by R. T. Lowe
“No kidding,” Lucas agreed. “It’s not like a movie where the bad guy just does all kinds of evil shit for the sake of being evil and psychotic. Don’t judge me, but I’m not even sure whose side I’m on. I mean, I’m on your side, and Allison’s, obviously, but whose side is that?”
Felix sighed through his nose. “Believe me, we’re on the same page. When I have a clue about what I should be doing, I’ll let you know.”
A phone rang. Felix jogged over to his backpack and unzipped the pocket. It was his regular phone, not the burner he now took with him everywhere.
“Allison?” Lucas shouted, jogging over.
“No. Campus number though. Left a message.” He entered his password and listened. ‘This is a message from the office of Dr. Borakslovic. Please come to the dean’s office immediately. Thank you’. Felix stared at the phone, then at Lucas, dumbfounded.
“I heard.” Lucas looked concerned. “I didn’t know the dean worked on Sundays.”
“Neither did I.”
“What’d you do?” Lucas asked, his expression concerned.
“What didn’t I do?”
Chapter 18
THE COLONY
From the hillside overlooking the valley, Kayla gazed out upon miles of tents and recreational vehicles. Surrounded in this sea of humanity, Wakatuk, the wildlife refuge the area was known for, looked small, like a child had cobbled it together from Lincoln logs. The Oppositionists had taken to calling the site a ‘colony’, and it had caught on at the other protest sites, a not so subtle accusation that the New Government represented their interests no more than the British had represented the interests of the Colonists at the time of the Revolutionary War. For as many vehicles as there were—Malone had said the colony now exceeded 100,000 people—Kayla was impressed with how orderly everything appeared to be operating. The land was reasonably well suited for an occupation. The valley floor was flat and treeless and there was sufficient fresh water from a spring fed river that ran north to south. The buses, RVs and sundry other vehicles were parked in rows so neat one would have thought the ground had been painted with parking stripes. A network of rutted paths intersected the colony in measured intervals, allowing for water, gas, propane and sanitation trucks (there were thousands of blue port-o-potties) to make their rounds. Men with assault weapons guarded the entrance, their flatbed pickup trucks flanking a country two-lane, the only access to the Wakatuk Valley. For the past two hours, the men had been busily coordinating the new arrivals and streams of tractor trailers which they diverted to an open field on the eastern fringes where they were quickly unloaded by teams of men and women, box after box thrown into vans that sped off to distribution centers and unloaded again. Some of the containers were too heavy to be moved by hand so forklifts carried them off the trailers to enclosures covered with heavy black tarps that rippled in the wind.
“What do you think that is?” Kayla pointed off toward the forklifts, their diesel engines rumbling. There was no need to whisper. They stood behind a rocky outcropping that kept them reasonably well hidden and they were a mile or more from the northern edge of the colony.
“Munitions,” Malone surmised, standing beside her. “Looks like it’s military. Some armories have recently been hit in Washington.”
Zara nodded. “More guns than people.”
Kayla concurred. She hadn’t seen anyone who wasn’t carrying a rifle. She flexed her toes and blew hot air into her fists. She hated the cold. People who claimed you got used to it annoyed her. The only way to beat the chill was to escape it, and she was looking forward to doing just that once they finished their reconnaissance mission.
“They’re very organized,” Malone pointed out. “They seem to have established a leadership structure.”
Zara nodded, then frowned. “Their leaders are probably in that administrative building warming themselves by the fire.”
“Perhaps,” Malone replied, “but no one’s hungry or in danger of dying from the elements. They’ve managed to haul in enough fuel to run thousands of generators twenty-four hours a day and the folks in the RVs and campers must be taking in the ones who come in cars. It’s an effective system and it says something about the level of cooperation. Not to mention the commitment to their cause.”
Zara snorted derisively.
“I think you have to give them some credit,” Kayla said, tired of Zara’s disparaging attitude. “Whoever’s in charge has assimilated a hundred thousand people in a very short period of time. They have water, food, heat, sanitation, and there’s no reason to think they can’t keep this up indefinitely.” She looked out at the horizon, wondering how many more sympathizers they could accommodate. “I think what they’ve done is really quite remarkable.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Zara’s voice was thick with sarcasm. “What would your friend Lofton think?”
