Harden

by D. J. Molles

  ***

  It wasn’t a dream. More like one of those memories that assaults you the moment you awaken.

  Angela opened her eyes and knew where she was, knew what had happened in the last two years, but for some reason her mind was on a rooftop under a beating summer sun. An empty jug of water in one hand, and the other holding onto her daughter, while her husband paced the yard below, gone mad, obsessed with trying to kill them.

  She lay there in her bed, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, knowing that she was in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone, but feeling the dread of that day as though she were living it again right then and there.

  On the roof. Stranded.

  That’s how Lee had found her, almost three years ago.

  She remembered seeing Lee emerge from the wood line close to their house.

  She remembered seeing her husband—or at least what had been her husband—charging towards Lee.

  The pop-pop-pop of Lee’s rifle.

  Her husband going down.

  Abby screaming “Daddy! Daddy!” because she didn’t understand that it wasn’t him anymore.

  A knock on her bedroom door startled her.

  Back in the here and now.

  “Angela, hon?” Marie’s voice coming through the door.

  Angela rolled upright, sensitive to the pain of her bullet wound healing in her side. “Yeah,” she said, trying to sound more awake than she was. “I’m up.”

  “Breakfast is on.”

  Angela dressed with painful, wincing care, and made her way out to the kitchen.

  Her home was one of the houses on the base where active duty troops and their families used to live. It was one of the single family homes in the middle of a circular street called Hoyle Plaza. Most of the homes in that neighborhood had been given over to the civilian refugees.

  It almost felt normal sometimes.

  Almost.

  In the kitchen, Marie was tidying up the breakfast mess. Her short crop of curly brown hair wiggled and bobbed as she scrubbed a sticky patch on the counter with an intensity that it seemed only Marie could muster.

  At the kitchen counter, perched on a stool, was Abby. Her frizzy blonde hair hung around her face as she poked at breakfast. Which, Angela noticed, was eggs and some homemade bread.

  Fresh eggs, by the look of it. A nice change from the powdered eggs they’d been subsisting on for the past year. But Angela realized she felt guilty for having the eggs.

  She ate from the same ration boxes that Marie handed out to the rest of the populace, but she remembered acutely how people didn’t believe that to be the case. She would’ve preferred to eat worse than everyone else, just to prove a point.

  And to get rid of the guilt.

  Angela went to the pot on the stove that contained steaming instant coffee. She poured herself a mug and eyeballed her daughter, who had yet to acknowledge her mother’s presence. “Good morning, Abby.”

  “Morning, Mom,” Abby sighed back.

  Angela exchanged a glance with Marie.

  Marie gave a slight roll of her eyes.

  Angela sipped her coffee and didn’t notice that it was bad because it’d been years since she’d had real coffee and she couldn’t remember what good was. In fact, there’d been several times that she’d gone with hot water steeped with burnt bread crusts.

  So, compared to that, instant coffee was stellar.

  She gestured towards Abby’s plate. “Those are fresh eggs, you know.”

  “I knooow-uh.”

  Angela’s mouth quirked, loading a rebuke. “Well there’s no Pop Tarts and Cap’n Crunch. Eat your breakfast.” She almost said “Eat your damn breakfast” but caught herself at the last second.

  Abby proceeded to eat in the least enthusiastic way possible.

  Angela watched her over the rim of her mug and wondered how the hell a kid got spoiled in a world like this. Was she doing something wrong? Was she coddling Abby too much? Or was this normal kid behavior?

  Marie reached across Angela and pointedly slid an identical plate of eggs and a slice of the bread in front of Angela. “You too.”

  Marie had insisted on helping out while Angela fully recovered, and hadn’t taken no for an answer, though Angela had tried valiantly. In the end, Angela was glad she was there. Recovery was harder than she thought.

  Angela started into her breakfast.

  Marie sipped her own cup of coffee, relaxing back onto the counter. “How you feeling today?”

  “Better,” Angela said around a mouthful. “The eggs are good. Thank you. When did we get fresh eggs?”

  “They been laying for a bit now.”

  “Really? I didn’t know.”

  Marie smiled. “That’s why you delegate, hon.”

  “So the egg lottery is working, then?”

  “Looks like it. Most families can get a half-dozen at least once a month. I’m told when the warmer weather gets here we might could bump that up. But that’s Jeff’s domain.”

  “I’ll have to ask him about it.” Thinking of Jeff made her think of the meeting she’d had with him right before being shot. Made her think about the dire warning that Jeff had given her.

  Which made her think of the fuel situation.

  Which made her think of Lee.

  Marie’s thoughts must have shadowed Angela’s, though her concern was less for Lee, and more for her sister, Julia. “Any word?”

  Angela shook her head. “As soon as I know, I’ll tell you.”

  Marie found something on the counter to scrape with her fingernail. “What about the Lincolnists?”

  Angela’s neck stiffened. “What about them?”

  Marie gave Angela a sidelong glance. “They’re tearing us apart, Angela.”

  “They’re just…people.”

