Amnesia

by Jaid Black

  Dead, naked bodies hanging from trees. Screaming. Crying. Gunfire. Smoke—so much suffocating smoke. “Kill them all!” a man in military fatigues roared. “No survivors!”

  Gaia vomited again, the pain in her head excruciating. The memories kept flooding back, agonizing in their intensity. Afraid she might pass out, she held onto the toilet for dear life.

  She fired the AR-15 at a group of enemy extremists, praying that all of them died. They were easy to spot because of the common insignia they all wore around the biceps area of their arms. The emblem, a symbol that invoked as much revulsion as the Nazi’s emblem had, was that of the United States, a singular gold cross present where the fifty stars had once been.

  Her legs shaky, her entire body trembling, Gaia forced herself up onto her feet. She staggered over to the sink and stared at herself in the mirror through haunted eyes. Now she understood the reaction her mere presence had garnered during the inauguration. Now she comprehended the enormity of the situation she was in. Gaia was a rebel. “Oh my God,” she cried. “It’s no wonder that poor woman called me a traitor.”

  To United Christian America, Gaia Evans was a traitor who had been miraculously redeemed and transformed into one of their own. To United Democratic America—the country where her allegiance lay—she had undoubtedly gone from being a war heroine to a traitor in truth. The knowledge made her want to vomit again.

  Gaia held her stomach and tried not to panic. She was fairly certain she was pregnant with Ryan’s—the enemy’s—baby. Her hazel eyes narrowed into menacing slits as she continued to stare at herself in the mirror. Chills worked up and down her spine as she considered just how much of a coup it must have been for her so-called husband to bring the civil war’s most famous rebel to heel—his heel.

  She forced herself to calm down, to figure out a method of escape. Splashing water on her face from the sink, she next brushed her teeth. Until she could find a way to successfully thwart the enemy, she couldn’t let on that she knew he was one.

  Gaia’s teeth gritted at her own foolishness. Clearly she had been outwitted, though he’d held an admitted advantage over her because of the amnesia. It physically repulsed her to acknowledge that Ryan had been crafty enough to get her to fall in love with him, or at least with the man she’d thought he was.

  Dead, naked bodies hanging from trees. Screaming. Crying. Gunfire. Smoke—so much suffocating smoke. “Kill them all!” a man in military fatigues roared. “No survivors!” The man, the soldier, turned. His wolfish blue gaze bore into hers.

  Ryan. Oh my God. Ryan.

  The memory was like a punch to the gut. Gaia stumbled into the bedroom and searched for the clothes he’d torn off her not even two hours ago. She felt faint, slightly dizzy. Where had she put them?

  “Baby? Are you okay?”

  Gaia whirled around, an action that only made her dizzier. A good spy would have continued playing her part. She supposed she wasn’t CIA material. “Stay away from me!” she spat, reaching for a bed post to steady herself. “You might as well string me up on a tree the way you did that protestor because I will never willingly stay with you!”

  His eyes narrowed and his jaw tensed. “You cannot and will not leave me.”

  She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but the vertigo proved to be too much. One second she was shooting daggers at him with her eyes and the next she was falling onto the bed. The last coherent image she took in before succumbing to blackness was that of Ryan standing over her fainting body.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gaia’s dreams were fitful. So much tossing and turning, so many memories rushing back to fill the five-year void, so little light in a world of chaos and darkness. The United States had bitterly divided and subsequently fallen, breaking up into two disparate zones: those who wished for a theocratic government and those who didn’t. The entire west coast along with most of the northeast were the first to band together and form a new government: United Democratic America. The rest of the former USA founded United Christian America, which ruled its people with an iron fist—Ryan’s iron fist.

  There had been other leaders to emerge before Ryan, but they lacked his charisma and ability to bring squabbling factions together with relative if tentative calm. General Evans had come out on top, as much a symbol of the revolution to UCA as Gaia had been to UDA.

  The dreams continued, her memories flowing back faster than she could keep up with. She knew deep inside she was remembering, not just dreaming, and told herself so even in her state of unconsciousness.

  “You will go behind enemy lines. You will marry him. You will become one of them. We will tear them apart from within and annihilate them from without.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take out that Russian-backed general first. I’ll find a way to get your next orders to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gaia moaned. The pain in her head was excruciating enough to make her cry out. She whimpered as she slowly came to. Ryan sat next to the bed on a chair. Implacable as ever, he held a washcloth to her forehead. His gaze found hers.

  “So you’re starting to remember,” he said calmly. He nodded. “I hoped you would.”

  She narrowed her eyes. Little did he know, he wasn’t the only one with a mission.

  “I want you to know,” Ryan said, “that I never faked a single thing with you. I wanted you from the moment I first saw you. You were just so fucking beautiful. I never expected you would fall in love with me these past few weeks, though I’ve been in love with you for a long, long time.”

  “What do you know of love?” she hissed.

  “Apparently more than you think I do.”

  She pushed the washcloth and thereby his hand off her forehead. The pain rushed back, searing in its intensity. She grabbed her head and took deep breaths.

  The voice retreated with a final scream and suddenly rough hands were all over her injured body. The hands poked and prodded, forcing a small whimper from her lips that didn’t match up to the horrific anguish the touching made her feel.

  “She’s losing too much blood,” a man announced.

  “I want her alive!” another man ordered.

