Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
“Emily Swanson and Charlie Cannon,” Tuck said. The woman Hosea had spoken to came through a door carrying a tray. She brought it over to us, setting it down with a smile. There were three plates with covers piled on top of each other and Hosea doled one out to all three of us. I opened the lid to see what looked like some chicken salad, a few canned pears, and a slice of bread.
“Oh, thank you,” I breathed, picking the slice up and inhaling the yeasty scent. I tried not to cry, but tears sprung to my eyes and I blinked them away before taking a bite and moaning as I chewed.
“Tell me about this place,” Tuck said after he’d swallowed a mouthful of food. “Who’s running it?”
“A few scattered military units were able to join up by using ham radios and are out trying to help. But it’s been overwhelming to say the least.”
Tuck eyed him. “You broke out of Leavenworth when the power went down?”
“Yup. It was fucking crazy, man. I was out in the yard when the event happened. The guards started scrambling to herd us inside. Only a few generators powered up, and so we were all ushered into one area. To make a long story short, fights broke out. Two guards were killed, and things got really ugly. We could hear men yelling from their cells where they were locked inside in other sections of the prison that had no power. After about twenty-four hours, it became clear this was bigger than it seemed at first and that no one was coming, not even to pick up the bodies. The rest of the guards had already started deserting their posts. After that, finding a way out wasn’t too difficult.”
A shiver crept over my skin. I thought of the prisoners in those locked cells. Had anyone helped them to get out? Or were some of them still there, sitting in the frigid dark, slowly dying of starvation? They were inmates, there because they’d hurt and victimized others, but they were also human and it was a very cruel way to go.
“Anyway,” Hosea went on. “I switched out my clothes at a Walmart that was already practically stripped bare, and then ended up hitching a ride with a couple of the men who set this operation up when they realized emergency services were down. They figured out pretty quickly which vehicles were running and sent crews out to hotwire cars sitting on streets or in dealerships or wherever they could be found. They told me about what they were doing and said they needed muscle.” He smiled and flexed his massive bicep, his teeth extra white in the midst of his deep brown skin.
“You do have those in spades,” Tuck said.
“I’m sure they’d find a place for you too. We need people with special skills, somewhat outside the norm,” Hosea said with a wink.
Tuck’s gaze flicked to us, then away, and though my stomach was currently being filled by blessed bread, it dropped slightly. “Can’t. I have responsibilities at the moment,” he said. “But…maybe once that’s done…”
Responsibilities.
Hosea nodded and then smiled. “Tucker Mattice. I never imagined I’d see you again. What happened to you three to bring you here?”
“Our plane crashed when the grid went down.”
“Well shit.”
“That’s about right.”
Hosea looked at Charlie and me and put his hand on Tuck’s shoulder. “This is a good man right here. Taught me to read. Taught plenty of others how to read too. Changed some lives for the better.”
I swallowed. Oh.
Tuck looked away, his cheeks coloring. My heart thumped. Of course he’d taught people to read while in prison. You and your damn books. I had this intense desire to hug him, to throw my arms around him and squeeze him tight. I wondered what he’d do if I did. “Man, I was bored,” Tuck muttered. “What else was I gonna do?”
Hosea chuckled. “Still full of shit, I see.”
“What’s the plan here, going forward?” Tuck asked, obviously changing the subject.
“For now, without communication, the units here are acting outside any official capacity. These warehouses are food facilities. Got a whole stock of canned and boxed food. They secured this location right away. They’re problem-solvers, man. They’ve been out gathering whatever they believe might come in handy, they moved in the portable toilets from the baseball field and fencing too. Others have been out siphoning gas from otherwise useless cars so we can keep powering working generators for as long as possible. It’s been a bona fide operation for the past week.”
“Why are some generators working and some not?” I asked.
“Most aren’t working, even with fuel,” Hosea said. “The electronics inside are fried like everything else. But we’ve found a few that were in basements or other storage locations that seemed to have protected them from the surge. They’ll work as long as we have gasoline and then those will be useless hunks of metal too.”