Burning Nation

by Trent Reedy

  “Unless we decide to make immediate and drastic changes, this dire situation will only worsen. This particular aircraft has served as Air Force One for several United States presidents, and wherever it has flown, it has stood as a symbol of peace and hope. Today, I extend that hope for peace across America. Having no desire to be the last president of the United States, I ask the leadership of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Texas, and Oklahoma to stand down the military forces under your command. In exchange, I repeat my offer for a full, free pardon for all soldiers, officers, and civilian combatants in rebel states. And I promise a fair trial and comfortable, humane treatment for rebel state political leaders. We must act now, today, in order to preserve tomorrow.

  “Historians will title this tragic period of American history the Second American Civil War, but the end of this sad chapter has not yet been written. We, the authors of our own story, together will determine what happens next. Working with one another toward peace, we can yet secure for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children a happy and hopeful future. •—

  —• Idaho, Idaho

  Light of hope in darkness glow … •—

  —• Ladies and gentlemen, those sounds you might be hearing in the background are gunshots and screams coming from inside the KREM 2 News building. My coanchor Grace Spicer has taken cover. I’m going to stay on the air as long as … Who are you people!? Ladies and gentlemen, there are armed —”

  “Take it easy, Rex. We ain’t gonna hurt you. Step aside. Is that camera rolling?”

  “I will not allow terrorist thugs to use this station to make threats or —”

  “We’re rolling, Lieutenant.”

  “People of eastern Washington, I’m Lieutenant Ron Meyers, a soldier of the Brotherhood of the White Eagle. We’re a militia group working with the Republic of Idaho and the countries of Montana and Wyoming. We’ve been getting ready for this day for years. Thanks to all of our hard fighting, what’s left of Fairchild Air Force Base outside of Spokane is now ours. We have taken over all military stuff at the Yakima Training Center. Interstate 90’s been destroyed at Snoqualmie Pass, and all other passes through the mountains are closed to the United States. Everything east of Washington’s western mountain range is now a part of Idaho. All US military who give up now can leave alive. All civilians who want to leave better get out now. Any property they leave behind will be taken by the Republic of Idaho. Rex Faber here called us terrorists, but we ain’t gonna hurt you. We’re here to free you. Keep watching this channel for more information. Long live the Republic of Idaho. Long live the Brotherhood! •—

  —• We will defend our liberty … •—

  —• Can anyone hear me on this channel? Our comms are still shut off up here. Um … Breaker one nine. This is Troy Nolan, two miles up Burke Road in Wallace, Idaho. Look, we ain’t Fed. We ain’t rebels, but we got a plane crashed up here. Big passenger jet. I think a couple fighters was too close to it, shooting each other up. Listen, we can’t call nobody with our comms out. A coupla guys rode down from the fire department on horseback, but they only got enough gas for one fire engine, and that’s south of town putting out the fire from where one of the fighter jets went down. People on that plane are hurt pretty bad. We need doctors, like a surgeon, and the fire’s out of control. We fightin’ it just with like garden hoses, but we ain’t makin’ a dent. Couple houses are going up. Please. We ain’t part of no war. We’re just trying to get along in life. Please. Oh, Jesus, help us. The whole town’s gonna burn. Please help. This is Wallace, Idaho. Is anybody listening? Anyone at all? •—

  —• Idaho, our lives for thee. •—

  As we rode back through town in the Humvee, a flash of tan and green caught my attention. Three Feds had broken cover near a house and sprinted across a street at the western edge of town. I recognized their leader, a face that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. “Alsovar,” I said quietly.

  When Cal slowed us down to swerve around a burning Ford, I popped the latch on the door, jumped out, and ran. I raised my gun and took a shot at Alsovar, but at the last second, one of the others shifted position, and I clipped his thigh. The other turned and started to bring his rifle to bear, but I blasted him. Alsovar dodged out of sight around the corner of a house. I shot the other Fed in the face as he rolled to his weapon. Then I dove behind a van parked in the driveway right before the major sent a couple of rounds my way.

  If I ran around the other side of the house, I might be able to ambush him. Or a guy like that might be waiting for me to round the corner, and he’d shoot me when I did. A bullet whizzed by under the van. Another crashed through the windows. I ran to the side of the house.

