by David Lucin
“Sam?” Dylan had stuck his head out of the operations tent. “I thought I heard you out here.”
“You know this guy?” Horvat asked him.
Dylan ignored the question and held open the flap, inviting Sam inside. “Get in here. Quinn, grab your team. Give Ed a hand loading the empty water jugs, then wait for me to tell you what the plan is.”
Sam hadn’t noticed that she and Ed had followed him here.
“Copy that.” She gave Sam’s forearm a light squeeze. The gesture said, It’ll be okay. He desperately hoped it would be.
Dylan led him into the tent. Around a central table, Liam conversed with a stern-faced thirty-something white man and a younger Black woman with a clean, crisp uniform. Sergeant Colin Murphy and Lieutenant Felicia Townsend. Sam hadn’t formally met either, but Jenn had spoken about both at length. She respected them, so Sam trusted they would do everything possible to rescue her.
The moment Liam noticed Sam, his posture relaxed, and the commander of the Militia seemed to fold in on himself. “Sam, I’m so sorry. We’re doing—”
“Sir!” Townsend interrupted, holding a radio close to her ear. “Sergeant Vasquez on the line. He says a truck’s approaching his position on the interstate. They’re coming up from the south. Someone’s waving a hand out the window. I think they want to talk.”
“Tell him to hold his fire,” Liam said. “Let’s see what these people have to say.”
Townsend relayed the order as Dylan led Sam to a chair in the corner. He wanted to insert himself into the action and help in any way he could, but his legs had turned into rubber and a sudden wave of exhaustion sucked out all his strength. The reality of this situation—that he might never see Jenn again, that she might be dead—began to seep into his brain, infecting his thoughts like an aggressive cancer. He stood firm, though, and resisted those dark thoughts. Jenn wouldn’t lie down and accept defeat, so neither would Sam. Picturing her swearing at her captors and making their lives difficult made him smile.
Dylan explained what had happened, starting with the ambush on the road in the western valley and finishing with the National Guard running into makeshift spike strips on the interstate outside Black Canyon City.
Townsend brought the radio to her mouth and said, “Sergeant Vasquez, report.”
“There’s two of them, ma’am, a driver and a passenger. The passenger’s approaching now.” A tense second ticked by. “He says he represents the group that kidnapped our people.”
Sam bit a fingernail.
Vasquez added, “Ma’am, he’s asking to speak with the commander.”
Liam nodded to Townsend, who said, “Copy that, Sergeant. You’re clear to put him through.”
After exhaling audibly, Liam rolled his shoulders and neck, then took the radio from Townsend. Sam was tempted to snatch it away and demand that these people bring Jenn home, but he reined himself in. They’re the pros. Let them handle this.
The radio hissed static, and a scratchy male voice asked, “Am I talking to the fella in charge?”
“This is Commander Kipling, Flagstaff Militia. To whom am I speaking?”
“Whoa, Flagstaff Militia,” the scratchy voice said with heavy sarcasm. “Sounds very official. Is that what you guys are doing up there? Playing soldier?”
Beneath him, Sam’s chair grew uncomfortable. He made to stand, but Dylan, hovering nearby, held out a hand and signaled for him to remain seated. The tent was deathly silent before Liam replied with, ignoring the insult, “You took five of my people and killed one without being provoked. Why?”
“Simple—you have stuff we need, and if you want your little friends back, you’re gonna give it to us.”
Sam scooted toward the edge of his chair, ready to run out of this tent, grab Ed, and start loading the trucks with whatever this thug demanded in return for Jenn.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Liam said. “What exactly are you asking for?”
“I’ll leave a list of our demands and the details of the meet with your Sergeant Vasquez down here. But know this, Mr. Commander: the Major doesn’t negotiate, so you agree to our terms or we’ll be leaving your people’s bodies in the desert for the vultures. They gotta eat, too. See you at noon tomorrow.”
The Major. Sam felt physically ill. He’d naively hoped that two-bit thugs or desperate refugees had kidnapped Jenn, not the kingpin rumored to be ruling over the ruins of northeast Phoenix.