“He’d think you’re an idiot!” Kayla snapped.
“Hey now,” Malone said gently. “We’re here to assess the viability of potential assets, not argue with one another. I’m inclined to agree with Kayla, though if this is to be the backbone of our army, we can’t ignore their obvious shortcomings.”
Zara smiled sweetly at Kayla. “Half the people are only here because of their macho obsession with guns. Giving them up is like asking them to cut off a testicle and they’re not about to agree to anything that reduces their testosterone. They couldn’t spell ‘Bill of Rights’ to save their hillbilly asses, but the one thing they know for sure is they like to aim, pull the trigger and shoot shit, preferably foreigners and minorities, but anyone looking at them the wrong way generally works just fine for them.”
“That’s a bit simplistic,” Malone cautioned. “Many of these people have been arguing for years that the government was promoting sensible gun legislation when the goal all along was to repeal the second amendment and disarm them. Well, many of us called them paranoid and delusional, but their fears have come to fruition and now they’re being ordered to relinquish their weapons or face capital charges. The government intends to disarm them at perhaps the most dangerous time in our country’s history. Numbered Ones are a genuine threat to themselves and their families and the New Government is demanding they give up their only means of protection. So you may want to consider being a bit more sympathetic when the Opposition says it doesn’t trust the New Government to protect them.”
Zara’s jaw clenched but she remained quiet, staring off in the distance as the landscape itself appeared to move. Near the eastern end of the colony at a looping bend in the river, a stage had been erected and trucks were unloading generators, speakers and electrical equipment, all on pallets. A crowd of thousands—tens of thousands, Kayla reminded herself—made their way through acres of parked vehicles, a human migration trampling its way across the land.
“Maybe we’ll find out who’s leading this brave troop,” Zara said, emphasizing ‘brave’ to indicate she thought nothing of the sort.
Malone nodded, saying nothing, watching.
The front lines converged on the stage and began to seat themselves, spreading out blankets and settling into foldable chairs. Like soldiers marching into battle, they came by the hundreds and thousands, staking out bare patches of ground. Then they waited expectantly, staring toward the stage.
Kayla, Malone and Zara stood there for the better part of an hour, shivering in the cold, until finally the screech of feedback blasted through the speakers and the crowd roared its approval. A man in a cowboy hat and a simple brown jacket jumped onto the stage with a rifle slung across his back. The crowd noise crescendoed. The man said something into the microphone and it quieted quickly. He started to speak again but Kayla couldn’t discern any words.
“We’re too far away,” Zara complained, sounding bitter. “Should we get closer?” She looked to Malone for guidance.
He shook his head. “We’d risk being seen. I recognize him though. His name’s Wesley Dixon, a rancher from Burns. He’s seen the inside of a few prisons. He’s
an agitator, an anti-government crusader for at least a decade, and obviously respected. I think if given the right incentives, we’d find him to be… malleable.”
Wesley’s speech was punctuated with the occasional raised fist, and though they couldn’t hear him, the crowd’s exuberant reaction was evidence enough of his charisma.
“This’ll make it easier,” Zara admitted. “Looks like the masses just might go along with anything Wesley tells—” She cut herself off and looked up at the gray sky.
Kayla heard it too, the deep hum of an airplane’s engines. She raised her eyes, searching for it.
“Clouds are too low,” Malone said, and Kayla thought his voice sounded different, troubled. “A big one I’d wager and visibility’s at maybe seven or eight thousand feet. The plane’s higher than that—but not much.”
“Is there an airport near here?” Zara asked him.
“Not for large aircraft,” Malone said.
Kayla’s nerves began to coil and she wasn’t sure why. It was just an airplane. Nothing unusual about that, right? Many in the crowd were also looking up at the sky. The hillside from where they were observing the colony was a few thousand feet above the valley floor, but to Kayla it felt even higher, as if they were hovering at the midpoint between clouds and the people down below. She kept her eyes trained on the sky, watching, looking for something, and then, as if in response to her thoughts, a whisper of cloud cover burst open and something black and cylindrical cut through the haze like a bullet, speeding to earth.
