The Dying of the Light (Book 2): Interval

by Jason Kristopher

  George just rolled his eyes, letting his wife take this one. “You know as well as I do, David, that up until the very end of the third trimester…” I stopped listening until she ran down, smiling the whole time, and she finally realized what I was doing. With a pretended huff she clammed up, but I just shook my head and laughed. “Have you told Kim yet?”

  Suddenly, Mary was quite nervous, and shook her head, her hands clutching protectively around her expanded abdomen. “No, I was waiting until the right time.”

  “The right time?” I asked, surprised. “You know as well as we do that there will never be a ‘right time’ for a baby, Mary. You should tell Kim.”

  Mary stammered her answer, which was unlike her. “It’s just, I don’t want to distract… I mean, it’s not my place…”

  “Mary, what are you talking about?” I asked, looking over at George. “Is she all right?”

  “Sure, sure,” said George, beaming fit to bring down the house with sunshine. “She’s just a wee bit jealous.” Mary glared daggers at George, but he was oblivious to them. “Doesn’t want to upset the apple cart, ya see. Congratulations, by the way, from both of us.”

  Tom and I looked at each other, both puzzled beyond reason, then I turned back to George. “Just what the hell are you talking about, General, sir?”

  It was the first time I could remember seeing Brigadier General George P. Maxwell anywhere in the general vicinity of flustered. He leaned over to his wife. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

  At this point, Mary was nearly purple with embarrassment. “No, you big lunkhead! He doesn’t know. I shouldn’t have even told you, George!”

  Again, I glanced at Tom, who was, as before, unhelpful. “What doesn’t he know?” I asked, and was surprised again as Maxwell started laughing.

  Until that moment, I had only rarely seen the man so much as crack a smile, much less laugh outright.

  Something is seriously wrong here, I thought. What the hell are they hiding?

  “Well, my boy,” said Maxwell, wiping tears from his eyes as he straightened. “Turns out me and you are in the same boat. ‘Cept you two are having a girl, which is what Mary’s all jealous about.”

  “A girl what?” I asked, dimly noting that Tom was now clapping me on the back, Mary was beaming from ear to ear, and the general was shaking my hand. Tom leaned over and whispered in my ear. “He means Kim is pregnant, David. With a girl.”

  “No, that’s not possible,” I said, turning to look at Tom, who shrugged. “She would’ve told me, she wouldn’t have… hidden… oh.” I felt woozy, and fell back against a side of one of the Humvees. The other two men reached out to steady me, as did Mary, but her reaction time was far too slow, a curse of the pregnancy. “That’s not…” I sat down on the backseat of the Humvee, holding tight to the door Tom had opened for me. “You mean, Kim… Kim and me… a child… a girl…”

  Maxwell nodded, unable to keep the grin from his face, like the rest of those who’d been on guard duty or were now suddenly otherwise occupied. “She’s perfectly normal,” said Mary. “Kim sent me the test results, and I went over them many times. She’s a fighter, too—already kicking ass and taking names.”

  Maxwell shook my hand for the hundredth time. “Congratulations, my boy. I always hoped for this. You’ll need to be there for her when she’s ready—and I’m not just talking about Kim.” He waved off further commentary, and smiled more hugely than I’d ever thought possible. “In any case, welcome to fatherhood, Dad.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Tutuila Island

  American Samoa

  It was hard for Anderson to hold still and do nothing while the Russian had a gun on the one guy that could save them all. He knew that the standoff couldn’t go on forever, but he also knew that he couldn’t just let her leave with her own private jet. She was still backing towards the truck Mahoney had arrived in, and suddenly Anderson noticed a shadow moving in the truck.

  Someone inside? Trying to get the drop on her? If they hit her, she’s liable to squeeze that trigger… He looked directly at the shadow in the truck and slowly shook his head, the whole time keeping up the calm, soothing banter with Zavrazhny.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

  “What are you shaking your head for, Captain? Are you telling me ‘no’ while your words say ‘stay calm’?” Her eyes widened, and she gripped the gun tighter, causing another strangled moan from Mahoney. “Or perhaps you are signaling someone else, da?” She began glancing around, looking in the low brush of their lunch spot, then turned to look behind her.

