Page 35 of Chaos
“Ben has to die,” I say when she’s done. “Renata told me that. She said, ‘make sure he dies.’ And also they had pigeons she said we couldn’t release.”
Like homing pigeons? Messengers?
“Yeah, well, I don’t trust anything that snake of a conwoman says.”
I scowl at the coil of thoughts I have when I think about Renata. Snake is a good descriptor. She’s slippery and unpredictable and scary—but snakes are just trying to get by like the rest of us. She’s different than Ben.
“I wouldn’t trust Colleen to kill him either,” Shasta continues. “Between the army and the ex-townees, it’s a mess. Yorke gave over almost all of our bullets for you. Church said an execution would only rile people worse. She’s stuck in a political rut.”
A rut.
Ben smashed Shane’s hand.
He killed Ruby.
It’s his fault Shasta’s blind.
And now Wendell was shot?
He put his fingers in me.
He was going to let Scraggle have me.
He threatened Auden. And Yorke. And if he gets half a chance, he’ll hurt me and my maybe of a baby over again.
And because of a political rut, he’s going to … what? Stay alive to ruin the world another day?
9 |Not violent enough
YORKE
FRANKIE HANDED HERSELF OVER TO BEN.
She fucking volunteered herself …for me.
She looks like women we pulled from a bunker in Sochi during the war once, captured by enemy soldiers, raped, starved, beaten. I still have no clue of the hell she survived …
That thought keeps jerking itself to the forefront as I stalk through the halls from the ballroom-turned-schoolroom to the infirmary after dropping Auden off. I pass dozens of soldiers who glare at me. And I glare back.
Some of them deliberately stand in my way, forcing me to go around them.
My fault.
It’ssimmering along my blood the entire time I get a debrief from Jacquetta on what Ben and Ephie have said so far in interrogation, then from Rey and her sergeant, a hippy red-haired woman named Kelly, about the wall’s construction, the fact that our bullets will likely be gone inside the month, and that our food supply will likely be gone around the same time.
They’re not rude to my face. No one from the army is rude in front of Jacquetta or Church, but they don’t like me, and they don’t trust me, and they make that clear.
More fallout from the last month.
Frankie subordinated her physical safety for myfeelings.That thought shakes everything else loose. She gave herself up for me … all so I wouldn’t shoot Ephie.
It’s churning away as I get Shane working on an inventory of the remaining bullets, spent shells, and usable primer, with more unfriendly, borderline-hostile soldiers, and when I meet Church in the War Room to get his cartographers working on a new map and have him send several squads out to search for Ben’s people who fled with the Raiders, and as we make the hard decision to release the prisoners, disarmed, stitched up, with water and food to last two days.
Their information was good, we can’t keep them forever, and don’t want to kill them.
For a month, all I saw was the absence of Frankie, now all I see are a million new threats. Raiders still out there, Ben’s people, the ones that weren’t at the farmhouse, still out there. Butcher breathing down our backs, food shortages, bullet shortages, an unhappy army, and a disgruntled population on the home front.
Thornewood is crumbling, and fuck if a big part of me doesn’t want to let it.