Night Before Dawn

by David Lucin

  At the mention of Jenn’s name, Sam’s head whipped around. So did Allison’s. Within seconds, the whole room had turned toward Gary yet again, its collective breath held.

  “Jenn Jansen,” Jordan said. “I remember. Hard to forget that one. Commander Kipling’s a tad busy, from what I’ve gathered. We may or may not have captured the Great Khan himself. Still waiting on confirmation. But I’ll ask around about Ms. Jansen and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Not exactly the answer Gary wanted to hear, but it would have to do for now. News of the Great Khan’s capture hardly registered in his mind. He should be ecstatic, but this victory would mean nothing if Jenn didn’t survive the battle.

  “Thank you,” he forced out in reply. “That means a lot.”

  “Don’t mention it. You stay put up there, okay? We’ve got about a hundred stragglers running amok in here. Might take the better part of the night to track them all down.”

  “Will do. Speak to you soon.” Gary set the radio aside and laid a hand on the stock of his shotgun.

  Sam shot to his feet, the Gunsite Scout in his arms. “I’m going to go find her.”

  “Not without me,” Charlie said.

  “Me too.” Allison broke away from her family. She didn’t have a weapon, but Gary admired her spirit. He was tempted to join them. However, after what they’d all just been through, he couldn’t leave Maria behind.

  “Please, no,” she pleaded. “You heard on the radio. It’s not safe out there yet. We’ll wait until—”

  The door handle jiggled.

  A sharp bolt of adrenaline made everything appear brighter. Gary’s fingers, already on the shotgun, wrapped around the stock. Could some of the White Horde have found their way past the defenders on the concourse and up here to the press box? Or could Tim have come to check on him?

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Maria jumped at the noise. Mostly on instinct, Gary aimed his shotgun toward the door, ready to loose a hail of buckshot at anyone who burst through. But why would someone knock before trying to break in?

  “Who is it?” he called out.

  “It’s me! Let me in!”

  He recognized Jenn’s voice immediately.

  Oh thank God. His guts loosened, and the shotgun slid from his grasp. He collapsed against the wall of the press box and slipped into his imaginary bath once more. The fight would go on until the last of the White Horde was rounded up or killed, but with Jenn here and unharmed, he allowed himself to relax. His family was safe.

  Maria sat upright, leaning forward in anticipation. She covered her mouth with her hands, as though she was trying not to cry.

  “She made it,” he said, as much to her as to himself, and rubbed her back. “She’s okay.”

  Of course she’s okay. In hindsight, Gary shouldn’t have been surprised. Since the bombs, this girl had taken on the world, and he couldn’t have been prouder of her.

  More knocking. “Are you guys okay?” Jenn shouted. The handle jiggled again, followed by a loud bang. Was that a kick? “Let me in!”

  Sam unlocked the door and pulled it inward. White light rushed through the opening, backlighting the form of Jenn as she leaped into his arms. The force knocked him off balance, and he staggered backward. When he’d righted himself, he lifted her clean off the floor and spun her around in a circle.

  Gary’s eyes stung, and his throat tightened. Seeing these two reunited filled him with optimism and hope. Their love survived the bombs and now the White Horde. Nothing could break them apart. Soon, they’d be married, maybe even have children. Together, they were creating something new, and Gary found great inspiration in that. It was time to stop looking backward, he decided, time to stop simply surviving. It was time to rebuild.

  Quinn Novak, carrying a flashlight that lit up her blue hair like ice, followed Jenn inside. Allison greeted her with a hug. Rudely, Barbara interrupted while Sam was trying to slip Jenn’s engagement ring on her finger; apparently, he’d been holding onto it since last night.

  Maria laid her head on Gary’s shoulder, and her cool fingers wrapped around his. He listened to her melodic breathing, felt the beat of her heart. Whatever he planned to do next, he would need this woman at his side. She gave him more strength than she could possibly know.

  “We did it,” he whispered to her. “It’s over.”

  But also just beginning.

