by J. J. Holden
Amber’s victory calls rose above the roar of the engine and the guns, and Cassy’s face twisted into a snarl of savage joy. Then she had a chance to look at the battlefield ahead. The fight for the wall, too, was all but over. All that remained was the mop up.
Atop the walls, lined with the Ephrata defenders, she saw them standing with their fists in the air and screaming in victory down at the dying invaders. Whatever the town’s leaders felt about meeting their obligations to the Confederation that helped protect them, she suspected the townspeople themselves wouldn’t forget this Confederation victory anytime soon. This had probably saved hundreds of lives and secured the town’s help with the general war effort for at least the next five years.
“A real PR coup,” she muttered. They had saved the Confederation. Or at least, they had given it a fighting chance.
- 20 -
0830 HOURS - ZERO DAY +640
SLOWLY, CHOONY BECAME aware of voices. No doubt Jack and Chump had returned. He was dead, though, so it mattered little to him. He simply lay there where they had left his body, enjoying the fact that he felt very little pain for the first time in… He had no way of knowing how long, actually. A day? A week?
He became aware of an odd sensation, something gently rubbing his hair, as something else rested tenderly on his upper arm. He wondered if he was perhaps being devoured. It occurred to him that people didn’t often get to watch themselves be devoured, so he turned his head to the left, the side on which he felt the touch, and opened his eyes. He saw Jaz sitting beside him on the bed, leaning over him and smiling. His heart cracked, realizing this meant she was obviously dead, too, and had joined him in whatever afterlife this was.
“Dammit, not you too,” he said, looking at Jaz’s spirit.
Jaz’s expression shifted from tenderness to one of confusion. She cocked her head to the side a little and said, “Choon, you’re safe. Do you understand me? Can you hear me?”
Choony shook his head and closed his eyes. He really didn’t want to see the ghost of his beloved Jaz, a painful reminder of his own failure. He was too ragged, mentally, to pray or meditate to regain his serenity. At the moment, he was in chaos, and he simply let that be his truth for the moment. Now that he was dead, he had an eternity to restore his harmony and be a good Buddhist. Maybe after rebirth, even, because he didn’t much feel like being serene at this very moment.
He said, “Why do you torment me, spirit?” This was completely unfair, and he still had no interest in having serenity about the fact. His mind felt like he was slogging through thick mud.
Jaz’s voice said, “Choony, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What spirit?”
A pause.
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
Another voice, a man’s, said, “He’s got one hell of a fever. Feel how hot he is. He’s probably delusional.”
Jaz’s voice replied, “Get a wet rag or something. We have to cool him down.”
The male voice, which sounded somehow familiar now, grunted. “That’s not gonna cut it, sweetie. Look at these cuts… They’re all infected. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some internal bleeding, too. And where they tore his cheek, I’m pretty sure that’s infected. He needs antibiotics.”
That sounded entirely too mundane and logical for spirits of the dead. That wasn’t the conversation spirits would have… He slowly opened his eyes. He still saw Jaz, now fully dressed, standing over him beside a demon. Only the demon looked different, now—its wings resembled a backpack, and its hideous face seemed now to be somehow artificial, like a mask. No, a helmet.
It dawned on Choony that he was looking at an ordinary person. A familiar-looking one, at that. He tried to place the name to the face, and then it dawned on him. It was the transient he had met and fed on his way to search for Jaz. “Andy?” he asked, incredulous.
Andy nodded and grinned. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“How did you…”
“One of my friends saw two suspicious guys coming and going from this place. We came to grab their shit and go…”
As the fog in Choony’s mind cleared, he noticed how much of Andy’s gear was splashed with red paint. He looked around the room and saw another half-dozen men and women, all similarly attired. Fear shot up his spine as he drew the obvious conclusion. “You’re not going to eat us, are you?” Choony was too tired to be truly terrified anymore, and his voice was calm and even because of it.
Andy grinned again, this time with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He nodded, and showed no sign of shame. “I see you noticed that about us, huh? Yeah, we do that on occasion, but not to you. You know why?”
Beside him, Jaz let out a tiny squeak of alarm, and from the corner of his eye, Choony noticed her looking all around. Probably looking for a weapon or a way out.
Choony said, “Because I’m such a nice guy?” He forced a smile onto his face. It would be just his luck to be rescued, only to become someone’s dinner.
Andy shrugged and said, “Yes, actually. You gave me way more than you had to. You didn’t have to give me anything, really, but you gave me a lot more than I would have given you, if our roles had been reversed. Giving food, that’s not something you see every day, not anymore. Anyway, we don’t eat people when we don’t have to. And Korean barbeque gives me gas.”
Choony squinted to get a better look at Andy’s face. The guy still showed no sign of being ashamed at his cannibal status. Choony pursed his lips for a moment, and then said, “So how many of you are living out here in the wildlands?”
Choony wiggled his fingers and toes, testing them. The movement caused him intense, shooting pain, not just where he was missing digits. That was a good sign, considering how long he had been bound—he might have suffered some cellular death in his hands and feet from how tightly he had been tied up, but apparently not. That was fortunate, but he still felt like roadkill from the fever they’d mentioned, and his injuries.
