Live in Infamy

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  Tessa was about to disappear into the bunker before she looked up at Ren. “I liked the very end of the essay especially. Thank you for including his name.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” said Ren. He watched her smile a sad smile, and he returned it. They had both lost so much — her more so than him — and their lives since Alcatraz hadn’t been easy by a long shot. But each day had a purpose, and Ren was glad that Tessa was here to share that with him.

  Mr. Cabot came up behind Ren. “Once Tessa comes back, we’ll head out. Do you have a copy for me?” He had already saddled his own horse — a brown mare named Peppa, with a soft nose and a strong bite — and he slid two pistols into the holsters on his belt in case they ran into trouble. Ren had watched his father change these last few months. He had grown leaner and stronger, thanks to all of the riding he did; and he had opened himself to the Resistance once again, insisting on talking details with Marty and volunteering for extra patrols at night. And he had changed as a father, too. He may never be the hug-it-out type of parent, but he was trying to rebuild his relationship with Ren. After dinner each evening, they would break out a deck of cards, and late at night, whenever Ren had another nightmare, his father would soothe him. Sometimes, Mr. Cabot would sleep on the floor next to Ren’s cot, no questions asked, just to let his son know that he was there and that he cared. The two of them might always be a work in progress, but Ren was grateful that his dad was trying. Ren may have lost his mother all over again, but he had regained his father in so many ways.

  Ren ignored his nerves and held out his essay to Mr. Cabot before he chickened out. For some reason, he didn’t mind the thought of thousands of Americans reading it — but his dad? That scared him.

  “Everything okay?” his dad said warily.

  Ren motioned at the paper. “Just read it and you’ll see.” Then he thrust his hands behind his back and threaded his fingers together as he waited for his father to finish. He had worked on this piece for so long that he had memorized some parts of it.

  Over two centuries ago, our colonial ancestors broke free from the powers of tyranny and established across these lands a new nation, called America. Our country was born upon the greatest of dreams — of freedom, of liberty, of inalienable rights.

  But this newborn nation was birthed with imperfections. Its freedoms were not given to all, and its rights were never extended to everyone. As America grew, these imperfections grew with it, sometimes leading even to war.

  And yet America persisted. Her children fought for change, for freedom, and for equality for all. As we must do now, in the face of the Empire’s evil.

  The Empire believes that it had long ago slaughtered the United States, but they’ve never understood that they cannot kill a dream. Only we Americans can do such a thing if we let that dream wither and perish, if we allow our rights to be stripped, and if we forget about our claim to liberty and justice for all.

  If we wish to breathe life back into our country, then we must rise up and fight. We must aid the Resistance, and we must reclaim what we’ve lost.

  We must not fear. For in the darkest of nights, we shall strike — and strike again.

  The Viper, you see, is more than a boy named Ren Cabot.

  The Viper is Jenny Tsai, who believed in a cause.

  The Viper is Abel Quirk, who died for freedom.

  The Viper is Jay Park, who fought for equality.

  The Viper is not one person, but a rallying cry. The Viper is you and me and every American living under oppression.

  And it is time that we awaken.

  It was taking a long time for Mr. Cabot to finish the essay, and Ren began babbling. “I’m not sure if I got the tone right. It might be a little heavy-handed but I thought —”

  Mr. Cabot looked up and wiped his shining eyes. “I wouldn’t change a thing, Ren.”

  Ren grinned so wide that his lips hurt. He blushed and tried to shrug off the compliment. “Sorry I made you cry, old man.”

  “Cry? These aren’t tears on my face. It must be raining or something.” They shared a laugh before the silence trickled back in. Mr. Cabot said softly, “I’m proud of you. Your mom would be, too.”

  Ren felt his own eyes prickle with tears, and his father gave him a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “See?” Mr. Cabot said. “It is raining.”

  When Tessa returned, it was time to depart. Ren helped his dad guide his mare out of the barn, drawing the process out for as long as possible because he always hated this part. His dad and Tessa would take every precaution, but Ren would keep worrying until they returned.

