Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  Looked like he was going to have to put in some sweat equity himself.

  He thought nothing else of it, aside from the fact that the five people missing today better have damn good excuses whenever he saw them again. It was harvest, and these cabbages didn’t pick themselves.

  In fact, none of the five foremen and forewomen thought anything of their weak rosters on that particular morning. But they all called their conspicuous absences in, as they were required to do.

  Corporal Townsend at the Support Center, however, did notice it.

  Not at first. At first, he jotted down the names without a second thought. As he received the second call in, and added another eight names to the list, he wondered if there was a spring flu going around, and, being a bit of a hypochondriac, wondered if he felt ill himself.

  By the time he’d put the phone down for the fifth time and had a total of forty names, Corporal Townsend was in a near panic. The body of his boss, Lieutenant Derrick, was barely cold after a brutal and senseless murder, and now forty-plus people were not reporting to work. He had the deep-seeded suspicion that these two occurrences were somehow linked, but he had no idea how to link them.

  So he did the only thing he could think of to do.

  He called someone who had more authority than him.

  Master Sergeant Carl Gilliard was quick to answer his radio: “Go ahead, command.”

  “Sir,” Corporal Townsend stared at the list of papers, as the phone on his desk started to ring yet again. “We got a problem.”

  ***

  In a single-family residence in the northwestern corner of the Fort Bragg Safe Zone—the very same residence where the transmission of clicks had originated—Elsie Foster sat in a living room made dim by the drawn shades and closed blinds on the windows.

  Elsie was seated on a couch, hunched forward, with her elbows on her knees, her hands clenched together. Her knees bouncing. On the small coffee table in front of her, a plate held a single piece of coarse bread, homemade from the hard red wheat they grew.

  It had a single bite out of it. Save for that bite, Elsie hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, but the nerves roiling through her made her nauseas.

  Standing beside the couch was her only companion in that house: Claire Staley.

  Claire held one of the FRS civilian radios in one hand, and in the other she held the satphone that she’d secreted away in her backpack when she’d fled the house she’d once shared with her father.

  “Everyone’s in position,” Claire stated.

  “Except the captains,” Elsie pointed out.

  “They’ll be there as soon as they get out of work.”

  Elsie looked up at Claire. “Gilliard’s going to go to their houses,” she said, referring to all the people that hadn’t shown up to their work that morning. Those people were now stationed in the houses of the captains. “He’ll investigate the absences.”

  Claire nodded. “Probably. But he won’t find them. And he has no reason to go to the captains’ houses.”

  The captains had been the ones that did show up to work that morning. They would not be on the list of houses for Gilliard and his goons to investigate.

  Elsie cupped her hands over her mouth. Her fingers felt like ice. After a moment, she pulled them away, and rubbed them together to try to get some blood flowing in them. “There’s a lot of ways this could go wrong.”

  Claire nodded. “You’re right. But you can’t anticipate every way it might go wrong. All we can do is what we have to do. We’ll make adjustments as needed.”

  Elsie’s eyebrows twitched up. A grim smile touched her lips. “You’re always so calm, Claire. I admire that.”

  Claire stared down at the leader of the Lincolnists. The leader of the resistance. “We’re doing the right thing, Elsie.”

  Elsie nodded. “I know that. I’ve never doubted it for a second.”

  Claire held out the satphone. “Make the call.”

  Elsie took the satphone and cradled it in her hands like it was capable of starting a nuclear war. And perhaps she wasn’t so wrong. It wasn’t going to be nuclear, but it was going to be a war. And it was going to start with her. It was going to start with dialing a number.

  Elsie nodded again, and then dialed the number. The only number that that satphone had ever dialed.

  Elsie Foster contacted Greeley, Colorado.

  ***

  Angela stood with her arm around Abby in the emergency room of the medical center.

  Abby was hale and hearty, and ready to go home. She was smiling and happy. The bite from the primal hadn’t infected her. And she didn’t know how close she’d come to being deliberately infected by Nurse Sullivan.

  Angela hadn’t told her.

  Another nurse—not Sullivan—stood in front of them, giving them some discharge instructions to care for the healing bite wound. Angela nodded along, and held eye contact with the nurse, but she didn’t hear much of what was said.

  Her brain was trapped in an invasive loop. It had enslaved her thoughts, and chained them to this treadmill. She saw Abby, frothing at the mouth, strapped to a hospital bed, gone mad with infection. And who was going to make the call to put Abby out of her misery? Could Angela?

  She knew that she shouldn’t even be thinking about that shit right then—what was the point? Abby was safe. It hadn’t happened. They had dodged that bullet.

  But it had been close.

  And that closeness terrified her.

  What would she have done?

  The very thought of having to make that call—or even just turning her back while somebody else did—robbed Angela of every bit of courage she possessed, and though she stood there, with a half-smile on her lips, nodding to the nurse, inside, she felt like every hard thing in her had been melted like wax.

  She had been through a lot. She had changed a lot.

  Somehow, someway, she had made it through the end of the world without losing her only child.

  And for a while, perhaps, she’d fooled herself into believing that those days were over.

  But they weren’t.

