The Beginning at the End of the World: A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Series (The Survivor Diaries Book 2) (11 page)

∞

“Sorry, I told everyone I was leaving before we had a chance to talk about it,” I told Mark when he finally came into our room.

“That’s okay. The family talked a lot about it when you were in the Hotel, and we decided the same thing,” said Mark.

He sat next to me on the bed, trying not to scatter the photos I had arranged in geographical order on the blanket. He glanced down at them and then back at me, compassionately.

“This means that we are going to the Valley to become farmers, doesn’t it?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“I never imagined us as farmers, with cows and chickens and crops. We will have to find you some overalls,” I told him.

We chuckled.

“I have trouble imagining our lives like that, but we have to do this for Bailey, Ammie and Bri,” he said.

“E.I.E.I.O.”

I had just read what Bri had written for “the records,” and I decided that I had had enough of Jackson’s shenanigans. I grabbed Mark by his arm and my video camera, and we took the golf cart up to Jackson’s house. Mark tried to ask me what was happening, but I was too angry to speak. He must have recognized that, because he stopped asking.

With video camera on and recording, I barged in through the unlocked front door with Mark on my heels. Since Jackson had no reluctance to violate my privacy, I was not too concerned about his. When I didn’t see him immediately, I decided to take a self-guided tour of the rooms that I had never seen. It was an eye-opener, to say the least.

“We can’t do this,” said Mark.

The first room I found was Jackson’s bedroom. I panned the room with the camera and noticed a motion on the ceiling. I did a tilt up and jumped when I saw myself. Eww… mirrors above the bed. Why was I not surprised? Mark burst in after me, pleading with me not to violate Jackson’s privacy. He looked at me and followed the camera’s gaze to the ceiling mirrors. He chuckled.

“That’s not what I am looking for,” I told him.

I heard the sound of a machine running down the hall, and I followed it. Expecting to find a generator, I opened the door. To my surprise, it was a washer and dryer, and the dryer was running. I opened the lid to find a set of sheets tumbling to a halt. While we all took cold sponge baths and washed our clothes by hand and dried them in front of a fire, he was using up our precious gas supplies. I turned the knob off so his sheets wouldn’t dry and would hopefully stink from mildew. It was not much as far as punishment goes, but it would have to do for the moment.

I turned on my heels to look for the room Bri described in her diary entries. I ran through the house like a crazy person; swinging open every door I found until I came to one of the upstairs doors that held behind it the prize I was looking for.

The dark room buzzed blue with the light of several monitors, each with picture in picture. You could see practically every “public building” in the Village. People were going about their business, walking through the ballroom, checking supplies and walking the corridors of the hospital. I wanted to scream when I saw Annie, Jill and Mrs. Ingram working on canning in Annie’s kitchen.

Mark came in behind me, and I saw his jaw drop. We spent several minutes just standing there and staring at the screens, watching our unwitting neighbors.

“What is this?” Mark asked, as if I could tell him something beyond the obvious.

“I bet this is not all,” I said.

I ran down the staircase into the “wine cellar.” I had been down there before, but this time I wasn’t looking for a nice cabernet, although a big swig of alcohol was sounding good around then. I ran up and down the rows of floor to ceiling wine racks until I found a door in the far back of the room. I hadn’t noticed it before, but this time it stood out like a big, sore thumb.

It led down a cold, blue corridor that was lit with florescent lights that buzzed loudly above us. I opened a door to my right and found another surprise. Jackson was sitting behind a desk, a laptop in front of him.

As much as we were surprised, he obviously wasn’t. His arms were folded over his chest and his eyes were on the door, watching our every step. I moved into the room, just enough to allow Mark in behind me.

“I don’t believe you made an appointment with my secretary,” he said without hesitation.

“Don’t act cute, Phillip,” I said, seething. “What do you think you are doing?”

I got another burst of bravery and walked over and turned his laptop to face me. As I had guessed, it showed the now still wine cellar.

