Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  “Elsie,” Peter said. “If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to die too.”

  “Not yet,” Elsie snapped. “It’s not over yet.” She held up her satphone.

  Claire nodded. “Call them,” she said. “Get them involved.”

  Elsie began dialing. It was still early, but maybe Greeley’s forces would be ready to move into action. And the Fort Bragg Safe Zone had never been riper for the picking.

  ***

  Carl and his team drove right behind the pickup truck with the soldier in the back, hollering over his bullhorn. Carl had heard the announcement repeated so many times now, it wasn’t even words to him—just squawking.

  Carl was focused outward. First to the right, and then to the left.

  Each side of the street. The houses.

  Doors opening, civilians coming out.

  Soldiers on the ground, walking alongside the two pickup trucks, addressed the worried civilians that approached them, always saying the same thing: Just take your family, don’t bother taking your things, you need to get to the rally point immediately.

  The houses were emptying out. Most people weren’t waiting to speak to the soldiers. Everyone in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone was familiar with the Blackout Plan, and it was based on everyone getting their asses to a safe location immediately.

  Everyone knew what a blackout meant.

  No high voltage fences.

  No protection from primals.

  So as the trucks and their escort on foot made their way down the neighborhood streets—a scene playing out in all the neighborhoods in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone—the people streamed out of their houses and scuttled down the streets in an ever-thickening river of humanity, flowing before the soldiers, like sheep before the herders.

  Except, not everyone was going to leave their houses, were they?

  No, not if you were hiding from the military.

  Not if you were Elsie and her Lincolnists.

  The street they were on curved up ahead. In the stark light of the pickups’ headlamps piercing the absolute blackness of the powerless night, adults towed children in firm grips, and everyone hurried, but they didn’t run.

  There was still a dazedness to their movements, like they couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Which Carl found extraordinary, because couldn’t they just remember back to the last time they felt this way? When society fell apart and the streets were swamped with infected, attacking everyone and everything they saw?

  Why is it that people never learned?

  From the driver’s seat, Morrow leaned forward and pointed up to the right, towards another dark house front. “That one.” He pulled his rifle from between his knees and rested the muzzle on the dashboard and hit the house he was referring to with a visible laser. “No one came out.”

  Carl nodded and turned out of his passenger side window. “Corporal Billings,” he called, and the soldier that was walking on the side of Carl’s pickup looked over. Carl gestured to the house that Morrow was still designating. “Check that one there.”

  ***

  Sam Ryder was just a few paces behind Billings, and he heard Master Sergeant Gilliard speak, and saw the laser flitter over one of the houses.

  Billings looked over his shoulder at Sam, and then to the rest of his guys, who walked in file behind Sam.

  “Squad!” Billings barked. “On me!”

  Billings turned and pulled his rifle into his shoulder and started stalking towards the house in question. Sam followed at a jog. He glanced behind him, and saw Jones and Chris following close behind.

  They were halfway up the lawn when the door opened.

  Billings stopped, rifle snugged into his shoulder with one hand, the other waving at a man that froze in the front door and raised his hands, his eyes wide with shock. “Come on out!” Billings yelled. “Come out of the house, and kneel down!”

  The man started forward on stilted legs. “I don’t…you just told me to come out of the house?” he seemed confused.

  Sam angled around Billings, pulling his rifle up as well and scanning across the front door, where two other faces appeared: a woman and a teenage girl, not much younger than Sam himself.

  “On your knees!” Billings shouted at the man, louder because his commands were not being obeyed.

  The woman and the girl at the door cowered back, then saw Sam.

  Sam motioned them forward, and he tried to look reassuring, but he guessed that he wasn’t, because he was pointing a rifle at them. “Billings, I don’t think these are the people…”

  Jones gave Sam a sharp elbow as he slipped around him. “Shut the fuck up, Ryder!” Jones pointed his rifle at the man and jerked it towards the lawn. “Go on now. Get going.”

  The man knelt, right in front of Billings.

  The woman and the girl edged their way out of the front door, complying with Sam’s gestures to come out.

  “There anyone else in there?” Billings demanded of the man.

  “I…No. It’s just us! The other family already got out!”

  Billings didn’t take his eyes or his rifle off of the man. “Ryder! Jones! Clear the residence.”

  “Corporal,” Sam began to protest.

  “Clear that goddamn building or I’m gonna kneecap you, you insubordinate fuck!”

  Sam looked to Jones and found the other man smiling at him as he started towards the door. “Jesus, Ryder. Why don’t you stop trying to think so much? That’s what people with stripes are for.”

  ***

  “They’re sending troops into the houses,” Peter said, his voice low and quavering with worry.

  “Every house?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t think so. But if we don’t send people out of this house, then they’re gonna send troops in, I think. That’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to flush us out.”

  Elsie stared at the satphone in her hand, the line now dead.

  “Elsie, did you hear me?” Peter whined.

  Elsie squinted at him. “What?”

  Peter’s face blanched when he saw the expression on Elsie’s. “What’s wrong? What did they say?”

