Bedlam Read online

  I stood stock-still, my arms full of sheets, my mouth hanging open. This couldn’t be real. Culling the herd? Deciding which survivors lived or died based on their ages? Jesus Christ. Mrs. B. was eighty, as vibrant, as full of life, as valuable to the world as anyone. And whose body had Jonesy disposed of? Were they talking about the woman who’d kidnapped Ever, the mother driven mad by grief? Kyle told me that Jonesy and Brody had driven her to a facility in town, a place where she could be taken care of. Did Jonesy take care of her with a bullet?

  What the hell was going on? What kind of stable, law-abiding society were the Allsops trying to create?

  Holding my breath, I turned to tiptoe back up the stairs.

  “Hey, Sunny. Where you going?” Brody asked, leaning casually against the arched entrance to the living room.

  Could I bluff my way out of this, pretend I hadn’t heard a thing?

  “I forgot that I wanted to wash Kyle’s T-shirts with the sheets. I’m heading back upstairs to get them,” I lied.

  Brody grinned, a gleeful expression filled with such malice that my blood chilled. I took a step backward, tripped on the bottom stair, and sat down hard, still clutching the sheets. “Nice try,” he scoffed. He raised his voice. “Dad, Jonesy, we got a problem.” Brody took the balled-up sheets from my hands and threw them on the floor. Seizing my elbows, he hauled me to my feet and shoved me ahead of him to the kitchen, where Mr. Allsop sat at the counter with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Somebody was snooping,” Brody announced.

  Dread curdled in my stomach.

  “What did she hear?” Mr. Allsop asked his son.

  “That Jonesy disposed of the body. That we plan to cull the herd.”

  “How unfortunate.” Mr. Allsop took a sip of his coffee. “This was not how we intended to introduce Sunny to our new order.”

  There was no way to defuse this powder keg, was there? I couldn’t bring myself to pretend that I sympathized with his new order. “You’re out of your minds if you think that people come with an arbitrary expiration date. If you believe that some people are more valuable than others. Your plans for the new world are barbaric.”

  That got a rise out of Mr. Allsop. He thumped his coffee cup on the counter. “Barbaric? On the contrary. We are in a life-and-death struggle for the survival of civilization. I’m trying to protect all the best that humanity has achieved over the past millennia. We can’t afford to be ruled by sentiment.”

  I could argue until I was blue in the face, and Elliot Allsop wouldn’t budge. The man had an agenda I wanted no part of. He’d amassed an army and an arsenal of weapons. What troops could I rally against him? He held all the power here. Retreat—even a dishonorable retreat—was my only option. Stick to the new plan. Kyle and I would take Mrs. B. and Ever and flee to Valhalla.

  “Listen,” I said. “There’s no way that Kyle and I can be a part of your new order. We’ve already decided to move on. We were planning to tell you that today. To tell you that we appreciate everything you’ve done for us, how you offered us a place with your organization, but we want to live somewhere quiet and out of the way.”

  “You planned to tell me that today?” Mr. Allsop dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

  “Yes.”

  “You were ready to walk away, to abrogate your responsibility to your class, to your upbringing?” Mr. Allsop said. “I thought better of you.”

  “See, Dad, I told you she has a shitty attitude,” Brody said. “Fat lot of good being nice to her did. Making her brownie sundaes.” He snorted. “She’s got poor Kyle wrapped around her little finger. She’s always hated me, and she probably poisoned Kyle against us.”

  “So I see,” his father said. “What do you propose we do with her?”

  “Let’s get real, Dad. We don’t want to kill her. Let’s put her in lockup. Let her stew in her own juices for a while. She’ll come around. And even if she doesn’t, we still have another shot with Kyle.”

  Mr. Allsop sighed, the bone-weary sigh of a man burdened with too many responsibilities. “And what will we tell Kyle about her disappearance?”

  Brody laughed. “That’s easy. Tell him that our favorite boogeymen took her.”

  Finn sauntered into the kitchen carrying a manila folder. “I got those reports you were asking for, Mr. Allsop.” He halted, probably cuing into the tension in the room. He glanced at me, frowning, then looked at Mr. Allsop. “What’s going on, boss?”