I slapped the lid down and was about to do the same to Jackson’s smug face, but Mark pulled me back.

“You have been spying on us this whole time?” Mark asked, disgusted.

“And you’ve been using our gasoline to run this entire set up,” I added.

“I haven’t used ‘our’ anything,” he countered our angry voices with his calm one. “I have only used my own resources here.”

I looked around the room that was filled with radios, maps, computers, and five large metal gun vaults. They had brass turn handles like you see at banks, or in old movies. They also had numbered keypads. I walked over and tried one of the handles, but it was locked.

Jackson came to my side and entered a number sequence into the keypad, spun the turn handle, and pulled open the thick, metal door.

“Aren’t you the brave one,” he said. His voice sounded completely different, like he had been hiding his militant, colonel-side the whole time. I have been so naïve, just like he had accused me of. But then again, he hadn’t been talking about being naïve about him.

Inside the vault, there was an arsenal of automatic-machine guns, boxes of bullets, and even grenades. I got it all on video, not knowing what I was going to use the footage for, but knowing I needed it.

Mark just stood there, his mouth agape, eyes fixed on Jackson. Impulsively, he flew forward, and his fist flung into Jackson’s jaw with a loud crunch.

I had never seen any violence in my husband, not even the potential for it. I sat down, letting out the little air I still had in my lungs. I began to cough, hard.

Jackson looked at me, concerned. Who was this man? One minute he was fierce and intense, the next thoughtful and caring. I wanted to run from the room, but I couldn’t stop wheezing. Mark came to my side and rubbed my back, while Jackson reached under his desk and pulled out a water bottle.

“Drink,” he commanded. “And then you come with me, both of you.”

He waited for me to regain my breath. I wasn’t well enough yet to be going through this. And had I known then what I know now,
I hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Let’s go,” he said as he led us up the stairs and to the front door. He put on his jacket and gloves and walked out the door and straight to the golf cart. He sat in the driver’s seat and waited for us to get in. I almost took off on foot to my house, but Mark led me to the cart and helped me into the back. He took a seat next to Jackson. He put his hands in his lap and I could see his fists were clenched.

Jackson didn’t head down the driveway as I expected, but instead he chugged the golf cart up the hillside. It was slow going, even with the snow melting. About ten minutes later, he stopped at a tall fence with barbed wire on top. He got out and unlatched the lock and waved for us to follow him on foot.

Mark held my hand as we entered through the gate that Jackson immediately closed behind us. I looked at the concrete building with tons of solar panels surrounding it. On one side of the building there was a shiny gasoline tanker.

The shock must have shown on my face. “I have my own supplies,” Jackson said. “Are you going to film this whole thing?”

I felt a shot of bravery pulse through my veins. I looked Jackson in the eye. “Yes. Does Bri know about this place?”

“No.”

He shrugged and pointed at the building. “In there is my personal power plant, but we don’t have time for that now. Come on.”

I don’t know why, but we followed him, and we loaded back in the golf cart after he relocked the gate. Jackson’s plant operation was far enough back in the hills that no one would find it.

For the second time, he started to drive us in the opposite direction from what I had expected.

“Now where are we going?” asked Mark.

“You want to know everything, right?” said Jackson. His jaw was red and beginning to swell.

I wanted to jump out of the golf cart. I wouldn’t have gotten hurt with how slowly we were going, but I trusted that if Mark wasn’t protesting, neither should I. I hung on and hoped that Mark wasn’t going along with all of this because he thought the same thing of me.

It was in the twenty degree range out, and I was cold. I sunk my head into my zipped up, faux-fur lined ski jacket. Mark looked back at me and didn’t say a word.

We drove for at least forty more minutes, going slowly upward and further back in the hills. I had always thought there was nothing back there but forest, but I soon found that I was very wrong.

The snow thickened on the hillside the further up we climbed. I could tell that the chains on the small tires were never meant to be used on this particular mode of transportation. I really wanted to ask how he found snow chains for a golf cart, but I suspected that the reveal that was coming was much bigger than that. I opted not to ask.

