one of the things that he considered important was that you didn’t weasel your way out of your promises on technicalities. When he’d made that deal with Kat, she hadn’t walked away thinking they were going to be prisoners after the deal was concluded. And the thought hadn’t really crossed Lee’s mind either. When he’d made the deal, he’d made it for everything. If Kat helped them save Bea, then the slate was wiped clean.
And she had. And so it was.
Lee ignored the man that had spoken up, and instead looked right at Bran. “No, Bran. You’re not a prisoner. Neither are you, Kat. But you got some pretty nice wounds, and you’re gonna need more than just a few bandages to sort all that out. You need medical attention that only we can give you.”
Bran was already shaking his head before Lee finished. His face went tight. Pained. But not from his physical wounds. His voice was hushed and shaky when he spoke. “I can’t go back there.”
Kat looked at him sharply. “Wounds. Need healing.” She jabbed a finger at Marie, and then Lee. “Medicine.”
Bran looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Jesus, Kat. I just spent six years fucking with these people. I don’t wanna get to know them.” A shame-filled glance at the two Redoubters in the bed with them. “And they don’t wanna get to know us.”
“Jax,” Abe said, waving a hand out the driver’s window. “Don’t we wanna get the fuck out of here?”
Lee blinked. “Yeah. Yes. Let’s go.” He raised a hand to Bran’s panicked look. “We got miles before we get there. We can talk on the way. But this is not the place to do it.”
The truck shifted into reverse, and Abe wasted no time, though he accelerated gently, on account of everyone still standing. Bran bobbled unsteadily as the truck sped up, and Kat grabbed him and eased him into a seated position on the side of the bed.
Abe got enough room to turn around and spun the wheel, guiding their backend straight towards the darkened entryway of Ascend Church, the white-and-black ATV still sitting there where they’d left it.
Abe shifted into drive, preparing to finally get them out of the Town.
“Wait-wait-wait!” Bran snapped with uncommon verve for a wounded man. His head was twisted around, looking out past the tailgate at the ATV. “Is that ours?”
“Yes,” Kat answered, a question in her voice.
Bran waved a hand as Abe pressed the accelerator. “Stop!”
Lee slapped the cab. “Hold up, Abe.”
The pickup lurched to a halt. “What now?” Abe called, antsy to be free of this place.
Bran struggled to a standing position again. Put his hands on Kat’s shoulders, leaning heavily on her. “Kat, we can’t go with these people. They’ve got dead to bury that we killed. Do you understand that? Do you understand how much they’re going to hate us?”
Maybe Kat hadn’t really understood that. Because her head drew back, as though the concept were a surprise, and she twisted to look at the baleful glares of the Redoubters. And then the concept became very real to her.
She’d spent enough time with people that hated her. She knew what it looked like.
Bran turned to Lee. “How much battery is left on that thing?”
Lee frowned, remembering that he’d checked as he’d driven into the Town—wondering how long it would last if they had to make a quick getaway. “Around fifty percent, I think.”
Kat shook her head. “Not enough.”
Bran grimaced. “It might be.”
Kat glared. “You said. Not enough.”
“I know what I fucking said,” Bran retorted. “But…I don’t know! Maybe we can reach some place. Some place that’s not here. Some place where the people don’t know us and fucking hate us. Some place where we can start fresh and just…be us. Be Bran and Kat. Wouldn’t that be better?”
Kat struggled with it for a moment.
Somewhere in those smoke-clotted streets, a primal wailed, long and haunting.
Lee felt an unvoluntary shudder go up his back. “Y’all gonna need to make a decision.”
“Your wounds,” Kat said to Bran, pleadingly. “Medicine.”
“Hey,” he said, trying on a haggard smile. “I’ll make it, okay? I want to survive. I want to live.” That shame-faced glance that didn’t really meet anyone’s eyes. “Just not here.”
Something like determination came over Kat’s face. She gave a nod. “Okay. We go.” Then she raised her hand, looking at it with some confusion, as though it were operating of its own volition, and laid it on Bran’s unwounded shoulder. “New place. No Dark Mode.”
Bran wheezed out a chuckle. “No Dark Mode.”
As Lee watched them dismount the truck bed—Kat practically having to carry Bran off like a child—he realized he was relieved to watch them go. Relieved on many different levels, not the least of which was because he wouldn’t have to keep the Redoubters from slitting Bran’s throat in his sleep. And maybe just a bit relieved that something—someone—like Kat could get a second chance.
