by Noah Mann
“I know, ma’am. I just thought you deserved it. Especially in this situation.”
The barest smile came to Schiavo. She looked to me, no words coming right then, but everything about her look conveying a simple message to me—thank you.
* * *
Lieutenant Schiavo sent two of her men with Avery to his cavern hooch to retrieve his gear and belongings while she and the remainder of her troops caught some rest. Neil and Elaine and I stood watch outside, our defensive posture somewhat more relaxed than the night before.
My friend, I could see, was still having difficulty waiting. He was just expressing the frustration that came with that in a more sedate way. A way turned inward.
That had to be hell.
“What are you going to do when we get back?” I asked him.
He didn’t look at me, his gaze fixed out on the darkening waters of the channel as it had been for several minutes.
“Back to Bandon?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Never let her out of my sight again,” Neil answered.
I could appreciate that, though I didn’t know how realistic that statement would end up being. It was a reactionary sentiment he had expressed. One totally relatable to all that had happened since returning from Cheyenne.
Then, he looked away from the churning sea and made eye contact with me. With only me. His gaze very purposely avoiding Elaine where she stood a few feet away.
“Walk with me for a minute, Fletch,” my friend said.
It was a request. A polite way to ask if we could talk alone. Just the two of us.
“Sure,” I said, then looked to Elaine. “Be back in a minute.”
She nodded. There was no doubt that she’d heard the exchange. She understood that my friend, my oldest and dearest friend, wanted to speak to me out of earshot of anyone. Though the look about her as I turned away made me think that she was wondering if he only wanted our words to be unheard by her.
We walked to the edge of the dock. Wind waves rolled hard against it, the gusts pushing at us where we stopped. The storm was more wind than rain now. Nature’s fury cut by half.
“I have no way of explaining how hard this is to say,” Neil told me, looking out to the water again.
“What is it?”
“Don’t ever have her with you again if there’s a chance you’ll see her die,” my friend said, looking to me. “It’s hard enough knowing I wasn’t there when Grace and Krista were taken away. If I’d had to watch that happen...”
“They would have taken you, too,” I reminded him.
“Dammit, Fletch!”
The outburst came so fast that I literally shuddered. I glanced behind and saw that Elaine was looking our way, but just for a moment. She turned and wandered toward the building and disappeared around the far side.
“You’re just not understanding what it is you’re risking,” Neil said, a calm returned to his manner. “I thought about it before. That night on the boat when you asked me what I was thinking.”
I recalled that. He’d considered Elaine with what I now thought could have been a measuring gaze. One that was judging, maybe for the first time, just how much she meant to me. And I to her.
“I had no idea what we’d come across on our little boat trip,” Neil said, allowing a small, brief smile. “But I was thinking about how bad it could get. We’d seen terrible things, and I didn’t know if you were ready to have anything happen to Elaine in front of your own eyes.”
I glanced behind again, even though she wasn’t there. Just for an instant I glimpsed the emptiness where she’d been, and what Neil was saying resonated. A chill, not made of the weather, slid slowly over me, from head to toe.
“I think I wanted to tell you then what I’m telling you now,” Neil said, and I faced him again. “What if she’d been the one to run up on Avery’s bunker and not you? And what if it had gone wrong? Can you handle that?”
I didn’t have an answer for him.
“You took the risk today,” Neil said. “Will she let you do that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, if we’re up against another obstacle that’s trying to kill us?”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t say you don’t know,” he said, cutting me off. “Because you do know. She won’t. She’s a hard charger, Fletch. Just like you.”
“And just like you?” I challenged him.
My friend nodded.
“This world is different than the old one,” Neil said. “A bad move back then might send you to the emergency room for stitches, or maybe a cast. A bad move now...”
I knew what he was saying. There was no safety net other than what we, ourselves, could manage.
“If you can’t imagine yourself watching something bad happen to her, then think about how much she means to you. It’s new. Ending something now would hurt, but not as much as watching her die.”
“You think I should...”
Neil shook his head.
“She’s good for you,” my friend said. “I see that. And you’re good for her. But if it is important enough to be together, to stay together, then think very, very hard about who’s going to be the first one down a dark hall. Okay? That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
It might have been the most heartfelt statement of concern he’d ever shared with me.
“I need her,” I said.
“I know. So think about what I said. Okay?”
The wind gusted and tossed the spray of a wave over the edge of the dock. Icy droplets of water prickled cold on the skin of my cheeks.
“Okay,” I said.
Neil walked away, putting a hand briefly upon my shoulder as he moved past. When he was gone I looked to the sea, as my friend had. Night was racing over the storming channel. Grey and black clouds hung over ashen islands beyond indigo water. All that I saw before me was angry, and grim, and foreboding. The world had tried to kill me. People had tried, too. But I had survived. And I wanted to keep doing so. More than anything, though, I did not want to do so alone.
I wanted to see a new world born with Elaine by my side.
