by Schow, Ryan
“Let me handle this situation first,” Quan said.
“Copy that,” he said.
“Thanks.”
The line was already dead. It was like that. They needed to spend as little air time as possible on matters of conspiracy and retribution.
It was safer that way.
He’d been getting ready to head to the mountainside to work on the town’s new bug out location, but now his head was an agitated bee hive, which was to say, he couldn’t wrangle in his restless thoughts, or still his sudden temper.
After going through the front door of the house given to him, he slammed the door so hard the front glass cracked. Turning, he looked at what he’d done and f-bombed the door, the Chicoms, the traitor and his friend’s suggestion that he come to Yale.
He liked the life he’d been living. It felt real.
Since the Chicoms took out half the town in a brutal assault, Five Falls had been left alone. Not that they could have done anything. After the massacre from above, their backs were broken, their souls thoroughly flattened.
Quan got on his four-wheeler, checked the gas tank, kick-started the engine and set out to find the men he’d need to do what had to be done.
The cool air on his blistering hot face felt good. His heart, however, was restless. He liked Bronx. He hit the handlebars in a fit of rage, then stopped when he hurt his palm. The outburst felt good at the time, but five minutes later, it just seemed childish.
Get ahold of yourself!
When he reached the mountainside, he entered the soft earth slowly, working hard not to tear up the forest floor, for tracks were a dead giveaway to someplace they needed concealed. At the site, entire teams were working to build out the shelters in the woods. They were doing so under the cover of the more dense sides of the forest.
He went to Connor’s tent, which was just past an old tractor they’d used to drill for a well. Cooper met him with a hyperactive tail, lowered back haunches and a fit of whining.
“Hey, boy!” Quan said, scratching him all over as the dog shook and shuddered with excitement.
Connor came out of his tent, told Cooper to sit. The dog sat. Quan looked at his friend and said, “I’m going to head down and see Clay. I wanted to tell you that I’ll be here later on.”
“You could have used the Uniden,” he said, referring to the two-ways.
“This is a private conversation,” he said.
“Yeah?” Connor asked.
“We found the traitor,” Quan told him.
“How?”
“We just did,” he said.
“Okay,” Connor replied. “What’s next?”
“I’ll get this handled, then I’ll spell you off,” Quan said. “I’m sure Orbey misses you and Cooper.”
“She visits,” Connor said.
Quan smiled, thinking he’d someday like a wife like Orbey. She was a solid force among a bunch of pissed off, rowdy men, a unifying energy amongst the ghosts of them.
“But she sleeps alone,” Quan argued. “I’m sure that gets lonely at night.”
“That’s why she said she wanted Cooper to stay with her,” Connor said with a grin. “A man needs his dog, though.”
Quan laughed. “I’ll be back in a few hours, maybe less.”
“Who is it?” Connor asked.
“Bronx.”
This took him by surprise. He drew a deep, almost startled breath, then rubbed his face and let his eyes drift up to the tops of the trees where he contemplated the betrayal.
“This is going to wreck Noah,” Connor said.
Quan nodded.
“That punk kid,” Connor growled, a sharp edge to his words—something Orbey called a tempered outburst.
“Turns out he was part of the dying remains of some fascist group of militants parading around as anti-fascists,” Quan said. “He was in Portland in the early 2020’s.”
Connor nodded his head, getting it. “What are you going to do?” he asked, now holding Quan’s eye.
“Make him pay for what the Chicom pukes did to this community,” Quan said. “But how that transpires won’t be my choice. I’m going to leave that to Boone.”
Connor blew out a breath and said, “I hope for your sake you have a strong stomach.”
“I’ll develop it,” Quan said. “Boone’s gonna want this.”
He walked a little farther up the mountainside, found Noah taking a piss against a tree, his sagging underwear a good two inches lower than his hairy ass crack. He was whistling to himself, signing his name on the tree in urine, his sinewy legs untouched by the sun for what looked like decades.
“Seeing you like this is stronger than coffee,” Quan said.
“You’re a little late for a shower,” Noah said. “Bladder’s ‘bout empty. There’s still enough for a drink though.”
“I’ll pass,” Quan said, leaning against a tree, looking the other direction.
When he was done, Noah waltzed over to his tent, put on his pants and said, “Whatcha doin’ here kid?”
Quan took a deep breath, blew it out, then said, “I have good news, but it’s also bad news.”
“Let me get my coffee first,” Noah said, eyeing him. “You want a cup?”
“That’s like drinking battery acid,” Quan said.
He poured himself a cup of Joe, blew over the rim, then said, “Alright son, spill it.”
“Bronx.”
That’s all he had to say. Noah’s face drained, what sparse amount of color he had left looking a few shades lighter.
“You serious?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“How do you know for sure?” Noah asked, stricken.
“My contact wouldn’t have called me without verifying it himself,” Quan assured him.
Noah prided himself on his ability to make the right decisions quickly and with little mental consternation. He’d chosen wrong with Bronx. Now he shook his head, drained his piping hot coffee in a couple of burning gulps and said, “Let’s go while I’m wired up.”
“I’ve got the quad,” he said.
