Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) by Frank Tayell Page A

that was a door that Tom was certain led down to the cellar. Unlike the others leading from the hall, this one was locked. There was no key.
    “Check the rest of the house first?” Tom suggested, more out of a desire to put off the inevitable than from necessity. It was unoccupied, and the doors were all unlocked, except for the one to the basement.
    Helena shone the flashlight on the door. Kaitlin raised the rifle. Tom raised the axe and swung it down. The lock splintered. The door swung open. He stepped back, giving the soldier a clear line of fire. The sound grew louder, but not closer.
    “Give me that.” Wanting it to be over, Tom grabbed the flashlight from Helena and stepped through the door. The doorway was narrow. The stairs were steep. He could hear the creature, and something else. Something metal. He stopped, halfway down, tracking the light across the space. It illuminated wooden shelves, sheet-covered furniture, a rusting tool rack, and, in the corner, a zombie that had been an old woman a few weeks before. One end of a long chain was wrapped around her feet; the other was attached to the metal bracket of a workbench. The rattling of the chain grew more strident as he shone the light into her eyes. The arms clawed at the air between them, the mouth snapped, but the chain held. He scanned the rest of the room, then forced himself down the remaining stairs.
    “Your life shouldn’t have ended like this.” He swung the axe down. The zombie was still.
    “Tom? You okay?” Helena called.
    “An old woman chained herself up down here,” he called back. He found a rag on the workbench, cleaned the axe, and then he went back upstairs. “Must have lived here.”
    “Then this is a safe place to spend the night,” Helena said to Kaitlin.
    “As safe as anywhere,” she said.
    He went outside, leaving it to Kaitlin and Helena to gather the children. He walked out into the road, checking it was still empty, and then wandered the garden until he found a well-worn bench. The wood was warped, the varnish flaking. Helena found him there, twenty minutes later.
    “You okay?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    “Why don’t I believe you?”
    “It’s the old woman. It’s all the zombies. It’s all the people they were, the lives they could have led.” He gestured at what he’d been looking at. In front of the bench were a row of grave markers. “Do you see the dates? They correspond to Vietnam, Korea, Germany in both wars, Gettysburg, and Antietam.”
    “It’s a military family,” Helena said. “There’re photographs in the hall, and in the main room.”
    “It’s a family that gave so much, until now there’s no one left to give. How do the politicians repay that sacrifice? They conspire to rig the election, just so that history will remember their names. And it will. If there ever is a history, it will remember Farley and Sterling. It will even remember Powell, but it won’t know any of these people.”
    “There’re photographs inside of a young man in uniform,” Helena said. “They look recent. You now what I think these graves show? That some died, but others came back. They went out into the world and made a life for themselves. That woman didn’t, sure. She stayed and tended the family home. It doesn’t mean the rest are dead, or make their sacrifice any less meaningful. That’s not what’s bothering you.”
    “It’s not?”
    “You think that you should still be hunting for Farley, that you’ve given up. You know that when we get to Maine, you might find some clues on the computers you have there, but you also know you’ll never be able to act on them. You said as much and think that means you’re handing the world to the cabal. You aren’t. You won. The conspiracy is over, Tom. You only have to look about you to realize that Farley has lost. I think Powell’s attack on the motel was a last desperate attempt at revenge after their organization was destroyed.”
    “And if it