Fight for Power by Eric Walters Read Free Book Online

protect the innocent. Sometimes there are necessary evils that must be done. Does that make sense?”
    I slowly nodded. There were many things that were necessary, but that didn’t make them any less evil.
    â€œBut I know it’s not going to come to that,” Herb said. “They’re not going to surrender. The only question on the table is simple: Do we attack them now or allow them to attack us later?”
    I knew there was possibly going to be hours of discussion. I also knew what was going to happen in the end. For better or worse Herb—backed by my mother—would get what he wanted. All that remained was for everybody to be convinced in a way that would help them sleep afterward.

 
    4
    The next day, I was stuck at home looking after Danny and Rachel, my younger twin siblings. Around noon, while they were downstairs playing together, I was finally able to get outside to work on my car. Something was off with the timing and it was running rougher than usual. My 1979 Oldsmobile Omega was a junker, but that’s what made it more valuable than a brand-new BMW, as I’d discovered the very first day of the crisis. Because it had no computers controlling any of its functions, it was unaffected by the virus. So it worked—but only as well as it always did, which wasn’t saying much.
    Yesterday, the meeting had continued for another two hours and then, just as I expected, after much debate, everybody came to an agreement with Herb’s proposal. But by the time it had all been decided, it was too late to plan the attack for the next day. My mother and Herb and Howie had stayed up late putting it into place.
    So today we would focus on preparation, and tomorrow would be the day of the attack. As usual, Herb got his way. Not only was the attack going to happen, but it was going to be a surprise assault, if we could pull it off.
    Keeping the element of surprise had been the longest part of the discussion. Most of the committee members—my mother included—had first wanted to try to negotiate with them, ask them to give up their weapons and flee. Herb had insisted that warning them was only going to give them time to react, not surrender. In the end he convinced people, one by one, including me, that you couldn’t negotiate with monsters and murderers, until it was an argument almost exclusively between him and my mother.
    Finally, she gave in. She said she knew the attack was going to happen. And she had to agree with Herb that losing the element of surprise was going to cost us lives.
    Watching it all happen had confirmed what I already knew. While the committee made the final decisions, those decisions were driven by my mother and Herb. The two of them were the leaders, and as long as they led together we were okay. I didn’t want to think what would have happened if they hadn’t finally agreed.
    As word about the plan spread throughout the neighborhood the mood shifted—again. We had gone from dread and fear two days ago to gratitude and relief, and now we were back where we’d started.
    The lucky ones were those of us who had work to do. At least we could be distracted. For the rest, the waiting was hard.
    At our house, Rachel and Danny were picking up on all the stress and had been fighting nonstop. They had always had a healthy rivalry, but this wasn’t the usual brother-and-sister bickering. They had started saying really nasty things to each other until Rachel had broken down and started crying about Dad. That had gotten Danny crying, too, and because Mom was out, I had to work as hard as I could to offer them reassurance that Dad was fine. I hated lying to them, telling them things I couldn’t possibly know were true. I just wished there was somebody to give me convincing lies.
    Herb, my mother, Howie, and Brett were busy preparing the attack force. There were going to be 240 men and women from our neighborhood—forty of whom were being