  * * *

  Jenn had never given much thought to what happened to the bodies after a battle. As it turned out, they didn’t simply vanish; they had to be moved. Grim work when there were hundreds of dead. Most of the corpses belonged to the White Horde. If Jenn were to guess, she’d say the Great Khan’s army had suffered six or seven times as many losses as the Militia.

  Remarkably, Olivia was the squad’s only casualty. She’d been brought to the infirmary in the Lumberjacks’ locker room and was receiving medical treatment. Hearing that she would survive untangled the last painful knot in Jenn’s stomach.

  Now she experienced what she could only describe as post-battle bliss. She felt it after the farm, too. A light, airy sensation filled her head, and her limbs were all loose, like jelly. Tired but wide awake, she glided along in her work, finding, strangely, joy in the mundanity of it. This was true, complete relief. The feeling was so foreign she almost didn’t recognize it.

  Yet a current of guilt ran just beneath the surface. Why had she survived? She liked to think her training had helped, as well as the skill of her unit, but in truth, chance had likely played the bigger role. As many as a hundred of her fellow Militia troopers weren’t as lucky. And what about the civilians, volunteers, and police who were killed during the horde’s storming of the Skydome? The total number of dead wouldn’t be known for days as more and more of the injured succumbed to their wounds. Although Flagstaff had won the battle against the Great Khan, victory had come at a high cost.

  There would be a funeral, so she’d have a chance to pay her respects, but more should be done to honor the real heroes of this war. Maybe Gary could commission a memorial, like those for Vietnam and World War Two in Wheeler Park downtown. Somewhere, the names of the fallen should be eternalized so everyone would know, both now and in the future, who made the ultimate sacrifice to save this town.

  Quinn held the wrists of a thirty-something man, while Jenn held the ankles and Tanis supported the middle. They carried him into an open-bed trailer filled with the corpses of his former comrades. He weighed at most 140 pounds, even though he was six feet tall. Jenn had no sympathy to spare for him; he’d tried to hurt her friends and destroy her home. Death was a well-deserved punishment.

  Once she, Quinn, and Tanis had deposited the body, they trudged back down the trailer’s ramp. The early-morning sun illuminated a parking lot filled with clusters of dead awaiting disposal. Trucks with trailers drove from cluster to cluster with teams of workers, many of them civilians who’d volunteered to help. The Militia’s fallen had already been moved; caring for them took priority over disposing of the White Horde. The Khan’s deceased followers would be burned without ceremony and without remorse, hopefully right away. They represented a blight on this town, and Jenn couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

  “I still can’t believe that machine gun didn’t hit you guys,” Quinn said as Freddie and Sam passed, the corpse of a woman sagging between them. “You’re like the luckiest people on the planet.”

  “Hard to argue with that.” Jenn brushed her hands off on her pants. After handling so many dead, she’d need to spend an hour scrubbing them with soap. Or bleach. “The AI’s camera must’ve lost us when we dropped behind those cars.”

  “You’d think the thermal readings would have shown you lying down.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I guess not. To be honest with you, I don’t really care. I’m just happy to be alive.” For the hundredth time since the end of the battle, she checked her pants pocket, feeling for her rings. Still there.

  She couldn’t resist smiling to
herself. As of today, she had her whole life ahead of her. She and Sam were married, the White Horde had been defeated, and spring was on its way. What then? A family of her own? A few short days ago, the idea of bringing a child into this world terrified her. Now she found it exciting. She’d have to ask Sam. They’d discussed having children, but only during pillow talk. He wanted them, too, but maybe they should wait. There was no rush. For a while, they could enjoy being husband and wife.

  “I’m starting to wish we got assigned guard duty today.” Tanis’s ponytail had begun falling out, and strands of her long, dark hair hung in front of her face. “Watching prisoners would be a million times better than this.”

  “Do we even know what we’re going to do with them?” Quinn asked. “We definitely can’t keep them here.”

  The survivors of the White Horde, about four hundred in total, most of them male, had been rounded up and moved into a nearby residence building, where they were being kept under heavy guard by two full platoons. The police had transported the Khan himself to an undisclosed location.

