“You still got it,” Marcus said.
Darrick sighed. “That’s just the thing, Marc. I don’t have it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You just whooped me.”
“It’s not that,” Darrick said, sitting up, frustrated with himself. “An animal can fight. They can lead. They can protect their young and their elderly. I always looked at myself as a lion, and my family was my pride. What lion kills its own?”
Marcus didn’t have the answer Darrick was looking for. There was silence as Marcus rubbed his jaw. Although Darrick didn’t directly tell Marcus what had happened in the woods the night before, he assumed it. Marcus was a clever man.
“So what do you think?” Darrick asked. “A debris hut or a lean-to?”
“Last night’s rain was unexpected. Maybe we should err on the side of caution and go with a debris hut. What do you think?”
“That works for me. The canopy is full enough,” Darrick said, looking upward. “I’m thinking a very small fire may be in order, too. Something small that won’t give off too much light. The trees will hide our firelight and disperse the smoke. We can take turns doing watch.”
When Darrick and Marcus came walking out of the woods, Tonya and Carissa were sitting around the fire that Carissa had started. Kara was nowhere to be seen. Andy was originally sitting by his mother until Darrick came back; then he stood up and walked away, preferring not to be around his dad. Darrick noticed. “Where’s Kara?” he asked.
“Really?” Tonya said with an upset overtone. She had no intention of telling her husband where Kara went, even if she knew.
“Carissa?” Darrick said. “Did you happen to see where Kara went?”
Carissa refused to be pulled into the family feud and was upset that Darrick called on her to be a part of it. Her answer was sharp and direct. “I have no idea where Kara went. She’s an adult.”
Darrick breathed deep, upset that Kara’s absence wasn’t being taken seriously. He threw his armful of wood down next to the fire and ran off in search of her.
Tonya was all over him. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” she yelled, standing up and chasing after her man.
“My friend is missing and I’m gonna go look for her.”
“I’m here,” Kara said, walking out from a concealed location.
Darrick turned around to face her. Tonya walked back to the fire.
“Where’d you go?” he asked Kara.
“Looking for a place to sleep. I’m not sleeping anywhere near your wife. She’s a psychopath.”
“You should know,” Darrick bantered, his joke referring to her background in clinical psychology.
She smiled.
“So what’s your plan? You’re just gonna sleep in another spot?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“I’m just thinking about the work. Me and Marcus were talking and we agreed that we’re gonna make a debris hut. If we make one big enough, we can all sleep in the same spot. It’s safer that way.”
“Like I said–”
Darrick interrupted her. “You’re not going to sleep near Tonya. Yeah, I heard that, but I was hoping I could talk you out of it.”
“Not likely.”
Kara looked past Darrick and saw Tonya sitting by the fire. Marcus sat down near her. She hatched a plan. “Are you okay with those two being together like they are?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, Marcus and Tonya. Together again. Andy doesn’t respect you, and it looks like he’s getting along with Marcus just fine.”
Darrick looked at Andy. He was sitting next to Marcus, not necessarily showing any kind of affection, because that was just something Andy didn’t do. But he seemed okay with Marcus. Darrick didn’t know whether he or Marcus was Andy’s father, so the seed Kara had planted was taking root. “You know what?” Darrick said. “If you’re not going to sleep with us, I’ll make a debris hut for you.” It was Darrick’s way of getting a jab back at Tonya.
“If you show me what to do, I can do it on my own next time.”
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime?”
“Exactly,” Kara said, poking Darrick in the abdomen with her finger. He could sense she was flirting with him, but he ignored it.
“Okay, the first thing we need to do is find a fallen tree that’s still attached to its trunk.”
“Like this one,” she said, already finding a tree that was broken at the trunk about four feet from the ground.
“Yes, exactly like that one,” he said. “Next, we need to collect a bunch of sticks that we can line up against the fallen tree. The idea is to rest them on the ground and have them leaning against the tree. We need to lean them from here to here,” he said, pointing to the tree where it fell and again to where it was connected at the trunk. “We’re going to need several different sizes to make it work.”
Tonya was at the firepit when she stood up to check on Darrick. He was walking around in the woods with Kara. Marcus saw it and grumbled, “What are you doing?”
“I have to watch her like a hawk.”
“You’re killing me,” Marcus said.
“How so?”
“Darrick just killed his old man. He hasn’t spoken since last night. She got him to talk and you’re jealous about it.”
“I didn’t know that for sure. Did he tell you that?”
“Not exactly. He spoke to me metaphorically. I figured it out.”
“That changes things a little bit. It’s the fact that he wouldn’t tell it to me that peeves me off. I have a good reason to be jealous,” she said, sitting back down on the ground next to Marcus.
“Are you jealous of me?”
“For what?”
“Because he shared something like that with me and not you.”
“No.”
“Then why are you jealous of her? We don’t even know if he told her anything at all.”
“Look at ’em over there. They’re talking. He wasn’t doing that before.”
“Well, I kind of opened him up old school.” Marcus was rubbing his jaw.
