Free Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) by K. D. McAdams

if mom does. The person I need to think about is Sofie; will she stay here or go to the quarry?
    Dad yells from further down the path. “Mike! David! You need to come see this.”
    I sit tight. Every instinct in my body says to get up and follow Mike and David down the path. But my dad didn’t call for me.
    Those of us left sitting at the table look at one another in silence.
    Eventually Henry gets up and walks in the direction of my father and the other two men. Even now I don’t have the confidence to get up and follow him.
    After several moments the four men come back into view. Dad is carrying Remmie and David is carrying some straps that look similar to the ones I used on the portable reactor.
    As Dad puts Remmie down, he says, “Go back and help Gracie with the babies, okay? We’re going to talk about what you saw.” He pats Remmie on the bottom to hurry him along.
    There is a collective gasp as the straps are placed on the table. In the spot where I had secured the core of the reactor is a hand—a human hand freshly severed from its arm.
    “That has to be Luke’s hand. It’s too big to be Sonjia’s,” David says.
    “This is what I’m talking about. He found them and instead of observing, he engaged and at best had only his hand cut off,“ Mike says and glares at me.
    “He stole it,” I mumble lamely.
    “Bullshit,” Mike snaps. “You gave it to him. If he’s dead, it’s on your shoulders. Sonjia too, for that matter. For such genius, you can be awful stupid. Keeping humans alive is our number one goal. You don’t seem to get that.”

Part 2

Chapter 10
     
    Keeping humans alive is our number one goal. I know that. Why don’t they all see that there is no one best way to accomplish that goal?
    Without me, humans wouldn’t be alive right now at all. “What have you done for me lately” is the order of the day.
    I have to realize that my reactor may be important to our survival, but in this case it’s just a tool. Much like a hammer doesn’t actually build the house. More accurately, a hat doesn’t plow the field—it just keeps the farmer from getting sunburned.
    The inventor of the hat does not dictate how crops are sold at the market. Making it safer or easier to work does not mean you are the best one to do the work. I keep coming back to the question of whether I can shift my thinking and leverage my intellect to deal with social and political problems. So far, it seems the answer is no.
    My personal growth has been significant since the apocalypse. I engage people in conversation. Patience is not a concept for me to work on; it’s something I practice. Hard work is done with my body as well as my mind. So much has changed, but still I obsess over “my way.”
    Dad is big on goals and positive thinking. If we were discussing this, he would tell me that if I want to change something, I need to set a goal and believe I can achieve it. Once I’ve done those two things, the hard work is over and all I need to do is act as if the goal is a reality.
    Setting goals can be tricky. I feel like “stay alive” is a pretty reasonable one at this point. Sadly that’s a little broad, and not actionable. I guess my first goal should be to get Luke and Sonjia back. It must be okay to share goals with other people, but would any of them care about my personal development right now?
    Sofie didn’t come back to the cabin last night. I probably need a goal related to her, but that will be more difficult than inventing warp drive.
    Being a stickler for routines, I get out of bed and head off to the central cabin for breakfast. It’s days like this that I really miss coffee.
    David, Mike and Jake are having a heated discussion at the table when I arrive.
    “No,” David says. “We wait until one of them goes off alone. I like our odds two-on-one and then we’ll know what it takes to kill them.” He slams his fist into his open palm.
    “They take a hand and we take a life? We can’t escalate like