Aubrey stepped dripping from the tub and wrapped a towel around her body. She wiped the foggy mirror and inspected herself.
“This is very good,” Rafael said from the main room.
She peered past the doorframe to see him sitting up in bed, reading glasses perched on his angular nose. “And you’re post-coital.”
“Where did this happen and when?”
Aubrey told him.
“I would like to photograph the place. Would you show me exactly where?”
“Sure, I can take you there.”
He moved to the edge of the bed and pulled on his boxers.
“Me and my big mouth,” she said.
He smiled at her. “There is time for everything.”
“If it’s one thing the war’s taught me, it’s that ain’t true.” She sighed and began to dress. “You know, it’s just a bloodstain. And probably gone by now. People walk along there all the time.”
“Faded is fine,” Rafael said. “Gone is not. I know the street. You are right, it is a busy thoroughfare. There will be people about. They will be walking past the spot where a sniper killed a woman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to picture it.
“Her blood is there. It marks the exact spot where she last lived. It is as much her grave as the lime pits at the American Legion Mall. The city has many unmarked graves such as this. The streets are filled with them.”
Aubrey imagined the scene. The blurred legs of hurrying people surrounding a black stain in center view. The one who didn’t make it. She found herself again appreciating Rafael’s eye for using a simple visual to tell a story.
At the same time, it seemed too realized. Too artistic. Maybe they were in the war porn business after all.
“I need that image,” he told her. “I intend to submit it with your story to L’Opinion. An American perspective. They may publish it.”
She stared at him. “Really.”
“Would that interest you?”
“Are you kidding?”
“First, we must get the image. The two work hand in hand.” He checked his watch before putting it on. “We must go now before I lose the light.”
They went outside into the cold gray afternoon. After a long hike, they arrived at the stretch of street where Zoey Tapper died. Aubrey pointed out the black stain on the snow. Rafael adjusted his camera and started shooting. This was important, documenting the violent end of a life. The document would have meaning, and the act of capturing it had meaning to her.
She spotted another stain beyond the first. Older, more faded. It alarmed Aubrey on some primitive level but fascinated Rafael, whose camera clicked in search of the perfect shot. She wanted him to stop. They’d been stationary and out in the open far too long for her liking.
Her memory flashed an image of blood splashing across her notepad. The stains reminded her they were all standing on thin ice and at any time might fall through into the eternal darkness. She didn’t want to become a stain, a stain that time and feet would gradually erase.
“We should keep moving,” Aubrey said.
Rafael stopped shooting and looked around. He trusted her instincts. “Okay.”
They started to walk back to the hotel, where she’d left her bicycle. She bounced with nervous energy. She wanted to stay up all night.
She thought: If he invites me in…
No. They were past that now.
She said, “I’m staying over tonight.”
He smiled and said he would like that.
Maybe he was falling in love with her. Let him. It was war.
Right now was all that mattered.
THIRTY-FOUR
Dressed in full battle rattle, the militiamen breakfasted on jerky while gunfire crackled in No Man’s Land. Alex drank some coffee and forced down an energy bar he’d been saving. Then he packed up his kit and waited for the order to unleash Armageddon.
In the distance, a roof blew into the air. Shingles and wood splinters rained down from a mushroom cloud. Alex stared in fascination.
“Get some!” Sergeant Shook howled at the sky.
Nobody laughed this time.
The convoy of idling vehicles snorted like steel beasts, spewing exhaust into the frigid air. The men policed their trash in silence, put out fires, made last-minute equipment checks. They wrote final notes to loved ones and kissed their talismans and gun barrels.
Small arms fire popped. The atmosphere was charged with potential energy. Even now, Alex couldn’t believe this was really happening.
The first two stages of the assault had already begun south of them. The other platoons were engaged. Soon, the sergeants would give the order for Second Platoon to mount up.
The bearded chaplain approached brandishing a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other, an impressive sight. He wore a camouflage stole sewn with cross patches. The platoon crowded around and took a knee.
The chaplain cried: “‘Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to battle.’”
The men bowed their heads to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Guns crashed in the south. Alex spared a glance over his shoulder. Ruined homes stood dark and empty. Clouds of dust and smoke drifted across the gray sky.
Jack bowed his head even lower and sniffed. He came up smiling and opened his palm to show Alex the vial filled with white powder.
“My turn,” Alex hissed.
Jack tapped a little on the rim of his hand. “Quick.”
Alex snorted and wiped his nose, which went numb. He sniffed. His mouth flooded with a bitter taste.
At first, nothing happened. Then his eyelid began to twitch. His heart galloped in his chest. The cold air’s bite faded.
Then euphoria.
The drummer started pounding out a martial cadence, the sound crisp in his ear. Whistles blew. It was time to load up and get rolling.
The chaplain lowered his Bible and held up his rifle. “God is with us!”
The men stood as one with a wild cheer. Alex howled along. The cheer turned into a long rebel yell as they streamed toward the vehicles. He climbed aboard his designated truck and sat in the back between Grady and Jack, his leg bouncing.
