As Darkness Falls

by David Lucin

  “Some news came in today.” His voice was so low she could barely hear him. “On the shortwave radio.”

  “What did it say?” Sam asked. “Is there more help coming?”

  In early August, a long-awaited airdrop of food and medicine landed outside New River. Lionel, before he succumbed to the so-called New River flu—a nasty virus that had been working its way through the camp’s population, killing the weak, elderly, and immunocompromised for weeks—offered Flagstaff more than its fair share, but Gary refused. It was better used to keep New River afloat, he’d argued, and city council agreed. Tens of thousands of refugees still lived there, and when the camp ran out of supplies and collapsed, the first places they’d come looking for help would be Flagstaff and Prescott. Delaying that horrible inevitability by even another month ranked high on Gary’s endless list of priorities.

  “No, Sam,” he said, his face ashen. “No one’s coming.”

  Jenn’s guts lurched. While Gary’s answer came as no surprise, the way he wrung his hands together made the tendril of worry in her stomach blossom into borderline panic.

  Maria had returned to the living room. Fiddling with the hose wrapped around her ears, she said, “Gary, you’re scaring us.”

  He peered down the hallway, likely to ensure Barbara was still in the office. “The federal government,” he whispered. “There was a coup.”

  “A coup!” Jenn blurted out, then threw a hand over her mouth.

  Gary shushed her and pressed the air, signaling for her to keep quiet. “Yes, a coup. Details are fuzzy, but it seems an Air Force general named Julio Rodriguez ordered President Duncan removed from office. We don’t know exactly what happened next, but she wound up being killed, along with about half of the congresspeople who survived the bombs. Loyalists fought back and apparently still are, but the government, or what’s left of it, is in chaos.”

  The firelight glistened off a tear in the corner of Maria’s eye while a bead of cold sweat slid down Jenn’s cheek. Hundreds of questions danced on her lips, but she asked the most obvious one: “Why would the military do that?”

  “Duncan wasn’t very popular with the armed forces. They blamed her for bungling the war for those first few years. It’s not surprising Rodriguez decided to take matters into his own hands. To what end, I have no idea. Could just be a plain-old power grab. Duncan had built a strong bipartisan coalition around her, which explains why Congress was targeted as well. Or maybe he thinks he can do a better job coordinating relief efforts, though I highly doubt that. Not many coups happen because military leaders have the best interests of the people at heart.” Gary’s disgust was palpable. “If Rodriguez did, he wouldn’t have attacked our democracy and forcibly removed a fairly elected president in the middle of her term.”

  The fire popped and crackled over the buzz of Maria’s compressor. A scritch scritch scritch came from Ajax, who was scratching his neck with a hind leg.

  Jenn swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Knowing the president was alive and the federal government continued to function had given her some measure of relief. A sense of continuity had existed with the past, and she’d hoped America, as a nation, would eventually emerge from this nightmare as something recognizable. Gary’s news shattered that dream, and in an instant, the world became a hundred times larger, a hundred times more hostile and dangerous. There would be no help against outside forces like the Major, no food to prevent thousands from starving, no one working to restore the power grid before winter set in. For the foreseeable future, Flagstaff was truly on its own.

  “So what now?” She already knew the answer, but she yearned to hear Gary say something wise or inspirational. Anything to keep the fear at bay.

  “Nothing changes,” he said firmly and with confidence. His mayor voice. It helped Jenn believe him. “We hunker down and prepare for the worst, same as we’ve been doing. Government help or not, we’ll get through this. We have to.”

  4

  Sleet pelted Jenn’s jacket as she gazed down the interstate from behind a navy-blue Tesla not unlike Sam’s. It and a dozen other idle vehicles formed a roadblock across I-17, the primary route into Flagstaff from the south. Despite her squad learning bounding overwatch, its main task remained guarding these roadblocks, so for four or five days a week, Jenn was at one of them, watching for unexpected out-of-town visitors.

  All shades of red and orange colored the woods on either side of the highway. On the median strip, the grass was wild and overgrown, stretching up to her knees in some places, and weeds sprouted from cracks in the asphalt. Already, after only five months, nature had begun reclaiming the world. How long until the forest swallowed this interstate whole?

