by Noah Mann
Dorothy...
Dorothy Quinn. We’d learned her full name as she warmed to the town she’d adopted, and which had welcomed her. Once fearful and broken, she was flourishing now, and spent most of her time helping new arrivals acclimate to life in Bandon. Life that was good, and real. Life that held promise.
Life that held hope.
That we had turned a corner, and were growing, even with the departure of so many to settle in Remote, was deeply satisfying to me. My waning time on the Defense Council had been the most important period of service, I felt. Good things, big things, had been set in motion.
And life at home was as wonderful as I could have imagined. More, actually.
Only a few weeks had passed since I’d come home from Remote for the final time, but the world had righted itself where Elaine and I were concerned. I was her husband, and she was my wife. We were parents of a beautiful child whom we would raise in a world that was, day by day, turning green again.
Our alliance with Camas Valley had solidified, with specialists from each of our communities traveling to the other to provide needed expertise in various fields. Power generation, oil extraction, medicine. We were helping each other. The footprint of humanity’s good nature had spread from west to east, and we had every hope that would continue as other survivor colonies were located.
We were moving forward. Not just in baby steps, but in leaps and bounds. There was a confidence building amongst the residents of Bandon. A belief that our tomorrows were going to be bright.
Part Five
Dark Skies
Forty Three
Sally and Nelson Vickers spotted the light while out for a midnight stroll along the beach. He sent her running home to report what they’d seen while he remained to stay focused on the spot of flashing white far offshore.
“Is it still there?” Schiavo asked.
“Right there,” Nelson said, pointing to a spot between the rocks rising beyond the surf line.
And there it was. A tiny, hot spot of light, flashing on and off. On and off with some purpose that was more than familiar.
“Private Westin...”
The captain summoned her com expert forward. She’d brought him along, as well as Martin, swinging by my house to pick me up before speeding to the beach. The information that the light was not burning steady, but strobing randomly, had made it abundantly clear that whatever vessel was out there was trying to make contact through code.
“Do you need NVGs?” Schiavo asked.
Westin shook his head, choosing his own standard binoculars over the night vision optics the captain had brought along.
“Let’s see what they’re saying,” Westin said, bringing the binoculars up and focusing in on the distant light.
I looked to Nelson, who stood without his wife, staring out at the pulsing, distant light.
“Sally said you told her to stay at home after she called this in,” I said.
Nelson nodded and remained fixed on the staccato flashing where black water met blacker sky.
“She also said you told her to use the phone, not the radio,” I recounted, sharing what Schiavo had told me on our way to the beach.
Now Nelson looked at me, concern plain on his face.
“That’s Morse code, Fletch,” Nelson said, stating the obvious for some effect I didn’t yet understand. “To me that says whoever’s out there isn’t too keen on using the radio, so I figured maybe we shouldn’t either.”
The man was nearly twice my age, but sharper by a factor of ten. He would make a good addition to the Defense Council, I thought. My time was almost up, and there would be discussions about who to appoint to fill my place, a choice that, as I’d insisted, residents would have to approve through a vote. Elaine had decided to stay as a member, as had the others, but my tenure was coming to an end. Willingly.
“I didn’t want Sally down here until we figured out what this means.”
“I’d say you made the right move,” I told him.
“It’s the Rushmore,” Westin said, drawing all attention to him.
“You’re certain?”
Westin lowered the binoculars for a moment and looked to his captain. A smile spread across his still boyish face.
“Positive.”
He brought the binoculars back up and focused on the lights again. Lights emanating from the Navy supply ship which had brought us much of what we’d needed to stay alive while farms and fields and forests regenerated. Until one day it came no more, leaving us fearing the worst.
“We need to signal them,” Westin said.
Martin looked behind to the Humvee, angled on the sand a few yards away.
“I’ll get it pointed in the right direction,” Martin said. “We can use the headlights.”
It took him less than a minute to reposition the beefy vehicle. He stepped out but remained by the open driver’s door.
“Three long flashes, then off,” Westin instructed, then zeroed in on the distant lights, waiting through the signal as Martin operated the Humvee’s headlights.
“An ‘O’ for ‘okay’,” I theorized aloud, and Westin brought one hand briefly off his binoculars and gave me a thumbs up as confirmation.
Just a few seconds after the signal had been sent, the lights out at sea stopped. And stayed dark.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Westin answered, still scanning the dark ocean.
Schiavo waited, as the rest of us were. Had the town been made aware of a ship off our coast, even not knowing just which ship it was, the beach would have been flooded with people. Sally Vickers had not shared what she’d seen, clearly in sync with her husband’s trepidation concerning the unknown.
“Westin...”
Schiavo calmly prodded her com specialist, her patience thinning.
“Nothing, ma’am.”
She shook her head and turned, walking quickly to the Humvee, stepping past her husband to retrieve something from the front seat, returning quickly with the item in hand.
