by Noah Mann
Schiavo took the two cups to the dining area and sat across the table from Elaine, sliding a cup toward her. She eased her hands around the warm mug and stared into the brownish liquid.
“Why are tea leaves not affected by the blight?” Schiavo asked. “Shouldn’t these be dried and grey like every other thing that came from a plant?”
It was an interesting question asked for lack of a desire to probe Elaine’s darkened mood.
“Already dead,” I said, slipping to a place closer to the table, but still standing in the belly of the gently rocking boat. “Picked and dried.”
Schiavo accepted that with a nod and sipped her tea as she looked between Elaine and me, her expression begging the question as to whether I knew why Elaine had been affected so much by what we’d seen on the island. I didn’t, but I was also wondering the same thing. It was terrible, to be sure, a sight no person should ever have to imagine, much less see. But was it the worst thing we’d witnessed?
No. In Cheyenne I’d seen things that would haunt me. A woman, her legs and arms removed in some attempt by Moto to sustain a population of human cattle. She’d spoken to me in the dark, and I couldn’t help her. That, to me, was far worse than seeing a man driven to see his own wasting body as something that could sustain him.
To Elaine, though, that sight had found some deep nerve, and was still twisting it. She was hurting, and I didn’t know why.
Then, without prompting, she asked a question that, for me, began to explain her distress.
“Lieutenant, have you heard anything about our troops overseas?”
“No,” Schiavo answered.
Elaine looked up from her tea, hands still embracing the cup, liquid within sloshing with the roll of the boat.
“My little brother is in Germany,” Elaine explained. “Albert. He’s in the army.”
Schiavo nodded, some sense of understanding rising now.
“You haven’t heard from him in a while,” Schiavo said.
“Not since the initial rioting over there,” Elaine told her. “I just...”
I went to the dining table and slid onto the bench seat next to her. She took one hand from the cup and let it rest atop mine on the tabletop.
“I just worry that he’s...that he’s having to do things to survive that he shouldn’t have to.”
It was a terrible fear to harbor. One clearly brought to the forefront of her thoughts by what she’d spotted near the fire. How irrational it might be to transfer such a horror to a sibling unseen for years I didn’t know, and it really didn’t matter. She was feeling what she was feeling. I had no real relationship to equate it to. My parents were both passed, and I’d not had brothers or sisters. There was just me.
But, now, with Elaine in my life, I could imagine loss, true loss, for the first time. Not the death of a friend or acquaintance, but of one I felt bound to by the truest love I’d ever known. And I never wanted to feel what Elaine was.
“I wish I had a way to find out for you,” Schiavo said. “But everything broke down. Communications. Reporting. Order. We’ve lost so many people that we’ll never know about.”
Elaine nodded. She understood. It was grasping at straws, but grasp she had to.
“If there comes a time when I can pass along a request for status,” Schiavo said, “I will.”
By just a degree, Elaine brightened. But that slimmest glimmer of hope mattered. She and I both knew that.
“Thank you.”
Schiavo took a long sip of tea and stood, stepping back into the kitchen to rinse her cup.
“We’ll reach Ketchikan in a couple hours,” Schiavo said. “You might want to rest. I don’t know how lively things will be when we get there.”
Lively...
That was a disarming way to describe what might mirror the sounds and sights and resultant death that we’d left behind on Mary Island. Another battle. More risk.
And more delay. More time spent getting to our friends.
If things were to get ‘lively’, as the lieutenant put it, I wanted to do my part to bring it to a satisfactory end as quickly as possible. The same would apply to Elaine, I knew. And Neil.
Without being asked, we’d drafted ourselves into any fight that might come between us and Skagway.
Fifteen
We neared Ketchikan as the first wisps of daylight glowed blue upon the mountains towering to the east.
“Stop us here.”
Westin followed his lieutenant’s order and throttled back all the way, putting the Sandy in reverse for a moment to fully stop her forward motion. He’d taken over for Acosta at the wheel an hour before, the Massachusetts native giving his relief some quick instruction on the controls and what to watch for on the instruments. Since passing the small fire on the remote island, nothing had appeared out of the ordinary. And looking ahead now at the town nestled close to the Pacific, all looked quiet. All sounded quiet. Peaceful.
Deserted.
“Something’s wrong,” Schiavo said.
“What?” I asked.
She passed over the standard binoculars, enough light to make its thermal imaging cousin unnecessary.
“Do you see the stars and stripes anywhere?” the lieutenant asked.
I didn’t. Scanning the waterfront along the shore that stretched out to the north on our starboard side, I could make out buildings, and docks. Even a boat swamped at its mooring, just the top of its wheelhouse and radio mast visible above the water. But no hint of our national flag. Not even a tattered semblance of one left flapping atop a pole after years of neglect and weathering.
“Straight ahead, large installation,” Schiavo directed. “Docks but no boats. You see that.”
I did. Exactly as she described. I even noted a flagpole, no banner at its top. Just bare metal.
“US Coast Guard Station Ketchikan,” Schiavo said. “That’s where the garrison is supposed to be.”
“The flag would be flying if they were in control,” Lorenzen added.
