Chapter 35
Mrs. Hickman was standing on the front porch when the squad cars pulled into her driveway at four in the morning. She was wearing her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and her hair was rolled up in curlers. She ran down the steps to greet her son.
“Mom, stop!” Jonas tried to wriggle free from her bear hug as she kissed his forehead and cheeks.
“Let me look at you,” she said as she held him at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Where’s your father?”
Jonas shrugged. “I think he went to work, but I’m not sure.”
“And you’re not hurt?”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“Oh, pishposh,” she said, waving her arms. “Now the lot of you need to get inside before you catch cold. Go on now.”
She ushered them into the dining room where there was enough bacon, eggs, and pancakes for everyone to have seconds and even thirds.
“We just want to go to bed,” Jonas said.
“Not until you’ve eaten something,” Mrs. Hickman insisted. She filled each of their glasses with freshly squeezed orange juice and heaped food onto their plates. “Eat up now. All of you.”
They ate in relative silence, each of them too tired to argue and too nervous to sleep, knowing that both Jonas and Mrs. Hickman were actually Thule. Colt could tell Jonas was nervous since he refused to look anybody in the eye, and Pierce spent most of the meal scowling at him from across the table.
When they were finished, Danielle started to clear the plates, but Mrs. Hickman took them out of her hands.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “You’re our guests. And besides, you must be exhausted after all you’ve been through. Jonas, why don’t you give your friends a tour? We have plenty of beds if anyone wants to take a nap before the vote tonight.”
“Nobody wants a tour,” Jonas said.
“Go on now,” Mrs. Hickman said. “Just do as I say and then you can sleep.”
“Fine.” Jonas rolled his eyes before he led them through the house, showing them the unfinished basement, the main living area, and the second floor, where there were three bedrooms and an office. “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to go in there,” he said as he shut the door—but not before Colt spotted a plaque that declared that Dr. Zachariah Hickman was a member of the Tesla Society.
There was another flight of stairs that took them up to an attic that had been converted into a media room, complete with a sixty-inch television, surround-sound speakers, a mini-fridge stocked with soda, an old couch, and some beanbag chairs.
“You got any video games?” Grey asked.
“Don’t you want to sleep?”
Grey shrugged. “Maybe later.”
“Help yourself.” Jonas walked over and opened a cabinet that had row after row of titles to choose from, on three different gaming systems.
“If I had a room like this, I’d never leave my house,” Grey said as he grabbed Zombie Exterminator 3 off the shelf. “Anyone want to kill some undead?”
“I’m in!” Ethan plopped down on a beanbag chair.
Stacy shrugged. “It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”
“We got room for one more,” Grey said.
“You’re kidding, right?” Pierce said. “You’re going to sit around here and kill zombies while we’re trapped in a town full of Thule?” He turned to Colt. “You’re our squad leader. Don’t you have a plan or something?”
“Take a look out the window,” Colt said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it.”
Pierce walked over and peered through slats in the blinds. An unmarked sedan was parked on the gravel beneath a streetlamp, and even though it was partially hidden behind a tree, he could see two figures sitting inside, one with a set of binoculars and the other smoking a cigarette. “Who are they?”
“Deputies,” Colt said. “They’re here to make sure we don’t wander off.”
“So what?” Pierce said. “We can’t just sit here.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“How about I get some sleep while you guys take first watch,” Oz said as he stretched out on a beanbag chair.
“Danielle told me that when Koenig tried to open a gateway at the Trident Biotech facilities back in Arizona, you used a computer virus to shut it down,” Jonas said. “What if I could get inside the server room at the power plant? Do you think you could do it again?”