CHAPTER 53

Colin went back to his bunk in dormitory number two and put his head down gently on the pillow. There was a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. His jaw and his knees and tailbone were all sore, but it was his pride that hurt the most. He let his gaze wander around the large, open barracks. Sunlight slanted in through the windows on the north wall, touching the white sheets on the empty beds around him, lending the room a sepulchral aspect. How could this have happened to him? He looked back over the events of the last few months and it was a complete mystery to him. He’d been on the verge of inheriting one of the largest fortunes in America. Now, he’d lost one of his oldest friends and had been reduced to fighting a two-bit Florida peckerwood over a damn blind girl. It just didn’t seem possible that he could have fallen so far.

He rolled over and slept fitfully for the remainder of the day. When he awoke, the sky was plum-colored and there was a faint odor of wood smoke in the air from the barbecue pits down in the common area around the pavilion.

His anger had subsided a little, but it still grated on his nerves the way he’d been outplayed and abused by Billy Kline. The barrack’s wooden floors were cold, and so he slipped on his shoes before he went to the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face. There were bruises at the corner of his mouth and on the point of his cheek and around his right eye. He tried to think of a way to hide the injuries but knew it was pointless. Even an idiot would be able to tell that he’d had his ass handed to him in a fistfight.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror and a thought that had been going around in his head since he lay down came back to him.

Michael Barnes. He was the solution to this.

In very little time at all, the man had become one of Jasper Sewell’s favorites, and though nothing was ever said officially in front of the whole Grasslands community, it was generally acknowledged that Michael Barnes was the head of internal security at the compound. Ever since the morning that the infected had broken through the main gate, he’d had Jasper’s ear. If there was some way, through Barnes, to heap Jasper’s asperity onto Billy Kline, then he could remove his rival without lifting a finger. It would be the best kind of revenge.

Yes, indeed, the best kind.

Later that night, after most of the compound had retired indoors to get out of the cold, Colin knocked softly on Michael Barnes’s office door and poked his head inside.

Barnes sat behind his desk, reading some kind of report and making notes.

Colin said, “Uh, excuse me—” He was uncertain how to address Barnes, and so he added, “Sir?”

Barnes didn’t look up.

“Uh, is it okay if I talk to you for a second? It’s kind of important.”

“I’m busy,” Barnes said. He didn’t bother to look up.

“I know you are, sir. But this is important.”

Barnes put down his pen and looked at Colin. Barnes was lean, severe, all hard angles. The ligature of his neck stood out like cables beneath his skin. Everything about him suggested a wild animal waiting to strike.

“What’s your name?”

“Colin Wyndham, sir.”

Barnes seemed to be searching his mental Rolodex. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re from Los Angeles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You came here with a group from Florida.”

“Well, yes, sir. But we only hooked up with them as we were heading through Kansas. I’m not with them.”

Barnes just looked at him.

“It’s actually them I wanted to talk to you about. Can I sit down, please?”

He made a gesture toward the chair opposite Barnes.

Barnes didn’t answer, and Colin didn’t push it. He suddenly felt very small, very afraid. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought it would be.

“I think a couple of the people in the Florida group are spreading lies about Jasper.”

Barnes’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of lies?”

Colin thought of Billy Kline with his girl, and the words came pouring out.

Michael Barnes spent the next two days keeping an eye on Ed Moore and Billy Kline. His experience as a cop had taught him that people never change. Reformation was a pipe dream. You start out as a piece of shit, you’ll remain a piece of shit no matter what the rest of the world tries to do on your behalf. Billy Kline was a car burglar, a thief, and in Barnes’s estimation, thieves were like sex offenders and drug addicts. They were broken on a fundamental level. The only cure was a bullet.

But he was surprised about Ed Moore, the retired U.S. Deputy Marshal. The man had been a cop for thirty-five years, a marine before that. If anybody could appreciate the way Jasper had stamped a sense of order onto a world that made absolutely no sense, it should have been Ed Moore. Didn’t he have everything he needed here? What was wrong with him that he couldn’t see that?

The screen door opened behind him and a young man of about seventeen came out. Jasper had his arm around the boy’s shoulder. They both looked disheveled, the hair on their brows matted with sweat. Jasper was wearing an enormous grin, and as he stepped outside, he breathed deeply of the cool morning air.

The boy looked docile, and he wouldn’t look Barnes in the eye.

“You’re doing well, Thomas,” Jasper said. “Very well. What did you think of today?”

The boy mumbled something that sounded like he said that he liked it very much.

“Fine, fine,” Jasper said, squeezing the boy’s shoulders tightly. “Very fine. I’m looking forward to sharing another session with you soon, Thomas. Can you come by tomorrow morning, say, just before breakfast?”

“I don’t know if—”

“You come by tomorrow morning, Thomas. I’ll see you here at seven, okay?”

The boy nodded. Then he slipped out of Jasper’s embrace and trotted back toward the center of the village, limping slightly.

“Fine boy,” Jasper said. He stared out over the prairie and breathed deeply again. “I’ve hardly seen you the last two days, Michael. What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been looking into some things.”

“I see,” he said. “You’ve found out something?”

Barnes nodded.

“Well, I guess you better come in, then. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”