Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  Gomez evaluated Riley to see how close he was to getting in a fight.

  “I’m just bustin’ your balls man,” Gomez relented. “I know you’re not a retard.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  Gomez went back to staring at the sky.

  The substation was important. He understood that. It was the main hub of all the electricity that not only made life livable in the Safe Zone, but kept the high voltage wires running. Which is kind of what made it the Safe Zone to begin with. Without the substation, there was no Fort Bragg Safe Zone.

  Gomez’s main problem, was that he was having to guard it. And guarding it was sedentary. And sedentary was boring. There is nothing in the world so boring as stationary guard duty. Is there another activity on earth so boring that it has inspired men to put hot sauce in their eyes just to stay awake?

  At least the scenery changed when you were walking the perimeter. Here it was just an unending nightmare of pine tree after pine tree sameness. The same pine trees. In the same spots.

  Maybe Gomez wanted to see other pine trees.

  As it turned out, Gomez would never see any other pine trees.

  He felt something hit him hard in the face, and for a moment he thought he’d been struck by some aggressive flying insect, but sometime around when the sound of the rifle report washed over him, and the time that he realized his jaw was missing, he knew that he’d been shot.

  He tried to duck down, but the shot that had ripped his jaw off was just the first.

  A flurry of them followed the first one, and they crashed into the sandbags, and Riley was screaming, and Gomez thought he was screaming too, he tasted blood, and he felt sand peppering his mouth…

  Then one caught him in the eye and it was lights out.

  ***

  Elsie Foster waited in the living room of the house that had become her last stand in the world. Do or die, win or lose, it would all happen as she stood on this patch of stained carpet, surrounded by these people.

  Tonight, Fort Bragg would be free again. Or she would be dead.

  Around her were several of her captains, and of course, Claire Staley.

  There was also the girl. Some asset that Claire had been working. She had a boy’s name. Elsie was having a hard time remembering it right now. But Peter Kerns had brought her to Elsie’s hideout, and she’d had information to give.

  The intelligence had provided Elsie with not only a target that would cripple Angela, but a terrible dilemma to put her into. A dilemma that would prove her to be the incapable housewife that she was.

  In the house where Elsie stood, everyone was quiet. They were all waiting to hear from the radio that sat on the table in front of Elsie. This room that they all stood in, it had become mission control, and they were waiting to hear from their operatives on the ground.

  Elsie brought her hands together. Steepled her index fingers. Placed them to her lips.

  The radio clicked.

  One click.

  Two.

  Three.

  Pause.

  And then again.

  One, two, three.

  The pattern repeated, twice more.

  Elsie felt a bloom of relief rise up from the concrete slab of her chest. She let loose all her breath that she’d been holding, and looked to Claire. “They’re in. They have the power substation.”

  Claire nodded. “Clock’s ticking. You need to talk to the command center before they send anybody out there to investigate.”

  Elsie turned to the table and snatched up the radio. She held it in her hand for a moment. Hefted it, as though it alone related the weight of the moment. Then she switched it to channel eleven—the channel for civilians to call in emergencies to the Fort Bragg command center.

  She pressed transmit.

  “Fort Bragg Safe Zone,” she began, articulating each word carefully. Almost savoring them. “Command center, this is Elsie Foster, on behalf of the Lincolnists, and all the citizens here in Fort Bragg. We have taken control of the power substation that supplies all electricity for the Safe Zone…and for the perimeter fences.”

  Elsie turned and looked at the young girl that stood beside Peter Kerns, gawking up at Elsie as though this were some stage and Elsie were a celebrity. “We have come to learn that there is a large colony of primals very near to this location, and that packs of primals from this colony have been observed, probing our perimeter on a regular basis—a fact which you have failed to tell the people. Understand me clearly on this point: If you attempt to retake the power substation, we will destroy it. Then whatever happens is in God’s hands. If you attempt to take me out, or any of my people, then we will destroy it. If any of my people currently holding the substation see a single one of your soldiers, they know to destroy it.

  “Everything else I have to say, I will say to Angela Houston directly. I pray for the sake of everyone in Fort Bragg that she can do at least one good thing for this population of people, and cooperate with us.”

  Elsie released the transmit button.

  Then she shoved it onto the table, as though it had grown uncomfortably hot.

  Beside the radio sat Claire’s satellite phone. It was a risk to use it when they also might have to coordinate with Greeley, but Elsie wasn’t going to use the radio frequencies, or any communication device provided by Angela or her goons. When they talked, it was going to be on Elsie’s terms, and with Elsie’s equipment.

  And if Greeley called back?

  Well…Elsie guessed she’d just put Angela on hold.

  Elsie picked up the satphone and dialed the Support Center.

  It was time to start a revolution.

  ***

  Angela sat frozen at her desk in the Soldier Support Center.

  Staring at the civilian band radio in its cradle, on her desk.

  Ten minutes later, and she would’ve been home. She still had the last item of the day clutched in her hand—a handwritten spreadsheet of projected corn yields for this year.

