Page 65 of Heart of the Sun

Tuck gave a small nod and then began rising, Charlie and I following suit. We all raised our hands in the air. “Now turn around and face me.”Oh God, oh God. We were going to be shot by the men tossing kids into a truck and carting them to these fenced-off warehouses. My true nightmare was about to begin. I clenched my eyes shut and turned to face the maniacs who were threatening us. With the light behind the fence, I couldn’t see the three men’s faces, just their shapes. They were big and muscular, and they had rifles that could mow us down if we tried to run.

“Hello, sir,” I squeaked. “Sirs, that is. We only—”

“As I live and breathe. Tucker Mattice? Is that you?”

My head whipped toward Tuck, and he shielded his eyes, squinting toward the biggest of the men who was standing in the middle. “Hosea Hardy?”

What the hell?

“Are you shittin’ me?” The man apparently named Hosea lowered his gun,and then gestured for the other men to do the same before he took a step toward Tuck. He let out a gruff laugh and then he grabbed Tuck, wrapping his arm around him as he gave him one of those man hugs that looked more like an attack than anything. But Tuck didn’t seem to mind, his laugh relaying delighted surprise.

“How the hell are you here?” Tuck asked.

“Man, I got transferred to Leavenworth, remember? It’s not far from here.”

“Yeah, hell yeah, I remember, but I thought you had a few years left.”

“I did. Come on in and I’ll tell you about it.” Hosea paused, scrutinizing me and Charlie, who were standing there frozen with our mouths partially open. “These two okay?”

Tuck’s eyes landed on Charlie for a moment, and I thought he might throw him to the wolves, which honestly, maybe I couldn’t have blamed him for, but Tuck just nodded, and then Hosea put his arm around Tuck’s neck and we all took up behind them, the man’s deep laugh floating to us as he and Tuck chatted.

They walked us back to the front gate, where another man with a rifle opened the latch and waved us through. The lights were a little brighter in here, the first illumination other than the moon or stars that I’d seen in six days, and I blinked around, trying to understand what this was. The warehouse buildings had obviously already been here, but along with those were a few large tents, and a row of portable toilets far back to our left. We followed Hosea and the other two through a door of one of the warehouses and walked into a large open space with what looked like fifty cots or so on one side, and cafeteria-style tables with attached benches set up on the other.

“Come on, you hungry? There’s some food left.”

As if responding to the word, my stomach let out a loud growl. Tuck’s head turned in response to the noise, and I gave him a weak smile.We sat down at the end of a table, and Hosea stepped away and said something to a woman standing nearby who nodded and walked away. Hosea came back and took a seat on the opposite side of the table where Tuck was sitting and turned to face us. “Who are your friends, Tuck?”

“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.”

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