by Justin Bell
“Reminds me of Texas,” she said quietly. “Reminds me of home.”
Angel chuckled. “Ain’t nothin’ about this place that reminds me of L.A. that’s for sure.”
“It’s quiet, though,” Rebecca said. “Warm. Peaceful.”
“Only because we’re doin’ what they tell us to.”
Fields opened her eyes and turned toward him. “Is what they’re telling us to do so bad? Feeding animals? Tending to the plants and gardens? Seems like almost a fair trade for not getting shot at.”
Angel shrugged. “There’s something to be said for having your freedom.”
Rebecca shook her head. “Freedom. What freedom? We live in fear these days, Angel, not freedom.”
“Seems to me we’ve got just as much to worry about here. What if they do detonate that bomb in Philadelphia. Or even Washington. This place gets wiped off the map just like any other.”
“Do you really think we can stop it?”
“Who else will?”
Rebecca breathed long and hard. The smell of hay and fresh cut grass drifted through the air, crawling up into her nostrils. She smiled again, letting the sun work its way across her skin, warming it to the touch.
Angel remained quiet beside her, feeling the same pleasing warmth of the sun and smelling the same smells, though not nearly as familiar to him as they were to her.
“The war doesn’t even exist here,” Rebecca said finally. “They’re barely aware of it.”
“Ignorance is bliss?”
“Maybe sometimes. There are children here, and to them, nothing has changed.” She turned to face him. “Can you even imagine? Living your life now the same way you were living six months ago?”
“Never happen for us,” he said. “Even if we put up shop here. This isn’t how life was, not for us.”
“But maybe it’s how life can be.”
“Meanwhile, we’re gonna let Ironclad and Karl Green, and all those scumbags kill another million people?”
Fields looked down over the fence, her eyes fixed on the grass and hay. A lone cow mooed off in the distance.
“I know you don’t think we can stop them,” Angel continued, “but what would it say about us if we didn’t try? Weren’t you the one telling us all we had a duty to fight back when we were back at the mall?”
“And what did that get us?” she asked. “The Shimizu’s died. The mall burned. Greer…”
Angel lowered his gaze and squeezed her shoulder gently. “Greer woulda died no matter what, Becky. His death ain’t on you. Neither are the Shimizu’s, all right? You’ve been beatin’ yourself up over that for a month.”
“We had a place. We had a life. The mall was working well for us. Maybe if we’d stuck around instead of running off we would have been able to fight off whoever torched it.”
“Or maybe they woulda just torched us along with it. How many times are we going to have this conversation?”
“Until I believe it,” Rebecca replied coolly. “And I don’t.”
They stood in silence for a few beats, looking out over the grass and fields, staring at the small white house in the distance, the one that had been but a shadow the night before. Rebecca wondered what went on inside. Were they cooking breakfast right now? The same way they’d cooked breakfast so many months before? Inside those four walls, had anything changed at all since the nuclear detonation? What she would give to live in that kind of isolation.
“So, what?” Angel asked. “We just bury our heads in the hay and pretend life is sorta normal? That’s our play?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Maybe it’s the only one that makes sense.”
Angel shook his head. “I don’t believe that for a minute.” He turned and looked at her. “Neither do you.”
“You don’t know what I believe,” she replied. “We’ve known each other for what? Two months?”
“Feels a lot longer than that,” Angel said.
“Jerk.” Rebecca punched him in the arm.
“Hey, watch it, lady. I got shot, remember?”
“Yeah in the other arm. Don’t be such a baby. There’s a kid in the barn that got shot more times than you for crying out loud.”
“I am humbled by your sympathy.”
Rebecca leaned over the fence, her arms crossed and dangling. Angel’s arm draped over her shoulders, feeling comfortable, like a thick, rugged muscle-hewn blanket.
Farm smells surrounded them like an invisible embrace, Rebecca relishing in the reminder of days gone by and a home she knew she’d never see again.
***
“Clean the stables? Are these dudes serious?” Max lifted the shovel and looked at it, then looked over at the fenced-in area where the horses were roaming, most of them head down, chewing on the grass and hay scattered throughout the ground. Behind the horse pen was a wooden structure, long and narrow, a slanted roof mounted on several wooden slats dividing each section where the horses lived.
“What’s the matter, never shoveled crap before?” Phil asked.
“Not like you have, old man,” Max shot back, chuckling.
“I changed your diaper, which was almost as bad.” Max and Brad both laughed at this, though Brad’s laugh was short and chopped.
“Well, good, you’ve got experience.” Max turned and tossed the shovel to his father. Phil reached out to grab it, but the handle whacked his palm and jumped aside, toppling to the ground. “Nice catch, Todd Helton!” barked Max. He had a long love for the Colorado Rockies first baseman, even if he had retired several years before.
“Cut me some slack, this bandage messes up the depth perception.”
Brad bent over and silently plucked the shovel from the ground, walking toward the stables, leaving Phil and Max in his wake. He approached the fence and bent over, snaking through the top two bars, into the horse pen, then angled toward the stables.
“Everything okay with him?” Phil asked.