“Did you guys get in a fight?”
“Kind of. It worked,” Marcus said, laughing out loud. “Look, if Darrick was over there hanging out with a dude, you’d be okay with it, but since it’s a chick, you’re all jealous. Lighten up,” he said, laughing again.
Kara heard Marcus giggle. “I can’t believe they’re having a good time while you’re having to deal with what you’ve been through,” she said, plucking away at Darrick’s heartstrings.
“Life goes on,” Darrick answered, seemingly unaffected by it.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asked.
“What’s there to talk about? I had to kill my own dad to save my son’s life. That’s something every person has to go through.”
Kara knew he was being cynical. “Keeping it bottled up inside isn’t healthy.”
Darrick redirected the conversation. “Some things are best left unsaid. Tonya’s dying of cancer. My mental health means little.”
“Darrick,” Kara said, calling him by name. He turned to face her. “Without your mental health you won’t be able to protect Andy.”
Protecting Andy was Darrick’s most important role. Even if his own son wasn’t speaking to him. It killed him that Andy wasn’t talking to him, but pained him even more that Tonya was dying a slow death and he couldn’t do a thing about it. Darrick shut down mentally and walked away. He headed back over to where Tonya and Andy were sitting and put his arm around his wife. Tonya smiled at him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Does she need help?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah. Just collect what’s left of the walls and tell her to find her own debris,” he answered.
Marcus stood up and walked away.
“Are you okay?” Tonya asked.
“I will be.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Darrick cons
idered the words Kara had spoken to him. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about in front of Andy.”
Andy heard the comment and became upset at his dad’s words. He stood up and followed Marcus.
“I don’t like him chasing after Marcus all the time, either.”
“So you wanna start by telling me what happened last night?”
“Andy was on the other side of Big Ditch. A couple of armed men were walking through the woods. I couldn’t reach him in time. Dad was there making a ruckus, as usual. He wouldn’t stop. He kept yelling and the men were about to discover Andy’s location. I feared for Andy’s life. I – I had to silence Dad to save him. I smothered him with my own hands until he went limp. I had to. He was kicking and shouting and–”
Tonya pulled him in for a hug. He stopped talking and tried to push the horrible memory from his mind. Each time he did that, it distanced him from his family. He pulled away from Tonya. “I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t know how to console him if he wasn’t willing to be consoled. He went to work putting a debris hut together for the rest of the group.
Four
FEMA BOUND
A ditch on the side of the road
Somewhere west of Raleigh, NC
Looking up and down the road, there was no sign of that Humvee or its occupant Marines. It was like the whole situation never even happened. Did it? Was any of it real? He would believe it all to be a figment of his imagination, all except for his broken body. Always wondering without ever knowing, he pushed on.
Tommie trudged along the dark roadside. His last two encounters with Americans proved bad news. Somehow, someway, he was still alive. Unsure how he ended up in the ditch, he pushed the unanswered questions to the back of his mind. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t trained to endure such things. He certainly wasn’t schooled in the art of escape and evasion. These two things seemed to come to him naturally.
For now, Tommie’s primary goal was to survive. His tummy rumbled as his body craved the proteins necessary for recovery. Weeks of walking and scavenging for food had left his body in a poor deteriorated state. Fortunately for him, he had strong willpower and his constitution was even stronger. Genetically speaking, Tommie was a hard man. He simply lacked the training to optimize his current situation. His original destination had been Tennessee, but now things were different. The Marine had seemed matter-of-fact regarding survivors to the west.
Tommie’s heart was sinking.
I came all this way. For what? I’m hungry. Tired. Spent.
Tommie stopped dead in his tracks. His shoulders sank under the weight of the truth. He had finally come to his realization.
I have to check into the FEMA camp. If I don’t, I’ll starve to death. They have food. Shelter. Safety.”
With heart heavy and energy low, Tommie switched direction and headed toward the Cherokee National Forest, where he had been told he could find shelter, along with some much-needed food and water, at the FEMA camp. Sommers had mentioned very little about it before shutting down the conversation with Tommie.
Old White Oak Sanitary Landfill
Waynesville, NC
Repurposed FEMA Camp, Region IV
A medium-built Russian soldier stood over the bodies of several dead Marines. Warm brass covered the cold hard concrete floors, now mixed with the blood of men who had sworn to defend their country. They did. To the last man. Their would-be thwart of the Russian invasion might have been successful if not for their lack of numbers and support. The Russian sergeant had the element of surprise, support, numbers, and equipment on his side. The Marines had been attached to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a security force. The security detail was simple: defend. The orders came with little support or intel that foreign forces might be involved in an impending or otherwise imminent attack. Communications failed.
Sergeant Tolstobrov Pavlovich had already served fifteen years in the Russian Armed Services when he received his orders to deploy to the United States. He had spent a few preceding years watching tensions boil over between North Korea, China, and the US. He was a student of history and learned a great deal from his father, who served in the army during the years of the Soviet Union until it was dissolved in 1991. Before that, his grandfather served, in secret, in Vietnam as a tactical military advisor against the United States.
