by S T Branton
“That’s it.” I grasped a corner of the sheet and whipped it away to reveal the radio’s ruined face in all its jagged, demolished glory. Marge took one look at it and cackled as she leaned on her cane.
“Is that reaction good or bad?” I asked and dropped the sheet to the side. It had been a while since I last saw how bad the radio looked, and I had to admit, the prognosis seemed grim at best.
“Too early to say.” She eased in closer. Veronica brought her a chair, and she plopped her skinny butt down on it and scooted it as near as she could to the radio casing. “We’ll need a screwdriver. Phillips head, if you please.”
The toolbox we’d originally brought in to tinker with the thing still sat in the corner. I rummaged through it for the proper tool and used the screwdriver to remove the front plating of the machine. The inside was a mess of dials and wires and circuitry that I couldn’t begin to understand.
Marge rubbed her chin and mumbled to herself. She leaned in closer and squinted in concentration. Veronica and I stood poised and ready to catch her should she topple off the chair. A few long minutes passed. Eventually, her mumbles stopped.
“What do you think?” I ventured hesitantly. Every fiber of my being was prepared for the worst diagnosis.
This contraption utterly confounds me, Marcus declared. There is something to be said for the written word, I think.
“Not bad,” Marge decreed. “Not bad at all.” She jabbed her thumb in Veronica’s direction. “This one here talked like all you had was a pile of glass and plastic.” She chuckled. “It could be how it looks like to you, but to me?” She nodded serenely. “We can fix this old thing up in a jiffy. I need some new parts, mind you.”
I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt. “Are you sure you can salvage it?”
Marge wrinkled her nose. “Honey, you listen to me. I worked at NASA, back in the sixties, on the telecom systems that kept Houston in touch when we got to the moon. Those turned out fine if I recall.”
“Wow,” I said. “Okay, that’s one hell of a resume.”
She shrugged like it was no big deal, but I thought I saw a hint of pride in her eyes. “And that’s only the job I can tell you about.”
“What do you mean?” Veronica asked.
“I think she means she did classified work,” I said. “Top secret stuff, right?”
Marge smiled enigmatically. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
Veronica’s eyes widened, and she looked at the old woman in awe. “I bet you’ve got some great stories to tell.”
Marge nodded. “We all do these days. Everyone here is a survivor, and one way or another, we all went through hell before we got to Fort Victory.”
“That’s the damn truth,” I said. I scrounged up a pen and a scrap of paper. “Tell us what you need to fix the radio and we’ll find a way to get it here for you.” The tip of my pen hovered over the paper and practically vibrated with anticipation.
The old lady looked at me from her perch atop the chair. Her crinkled eyes sparkled with a hint of amusement. “I can’t say you’re not determined,” she said. “Good. Now make sure you get this all down exactly as I say. If the specs are wrong, the parts won’t work.”
She proceeded to rattle off a list of things that dampened my new-found hope a little. We’d probably be able to gather it all at a regular hardware store, but the hard part would be to head back into civilization. Anything could be out there waiting for us.
I read the list back to Marge to make sure I had everything right. She made a few corrections and finally nodded her old head. The cloud of grey hair bounced around her temples.
“Give us a day or two,” I told her. “A trip to the store isn’t as simple as it used to be, but you’ll have your materials, I swear.”
An impish smile deepened the furrows in the engineer’s face. “Oh, I don’t give a hoot how long it takes.” She chortled. “I’m not going anywhere. Unless I die before you get back, of course.”
I blinked. “Please, uh…please try to stay alive, ma’am. We’ll move as fast as we can.”
Marge scooched her chair back, pushed to her feet, and gripped the top of the cane. “Well—”
Her voice was cut off by a massive, rumbling crash. The entire building trembled, and her balance wavered. Veronica rushed to steady the ancient woman while I raced to the nearest exit, which happened to be the door nearest the garden. From there, it was impossible to see anything other than a huge cloud of dust.
Shouts rang out, quick and panicked. I lunged into a sprint toward the scene of destruction, dreading whatever new surprise the world had in store for me.
Chapter Four
The pile of rubble was taller than me, and it still hadn’t settled when I reached it. The dust rose like smoke and swirled in the breeze. I stood there for a moment, stunned. Only a few minutes ago, this had been a watchtower.
And people were inside it.
The thought cut through my shock and spurred me to action. I bolted toward the jagged mess of broken support beams with my sword at the ready. A couple of the guards had started to work their way out of the tower ruins, but I knew there were more.
“Stay still!” I called. “I can cut you out.”
The men froze. They looked like mice trapped in a maze and stared at me with wide, apprehensive eyes. Around them, the remains of the watchtower creaked and groaned. Pieces of the structure still broke and crumbled away. I had to be careful. One wrong move would start an avalanche of debris that could crush the survivors.
I’d never used the Gladius Solis for this kind of precision work, but I refused to let fear stop me from saving lives. I had to work carefully to ensure these guys escaped unscathed. It was like a high-stakes game of Jenga.
With that perspective, I moved in and began to widen openings with steady care. Where I was able, I lifted rubble out of the way with my hands. The men coughed and shielded their noses and mouths.
