Written in Fire

by Marcus Sakey

  “What are the effects?” Shannon’s voice had a girlish lilt that caught Cooper’s attention. When he glanced over, she didn’t wink, but he could see that she thought about winking, with the tiny resulting muscular motion that entailed. God love her, she was playing them.

  “The ring agitates electric dipoles like water and fat, and their motion generates heat.”

  “Sort of like a microwave oven?”

  “Yes, exactly.” Vogler beamed at her.

  “So . . .” She paused theatrically. “It will burn them alive?”

  “Well, the advantage of the system is that there is plenty of warning. It’s not like one moment targets are fine and the next they drop dead. The only way it would be fatal is if—”

  Cooper said, “Somebody marched you into it with a rifle at your back.”

  “In the absence of ideal options,” Erik said, “the only rational choice is the best of the worst.”

  “Then why aren’t you watching?”

  “What?”

  “It’s easy to talk about the greater good,” Cooper said, “when you’re looking at a colored blob crossing a dotted line. But that’s not what’s happening.”

  “I . . . I like people. You know I do, that children—”

  “Stop playing the saint, Cooper.” Jakob’s tone was sharp. “How many people have you killed? How many have you killed today?”

  “Today? Two. And I looked them both in the eyes.” His hands clenched and unclenched. “I’m not a saint, Jakob. Far from. But if you’re going to decide who lives and dies, have the stones to watch.”

  Erik took a deep breath. “Computer. Quads one to fifteen, activate, drone and security footage, multiple perspectives, militia approaching Vogler Ring.”

  The air shimmered to life. What had been empty space was suddenly filled with people, a mob of them, a horde of humanity. Cooper had heard the number over and over, the headcount of the New Sons of Liberty, but it was one thing to hear the figure and another to see the mass, a crowd that could fill a midsize stadium. At that scale, individual features were lost in a shifting whole, and the dust-coated clothing, coupled with the beards and the dirt and the rifles, compounded the impression that it was a single creature, some thousand-legged insect out of a nightmare.

  “Better?” Jakob’s voice was cold. “You see what’s coming for us?”

  “The children, Erik.”

  Jakob said, “Don’t—” as his brother said, “Computer, group quads, refocus, front ranks.”

  The hologram shifted vertiginously, the multiple angles replaced by a single stream of video.

  According to the news, there were about six hundred children. A small number when compared to the militia twenty yards behind them, but seen altogether, it was about the same size as the school Todd attended. The youngest were four or five, the oldest in their late teens, the majority somewhere in the middle. They were dressed too lightly for the weather, and fear shone bright from their faces.

  “Erik,” Jakob said softly. “No one wants this. We don’t have a choice. It’s a horrible decision, one we’ll have to bear for the rest of our lives, but it’s the right one.”

  “The right one?” Cooper couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. Six hundred children. His mind kept wanting to zoom out, to see them as a mass; to counter that, he made himself focus on one. A teenage girl walking a bit forward of the others, her head bowed, hair falling across her face. She was one of the academy kids, he could tell instantly; where others risked defiant glances and might resist when the pain got bad enough, she just walked. Bore up under horror not because she was brave or strong, but because horror was what the world had shown her so far. “It might be the decision that lets you win. But it’s not the right one.”

  Shannon said, “They’re crossing the second line.”

  She was referring to the animation, he knew, but it was easy to see in the video as well. An invisible wave of sensation washed across the children. Not a wind that tugged at clothes or hair, but a ripple of pain that twisted their features into grimaces and gritted teeth. What had been strange warmth was beginning to burn as they moved farther into the radiation field. Several of the kids hesitated. Behind them, men raised rifles, made soundless threats. Some of the New Sons were laughing. One boy froze, then turned around, his defiance clear even without audio, his arms pointing and head shaking. A dark-haired man in his fifties slung the rifle casually to his shoulder, aimed with practiced ease, and fired.

  Shannon gasped.

  The dirt inches from the boy’s toes exploded upward.

  He staggered backward, his face wild with disbelief. A friend grabbed his shoulder, pulled him along.

  Randall Vogler looked like he wanted to vomit. Erik Epstein had his tongue between his teeth and was biting savagely. Jakob put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You don’t have to watch.”

  The children continued marching, their faces tight and shining.

  “We’re saving lives,” Jakob said, his voice hollow. “This is the choice we have to make.”

  Cooper turned back to the video, his fists clenching and unclenching, heart pounding. He made himself look at the same girl. “Turn it off, Erik. Please.” She was still walking, her pace steady, even as her shoulders shook and chest heaved. “Erik.” Walking through agony because the choice was death, and she didn’t want to die, not before she’d had a chance to live. “Erik!” Her fingers knotted, the knuckles twisting. Her face was turning pink and spotted, a sunburn happening at high speed. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her skin rippled and tightened. Discolored splotches rose on her cheeks and nose, pink blotches that turned angry red, then white. Like acid sprayed across her flesh, and yet she kept walking—

  Enough.