And, strangely enough, he also felt some worry for them. Bran could die of an infection within the next few days—gunshot wounds almost always got infected if left untreated. Even if they found a settlement, and even if that settlement was willing to take in two strangers, one of which was a hybrid, would they have the medicine he needed?
“Hey!”
Lee snapped his head around and found Marie standing up from her medical pack, a white bottle in hand. She tossed it in a high arc. Kat snatched it deftly out of the air, the pills rattling inside.
“Amoxycillin,” Marie called out to them. “Take two a day, morning and evening, for ten days.” Then, as though she were in a hurry to avoid any thanks, she twisted and hollered at Abe, “We’re done. Let’s go.”
Abe gratefully accelerated them out of there.
Marie caught Lee’s faint smirk as she settled down into the bed, zipping her medical pack back up with jerky movements. “What? You said to do what I could.” She waved an irritable hand in the direction of the retreating ATV, the wounded man, and the hybrid that was his friend. “I could.”
Lee’s smirk turned into a knowing grin. Marie scowled and flipped him off.
Yes, for some odd reason, Lee was worried about those two. And apparently it was infectious, even for someone as stubborn as Marie. But if anyone had a chance out there in this world gone mad, it was Bran and Kat.
Chapter 47
“Doesn’t it feel like the Universe has it out for us?”
Jones was in a particularly pensive mood this afternoon, Lee noted as he mashed the detcord into the brick of plastic explosive.
Lee quirked an eyebrow at the younger man. “How so?”
Jones sat straddling the concrete floodgate with its steel door, a pile of C4 next to him. He had a brick of it in one hand, and his knife in the other. He frowned at his work as he cut the brick sidelong, prepping it for the detcord. “I mean, it feels like we’re caught in this never-ending cycle of struggle, and just when we think we’re going to taste some sweet relief, we’re somehow miraculously reborn and forced to do it all again.”
Lee chuckled, pushing his detcord-primed package into the hole they’d dug in the soft earth. “I think that’s called life.” Lee rose from his squat and gestured for the split brick in Jones’s hands. “And besides, the Universe isn’t forcing you to do anything. You don’t have to stay in the struggle.”
“Yeah.” Jones slapped the brick into Lee’s waiting hand. “I could just off myself.”
“Well, then you’d just be reborn right back into it.” Lee wagged a finger at him. “Your theory, not mine.”
Jones mused on that for a moment. “So, there’s no way out.”
“Of course there’s a way out. You simply choose not to struggle.”
“Choose not to struggle?” Jones looked aghast. “So…just lie down and take it up the ass? Is that what you’re saying? If I stop resisting it’ll hurt less? Like prison sex?”
Lee paused in his preparations, a knot of detcord in one hand, C4 in the other. “I’m saying you don’t have to do anything. Everything’s a choice. You choose the struggle. Probably because you know that giving up on it will only result in worse struggles in the future.”
“But see, that’s my point. The future doesn’t get any better. It’s just…more of this. Another round in the endless cycle.”
“I get where you’re coming from,” Lee allowed. “Sometimes we expect rewards for our labors, but the reality is that pain and struggle are just a part of our human existence. But that doesn’t mean you have to be miserable about it.”
“Oh, you’re not miserable?” Jones looked dubious.
Lee smiled at that and shook his head. “No, I’m really not.” He set to mushing the detcord into the split Jones had made. “What is misery anyway? It’s subjective. Take two people—one person lived in a shitty little shanty in some war torn, drought-ridden country. The other person is from some nice suburban house in America who’s never had to go hungry a day in their life, always had access to healthcare, clean water, and central air conditioning.” Lee placed the primed brick in another hole, grunting as he stood up straight again. “Now, take both of those people and force them through the end of the world, and set them both up in one of these shitty little settlements of survivors. Who’s more miserable?”
“Well, obviously the suburban American. But they’re both still miserable.”
Lee shook his head. “No. See, the guy from the war-torn shanty, he sets up in the settlement, and yeah, life is still hard, but he says, ‘at least there’s rain so I can grow food.’ See, he compares it to his worst days in the slum of that drought-ridden country and sees that it’s not so bad. Suburban guy, though, his worst day was when he got fired from his cushy job, or lost a bit of his retirement fund in a bad investment, or his wife fucked the pool boy. So, when he compares his current circumstances to that, he says, ‘life sucks, and it only seems to get worse.’ But it’s just a matter of perspective.”
Jones pointed at Lee emphatically. “But, see, that’s exactly what I’m saying. We’re the suburban guy. We had all that nice shit. And now life does suck and it seems to only get worse.”