  “I don’t know,” Jenn said. “Straight-up executions might be extreme.” She wanted the Khan’s followers dead, yes, but the thought of murdering them in cold blood made her skin crawl, reminded her of what the horde did to those poor people in Window Rock—what he would have done to the residents of Flagstaff. “We’re not monsters. Exile, maybe? We can just send them out into the desert and forget about them.”

  “I don’t know. We can’t let them get off that easy.” Quinn reached down for the legs of a new corpse, a mid-forties woman with the left side of her head shaved. “Jenn, your turn on the arms. T, you got the middle again.”

  Jenn lowered herself into a squat position, ready to lift, but noticed Dylan approaching from another group of workers.

  “Come to help?” she asked him. “I’ve heard it’s good for officers to get their hands dirty and lead by example.”

  He gave her a stiff, polite grin. “Unfortunately not.” With a flick of his wrist, he waved over Sam and Freddie. All five crowded around him as he added, “The team that went up to I-40 just got back. They found Murphy. He didn’t make it.”

  Tanis gasped and covered her mouth. Quinn sneered, but tears had formed in the corners of her eyes. Freddie cast his gaze downward while Sam chewed a fingernail.

  That pleasant sensation of post-battle bliss evaporated. Shame took its place. Jenn hadn’t thought about Murphy in hours, not since the airport.

  From her squat position, she fell onto her butt. She’d known Murphy longer than any of the other Guard troops. The man had brought her to New River and helped her find Ed. He’d been so happy for her and Sam when they announced their engagement. She hadn’t even had the chance to tell him about their wedding. To her and many others, Murphy was the Militia’s true leader. Liam was the commander, yes, but she barely saw him anymore. Murphy took an active role in training, mingled in the barracks, and knew all three hundred troopers by name. Always, they could count on him for help or support. The unit wouldn’t be the same without him.

  “There were others up there, too,” Dylan continued. “The ones who went missing after the fight on Route 66. They were all shot, execution-style, and left out on the road.”

  Jenn’s shame shifted, making room for white-hot fury. Good thing she’d been assigned to cleanup duty. Had she been watching the prisoners when she heard this news, she might not have been able to resist the urge to harm them—or worse.

  “Anyway,” Dylan finished, “word’ll get around fast. Just thought you guys should hear it from me.” He gave Freddie a friendly slap on the back and moved away, heading toward a group that included Aiden, Wyatt, Beau, and a few others from the squad.

  Jenn tried to stand, but an invisible weight held her in place. All the energy she’d felt before, all the optimism, had been sucked out, leaving behind an exhausted husk.

  Quinn flexed her jaw. “You still think we shouldn’t execute the prisoners outright, Jenn? After what they did to Murphy?”

  “Execute?” Freddie asked. “Did I miss something?”

  “Earlier,” Jenn said, “we were talking about what to do with the Khan’s people. Quinn thought we should execute them. I said exile.” But I’m not so sure anymore. What would Murphy have wanted? He was a kind, patient, and tolerant person, but he also had a practical side. She liked to believe he’d endorse exile, if only to save the ammunition.

  Sam cleared a patch of snow off the asphalt and sat beside her. “I don’t think we should be doing anything until there’s a trial.”

  Quinn snorted rudely. “Seriously? Trial? For what? To prove the defendants are murdering psychopaths?”

  “Yeah,” he deadpanned.

  Another snort from Quinn. This time, it was more indignant than rude. “Care to explain?”

  “It’s all about due process. We know they’re guilty, but this town, it’s still a democracy. We’ve even had an election since the bombs. It might not technically be the United States anymore, but we should at least try and uphold its values. Fair elections, freedom of speech, innocent until proven guilty. We fought a war over it. It’d be a shame to let it all go now.”

  “You sound like Allison.” Jenn bumped his shoulder with hers. “She’s always talking about how we need to stand up for our rights and blah, blah, blah.”

  “We might have talked about it once or twice.” He put a fist to his mouth and yawned. “Think about it this way. The Great Khan executes people without trials, so why would we do the same? If anything, we should do the exact opposite.”

