by James Hunt
“You okay, bud?” Mike asked.
“I didn’t like it,” Freddy answered.
“What happened in there?” Anne asked.
“They kept asking questions about you guys. Where we lived, my birthday, what I liked to do for fun.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Nelson said.
The rear door opened and a man they hadn’t seen before dressed in army fatigues entered. Judging by the way the men behind him were following, Mike guessed that he was someone important.
“Who’s in charge?” he asked.
Everyone’s eyes turned to Mike.
“You’re with me. The rest of you will stay here.”
The soldier’s men grabbed Mike and pulled him back into the building.
Mike was dragged through the winding hallways, deeper into the building. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember his way out. The journey finally ended outside a small office door.
One of the soldiers entered while the rest stayed with Mike in the hallway. Whoever was inside, Mike figured was important. The soldier stepped out and kept the door open.
“The colonel will see you now.”
“Colonel?” Mike asked.
The office was completely empty with the exception of a desk, one filing cabinet, and a folded American flag in a case that sat on top of it. The colonel, clean cut and shaven, sat behind the desk. Mike could see the finely-pressed creases of the uniform.
“Have a seat,” the colonel said, without looking up from his work on the desk. “I’ll be with you in a moment. You’re dismissed, Blake.”
“Yes, sir!”
Blake saluted, turned on his heel, and closed the door when he left. There was only one other chair in the room. Mike sat down and noticed the name “Col. Cadogan” embroidered on the front of his uniform. The colonel was scanning pages of a file.
“Those our answers?” Mike asked.
“Just yours.”
Cadogan waited a few more minutes before finally snapping the file shut and stacking the papers neatly on the corner of the desk.
“You’ve been through it, Mr. Grant,” Cadogan finally said.
“What do you want?”
“You know what all those questions told us?”
“What?”
“That you’re dangerous.”
Mike felt his body tense up. He caught himself reaching for the gun at his hip that he knew wasn’t there.
“Dangerous to who?” Mike asked.
“To whoever you don’t like, Mr. Grant.”
“No, I’m only dangerous to anyone that threatens my family, Colonel.”
“I can see that,” Cadogan said. “During your questioning you said you heard our radio broadcasts, and that’s how you knew where to find us.”
“Yes.”
“Other members of your group mentioned a similar statement. Tell me, how did the radio survive the EMP blast?”
“A Faraday cage.”
“And you came here on four motorcycles, and a Jeep, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Resourceful. Luckily for you there are two things I admire in a man: honesty and ingenuity. You have both.”
Cadogan rose from his chair and grabbed the case with the American flag folded tightly inside its triangular box. The colonel carried it gently.
“I received this flag when my youngest was brought back in a box from Iraq,” Cadogan said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I wasn’t going to get my son back, but I knew what he died for, and the way he died was honorable.”
Cadogan set the flag down gingerly on his desk. His hands lingered on it for a moment before finally letting it be.
“People don’t have that anymore, Mr. Grant,” Cadogan said. “I’m hoping we can bring that back.”
“And you think it can happen here?”
“Yes.”
Mike shifted in his seat. He could still feel the pain in his ribs, the broken bones trying to mend, the punctured lung trying to heal. This place was uncomfortable to him, but then again everything seemed uncomfortable these days.
“So what does that mean for my family?” Mike asked.
Cadogan gave a smile. He walked back behind his desk to the filing cabinet.
“You’ll each have your own quarters, and will be assigned to a specific job that you will report to each day,” Cadogan said.
“What are these jobs going to have us doing?”
“Each assignment for the members of your group is based on the evaluation of our interviewers and the answers to the questions that were asked of you. Sergeant Blake?”
The door to Cadogan’s office opened and Blake stepped back inside.
“Yes, sir?”
“Escort Mr. Grant back to his group and have them all report to their quarters for the evening. They’ll begin their training in the morning.”
Cadogan handed Blake the orders. When Mike turned to leave Cadogan called out to him.
“Mr. Grant,” Cadogan said. “Don’t make me regret keeping you here.”
***
When Mike made it back to his group, everyone had questions, but there wasn’t much time for him to answer. The soldiers led them out of the fenced lot and back around to the front of the building.
