Dark Alignment

by David Haskell

The tree cover loomed thick overhead, casting a mid-day pall over the path. But the undergrowth was soft and manageable, and easy-to-follow animal trails spread out in all directions. Shane fought to make progress on his injured limb, but he finally flopped down in the shade of a large oak and propped himself up.

  “About time we stopped for a rest anyway,” Jo said, cutting him some much-needed slack. She broke out a first-aid kit, fortunately taken ahead of time from their now-wrecked plane. She prepared a change of bandages for the wounded man, then applied an anti-bacterial. She removed the hastily applied top covering, causing him to wince.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright, Jo. Or should I be calling you Agent Osborne?” He’d been calling her Jo all along, but he was looking for some line of conversation to take his mind off the pain.

  “Jo’s fine,” she said, looking away and rubbing the ointment into the bandage absently.

  “Not Josephine or Joanna or anything?” he asked, sensing that he’d hit upon a sensitive topic.

  “Nope.”

  “Jordan? Josie?”

  “It’s Jane.”

  “Jane?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jane Osborne,” he said, then added, “Agent Jane Osborne.”

  “Right again.”

  “But you’re nickname is Jo.”

  “Also right,” she said, her voice taking on an edge.

  “Why not Janie,” he teased, “or Ozzy?”

  She scowled. He got the impression she’d heard these before.

  “It’s my initials. Simple as that.”

  J.O. Shane grinned. So simple, and yet it was like pulling teeth to get the facts out of her. What a mystery.

  “Ozzy’s nice, though. Ever thought about switching up?”

  Jo ignored the jibe. “You’ve lost a decent amount of blood,” she informed him, “but you won’t lose anything you can’t live without.”

  He smiled, appreciating her attempt at comfort. “Glad I’ve got you on my side. A field medic with a decent bedside manner’s hard to come by these days. Add that to the resume next time you polish it up.” He chuckled, amusing himself. Then he winced again. The wound wasn’t as superficial as he’d hoped—it went deep enough to be of real concern.

  “Hang on a second,” she said, leaving him holding the used bandages while she set the fresh ones aside and hurried off.

  “Don’t be too long,” he called. Only then did he notice Dean standing there. The scientist appeared fully recovered, and looked nervously after the departing woman.

  “She’ll be back,” Shane reassured him, “feeling better?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Dean said, giving Shane’s wound a once-over and cringing at the sight. “Does it hurt much?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Good. Look, I really appreciate the two of you coming all this way to find me. I don’t know what—”

  Shane waved the sentiment off. “Don’t read too much into it. No offense, but you’re an asset, first and foremost. We’ve been assigned to protect you. Nothing to start feeling sentimental about.”

  Dean didn’t reply immediately, selecting his own tree to rest against, then flopping down into it with a sigh. He still looked pale. Aftereffects of the drugs, or shock. Or the nausea.

  “Assigned or not,” Dean offered, “it’s a hell of a relief to be back with you guys, instead of the alternative.” He nodded back to where he seemed to think the enemy camp lay. He was off by a good thirty-degrees, but there was no sense in pointing that out. There’d been plenty of twists and turns along the way, and even Shane himself was feeling somewhat disoriented.

  “Those other guys, the ones who helped us,” Dean continued, “any idea who that might’ve been?”

  Shane thought back to the events immediately following his injury. They’d gotten out the gate by the skin of their teeth, staying just ahead of the guards for a half-mile or so before heavy fire and several detonations had bailed them out.

  “Hard to say at this point,” Shane said. “Could’ve been our boys. Or their own reinforcements, caught up in the crossfire. Or it could’ve been a third party, out to get you for themselves. For that matter, it might have been some combination of the three. I have no earthly clue, honestly. But I’m not planning to wait around and find out.” He spoke with a finality meant to inspire confidence, for Dr. Eckert as well as for himself.

  Jo returned, arms laden with bunches of leaves and growth. She set it down beside her pack and picked up the fresh bandage. “There, now we got some air on the wound and everything. You’ll be ready for round two by sundown.” She smiled at Shane, ignoring Dean entirely.

  “What’s all that about?” he asked, indicating her foraging efforts.

  “A painkiller, I think, if I haven’t mixed up my root classifications.”

  Shane shook his head. “Geez, lady. Anything you can’t do?”

  She laughed. “Can’t get us the hell out of here,” she joked, mocking herself and their situation all in one, “that’s what I can’t do. Fat lot of good the rest’ll do us if we can’t figure that out.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Shane reassured her, poking through the roots and leaves with feigned interest. “Now which one of these is supposed to make me feel better?”