  The Humvee’s engine roared as Cal had finally turned around and was catching up to me. “Wright, you stupid son of a bitch! Get back here, Private! That’s an order!” Sparrow shouted from the gun turret.

  Alsovar’s shooting had stopped. He’d heard the engine. He wasn’t dumb enough to hang around when Sparrow’s machine gun turned the corner. I ran to the back of the house. “Damn it!” The bastard was fast! He’d cleared the backyard and was almost to the woods near the Abandoned Highway of Love. I aimed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I slapped the magazine up into the well and tried again. “Shit!” I sprinted after him. A shot rang out from the woods, and I dove to the ground, rolling to my right and scramble-crawling behind a little stone birdbath. Shit for cover. I pressed the button to drop my empty mag and slapped a full one in. I rolled back to the left and ran as I fired off three rounds, sprinting for the toolshed at the back of the property. My last cover until the woods.

  The Humvee had jumped the curb and was making its way in my direction, Sparrow unloading heavy machine gun rounds at the trees. With that kind of cover fire, I took off on my best football run across the empty field toward the woods by the river. I crashed into the low scrub brush at the edge of the trees, hitting the ground on a leftover patch of gray snow. My heart beat so heavy I worried I’d never hear Major Alsovar when he made his move. One thing that asshole had been right about: He had a lot more combat training and experience than I did. I’d only been to basic training, which, when compared to all I’d done so far in this war, now felt like preschool.

  Where was he? How could I find him in this scrub? When we were kids, we’d build forts and play hide-and-seek in these trees and bushes. Sweeney’d always find the best hiding places, and he loved making us look for him until long after the fun of the game had passed. Later, we came back here to party, drink, and mess around with our girlfriends on the Abandoned Highway of Love. This wasn’t a party or a game, though. It was straight-up life or death.

  I was pushing a bad position. I would have to search for him, while all he had to do was hide and wait to shoot me. If he scored a clean shot, I might never figure out who won this thing.

  No. I squeezed my pistol grip extra tight. The endless hours without sleep. Hot-as-hell room. The damned waterboarding, with no air, no hope. Whatever he’d done to Sparrow that she wouldn’t talk about. There were supposed to be rules, even in war. That bastard had bragged about how he’d ruined my shop, casually murdered Schmidty, about how he’d break me, kill me, and then use what I’d told him to find my friends. Torture them too. Hell no. This son of a bitch had to go. I had about eighteen 5.56 rounds that said I’d pull this off.

  I bounded to my feet, twisting, ducking, jumping to avoid shrubs, tree branches, and fallen logs. I swept my eyes left to right and back again, rifle at the ready. If anything moved, I’d shoot it.

  Where was he?

  I tripped on a rock and went down, but I threw myself into the fall, tucking my shoulder and holding my rifle close so I could roll back up to my feet and move.

  Then I saw him. Alsovar was scrambling up the far riverbank, using roots and chunks of the collapsing roadway as hand- and footholds. Near the top he swung his right leg up onto the road surface. Before he could pull himself up, I aimed, breathed in and out.
In and out and hold. I fired.

  Alsovar screamed and rolled up over the edge into the brush. His rifle skittered down the bank until it splashed in the water. Blood soaked into the dirt, but not enough. If I’d hit his leg center mass with a heavier caliber round, I would have damn near shot it off. But at least he was wounded. And unarmed.

  “Alsovar! I’m coming for you! See how tough you are when you don’t have me chained to a chair!” I pulled the trigger. One-two-three-four-five-six rounds. Sticks and clumps of pine needles fell to the ground as my gun spat fire.

  I ran to my left as fast as I could. Maybe Alsovar was dead. Maybe not. But if I tried to climb up that steep bank after him, he’d have the high ground, and he could take me out with a branch or a rock. I smiled as the sweat rolled down my face, down my back, like in football. The game was on my field, my home advantage. I knew this place and he was the shitbag Fed outsider. I ran around onto Party Bridge, happy that the Brotherhood had cut the old roadblock I-beams away. When I cleared the bridge, I made my way back up through the woods. I could have taken the highway, but what if Alsovar had a sidearm? Sparrow had warned me not to do anything stupid. I’d take no chances.

