by David Lucin
“Thank you, sir.” A hint of relief came through in Murphy’s tone.
Liam grasped his hand tighter. “On one condition.”
The sergeant’s brow knit together. “Sir?”
“I need a Top. The unit was already too big for me to manage on my own. With a hundred extra bodies, I’ll be drowning. Job’s yours, if you want it.”
Murphy’s mask slipped again. This time, gratitude peeked out from underneath it. “I’d be honored.”
“Excellent.” Gary returned to the map on the table. “Now, shall we decide exactly where we’re going to put this roadblock?”
* * *
Jenn and the other thirty-six members of First Platoon had packed into a study room at Militia HQ to receive their new orders: in three days, the unit would deploy to a point between Cordes Lakes and Black Mountain City. There, in cooperation with the National Guard—which, she was shocked to hear, now fell under Militia authority—it would establish a roadblock and front line against the hordes of refugees expected to head north toward Prescott once New River was abandoned. Second and Third Platoons would follow soon after. How long they would be gone, Jenn didn’t know.
The news stunned everyone into silence. When conversations eventually broke out, they remained quiet, subdued, reminding Jenn of how mourners would speak at a wake. How they had spoken at Val’s funeral.
She sat at the rectangular conference table with Quinn, Yannick leaning against the wall behind them. The rest of the squad hovered nearby. All but Freddie. He stood alone near the dark LED screen at the front of the room, head down, staring at the floor.
Jenn wanted to go speak with him, but Quinn asked, “So we’re going to turn them all away, just like that?” She tugged at a strand of purple hair. “All those people . . . We’re not even gonna try to help them?”
Yannick peered down his wide nose at her. “What other choice do we have?”
From their time working together at the farm, Jenn knew there was no malevolence in Yannick’s body language or in his question. Quinn, though, barked out, “They’re people. Just like me and you. Just like the refugees who came from Las Vegas.” She spun around and faced Jenn. “Just like your friend Allison. Just like Dylan’s girlfriend. We helped them. Why can’t we help these people?”
The ambient chatter quieted. Several troopers were staring at Quinn, whose face had begun turning red, probably more out of anger than embarrassment.
But she had a point. A good one. After the fight with CFF and Vincent Grierson in defense of the refugees, the thought of sending thousands more to certain death made Jenn sick. New River was full of people no different than Allison and Charlie, full of people like her parents, people who only wanted to survive. They had done nothing to deserve this fate, but there was no way Flagstaff could help them without dooming itself in the process.
“We can’t do anything for them,” she said as softly as possible. In response to a sharp glare from Quinn, she quickly added, “We don’t have enough food. We’re pushing our reserves as much as it is. There’re tens of thousands of people in New River. Say half go to Prescott and half come here. That’s maybe twenty or thirty thousand more people we need to feed, which means our rations will last three months instead of six. We’ll be out by December. January at the latest. Not even close to the first harvest next year. The two thousand who came in spring were a drop in the bucket compared to that.”
Quinn let her hands fall into her lap and hid behind her hair.
“This is the only way,” Jenn continued. “We’ve known this was coming for weeks now. I hate that it’s already here, but we can’t save everybody.”
Her own words disgusted her, and she despised herself for saying them, even though she spoke the truth. Allison would be horrified, and Jenn wasn’t looking forward to explaining the same logic to her best friend.
A long exhale came from Quinn. For a second, Jenn thought she would relent, but then she shot to her feet and stormed away, toward the door.
Jenn gave chase, ignoring Yannick as he said behind her, “Jansen, just let her go.”
As she left the room, she caught sight of Freddie. He’d found a chair but sat alone. She would have to make sure he was ready for this mission, because right now, with his blank stare and white cheeks, it looked like he wanted to barf. But of her two fire team leaders, Quinn was the most distressed, at least outwardly.
“Wait, Quinn,” Jenn called out. “I’m sorry.”
Quinn pushed open the front door and went outside.