  “It seems we have a traitor in our midst.”

  Finn stiffened, his eyes darting from Mr. Allsop to Jonesy and then to Brody, before settling on me. “Sir?”

  “Miss McAllister overheard a conversation she had no business listening to. She finds our plans for the future of Boise objectionable. And apparently, she’s persuaded Kyle to abandon the city.”

  “Used her feminine wiles,” Brody said in a mocking tone.

  I shot the creep a dirty look but said nothing. I’d never throw Kyle under the bus, never tell them that leaving Boise was his idea.

  But I’d told Finn that. Shit. I glanced at the farm boy, waiting for him to rat Kyle out. He remained silent, although his jaw was clenched, like he was biting back words. The tension in his face suddenly eased. He scratched the back of his head and offered one of his slow, easy smiles. “Guess you just can’t tell about people, can you, sir. You think you can count on ’em, that they’ll do right, then they go and disappoint you. What do you want to do with her?”

  He was throwing me under the bus. That good-old-boy country charm was entirely bogus, a realization that pained me more than it should under the circumstances.

  “I liked you,” I said bitterly, glowering at him. I couldn’t believe that I’d invited the dick to come to Valhalla.

  “I liked you, too, darlin’. Too bad you turned on the boss.”

  I screwed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see his stupid face.

  “Jonesy,” Mr. Allsop said. “Take Finn and Brody and escort Miss McAllister to lockup.”

  Opening my eyes, I glanced frantically around the room. My gaze landed on a plate of cherry Danish on the counter, next to the coffee maker. Hildy must have been up at 6 a.m. to bake pastries. Now that I’d been deemed a traitor, fresh pastries were a thing of the past, weren’t they? My panic-addled brain fixated on nonsense. I choked back a hysterical laugh. No more pastries. I sobered. No more Mrs. B. and Ever. No more Kyle.

  Past Jonesy’s shoulder, Hildy stood in the hallway, her hand pressed over her mouth. Sympathy and horror reflected in her eyes. I gave a slight jerk of my head, encouraging her to retreat before Brody and Mr. Allsop tore their eyes from me and saw her. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed before slinking away.

  A small smile touched Brody’s lips as he watched me flail. Bastard. I lunged at the stove and grabbed the handle of a small cast-iron skillet. I had no delusions. There was no way I could take on four men with a frying pan. But the satisfaction of smashing it against Brody’s smug face—of watching blood spurt from his broken nose—that would keep me warm at night after they’d put me in lockup. Wherever that was. I raised the pan over my head and swung with all my might.

  A pair of strong arms interrupted its downward arc. Finn’s right hand captured my wrist, and his left arm snaked around my waist, hauling my back against his chest. “Drop the pan, sugar.” I defiantly tightened my grip on its handle. He twisted my wrist, forcing me to let go.

  “Ow.” I scowled, rubbing my wrist.

  “You gonna be good?” he demanded.

  “Screw you,” I spit out, stomping on his foot. Fat lot of good it did. My flimsy beaded sandal didn’t stand a chance against his heavy work boot.

  Finn chuckled. “Feisty little filly, aren’t you?”

  “Such histrionics are beneath you, Sunny,” Mr. Allsop said. “Jonesy, bring the SUV out front. You need to leave before Kyle gets back.”

  Kyle. They were taking me away from Kyle. Oh, God. Would I ever see him again? I slumped against Finn’s restraining arm, a trembli
ng taking hold deep in my bones. They planned to lie to him, to tell him that I’d been kidnapped. Kyle would be mad with worry. He’d probably turn to his old pal Brody and Brody’s dad to help rescue me. Fat lot of good that would do.

  Get a grip. Think.

  It sounded like they intended to give Kyle the benefit of the doubt, to assume that I’d led him astray with my dislike for Brody. That implied that they still hoped they could bring him around to their cause. At least he’d be free. As long as Kyle was free, there was hope.

  Five minutes later, Finn and Brody were hustling me into the back of an SUV. Mere minutes after that, Jonesy pulled up to a place familiar to everybody who grew up in Boise: the defunct Old Idaho Penitentiary, a former prison built in the late 1800s. Jonesy’s rough hands pulled me from the SUV. Brody led the way toward the women’s annex of the prison where two Allsop security men stood guard outside the entrance.

