Harden

by D. J. Molles

  Something tapped the back of her head.

  She instantly knew that it was the muzzle of a rifle.

  “Don’t fuckin’ move,” a voice said.

  Julia felt like her stomach was imploding. Gone supernova. Sucking reality into it.

  Her vision went white and sparkly at the edges.

  “Finger off the trigger,” the voice said.

  She pulled her finger off the trigger.

  “Let that rifle hang, and put your hands up high, and don’t make a move for it.”

  Julia did, and it was only when she stretched her hands up high that she remembered to take a breath, and some of the white sparkles disappeared from her vision.

  “Now, walk into the basement so we can get outta the open.”

  Julia stepped forward.

  Thought about spinning and trying to disarm whoever was behind her.

  Thought about making a run for it.

  Thought about refusing.

  Somehow, each imagining ended in some sort of disaster, and then, before she could come up with any worthwhile plan, she was standing in the doorway of the basement and looking in.

  Their solar lantern was sitting there, burning brightly on the pullout couch where Abe was seated, next to Lee’s body.

  Abe had his rifle in his arms, but it wasn’t held ready.

  Another armed man was standing behind him, at the side of the pullout couch.

  Abe looked at Julia and shook his head. “Jules, chill out. We’re all friends here.”

  tWELVE

  ─▬▬▬─

  MESSAGES

  Lee was standing in a place.

  It seemed passingly familiar.

  Bright sunshine poured over him. But it didn’t heat him. He still felt cold. He was surrounded by green grass that billowed in a breeze. In the distance was a hill. On that hill, a tree.

  That was it. There was nothing else.

  He felt…distraught.

  Out of place.

  Like a trespasser.

  “Do you recognize this place?” someone asked him.

  He turned and looked.

  Angela stood next to him. And he was not surprised to see her there. Like she was supposed to be there. Like she belonged in this place, although he was still not sure where this place was.

  “I think I do,” he said. “But I don’t know.”

  Angela only shook her head at him. “You don’t know it. You’ve never been here.” She seemed disappointed in him. She gave a small shake of her head, then turned away from him.

  Lee was not sure what to say.

  Not sure where he was.

  Angela took a few steps past him and looked over her shoulder. “Who are you, anyways?”

  And Lee felt the hollowness of nothing. Felt it like a big empty space, how every movement echoes and the wind sighs through it because there is absolutely nothing there.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  And then, abruptly, he was no longer in that green field. He was in the hollow place of his imaginings, a vast, empty cave, and the ceiling vaulted blackly over his head and down at his feet there was the sad leftovers of a fire, embers barely glowing in all this darkness.

  Seated cross-legged at this depressed fire was Julia, and Lee had the sense that she had somehow sprouted from Angela, that Angela had become Julia.

  Julia looked up at him and smirked. “This is where you belong, Lee. Down here with us. Down in the ground where the light doesn’t reach.”

  ***

  Lee came back into his body like he had been dropped into it from a great height.

  His eyes opened before he was fully conscious. The strange dream world of fields and hills and trees and dark caves had melted into something else. A dim room. There were people in it. He recognized Julia. He recognized Abe. The others were strangers.

  There was a moment when he thought that he was still dreaming.

  And then, in the next moment, for no particular reason, his brain snapped into place and he knew this was reality.

  Julia, across the room. An armed man behind her.

  Abe, sitting beside Lee on what looked like a bed.

  Another armed man, standing at the side of that bed.

  Lee had no idea what the fuck had happened, or where the hell he was. His only recollection was of a life-threatening sense of oh shit. A knock of adrenaline hit him like someone had injected it straight to his chest, and his heart started slamming.

  Three things made it through the whiteout of panic that rushed over him.

  He was aware that he was injured—he felt it in the deep and horrible ache in his body.

  He was aware that he had no weapon and no armor—not even a shirt.

  And he was aware that the armed stranger at the side of the bed was within reach of him.

  He did the only thing that he could think of to do.

