Columbia

by Chris Pourteau

  The voices died down.

  “Who the hell are you?” someone asked. The woman was older—probably a member of the council with Logan, Hatch thought. “This man was our leader,” she said. “We have a right—no, an obligation—to stand here with him.”

  Hatch addressed her without standing. “I absolutely agree with you. But at this moment, I need to talk to him.”

  “And who the hell are you again?” asked a man. It sounded like the agitator, the one who had wanted to lead an escape attempt, whatever its odds of success.

  Hatch wasn’t sure how to answer. Should he tell him—which meant telling them all—that he was an AWOL member of TRACE? Would one of them recognize him, any moment now, from their visit to the camp, as Anne had done with Stug? And either way, if they knew who he was, might one of them sell him out at the first opportunity to escape Transport’s wrath?

  None of his options were good ones.

  Then, for once, Transport’s interference worked in Hatch’s favor.

  “You there! Break that crowd up!” It was the Authority officer who’d dressed down the bully private. “Move away from the man on the cot. Now!”

  Grudgingly, the circle of Wild Ones began to disperse around the room, crowded as it was. Even the grouser moved away. The councilwoman left Hatch with a nasty stare that promised their conversation wasn’t finished.

  Left alone with Logan, Hatch knew he didn’t have much time.

  “Hey,” he said, touching the former TRACE agent’s good arm. “Hey, Logan. You need to wake up.”

  Logan was unresponsive. Hatch shook him harder, but nothing. Transport no doubt had him sedated—maybe with morphine for the pain or Q to keep him docile, unable to whip up his followers into another frenzy of rebellion. Looking at the wounded man, Hatch doubted Logan would be whipping anyone up into anything anytime soon. Maybe ever again.

  But he needed the man awake.

  He looked around and saw Stug and Anne watching him. Despite the close quarters, everyone else seemed to have claimed a little corner of the big room, per the officer’s orders. Hatch shook his head furtively at Stug. The sergeant nodded and turned Anne away so she was facing another direction, then began talking to her to keep her distracted.

  Hatch braced himself and, with a final glance around, placed his palm on the shoulder wound and squeezed.

  Logan moaned.

  “Wake up, damn it!”

  He placed his other hand over Logan’s mouth and squeezed the man’s wound harder. Logan’s eyes flew open, watering at the edges. His eyes darted left and right for the source of the pain, finally lighting on his tormentor.

  Hatch released his shoulder and met Logan’s gaze. The gray man focused as the pain subsided.

  “Hatch?” Logan’s voice seemed to wonder if he was real. “Sean Hatch?”

  Placing a finger to his lips, Hatch nodded.

  “Where the hell am I? What happened? Transport attacked, and then … everything … I can’t remember anything after that.”

  “You and the survivors are in the City’s Detention Center. Looks to be about a hundred of you left.”

  Logan’s eyes widened, and his head came up. He winced with the effort. “The City? They brought us to Columbia?”

  “Yes. Now listen to me, we don’t have much time—”

  “No. Damn it, no.” The Wild One leader dropped his head to the floor.

  Hatch was confused. “Where else did you think you’d be interred? Now listen to me—”

  “You don’t understand,” said Logan. “There’s a bomb. There’s a goddamned bomb.”

  The lieutenant’s mouth opened and closed again. “A bomb? What kind of bomb?”

  “An okcillium bomb. The rumors were true.” Logan’s voice sounded desperate and defeated. That worried Hatch even more than what the man was telling him. Logan had been a stalwart believer in the Wild Ones’ ability to fight back when they’d stolen those guns from the Armory. Now he gave the appearance of a man ready to grab the nearest handgun and blow his own head off.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Transport is defeated here. They know it. Hell, everyone knows it. The evacuations, the clean-up operations. And now, a Final Solution.”

  Hatch sat down against the wall. He could see Stug’s expression from across the room. The big man didn’t appear to like what he was seeing in Hatch’s face.

  “How do you know this? How could you possibly know this?”