“Who’s really out there?” she asked, not expecting an answer from any of us as she raised the stout Night Vision Glasses and dialed in the spot where the light had been.
“What do you see?”
Schiavo didn’t answer my question. She passed the NVGs to me so I could see for myself. I did as she had and located the source of the now darkened lights, finding what she just had, a silhouette on the artificially bright horizon, greenish shape unmistakable.
“It is the Rushmore,” I said.
“Look at her hull forward,” Schiavo directed.
I did, and easily found what Schiavo had taken note of. The bow of the ship was unsymmetrical. Graceful lines had turned blunt, even twisted.
“Battle damage,” Schiavo said.
I handed the advanced optics back to her. She held them low, having seen enough.
“Why did she stop communication?” Westin wondered aloud to his captain.
“That’s not the right question,” Martin said, rejoining us from his position by the Humvee. “Why’d they start communicating?”
“She’s sending again,” Nelson said, pointing past us to the wide, black ocean.
Westin brought his binoculars quickly up and processed the code being sent, watching for a long moment before he briefly lowered the glasses.
“What the hell?”
“Private...”
Westin looked to his commander, more than puzzled.
“Captain, did you have a dog when you were six?”
It took a moment for the weirdness that had swept over Westin to transfer to Schiavo.
“Excuse me?”
“Cap, that’s what they’re asking,” Westin said. “What was Captain Schiavo’s dog’s name when she was six?”
Schiavo’s gaze narrowed down and she looked to me, then to her husband.
“I didn’t have a dog,” she said. “I had a cat. Her name was Lady.”
Martin thought for a mom
ent, then looked out to the ocean which had gone dark again, no lights, the question asked. It was our turn to answer, though what that answer should be, and what the query was truly seeking, seemed to be mired in collective uncertainty.
“Are they trying to identify you?” Martin wondered. “Make sure it’s actually you before coming ashore or making further contact?”
“They know enough to know that you’re a captain now,” Westin said.
When I’d first encountered Schiavo on Mary Island she’d been a lieutenant leading a small contingent of soldiers trying to beat back a rogue Russian incursion along the Alaskan coast. After her actions in Skagway, where she’d led a force which freed hundreds from Kuratov’s grip, including helpless children being used as human shields in the pit, word had come that she’d been promoted. Word supposedly from the very top of the chain of command—the President himself.
“If they expect you to be here, then why throw wrong information?” Nelson asked.
Schiavo thought for a moment, as did I. Somehow, whoever was out there knew enough about Captain Angela Schiavo to be confident that the question they were asking would be in the ballpark of correctness, but not on the money. They would also know that an officer of her ability and experience, particularly after all that had happened since the blight struck, would be wary. Or should be.
“Westin,” I said, and the trooper looked to me. “Send ‘wrong question’ to them.”
The private waited, shifting his attention to his leader. I knew immediately that Schiavo understood what I was suggesting.
“How would Captain Angela Schiavo really answer them?” I asked her, just to reinforce my point.
She nodded lightly, mostly to herself, the faced Westin.
“Send it,” she said.
The private walked to the Humvee where Martin had positioned it and pulsed out the message using the headlights. We waited, scanning the night far beyond the shore as Westin rejoined us and wielded his binoculars again. A second or two later, the lights began again.
“What did they say?” Martin asked.
Westin lowered the binoculars and smiled.
“Who was Lady?”
Schiavo, too, smiled. From an obscure question answered in some compendium of personal information collected on her, a connection had been made.
“That had to be buried deep in the Pentagon somewhere,” she said, looking to her com expert. “Give them an answer, private.”
Westin hustled to the Humvee to transmit the reply, then returned to zero in on the Rushmore.
“Okay, so they know that about me, and they know that I’m here,” Schiavo said, trying to comprehend the significance of those two facts. “Why am I suddenly popular?”
Before anyone could offer a guess, educated or otherwise, Westin spoke up.
“They’re sending again.”
Once more we watched and waited as the message came in.
“Cease all radio communications,” Westin said, binoculars glued to his eyes. “Repeat, cease all radio communications.”
Schiavo absorbed that directive and looked to me.
“They’re not warning about the hiders,” I said.
The captain shook her head in agreement. Whatever beacon we’d innocently provided to draw the hidden remnants of civilization to our town, the powers that be aboard the Navy ship would be concerned about larger threats. More profound enemies.
“Further instructions coming soon,” Westin translated.
“What instructions?” Martin wondered. “From who? When?”
We waited for some further clarification, but the lights in the darkness pulsed no more. After a moment, Westin lowered the binoculars and looked to us.
“She’s pulling away,” he said.
Schiavo raised the NVGs and looked out to the Rushmore, watching for just a moment before bringing the device down.
“She’s heading out to sea,” Schiavo confirmed.