Lee shrugged and propped his hands on his hips. “Sure, we have the same background as the suburban guy. But we don’t have to share his perspective. We don’t have to just compare our life now to our life before. We can also compare our life now to how bad it could be.”
Jones gave him a deadpan look. “So…it could always be worse. That’s your big point?”
“Think about the multiverse.”
Jones blinked. “Really? You’re going with the multiverse?”
Lee sighed. “It’s as valid a theory as any other, Jones.”
“Alright,” Jones said, cautiously. “How’s the multiverse factor in?”
“Because, what if we live in the universe with the best possible outcome? Have you ever thought of that?” Lee smirked at the distrustful look on Jones’s face. “Maybe all the universes in the multiverse are complete dumpster fires, except for this one. Maybe we live in the best universe. In this moment, in another universe, maybe things are way worse than they are now, and if you were living in that universe, you’d wish you could have the life you’re living now. Or maybe, in that other universe, the whole of humanity got wiped out, and there’s not even any people left to have existential conversations like this one.” Lee looked up at the blue sky, as though appreciating it with a fresh perspective. “And when I look at it like that, I think, well, this moment ain’t so bad, all things considered.”
Jones squinted disbelievingly at the sky. “So, if your reality sucks balls, just imagine a completely different reality that sucks even worse and then convince yourself to be grateful?”
“Why not?”
Jones chuffed. “Seems like you’re deluding yourself because you don’t want to face the facts.”
Lee blew a raspberry. “The facts don’t change. I see all the same facts you do. I’m not putting blinders on. But I choose to see those same facts in a way that doesn’t make me miserable. Why is that not valid? Why do we assume that if it makes us miserable, it must be valid?”
Lee gave the other man a discerning look. “Let me ask you a question: Am I deluding myself because I want to be at peace? Or are you deluding yourself because you want to be miserable? Like I said, no matter how you interpret it, the facts remain the same. But one interpretation gives you a sense of peace, and the other makes you miserable. You choose how you want to interpret the facts, so, in effect, you choose whether or not to be miserable, regardless of your circumstances. I personally think it’s silly to make myself miserable for no good reason. I’ve lived that paradigm before and it didn’t change a damn thing for the better. It didn’t make me a better fighter. It didn’t make me quicker to see a threat.” Lee smiled and gestured to the scars on his face. “It didn’t make me impervious to bullets. All it did was make me miserable and shortsighted. Because when you’re miserable you become just an animal that can only think one step ahead because your mind is clouded by past bitterness and future anxiety. If I could go back to my younger self and say one thing, I’d tell myself to stop being so pissy and grow a sense of humor.”
Jones grunted, narrowing his eyes at Lee. “What advice would you give me?”
Lee grinned. “Stop being pissy and grow a sense of humor. It’s not all that bad, and focusing on the negative aspects of life doesn’t make you hard. It just makes you brittle.” Lee nodded at the pile of C4. “Now split me another brick.”
An hour later, dirt-smeared and sweat-soaked, Lee and Jones spooled out an enormous length of detcord—courtesy of a recent supply drop—and then hunkered down on the other side of a ridge, two hundred yards from where Colin Horner had dammed up the river.
While Jones wired up the detonator, Lee poked his head up and surveyed the dam from afar. Horner—or more likely, his ranch hands—had actually done a pretty good job. The majority of the dam was earthwork, but right in the center of it was the floodgate that could be used to control the flow of the stopped-up river. Lee had no idea where Horner had gotten the concrete for that section, but there was a good bit of it. It leaked a bit more than would probably be accepted if the dam had been made by an engineer, but it had clearly done what Horner had wanted it to do.
Stopped the river, and deprived all the little settlements in the Valley of the water they needed to survive and irrigate their crops.
Lee and his team had had a private sit-down to discuss whether they would leave the dam in place and simply open the floodgate. But the consensus was this: People were shitty, and the second Lee and his team moved on, some other asshole might decide they wanted to hold the power of the dam for themselves.
They’d decided it was best to destroy the whole damn thing—pun intended.
Lee settled himself down to the ground, laid on his back, and put his newly-replaced helmet on his head—just in case. A few hundred yards further down, Marie, Sam, and Abe stood at the pickup, weapons in hand. There were still primals in the Valley, after all. And they couldn’t rely on Freya to always be there to stop them from chomping on people. Fact was, they hadn’t seen or heard from her since they’d narrowly escaped the Town, a week ago.
“Put your lid on,” Lee admonished Jones as the other man settled into place beside Lee with the detonator in his lap.
“Oh, right. Good call.” Jones put his helmet on, the chin strap dangling. “You ready?”
