by Judd Vowell
After Anna had told Cruz and his lieutenants the story of Forager’s demise, he knew why she and the others had come to Alamo. His was the next largest camp in the Liberation Effort’s network. And it was somewhat central geographically, even though it was the furthest south. That meant Camp Alamo would become the new Lefty capital.
“And that means you’re in charge, Cruz,” Anna had added. Once she had gotten to know him, it only made sense. He was a natural leader, and as military-minded as McKay had been. Cruz had been a Major in the US Army before the Great Dark fell over the world. He was on leave when it happened, visiting his family’s hacienda in the Mexican countryside. By the time he made it back to Texas, his base had been overtaken by imbedded ANTs. After that, he was suspended in the chaos with everyone else, until he found a prominent place within the American Liberation Effort. When Anna offered him the Lefty leadership, he accepted with pride and vigor.
One of the few area’s where Camp Alamo was behind was technology. They had hacked into the closest ANTI- grid’s power source, just like the other camps, but they hadn’t done much once they had gained access. Jacob was put in charge of changing that. He trained the Lefty computer operators to break down code and decipher the ANTs’ encrypted messages. He showed them the ability of a single computer in gaining intelligence. And he made it all fun, like when he had first discovered the power of programming back in high school.
Archer was made chief military trainer. As with the Lefty volunteers in all camps, Alamo’s soldiers were mere citizens before the darkness. Almost none of them had fought in a military battle before, and some had never even shot a gun. Archer’s training became regimented and aggressive. He needed a fighting force fast. The lesson of Forager learned, his Leftys weren’t going to wait on another air strike to destroy them.
Jessica chose to live her Camp Alamo life quietly. She was well-known to the Leftys there, just as she was to the entire Effort. Her speech from Forager had been broadcast to them all, and her inspiration felt among the entire rebel nation. But instead of pursuing a leadership role, she joined one of the camp’s hunting teams, a way for her to stay sharp with her rifle while providing for the people of Alamo. She felt like it was an anonymous job, even though she was anything but.
Anna didn’t resist Jessica’s choice for obscurity. She understood the burden that came with being something more to people than just their peer, especially for a fifteen-year-old girl. But she also knew that Jessica couldn’t escape her own legend, even then. And Anna would be sure to take advantage of it when the time came.
ΔΔΔ
The Camp Alamo winter that year was harsh by Texas standards. Rainstorms and rare San Antonio snow bombarded the Leftys intermittently. Less recruits appeared in the cold months, the weather slowing prospective travelers throughout the region. When the spring finally did break, the Alamo residents were ready for it. And the arrival of new rebels picked up again as warm days began to outnumber cold ones.
It was during one of the warmer evenings that spring when a mother and son arrived at the camp, innocuous and excited. They were welcomed inside, having traveled far to reach Alamo. But that was also the night when disaster struck the San Antonio camp. Because the mother and son had brought the hell that was ANTI- with them, and they didn’t even know it.
25.
F all had passed into winter by the time Quinn had his new drone team prepared, and the winter that year in the southwestern United States was abnormally cold. Quinn conducted drone flights when he could, but much of the area around his base suffered through multiple rounds of snowstorms, hampering his feigned search efforts. He spoke with Salvador regularly, reporting his struggles.
“Patience,” Salvador would tell him. “Take your time, Quinn. You will find them.”
Salvador’s casual attitude about the mission kept him unnerved. But Quinn pressed on with his own agenda, not knowing how he might proceed if Jessica was found. For the moment, the finding was the focus.
Behind the curtain of his misleading performance for Salvador, Quinn was conditioning his own team of Omega XT, a small group of soldiers who would follow his orders without question. The Omega XT were his men first, not Salvador’s. They always had been, ever since he had created them. He believed in their loyalty to him above all else.
He trained one of them to pilot a specific drone, one that would operate in secrecy. It would be flown primarily over the camp in Texas, where he knew Jessica would be living if she was still alive. The other soldiers he recruited would remain on standby, until the time came for them to somehow rescue her.
Quinn’s secret drone flew over the rebel camp almost every day, using its surveillance camera to photograph the camp’s inhabitants. Each morning, Quinn would review the previous day’s pictures, hoping to find a familiar face among the hundreds of still-life strangers. It was an early spring morning when he saw her, a rifle hanging over her shoulder and a serious look across her pretty face. She had turned sixteen that Christmas, but she looked so much older, so aged.
He had found his missing granddaughter. Now it was time to do something about it.
ΔΔΔ
He kicked it around in his head for three days before he decided to do it. It was a desperate move, and risky, too. He couldn’t imagine Meg and Henry accepting him back with ease, if they were even still alive. He put that thought away quickly. So, if Meg and Henry didn’t kill him upon his arrival, he could maybe convince them to help him save Jessica. If they would choose to trust him again.
In his daydreams, he secretly hoped to rescue his granddaughter and show up with her back at the farm, the hero granddad joined with his long-lost family once again. But that was pie in the sky, and he knew it. Even if he could get to Jessica somehow, then get her back to the farm, Meg wouldn’t have him back. Not after what he had done. And there’s no way he could even get to Jessica. Not by himself, and certainly not with a group of Omega XT. A violent kidnapping was not the answer.