  Elsie stared at him for a moment, stumbling through an overgrown forest of thoughts. “They’re nearby. They’ll be ready in a moment.”

  But that wasn’t what the forces from Greeley had said.

  What they’d said was that they were waiting to engage until the “situation clarifies.”

  Cutting through the crap-cake, Elsie translated: “We’re not going to commit the troops until it looks like victory is certain.”

  They were going to sit around and wait to see how everything played out.

  The officer on the other end of the line, who was, presumably, somewhere nearby, had wished her good luck.

  Good luck?

  No such thing.

  Elsie Foster made her own luck.

  She snapped the satphone’s antenna closed. Then straightened herself up. “Who here has never been interrogated about being a Lincolnist?”

  Hands went up, tentatively at first, as though they weren’t sure whether they were supposed to step forward, sound off, or simply raise their hands.

  Elsie nodded. “Those of you who raised your hands are going to exit this building and join the crowds moving towards the shelters. That should give the rest of us time—make Carl and his troops believe this house had been evacuated.” Then she looked at Peter. “The rest of us should load up. Just in case.”

  ***

  Sam stepped out of the house.

  It’d been empty, just as the family claimed.

  On the patch of weedy dirt that passed for a lawn, Billings and Chris still held the cowering family at rifle point. Billings looked up at Sam and Jones as they hustled down the front steps.

  Sam decided to keep his mouth shut. He’d said enough.

  Jones shook his head at Billings. “House is empty. All clear.”

  Billings stepped away from the people, and ported his rifle. “Sorry ab
out the mix up, folks. Y’all better get going.”

  The family didn’t say a word to that. They just got up and shuffled away, joining the rest of the people moving down the street, moving towards the center of Fort Bragg, like blood retreating back to the vital organs.

  On the street, the soldier in the back of the pickup truck, issuing the announcement, was just abreast of them. Behind that truck was the truck bearing Carl and his team of operatives. Carl looked at Billings, who shook his head at them and moved to rejoin the other soldiers on the street.

  Jones pushed passed Sam with a grumble that Sam couldn’t make out over the rambling loudspeaker.

  Sam looked down the street, in the direction that everyone headed.

  It’s odd how sometimes you can pick someone out of a crowd, just by the way they walk. You don’t even have to see their face. You just see their frame, and their gait, and you know who it is.

  But she did raise her face up, after he’d already identified her. She looked up, as though she knew that he was watching her. Her eyes locked right onto his as she hustled herself off the driveway of a house.

  Charlie.

  She looked away.

  Sam did not.

  He stared at her. Frowning.

  This wasn’t her neighborhood.

  Those people with her weren’t her housemates.

  Sam’s heart had begun to thud inside of him.

  Something in his brain was getting close to connecting, and he wanted to make that connection, but simultaneously dreaded it.

  “Ryder! You coming?” Billings shouted at him.

  Who had told Elsie Foster about the colony of primals?

  It could’ve been any of the guys in Billings’s detachment. And rumors spread fast. Even when they weren’t supposed to be talked about. Maybe even especially when they weren’t supposed to be talked about.

  But suddenly, Sam knew.

  Felt like an idiot for not knowing.

  The incessant questions. The group of people meeting outside the Fort Bragg perimeter. The secret meetings with Claire Staley.

  Shit!

  It all came together.

  You stupid fucking idiot! He swore at himself.

  That backstabbing little bitch! He swore at her.

  “Hey!” he bellowed.

  He watched her shoulders jerk at the sound of his voice. She’d been listening for it, tense and waiting. There was no other way she could have picked it out over the loudspeaker.

  What was he going to do? Was he going to out her?

  Would she be killed?

  Would he kill her?

  “Ryder, what the fuck’re you doing?” Billings sounded on the edge of doing that knee-capping.

  Sam watched the back of Charlie’s head for another second, before he whirled around. He looked right past Billings to Master Sergeant Gilliard, who scowled at Sam.

  Sam almost pointed at the house that Charlie had been walking away from, but stopped himself.

  Be smart. Be smart FOR ONCE.

  Sam sprinted for the side of the truck, his eyes jagging to his right, and every time they did, it took a little longer to reacquire where Charlie was in the crowd.

  He slammed into the side of the pickup. “Sir! I know where Elsie Foster is!”

  “Oh Lord,” Billings said, clearly not believing him.

  “Ryder,” Jones hissed at him. “Shut the fuck up, bro!”

  Carl’s eyes shot Sam up and down. “Where?”

  Sam nodded, discreetly. “That house. I can show you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw someone come out of it. A Lincolnist.”

  “Who was it?”

  Sam’s mouth worked with a silent syllable. And then: “I don’t know their name. I just know they’re a Lincolnist. I’ll show you the house.”

  ***

  Charlie walked with her shoulders up, and her head down, and her sweatshirt hood pulled up.

  He’d seen her.

  She knew he’d seen her.

  She’d heard his shout but she’d kept on walking, and he hadn’t shouted again. Was he running after her? Was he going to grab her by the arm in a moment?