  “I’ve heard rumors for weeks. Through old contacts. Fifth columnists that work with us. I should’ve listened more closely. I thought they were just rumors. I thought, not even Transport would murder an entire city of innocents. Then my contact was killed, and they tracked his information trail to Bedrock. It’s why they attacked. I should have evacuated sooner.” Logan closed his eyes, turned his head away from the crowded wounded in the room. “I should have evacuated sooner.”

  “A cruel, petulant child with massive weaponry,” breathed Hatch.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “When is this thing set to go off? And you’re absolutely sure?”

  “As sure as anyone can be. The intel was solid. But when? Now? Five minutes from now? A week—wait, you didn’t know about the bomb?” Logan was focusing again, his old operative’s training kicking in. “What are you doing here? Why are TRACE commandos in the City then?”

  Hatch closed his eyes. “TRACE isn’t. Stug and I are … we’re … pursuing a mission of our own.”

  Though he had only one good eye, Logan recognized the expression on Hatch’s face. He knew exactly what their mission was. The lieutenant had been something of a rival in the short time they’d spent together. During a conversation with Mary Brenneman on the Pittsburgh, Logan had guessed the nature of Hatch’s past relationship with her. He’d even harbored some passing, juvenile fantasy of pursuing her himself. He liked her—her fire, her humor, her unbending spirit. So seeing Hatch’s face now was like seeing his own reflection in a pool. No words were needed to explain.

  “You’re here to rescue her.” Logan said it as a statement of fact, not a question. “I wish I could help you. I wish I could help anyone.” Again his tone became despondent. He looked down at the stump of his right shoulder, and his head dropped back to the cot.

  “You really have no idea when this thing is set to go off? Or where it is? Maybe we can stop it.”

  Logan shook his head. “I have no intel as to its location. It could be anywhere. Hell, they could phase it in from the Old World, for that matter. Trying to find it is pointless. Where would you look for a bomb that can destroy an entire city?”

  Hatch gritted his teeth. He watched Stug set Anne on the ground. The sergeant bent down, probably making sure she’d be all right, and handed her something. It was his fedora from Wainwright’s. Damn it, I told him to get rid of that. Then Stug sidled his way toward them through the crowd.

  “Then we have no more time to waste,” said Hatch, making to rise.

  Logan reached out and grabbed his arm. “Take my people with you, Lieutenant. Get them out of here!”

  Hatch stared at him. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re all in the same boat with a hole in it.”

  “Please! You’ve got to get them out! Out of here, out of the City!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Hatch hissed. “Or none of us will get out of here.”

  “What’s all the hubbub about?” whispered Stug, nodding a greeting to Logan and leaning against the wall next to Hatch.

  “There’s been a complication,” breathed Hatch. He stared at Logan, whose eyes pled silently to do as he’d asked.

  “Eh, there always is,” said Stug with a wry smile. “Never stopped us before.”

  The sergeant’s confidence heartened him, but Hatch felt himself slipping downward to join Logan at the bottom of a well called despair.

  “There’s always a first time,” he said.

  Up, Up, Up!

  “How the hell ar
e we supposed to get them out?” asked Bracer. “And are we even sure they’re in there?”

  The noise and activity of the day criss-crossed the square in front of them. The two pairs of commandos sat at separate but adjacent tables outside a small café, positioned so they could see one another and hold a covert conversation but not appear to be together. Under the Authority’s martial law, four or more people congregating was considered a crowd, and every crowd was assumed to be fomenting rebellion. Once, that might have seemed paranoid. These days, as Transport evacuated the City, it was more than a reasonable assumption.

  The fountain in the middle of the square, its unmasked Lady Justice pointing toward the courthouse, arced water in a pattern that, seen from above, formed the emblem of the Transport Authority. From their tables in front of the café, the TRACE team watched the comings and goings of the square framed by the Detention Center and the Justice Building. The sound of the spraying jets helped to mask their conversation.

