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Hudson spent the first two days after being rescued in Mary May’s attic.
Well- it was the Spread Eagle’s attic, where Mary May kept a lot of her stock. But in light of the multiple buildings and homes that had been destroyed, she’d put some mattresses down and set it up as a sleeping area for those who’d been displaced; Jerome had done the same with the church.
Hope County was not strictly confined to the valley in the center of the mountains; it extended for some miles past the mountain barriers on all sides. On one hand, if Hudson lived in the valley, she’d be able to go home now instead of living in the local bar’s attic. Of course, if her apartment complex was located in the valley, it probably would have been destroyed in whatever clusterfuck of a battle had taken place in Fall’s End a few weeks back.
That was a hell of a thought: Assuming that she was all alive when this was all over, Hudson would be able to return to her apartment and find it untouched, like nothing happened. She imagined it would be a surreal and uncomfortable experience.
Oh well.
Right now, she didn’t need to think about shit.
Hudson lay with her head pressed into her pillow. It was difficult to breathe with her chest pressed up against the thin mattress, but honestly, it was an acceptable trade-off if it meant she could block most of the world out. She could hear other people in the bar below, she could feel sunlight on her back from the window above her head, and that was all she needed.
“You’re gonna get the sun right in your eyes in the morning,” Rook had yawned the other night as they’d settled down to sleep.
“That’s fine,” Hudson had muttered. She was never going to complain about the sun ever again. Aside from the torture, the worst thing about being in John’s bunker was the terrifying thought that she might die down there without ever seeing the sun again. It was a bit of suffering that she wasn’t sure John had even thought of; the man had been insanely fixed on the idea of ‘turning’ them to devout members of Eden’s Gate, and she was sure if she’d asked he would have assured her whole-heartedly that she would see the sun again.
(After she’d confessed her sins and repented, of course.)
Now Hudson lay face-down on the mattress, head pressed into the pillow, dead-weight. Occasionally she jerked up if a door slammed, or gunfire sounded in the distance- but as always, when nothing really came of it, she would sink back down and close her eyes, shutting her mind down in a way she hadn’t been able to since the night before the arrest. It took a few days before anything beyond eating and sleeping didn’t make her want to cry.
From there, she should have guessed that it wouldn’t be long before people started bothering her.
Hudson awoke to something touching her.
It was fortunate that she hadn’t been completely asleep, that she’d still been in touch with the fact that she was safe and not in John Seed’s bunker, else she would have reacted much more violently to the fact that something was poking her in the back.
“Uh-”
“Shh.”
Hudson rolled over and opened her eyes.
Mary May and Rook were standing beside her. Mary May had a pole in hand- presumably what she’d been poking Hudson with- and an uncharacteristically wide smile on her face. Rook looked apologetic. “Hey, she’s alive!” Mary May crowed, withdrawing the pole and tapping it on the ground. “Thought you mighta just melted into the floor or something.”
“Did you need something?” Hudson rasped, rubbing her eyes.
“I did!” Mary May said brightly, lightly tossing the pole up into the air and catching it again. “You get on up and come find me downstairs when you’re ready. Pastor Jerome’s got a job for the two of you.”
And then she turned and hopped down the stairs, neat as you please.
“Sorry,” Rook said, cringing and slowly coming to sit beside Hudson. “I tried to stop her, but, uh… Mary May’s scary.”
“No shit,” Hudson snorted as she sat up. “She manages a bar, Rook. She’s gotta be scary or the Spread Eagle would have been burned down by now.” She pressed both palms over her eyes, staying still and silent for a moment.
I can do this.
I can.
Hudson took a deep breath, and then removed her hands.
“What does the Pastor want?’
“Haven’t the faintest.”
[---]
“There’s a defector at Silver Lake Trailer Park.”
“From our side, or theirs?” Rook asked, brow furrowed.
“He’s from Eden’s Gate.” The Pastor shrugged. “It was only a matter of time. John’s death has made many followers question the divine sanction of their actions, and this young man has decided he wants out.”
“Because he’s had an epiphany, or because he realized he’s on the losing side?” Hudson asked flatly.
