Interrupt

by Jeff Carlson

  Another hunter crashed into Drew. The man had thrown himself beneath Emily’s M249. His weight cut Drew’s legs out beneath him and they tumbled onto the road, the M4 smacking against Drew’s neck. Somehow he kept his pistol.

  Drew slammed his knee into the man’s groin, once, twice. Then he cleared his arm and fired three quick rounds at the man’s feet. One connected. The man howled.

  It was Marcus.

  He clawed at Drew’s eyes until Drew rammed his pistol grip into Marcus’s neck. Marcus tottered. When Drew shoved him aside, he saw Emily screaming at P.J. as the boy ran at her with his club. She’d lowered her weapon.

  “P.J., please!” she cried.

  Drew’s mind slowed to a single thought of protest. No.

  Beyond her, four more hunters littered the roadside. One man was on his hands and knees. Another sat on his bottom like a child, cupping the bloody mess of his intestines. She’d blunted the second prong of Marcus’s assault. She’d done it by herself. But shooting P.J. was too much for her.

  Drew couldn’t raise his pistol fast enough. He could only stare.

  Emily stepped toward P.J., impeding his stride by kicking her foot at his shin. She redirected his club with her left arm. Her right hand lifted from her side. She held a Taser.

  She jammed the stun gun into his ribs and discharged it. P.J. jerked. He collapsed, whacking his skull on the road.

  Marcus was half-conscious, groaning, but Drew refused to take any chances. He put his own Taser against Marcus and jolted him, too. Then he hurried to Emily. She knelt over P.J., weeping. Amazement and relief swelled inside Drew, but there wasn’t time to compliment her.

  “I need the ties in your pack,” he said.

  “Yes.” She didn’t move to take it off.

  “Help me reload and keep watch.” He shoved his Glock at her. “I can’t help their wounded unless you cover me.”

  “Yes.”

  He hugged her clumsily, turning his head to watch the swamp. After a moment, Emily shook herself as if waking up.

  She’d slid a new clip into Drew’s pistol before Bugle’s squad filtered out of the trees. She could have handed the loaded pistol to Drew. Instead, she set the weapon down and called to them, “It’s over. You got us.”

  The hunter sitting in the road died before the medic finished his cursory examinations of Emily and Drew. The other Neanderthal was unconscious, so was P.J., and Marcus couldn’t stand on his own. Emily and Drew were barely able to move themselves.

  Hiking back to the bunker was slow going. Emily shivered uncontrollably, too close to shock and hypothermia.

  Her head was tangled with emotions. Hatred. Love. Dismay. Optimism. She’d been through too much with Marcus, P.J., and Drew. She would have given anything to walk alongside Drew and share their new closeness.

  Bugle had separated them while arranging his column. Macaulay was on point with Orion. Emily came next, followed by two soldiers bearing the unconscious Neanderthal on a jacket they’d fashioned into a crude stretcher. Another man carried P.J. in his arms. Drew followed with his good hand secured to his belt with a plastic slip tie—the same ties they’d used to bind P.J. and Marcus. Three more soldiers hauled Marcus between them in another jacket.

  Bugle marched alongside their column instead of being part of it, either waiting behind or pacing to the side, attempting to cover every direction at once. There was no one else left. Marcus’s ambush on the road had killed four guys in Bugle’s squad, and Bugle had yet to recover their M-string. First he’d run to help Drew because he’d intuited the trick Drew had played on the Neanderthals even if he wouldn’t admit to such a strong connection with his old friend.

  By making themselves a target, Emily and Drew had lured the Neanderthals from the bunker. Otherwise the soldiers might still be trapped inside. The best they’d managed was a few potshots at the Neanderthals as Marcus pried at the rock above the tunnel, starting a landslide, trickling gravel and dirt across the shield. Then the soldiers had realized Marcus and his tribesmen were gone. The Neanderthals had outraced Bugle’s squad down the mountain, but in the end Drew had exploited the Neanderthals perfectly.

