by Noah Mann
An hour after we began sending, the transmission stopped and the program locked in on a specific frequency where a response was detected.
“Put it on the speaker,” Schiavo instructed her com expert.
Westin dialed the volume up and adjusted filters to clean up what was coming through. When the transmission became clear enough to recognize, our hearts sank.
The high, low, high tone repeating was identical to the alert tone which had preceded the ATV broadcast from the Unified Government.
“Maybe it’s them,” I said.
Westin, though, shook his head.
“This signal is not local. Not by a longshot.”
A few seconds later we learned exactly where it was originating as the tones ended. And we learned this through a familiar voice.
“Bandon, this is Yuma, a colony of the Unified Government.”
“Perkins,” Martin said.
Earl Perkins, who’d been head of the Yuma survivors taken to Skagway with others from the lower forty-eight and Canada. He was an abrasive man, small in stature but big in bluster. An autocrat with few to lord over, I’d thought when meeting him after our trip north. Now, apparently, he’d found a like-minded entity which he could serve.
“Shall I respond?” Westin asked.
“Bandon, come in.”
Schiavo looked to me.
“They’ve taken Yuma,” she said.
“Or Perkins just invited them in,” I suggested.
“Bandon, have you come aboard? Come in.”
“No other responses?” Schiavo asked.
“Just Yuma,” Westin confirmed.
“Bandon, are you there? Come in.”
“Shut it off,” Schiavo said.
Before Westin could, Elaine leaned in and killed the speaker.
“We may be the last,” I said.
“Yeah,” Schiavo said, disappointed, though that sentiment evaporated as quickly as it had come. “Or the seed from which many grow.”
Thirty Eight
Commander Clay Genesee, malcontent doctor of the Bandon survivor colony, began administering a diluted vaccine to the population less than twenty-four hours after surgically removing the implant from Sheryl Quincy’s arm and extracting its remaining contents.
It did not come in time for two residents.
“This morning,” Mayor Allen said as Genesee prepared to give him his injection on the porch of his house. “She never woke up.”
Genesee hesitated, the needle just above the old doctor’s arm, glancing past the man to the open door, then to me. I’d been drafted to assist him in visiting those too ill to come to the clinic where Specialist Hart was handling injections for those still mobile. After he was finished there, the garrison’s medic would begin a quick tour of the frontline checkpoints to administer the vaccine to our defenders who’d remained on the line through fevers, choking coughs, and debilitating aches.
Here, though, the Navy doctor and I stood with his predecessor, learning that his wife, sickened by the virus, had not made it through the night.
“Did we lose anyone else?” Mayor Allen asked as Genesee slipped the needle easily into his flesh on the outside of his bicep.
“The little Chester boy,” Genesee said.
“Good Lord,” the mayor said, his head shaking somberly.
The Chester household would have been our first stop once the vaccine was ready to distribute, but just before the process was complete word came that the child, not quite five years old, had succumbed. An asthma sufferer, he’d struggled from the beginning, growing sicker, and weaker, by the hour.
Until the hours ran out.
“If this works,” Genesee said, “I think we’ll be able to pull everyone else through.”
Mayor Allen nodded, grateful for that assessment. Truly grateful. But the shadow of loss upon his face, in his eyes and his slack expression, made clear how deep a loss he was experiencing before our very eyes. He’d made the town his priority, at his wife’s urging, I was certain. Even in her final hours, when she was still conscious and able to speak, I had no doubt that she’d pushed him to focus on the town, and to keep the residents foremost in his thoughts, and in his efforts.
“I’m sorry, Everett,” I said.
The old doctor who’d accepted the mantle of leadership reached out and put a comforting hand upon my shoulder. Offering me support. This town I’d adopted, which had accepted and embraced me as one of their own, had its share of fine, fine people. To think that there was a time, not long after arriving, that I’d thought of leaving, of heading off to seek survival on my own, was almost folly now. I simply hadn’t looked hard enough at the people around me to realize I was already in the best place, with the best people, that I could be.
Commander Genesee finished the injection and discarded the needle in a container we’d brought along.
“My condolences, doctor,” Genesee said.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll have a burial detail sent out,” I told the mayor.
He nodded and stepped back, settling into one of two rockers that sat side by side on the porch.
“I think I’ll just sit until they get here,” the mayor said.
“Of course,” I said.
Genesee and I left the man to be alone with his wife in their home for the last time. There was going to be another funeral. Another burial. More than one, I knew. And still more beyond those. Because, even with the vaccine, and expecting that it would work, there were still two armies facing each other, waiting for the order to attack.
But we had a chance, now. A fighting chance. Thanks to the man I’d suspected of turning against us.
“You may have saved us,” I told Genesee as we climbed in the Humvee in front of the mayor’s house and headed for our next stop.
“Maybe,” Genesee allowed as I drove us down the street.
Silence lingered between us for a half mile of town streets. I’d been waiting for the Navy doctor to speak, but I realized it was actually me who had something that needed to be said.