  She threw up her hood, then surveyed the squad’s line. Aiden Ademola and Tanis Rice manned the southbound lanes. Aiden, the son of Nigerian immigrants who taught at the university, sported round glasses and shaved his head to the scalp. Like Freddie, Tanis grew up in Flagstaff. She wore her dark hair long, even longer than Jenn’s, and had pale skin, as though she hadn’t seen sunlight in all of her twenty-four years. Wyatt and Jenn manned the northbound lanes. Freddie, the fire team leader, took his lunch break in the Toyota pickup behind them.

  Each roadblock had one working truck with enough charge to drive across Flagstaff, allowing squads to quickly redeploy to another position in case of an emergency. Quinn and her team remained in lookout positions about two miles south. If they spotted someone coming up the highway, they’d radio a warning to the roadblock. Jenn would in turn radio Dylan, who would assign reinforcements as necessary. This system hadn’t yet been tested by a real threat—and Jenn was thankful for that—but the Militia, in coordination with the police, regularly rehearsed a range of scenarios, from a single vehicle approaching town to a full-scale incursion by a hostile convoy.

  The door to the Toyota slammed shut. Freddie, on his way toward the roadblock, stuffed a notebook and a pencil into his backpack.

  Jenn checked her watch. “You’ve still got ten minutes on your break.”

  “I felt bad sitting in there, staying nice and dry while you guys were out here getting soaked,” he said and slung his AR over his shoulder.

  She hadn’t heard Freddie speak sarcastically before, and it caught her off guard. “How very thoughtful of you.”

  Water rolled down the bridge of his nose. “You remember when it first rained after the bombs? How everyone was freaked out about radiation?”

  “Ugh, yeah. I was on the range at the farm and sprinted into the house as soon as it started. Pretty sure I’ve never moved that fast in my life.” She felt silly afterward, when Gary told her clouds formed far below the altitude of the smoke in the atmosphere, meaning precipitation wouldn’t bring any residual radiation to the surface. “Where were you?”

  “Go Market. In line for rations.”

  “Yikes. I heard about that. Didn’t a bunch of people try pushing past the cops to get inside?”

  “It wasn’t a pretty scene, to say the least.”

  Jenn readied some quip about her own experience with crowds at the Go Market, but from across the roadblock, Wyatt shouted, “Hey, Jansen! Is Freddie done with his break?”

  “Yeah,” she said back. “Your turn. Thirty minutes starts now, so make the best of them.”

  He practically ran to the Toyota. Once inside, he pulled a Tupperware container from his backpack and proceeded to stuff a potato into his mouth.

  “That guy loves to eat,” Freddie said. “He needs to slow down or else he’ll just be hungry all day.”

  “I think he’ll be hungry all day anyway.”

  “Touché.”

  Jenn was enjoying the conversation with Freddie, but she still wasn’t sure what to make of him. During training at the college, he seemed so disinterested, almost arrogant, like he had better things to do. Why, then, did he volunteer for the Militia in the first place? She wanted to ask him outright, but in this case, her usual bluntness could backfire. If she came on too strong
, he might put up his defenses and shut her out.

  So when he began to wander away, she stopped him with, “Hey, wait a sec. What was that notebook you had? Were you working on something in the truck?”

  His cheeks turned a shade of pink. Was he embarrassed or cold? “It’s nothing.”

  “I bet it’s not nothing. Is it a journal? My boyfriend’s sister started keeping one. She’s interested in mental health and stuff, and she says it’s good to reflect on how you feel. I tried it for a while, but I can barely string together a coherent sentence.”

  He tilted his head at her. “Didn’t you go to college here?”

  “Yeah, but I was in engineering, so no papers.”

  “Engineering, huh? Like bridges?”

  “Robotics,” she said dryly.

  “You don’t sound too excited about that. Isn’t robotics intense?”

  “It is. Was. But I mostly went into it because there was work in the field. Machines might’ve been taking everyone’s jobs, but someone still needed to fix them.”

  “Until they learned how to fix themselves.”

