Revolution (15 page)

             
Merrick frowned, a deep groove in his forehead that meant he was really thinking about something. Everybody else had stopped to listen. "In the middle of the road? Weren't you suspicious that it was too easy?"

             
"Sure we were. But you know what they say about a gift horse."

             
Rylee butt
ed
in, "That you don't leave it in the middle of the freaking road."

             
Pastor went on. "We cracked them open and it was exactly what it looked like." He smiled and lifted his dirty hands. "Manna from Heaven."

             
"Can we c
ut all the religious mumble
?"
Billings said and crossed his arms. "Let's get back to what's in the crates."

             
Pastor took his hand and ran it under the word "Can
ned
Goods" on one crate. "Can
ned
goods," he said sarcastically. I wanted to laugh.

             
"Ha. Ha. What about the rest of them? You mean to say that you found crates in the middle of the road that really had guns and explosives in them?"

             
"That's what I'm saying."

             
"Well then!" he yelled and laughed. "Let's go door to door to the enforcement facilities and give them a little 'Hey, how you doing'."

             
"We can't do that. There are innocent people in there!" I said and found my chest heaving a little with anger. I knew what he was
saying, I understood, but I had been
one of those people just days ago.

             
He sighed and twisted his lips. "Sorry. You're right. I'm just shooting in the dark to find a solution
here
."

             
"I know," I answered back and waved off Merrick's look of concern. "I know."

             
"
Sherry's right, of course," Pastor continued. "We can't do that. The reason I kept it was because I knew there would be a right time. That one day, there would be a moment of weakness or bloated egos on their part and we would be able to take advantage of it."

             
"You got a TV in here?" Cain asked. "We need to see if our little blip at the hospital
and then the store
and all made the news. Hadn't thought about that until now." He looked at Jeff and Marissa. "I bet they've got all kinds of people looking for us."

             
"Sure," Pastor said. "It's small, but it works." He went to a small cabinet on the wall and opened the doors. The nine inch TV sat there, dusty and beautiful. He flipped it on and we watched as the non-stop news played us a story about Malachi's recent 'good work'
- even though he was dead as dead could be -
at the new enforcement facility near there. They'd taken over someone's house to use as headquarters since we'd demolished the jail there.

             
And then
a
man came to the podium at some sort of press conference, and he looked pretty irritated. He coughed dramatically and then
explained that they were now upping the ante on the rewards.

             
"Due to the circumstances that have risen in the past few days, we have decided to increase the reward for anyone who catches and brings a rebel to us or gives us information regarding their whereabouts. The reward is now
twenty thousand dollars for the capture…"

             
The rest of his words were lost on us. I sat in disbelief.
Well it explained why the town was in disarray. Everyone was looking for rebels.
Miguel bolted and turned off the offensive TV. Billings started laughing hysterically. "Twenty thousand! Twenty thousand! For twenty thousand I'll turn my own self in!"

             
"Billings," Cain warned, but he was on a roll.

             
"We don't stand a chance now. It was bad before, but now we've lost the store, we've lost our privacy, we're losing people left and right, ambushed every time we turn around, we've got no way to gain the upper hand now, and on top of all that? We're being hunted by money hungry desperate people." He laughed once more, bitterly and angrily. "We're gonna die."

             
I took a deep breath and looked over at Lily, who had woken in my arms. She was looking at Billings like he was some sort of alien.

             
"You have to bewi
eve in it,
Mister Biwwings,
" she spouted.

             
He looked at her.
He sighed, his chest deflating with sadness. "I'm sorry, Lily. I shouldn't have said that, ok?"

             
"Why you so sad?"

             
He smiled. "Cause I feel like everyday it's raining on us."

             
Calvin busted through Ryan and his mom and started belting out, "
If you walk away, everyday it'll rain, rain, raaaai-a-a-ain! Ooooooh!"

             
We all stared a little before laughing at him. It was obvious what he was trying to do, so when Franklin joined him and they continued singing as Lily squealed and ran to dance with them, I was pretty proud of the kid.

             
"Don't you say goodbye! I'll pick up these broken pieces 'til I'm bleeding if that'll make it right! 'Cause they'll be no sun
light
, if I lose you, baby!
And they'll be no clear skies, if I lose you, baby!
"

             
Calvin held Lily's hands and danced with her as they sang. She didn’t know the words, but twisted her legs and hips to his tune. Cain grabbed Lillian and  started dancing with her, too. It reminded me so, so, so much of the bunker.

             
And it made me realize that home is where you make it. Yes, the bunker was a good spot and convenient and we'd
been there so long it just seemed wrong to leave. But my home was my family. And we were all right here together. And dancing to Bruno Mars without a bed to our names or a shower to bathe in, but we were smiling and alive.

             
To me, that was everything these days.

             
Everything.

Blade of Fire

Merrick

             
I didn't dream often. I have no idea why, but it just never happened or I never remembered them. So to have my first nightmare was brutal. And to wake up sweating and panting, having Sherry fuss over me, was worse.

             
"Are you ok?"

             
"Fine," I answered gruffly.

             
"Merrick, don't placate me!" she hissed and I turned to look at her in the dark. "I know you had a bad dream, I heard you. Now what happened?"

             
I sighed long and loud to show her I absolutely didn't want to tell her. But I did anyway. "I had a dream about leaving you."

             
She stiffened all the way to her bones. "What?" she squeaked.

             
"No, no
t
leave you that way." I eased her to my lap and wrapped my needy arms around her. "Leave you like…death." She gasped. "When I…died," I said, because that was exactly what I had done, "I saw this light. Cheesy, I know, but it was all encompassing and it was just for me. Though I knew it was meant for me to go through," I pressed my lips to her temple, "I just couldn't leave you."

             
I thought she would cry, get sappy, make me console her, but no.

             
She laughed.
             

             
I felt my eyebrow reach my hairline and leaned back to see her face in the shadows of the big room we were all camped out together in. Lily slept on a sleeping bag on my o
ther side and the room was quiet
and oddly peaceful.

             
"And what's so funny?"

             
She giggled once more and then wrapped her arms around my neck. She let her legs straddle me before whispering in my ear. "I think I'm a little slap happy. I can't sleep and you telling me that you defied death and refused to leave me was just suddenly funny." She leaned back. "I'm sorry," she said, but she didn't look sorry. She looked like she was about to have another giggle fit.

             
I found myself chuckling a little, too. "Honey," I whispered, "I don't know what I'd do without you. I'd be a very lonely and disgruntled Keeper without you here to keep me laughing and happy."

             
"Good," she said
in return and pushed me
down. She lay down on my chest and sighed deeply. I rubbed her back and loved feeling her heartbeat through our shirts as our chests pressed together. Within a minute she was asleep, breathing deeply. I chuckled again, the movement shaking her a little. She was something else.

             
I let sleep claim
me as well and this time, I dreamed of our
unreachable
future, not the horrible past.
I didn't know which one was worse.

             
In the morning, we all woke and decided that some arrangements needed to be made. Everyone piled randomly on the floor at night wasn't going to work for me or anyone. So Sherry, Lillian and a few others started putting up clothesline rooms; little
nooks along the walls that were separated by sheets on clothesline wire. And the rest of us got to moving the crates and going through it all. Making some order to the chaos.

             
It took us pretty much all day to get everything 'livable'. There was no running water for showers. The ladies pitched a fit about that one. So we rigged a closed off space for taking 'bowl baths' Miguel called it. None of us really understood how good we had it before, I guessed.

             
There was a toilet. As in one toilet in a small toilet closet with no sink. I shook my head as I looked at it. Could be worse. There could be
no
toilet.