“I didn’t really care too much for you,” I said.
Genesee never looked away from the road ahead as he processed what I’d just admitted.
“And now?” he asked
That was a fair question. And the truth was, I didn’t have a good answer.
“Get back to me in a couple weeks,” I said.
“You planning on being my cellmate in a Unified Government prison camp?”
I glanced from the road to Genesee and saw that he was still staring straight ahead, his steely gaze over a very unexpected smile.
Thirty Nine
They came from every direction but the west, the Pacific our only secure flank. It was also the immovable bit of mother earth that our backs were up against. There was no retreat. We could not run. We either stood our ground, or surrendered. I knew what that meant. We all did.
People were going to die today.
“I’m deploying the bulk of our reserves to the south,” Schiavo said, reacting to the volume of reports that put a sizeable force to the east. “I believe that’s a diversion.”
We stood together, the Defense Council, possibly for the final time. The events of the night to come would dictate whether we would all gather again in the town hall conference room where we now stood.
“And the north?” I asked.
Schiavo looked to both Elaine and me.
“That’s where you two will be with Corporal Enderson,” she said. “You’ll be able to read whatever happens there and know if a full attack is coming.”
“And if it does?’ Elaine asked.
“Then I’ll be responsible for the fall of Bandon,” Schiavo said, with matter of fact honesty. “I’ll be here. Sergeant Lorenzen and Specialist Hart will deploy with the eastern forces, and Private Westin with the southern forces on the front line. If we need the reserves, I’ll join them.”
“So will I,” Martin added.
A map lay on the
table where we stood. Schiavo had marked all the positions and her intended deployments prior to our arrival. Mayor Allen leaned forward, palms on the edge of the map, his aged eyes sweeping across the landscape reduced to two dimensional lines denoting streets and elevation contours. He’d had no time to mourn the loss of his wife. No time even to bury her. Her body, and those of Nathan Chester, remained in cold storage at the town’s morgue. Victory would allow us to give them proper services. But that outcome was still far from certain.
“And what if it fails?” the mayor asked. “When do I step in?”
He didn’t outright say it, but what he was thinking echoed the American principal of civilian control over the military. In essence, he was asking Schiavo at what point he would have to make the decision to surrender in order to save the lives of those who remained.
“You’ll have to make that call, sir,” Schiavo said.
“People won’t follow any such order,” Elaine told the town’s leader. “I won’t.”
“If I have to cross that bridge, Elaine, I fully assume that everyone in this room will already be dead.”
“Except you,” I said.
Mayor Allen nodded soberly.
“And God help me.”
Schiavo stepped away from the table and slipped into her battle gear, taking her M4 in hand but foregoing her Kevlar helmet.
“I’ll be in communications,” she said. “My guess is that radio reception will be interfered with, so use landlines if you can get to one to report anything important.”
“All right,” I said.
We shook hands. We hugged. We said our good lucks, which, we knew, might very well be goodbyes. Then Elaine and I left the town hall and drove north in the old pickup we’d been assigned.
Ten minutes after we arrived at our destination, all hell broke loose.
Forty
“On the left!” Enderson shouted, his M4 spitting rounds to the northwest from the narrow firing slit of the sandbagged bunker at the northern limits of the town.
“I’ve got movement on the right!” Elaine yelled back, firing controlled single shots from her MP5, trying to conserve ammo.
Between them, facing the bridge directly, I squeezed off double taps at what I was certain were groups of enemy across the span, maneuvering on the far bank of the Coquille River. Every volley we sent toward our enemy was returned in kind, with greater volume than ours, sometimes by a factor of four.
We were outnumbered.
“Where’s the patrol?!” Elaine asked above the deafening ripple of incoming and outgoing fire.
“They pulled back!”
Elaine hadn’t caught the report on our radio, just thirty seconds earlier, that one of three foot patrols, meant to plug the space between our location and the checkpoint three hundred yards to our southeast, had retreated to a more secure vantage point. With that repositioning, and the engagement to our own front, it seemed almost certain that the final assault on Bandon had begun.
Until, without warning, the guns pointed at us fell silent.
It took us half a minute to realize that we were the only ones still shooting. Once we ceased fire, we watched. And we listened.
“What the hell is going on?”
The corporal’s question was well founded. Whatever tactics our enemy was employing, they weren’t from any textbook he was familiar with, nor recognizable compared to any engagement we’d had in any conflict since the blight turned us all into warriors.
“They know we’re low on ammunition,” Elaine said.
“Just getting us to waste what we have,” Enderson said, agreeing. “We need to hold our fire until the real thing comes.”
“I thought this was the real thing,” I said.
The enemy was out there. Moving. Positioning themselves. They hadn’t yet come across the river, which was the natural barrier on our northern flank. For all we knew, the targets we’d been shooting at were just the fodder troops that Olin had spoken of. The real troops, the hardened soldiers, could be right behind them. Or in another area altogether.
“There’s shooting to the south,” Elaine said, listening through the sudden quiet in our area.
