A pair of heavy machine guns opened up from each end of the town’s riverfront and the organized strafing of the pirate fleet became much more erratic.

  Marco’s taunts and threats were lost in the chaos as the water began to explode around him. More members of The Penance appeared with shoulder-fired rockets and drew down on Marco’s fleet with deadly precision. It was all well executed, and within minutes the pirate threat had been eliminated. Half sunken hulls of Marco’s fleet bobbed in the Tennessee. Your Mom had made one more pass and taken blistering shots from many men as it sped upriver. It did not return for another pass.

  “We’re going to need more people,” Eve said after the gunfire finally stopped.

  “We’re going to need an army,” Jerry agreed. “Let’s get back to the Boomer. We need to figure this out.”

  They hadn’t heard them approach. They most likely used the fighting for cover, but even at that, the small group of raiders were eerily quiet. They stared at Jerry and Eve from behind optic sights and horrific war paint. Besides what they had done to themselves with piercings and horribly cliché tribal tattoos, the men looked fit and fierce. And, as there were several of them, Jerry and Eve set down their own weapons and let the raiders take them captive.

  Outside of the graffiti work down by the river, the former town of Clifton seemed almost untouched by the end of the world. The shops along Main Street looked as if they had never been looted. The storefronts still had glass in their windows and some still had sales posters inside and stock left on the shelves.

  Jerry and Eve’s wrists were bound, and the couple was marched through town. The gang members remained calm. The post-apocalyptic perp walk was usually accompanied by howling mobs that hurled trash and curses at the prisoners. These gang members just watched in silence. There was an occasional spit, but it was directed at the ground instead of at either of the prisoners.

  As they moved into an area of town with more light, the cracks in the Penance veneer became even stranger. Raiding was a young man’s game. Cults were as well. Even though the wasteland tended to put the years on a body faster than before, it was easy to see that the men and women of the Penance weren’t adolescents attracted by the anarchy or irreverence of the hairstyles. Many were mid to late thirties and looked more than a little uncomfortable in the leather and rubber getup that many of them wore.

  Their captors walked them up Main Street and through the front door of the town’s police station. They had no opportunity to talk, but they were both undoubtedly thinking the same thing. Had the others gotten away?

  That question was answered when they were led into the holding cells. Andy, Caine and Lana were tied to chairs in the center of the room with a hood over each of their heads. They may have been gagged as well. They all sat quietly.

  The dogs weren’t. He could hear all three of them barking in a distant room. Even Fidget barked. It wasn’t likely that he was smart enough to remain silent; it was more likely that he was so upset about the current situation that he forgot he could talk and reverted to barking.

  Their guard addressed another raider in the room. “We found these two in the reeds across the river.”

  The raider studied them both. He looked at Jerry for an uncomfortably long time before snorting. “This one?”

  The guard nodded and the raider rolled his eyes.

  They were then hooded and tied to chairs like the others. This is how they stayed for at least an hour. He did his best to listen, but there was nothing to hear—no conversation to interpret, no whispers to eavesdrop on. Just the dogs barking, somewhere else in the building.

  When his hood was finally removed, he found himself staring at a new face. This face was older than the others and therefore looked even more ridiculous than the rest in the makeup and metal. From the look on the man’s face, he wasn’t happy wearing the war paint.

  He let Jerry size him up before pulling up a chair and taking a seat across from his captive.

  At this distance, Jerry could better see the man’s face. It was old. Older than most of the ones he had seen around the town. A nose ring had never looked so out of place as it did on this man’s face.

  “Comfortable?” The man asked after a long grunt.

  “Are you?” Jerry responded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face less thrilled with itself.”

  “You’re not in any position to be making jokes.”

  “It’s not a joke. Did they have to hold you down to get that thing in your lip? It’s definitely not there because you want it to be.”

  “The Penance⁠—”

  “Drop it.” Jerry leaned back in his chair as far as the cuffs would allow. “You’re not a cult. I don’t think you’re even much of a gang. So why don’t you tell me what you are, really?”

  The old man stared hard. The look was obviously an overused tool in his toolbox, and he expected it to be more effective than it was.

  Jerry wasn’t giving in. He was expected to squirm and backpedal, but he held the old man’s gaze. “Who are you?”

  “We’re—”

  “No, you’re not,” Jerry stopped him. “You’re all over the place thematically. Elements of a cult. Bits of a gang. And you’re far too polished to be either.”

  “We are the sons of⁠—”

  “No. No you’re not.”

  The old man wasn’t used to people speaking to him this way and it was starting to show in his face. “We⁠—”

  “Nope. You’re not. You’re militia at the very least. But I seriously doubt anyone could have remained so ignorant up here. No. I think you’ve been hiding under a rock.”

  The hard expression finally cracked, and a hard smile appeared on his face. “Let’s say we have been hiding under a rock.” The raider brought his hand to his face and pulled the metal stud from his lip and the ring from his nose. They weren’t even real piercings. Just magnetic fakes. He dropped them in his pocket. “Now we’re back and we’re looking for an old friend of ours.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?” Jerry said. “I meet a lot of people on the river.”

  “The Librarian.”