  Lee’s eyes latched onto that stranger’s rifle—an SKS—and he lurched up, which caused a wave of apocalyptic pain in his chest, and he grabbed the man’s rifle.

  The room turned into bedlam.

  Lee got his left hand on the foregrip and his right hand seized the buttstock, and he ripped backward. The man yelped, shouted, and started pulling back.

  Lee hadn’t even noticed Deuce laying at his side, but the dog bolted off the mattress and started barking savagely.

  Everyone was yelling.

  Abe launched his body over top of Lee’s, smacking the rifle out of his grip. Abe’s voice punched at his eardrums, but it took a second for Lee to register what he was actually saying.

  “No, Lee! Stop! Stop!”

  The stranger behind Julia crossed the room in a flash and pointed his rifle at Lee, yelling, “Put it down! Put it down!”

  The SKS clattered to the floor, and the man who had held it two seconds earlier dove for it.

  In a wash of paralyzing confusion, Lee allowed Abe to flatten him back into a laying position. Abe had one hand posted on Lee’s sternum, which made his entire upper body feel like it was on fire, while Abe’s other hand pumped the air.

  “Stop!” Abe shouted. “Everyone chill the fuck out!”

  Lee lay there, struggling to breathe, wondering why he was struggling to breathe, wondering why it hurt so damn much. Over Abe’s shoulder, he watched the second armed man dip his muzzle a few inches.

  It was enough of an acquiescence that Abe turned away from that man and faced Lee.

  Lee’s whole body was shaking. He realized he had Abe’s shirt clutched in two handfuls. He released them and held up his hands, not sure if that was the right move. It felt wrong, but Abe was telling him to stop. His hands hovered in the air, and they trembled violently.

  The other armed stranger had scooped up his rifle and backed off to the far side of the room, holding it at a low ready, his eyes darting as he swore vehemently.

  Deuce had planted himself between the two strangers, his head low, his tail between his legs, growling fiercely.

  Abe grabbed Lee’s head, holding him steady, anchoring him to reality. Abe’s dark eyes were locked on his, searching them for reason.

  The image of Abe’s bearded face suddenly blurred.

  Tears of pain and abject confusion were springing out of Lee, like the bedrock of his being had been cracked open. He couldn’t control himself. His mental defenses were shattered.

  “Lee. Are you with me? You see me?”

  “What the fuck is going on?” Lee coughed out, sending another rack of pain through his chest. He inhaled sharply, and it hurt and shivered his body. “What the fuck is happening?”

  “These are friends,” Abe said in the tone of someone speaking into an abyss of insanity. “We’re all friends here, okay? Can you relax? Can you sit back?”

  Lee realized he was still straining against Abe’s grip, trying to sit up against it. He released the tension in his core, and some of the pain in his chest abated.

  “There you go,” Abe counseled. Then he turned to the armed strang
ers. “We’re good. Everyone’s good. Let’s all stop fucking pointing guns, okay? Let’s all be calm.”

  The two strangers exchanged a worried glance, and then lowered their rifles further.

  Lee’s pulse was hitting so hard that it was twitching his whole body. His breathing was too fast.

  Slow it down. Think.

  Compartmentalize.

  Get your shit together.

  He started pulling air through his nose and breathing it out slow through pursed lips.

  What happened? Why are you here?

  The pain his chest went from a widespread blaze to a small, localized flame. The left side of his chest. His ribs.

  His hands fluttered to his side. He craned his neck to look.

  “Ah-ah,” Julia’s voice, shooting through the darkness of his confusion like a searchlight in a storm. “Don’t touch that.”

  Lee glanced up, his brows still furrowed, his eyes still wet. He distinctly recalled this feeling. This shattered feeling. He had felt it once before. On a forest floor. Lying there, left to die, after a bullet had skimmed along his skull and jangled his brain.

  I’ve been injured…

  Lee blinked. Focused.