  Anderson took advantage of the distraction and rushed forward, his sights set on knocking the gun from Mahoney’s chin. He’d only taken a few steps of his run when her head whipped back around and she aimed at him, instead. Just as she fired the weapon, the door flew open from behind her, striking her in the small of the back and the legs, causing the shot to veer off-course. Anderson felt a powerful punch on his chest, as if he was going toe-to-toe with Tyson and the champ wasn’t wearing gloves. He spun around, the force of the impact unbalancing him and knocking him off his feet.

  The Russian flew forward, landing awkwardly on top of Mahoney’s back, the pistol falling from her numb fingers. Mahoney scrambled for it while she was still dazed, and swung back around to point it at her as he sat on the ground. It was only his quick reflexes that stopped him from shooting her, or, more likely, the man who now held her pinned and immobile on the ground.

  Sven Fagerhölm had to use both his arms and legs to pin the writhing, twisting woman to the ground, keeping his face away from hers as she started to bite at him, seeking any purchase, any pain she could cause to relax his grip. But the Swede outweighed the Russian girl by at least a hundred pounds, and she finally stopped resisting. He wasn’t fooled, and remained in place a moment later when she thought to try again, acting on surprise.

  “Stop! Stop it now. You cannot go now. I will hold you like this until you have settled down, for as long as it takes. Please, lyubov, don’t make me hurt you.” Sven looked up at Mahoney, still holding the gun. “You may want to check on the captain.”

  Mahoney nodded, getting to his feet and running over to the fallen Anderson. Gaines was kneeling next to him, applying pressure to the wound as Anderson groaned.

  “How bad is it?” the captain asked.

  Gaines shook his head. “Not that bad, sir. Through-and-through, not enough blood to be worried about. Looks like it missed the lung, too. It could’ve been a lot worse.” Anderson grimaced, trying to sit up, but Gaines held him down. “No moving around for you just yet, Captain.” He turned to Mahoney, hovering nearby. “Get the medical bag from the truck.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the mechanic, taking off at a dead sprint.

  Gaines activated his throat mike. “All personnel, radio silence lifted. Maintain perimeter.” Through the chorus of acknowledgments, Gaines heard Mahoney returning with the bag.

  “Here… bag…” The man dropped the bag and went to one knee, panting and heaving with exertion.

  “Good. Now take over for me. Keep the pressure on, like this.” Gaines stood up, moving over to the bed of the truck and taking a length of rope he’d found earlier and saved for a rainy day. “Well, it’s raining now,” he said under his breath. Moving over to Sven and Tatiana, he knelt down next to them.

  “Ms. Zavrazhny, here’s what’s going to happen next. Sven and I are going to tie you to that tree right over there.” She struggled again, and stopped when her jostling had no effect on the seemingly inexhaustible Swede.

  “We’re going to do this for your safety, as well as ours. If you struggle, if you attempt to break free, if you do anything that in any way pisses me off,” he said, pulling his pistol from its holster. “I will shoot you in the head.” He tapped the gun against her temple for emphasis. “Do we understand each other?” She didn’t respond for a moment, then nodded. “Good. OK Sven, let’s get her up.”

  For a wonder, she didn
’t fight them as they tied her to the tree. If he hadn’t known better, Gaines would’ve thought she was a completely different person than the ferocious struggling creature he’d seen minutes before. “How you doing over there, Mahoney?”

  “He’s doing fine, Gunny,” said Anderson. “Got her secured?”

  “Almost, sir.” Gaines turned to Sven as they tied the final knots. “Go and see to the captain, please.”

  Sven nodded and knelt next to the captain, stripping off Anderson’s uniform shirt and inspecting the wound. “It is, as you said, not bad. Could have been much worse. Lie still, Captain, and I will bandage it.”

  Anderson nodded, content for the moment to rest. “Gaines, check her pockets. We don’t want her finding some way out of that rope.”

