The Heart of War: Book Seven of the What's Left of My World Series

by C. A. Rudolph

  Dave didn’t hesitate to taste-test Michelle’s brew. “Extraordinary, the flavor blows away the bouquet.” He made a toasting gesture. “My compliments.”

  Neither Russell tendered a response to his praise.

  Dave took another sip and sat quietly for a time, then began to get the feeling his invitation might’ve expired. “Alan, Michelle, if this comes across as ill-mannered, my apologies in advance. But I’m beginning to think I might be imposing. Should I swing back in another time?”

  Michelle shuddered and twisted in her chair. “No, sorry, you’re fine. We’re just dealing with a…family issue.”

  Dave went to respond, halting when Alan suddenly came to life.

  “Something just hit me,” he said, regarding his wife. “Something Lauren said the night of the party you threw for me when I found her in the woods. We had a great talk…turned into an incredible heart-to-heart. She told me so much I needed to hear, but there were some things she said that didn’t add up then.”

  Michelle locked eyes with him. “What? What did she say?”

  “She said I taught her skills and had others teach her. That I taught her how to think and how to look at things differently. Then she said something else…something I’ll never forget.” Alan hesitated, all eyes on him. “That I readied her…to make war with hell.”

  Michelle leaned back into her chair, pale faced and jaw slackened. No words escaped her lips.

  “I didn’t know what she’d meant by any of it then. I figured, like everything else, it would come to me eventually. And I have to say, it’s starting to now.”

  “If I may,” Dave began, index finger pointed to the ceiling from a balled fist. “Please correct me if I’m mistaken. I’ve only been present within your humble abode a few minutes thus far, but I’m sensing two superlative challenges; one of you bears absence of knowledge; the other, absence of memory. And while I’m uncertain as to why the topic’s in plain sight, I’m willing to offer snippets of a missing perspective, if it serves to benefit matters.”

  Lauren’s parents rotated in their seats to face him, their expressions bidding him to expound.

  “By all means,” Michelle said, appearing sprightlier. “Please.”

  “Very well,” Dave said. “Let’s see. Where best to begin? A twosome of years following my discharge from the Army, I took on a firearms instructor position at Point Blank Weapons Training Center. Several years into doing so and after becoming a chief instructor, a guy by the name of Alan Russell walked through the door, inquiring about defensive shooting lessons. He said he’d been brought up around guns and knew how to shoot, but he wanted to know more, as much as he could, a motive just about everyone working there had heard a few times. We spoke more in depth about our standard self-defense curriculum and what all we had to offer, and he eventually opened up to us about a recent run-in he’d had involving two would-be assailants several miles off the beaten path.”

  Chapter 40

  FEMA Resettlement Camp Bravo

  Tuesday, March 15th

  The strike to Sasha’s face was nothing. It felt like a glancing blow, as if her interrogator’s intention had been to not hit her squarely. The punch impacted her jaw with a quick, dazing thud; the pain came, lingered a few seconds, and dissipated until it was extinct.

  Sasha tongued at her inner mouth and gums for injury, finding nothing aside from a dulled, temporary lack of feeling. The nontechnique tickled her. She’d been struck in the face hundreds of times before by larger, stronger, even drunker adversaries, most of them male, every damn one of them more competent than this person.

  Officer Carrie Hewlett was short, stout and unusually overweight for the prevailing circumstances, if one could believe it. Practically everyone Sasha had known or encountered had shed circumference from their waistlines resultant of the collapse. How this woman had managed to pack on the pounds was incomprehensible, almost. Officer Phil, God rest him, had himself seemingly achieved a similar miracle. After Sasha’s latest run-in with him over the prospect of stolen food, she’d developed a notion as to how. There was no way to confirm, however, as McCracken’s unfortunate demise prevented him from being reached for comment.

  “You’ve been in the hole for a week, Ms. Ledo,” Officer Hewlett groaned, her balled-up fists pressing down on the table beneath her weight. “Haven’t learned your lesson yet? How much longer are you going to hold out on us?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” cooed Sasha. “A little while longer, I suppose. Maybe more than that.”

