by Keys, Logan
He stood hunched until his back would straighten out.
“Please. Kentucky. Just call me…” He enjoyed the night sky a moment, little stars and no moon, but gloriously breathtaking and wide, before he asked, “Is anyone still alive?”
She glanced around at the quiet night. “Let’s go.”
“You're bleeding.”
Bethany only twitched in a barely-there flinch. “It’s a scratch.”
But it wasn’t just a scratch. Her shoulder was soaked in blood and she held that arm tight to her side. “Let’s go,” she said again, but he could tell she wasn’t thinking; she was just talking to talk. They both were exhausted and running on nerves.
He outranked her but fell in alongside at her request. Sense was sense. Bethany obviously knew the direction better than anyone, being a driver. Survival had a funny way of making everyone equal in desperate moments.
They worked their way from the start of the line to the end. Just to be sure, Kentucky checked each truck, but no one else had made it. They finally got themselves free of the main part of the small village that hung over the side of the hill. Then it was just wide-open desert and a single road that wove down the mountain. Any type of trap or ambush could’ve been on a road like that one. If they were caught in the open, they were finished.
“How far?” he asked, but then he remembered. “About three miles, right?”
She nodded.
Again, Kentucky decided she was the tiniest thing he'd ever seen, and… “That's a lot of blood, Bethany.”
“I know,” she said, breathing hard as they walked.
He caught a hint of sadness in her voice.
“Should we have a look at it?” When she didn’t respond, Kentucky said, “Let’s get back.”
When he paused, she glanced at him with frustration and fear pouring off her. “Please, Sergeant. Please, can we keep going? I don’t want to stop again. Not for anything.”
He stared deep into her solid gaze and nodded.
They kept walking, but Kentucky checked behind a few times, half afraid that if he looked back it would all be a dream and he’d wake up trapped underneath the truck. A POW by morning.
But no vehicles were traveling this late. They probably had set this pathway with IEDs. Kentucky pulled Bethany off the actual road and onto the side of it, just in case.
“Good thinking,” she said, rattled, looking a little lost. She touched her brow in heavy concentration. Her steps swayed as she walked ahead of him.
They’d gone one of the miles out of three, and she was loose-legged and growing pale.
Kentucky caught her by an arm when she stumbled a time or two, but she hissed in pain. He moved to the other side so he’d stop grabbing the bloody one.
They’d quit walking by mile two, just to take a breather, but she smiled dryly at Kentucky and said, “Don’t faint on me.” She lifted a hand weakly toward the road. “I don’t think I can carry you.”
He laughed uncomfortably. It was the first argument against female soldiers, and an old and tired one. It had some merits at a moment like this… if you lived this long, you had the luxury of debating whether or not Bethany could carry Kentucky across the line to safety. In his opinion, you could only make that argument if you first took a bullet.
Funnily enough, without her, he’d still be underneath that truck most likely, waiting to be caught when the sun rose.
There’s more to soldiering than carrying somebody, he thought. A hell of a lot more.
Blood was dripping along the ground as she took a few steps in the right direction. “Tell me one thing you have to live for,” he said, encouraging her.
“My son,” she said hollowly, and Kentucky’s throat closed.
“All right. What’s his name?”
“Garret. Garret James,” she said, leaning heavily on Kentucky but still trying to walk.
“All right, then, and what would Garret say if he knew you were laying here instead of walking home to him?”
She smiled up at Kentucky, her eyes a little too glazed for his liking. “He’d say, ‘Momma, you tired? You tired, mama? You wanna nap?’” She snorted. “He’s only two.”
Kentucky swallowed but reached for his firmest voice. “And you want to see him again, don’t you?”
“Yes, Sergeant. I’d give anything…Anything.” She started talking directly to Garrett as tears slipped over her refined features. Bethany had lost a lot of blood, so Kentucky couldn’t tell if she was delirious or if she was just pretending to make it through.
“Hey, I miss you, buddy,” she said softly. “Take care of Nana, and tell bunny the next story is on me.”
Even though she was covered in dirt, it didn’t hide the fact that Bethany was the type to turn heads. Slight, pretty, blonde. Her boots looked children-sized from where he stood. She probably had a makeup bag in her pack somewhere because she hadn’t let this job make her any less feminine.
She was the opposite of everything you’d expect to find in a tough-as-nails soldier, but here she was, bleeding American blood all over foreign soil and about to die away from home.
Kentucky had to fight tears, too, as he realized this tiny lady in his arms was the toughest thing he’d ever seen. She was a hero. She needed to get home.
In his mind, he saw himself carrying her the last mile. He pictured it just like a movie. But the reality was when he tried to heft her, his strength left him, and his knees buckled.
The landscape swam in his vision, tilting onto the side until he put her down. He was too dehydrated to make it with the extra weight. He wouldn’t make it ten feet, let alone half a mile.
He tried again, and with a loud, gruff curse, they both tumbled to the dirt after only a dozen steps.
Kentucky felt woozy, and he leaned back and shouted at the sky.
