by Jeff Hirsch
“Which we weren’t prepared for,” Hill said.
“Sir, I—”
“Your assessment said that the Feds weren’t supposed to have half this many troops left.”
“We’re working on it now, sir,” the general said. “If we have more time, I’m sure we can come up with an—”
A junior officer spoke up from a bank of communications gear. “Sir, it’s confirmed.”
There was a pause as the general turned to the young man. “We’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. We have multiple visual confirmations.”
The general seemed to deflate. He glanced to a tech seated by the side of the main computer screen. “Go ahead. Change them.”
With the press of a button, a large concentration of the Federal blue triangles to our south and east turned into the Union Jack of British forces. Throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania, what had been marked as Fed forces changed into the blue, white, and red of France. Other flags appeared in smaller numbers across the map. Israel. Spain. Brazil. Germany.
“Sir, we’re ready to confirm that a coalition of at least six different countries is currently operating within our eastern theater,” the general reported. “There are also indications of Russian forces attempting landings in California, and the Canadians breached the lines at Washington State.”
Another communications officer spoke up. “Sir, the Two-Three reports sightings of small team forces within our own fence line.”
The general pulled a red folder from a nearby case and held it out to Hill. “Are we ready, Mr. President?”
The room went silent. Hill stared at the red folder in the general’s hand but made no move to take it.
“Sir? They knew the consequences when they did this.”
“Have the men from Cormorant repel the coalition forces within Shrike’s perimeter,” Hill said quietly. “Commit everything else to Philadelphia.”
“But, sir—”
“Do it!” Hill snapped as he took the red folder out of the man’s hand. “I need to pray on this.”
Before anyone could say another word, Hill left the group and strode past me and through a door to an adjoining room. The officers looked from one to another while the blinking armies advanced and retreated behind them.
The door Hill went through opened with a soft click when I turned the knob. I stepped inside and closed the door. The small room was almost suffocatingly hot due to the dozens of candles that lined the desk and shelves, filling the place with a flickering glow.
Just inside the door, there was a desk made of darkly polished wood. A belt was draped across it, holding Hill’s holstered sidearm and his combat knife. His uniform was on a hook near the door.
Hill was across the room, kneeling with his back to me, in a nook where an altar had been set up. He was shirtless and barefoot. Waxy burn scars covered the whole of his back. The way the light hit them made them look like flames.
“Have a seat,” he said without turning. “I’ll be done soon.”
I crossed the room to a small couch. The red folder sat on a table in front of me. When Hill had finished his prayers, he stretched into a khaki T-shirt and sat across the table. He said nothing for a time, eyes locked on the folder.
“Sir, I wanted to talk to you about the girl who—”
“You’re from New York.”
“I… yes, sir.”
“But not the city.”
“Ithaca.”
“There’s a lake there,” he said. “Did you sail?”
I sat forward on the couch. “Sir, I’d like to—” Hill fixed me with his icy-blue eyes. “No, sir. I didn’t.”
“I sailed with my father,” he said. “He took me out on the water the day his store finally went under. Everyone told him he should just torch the place and collect the insurance money, but Dad said that when he started out in business, he promised himself he’d be honest. A man of his word. He wasn’t going back on that just because it made his life a little easier.”
“Sir, Nat—”
“Sergeant Parker made a report, Cal. The girl will be dealt with in the morning.”
“But if I could have a little more time with her, I could—”
“Your friend admitted to treason and refused to join the Path.”
“But the intelligence—”
“Was worthless,” he snapped. “Anything that girl knows is out of date. It’s over.”
I started to speak again but Hill was done. He reached for the red folder, drawing out the papers inside and regarding each carefully. A cord of tension inside of me evaporated and I fell back against the couch, feeling foolish for my whispered prayers. I imagined Nat in a cell somewhere within the base. Did she already know this was her last night?
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it? The things God requires of us.”
Hill had dealt the papers out across the table so they sat in a snowy line between us. He was regarding them carefully, his chin in his hand. I looked closer and saw the name of a city printed at the top of each paper — Moscow. Berlin. London. Paris. Ottawa. Madrid. Below each name was a map and a list of numbers. A chill went through me as I remembered something Grey had said about a promise Hill made to any country caught interfering.
This was a list of targets.
The cities were the capitals of each country joining the coalition against him. The numbers detailed the quantity of warheads, their yields, and the estimated casualties. The numbers in the last column ran into the hundreds of thousands for each city. There was one more piece of paper sitting in the folder. I reached across the table and drew it out.
At the top of the paper was one word: Philadelphia. I looked over the page to find Hill’s otherworldly blue eyes locked on me.
“God can’t want this,” I said.
“Why?”
James’s voice fell into my head. “Because he’s not cruel.”
A peaceful smile settled across Hill’s face, but his gaze didn’t falter. “When God does it, it isn’t cruel. It’s what’s meant to be.”
Hill leaned across the table.
“God brought you across the country and set you down in that room, at that time, and gave you the courage to save my life. Why? To ensure that his will was done.”