Crisp air bit at Jenn’s face as soon as she exited the building. The sleet from earlier had shifted into a light drizzle. Clouds hung low in the sky, hiding the muted orange-gray of smoke in the stratosphere. Through them, the sun burned its usual eerie bloodred.
With the sleeve of her jacket, Quinn brushed water and leaves off a metal bench and plopped herself down.
“I’m sorry,” Jenn said again. “I shouldn’t have started quoting figures and timelines at you like that. Sometimes my idiot scientist brain takes over and I can’t really stop it from saying stupid stuff.”
“It’s okay. The worst part is, you’re right.” Quinn cleared off more space on the bench, which Jenn took as an invitation to sit. When she did, the metal seat cold and damp against her backside, Quinn added, “The refugees here are my family now, you know? I was all alone when it happened. Just me in an empty apartment at Raymond Hall. My friends had all gone home.” She snorted out what might have been a self-deprecating laugh. “Not that I had many to begin with.”
“That must’ve been hard.” Jenn had heard this story before, of course, or most of it, but she sensed that telling it was Quinn’s way of coming to terms with their new orders.
“My building was basically empty when the bombs fell. I thought about trying to go home a few times. Figured I’d be able to find someone who was driving out to the coast. Then I tried talking myself into walking. Just packing my backpack with as much food and water as I could fit and going, seeing if I could do it. I didn’t really care if I died out there, not when my parents and Jack”—her older brother, Jenn recalled—“were dead.”
Jenn counted herself lucky that she had Gary, Maria, and Sam. Had she been in Quinn’s position, all alone as the world fell apart around her, would she have trekked into Phoenix on foot in search of Mom and Dad, knowing she was likely marching to her own death? Maybe.
“But I was too scared,” Quinn continued. “So I just stayed in my apartment, got food and water when I needed it, and hoped help would come. Then all these new people started moving in. I had no idea refugees were getting put up there. They hardly had anything, but they shared whatever they could.” Her expression darkened. “Did you know thirteen bombs hit Las Vegas?”
“Thirteen?” The number seemed high when only five hit Phoenix and one hit Albuquerque.
“Thirteen,” Quinn repeated with a greater sense of awe. “The Chinese weren’t taking any chances. Leveled the whole place with ground bursts to make sure they got Nellis.”
“The government kept nuclear weapons there, right?”
“Apparently.” Her shoulders relaxed, and the redness in her face had begun to recede. “They went through so much to get here. Those people in New River? They’ve been through worse. Way worse. Hardly any food, living in tents, now the flu. And when they need us the most, we’re going to abandon them, let them all die. I can’t shake the feeling that what we’re doing is wrong.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned since this all began,” Jenn said, “it’s that this world doesn’t care about right and wrong. Those words don’t have any meaning anymore. Or at least not the same meaning they used to. For me, right is what keeps my people alive. Wrong is what doesn’t.” Her hand drifted to the cross around her neck. Months later, she continued to miss Val. She probably always would. “I’ll give myself an ulcer if I try thinking too hard about the morality of what I’ve done to make it this far.”
Another snort from
Quinn, this one most certainly a laugh.
“Listen,” Jenn added, then waited for Quinn to face her before she went on. “Turning those people away will be hard. I have zero doubts about that. But when the snow melts in the spring and we’re still here, when your friends from Las Vegas are still here, you’ll have no regrets. I promise you.”
Quinn nodded to herself a few times, and her jaw tightened, but not in frustration, Jenn thought—in determination. “Thanks for the pep talk. Hard to believe you’re two years younger than me.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot these days.”
Together, they listened to the rain for a while. Then Quinn said, “We should head back in.”
“Good idea. Freddie was looking like he saw a ghost, so I should probably talk to him next.”
“You think he’ll be up to this?”
“He better be,” Jenn said with an unexpected edge to her voice. “If he’s not, I’ll ask Dylan to get him bumped. I’m not doing this with people I can’t trust.” She gave Quinn a reassuring look. “Don’t tell anyone this, but to be honest, I wish he was more like you.”