  Gaines began checking the woman’s pockets, which were numerous in the cargo pants she was wearing. He pulled two knives from various locations, including the one she’d been toying with earlier, a spare pistol magazine, identification, and other odds and ends. When he reached the inside breast pocket of her jacket, she began shouting in Russian and twisting away from him, biting when he came near. Finally, he’d had enough and held his pistol up once more.

  “I thought we had an understanding. Do I have to knock you out or shoot you?” He reached for the pocket again, this time holding her head to the side so she was virtually immobile. When he finally retrieved the contents, he was confused.

  “What is it, Gunny?” asked Anderson, straining to see without sitting up, something made impossible by one of Sven’s ham-sized fists pressing down on his uninjured side.

  Gaines shook his head as he stepped over to the captain and showed him the photo he’d plucked from her pocket. “I don’t get it.” The photo was of a young man, standing next to a tank. It wasn’t until Anderson reached for the photo that he saw the back, and suddenly it all made sense. “Vasily Zavrazhny.”

  “What?” asked Anderson, then turned the photo over at Gaines’s nod. “Well, I’ll be damned. No wonder…”

  They both looked over at the tall Russian, who had slumped against her bonds, her head hanging down. Wracked with sobs, both men could see her tears, and as they looked back at each other, they both knew exactly what the other was feeling. Anderson spoke first. “How is it that she shoots me and suddenly I’m the asshole?” he asked. “How does that happen?”

  Sven finished applying the bandage to the captain’s back, and sat back on his heels, noticing Tatiana crying for the first time. Fast for such a large man, he was at her side in a moment, whispering to her. She just kept shaking her head, though the tears and sobs did lessen. Gaines and Anderson looked at each other, and away again. “Help me up, Gunny,” the captain said, and Gaines gave him a hand, wrapping an arm around his broad shoulders as he helped the former SEAL to his feet.

  Sven stepped to one side as they approached, though he held one of her hands tightly. Or rather, Anderson noted. She’s holding on to his hand. I knew they were close, but this… He shook his head. None of my business.

  “You wanna tell us what all this was really about now?” Anderson asked, waving his free hand around. Noticing he still had the photo in his hand, he tucked it back into her jacket pocket. “Let’s hear why I had to take a bullet, shall we?”

  For a moment, she didn’t look up, but then she sighed and raised her head, her eyes puffy and her cheeks wet with tears. “It’s simple, really. I want to go home.”

  “Hell, we all want that, Tatiana. But why take a hostage? Where were you going to go? Russia is a long way from here. That G-4 would never have made it. And what’s with this sudden badassery? The knife, the double-tap in the jungle, this… You’re a pro, that much I can tell. So who are you? FSB? Spetznaz? What?”

  “I am Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki. What you call SVR. Like your CIA.”

  Anderson whistled softly. “I’ve met a few of you. Every last one was a hardcore motherfucker. That explains a lot.” Coming from a former Navy SEAL, that was high praise indeed. “What the hell were you doing in Antarctica?”

  “It does not matter. Not now. I just want to go home.”

  “You wouldn’t have made it in that G-4, though.”

  “To Russia, no. But to Japan? And then from there to China, then Kazakhstan, then to Moscow, or St. Petersburg or elsewhere. To home.”

  “There’s nothing there, Tatiana. Just more walkers.”

  “No,” she said, slumping against her bonds once more. “I mean, yes… but I thought… there are… were… bunkers, like yours in the US. Vasily…” Her face crumpled for a moment, and she fought off more tears. “Vasily was the commander of an entire tank division. He would have been in one of the bunkers.”

  Anderson glanced at Gaines. “We never heard anything conclusive about Russian bunkers like ours, just rumors.”

  She shrugged as well as she could tied to a tree. “It was a state secret. I should not be telling you, but I suppose now… it doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does! If he’s in a bunker, then there’s a damn good chance he’s still alive—”

  She shook her head. “Nyet. No, there is no chance. Your men have told me that the last the American military ever heard was that Russia was overrun. Millions of walkers coming from Eastern Europe and more from the south. I see no reason to doubt this information.”

  No wonder she’s upset, Anderson thought. Her homeland is just… gone.

  “And so you were going to do what? Look for him?”