They were brought to a hotel high-rise a few blocks from where they were interrogated. On the way there Mike noticed that not all of the buildings had guards, only the ones that looked occupied.
The guard at the hotel’s entrance reviewed the papers, nodded, and then opened the doors for them.
The collective sigh of everyone that entered the building was followed by laughter and giggles from the kids.
“Air conditioning!” Freddy yelled.
“Here are your room keys and numbers,” Blake said.
Kalen snatched the card out of Blake’s hand and made a beeline toward the stairs.
“I call first shower!” Kalen said.
Kalen ended up stopping herself before she got to the door and looked over at the elevator. She glanced back at Blake who nodded.
“Those work, too,” he said.
Freddy and Sean ran after her as the elevator doors opened, and the three of them disappeared behind closed doors with smiles still on their faces.
“Well, hopefully she’ll leave enough hot water for the rest of us,” Anne said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Mike replied.
“We’ll be back here at zero six hundred to begin training. Meet me in the lobby,” Blake said.
The hallways of the apartment complex were mostly empty. There was only one other individual Mike saw when walking to their room, and it was a guard.
Mike slid the key card in the door and pushed it open. It was a simple single bed hotel room. He walked over to the window and looked outside. He could see a fire escape on the side of the building, but the stairs below the fourth floor were destroyed.
There was a light switch on the wall next to the entrance. Mike sat there for a moment, looking at it. He reached his hand out slowly and flipped the switch on. The lights from the lamps instantly brightened the room. Anne started laughing.
“Weren’t sure if they’d work?” Anne asked.
“I’m still not sure if I believe it.”
Anne grabbed his hand and started pulling him toward the bathroom.
“C’mon. Let’s test the shower,” she said.
***
It took a second for Mike to realize the buzzing was the alarm. That first moment when he turned it off he thought he was back in Pittsburgh. Then reality set in as he rested his feet on the carpet of the hotel floor. He wasn’t in Pittsburgh. He was in Cincinnati, and the stiffness in his hands brought back the wall he’d been keeping up for the last three weeks.
He gave Anne a kiss before waking her and she climbed out of bed and opened the curtains. The sun had yet to join them.
Mike walked down the hall to Fr
eddy and Kalen’s room. He was given a key to their room, so he cracked the door open, checking to see if they were awake.
Kalen was up, already dressed, lacing her shoes.
“Hey, Dad,” Kalen said.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Not as well as him.”
She gave a half smile and nodded back to Freddy.
“Good luck getting him out of bed today,” Kalen said.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll see you downstairs.”
It took Mike twenty minutes just to get Freddy to sit upright, and another twenty minutes to finally remove him from the bed. By the time he made it downstairs he was ten minutes late. There wasn’t anyone else left except Blake, tapping his boot.
“I’m sorry. My son, he—”
“Save it,” Blake said.
He pulled the two of them outside and they headed deeper into the city. They stopped at a smaller building with a playground on the side.
“The boy will stay here. You can pick him up after your training is over,” Blake said.
“What is this?” Mike asked.
Freddy hid behind Mike’s legs.
“This is our school,” Blake said.
“I want to go inside before I leave my son anywhere.”
“We’re already late.”
“Then it won’t make much of a difference if I take a few more minutes.”
Mike grabbed Freddy’s hand and the two of them headed inside. It was a simple one-story building, a little older, but kept in good condition.
The “School of Young Minds” sign out front suggested it was some kind of gifted school before the blackout. Judging by the brick walls, and intricate garden beds, Mike imagined it wouldn’t have been something he could have afforded to send his son to.
Inside were the typical school hallways. Lockers and classroom doors were shut. Mike walked past a few of them, checking inside the windows.
Each room Mike passed was filled with kids. It looked as though the rooms were broken up by age groups. The farther Mike walked down the hallway, the younger the kids looked.
Finally, Mike saw Sean. The teacher inside noticed Mike and greeted him at the door.
“You must be new,” she said.
“Yeah. This is my son Freddy,” Mike said.
“Nice to meet you, Freddy. I’m Ms. Franklin.”
Freddy took her hand timidly, and then jumped behind Mike. He tugged on his dad’s pants and Mike bent down so Freddy could whisper in his ear.
“Do I have to stay here?” Freddy asked.
“Afraid so, bud.”