  * * *

  They made better progress with Shane properly attended to, and by sundown they were at the edge of the forest. They stopped for the night, just inside the tree line where they could remain unseen. Shane broke out rations and divided them up, prompting Dean to realize he hadn’t eaten a thing in ages. Torn between aching hunger and lingering nausea, he nibbled carefully. There wasn’t much, anyway—his rescuers had only brought so much along—so he managed to finish.

  When it was time to sleep Jo and Shane traded shifts, keeping alert for trouble. Dean would’ve been happy to volunteer, but he wasn’t asked, and a cold shoulder from Jo kept him off balance.

  Morning revealed an expanse of open pasture in front of them. Mountains were visible in the distance, offering enough of an orientation for Shane to declare, “Over the Tatras and we’re in Poland. From there we’ll be able to get help.”

  Dean still had no idea where they were. For whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to him that his rescuers might know. What had seemed like a mindless escape suddenly made sense.

  “Who’re we going to find to help us?” he asked, wondering why they hadn’t at least checked to see if any help might be available from the ones who sent in the drones. But as Shane had explained, they could be just as dangerous as his kidnappers.

  “Jo has people,” Shane answered, provoking a dirty look from the woman. He ignored her and continued, “The chances of us getting there without being seen aren’t good though. We may need to split up.”

  Dean felt his eyes go wide, an odd sensation as it was entirely involuntary. A sick feeling of abandonment hit him in the gut, as if they’d already left him behind. “Are you serious? How are we supposed to know where to go?”

  “How are you supposed to know, you mean?” It was Jo answering him, speaking directly to him for the first time since the escape. Dean wondered what he’d done to piss her off so much. He had no clue, aside from being a thorn in her side for having been captured. That was hardly his fault, though.

  “Maybe it’s time you start taking charge of your own ass for a change,” she said.

  Or maybe not. “Look, I don’t know how I’ve offended you, but…?”

  “Not offended, Eckert. Just tired.” She hefted her gear and squared her shoulders. “Now, can we get moving?”

  Shane nodded, giving Dean a sideways glance that said ‘drop it’ even as he lent moral support. That made him feel somewhat better. He half-wished he and the airman could remain paired up at least, and leave the angry woman to her own devices. Still, if it weren’t for her, they probably wouldn’t have made it this far. He had little right to bear resentments, even if he himself were on the receiving end of such.

&n
bsp; “We’ll stay together as long as possible,” Shane reassured him, “and if something goes wrong, we won’t be split for long. You’ll head out along the edge of the woods there,”—he pointed to the leftmost perimeter, where the shadowy yellow-green of the grasslands gave way to a sweeping, vibrant covering of leaves—“Jo can take the right-hand side along those ridges so she can get an overview, and I’ll go up the middle, since I’ll be slowest. Hopefully I can serve as a distraction.”

  Dean was determined not to give Jo any more ammunition to use against him, so he nodded confidently. Jo said nothing, though she had raised an eyebrow at the suggestion of Shane being a distraction. She held a stick and poked at the ground with it, anxious to get moving.

  “For now, we’ll move along the tree line,” Shane finished, propping himself up on his good leg and testing the bad one. It seemed to hold up well enough. “Heading for that valley, straight on.” He pointed to the space halfway between the mid-range of the mountains. “Looks like there’s plenty of cover, so if we do split up, just get there and find some. Either Jo or I will find you as soon as we can.”

  Dean muttered an agreement, withholding his objections in deference to his rescuers.

  28.

  The national guard first response team had been in Joffrey since the weekend, having been ordered to evaluate the effectiveness of the relief effort, and determine if it could be duplicated. The imminent spread of the phenomenon was now established fact, with seven new cases having cropped up in recent days. The worst was a situation in Hartford, Connecticut, the first major metropolitan area to be affected since D.C.—and calls for the government to build upon Joffrey’s success were pouring in from all directions.

  John Masters would have assigned one of his own as liaison, if Mayor Quaid hadn’t insisted on accompanying the team personally. The unfortunate incident that followed, though, was blamed on Masters’ people anyway. It didn’t matter that they nothing to do with the reckless actions of the mayor, and no control over the resulting mayhem between national guard and local volunteers. They were scapegoated all the same.

  The fact that the group had become stranded in an afflicted zone was entirely the mayor’s fault—there was no argument on that front—but efforts to extract them fell to John Masters. Losing three vital volunteers in the process, too, was the fault of the mayor. He sent them in blind, trying to save the day with his quick thinking, but making things far worse instead. Yet another problem for the police chief to handle.