  “Careful out there,” Ren said. “Watch your back.”

  “We’ll be home before you know it,” replied his father. “See you soon.”

  With a click of their tongues, they entered the night and Ren watched them go, feeling a piece of his heart ride off with them.

  Once Ren could no longer hear the hoofbeats, he returned to the bunker, retrieved a glass of water, and sat back down at his desk, where he set his fingertips against the worn keys.

  He wasn’t sure what to write, but he wasn’t too worried. Every essay began this way, with a blank page and a fresh start. The words would come eventually, sometimes in a jolt of inspiration and other times with what felt like pliers. But the writing process was never meant to be easy. His mother had taught him that, and Ren thought about her as he typed a few words and then a few more.

  In a lonely bunker, in the middle of nowhere, the Viper got back to work.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at The Only Thing to Fear …

  The Nazis always arrived on schedule.

  Today would be no exception.

  At four o’clock sharp, Zara St. James gripped the sides of her canteen, her dark eyes fixed on the Sentinel flying toward her. He soared across the cloud-ridden sky, zipping through the breeze with his arms locked in front of him, like a superhero from an old comic.

  But there was nothing heroic about him.

  As the Sentinel neared the fields, he dipped down so low that Zara could see the rifle looped over his shoulder and the fist-size swastika on his olive-green uniform. His golden hair flapped in the chilly April wind, cementing the look of the prized Aryan soldier: sturdy frame, snowy skin. Adolf Hitler’s shining legacy.

  “Not you again,” Zara whispered. The corners of her mouth tightened with worry. Twice this week she had noticed him patrolling the farm, always around four o’clock. One visit was routine. Two, a bit alarming. A third could mean trouble. Possibly an interrogation.

  Or worse.

  Zara’s worry sank deeper as the Sentinel headed straight for the farm. He skimmed over the Shenandoah hills, which were bursting with fresh spring leaves. Then his gaze swept over the St. James land, scanning the worn-looking house and the decades-old barn and finally settling on Zara, who stood at the edge of the rain-soaked fields.

  He slowed to a stop. “Heil Hitler!” he shouted in crisp German, hovering thirty feet above her head.

  Zara’s heartbeat clattered, but she stretched out her arm in the proper salute, just as her mother had taught her years ago. “Heil Hitler,” she replied. Her own German was passable due to the mandatory classes in primary school, but her accent had always been atrocious, which didn’t bother her in the least. On most days she rather enjoyed offending the Germans’ delicate ears — one of the few crimes they couldn’t beat her for — but now she made sure to enunciate each syllable. She didn’t want any trouble.

  The Sentinel saluted in return. “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” he barked out. The Nazi motto. One people, one Empire, one leader.

  Her breaths grew tight. At this distance, Zara could see the three lightning bolts printed on the side of his helmet, the symbol of the German Anomaly Division — the most elite, and most frightening, branch of the Nazi military. The division had been the brainchild of Führer Adolf Hitler’s, an entire regiment composed of genetically altered soldiers who could crush their e
nemies with their super-powered fists. And those fists had changed the world.

  Zara’s gaze slunk toward the farmhouse, still unsure why the Sentinel had stopped by. Please don’t be here for a search, she thought desperately. She wished she could warn her uncle somehow — Hide the radio, she’d tell him — but then the Sentinel landed on the field, his boots flattening an onion sprout, blocking the house from her view.

  “Your name, girl?” he demanded.

  She forced herself to look up at him. “Zara St. James, mein Herr.”

  “Age?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And where are you from?”

  Zara grimaced. She had heard that question enough times to know that he wasn’t asking where she had been born, which was right here in the Shenandoah Valley. He wanted to know her lineage, where she had gotten her black hair and sable eyes in this rural mountain town.

  “I’m English on my mother’s side,” Zara said slowly. Her chest squeezed at the mention of her mom, and she wondered where his questioning was leading. “And Japanese on my father’s.”