  “Roof looks accessible,” Hawkeye said, like he was commenting on the weather. He had one eye closed, drawing lines and judging distances in his head. He’d tried accessing public records on the area, but the constant static on his BICE had given him a headache, so he’d turned it off. Besides, whatever he could find on the Internet about the Detention Center in the public record was likely to be disinformation anyway. Transport was neither stupid nor hubristic enough to publish its prison schematics online.

  “They’re there,” insisted Pusher. “Wainwright said they had the plans. When have you ever known Hatch or Stug to sit idly by?”

  Bracer gave her a look, conceding the point.

  “If they’re in there…” began Trick. The others turned their eyes on him expectantly, and he stopped speaking. The captain seemed to be mustering his next words like troops before a charge uphill. “If the Authority has them, Colonel Neville’s orders are to consider them lost as prisoners of war. We’re to return to Little Gibraltar immediately.”

  The fountain’s pumping pulsed in their ears. The noises of daily life in the heart of the Authority’s security sector occasionally broke up the serenade of its splashing water.

  To his credit, Trick met each of their eyes in turn. He had to force himself to do it.

  Bracer spoke first. “Our mission is to recover valuable assets that could, potentially, be very damaging to TRACE if interrogated successfully by Transport.” He was paraphrasing their orders. Highlighting the parts that supported his argument, as it were.

  “Unless that mission can’t be fulfilled without undue risk of providing the Authority with four more sources of information,” parried Trick.

  “Sir, we can’t just leave them in there,” said Pusher.

  “That’s exactly what our orders say we’re to do, Sergeant,” said Trick. “And if we disobey those orders, we become outlaws right alongside Hatch and Stug. Are you prepared to throw away your career, your part in an organization dedicated to the destruction of Transport and all it stands for?” This time, Trick had no problem holding their eyes. His own words had fired him up. “All to maybe—maybe—save two AWOL louts who let their emotions get the better of them? Who threw military discipline aside to pursue their own selfish goals?”

  Bracer shifted uncomfortably. To Trick, it looked like he was trying to keep himself from punching his captain in the side of the head. Pusher’s teeth were clenched. Her jaw muscles flexed. As always when he was under fire, Hawkeye simply sat and stared, gathering information to use against his enemy later.

  Now was the time, Trick decided. “Two louts who pulled every one of you—and me—out of more scrapes than we ever would’ve lived through without them?”

  “Sir, I know what our orders say, but we have do right by those men,” Pusher said. Her words were calm, if bold. Her expression was determined, unyielding. Her ears, apparently, were closed.

  “Yes we do, Sergeant,” said Trick quietly.

  Pusher made a gesture with her hand. “And if you don’t want to be a part of that because it breaks orders, I under—Sir?”

  Reviewing the last few moments in his head, Bracer turned his eyes on Trick. He’d only been half listening, convinced the captain was Obadiah’s man through and through.

  “I’ll wait for you three to catch up,” said Trick, grinning. For the first time, he felt comfortable in his role as their captain. And all it took was treason, he thought.

  “Sir, did you just agree to lead a prison break to recover Hatch and Stug?” asked Hawkeye.

  “First to spot the obvious as always, Corporal.”

  Bracer sat back. “You sonofabitch. This whole time you were playing us.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Corporal. You had to believe it so Neville and the rest of B Company would believe it. Or you might be here taking orders from someone else. Someone else less … flexible in their interpretation of orders.”

  “You sonofabitch,” said Bracer again.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us when we stepped off the boat?” asked Pusher. The expression on her face was somehow both incredulous and relieved at having been duped.

  “Because I didn’t want to suggest we break orders until it was absolutely necessary. That would’ve put you at risk as parties to mutiny. Hell, think about it. We might’ve found them face-down drunk in Wainwright’s bar.”

  Hawkeye nodded knowingly. “To be fair, odds were pretty good for that.”

  “Sonofa—”

  “Bracer,” admonished Pusher. “We all know what you think of the captain’s mother. So … what now, sir?”

  Trick stared across the combined length of both tables at Hawkeye. “Corporal?”