Sustained fire, I thought. Heavier weapons. Machine guns. They could be ours, but I was guessing theirs. As yet there had been no explosions, signaling mortar attacks. Or worse.
“You two take a break,” Enderson said, his attention focused through the bunker’s narrow opening.
“Thanks,” Elaine said.
We shifted position to the back of the bunker and sat on the floor. The barrels of our weapons were still warm as we set them momentarily aside. Elaine reached to me and pulled an expended 5.56mm casing from where it had lodged against my collar.
“Glad it wasn’t the other end of one of these that found you,” she said, dropping the spent shell atop the others that had been ejected from our weapons during the firefight which had just ended.
The hint of gallows humor in her words was plain. But so was the truth that bullets would find people. Our people. Our friends.
As we were about to learn, that fact had already come to pass.
“We have two down.”
The report came in over the radio, the voice calm and familiar. Schiavo.
“Jesus...” Elaine said.
There was no more information shared. Captain Schiavo, at the garrison’s command center in town, was taking in reports from the fixed outposts via wired lines and field radios. Whatever was happening elsewhere in and around the town, it all flowed through her. And, when necessary, to us.
“Down doesn’t mean hurt,” Enderson observed.
I knew he was right. Elaine did, as well, I knew. Offering up a running tally of any wounded was meaningless. Deaths, where someone was taken completely out of the fight, was not.
“So much for your friend’s word,” Enderson said, never looking back as he scanned the battered span that traversed the dark waters.
“What do you mean?” I challenged the corporal.
He glanced to me, no apology in his gaze for what he had said, and what his words suggested.
“They don’t want to hurt anyone,” Enderson said. “Wasn’t that his promise?”
“It was their promise,” Elaine corrected him. “The Unified Government.”
Enderson snickered lightly and looked back to the river.
“He’s with them,” Enderson said. “And that means he’s against us. It means he now has blood on his hands.”
What the corporal was stating couldn’t be argued on the face of the facts that had become known. But in that moment, as he laid out what seemed obvious, another possibility rose. A possibility which, as I considered it, seemed, in almost every way, more likely that what Enderson was saying.
“We’re going to check the old bunker,” I said, taking my weapon in hand and rising.
Elaine looked up to me where I stood, puzzled. Possibly she was doubting my choice to leave the safety of the intact bunker for the rubbled remnants of what had once been known as Checkpoint Chuck. Or she might have thought it odd that I was retreating from any defense of my friend, however distant and strained our onetime inseparable bond had become.
I reached my hand down and she gripped it, standing with my help. She was weak, still, a combination of exertion from the firefight and the remnants of the bug almost everyone in town had been fighting. Genesee’s magic was working, saving almost every resident who was old, young, or compromised through some chronic illness. The bit of medical magic had also lessened the effect of those who did contract the illness, like my love. That had allowed her, and others, to stay in the fight.
Whether they had another fight in them, I wasn’t certain.
* * *
We moved through the darkness, bounding to cover each other until we reached the shattered remnants of the old bunker within sight of our checkpoint. I’d fought there alongside Elaine soon after arriving in Bandon, fending off an assault across the bridge by the drug-crazed ho
rdes from Seattle. Then she’d been just a hardened survivor, wary of the newcomers. Now...now she was everything to me. I loved her. I trusted her.
And I needed to share something with her.
“What if we’re wrong about Neil?”
I posed that question to Elaine as we stayed in cover, scanning the river snaking east. In the dim light of the quarter moon I could see doubt registering on her face, then curiosity.
“Wrong?” she asked. “How could we be wrong? You know what he did, and who he’s aligned himself with.”
“I know what we think he did,” I countered. “There’s one very glaring hole in this picture we’ve all painted of him being a traitor.”
“What hole?”
“His family,” I said. “Grace, Krista, Brandon. They’re here.”
“He said it was a goodwill gesture,” Elaine reminded me. “That he wouldn’t send them somewhere where—”
And then she saw it, too.
“Where they’d be in danger,” I said, completing the thought. “Except they are in danger. And he had to know that this would happen. That we wouldn’t surrender. Not after all we’ve gone through to keep this town going.”
Elaine nodded and brought her arm up to cough into the crook of her elbow.
“Why would he send them to a place where they’d be in danger?” I asked her.
She thought for a moment, the revelation coming to her as it had come to me.
“He’d send them if the danger here was less than where they already were.”
It was my turn to nod.
“There’s more to what he did,” I said, feeling, for the first time in many months, that the man I’d grown up with was not the turncoat we’d feared. “There has to be.”
“But what?”
I didn’t have an answer. Just a gut feeling. And as I let all that I’d learned since Neil left run through my head, bits and pieces began to stand out. Inconsequential snippets of facts and moments.
One in particular.
“The Hawks...”
Elaine puzzled at my statement. I looked to her, my heart rate quickening.
“He joked that when this was all over we could catch a Hawks game,” I said, recalling the innocent slice of banter my friend had offered. “On the ATV transmission, he said that to me.”
