by Judd Vowell
She went to the tow truck parked close by, the only Lefty vehicle left. She climbed up into the truck’s cab, then motioned for Jessica and Jacob to join her. The three waited there until Archer and the others returned. And just like Anna had said, that wasn’t very long.
ΔΔΔ
The Omega XT soldier who had survived the interstate crash was despondent but still defiant. He refused to speak at first. He chose silence as his means of insolence.
Anna interrogated him alone inside the bottom-floor of the building where she had watched Camp Forager burn. Archer and Laz had tied him to one of the former restaurant’s wooden chairs with thick rope, his hands behind him and his ankles tight to the chair’s legs. He was surrounded by piles of human bones on the ground and still-upright skeletons in the corner booths, reminders of ANTI‑’s brutal oppression. She didn’t care about his pain or his fear. In fact, she used them both to get the information she wanted.
“Don’t feel much like talking, is that it?” she eventually asked the soldier. “Nothing you want to tell me today?”
He tightened his lips and tried to puff out his chest, but he was hurt. His body gave way to the pain, and he slumped in his chair.
“I’m going to make this real simple for you,” Anna said. She was pacing the floor in front of him as she spoke. “You’re going to die today. You know that as well as I do. You can feel that sucking in your stomach, just barely there, can’t you?”
The soldier had been pierced through his abdomen with a piece of torn metal during the crash. A small part of it was visible just outside his ripped uniform.
“Let me tell you something about gut wounds,” she continued. “They can be the most painful injury a man can experience. But there’s something else – they can take hours to kill you.”
A mixture of emotions crossed over the Omega XT’s face. He was trying to maintain his misguided stoicism, but he had become scared as she talked. He looked down at the metal sticking out of his side.
“You’ve got a classic gut wound, soldier,” Anna said. “Probably tore into a couple of organs in there. Maybe your liver, maybe your spleen. No way to know. But one thing is certain – you are bleeding internally. And pretty soon, you’re going to be in the worst pain you’ve ever known.”
The soldier suddenly felt full in his abdomen, which made him nauseous. There was significant pain radiating from his wound, but it was still manageable. And yet it was stronger than it had been a few minutes before. He was sure of it.
“You’ve got a choice,” Anna said, crouching in front of him so that she was level with his eyes. She was only a foot away from his sweat-covered face. “You tell me what I want to know, and I stop what’s coming. I end it all right now, so that you don’t have to endure the pain.”
He looked into Anna’s eyes. She was trying her hardest to show him sympathy, even though she felt none. The defiance he had held on to so tightly faded from his face. She saw it happen. She saw him give up.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Everything,” she answered.
He started with his recruitment and training, then moved on to his initial assignment. He had been part of the infiltration and removal team that entered the Milwaukee grid as the ANTI- takeover began. He had stayed on there as a border guard for a few months. Then he had received transfer orders from the Philadelphia headquarters. He was sent to a remote army base in Kansas to work security. It was there, just over a hundred miles west of Kansas City, that ANTI‑’s largest drone operation was based. The base was staffed with not quite two hundred ANTs. There was the group of drone pilots, then just enough Omega XT to secure the base’s perimeter. He had left there this morning with a few of his fellow soldiers, sent to watch the base’s drones destroy the Lefty camp.
“That’s all I know,” he finished. His face had turned whiter as he told his story. “May I have some water?” he asked with a grimace.
Anna reached for the canteen at her side, hanging just behind her pistol in its holster. She unscrewed the top and placed its opening at the soldier’s lips. He lapped at the water that spilled across his mouth and chin. She pulled the canteen back and screwed its cap back into place. Then she put her hand on the gun’s handle.
“Ready?” she asked.
The Omega XT soldier nodded once with the slightest head movement and closed his eyes. In one motion, Anna drew her gun and shot him in the center of his forehead. The force of the bullet sent him backwards in his chair. He hit the floor and bounced to his side. He didn’t move again.
Anna calmly put her pistol back into its holster and walked out of the building, with retribution on her mind.
5.
Q uinn grew sicker as he rode the Philadelphia elevator down to the ground floor. His granddaughter had just been executed before his eyes, along with hundreds of other rebels. All at the hands of a man for whom he had once held such great respect. He couldn’t shake the smile on Salvador’s face from his mind.
The large amount of whiskey he had drunk on an empty stomach was only making him feel worse. As the elevator doors opened, he ran through the lobby as fast as he could. He made it outside and around a corner before he vomited. His body’s purging made him feel better, but only for a few seconds. Then the misery came rushing back. He stood bent over for a minute, staring at the bile and whiskey mixture streaming its way from the sidewalk to the street.
“Sir?” he heard someone ask in a voice that seemed far away. “Are you ok, sir?”
He turned his head in the direction of the distant voice, but his legs collapsed beneath him before he could see who it was. He lost consciousness as he was falling, so he didn’t feel his head bust open when it slammed against the concrete. A dark and heavy curtain then closed over his brain and stayed shut for more than a week.
ΔΔΔ
After Quinn left the top-floor residence, Salvador went to his laptop. When he opened it, Simone was there on the screen, waiting for him from her new station inside Sector 5’s San Antonio grid.