  Julia was on one knee at the side of the bed, next to Abe. Her eyes were on the side of his chest, but then they flicked up and met his. Julia gently pushed his fingers away from his ribs, away from whatever it was she didn’t want him to touch.

  Lee strained again to see his ribs.

  A mound of bandaging, taped around a plastic tube that was protruding from him. Thin, watery-looking blood spotted the inside of the tube, like condensation.

  “The fuck is that?” Lee croaked.

  “It’s a chest tube,” Julia said, her voice calm and clinical.

  Calm and clinical.

  Julia.

  Julia standing over him while bullets screamed through night air.

  The memories hit him like a geyser.

  He remembered looking up at her. Seeing the stars behind her. He remembered the pain in his side. Remembered her telling him to breathe, try to breathe…

  We are born surrounded

  The ambush. The shooting. The running through the woods. The flicker of muzzle flashes in the night. The cold, hard truth of tactics like a thin veil over the fear of imminent death. The feeling of something hitting him hard in the chest.

  And spend our lives fighting to the death

  “You were shot in the chest,” Julia said, her words slow and enunciated. “Do you remember that?”

  Lee did remember it. “How long?” he blurted. “How long have I been out?”

  “Three days. Almost four. This is the fourth night since it happened.”

  The surrealism of lost time hit him like a right hook. It didn’t seem possible. Almost four fucking days? How could all that time simply disappear?

  A more urgent thought occurred to him.

  “Where’s everyone else?” he said, his eyes going wide, flicking between Abe and Julia. “Where’s…? Where’s Brian? And Carl and Nate?”

  Julia averted her gaze. Blinked like something was caught in her eye.

  Abe’s throat bobbed. Constricted. “Nate was killed in the ambush,” he said, his voice low. “Tomlin and Carl were captured.”

  Lee’s mind seemed to spasm. His stomach felt like it was an elevator, and the cables had just snapped. His thoughts lurched to one thing, and then the other. Nate’s dead, and then, Tomlin and Carl are captured.

  Lee’s first instinct was to ask about Nate, but then he realized the stupidity of the question. It didn’t matter that the truth was too large to be absorbed. Abe was looking in his eyes and telling him that Nate was dead. Was there really a question to ask?

  Nate’s dead.

  Lee reeled. Remembered to breathe. Sucked in air.

  He couldn’t accept it. But he deflected. He went to the other question. The one that did need to be asked.

  “Carl and Tomlin,” Lee said, coming up onto his elbows with significant effort. “Who captured them?”

  Julia and Abe didn’t answer. But Abe raised his head and looked at someone.

  Lee followed his gaze to the man standing across the room. The stranger that he’d tried to disarm. Probably would have, and then shot dead, if Abe’s reactions hadn’t been so quick.

  Lee took stock of both of the strangers.

  The one with the SKS was a younger guy with sandy blond hair sticking out beneath a black watch cap. He had quick, cautious eyes. He carried a pack on his back and was dressed in jeans and a dark blue jacket. He had no other weapons or ammo on him, unless he carried it in his pack.

  The other stranger was similarly dressed, but older, with short-cropped, balding hair, and he carried an AR variant with a hunter’s scope on it.

  The younger one took a step forward and appeared to relax some. “It’s Lee, right? Lee Harden?”

  Lee nodded once.

  “I’m Braxton.” He nodded towards his older counterpart. “That’s Trey. We’ve heard a lot about you. And the UES.”

  Lee didn’t care about that right now. “Who took my guys?”

  Braxton blinked, shook his head. “Look, we don’t know for sure…”

  “It might be some guys we’re familiar with,” Trey spoke up.

  Lee pivoted his attention to the older guy.

  “We were in the area, scavenging, when we heard the ambush,” Trey continued. “We saw what happened. Hightailed it out of town. Went back to our group. Our main guy, I guess our leader, so to speak, he told us to come back and try to make contact with anyone that survived. Thought we might have some mutual interest in the people that took your guys.”

  Lee felt a rush of frustration heat the back of his neck. Made him suddenly feel sick. He tried to speak, but the air that he gathered for the words turned to acid in his chest and he started coughing violently.