  “And then destroyed humanity because they didn’t need us anymore?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about that. Humanity did a pretty good job of destroying itself.”

  He tapped his temple and leaned closer. “Unless robots were the ones who launched the bombs in the first place.”

  Jenn had meant her comment as a joke, but some crazies in Flagstaff truly believed an advanced AI had become self-aware and then triggered a global nuclear war with the intent of annihilating the human race. Now she worried Freddie might be one of them. “You’re kidding. Like, you don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “It’s the plot of the movie Terminator. Old flick from the 1980s. Ever seen it? The sequel’s better.”

  She let out a long, relieved breath and pretended to wipe sweat from her brow. “Good. I thought you were some conspiracy nut for a second there. And no, I’ve never heard of it. If you like classic movies, you should talk to Dylan. He’s obsessed with them.”

  He put a finger to his chin. “I might have to do that.”

  Wind blew in from the west, throwing water against her cheek. “So what was in the notebook? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  He pulled down his ball cap, then shot a glance at Wyatt in the truck and then Aiden and Tanis in the southbound lanes. “I’ll tell you, but you’ve gotta promise to keep it a secret.”

  A secret? Interesting. She ran her thumb and index finger over her lips like a zipper.

  Again, he leaned down to her height, speaking softly: “It’s a screenplay.”

  “Screenplay?” she repeated far too loudly.

  “Jeez, keep it down.” He turned her away from Aiden and Tanis, who continued chattering to each other. In the truck, Wyatt had shut his eyes, his head leaning on the headrest, so he clearly hadn’t heard her, either. “I was working on it before, and I always promised myself I’d finish. I lost the file with the EMP, but I started from scratch, writing it out by hand.”

  “That’s so cool. I didn’t know you were a writer. Can I read it?”

  “Not until it’s done,” he said with a sense of finality. “It’s dumb. Not like anyone’s making movies anymore.”

  “It’s not dumb.” She gave him a friendly punch in the upper arm. “It’s awesome. Is that what you wanted to be? A writer?”

  His posture relaxed, his movements a little freer. “Sort of. I wanted to be an actor.”

  “Actor? During a depression and a war? I didn’t think anyone was doing much filming. All my favorite shows got canceled or put on pause.”

  “A few kept up production, but nobody said it’d be easy.”

  One of Gary’s oft-repeated mantras rose in her mind: Nothing worth doing is ever easy. She respected Freddie for wanting to pursue a challenging career; it suggested he had a drive to succeed, which only confused her more. Why did he need his uncle to get him assigned a fire team? Why not just work his way up the same as everyone else? If he believed he could make it as an actor when Jenn had as much chance of becoming a starting outfielder in the majors, he could surely put in the effort required to lead a team. It wasn’t like the Militia’s talent pool was deep. Actually, it was more of a talent bath. She caught another glimpse of Wyatt sleeping in the Toyota. Okay, a talent puddle.

  Freddie clearly wasn’t arrogant, as she’d once thought. If anything, he came off as fairly humble. Self-conscious, even. There must be more to the story about him and Chief Morrison’s backroom deal with Gary.

  He couldn’t have been forced to join the Militia, could he? By his uncle? Would Morrison do that? And why?

  “I lived out in LA for a couple years,” he continued. “That place makes Phoenix look like a utopia.”

  For now, Jenn resisted the temptation to press him about her new theory, saying instead, “I’ve heard. Did you get any roles when you were there?”

  “I was in a recruitment ad. You can see me way in the background, standing at attention. Then, later, there’s a shot of me crawling through mud.”

  She punched him again, harder. “Get out of here! Seriously?”

  Casually, he rolled a shoulder. “It’s really not a big deal. They didn’t even pay me. The casting director convinced me—”

  The mic clipped to Jenn’s jacket crackled. “Quinn for Jansen.”

  “Sorry,” Jenn said to Freddie. “To be continued.” Then, into the radio, “Jenn here. Go ahead.”

  “Uh, yeah, we got something down here. Looks like a Humvee.”

  Humvee? Occasionally, the National Guard sent messengers up from New River, but none had arrived since Jenn began working roadblock duty earlier this month.