“That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“Now let’s not take joy in someone else’s death, Simone.”
“Someones’,” she said, placing an emphasis on the ‘s’ at the end of the word. “I can’t help my feelings, Salvador. It’s a natural reaction. Seeing those bombs drop…then the explosions…it was exhilarating.” She smiled on the video feed as she said it. Then she turned serious again. “So, how’d he handle it?”
“Not well,” Salvador said. “Not well at all.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know yet. But I aim to find out. After what happened with Jacob, I can’t afford another betrayal.”
“I don’t know him like you do, Salvador. But he’s been acting strange ever since he saw those pictures. The ones of Anna and the girl.”
Salvador thought for moment before he spoke again. “I watched him the entire time. And when the bombs began to drop, he winced, like he was in pain.” The answer then became clear to him as he said it. “Or like someone he loved was in pain.”
“You think?” Simone wondered.
“I do now,” Salvador said. “I’ll be in touch, Simone. When I’ve decided what we’re going to do about all this.”
He closed the laptop and leaned back into the cushion of his leather chair, still trying to place the final pieces of the puzzle that would reveal why his old friend Quinn had changed so dramatically.
6.
T he group of sixteen Leftys who had ventured into Kansas City that morning had shrunk to thirteen. Two of them had been shot and killed on the rooftop, while another had died in the shootout on the interstate. Only thirteen still living from the hundreds at Camp Forager. It was a harsh realization for everyone left.
On the upside, thirteen was a good number for traveling, which they would have to do. They needed to decide on another Lefty base where they could find refuge. But Anna had one t
hing she wanted to do first. And thirteen was a perfect number for the guerrilla warfare she had in mind.
She pulled Jessica, Jacob, and Archer aside from the others after she had finished her interrogation. She told them about the army base, sitting a hundred miles or so to their west. She said she wanted to come up with a plan of retaliation. She wanted the ANTs at that base dead.
“Archer, that’s where you come in,” she said. “You and Laz are the only true military minds we’ve got. Based on what we know about that base, how do we do it?”
Archer thought for a moment. They silently waited for him. “Two hundred of them,” he finally said. “Thirteen of us.” He had a grave look on his face as he said it. But then he smirked. “I like it. They’ll never see us comin’.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Anna said. “Here’s the hitch: we’ve got to act quick. These ANTs that we’ve killed will be expected back at the base this afternoon. Archer, that gives you and Laz just a few hours to come up with something that’ll work.”
“We’ll come up with something,” Archer said.
Jacob leaned in to Archer and said jokingly, “...that’ll work, right?”
“Screw you, Marsh,” Archer snapped.
“Hey, don’t fault me for being the voice of reason here,” Jacob said. “But this sounds like suicide to me.”
Archer patted Jacob’s chest hard with the palm of his hand. “Have faith, Marsh. You listen to me, do as I say, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”
“Faith,” Jacob said with a laugh. “Overrated concept, if you ask me.”
Jessica looked up at Jacob and ended the conversation like she seemed to do so often. “Got you this far, didn’t it, Marsh?”
ΔΔΔ
The Leftys who had traveled to Forager after the attack got back to the city mid-afternoon. They reported what the others already knew. The camp had been obliterated. There was nothing left but rubble and fires. They had found no one alive. They had buried their two friends just outside the camp’s perimeter and that was that. The confirmation only made Anna more resolute in her plan for retaliation.
As the day crept forward, Archer and Laz worked quietly on a strategy for overtaking the ANTI- base while the rest of the group began preparations for the trip there. The first line of business was transportation. All of their vehicles had more than enough gas for the trek, but the humvee had been heavily damaged in their pursuit of the ANTs that morning. Bullets had riddled the entire front half of the vehicle, and the engine had taken a number of hits. The tow truck Leftys deemed it too unsafe to drive. That left them with the cargo van, pickup, and tow truck, plus the rooftop ANTs’ humvee, if they needed it. Getting to the base was going to be the easy part.
The group then inventoried and checked their weapons. They had brought guns with them to the city, but not enough for a direct assault on a small army. They collected more weapons from the dead Omega XT on the roof, adding a few extra pieces to their arsenal. But once everything was laid out on the street, the collection of guns, ammunition, and grenades still looked much too small for what lay ahead of them. It was obvious that they were going to have to get creative.
Finally, the Leftys paid respect to the body of their fellow soldier who had died in the interstate shootout. They carried him two blocks away from where they had stationed themselves, placing his body in the middle of a city intersection. They soaked two tablecloths they had taken from the lobby restaurant in gasoline from their humvee’s reserve tank, then wrapped him in both. Without words, one of the Leftys lit a match and touched its flame to the cloth at his dead friend’s feet. They watched his makeshift funeral pyre burn until it turned to ash. By then, the plan for retribution had been devised, and they were ready to hear it.