  Cooper stepped forward, grabbed the world’s richest man by the sweatshirt with one hand, then wound up and slapped him with the other. “Look at her.”

  Jakob opened his mouth, but before he got a syllable out, Shannon had the gun jammed in the base of his skull. “Whatever security system you were about to engage,” she said, “don’t.”

  “Look at her,” Cooper said. “Look at her. Look at her goddamn face!”

  Erik did. The blood rushed from his cheeks, and his eyes went wobbly, and then he said, “Computer, power down Vogler Ring.”

  “Yes, Erik.”

  Cooper turned back to the video. The effects must have been immediate. The kids were staggering as if something they’d been leaning against had vanished. They stared at one another in relieved disbelief, gingerly touched themselves, wincing as they did.

  And behind them, a barbarian army began to howl, whooping and raising their guns in the air, firing shots at heaven.

  “My God,” Jakob said. “What have you done?”

  Cooper let go of Erik, clapped him on the shoulder. He sucked in a deep breath, let it out. “You know what I’ve learned over the last year? Doing the right thing doesn’t protect you. But it does help you live with the consequences.”

  “You let an army of murderers in,” Jakob said. Shannon released him, and he collapsed into a seat. “You’ve killed us all.”

  “Just because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice innocent kids,” Cooper said, “doesn’t mean I intend to quit fighting.”

  “What are you suggesting, Cooper? We hand out rifles to accountants and housewives?”

  Maybe it was relief, or a year-long surplus of adrenaline, or just the best thing to do at the end of the world, but Cooper found himself laughing. “You know what? That’s exactly what I suggest.” He turned to Erik. “I know how your mind works, and I’m betting there are bunkers within the city. Something underground, just in case.”

  “Yes,” Erik said, “designed for brief bombardment or extreme weather. Not defensible long term. Dependant on external support for air recirculation and water supply. Limited waste facilities.”

  “Get the children there, and the elderly. Do it now. Break the rest of the population into groups around the perimete
r of the city. Choose multistory buildings with good sight lines. If they’re old enough to operate a rifle and young enough that the recoil won’t break their shoulder, put them in a window and give them a gun.”

  He stepped away, walked closer to the video feed, still live. The militia had spread the children out across the breadth of the defunct Vogler Ring, guards keeping them in place while the rest of the mass moved through. Thousands on thousands of men. Not monsters; just men. Men who had lost loved ones or lost faith, who were too panicked to see beyond the animal side of themselves. Steeped in fear, hardened with pain, and released from bounds.

  There’s nothing more dangerous.

  Shannon was suddenly beside him, her eyes on the video even as her fingers found his. “The Vogler Ring is about five miles out of the city.”

  Cooper nodded. “My bet, they’ll surround Tesla.”

  “They’ve been marching for days. They’ll rest. Wait for night to fall.”

  From behind them, Vogler’s voice said, “And then what?”

  “Then we do the thing I’ve been trying to avoid,” Cooper said. “We go to war.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Natalie stood in the kitchen and stared at the news on her d-pad. A headphone in one ear, the other maternally tuned in to the sounds of Todd and Kate watching a movie in the living room. She’d offered them a daytime double feature with popcorn and Coke, and while they were surprised, they’d been quick to seize the opportunity before she changed her mind.

  Funny to think that there had been a time when what she’d worried about was making sure they didn’t watch too much tri-d, that they ate their broccoli.

  The news was limited, just live footage from one angle, a high-altitude drone aimed at the militia. A reporter babbled pointlessly, using a lot of words to say nothing specific. The existence of the Vogler Ring was an open secret, but the details weren’t public, and the reporter was clearly being cautious. It was only as it became clear that the kids were suffering that she started to sound like a human being, her voice cracking and fear spilling out.

  Literally the last thing Natalie wanted to watch was children burning alive, but as their hands knotted in agony, as furious boils bubbled on their faces, she made a vow that she would not look away. That she would watch every second, no matter how horrible, because if she couldn’t do anything to save them, then by God she could at least stand witness.

  Then, suddenly, it was over. Whatever force had been hurting the kids vanished, leaving them baffled and obviously fearful of its return. Her joy had been both overwhelming and short lived, because behind the kids, the endless column of armed men had started cheering.

  That was Nick. Her certainty was based on nothing, but it was certainty nonetheless, and her chest swelled with pride for the man she loved.

  She continued watching the news, staring hypnotized as the New Sons marched ever closer. The sea of men began to split into two groups that would spill around Tesla, enclosing it like pincers. Natalie watched and listened to the reporter’s breathless string of nonsense, and waited for the knock at the door.

  When it came, she plucked out the earbud and walked to the front window. They were still in the diplomatic quarters they’d been given three weeks ago. It was a lovely space, but it wasn’t home, and as she drew aside the sheer curtain, it felt like she was staring out a hotel window. She’d never seen the street below so busy, electric cars and mini-trucks bumper-to-bumper, bicycles zipping between them, nervous people in the street pausing to watch the video feed projected from the opposite building, the same news footage she had just been watching.

