by Patten, Sean
She looked defeated by the time she’d reached her last word, not even able to finish. A soft shimmer of tears was in her eyes.
“Hey, hey,” I said, wrapping my arm around her and pulling her in close. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m here.”
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just…I don’t know what I’d do without you, Justin. With all this…you’re all I’ve got.”
I squeezed her hard, feeling her body against mine.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said. “No matter what happens. Just put that out of your head right now, okay? It’s not going to happen.”
I could feel her heart beating against my chest. And I just held her like that, holding her like I used to. And as I did, Kelly slowly tilted her head up until her eyes were locked with mine. The tears were still there, but there was something else, too.
And as her lips slowly parted, I knew exactly what it was. It was like I was being pulled to her by some force I couldn’t control. But the moment our lips touched, I knew her kiss was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I’d needed.
We kissed, the rest of the world melting away around us. Kelly only took her lips from mine for long enough to reach back and switch off the lamp, darkness filling the room as I laid her back slowly onto the bed beneath us.
Chapter 12
May 16
I woke up to the sound of rustling from across the tent. My eyes bleary, I reached over without thinking and draped my arm across the bed. I was expecting to feel Kelly, but instead I put my arm down on nothing.
After rolling over on my shoulder and rubbing my eyes, I looked around the room to see what the noise was. Kelly. Her back to me, she slipped her shirt down over bra-clad back, finishing dressing.
“Hey,” I said.
She glanced over shoulder.
“Hey,” she said.
And nothing else.
Already I could feel something strange in the air, something that made me realize that what had happened between us last night wasn’t going to be without some awkwardness. I wanted to say something, to ask if she was okay with what we’d done. But I didn’t want to press the issue if she was going to take the “pretending it never happened” option.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked.
Oh, I thought. So she is going to talk about it? Better sooner than later, I guess.
Her eyes went down to my hand.
“Your fracture,” she said. “Feel any better? Worse?”
Right. Of course, I thought, partially relieved.
I opened and closed my hand, feeling a tinge of pain run up and down the side.
“Actually feels a lot better,” I said. “A little pain, but nothing too serious.”
“Good,” she said. “If you’re lucky, it might just be a sprain. Still, you might want to not use it for anything too strenuous.”
Like last night? I thought, followed by God, Justin, keep those kinds of jokes to yourself right now.
“Come on,” Kelly said, her voice calm, almost professionally so. “Get up and get dressed—we ought to hit the chow line before it gets too crazy.”
“Good call,” I said.
I rolled out of bed, parts of my body still sore from the fight last night. Kelly handed me my clothes and I was dressed moments later.
“Wish I could just take a dip in the lake,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how much longer I can wear these dirty clothes for.”
Not exactly the subject on my mind, but that was fine with me.
“Hopefully Lambert will get the water situation sorted out soon,” I said. “With the number of people still pouring into the place…”
I trailed off, not wanting to finish and give us both something to worry about.
“Lambert,” Kelly said as I tied my shoelaces. “You talk to him?”
I nodded. “I did. Didn’t go all that well. Poor bastard looks like he’s about on the brink of a breakdown.”
Her eyes went wide, and I realized that I probably didn’t need to share that particular bit of information.
“That bad?” she asked.
“Getting there,” I said as we stepped through the tent flap and out into the warm morning air. “I mean, he’s a good man, and he’s doing his best with what he has. But there’s only so much you can do when you’ve taken it upon yourself to shelter half the state.”
“Then…” she said. “Our plan. We need to do it sooner than later. I don’t know what’s going on with the people in charge but if things keep going the way they are, this camp’s not going to last a week.”
She was right. There was no point denying it.
“Can you quit your work?” she asked. “Maybe the two of us can spend a few days just looking for Steve.”
I shook my head. “I quit and not only do I piss off the most powerful person in the camp, but we can kiss our private tent goodbye. Me having the general’s signature on my lanyard is the only thing keeping us from being shoved into a tent with twelve other people.”
She nodded as we walked, an expression of worry on her face. It was plain as day that she wasn’t happy with what we were doing, and I couldn’t blame her one bit.
“I just don’t know how to handle this,” she said. “We need to find Steve, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “The general really didn’t tell you anything?”
“Nope. Seemed pretty pissed that I’d even asked.”
“Gotta love a guy who tells you that taking the job will get you some info on your brother, then gets mad when you ask.”
“Well when you put it like that…”
“Let’s just get through the day,” Kelly said. “All I can think about right now is the twelve-hour shift I have ahead of me.”
“Same,” I said.
Of course, on top of what we’d just talked about, there was still the whole issue of last night. It would definitely need to get talked about at some point, but now was clearly not the time.
We eventually reached the rations line, which was already long enough to knock the wind out of my sails.