Twenty Two
It stormed for five days. On the sixth we prepared the Sandy for departure just before dawn. Private Avery stood with us on the dock as we gathered for the last time in Ketchikan.
“If I can get communication going again I’ll report your status,” Schiavo told Avery.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Avery said.
He wore a clean uniform. One he’d squirreled away for later use. As the lone surviving member of the Ketchikan garrison, he was clearly taking it upon himself to represent the unit he’d served with.
“I’ll also report your promotion during circumstances of battle to specialist,” Schiavo said. “Congratulations, Specialist Avery.”
The young man went almost white for a moment, then the color came back to his face and he saluted Schiavo. She saluted back and offered her hand. Avery shook it and looked to each of us, settling his gaze on me last.
“Thank you for not...doing what you could have,” he said.
“I’m glad it all worked out,” I said.
Acosta already had the Sandy fired up, its diesel rumbling below decks as the last of us boarded. Avery untied our bow and stern lines and waved as we pulled slowly away from the Coast Guard Station’s dock. We’d left a supply of MREs with him to partially replace what the Russians had taken, allowing him a good month of food to sustain him. By then we should have been able to reach Juneau, and Skagway, and report on his needing further resupply. Or extraction altogether.
“How long?” Elaine asked Acosta as we sailed past Ketchikan’s airport on Gravina Island, directly across the channel from the northern part of the city.
“Thirty hours,” the soldier said. “Approximately.”
Behind him, Schiavo was scanning the way ahead through binoculars. It was just the four of us in the wheelhouse. The rest were mostly below, though Neil and Westin stood on deck near the stern,
talking about fishing it seemed from the hand motions each was making.
“Can you do that, lieutenant?” I asked. “Just promote that kid yourself?”
Schiavo lowered the binoculars and looked to me.
“I think so,” she said. “If anyone higher up wants to challenge me on it, bring it on.”
She brought the binoculars back up and continued glassing the waters ahead and the shores to either side.
“Will you spell Acosta in a couple hours, Eric?” Schiavo asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“I’ll take the wheel after him,” Elaine said.
“Then that’s the plan,” Schiavo said.
I looked to Elaine. She stood next to Acosta, her own gaze sweeping the mix of land and sea ahead, searching for threats or obstacles. She was putting herself out there. Taking the initiative. Doing her part.
Just like Neil had suggested she would.
No one was shooting at us here. Not at the moment. But my friend was right—if the time came, Elaine Morales would not hesitate to put herself into the fight.
For the first time since we’d found each other, that scared the hell out of me.
Twenty Three
Almost exactly thirty hours after departing Ketchikan, Acosta maneuvered the Sandy past the long pier where cruise ships would have once lined the waterfront. Sergeant Lorenzen stood next to him, binoculars raised and fixed on a small dock ahead.
“Damn...”
Lorenzen’s commentary drew me to the window. I took my own compact binoculars from my pocket and zeroed in on what had elicited his response. The dock itself, about twice the size of what was needed to accommodate our vessel, was unremarkable and undisturbed. A structure just beyond it was not.
“The garrison?” Schiavo asked her number two.
“Building’s gone,” Lorenzen told her. “No sign of life.”
Gone didn’t fully describe the remains of what had been there. Roughly the size of an average house, all that was left were charred timbers and debris scattered into parking lots beyond. It was as if the place had come apart from within.
We pulled alongside the dock and tied off, everyone but Acosta on deck now, armed and geared up. When the Sandy’s engine was shut down, the purest, eeriest silence settled in. The quiet was almost tangible. You could feel it, like one might sense fog prickling cold at their skin while their eyes were closed.
“Is that where they were?” Neil asked.
“That’s where they were supposed to be,” Schiavo said.
The garrison posted in Juneau, which was supposed to number five, the same as Ketchikan’s decimated unit, was nowhere to be seen. If they’d spotted us cruising up the channel it would have been prudent for them to observe and lay low. But now, as we all disembarked and spread out near the remnants of the building, using other structures and low walls for cover, anyone watching would have the perfect opportunity to make contact with us.
Or to attack.
“Check what’s left,” Schiavo ordered.
Lorenzen directed Westin and Enderson forward. The soldiers waded into the demolished building, scanning the debris for a few minutes before looking back to their commander and giving a thumbs down.
“No bodies,” Lorenzen said.
“No anything,” I added.
Schiavo let out a long, bitter breath.
“We need that radio,” she said.
“What if the garrison relocated?” Elaine suggested. “If Kuratov’s troops did come through here, they could have seen them coming.”
“And bugged out,” Lorenzen said, entertaining the thought. “If they were faced with a superior force...”
“Yeah,” Schiavo said. “If. If this, if that. Everything’s an ‘if’.”
She was frustrated. My guess was that being cut off was wearing on her. Schiavo was obviously a capable leader, but she was facing a world that her training hadn’t quite envisioned. Officers were schooled in initiative, but also in the importance of command and control. The necessity to follow orders, and to report developments to their higher authorities.