“Let’s go kill some motherfuckers,” Jack said.
Alex grinned. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
He was breathing hard, face flushed, skin crawling. The top of his head was achieving liftoff.
Suddenly, he could do anything.
“Here we go,” Grady yelled. “This is it, boys. This is it!”
Flags waving from the aerials, the column began to roll. The giant plow cleared the road for the rest, which followed at a steadily increasing speed. Pops and booms punched the air. Another thunderous explosion sprayed clods of frozen earth.
“That’s the Bible thumpers,” Grady shouted over the noise. “Helping us out with the mortars they got.”
Jack nudged Alex. “How you doing there, bro?”
“I’m invincible.”
Some of the guys in the truck ahead of them tried to strike up a patriotic song but got no takers. The men were too keyed up. Instead, they launched into another strident rebel yell as the trucks humped the green space between St. Clair and Centennial. Alex joined in, screaming his head off. They were officially in lib territory now, ready to stomp ass.
A woman holding a rifle appeared between two houses.
Alex wrestled with his AR-15. “Contact!”
The truck zipped past. The woman disappeared from view. Small arms fire erupted in the rear.
“Light her up!” Jack whooped next to him.
Alex itched to shoot something, anything. He had a magazine in the rifle well and five spares in his assault rig. He wanted to burn one off into these houses just to see the bullets fly, but he knew Mitch was watching.
A terrific explosion rocked the earth. Trucks slammed their brakes all down the column. The sudden stop hurled him against Jack, who laughed and shoved h
im back.
“IED, I’ll bet,” Grady said.
Jack pounded the side of the truck. “Come on, keep it moving!”
Mitch roared from the next vehicle in line: “What the hell are you doing? Get out and check for secondary IEDs! Set up a security perimeter! And keep your eyes peeled for the triggerman!”
Grateful for some action, Alex hopped off the side of the truck. His boots struck the ground. The squad fanned into a circle around the pickup, weapons aimed outward. He brought up his rifle the way they taught him.
He crouched and waited, knee bobbing with adrenaline and cocaine.
The vehicles honked in sequence down the line. The sergeants roared into the din. Time to move again. Alex climbed back into the truck as it started to drive away. Two militiamen grabbed his arms and hauled him up.
“Gonna miss the party, dumbass,” Grady said.
“Shut up, fat man,” Jack said, which sent him and Alex into hysterics.
The column was rolling again, though at a slower pace now. No more rebel yells. The militia hunkered down and scanned their sectors for targets.
Alex passed the flaming wreckage of the snowplow. Blood streaked the cab’s windows. Two trucks had parked nearby, one discharging fighters.
“Wow,” he breathed.
They were near the front of the line now. Sergeant Gore’s squad led the way in trucks with mounted machine guns, followed by the big Striker with its firefighting cannons. The column started to pass a big redbrick building on the left.
“We caught the libs napping,” Grady said. “The intel was solid. Another minute or two, we’ll be through Haughville and into Stringtown.”
“How do you know that?” Alex said.
“Because I studied the goddamn map—”
Red spray. Crashing gunshots. Grady slouched, coughing blood, his back shredded. The air filled with the rattle of automatic rifles.
Alex stared at the dying man.
“Contact!” militia screamed down the line.
The truck ahead of them somersaulted with an electrifying roar, tossing men like dolls before crashing back to the earth.
The Striker screeched to a halt on its massive wheels. The turret swiveled and pounded the windows with a moving jet of water.
“Come on!” Jack shoved Alex, then threw himself out of the truck.
Pure chaos arrived in all its fury.
Alex rose to his feet and watched the scene transform into bedlam. Tracers flashed between the halted column and the redbrick building in a constant, rolling roar. Bullets punched through the truck’s thin metal skin.
Nothing could hurt him. He had a special role to play in this movie.
A round snapping past his ear jarred him back to reality. This wasn’t a movie. Grady lay dead at his feet, blood and bits of him everywhere.
Alex dove and landed in a hard roll. Behind him, glass sprayed from the truck’s windshield as heavy weapons fire stitched across it. Muzzle flashes blazed in the windows. A man screamed for a medic. Thick black smoke poured from the overturned vehicle ahead. The brick facade shed a screen of dust as hundreds of rounds raked it.
A hot wave of oily smoke rolled over him and filled his lungs with an acrid burn. On all fours, he coughed it out of him. His bile was tangy and foul. He spat a black mess. A round cracked off the asphalt near his hand.
“Lightly defended, my ass,” Jack shouted.
Alex stayed put as his euphoric high fought its own losing battle against the horror surrounding him. His feelings of invincibility dissipated like more smoke. Threads of fear wrapped around his guts and yanked them into a tiny clenched fist.
Flying metal filled the air around him. His every instinct now screamed at him to curl up in a fetal ball. His limbs became dead weight and refused to obey him.
Shaking, he forced his body to rise. He aimed his AR-15 into the dust and burned through a mag. The rifle’s stock hummed against his shoulder. Empty shell cases flickered in his peripheral vision. He had no idea if he was shooting at the enemy or putting the hammer to the building’s facade. It was good just to shoot back. With each burst sent downrange, he gained a little more control over his trembling limbs until they became light again.
