ELE Series | Book 5 | Escape

by Jones, K. J.

  Eric said, “That’s what we were taught by our Rangers and Marines, too.”

  “I like that cripple-and-crown your people came up with.”

  Eric nodded. It didn’t mean they were best buds. This was business.

  Alden the Younger said to his tribe, “Y’all remember that order. Cripple and crown.” His people nodded, but the non-Zoners had wide eyes much like children. Even Ghetto Guy.

  The female side was not developing the common ground so well. Whenever the two halves of the platoon regrouped, reports of new problems.

  “Females are too territorial,” Alden the Younger said, complaining about the reports he received from his women. “I keep trying to tell them to squash tribal shit and focus on survival.” He spoke to Jerome and Dre primarily, since Mullen and Eric had none of their tribal females there. “Can you tell your women this, too? We’ll need them to roll without bullshit if the shit hits the fan.”

  “We’ve been saying it,” said Jerome.

  “Vi’s not part of this bullshit,” Dre said.

  Alden chuckled.

  “What’s funny?” Defensiveness in Dre’s tone.

  “Dude, she’s a six-foot-tall sniper.”

  Vi was not slated for going sniper in the Army after basic training, due to being female. It remained all-male, despite the draft of females.

  Kanesha, unfortunately, was one of those running her mouth and not letting bygones be bygones. When Jerome tried to talk to her outside, she had a good point. It was an issue that had gone on for centuries, true. His point was, like Alden the Younger said about the brass holding onto the tactics of the last war, they had to be smarter than the brass and adapt to the new way for survival in a new war. He wasn’t asking her to girl-talk with the other tribe and become BFFs with racists.

  “They aren’t fighters, Jerome. They are protected by the men. They’re fucking breeders, brother. It’s all different on the female side.”

  “Just do your best.”

  “They killed our people.”

  “I know. I know. God, do I know. But we gotta survive, huh? Do you think those dumb-ass no-Zones gonna take our backs? They’ll piss themselves the same way everybody did when the shit began back in Charleston. Remember that? People running around crazy. Shooting each other cos they didn’t know how to shoot at fuck-scary moving targets. That whole learning curve gonna happen to these people. And there we’ll be, yelling at ‘em, getting shot in the back by ‘em. All that bullshit again.”

  “I’m telling you, Jerome. These bitches are not fighters. Got maybe one or two, but that’s it.”

  “You only got like four of ‘em over there.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “That makes it about half.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “You are being bullheaded.”

  “So what if I am?”

  “Stop it.”

  “I ain’t listening to you.”

  “I bet if it was that medic Matt telling you, you’d listen.”

  “What?” Kanesha’s voice high pitched.

  “I saw the way you looked at him.” A sly smile on Jerome’s face. “Sneaking off back at camp.”

  “I do not know what you’re talking about. You talking crazy.”

  Jerome laughed. “Sure, you don’t.”

  “I think the sun been beating down on that bald head of yours and boiled your brains.”

  He laughed harder. “Uh-huh.”

  Kanesha tried to hold a hard face, but it broke into a smile, followed by a laugh. “Oh, shut up.”

  * * *

  Classroom again. They learned about radiation sickness. Their basic kit which held their first response medical would include syringes for radiation sickness, the recruits were informed. They were taught what to do within various distances from a nuclear explosion. Ground zero was Just Die. Not said so blatantly, but all the trainees got the message. Eric and Mullen took notes.

  The instructor said:

  “Nuclear weapons emit thermal radiation as visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light, which is largely transparent. This is known as the Flash. The chief hazards are burns and eye injuries, called flash blindness. On clear days, these injuries can occur well beyond blast ranges, depending on weapon yield. Fires usually ignite by the initial thermal radiation, but the subsequent high winds due to the blast wave may put out almost all of these fires. This is because the intensity of the blast effects drops off with the third power of distance from the explosion …”

  The instructor lost all but Eric and Mullen, both of whom kept scribbling notes. It appeared as if they wrote more than flash-blind, blast wave, fire, high winds put out fire, as the rest of the class had written in their notes.

  “Thermal radiation travels, more or less, in a straight line from the fireball …”

  Eyes glazed over among those who hadn’t done school learning too well.

  “Gamma-rays from a nuclear explosion produce high energy electrons through Compton scattering.”

  Vi mouthed, “Compton scattering?” to her brother. He shrugged. Compton was usually the name of a ‘hood.

  “The pulse is powerful enough to cause moderately long metal objects such as cables to act as antennas and generate high voltages due to interactions with the electromagnetic pulse.”

  EMP was old hat for Mullen and Eric.

  “These voltages can destroy unshielded electronics. The ionized air also disrupts radio traffic that would normally bounce off the ionosphere.”

  A lot of staring out the windows.

  “The heat and airborne debris created by a nuclear explosion can cause rain. The debris is thought to do this by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. This has previously been termed black rain …”

  “With medical attention, radiation exposure is survivable to two hundred rems of acute dose exposure. If a group of people is exposed to a 50 to 59 rems acute radiation dose, none will get radiation sickness… If the group is exposed to 60 to 180 rems, fifty percent will become sick with radiation poisoning… If the group is exposed to 1,000 to 5,000 rems, one hundred percent of the group will die within two weeks… At 5,000 rems, one hundred percent of the group will die within two days.”