  They were never going to be over.

  They were all in danger, all the time.

  Fucking Elsie Foster…

  Angela pictured the woman’s face and never in her life, in all the hellish times she’d been through over the last few years, had she felt so removed from any semblance of human empathy. She had killed before, in anger and out of necessity, and for the protection of her child. But this was different somehow.

  All of what she’d done before had been purely animal. Maternal instinct.

  This had left that territory now. It had gone into some dark land that Angela was unaware even existed inside of her.

  She could make Elsie suffer.

  She could make that woman scream and never feel a stir in her soul beyond satisfaction.

  And as Angela knew this, and accepted it, some of the things that had melted inside of her turned hard again.

  “Mom,” Abby’s voice poked in.

  Angela blinked. Looked at her daughter. “What?”

  Abby glanced at Angela’s hand that gripped her shoulder, the fingers pressed into her flesh. “That hurts.”

  Angela released her grip on Abby’s shoulder. Her fingers left little indents in the cloth of Abby’s shirt. She smoothed them out, then patted Abby’s shoulder. “Sorry, Honey.” She swallowed, then looked at the nurse with a frown. “Is that everything?”

  The nurse gave her a queer look, but then forced a wooden smile and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. That’s everything.”

  Angela tried to return the smile, but it only flittered across her face and was gone. She turned around, guiding Abby with her, towards the doors of the emergency room where Kurt Barsch stood, waiting.

  “All ready, ma’am?”

  Angela nodded. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  Kurt went first through the sliding doors, his sharp eyes tracking over everything in sight, searching for anyth
ing that could be a threat. As he walked, he keyed his comms. “Diamondback’s on the move.”

  As they walked out into sunshine, Angela’s mind flashed back. The imagery was nearly identical: walking out into daylight, an SUV pulling around to pick her up, her bodyguard walking in front of her.

  She felt a knot form in her stomach, and as her heart started ramping up, she glanced up at the school building, expecting once again to see the twinkle of a riflescope in sunlight, or the puff of a muzzle flash…

  But of course, just like last time, there was nothing there to be concerned—

  Kurt stiffened. Grabbed her shoulder.

  Angela’s mind went into a blank, buzzing space of panic, thinking, it’s happening again!

  A white pickup truck, speeding into the lot.

  Kurt pushed her towards their waiting SUV, his rifle starting to come up towards the fast-approaching pickup.

  Again? She almost couldn’t believe it. They’re going to try to kill me again?

  Angela grabbed Abby and started shoving her for the SUV, all concern for herself supplanted by the fact that her daughter was present.

  Kurt abruptly halted. Appeared to hear something over his comms, and then swore under his breath. They had reached the SUV, but he wasn’t opening the door.

  “What’s going on?” Angela demanded, her voice husky.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Kurt said, annoyed. “Didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s fine.”

  The pickup came into the roundabout that fed the entrance to the Medical Center, and before it had even rocked to a stop, the door opened, and Carl Gilliard stepped out.

  Angela swore. Her heart still knocking.

  For a second she thought about releasing some of that tension onto Carl—bitching him out for rolling up on them like that, but Carl’s face put an end to that train of thought.

  “Angela,” Carl said, stalking up, still with a pronounced limp. “We have a situation that needs your immediate attention.”

  Angela took a breath to settle herself. Quelled the feelings of fear, and the irritation that they’d even been sparked in her. She looked at Kurt. “Can you take Abby back to the house, please? I’ll go with Sergeant Gilliard.”

  Kurt looked perturbed, as he always did when there was a change of plans. He liked things to move along the pre-arranged rails. Any divergence from them was a source of danger in his mind.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Abby asked, as Kurt opened the back door for her.

  Angela gave her daughter’s hand a squeeze. She looked at her daughter’s worried face, and she wanted to say that everything was going to be fine, but was it?

  She kept saying that. And she kept making herself a liar.

  “I don’t know, Honey. Go with Kurt. I’ll send Marie over.”

  A flash of a frown went across Abby’s face, but she let Kurt guide her into the back of the SUV.

  Carl waited, his stern face showing signs of impatience.

  Kurt closed the back door, then looked over the hood of the SUV to the truck, where he saw Mitch in the driver’s seat, Logan, Rudy, and Morrow in the back. All were strapped up with armor and rifles. This seemed to placate Kurt.

  “Diamondback one to command,” Kurt transmitted over his comms. Waited for the return, which Angela couldn’t hear. “Diamondback Actual will be with Master Sergeant Gilliard, moving to…” he arched his eyebrows at Carl.

  “Support Center,” Carl grunted.

  “To the Support Center,” Kurt finished his transmission, then gave Carl a curt little nod, and relinquished his duties.

  Formalities taken care of, Carl gestured for the truck. “After you, ma’am.”

  Angela got into the back of the truck. Carl closed her door after her, suspicious eyes scanning over everything, just as Kurt’s had. He was far more dour than Kurt, but took the responsibilities of keeping Angela safe just as seriously.

  The SUV bearing her daughter roared out of the Medical Center parking lot, and the pickup truck followed after, turning towards the Support Center while the SUV turned towards Angela’s neighborhood.