A dry laugh broke through his fury. He was the one who couldn’t carry her! Oh, the irony!
Gently, he shook her. He slapped her cheek a bit harder than he meant to, and she sputtered. “Wake up,” he snapped. “You get on your own feet, and you march!”
Numbly, as if she wasn’t fully awake, she scrambled weakly to her feet with his help.
She leaned heavily but moved.
“Left, left, left, right, left,” he said quietly, and she obeyed, her expression pained and distant.
But she kept going.
They'd reached the COP by sunrise. Bethany was as pale as a ghost, and Kentucky was the delirious one, so he remembered very little of the moment they finally stepped into safety.
And Bethany, though three days out from a bullet lodged in her shoulder joint, had lived.
She’d gone home to be with her son. While they gave eachother their addresses, neither had written because all had been said. Or all had been felt, anyway.
Somewhere inside him was a bare-bones connection to that woman—a sort of brotherhood. They were close without speaking. They were like family without visiting.
Kentucky thought of Garett now as he lost himself to another delirium while laying across the sub like a dead fish.
He wondered if Bethany had made it through all of this and then smiled knowing she had. “Tough as nails,” he said.
He sighed.
He had told her to fight. To live.
How could he do anything less for himself?
Sitting up, he was astonished to notice the waters around the sub had receded some. And there to the side, where the thing was listing, now free of the murky water, was the hatch.
Sliding down, careful not to fall, Kentucky twisted and fought until the hatch gave and spun beneath his hands. He got the automatic part turning and pulled it open with a loud bang.
Some water rushed in but quickly slowed to just a trickle.
His heart beat fast and the elation was almost too much for his light headedness. There had to be supplies on the sub, right?
Kentucky climbed in and down, or rather across, the ladder now that it leaned. When he got to the bottom, he bum
ped into a piece of metal that clanged against the side, rattling the entire thing with an echo.
He nearly thought that was the sound he’d been hearing all along, just some floating metal, until something echoed back from deep within.
“Hello!” Kentucky shouted, knowing he was insane for even trying.
A muffled voice answered, and it stunned him to his core.
“Hello!” he called again, working his way across the crooked hallways of the sub.
It was large inside.
When he got to the opposite end, he had to turn around the other way and go even farther in the new direction until he found that end of the sub, too. On this side, there was a door blocked by a metal shelving unit that had fallen at some point during the solar flare, no doubt.
“Hello?” Kentucky said, in a more normal range of voice.
“Hello!” he heard clearly on the other side.
“I’m gonna get you out!” Kentucky called, seeing with joy that on this side the hallway connected to a kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”
“No! Wait!”
But Kentucky had found the jackpot. Food. Water. Most of it preserved.
He started shoving things into his mouth without reading what they were. Dried apricot exploded over his taste buds and he moaned and leaned against the table.
Staring at the shelves, he thought about how to leverage them out of where they laid across the entrance to that room. He’d need to ask the person if they knew where some rope was, and maybe he could make a pulley.
With a full belly sloshing with water and hastily eaten food, Kentucky stood with all of the items necessary to try to free the man on the other side.
Through the door, the man had given him instructions on where to find everything. Kentucky couldn’t help but notice a very strong accent. He sounded Scottish. Or Irish.
Kentucky figured out the pulley after just a short while, but his strength was an issue. It took him a few more tries than he liked to admit, but eventually the shelves were pulled back to standing.
He slid them away from the door, but the lever was bent so they had to work at both sides, pushing and pulling, until it finally turned.
When the door opened the man flew out, practically running Kentucky over. He had on a military uniform, but obviously from his own country since Kentucky didn’t recognize the pattern. The man looked a little wild, and he rushed to the kitchen and started eating and drinking as fast as Kentucky had.
Between bites he said, “What’s been goin’ on oot there?”
His nametag read “Nestor”.
Kentucky started from the beginning, telling him everything that he knew. The man gaped and blinked for a solid minute. He crossed himself. “Are ye screwin’ wit’ me?”
“No. How did you end up locked in here?”
“When whatever hit hit, they must have evacuated the sub in the harbor. I was asleep, had me earbuds in, and didn’t hear the alarms. I’m not part of the regular crew, was here fillin’ in as part of my own trainin’, and the bastards…” He glanced around as if he could find them and make them pay. “They left me tah die. I ran oot of water two days ago.” He took a giant swig. “Food, a day before that.”
“It’s been pretty chaotic,” Kentucky said. “I’m sure they didn’t mean it. They probably wanted to see their families one more time before…”
Nestor’s eyes narrowed and he swallowed tightly. “Ye ken anythin’ aboot Scotland? If it’s all right?”
Kentucky shook his head.
“Aye. They were wantin’ to see their families? Aye. I’ve got family, too, ye ken? I thought war had broken oot. I had nothing tah go on. And now this…”
Kentucky felt terrible for the guy. “I’m Kentucky. Or Kent, for short.”
“Cameron.” They shook. “Cam for short. Ye in the service?”