So that left one option, as he saw it. The desperate and risky option, but the only one: enlisting Meg and Henry to help him. If they were still alive. “Go away, evil thought. Of course they’re alive.”
He called Salvador as soon as he had it planned in his mind. Another lie added to his heap of deception.
26.
T he ANTs inside Philadelphia’s grid had suffered through a harsh winter of snow and ice and wind. Reports from the other grids in North America told similar stories. Except for California, of course. Salvador longed for his home state, especially when the weather was brutal. Philadelphia still made sense, with the Lefty rebellion simmering across the country. But he would be back in California one day. It was a promise that he made to himself all the time.
Quinn called from New Mexico after one of Philadelphia’s first warm days of spring. The sun had been out, the sky had been a crisp blue. Salvador had spent most of his day walking the grid’s streets, watching his ANTs live a life without the worries that the world had presented before he flipped it on its head. He was pleased with the progress of his experiment so far. And as long as he could keep the rebellion at bay, the experiment would thrive. So when Quinn called that evening, Salvador’s happiness grew even more, because the next step in stopping the rebels was about to happen.
“Hello, Quinn,” Salvador answered.
“Good news, Salvador. I’ve got a lead.”
Salvador could hear the anxiety in his voice. Quinn’s ability to lie had grown worse throughout his months-long charade. “Wonderful!” Salvador replied.
“I need to leave the base. There may be something west of here. Looks like a small group. They have vehicles, so that makes it suspicious. Might be our tricky rebels from Kansas.”
West, a directional ploy. But Salvador knew where Quinn would be heading, and that was east, not west. “That does sound like a good lead.”
“I’m going to take a group of Omega XT, go check it out over the next few days. May be nothing, but we need boots
on the ground to make sure.”
A few days, enough time to execute his rescue plan without raising suspicion. Salvador had predicted his every move. “Of course. But be careful, Quinn.”
“Don’t worry, Salvador. Careful’s my middle name,” Quinn joked, but it came out awkward. “I’ll let you know when we return.”
“Sounds good,” Salvador said. “Until then.”
Salvador closed his laptop and smiled with satisfaction. He had been two steps ahead of Quinn ever since his awakening at the hospital. Once he had made the connection, realized who the young girl was to him, he had led Quinn to her. It had actually been much easier than he thought it might. Quinn had been blinded by emotion, and that made him vulnerable to Salvador’s control.
The Omega XT who Quinn had recruited for his secret operation had divulged the rescue plan to Salvador earlier in the day, after they had been briefed but before Quinn had worked up the courage to call Salvador and deceive him. Quinn’s trust in his men was misplaced, their loyalty to him gone. Salvador had made sure of that a long time ago.
He shut his eyes and imagined the look on Quinn’s face when he realized he had been played. Salvador had learned a lot from Jacob’s betrayal, but the most important lesson had also been the most painful. That is, that no one is immune from the act of deception, given the right motive. He had lost another close friend in Quinn, maybe his closest. But it didn’t bother him as much this time. Because he had seen this betrayal coming. And he had faced it down, placing himself in its path and controlling its progression.
Salvador, his eyes still closed, smiled even wider as the image of Quinn’s startled and anguished face became clear in his mind. Then the face of Jacob appeared. He had learned so much from his past protégé, much more than even he had realized.
“No more blindsides, hijo,” Salvador said out loud. “No more.”
PART FIVE: FINDING THE WAY
1.
I learned a lot when my father returned to the farm, nearly two years after he had disappeared into the Great Dark. I eventually learned more about him than I ever wanted to know, and those things are probably more a burden to me than they ever were to him. Somehow, he was able to leave us in the darkness, knowing that we might not survive. His own family. Maybe he never understood what family really is. And maybe that explains a lot about the man I never really knew.
But here's the thing I learned that's almost worse than any of that: you are your parents. Don’t even try to deny it. Fighting the reality of it is futile, even though you may feel like you want to. Or even feel like you have to. Some people say you become your parents as you get older. But that’s not true. Truth is, you’ve always been them. The good parts and the bad. The successes and the mistakes. The love and the hate. Maybe you’re more like your mother, or more like your dad. But either way, they’re both in you.
So when you realize that one of your parents possesses an evil streak, a character flaw so awful that you can’t comprehend its existence, you change forever. Because you begin to worry, and you start to look for it. Not in them, but in yourself. You can’t help but wonder if it’s in you, too, just biding its time before it might have a good reason to reveal itself.
2.
C hance stayed at my side as we made our way to the farm’s entrance, the fur along her spine raised and her ears angled at constant attention. Henry walked on my other side and just a few steps ahead of me. He kept his rifle raised in defense, in case any of the Omega XT outside the gate opened fire suddenly. We wouldn’t have stood a chance against their assault rifles, but Henry maybe could have gotten off a shot or two. I guess that made him feel better as we got closer to the gate.