  What was she going to do if that happened?

  Fight him?

  Surrender?

  Her eyes were fixed in front of her, on the ground. The pavement. The heels of the man just ahead of her—another Lincolnist, trying to blend in with all the sheep.

  A flash of rapid movement.

  She snapped her eyes to it, feeling all of her insides tighten and rise towards her throat. A fleshy scramble of limbs. An inhuman snarl.

  It all happened so quickly that Charlie didn’t know what to do.

  One of the evacuees went down, right on the sidewalk. A man. Screaming.

  She knew what she was looking at, but she didn’t have a framework to put it into, didn’t have a plan of action, other than to do what everyone else did, to be a part of the herd and hope that there really was safety in numbers.

  Her feet did a panicked dance on the concrete.

  For a moment, that man’s shocked scream was all that anybody could hear.

  And then all at once, everyone was screaming. Everyone was moving. Surging. Away from the attack, away from the two houses, between which multiple shadows emerged, rapid and wraithlike in the gloom.

  She let out a mewl of terror, and spun—right into Sam.

  Sam, with a look on his face like she’d never seen before.

  Sam seized her with his left arm and dragged her behind him, while he fired his rifle with his right—two rapid bursts of rounds. The rounds struck a primal that had been one small leap from sinking its teeth into Charlie’s jugular.

  It tumbled to the ground, but kept coming, kept gnashing its teeth until another flurry of rifle shots from Sam knocked those teeth back into its brain and it lay dead.

  The people were screaming, and their feet made the noise of a stampede, and the primals were howling, and dragging the wounded back into the shadows.

  Sam spun around, and his face was not the face of a saving angel. His eyes were like coals of fire and his teeth were bared, and his grip on her arm felt like it might crush her bones.

  “You get the fuck out of here!” he growled at her, not sounding like Sam Ryder at all, but some stranger that had suddenly grown out of him. “I don’t wanna see you again!”

  He gave her a shove, and she almost lost her feet, but then recovered them and began running, her chest barely drawing air through the racking sobs that shook her.

  Behind her—she didn’t see it—but Sam Ryder planted his feet in the middle of the street, at the end of a driveway, and he activated the flashlight at the end of his rifle, and he blazed the beam across the front of one of the houses.

  Marking it.

  ***

  Elsie watched it happen.

  “Shoot that little prick!” she snapped, and started scrambling for a gun, while the people around her chose windows and raised their weapons, all the while the light flashing against the drawn shades, like a neon sign:

  They’re here! They’re here!

  ***

  Carl saw and evaluated many things at once.

  Primals attacking.

  People running.

  Sam, strobing the front of the target house.

  A flicker in the blinds of that house.

  Carl was already out of the truck. He swung himself onto the concrete and snapped his rifle up, scanning first to his right—towards the open street where the primals were coming from—then back to the left, towards the house.

  Sam, still standing there, strobing it.

  Definite movement in the windows.

  “Ryder!” Carl bellowed. “Move!”

  Carl was already starting to stride forward, the pickup was stopped, and he was twenty yards from the house, he and his team could form up on the side of the residence where there weren’t many windows and breach through the back…

  The windows sh
attered.

  Muzzle flashes poked through.

  Bullets pocked the concrete around Sam. He spun, then sprinted for the cover of the neighbor’s house.

  Carl turned his rifle and unloaded one long string of fire at the front of the house, tracing it from one side of the window to the other, watching siding and wood and glass come off of it in clouds.

  He registered movement in the upstairs windows.

  He pulled his finger off the trigger and ducked, just as those windows shattered and bullets struck the hood of the pickup.

  Carl went into a crouch, teeth gritted, shoulders hunched. His team tumbled out of the truck, Morrow and Rudy tearing around the driver’s side, and Mitch and Logan already taking cover on the passenger’s, giving the other two covering fire.

  They were pinned down by gunfire on one side, and primals on the other.

  “Mitch!” Carl yelled. “Blow the motherfucker!”

  Mitch had hit the ground near the rear axle. He looked up at Carl, just as a round smacked the pavement under the car. The concrete exploded, the puff of dust rocketing straight into Mitch’s face.

  He pulled backward and yelped, his hands going to his face.

  Morrow rounded the back of the pickup truck, scrabbling into the space already occupied by Mitch and Logan, while Rudy duckwalked to where Carl crouched.

  From the shadows across from them on their exposed side, Carl saw shapes flitting between the houses.

  “Primals!” he called out. “On our backside!”

  The deluge of gunfire coming from the enemy house continued to chew the truck to ribbons.

  Carl’s mind bounced back and forth to all the imperatives.

  He glanced back towards Ryder, but couldn’t see him anymore.

  Goddamn idiot half-boot, standing in the middle of the street like that! What had he been thinking? What on earth had possessed him to run off in the middle of all of this anyways?

  Carl snapped back to Mitch. “Mitch! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah!” Mitch shouted back, but didn’t sound completely sure.