by Jim Heskett
The man on the swing set hopped off, then crossed to the other two. He whispered something to them, then Sutter sank back down behind the sign to collect his thoughts.
He needed to follow them, but how? It’s not as if he could blend into traffic in a deserted town like Richmond. And if they were going anywhere near Fort Lee, it wouldn’t help if they had a head start on him.
No, the better plan would be to get his hands on that map. She’d made markings on it; maybe she diagrammed the route to their destination. He eased back across the rooftop as he slipped the pistol back into his waistband.
But when he reached for the ladder, it jiggled.
He leaned over, and the man who’d been on the swing set was standing below, holding the ladder in his hands.
“Look at this,” the man said with a sneer on his face. “What are you doing up there?”
Sutter whipped his hand back to snatch the gun as the man yanked the ladder away from the building. By the time Sutter had the gun out, two quick blasts had echoed and bullets whistled past his head.
He hit the gravel, checking himself for injuries.
Shouts came from across the street.
Sutter steeled himself, taking deep breaths. This wasn’t like dealing with those undisciplined Red Streets gang bangers back when he was living in the Marriott. This was the Infinity. He’d seen what they could do firsthand.
Sutter got to his knees just as something sailed through the air and landed on the gravel near him.
Grenade.
He was right next to the edge of the roof. Nothing to hide behind. Without any time to consider other options, he coiled and sprung forward, over the edge. The ground came up to meet him in a flash, and he crashed on his side. A burst of pain throttled his shoulder and spread over his back and neck.
The Infinity member stood over him, blotting out the sun.
The grenade went off, a rumbling explosion that sent gravel into the sky, raining down all around them. As the man reached down for Sutter, a piece of gravel smacked him on the side of the head, making him jerk for a second.
Sutter kicked out, sweeping the man’s leg. He thunked on his back, then wheezed as the air rushed out of his lungs.
Sutter raised up and drove his elbow down, into the man’s nose. A gush of blood poured out as the man’s hands flew to his face.
Sutter got to his knees and snatched at the knife clipped to his belt. He dragged it across the man’s scarred neck flesh until he’d opened it and blood darkened the slit.
Sutter stood, momentarily dazed. His ears were ringing from the grenade blast. Bits of gravel dust floated in the air. He still had the pistol in his hand, and he stumbled out of the diner’s alley, around the side of the building.
But the two remaining Infinity members were no longer across the street. They were gone.
He spun, trying to blink the gravel dust from his burning eyes. He caught only a blur as something sailed through the air toward him. A knife. He jerked back and out of the way as it nicked his pants. The woman was across the street, peering out from behind the bus stop enclosure. She reached down to draw a second knife from a collection strapped to her thigh.
That meant she didn’t have a gun.
Sutter broke out into a run, which made the pain in his back throb with each step. But he only had to cross thirty feet to get to her.
She drew a blade and prepared to throw it, and as her arm went back, he dropped into a somersault. The knife went whizzing over his head. He popped up just five feet from her, rearing his fist to punch her.
She jumped and backhanded him. She was wearing gloves, and they must have had weights in them because she smacked him so hard he feared his jaw might be broken. It pulsed and stung immediately.
As she reached down to draw another knife, Sutter lifted the gun and put a bullet in her leg. She collapsed against the bus stop, but she didn’t stop trying to grab at her knife.
He blew a hole in her hand, and that seemed to get her attention.
She screamed and slumped into a sit.
“We don’t fear death,” she wheezed, glaring defiant eyes at him and clutching her bleeding hand to her chest.
“What you people did… death is too good for you.”
Then he looked around, noticing one of the motorcycles gone. He leveled the pistol at her face. “Where’s the other one?”
She grinned, teeth bloodied. “Scouting south. Looking for our brothers and sisters.”
And that was all she would say.
Sutter squeezed the trigger one more time, then snatched the dead woman’s motorcycle.