“He’s taking the Clancy thing hard,” Max replied.
“I think we all are.”
“Well, yeah. But after his parents and everything? Clancy had been like a dad to him I think.”
“I’m sure it’s rough.”
“He sees us all joking around and stuff, and he realizes that everyone he’s ever really joked around with is gone, maybe except for me.”
“And you’ve got your family. He doesn’t.”
“Right.”
“Anything we can do to soften that blow, you think?” Phil and Max had halted their walking, giving Brad some space as he entered the stable with the shovel and started working. Max shrugged.
“I’ve tried a bunch of things,” Max said. “I was able to get to him, even after what happened to his mom and dad. But in the past few weeks since Clancy died, he’s really closed off.”
Phil watched the young man work, bending over and sliding the shovel down into the hay, pulling out mounds of horse manure and piling it outside the wooden construct. He climbed up over the fence, Max close behind him, dropping down into the hay within the fence’s perimeter. Around them, inside the penned in area, horses walked, snorting and clomping their heavy hooves.
“What sort of stuff was he into at school?” Phil asked. “As weird as it sounds, I don’t feel like I know him that well, even though we’ve been with him constantly for over three months.”
“He likes video games,” Max said. “I think he used to collect comics. Played Dungeons and Dragons quite a bit with some kids in his old school. He was kind of a nerd, but one of those cool nerds, you know?”
Phil shook his head, confused.
“Whatever,” Max replied, exasperated. “Anyway, I don’t know what to say to him anymore, really. I’ve tried all that stuff.”
“Best we can do is just be there, I think,” Phil said.
“You guys talking about me?” Brad asked, turning toward them. His eyes were narrowed against the bright sun.
“Little bit,” Phil replied honestly. “Just talking about how much crap we t
hink you can shovel in an hour. I’ve got ten bucks on it; keep working, would ya?”
Brad laughed in spite of himself and Max took a few steps forward. “Here, let me hit it for a little while.”
Brad tossed the shovel to him and he caught it. Brad walked by him toward Phil.
“Can you see all right, Mr. F?”
“I see well enough to tell you not to call me Mr. F for the tenth time, kid.”
“Sorry. My bad,” Brad said. “Old habit.”
Phil ran a hand through his hair. “It’s all right, buddy. I mean, we’re practically family, right?”
“I guess,” Brad replied. He stood next to Phil and they looked around over the expanse of the farm. A distance away they could see Rebecca and Angel standing by a fence, hanging their arms over the edge. Off to the north, they thought they saw the cows roaming around, and Brad was pretty sure that’s where Winnie and Tamar had ended up after they’d been ushered out of the barn.
“It’s actually pretty nice here,” Brad said quietly. “Not as dangerous.”
Phil turned, looking along the perimeter of the farmlands. As he looked, he could make out a few shrouded forms scattered throughout the edge of some thick trees. By the small white house he saw a few more, and where the dirt road driveway ended by the south side of the homestead, two men on horseback trotted at an even pace.
“It doesn’t look dangerous, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t,” he said quietly. “In fact, I’d argue this is worse. There’s a false peace, but trust me, those guys with the bows and arrows are watching our every move.”
Brad glanced around himself, his face hardening.
“Just do what we’re told,” Phil said quietly. “Best I can tell you right now. Do what we’re told and try to figure out how to get to Philadelphia.”
“Or just do what we’re doing and wait for them to set off another nuke.”
Phil looked at the boy, his face stoic and serious, no sense of ironic humor anywhere on it. Phil didn’t reply. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
Chapter Four
The metal-on-metal bang and slam was nearly deafening as Gerard Krueller approached the main manufacturing segment of the makeshift factory. As part of the warehouse complex, it had once been a storage area for an Italian restaurant distribution company, shelves stacked wide and tall full of cases of tomato sauce, pasta, and other non-perishables. The shelves had long since been torn down and removed, and now the large, cavernous area served as a manufacturing arm, the place where things were built.
There was only one thing Gerard Krueller was concerned about here, and as he rounded the corner, his wife close behind him, he could see the shrouded form of a man slamming a metal enclosure with a hammer, shaping the device to bend to his will. As the Kruellers watched, the man lifted a large hammer above his head, paused for a moment, then sent it crashing back down on the metal in front of him, an echoing clang and blast of white sparks rebounding with the strike.
“Fabrication is indeed a lost art,” a voice said from their right, peeling from the shadows.
“Mr. Park,” Gerard said, nodding toward the Korean as he approached.
“I am impressed by the talent you’ve pulled together, Mr. Krueller,” Park replied, looking over at the man who continued banging away on the metal housing.
Gerard didn’t reply, he just pinched his mouth closed and allowed the slightest shift of a grin to turn up his lips.
“It seems appropriate that the road back to where America came from be on the backs of skilled manual labor, don’t you think?”
“I’m no expert in American history,” Hyun Ki Park said. “I will have to trust your judgment.”
“You can trust his judgment,” Jodi said. “He is right. A device built by the skilled hands of American labor will indeed bring our nation back to its glory days.”
