by T A Williams
“This the FOB?” Mason asked Zima quietly.
“Negative. The forward operating base is in Brooklyn. There are a couple of bases like this here on the Island. Set up to pick off the enemy who sneak in, and help out the people who still haven’t left.”
“People still live here?” Ben asked a little too loudly.
“Nobody wants to leave the Big Apple, baby,” Ty said shooting him a smile.
“Yeah,” Zima answered. “For a while they were shipping them down south where you don’t have to deal with winter but manpower is low. So they’ve been doing what they can to find them and protect them, but there isn’t a whole lot they can do.”
They stopped on the side of the street and a few soldiers walked past them as if they didn’t exist.
“Now what?” Mason asked. Ben was glad he didn’t have to.
“You two might as well get seen by the medic and then we’ll report and figure out what we are going to do next.”
Ben took in a deep breath. The power was out, the country was at war and he was right in the middle of it.
Alec
He watched the fire dance over the logs from afar. The bonfires were all over the empty field as the community members came together to let off steam and enjoy themselves. Alec always made a point to visit all of them before the fires died down to strengthen old relationships or add tinder to new ones. Tonight wasn’t any different, outside of the fact that he had visited every bonfire except for one.
He stood off in the shadows working up the courage to step forward. Sitting around the small fire was Trevor and his daughter Jamie, next to them was Mark and his daughter Bethany. They had decided to stay over for a while to assist Margie in training the horses since they still had a few that were not tame enough to ride, and Mark seemed to be an expert in that area. While Alec had managed to avoid them for the majority of their stay he knew at some point he was going to have to interact with them. He took in a calming breath and walked over.
“Hey Alec!” Jamie yelled as he stepped into the warm glow of the bonfire.
He felt everyone’s eyes on him and he walked over and sat down next to Trevor and Jamie, who just so happened to be on the opposite side of the bonfire.
“Haven’t seen you in a bit, everything all right?” Mark asked as he munched on something.
“Yeah, everything is good, just been busy,” Alec lied.
“We were just talking about where we used to live,” Jamie told him.
“Where’re you from?” Bethany asked him. The light from the fire caused her eyes to twinkle and Alec focused on the fire in front of him.
“Before the world went dark?”
“Yeah.”
“St. Louis. My family lived there, then we moved here when things went bad.”
It was quiet. Mark cleared his throat. “I understand you lost them.”
Alec wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. He didn’t feel he had lost them, he felt they had been taken away. “A group attacked us. Killed my youngest brother and kidnapped my sister.” His nerves disappeared as he was transported back to that time. “We went after my sister and my father was killed. My sister got away with another prisoner but I haven’t seen her since. While I went looking for her, my brother, Ben, left with a soldier to who knows where.” He paused and listened to the crackling fire for a moment. “I couldn’t find her so I returned here.”
“And on the way met up with me,” Trevor said. “And managed to save a town.”
“So I’ve heard.” Mark took a drink from a glass of water. “I’ve talked to a lot of people since things went south and not many of been through as much as you have.”
Alec nodded to him. “What about yourselves?”
“We’re from Indiana. I had a ranch there. Bethany and I raised horses and cattle and stuck to ourselves.”
“And when the power went out?” Alec asked.
“We stayed there as long as we could.” He didn’t say anything else and a dark shadow passed over Bethany’s face. Something had happened, something they didn’t want to talk about.
“Did you lose your mom too?” Jamie asked.
Bethany shook her head. “I never knew my mom.”
“We lost her mother when she was young. It’s always just been the two of us.”
It was quiet again. The fire danced and crackled, the sounds of laughter from a different bonfire floated over to them.
“So do you all have a name for this place?” Bethany asked.
Trevor shook his head no. “We never really talked about it.”
Alec smiled. Last year when Jamie had been struggling with the death of her mother they had talked and she had suggested a name, a name that Alec had liked. Things had just gotten crazy and he had not brought it up to the council. “Well, a good friend of mine had a name picked out.” He saw Jamie’s eyes light up. “Hope.” Her face broke into a smile. “I was thinking New Hope.”
Trevor put his arm around Jamie and pulled her close. His eyes met Alec’s and he gave him a nod. “I’ve heard that name suggested before. I like it.”
Mark smiled. “It’s fitting.”
Bethany gave him a bright smile and Alec returned it.
“I’ll bring it up in our next meeting, I’m pretty confident we can get it passed,” Alec said.
Mark raised his glass of water. “To New Hope.”
Everyone raised something in the air.
The night drug on and the fire soon began to die down. Mark fell asleep next to the fire and they continued talking into the night. Jamie went to bed and soon after Trevor left as well. Just like that it was only Alec and Bethany awake around the dying fire. Awkward silence reigned until Bethany shattered it.
“It’s pretty cool what you’re doing here.”
“What do you mean? This place?”
“Yeah,” she said her eyes once again sparkling in the light of the fire. “Bringing everyone together and building a town.”
“Thanks.” Alec knew he should probably say something else but nothing came to mind.