  Mullen whispered, “Good times.”

  They all wrote their notes of long-term effects from exposure:

  Infertility, lessened fertility, blood disorders, increased rate of cancer begins after five years, eye cataracts.

  Then came the practical lessons on what they could do as soldiers to protect themselves.

  During the practical, Mullen learned from chatting with an instructor that since he was a college graduate, he should be an officer and in a different training program. The others made fun of him from then on, calling him “sir” and saluting him at every turn.

  Eric, who had been in his second year of his bachelor’s degree, wouldn’t get to be an officer. However, he was the absolute top rank of the nerds. Many of the programmers knew nerdy things, too, but they were not Zoners. Alden the Younger and company consulted Eric about things and asked him to help them understand concepts. All the Zoners were very interested in learning everything they could about nukes and radiation, something new in their repertoire but utterly feasible to be the next horror they confronted.

  All the Zoners agreed, they were being taught so much about nukings because nukings were either already happening or going to happen. Whether this was nuked by another country or by their own, they did not know. The instructions left them with the impression it was both, due to the difference in the missiles: Cruise versus Intercontinental. The former being their own country. The latter being from another country.

  3.

  Raven Rock Emergency Center. Or RRMC. Or Site R. Various names for the Cold War base inside a hollowed-out mountain. It was the place the Pentagon went in an emergency as part of the Continuity of Government, or COG plan.

  Mazy and Ben found themselves in the middle of a forest. The deciduous trees hadn’t begun to g
row their leaves back from the winter, so they all looked dead.

  The chill of Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Mountains seeped in through the Humvee’s thin doors. They had been given coats upon landing at the helicopter pad. Patches of snow remained on the ground, clumped around trees and in gullies where the sunshine didn’t reach. From the helicopter, they had seen large antennas sticking out of the top of the mountain, surrounded by forest. One was giant and orange and white stripped.

  From the helipad to the tunnel, there lay a parking lot. The civilian cars appeared to have been sitting for a while, based on the dirt accumulating on their windshields. Mazy’s first thought at seeing them: Oh, good, we can siphon gas from them.

  Somehow, she didn’t think this was how the Rock rolled.

  The tunnel entrance looked pretty much the same as Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Mazy knew this only because she watched the series Star Gate growing up – her stepfather loved the 1990s sci-fi show. Otherwise, she’d have no clue since these emergency complexes inside mountains were not natural Marine habitats.

  The pair wore their unreadable faces – unreadable for the strangers around them, but their eyes, they could read in each other. The whole trip, Mazy and Ben were mindful to keep a distance between their bodies and retain behavior platonic with each other, but their brief gazes shared the same thoughts: What the hell are we in now?

  Sunlight was blotted out as the Humvee drove inside the tunnel. A huge nuclear blast door stood open. The din of a large number of human beings moving around and talking, bouncing off solid walls, mixing with machinery and electronic beeps. Mazy and Ben felt nearly as overwhelmed and afraid as wild animals entering a city would. A city in a hollowed-out mountain, the inhabitants all wearing the new Armed Forces ZBDUs as they bustled around.

  The Humvee parked. Time to get out. Ben felt instantly uncomfortable so far from the outside. The smells were all wrong and artificial. His gaze moved to the daylight with longing.

  “We can do this, Running Elk,” she whispered.

  A male voice said, “There’s a sight.”

  They turned to see a familiar face. Charles Napier from Parris Camp. More grayed and a little more weathered in the face than the last time they saw him, but it was him in the flesh. They wanted to give him a Zoner greeting. Instead, they saluted the colonel.

  General, they noticed. He bore one star. A brand spanking new brigadier general.

  He returned their salute and smiled. “Good to see you two.” He shook their hands. “Grab your gear. We have to brief fast.”

  It was unusual for a general to meet lower-ranking Marines in such a manner, but it soon became clear why Napier had done so. The walk through a labyrinth of corridors gave them a chance to chat.

  “I requested you both as soon as I became aware of you on the Fort Jackson roll,” Napier said. “I keep an eye on it just in case anyone I know pops up. You were the only two I could request re-ass. Jackson is the catcher’s mitt for service personnel in the Zone. The Commandant and I are eager to get as many Zoners here as possible. Army brass and the civilian government aren’t in agreement.”

  Mazy had a hundred questions, but she would have to bide her time.

  Napier continued, “They see Zoners as a quote ‘liability’.”

  Mazy and Ben shared a glance.

  “The politics here are enough to make ya yack. Both of you, be aware of it. A lot of politics. In all kinds of new and interesting ways. Baptiste, as a Zoner officer, you’re probably gonna become a pawn in this very fast, so watch your back.”

  Mazy’s stomach flipped. Well-versed in internal organizational politics was not one of the things she’d put on her resume. She knew how to observe people, but not how to become a player in a shark pool herself.

