Burning Nation

by Trent Reedy

  “You sleep at all?” Cal spoke quietly as he and Becca joined me the next morning in the bedroom we’d named the guard tower.

  “I swear, I never sleep.” I turned around and sat on the heavy wooden table on which we’d set up one of our new .50-cal machine guns. We’d need to bolt the tripod to the table and the table to the floor if we didn’t want the weapon’s recoil to knock the whole thing over, but it would do for a last-stand-at-the-Alamo-type weapon. I squeezed my dry eyes shut. “I’m so fried.”

  “You should have come got me. I would have helped you sleep,” Becca said.

  Cal looked at me like What is that all about? I shrugged him off. I wasn’t about to get into it. Besides, I hadn’t wanted to sleep. I would’ve dreamed of Schmidty bleeding out or of Herbokowitz or Bagley getting shot. It was better to stay awake.

  Cal looked out the window at the gray morning and fresh snow falling on the empty, unplowed road below. “It’s already after seven. You were supposed to wake me up to relieve you. You been on guard duty since you took over for Kemp?”

  I nodded. Sweeney slipped into the room, being careful not to spill either of the two cups he carried. “Hey, guys. Wright, I made you what I hope is coffee.” He handed me one of the mugs. “Sorry, Cal, Becca. I didn’t know you were up. Wright’s been awake all night, and I could only carry two. You’ll have to get your own.”

  My faded mug read SEATTLE SEAHAWKS 2014 SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS. I held it up to take in the smell, trying to remember the last time I’d had coffee. “Where did you get this?”

  “Found it way in the back of one of the cabinets in the kitchen. We’re long past the ‘best if used by’ date on the coffee, but …”

  “Come on, Cal. I’ll make you some,” Becca said. “And I better figure out what else this place has for food or supplies. Get the kitchen ready.” Cal slid down off the table and followed her out.

  “Pretty wicked machine gun,” Sweeney said after the other two left. “Good position here.”

  “I hope we never have to use it,” I said. “Not up here, anyway. If the Fed get this close, we’re in deep shit.”

  Sweeney was quiet for a moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “You hate talking about this, but hear me out for a second. I know you felt terrible about having to shoot that staff sergeant in Spokane when we were trying to get your mom back home.” He took a sip of coffee. “You had to do it. It was him or us. It was horrible, but I also secretly thought it was kind of badass. I’ve played a ton of Call of Duty. Always thought it was so realistic or whatever. Then I saw you do the real thing.”

  “That was nothing like a stupid video game,” I said.

  “I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man,” said Sweeney. “I know we had to shoot those Feds at the school, at the shop. And if we had to go through that again, I’d do it the same way.” He steadied his cup with his other hand. “But this stuff is nothing like the movies or the video games. It’s not only that we’re actually in danger or that we could be killed any second. It’s —” His voice tightened up.

  I took a drink. The coffee tasted a bit like soap. “The bodies are real. You can see them. The blood gets on you, and that smell doesn’t wash out right away. Real dead people don’t just disappear like on the games.”

  “Yeah. And now I’ve killed those real people,” Sweeney said, his voice shaking. “I’ve killed a lot of real people. They had parents and brothers and girlfriends or whatever. So I wanted to talk to you in private. I know this is a war and everything. But … how do I …”

  How did he live with himself or get past the nightmares? How did he balance a lifetime of hearing stuff like “Thou shall not kill” with the need to stay alive and to protect his friends and family? How did he deal with the increasing uncertainty that the need for the few of us to survive was greater than the right of so many others to live?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I try not to think about it. Focus on what we have to do.”

  I finally looked at Sweeney. Most of the time, he was smooth and confident, like one of those action heroes in the movies who gets all the girls. He always seemed to have an answer for everything, but now he looked really lost.

  I patted him on the shoulder, careful not to hit him hard enough to make him spill his coffee. “Hey. You did what you had to do. And, when I froze up in the shop … Well, thanks for getting me out of there.”

  “With you all the way.” Sweeney smiled a little. Then he took a drink. “Ugh, who am I kidding? This coffee tastes like ass.”