  Their downfall was being predictable. They were so finely attuned to themselves and to any threat to their tribe that they couldn’t decide not to attack. Yes, Marcus had used P.J. as a decoy exactly as P.J. had used his wounded men. They were clever. Nevertheless, they’d allowed Drew to bring them into the open swamp.

  The memory of the gun shuddering in her hands wouldn’t leave her. Emily’s fingers fluttered and clenched as she trudged after Macaulay. She moved like a sleepwalker, utterly spent. Her thoughts felt as distant as the static on Bugle’s radio and the muffled sounds from the end of the column, where Marcus had been gagged as well as tied.

  That P.J. had been spared was a godsend. She prayed his mind would clear once they were inside. Would he remember her? What if he’d been permanently altered?

  Orion was growling. The noise reached Emily as Macaulay said, “Movement. Left.”

  The soldiers dropped the unconscious Neanderthal to the ground, kneeling in the brush as they brought up their M4s. Bugle shoved past Emily. “Where?”

  “Two wounded men eighty yards across the hill,” Macaulay said. “They’re hardly moving.”

  “Okay, I see ’em.”

  One of the human shadows crawled feebly on its stomach. The other lay on his back, either dying or dead.

  Bugle dismissed them. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Emily said, rousing from her daze. “It’s Roell.”

  “We’ll come back for him if we can.”

  “Do you know who that is? Roell is Marcus’s son, and we need Marcus to cooperate with us!”

  “I’d have to leave your nephew to bring anyone else.”

  “I’ll carry P.J. myself. I can do it.” Emily turned to find P.J. and stumbled. Her legs felt wooden and she shook herself, desperate for more energy.

  “All right, all right,” Bugle said. He chopped his hand sideways at the hill. “Heads up,” he told his men. “We’re gonna see if we can grab more of these fuckin’ cavemen.”

  Orion and Macaulay led the short column of soldiers and prisoners through the brush.

  Overhead, two birds darted through the rain.

  Roell’s eyes were open. He bared his teeth when they approached. “Hnn!” he sang, biting as Bugle and Macaulay held him down, keeping their hands from his face.

  “I can’t help this guy,” the medic said. “There’s too much damage. Lung. Ribs. Liver. Spleen.”

  “He’s going to die?” Emily asked, looking at Bugle for empathy.

  Marcus and Roell were only a few feet apart, and yet that space might have been wider than a thousand miles. It was as big as a lifetime.

  “You have to let them talk,” she said.

  Bugle shook his head. “You fuckin’ traitor. You really are crazy.”

  “I’m not. Marcus was one of the top astronomers on the planet. He helped design the Hoffman array. If he’s ever going to work with us again—”

  “Drew says he killed at least five of our guys!”

  “You should give him this much. It might help us.”

  “How?”

  “We can afford to show a little mercy. We won this time. But there will be more fighting. If we want to stop the war, someone needs to go first. They need to see that we can forgive—that we can be good. We need to find a way to make peace, and you don’t know what we might learn here.”

  Bugle studied Roell’s gray face. “Shit,” he said. “All right. But I’ll shoot them if I have to.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  The soldiers carried Marcus to his son. At first, Marcus struggled even more. He calmed when they set him on the wet earth and removed his gag. He examined Roell, looking down at his son before sweeping his eyes toward Bugle and the rest.

  “Nnnmh,” Marcus sang.

  “Hnn,” Roell whispered.

  “Nnnnnmh,” Marcu
s sang again. Then he stopped. It was as if he’d taken Roell’s measure and realized the teenager could not help him escape.

  “Hnnnh,” Roell whispered as Marcus ignored him.

  To Emily, the scene was unbearably tragic. She couldn’t say that Marcus didn’t recognize his son or that they hadn’t spoken of love or loyalty—but as Neanderthals, they seemed too limited to do more than study their enemies.

  “This is stupid,” Bugle said. “Let’s go.”

  “We have to try something else,” Emily said.

  “It’s not safe. What if they sent runners for more men? We need to get M-string on more guys and regroup.”

  “I have cargo sheets in my pack,” Emily said. “Let’s put M-string on them. Marcus needs to know what we’ve done for him.”