  Staring at the black surface of the little radio that sat at the corner of her desk so that she, the good president Angela Houston of the United Eastern States, could keep tabs on anything bad that might be happening to the people that had elected her to this office, she began to feel a sensation rising up…or maybe it was descending down on her…

  It was not a completely foreign sensation.

  She’d felt it before.

  And, as she sat there staring, she realized that it was neither rising up, nor descending down. It was spreading out from the very center of her. From some spiritual point of origin deep in the epicenter of every human being.

  The feeling that coursed through every fiber of her being was like hot gasses expelled from a volcano that’s just cracked its crater open. Ages of compressed energy. The first sign that the peaceful mountain might not be what it seemed on the surface.

  The spreadsheet of projected corn yields made a rattling sound as it quivered in the air. She looked at it, almost confused, until she realized that the hand that clutched it was beginning to tremble.

  There was nothing else being said on the emergency channel of that radio, and yet a voice cawed repetitively in her brain like an angered crow.

  I pray for the sake of everyone in Fort Bragg that she can do at least one good thing for this population of people, and cooperate with us.

  …at least one good thing for this population…

  …at least one good thing…

  …at least one…

  Angela’s ears hummed. She couldn’t tell if it was the blood that thrashed out of the chambers of her heart at a rate that suggested she’d just sprinted up a flight of stairs, or if the burning sensation she felt creeping up the back of her neck simply came with an auditory hallucination.

  The door to the office flew open and Corporal Townsend from the command center burst in, flush-faced and breathing hard, because he had just sprinted up a flight of stairs. He held one of the civilian radios in one hand, and a satpho
ne in the other.

  The satphone rang.

  Townsend stumbled to a stop in front of her desk and thrust the satphone at her. “Sergeant Gilliard says he heard, and he’s on the way, and not to agree to anything until he gets here!”

  Angela looked at the ringing satphone. She imagined gripping it so hard that it shattered into a thousand pieces, and that somehow, that kinetic force would travel through the telephone signal to Elsie’s Foster’s skull...

  This was so very strange to Angela, and yet it wasn’t the first time she’d felt it.

  She’d felt it before, as she’d stood in the Emergency Room with her daughter, as Abby was being discharged. After Elsie had tried to poison Abby. Had tried to kill her.

  My daughter.

  My one child.

  The one thing in the world that means anything.

  Thinking these words only stirred up the quaking things inside of her even worse.

  How else was she supposed to feel when speaking to the person who had tried to kill her only child? The child that she had managed to keep alive through the collapse of civilization. The child that had been carried from the end of the old world, to the beginning of the new one. And right when she thought things were civilized again, she realized that they weren’t, because there was someone out there who was willing to kill a child—her child—just to get to her.

  The spreadsheet was now a half-crumpled ball in her trembling right fist.

  She dropped it like a piece of trash.

  Took the satphone and pressed the answer button. Brought it to her ear, and as she stared across her desk at nothing in particular, she heard the sound of breath on the other end of the line, and she had never in her life desired so fervently to extinguish that from another living thing’s chest.

  The only word Angela was capable of speaking came out as almost a whisper: “What.”

  Weak.

  Housewife.

  Unfit.

  …at least one good thing…

  The phone line susurrated with Elsie Foster’s respiration—gentle, calm—and she spoke evenly. “Angela. Thank you for answering so promptly.”

  Elsie paused for a moment, perhaps for dramatic effect.

  In any other time and place, perhaps Angela would have been able to see through the fog that was now shrouding her mental space, and perhaps divine her opponent’s strategy. But in that pause, Angela only thought,

  Weak.

  Housewife.

  Unfit.

  She thought of another person that had tried to hurt her daughter. A person named Jerry. Angela had shoved a tire pressure gauge into his throat.

  And yet, for all of the ferocity she had felt in that moment, it was not the same as what she felt now.

  That had been pure survival instinct.

  This…

  This was different somehow.

  Different because this had metastasized out of years of trying to do the right thing, of trying to keep everyone safe, of trying to be a good person, and a good mother, and a good leader, and nevertheless, having everyone question her motives, her competency, and her basic intelligence.

  That can wear a deep groove in someone’s brain.

  It can wear that groove straight down to the bone.

  After everything she’d done—the peace with neighboring communities, turning the lights back on, coordinating the growing and distribution of food, keeping everyone safe, letting them live their lives in some semblance of what it used to look like before everything went to shit…

  After all of that, she was still seen as

  Weak.

  Housewife.

  Unfit.

  From the speaker of the satphone, Elsie’s voice continued, confident and collected: “Were you aware of the fact that there is a colony of primals just outside the fences here at Fort Bragg? Were you aware that there had been an increase in sightings of packs of primals over the course of the last few months? Were you aware that your military men knew about this and have speculated that there’s an increase in primal activity because we’re the prey, and there’s a lot of us sitting here like cattle in a stockyard? Were you made aware of any of this?”

  Angela found it difficult to focus.

