The Land of the Shadow (40 page)

“You’re not going,” she said. She wished he’d waited until Justin had come back from the barn to have this conversation.

“The hell I’m not,” he said, and for a moment, he looked enough like Justin to truly be his son, his eyes flashing in anger.

“We need you here.” Carly turned to him and put down the towel with which she’d been drying dishes. “We need trustworthy defenders in case . . . in case they get past us.”

“I want to go with you, Carly,” Kaden shouted, and it wasn’t the petulant shout of a teenager but the roar of an anguished man. In place of the gangly boy Justin and Carly had adopted, she could see the man he would become, and it filled her with wistful pride. “Whatever happens, my place is with my family.”

“And that’s why I want to make sure you’re here to take care of Dagny in case . . .” She couldn’t finish the rest. “She’ll need you, Kaden.”

“I want to be there, backing you up,” Kaden said.

“I need you here.”

“That’s not the only reason you’re saying no.” Kaden glared at her.

“That’s true,” she said. “You’re no killer, Kaden.”

“You’re not either.”

Carly looked away. “I can be, when I need to. I have been. Please, Kaden, back us up by protecting what we’ve built.” She pulled him into her arms and went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

“I love you,” Kaden said. He buried his face in her hair and squeezed her tight. “I love you . . . Mom.”

Tears stung her eyes and strangled her words. “I love you too, Kaden. Your dad and I both.”

Carly opened the barn door and heard Shadowfax rumble in greeting. She approached the stall door and both horses stuck their heads out over the top, snuffling at her and bumping her for attention. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the two small apples she’d brought. Storm chomped at hers, almost taking Carly’s fingers with it in the process.

“Ouch!” Carly wagged her finger at the filly. “No biting!”

She held out Shadowfax’s apple, and the mare used her lips to pluck it from her palm. Carly told her she was a good girl and stroked her large head as she chewed. Shadowfax looped her head over Carly’s shoulder, the horse version of a hug and Carly hugged her back.

“I wanted to come to see you one more time before we go,” Carly said. “I think . . . I’m pretty sure we’re coming back. Our odds are good. But just in case . . . I had to say thank you. You and Sam, you helped heal my heart after the Infection. I wasn’t really myself. I’m still not, to tell you the truth. I’m different now. The person I was . . . she died during the Infection, too. The Carly I used to be wouldn’t be planning an attack on a rival group, that’s for sure. But this Carly knows she has to do what must be done to protect the little haven we’ve built. And for those poor people they’re keeping captive. I can’t just walk away.”

She rubbed beneath Shadowfax’s mane, soothing the itchy spot the horse couldn’t reach. “I’m leaving Sam here with you. I know he’s been different since Tigger died, but I saw some of the old Sam now that Buttercup is here.”

She stepped back, and stared at the barn floor as she scuffed her shoes against the straw. “What I’m saying is, you’ll be okay. You’ll all be okay. No matter what. Everyone promised they’d take care of you for me. I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me when I needed it.”

“Carly?” It was Justin, standing in the barn door. “We need to get suited up.”

“Coming.” She gave Shadowfax one last pat and followed Justin back to the house, down into their room.

“I know there’s no way I could convince you to stay behind with Kaden,” Justin said.

“No.” Her throat felt tight. “There’s nothing that would keep me from your side. We stand together, or we fall together. Whatever our fate is, I will meet it at your side.”

“More than anything, I wish I could protect you from this, that you wouldn’t have to see this side of the world,” he said.

“It’s not that kind of world anymore, Justin. The world has changed, and I’ve changed to meet it. I didn’t realize how much until my people, my home, was threatened.”

She braided her hair tightly and bound it up in a bun at the back of her head the way Pearl did. Justin stared at her for a moment, unused to seeing Carly without her mass of caramel waves around her shoulders. She dressed in a pair of dark khakis and pulled out a long-sleeved shirt. Before she could pull it over her head, Justin handed her something.

“Put this on.”

She stared at it. “Where did you find that?”

“Police station. Put it on.”

The bulletproof vest was white and fit snugly around her torso, stiff and thick. “I can’t move in this.”

“You’re not going to be doing any acrobatics,” Justin said.

Carly wriggled around and grimaced. “Justin . . .”

“For me.” As if it wasn’t stiff enough, he slipped a plate through a pocket on the side, to lie over her heart. He handed her the shirt she’d chosen, and she pulled it on over the vest.

“Do you have one?”

“They didn’t have my size.”

She gave him a chiding look, and he grinned in response. It made her heart ache.

Her Justin. The man who had teased her gently out of her shock and grief during their journey, who had made her laugh with his jokes and singing bad 80s tunes. Could she have him back once this was over? She missed it. Missed how it had been when it had just been the two of them on the road, and when they had been just the little family of three in the farmhouse in the Dakotas.

This was what she had wanted. And this was the price she had to pay for it. At that moment, the price seemed very high indeed. She went into his arms one more time—her mind refused to think of it as one last time—and he kissed her. For a moment, it was as though their souls touched as well, mingled and spoke, and the only word was
love.