The scheme that Archer and Laz put forth was one of trickery and deception, and it would require precision and timing. There was absolutely no room for error. If one part of the plan failed, the rest would follow. Everyone got their assignments at four o’clock and split apart to study them. They would leave the city at seven that evening to ensure that their arrival outside the army base would be after dark. Until then, it was nervousness and anticipation for the Lefty soldiers. Except for Jessica, who relaxed on the sidewalk in the late afternoon sun, as calm as a girl by the pool on summer break.
7.
M ilitary battles aren’t won by luck, and they’re rarely decided by the skills of the soldiers fighting them. Many times an armed force finds itself suddenly on the defensive, surprised by an attack that seemingly comes out of nowhere. And more often than not in those situations, the attackers win. But it’s not because the attack itself truly came out of nowhere. Time and thought and preparation each had a hand in it. There are multiple steps of strategy that have led up to the actual moment of “surprise.” And if everything falls properly into its place, the ones on defense don’t stand a chance.
The first step in Archer and Laz’s plan was finding the right spot to park the humvee that had been too damaged to drive. They had instructed the tow truck Leftys to load it up and bring it with them on the trip. With over half a tank of gas and more in its reserve tank, it could still be of use. That would be plenty of fuel to create a fiery provocation.
Laz led the Lefty convoy in the ANTI- humvee, another vehicle that would serve more than one purpose in the plan. A mile out from the base, he pulled to the shoulder of the highway. The others behind him did the same. They couldn’t see the army base in the distance, but the maps they had pulled from the dead Omega XT told them exactly where it was. Everyone exited their vehicles and waited for Archer to direct them to their tasks.
“Alright, everybody, we’re here,” Archer said firmly, but with the volume of his voice low and controlled. He was dressed in one of the dead Omega XT’s uniforms, just like Laz and Jacob and one other Lefty named Simpson were. The uniforms were stiff with dried blood and torn from gunshots, but they would work just fine in the darkness.
“Let’s get the damaged humvee unloaded,” Archer instructed. “Then I want it on its side here.” He gestured to the shoulder of the highway.
The tow truck Leftys got to work, angling the bed of their truck upwards, then slowly unwinding the cable holding the damaged humvee in place. Once they had it on the ground, they turned the tow truck around and backed its lowered bed underneath the vehicle’s frame. Then they gently raised it. The humvee lifted off its driver side wheels. It continued to move upwards until its weight tipped it onto its passenger side with a scraping of metal against asphalt.
“Perfect,” Archer said when they were done. Then he pulled out a map and a flashlight. They all gathered around him. “The service road that leads to the base’s rear entrance is five hundred feet ahead. Team Two will take that road, just as planned. Go half a mile, then wait for our signal. If we don’t signal, abort. Understand?”
Everyone nodded.
“This is it, everybody,” he said as he folded the map and returned it to his front jacket pocket. “No turning back now. Remember your role, nothing more. If we all do what we’ve prepared to do, we can’t lose. Team One, stay with me. The rest of you, we’ll see you on the inside.”
ΔΔΔ
There were ten Omega XT guarding the army base’s main gate on its eastern perimeter at 9:38 that night. They all saw the explosion, approximately a mile down the highway. It was loud and appeared to be gigantic against the pitch-black backdrop of total darkness. It shrank to flames within seconds, still large enough to see from the base.
“What the hell was that?” one of them said.
“Shit, who knows,” said another.
“It was out on the highway,” a third guessed. “Had to be.”
Until that afternoon, the base had been a much easier assignment for the Omega XT stationed there. Unlike the grids they had been protecting initially, every ANT inside the base was a soldier, able to defend himself if needed. There had been occasional skirmishes with wanderers along the base’s outskirts, an
d even a large crew of vagabond thugs that had to be eliminated one time. But the two Omega XT teams that had left that morning to monitor the drone attack had not returned. And now this explosion. The soldiers were nervous.
“Let me call it in,” one of the guards said. He reached for the intercom attached to the chest of his uniform and pressed its button. “Control, we have unusual activity outside the eastern perimeter, over.”
The intercom was silent for at least a minute. “Uh, yes Gate 1, repeat that, over.”
“Asshole isn’t even at his desk,” the reporting Omega XT said to the others before he replied. They all chuckled anxiously. He pressed his intercom again. “Yes, Control, I say we have unusual activity outside the eastern perimeter. There was some sort of explosion and now a fire. Looks to be down the highway, maybe a mile or more, over.”
The soldier in the base’s central control hesitated for another thirty seconds before he replied. “Affirmative Gate 1, we see the fire. Be advised, send a unit out to investigate. Report back when you know more, over.”
“Yessir, over and out,” the Omega XT said into his intercom, then took his hand away. “Alright, boys. Looks like we’ve got a little action tonight. Who wants to go?”
With the mystery of their missing comrades fresh in their minds, no one wanted to investigate the strange highway fire, but finally four of them volunteered. They jumped into a humvee and headed out of the base’s gate, driving west to see what the unusual fire was all about.
8.
S alvador could hear his laptop’s message alert beeping from the shower, but it didn’t hurry him. He had run for ten miles that afternoon, his first significant exercise since traveling to Sector 3 and back. The muscles in his legs and back were already aching. He wasn’t about to deprive them of the hot water they so desperately needed.