Andy said, “We have made arrangements with some of the homesteaders within about ten miles of here. We can’t just take too much food from them or they’ll starve, and that would be a waste of both a resource and the meat on their bones. They give us what they can spare in exchange for being left alone.”
“Sounds like a good deal.”
“Yeah. And we supplement with any meat we can catch, of whatever variety. Whatever it takes to stay free, and out from under the thumb of New America.”
“I see.”
“We all got no interest in being told what to do by that Taggart. We’ve spent two years without big government, and we like it that way. I guess freedom isn’t free, and the cost is other people’s lives on occasion.”
Choony could only nod. He was too weak and dazed to argue the point, nor did he really feel like picking a fight with his rescuer. Especially a rescuer who was still capable of butchering him and Jaz for a tasty snack. After a moment’s pause, he said, “I would say you should just go start some farms.”
“You gotta understand, this is solid New America territory. That’s not the way to stay free.”
“You know you won’t be able to stay here forever, right? Hoboken’s population is growing, and fast.”
Andy let out a sharp breath and frowned. “Yeah, but our options are pretty limited. I figure we’ll stay alive and free as long as we can, then fight for our homes and hope they spare our kids.”
Jaz said, “How many kids?”
“Twenty five, maybe thirty, all told.” Andy scratched his cheek as he seemed to be mentally counting.
Jaz covered her mouth with her hand in shock. “I’ll see what we can do to help you people, once we’re back and safe.”
Andy nodded.
“You have my word, too,” Choony said. “But what about the two jackals who did this to us? Did they escape?”
Andy looked at Jaz, then turned his gaze to Choony and winked. “One got away, and we haven’t spotted the other, but don’t worry about them. They’re not your proble
m now.”
One of the other Road Warrior-looking fighters, searching through unattached cabinets that had been laid out in one corner of the warehouse, shouted, “Sweet! Hey Andy, take a look at this.”
Over his shoulder, Andy hollered back, “What do you got?”
“Cases of MREs and canned food. A whole stockpile. Some funny looking paperwork, too.”
Andy disappeared from Choony’s view for a minute, and Choony briefly closed his eyes.
When Andy came back, he had paperwork in his hands. “This doesn’t mean anything to us, but you two might find it really useful.” He handed the papers to Jaz.
She skimmed through the papers and as she did so, her eyebrows rose. She looked at Choony and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. Our little friend Jack has been a very bad boy.”
From the papers, she pulled out a black-and-white glossy photo.
“What’s that?” Choony asked.
Jaz held the photo up in front of his face. It showed him and Jaz in the marketplace, standing among other people. Both of their faces had been circled in a red marker.
Choony stared at the photo in shock until Jaz pulled it away and set it down. She turned her attention to one of the sheets of paper, studying it closely.
“Looks like this was typed up on a typewriter.”
“What does it say?”
“It’s a message from someone called ‘Killjoy,’ with details of hiring Jack to tell them everything he knows about Clanholme and instructions to capture me and you. Pretty specific orders, too.”
“Wow. What about that other page?”
“It’s basically a commendation for a job well done, and states that because of the information Jack provided, they had all the tactical intelligence they needed to ‘ensure mission success in the next stage of the Great Plan.’ ”
“Great Plan? Do you think…” Choony’s voice trailed off as his mind spun.
Jaz said, “There’s a series of four coordinates here, detailing latitude and longitude.”
Jaz read the coordinates aloud to Choony. He couldn’t be sure, but the numbers were close together and he thought they were all from a nearby area, no more than a few days’ ride from the coordinates he remembered for Hoboken.
Choony locked eyes with Jaz and suddenly felt the full weight of his exhaustion. All he wanted to do was sleep for a week, but this appeared important. “Jaz, we have to alert Clanholme of this and pass this intelligence on to Ethan.”
Even to his own ears, Choony’s voice sounded frail and faint. He was definitely at the end of his endurance. He also wanted to reach out and comfort Jaz, as she had endured a horrific ordeal herself, one which Choony had been forced to watch. He couldn’t imagine that she would ever be the same again, and his heart broke to think of it.
Andy said, “But anyway, we’re going to rig up a stretcher and get you two home to Hoboken now. If you ever need to get in touch with me again, you can send word through the guy selling alternators at the north end of the market zone.”
Choony nodded, but his thoughts were whisked elsewhere, anticipating getting home. A shower, a meal, and antibiotics—that sounded as close to heaven as he was ever going to get in this world. Choony smiled and reached out to take Jaz’s hand.
Jaz leaned over to embrace him, and into his ear, she whispered, “You’re going home…”
* * *
0600 HOURS - ZERO DAY +643
Sitting at his desk, Taggart looked up from the three sheets of paper the messenger had handed him in a sealed envelope. Choony and Jaz had apparently been aided by some unnamed outside force, although he didn’t yet have all the details, and Choony was refusing to say anything about the people who helped them.