  Marie twitched, started to say something loudly, then remembered Abby was sitting on the other side of the counter, and spoke just above a whisper. “Look what they tried to do to you! You think that was a one-off? You think they won’t try it again?”

  “We don’t know that it was them.”

  “Oh, come on, Angela!”

  “We can’t prove it.”

  “I feel like you’re being intentionally dense.”

  Angela shot her friend a look. “I’m trying to play by the rules, Marie. You don’t think I want to send Carl and Mitch after them?”

  Marie took a moment to scrape a fingernail along her eyebrows, exasperated. “Angela. I respect what you’re trying to do. I respect that you’re trying to hold yourself to the law.” She leaned in closer to Angela. “But just because we’ve reinstated a form of civilization, doesn’t mean that we’re civilized.”

  Angela looked at her friend for a long moment after that.

  Was she right? Was Angela playing this too soft?

  They tried to kill me, for chrissake!

  But if Angela didn’t follow the rules, then how could she expect everyone else to?

  She couldn’t be above the law.

  That was one of the things everyone hated about the old government.

  It was one of the things that they hated about President Briggs.

  Abby, oblivious as ever to adult conversation, interrupted loudly. “Where’s Sam?”

  Angela turned to her daughter. “He had guard duty last night. You know this. How many times do I have to answer this question for you? You’ll see him when you get home from school. Which reminds me, you need to get ready, it’s almost eight.”

  What a normal mother-daughter conversation.

  Sometimes you could almost forget that you were just a few short months from starvation, and that if you stepped outside the high-voltage wires that surrounded you, there were things in the woods that would rip you to shreds.

  Almost.

  ***

  Sam.

  A few years ago, he’d had a family.

  They’d all died.

  He’d been on the run with his father.

  He died too.

 
; And right as Sam was about to die, a man snatched him up and carried him out of danger. That man had been Lee Harden. He’d hauled the kid into a hiding place in the woods, shoved him under the roots of a fallen tree, and given him a pistol. Then he’d gone back, to deal with the men that had killed Sam’s father.

  Sam remembered sitting under those roots, bits of dirt and bark going down the back of his collar, flinching at every gunshot, cringing as men cried out as they were killed.

  The kid hiding in the roots had been named Sameer al-Balawi.

  That was not him anymore.

  He was just Sam now.

  They’d done a census in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone. They’d asked Sam for his full name. Sam had told them his name was Sam Ryder, because that was the first damn thing that popped up into his brain, and that’s what he’d decided to go with, knowing full well that they couldn’t fact-check him on it.

  Still, knowing he was clearly of Arabic descent, and that he was from Camp Ryder, the officer taking down the paperwork had frowned at him, as though perceiving the truth through Sam’s lie. In the end he’d shrugged. Coming to the same conclusion that Sam had come to.

  There was no way to prove him wrong.

  So, Sam had become Sam Ryder, and that was that.

  He’d been thirteen then, and though he was only just about to turn sixteen, the intervening years may as well have been a lifetime. Fifteen was the new age of consent, as far as the leadership in Fort Bragg went, and at the moment, on that chilly April morning, Sam—AKA Private Ryder—was wearing his second-hand ACU uniform that he still needed to grow into.

  He’d already checked his M4 back in with the armorer.

  He didn’t like to be without a weapon, even though they called it the Safe Zone—or the Relatively Safe Zone, if you were feeling cheeky—but now the little .22 rifle that he’d toted back in Camp Ryder seemed a piddly thing compared to the full size rifle he’d grown accustomed to.

  Plus, he would have to go back home to Angela’s house to retrieve it. And he was headed other places at the moment.

  Like any almost-sixteen-year-old, his thoughts were consumed with a girl.

  He met her out back of the Ste Mere Eglise Community Center.

  Charlie Tucker was fifteen, long, thin, and dark haired. To any adult she would have been a pretty-but-mousy girl that could turn either homely or beautiful, depending on how her later years treated her.

  Of course, Sam was not objective, as no young man has ever been objective about a young woman he thinks he is in love with.

  His heart stutter-stepped when he saw her. He hoped he looked good in his uniform. And he tried his best to be cool, because feigned apathy is a teenager’s best defense.

  She smiled when she saw him.

  He kept his own reaction to a smirk.

  “Hey, Soldier Boy,” she teased. “You just get off work?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  She gestured to the muddy tan overalls she wore. “Well, I don’t wear these for fashion.”

  Sam thought she looked cute in overalls.

  “You got classes this morning?” He asked her, falling into step with her as they veered away from the Community Center and towards the cut through to the neighborhoods.

  “I got deferment on first,” she said. Meaning her early morning work allowed her to skip first period.

  “What’d they have you doing today?”

  “Tuggin’ on cow tits.”

  He laughed and she grinned at him.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You?”

  “Walking the fence line, as usual.”

  “We still safe?”

  “Relatively safe.”

  “Of course.”

  They took a well-worn path that ran through the middle of a copse of trees. To their left, a neighborhood. To their right, a road.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s not my mom. You know that.”

  “Right. Your adopted mom.”