  “We’ll tell the motherfucker inside.”

  “Bugle, please.” Emily wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but she would have wanted to be in her right mind if she were in Marcus’s place.

  It took three men to hold Marcus as Bugle belted a sheet of mesh fabric onto his head. Roell did not resist when Bugle repeated the procedure.

  M-string was a trauma to them both. Roell went into seizure. He swiftly wilted, and his breathing grew shallow and erratic. Beside him, Marcus slumped over, unable to prop himself up with his hands tied behind his back.

  Roell was in the pulse for weeks, Emily thought. What will happen to P.J. when we bring him inside?

  “Dah,” Roell said. It wasn’t a Neanderthal sound. His eyes had brightened. Staring at the soldiers, he was obviously terrified and confused.

  Marcus responded to his son’s voice. His first answer was incoherent, a humming noise like Nnnnmh.

  Roell’s gaze shifted to his father. “Dad,” he said.

  “Cut his ties,” Emily hissed. “Bugle. Cut his ties.”

  “I can’t.”

  Marcus and Roell paid no attention to anything except each other. Marcus hunched closer, trying to embrace his son without falling onto his bloody chest. “Roell,” he said. “Roell.”

  The boy might have smiled. “You were with us,” he said.

  “I’m with you now,” Marcus sobbed. “Oh God, I’m with you now.”

  They murmured together like a duet, exchanging soft, meaningful words. It didn’t last. Within seconds, Marcus was the only one speaking. Roell was gone.

  Nobody moved.

  Cold rain pummeled the hill.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said, reaching for Marcus, but he thrashed and screamed and tried to throw off his M-string.

  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  Emily sat in a corner of her jail cell, pressing her forehead into the narrow slot between two bars. Her hunger felt like a rat inside her. It gnawed at her belly, pulling her midriff tight against her ribs. Even her face felt taut. She’d lost ten pounds she’d never had to spare. Her hair fell lank and unwashed against her shoulders.

  The holding cells were in a sublevel of a California Highway Patrol station. Four lightbulbs lined the corridor ceiling. Everywhere else was in shadows. Their cells were dark and loud and disgusting, fogged with the stink of unwashed people, urine, and the ever-present ash and smoke smell of Sacramento.

  Emily’s hand reached through her bars. Her left hand. Without rings. She couldn’t see Drew in the next cell—a cinder-block wall separated them—although if they both leaned against the wall, they could talk without being overheard. They could also touch fingertips by stretching their arms into the corridor.

  “I wish we’d made love,” she said.

  “Stop.” But his tone was interested, so her voice grew slow and erotic.

  “I remember both times we kissed,” she said.

  “There were three times,” he said.

  “Once while we were outside?”

  “I should have.” His fingers tried to curl around hers and Emily laughed, straining to reach him. She was beyond feeling self-conscious or embarrassed. They’d forgotten those hurdles by the third day.

  Emily and Drew had been transferred south from Bunker Seven Four during an interval that lasted nineteen hours, maybe longer, aboard a single-engine Cessna that was not armored against EMP weapons or the pulse. They’d listened closely as the pilot radioed twice for updated forecasts.

  Most of the other inmates had arrived during the same calm. Then two days had passed before another, smaller group was escorted into the jail block. Those men said they’d been moved during a four-hour interval.

  Since then, they’d had no information. The guards who brought two small meals a day were indifferent to the prisoners’ questions. It didn’t help that too many of them shouted for more food. Even Emily had lost her self-control on the fifth day, pacing against her bars and banging on the steel, demanding water, before she realized she’d cost herself dearly by breaking into a sweat.

  She was so thirsty.

  More insidious than her physical needs was their fear that America was at war. If the Chinese satellites continued to probe through U.S. and NATO strongholds, crippling their silos, burning their aircraft… At some point America’s generals would realize they’d acted too late. Like a wounded dog, their ability to fight might be limited to one last all-or-nothing nuclear launch.