  Her vision had throbbed down to a pinpoint. She could only see a little swath of the wall of her office, opposite her desk. She could only feel the pressure in her fingertips as she held the satellite phone in a death grip.

  She was trying to listen and pay attention. But she felt like her thoughts had broken a restraining chain somewhere in her head and were now running off in wild directions, ignoring her calls to focus.

  She kept picturing that tire pressure gauge in Jerry’s throat.

  She kept picturing Elsie Foster’s head shattering.

  She kept hearing

  Weak.

  Housewife.

  Unfit.

  AT LEAST ONE GOOD THING

  “Angela,” Elsie prompted with a falsely-pleasant tone. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” she managed.

  “I take it that you weren’t aware of any of that. I’m sure your military cronies who are gathering around you right now will confirm it for you. But it’s beside the point. The point is, the threat is there. And the only thing that is keeping you from that threat is the high voltage fencing. And we now possess the power substation that controls the electricity in the Safe Zone. Do you understand what I’m getting at here?”

  The tone of her voice.

  Like Angela lacked the basic intelligence to comprehend language.

  For a moment, Angela was genuinely confused. “Who is it that you think I am, Elsie?”

  A moment’s hesitation implied that Elsie was taken aback by the question. She sighed over the line, and she started to speak, but Angela talked over her. Her voice was quiet. Mystified. Earnest.

  “I know what you must think. I’ve heard what they say about me. You think that I’m just a housewife that stumbled into this position somehow. You think that I’m weak and unfit for the office that I hold. And you know what? Maybe I’m not the best at it. I never claimed to be. I never campaigned for this. I never asked for it. But what confuses me, Elsie, is where your hatred comes from? You’re talking to me right now over a satellite phone that you stole from us, while hiding in a house that we provided you, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be brutalized or raped or eaten alive because of all of the things that we’ve built.”

  Elsie made a soft, scoffing noise. “I think you’re getting off point—”

  Angela’s lips trembled as she interrupted. “The only reason you’re still alive is because I let you stay that way. I’ve had every chance. Every opportunity to have you taken out. And I didn’t. I let you live. And you tried to kill me for it. You tried to kill my daughter!”

  Elsie Foster’s voice became an indignant hiss. “Don’t forget that my finger’s on the trigger here, Angela! You might want to proceed with some caution, and some intelligence, if you can muster it!”

  Everything coalesced in the fog. Like gravity pulling a nebula together to form rock.

  What had been misty and searing suddenly flashed into cold granite.

  Angela rocketed up out of her chair. “Caution is over,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “I was cautious before. That’s the only reason you’re still alive. I was told once that loose ends always come back to bite you in the ass, and I didn’t listen to that advice, but I intend to correct that now.”

  Elsie raised her voice, abandoning the pretext of calm. “Interrupt me again and we’ll shut the power down!”

  “You’re going to burn the only bargaining chip you have?” Angela snapped. “You go right ahead! You have demands? I won’t hear them. You want my cooperation? You won’t get it.” Angela clutched the satphone’s mic close to her mouth, like it was Elsie’s ear that she was hissing into. “Whatever you thought you were going to get from me, you miscalculated, and now you’re going to spend the last few hours of you
r sad existence on the run, in the darkness, hounded by primals and every goddamned soldier in this place. I have no pity for the violent death you’re about to experience. You’re already dead to me.”

  Angela disconnected the satphone and slammed it down on the desk, and the blood rushed to her head like a tidal wave and the breath that she’d expelled with each rage-filled word ran out and her vision swam.

  She took a sharp breath and braced herself on the desk to keep her feet under her.

  Across the desk, Corporal Townsend gaped.

  At the door to the office, Carl Gilliard stood, his lips a thin line, his eyes wide.

  Angela stared at him, defiant. “I didn’t fucking agree to anything!” she barked. Took another breath and thrust herself upright off of the desk. “Carl, I want you initiate the Blackout Plan, and then I want you to take however many soldiers you need and I want you to find Elsie Foster, no matter what it takes. I don’t give a shit! You find her and you put her down!”

  And that was the moment when the power went out in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ─▬▬▬─

  FIRE AND LIGHT

  Walking back through the darkness, on their last night in the Butler Safe Zone, Lee felt the warmth of the fire draining off of his clothes like blood from his body.

  By the faint light of the fire behind him, he saw his own elongated shadow, bobbing along. Ahead of him, only by the bare bit of moonlight they had, he saw Julia, and ahead of her, Tomlin and Nate. Everyone heading to their beds, where they were bunked in a few offices of the Sheriff’s Station that Ed had provided them.

  Quick footfalls behind him made Lee glance over, but he could tell by the breathing that it was Abe. How well did you have to know someone to be able to ID them by their breathing? It required many nights sleeping side by side, and long silences as you crept through woods, or sat in a car watching the landscape of a ruined nation pass you by.

  “Y’all just gonna leave me behind?” Abe grouched.

  “You ‘fraid of the dark?” Lee smiled.

  “I feel that I am reasonably circumspect about the dark.”