  “Oh, really? I know what you’re doing, see? That’s a stalling tactic. I’m trained to know that, by the way. And you can stall all you like, but it won’t get you anywhere, trust me.”

  “It won’t?”

  “Well, it hasn’t so far, has it?”

  Sasha shrugged. “It hasn’t failed to get me out of my room every day for an hour or so.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.” Hewlett frowned. “You know, this would all be over and done with if you just came right out and told the truth. Haven’t you ever heard that the truth will set you free?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Sasha quipped. “It’s from the Bible. But it’s been misapplied for decades like some virtuous proverb, mostly by cops, investigators, detectives, members of law enforcement and the like, rendering the entire verse a farce.”

  Officer Hewlett gritted her grimy teeth. “Are you implying that all law enforcement officers are liars, Ms. Ledo?”

  Sasha looked sideways at her. “I’m not implying anything. It’s the damn truth.”

  “Well, the only liar I see in this room happens to be you.” The interrogator backed away and folded her arms. “For the purposes of this inquisition of ours, I’ll repeat myself again. All I need is for you to tell me what happened to Officer Phillip McBride and Officer Jonas Cochran. And if you don’t, it’s back to the hole with you.”

  “Same scenario as yesterday? And the day before?”

  “You betcha.”

  Sasha poured on the scorn. “Oh, damn. The slammer. Solitary confinement. Locked up alone in an old hotel room converted into a cage, with a shower and a porcelain toilet all to myself. Doing hard time. Woe is me.”

  Hewlett put a grumpy hand to a hip. “I bet you’d change your tune if I dragged those girls you adore so much in here and questioned them instead of you.”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” Sasha hissed. “Over my dead body.”

  “That can be arranged, you know. Actually, it’s probably more proper to say that it’s already been arranged. You being here is just a formality. Guilt isn’t far from being assigned. Two officers found dead in your dormitory says a lot, and once the autopsies come back, we’ll know everything beyond a shadow of a doubt. After that, game over, Ms. Ledo.”

  Sasha sneered. So what if it was? What difference would it make at this point? This senseless tripe had been ongoing for months, and she’d yet to learn any way of escaping this hellish place. She was on her own again, seemingly powerless to mend her predicament, and was running thin on give-a-damn, nearing the point of having nothing left to lose.

  She curled an edge of her lips. This inquisition was over. Even if she had to stoop low, unerringly low, like a mean-girl, middle-school bully, the time had come to shit or get off the pot. “Hey, Carrie? How fast can you run the hundred?”

  “Huh?”

  “The one-hundred-yard dash, landbeast. What’s your best time?”

  Officer Hewlett didn’t answer. Her chin quivered and her eyebrows pulled tight.

  “Just the other day, I heard that heart disease is killing off members of generation XL right and left. I sure hope you get your blood pressure and cholesterol checked often.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard what I said, chunky brewster. Exactly what is your BMI—on a scale of one to manatee?”

  Officer Hewlett clomped her way to the table, shoving it into Sasha’s chest with her thighs. “I’ll have you know that I inherited hypothyroidism from my
mother—that’s an underactive thyroid gland, in case you didn’t know—and I’ve suffered from an eating disorder since before puberty. I have medical conditions…and you have no right to say an—”

  Sasha giggled into a fit of laughter. “Stop it, jigglepotamus. You’re just rattling off the same silly excuses every salad-dodger has ever exploited to stress eat herself into a diabetic co—”

  Sasha didn’t get to finish. Hewlett lashed out, cracking her across the face with a brutal backhand, but the recipient only took it in stride.

  “That was way better,” Sasha declared, spitting out a wad of blood, “but something’s still missing. Maybe it’s muscle. Yeah…that’s it. All mass and no ass.”

  That was when the incessant abuse turned the key, flipped the switch, devolving Carrie Hewlett into a primal, inhuman body of rage. Her face turned crimson, her breathing became shallow, and her fists balled into white slabs of hate. She struck Sasha once, then twice, then again, countering over and over with multiple blows.