“Sir, you can’t—”
Hill swept the papers into the folder and crossed the room to his desk. He reached for the uniform hanging by the door.
“Don’t worry,” he said as he pulled on a shirt and laid a tie around his neck. “There’ll be a place for you after this. And for your brother too! Sergeant Rhames mentioned he was here. Kitchen help, I think.” Hill chuckled. “I’m guessing we can find something a little bit better for him than that.”
I watched Hill as he knotted his tie in crisp strokes. I thought of Alec pulling away from me out into the moonlit lake. Maybe he was right. Maybe the future was coming and there was nothing I could do about it. All I had to do was be still and let it come. James and I would be together and safe.
Hill slipped on his jacket and buttoned it. I saw Grey Solomon standing on the side of the road, and Nat, defiant, in the interrogation room, and a prayer started to unspool in my mind. It was a whispered voice growing stronger by the word.
I am on a glorious path. I will not turn from it even if it means my death.
Hill turned as I threw myself across the room, reaching for the sidearm that lay on his desk. My fingers grazed the belt, but Hill came at me in a blur. One fist slammed into my ribs and then his knee found my stomach. The air shot out of me and I hurtled into a shelf, shattering it. I rolled over, groaning, and saw Hill’s belt on the ground. The gun was gone but the combat knife was within reach. I snatched it out of its sheath and slashed at Hill as he reached for me again. The blade bit into his flesh, buying me the second I needed to get up and stumble out to the center of the room.
I staggered backward, swinging the knife in front of me to keep him away, but Hill was too fast. He glided in between swipes of the blade, ta
king my cast in both hands and slamming it onto a corner of the table. I screamed and then a backhand to my temple sent whatever energy I had pouring out of me. The knife fell out of my hand and I tumbled backward, crashing into his altar.
I tried to get up, tried to keep fighting, but I had nothing left. I lay there, my arm throbbing, one eye swelling shut while the other filled with blood. My consciousness slipped in and out. I thought I heard gunfire and sirens coming from somewhere nearby. Hill stepped through the blur of my vision and fell on top of me, his legs pinning my arms to my sides. He found the knife by my side and held it over me.
“No one can stop what God has put in motion,” he said, barely out of breath.
I closed my eyes as Hill lifted the blade, but there was a crash by the door. Hill turned toward it, and three sharp reports rang out across the room. His body jerked and he collapsed over me. His chest struck mine. His face fell by my cheek. Streams of his blood poured down my sides.
I forced myself out from under him, scrambling until I struck the far wall. I coughed and wiped the blood from my eyes as someone staggered into the room from the open doorway. The knife was lying by Hill’s body. I grabbed it and held it out toward whoever was coming. A gun clattered onto the floor and a body came into focus.
James fell to his knees beside Hill’s feet. He stared at the body in front of him, his arms limp at his sides, his eyes wide. His chest began to heave.
“James?”
I dropped the knife and reached for him as several small explosions shook the walls of the office. There were shouting voices just outside, followed by the back-and-forth chatter of small-arms fire.
“We have to go,” I said, reaching for Hill’s gun, which lay beside James. “James?”
The door to the ops center flew open and three black figures appeared. I scooped up Hill’s weapon and fired half blind. Three shots shredded the door frame and forced them back. I stuffed the gun into my waistband and took James by the shoulders.
“Come on,” I said, but James didn’t move. “Get up!”
I grabbed James’s shirtfront with my one good hand and hauled his limp body up. My muscles screamed and the effort sent me crashing against the wall beside me. There were more gunshots out in the hall and fire alarms began to wail. I wiped the blood out of my eyes and dragged James toward the door.
There were bodies strewn across the ops center, generals and their servants torn apart and still. The computers and the communications gear had all been destroyed and were smoldering, filling the room with a haze of smoke. My eyes stung as we made it through and into the corridor outside. Weapons fire seemed to be coming from all directions. Somewhere there was the boom of a grenade.
I searched through the gloom and saw a door just past the mess. The glass was shattered and I could see streetlights shining on the other side. The way to it was clear, but we couldn’t leave. Not yet.
“Where would they keep a prisoner?” I asked, trying to shake James out of his shock. “James?”
He nodded down a hall across from the mess and I moved toward it, pulling him along, trying to ignore the pain that came with every step. The battle sounds grew louder, the deeper we ran into the base. I followed James’s direction, ducking into doorways at any sign of the soldiers who stalked the hallways, never knowing if they were Path or Fed. We passed bodies, fallen singly or in groups, torn, bloody, eyes open.
James pointed down a corridor where a young Path corporal was collapsed over a small desk, a pool of blood gathering around his temple. Behind him was a hallway lined with close-set rooms.
I set James down in the hallway, then searched the corporal for his keys. I found them and moved down the line of rooms, opening door after door, only to find the rooms empty or their occupants dead.
I stuck the key in the second door from the end and when I opened it, a body flew at me from a far corner. A fist connected with my jaw and I hit the floor in a heap, fireworks lighting up my vision.
“What are you doing here?”