  I laughed. “It really does, dude.”

  Cal came back into the room. “If you two are done making out or whatever you’re doing up here, everybody’s awake. Kemp wants us down by the fireplace.”

  Sweeney flipped Cal off. “You go,” he said to me. “I need to be … I’ll keep watch.”

  * * *

  A fire roared in the fireplace in the living room, and Becca patted an empty place beside her on the couch. I sat down, and after so long in the dungeon with nothing but metal folding chairs and Army cots, I felt like I was floating on a cloud. I struggled to keep my eyes open.

  Luchen sat in a faded old recliner with Sparrow on the armrest. She was eating cheese tortellini from an MRE food pouch. Cal dragged a kitchen chair in, turned it around backward, and sat with his legs spread around the back. Crocker was on the stone hearth. Kemp stood in the middle of us all.

  “Before we talk about anything else, I want to …” He let out a long breath. “I want to remember the people we lost yesterday. What can I even say? I … I’m sorry. I’m not so good … They never trained us for this.” He laughed sadly. Sparrow snorted and leaned against Luchen. “I didn’t know Bagley that well,” Kemp continued. “I know he could be tough to get along with, but you have to give him credit for being brave enough to jump into all this with almost no training.”

  “He just wanted to go home,” Becca said. “Maybe if we’d found a way to make that happen …” She leaned over and put her head in her hands. “And we just left them there on the floor.”

  “Wasn’t like there was time for a funeral,” said Luchen.

  “Scott Herbokowitz was the best first sergeant I ever served,” said Sergeant Kemp. “He could be a bit rough sometimes, but he—”

  “He cut out the bullshit,” said Luchen.

  “Right.” Kemp paced in front of the fireplace a couple times. “So I guess I’m in charge.” He looked at all of us as if checking that we agreed. “And the question is, what do we do next?”

  “We need to send someone into town to see how the Fed has reacted to yesterday,” Becca said. “But mostly to let TJ and JoBell and Cal’s dad know we’re still alive.”

  “Enough with the endless recon mission,” Luchen said. “I want to stick it to the Fed for a change.”

  “Normally, I’d say that’s impossible,” Sparrow responded, “but since we’ve proven that hiding doesn’t work either, I suppose we might as well try.”

  “Hiding didn’t work in the dungeon because we kept going around town planning for a fight,” Becca said. “It was too small and nasty to stay down there. Now we have plenty of space. A lot more privacy. Maybe if we just stayed here and waited it all out, we could —”

  “You guys are the ones who ruined everything by getting into a firefight with the Fed at the school.” Sparrow pointed at me and Becca. “You brought them down on us!”

  I winced a little at that. I’m not gonna lie. I kind of agreed with her.

  Sergeant Kemp sat down on the base of the stone fireplace. “Wright, what do you think?”

  I knew JoBell would say I should sit out the fight. I looked at the tired faces around me and thought of how rattled Sweeney was. Then I thought of the people the Fed had killed. “We need some downtime before we hit back,” I said. “And we need to get set up out here. Then we can figure out what to do next.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly that we should wait a while,” said Crocker i
n his nasally voice. Luchen grabbed a food pouch from Sparrow’s MRE bag, holding it up to her as if to ask if he could have it. She shrugged and he opened it up. Crocker continued, “The Fed will be looking for us all over Freedom Lake. Maybe after a week or two it will be safe.”

  “Two weeks?” Pieces of dry poundcake burst from Luchen’s mouth. “Oh, hell no! I ain’t sitting on my ass for two more weeks.”

  “Hey, at least you can sit on your ass now,” Cal said.

  “Damned right.” Luchen wiggled his butt around in the chair just to show he could. “But if we do have to make a trip into town, to get supplies or send word to Mommy and Daddy, well, Wright is the Fed’s most wanted, and some of you are not too far down the list. I could go instead. They’re not looking for me like they’re looking for him.”

  “Makes sense,” Cal said. “We could give him directions to TJ’s, pass along word that way.”

  “I’m not going to sit and do nothing,” I said.