“Zara!” Malone shouted, raising a finger toward it. “There! See it? Get rid of it! Now!”
Zara appeared stunned. “Is that a… a…?”
“It’s a bomb,” Malone said, his voice much calmer than Kayla felt. “Destroy it! You have twenty seconds.”
A bomb? Kayla thought, her heart pounding in her temples.
Zara planted her feet and raised both hands as though she was preparing to catch a ball. The space around her fingers shimmered for a moment—Kayla thought it looked like she was holding mirrors reflecting the light—and then the air, twisting and rippling, erupted in a pulsing wave of energy that streaked across the sky straight for the descending bomb.
“It’s too far away,” Zara said anxiously, her broad nose flaring in concentration.
Kayla glanced down to see if she could predict where it might fall—the main building, she thought, but it was impossible to say for sure—and when her eyes located the bomb again it was brighter than before and falling less rapidly. Its descent had met resistance. Zara’s mind was slowing it. The bomb dipped below the ridgeline on the other side of the valley and a piece splintered off, fluttering away, followed by others, each larger than the last.
“That’s it,” Malone said encouragingly. “Get it away from the colony.”
Kayla watched, transfixed. The people were screaming, aware now of what was happening, expecting, perhaps, for their lives to end in seconds. Zara stood completely still, her eyes focused and unblinking, the deepening lines on her face the only indication of the enormous strain she was enduring.
Sparks trailed behind the bomb and it wobbled erratically, slowing further and changing direction, edging away from the colony toward the river. Zara, grunting with the effort, moved her hands in a pushing motion and the weapon veered radically off its course, rocketing over the water for the rolling hills on the other side of the valley. Tens of thousands watched with desperate and fearful eyes, waiting.
Tha-crack! A single treetop high on the hill swayed anticlimactically. Then it went still. No explosion. No destruction.
Silence descended on the valley and then a great roar erupted as the crowd shouted in jubilation, embracing one another, celebrating the defeat of the bomb and the New Government that had undoubtedly sent it.
Kayla let out a heavy sigh, relief flooding through her. “It didn’t explode?” She stared at the spot where it had disappeared among the trees. “It didn’t explode!” She turned to Zara and hugged her, laughing with joy. “You did it! You rock!”
Zara, sweat beading her forehead, broke into a smile. She hesitated for a moment then returned Kayla’s embrace.
“For being such a bitch, you’re pretty awesome,” Kayla said to her.
“You try leading a Fortress without being a bitch,” Zara replied and laughed.
“Heaven have mercy,” Malone whispered, his voice a bare whisper, his eyes turned to the sky.
“Wha—?” Kayla said, confused. The skyline had gone dark. The clouds were still thick, gray and swirling in the wind, but beneath the cloud cover, from one side of the valley to the other, the horizon had been painted over with small black cylinders.
Zara gasped and threw out her hands, adopting her earlier posture. “I… I can’t,” she sputtered, her hands jerking back and forth as if she couldn’t decide where to focus her powers. “Too many. There’s too many!”
A handful of vehicles had started up, heading for the road that led out of the valley. But the crowd, now standing, wasn’t attempting to flee. Wesley Dixon, still on the stage, was holding the microphone, bobbing his head, and Kayla wondered why she couldn’t hear anything from the speakers. Planes, she realized. The sound of jet engines.
“Why aren’t they running?” Kayla screamed helplessly. “Run!” she shouted down at the people below, knowing they couldn’t hear her. “Run!” In her mind, Kayla imagined three tanks, their cannons blazing, and hovering over them, attack helicopters, all emblazoned with the flag of the United States. If she could scare them, maybe they’d run? Get distance from the bombs? She fixed her gaze on an area a stone’s throw from the stage and conjured her illusions. The tanks fired, cannons flashing white, recoiling with each discharge. The helicopters stalked slowly through the air toward the heart of the crowd, shell casings falling to the ground in streams of glimmering copper.