  As they took a corner, Ben slightly bumped her shoulder to reassure her the only way he could. He sympathized with her, but at the same time, he was glad it wasn’t him. Politics, especially of brass and civilian politicians, was far, far from any of his skill sets, and he was perfectly happy to keep it that way.

  “Raven, you have a hunting background?” Napier specified, “Of animals?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. They’re looking to you for a long-range perimeter watch post over at Weather. In the forest.”

  “Weather, sir?”

  “Mount Weather. The hive of the civilian government. You’ll be going over with the lieutenant today. No time to settle in. There’s a virus seminar USAMRIID gives scheduled and we got you two on the list of attendees.”

  Napier had been a field colonel before retirement. He liked the heat of battle, not a desk. When he retired, he and his wife settled in coastal South Carolina. Most of his grown children were Marines. Whether they were still alive or not was one of the interpersonal questions Mazy slotted for her To-Do List. She hadn’t the whole story clear, since they hadn’t done too much chatting at Parris Camp, but somehow his wife and he had the grandchildren when the outbreak occurred. There may have been daughters or daughters-in-law. The end result was only Napier and the grandchildren survived and they ended up on Parris Island, where he was brought out of retirement. The last Mazy had seen of him was shortly after a mutiny against the base commanding officer. Obviously, reports of this hadn’t gotten off the napalmed island, or Napier would not be a one-star general now. He had been leading a group west into the interior of the state. And now he was in Raven Rock. Lots of questions on that To-Do List.

  Ben and Mazy found themselves at an office where the door plate read Commandant of the Marine Corps. A nervous glance between them. Napier knocked before opening the door.

  They gave their smartest salutes to the man inside.

  4.

  “Get off of me!” Nia fought against the hands.

  “Sit down and calm down,” a woman said to her.

  “I want my mother. Get me my mother.”

  “Calm down.”

  “Fuck you, lady. You took everyone from me!”

  “You’re not helping yourself.”

  “You’d fucking kill the rest of us too!”

  “Sit down. Please.”

  “Let me outta here!”

  The door opened. An African American female sergeant entered.

  “Oh,” Nia wailed. “I see. You think a black woman will make the black girl feel at home, huh? Fuck you! All you motherfuckers are stuck in the Before. You don’t know shit!”

  Jayce could hear her screaming. A sergeant – an African American male – stayed with him in the corridor, keeping him from heading to the room. He wanted to agree with what he heard his sister yell – they’d kill a thirteen-year-old girl just as fast as anyone else if they received the order. These weren’t their people. These soldiers didn’t know a thing about how the Zone worked. And they did not seem to care to learn.

  His rational side took hold. Jayce needed to be calm to help the situation. Maybe get in there to Nia somehow. She shouldn’t be alone surrounded by them, the non-Zoners, the soldiers.

  “If I could just speak with my sister, sir,” he said to the sergeant. “She needs family right now. She’s traumatized.”

  Jayce had never heard Nia curse the way she was doing. Not once. Those words weren’t said in their family in the Before when they had a family. Though he kept his hands visible – using the rules as if these soldiers were cops – his hands shook.

  “She needs me, sir. I’m her brother. The only family she’s got.”

  “You just wait, son. They’ll handle her.”

  Jayce gulped. What was handle?

  Miss Glenda had taken Tyler back to the hangar once she and Karen had been questioned and gave witness statements. Jayce refused to leave without Nia. He had followed his yelling sister’s voice to a hallway of offices where he had been stopped.

  Medics entered the room. They would sedate Nia. The grip on Jayce’s stomach grew tighter until he felt he would puke. Sweat gave away his true emotions.

  Someone stepped out of the
room and nodded to the sergeant.

  “Let’s go back, son,” the sergeant said to him.

  “No!” Jayce yanked his arm from the man’s grasp. “I need to see my sister.” A cleansing breath to calm himself.

  “Nothing you can do for her, son.”

  “What are you going to do to her? She didn’t do anything.”

  “They need her to calm herself down. Then take a statement from her.”

  “Why can’t I be with her to help her calm down? Seeing me, that would calm her. She’s freaking out. Can’t you hear it?”

  “I know, son. I know. But they don’t want you here.”

  “Afraid I’ll freak out, too? Cause a problem?”

  “Don’t be thinking that way. The Army isn’t the police.”

  “No? Y’all are acting worse.”

  “Let’s go back, son.”

  5.

  The MPs had the decency of dropping them on cots. That was nice of them. Emily woke up in a strangely contorted position with one arm under her. She sat up and rolled her arm in the shoulder socket to stop the cramping.

  It appeared as a very clean jail cell. Two cots, placed at catercorner from each other. A silver toilet with an attached silver sink occupied the other corner – no privacy for the toilet. One wall was all bars, where the door was located.

  “Ow,” muttered Phebe as she came to. “My head.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “My whole body.”

  Phebe rolled over and looked at the ceiling. Not recognizing it, she moved her head around to see what else there was. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Is it called the brig? No. The stockade, right?”

  “Military jail, you mean?”

  “Thinking so. The bars and exposed toilet were my clues.”

  Phebe cringed as she sat up. “Smart girl. All those years of college paid off.”