Quinn sat tall. “I don’t blame you. I’m pretty awesome.”
As they made their way inside, Jenn noticed a vehicle coming down the street. No, there were two of them. Faint sunlight glistened off solar panels crudely attached to large, ugly frames protruding from the boxes of both. The Nissan and the Dodge.
“What the heck are those?” Quinn asked.
“It’s Sam.” Jenn couldn’t decide if she was excited to see him or worried that something had gone wrong. Why else would he be here?
The trucks pulled up outside HQ. Sam came out of the Dodge and did a double take when he saw her approaching down the path to the sidewalk. “Jenn? What’re you doing here?”
“Um, I work here?”
“Right. Obviously.” He put his hand on the small of her back and said, “Hey, Quinn. What’s up?”
“Nothing much, Samuel.” She slapped the Dodge’s hood. “Pretty sweet ride you got here. You find it at a junkyard?”
He sneered at her. “Once you make a solar-powered truck that actually looks nice, then I give you permission to call mine ugly.”
“I’m just messing with you.” She gripped one of the bars supporting the solar panels and gave it a light tug. “This is seriously cool. How long does it take to—”
“Sam,” Jenn interrupted, poking him in the chest, “what are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
Ed climbed out of the Nissan. “Ladies,” he said with a little wave. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m late for my meeting with your commander. Sam, you mind keeping an eye on the trucks?”
Sam gave him a lazy salute. “No problem.” Then, to Jenn, “Everything’s fine. Gary came by the farm, briefed us on the situation and the mission to block the interstate with the National Guard. He mentioned your platoon’s the first group heading down.”
“No, yeah, we are, but what does this have to do with you and Ed?”
“We’re going, too, to help with logistics.”
He continued explaining, but Jenn had stopped listening. “Wait, you’re going?”
“Yeah,” he said like she should have known this already. “Gary said transport will be a big bottleneck in setting up the roadblock, so he needs as much as possible. Since the Dodge and the Nissan can charge themselves now, they’re perfect, especially once you get down there and there’s no charging stations nearby. We’re also planning to work through the next couple of nights to build the mobile charger I was telling you about. I volunteered to help drive because if you’re going down, so am I.” He lifted an uncharacteristically stern finger at her. “Before you start arguing with me, I know you don’t approve, and I don’t care.”
She argued anyway: “No, Sam, you need to—”
“Jenn . . .” He took her hands in his. “Remember what you told me the morning we left the cabin in Payson to find a charger for Kevin’s BMW? You said we were a team. I never forgot that.” Jenn hadn’t forgotten, either, but in some respect, their lives had taken them in two different directions. Not since those first few days after the bombs had they faced real danger together. Months later, as a couple, they were closer than ever, yet as teammates, they were somehow further apart. “It feels like I’ve been sitting on the sidelines. It’s my turn to step up. Plus, I already let you go to Phoenix by yourself once, and you almost didn’t come back. Not happening a second time.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” She still hadn’t shared with him the ugliest details of her excursion into the city, instead preferring, as Dylan had recommended, to water them down.
Quinn’s eyebrows flew up. Unlike Sam, she knew it all: the man Jenn shot in the house with Val, the way Rusty’s .50-caliber machine gun ripped through human bodies like they were paper, all of it.
“That’s bull,” Sam said. “I’ve heard the stories, and I’ve been spending a lot of time around Sophie lately. She’s pretty loose-lipped, you know.”
Jenn wished Sophie wouldn’t regale the tale behind her back without permission, but she didn’t have the guts to ask her to stop. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” She stood on her toes to kiss him. “I’m extra sorry you had to hear it from her. I can’t imagine she’d be very sensitive.”
“It’s fine. Just be honest with me from now on, okay?”
She kissed him again. “I can do that.”
Quinn politely cleared her throat. “We’ll be happy to have you along, Samuel.” She jerked a thumb at the Dodge. “I call shotgun in this bad boy for the drive down.”
“I think that seat’s taken,” he said with a wink at Jenn.