The leader of the colony unslung his rifle and fired at the tanks. Many in the crowd followed his lead, and soon, hundreds were shooting at Kayla’s illusions, not noticing the bullets passed cleanly through, slamming into vehicles, shattering windows.
“Run you idiots!” Kayla screamed. “Why aren’t—?”
The ground shook and a plume of smoke and fire leaped high in the air, followed by another, and then another, a trail of destruction tracing the length of the colony. A bomb landed on the administrative building, erasing it and everything around it. Explosions rocked the earth as the bombs fell in waves. The crowd disappeared behind a veil of billowing black smoke that flashed in bursts of red and orange, lighting up each time a detonation flared within it. Kayla watched helplessly as the bombs descended in clusters, obliterating each section of the colony, methodically reducing people and machines to dust and rubble.
Kayla sank to her butt, the despair crushing her spirit, feeling as though she would never know happiness again. She felt the tears slide down her cheeks as she sat there on the cold ground, doing nothing, for all that was left to do was watch. Gradually, the bombs stopped falling in clusters and the earth regained its balance. The pounding blasts grew more sporadic, and then finally, the assault came to an end. The air smelled of smoke and oil, and what Kayla imagined could only be the stench of death. Through swirling clouds of smoke gusting lazily across the valley, Kayla thought she saw the occasional flicker of movement, of someone, perhaps, seeking sanctuary.
Kayla stood. “We should help them.” She wiped her eyes. “There could be survivors.”
Malone and Zara nodded slowly, numbly, dazed by the bombardment and the incomprehensible loss of life.
Kayla started down the hill.
Malone pulled her back suddenly, snaring her arm. “Wait!” he whispered urgently in her ear. “Listen!”
The sky, once more, hummed with the low roar of approaching aircraft.
Zara came up beside them. “There’s nothing left!” She gestured furiously at the smoldering colony. “Why are they coming back?”
“Lofton’s making a point,” Malon
e said gravely.
The next wave of bombs knifed through the cloud cover, strands of cottony gray mist curling down in their wake. Nearing the confluence of smoke and a low drifting haze, their outer shells split apart and swarms of stick-like objects streamed out, gathering around the entry vehicles like constellations.
“Incendiaries!” Malone bellowed. “Run!” He tugged on Kayla’s jacket, wheeling her around. Zara was already ahead and bounding up the slope, slowing as it began to steepen.
Kayla dug her feet into the soft soil and ran, her thighs burning. The sky flashed orange. Explosions rolled over the land like thunder, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Kayla braced herself against a tree and stared up through the branches at a blood red sky, catching her breath for a second and continuing on. She found Malone and Zara in a small clearing and together they silently watched the fire engulfing the valley. Nothing in the colony was visible, not a single structure or vehicle. Buried in the depths of the undulating flames, Kayla could only hope that death had come quick to those below. The winds gusted suddenly, pushing the fire toward them.
“We’ll have to get to higher ground,” Zara said, sweat streaking her face.
“Can we watch for a minute?” Kayla asked. The fire was spreading up the hillside faster than she thought possible, but the scene before her reinforced what she’d always believed and she wanted to hold on to the certainty of her convictions for as long as she could—to feel the moment. She had known in her heart that Lofton was capable of anything, and this was irrefutable affirmation, proof that he was the monster she knew him to be.
The tree line below ignited like matchsticks and smoke rose in choking clouds as the fire crept higher. The air was beginning to feel thin and Kayla coughed, holding a hand to her mouth. A tall fir beside them burst into flames though the ground fire was still some distance away.
“It’s the wind!” Malone shouted. “It’s superheated. We’re leaving! Now!”
They stood in a circle, holding hands, and Kayla closed her eyes. She let out her breath, hearing Zara and Malone do the same, and silently counted to ten. The heat of a sudden gust burned her cheeks and in her mind she urged Malone to hurry. For an instant, she felt as though someone was sitting on her chest, her lungs ached for air, and then the sensation was gone. She regained her breath and the air was colder and clearer, the stench of smoke and oil more distant. She felt her hand being squeezed. She opened her eyes. Malone had teleported them to safety.