“I don’t know,” Jerome said, utterly unfazed by her implications, “And frankly, Deputy, I don’t care. We have to be open to forgiveness with our enemies, or we’re no better than Eden’s Gate.”
Hudson sniffed and shook her head. “I’ll keep the idiot alive. Don’t ask me to forgive him just yet.”
“That’s a fair trade, Deputy.”
The ride to the trailer park was surreal: Hudson had gone from being trapped in a bunker for weeks on end to willingly confining herself to Mary May’s attic, and being on the open road left her feeling somewhat disoriented. This was, perhaps, a taste of what the outdoors felt like for an agoraphobe: Too big, too chaotic, too endless to reliably control and monitor, and far too-
“Deputies, be careful: I just got word that the trailer park has been surrounded by cultists. They think we’ve kidnapped the defector, and they’re going to do everything in their power to save him. Our people are cornered- you have to act fast.”
Rook looked to Hudson- they were already halfway down the road to the trailer park. Rook slammed on the breaks, and they screeched to a halt. There didn’t seem to be any cultists up ahead, no off-white trucks with the Eden’s Gate symbol spray-painted on the side, but that didn’t mean anything.
“Oh, you mean they think we’re kidnapping their people and trying to convert them against their will?” Hudson asked, unable to keep the hostility from bleeding into her voice. “You don’t fucking say. Well, you know what? I say we treat them to the same response that they gave us when we tried to save our people from them.”
“I’m sure not arguing with you.”
“Good call.”
Almost on cue, a bullet pinged off the hood of the truck
“Shit!”
Rook veered off the road, taking shelter among the trees, and Hudson braced a hand on the dashboard as the truck slammed to a stop.
Action time, she thought, freezing up for a moment as the gunshots kept popping and Rook threw open her door, jumping out to hide behind a tree. Action time. Get up. Move. MOVE.
Hudson hurled herself out of the truck and into the underbrush, scrambling until she thought she was far enough away from the truck that the Peggies wouldn’t see her. Then she stood up, peered around the tree, and returned fire. A tattooed Peggie fell out from behind a tree, blood spurting from his head; another came rushing through the trees only to crash to the ground from a lucky shot.
Looks like I haven’t lost my step, at least.
There were shouts from the park, and not nearly as many gunshots being fired into the trees as she would expect, and Hudson had a feeling that they’d walked into what had intended to be an ambush on the Resistance members.
After a few minutes with no shots in her direction, Hudson crept towards the trailer park. “Rook,” she hissed. “Rook!”
“Hudson!” Rook was standing in the open, out on the road. “It’s okay, we’re clear!”
Hudson ducked and weaved through branches and bushes until she got to the dirt road. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, look.” A handful of people were milling around the entrance of the trailer park, and when they saw the deputies approaching one of the men broke away and started towards them: Evan Dawson, who was of an age with Hudson and had played softball with her when they were kids.
“Joey!” He called, grinning and raising as hand as he came up to them. “Good to see you safe! I’d hoped you’d gotten out of the bunker.”
“That I did,” Hudson said, feeling her pulse race almost immediately and quickly redirecting. “So, what’s going on? The Pastor said there was a defector. You think he’s for real?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But if he says he wants to leave Eden’s Gate, then we gotta help him.”
Now that she thought of it, Evan had always been nicer than Hudson.
“Where is he?” Rook asked.
Evan nodded to one of the trailers nearby. “In there. We’ve got him tied up, just in case- he was cool with it, said he understood.”
“Oh, well, good for him,” Hudson grunted. The bitterness was reflexive, seeing as how she’d been dragged from a helicopter and tied up and knocked out and woken up in a goddamn bunker with John Seed ready to torture her into confessing her sins-
You’re spiraling.
Breathe.
“Pastor Jerome’s trying to scrounge up some Resistance members to come get this guy,” Evan continued. “Gotta move him someplace more secure, further away from the parts of the county that are still occupied. We’re so close to the border with the Whitetails, I’m worried Jacob might decide to send some muscle down if he knows we’ve got one of his guys here. He’s gotta be pretty pissed about John’s death.”