  “Look, we need to get them out,” Masters concluded, “simple as that. All of ‘em, and quick. So get me an extraction team, and put me through and let’s get this shit done.” Having taken charge, he put on a brave public face. He wasn’t nearly as confident as he came off, though. It was bad enough trying to extract even one man from the gravimetric shear, with considerable risk of injuring others. Getting a whole gang of them out was damn near impossible.

  In the end, he went out to the location to lead his team and coordinate the rescue effort personally. There was just no way to handle this over the radio. He had to see what they saw, understand what they were up against. Fortunately, the trapped men seemed to know what they were doing, and the splinched ones were only mildly affected. Thank heaven for small favors.

  Masters took up a bullhorn. “Okay, folks,”—His booming voice caused a nails-on chalkboard screech of feedback until he moved the mouthpiece off to one side—“stay calm as you can. We’re working on getting you all out. It’ll just take a little while. We’re going to extract the injured first, so get them ready to go, and standby for more instructions. Okay?”

  He couldn’t hear the replies—the effect played havoc on sound waves, of all things—but they stood at the ready, looking like they understood. He turned to his men, dispatching them to their positions with nothing more than one practiced glance after another. Everyone knew how this worked, so there was no point in belaboring the orders. Everyone also knew how deadly this effort could be. A fact best left unsaid.

  “On my count, then,” he bellowed into the bullhorn, which was close to superfluous under the commanding weight of his words, “Forward unit…move in!”

  The flurry of movement into the contaminated zone was hard to read. So much debris and dirt came flying back at the waiting rescuers that they were temporarily blinded. There was no way to keep track of their men, and they couldn’t see the trapped ones any longer either. Huge clouds of debris billowed up every time the perimeter was breached, but it was hard to get a read on how many got in successfully. It was possible the gravimetric effect had knocked the lot of rescuers back, but hopefully some had managed to penetrate. There was little to do but wait for the dust to settle, literally.

  Masters’ men shimmered into view. Lieutenant Frank Reid was on the ground, clutching what was left of his leg. His foot had been splinched off completely, a jagged stump in its place. Two others close to Reid looked uninjured, straining against the bubble and reaching back for those trapped. Masters called for the next wave.

  * * *

  The situation was brought under control within a half-hour, every last man rescued thanks to a monumental group effort. Unfortunately three of Masters’ men were injured pulling the others to safety, though none worse than poor Reid. Splinched flesh wounds, a broken arm—nothing the medics couldn’t handle. Now Masters could breathe again, and in that instant he knew he’d had enough.

  Driving back to confront the mayor, he felt the first of the tremors at a red light, but assumed it was a heavy truck, passing on a parallel street. The next quake was significant enough to rock the car, even while in motion, prompting the Chief to slam on his brakes. Sure enough, they were experiencing an earthquake. Something unheard of way up in Joffrey. John Masters began to seriously wonder if his peaceful little town had crossed the rubicon, straight into Biblical territory.

  Shaking off this latest calamity, he got back on the road and proceeded to ‘the situation room’, as the mayor had dubbed it, bursting in in the middle of an interview. One of the reporters was just asking the mayor to comment on the earthquake. Based on the chatter, it had been centered quite far to the south, making the magnitude they felt all the more disquieting.

  It was a bizarre sight to witness a journalist asking this small town mayor for his expert opinion on seismic activity. Masters was tempted to interrupt. But he held off and allowed the interview, along with his boss, to continue on down that increasingly ludicrous path.

  “Mind?” Masters nodded at the office door when Quaid finally caught sight of him.

  “Right now?” replied the Mayor, looking put-out.

  “Right now,” Masters insisted.

  The two men entered the room and Masters closed the door, stopping just short of a slam. He clicked the door shut instead and took a deep breath. “Dennis, I’ve got three fresh injuries on my hands. Thanks to that stunt you pulled, and—”

  “Thanks to me? Jesus, John, what are you accusing me of?”

  “I’m not accusing. I’m just stating facts here. That rescue had to happen because of a situation you allowed, and I’m telling you we’ve got to get a handle on this thing quick. We can’t afford any more fuckups like this, Dennis. I’m warning you.”

  “You’re warning me? John, you’d better take a step back and remember who the fuck you’re talking to. We’re not playing grab-ass here for fuck’s sake. I’ve got a city to run.”

  “I know you do, Dennis. Now look—”

  “No, you look John. I’m not about to start taking orders from you, and I’ll be damned if I let you start badmouthing me in front of people—”

  “Now hold on. I haven’t done that,” Masters said, checking himself before his temper got too heated, “and you damned well know it. We’re talking man to man here, right? I’m not going to undermine you, okay? But I’m not going to send any more of my men into harm’s way either. Not without a damned good reason.”