Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

FORTY

Stone was silent for a moment.

“I thought I’d met you before,” he said, quietly. “But I hadn’t. Only I know why I thought that. The family likeness is there. The boys took after their mother, not their father.”

“I wasn’t their mother. I was their aunt. He was married to my sister.”

Stone nodded.

“Mary died giving birth to Chuck. A few months after she passed he took me. He put a collar around my neck and led me about on a leash. He was forty three, an old man, and I was twenty nine, a prize for him. He hung a sign around me. Whore. He kept me locked in a house in Batesville. One of the townhouses. At night he would put me in a box. I was his prisoner for four years. When the war came, the League looked for men to fight against the Ennpithians. He volunteered.”

No one spoke.

The rain fell against the house.

Cigarette smoke curled toward the ceiling.

“When he left I ran. I put my nephews with a woman named Michelle Creagh. I never looked back. I have been here for more than ten years but there isn’t a day I don’t see him walking the streets of our town.”

Jodie gulped.

“I know you killed them.”

“I did.”

“They would’ve become like him.”

“They already had.”

“I know.” She lowered her eyes. “Yuan told me everything about her friend who shot herself.”

“Wait,” said Cali. “Are you talking about Bobby and Chuck?”

Jodie nodded.

“Is Robert still alive?”

“There was a shootout in Batesville. But he escaped. I know they’re following us.”

“How long before he gets here?”

“Soon, I reckon.”

Jodie nodded. “Everyone dies and he lives.”

“Not for much longer.”

“But you’ve already tried to kill him. He got away.”

“That won’t happen again.”

Jodie scrunched her forehead.

“What about the prison truck? It will be here soon. Why don’t you capture him and send him to Starkville?”

Stone shook his head.

“A man like Reardon ends up in the dirt. Not a labour camp.”

Jefferson rolled her wheelchair forward.

“How do you know the monster that hurt Jodie?”

“The world is a small place, Jefferson. You go round it enough times and you meet the same people.”

“Your sister was Robert Reardon’s wife?” said Cali. “Oh, man, this is seriously fucked up.”

“Reardon is after me,” said Stone. “So you need to stay hidden. He doesn’t know you’re here or he would’ve come after you years ago. He isn’t your problem. He’s mine.”

He faced Jefferson.

“But there’s an assassin out there looking for the weapon and that is going to be your problem and, trust me, it’s not one you want. This is your last chance. Let us take it to New Washington.”

Jefferson chose silence. Stone shook his head. He wasn’t going to kill her and he wasn’t prepared to torture her. There were lines in the sand he was unwilling to cross, despite what they thought of him. He was the monster from the wasteland, the killer with the black soul. The fire in Kiven flared in his nostrils and choked him. He saw bodies, four of them, locked together in a charred embrace, a family out of luck, and it sickened him.

“Cali, we’re leaving.”

He glimpsed the painting in her hand.

“There’s no time for lifting stuff.”

“You need to see this.”

She tossed it onto the table. It clattered loudly, startling Jefferson. The meaningless wanted poster sailed to the floor.

“It’s the weapon, Stone. Look. Just look.”

Stone narrowed his eyes. The painting was a landscape, quite old, the frame a dull yellow colour, thick dust within its fancy swirls. The colours were a little faded but still vivid enough so that none of its poetry had been lost. There was a green hill with soldiers wearing uniforms and helmets. Together, they were pushing a flagpole into an upright position.

Stone took out the piece of paper and placed it on the painting beside the flag that billowed in the wind.

“A flag?” he said. “This is what we’ve been fighting for? A flag?”

Jefferson’s withered hand clutched the painting.

“It’s more than a flag,” she said. “Which is why you will never possess it, Stone. Never.”

There was sudden vigour in her, a swelling of strength and pride, eyes shiny, her voice stoked with reverence.

“It is a symbol of what is right, true and honest. It was the flag of our once great nation when all the townships and communities and tribes were bound beneath it. It was the most powerful image of the first-world.” She paused. “And the most deadly. And that is why it will remain here, hidden from the world, until the time is right for it to fly once more, in schools and on playing fields, store windows and front porches. But that time is not yet.”

Stone traced his coarse fingers across the red, white and blue.

“Stars and stripes,” he said. “Not stars in a rippled sky.”

He looked at Cali.

She looked at him.

“It is the flag of the former United States of America,” said Jefferson. “The flag of the Ancients.”

“And you have it?”

“Not that particular one,” she replied. “But I have the last remaining one from the Before. It is the most valuable relic there is. It is the flag that flew during the Battle of New York City when the Ancients fought the Third War. Men like you, Stone, men like you and men like Reardon. You ignited the sky and burned the first-world until only dust remained.”

She coughed, steadied herself.

“Silver Road is more than a second-world town, Stone. We are redemption for the horror of the past. We are a beginning for the innocent and the enlightened. For every Batesville there is a Silver Road. One day there will be more towns like Silver Road and we will have risen from the ashes. There is no place for a man like you in this world. You are a thing of the past. Something extinct. We are settlers now. The age of drifters and vagabonds living off the land is dying. I know I will not see the flag in my lifetime. But one day we will be ready and then it will be raised into the air once more and we will be a nation again.”

Seconds passed, seconds that seemed like hours. Jodie turned from Jefferson and looked at Stone. She glimpsed the veneer slip, momentarily, and saw a man crushed by mere words. Cali flared and tore into the old woman, angrily waving her hands and jabbing her pistol. She retold what had been drummed into her by Jeremiah. But the mayor closed her ears.

Stone placed a hand on Cali’s shoulder, calmed her.

“I cannot expect you people to understand,” said Jefferson. “You are no different from the man whose sick mind found pleasure in hurting Jodie.”

Rawles, now conscious, struggled to his feet. He was shocked by the cruelness of her words.

“They’re different.”

“You are not thinking straight, Rawles,” said Jefferson.

“No, he is,” said Jodie. “And he’s right. They are different. I have watched them for six days. They are not like us but they are not monsters.”

“Why do you want to take this flag?” asked Rawles.

Cali laid it out for him, told him of the communities beyond the red zone, and the threat from the north.

“Jeremiah, Major Cartwright, believed the flag would unite the people, make them strong.”

“So they can fight?” said Jefferson. “So more wars can be waged?”

“We want the flag to save lives,” said Cali. “Not to kill. Jeremiah told me that an army had been mobilised. It’s only a matter of time before they attack. And it won’t stop in New Washington.”

Jodie crouched beside Jefferson’s wheelchair.

“Can you not hear the conviction in them? Tell them where it is. Surely, they can do some good with it.”

A siren sounded.

Stone and Cali tensed.

“The prison truck,” said Rawles. He leaned against the wall. “Carlton will need help with the handover.”

“Your prisoner isn’t going into any prison truck,” said Stone. “We’re taking him with us.”

“He killed a deputy.”

“He’s here for the flag. We need him.”

Rawles nodded, weakly.

“I’m sorry you got hurt,” said Stone. “But I need you to come with me. I don’t want to kill any of your deputies.”

Stone turned to Cali.

“At least you know what you’re looking for. Go through every box in the vault. Then clear out and hide until I come with the truck.”

He looked at Jefferson and she stared back at him, closing her lips around a fresh cigarette.