Mike kissed Freddy’s forehead and watched his son walk into the classroom, grabbing a seat next to Sean.
“He’ll be fine,” Ms. Franklin said.
“What time do they get out?”
“Today’s your first day?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be able to pick him up before the day’s over. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
When Mike walked back outside he and Blake two-timed it through the streets until they made it to a city park. He could hear the gunshots beyond the trees.
“Where are we going?” Mike asked.
“To train.”
When they made it through the walkway and past the trees the park opened up into a massive field. Targets were set up with men and women practicing their marksmanship. Demonstrations of field-cleaning a rifle, hand-to-hand combat, and how to handle heavy artillery were set up along the edges of the field.
“Welcome to boot camp,” Blake said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You were selected for security duty based on your evaluation with your interviewer. A couple other people from your group made this list too.”
“Who else?”
“Sam and Kalen.”
Mike’s heart dropped. He brought his family here so they could be safe, not to put them in the line of fire.
“My daughter does something else,” Mike said.
“No can do. All assignments are final. Here, your first stop is the range to assess your accuracy.”
Mike was handed an AR-15 with a full clip of ammo. Blake kept a close watch on him the entire time. The targets were spread out in ten-yard intervals. The closest was ten yards and the farthest was one hundred.
“You get three shots per target,” Blake instructed.
Mike brought the scope up to his eyes. The round bull’s-eye target fell between the crosshairs. He flipped the lever from spray to single shot.
He moved through each target fairly quickly. When he made it to the one-hundred-yard marker he had a little trouble, but managed to hit one bull’s-eye, and got the other two close to the center.
“What’s next?” Mike asked.
Blake made a few marks on his clipboard and nodded over to the hand-to-hand combat area.
The trainer was a tall, lean man with sweatpants and a shirt on. He was demonstrating a few disarming techniques during a knife fight.
After watching the instructor walk through the motions a few more times they broke off into pairs. Mike’s eyes kept finding Kalen, practicing with another woman. His lack of focus was causing his opponent to kill him every time.
“You two. Stop,” the instructor said.
It took Mike a moment to realize who the instructor was talking to, until the instructor started walking over.
“You need to be more decisive. Any hesitation and your opponent kills you,” he said, grabbing the knife from Mike’s sparring partner.
The instructor poised himself for attack, and before Mike could do anything he was on his back with the instructor’s blade to his throat.
“You’re slow, old man,” the instructor said.
Mike brought his knee up to the instructor’s stomach and rolled him over, struggling to get the knife from him.
Before Mike could grab the blade the instructor answered with a right cross against Mike’s jaw, almost knocking him out.
“You’ve still got spirit though,” the instructor said, extending his hand and helping Mike up.
Kalen rushed over to help steady him, but Mike waved her off.
“I’m fine,” Mike said.
“Dad, you’re not fine. You need to rest.”
“I said I’m fine.”
He didn’t mean for his tone to come out as harsh as it did, but he didn’t want to appear weak. Not here.
“All right, everyone. Back to your partners,” the instructor ordered.
The rest of the day seemed to go smoothly enough. There weren’t any more combat or shooting exercises. Everything was about strategy and ensuring the unit of men and women you were with understood each other’s roles.
They were dismissed shortly after lunch and Mike, Sam, and Kalen all walked back together. It was the first time they’d really been able to talk since this morning.
“Where’d your mom go?” Mike asked.
“Hospital,” Kalen said.
“What about everyone else?” Mike asked.
“Katie’s doing administrative work at some office, Nelson’s with maintenance, and Mary’s at the hospital. The rest were under sixteen, so they’re at the school,” Sam replied.
“Let’s grab Freddy on our way back,” Mike said.
When they arrived at the school the timid boy who didn’t want to be left this morning was replaced by a disheartened boy who didn’t want to leave.
“Can’t we stay a little bit longer? Ms. Franklin is so cool!” Freddy shouted.
“Yeah, Mr. Grant. When my dad comes to get us he can make sure he picks Freddy up too,” Sean added.
“All right. You two be careful,” Mike said.
“Yes! Thanks, Dad!” Freddy yelled, running back onto the playground with Sean.
“He seems to be adjusting well,” Kalen said.
“Yeah,” Mike replied.