3
Isabelle glared at Sutter the New Yorker as he stood in the mess hall at Fort Lee. Yes, he’d arrived at just the right time to break up a fight between her and these two camp rubes and therefore save her from getting that third and final strike, but part of her wanted to fight anyway. Life at the camp was exceedingly boring.
“Who’s coming?” Dave said.
“The Infinity. There were three of them. Scouting team.”
“So?” Isabelle said. “How do you know they’re coming here?”
“Because I caught up with the last one five minutes outside our gates. Izzy, he had a map with Fort Lee circled on it.”
The two rubes looked at each other. “Shit,” said the one with suspenders.
“Okay,” Isabelle said. “A couple of them were on their way here. That doesn’t mean anything.”
Sutter stomped across the mess hall and shoved a folded piece of paper in her face. “It means something because of this letter I found on him.”
Isabelle read the letter, then passed it to Dave.
“We need to go tell the camp leader,” Sutter said. “Right now. I don’t think we have much time before others start showing up.”
Isabelle checked with Dave, and he nodded his agreement.
The rubes and the shotgun-wielding bartender stayed put while Dave, Sutter, and Isabelle left the mess hall and ventured out into the dreary gray Virginia afternoon.
When the militia had commandeered Fort Lee not long after the end of the world, they’d built fortified walls to enclose the collection of buildings that made up the fort. It became an oasis in the middle of a torn-apart Virginia.
Isabelle and Dave had taken flight right after the news spread about the war between Chalmers and LaVey. Leaving DC seemed the smartest play, since they assumed the war would spread and consume most of the country. They headed out for this mythical camp they’d been hearing about for years.
The war did spread, but it wasn’t Boss Chalmers or Senator LaVey who’d been the cause. Those burned freaks emerged like ants from an overturned log once the two “superpowers” were gone. But they hadn’t come south, at least until now.
The letter Isabelle held in her hand meant all that was going to change.
They hiked to the admin building on the south side of the camp. The camp leader, an older man who went by the peculiar name of Alias, usually spent his afternoons in one of the offices there.
Just outside the admin building, Sutter’s friend Zach crossed their path and paused when he saw the look on Sutter’s face.
“What’s up with you guys?” Zach said.
“We’re going to speak to Alias,” Sutter said.
“That douchebag? What do you want with him?”
“This is serious,” Dave said. “Something bad is happening, and we have to do something about it.”
Zach seemed unsure, so Sutter huffed a groaning sigh as a reply. “You can come with us if you want. You can help us convince him.”
Zach shrugged as he fell in step with the rest of them. “Sure, whatever.”
The four of them entered the admin building, hustled up the steps to the second floor, then knocked on Alias’ office.
“Come in,” he said.
They each took up a position opposite Alias’ desk. The camp’s leader was a rotund man with bushy sideburns and thick black glasses. He was leaning over his desk, scratch
ing in a spiral notebook.
“One second,” he said, scribbling intently as he held up a finger.
“We need to talk,” Isabelle said. “It’s urgent.”
Alias kept writing for a few more moments, then set down his pen. He flashed the same charismatic smile that had earned him the trust of the collective camp voters in the last election. “Yes?”
“They’re coming,” Sutter said.
“Who’s coming?” Alias said.
Isabelle held out the letter and Alias adjusted his glasses to read it. “Ahh, Infinity,” he said as he scanned down the page. “So they’re trying to rebuild their broken satellite phone network. I don’t see how this means they’re coming.”
“I found three of them on their way here,” Sutter said. “One of them told me they were scouting.”
Alias took off his glasses and polished them against his shirt. “Still don’t see the problem here. That’s what we have walls and armed gate guards for.”
Sutter threw up his hands. “Those walls outside the fort? It’s not going to matter if they’re fifteen feet high or twenty. You don’t know what these… people can do. I’ve seen it.”
Isabelle caught Zach wincing at Sutter’s words.