The sergeant’s statement wasn’t delivered with any ominous tone, but it arrived with that very effect.
Schiavo looked to her troops and to us.
“Gear up,” she said. “And stay sharp.”
* * *
We moored the Sandy alongside a small pier at an industrial area a mile and a half south of the Coast Guard Station. Hart and Westin stayed with the boat while the remaining seven of us moved north along Tongass Avenue, the coastal road, in a single line hugging the left shoulder, Acosta on point fifty yards ahead of our main group.
“It had to be beautiful here once,” Enderson said.
Green. That was what he was letting his mind’s eye conjure. Trees that weren’t grey and crumbling. Slopes that weren’t ashen and bare. Every hundred yards or so a house was planted along the mountainside to the right of the road. Only signs of wear and weathering made them appear anything but normal.
“People up and left,” I said.
“Why?” Enderson asked. “This would seem perfect. Easily defensible.”
“And where do you scrounge for supplies?” Neil asked him.
“Everything comes in by sea,” Elaine said. “Once the canned goods run out, there’s no nearby town to raid for food.”
Enderson eyed the water just a stone’s throw from the road.
“Helluva a view,” the corporal commented.
“It was,” I said.
We walked on in silence. An unnerving silence. That absence of the hush and rush of life still bothered me. The breeze whispered hollow and cold, absent any cry of gulls or laughter of children. Still, the quiet that surrounded us was preferable to any deafening eruption of automatic weapons and exploding rockets.
And that stillness lasted. All along the route to the Coast Guard station. Schiavo halted us at the curving drive that sloped gently down from the highway to the station’s buildings. A rolling gate that had once secured it was pushed open, not blasted or torn from its mounts.
“Serg
eant, take Acosta up the road and approach from the other entrance,” Schiavo said. “Enderson, you’re with me. You three stay out here.”
You three...
We weren’t professional soldiers. But we hadn’t come along for the exercise, either.
“You brought us along to wait?” Neil pressed the lieutenant.
“No, I brought you to cover our six,” Schiavo said. “Now grab some cover and make sure nothing comes down that mountain or up the road to surprise us.”
She offered no more guidance, then turned and led Enderson through the gate as Lorenzen and Acosta jogged up the road to the far entrance.
“I’ll take the right,” Elaine said, almost drowsily, the assignment as exciting as it sounded.
“I’ll stay right here,” Neil said, wandering a few feet to the chain link fence that ran along the inland perimeter of the facility.
I shifted my position, to a point where I could see a good distance past the far entrance. Every minute or so I glanced back to my friend, one boot digging at the hard earth where he stood. He was impatient. Waiting was not anything he’d seen himself doing on this journey. The whole point was to get to our friends and loved ones as quickly as possible. How long ‘quickly’ turned out to be depended on more external factors than we’d expected when we set out from Bandon.
“We’ll get there,” I told my friend, just loud enough to carry the dozen yards that separated us.
He looked to me, a hard worry about him.
“We will,” I reiterated.
Finally he nodded, accepting my assurance. Whether he believed it was another question.
“Hey.”
I turned toward the newly familiar voice. It was Corporal Enderson, Private Acosta trailing just behind.
“You can head on down to the building,” Enderson said as he and his fellow trooper moved past, back onto the road in the direction we’d come from. “We’re going to get back to the boat and have them bring it up here.”
“What did you find inside?” I asked.
“Is the garrison there?” Elaine added her own question before Enderson or Acosta could offer any reply to mine.
Enderson paused for just a brief second and looked to us, confused.
“We didn’t find a damn thing,” he said, then continued back along the road with Acosta.
“What does that even mean?” Elaine asked.
Neil moved past Elaine, and then me, glancing back as he headed down the driveway toward the building.
“It means they have no idea what the hell’s going on,” my friend said.
I thought on that for a moment as Elaine began walking, following Neil. We’d come here with Schiavo and her unit for a specific purpose, because the garrison, and their radio, was supposed to be here. If that was not the case, then Neil was right.
But we’d found the same when returning from our trek to Cheyenne. The residents of Bandon gone. My friend, I guessed, wasn’t factoring that into what was stoking his frustration. This was no different. The world wasn’t providing us, or anyone, with an easy path to what we wanted. To what we needed.
And I feared that wasn’t about to change anytime soon.
* * *
Not a damn thing...
By that they’d clearly meant not a living soul, because that was what awaited us. There was no garrison where the garrison should be. No sign of life, or of death, either. The place was empty, main and support buildings deserted, bunkhouse space the same, recreation room filled with chairs and couches and a pool table, with no one to enjoy the amenities.
“Any bodies?” I asked.
Lieutenant Schiavo, standing at a window looking out to the waters of the Tongass Narrows and Pennock Island beyond, shook her head. Clouds swept in low and fast, erasing the fat sliver of land across the channel, sheets of rain descending. Weather was moving in.
“No bodies, no troops, no radio,” she said, then turned and looked to us as Sergeant Lorenzen entered the spacious room from a hallway. “Anything?”
“No,” Lorenzen answered. “Boat sheds are empty. They could have left by sea.”
“If they had transport,” Schiavo said. “We don’t know if they did. And even if they did...”
