by Franks, JK
He was talking about Jack’s rescue from the group of Messengers and especially the twisted bastard they called the Prophet. Tommy, who the townsfolk had taken to calling Ghost due to his ability to seemingly appear and disappear almost without notice, had single-handedly rescued Jack. Scott downed another gulp of the bitter, black liquid. “I agree, some part of the warrior that he was is still alive in there, even if he’s just running mainly on instinct. Skybox said he had been heavily sedated since the injury.”
Scott thought briefly about the chopper crash, seeing Ghost standing in his yard shortly after. Now knowing that crash also had taken the lives of Gia’s husband and daughter. It was a subject that she had refused to discuss—ever.
“That poor man,” Angel said somberly. “Can you imagine being in that condition? Trapped with a brain that no longer works. Not knowing who you are or where you are. I mean, who knows what he thinks of or even if he thinks? Maybe the killing and stuff is all just instinct. Like an animal or something.”
“He’s not an animal,” Scott said firmly. “I don’t know if Skybox can reach him, but he’s determined to try. He said this is the most responsive he’s seen Tommy since the accident. Being off the drugs may be allowing him to access more of his memories―maybe he can remember who he is. In either case, we owe him everything. His actions definitely saved Jack and may have saved the entire community.”
“I know, I know…I didn’t mean to say he was an animal, Scott. I just can’t imagine anyone suffering the way he must be. He may be in constant agony but unable to let any of us know.”
Roosevelt chimed back in, “Dat boy done figured out how to handle dat pain. He done put it to work for him. Lawd help anyone getting in his way when he needs to let it come out.” He gave a little chuckle before continuing, “Sides…he knows we are friends. Specially dat SkyFox dude.”
“Skybox, not Skyfox, you old coot,” Angel said with a grin. “I gotta go to work. You boys have a good day.” With that, she disappeared. Both men watched her until the door to the kitchen’s prep area swung closed.
“Dat young man of hers better do her right,” Roosevelt said.
“DeVonte is a good kid, and he knows what a catch she is. I hear rumors that he may try and convince her to make it official.”
The old man’s eyes lit up. “Really? Wow, dat gives me hope. It sho do. It would be so easy for us to just give up, ya know? All dis awfulness out in da world. People needs to keep on falling in love, havin’ babies, growing old. Dat is what survival really means, not how much beans and rice and guns ya gots...”
The old man leaned over, growing more serious and quiet. “Mr. Scott, I needs to tell you something. Something I been dreading eva since you come back.”
Scott panicked, he hoped the man wasn’t leaving, going back out to his little farm. Everyone had adopted the older man almost as a wise grandfather. He was sharp as a tack, and his knowledge of…well, everything was amazing. He was well versed in survival, farming, hunting, fishing, but also people. Beyond that was something else, though. Roosevelt Jackson had intuition or some way of anticipating things in an uncanny way. Scott found it awkward at first accepting things on faith, but Roosevelt’s accuracy had proven itself time and again. He felt the chill go up his spine as he felt the edge in the man’s words. “What is that, Roosevelt?”
“Now listen to me, son, I’m a…I’m jus’ an old man. An ole fool as dat girl in yonda said, but sometimes, evry now and den, I gets a feelin’ bout something. Sometimes it goes away, and…sometimes it don’t. You member me telling you dat you got da signs?”
Scott thought back to the first time he had met the man. “Yes, Roosevelt, I remember.”
“Well, ya see, I knowed you would be ok when you was lost out at sea. I just knowed. Even when Mr. Todd said you was dead, I knew betta. Just like I know this other thing. My friend, you about to be tested like never before.”
Scott started to speak, but the old man’s look silenced him. His friend wanted him to know this was important.
Roosevelt stared at the table for a long moment before continuing, “Scott you gonna hafta face a terrible choice. One…one dat no man should ever hafta face. I can’t tell you more, but I do know it will be the mos’ difficult thing in your life.”
Scott’s face must have shown the concern and questions. “Dat’s all I can say bout it. Trust yourself, Scott. I know you will know what to choose when da time comes.”
With that, the spry old man stood up, patted him on the shoulder and ambled off. Just what did all that mean? Scott wondered what the man could be referring to but had no idea. Time for him to go to work, anyway, as he downed the last of his coffee and stood.
Jack had been gone a few days and had taken an old diesel pickup. He’d loaded in a few of the things to trade, like bags of salt, dried fish, and even some coffee. These were the few items they had a surplus of. This was just an initial visit, though, just to find out who was still left out there to trade with. Scott missed the man already, he was more than a friend, and the burden he himself was carrying seemed immense. Jack represented the soul of Harris Springs to Scott and watching him go had pained him deeply.
If Jack was the soul, then the man he was about to talk to was its heart. He found Todd with DeVonte down at the marina. They were siphoning fuel into Todd’s boat, the Donna Marie. His little sailboat had not survived the hurricane. “Todd, got a minute? I need your help.”
“Sorry, man, haven’t come up with a cure for stupid yet, check back next week.”
Scott laughed, “Asshole.”
“Kidding, man, come on down. What’s up?”