The Navy ship hadn’t even waited for us to confirm we’d understood her final message. That either meant that those aboard had confidence that we had, or it meant that she’d only come this close to shore with some concern and was now making a hasty retreat.
“Something’s not right,” Martin said.
I couldn’t disagree with him. But to Schiavo, the oddness had an even more ominous familiarity to it.
“We waited for a message before,” she said. “Everyone remember how that turned out?”
No one who’d been in Bandon could forget it.
“The Unified Government giving us an ultimatum,” Martin said.
“And our answer was war,” Nelson recalled.
At that moment, the best we could do was hope, and pray, that history didn’t repeat itself.
Forty Four
The roar built an hour before dawn, rumbling over the town, familiar and frightening all at once.
“An aircraft,” Elaine said as she roused from the hour of sleep she’d managed after feeding our daughter around five in the morning.
“A big one,” I said.
I was already getting up, slipping quickly into my pants and boots. There was a momentary rush of fear, and I was certain Elaine had felt it, too. Having been through the nighttime passage of the Unified Government’s drones during the siege, this return of unknown sounds from the sky was, at the very least, disconcerting. Neither of us wanted to consider what it might mean to any degree beyond that.
“Wai—”
I almost said it. Almost told her to wait there, inside with our daughter. But I caught myself.
“We can see from the front yard,” I said, correcting my delivery.
Elaine finished dressing, then the both of us gave a quick look in on our still sleeping daughter and grabbed our long weapons from the front closet before heading out.
There was only the barest hint of the new day to the east, a trickle of light blue outlining the treetops, but the sky in all other directions was pure black flecked by flickering stars and bright points of light that were Jupiter and Mars. No moon hung above, leaving the fading night to seem, for a while at least, as total as it had been before we’d been awakened.
“It’s from the south,” Elaine said.
She was right. And it was coming closer, the sound changing as it did, the familiar whine of jet engines rising.
“Fletch!”
Dave Arndt came jogging toward us from his place up the block. His Remington pump was slung across his back, untied laces of his boots whipping about with each hurried step.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
“I’d rather know who it is,” Elaine said, letting her MP5 hang at her side from its sling.
We were all armed and ready, as were most people spilling onto the street. The unknown had often presented itself in ways that later turned out to be threatening. There was a reasonable wariness toward the approaching aircraft.
To me, though, its appearance seemed too coincidental. The arrival of the Rushmore offshore just over twenty four hours earlier might not be related, but I didn’t think so. Its sudden and unexplained retreat from the coast had left those of us who’d witnessed it unsure of the reason for its visit. The coded messages flashed could be thought of as some mission it was performing.
Or they might have been a ruse to confirm that our military commander was present for targeting, not for talking.
“These aren’t going to do anything against it,” I said, briefly lifting my AR.
“That thing’s a monster,” Dave said.
He was not wrong. And as the craft drew closer and closer, flying what could only be described as a bit above treetop level, we began to feel its approach, the rumble buzzing up from the earth below and through our feet.
“Here it comes,” Dave said.
Elaine reached out and took my hand as the shadow the craft made against the sky grew, and grew, its wings seeming like those of some predatory bird sweeping down upon its prey.
“Jesus!”
/> Dave shouted the exclamation and slammed his hands over his ears, the big jet streaking almost directly overhead, its deafening roar shaking any who had not already risen out of their beds. I cringed, straining to get a better look at the plane, but could only glimpse minimal details from its silhouette. Four engines hung beneath its wings, which sprouted from a wide, long fuselage. As I turned to keep tracking its progress north, I saw Elaine sprinting away from where we stood, bounding up the steps and into the house, obviously worried that the unexpected noise of the pass directly overhead had startled our daughter from her sleep.
“What the hell’s going on, Fletch?”
I had no answer for Dave. Even if I’d wanted to hazard some guess connecting the overflight with what a few of us had seen the previous day, I couldn’t. Word of the Rushmore’s reappearance hadn’t leaked from the small circle which was privy to that knowledge. This, though, was about as far from a secret as a thing could be.
“I’m not sure, Dave.”
The sound receded, then seemed to sweep west, out over the Pacific.
“It’s turning,” Dave said.
“Coming back for another pass,” I suggested.
Before Dave could agree or offer a counter to what I’d said, a Humvee came fast around the corner up the block and pulled to a sliding stop next to my pickup at the curb. Schiavo, Martin, and Westin got out and joined me where our yard met the sidewalk.
“It’s a seven-forty-seven,” Martin said.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Saw enough of that forward hump to know,” he told me.
“Someone got a commercial bird up,” Westin said.
To that, Schiavo shook her head, the expression tinged with a hint of suspicious uncertainty.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
Elaine came back out, Hope bundled tight and held against her chest. She was fussing, maybe frightened. The only solace I took after noting that was the belief that no imprint of this terrifying memory would last. The blissful ignorance of newborn life would shield her from that.
“He’s coming around,” Martin said.