Quinn only shrugged. “I figured. Worth a shot.”
A few troopers exited HQ, backpacks on. Duty shift for First Platoon ended over an hour ago, so they were likely headed home for the day. “I need to talk to Freddie,” Jenn said.
“Teddie? Why?”
Quinn snorted out another laugh. “Teddie. That’s a good nickname.” She snickered some more. “But yeah, we should go check on him.”
“Don’t leave without me.” Jenn gave Sam’s hand a squeeze. “I want a ride home.”
She and Quinn returned to the study room, but in the time they’d been talking outside, half the platoon had left, Freddie included.
“You looking for someone?” Yannick asked her.
“Yeah, Freddie. Is he still around?”
“Took off a few minutes ago. One of your grunts saw him sneaking out the back door.”
Jenn cursed under her breath. Freddie was brave enough to move to Los Angeles, a city far more dangerous than Phoenix, to pursue an acting career at a time when the nation’s resources were geared toward fighting a war on multiple fronts, not making shows or movies, but this mission had freaked him out. Why? She understood feeling anxious about leaving Flagstaff or having reservations about turning the refugees away at the roadblock, but Freddie’s reaction was unlike anyone else’s in the platoon.
Again she wondered if he’d somehow been compelled to join the Militia, if he hadn’t volunteered entirely of his own free will. Had his uncle forced him? Why would he do that? She resolved to straight-up ask him as soon as she had the chance. He had to want to be here. Otherwise, he was the weak link in her squad and she wouldn’t be able to trust him.
“You still with us, Jansen?” Quinn asked.
“Huh?” It took her a second to process Quinn’s question. “Yeah, sorry, I’m fine.” She watched a few more of her platoonmates, Aiden and Tanis included, leave the study room. “We should go home and take it easy for the night. Something tells me we won’t be getting much rest for the next little while.”
6
Sam knocked on the door to Gary’s office at the Ruiz house. “Come on, Mom. Let me in. Me and Jenn need to get going, and I’d really like to see you before we head out.”
He tried the knob again. Still locked.
Frustration bubbled in his gut. How could his mother re
fuse to say goodbye as he was about to leave for Cordes Lakes? Since the bombs, he’d done his best not to blame her for how she behaved, and so far, he’d become more patient, more understanding. She was testing that patience now.
“Mom,” Nicole tried. “Please, let us in.”
To Sam’s surprise, he heard a muffled voice say, “You’re leaving me again. I knew you’d do this. You always do this. I don’t even know when you’ll be coming home. It could be months.”
Sam exchanged glances with his sister, who held up a hand, telling him to keep quiet. “He’s not leaving, Mom. He’ll be back and forth to Flagstaff all the time to pick up supplies. This isn’t like when he moved out to go to school.”
True. In Arcadia, he couldn’t breathe around his mother; he only wanted to get away from her. But going to Cordes Lakes with the Militia had nothing to do with Mom and everything to do with Jenn. In May, the morning she left for Phoenix, she told him to stay in Flagstaff while she searched for Ed, and for reasons he still didn’t fully understand, he let her go without a fight. Had he been subconsciously trying to give her space? Or had he been afraid of how she’d react if he tried to tag along? The regret of that decision continued to bother him. If she had gotten hurt, or worse, he would have blamed himself. Now, whatever happened, they would face it together.
“Mom?” Nicole said after their mother hadn’t responded. “Mom, can you hear me?”
In the living room, Jenn hugged a teary-eyed Maria while Kevin lurked at the end of the hallway, hands in his pockets, unsure of what to do or say, it seemed.
Nicole tried knocking on the door once more.
The frustration in Sam’s gut worsened, growing hotter and hotter. “I’m done with this,” he finally said to Nicole, not caring if Mom heard.
He stormed away, half hoping Mom would burst out and apologize for being so stubborn, but she didn’t.
“I don’t understand what’s gotten into her,” Kevin said.
“It’s all right. I gave it a shot. Only so much I can do.”
