by Noah Mann
“Captain, I wouldn’t,” Quincy said, her words half plea, and half proclamation of innocence. “I would not do this.”
“This message was sent hours after we discussed its contents,” Martin said. “From a transmitter hidden beneath the egg catcher in the chicken coops. The coops that Private Quincy here checks every day—your words, private.”
For the briefest instant, Quincy’s gaze broke, shifting among those staring at her. Searching for a sympathetic face. A believer.
“This isn’t right!” Quincy shouted.
Martin looked to the sergeant.
“Paul, hold her,” he said.
Before she could pull away, Lorenzen seized Quincy firmly from behind, pulling each of her wrists back, locking them in his hands that, at that moment, functioned as handcuffs made of flesh and muscle and fury.
“What are you doing?!”
Martin didn’t bother answering the question Quincy shouted at him. He simply moved swiftly, reaching with his free hand to her right sleeve and tearing the material away, exposing the back of her bicep and a small, healing scar there.
“Look,” Martin said, grabbing her arm almost violently and turning her so that Schiavo, Elaine, and I could see.
She’d received an implant. One whose entry point had scarred over. It appeared older than mine, and of those Grace and her children had been given.
“She’s had this for at least a month,” Martin said, fixing on the traitor he’d identified. “What did you do? Slip off into the woods and get your ‘stay healthy’ implant before all this started?”
Quincy gave no response to the question. She also stopped her protests, determination now replacing her faux surprise. Determination and a sly, pitying grin.
That was a mistake.
“Answer the question!” Schiavo ordered, bringing the back of her hand across Quincy’s face.
The traitor’s head snapped from the blow, and when she looked to the captain once again, still grinning, the slim smile was spotted with blood from a split lip.
“Go to hell,” Quincy told her commander.
Schiavo let herself calm. It seemed to me she was working through some internal count to allow her anger and adrenalin to abate.
“Sergeant,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Get her out of here.”
“With pleasure,” Lorenzen said.
Martin reached into his pocket and retrieved a pair of handcuffs. Certain that he was right, that he had the proof he knew would be necessary, he’d come prepared. The sergeant took them and bound Quincy’s wrists, then grabbed the short chain between them and lifted, levering her body forward as he walked her away from the scene of devastation.
“Find the mayor and have him meet us at the garrison headquarters,” Schiavo said when the traitor was gone.
“Will do,” I said.
“Stay with the fire crew,” Schiavo told her husband. “Let me know if anything gets out of hand.”
Martin nodded, his wife holding his gaze for a long moment.
“You did good,” she said.
Schiavo headed off, trailing her sergeant and their prisoner. Martin put a hand to my shoulder, a gesture of thanks. For what, I wasn’t certain. But there was plenty of gratitude to flow in all directions. There always had been in Bandon.
Martin left us and took a position closer to the pumper truck, grabbing a hose when a pressure spike caused it to buck and flail. He had been a leader, a great leader, and, through actions large and small, he continually proved himself to be a fine man.
“I’ll find Mayor Allen,” I told Elaine. “You go get Genesee and tell him what just happened. Tell him everything.”
It only took a second for Elaine to understand why I was sending her off on a separate errand.
“Right,” Elaine said.
We made our way away from the raging blaze, explosions still sounding. Our town had been hit. Hard. And more was almost certain to come. But we had finally blunted one of the Unified Government’s most effective weapons. And, in doing so, it was possible that we might be able to improve our situation even more. Much more.
Thirty Six
Lorenzen shoved Quincy into a chair in the holding room at the garrison’s headquarters and hooked a set of handcuffs to the pair that bound her wrists behind her back. The other end he pulled roughly downward and secured to one of the chair legs, leaving her body twisted at a painful, awkward angle as Schiavo and Mayor Allen came through the door.
For a moment nothing was said. Lorenzen and I looked to Schiavo as she glared in silence at the private who’d joined her unit before they’d come to Bandon.
“Do you want to tell us anything?” Mayor Allen asked.
“Yes,” Quincy said. “Your time is running out.”
The burst of almost childish insolence didn’t rattle the four of us in the room with the traitor. She was caught, and she was resisting through some expression of bravado. That it might be fueled by a devotion to the Unified Government was beyond me to fully fathom.
“You’ve lived among us,” I said. “You know us. We’re good people. Not perfect, but good. We’re decent. Why would you be party to something that seeks to destroy that?”
“Good?” Quincy challenged me. “You think ‘good’ is what matters?”
“I believe it matters more than anything,” Mayor Allen backed me up.
Quincy, her eye swelling from Martin’s blow and mouth bleeding from Schiavo’s, shook her head, judgement and disdain in the gesture.
“Good equals weak,” she said. “And this is not a world that will allow weakness to survive.”
“We’ve made it this far,” I reminded her.
“You think you can make this work?” Quincy asked us, her face twisted with a mix of pity and disbelief. “You really believe that everything is going to fall back into place without some sort of overall order?”