  Back at the spot where I’d shot him, I found a patch of pink-white snow and deep red blood smeared on some pine needles, but he was gone. I took a knee with my back to the river, scanning all around, slowly sweeping my rifle back and forth. He couldn’t have gone far with his leg like that. If there’s no blood trail, he has to be—

  A dark shape flew screaming out of the shrubbery, knocking me on my back. Alsovar was in my face, grinding his teeth with his nose wrinkled. Spit dripped from his mouth. “You little shit!”

  I maxed out my bench press at two twenty. How much did this asshole weigh? I shoved him hard, but he had hold of my rifle with his forearm pressed to my throat. The most I could do was roll him to the side. My grip slipped on the gun, and he almost took it away. If he grabbed my weapon, this was all over. I tried to pull the rifle down, to get the barrel under him and shoot him.

  He pushed the rifle back up so the barrel was clear of both of us. Then his fingers found mine on the trigger and he made me squeeze off shot after shot — deafening with the weapon beside my face — until the mag was dry.

  Alsovar threw a hard elbow into my face, dazing me for a second. I kneed him in his bloody leg and he groaned. His grip relaxed enough so that I could connect a hard punch. That bought me enough room to slide away from him so I could get a better position for a hand-to-hand fight.

  But just as I cleared him and took a few steps out onto the highway, where one whole lane had long ago collapsed into the river, he came at me again. This time when my back hit the ground, my shoulders and head didn’t, and I turned my head, frantic that I was falling over the edge to the rubble below.

  The major was on top of me, and his hands clamped down on my throat. He was old but strong. I swung my fists down on top of his arms, but couldn’t break free. I tried to nail his face. He turned his body and let his shoulder absorb the blow.

  “I told you I’d kill you, Danny. I’ve fought wars for my country.” He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip. “Killed for my country. I’ve wasted Iraqis, Pakistanis, Syrians, even a few … Mexicans when I was on a counternarcotics task force. But you’re the real prize. Killing the symbol of this damned rebellion. It’s good, Danny. Isn’t it good?”

  Weird little specks of shadowlight danced in my vision. Losing air. He had me. Sparrow and the others. Should have waited for ’em. For Cal. Becca and JoBell’d be so sad …

  JoBell.

  I bent my legs to drag my feet up by my ass. Then I pushed the hardest squat of my life, shoving my body up, arching my butt and lower back off the ground, and dumping us both over the edge of the crumbling road.

  Rocks, dirt, sticks, grass. Alsovar lost hold. Air. Some larger stones jabbed my head, back, and legs as I rolled end over end until I skidded to a stop with my legs in the icy water of Freedom River.

  I looked up. Alsovar was crouched with his back against a pile of rocks, concrete chunks, and asphalt pavement only a couple feet away. He glared murder at me, but while I stood up and cocked back my right fist, he didn’t make a move.

  Then I saw the little stream of blood running down from right under his right pec. A red-black, blood-soaked piece of steel rebar stuck four inches out from his chest.

  I smiled. “You got a little …” I pointed at the rod that had impaled him. “Right there. Might want to get a Band-Aid.”

  I had to admit, the guy was tough. He tried pushing himself off the bar, and even slid up on it a couple inches before his eyes rolled and he fell back to where he was.

  “Oh, did that hurt?” I stepped up and leaned down over him. “Good.”

  His arm swung at me so fast, I only saw the flash of the blade a second before I felt the burn rip across my chest. I dropped to my knees on the slope right by him, but before he could bring his knife back at me, I grabbed a chunk of concrete twice the size of my fist and blocked his hand so that his weapon flew off into the river.

  We looked at each other. I stood and lifted the concrete high above his head, ready to spike it down through his skull like smashing a pumpkin on Halloween.

  “Do it, then.” Major Alsovar coughed. “Do it, if you got any balls, boy.”

  I looked down at the man who had tortured me. “I win,” I said.

  “Danny!”