  She nodded. “I was, yes. And I still have to.” She raised her chin defiantly. “What would you do for the person you love?”

  Anderson thought about Morena and his unborn child, and couldn’t really blame her for wanting to be with her own family. He shook his head, then looked over at Sven. “You’ll keep her under control?”

  Sven nodded, mute.

  “Good. Then let her go.”

  “What? Captain, please… she just shot you,” said Gaines.

  “I know, I know,” Anderson replied. “But she’s right. Wouldn’t I have done the same for Morena? Wouldn’t you have done the same for Rachel?”

  Gaines looked away for a moment, then turned back and nodded.

  “Well, there you go, then. I’m not saying she’s perfect, and I’m not forgetting what she did anytime soon, but I do understand it.”

  Tatiana sighed with relief when Sven let her go, rubbing her wrists and the small of her back. “Did you have to hit so hard with the door?”

  He shrugged.

  She twisted to get the kinks out. “So, what will you do with me now?”

  Anderson thought for a moment, then smiled. “Well, I suppose we should gas up that G-4.” Everyone was as stunned as he had expected them to be, but he’d made his decision and that was that. “Just one thing. OK, two things. First, you can’t have Archer. We need him for the trip home.”

  The Russian nodded. “That’s not a problem, Captain. I can fly the smaller plane.”

  Sven glanced at her in surprise, then shrugged.

  “What is your second condition?”

  “You have to take anyone else who wants to go.”

  Her eyes opened wide at that, and she very obviously didn’t look over at the Swede standing next to her. “I… that is… unexpected, Captain.”

  “Have you talked to anyone else? I’m sure you can’t be the only Russian in the group.”

  “No, I… I had not thought of that.”

  “See that you do. Then report back to me when you have a list.”

  She snapped off a salute, then began walking to the terminal, clearly excited. Anderson noticed that she was still holding tight to Sven’s hand as she did. That’s odd, he thought. She’s clearly attached to Sven but still hunting for Vasily. How’s that going to go if she actually finds him? Well, I hope it works out for all of them, one way or the other.

  “Mahoney!” he yelled, turning with Gaines’ help. The young mechanic approached and stood at ease. “You all right?”

  �
�Yes, sir,” said the chief. “Just a few bruises, sir.”

  “Well, then what are you waiting around for? Get that Gulfstream fueled and ready to go, then finish the damn 767. This ain’t a pleasure cruise, chief!”

  Mahoney grinned and saluted as well, climbing back into the truck and yelling through the window. “Want a lift to the terminal, sir?”

  Anderson nodded and climbed into the cab, sitting stiffly against the backrest.

  Gaines climbed into the bed behind them. “Onward, soldier,” he said to Mahoney. “Let’s get these people home.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Several hours later, the Gulfstream had been fueled, and the survivors who’d chosen to go with Zavrazhny were onboard, along with the supplies the others could spare. Mahoney and his men had taken a break to say goodbye to the tall Russian woman, and the only thing that remained was for them to climb aboard and set out.

  The goodbyes amongst the survivors had been particularly difficult and long, as those who were leaving had been a part of the tight-knit community for nearly ten years. Now, though none of them said it, they all knew the chances they would ever see each other again were nonexistent. Anderson and the other soldiers who weren’t on perimeter detail stood off to one side, keeping their thoughts to themselves, though it was clear that they were all thinking of home, wherever that might be.

  Soon enough, all the goodbyes had been said, and Zavrazhny and Sven walked over to Anderson.

  “All set?” Anderson asked.

  “Yes, Captain. We have everything we need,” she answered.

  “No last-minute requests? No one’s changed their mind?”

  “No,” she said, glancing back at the waiting jet. “I was surprised when the Chinese decided to stay, but we have a crowded plane without them, with the Japanese and my own people. In any case, it is probably better that they go with you. It sounds like China is, for all purposes, gone now.”

  “You have the communication codes?” Anderson asked.

  Anderson had shared with the Russian and the Swede the procedures for contacting the defense satellites in orbit, in an effort to maintain contact between the groups. We’re going to need to be able to talk to each other soon enough, he thought. Probably broke about fifty federal laws there, not that it matters anymore.