“There’s nothing disorderly about what we’ve accomplished,” Mayor Allen said.
Quincy smiled at the elderly leader. A man who’d devoted his life to helping, and healing, and community.
“This isn’t order,” she countered. “All you’ve done is evolve into some sort of commune with a few rules that anyone is free to disregard by leaving.”
“We’re not running a prison,” I said.
The private shook her head slowly, now with open contempt toward me. Toward us.
“I can...”
Schiavo didn’t complete her statement, a sudden coughing fit causing her to turn away and clear her throat as she faced the corner.
“You all right, captain?”
Schiavo composed herself and looked to her sergeant, nodding. Then she faced the traitor in our midst again and saw what we all did—a broad, almost knowing smile spread across her face.
“I can have you shot,” Schiavo told Private Sheryl Quincy. “I have that authority.”
“You have no authority,” Quincy said. “Your government is finished. It’s gone.”
“You know nothing of the sort,” Mayor Allen told the traitor.
“Is that so?” Quincy challenged him. “How’s that Navy resupply you were promised working out? Where’s the Rushmore? Where’s any ship? And the airwaves are clear now, so where’s the soothing call from your government?”
No one bothered to answer the questions she posed. Almost certainly because none of us could.
“If you help us, there will be consideration given toward you in any proceedings,” Mayor Allen said.
“How many troops are we facing?” Schiavo asked, expanding her inquiry with rapid fire probing. “Where is your supply base? How many drone aircraft do you have? Has an attack day been decided?”
“Why would I help you?” Quincy asked, truly incredulous. “Why would I help perpetuate a failing, feel good system?”
We weren’t getting anything from her. Nothing that we could use to better our position or prevent what we all knew to be coming now. That was what we
all realized.
A knock on the door proved us wrong.
It opened and Commander Genesee stepped in, Specialist Hart with him. The latter man held a syringe, its needle shielded by a pale blue cover.
“Commander, what’s going on?” Schiavo asked.
Elaine followed both men in as Genesee tipped his head toward Hart. The army medic stepped past Mayor Allen and popped the cap off the syringe as he brought the needle toward Quincy’s exposed left arm.
“Hey!” Quincy protested, trying to wriggle away from Hart. “What are you doing?!”
“Specialist!” Schiavo shouted.
“Let him do it,” Genesee said to the captain.
“Yes,” I said. “Let him.”
Schiavo considered both pleas, then relented with a look to her medic.
“NO!”
Hart jabbed the syringe into Quincy’s arm as she screamed. He pressed the plunger down, injecting her, and before the shrieking sound of her protest was quieted, her head began to loll, eyes rolling back, mostly whites showing. When she was fully unconscious, Genesee crouched next to her and examined the back of her arm through the tear in her shirt Martin had made. After a quick check he looked up to Schiavo.
“Captain, your permission to remove her implant.”
There was no hesitation from Schiavo, and no resistance.
“Granted. Make your vaccine, Commander Genesee. Just keep her alive.”
We all knew what that last admonition was for. If we weren’t certain, the captain left no ambiguity about it with her next words.
“I’m not done with her.”
Thirty Seven
By morning the explosions were over and the fires had subsided to small licks of flame that danced upon the charred debris, smoke curling upward into the grey sky. Elaine and I returned to observe the scene of destruction after catching a few hours’ sleep.
“Schiavo’s going to kill her,” Elaine said.
Private Sheryl Quincy, traitor, had been locked up in the town’s small jail. Its only occupant.
“You mean execute,” I said.
“Dead is dead,” Elaine reminded me.
That was a universal truism. Once gone, you stayed gone. I feared that was also going to apply to Bandon. And to us.
“What if we lose?” I asked.
Elaine had no response to the possibility I was suggesting. That outcome had always seemed unfathomable. We’d overcome so much. Been victorious over long odds. But what we faced here...
“We’re out gunned and outnumbered,” I said. “They can take out our vital installations at will with strikes we can’t anticipate, much less stop. Defeat is a possibility.”
“What happened to ‘there’s always hope’?”
I was surprised that my wife had seized on that mantra, one which she, herself, had discounted so recently.
“It left on a helicopter and went to the other side,” I shot back, almost angrily.
I didn’t like losing. Or even the thought of such. Working hard, being successful, winning—all had been the way I’d lived my life since tearing up the field with Neil on our high school football team.
Team...
In that moment, with that thought, I remembered that there were other players. Others who might be impacted by the same entity we were facing.
“We have to let the others know,” I said.
For an instant, Elaine didn’t realize who I was talking about. Then the broadness that could apply to the term I’d chosen became clear.
“The other colonies,” she said.
Yuma. San Diego. Edmonton. Those were the other bastions of humanity we knew of. There would clearly be more, and must have been. Neil had mentioned in the ATV broadcast that there had been trouble with other colonies. Whether that referred to those we knew of could not be determined. Not standing where we were sampling the smoky air.