“You don’t say a lot, do you?” she said smiling.
“No, I do,” he then went quiet and realized he was proving her point. “I, uh, I don’t know. I guess I’m more of an internal guy.”
“Nothing wrong with an introvert, makes you mysterious.”
Alec couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t think anyone has called me mysterious before.”
“Are you kidding me? You come off as the heroic silent type. The people here talk about how you saved them and brought them to this safe-haven, meanwhile you wave it away like it’s no big deal.” She smiled again clearly having fun at his expense. “Then you just sit back not saying a word. Pretty cool.”
Alec let out another laugh and shook his head. “I like their version a lot better than the truth.”
The smile slowly disappeared from Bethany’s face. “Yeah, it’s like my father just saying we just left Indiana and showed up here. It sounds so simple and carefree.”
“And I’m sure it was anything but.”
“Exactly.” Bethany stared into the fire clearly pulling up an old memory. “The world is a bad place.”
That caught Alec off guard. His life since everything went black had seemed, at times, like a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from, but he couldn’t recall thinking the world as a whole was a bad place. “What makes you say that?”
“Just the stuff that’s happening and the bad people that are out there.” She glanced over at her father who was sound asleep on the ground. “He does everything he can to try and shield me from it, but there is so much evil out there.”
“What happened?” he dared to ask.
“There is no one thing. We stayed in a lot of towns while we were traveling, met a lot of people.” She took in a deep breath. “People robbed us, we watched people kill each other for pointless reasons, we saw…..bodies.” She shook her head. “It’s no one thing, it’s a collection of shitty moments and shitt
y people that just prove my point.”
“I don’t think I have any evidence to argue with you.”
This time Bethany laughed. “Actually you do.” She spread her arms out wide. “This place.”
The memory of Clive’s dead body crept into his mind. The man lying there on the brain-spattered ground with blood pouring from his head. “This place has had its challenges.”
“Well I think it’s great. I think you all have done a great job.”
She smiled and looked at him as her hair fluttered in the cool breeze. She was so beautiful. Something in his face must have given away what he was thinking because she turned red and quickly looked away.
“I, uh, I better catch some sleep. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do tomorrow,” he blurted out.
Her face was still a little red but when she glanced up there was something about the look she gave him that made him feel like he could face anything. “See you tomorrow.”
Alec smiled. “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”
Ally
She watched from the back of Dena’s horse as dozens of birds that had been sitting on the ground took flight, making it seem like the field suddenly started to fly.
“That was pretty cool, huh?” Dena asked.
Ally merely nodded. The woman was trying hard but Ally wasn’t sure what she was trying to do. Adam was nice to her and she appreciated it, but Dena acted like she wanted something from her, and Ally didn’t know what.
Spence rode up beside them and gave Dena a warm smile. It was the first time Ally had noticed anything outside of a scowl on the man’s face. “Remember when you said there was no way you were going to be able to ride for a day straight?”
Dena chuckled. “It just took a while for my ass to develop calluses.”
“I told you it wouldn’t take long.” Spence said smiling and then noticed Ally on the back. His smile faded and he turned his attention back to the field in front of them.
“What did you do?” Ally asked suddenly emboldened.
“What?” Spence asked, the look of annoyance back on his face.
“Before the lights went out, what did you do?”
Spence’s face lightened when Dena looked to him but he still didn’t smile. “I was in construction.”
“Did you all meet before or after?”
He shared a glance with Dena. “Before.”
They rode over a hill and the green grass and emerald trees were gone. In their place were dead blackened trees, and where the grass had once been was nothing more than barren dirt with a few brown weeds sticking up. They pulled up their horses and stared out at the field trying to figure out what they were looking at and then Ally noticed a partially burnt up seat sitting a few yards from them. She opened her mouth to point it out and then she saw another seat and then among the blackened trees she could see a large cylinder shaped object that was twice her height.
“Is that-“ Spence started but stopped. He turned to Dena but she had already spurred the horse forward and it trotted into the blackened field.
“No, no, no,” Dena said more to herself than anyone else.
Suddenly Dena swung off the horse nearly knocking Ally off and then leaving the girl all alone on the large horse. The woman ran into the middle of the blackened field and Ally finally realized what it was she was staring at. In between the dark of the field, between the burnt trees and brown weeds were the ruins of an airplane. Pieces of the fuselage were strewn all about and the wings or tail were nowhere to be seen, but there was no doubt what it was.
Spence and Adam came up beside Ally and got off their horses but no one approached Dena. The woman darted about, starting to walk one way and then quickly turning to walk another. She continually ran her hands through her hair and it sounded as if she was talking to herself.
“What is it?” Ally asked.
Spence walked forward to comfort the woman but she lashed out at his touch. “Get away from me,” she yelled. “I’m fine.”
Adam shifted his weight back and forth but didn’t budge an inch. Ally hopped off the horse and grabbed Adam by the hand. “What is it?”