Noah replied, “I’ll get the truck and follow you down.”
The first place they went was Boone’s house. They had to get that out of the way, nervous as they were telling him this news.
“He’s the traitor?” Boone asked as he stood in the doorway. He was still half-asleep, his beard heavy, three months of uncut hair making him look more like a mountain man than a once handsome mechanic and hunter. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Quan said.
“Let’s stop off and grab Logan,” Boone said. “Whatever I don’t have the nerve for, he’ll do.”
Noah and Quan looked at each other, their looks quizzical at best. Was he really deferring to Logan?
Boone got in the truck with Noah, which meant there wouldn’t be a conversation between them. Noah was too embarrassed at not seeing it earlier, and Boone was probably deciding how best he wanted to handle this.
Since Miranda’s death, however, he wasn’t handling anything. The man was a zombie, a ghost, a shell of his former self, according to all who knew him before this.
He radioed ahead to Logan, told him they were going hunting, that they already had their prey. Logan seemed to understand. Quan, Noah and Boone met him at the pile of bones. The second Logan saw Boone in the truck, Quan knew he knew.
“Get on,” Quan said, scooting up on his seat.
Logan got on the quad and they followed the truck to Bronx’s neighborhood. Noah and Boone got out of the truck while Quan and Logan got off the ATV. The four of them walked up to Bronx’s house in silence.
Boone kicked the front door in and entered with his pistol out. They found the traitor in bed with one of the younger boys from town.
“Well ain’t this the flat backside of an old bitch,” Noah snarled.
“Get the hell outta my house!” Bronx yelled as the boy hustled out of bed, his pale body rail-thin and feminine.
Logan and Quan bloc
ked the boy’s exit, both with their guns out and eyes that meant business.
“We’re just friends,” the kid said, his eyes getting that shine like he was about to cry. He had his clothes pressed over his privates, and a tremor to his voice.
“I don’t care what you are, kid,” Quan said. “He’s an adult and you’re not.”
Quan looked over and saw Logan’s set jaw, his narrowed eyes, a savagery in his gaze that he’d developed after the wholesale murder of half of Five Falls. The kid saw the look, too.
He shrank back, terrified.
Noah turned around and slapped the back of his head so hard, the kid wobbled forward into Logan. Logan shoved the kid through the hole between him and Quan and growled, “There’s no reason to come back here, ever.”
Boone started hitting Bronx. He just jumped on the bed and started pummeling him with heavy fists and sharp elbows. Bronx managed to pull the quilt over himself and turtle up. That wasn’t good enough. Boone scrambled off the bed, grabbed the bedsheets and blankets, started jerking and yanking him off the bed, even as the seemingly undressed man howled in protest.
When he flopped out of the bed and slammed down on the floor, Boone ripped the blankets off him and found him naked.
“Get his legs,” he turned and said to Logan and Quan. “Noah, get his neck.”
Quan knew those dead eyes. He had worn them so many times he understood the blackness and the emptiness behind them. It’s what happened when the rage took over and an eerie silence settled over you. That’s when you rolled your shoulders, balled your fists and went to work with one thing in mind: massive bodily damage.
Bronx still had some fight in him as Logan and Quan grabbed his ankles. When Noah slammed his head down on the floor five or six times then dropped a forearm and his weight on the man’s throat, he relented, hardly able to breathe.
Boone stood back, pushed Quan and Logan farther apart. His legs were spread about as wide as they’d go. That’s when Boone kicked Bronx right in the balls with all his might. His body bucked and strained against the pain. Boone kicked him again and again and again until he passed out.
Noah looked up and said, “You can stop now, he’s out.”
Boone was red faced with rage, his eyes rabid, seeing not this scene, Quan believed, but the dead eyes of his wife, half her head turned to mush.
“Get this traitorous slag up and bring him outside,” Boone said.
Logan grabbed ahold of Bronx’s hair and dragged him outside. The man started to come around as his naked body scraped across ragged concrete that was his back porch. Boone threw a pair of boxers in his face and said, “Get dressed, traitor!”
It wasn’t easy. He could barely stand. Even worse, he looked ready to puke.
Leaning on a patio chair, the man gingerly put on his boxers. When he started to sit down, Quan kicked the chair away from him, showed him the satellite phone and said, “I have friends inside. You know what this is, right?”
“Chicom phone,” he said.
“Yes.”
Logan joined Quan and said, “That means you are a traitor to your people, to America, to us, to your family.”
The man lowered his eyes, standing funny, unwilling to answer for himself.
Noah shoved his way through the rest of them and barked, “Do you realize the damage you’ve done?” Bronx lowered his head farther, a small red spot forming at the head of his penis where it was pressed against the white fabric of his boxers. “Well, do you?”
When he refused to answer, Noah hit him so hard against the side of the head, the man toppled over. Boone grabbed him by the hair, stood him up, then kneed him again in the goods. He buckled, the cords standing taut in his neck, tears now draining from his eyes.
“Get up,” Logan said, standing him up.
He was green-faced and crying like a child. Quan had to remind himself that this man had been informing on them just so he didn’t feel bad. He’d walked among them a friend for months and yet there he was, a Benedict Arnold, a Judas, violating an underage boy like he was candy from the jar of untainted children.