  Julia put a gentle hand on his chest. “Try not to cough, Lee.”

  Lee did his best to stifle the racking pain in his lungs. Let out a wordless growl.

  Trey held out a placating hand, and waited until Lee’s coughing fit had ebbed before speaking quickly. “Listen. Our guy, Paolo, he told us not to give you all the deets here. He’s got his reasons for being circumspect. I’m sure you understand. We’re willing to build some trust here, but we don’t know you people, and you don’t know us. We’re not just going to spill everything we got when we don’t even know who you are.”

  Lee was struggling to reset his mind to reality, like putting your house back in order after a burglar has ransacked it.

  You have to be in control.

  You have to TAKE control…

  “You know my name,” Lee managed. “You know we’re from the UES.”

  Trey nodded, coolly. “Sure. That’s what you say. But things are…tricky out here.”

  “Well, where the fuck’s this Paolo of yours?” Lee demanded.

  “He’s at our place. We’ll take you, if you want. Paolo will meet you there. He’s the one that wants to talk to you. He’ll let you in on the details.”

  Julia snapped her eyes to Trey. “Why should we trust you people?”

  Trey shrugged. “You don’t have to. But Paolo knows who took your guys.”

  “So Paolo wants something from us,” Julia realized.

  Trey didn’t respond to this, but his silence felt like answer enough.

  Julia glared. “What’s to stop us from taking the two of you and beating the information out?”

  Trey and Braxton both tensed again, going back on high-alert.

  Before the situation could muddy any worse, Lee held up a hand, stifling another cough. “Stop. Both of you stop.” Take control. “No one’s beating anyone.”

  Julia continued to stare menacingly at Trey, and Trey held her gaze, unflinching.

  Lee had to slow his respiration again. Every time he started breathing hard, the pain in his chest mounted and made him want to cough. But even in the last few minutes of bei
ng awake, he was adapting to it. Learning to control the need to cough. It reminded him of drown-proofing.

  This is who you are. This is what you do.

  We’ve got a mission, Lee was thinking rapidly. Make friends, and find fuel.

  “Trey,” Lee said, controlling his voice, working some command back into it. The other man tore his defiant gaze from Julia, and met Lee’s eyes again. “We’ll talk to Paolo, okay?”

  Trey pursed his lips. Then nodded, curtly.

  Lee looked at Abe and Julia. “Has anyone managed to get on the line with Fort Bragg?”

  “Our satphone got shot in the ambush,” Julia said. “I tried to piece it back together, but it’s done. Power source was shredded.”

  “Fuck.” Lee tilted his head back and breathed steady to quell the sickening frustration. Control. Command and control. “Any idea how we can get comms with them?”

  “Radios won’t reach,” Abe pointed out the obvious. “Nearest settlement with a satphone is back in Butler.”

  Lee closed his eyes. They felt hot and feverish behind his eyelids. He thought. Forced himself to think through his physical discomfort. Forced himself to compartmentalize all the bad shit into another place in his mind, and simply focus on the problem standing before him now.

  They had to get comms with Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg needed to know what had happened in Hurtsboro, and from there, they might be able to dispatch a reaction force.

  But a trip back to Butler would cost them time. And time, they did not have. They had already lost four fucking days.

  Lee felt Carl and Tomlin’s absence like a cable tied to his chest. The longer they waited, the further they stretched away, and the cable was taut to the point of breaking. They had a trail to pursue right now. But if they let that trail go cold…

  We are born surrounded…

  The thoughts were almost invasive. Hard to beat down.

  Images from the ambush peppered his brain like stray bullets.

  Muzzle flashes in the night.

  The nightmare feeling of his lungs collapsing.

  Fucking FOCUS!

  Lee opened his eyes again and looked at Trey, then at Braxton. “Do you guys have a vehicle?”

  Trey considered this for a moment, as though unsure whether or not to volunteer that information. Then he nodded. “Yes.”