Lorenzen nodded, seizing on the incongruity of what they’d found.
“Why not leave a note,” he said. “Some communication.”
Schiavo nodded.
“So five soldiers are missing,” Neil said. “Just gone? Just like that?”
“No,” Schiavo said. “Not just like that. We haven’t checked the town yet.”
Roughly a mile up the road was the center of Ketchikan. Its business district. Shops and eateries to serve the masses of humanity cruise ships would deposit when calling on the port. It was small by lower forty-eight standards, but, one would imagine, held enough out of the way places where someone, or five someones, could hide.
“Why would they leave this and head into town?” Elaine asked.
“Don’t know,” Schiavo said. “But we have to make sure they aren’t holed up somewhere else nearby. With that radio.”
She was concerned for the absent garrison, I knew. But the radio, some link to higher authority, was at the forefront of her focus. Almost an obsession, I sensed.
“When they get back with the boat, we’ll scout the town,” Schiavo said.
“I’m going,” Neil said.
Schiavo eyed him.
“I decide who goes,” she said.
“Then decide that I’m going,” Neil challenged her. “I’m not sitting around here waiting for you to do your job. We need to get moving. We need to get to Skagway. So I’m going into town to find your lost garrison, or not find them, so we can get back on the water.”
The moment was charged. Lorenzen glared at Neil. Schiavo, though, showed nothing beyond a determined stare. No animus in it. No raised chin superiority.
“You’re going,” she said. “I need two of my men to stay here with the boat and the station. The sergeant will take two with him, and you three will be with me.”
She took a few steps toward Neil, facing him, but not facing off with him.
“That was going to be my decision before you volunteered,” Schiavo told him. “Understood?”
Neil sensed he had come close to a line Schiavo couldn’t let him cross. Couldn’t let anyone cross while she was tasked with completing a mission. I’d never seen my friend retreat from a fight, but this wasn’t that. This was him being eaten alive inside from worry over Grace and Krista. He wasn’t thinking with one hundred percent clarity. But in that moment between himself and the lieutenant, I saw that he realized he needed to at least make an attempt at rationalizing the reality of our situation.
“Yes,” Neil said. “Clearly.”
Schiavo stepped back and let the moment settle before looking to her sergeant.
“Leave Acosta and Hart here,” she said. “We’ll head out now. You follow when they get here with the boat. Take the northern end of town. We’ll cover the south.”
“Will do,” Lorenzen said.
Schiavo said no more to him. She just looked to us and gestured to the door.
“Gear up.”
Sixteen
Ketchikan was a ghost town. Like any other of the tens of thousands of places waiting to be haunted in the new world.
If they weren’t already.
“Neil, you and Elaine check the right side,” Schiavo directed.
I followed Schiavo up the left side of the street. The rain had come, steady and cool, long torrents of it spilling from rooftops and awnings along the avenue. We stepped around the drainage but kept close to the buildings on this block. The seventh we’d checked. Switching off our pairings each time. Putting fresh eyes and perspectives together, Schiavo had explained it. That was our purpose on this foray into town—looking. And searching. And, hopefully, finding. Someone or something that would shed some light on the missing garrison.
As we passed every shop or store or eater
y or business of any kind we’d pause and check briefly within, one member of each pair waiting just inside the door, covering while the other made a cursory search of the inside. So far we’d found nothing.
That changed at the real estate office two doors from the corner.
“Stop,” I said from my position just inside, watching as Schiavo moved through the interior. “Don’t move.”
She froze calmly, her weapon coming up with an easy motion, eyes sweeping the space around her.
“What is it?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead I leaned back through the open front door and spotted Neil and Elaine across the street, about to enter a pizza restaurant.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Don’t go in. Hold right there.”
Neil and Elaine read the urgency in my voice. They spread out, each taking positions across the street to cover approaches from either direction.
“Eric...”
I looked back to Schiavo and pointed to the desk on her right. Its drawers had been ransacked, papers spilled, a small mound of the documents spread across the top, covering something. But not completely.
“Tripwire,” I said.
Schiavo leaned her head to look over the papers and saw a thin blue cord beneath. It ran along the far edge of the desk and dove down to the opposite, unseen side. From there it disappeared from my view, but I suspected that it was running under another mass of strategically placed papers on the floor.
Right where Schiavo would have taken her next, and possibly last, step.
“Just don’t move,” I said.
I shifted to the right and looked to the side of the desk where it nearly butted up against the wall. There was a space there between the piece of furniture and the drywall. Not much. About as wide as my fist. Just large enough to conceal the three grenades duct taped to the hidden side of the desk.
“Grenades,” I said.
“You’ve gotta guide me,” Schiavo said.
“Give me a minute.”
I looked closely, taking out my flashlight to examine the improvised trap. The pins on each grenade were connected to the blue line with an elaborate series of knots, the string already taut. Any further pressure on it, such as Schiavo stepping on the concealed trigger wire, would cause the pins to be pulled. With the safety lever not depressed, a detonation would be imminent. Would we have noticed the sound? And if we had, would we have recognized it in time to avoid being blown to pieces in the confined space?