  I almost dropped the concrete chunk, but then I realized the voice had been JoBell’s. The whole group came to the edge of the collapsed road.

  “Wright, you idiot,” Sparrow said. “I told you not to do anything like this.”

  “Yes!” Cal slid down the slope to us, somehow managing to stay on his feet even while carrying the M240. Sweeney, Becca, and JoBell followed. “You got him!”

  “Sparrow, you and me will form a security perimeter. Cover them from up here,” Kemp said. He yelled down to me, “Wright, what do we do with him?”

  Cal kicked the major in the ribs. “Not so tough now, are you? Payback’s a bitch!” He elbowed me. “Do it, Wright. It will only take a few hits.”

  Sweeney touched my arm. “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, arrest him or something? Isn’t he a POW?”

  “Forget that!” Cal put his machine gun down. “Remember how he treats his prisoners? Come on, Wright! Kill the bastard!”

  Alsovar winced as his boots slipped in some loose gravel and more of his weight fell on the rebar. I heard his flesh tear like the sound a knife makes when cutting through steak.

  “I don’t know, Danny,” said Becca. “We don’t have any doctors, and he’s in bad shape. Maybe he’s like a horse. When it’s hurt, and there’s nothing we can do, sometimes it’s best to just put it out of its misery.”

  She said it so matter-of-fact, like an ethics debate at veterinarian school. Alsovar wasn’t an “it.” He was a person. When had the sweet Becca I’d grown up with gone so cold?

  And why was I going soft on Alsovar?

  I looked at JoBell, who watched me and said nothing. She didn’t offer advice or cry or even look at the major. She just stared at me as the wind whipped her blond hair. My arms shook from holding up the heavy concrete.

  “You want to shoot him instead?” Cal asked. “I’ll get you a gun. No problem. You’ve killed tons of Feds before, and he’s not just a Fed, he’s their damned leader. Waste him.”

  That crazed animal look had returned to Cal’s eyes, that violent eagerness that we used to get out on the football field. I’m not gonna lie. I hated Alsovar. I understood Cal’s rage.

  I met the major’s eyes. “You gonna kill me, huh? I’m the dead man, you son of a bitch!?” With all my strength, I slammed that concrete down.

  It hit the ground right next to Alsovar’s head.

  “How could you miss?” Cal asked.

  Yeah, I understood Cal’s rage. It was part of me too. And I worried about what it was doing to Cal and to all of us.

 
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “He’s finished anyway.”

  I took JoBell’s hand. “I told you I was getting out of the war, and I meant it,” I said. “We finish this battle, and then I’m out. He’s no longer a combatant. Killing him would be murder. And I’m not …” My throat tightened on the words. “Not a murderer. At least, I don’t want to be. We gotta save something of ourselves, of our humanity, if we’re ever going to leave the war behind. If we’re ever going to get back to real life.”

  JoBell kissed my cheek, and then we all started climbing back up to the Abandoned Highway of Love. It was a tricky climb, and we slipped a few times when rocks would give way under our feet.

  “Cal, you coming?” Becca asked when we had all reached the top.

  From behind me I heard a slide-rattle sound and turned to see Cal next to Alsovar with his saber high over his head. “No,” he said quietly.

  “Cal, don’t!” JoBell yelled.

  He shook his head. “He doesn’t get a free pass.” He kicked Alsovar in his bloody leg. The major grunted. “You killed Schmidty! Herbokowitz! Bagley! You try to kill my best friend!?” He stabbed the sword through Alsovar’s thigh. It went all the way through his right leg and into his left. The major bit his lip, but kept quiet. Cal twisted the blade. “Huh, tough guy!? You torture him!?” He pulled the sword out and then slashed, opening the major’s stomach as blood splattered everywhere. “You mess with my friends! I’ll kill you all!” Cal slashed again and again. He left deep cuts crisscrossed all over Alsovar’s body. The tough old bastard didn’t yell once.

  I slid down the slope and grabbed Cal’s arm, using all my strength just to slow him down. “Cal. Cal! Enough! He’s dead!” Blood was in Cal’s hair, running down his cheek, dripping from his nose and lips. His sword and the arm I had hold of were drenched in it.