  “Copy that, Quinn. Hang tight, stay hidden. Jenn out.” She switched to the platoon channel. Dylan would be at Militia HQ or another roadblock. The Militia used police radios, so through some system of repeaters and signal-amplifiers Jenn didn’t fully understand, they could communicate across town. “Jenn for Dylan.”

  He replied in less than a second: “Dylan here. Go ahead.”

  “Scouts spotted a Humvee coming north on I-17. Just the one vehicle so far. I’m assuming it’s military, but we haven’t confirmed. You know about a messenger scheduled to come up today?”

  The radio went quiet, presumably while Dylan sent Jenn’s question up the chain of command to Liam. Her stomach cramped while she waited. Wide-eyed, Freddie watched her closely, hanging on her every word.

  “Jansen,” Dylan said, “no one’s expecting any visitors, so hold your position. Return fire only. I’ll reinforce with Third Squad. ETA ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes. That Humvee would be here in less than five. But what were the chances this vehicle was hostile? Could raiders have killed a National Guard team and stolen the Humvee? If so, why drive straight up the interstate and into Flagstaff? Wouldn’t they know by now that Flagstaff’s borders were closed and defended? Nothing explained why this Humvee would try forcing its way through the roadblock, but still, she ran through a series of worst-case scenarios in her mind, chief among them the Humvee opening fire with the heavy machine gun mounted to its roof.

  As she reached into her backpack for a pair of binoculars, she called out down the line, “Okay, listen up. We’ve got a vehicle coming our way. I’m assuming it’s military, but we aren’t taking any chances here.” She belatedly realized Freddie, who’d listened in on the conversation with Dylan, should have taken the initiative and informed his team of what was happening. “Freddie,” she said, and he jumped at her voice. “Go get your people ready.”

  Unmoving, he blinked at her a few times, like his brain was lagging or struggling to piece together the meaning of her orders.

  “Freddie!”

  One more blink, and then he scurried toward the Toyota, awkwardly holding his rifle strap so the weapon didn’t slip off his s
houlder.

  She rolled her eyes in frustration, trying not to let his inaction bother her. Everything about this situation was new to him. It was new to her, too, she supposed. Unlike Freddie, however, she had combat experience to dull her nerves. Still, she couldn’t help but think if Quinn were here, she would have leaped into action the moment a scout reported an unidentified vehicle.

  Jenn peered through the binoculars. In the distance, she made out a military-style Humvee, a tall rooster tail of water trailing behind it. She swallowed upon seeing the heavy .50-caliber machine gun. Unbidden, an image of Rusty, the legged combat drone, tearing through flesh and metal alike at the hospital in Phoenix forced its way into her mind. The vehicles forming the barricade at this roadblock couldn’t stand up to that kind of firepower. To make matters worse, the squad’s own .233 or .308 rounds would at best dent the Humvee’s armor. If it wanted through, Jenn was helpless to stop it.

  It’s the military, she told herself. You’ll be fine. The ache in her guts disagreed.

  Freddie returned to her side, weapon in his arms. “Everyone’s ready,” he said, out of breath. He seemed nervous, and sometimes, when feeling threatened, inexperienced troops forgot their trigger discipline. To her relief, Freddie’s index finger rested away from the trigger assembly. “You see it?”

  “Yeah, here.” She handed him the binoculars so he could see for himself. While he looked, she called out to the rest of her squad, “Safeties on. Hold your fire until I say otherwise.” Presumably, Freddie had already given them the same order, but she wanted the grunts to hear her voice, to know she was here and present. “Dylan’s on his way with Yannick’s Third Squad.”

  The vehicle, now clearly visible without the binoculars, continued its approach. Jenn returned to her position next to Freddie and readied Espinosa. She did her best to train her iron sights on the Humvee’s tires, but at this range, still several hundred yards, she’d be lucky to hit anything at all, let alone a precise target; marksmanship, she’d learned, was not her forte. Even if she could make the shot, military vehicles sported state-of-the-art airless tires, so puncturing them would do little more than tick off the occupants.