“Be careful getting down,” I told them. “This doesn’t look too stable.” They nodded as they scrambled through the exits I had carved.
“Help!” The scream was muffled and weak. “Help me. I’m down here.”
Our heads snapped toward the source of the sound. I threw some of my previous caution to the wind and hacked away a larger portion of the wreckage. A massive support beam lay diagonally through the middle of the watchtower’s former base, and as I moved closer, I saw the lower half of a human body pinned underneath.
“Help!” he shouted again, though his voice was already hoarse. “Can anyone hear me?”
“It’s okay,” I answered without knowing if that was the truth. “I’m here. I’ll get you out.”
I reached the fallen beam, brushed my hands off, and gripped it under the bottom edge. Resolute, I lifted with all my strength. The trapped guard’s compatriots who had already been freed ran up behind me. They joined the effort on either side, followed by several others. We strained together to pick the damn thing up, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s caught under something,” someone yelled. “We have to break it somehow.”
I glanced at my sword. The blade would make short work of our task, but at what cost to the man underneath? I couldn’t risk it. Instead, I readjusted my grip on the beam and pulled as hard as I could. The girder shifted slightly. On the other side, the guard made a strangled, hopeless sound.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Shit!” My brain raced for a solution and came up empty. The situation seemed hopeless. If we weren’t able to lift this thing up off of him, there seemed to be nothing left to do.
No. That was unacceptable. I took a deep breath and reached for my sword. As long as I was extremely careful…
Victoria, this is an exceedingly reckless course of action.
“I have no choice, Marcus,” I retorted tersely. “It’s either this or leave him to die, which will not happen.”
You have seen the effects of the Gladius Solis on flesh, both human and monster. Indeed, you have used th
ese effects to your advantage. I should not have to tell you it is inadvisable to expose this man to the blade for any length of time.
I ground my teeth in frustration and wondered how it was that Marcus could manage to be both right and wrong at the same time. Of course, I knew the risk I took, and of course, I hated it, but I couldn’t think of another option.
Before I could formulate a reply, however, my thoughts were interrupted by a fierce female voice at my back. “Move!” she bellowed. The crowd around the beam scattered. In the next moment, Maya grabbed the beam beside me. “Ready, Vic? We can do this.”
I nodded, suddenly filled with a renewed sense of vigor. She triggered her transformation, and we lifted together. Her hulking Were-form dwarfed us all. I heard gasps and whistles from the onlookers. More importantly, the collapsed support moved. Maya roared and surged upward until the end of the beam hovered above the ground. Instantly, the bystanders swooped in to recover the injured guard. They dragged him to safety, and I signaled her to drop her section of the load. It settled into the imprint it had left in the dirt, and we backed away.
“Thanks,” I said to her as I rubbed my shoulder. The nectar gave me super-human strength, but those muscles would be sore tomorrow. “I don’t think we could have pulled that off without you.”
She shrank down to her human form, picked up her coat, and dragged it on. “Don’t worry about it. Do you think you could grab me some clothes? I have to make sure this man gets taken care of, and I’ll work better if I’m not showing my naughty bits off to the entire fort.” She turned toward the place where the rescuers had laid down their injured colleague. “If he’s stable enough to move, we need to get him inside and warm. There’s a stretcher inside with the medical supplies.”
“I know where that is,” a young woman said and darted toward the fort.
Maya knelt by the guard’s side. Very gently, she worked the boots off his feet. “Can you feel this?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the guard. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Maya said. “Wiggle your toes for me, please.” Once he did, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. You’re not paralyzed. That’s one thing we don’t need to worry about.”
I tore myself away from the scene to fetch the doctor some clothes as she’d requested. The population of Fort Victory knew about Were-Maya, and they knew she protected the shit out of them, so they embraced her. Not least, I thought, because she was so damn great with people. In a group full of well-meaning assholes who were more than a little rough around the edges, I couldn’t have been more grateful for her overflowing compassion.
The girl with the stretcher passed me at the front entrance, a look of absolute determination on her face. I turned for a second to watch her dash to Maya, and a swell of pride formed in my chest. The people in the fort had become a community like one big family brought together through struggle and perseverance. These were my people, and they looked out for one another.
Seeing it reminded me that humanity was worth saving from the gods’ invasion. This was why I fought.
Ten minutes later, I stood guard while Maya ducked behind the watchtower to change her clothes. The stretcher and its human cargo were on its way to the fort infirmary, and everyone else had slowly begun to disperse back to their normal activities.
“Thanks for bringing these,” Maya said from behind a section of the tower’s base. “I didn’t think about the aftermath when I sprang into action.”
“You saved that man’s life,” I told her. “The least I could do is get you a shirt and some jeans.”
“I guess that’s true.” She emerged and grinned as she pulled down the hem of her shirt. “Give me fifteen minutes before we debrief. I want to check on that poor guy and make sure he’s really all right.”
“Lead the way.” I stepped back to let her move in front of me. “I’d like to have Dan take a look at this tower and see if he can figure out why it collapsed. I didn’t realize they were so rickety.”