Hudson and Rook were silent, and did not look at one another. There were rumors that Sheriff Whitehorse was at the prison, but Pratt and Burke were still being held captive by the cult; and if Hudson had been sent with John, it made sense that they were being held by the remaining Seed siblings. John’s abuse had increased with every Resistance victory, especially towards Hudson: He had told her in graphic detail exactly what it was Rook, specifically, had done to earn Hudson another punishment. There was a strong possibility that Pratt and Burke would pay for their resistance here; and while Hudson was obviously concerned about Pratt, she felt a special sort of guilt about Burke being taken hostage.
“I’m here because you have a cult problem that you have not and apparently are not capable of dealing with,” He’d snapped at Whitehorse one day when the tension between the two had reached a boiling-point. “The people of your county reached out for help, Whitehorse. Next time you’ve got a religious nut, deal with him your goddamn self and I won’t have to.”
Hudson, Pratt, and Rook had been nearby for that conversation, eavesdropping. Rook had been intrigued by the conversation, and Hudson and Pratt had exchanged a look behind her back: Whitehorse still didn’t know that they’d given some statements to the Marshals’ office covertly, that they had been somewhat instrumental in getting Burke to Hope County in the first place.
We should have done something years ago, Hudson thought now, kneading her temples as she sat on the front steps of the trailer. If we had cracked down sooner, if we’d been more aggressive in making sure the cult knew that they couldn’t get away with this shit on our turf, maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as it is now.
But it was.
And while Burke might not have been the most lovable person she’d ever met, Hudson felt a knot of guilt in her throat for the fact that he wouldn’t be in this situation if not for a thousand things that could have been done differently. The man had had little to no idea what he’d been walking into, because they’d allowed the county to devolve into a situation that even a salty, seasoned U.S. Marshal couldn’t see coming.
As much as she had come to hate the word ‘atonement’, Hudson knew she was going to be doing a lot of it once this was all over.
[---]
“Jesus, Rook, how long did I sleep today?”
It was July, and the sun had very nearly set. They’d only been in the trailer park for an hour or two, and that meant that Hudson had to have slept for most of the day. Rook’s guilty shrug more or less confirmed it: “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to bother you. I told you Mary May was the one who wanted to bring you in on this.”
Hudson’s lip quirked. “Got all independent on me while I was gone, huh Rook? What happened to that shy little Probie we hired a couple months ago?”
Rook shrugged again, a wry little smile on her lips. “Eden’s Gate.”
Hudson’s eyes rolled shut. “Eden’s-fucking-Gate.”
The radio crackled to life. “Deputies, I dug up as many Resistance members as I could find. They’re gonna meet you at the nearby docks.”
Hudson picked up the radio. “Roger that, Pastor. We’ll bring him down ASAP.”
And then- right on fucking cue- the sentry stationed by the road called out:
“Peggies inbound! Four trucks!”
“Shit, they must have figured out what Jerome was doing,” Hudson groaned, hustling to her feet and hefting her shotgun. “We’ll have to hurry- are his legs tied?”
“Yeah, I’ll-”
BOOM.
The ground shook, and Hudson and Rook had to grab onto one another to stay on their feet. “They got rocket-launchers!” One of the other Resistance members screamed. “Take cover!”
Rook ran behind a dumpster, quickly reloading her rifle. When the first truck appeared on the road, she started firing at the tires.
“Hudson, get the defector down to the docks! We’ll hold them off!” Evan called, crouching behind a fence near to Rook and opening fire on the trucks as well.
“Wait-!”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Of course it had to be her.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned and hurried into the trailer, bursting through the door and damn near tripping over the cultist that was lying on the floor. Hudson froze, first out of surprise and then out of downright shock:
This wasn’t just any cultist- this was a VIP, one of John’s (or Joseph’s) favorites.
There was a strong possibility that he was at the church that night they’d tried to arrest Joseph; hell, there was a decent chance he might have been one of the Peggies in the truck that had brought her to the bunker that night. Wherever he’d been, whatever he’d been doing, he’d likely been making the lives of everyone in this county as hellish as the other Peggies had made hers.
