by Schow, Ryan
She took his hand, really looked in his eyes for the first time since she’d known him. She then moved forward and kissed his mouth slowly, lightly, lovingly.
“Thank you for telling me about Orbey,” she said. She put a hand on his chest, gathered up her wits, then said, “I’ll break down again after we bury her.”
“We all will,” Logan said. “But she wanted this. She wanted to be with Connor again.”
“She really did love that man.”
“We all did.”
“Do you think this is over?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he said.
Over the rest of that day, the patriots killed the SAA and Chicom stragglers, then they collected every last gun, every last bullet, and every last resource, including the remaining food and water resources from both armies and the Chicom HQ. They didn’t know if President Hu would retaliate, if he’d realize he’d lost this war and just sit home and lick his wounds, or if some other faction would rise up out of the ashes of the Chicom regime and try to establish dominance in the new world. If that happened, they’d need lots of guns, bullets, and medical supplies.
“Are we about ready to leave?” Quan asked Logan.
“We’re getting close,” he said.
They packed the last of the weapons and supplies into the vehicles that still worked, and then Boone asked Zeke and his men, as well as Brandon and his remaining men, if they wanted to come with them to Five Falls.
“The only way we exist in this world is as a community, helping each other, both in survival and security,” Logan added. “There are no better people to live with than those you’ve fought and bled with.”
Everyone readily agreed to stick together, to at least try out the Five Falls way of life. The last thing they did before leaving the Chicom HQ was use what explosives remained to bring the building down. They detonated everything they had. The explosives blew in an extraordinary display of smoke and violence, but the building still stood.
“Figures,” Harper said, soil smeared into her pores, bits of blood drying with the dirt.
As they were driving out of the valley, he looked over the battlefield. In the distance, he heard a hearty rumbling, one that had him looking in the side mirror. There Logan watched the entire Chicom HQ finally come down, taking down half the ridge along with it in an incredible display of destructive power.
The caravan was mighty and victorious, but as they drove the 503, leaving the war behind, they had the future to look forward to. And part of that future was picking up Stephani, Rowdy and Cooper. Stephani whose mother was dead; Cooper whose other parent was now dead.
They pulled into Roseburg late that night. Stephani rushed out to meet them, Cooper in tow. When she saw them, she asked if it was over and Logan and Skylar nodded, even though both their eyes were filling with tears again.
“Where’s Mom?” Stephani asked.
She saw Skylar’s expression, then Logan’s, and then she turned to Harper, who was also stricken.
“No,” she said, falling into Skylar. “No.” She started to shake and cry, bringing Cooper to her leg to press into her.
He looked up and whined at Logan.
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” he said, rubbing his head in consolation.
When Stephani pushed out of Skylar’s arms, Boone was there, looking at her. Her face bore the pain all of them carried, an agony so fierce no one knew how they’d bear the brunt of it. They’d all lost someone, and they’d likely lose more in the years to come. But Boone was there for her now. He held her. At first she tried to push him back, but he ignored her, pulling her close, telling her it would be okay. Finally she let herself be held, sobbing into his arms until he picked her up, walked her inside and put her to bed. No one saw the two of them that night, but in the morning, when it was time to go, everyone loaded up and left, driving the next two hours without incident to Five Falls.
They moved from one war zone to the next. Out of Yale to Portland, out of Portland to Roseburg, out of Roseburg to Five Falls.
When they got home, they didn’t wait to bury Orbey. Instead, Logan found Boone and Stephani digging next to Connor’s grave. He asked if he could help, but Stephani said, “I need to do this.”
“Okay,” he replied.
That afternoon, they held a private burial for her. The men lowered her into the grave, then stood back. Instead of giving a eulogy, which Stephani wasn’t prepared for, she said, “I love you, Orbey.”
“I love you, Orbey,” Logan said.
Harper’s eyes were wet, her body shaking. “I love you, Orbey.”
Skylar was holding onto Ryker for dear life. Logan had never seen the woman cry until recently, but now it seemed like she couldn’t stop. “I love you, Orbey.”
The rest of the day was a blur of emotion. On one hand, the war was over, but on the other, the struggles to survive were just beginning.
“What do we do now?” Stephani asked, looking up with wet eyes.
“We rebuild,” Logan said.
Epilogue
One year later. Logan, Boone and Clay stalked through the forest, the first light of day upon them. As the cold burned off, they carried their deer with them to the clearing. There they prepped them for easier transport, divvied up the meat, then each headed home.
“Dinner at sunset, right?” Clay called out to Logan.
“Yeah, sunset,” he said back, smiling at the brothers as they headed in different directions.
With nowhere to be, no schedule to follow and no job to do but survive, be a good husband and someday a good father, Logan tromped through the woods, walked past the remnants of town, then made his way up the hill to their house.
On those long walks, he used to think he was getting back to nature, establishing a better connection with the earth, but the truth was, he’d been in nature for well over a year, and the relationship he’d established happened a long time ago.
The Chicom vehicles they kept at the house were gone now, for all the available gas had gone bad and there was no where of interest to go anyway. Immediately after the war, he and Ryker drove the hideous looking vehicles to a nearby valley with a steep hillside and rolled them over the edge into “long term parking.” One of them blew up. The others just crashed into each other in a rather anticlimactic display.