  “The Empire of Japan, hmm?” His eyes skimmed over her sun-darkened skin, loitering over her sweaty, secondhand shirt and drifting toward her hips. His mouth curved into a smile.

  A sour taste bloomed on Zara’s tongue. She knew that smile and what it meant. Most Germans sniffed at her “half-breed” stock. She was an Untermensch — a subhuman — like the Polish and blacks and any mixed-race persons, only fit for factory and farm work. But not everyone scorned the color of her skin. There were a few townspeople — always men, it seemed — whose gazes lingered on the shape of her eyes and at the slight curve of her hungry waist. Like the Sentinel was doing now.

  Zara’s thoughts hit a tailspin. She could use her fists as a weapon, but that wouldn’t be much against the Sentinel. Or she could scream, but there were acres between her and her uncle. Only the cows would hear her from here.

  That left her with one last option, but Uncle Red’s warning drilled through her head: No one can know about what you can do, he had told her countless times. If the Nazis found out, they’d haul you off to one of their labs or a labor camp. Or a grave.

  The Sentinel stepped forward, that smile of his arching. Zara’s fingers tightened around her canteen, ready to swing at his head, but then he pulled out a stack of papers from his pocket instead. He tossed one in the dirt.

  “An announcement from Fort Goering,” he said, referring to the Nazi citadel a few miles up the road, where thousands of soldiers were stationed. “Pick it up.”

  Eyes wary, Zara retrieved the paper and ignored his grin at her obedience. The fort’s soldiers must have been ordered to distribute these flyers across the township; and unfortunately for Zara, the Sentinel had decided to hand-deliver hers. She scanned the paper’s contents:

  FROM THE OFFICE OF COMMAND

  FORT GOERING, SHENANDOAH DIVISION

  EASTERN AMERICAN TERRITORIES

  At 1700 hours EST, all residents of the Greenfield Township are required at the Courthouse Square. An announcement will be made shortly thereafter, broadcasted live from Berlin. Attendance is mandatory.

  A dozen questions ripped through Zara’s mind. Most announcements from Berlin — treaties signed, battles won — were aired on the evening news reports or printed in the state-run newspaper. Only a handful merited a live broadcast, let alone mandatory attendance.

  Zara still remembered the first announcement she had attended, back when her mother was alive. All of Greenfield had met in the square to celebrate the birth of Johann Hitler, the son of the current Führer, Dieter Hitler. The entire Nazi Empire, from Berlin to Brussels, from the American coast to the North African shores, was forced to salute the newest addition to the Hitler dynasty, the great-great-grandson of Adolf himself. Zara’s mother had saluted dutifully, too, but a soldier struck her anyway for wearing muddy boots to such a sacred event. She had apologized immediately, but she never flinched from the hit. Years later, that memory still stuck with Zara: her mother standing tall, the bravest woman in all of Greenfield. The ache of missing her never went away.

  Zara wondered what this new announcement would bring. Perhaps Dieter’s wife had squeezed out another child? Or maybe the Führer had taken over the Italian Dakotas? The Italian economy had teetered on the brink of collapse since Prime Minister Benito Mussolini III came into power a decade ago. He may have sold the Dakotas, along with the Canadian lands, for a desperate price.

  “Why are you still standing here, little Mischling?” the Sentinel said, cutting into her thoughts.

  Zara tacked on a polite smile. “My apologies, mein Herr.”

  His jewel-blue eyes looked her up and down. “See to it that you aren’t late. I’ll be watching.”

  Her cheeks burned, but she daren’t say a word. Instead, she quickly turned on her heel while the Sentinel launched into the clouds. Only then did Zara shudder.

  “Mischling?” she muttered. It was a German term for mixed-blood, usually used like a slur, but the Sentinel hadn’t made it sound that way. Her fingers had itched to slap him, but an Untermensch like her would get jailed for that. Or sent to the Front Royal labor camp thirty miles east.