  A sturdy door was built into the tall stone wall that surrounded the complex. Inside the wall, dead grass and a few scraggly trees surrounded the Women’s Ward. When I visited the place as a child, the small stone building reminded me of a medieval castle, complete with crenellations and a battlement.

  I stumbled on the uneven walkway leading of the entrance to the Women’s Ward, and Jonesy caught my arm. How had I ever imagined the place as a castle? Now it resembled nothing more than a dismal hellhole, a place where the Allsops would hide me away from the world. Away from Kyle.

  The four of us stepped inside the small building. Sunlight from a skylight illuminated the central hall. Jonesy shoved me down onto a bench.

  “Sit,” he ordered while he fumbled in his pocket for a set of keys.

  I turned my head, surveying the place. It hadn’t changed since my school field trip. Seven narrow prison cells surrounded the hall. Instead of bars, a grid of metal straps and mesh covered the doors to the cells. Depressing mint-green paint covered the walls. If I remembered correctly, each cell held a bunk and a toilet. God knows if the toilets worked.

  “Sunny?”

  I jerked at the sound of a familiar voice. Dr. Sara Russo peered at me from inside a prison cell. Her face was pale and her eyes exhausted.

  “Sara!” Ignoring Jonesy’s order, I jumped up and ran to my friend. “Are you all right?”

  “Rocco’s here, too,” she said quickly as Brody bore down on me.

  He dragged me away from the cell door and pushed me back onto the bench. “Sit means sit, sweetheart.”

  I glared at him. “You,” I sputtered. “You kidnapped Sara and Rocco. You attacked the Haven.”

  “Well, yeah.” Brody shrugged. “If we’re going to make Boise our center of operations, it makes sense to get rid of any groups that might stand in our way. We dressed some of our men up like Nampa Boys and made sure they were seen around town. We hit the Haven and the Nampa Boys at the same time, and let the survivors blame each other while we rounded up the stragglers. Thanks for leading Finn to the rest of the scavengers, by the way.”

  Finn grinned and patted the pocket holding the spiral notebook. Bastard.

  I swallowed back the guilt that threatened to swamp me. Brody was chatty and I had more questions. “But Kyle was there when you captured the Nampa Boy. The one who said his group took Sara and Rocco. That they escaped.”

  “Daniel? He works for us. Earned himself a nice steak dinner for taking a punch to the face.”

  “Why?”

  “We needed Kyle to stop searching for the doctor. Telling him they escaped did the trick.”

  I clutched my head, overwhelmed, trying to put all the pieces together. “You couldn’t have known that Kyle and I would show up after you attacked the Haven.”

  “You’re right. We had no fucking clue,” he said cheerfully. “But Dad and I always liked Kyle. Dad wants to put the right kind of people in positions of power in the organization. People like us. We still have hopes for Kyle. You were always a long shot. Didn’t pay off, but we tried.”

  “Then why keep me alive?”

  Brody smirked, that patented douchebag grin that always raised my hackles. “The flu took more women than men. Dad never wastes assets. Every woman of childbearing age is valuable. Why would we kill you? Makes more sense to breed you. The new world could use a passel of Brody juniors, don’t you think?”

  My jaw dropped and I gaped at the man.

  Nope. Hell to the nope.

  “Later, babe.” Chuckling to himself, Brody strolled out of the Women’s Ward. Jonesy and that rat fink Finn followed closely behind.

  I freaked out and tore apart my cell looking for something I could use to defend myself. At first I thought that the metal box springs held promise, but my bare hands couldn’t pry apart the metal strips. The porcelain lid to the toilet tank proved to be my best bet. It was heavy, and if I hit him just right, it could crack his skull. Would he close his eyes and hold still while I took a swing at him? No, he would not. As an offensive weapon, it sucked, but it was the best I could come up with under the circumstances. I hid the toilet lid under a blanket on the pathetic excuse for a bunk, then took a deep breath. Knowing I had some kind of plan—lame though it might be—allowed me to calm down enough to think.

  I walked over to the cell door and gave it a good shake. It rattled, but the padlock held.