Alias read over the letter again with his forehead wrinkled and a persistent look of doubt on his face. He folded the letter and handed it back to Isabelle. “Okay, guys, what would you have us do?”
“We need to get out of here,” Dave said. “Everyone does, as soon as possible.”
“Or at least arm everyone,” Sutter said.
Alias flashed his winning grin again. “Arm everyone with what? Good intentions? This isn’t public knowledge around camp, but Coullier and his men took almost everything when they left. Militia priority, he claimed. Our stockpile of weapons and ammo can fit in half a closet.”
Isabelle felt a weight press on her chest. Alias was right, those walls were the only asset they had, and they weren’t worth much.
“What if we could get more weapons?” Isabelle said.
Alias opened his mouth to respond but stopped. He cast a suspicious look at her, frowning.
“What are you talking about?” Dave said.
“We could bring back weapons and set up a defense perimeter,” Isabelle said.
“Sure,” Zach said, “we’ll just run down to Walmart and stock up on shotguns.”
Isabelle crossed her arms. “I’m just spitballing here. If we’re going to do something, then we have to do something quick.”
Alias cleared his throat. “I think you’re blowing this all out of proportion. Even if they do mobilize, and even if they move south—and those are two big ifs, by the way—there’s no guarantee they’ll come anywhere near here. You go around spreading this kind of cataclysm and paranoia, you’re going to have the whole camp on edge.”
Isabelle scowled at the man who was supposedly this camp’s leader and protector. How could he be so cavalier about all this?
“If you do nothing,” Sutter said, “they’ll kill every single person in the camp. Maybe burn us all alive. How’s that for cataclysm?”
Isabelle thought back to her first experience with the Infinity when she and Dave had been stalled at that gas station in Nevada. The mutilated body in the bathroom and that rose stem sticking up from its chest. A cold chill ran through her.
Alias took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together over the desk. “I’m afraid I don’t see it that way.”
While her three companions stumbled over their words, Isabelle came to realize that arguing with Alias was pointless. “Let’s go, guys.”
The rest of them followed her lead, with Zach tossing a rather juvenile glare at Alias on the way out. Like it or not, that man had the final say in camp activities.
As they proceeded down the stairs, Dave tugged on Isabelle’s arm to hold her back from the other two. “So what do we do?” he whispered to her. “Do we go?”
“Do you want to go?”
He chewed on the question for a couple seconds. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m tired of moving around, you know? I thought we had a good thing here, and I figured we’d be here for a long time.”
She didn’t feel as tied to the place as Dave did, but he had a point. In the year they’d been here, their life had gotten better. The walls did keep most of the road-bandit type of assholes away, and as long as they pitched in, they earned food and shelter. Couldn’t say that about most places.
“Then we figure something out without Alias,” she said. She pulled Dave by the arm down the stairs to catch up with Sutter and Zach, who were sitting in the courtyard outside the admin building.
“So, guys,” she said, “am I right to think you’ve got some kind of backup plan in case this invasion turns out to be for real?”
“We were just talking about that,” Sutter said.
“Okay, for the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” Zach said.
“What’s a terrible idea?” Isabelle said.
Sutter let out a grumbly and labored breath as Zach shook his head. “I know where we can get some weapons.”
4
Isabelle, Dave, Sutter, and Zach stood in Sutter’s dorm room in the barracks, huddled over a map of the eastern United States. Or former United States. Or whatever they called it now. A gas lantern aided the dim light pouring through the room’s lone window.
While Sutter drew a line from Fort Lee up to Philadelphia, Isabelle kept a close eye on Dave. Talk about protecting the camp was cheap, but Dave hadn’t been willing to fire a gun for a long time. The events preceding the bombing at the Air Force Academy—the night Isabelle had been kidnapped—had scarred him. Fortunately for Dave, Isabelle had no problem pulling a trigger.