She followed him onto the porch, closing the door behind them with a firm click. Carly took a deep breath and looked around Colby, the bit she could see from her porch.

Was it worth it? Was Colby, what she was trying to build—their community, but more importantly the ideals for which it stood—worth it? Worth the chance of losing her own life or the life of the man she loved? Could what they were building here be that important?

She could see Stan and Mindy outside, suiting up and checking their guns. They paused to kiss as she and Justin had done, and she saw the expression on Stan’s face as he looked down into Mindy’s eyes.

Tears blurred Carly’s vision.

Yes, it was worth it. To hell and beyond, it was worth it.

Chapter Fifteen

Their approach was silent, under the cover of darkness. Clayton was lit only by a campfire in front of the courthouse, where the small handful of guards sat on lawn chairs, occupied with their conversation instead of watching. Just as Justin had said. He had been scathing when he reported on their nearly nonexistent security measures. Had their way of life been that easy for them, Carly wondered? Going from place to place and preying on whomever they found, never fearing attack themselves?

Everyone knew their positions. They had studied Justin’s map, which he had drawn and labeled last night, though he’d had Carly go back and switch the letters he’d transposed.

Mindy and Carly were positioned on the high ridge on the opposite side of the river. Enfilade, Justin had called it. Justin was heading around the side of the town, following the path of the little river, and then slipping up between the courthouse and the Victorian.

They met at the burned-out barn, their staging location, their fallback position. Stacy would be stationed here, her emergency medical supplies spread out on a small folding table. Grady was stationed here, on the second floor, to provide covering fire for a retreat if necessary.

Carly watched Justin creep through the darkness toward the lone picket at the end of the bridge. Even his shadow disappeared. She took a deep breath, waiting for the gurgle of a slit throat and the thump of a body, but she was surprised instead when Justin appeared, a young boy propelled in front of him. The kid couldn’t have been more than fourteen, pale and scrawny. Justin knocked him to the ground in front of their group. “Look at this shit,” Justin said, sounding disgusted.

“Please, don’t kill me,” the kid pleaded. “Please, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!”

“How’d you end up with these assholes?” Stan shook his head.

“The guy I was traveling with joined them. I didn’t want to, but he said we needed the protection.” The kid’s eyes glittered in the light of their lantern, and his mouth twitched as he blinked fast.

“And they put you on guard duty?” Carly thought shooting a rifle would probably knock him over.

“Not really a guard.” The kid licked his lips. “I mean, what I’m supposed to do is tell them if anyone’s coming so they can . . .” He looked around at his audience and fell silent, dropping his head to stare down at the ground.

“So they can rob them,” Pearl said, her voice as flat and hard as iron. “Tell me, kid, how many families have you lured in to their deaths with a welcoming smile?”

“None!” The boy turned a pleading face up to her, tears making tracks in the dirt on his cheeks. “They’ve been complaining about it . . . no one has come by for a while now. I heard the men complaining about signs warning them off.”

“Hmm.” Pearl didn’t look like she believed him, and unlike Justin, Carly wasn’t able to detect any subtle signs that would reveal when she was faking it.

Justin knelt down and bound the kid’s hands behind his back with rope. “We’ll deal with you later.”

“Deal with me how?” The kid looked around at each of them, alarmed.

“Probably go more in your favor if you’d shut up right about now,” Justin said, and his smile sent a chill down Carly’s spine, even though she knew he was pretending.

The kid had a brain. He shut up, though his eyes still darted from face to face, pleading, terrified.

“He gives you any trouble, just go ahead and kill him,” Justin said to Stacy, who had to use humane mousetraps in her kitchen because she couldn’t kill the mice who invaded her pantry. She nodded, though, as if she would do as she’d been told.

He turned to Kross and looked at his watch. “You’re up.”

Kross took a deep breath. For all his outward badassery, he was still only seventeen, and for a moment, he looked it. Then resolve hardened his features, and he reached down to shoulder the two large packs. Their weight bowed him backward for a moment, but he headed off into the night.

“For home.” Justin said.

“Colby,” they all replied in unison.

It was their countersign. But Justin said if everything went as planned and they all stayed in their assigned roles, it wouldn’t be needed. But, as he’d said with a small smile, plans had a way of going to shit. That was why Justin had drilled them again and again in the half a dozen or so contingency plans he had devised. Carly couldn’t remember a single one of them at the moment, and her heart hammered so hard, it almost drowned out his soft command for them all to take their positions. He paused for a moment, then grabbed Carly and kissed her, hard.

“I love you,” she said.

He kissed her again. “You’re my everything. Stay with Mindy. Promise me.”

“I will if I can.”

He grimaced at the prevarication, but it was the best she could do. She grabbed her rifles—he’d insisted on two—and slung her bag of ammo over her shoulder and followed the others out into the night. Justin caressed her cheek again before he departed, as if he had to have one final touch.