His grandfather never spoke of the war in Vietnam. He had been sworn to secrecy. Since there was no clear victor, he felt somehow slighted that he was even involved. His Russian pride was unparalleled. He often spoke profanities against the US, having a deep-rooted hatred for Americans that fermented during the Cold War. This animosity was passed on to his son, who passed it down to Tolstobrov.
In truth, Tolstobrov had been taught that he was a sixth-generation soldier. It would be an insult to the family name if he would have pursued some other profession. It didn’t matter to him. He had no desire to do anything other than soldiering. It was all he knew. He ate, drank, and breathed it growing up. He would play with his toy soldiers until his dad came home and hung his ushanka hat on the coat rack. Then he and his little sister would sit at the dinner table and hear about his day at work. He idolized his father. He wanted to wear the uniform and give orders. One day, maybe if he was lucky, he could get his shot at the nasty Americans whom his father and grandfather hated so much.
What seemed like a lifetime later, when the Pulse happened, a rapid assessment of the incident was ordered by Russian intelligence agencies and delivered to the Russian president. Rather than assisting the US, the Russian president was emboldened by the lack of strength shown by the Americans’ defensiveness. It was his golden opportunity. The offensive didn’t begin immediately. It took time to prepare – to study. Nearly two years later, Tolstobrov volunteered for the deployment.
With the blood of American Marines at his feet, he felt as though he had somehow polished the reputation of his father and grandfather. These weren’t the first American troops he’d killed, but they were the first unit of Marines he’d erased.
“Todorov,” he yelled, “today we drink.”
Junior Sergeant Todorov signaled the nearest and lowest ranking soldiers with his hand. He wanted the Soviet Champagne that his unit looted while plundering. The low-ranking Russians didn’t hesitate. They ran and fetched the champagne at Todorov’s beckoning. Once delivered, Todorov wasted no time bringing the home-style delight to Tolstobrov, not just with the bottle in tow, but champagne glasses, too.
“One glass for you, my Russian comrade, and one glass for me,” the sergeant said, pouring Todorov a glass of his own. His moment wasn’t to be celebrated alone. Tolstobrov popped the cork with a large knife that he thrust across the lip of the bottle. He poured each of them a drink of the generic home-brewed beverage.
“I was expecting more of a fight,” he said to Todorov, picking the cork up and placing it back in the bottle. “These Marines have such a reputation. So few fights they’ve had against their Russian adversaries, I’d say. The Germans are weak,” he said, turning to his comrade. That’s why they are called ‘Devil Dogs,’ Junior Sergeant! The Germans couldn’t stop them, but we are not German. We are Russian.”
Todorov smiled at his sergeant and said, not understanding his history lesson, “Cheers to you, Sergeant. You have brought us another victory against the Americans.”
Sergeant Tolstobrov smiled back. “Cheers!”
Five
WHAT A DRAG
Ten miles east of Pontybridge
August 18th
The fire was gently crackling. It has to be close to midnight, Darrick thought, sitting alone next to the bright orange-colored blaze. The fire wasn’t so much for warmth, as it was yet August, but more for a little light in the darkness. The canopy above was thick enough to repel any light source, whether from the ground or from the night sky.
Darrick had drawn the shortest straw that night. Marcus had insisted on being first watch, but Darrick knew from his
military days that first watch got the best sleep. So he said, “Let’s draw for it.”
Everyone was included, all but Andy and Tonya. Darrick, Marcus, and Carissa voted Tonya out of the pool. She needed her rest, and going without sleep would only complicate her situation. Kara was off in her own place. Alone.
Sometime later, three darkly dressed men crept silently through the forest. Rueben was wise enough to send his tracking party out this time. The usual ragtag trio wasn’t going to cut it. Six of his men were already dead after crossing paths with the group they were stalking.
They had no idea where the group was headed, but knew the general direction. They were following some well-defined tracks that had been left behind by several humans. Judging from the heel-to-toe distance of the smaller prints, they figured there was at least one child, who was kicking stones and sticks along the trek as they went. It made tracking easy and gave a distinct direction for them to head when the sun went down.
Because the canopy was thick, each man kept his hand on the shoulder of the man to his front so that he could feel where they were headed and stay together. The front man was the lead. He would stop every so often and shine his flashlight onto the compass he was using for direction. Each time he did so, he would squint to keep his night vision as acute as possible. Once he charged the phosphors in his compass, he would make sure they were still headed in the same direction. They did this for some time until they found the party they were tracking.
“Up ahead,” one of the men said. The group of three stopped and backed up, concealing themselves behind trees. About that time, they saw the silhouette of a woman’s frame against the very small fire that burned just up ahead. The woman seemingly stood up from nowhere. Wherever she was, she was unaware of their presence. The woman didn’t approach the campfire, but instead, took a few steps away from where she was concealed and pulled her pants down, using the forest floor as a restroom.
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