“Was. Yeah.”
“All right, then. At least one of ye bastards came back.”
11
Two years earlier…
Griggs stood in the center of the room, and though the general and his wife both stood at his side, he felt completely alone. The sun had already collapsed, or might as well have as far as he was concerned. “The details are very few at the moment. We only know that the assailants were wearing masks and the video images provide very little depictions of who they were.”
The rest was muffled by the blood rushing into his ears.
“They killed her,” he said, and a chair appeared behind him before he sat all the way down. “They murdered her. Because of me.”
“I don’t think it’s that personal, son,” General Wirtz said. “I don’t know how they knew, but they knew. Don’t you worry; I’ll raise hell about this and see what I can do.”
“What you can do?” Griggs blinked at the general and further blinked when the Misses handed him a warm cup of tea. He pressed it gently away and stood. “With all due respect, sir, she’s already dead. Unless you can raise her back, there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do.”
He walked out of the house and down the steps to his car. He got in and drove, not really knowing where he was going, but driving was better than thinking.
He wound up at a bar, where he found the bottom of a bottle, before a cab took him home where he passed out and woke to the horror anew.
It never really did stop, the grief; it just got pushed out for a while. Alcoholics were procrastinators of the biggest kind, he realized.
He sat up and cried. Big crocodile tears.
Then he wiped his nose and called his sister who told him she knew that might happen. “They also might have bugged your apartment, hun. They know you work for him. Listen, I better go.”
And the line went dead.
Griggs pressed the phone to his forehead and spoke to the empty room.
“Listen, you human filth. Whoever you are. Listen to me and listen well. The world is going to end one way or another it sounds like, and you can stop all the little spills along the way about your stupid plans to fix this, but you can’t stop what’s coming. And I hope and pray when it hits, it’s slow and painful for you and yours.”
12
Outside Fort Benning, Georgia
“We were on a special mission.”
“A special mission?”
“Yeah.”
Patty tried to sit still, but it was impossible. This man had the keys to her kingdom. Yes, the man who’d left her for dead.
“Okay, I thought that was overseas,” she said when she knew she should just wait, be silent, but her brain was screaming for answers.
Terrance shook his head.
She had to tread carefully here. He was acting like, for some reason, this was the breaking of a vow. Perhaps he’d been told that he couldn’t give the details to anyone. Ever. Maybe this was national security she was asking him to go against. Protocol.
But this was her life, too.
“We had a job to do, and it was, uh…not far from here.”
“Not far from here.” She tried to beat back the betrayal. Patty fought to not let the tide drag her out too far. Her husband lying to her wasn’t something she’d easily be able to swallow.
“Fort Polk,” Terrance said.
Patty had to steady herself with a palm on the table. “What do you mean Fort Polk? Like Fort Polk, Louisiana?” she shouted.
“Yeah.” His eyes moved around the room, landing on things, flitting to a new place afterwards. “Yes.”
“Let me get this straight. The base that’s closed; that’s where you were?”
He nodded, and the world shifted underneath her feet.
Gina made a strangled sound and loyally sprung up at her side with some cold water. Cold because that’s all they had. It was getting more frigid outside by the second, and the tap came out freezing if at all.
Patty thought about another worry; the pipes would lock up, if not tonight, by tomorrow. They’d freeze, and what would she do then? They were boarded up inside a place that would soon b
e a grave.
She longed to shove the table over on its side. She longed to punch something, or someone. Anger was replaced by joy in an instant as she realized how stupid it was to be furious when…when…Corwin, her Corwin, might be so close!
She stood, but Terrance motioned for her to sit down.
“We have to go. Now.” Patty pushed a hand through her hair, but Terrance gazed at her with wide eyes and motioned to the covered window.
“It’s storming outside.”
She paced while he sighed. With loud noises through his nose of exasperation, he said, “Would you just sit down and listen to me?”
She nodded and did as he asked.
Now he was the one to get up. “I’m going to start at the beginning. You listen. No interruptions. All right?”
“Deal.”
“This is about Project Sol.”
“Project what?”
He lifted a finger, and she pressed her lips together.
When Terrance failed to continue, she pretended to zip it and throw away the key. It made him smile. He had a nice smile.
“Corwin and I got invited to be on detail to protect a few congressmen and otherwise important dignitaries who were meeting at Fort Polk. They closed the base down saying it was due to deadly molds, remember? You can nod.” She did. “But that’s not entirely true. They shut it down to build a bunker.”
But that would mean they knew…
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut at his look.
“They shut it down to build a bunker large enough to fit hundreds of people for a very, very long time. We were allowed, if we did our job and kept quiet, to bring our families to the bunker. We never got that far. Something happened.”
When Patty waited not so patiently for him to go on, he was the one who began to pace.
“There was an incident. The helicopter did crash, but I think it was friendly fire. I think they shot us down. I’m not sure why. All I remember is a yellow envelope for some reason. But Corwin, I swear it, Patty, he didn’t die in the helicopter. He might not even have been on the bird to begin with.”