  Sam eyed Charlie as they walked. He wished Charlie wouldn’t have that tone in her voice when she talked about Angela. Like she was talking about the village idiot. But at the same time, Sam didn’t care to be associated with Angela.

  There was a lot going on there that Sam wasn’t able to put his finger on. He just knew that he wished more people liked Angela, but at the same time, he knew that sticking up for her would knock him down a few points. And, at this age, life was very much a scoreboard, and the points could only ever be awarded by your peers, and they were awarded strictly on the basis of opinion.

  In the end, Sam chose a very neutrally-toned “She’s fine.”

  Another few steps in silence.

  It didn’t escape Sam that Charlie’s sunny nature had clouded over.

  “Did you know him?” Sam asked.

  Charlie cast a glance in Sam’s direction. She nodded. “Yeah, I knew him.”

  They reached Longstreet Road. No vehicles coming or going. Why would there be? There was barely any gas to run them. Fuel was for IMPERATIVES ONLY.

  They crossed Longstreet Road, headed towards McFayden Pond.

  Sam became aware that he was just following Charlie now.

  “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer him immediately. And he didn’t press her. Kept walking beside her. Felt good just to be with her.

  Finally she stopped.

  They weren’t in any particular place.

  Just another path through woods.

  Up ahead, because the trees had not completely leafed out yet, Sam could just see the glint of sunlight on water. In another month, that wouldn’t be visible from where they were standing now.

  He looked at Charlie and found that she was facing him, watching him.

  Like she was trying to figure out whether or not to trust him.

  “Can you keep a secret, Sam?”

  Sam frowned at the question, because it seemed odd. He considered himself a trustworthy individual. He thought of times people had told him things in confidence and he’d kept it to himself. So he nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

  She looked away from him. “You say that so easy. Like it doesn’t even mean anything.”

  Sam raised his hands in supplication. Felt indignant that his confidence was being questioned. “What do you want me to say? You asked and I said ‘yes.’ Is there a special way you want me to say it?”

  She looked at him sharply, then started walking again. “Never mind.”

  Sam immediately felt bad.

  Insert foot in mouth.

  He stepped quickly after her. “M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry,” he muttered.

  She stopped walking away from him. Looked at him. But with her shoulders up. Arms crossed over her chest. Pure defense.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, more articulately. “Charlie, you can tell me anything. I promise. You can trust me.”

  “Even though you’re wearing that uniform? Even though…” she cut herself off, rolled her eyes, then shook her head. “You know what? Never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

  He let her get a few steps away from him this time.

  “Charlie.”

  She turned back to him. About ten feet away.

  She expected him to say something.

  He supposed he expected himself to say something too.

  He had a moment of sardonic clarity. One of the few gifts that came with watching the world burn was that it gave you a sense of perspective, even at a young age. And what he thought, with an inner smirk at himself was, Well, this didn’t go how you thought.

  Of course, what he thought was what every guy his age thinks: that every encounter with the opposite sex at least has a good chance of getting physical.

  He finally went with, “I care about you. I want you to trust me.”

  She watched him for a long time, with that same gauging look in her eyes.

  Long enough for the back of his neck to feel hot and for his feet to tingle like they needed to get
moving.

  “Be here tonight,” she said, suddenly. “Seven o’clock.” Held his eyes for another pointed moment. “And don’t tell anyone.”

  And then she left him in the woods.

  FOURTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  PAOLO

  They stopped in the middle of some misbegotten farm road in Alabama.

  Lee thought he knew what rural looked like.

  He was wrong.

  This rural was borderline wilderness. Whatever farmsteads there’d been, which seemed few and far between, had long since been abandoned, ransacked, or wiped out by infection.

  “Let me get in the bed,” Trey said, kicking his door open and exiting the vehicle. Before he closed the door, he looked back in at Abe and said, “Go slow.”

  Abe nodded.

  Trey shut the door and clambered into the bed.

  Lee watched him. He couldn’t help but be suspicious.

  They left the windows down, and the back glass open, so that they could communicate to him in the bed. Deuce took the opportunity to shove his snout out the window and huff deeply.

  Trey stood up against the cab of the pickup and withdrew a yellow piece of cloth, which he then held high in the air like a banner and began to wave it back and forth.

  “Go ahead,” Trey called to Abe, and the pickup truck started rolling forward. “Somewhere in the next mile some guys with guns are going to come out of the woods. They’re our friends. Please don’t shoot at them.”

  They rolled forward at about twenty miles an hour for about two minutes before the welcoming party suddenly appeared from the wood line on either side.

  Four individuals in homemade ghillie suits, bits of burlap and branches and leaves obscuring their faces. Two on either side of the road. They pointed guns at them.

  Lee gripped his rifle a little tighter. Thumb touching the rifle’s safety.

  One of them stepped closer to the road and held up a hand.

  “Stop,” Trey called out.

  They stopped.

  Trey raised his voice. “It’s Trey. I got friends with me. Everything’s good.”

  The ghillied one that had held up a hand stepped up to Trey’s window and peered in. Deuce let out a rumble, low in his throat, not fond of the stranger’s intrusion, but Lee shushed him with a firm hand to his chest.