“God,” I said. “What I’d do to just be able to drink a cup of coffee in silence.”
“No kidding,” said Kelly. “Nothing like living in a refugee camp to really make you miss the small things.”
The two of us got in line, the smell of the crowd seeming even worse than it normally did. And it made sense—we were slowly getting sewer systems up and running, but huge sections of the camp were without anything but a bottle or two of ration water just for drinking.
The line moved forward slowly, just like it always did. Around us I could hear the nervous conversion of the other refugees, all of them even more in the dark than Kelly and I were. Some were more hopeful, convinced that any day now the rest of the army would arrive with enough supplies for everyone, while others were more doom and gloom, asking aloud if they would have been better off fending for themselves in the city.
Hard to say, really.
“Hey, fuck you!”
A booming voice broke out among the chatter of the rest of the line. Everyone’s attention snapped in the direction of the noise.
“You think you can just cut in line like that?” the man yelled. “Get your ass to the back and wait with the rest of us!”
“I’m here with my wife!” growled out another voice. “We’re sticking together!”
“I don’t give a fuck!” said the first voice. “No cutting!”
I stood on my tiptoes to see the source of the commotion.
“What is it?” asked Kelly, too short to see over the crowd.
“Couple of assholes fighting over a place in line,” I said.
More curses sounded out, and before too long the men were exchanging shoves.
“Oh great,” I said. “A fight in line’s the last thing we need.”
Right at the moment I spoke, one of the men pulled his fist back and drove it hard into the face of the other man. Screams sounded out from the crowd around
them.
The blow landed with a hard thud, the man who’d been struck stumbling backward into the crowd. His elbow went wide, striking a nearby woman in the face.
“Watch it, asshole!” shouted the man standing next to her. Then he grabbed the punched man and shoved him around.
This time the guy was ready to strike back. For some reason, instead of going for the man who’d hit him, he went for the guy who’d done the shoving.
Everything next happened in a frenzy. More punches were thrown, more screams sounded out, and before too long a brawl involving about a dozen men and women had broken out.
“Shit,” I breathed. “Stay back. We don’t want to get caught up in this bullshit.”
Kelly nodded and the two of us put some distance between us and the fight.
Thankfully, a small squad of nearby soldiers were quick to intervene. A blur of military fatigues rushed into the fray, pulling the fighters apart and dragging the most troublesome ones away from the line.
But they didn’t go down easily. Some didn’t miss a beat before turning to the soldiers and trying to drag them into the brawl.
“Are they hitting the troops?” asked Kelly. “Why are they doing that?”
I said nothing, instead watching the mess unfold. As far as I could tell, the refugees were taking out their frustration with the rest of the military on these poor grunts who were just trying to do their jobs. It was a mess all around.
Didn’t take long before the troops had most of the fighters in zip ties and were leading them off in the direction of the brig. My gut went hot at the idea—if the best parts of the camp were this bad, I could only guess what kind of state the brig was in.
Finally, one of the troops broke off from the rest and spoke to the crowd, his face hidden by wraparound shades and a helmet.
“All right, folks,” he said. “Show’s over. Back in line and get your grub.”
The voice—it was familiar. And the longer I watched the soldier move, the more familiar he became.
No way, I thought. No fucking way.
“Did you hear that?” asked Kelly. “That sounded like—”
Screw it.
“Hey,” I called out. “Steve!”
The soldier stopped in his tracks, looking around for the person who called the name.
“Steve!” I shouted again. “Over here!”
He pulled off his shades.
It was him.
I waved my arms and he spotted me. And seconds later I was embracing the one man I wanted to see more than anyone.
I’d found my brother.
Chapter 13
I couldn’t believe it was really him. Across from me and Kelly at a cheap plastic table, three plates of powdered eggs between us that sat untouched, was my brother.
“You okay over there?” Steve asked with a smile. “You look like you’re, uh, on something.”
I shook my head, snapping myself out of the daze.
“I can’t believe you’re here is all,” I said, reaching across the table and grabbing hold of his wrist, as if he might vanish in front of me like he’d done before.
“You have no idea how hard Justin’s been looking for you,” Kelly said.
“Not hard enough, then,” he said with a joking smile. “Because it took sure took you a while.”
“What happened?” I asked. “When we were separated?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back. As he did, I looked over his uniform, noting that it was without a name tag or any kind of identifying rank or information, like it’d been pulled fresh out of the box and given to him. Probably not too far from the truth.
“It all happened so fast,” he said. “Like, one minute you guys were there, the next you were gone. And before I could say ‘what the fuck’ I was in the back of some troop transport and being driven off to God knows where.”
“Sounds familiar,” said Kelly.
“The hospital,” I said. “Lambert said you’d probably been taken to the hospital.”
Steve cocked his head to the side, clearly confused.