“We need to find out who the Unified Government moved on before us,” I said.
Elaine coughed lightly, the acrid haze working on her still compromised respiratory system. She was holding her own, but I found myself hoping, and praying, that Genesee’s plan to manufacture a diluted vaccine would work. And work fast.
“Let’s go,” I said, wanting both to get Elaine clear of the smoldering site, but also to get to the one person who might be able to shed some light on the Unified Government’s actions before it zeroed in on us.
“Where?” Elaine asked as I led her away from the shattered armory.
“To see Grace.”
* * *
“Did Neil say anything about the other survivor colonies?”
Grace listened to my question and thought as she stood next to Brandon’s crib, the piece of furniture brought to her house and tucked neatly next to the bed she’d shared with Neil.
“The other colonies?”
Since returning, as though she was in a state of low grade shock, the woman who’d been a sharp and determined individual, with a nursing degree to her name, had struggled to process even the simplest questions. It was as though each rattled around in her head, competing with raging thoughts, before any worthwhile response could be summoned.
“The people from Yuma, or San Diego,” Elaine prompted her.
For a moment Grace thought on the question, then she looked to Elaine, some connection made to memories that should still be fresh.
“Edmonton,” Grace said. “You forgot Edmonton.”
“That’s right,” Elaine said, smiling as she reached out and put a hand on our friend’s arm. “I did.”
In his crib, Brandon slept, not even stirring as we talked quietly near him. Across the hall, through the open door to her room, I could see Krista on her floor, drawing in her notebook, a pile of colored markers and pencils next to her in-progress creation. Art seemed to be her companion at the moment. An almost therapeutic way to express thoughts and feelings.
“Do you remember him saying anything about the Unified Government going to those places?” I asked. “Or anyone there? Did anyone talk about those places?”
“I didn’t spend much time with the others,” she told us. “Neil was always with them, and he didn’t want to talk about what went on.”
She paused for a moment and looked down to their son.
“He never seemed happy once we were there,” Grace added. “Never. I still don’t understand why he made us go.”
She was drifting off into a melancholy fugue. A state of simmering despair which we’d observed on several occasions since her return. We needed to pull her back from the edge of that mental abyss. For her own good, and for ours.
“Grace, we need to know about the other colonies,” I told her. “We need to know if they’ve been threatened. We need to warn them about what’s happening.”
“Why don’t you call them?”
The question, simple and innocent, came from the room across the hall. Krista’s room. The girl was looking up from her book, the drawing she’d been working on stopped, a bright yellow marker in hand.
“They’re a long ways away, sweetie,” Elaine said.
“Micah said that didn’t matter,” Krista countered. “He said the radio signal can ride a skywave.”
I stepped away from Grace and stood close to the bedroom door, Krista just a few feet away.
“Skywave?” I asked, the term vaguely familiar.
“It had a fancier name,” the child said. “But Micah said that signals go up and follow something in the air.”
“In the atmosphere,” Elaine said.
“Right,” Krista confirmed. “It was something in the atmosphere.”
I looked to Elaine.
“We need to talk to Westin.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, as we waited at Micah’s workstation, Private Westin arrived with Captain Schiavo.
“Here he is,” Schiavo said, personally delivering the man we’d wanted to see.
“You had a question about one of these radios?” Westin asked, ey
eing the impressive setup which had been put together by Micah, for Micah.
“We do,” I said. “Talk to us about skywave.”
“Ionospheric skip,” Westin said. “To put it simply, under certain conditions, radio signals can bounce off of charged layers in the ionosphere and reflect back to earth. Basically, it negates line of sight limitations to transmissions. You can send and receive signals over thousands of miles.”
“So with the Ranger Signal gone, we could, potentially, reach out to one of the other colonies,” I said.
“Sure,” Westin said. “If you knew what frequency they’d be monitoring.”
“And there are thousands of those,” Elaine said.
The idea, though technologically possible, had this one inherent flaw.
“Scatter,” Martin said.
I looked and saw the man standing at the end of the hall that spilled into the workstation area. He walked toward us and reached to the computer mouse, dragging it across the monitor to click on an icon labeled with the word he’d just spoken.
“Micah wrote this program to both scan all usable frequencies,” he explained. “And to transmit on them. Record a hailing message and run the program. If someone is listening, they’ll hear it.”
“And if they transmit back, the program will know?” Elaine asked.
“The program will lock in that frequency,” Martin said. “Then you initiate communication.”
Martin stepped back from the workstation, staring at it for a moment. Staring and even smiling. As he’d stated before, this was where his son had lived. The cemetery was where he rested. I understood why this space soothed him—it was where memories could seem real. If only for a moment.
“Let’s record our message,” Westin said.
* * *
We chose Elaine’s voice to bear our message.
“Any survivors, this is Bandon calling. Please reply.”
That transmission repeated thousands of times on thousands of frequencies through multiplexers Micah had constructed and wired into his array of computers and radios.