Dave seemed steely and resolute, but it wouldn’t have been the first time he put on a brave face to impress Isabelle. Just another one of the things she loved and admired about him.
Sutter drew a circle around Philly, then marked a line from Fort Lee up through Maryland.
“And you know exactly where she is?” Isabelle said.
Sutter nodded. “Cassie is in Bella Vista, in a house on Fulton Street. I mean, if she’s where she was when we parted and the city block is still standing. I don’t see any reason to think she’d move. It’s a secure location, and she’s got enough firepower to stop a small army from messing with her.”
“But you can’t say for sure that she’s there,” Dave said.
“We have an agreement,” Sutter said. “She’ll honor it.”
Zach grunted.
“You,” Isabelle said, nodding at Zach, “what’s your deal with this woman?”
“She’s a cold-hearted bitch,” Zach said, glaring at Isabelle as if he needed to drive the point home.
“She’s not the most personable ally we could have enlisted,” Sutter said, “but she’s solid. Cassie worked on Wall Street right up until the shit hit the fan. We met her in Yonkers a few years later, and she’d stumbled on this big cache of weapons.”
“She stumbled on it?” Dave said.
“Not exactly,” Sutter said. “I don’t know all the details. She enlisted help to take down some thugs running a crooked market in Yonkers, and the weapons belonged to the ringleader. She inherited everything.”
Zach retreated from the table and sat down hard enough on a bunk to make it rattle. “That’s what she says, but she lies. You can’t trust her.”
Sutter ignored Zach’s interjection. “When they came to burn New York, we got her and her supplies out of town, in exchange for future help.”
“Why do you hate her so much?” Isabelle asked Zach. “You try to get in her panties and she turned you down?”
Zach scoffed and picked at the bunk’s bedspread. “Yeah, right.”
Isabelle glanced at Sutter for confirmation, and he shook his head. “Zach and Cassie… they didn’t get along. But you don’t need to worry about that. Whatever else she is, she’s someone who can honor a debt. She’ll give us the we
apons.”
Dave drew his finger along the map from Philly back to Fort Lee. “And then what? It could take us several days to get up there and back. What if they get here before we do?”
“That’s possible,” Sutter said. “I don’t know their timeline.”
“If worst comes to worst and we get back to find the camp infiltrated,” Isabelle said, “we’ll at least be outside of it and have weapons. We could maybe take it back.”
“Or leave,” Sutter said.
Isabelle nodded at him. The more she got to know Sutter, the more she liked the pragmatic way he saw things.
“But even if we do get back in time,” Dave said, “most of these people here aren’t prepared to fight. They moved here to get away from the outside world. We start putting assault rifles in their hands, they’re just as likely to shoot each other or maybe run away.”
Isabelle put a hand on Dave’s arm. “Babe, this is the best plan we have. We stay and die, or we go to Philly and try to give everyone here a chance.”
“Doing nothing condemns these people to death,” Sutter said.
As Zach frowned and Dave nodded solemnly, Isabelle sneaked a look at Sutter. She could tell just by the microscopic hint of a frown on his lips that he also understood this plan had almost no chance of succeeding.
5
Victor rolled his wheelchair up to the severe iron gate at the house in Red Bank and drew in a lungful of salty air. It settled heavy in his lungs, making him work to push it in and out.
“It’s good to be home,” he said. His assistant Norman opened the gate for him since Victor would have looked like a fool trying to roll the wheelchair at the right angle to reach the latch. Norman knew this because Norman was a capable assistant. Victor seemed to think his assistant relished his increased worth now that Victor had lost the use of his legs.
Life without agency in the lower half of his body had not come easily for Victor, but a ricocheted bullet to the spine while visiting the Infinity border station in Kansas had forced it on him. The old man and the younger one, so determined to get into Colorado that they’d killed half of Victor’s group and left Victor full of holes. It was only due to their haste that they’d forgotten to check if Victor were dead before rushing off.