Scott ran his hand over the polished wood, recalling the same feeling touching the treasured woodwork in his families’ old beach cottage, now just a pile of ashes. His friend loved this boat like he had once loved this town. “Todd, we have to leave here.”
The older man set the fuel container down and leaned back against the rail, his weathered face filling with unasked questions. Scott went on to explain just as he had to the AG’s new council.
DeVonte’s face looked ashen at the news. “How long we got, Scott?”
“Maybe six months, but we have a lot to do before then.”
Todd looked northward, Scott knew what his friend was thinking. His wife, Liz, was buried on the other side of town. Most of the town was buried there, in fact. He ached for his friend but had to make him understand, they had no options.
Todd looked at him, eyes filling with tears, “Don’t make me do this.”
Scott walked the few steps and hugged the man, “We have to, Todd, the AG needs her captain.”
Chapter Eight
Georgia, South of Atlanta
The major looked out on the scene of utter misery in disgust. The smell filled every pore with the odor of rot, filth and decay. He turned and nearly tripped. He looked down to see what had caught his boot. A small, white curved bone extended above the sucking, red clay mud. A rib bone, human—probably a child’s. He slid his foot back and carefully stepped around the small obstacle.
“Colonel Willett, sir?” he said smartly as he approached the Humvee.
The bald-headed man lowered the binoculars, handing them back to an aide. “What did you find, Kitma?”
“It is veery mush what we feared, sir, mush like de others. Worse even.”
The colonel spat over the edge and scanned the scene. “So, just like the last one?”
“Oh, no. No, sir. In this one, they had no food left at all.”
The US Army drones had been monitoring the camp for months. They had overflights every few days since the black-clad security forces had begun setting them up just after the solar flare. They had seen the sharp increase in the number of dead bodies over the last couple of months. The mass graves had increased daily, and then, they suddenly stopped. No new burial plots had been spotted for weeks. Now they knew why.
“We failed them, Major. We failed them all―they were the America we swore
to defend. Fucking bastards. Goddamn ‘em. Damn ‘em all to hell!”
Kitma knew who the man’s anger was directed at. The National Security Forces, those black-clad mercenaries the government was using to keep camps like these filled and productive.
The colonel had climbed down and walked around to the front of the nearby tents. Calling it a tent was giving the flimsy structure way too much credit. It consisted primarily of scraps, several pallets standing on edge with the tattered remnants of blue plastic tarp draped over the top. “Major, rough numbers on survivors and captured?”
“Approximately 1300 survivors rescued and 119 of their former guards in custody”
Willett shook his head. “Thirteen hundred out of, what was our original estimate, 28,000 or so?” His words, laced with bitterness, left much regret unsaid.
“Colonel, there is something else. We questioned the guards. Not all of them are American.”
Willett exploded at this discovery, “You have got to be kidding me. They are importing soldiers to help keep our own citizens imprisoned?”
Kitma knew the question needed no answer. The colonel was doing a brave and dangerous thing in making it his mission to free as many of the internment camps as he could. They had sat on the sidelines for too long. Being first ordered to help build the relocation aid camps and then sitting idly by when they saw how they were actually being used was simply too much. He, like many others, could only follow presidential orders just so far. At a certain point, they came to realize the acting president was not simply incompetent; she was certifiably insane.
When many of them in the military chain of command refused, they had been removed. Then, when the replacements also refused, the camps’ fuel, food, supplies and even radio communications were cut off. Willett was one of those replacement commanders. He took over after the other commander disappeared. He had initially tried to obey orders from Washington and President Chambers. After proof came out that the former president had been assassinated, though, few in the military would listen to the orders from the high office anymore.
Willett remounted the Humvee. “Release the survivors, let them take anything they want. They can make their way back home eventually. We can’t feed ‘em either, nor take them with us. Got no fuel to spare.” He paused, looking at the ragged line of the survivors in the distance. Most were so skinny, they looked like holocaust victims. “What the hell have they been eating the last few months?”
“Each other, sir.”
The look of utter hatred on the colonel’s face needed no words. “Those guys,” he pointed at the captured camp guards. He got back down from the truck and slowly walked to the assembled remnants of the NSF guards. He walked in front of each man, looked into the eyes of each.
“You people fucking disgust me. You’re about as useful as an unwiped ass. How in God’s name do you feel justified in what went on here?” None of the men spoke, most held their heads down. “Let me guess, you were just following orders—right? Orders to imprison and subsequently starve American citizens. Innocent Americans that had come to you for help. Had come to you thinking this was an aid camp!” He spat out a dark stream of tobacco juice. “Let me guess, someone gave you a gun, a uniform and just enough authority to make you feel important—right?” The tempo of his condemnation increased with every step he made. “Let me explain something to you, I got those same orders, just like all my men. Against all our training, we refused to obey. WHY? Because it was wrong, reprehensibly wrong, morally wrong!”
He paused at one end of the line of former guards. “Do you smell that? Maybe you’ve been here so long you no longer notice. Take a deep, fucking breath. That is the odor, hell, the remains of bodies you burned. Bodies of Americans, of men, of women, even of children. The order to protect those people overrides everything else. Those people are who we serve. You bastards don’t deserve to be on the same planet as them!”