“What about the bone pile?” Ryker asked. “Is that like some memorial or something? Because it’s kind of creepy.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s going next,” Logan said.
So they gathered up what remained of the Chicom bones, crushed them to little bits and turned them into cat litter for a few of the feline friendly households.
It was a good idea, one everyone seemed to appreciate.
As the weeks and months advanced, some of the locals began to worry about President Hu. Whether or not he’d retaliate. These were valid concerns, for much of the town suffered some sort of PTSD. In the end, the town’s brightest minds and top military strategists determined that the time, energy and resources Hu would have to dedicate to wage another assault on America were counter productive on every level. He didn’t have enough years left in his life to wage that kind of a war. Besides, the patriots had taken apart a half-century plan (give or take) in a matter of days, and that was incentive enough for the Chicoms to steer clear of the people of Five Falls, and of America in general.
Where the first battle in Five Falls left the front of the Madigan property scarred, four new seasons brought them a lush blanket of meadow grass, forever hiding the horrors of that conflict. Even the original house was now gone, cleared away stick by stick, all the materials recycled where possible. All that remained was the building pad, a pad that had become the topic of new, more exciting discussions.
Much of the physical resources from Connor and Orbey’s former home were used to build Skylar and Ryker’s home just down the hill. The couple now had a nice two bedroom house tucked in the woods on top of a nearby clearing not far from there. Skylar didn’t
like the seclusion at first, but then she said the silence helped her to find herself. Something she hadn’t been able to do since her grandmother was killed by the Chicoms so many years ago.
When she and Ryker left the barn a few months back, they did so making room for Boone, Stephani and Rowdy to move in. Stephani had been rebuilding her hives, but she’d also been working hard to raise Rowdy right, and tend to the new child now growing in her own belly. Connor and Orbey would have been so happy to see Stephani settled down with Boone, and making a family of her own. Boone said he was happy enough for both of them.
Boone and Clay spent a lot of time catching up, becoming brothers again, working to make up for the years lost when Clay first fled Five Falls to see the world. In that time, Boone worked day and night to convince his older brother to head up the hill, and join them on the ample Madigan property. He even promised to help Clay build a home of his own. Clay had turned to woodworking to keep his mind calm, but he had bigger aspirations than furniture, or in his case, pine boxes. The furniture was for his own home, and for bartering, but the pine boxes were for Felicity’s parents. He planned on unearthing the graves, transfer the bodies into the caskets and giving them a proper burial. Felicity asked that they be moved to the Madigan property where they could join the others. This, of course, made it easier to present Felicity with the idea of building a home by the others.
“Wherever my parents go, I want to be there as well,” she said. He’d had that plan in the back of his mind from the beginning, but apparently she’d had the same plan.
Logan walked up the hillside, crossed the meadow and headed up a slight grade where he found Harper at work in the garden. What was once a garden for six was now a multi-acre garden and a rather substantial food production operation for dozens of them. They’d even managed to plant several fruit trees just past the barn. In the distance, at the far end of the garden, Skylar was pulling weeds, checking the plants for bugs, letting her skin soak in the morning sun.
He smiled, as he usually did. It was still so surreal. Skylar and Harper, here with him, safe, free and happy.
He met Harper with a kiss, told her of his and the Nichols brothers’ hunting successes, then told her he was going to prep the deer meat for curing. Cooper, true to his nature, smelled the animal cuts and practically ran to Logan’s side, his tail going crazy, his sniffer working overtime, and a little whine in the back of his throat.
In the meat prep area of the barn, when Logan looked down and saw those big, begging eyes, he cut off a small strip of the deer meat and said, “This is all you get, which means if you beg for more, you’ll get none on the next kill. Bark once if you understand, twice if you don’t.”
He barked once, prompting Cooper to sit down, look up and start to salivate. Logan fed the dog the strip, which he gobbled up too quickly. And then he sat there, looking up once more, controlling his needy, watery eyes and the whine. Logan looked at him. Almost told him to go, but laughed inside at the dog’s behavior. He was unable to leave on the off chance that a missed scrap would fall before him and he could gobble it up.
“When have you known me to drop scraps?” Logan finally asked.
Cooper lowered his head, couldn’t meet Logan’s eyes.
“You know, being in the proximity of food and staring at me, like you’re trying to pull some Jedi mind tricks, that’s the same as begging in my book.”
He stood and barked twice.
“Oh, you don’t get it?” Logan asked, unable to hid the humor in his voice. “Okay, let me explain it to you this way. If we don’t eat this meat we die, then we can’t feed you, and then you die, or live off of a steady diet of squirrels and field mice. Is that what you want?”
Cooper looked down, sneezed, then he looked away for a couple of moments before sneaking in an upwards, yet slightly sideways look.
“You’re pushing it right now,” Logan said.
Finally he stood, rubbed his face on the side of Logan’s leg, which earned him a quick back of the ear scratching. After that, he trotted out of the barn, presumably to be with the women. Which was exactly where Logan wanted to be at that moment.