  The SUV was an old-fashioned gasoline behemoth, muscular and black, and though the windows were tinted, she could see that a woman sat in the passenger seat, looking up at the window she looked down from. For a moment they stared at each other. Then Shannon raised one hand, and Natalie followed suit.

  The knock came again. She dropped the curtain and opened the door for her ex-husband.

  Nick looked tired but resolved, dark circles under his eyes but his shoulders high. She recognized his expression; she’d seen it before. It never meant things were about to get better. For a moment they just looked at each other. Then she said, “Come on.”

  They’d skirted the living room, stepping lightly as the movie played loud. She could see Nick’s urge to join his kids, to drop down on the sofa between them and grab a handful of popcorn and tuck Kate under one arm and Todd beneath the other. Instead, they’d gone into the kitchen, where she’d set about making coffee. It had felt surreal to go through the motions of measuring beans, grinding them coarse, letting them bloom in the French press, all while Nick explained what she had already guessed, that he had convinced Erik to turn off the Vogler Ring, that in so doing he had saved six hundred children but set the rest of the city up for a war. Then he told her about killing John Smith, how he had shot him three times through the heart. Her husband—ex—had killed fourteen times that she knew about, and probably more that she didn’t, and while for most women that would be distinctly a turn-on or a turn-off, for her it had always been something apart. A piece of Nick that she would never fully understand, and yet was grateful for. She knew that every time cost him something. He paid that price because he believed that he was making a better world for their kids.

  “I can’t stay,” he said, nodding thanks as he took the mug of coffee.

  “I know.”

  “The New Sons will wait until dark. We’ll have a couple of hours to get ready.” A pause. “This is everything I didn’t want to happen.”

  “I know.”

  “Epstein is appealing to the president now. Maybe, with John Smith dead, he can convince Ramirez to help.”

  “If the government wanted to stop the New Sons of Liberty,” she said, “they would have done it days ago.”

  “Yeah.” He sipped his coffee. “There’s a bunker beneath Erik’s complex. You and the kids will be safe there.”

  “No.”

  “You will,” he said. “It’s under forty feet of rock. The doors are solid steel. Erik built it to—”

  “I saw the bulletin.” It had flashed up on her d-pad only moments after the militia had passed the Vogler Ring. A brief message from the king of New Canaan, telling his subjects that the barbarians were at the gates. “Children fourteen and under, report to the bunker. The rest of you, get ready to fight.”

  Nick paused, with that look on his face, the one that meant he was skipping conversational steps because he’d read her intent. It had always driven her crazy. He couldn’t help it, she understood that, and his intentions were good, she understood that too, but being married to someone who always knew where you were going—or thought they did—wasn’t easy. He said, “Natalie.”

  “Nick.”

  “Nat, don’t—”

  “Nick, don’t.”

  “Listen to me.” He set the mug down. “You need to get our children to that bunker, and you need to stay with them.”

  “I’ll get them there.”

  “This is bad. Those men out there, they aren’t soldiers. They’re a lynch mob. They’re wounded and angry, and they don’t see the people here as people. There is nothing they won’t do.”

  “I know.”

  “I will fight with everything I have. But I can’t be worrying about you and the kids while I do it.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’ll stay in the bunker?”

  “No.”

  “Natalie—”

  “I love you,” she said. “I have forever. I loved you when my parents disapproved of us. I loved you when you started killing other abnorms for the DAR. I loved you when you went undercover to find John Smith and left me alone for six months, scared every moment that someone would firebomb our house. I loved you as you were dying in my arms. I will always love you.”

  “I love you too. But—”

  “But you are not the only one willing to die for our children. Or kill for them.” She saw t
he impact her words had, how profane the notion was to him. The dying, sure, but more the killing. She understood. It was profane to her too. Natalie locked eyes with him and said, “I’m going to take the kids to the bunker. And then like every other parent in this city, I’m going to get in a window, pick up a rifle, and fight.”

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Finally, he closed it.

  “Now,” she said. “Let’s go tell our kids that they don’t get to watch the end of the movie.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “Mr. Secretary?”

  It was still snowing, that fine stuff that looked more like fog whipping back and forth in the wind. Owen Leahy stared out the window of his Camp David office, a onetime guest room with a folding table in place of a bed, a tangle of cables running down from the back of it. Funny to see so many cords; in regular life, everything was wireless, meaning and message floating through the air. Here security had trumped that. That could be your epitaph: “Security trumped it.”

  “Sir, the call you’ve been waiting for.”

  Leahy spoke to the window. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In a career built on taking risks, the last hours had been the most brazen of them. After Luke Hammond had hung up on him, Leahy had called his chief of staff, still in DC, and told her what he wanted.

  “Are you kidding?” She’d been nervous, but also exhilarated, he could tell. No surprise there. What he’d asked her to do was the stuff of spy movies, and who didn’t want to be pulling the strings?

  “This is direct from the president,” Leahy had told her. “Screen all calls to any governmental office originating from New Canaan. No matter who it is, no matter what they say, they go to you. When it’s him, you send it to me.”