Dad was waiting there with his hands in his suit pants pockets, a charming smile spread across his face. The same smile he would always wear when he came to apologize for his absence from a soccer game or piano recital or school play that his work had forced him to miss. I had not forgotten what it looked like, even in adulthood. It made my stomach tighten.
“Hello, Margaret,” he said. He was the only one who ever called me by my given name. Mom had shortened it to Meg while I was still a baby, but Dad held onto the one thing that gave him some semblance of authority over me.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, just as I might have in some past greeting where things between us were still civilized. I crossed my arms and stood firm. I was not scared, of him or his men. Appalled and confused, yes. But not scared at all.
“Sorry for the circumstances,” he said, spreading his arms in reference to the Omega XT soldiers around him. “It’s really the only safe way for me to travel now.”
“What the hell’s going on here, Dad?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him tell me.
“Open the gate, Margaret, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Don’t do it, Mom,” Henry said suddenly. “Please. Don’t do it.”
“My dear Henry,” Dad said. “Put the gun down, son. I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Henry said. Then he moved his rifle’s aim across the faces of the Omega XT on the other side of the gate. His hands were steady, but I didn’t like the nervous aggression in the tone of his voice.
“It’s ok, Henry,” I told him. “I’m not going to let him in. Not yet at least. You tell your men to back off, Dad. I want them gone before I open this gate. It’s the only way.”
“Now, Margaret, you know as well as I do that these men can come onto this farm at any moment if they damn well please. But they won’t because I won’t let them.”
I was confused. Was my father in control of the Omega XT soldiers with him?
“Let’s consider it a show of good faith,” I said. “They get in their cars, drive up the road a bit, and let us say what we have to say to each other. Alone. Got it?”
“You always were demanding,” Dad answered. He turned to one of the Omega XT soldiers and spoke quietly to him. The men then loaded themselves back into their humvees and drove away in the same direction from which they had come until they were nearly out of sight. They parked, and I could see them get back out of their vehicles, watching us.
Henry had lowered his rifle as they drove off. Chance was still edgy, maintaining an almost inaudible but steady growl in the back of her throat. I unlocked the padlocks at the gate’s opening, then pulled it toward me. Dad walked up to me with his arms spread wide. I obliged and let him hug me. I loved him in a strange but specific way. Plus, his was a familiar face after so many months of isolation. I was relieved in seeing him, although I feared what his arrival and its circumstances might mean.
“Oh, Margaret,” he said as he squeezed me. “I’m so happy to see that you are alive. I had thought the worst so many times.”
I somehow held my emotions in check. I had so many questions that I wanted answered before I would allow myself to drop my guard. “What are you doing here, Dad? After all this time, why are you here?”
He let me go from his embrace but held onto my arms with his large hands. “It’s Jessica, Margaret. We may still have a chance to save her.”
My vision blurred and a ringing overtook my ears. He had insinuated that my Jessica was still alive. Then everything went dark.
3.
I was unconscious for only a matter of seconds, but long enough that my knees had buckled underneath me and I had fallen to the ground. Henry was kneeling over my head when I opened my eyes. Chance was licking my face.
“Mom, you alright?” Henry asked with concern.
“Yes, I’m fine.” Dad was still standing, his body blocking the sun and casting a shadow onto my face. I looked up at him. “What did you say? Before. About Jessica.”
“That you can save her, Margaret. Or should I say, that with your help, I can save her.”
I moved my eyes to Henry. His face held contempt and disbelief. He had lost trust in all of humanity, his grandfather included. He didn’t believe what Dad was saying, that Jessica was stil
l alive.
“I think we should take this conversation to the house,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Dad.”
ΔΔΔ
The three of us sat around the kitchen table where I had eaten so many of my childhood meals, more often than not without my father. It was actually a rare occurrence to have him home for dinner growing up. I suddenly realized how much I had missed him throughout my life, or maybe just the idea of him. I could hardly believe that he was sitting beside me again.
“You tell me where Jessica is first,” I said. “The rest can come later.”
He spoke slowly and with purpose, just as he always did. “She’s in Texas, with people she thinks are her friends.”
“Leftys,” Henry assumed. “And they are friends, by the way.”
“It’s all in how you look at things, Henry,” Dad said. “The people with whom she is surrounding herself are not safe. And that means the same for her. Don’t you want your sister to be safe?”
“Why are they not safe?” Henry blurted out. “Because of you?!?”
“Ok, ok,” I said. “We’re still family here, Henry. Don’t forget this is your grandfather. We don’t know the whole story. In fact, we don’t much of the story at all.” I took a deep breath, calming myself and letting the air in the room lighten. “I guess it’s time you told us everything, Dad. Then Henry and I will decide what needs to be done about Jessica.”
Dad cleared his throat and looked down at the table’s dark wooden surface. “Margaret, I’m sorry for most of the things I’ve done in my life. That includes the way I raised you. More like the way I didn’t raise you. I want you to know that, before I tell you anything else. I don’t need your forgiveness. I wouldn’t even dare to expect it. But I do need you to know that I’m sorry.”