  With another shudder, Zara hurried to the house, abandoning the onions for tomorrow. She leapt over the infant rows of corn and ran past the faded barn that her great-great-grandparents had built before the war. In the early ’40s, the old United States had been a beacon of hope — of freedom so vast it could swallow you whole — but that America had long been destroyed, its cities flattened by the German Anomaly Division. After President Roosevelt was executed in early 1944, the Axis powers had cut the country like a giant birthday cake. The Nazis had claimed the fertile lands east of the Mississippi River while the Japanese took over the West, leaving the Italians with the Dakota plains, a consolation prize for their anemic role in the fighting. Decades had passed since then and the Germans still held a tight rein over the Territories, but Zara yearned for more than a life of hard labor and Heil Hitlers.

  One day, she thought, clutching the paper in her hand. One day, her uncle would let her join the Revolutionary Alliance, an underground resistance group that had fought the Empire for decades. It was originally formed by the last remnants of the US military, who had escaped Washington, DC, after Roosevelt’s execution. Back then, its members had numbered in the millions, many of them former soldiers, but with the US military long disbanded the Alliance now relied on civilian recruits, like Uncle Red. And hopefully Zara.

  If only she could join the rebels, then she could help push the Nazis back to Germany or, even better, crush the regime altogether. Maybe then, finally, her mother’s death would have justice.

  As her lungs puffed, Zara burst through the kitchen door of the run-down farmhouse to find her uncle underneath the kitchen sink, a foot-long wrench in his hand. A water pipe had burst that morning (the second one that month), and he had stayed behind to fix it. Otherwise he would’ve been out in the fields as usual, planting eggplant and digging holes for the cabbage.

  “What happened?” said Uncle Red. He set the wrench on the floor and pulled himself up. “Did the cow get sick again?”

  Zara peered up into his bearded face. Her uncle wasn’t very tall, but she stood a whole head shorter than him. “The cow’s fine. Here, look at this.” She handed him the notice.

  His green eyes, the same color as Zara’s mother’s, flared wide. “An announcement? Now?”

  “Do you know what this is about?” Her voice dropped low out of habit. They never knew who could be watching them. “Maybe the Alliance sent you a message?”

  “No, we haven’t gotten a thing since last week.”

  “This has to be serious if attendance is mandatory.”

  Uncle Red ran a tense hand through his thinning auburn hair. As he neared forty, he seemed to be losing more of it each year. “I know. Remember to stick close to me. The square will be swarming with soldiers. You can’t lose control, do you
understand?”

  Zara bristled. “I haven’t had an episode in years.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

  “I’m always cautious.”

  He looked doubtful, but said nothing more about it. “Grab the keys. We don’t want to keep the Führer waiting.”

  Over the years I’ve heard dozens of writers talk about how hard it was to write their second book. Sophomore slump, they’d groan. The second-book blues. But much to my surprise this didn’t happen to me. My second novel wasn’t easy by any stretch, but the words flowed and I met my deadlines. I thought I had escaped the second-book curse!

  But in the end the Writing Gods got the last laugh. Live in Infamy is my third novel, but it was the most colicky of my book children yet. The characters eluded me. The plot wouldn’t cooperate. I wrote and re-wrote the last quarter of the manuscript three times. Yet through all of the turmoil, my editor, Jody Corbett, never gave up on me or my story. She spent hours on the phone dissecting plot points with me, and she never blinked an eye when I glumly asked for a deadline extension. Simply put, Live in Infamy wouldn’t exist without Jody, which is why this book is dedicated to her. I’m so grateful and lucky to have her in my corner.

  I also owe my agent, Jim McCarthy, a million thanks. We’ve worked together now for eight years, and I’m constantly amazed by his professionalism, his kindness, and his lightning-quick response times. He never seems to mind when I bombard him with neurotic emails (of which I’ve written many), and he remains the anchor of my writing career — always steady and stable and funny to boot.