Cooper still wasn’t over the loss of Connor or Orbey, but Logan sensed he was getting back to his old self. Still, when he couldn’t find him, when the German Shepherd wouldn’t heed his calls, either Logan or Harper found him down at the graves, just sitting with them. Grass had grown over them now. They kept it cut back, and had since added small headstones for all of them: Otto, Noah, Connor, Orbey.
Because it was so peaceful there, and such a spiritually significant spot, Logan, Ryker and Skylar built a beautiful, nearby fire pit. Harper cleared several large areas for seating. It was close enough to be near their friends and family, but not so close that it felt disrespectful. Since the new addition, the occupants and guests of the Madigan family property would go there once or twice a week, start a fire and talk about the old days while enjoying a meal. Stephani called it “family dinner,” which it kind of was. Eventually Harper had to clear more spots, this time with Stephani’s help, because the family was getting larger.
When the deer meat was finally cut, seasoned and hung in the pantry for curing, when Harper and Skylar were done collecting the vegetables for the night’s feast and Stephani had attended to the chickens and her bees, Boone, Clay and Felicity appeared in the barn, the three of them talking and laughing together.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” Stephani said, planting a kiss on Boone’s lips. “Did you have fun with your brother?”
He hugged her, careful not to press against her swollen belly. “Of course,” he said, carrying several large cuts of meat. “Trust me when I tell you, tonight will be a feast for the ages.”
This was a family dinner, but there were also other things to discuss. Formal things involving Clay and Felicity. When the Chicom war was over and they first returned home, Clay spent a number of days working with Logan, Ryker and Boone to repair the severely damaged barn. In that time, Clay confessed to having fallen in love with the property. Logan suspected that Clay was hoping to build a home on Connor and Orbey’s concrete slab one day, but first he needed Stephani and Skylar’s blessing, and then he needed Felicity’s blessing. Tonight he would have all three, for that was the purpose of tonight’s “family dinner.”
But as they enjoyed a sunset supper down by the graves, as the light burned from the sky and night settled in, the conversation about building a beautiful one bedroom cottage took a different turn. Originally, the cottage had been Felicity’s idea, but now she was changing her mind. Instead of a large one bedroom with a steep roof line and lots of windows, she said, “I think we’re probably going to need a second room.”
“For who?” Clay asked, tossing another log on the fire.
Smiling wide, Felicity pointed to her belly and said, “For this one.”
“Are you sure?” Skylar asked, an uncharacteristic delight building in the back of her throat.
Clay pulled her into a hug, and said, “Really? You’re not joking?”
“I’m positive,” Felicity said, her grin too huge for words.
Pretty soon everyone was hugging her, and family night grew bigger by one.
And so it went in the months following the Chicom war and the great sacrifice: friends became family, families grew larger and small communities doubled in size. Freedom did not come with so many bells and whistles, but there was a natural grounding of the souls to the earth, to the bounty of nature, and to those you loved and those who love you most.
In many ways, the new world was better than the old world. There was a triumphant stillness in both life and in the spirits of the survivors, for their slice of heaven was a world at peace, a balancing of nature, and the promise of a long, healthy future. Then again, the community recently experienced an unexpected emptiness, for several key members had been called to duty.
Longwei, Quan, Brandon and their men left Five Falls a few months back to join the new war in T
exas. The SAA recently made another run at Texas, a war effort they heard was taking a toll on the Lone Star State. It was not an easy decision for them to make, for they had many a round table meeting about it. But in the end, America fell to the Chicoms because they ignored the signs around them, waited for others to fight in their stead, then fell to weakness and capitulation when they were overrun and it was too late. As a community, they agreed never to fall to such short-sighted cowardice again, for freedom was fought for one day at a time, sometimes outside your borders, and often inside of them.
“Has anyone heard from Quan or Longwei?” Boone asked, the coals warm, the night cool and full of stars.
“He called a few weeks back,” Logan said, his arm around Harper. “Nothing urgent. He was just returning my call.”
Even though “modern technology” had yet to make a comeback across the West Coast, they held onto their sat phones, and Harper monitored her various lines of communication using both American and Chinese satellites. The Resistance wasn’t dead, it was just on vacation. Hopefully a permanent vacation, but time and vigilance would tell.
“How are they doing?” Felicity asked.
For whatever reason, Felicity bore an unspoken affection for Longwei. No one truly understood the attachment, or spoke of it, and she couldn’t explain it if she tried. It was just there. Something you could feel between them. Logan eventually chocked it up to two souls who understood each other on a deeper level, kind of like him and Skylar.
“So everyone’s still alive?” Felicity asked.
“Yes, but the SAA is bigger than before,” Logan said. “Then again, Oklahoma and Louisiana are now moving into Texas. Even the new military has joined the war effort. So perhaps the influx of reinforcements will tip the scales in Texas’s favor, and they can drive them out of America for good.”
“Do you ever think about going there to help them?” Clay asked.
He thought about this often, but had come to no conclusions. So instead of answering the question, Logan looked at Ryker—a man who’d become his brother in so many ways—and he said, “You want to take this, Ryker?”