  The spotter sighed. He missed his omni-lens. “They’ve got cameras everywhere. And drones at each of the facility’s two entrances,” he said, indicating the lone drone hovering on guard duty between the café and the building’s main entrance.

  “Don’t give me problems, Corporal,” Trick said, sounding for the first time like a commanding officer. “Your job is solutions.”

  Hawkeye stared for a moment, his brain working the angles he’d measured using his naked eye earlier. Then he shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”

  It had been a few hours since they’d brought her back to her cell following Gutierrez’s mind games. She’d lain in her bunk wondering about what he’d said as he left. About her father, Abram. She wondered if—hope beyond hope—he was still alive. More than likely, that had been just another game, a seed planted by The Inquisitor to accomplish exactly what he’d wanted—to distract her with false hope of ever seeing her father again. Get inside her head and make her fixate upon old hurts by reopening them. Paralyze her with self-doubt. It was what Gutierrez was good at. It was why he took such pride in his work.

  The electronic lock on her cell door hummed as it disengaged. Tumblers clicked and the latch released. When the door slid open, a guard moved into the space. “Stand away from the door,” he said.

  Wincing, Mary sat up on her elbows in her bunk.

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” said the guard, wagging his head like it was his way of laughing. “Here’s your new roomie. We’re wall-to-wall now. Hope you two ladies get along.”

  He stood aside, but no one entered.

  “Now, savage. Get in the damned cell.”

  Mary wanted to get up and usher the newcomer in. Help her past Planck, the guard no one wanted to turn their backs on. Then a small shadow crossed into the cell, followed by the waif casting it. Her eyes darted left then right, as if already looking for a way out. She held something in her hands tightly: a piece of cloth. When she passed in front of Planck, he shoved her forward, and she sprawled to the floor.

  “You take too long, savage,” he said.

  “Come a little closer,” said Mary, grabbing Planck’s attention. “And try that on me.”

  The guard smirked. “Don’t tempt me, rebel. Kicking a cripple around might be fun.” He backed out of the cell, and the door closed and
latched with a vacuum-sealed shunk.

  The girl lay on the floor. She’d raised herself up on her hands but rested on her right side, looking down. Her dirty hair covered her face like a veil.

  Or an Amish kapp that’s been dropped in the dirt, then stuck back on her head, Mary thought.

  Where that image had come from, she had no idea. But as the girl rested there, seeming to recover her strength, it looked more to Mary like she was debating whether or not to get up ever again. Like maybe the girl thought standing up was just more trouble, would cause more trouble, than it was worth.

  You can’t think like that. Mary directed the thought silently through the air to her new cellmate. You can’t ever stay down. You always have to get up again. If you can. Mary turned her eyes briefly to her legs, covered by a blanket.

  The girl began to rise. When she got to her feet, she turned around and stared at the cell door. She clutched the cloth to her chest like a talisman—or maybe a shield.

  “My name’s Mary.”

  Her legs trembling, the girl simply stood and watched the door.

  “Mary Brenneman.” She shifted on the cot, trying to sit up. If the girl were closer, she’d reach out to her. But Mary thought how she might feel in the girl’s place and reconsidered. Maybe space was best. “What’s your name?”

  Never turning, her eyes focused on the locked door of the cell, the girl whispered, “Anne.” And then, after a moment, “I remember you.”

  Mary wasn’t sure she’d heard right, so she moved in an attempt to better see the girl’s face. But the angle between them was too great, and Mary could hardly get up and walk over to the girl. It felt like she had lead weights attached to her thighs. Lead weights with jolts of electricity that randomly arced pain to her brain.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said I remember you. You and the others. You came to my village.”

  “Please,” Mary said, needing to know. “Please, turn around. Let me see you.”

  Anne obliged.

  Recognizing her beneath the grime, the hurt, the mask of stone and steel the little girl wore, Mary smiled. “I remember you too. You’re the little girl in Bedrock, aren’t you. The one …” The one who so reminded me of myself when I was your age. “The one who watched us so carefully.” Unvanquished. Immovable. Immortal.