  Ryan—it was Ryan. She’d know that commanding voice anywhere.

  “Bastard,” Gaia accused. No wonder she was still alive. The rigid general wouldn’t have permitted any other outcome. The resulting amnesia just made his goal easier to achieve. She closed her eyes. “How could—”

  Dead, naked bodies hanging from trees. Screaming. Crying. Gunfire. Smoke—so much suffocating smoke. “Kill them all!” a man in military fatigues roared. “No survivors!” The man, the soldier, turned. His wolfish blue gaze bore into hers. “Get out of here, Gaia, before you are compromised.” When she didn’t immediately run, he again ordered her to evacuate. “Go! Now!” She obeyed. She ran three blocks before an extremist’s bullet felled her, throwing her to the ground. She was going to die. Nobody survived a gunshot wound to the head.

  Gaia stilled. Her head was throbbing, but the new memory… what was going on? Her eyes flew open. She looked warily at Ryan.

  “It’ll come back,” he murmured. “If there is a God, and there is, it will come back.”

  “Ryan?”

  “Shhh. Just relax. Let yourself remember.”

  Her heartbeat was working overtime. Her skin was slick with perspiration. She wanted answers, yet feared them just as strongly. It didn’t matter. The answers were coming. She could no more stop the memories than she could stop the sun from rising and setting.

  “You will go behind enemy lines. You will marry him. You will become one of them. We will tear them apart from within and annihilate them from without.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Take out that Russian-backed general first. I’ll find a way to get your next orders to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  General Adams dismissed them both. “I’ll call a chaplain.”

  Gaia looked at Ryan. S
he smiled. “This wasn’t quite how I envisioned my wedding day would be.”

  “What did you envision?” Ryan asked.

  “I don’t have your military background. I am—was—just a simple girl with simple wishes.” She shrugged. “Flowers would have been nice.”

  He inclined his head. “Then flowers you’ll get. They might be dandelions, but I’ll get you flowers if it kills me.”

  She grinned. “Please don’t let it kill you.”

  Gaia’s mouth worked up and down. Her eyes, round as saucers, looked up at Ryan. “You found some wild flowers. Despite how cold it was outside you managed to find a few wild flowers holding on for dear life.”

  More emotion than he’d ever shown before sprang into his eyes. “You remember.”

  She held out her hand. He enveloped it in his bigger one. “I remember.” Tears filled her eyes. “I think I’m pregnant. You have no idea how relieved I am right now that you’re the father of my child.”

  “A baby?” He smiled. “Wow.”

  “Wow is right.” She stated the obvious. “We can’t raise our child here, Ryan. You know that, right?”

  “I know.” He squeezed her hand. “Everything is coming along as planned. Frank and James will get us out before the finale. I promise.”

  “They’re with us?”

  “Eventually you’ll remember that, but yeah.”

  “That’s good to know.” But Gaia was focused on her husband. She was so relieved that she damn near cried. “I felt sick when I thought you’d betrayed me. I even felt sick when I thought I’d betrayed you. I’m glad we’re on the same team.”

  “Me too.”

  She released a breath. “This place is crazy, Ryan. I can’t wait to leave it behind and return to UDA.”

  “I’m with you there.” He winked. “But there’s one of their customs I plan to take with us.” At her wrinkled brow he said, “I’m keeping your lock and my key. I’m a jealous man and you’re too sexy by half.”

  Gaia groaned. “The lock and key.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve got all the man I can handle in you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I still bring them?”

  She laughed. “Sure. Maybe one day we can scrapbook them.”

  “I want this to be real,” he murmured, his expression growing serious. “Us, our marriage, our baby, everything we’ve started building together. I want those parts to be real.”

  Gaia released his hand and brushed his jaw. “Me too.”

  Ryan proceeded to discard his clothes and make slow, sweet love to her. She gasped as he entered her then wrapped her legs around his middle and enjoyed the sensations of being stretched and filled so completely.

  It wasn’t over—not yet. Both of them had work left to do. With all the in-fighting taking place, she doubted the end would be long in coming though. Then, finally, they could have their happily ever after.

  “I need you, Gaia,” he whispered thickly in her ear.

  “I need you too, Ryan.”

  Epilogue

  It was good to be home! Free to think, to speak, to practice their Catholicism without religious overlords—freedom, period.

  Though the Evans’ now claimed New York City as home instead of Atlanta, at least they were no longer obliged to be in the former Washington D.C. The capitol of UCA no longer existed. UCA itself barely existed as more of it continued to collapse on a daily basis. The main, relieving difference was that Ryan and Gaia didn’t have to oversee its undoing anymore. Their mission was accomplished.

  Ryan picked up their three-year-old daughter, Amelia, whom they’d named after Gaia’s deceased mother, and put her in one strong arm. He held Gaia’s hand with his free one. She was due with twin girls in less than a month so they were spending as much quality time now with Amelia as possible. Today they were taking her to see a Broadway show.

  “Should we take a cab?” Ryan asked. He winked down at Gaia. “I’m not letting that belly get on a subway.”

  “My belly heard that.” She grinned. “Let’s just walk. We left in plenty of time and I could use the exercise.”

  “Mrs. Evans?”

  “Yes, General Evans?”

  He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. “I love you.”

  “You better.” Gaia squeezed Ryan’s hand. “I love you too.”

  The End

  Visit Jaid on the web at jaidblack.com