As if summoned by my words, Dan strode across the grass toward us, his face a mask of concern. “What happened out here?” he asked. “I received a distress call while I was out on patrol.” Maya slipped passed him, and he glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, shit.”
“Everyone’s okay as far as we know,” I assured him. “Maya’s on top of that. But I need you to go over that thing with a fine-toothed comb until you find out why it fell. The towers are useful, but we can’t station anyone up there if it means our troops are in danger.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I’ll have a report for you as soon as I know the cause.” He used his radio to call for assistance and jogged toward the tower site.
Satisfied with his response, I followed Maya toward the sickroom. I trusted her judgment, but it never hurt to see things for myself. And I also tried hard to be more visible around the fort, more approachable—which meant developing some sort of bedside manner. For that, I felt I needed all the help I could get.
Chapter Five
“Hey, Vic.” Maya stepped out from behind the curtained-off section of the med room where the injured guard had been taken. “He’s sleeping at the moment. If you want to talk to him, could you do it later? His body needs the rest right now.”
I blinked. “Oh, yeah, sure.” The realization washed over me that I was out of my element there. More than anywhere else, this was her turf.
“Thanks.” She put her notepad on a table and went to the sink to wash her hands. “Never a dull moment here, is there?”
I shook my head and chuckled. “That’s one way to put it. Actually, I hoped I could grab a minute with you if you have time. We haven’t been able to talk one on one since we got here.”
She smiled. “That’d be nice. Meet you in the common room in five? I have to file my notes before I forget.”
We separated, and I took my time through the halls and absorbed the cozy rhythm of life at the fort. Kids put puzzles together under the watchful eyes of their parents. An older man wearing a bandana on his head gave me a grin and a wave as he methodically mopped the hallway floor. In the common room itself, two teens stood on stepladders and cleaned the windows. I could even smell the aroma of food wafting in from the mess hall.
The gods were still out there, but humanity wasn’t finished yet. We were really making a go of it.
Maya showed up not too long after I made myself comfortable on one of the sofas. She took a seat on the cushion beside me. “Man, it feels good to sit,” she said and closed her eyes. “I feel like I’m constantly on the run.”
“You kind of are,” I said with a smirk. “People probably think you never sleep.”
“I’ve found that naps are a godsend,” she said. “Catnaps.”
“Dog naps,” I responded.
She rolled her eyes but smiled. “If anything, they’d be wolf naps. But I grab them when I can and pray the cumulative sleep deficit doesn’t catch up with me during a crisis.” She paused. “Although I will say, there haven’t been a lot of real disasters since we took the place over. This might be the first one.” She looked proud. Tired, but proud.
“It’s incredible that we haven’t lost anyone,” I said. “And it’s all thanks to our amazing chief medical officer.”
Maya smiled. “Well, I do my best, and conditions here are certainly much better than they were in the woods. Plus, no one has been murdered, which is great. But we’re still a far cry from pre-apocalypse standards. Our medicine stock is limited, and I mean, I’m a vet. I didn’t go to med school, so I can’t definitively give diagnoses if something major goes wrong.” She frowned. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m really, really glad we’re here. But it feels like we’re sitting on a time bomb.”
I’d had that feeling myself more than once. Hearing it articulated by Maya only strengthened my determination to get the ball rolling as far as the gods were concerned.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “The good news is, we’ll finally ma
ke some headway on the communications front. Veronica found someone who can fix the radio.”
Her expression brightened. “Hey, that’s great! I’m dying to know what the situation looks like beyond our little sphere. How many people out there haven’t been as fortunate as our little community?”
I sighed. “I know. Honestly, I’m a little afraid to find out, but I have to know the circumstances. And at the same time, I think I’m the only one with a weapon like this, so things can’t look too good everywhere that I’m not.” I glanced at her. “I’m not in a lot of places.”
Maya placed her hand on my arm. “You’re doing great, Vic. We’re so thankful for everything you’ve done. The bottom line is that none of us would be here if not for you.” She chewed her lip. “That said…”
“You won’t offend me, Maya,” I replied. “Trust me. I want what’s best for the group, and if you know what that might be, I’m all ears. At this point, there are no stupid suggestions.”
“Yeah. But we worked so hard to get here that it seems like…” She trailed off. “I guess things are always changing, and the longer we stay here, the more I can’t help thinking that this isn’t a tenable long-term solution.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “We can maintain our defenses and make regular supply runs, but even though this setup is sustainable, we still live in what basically amounts to a prison for however long this lasts.” She looked at me. “I don’t want that for you, or myself, or any of these people. It’s good that we’re safe, but we can’t stay locked up in here forever.”
I nodded slowly as I considered how I wanted to answer. Her point struck a deeper chord with me than I wanted to admit. Part of what had made life bearable in the hellish underbelly of New York City was the complete and utter freedom from everything, even laws. I hadn’t answered to anyone or anything, except the gnawing desire for justice against my parents’ killer, and that had been thrilling in a lot of ways. Granted, I was no longer the unprincipled wild child I’d been back when my quest against Rocco Durant first began, but the idea of spending the rest of my days confined in the fort for safety’s sake hardly appealed to me.