He turned away to his men guarding the prisoners. “They are hereby sentenced to death.”
From the bunker in Mount Weather, VA, President Madelyn Chambers watched the monitors for situational updates. Currently, she was intently following the video feed labeled as Camp 10H3 located just south of Atlanta. The situation was getting out of hand; even she knew that at some point the military was going to question her authority and begin undermining her directives. She had just not anticipated it would be so soon nor the use of military force against the Emergency Security Forces. She knew she would have to pass the information on as well and saw no way to spin it as a positive. Fuck, she hated politics. She had only wanted the authority, the prestige, not all this shit.
She called her assistant. “Ed, get me an update on all the remaining aid camps. Specifically, any within reach of all former military bases with a non-compliant commander.”
He knew what she meant, over two-thirds of the bases that remained were commanded by officers refusing to take orders from her. In her mind, they were warlords setting up their little fiefdoms, carving up the remnants of the country and flipping her off as commander-in-chief. Ed went to the intel room and began pulling up the information and transferring it to his tablet. She had already cut off all food and fuel supplies to those bases as well as jamming secure communications between them, but their resistance was increasing. Her decision to place infected people into some of the camps had been a horrific act of desperation. He was convinced they would all burn in hell for what they were doing.
The phone in his pocket trilled again. Answering it with some reluctance, he said, “Yes ma’am.”
“Ed, one other thing. Please get Ms. Levy for me. I need to brief her on this latest development.”
“Of course, ma’am.” He gritted his teeth as he put the phone away. The only thing he hated worse than dealing with the country’s first female president was talking with Ms. Levy. That woman was categorically maniacal. He also never knew where she was. He had a contact number to call, and sometimes she would appear in the offices within minutes, other times it was a short satellite transmission some hours, or even days, later. He felt sure she was well away from the virus ‘hot zone.’ The infected were already moving well past the hidden base they were in. While the Mount Weather complex had self-contained air, water and food supplies, knowing the pathogen was just outside freaked all of them out.
The return call, this time, was minutes, not days later. He transferred the call to the president’s encrypted line. As usual, he listened in covertly as President Chambers passed along the day’s events with an unmistakably shaky voice. Her normal confidence collapsed whenever she spoke to Ms. Levy. There was no illusion as to who held the real power. Chambers was losing her very loose grip on the country, anyone could see that.
“Madelyn,” Levy said. “You need to be presidential. Act like you’re the fucking president for once! Control the camps, control the military and for God’s sake keep the people under control. If you can’t handle this, I will find someone who can.”
Chambers gladly hung up the phone, then launched into an angry fit of cursing that deteriorated into stomach-churning nausea. She rushed to the toilet to vomit. The leader of the free world on her knees in fear. She cleaned herself and donned the mask of authority once more. She had a speech to write.
Several hundred miles away, in a nondescript concrete bunker, a metal door at the end of a dark corridor opened to reveal a lone figure sitting on a metal cot. “Up, prisoner,” the guard said. The man stood silently. His hands and legs were already shackled. The guard ushered him out the door which slammed back shut with a metallic clang. The prisoner shuffled his feet in an awkward gait. He asked no questions but took in every detail. The guard had been joined by four others. None of them carried firearms, only tasers, batons and other non-lethal weapons. So, they want me alive, not dead. Someone out there knew his capabilities. He’d been here in this former domestic black site for over a year. A supermax prison that didn’t officially even exist. From what he knew of the outside world now, he
felt somewhat grateful for the accommodations and the regular meals. It seemed like that was about to come to an end, though. Someone was pulling the old man out of mothballs.
The bright sunlight was blinding, they were leading him out of the prison bunker. A sleek black helicopter sat just outside the fence. The noise of the engine obscured all other sounds. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large black man signing a paper presented by one of the guards. His restraints were quickly removed. The black man walked around him in a full circle as if he were inspecting a prize cow he might buy. “Good to see you, Archangel. We need to go.”
Chapter Nine
Harris Springs, Mississippi
The galley area of the AG was immaculately clean as always. Angel no longer managed the meal preparation as her responsibilities were now much larger than that, but, like Scott, she still took several turns each week helping prepare meals and insisted on the galley staying spotless.
“Hey, Boss,” came her normal cheery greeting.
Scott gave her a hug. “Don’t call me that…please.”
The two had always been friendly, but something had changed when Scott had gone missing. Angel was the one who never gave up on him. She had been an outsider. Just a college girl on a summer beach trip when the lights went out. Even though she was just a few years older than Kaylie, he had seen a maturity and wisdom in her, rare for someone her age. Her abilities and confidence were immediately recognized by Scott. There was nothing romantic in their friendship, but it was now more familial in nature. Increasingly, she was more like a younger sister to him.
“Angel, DeVonte said you needed to talk to me.”
“I do, Scott, but mainly I wanted to just make sure you were doing ok.”
“Yeah, I’m doing fine. Why do you ask?”
“Just seems like so much going on…” she let the thought trail off. “You’re not about to go do something stupid again, are you?”