  No one in the prison could say how much time they had left, so Emily had told Drew about her temptation to develop gene therapies that would turn everyone Neanderthal. He’d told her about the intervals, the predictions from the Hoffman Square Kilometer Field, and his blind spot. He’d admitted that he blamed himself for Julie’s death.

  Maybe talking was easier because they couldn’t see each other, like confession, although the other prisoners had hooted or jeered when they started holding hands.

  Emily shared her cell with two women, an Army lieutenant who’d stolen food for the primitives outside her shelter and a geologist who’d murdered a man who raped her. They were jealous of Emily for having a friend nearby, yet watching her with Drew had helped the three of them form their own supportive relationship. Maybe they would have helped each other simply because they were the only females in the jail block.

  Every cell across the corridor held five or six men. So did the rest of the cells on Emily’s side. Fortunately, Drew wasn’t the only federal agent or soldier in lockup. He’d organized fifty-five prisoners by calling down the corridor, establishing rank and reforming squads among the disgraced men.

  Emily wasn’t surprised it had worked. Most of them weren’t criminals. They were people who’d made mistakes like she had, often for the right reasons.

  Listening to their different stories, she’d been struck by one similarity. All of them were high-value prisoners. They either had education like the geologist or military training like the lieutenant. There were no ordinary fools among them.

  Drew’s leadership was exactly what everybody wanted except in one defiant cell across from Emily. Those stupid bastards liked to yell. They’d begun a campaign of cursing, spitting, and exposing themselves. They were animals. Emily and her cellmates had to hold up a blanket as a screen whenever one of them used the toilet, which was a nasty, waterless, lidless steel bowl. The three of them also tended to gather in the right rear corner of their cell, where those men were unable to see them.

  It was the left front corner where Emily could reach Drew. As she toyed with Drew’s hand, one of the bastards shouted, “Hey, babe! Over here! Hey, I got something for ya!”

  She was done crying or acknowledging them in any way. Even flipping him off was a waste of time. What she cared about was Drew. “Did I really forget a kiss?” she asked. “Our first time was inside the blast door when you grabbed me.”

  “Who grabbed who,” he said easily.

  “Then we did it again before we left the bunker,” she said, smiling at her choice of words. Teasing him was the best she had to offer. She could barely stand it herself—eight days of talking—only talking—but at least her fantasies took her away from this place.

  He’d fallen sil
ent in the cacophony of voices.

  “Hey?” she asked.

  “You, uh, you’re missing our best kiss,” he said. “Inside the Osprey. I think I got to second base.” His tone was light, but she heard the concern beneath it.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “We’re just torturing ourselves.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  As long as they lived, fragmented memories would be a problem for anyone who’d gone outside without M-string. Two of the men imprisoned with Drew and the geologist in Emily’s cell were dealing with their own confusion, sometimes extensive. Emily had held the other woman at night when she woke with nightmares.

  In the geologist’s case, it might be therapeutic to wipe the slate clean. Was that possible? Walking her outside would affect her short-term memory, which was how her assailant had intended to get away with his crime, but she’d retained too many impressions and now the act of knifing him was ingrained in her mind. She would never forget unless the soldiers sent her outside forever.

  What if that’s what they decide to do with all of us? Emily thought.

  In their first few days behind bars, she and Drew had whispered about their fate. He’d also made the observation that everyone in the jail block was either a scientist or a soldier of one kind or another.

  If U.S. Command was holding run-of-the-mill thieves and killers, those people were being kept somewhere else or, more likely, they’d been banished. Or executed.

  Emily suspected the experts and warriors gathered in this jail block were closer to banishment than she wanted to believe. They’d only seen four different guards. Their rations were one step above starvation. Nobody had come to fix the plugged toilet in the cell at the end of the corridor, and two-thirds of the lights were off.

  To her, it looked like U.S. Command had consolidated their high-profile troublemakers for final evaluations. They wouldn’t waste food or electricity on people they decided they didn’t need.

  And if the bombs fell, it seemed unlikely that anyone would bother with fifty-five prisoners. This jail was more than death row. It could become their tomb.