After all of those days in my house and then in the Hotel, it was actually nice to be outside, in a really cold sort of way. I closed my eyes and let the wind rush over me.

“Are you okay, Laura?” asked Mark. “I should never have let you come up here. Where are you taking us, Jackson? And what’s taking so long?”

I opened my eyes to see Mark’s concerned face, and I started to get nervous, too. What if Jackson wanted to get rid of us because we knew about his secret? I pictured Jackson pulling his pistol off his hip and ordering us to get down on our knees. My imagination started to get away from me.

“Don’t get your panties in a wad. We’re almost there,” he said to Mark. Mark glared back at him. “What are you gonna do, hit me again?”

“If it takes much longer, I’ll rip your head off,” Mark said. I wished I could go over to him and shove those words back into his mouth. I didn’t like this side of my husband.

“If you hadn’t noticed, she’s been pretty sick. I would never have let her come if I had known you were going to take us this far. I thought that if you cared about anyone besides yourself, it was her,” said Mark.

“And if you hadn’t burst into my home, we wouldn’t be here right now,” said Jackson. As far as logic goes, Jackson was correct.

We finally came to a stop at another fortress. This one looked like it had an electronic fence and barb wire, too.

The three of us got out and stared up at the eight foot fence.

∞

I turned my video camera back on, and looked at Jackson defiantly.

From the outside, it looked like a house.

“You have two houses?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to fit the pieces together.

“No questions until I tell you; show you,” he said.

And like we had been doing all day, we followed the leader.

The house was fairly big, and it was solid looking. It was two stories, made of stone, and had a thatch-style roof. My first thought was how well if fit in with the environment. My second thought was that I was a total idiot. Of course, that was what made it the perfect house for Jackson’s hidden operations.

When the front door of the house opened, I lost my footing in the slippery snow and slipped back into my husband’s arms. He grasped me firmly until I could find purchase.

Since Jackson wasn’t talking, we followed him up the stone stairs and through the door of the house. It was warm inside, and for a moment, until I thawed, that was all that I noticed.

The two men inside, both in uniform, were roughly Jackson’s age. They saluted him, and Jackson greeted them.

“Colonel Ellis Fitzpatrick and Major Curtis Owens,” he began the introductions.

Mark and I just stood there. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. The taller of the two men came toward me, hand extended. Mark stepped in front of me for an interception.

“I have heard a lot about the both of you,” said Colonel Fitzpatrick, ignoring Mark’s not too subtle message. “Please come in.”

He has heard a lot about us?
Say what?

He led us into what looked like it should have been a living room, but it was outfitted much like the room we had found Jackson in earlier. It had the desk, the maps and more of those big, black, monster vaults.

I was extremely uncomfortable with everything I had seen so far, and I knew that there must be a lot more coming up. I felt a fire burning my face, and for a moment I thought that my fever from the Sneaker Wave was flaring up again. I held Mark’s hand tightly, and we sat in the proffered chairs.

“What is all of this?” I asked, finally finding my voice. “Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?”

The Major took a seat behind the desk. “That’s a lot of questions,” Owens said.

“Well, then maybe you should start answering them because if we disappear from the Village, people are going to start looking for us,” I said.

“We aren’t going to kill you off, Laura. Do you think that I would ever hurt you?” said Jackson looking incredibly hurt.

“Good, because I was about to use
my
secret weapon and cough all over your freak show; let you all feel what the Sneaker Wave is like,” I said with contempt. An honest coughing fit followed, as if on cue. I knew that I wasn’t contagious anymore, but that was all I had. Jackson went into the other room and appeared with another bottle of water for me. I didn’t want to take anything he offered, but I knew that the coughing wouldn’t stop unless I did.

“We were vaccinated against CNL2 before the war,” said Fitzpatrick.

Oh, damn. I had read that in Bri’s diaries, hadn’t I?

Mark glared at the men. He looked dangerous. I guess that was
his
secret weapon.