Adam looked down at her and his eyes were teary. “It’s…..just give her some time.” He gently pulled away from Ally and walked in the direction of Dena but made a point to give her enough distance.
Coby sniffed from on top of the back of Adam’s horse and he kept his attention on the back of the horse’s head, pretending that what was happening in front of him wasn’t real.
Dena turned back towards them and saw Adam approaching. She pointed her finger at him and shook her head. “She missed it, Adam! Don’t you dare say a damn word. She texted me that she missed it.”
“I know,” Adam said.
“She was still there….she was there when it happened.”
Adam took a few more steps forward as Dena put her head in her hands. “You’re right, she was still there.”
Dena looked up at Adam and Ally could see the despair in the woman’s face. “She wasn’t on a plane.”
Adam reached out and pulled Dena willingly into his arms and the woman broke down sobbing. The two of them knelt down on the ground and stayed there. Spence turned around quickly and walked in the opposite direction away from the scene.
From beside Ally Coby let out a blubbery gasp as he tried to stop himself from crying. She walked over to him and placed her hand on his leg. “You ok?”
Coby wiped his eyes and nodded his head. From some reason in that moment he reminded her so much of her brother Joseph. Coby started to swing down and Ally helped him. When he got down he wiped his eyes again. “My sister.”
“I figured,” she said.
“She was supposed to be flying home the night that everything happened. Momma said that she texted that she had missed her flight and was trying to find another one.”
“Did she find one?”
Coby sniffed and wiped his nose with his shirt. “Mom says no. Daddy says he doesn’t know.”
Ally looked back out at Adam and Dena in the field. She had watched Joseph die, she had seen her father get shot. The person that saved her, Jess, told her about what had happened to her family so she knew they were gone. It hurt, especially late at night when she had been all alone, but she had still known. Adam and Dena didn’t know. Their daughter could have been in the wreckage of any of the hundreds of planes that fell that night, or she could be safe in a home in a warm bed. Ally fought back the urge to cry when she realized there was comfort in knowing her entire family was dead.
They camped early that day. Spence as always took off on his own searching for supplies and hunting for food. Dena and Adam built a fire and then brought Coby over with them as they sat down and just stared into the flames. Ally stood off to the side watching, unsure of what to do. Tiger whined next to her as if he could sense the mood in the air. Ally patted him on the head to comfort him and then noticed Dena staring at her. Dena’s face was streaked with tears and her eyes were bloodshot but she still gave Ally a smile.
“Come over here Ally.” She said. Ally walked over slowly and sat down beside them. Dena reached out and gave her shoulder a hard squeeze. “I’m sorry if I scared you earlier.”
“You didn’t,” Ally lied. They sat in silence for a few minutes and then Ally finally asked. “She is the reason you are going to California?”
“Yes,” Dena said laying her head on Adam’s shoulder. “She was going to college at USC.”
Ally nodded and didn’t ask any other questions. As night fell Spence returned with several already skinned squirrels and cooked them up. Everyone ate except for Dena who went into her tent early to fall asleep with Coby. For a few incredibly awkward minutes it was just Ally, Adam and Spence sitting around the fire. Adam asked Spence what he had seen when he left and the man just grunted. He tried one other time to talk to the man but Spence just got up and walked into his own tent. Adam didn’t shake his head or react in anyway, he just sat there.
Ally yawned an
d he looked over at her and smiled.
“Having you around helps her.”
“Helps her? How?”
Adam smiled as he visited times past. “You are like her in a lot of ways. You’re both quiet, but you can tell your mind is running a mile a minute.” Adam laughed when Ally raised an eyebrow. “And you both are tough and just want to do everything on your own.”
Ally didn’t know what to say to that. If anything, it made her feel bad. The last thing she wanted was a constant reminder of the people she had lost. She sat there watching Adam smiling to himself next to the fire and felt sorry for the man. Despite the smile the man’s face was strained and based on the bags underneath his eyes it didn’t appear like he had gotten a good night’s rest in years. That was when Ally realized it had been nearly three years since the power went out.
“When did you leave for California?” she asked.
The smile disappeared from the man’s face. “We stayed in our home as long as we could. Dena was convinced that she would come to us, but she never did. Before the first winter we had to leave and found a refugee camp run by the military.” Adam rubbed a hand over his face. “It was a good hour’s drive away from where we lived but every few days one of us would drive home to see if she had found her way home.”
But she never did Ally mentally finished for him.
“The camp was running low on supplies and they were shipping people off to different camps when Dena decided- when we decided that it would be best to go find our daughter ourselves.”
Ally read the sadness in his face. Dena may have been able to convince herself that her daughter was waiting for them to come and rescue her, but it didn’t look like Adam was as lucky. “Was she on a plane?” Ally heard herself ask.
Adam looked at her and took in a deep breath. “I pray to god she wasn’t. Every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed, I pray she didn’t find another flight.”
She didn’t have the strength to ask him if he thought his daughter was still in California waiting for them. Instead she gave him a comforting smile. “I’m sure she is still out there.”