  “Right,” said Kemp. “There will be plenty for you to do up here. We’ll prepare some defenses and recon the area, looking for escape routes and more supplies. Maybe there are more abandoned cabins with stuff we can use.”

  “And then we attack the Fed,” said Cal.

  “Can I say something?” Crocker said.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  Crocker wouldn’t meet our eyes. “Before we launch any attacks, I think we should get our radios set up.”

  Cal snorted. “I know you’re scared, but we’re in a war here,” he said.

  “Cal, listen to him,” Becca said.

  Crocker nodded to Becca. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight, but if we don’t do it smart, we’re going to get killed, and we won’t be able to fight real great then, will we?”

  Cal wasn’t backing down. “What good is a radio going to —”

  “Maybe I am scared!” Crocker shouted. “Okay? And if you guys aren’t, then you’re stupid. Winning wars isn’t just about being brave or running around shooting people. It takes good strategy. Planning! And for that you need good communication. Right now we have none! Zero! We’re clueless on our own, and we have basically no information. But, if we get our radios set up, if I can get some help rigging a really good antenna, maybe we can make contact with other resistance cells in the area. Maybe we can intercept some Fed transmissions, if any of them are dumb enough to be using unencrypted radios. Better yet, if we can contact Idaho, we might be able to call up an air strike to hit the Feds, instead of rushing around risking our own lives.”

  Here was short, lumpy, totally out-of-shape Specialist Crocker shouting down Cal Riccon, two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle. Cal stared at him with his big arms folded. “So you’re saying we should get the radios hooked up?” He shrugged. “Okay.”

  We’d had a class on commo in basic training. “If you start trying to call people on the radio, won’t the Fed be able to locate you?” I said.

  “I’d just listen at first,” Crocker said. “Maybe try some very short transmissions. I think it would be worth it.”

  In the end, we agreed to make commo a priority, and then we all went to work.

  * * *

  Sweeney took Luchen and Sparrow on one snowmobile to drop the two of them off within walking range of Freedom Lake. The rest of us started preparing our new base. We got the electrical generator in the shed running and charged our comms, in case Idaho ever figured out how to make the Internet work for someone besides the Fed. On scouting runs to the three cabins that we’d seen on our lane, we found more shelf-stable food, a couple axes and other tools, and, best of all, a shortwave radio kit, complete with antenna. Crocker was so excited about the radio, he about shit his pants.

  Then Becca, Kemp, Cal, and I drove two snowmobiles along the side of the road, but back far enough in the woods so nobody would see our tracks. After about a mile, our lane came to a T intersection at a larger road that had been recently plowed. If only the Fed were driving, that meant this road was trouble.

  We’d brought some extra wood down on the snowmobile sled, and Kemp and I stacked it up to make a small, two-man fort. A piece of plywood formed the roof, and then we buried the whole thing in snow, except for one front window facing the intersection. We set up our second .50-cal machine gun on its tripod in this igloo. If the Fed turned up our lane, the guards on this position could light them up and then bug out on the snowmobile. The guards would be cold out here, but at least we’d have advance warning of any attack.

  Best of all, though, later in the day, we fired up the gasoline-powered water heater, and after a while we all had our first hot showers in weeks. I was the last to wash up and the water was cooling down a bit by my turn, but it was still incredible to get clean.

  Later that day, I heard the sound of an engine approaching from the woods. Cal was covering the guard tower and Kemp and Crocker were on duty in the igloo. I picked up my M4 and ran for the stairs. “I think we got company! Cal, be ready on that machine gun. Becca, grab a rifle. Let’s go!”

  We rushed outside and took up positions behind tree trunks, only to see Sweeney slide in from a different path than he’d taken before, with Sparrow riding behind him.

  “Where’s Luchen?” I asked as soon as they stopped.

  “Oh, he’s coming,” Sparrow said.

  Sweeney laughed, and Sparrow elbowed him. “Sorry,” Sweeney said, “but it is kind of funny.”

  “What’s funny?” I said. We were missing someone. What could possibly be funny about that?

  Sparrow finally relaxed her seemingly permanent scowl. “Wait till you see.”