  Caine gasped and pulled a bit of the hood into his mouth. He sputtered and spit it out.

  The man’s eyes never left Jerry’s.

  Jerry gave nothing away. “Well, I sure don’t know him.”

  The old man smiled. “We think you do.”

  Caine’s hood started to inflate and deflate quickly as he began to panic. “Oh my God, you guys. You’ve got the wrong—oh, I’m so relieved. This is just a misunderstanding— I’m not really the Librarian. I just play him, you know. In the movies. I’m not him and we can go! Right?”

  Jerry heard a door open behind him, but he kept his eyes locked on the old man’s.

  “This one?” The old man asked whoever had entered. “Really?”

  Dalton stepped into view and smiled at Jerry. “That’s him.”

  “I’m not him, guys,” Caine whined. “I just play him in movies!”

  Dalton smiled. “You’re a hard man to find, Librarian.”

  “Mr. Dalton,” Jerry said with a nod. “You made good time getting here.”

  “I took a helicopter. I told you people like to get places fast, Librarian.”

  “You know me, Mr. Dalton. My name is Mike. I’m just the boatman.”

  “What do you say,” Dalton chuckled and made air quotes, “Andy?”

  Andy stood up from his chair and pulled the hood from his head. “Oh, it’s him. Isn’t it, Janet?”

  The woman he had known as Laura entered the room. “It’s him. He’s a really nice man.”

  Jerry smiled at her. “Mrs. Ketchum. It’s good to see you up and around so soon after your recent, violent murder.”

  There was a surprised chorus from the three still in hoods. “Laura?”

  The older woman removed Eve’s hood and smiled. “Hello, dear. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

  Eve looked at Jerry. “A lot of things are beginning to make sense. Her combat medicine. Andy being a hell of a shot.”

  Jerry nodded and picked up where she left off. “How stupid their gang is.”

  Andy laughed at that. “I have to admit we have been under a rock. We hired a consultant to help us get the aesthetic right. He apparently steered us wrong.”

  “The hell I did!” A door crashed open and a man in a mohawk, a kilt and short one nipple stormed across the room. “I captured the look perfectly. It’s just that this dipshit doesn’t appreciate it.”

  “Animal?” Caine asked through the mask. “Animal? Is that you?”

  The angry consultant pointed at the bound man. “Who is that?”

  Caine rolled his head since rolling his eyes would do no good. “It’s Thomas Caine!”

  Animal was genuinely surprised. “Oh hey, Caine, what are you doing here?”

  “Animal was a consultant on the third Librarian movie,” Caine explained from under the hood to whoever might be in the room.

  “And one of the stars,” Animal insisted.

  “Well, a stunt player,” Caine argued.

  Animal took a deep breath and hissed, “You never could share the glory, Caine.”

  The old man stood up from his seat and took a towel from a nearby subordinate. “Enough of this nonsense,” he barked at the room, and began wiping the makeup from his face. “I knew this stuff was ridiculous.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Animal said. “I found the Librarian.”

  “I’m telling you guys!” Caine pleaded. “I’m not the real Librarian.”

  “Shut him up.” The old man’s wishes were immediately granted as two men dragged Caine’s chair out of the room. The old man turned his attention back to Jerry.

  “I’m sorry, but you didn’t find the Librarian.” Jerry said.

  “So you’re saying you’re not him?” Animal said with a fair amount of sarcasm and spit.

  Jerry shook his head. “I heard he was dead. Died in the Falls.”

  Eve backed him up. “Everyone knows that.”

  “You’re him,” Dalton said softly. “We’ve had our suspicions for a little while now. But we wanted to be sure.”

  “My name’s Mike, Mr. Dalton. I drive the boat.”

  Dalton’s smile faded. “Jerry, my name’s Captain Willis of the United States Government. And we need your help.”

  26

  The next time Jerry saw the old man, he had lost the costume and was dressed as a colonel in the United States Army.

  “Yeah. That looks more like you,” Jerry said. He was still trying to rub the feeling back into his wrists from the cuffs. They had cut the other passengers free, but only he earned a special ride in the old church bus.

  “The pageantry is unfortunately necessary,” the old man said, acknowledging the comment.

  “All this to find the Librarian?” Jerry had yet to admit a thing, and the old man wasn’t having it.

  “Not everything is about you, Mike,” Dalton said, with extra sarcasm on the Mike. “The Penance charade, unfortunately, is necessary at this time. We needed a way to operate without being identified.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen your operations. A lot more bodies than most of the costume parties I’ve been to.”

  “You can’t believe everything you see,” the woman he’d known as Laura said as she entered the bus.

  “Or hear,” Jerry added.

  The man called Andy followed behind her. Jerry wasn’t sure if that was his name or not. They had both changed out of the clothes they had brought on the Boomer and were dressed in much more formal attire. Andy wore a fine suit that had never seen a day of wasteland dust, and it looked like Laura was a champion of bringing back the pantsuit.

  Jerry pointed at Andy. “I knew you looked familiar. That suit helps. You were a congressman?”

  He nodded. “I’m a senator now.”

  “Congratulations. From which blown-up state?”

  “It doesn’t quite work that way anymore,” Andy said with the smile of a politician.