  Quinn squinted at Jenn, then at Sam. “So now that you guys are engaged, you think exactly the same?”

  Sam scrunched up his face. “Huh?”

  “Like five minutes ago, Jenn literally said the same thing.”

  “It’s true.” Jenn put a hand on his knee. “I did. And yes, Quinn, we think the same now that we’re engaged.” At that word, his leg twitched, and they shared a quick look. While she wanted to announce her wedding through a megaphone, she had to admit, keeping it a secret was kind of exciting.

  “I’m with Sam,” Freddie offered and had a drink from a water bottle. Some color had returned to his skin, but he still reminded Jenn of a vampire. “Trial, then exile.”

  “Me too.” Tanis hugged herself and bounced on her toes.

  All heads turned to Quinn now. “Fine, fine. You’re right. Due process.” A baggy of dried bread had appeared in her hand, seemingly out of nowhere. She munched on a piece, saying, “For a social sciences guy, you’re actually pretty smart, Samuel. Maybe you can run for mayor one day.”

  “Whoa there.” He held up his hands. “I don’t think I’m cut out for politics.”

  “Never say never,” Jenn teased. “You know about history and government and stuff, so why not? Gary might even give you an internship at city hall. If you want, I can talk to him for you.”

  “Please don’t. We’ve been getting along lately. If we start working together, we’ll wind up at each other’s throats again. I’ll stick with the Beaumonts and the Militia for the time being, thanks.”

  “Smart.” Freddie picked a piece of bread out of Quinn’s bag and tossed it into his mouth. “Gotta stay in the good books with the father-in-law.”

  “Yeah,” Jenn said. “On second thought, don’t do anything that’ll mess up your friendship. I like it a lot better when you guys are buds.” She peered up at Tanis. “And speaking of relationships. You and Wyatt, hey?”

  Tanis blushed and drew lines in the snow with her boot. “Yeah, well,” she began sheepishly. “You know, he’s—”

  “Got a great sense of humor,” Jenn finished. “Funniest guy in the platoon.” He wasn’t—top five at best—but the two seemed happy together, so she wanted to encourage them. “Just don’t let Captain Townsend find out. She seems like the type to get all ornery about relationships between squadmates.”

  A shrill whistle sliced through the air. Jenn recognized it from the b
riefing at the airport last night.

  “Speak of the devil.” Quinn pointed toward a cluster of vehicles near the Skydome’s front entrance, where Townsend, still sporting her tactical vest and helmet, had planted her hands on her hips.

  “Guess that means break time’s over,” Jenn said.

  She slapped Sam’s knee and pushed herself up. Before hearing about Murphy, she could have moved these bodies all day. Now the task seemed daunting. Yet she couldn’t help but notice the sky to the east. The sun had set it ablaze in reds and oranges, silhouetting a line of ponderosa pines.

  Her optimism returned, slowly at first, but the more she soaked in the sun’s rays, the more she found herself thinking about the future. Murphy might be gone, but he gave his life so Jenn and Flagstaff could have a moment like this. Monument aside, the best way to honor his sacrifice and the sacrifice of so many others was to look forward, not back. If Jenn hadn’t been so lucky, if she had been killed in the battle, she wouldn’t have wanted Quinn, Sam, Freddie, or anyone else to mourn her death. She’d have wanted them to move on, to make the best of their lives. For Murphy, she would try doing exactly that.

  “What are you looking at?” Sam put a hand around her waist.

  “It’s funny. In the mobile office in Window Rock, the Khan said something weird. Well, he said a lot of weird things, but now it’s kind of ironic.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d he say?”

  “He said dawn was coming.” She nodded toward the sun. “Looks like he was right.”

  24

  “You need anything, just holler,” Officer Carrera said. She knocked her nightstick against the metal bars of what used to be the drunk tank at the Flagstaff police station. Dim white emergency lights illuminated a polished concrete floor and cinder block walls, but Carrera still carried a flashlight.