“Lambert?” he asked. “You talked to him?”
“One story at a time,” said Kelly.
“Right,” said Steve. “But yeah, once they saw that my leg was all messed up they dropped me and some soldiers off at this hospital that they’d commandeered a little outside of town. And when I got in I realized how lucky I was—the place was packed, and priority treatment was for military personnel. But the CO with us had heard about what we’d gotten up to at the Troika and decided to slot me in for immediate care.”
“How’s your leg now?” asked Kelly.
“Hell of a lot better,” said Steve. “Mainly it was just dirty. But the doc said that if it’d been any deeper or gotten infected…”
He trailed off. We didn’t need him to finish to know how that sentence would’ve ended.
“Anyway,” he said. “They cleaned it and stitched it up and it’s fine. Just need to go easy on it, you know?”
His eyes moved back and forth between me and Kelly, like he was having the same thoughts as us, wondering if we were really there.
“Your uniform,” I said. “What happened, did you reenlist or something?”
“Or something,” he said. “Once I was up and moving around one of the officers came around to get everyone’s info. He asked what I was doing there if I wasn’t a military personnel. I gave him the reason, but mentioned that I used to be in the service. Man, you should’ve seen his eyes light up when I told him that.”
“They’re desperate for people?” I asked.
“You have no idea.”
He glanced around quickly, as if making sure that no one was listening in.
“They’re estimating desertion rates of upwards of thirty fucking percent,” he said.
“That’s…that’s a lot, right?” asked Kelly.
“That’s tens of thousands of soldiers,” I said. “Cutting and running.”
He sat back up. “Granted, that’s with Nevada’s numbers extrapolated across the entire military, but still.”
“Means putting our hope in the military might not be the best idea,” said Kelly.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Steve. “There’s still a shitload of men and women out there ready to put their lives on the line to do their duties. As you can see.” He gestured to the troops around us, most of them still dealing with the aftermath of the fight.
“Anyway,” he went on. “They told me I could—and by ‘could’ I mean ‘will’—join back up and help out. Hell, it was the least I could do considering they fixed my leg. So they got me a uniform and assigned me to a squad of other civilian soldiers, if that term even makes any sense.”
“And what kind of missions have they had you running?” I asked.
“Lots of recon and supply runs,” he said. “All in the city. And each time I went into that hellhole I made sure to break away from the squad and look for you both. Didn’t find hide nor hair, though, and I figured you’d have gone with the troops over here to Esperanza.”
“How long have you been here for?” I asked.
“Couple of days,” he said. “And…”
He looked ready to say something else, something it seemed he wasn’t sure if he should say.
“What?” I asked.
“Hey, Powell!” called out a sergeant from near the rations line. “There a reason you’re sitting on your ass?”
“Shit,” said Steve. “Gotta get back to it. But…”
He tapped his finger on the table in indecision before finally speaking.
“Let’s meet tonight,” he said.
“Great,” said Kelly. “Our tent is number—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ve got somewhere different in mind. Actually, it’s kind of a meeting I want you both to come to. At midnight.”
“A meeting?” I asked. “Like a military thing?”
I was confused as hell. What kind of meeting would be h
appening at midnight?
“Something like that,” he said. “It’s in sector eleven, near the Z row, by the water. Go there and I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Powell!” the sergeant barked.
“Gotta go,” he said. “Meet me there. We’ll figure out the next step after that, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
With that, Steve gave us one last look, one that almost seemed worried, before he rejoined his troops.
And soon he was gone, and all I could think about was how damn glad I was to know he was safe.
“Oh my God,” Kelly breathed. “That was really him. I can’t believe it.”
A big, beaming smile was all over her face. Underneath the table she grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.
And as soon as the happiness faded just a bit, curiosity joined it—curiosity at this strange meeting, and what exactly my brother had gotten himself into.
Chapter 14
23:50
Kelly and I moved together through the darkness, both of us beat from our grueling workdays, our bodies aching and crying out for sleep.
But sleep wasn’t in the cards for either of us. Excitement at seeing Steve again and finding out what the hell he’d been getting up to kept us going.
As I made my way through the uneven sands between the rows of tents, I did my best to ignore the ever-worsening stench of thousands of families living in squalid conditions.
“Seriously,” said Kelly, speaking lowly as me moved past the tents and drew closer to the lake. “What the hell kind of meeting is this?”
“You guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But I’m pretty certain that nothing on the up and up gets talked about at this hour.”
“But what could they be talking about?” she asked. “Maybe it’s like…some kind of gambling thing. Or maybe one of them set up a still and are selling bootleg booze.”
Both of those things would’ve been almost a relief, actually. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that whatever this was, it was more serious than some bored soldiers making moonshine—the look in Steve’s eyes had told me as much.