  Her wrists bound and cuffed to the chair at the small of her back, Sasha had no way to defend, no option other than to absorb each strike as it came. The assault was relentless, ceasing only when her attacker reached exhaustion and Sasha began to see stars. Everything became a darkened blur from there. Voices became murmurs and muffled slurs. She couldn’t discern if she was passing out or breathing her last breaths.

  Hewlett backed away, wiping the blood from her tormenter’s battered lips, cheeks and eyes from her knuckles. She turned and banged on the steel entry door. “Guards! Help! Let me out of here! Now!”

  The sound of boots smacking the tile floor came next. The door pried open, and two uniformed men strode in.

  “Jesus, what the hell happened in here?” asked the first.

  His partner’s eyes went wide at the sight of Sasha’s face. “Forget that—what happened to her?”

  Guard number one uncuffed Sasha from the chair and dragged her limp body upright. “Let’s get her back to the hole before someone sees her like this.”

  Officer Hewlett, who had held at the doorway, swung back in. “No! No way! That woman assaulted me! And that means it’s straight to the Annex for her!”

  “Assaulted you?” the second guard snapped. “How could she? She’s been bound to the chair the whole time.”

  “She verbally assaulted me! And one form of assault is the same as the other.”

  “Eh, I don’t know about that,” guard number one said, looking over the damage done.

  His partner agreed. “Yeah, I think we might need a supervisor to make that call.”

  “You can do that after you take her,” Hewlett whined. “Right now, I am the ranking, and I say she goes there. So make it happen! Kicking and screaming if need be!”

  Sasha didn’t remember the ride to get there. Two men dragged her from a vehicle and forced her into a cold, humid void, setting her down onto a hard surface just before removing her blindfold. As her swollen eyes adjusted to the outdoor light peering through the doorway, she could tell now that she’d been relocated inside a rectangular metal structure of some kind, perhaps a container. A minute later, both men took their leave without another word, closing the door behind them, confining her to the darkness.

  “Great. That’s just great,” she spat, the drying blood on her lips causing them to stick together. “So much for my five-star accommodations at Motel Six.”

  Her head pounded, and her face hurt like crazy. It stung to blink, move her lips, elevate or stretch her cheeks. The metallic flavor of blood lingered in her mouth. Sasha swallowed a few times to silence the tinnitus in her ears and, hopefully, adjust to the noise level of the cavern in which she’d been placed. She scratched a fingernail on the floor, then the wall inches from her back. Both surfaces felt like old corroded steel or iron.

  Sasha thought she heard breathing or panting. Maybe she wasn’t alone in this box. “Um, is someone else here?”

  There wasn’t an immediate reply, but the breathing sound continued. Then someone cleared her throat and gruffly whisper-shouted, “Shh! Keep quiet, whoever you are! If you make too much noise, they’ll hear you and come back! And if they come back, we’ll both be in a gigantic world of shit, and I don’t want to be in a gigantic world of shit. So kindly keep quiet.”

  “Damn. Sorry, it’s my first time here, so I didn’t know,” Sasha said, muffling her voice. “How about if we whisper? Is whispering okay?”

  “Sure, I guess. Just don’t do a lot of it.” A pause. “Why does your voice sound funny? Sounds like you have something stuck in your mouth. Are you chewing gum?”

  “Nope, no gum, just the ones barely holding my teeth in. My lips are busted pretty good, though, and my mouth hurts like a bastard. Maybe that’s it.”

  “How did you mess yourself up like that? Did you fall?”

  Sasha sniggered at the question’s satire. “No. A verbal misunderstanding took place at my interrogation today.”

  “Did you say interrogation?”

  “I did.”

  “Who did you have the mix-up with?”

  “Officer Hewlett.”

  “You mean Carrie Hewlett? She used to run the main desk at senior quarters. What was she interrogating you for?”

  “It’s a long story, sweetie.”

  “Don’t call me sweetie,” the voice quipped. “You don’t know me. You’ve never even met me until a minute ago. I don’t recall you ever buying me coffee, and we’ve never gone on a date, so you don’t get to call me sweetie.”