  Angela wiped her palms across her thighs as they started moving. “What’s happening now?”

  “Nearly a hundred people have failed to report for their assigned duties this morning.”

  Angela stared at the back of Carl’s head, trying to make the connection and failing. “Okay…”

  “Elsie Foster is missing. So’s Claire Staley. Lieutenant Derrick was found dead in his house.” This was all recap—Angela had already been briefed on these developments. But Carl wasn’t done. “Eight of the missing ninety-five people are on our watchlist of suspected Lincolnists.”

  This time, Angela made the connection. “Shit!”

  Carl nodded. “The Lincolnists are making their move.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  DOORS

  John Bellamy’s plywood box of an office was three boxes down from Captain Perry Griffin. Between them sat some administrative positions—lieutenants mostly—that Bellamy didn’t even bother to learn the names of anymore, because they cycled through so rapidly. Bellamy had paid enough attention to the lieutenants to deduce that whatever they did was of no grand importance. They were paper-pushers in camouflage uniforms. So he ignored them.

  Captain Perry Griffin, however, was a fellow Coordinator.

  Unlike Bellamy, Griffin had drank Briggs’s proverbial Kool-Aid.

  Perry Griffin was the point-of-contact for their element in Fort Bragg. The element was codenamed FLY, as in “fly on the wall.” Griffin did his due diligence in keeping FLY secret, as he was supposed to, but in months past he’d let a few things slip to Bellamy.

  Bellamy had determined that FLY was a woman who worked very close to Angela Houston, the elected leader of the United Eastern States. He’d also determined that there had been some recent developments happening over there.

  What bothered Bellamy was that sometime in the last few days, Griffin had become more secretive than usual.

  As the sole POC, Griffin was entitled to this secrecy. On paper, at least, he was supposed to report to Lineberger and Briggs with information from FLY. For the purposes of operational security, he was not supposed to let Bellamy in on anything.

  But it didn’t escape Bellamy that in the past Griffin had been pretty loose about his opsec, and that recently, he’d tightened up.

  Guilty of treason as he was, Bellamy found this new development disturbing.

  He tried to tell himself that it was just because something important was happening, and so Griffin was taking things more seriously. But in the back of his head he began to wonder. He began to analyze the way that Griffin looked at him. Began to wonder if Griffin knew something.

  And if Griffin knew something, who else knew?

  In his plywood office, Bellamy popped a chalky antacid into his mouth and crunched it, frowning. He’d had to do a bit of bartering with a scavenger in the Yellow Zone for the bottle of TUMS. He could’ve requisitioned it from the PX at FOB Hampton, but then he would have had to tell someone about his acid reflux, and he didn’t want anyone to know that he was feeling more stressed than usual. Word got around.

  He washed the antacid down with the dregs of his coffee.

  He’d been drinking a lot of coffee lately—or at least what passed for coffee these days.

  It gave him an opportunity to walk past Griffin’s office.

  Bellamy stood with his Styrofoam cup still in hand, and exited his office. He closed his office door behind him, always aware of the fact that he had an unregistered satphone in the bottom of his desk.

  The bubble of light, office conversation lilted through the air from the cubicles erected all through the conference room outside.

  As he drew closer to Griffin’s office, he heard the man’s voice speaking from inside, in quiet, urgent tones.

  Drawing abreast of the office, he saw Griffin with a satphone to his ear. He was walking to his open office door, a
nd as Bellamy walked past, Griffin’s eyes came up, held his for a brief moment, and then Griffin swung his door shut.

  Shit.

  Bellamy felt his gut roil again.

  Just that bare moment of eye contact had spoken volumes.

  Something was up.

  Bellamy continued on his way, his mind running in a dozen different directions.

  Was he being paranoid? It was difficult to make the distinction between paranoia and reasonable suspicion when it was your ass on the line. But it sure as hell felt like Griffin was hiding something from Bellamy.

  Like he didn’t trust him.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Bellamy needed an out. He thought about it for the hundredth time in the past few days. Maybe it was paranoia, but it couldn’t hurt to have a contingency plan in place to get his ass out of this place if things went sour.

  He’d already begun socking away some food and water. Some items for barter. Some things that might help him get out of the Green Zone. The problem remained that he was stranded in Colorado, and he had a lot of territory to cross to get to people that would be friendly.

  He had been toying with the idea of making contact with some of the “coyotes” in the Yellow Zone—people who made a living by locating the loved ones of Greeley residents and bringing them back to Colorado. The practice was a concern for the higher ups in Greeley, but as of yet, they hadn’t taken any action on it.

  Bellamy’s major concern was that these coyotes were just mercenaries. If they recognized Bellamy, or felt that they could get a better price for turning him in than Bellamy could pay them for getting him out, then they wouldn’t bat an eye to betray him.

  Bellamy found himself standing in front of the coffee maker.

  Someone had taken the last of the coffee and not reset it to brew.

  As with everything else these days, coffee was a finite resource. The coffee table was stocked with enough for five pots. Once it was gone, there was no more coffee for that day. And the coffee that was provided had already degraded to a mix of decaf and regular.