Unable to contain himself any longer, he shot up from his seat, but Dylan held him in place. “Easy, buddy. Easy now. It’s all right.”
“How is this all right? You heard what he said. The Major’s gonna kill her if we don’t give him what he wants. So what are we waiting for?”
He struggled to break free of Dylan’s grasp, but the ex-soldier was too strong. With little effort, he forced Sam into his chair.
Over the radio, Vasquez said something about the truck turning around and driving south toward Black Canyon City as Liam and Murphy swiped at a tablet.
The edges of Sam’s vision blurred. Heat rose in his cheeks, and sweat collected on his forehead. He thought he might pass out. Yet again, he tried to stand, but he doubted he’d have the strength or coordination to walk out of here without falling.
Dylan pulled up a chair and sat next to him. “Listen, this’ll be hard for you to hear, but I’ve seen the Major’s operation myself. I can tell you he’s not the kind of guy who’ll keep his end of the deal. People like him can’t be bargained with or bought off.”
“How do you know that? He was basically a myth until a few minutes ago.”
He sucked his teeth. “You just have to trust me on this one.”
That non-answer irked Sam, but Jenn had told him about Dylan’s past: West Ukraine, what happened there, what he did. Dylan had experience with this kind of thing. “Okay, then what’s next. What do we do?”
“Baker,” Liam said from the table. “Get over here. I want your take on something.”
Dylan slapped his knees and rose to his feet. “Hang tight,” he told Sam. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The Militia’s leadership pored over the tablet, discussing routes into the city, places where the Major could have taken Jenn, the logistics of moving forces southward. It became nothing but background noise as Sam’s thoughts turned to Jenn and when they first met. She came into anthropology class ten minutes late, drawing a glare from the professor. Sam remembered smelling raspberry and vanilla when she plopped herself down in the seat next to his. As the professor droned on about hominid evolution, she poked him with her pen and whispered, Hey, do you actually come to this class? Like, regularly? Because I haven’t been here for a week and there’s a midterm coming up, right?
It’s on Wednesday. Sam looked over at her for the first time, and his heart skipped a beat. She wore sweatpants and a Diamondbacks T-shirt, her jet-black hair in a messy ponytail, loose strands framing her lean face. No makeup, either. Not the typical girl Sam dated, but Jenn radiated a confidence that drew him in.
Oh, crap. That soon? Really? She snatched his notebook off his desk, then proceeded to photograph the pages with her phone before scrolling through social media feeds for the rest of the lecture. At the end of class, she said to him, I’m hungry, and I don’t know anything about freaking Homo habilis or whatever he’s called, so how about I buy you a fancy lunch and you help me not fail this midterm?
He agreed—with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm—and they ate cheap soy chicken burgers at the dining center while he tried to distill a half semester’s worth of material.
Give me your phone, she said when they finished, a spot of mustard on her bottom lip.
My phone? Why?
She held out her hand, palm open. You want my number or not?
I thought you just wanted help so you didn’t fail your midterm.
Yes, but when I pass, I want to celebrate with you. She stood up and pinched the thighs of her sweatpants. I promise I’ll wear
something hotter than this.
The memory made his chest hurt. The prospect of a life without Jenn frightened him more than the bombs or nuclear winter. Together, they would get through it all. Alone, though? He’d sooner die trying to bring her home.
Liam, Dylan, Townsend, and Murphy continued discussing how to find the Major’s base of operations. Dylan proposed sending a number of scouting parties into the city, while Murphy insisted on one small team. That would take too long, Dylan argued, but Murphy feared alerting the Major. So did Sam. If the Major discovered that the Militia was searching for him, he might harm Jenn in retaliation.
An idea began coming together in Sam’s head. While he and Ed modified the mobile charger so it could power up the recon drones, they chatted with a National Guard soldier—Specialist Hawerchuk—who’d mentioned that each unit had infrared sensors. That feature came in handy at night, he’d said, or during scenarios where smoke, dust, or fog obscured the battlefield.