Logan moved him against the nearest tree, pressed his face into the bark and said, “Hug it like you love it.”
He did as he was told, but in truth, that was the only way he could actually stand without his knees buckling.
Logan looked at Noah, who was pissed.
The old man’s hair was a mess. He wore a faded t-shirt and tired jeans that hung loose off weary bones. The veteran shook his head.
Boone turned to Bronx and said, “What are the Chicom plans for Five Falls?”
“I don’t know,” Bronx said.
To Quan, Logan said, “Go to the garage and bring me some wire cutters or tin snips. Whatever you can find like that is fine.”
“I’ll get them,” Noah said. “I can’t look at this asshole right now.” Meaning he might kill him before Boone got the chance.
Noah came back with a thick pair of wire snips, handed them to Logan. Logan, in turn, handed them to Boone, who gave him that look. His was the look that said he couldn’t cross that line. Without hesitation, Logan took Boone’s place with Bronx.
“So let’s try this again,” Logan said. “What are the Chicom plans for Five Falls?”
Seeing the clippers, Bronx freaked out, started begging and said, “I don’t know. They don’t tell me anything!”
Logan cut off his pinkie finger.
It fell in the dirt.
Noah looked at Quan whose face felt sallow but resolute. Boone looked like his expression hadn’t even changed. Bronx couldn’t stop screaming.
“Nine more times before we go to the toes,” Logan said. As it were, it only took three more fingers before Bronx finally broke down and told them everything.
“They’re coming man,” he laughed, his face green. He clutched his mangled hand against his boxers, blood leaking and spurting everywhere. His hysterical laughter turned manic. “No matter what you do to me, they’re coming for you!”
Logan put a bullet in his head, not even blushing.
Quan was quietly impressed, but he was also terrified. He was a Chicom soldier and even he couldn’t kill as easily as Logan just had.
Quan heard Logan was a softie in the beginning, that he was a computer programmer and slightly overweight. When he heard this, he could hardly believe this was the same man they were talking about. There was only death in Logan’s eyes. He saw it now. Felt it. Only when he was with Harper and the Madigans did Quan see any signs of life in the man.
He understood, though.
Some men rose to the challenge of war, turning off that humanitarian switch inside themselves, almost like a chameleon adopting to the landscape of war. He could do it, but not like Logan. Even Boone couldn’t get himself there, which was baffling considering all he’d lost.
When they stepped inside Bronx’s place, Quan said, “Let’s clear it all out, get everything to the community center.” He said this, nonplussed, his words sounding as casual as the look on Logan’s face.
“Leave it,” Logan said. “Let the people who need things come here and see this. Let everyone know this is what happens to conspirators.”
“You’re going to scar the kids,” Quan said.
“Good,” Logan seethed.
Chapter Seven
Twenty-two year old Felicity Espinoza and her father, Filiberto, were hunting in the early morning hours. They caught several cottontails just before day break, even though the rabbits were more prone to the prairie than the hills. They fancied themselves lucky, considering the lands had been hunted thoroughly as a result of the EMP and people not having power. Filiberto put his arm around his daughter and smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m proud of you,” he said.
“Am I the son you always wanted?” the twenty-two year old asked with a grin.
“No boy I’ve ever met could compare to you,” he said.
As they were walking home, making thei
r way back through thickets of trees, they heard screaming in the distance, and then they heard shooting. They ran to the edge of the trees, saw a terrible sight in the neighborhood below. Crouching down, her father broke out the binoculars.
“What’s happening, Daddy?” she asked, fear shooting through her like a live wire.
“Mother of God,” he said in his native tongue. “They’re dragging people out of their homes.”
She reached for the binos, but he pushed her hand away and said, “You don’t want to see this.”
“I need to see!” she said.
She never told her father about her trip with Clay Nichols, the one where they came down from Salem, how people died, how people were killed.
She’d seen death with Clay.
She also saw a man emptied out from war, a man with wounds so deep they cut to the core of him and still managed to ride the surface in hard, violent lines. After he dropped her off in Roseburg, Clay had gone on to Five Falls.
“You need good things in your head, not this nonsense,” he said, standing up. “Let’s go!”
They ran through the backyards where they could, and behind the fence lines where they had to. In the streets, the Chicoms were rounding people up. She’d heard the screaming and crying, and the harsh, high-pitched squeal of the Chicoms asserting their dominance.
Everyone knew they’d been amassing their reserves down at the airport. But for months, the Chicoms kept to themselves. They did this while the citizens of Roseburg lived every waking moment in fear. Lately the city spotters told the heads of the community that an increased amount of both vehicles and personnel had moved in.
The airport and the surrounding buildings had become the unofficial location of the Chicoms. They sent in scouts, men willing to get close when it was dark enough and take note of the enemy encampment. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find any weak spots. And the men were poring in by the day.
After California had been eviscerated, the Chicom oppression waned. Now it was back in force. She kept up with her father easily, for her cardio was good. He loved to run and she ran with him, but now they were running toward danger, not away from it.