Isolation , Jones, Nathan [top 20 books to read TXT] 📗

how peaceable your behavior, we'll assume it's an attack and respond in kind.”

Ellie put her face in her hands.

On the one hand the clear fury in Jay's voice didn't seem like a good sign he was here to talk about deescalating the conflict. But even so, no good would come from giving up on trying for peace. Even if it seemed unlikely, Darby couldn't take that option off the table, or this war would just keep on going and even more people would die.

“I can't be trusted?” Jay yelled into the radio through a burst of feedback. “I can't be trusted? You seriously want to talk about trust after sneaking into our town in the night and burning down dozens of homes?”

“Oh cry me a river, Corey,” Darrel snapped.

There was a brief, knife-edged silence. “What?” Jay said quietly.

“You heard me. You want to pretend you care about justice and decency now that you're getting a taste of your own medicine? You've terrorized us for weeks! You spread Zolos to innocent people! And who was the first to start burning down houses? Including my house, with my family inside!”

“What about all the families in the Wensbrook houses you burned last night?” Jay said, a wild edge to his voice. “Are you saying Darby's lying and you did do it?”

Darrel snorted. “Nah, none of us is leaving Stanberry to go to a place crawling with Zolos. But more power to whoever did.”

“You think this is funny?” the Wensbrook leader snarled. “No sympathy, even a pretense of it to further peacemaking efforts like you always pretend you want? Those were our homes! Our hope for the future!”

“And what do you think you're doing to us?” Darrel shot back.

“Well if that's the way you want to play it, then you have only yourself to blame when you're standing over a mass grave of all your friends and fa-”

“Not happening!” Darrel cut in, voice a furious roar. “Listen up, Jay and all you nutjobs running around with him. We've tried to be conciliatory every step of the way, and you SOBs just keep on doing worse and worse. Now you're literally guilty of an atrocity, spreading Zolos to over a hundred innocent people that we know of so far, and probably ten times that number before all is said and done.

“So you want to keep fighting? Well Stanberry's through with extending the olive branch, so let's show you the stick. We might not be able to leave our barricades, but we've got a militia of over three hundred people in town who've been training in target practice nonstop while you've been running around trashing abandoned houses like heroes. You're not sneaking in and catching us by surprise again . . . if you come within two hundred yards of our barricades we'll fill you full of holes, and no tricks or schemes are going to help you there.”

Jay started to snap a reply, but Darrel shouted right over him. “Then in our quarantine camp we've got a hundred and fifty fighters who are equally determined. We're patrolling our borders, our security is rock solid, and we're fed up with your games. If you try to kill us like you're threatening, we'll shoot back outnumbering you at least five to one, and if it's our lives on the line we'll shoot to kill.

“As for your stupid town, just remember that anything you can do to us, we can do to you. If you want to keep this fight going we can easily burn down the rest of Wensbrook. Or your camp. We can burn up all your food supplies and see how long you can keep this fight going.”

Considering that Ellie had just spent the last day dealing with people who'd effectively been given a death sentence thanks to Jay, she had a hard time disagreeing with any of that. Rationally she knew she should be trying to be the voice of reason here, continuing to try to speak for peace to end this conflict.

But where had her efforts gotten them so far? Jay didn't care about peace, and even less now.

A brittle silence fell after Darrel finally finished his tirade. Then Jay spoke, voice an infuriatingly calm drawl. “That Stanberry's official stance?”

There was a brief pause, then Darby spoke up quietly. “You're the one pushing this fight, Mr. Corey. You can walk away at any time. But if you insist on continuing to terrorize us, we'll-”

Jay cut in, voice a nearly incoherent scream. “We did walk away! We walked away and we were done! Then you burned down half our town and showed us this won't be over until we finish it!”

From that point the man's tirade devolved into a stream of obscenities and threats, like usual. Ellie turned down the radio and shared a troubled look with Hal. “You think that's true?” she asked quietly.

He snorted bitterly. “You think they went from smashing family photos and fouling beds in abandoned houses to calling it quits and heading home for good in the space of a day?”

Yeah, he was probably right.

Even so, she wished whoever had burned down those houses in Stanberry hadn't done it. What good had it done, other than give Jay even more justification to keep coming after them and probably do even worse in retaliation?

On the other hand, maybe Darrel was right that the only way to get Jay to back off was to make this fight as costly for him as it was for Stanberry. But Ellie had a feeling he'd never back off no matter what, even if he was reduced to living in a hole and eating insects while he took potshots at them.

Jay's ranting on the radio seemed to be over. She turned it on in time to hear reports from the south patrol that the vehicles were turning around and driving away, and Starr barking orders for the scouts to tail them and see where they went.

Sure enough, she could hear engine noises receding into the