“The drones,” Sam said.
The others paid him no mind and continued their conversation as though he were a ghost.
He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. “Guys, the drones.”
That caught their attention, and four heads turned toward him. Dylan asked, “What about them?”
“They’re the key. I know how we can use them to find Jenn.”
14
The truck peeled right, then took a sharp left—east. When Jenn came down here in May, as navigator, she directed Dylan toward the hospital via the Carefree Highway, which served as the primary artery linking the communities of the far northeast with the interstate. She assumed the Major’s people were taking the same route.
After a long straight stretch, the truck turned right, followed by two lefts. So south, east, then north. Where were they going? Jenn didn’t know this part of the city very well; before the bombs, she had no reason to come this far into the suburbs.
Tanis had stopped crying, though every few minutes, Jenn would hear a sniffle. She was surprised Broken Nose hadn’t gagged her. The poor girl. Jenn couldn’t imagine how frightened she must be. How was Freddie holding up? Wyatt? Aiden? Freddie had shown in the firefight that he could be brave, that he wasn’t a coward like he’d thought. And she’d need him to be brave if they were to escape.
And they would escape. Somehow, she’d find a way. She couldn’t see the solution yet, but she knew it was there, waiting for her to grab hold of.
Finally, the truck began to slow, then bounced over what Jenn guessed was a speed bump and rolled to a stop.
“I’ll be damned.” This voice, another man’s, came from farther away, outside of the vehicle, and Jenn didn’t recognize it. “You guys actually pulled it off. The Major was starting to think you’d never show.”
“He inside?” the leader asked in his gravelly baritone.
“Yeah, he’s here. Was about to send out a search party to find you.” What sounded like a gate rumbled open. “Throw them straight in the cells. Boss wants to let them simmer for a while.”
The truck lurched forward and returned to gravel. Through the pillowcase, Jenn tasted dust kicked up by the tires. Before long, the vehicle stopped.
“One per stall,” the leader said.
Stalls? Like bathroom stalls?
Rough hands gripped her by the shins. Then the zip ties around her ankles gave way with a snap. Legs free, she was tempted to continue kicking and fighting, anything to assert some level of control, but she thought better of it.
“Let’s go,” a new voice said, this one higher, younger. He took her by the arm and tugged. In a small act of defiance, she went limp, and to her delight, he grumbled a curse under his breath.
She was guided down the bed of the truck, then lifted off and set on the ground. Her knees wobbled, weak with fear, but she stood up straight and projected as much confidence as possible. Someone gave her a shove, catching her by surprise, and she nearly tumbled forward. She could hear people walking behind her but couldn’t make out how many. Several, at least. Were Freddie and the others here, too?
Soon, her vision darkened further, and the scent of the air changed, reminding her of the Grierson ranch.
“Stop here,” Broken Nose said.
Fingers touched her head, and the pillowcase came off. Light flooded her eyes, making it difficult to see. A few blinks later, she found herself in front of a black metal cage with a tall sliding door. A horse stall. Gray concrete formed the back wall. There was a window, but it was covered with a shutter and presumably locked from the outside. The same black metal caging made up the other three walls, and plywood shielded the top, preventing anyone from climbing out. In the corner was a metal bucket with a handle. A toilet? Near it lay a tattered, filthy blanket.
Next to her, a woman with buzzed hair and a lip ring held Freddie in front of his own stall, while Tanis, Aiden, and Wyatt were being walked toward three more. All still had pillowcases over their heads. Jenn was relieved to see them unhurt.
Broken Nose pinched the edge of the duct tape over her lips. “If I take this off, are you going to play nice?”
She shook her head, enjoying how his eye twitched when she refused to cooperate.
He ripped the tape off anyway, then pulled out the sock. She sucked in a long breath and worked her jaw to loosen the muscles. Her mouth was bone dry; the sock had absorbed all her saliva. Too bad. If she had any left, she’d spit it in Broken Nose’s face.
“Hey, check this out,” the high-voiced guard said from behind, and she felt him rubbing her bound wrists, then her watch—the one her parents had given her as a graduation present. “Dibs on this.”