A car snarled out of the intersection and smashed into the column.
His vision distorted into fragments as time seemed to slow to a crawl. The militia hosing the vehicle with automatic fire. Bodies twitching on the ground. Fighters turning to engage new hostile forces approaching from the south.
He saw it all clearly now, the entire situation. They were about to be surrounded.
“I don’t see Sergeant Thornton,” Jack cried. “What do we do?”
A Molotov cocktail burst on the road behind them. An intense fireball bloomed into the air.
“If we run, we’re dead,” Alex said. “We stay here, we’re dead.”
That left only one option.
“Hell no,” Jack said. “No way.”
Alex rose to his feet and charged.
THIRTY-FIVE
Reporters filled the desks next to the windows, taking advantage of the morning light. They chattered about deadlines and column inches and sources. Manual typewriters clacked. Aubrey finished her story and yanked the sheet.
Then she went to see Eckert.
She waved her hand to clear smoke from the air as she grabbed a chair. “You should pace yourself with those.”
“I wish I could,” he said. “Listen, I’m glad you’re here. I need to talk to you.”
Aubrey held out her copy with a smile. “Wait until you read this.”
He paled as he accepted it. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Is it what I think it is?”
“I got the story, Eckert. Yesterday, I visited two militias, one on our side and one on theirs. They were both using child soldiers.”
“You went to the rebel lines?”
Her smiled turned to a grimace. “Yes.”
“What was it like?”
Aubrey wanted to brush it off, show how tough she was. Even now, she romanticized the idea of the crusty, hard-bitten reporter.
After we’re done with you, we’ll shoot you in the—
“It was terrifying,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry I sent you out there.”
She gestured to the copy in his hand. “I got the story. It’s all here.”
He tried to give it back. “I mean I’m sorry because I can’t publish it.”
“You didn’t even read it!”
“Listen, Aubrey—”
She stabbed her finger at his face. “No, you listen. I risked my neck. A rebel suggested he might rape me like he was talking about the weather. This is a big story, and I don’t want any of your bullshit. It’s factual. Print it.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t print it.”
“Argh! What’s going on?”
“If you settle down a minute, I’ll tell you,” he yelled.
“Tell me then,” Aubrey seethed. “Or I’m going to reach across that desk and stuff those cigarettes down your throat.”
“The owners don’t want this to see the light of day.”
The Webb family, one of the richest in America, owned the newspaper. George Webb, Sr., its patriarch, was an old golfing buddy of the president’s.
“Now hang on a minute,” Eckert added. “Before you hatch a conspiracy theory, what you think is going on isn’t.”
She crossed her arms and waited, thinking, This ought to be good.
“You know the city’s government and military is factionalized around the Centrist and Leftist blocs,” Eckert explained. “Right? Yes? You with me?”
“Yes, Eckert. Of course I know that.”
“Well, here’s something else you should know. We run this story, it could bring the whole house of cards down.”
“Whatever happens, happens,” she said.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We print the truth. That’s our job. What comes from it
is up to our readers. If using children as weapons upsets them, they can stop doing it.”
“Christ, you still don’t get it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“If we run this story, the Chronicle will rock the boat and upset a lot of people. And yeah, maybe it’ll get the militias to stop using child soldiers, which would be one for the win column. The problem is,” he held up his thumb and index finger, “we are this close to government censorship. Some commissar telling us what we can and can’t print. Once they start that, it’s only a matter of time before they take over the newspaper and write it themselves.”
“Now look who’s the conspiracy theorist,” she said.
“They won’t need reporters anymore. They’ll just make up propaganda. As for you, they’ll arrest you on some BS charge.”
“You’re full of it. You’re just worried about your job.”
“They’ll put you in a deep, dark hole,” he said. “You know I’m right.”
The jails were already filled with people arrested for treason.
“They don’t have to censor us,” she spat. “We’ll just do it ourselves.”
Eckert stuck a fresh Marlboro in his mouth and lit up. “The only reason the government hasn’t taken us over before now is because the Leftist militias won’t allow it. But if we upset enough people by running this story, the government might see an opportunity to act. If the Leftists react, there’d be a bloodbath. I’m talking civil war inside the city.”
She knew how much the Leftists and Centrists hated each other. Eckert was right, though that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
As a reporter, Aubrey had always been shocked by the right wing’s war on facts. They regularly vilified anybody in fact-based professions, from scientists to doctors. They generated and consumed propaganda and called anything else fake. For them, reality wasn’t as interesting as a good simple narrative that had them righteously and perpetually enraged.
President Marsh had polarized the country so much that in the year leading up to the war, she began to see the same alarming phenomenon on the Left. And if Eckert was right, it was getting even worse. If things kept going as they were, even newspapers like the Chronicle might be forced to print propaganda. They’d become generators of news that incensed rather than informed—that created enemies and then dehumanized and demonized them for an insatiable market. And not just to serve an ideological end, but as an end in itself. For raw power.
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