  “Come on! Damn it! Would you … Go. Giddyup, horse. Go!” Luchen’s voice came from somewhere off in the woods. “No. You can eat later. I swear, I’ll get you a carrot. Do you eat carrots?”

  Sweeney and me laughed. Becca stood still with her mouth open and tears welling in her eyes. “Eric?” she said, almost in a whisper. “Is that …”

  Sweeney smiled. “We got your horse back, baby.”

  Becca threw herself at Sweeney, hugged him around the shoulders, and kissed his cheek. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Sweeney laughed. “If I’d known that it just took a horse to get some action from you, I’d have bought you a whole herd by now.”

  Becca laughed and kissed him again, then went to hug Sparrow. “You are totally my new best friend!” Becca said.

  “Yeah.” Sparrow leaned away, lightly patting her on the back. “Yeah. Okay. All right.”

  Becca actually jumped up and down when she finally saw Luchen guiding Lightning up the trail. Actually, “guiding” might have been a stretch. It was more like Lightning had decided to take her time following Sweeney, and Luchen did his best to manage. The stirrups on the saddle were way too short for him, so both of his feet hung loose. He tried kicking the horse’s flank a couple times to make her go faster, but she completely ignored him, pausing to nibble a bit of shrubbery.

  “Horse! That’s an order! I’m so serious, horse. You have to go faster. I think there’s like a whole bag of sugar at the cabin. Horses like sugar, right? Really. Whole bag.”

  Becca laughed with tears in her eyes. “You guys. I can’t believe it. I worried I’d never …” She took a couple steps forward, reaching out to her old friend. “Come here, Lightning. Come here, we have a nice warm stall for you and a paddock where you can run around.” She wiped her eyes. “You’ll be safe and happy here.”

  Lightning whinnied and picked up the pace when she heard Becca. Luchen leaned forward. “Finally, it decides to move.” As Becca and Lightning greeted each other, he struggled to climb down out of the saddle, slipping and falling on his ass in the process.

  “That stupid … I swear it tried to piss me off on purpose,” Luchen grumbled as he stood. “ ’Bout ready to shoot that —”

  Becca kept one arm around Lightning’s neck and reached out with the other to pull Luchen into a big hug. “Thank you so so so much for bringing he
r back to me.”

  Luchen tried to hold back a grin. “Yeah, well. The trick was getting her out of town. TJ found us some old guy he knew to ride it to the edge of town. I guess soldiers stopped him twice, but since there’s no rule against riding horses and the man flashed them his federal ID card, they had to let him go. When he was finally sure he wasn’t being followed, he brought the horse out to the woods and tied it to a tree out there.” He shrugged. “After that, it would have been easy, except the horse would hardly go.”

  We needed that happy reunion. That and the chance for everybody to get cleaned up let us end the day with a desperately needed glimmer of hope.

  —• If you can hear me on this shortwave radio … We hit the Fed patrol right outside of Kamiah. Dynamite took out both Strykers. We shot up the five-ton trucks. Long live Idaho! •—

  —• CBS Radio News, I’m Harvey Kennison. Secretary of Education Manuel Mendoza issued a statement today warning that unless changes are made, this could go down in history as America’s ‘lost school year.’ Due to high energy prices, an unstable supply chain, a massive domestic refugee problem, and violence, record numbers of American school-age children are being homeschooled or receiving no education at all. Here’s Secretary Mendoza.”

  “Some districts have had to reduce to a four-day or even a three-day school week. Those districts have tried to make up the time in lost teacher contact hours via the Internet, but student participation is sporadic, and there have been challenges with Internet interruptions due to security concerns. Other parents who fear violence are keeping their kids at home for ‘homeschooling,’ but with two working parents, there is often too little or insufficiently rigorous instruction. On behalf of the United States Department of Education, I would like to assure parents that our schools are safe, and encourage everyone to make sure their children get the best education possible. If something doesn’t change, we risk raising the least-educated generation in decades. Such an outcome would be a catastrophic setback, not only for the personal development of millions of American youth, but for the civil and economic life of the American people. •—