  “That’s an understatement,” Jerry said.

  The Colonel made an apology that didn’t sound much like he was sorry at all. “We regret any confusion or discomfort this charade has caused you. Unfortunately, at the moment, it was unavoidable.”

  “Well, sure. Can you imagine how upset people would be to find out that their elected officials have been sitting around all these years with their thumbs up their asses?”

  Captain Willis smiled. “We’ve been doing a little more than that.”

  “Well, you’ve been making donuts.”

  The bus pulled out into the street and drove through the town. The farther they got from the riverside, the more the Penance veneer faded. By the time they reached the edge of town, the colorful characters were replaced with soldiers performing their duties. The bus eventually turned down a side road that took them to the fence line of a former corrections facility.

  A medium security facility, it looked less like a fortress and more like a business complex that made hurricane wire. It hardly seemed a fitting place to hide an army.

  A rolling steel door met them at the end of their drive. It thundered as men inside the building opened it up and waved the bus through.

  Jerry was expecting a large garage, but the bus pitched down and began descending an impossibly long ramp that took them deep underground.

  Ahead, a bunker door stood open. It was several feet thick, and the retracted bolts were the size of a tree trunk. The bus drove another several hundred feet beyond the entrance and stopped.

  The Colonel stood up. “Now, if you’ll please come with us.”

  “Are we going to meet the Morlocks?” Jerry asked.

  “This is serious, son,” the Colonel stated.

  “I’m sure it is. Everything is, down at Fraggle Rock.”

  Andy put a hand on his shoulder. “We want to show you who we really are.”

  The tour of the facilities began with a bowl of the freshest strawberries he had ever eaten. It was accompanied by some sparkling water and a viewing of the Bill of Rights.

  Dalton pointed to the aged parchment behind the inch-thick glass. “One of the original copies. This entire facility was built to ensure that the words on that document still mean something.”

  They escorted him through the facility. There seemed to be no end to the corridors and chambers. Hydroponic systems grew the strawberries and other fresh food. A shop kept the vehicles and machinery in operable condition. There was even an underground lake that fed fresh water to the survivors.

  There was also a room that replicated the look of the House Chamber. Several elected officials had been secreted away before the end of it all and now served as the core body of the civilian government. The military presence continued on as before and ensured that everyone remained safe.

  The facilities had corridors filled with residences and barracks, which were in turn filled with men and women in uniform. For every person in Clifton, there were at least five times as many here in the bunker.

  And tanks—they had lots and lots of tanks. The armory was cavernous. Tanks, armored personal carriers, even attack helicopters had been stored away just in case the worst happened.

  By the end of the tour, it was impossible to deny who they were. Even the greatest SFX artist couldn’t have put on a show like this without a superpower’s budget.

  “You’ve got me convinced,” Jerry said. “So, the only question is where the hell have you been?”

  The Colonel frowned and cast a disapproving look at the others. “Our civilian government didn’t feel the time was right.”

  The Senator summed up what was obviously a much more complex answer. “We weren’t ready.”

  Janet stepped into the conversation with a smile. “We’ve trusted you with our secret here because we need your help. We’re ready to return to the surface.”

  “It looks to me like you’ve got everything you could need.” Jerry’s head was swimming with what he had seen. Aside from the tanks and it all being underground, it was normal.

  “Not quite,” Captain Willis said. “We realize that we’ve been gone too long. We were supposed to be there for the country. But we weren’t. There is no end to the good we can do now, but we aren’t fooling ourselves into thinking that anyone will be happy to see us after all this time.”

  “I don’t know. How many of those strawberries do you have?”

  There wasn’t any laughter to be had in the room, so he continued.

  “People want to go back. And I think they’re more than willing at this point. I think they’ll be happy to see the stars and stripes again.”

  “We’re glad you feel that way,” Laura said. “And that’s where we’d like your help.”

  “I’m just a boatman, Mrs. Ketchum.”

  The Colonel laughed. “Hell, son. You’re the closest thing this country has had to a bona fide folk hero. There’s not a person out there that hasn’t heard of the Librarian. Crossing the country dropping good deeds like some kind of ass-kicking Johnny Appleseed.”

  Andy’s political smile faded, and his face got serious. “I know where you’re at. It’s written all over your boat. The Boomer?”

  “I thought it sounded cool,” Jerry said with a shrug. “Maybe a little ironic considering the only way I’d ever have a boat like that is if the world blew up.”

  “You didn’t name it for the captain of the Samuel Enderby?” Andy asked. “I thought you might have.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” he said.

  “I see,” Andy said. “It just strikes me as odd. Captain Boomer was Melville’s sane version of Ahab. The captain who, despite losing a limb to the great whale, decided that going after Moby Dick was a fool’s errand.”

  “He sounds like a sensible man,” Jerry said.

  “He lived,” Andy said as a way of agreeing. “But who the hell remembers Captain Boomer?”

  “You did.”

  “I had to look it up,” Andy admitted. “We’re not asking you to kill the whale, Jerry. We’ll do that. We just want you to let everyone know that we’re here to help. Assure everyone that we’ve got their best interests at heart.”