  “We’ve tried. There’s no way out,” Rocco called from a cell across the hall from mine. His tall frame filled the small doorway. “The windows don’t open and they’re barred outside.”

  “They give us food and water twice a day.” Sara was in the cell next to mine. I could hear her voice, but I couldn’t see her. “The guards always come in twos. One of them stays in the hall with a gun trained inside the cell.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, shaking the door again.

  “Where’s Kyle?” Sara asked.

  “He’s free for now. The Allsops want to recruit him to their side, so they’re still making nice. They gave up on me and put me in here.”

  “They’re hoping that Rocco and I will agree to work for them, too. They said a doctor and a nurse are valuable assets, so they’ll give us time to come around to their way of thinking.”

  And I was still in the land of the living because Brody wanted to sleep with me. Because he wanted to make babies for the post-apocalyptic world. I shuddered. Tonight was supposed to be something memorable and wonderful, my first night with Kyle. Instead, I’d be listening for the jangle of a key in a lock, wondering when Brody would decide to make his move. He might station one of his men outside the door—with a gun trained on me—to make sure I cooperated. Maybe it would be Finn. Pain sliced across my heart again. How had I managed to so completely misjudge the man?

  “The guards said that the Haven was destroyed.” Rocco’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Is it true? Did they kill our friends?”

  “While you were at your meeting with the Nampa Boys, Allsop’s men hit the place. They killed Margie and Ed and everybody inside. They took everything, including the ledger, so they know where all our clients live.”

  “Fuckers.” Rocco threw himself against the door. The hinges held. He punched the door then stepped back, growling in frustration.

  “The Allsop men were waiting for us when we got to the meeting with the Nampa Boys,” Sara said. “It was all a setup. They intercepted our message. They killed Gavin in cold blood.” Her voice broke. “He was kneeling on the ground with his hands in the air.”

  “Bastards laughed and told us their men were attacking the Nampa Boys headquarters, too,” Rocco added. “Said they’d get the word out to any survivors in Nampa that the Haven had broken the truce.”

  “You heard what Brody said. They want to get rid of any competition,” I said. “Blame the violence on the Nampa Boys and the Haven. Ride into town like heroes promising to restore law and order. Then they’ll take over and implement the agenda for their new order.”

  “What agenda is that?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t know many of t
he details, but I did overhear plans to stop giving food and water to anybody over sixty-five. They called it ‘culling the herd.’”

  “Jesus...” Sara cried, horrified.

  “I thought they were good guys at first,” I confessed. “That’s why I helped one of Allsop’s men compile a list of all the scavengers. I turned our people over to them.” The knowledge was bitter acid and the guilt would gnaw at me forever.

  “Oh, sweetie. We know that you’d never betray them on purpose,” Sara said.

  True, but not much of a consolation.

  Sara and Rocco fell silent. I whirled around and paced to the far end of my cell. I’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but I felt the walls closing in on me. The cell was so narrow that the fingertips of my outstretched arms could touch opposite walls. Stepping on the toilet seat, I ran my fingers along the window frame. If I managed to shatter the thick pane, could I wriggle through? I pressed my eyes to the opaque glass and could just make out the exterior bars Rocco had mentioned. Damn.

  No more than a mile or two separated me from Kyle, but it might as well have been a million miles for all the good proximity did us. Had Mr. Allsop told Kyle that I was dead? Right now, at this very minute, was Kyle coming to grips with that lie, absorbing it, making it part of his inner reality? If so, the man who blamed himself for his friend’s death from the flu mania would surely think that my so-called death was his fault, too. That he’d failed me. I’d become another nightmare—like Miles—a specter that haunted his sleep and stole his joy.

  No. I pounded both fists on the unforgiving cement walls.

  I’m here. I’m alive.

  I plopped down onto the bunk. The ancient bed frame squeaked and shifted under my weight. A thin, ratty old mattress—one that must have been left behind when the prison shuttered in the 1970s—provided next to no cushioning against the metal springs. It was beyond me how Sara and Rocco managed to sleep in this place. Not that I anticipated sleeping. Not with Brody liable to show up at any moment.

  “Think!” I hissed, rocking back and forth, an old soothing mechanism I hadn’t resorted to since I was a child.