“And the world along with it, isn’t that right?” Park asked, nodding as if to remind them of a forgotten point.
“But of course,” Gerard replied.
Another loud metal bang exploded from the large room.
“How many devices will we be making?” Park asked. “My scientists don’t have much material.”
Gerard crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Diverting the shipments took far more time than we wanted. And assembling the device by hand will not be quick nor easy. With the Summit a couple of weeks away, there may only be time for a single device.”
“Let us hope this ‘skilled labor’ you speak of truly is as skilled as you believe.”
“Don’t worry about our part of it, Hyun Ki,” Jodi interjected. “Make sure your scientists do their part. The metal casing is useless without the right mix of radioactive material.”
Park glared at her. “Do not forget where we are and how we got here, Mrs. Krueller. If not for my country’s scientists, we would have never made it this far. Worry more about your labor and less about my material.”
“Understood,” Gerard replied. He turned toward his wife. “Lydia is waiting for us outside,” he said. “Let’s go. We can talk more about preparation along the way.”
Jodi nodded and fell in line with her husband as they exited the manufacturing area. Gerard glanced back over his shoulder as they left.
“You have our trust, Mr. Park. That should be enough.”
Park nodded. “It will have to be.”
The Kruellers navigated the hallway from the large, empty room out toward one of the side doors and emerged out into the late morning light. It was a fresh, new day, one full of promise and they looked at each other, smiling.
“That was quite the sight, wasn’t it?” Gerard asked.
Jodi nodded. “Our country was built on labor just like that. Seeing it happen right before my eyes is an amazing thing. We are witnessing a global shift, Gerry. The world is changing under our feet.”
“Let us hope that Ms. Kramer does her part as well,” Jodi said.
“Have you heard from her since she left?”
Jodi shook her head. “It’s been quiet, but getting to Washington these days is quite a logistical nightmare. I’m allowing her some space to deal with that.” She stopped walking and looked up into the bright sky. “Some space. Not too much.”
“Good. Like Mr. Park, she needs to remember her place. None of this would have happened if not for us.”
“Indeed.”
“Everything okay, Grandma?” Lydia asked, walking across the gray parking lot. She rounded the beat up green Humvee and approached them, walking toward the side entrance to that wing of the warehouse complex. Gerard looked at the Humvee for a long moment, then turned and faced his granddaughter.
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart,” Jodi said with a smile. “Everything is going well. We are safe and secure, and planning our visit to the First National Summit.”
Lydia hugged her, then stepped back and smiled at her grandfather. “When is that?”
“We don’t know for sure. Sometime in the next couple of weeks,” she replied. “We’ve sent our representative to Washington to find out some more information.”
“And then the rebuilding can begin?” Lydia asked, a touch of hope lifting her words.
Jodi nodded. “The rebuilding can begin, my dear.”
The three of them converged, walking back across the parking lot.
“Nothing from my parents yet?” Lydia asked.
Jodi shook her head. “Unfortunately not, honey. They’ll get here. I’m sure of it.”
Lydia nodded. A foot scuffed at the concrete loading dock and Gerard looked up to his right. A man was pushing through a side door up on top of the loading area, an exit that was rarely used, especially this time of day. He saw them walking and his face shifted slightly, though Gerard couldn’t tell why.
“Davidson?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes, sir,” Davidson replied. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, sir.”
“What are you doing in there?” Gerard asked.
; Davidson looked over his shoulder, toward the main complex. “Just a security sweep, sir. We’ve heard rumors of a rogue FBI agent, so I’ve been taking some extra patrols. Just to be safe.”
Gerard narrowed his eyes at the man for a moment, but then relaxed his face and nodded.
“Very well. Keep us posted, would you?”
“Of course,” he replied, then continued on over the loading dock, heading for the west side of the complex.
“So who will be going to the Summit?” Lydia asked, turning toward them and drawing their attention away from Davidson.
“I’m not sure that’s been decided yet,” Gerard replied. “We’ll play it by ear.” He cast another quick look over to where Davidson had emerged from, then grabbed his wife’s arm gently. “I need to go check on something, okay?”
Jodi nodded and he broke away, walking around the Humvee and heading back to the warehouse.
When she turned back toward Lydia, her granddaughter’s eyes were narrow, her mouth a thin, straight line.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Jodi asked.
“What’s going on with him?”
“Who? Your grandfather?”
“Yeah. The way he spoke to me the other day… he’s tense. I don’t like the atmosphere around here.”
“Everyone is a little tense, honey. When the American government is conspiring against you, things can get a little tense.”
Lydia shook her head. “I don’t know. That all seems pretty convenient, don’t you think? I’m not stupid. Something strange is going on here, and I think you know it, too.”
Jodi’s friendly gaze hardened. “Let’s not talk about this, okay? Not now.”
“I’ve been with you for a while now,” Lydia continued. “Since you found me in Chicago. I hear all this talk about government persecution, about how you’re just trying to survive, but you’re the ones with the armed contingent everywhere you go. This place seems safe, it seems like everywhere else things are falling apart.”
“Lydia, this is not the time or the place.”