He looked up at her; maybe he was just a lucky guesser, or maybe Hudson’s emotions were written plain on her face, but he looked her in the eye and whispered, “I’m sorry. Please don’t let them take me.”
Hudson chewed her lip for a moment.
Then, without thinking too hard, she cut the rope around his ankles and tugged on his arm. “Get up, we gotta go.”
The would-be ex-Peggie looked confused. “Go?”
“Pastor’s got a boat ready to evac you to a more secure location,” Hudson said, crouching down as she approached the door and motioning for him to do the same. “We’ve got to get to the river. Stay low, and stay behind me. If you see anyone lurking around in the shadows, let me know before I take a bullet.” She barely resisted the urge to remind him that failing to alert her to the danger would lead to him being captured by his old friends; he seemed to be well aware of that fact. He had as much investment in getting to that boat as she did. “Ready?” Hudson asked, hand on the door, mindful of the gunshots outside. “We’re going for the tree-line.”
“Yeah.”
“Alright.” Hudson started to push the door, and then stopped. “What’s your name?”
He hesitated, almost seeming to be taken aback by the question. “Amos,” he said finally. “And you’re Deputy Hudson.”
“Damn right I am. Now move.”
They charged directly across the road to the trees, Amos panting behind her. In the dark it was hard to tell where the shooters were, or who was who when the light from the muzzles popped in the dark. Hudson’s thighs and calves ached from hunching down, and her heart was pounding for fear that she would catch a bullet accidentally, dead before she even hit the ground. More than once she had to look over her shoulder to make sure Amos was still with her.
Finding their way to the hill was difficult, and shuffling down it while gunfire flew in all directions just made it worse as there was little to no cover to be had. Somehow Hudson found the small, rough path that led down to the dock and followed it, reaching back to grab Amos’s bound wrists and guide him along; the last thing she needed was for him to fall on his face and knock himself out.
They were nearly to the docks when, very, very nearby, Hudson heard at least three guns cock. “Freeze! Who’s there?”
“Deputy Hudson!”
“Jesus!” A few figures rose and swarmed them from the area around the docks. “Is that the defector? Quick, get him into the boat.”
A flashlight clicked on, and they guided Hudson and Amos onto the dock and down to the boat. Hudson helped him in, and then stepped back out. “Alright, you’re good, head out.”
“Thank you, Deputy,” Amos whispered. “Thank you.”
Hudson nodded. “Yeah, well, stay safe.”
And out of Eden’s Gate.
The boat buzzed off down the river, disappearing into the night.
The gunfire had slowed down, nearly to a stop. She would have to check on that in a moment, but for now Hudson picked up her radio. “Pastor, the defector’s on the boat. Mission accomplished.”
She could hear Jerome sigh with relief. “Turning the other cheek: That is the righteous path. I know you’re still angry about John and bunker, but we’ve shown that we can open our arms and embrace those who have been led astray. And there will be others.”
Hudson shut her eyes, pressing a thumb to the bridge of her nose. “You weren’t in the bunker, Pastor. I don’t think most of them are going to defect anytime soon.”
“Maybe not. But if they know that we are willing to accept them despite what they’ve done, we remove the notion that there is no life for them beyond the cult. Groups like Eden’s Gate succeed when they make their members believe that they’ll never be able to function without them; we need to show them that they have a place to go if and when they decide to listen to their better angels.”
“Guess that makes sense,” Hudson mumbled.
“I hope so, Deputy.” A pause; Hudson went to put the radio back on her belt only for it to crackle one more time. “If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me.”
Maybe she would, at some point. Maybe she would unload and tell Jerome about the bunker, about the beatings and the fear that she would never see the sunlight again. Maybe she would apologize for the Sheriff’s Department, for failing to do anything to curtail this before it could get worse.
For now, Hudson just wanted to go back to sleep.
“Yes I do, Pastor. Thank you.”
She turned and walked back up the hill to check on Rook.
-End