“No, that’s mine!” she snapped out as he cut the zip ties and pulled off the watch. She made fists, ready to spin around and start swinging, but she was pushed into her stall. On the way inside, she tripped and fell into a layer of mulch on the floor. She scrambled to her feet, but Broken Nose closed the door and secured it with a padlock.
The skinny kid with acne scars slid her watch over his wrist and admired it. “This is pretty nice.” He tapped the face with his finger. “Still works. Score.”
“Give it back,” she said, so angry she could barely enunciate her words. He ignored her and cut Freddie’s zip ties while Broken Nose pulled off the pillowcase. They pushed him into the cell next to Jenn’s and closed the door.
She watched as Wyatt, Tanis, and Aiden were locked away in stalls across a wide passageway that led through the middle of the stable. When the last door was secured, Broken Nose twirled a set of keys around his finger and announced, “Welcome to our humble abode. You’ve got toilets in the corner and blankets for when you get cold. And you will get cold.” He tucked the keys into his pocket. “Enjoy your stay.”
With the other guards in tow, he casually strolled down the passageway, like imprisoning people in these cells was part of his daily routine. Jenn wondered if there were other prisoners in here now. If not, what happened to them?
“What about water?” Wyatt called out. “You can’t leave us in here without water.”
“I can do whatever I want,” Broken Nose said, then disappeared around an L-shaped corner in the passageway. Jenn checked the other end, where they’d come in. There, the woman with the lip ring stood guard near a set of arched double doors.
“Jansen,” Freddie whispered. He’d taken to his knees and pressed his face tight to the cage that separated his cell from Jenn’s. “Are you okay?”
She crouched beside him. “Yeah, fine, other than they took my watch.” Her wrist felt naked without it, and she promised to get it back. Espinosa, too. “You?”
He answered with a nod, then added, “One of the guys who drove us here mentioned something about the Major. You think it’s him?”
“It is. That Neanderthal with the broken nose said so when we were passing Anthem.” She stretched her jaw some more and ran her tongue over dry lips, wishing those guards had listened to Wyatt and brought some water. “How are Aiden and
Wyatt?”
“Fine, I guess. Aiden’s playing it cool for now. Wyatt was yapping off until they threatened to gag him.”
Jenn recalled the taste of the sock in her mouth. She was about to ask Freddie how he was holding up, surprised and a little impressed by his levelheadedness so far, but the guard at the entrance to the stable said something into her radio and slipped outside, leaving them alone.
Seizing the opportunity, Jenn hurried to the window in her cell. She pressed two palms to the shutter, but it didn’t budge. Next, she fiddled with her door, then eyed where the plywood ceiling met the metal caging. How was it attached? Nails? Maybe if she could—
Voices interrupted her thoughts.
Freddie hissed, “Here they come,” and waved for her to return to the corner of her cell. She did, crouching low and listening. The voices, now accompanied by footfalls, grew louder. Broken Nose and Skinny Kid reappeared, sauntering down the passageway. Pistols hung from their belts, but neither carried a rifle. Jenn fixated on her watch, wanting desperately to tear it from Skinny Kid’s wrist.
“You come to bring us that water?” Jenn asked.
Broken Nose smirked as he passed her cell without slowing down. “Keep bugging me for it and I definitely won’t give you any.”
“You know, the service in this place really sucks. I want to talk to your manager. The Major, was it?”
“Soon enough,” Broken Nose said. “He’s going to get a real kick out of you.”
A chill ran down her spine. In May, “Ian” had taunted Val, saying the Major loved Latinas. He didn’t have some harem here, did he? No, he had women working for him, like Lip Ring and the one Rusty nearly tore in half at the hospital.
She showed Broken Nose a smirk of her own. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
Broken Nose kept walking until he and Skinny Kid passed through the arched entrance at the far end of the passageway. They closed the door behind them, leaving Jenn and her team alone yet again.
“Should you really be taunting them like that?” Freddie asked.