The intel they sent painted a very scary picture. The Maryland invaders were aggressively setting up intelligence rings in New America and hiring traitors from among Taggart’s own people, and this new Intel filled a gap in his understanding of what was going on with the ’vaders. Two days ago, his scouts had retrieved some Maryland spy’s logbook, communiqués, and several photographs that had truly raised an alarm in his mind. Those other photos had been taken from overhead, and the tiny printed writing on them indicated they were satellite photos. The Southern Cantonment didn’t have any way to get such photographs, as far as he knew, which meant they got them from somewhere else. Probably that bastard, General Houle, in NORAD.
Those photos were now on their way to Ethan in Clanholme, his unofficial spymaster. Maybe he could make sense of them.
So now, Taggart had a much fuller picture of what was going on. The North Koreans were aggressively establishing ground assets—people—to gather intelligence, and working in cahoots with someone who had access not only to satellite photographs, but also high-quality, large-format printers.
From the reports he received from Ethan, that someone could only be the mysterious character, Watcher One. Taggart asked himself why Maryland would want to hijack the Clan’s diplomats to New America, but the answer was pretty obvious. They were attempting to destabilize their enemies, the timing of which meant something big was coming. It was now only a couple months before the largest food harvests began, and his imagination immediately leaped to invasion scenarios.
Taggart thanked the messenger and said, “You’re free to go.”
He watched as the messenger left, and leaned back in his chair. Crossing his leg, he thought about sending Jaz and Choony a get-well package. They were friends as well as being representatives of the Clan and the Confederation. Also, he would have to send an order to double the guard put on their house. It was clear to him they were still in danger.
* * *
Jwa’s senses came fully awake from the light dozing he had been doing while the wagon bounced back and forth. He’d been inside the covered back for two days, shackled to the interior with nothing but a bucket for his personal needs. Some fresh air would be nice, but they never let him out when the wagon stopped. He didn’t dare to hope that this time would be any different.
Shortly after the wagon came to a complete stop, he heard voices talking, just as he had with every other stop. This time, however, he heard more voices. New voices. He began to feel uneasy. No one had told him what was going to happen to him, and although he would face it bravely as a soldier of North Korea should, that still didn’t mean he was eager to die. And he sure didn’t want to be tortured, although he had done his fair share of that to Korea’s enemies over the last two years. If they did torture him, he was certain he would have deserved it, but he still would prefer to avoid that…
Then the wagon was moving again, albeit more slowly. He felt it wind back and forth, turning left, right, then left. It rolled onward, now moving straight again for another few minutes before coming to a halt.
Through the thick canvas walls of the covered wagon, Jwa heard a bit of a commotion. Lots of voices that, unless he had lost his mind, seemed to include both children and adults. Perhaps the wagon had stopped at a settled waypoint. Whatever the case, it didn’t have anything to do with him, so he leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes to try to doze again.
The canvas door flap at the back of the wagon was abruptly thrown open. Through the opened flap, Jwa saw a man standing just outside, staring at him as though sizing him up. He probably was, Jwa realized, because he had the build and the bearing of a military man. Unlike most of the Americans he had seen, and definitely unlike the filthy sand-eaters he had been forced to fight alongside, this man was clean-shaven and his hair was cut very short. Beyond short. It had been cut in a military style. His posture, his direct gaze, his tidy appearance—Jwa realized this was possibly an American Marine. Those were just about the only true warrior troops the Americans had, according to everything he had been told, although he had never faced them in battle. Nor had he wished to, given that the American Army troops had been far tougher than his leaders led him to believe before the eve of invasion. American soldiers were as tenacious as veteran Korean soldier
s—how much more so would their Marines be?
Jwa kept his face passive, and he simply stared back. Eventually, someone would tell him what to do but in the meantime, he wasn’t about to disgrace himself by backing down. Especially not to a fellow soldier, and an enemy one at that.
The seconds ticked by interminably.
Finally, the well-built man nodded once and threw the door flap closed once again. Jwa closed his eyes as the seconds continued to march on.
* * *
Ethan spun in his chair when he heard the door opening, and a few seconds later, Michael came into view. “Sieg heil, mein general,” Ethan said with a grin.
Michael rolled his eyes. He stepped inside the bunker’s office area, grabbed the other office chair, and straddled it to face Ethan. “Just so you know, most Marines would punch your goofy face for saying that. It’s insulting. How are you holding up, buddy?”
“My vision’s much better, and the ringing in my ears is pretty much gone, but I find myself jumping at every damn noise. Which is funny, considering everything we’ve been through so far.”
Michael nodded and eyed him appraisingly. He said, “There’s a world of difference between going into battle surrounded by your team and a one-on-one, life or death fight that ends with you being captured. I’m glad to hear the flash-bang didn’t screw you up more permanently.”
“Thanks.” What else could he say?
Michael said, “Now that’s out of the way, it’s time to get down to business. The wagon we have been expecting just arrived. I thought you would want to know.”
Ethan felt a bit of shock, his scalp tingling. One of them, here in Clanholme… It didn’t make him comfortable, although he understood why it was necessary. At least, he understood why Cassy thought it was necessary. He would have rather just put a bullet in the man. “So we’re really going along with Cassy’s crazy plan?”