Schiavo, I could see, still hadn’t grasped that, for the moment at least, she was the highest authority that mattered. And she was going to have to get used to that.
“Lieutenant,” I said.
“What?”
“If you were able to get through to your command right now, what do you think their orders would be?”
She puzzled first, maybe at why I was even asking such a question. Then, almost calmed by the mental exercise, she seemed to calculate precisely the scenario which I was inquiring about. And the absence of reality it spoke to.
“Hypotheticals get you killed,” she said.
“Correct,” I said. “There’s no ‘if’ here. There’s you.”
She took that in, then turned away from me and surveyed the destroyed building, looking past it to the sliver of the city visible beyond. Mountains that were once green stood grey and jagged on the far side of downtown, thin ribbons of clouds drifting past their peaks.
“Map, Private Westin.”
The young soldier returned from the debris pile and slipped the map from his pack and brought it to his commander. She unfolded it and studied the city for a moment, orienting herself.
“State Capitol is due north of here,” Schiavo said. “About a quarter mile at the corner of Main and Fourth. That’s our rally point.”
She was identifying a place to meet. But meet after doing what?
“We’re going for a walk,” Schiavo said, then spread the map on the hood of a car with four flat tires and laid out her plan.
Twenty Four
Juneau was a city caught between mountain and sea. It was also dead.
“Abandoned,” Sergeant Lorenzen said as our group made our way along streets in the downtown area.
Three of us were with him. Elaine, me, and Westin. Neil, Enderson, and Schiavo had moved beyond the downtown area, heading to a residential cluster up the coast, just inland from the airport. It would be a five mile trudge along slick roads, and five miles back along the same for them. Our plan was for both groups to meet near the State Capitol building after our sweeps were complete, then head back to the Sandy, which was being watched over by Hart and Acosta.
“There’s not much damage,” Elaine said, scanning the storefronts. “Just like Ketchikan.”
She and I hugged the left curb, occasionally shifting around cars left to rot and rust. Lorenzen and Westin kept to the right, a few yards separating each pair. Spacing maintained in the hope that any unexpected fire wouldn’t take out multiple people at once.
“Who’s here to riot?” Westin theorized with a question. “This isn’t the big city.”
“They’re also well-armed,” Elaine added. “Or were. People here wouldn’t have put up with too much idiocy.”
I suspected she was right. Aside from some broken glass and a few torched cars on side streets, the leveled building back by the dock was the worst we’d seen.
Until we rounded a corner past an auto parts store.
“Christ...”
The quiet curse that Lorenzen let slip preceded his direction to us by just a second. Following his hand motions, Westin sprinted across the street to the opposite corner, and Elaine and I jogged diagonally across the intersection to set up a strong point that could cover our rear and the direction we’d come from. But it was hard to scan only those slices of the tactical pie. What lay down the block we’d planned to travel drew our glances no matter how hard we tried to not look.
Bodies were what we saw. Crumpled at the base of a brick wall. I counted five, all shirtless and barefooted. The pants they wore matched the camo pattern of Lorenzen’s uniform. And Westin’s. And the other members of the unit.
It was the missing garrison. All indications pointed to that.
Lorenzen motioned for us to cover him, and a moment later he moved forward, hugging the brick wall, his weapon covering the opposite side of the stre
et. He approached the collection of bodies and crouched close to them, examining what we’d found. Holding still. Very still. Saying nothing. It was almost as if he was praying.
Finally he waved us forward. We moved slowly. Warily. Scanning every window. Every corner. Every opening to any building.
“Damn,” Westin said as he reached the horrific scene.
“Executed,” Lorenzen said, rising up, pure fury in his gaze.
I looked upon the tangle of men on the cold, damp sidewalk. Their bodies had been defiled by violence. By volleys of gunfire. They’d stood as one, and fallen as one.
“How long ago do you think?” Lorenzen asked.
He’d posed the question to Elaine. I suspected that her years chasing white collar criminals for the Bureau had offered little chance to deal with things such as what we saw before us.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not days and days.”
It was harder in this new world to base estimates on factors that once were taken as gospel. No flies remained to lay eggs on dead bodies. No larvae would hatch. No maggots would appear. People simply died and slowly dried up, or were eaten away by wind and weather.
“They’ve already come and gone,” Lorenzen said.
The Russians had been here. The evidence of that lay on the ground where we stood. But were they still here? The evidence we saw, and which we’d seen of their actions in Ketchikan, pointed to them being long gone. They moved like parasites. Scavenging. Supplying themselves as they moved toward some greater prize.
Skagway.
It was terrifying to think of what might happen when Kuratov reached that place. If he hadn’t already.
“We have to bury them,” Westin said, quiet, measured rage in his voice.
“We will,” Lorenzen said. “We have to finish the sweep first and hook up with the lieutenant.”
The reality of that didn’t sit well with Westin.
“So we just leave them lying there?”
The sergeant faced his private, but didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Westin retreated without moving an inch.
“Same formation,” Lorenzen said. “Two on each side of the block.”