  “Okay, goddamn. Enhance your calm. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I am calm. Just don’t call me sweetie. And don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, either.”

  Sasha didn’t say anything.

  “So are you going to tell me? Obviously, you don’t have to, but I’d really like to know.”

  “Maybe we should get to know each other a little better first,” suggested Sasha, her lips stinging her. “I don’t want to chance saying anything that might set you off again.”

  A long pause. “Sorry. I have a bad temper. I’m Katherine. But call me Kat. Kat like with a K, not a C.”

  “Okay, Kat with a K. Shitty situation for us both, but it’s nice to meet you anyway. I’m Sasha.”

  “Sasha? Don’t think I’ve heard that name before,” said Kat. “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing, really. I…accidentally killed two officers.”

  Kathryn mumbled the response back to herself. “Okay, I’m confused. How do you accidentally kill a person? Much less two people?”

  “Trust me. It can be done.”

  “Who were they? The officers, I mean. The ones you killed accidentally?”

  Sasha rattled off the names as best she could from memory.

  “Hmm. Doesn’t ring any bells. What did they do? Something bad, I bet. Had to be, for you to accidentally kill them.”

  “No, not at all,” Sasha mused. “I accidentally kill people at random all the time. It’s become something of a hobby. It shoos away boredom.”

  “You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

  Sasha pursed her busted lips in the dark. “No, it’s something else entirely.”

  The voice in the darkness snorted. “You’re funny. And a little weird. But it’s nice to finally have somebody to talk to. It’s been really quiet in here…wherever here is. I don’t suppose you know, do you?”

  Sasha coughed. “Yeah, I have a feeling I do, unfortunately.”

  “Care to share? I haven’t had anyone to talk to since they took Mrs. G away.”

  “Mrs. G?”

  “Our pastor,” said Kat matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, her. The one you’re on a last initial basis with.” Sasha sniggered. “Sorry, Kat. I don’t attend your church, so I’m failing to make the connection.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “For about the past few minutes.”

  “No…not here, here; in the camp, here,” Kat said, sound
ing perturbed.

  “Apparently not long enough to know who Mrs. G is,” replied Sasha.

  Kathryn groaned. “Ugh. Why must you be difficult?”

  “It’s just the way I was groomed,” Sasha began. “I never took a guided tour or anything, but I’ve been to this camp before, as a visitor, before I became a prisoner. There’s this community of shipping containers in the southern neck. From what I’ve been told, they use them to house their…well, their death-row inmates, so to speak.”

  “Death row?” Kat repeated. “Are you saying that’s where we are now?”

  “It’s a damn good possibility.”

  “So they’re planning to execute us?”

  Sasha pursed her lips and nodded, though her companion couldn’t see. “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much? Either they are or they aren’t, and I truly pray you’re not serious. If that’s what they’re planning, that is seriously messed up. They never said anything about doing that when they brought us here.”

  “Kat, I’m not trying to offend you or insult your intelligence, but if doing so was their intention, do you really think they’d tell you beforehand?”

  Kat thought a moment. “No, I guess not. That wouldn’t make much sense, I guess.”

  “You’re probably right…” Sasha whispered snidely.

  “I mean, think about it. If they said something like that, people would freak out. It could start a riot or something.” Kathryn expelled a disconsolate sigh. “Oh, man. Everything has gone completely down the toilet. And it was going so well here at first. They gave us a new house of worship, Pastor Wigfield inducted Mrs. G into his flock, and the number of attendees was far exceeding expectations. Then, out of nowhere, it all just crumbled, you know?

  “We found Pastor Wigfield dead. They killed him, for all we know. And they probably burned down the church, too. Then they came and separated everybody, relocated all of us to different places. Mrs. G wasn’t having it, though. She fought them, but not with her fists…with her words. And she has awesome words. When they didn’t like what she said, they brought her here to keep her quiet, I guess. Then they brought me here too because I told them Mrs. G wasn’t going anywhere without me. We both were here for a long time, until just a few days ago. They just came in and took her away.” A pause. “Oh, man…this isn’t good, is it?”