Nat was leaning over me, one hand grasping my collar, the other ready to strike.
“We came to get you out,” I said, and when her glare didn’t soften, I shoved her away from me. “Trust me or don’t. You’re free. Do what you want. James, let’s go!”
I pushed us both into the hallway just as another volley of fire erupted. James flew out of my hands with a grunt, slamming into the wall and hitting the floor.
“James!”
He was sprawled on his back. His right side was gushing blood and he was breathing in ugly gasps. His skin was the color of paste. I pressed my hands into the wound to stop the bleeding and James screamed. I was dimly aware of Nat pulling Hill’s gun away from me. There was more gunfire and then silence. James’s eyes had gone wide and dark and then began to close.
I draped James’s arm over my shoulder. He cried out as I took a halting step forward. My knees went weak and I began to fall but then the weight suddenly lessened. Nat was beside us, James’s other arm around her shoulder.
The building was a maze, corridors blocked by bodies and collapsed walls. There were fires everywhere and clouds of smoke that burned our eyes and tore at our throats. We blundered through, coming to dead end after dead end. James hung between us, barely conscious, his lips moving soundlessly as he prayed.
“This way!”
Nat turned us down a hallway and I saw it. The door by the mess. We were almost there. Nat threw her shoulder into the door and we collapsed on the other side, coughing the smoke out of our lungs.
“James?”
His head lolled back and forth on the pavement. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling silently, incoherently. Buildings and wrecked vehicles burned all around us. Bodies littered the ground, and soldiers ran in and out of the darkness, firing constantly.
“Get somebody,” I said to Nat. “Get anybody. Please.”
Nat ran out of our small circle of light and disappeared down the street. There was a dead soldier facedown on the ground nearby. I took his combat knife and canteen and returned to James. His torso was slick with blood. His pants were dark with it. I stripped off his shirt and washed away as much as I could, revealing the ugly tear of a wound on his side. When I pressed the wad of bandages into his side, blood flowed between my fingers, but James didn’t make a sound. He pawed at my hands and I knocked them away.
“It’s okay,” he said weakly. “I’m okay.”
His eyes opened, shockingly bright. The sky lit up nearby and the pavement shuddered.
“Where are we?” he asked, in almost a singsongy kid’s voice. “It feels like we’re on a train.”
I smoothed the hair off his brow. His skin was hot and wet. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re on a train.”
“Where are we going? We going home?”
“That’s right,” I said. “We’re going home.”
I lifted the canteen to his lips and poured a stream of water across them. He gasped and drank. When he was done, I set the canteen down and took his hand in mine and squeezed. A strange smile rose on his face.
“Why is my brother holding my hand?” he said dreamily. “And when will he stop?”
I searched the dark of the base for Nat and saw nothing. A scream was rising in my throat, but I swallowed it.
“My friend is looking for help. She’ll be back any time now.”
“I killed him, Cal. I was looking for you, and then I heard the fight. I just saw someone on top of you. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t—”
“You saved my life.”
James shook his head, and then his eyes narrowed like he was searching for something in the sky. Across the street three figures emerged from the dark and were coming our way fast. I gripped the combat knife and leaned over James, but when they moved into the light, I saw it was Nat followed by two soldiers. I waved them over frantically.
“James, we’re going to get you out of here, okay?”
When I looked down, his eyes were wide with
horror, staring up into the dark. Tears ran across his cheeks.
“James?”
“… I didn’t know it was him.”
26
More than a month later, I stepped out into what used to be Camp Kestrel.
It was a bright day and hot, dusty from the dried mud kicked up by the Fed vehicles tearing through the streets. I gathered my things and left the barracks I had been staying in since Nat helped convince the Fed MPs that James and I weren’t a threat to national security.
I walked through the camp toward the infirmary, watching the Fed soldiers. Some went about the work of packing for the push south diligently, but most lounged on hillsides and across the hoods of vehicles. They smoked cigarettes and laughed. Their uniforms were ragged. The officers tried to keep order but few listened.
Path tents lay in molding piles of canvas all around the camp, but the command buildings still stood, gutted of intelligence and repurposed. Fed drone crews now sat in the place of their Path counterparts.
I paused by a blighted rectangle of ash and trampled grass. The Lighthouse had been the first thing the Feds destroyed, torching it to the cheers of their men. The altar was now a pile of scorched wood. The Path insignia had fallen and was facedown in the dirt, black and twisted. Soldiers still gathered to have their pictures taken with it, thumbs up and grinning. I knew I shouldn’t have cared, but for some reason, I was glad I hadn’t been there to see its destruction.
When I arrived at the infirmary, an orderly was pushing James’s wheelchair out into the sun. James looked as much like a ghost as Kestrel did. His skin was a waxy gray and all the weight he had lost gave him a skeletal look. His deep-set eyes seemed to stay permanently fixed to the ground. He’d barely spoken since we arrived.
“You ready?”
James said nothing. I passed the orderly a small wad of cash and he gave me a bag of medicine that I tucked into my backpack. After he left I reached for the back of the wheelchair, but James waved me away.
