by Tom Abrahams
Skinner’s face was frozen with disgust. Roof started to further make his case when Skinner snapped his fingers and pointed over the general’s shoulder, waving his finger at a desk on the far side of the room.
Roof turned around and saw a large notepad on the desk. He swung his leg over the chair and maneuvered his way to the desk. The pad was irregular and discolored from water stains, and most of the pages were already covered with illegible pre-Scourge notes.
Roof picked it up and showed it to Skinner. “You want this?”
Skinner nodded.
Roof walked around to the other side of the desk and fished through the unlocked drawers, looking for a pen. He found one, uncapped it, and scribbled on the paper until ink trailed onto it from the ballpoint.
He carried both back to Skinner and handed them over, standing over Skinner while he wrote on the crinkled paper and then ripped it free of the pad.
Roof took the note, held it close to his eyes and then pulled it back to focus. Skinner’s handwriting was hard to read. It resembled the left-hand offering of a right-handed kindergartner.
“You need me at the canyon. I don’t want to stay here with the losers and women.”
Roof looked up, still holding the note in his hand, and sighed. “You can’t put your tongue all the way in your mouth. You can’t talk. Your face is swollen like you stuck it in a hornet’s nest.”
Skinner scribbled another message and ripped it from the pad. Roof would’ve laughed at the comedy of it if he hadn’t been to blame.
“That’s why you can’t keep me here. I can’t be in charge. I’ll follow you to the canyon.”
Roof considered the argument. Skinner was right. He was probably more effective as a grunt than a leader given his injuries. The captain handed him a third message.
“I’m in the Cartel ’cause I want to be. Not ’cause I had to be.”
Roof nodded. “Fine, you’re a frontline grunt. Hope you’re happy.”
Roof was happy. He needed as many Skinners as he could get. Skinner had a cause.
He wanted to fight. It wasn’t about survival for him. It was about living.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OCTOBER 25, 2037, 9:07 PM
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
PALO DURO CANYON, TEXAS
Paagal took a long, slow drink from a tall metal thermos. She moaned softly as she drank, tilting the bottom of the thermos higher and higher until she’d emptied its contents.
“Coffee is such a treat,” she said. “Are you certain I can’t offer you any?”
Lola shook her head. Battle sighed.
“I suppose I’m boring you,” said Paagal, one eyebrow arched higher than the other.
“You haven’t told us anything,” Battle said. “We’ve been here for I don’t know how long, and I have no more sense of your tactical plan than I did when you were preaching to the choir.”
Paagal eased into the chair across from her guests. They were sitting at the rough wooden table in her tent. She reached down and pulled a large map from beside her. It was rolled into a tube and she unwound it, placing it on the table.
Paagal spun the map around so the Texas Panhandle was on her side. There was a thick black line that circumnavigated the old state boundaries. Paagal ran her finger along the markings.
“This is the wall,” she said. “That should give you a decent idea of the territory. We are in this location.” She dragged her finger to the canyon, which was encircled in red.
Battle noticed there were numbers written by the names of most of the larger cities. Some of the numbers were crossed out and new numbers written beside them. He tapped the number 729 near Austin and 1050 at San Antonio.
“What are these?” he asked.
Paagal looked up from the map with a smile. “Those are the numbers of Dwellers we have in those locations.”
Lola pointed to the number 2512 above Houston. “So you have twenty-five hundred people in Houston who are sympathetic to your cause?”
“Twenty-five hundred and twelve,” said Paagal. “And they’re not sympathizers, Lola. They’re revolutionaries.”
Lola’s eyes darted from marking to marking on the map. “How?”
“We didn’t start with these numbers,” said Paagal. “We began two years ago with maybe five or ten in each city. Each of those people recruited those who they thought might fit our way of thinking. They in turn recruited more people. It organically grew exponentially from there.”
Battle waved his hand over the map. “And all of these revolutionaries are doing what right now?”
“For starters,” she said, “they’ve attacked the leadership in each location.”
“You said that at the bonfire,” said Lola.
“Yes,” Paagal said. “I did. But I didn’t say what comes next.”
Lola leaned in. “Which is…?”
“Half of the revolution takes place in the cities,” she said. “The element of surprise is a powerful force. Once we’ve degraded the Cartel enough that neutral actors see we can win, they’ll join our side.”
“What about the other half?” asked Battle.
“They advance,” said Paagal. She held her hands in front of her face and interlocked her fingers. “They squeeze the Cartel. If we hold them at bay long enough here at the canyon, we win. They’ll have nowhere to go. Retreat becomes an impossibility.”
“Not impossible.”
Paagal leaned back, her eyes widened and brow arched. “Oh?”
Battle ran his fingers along the map, indicating stress points for the Dwellers. He showed Paagal areas from which the Cartel could make them vulnerable. He traced escape routes for both the Dwellers and the Cartel.
Battle had lost so much of what he’d learned at West Point and on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Syria. The space in his memory reserved for military gamesmanship was fragmented. He’d made so many stupid mistakes since the Scourge, it was as if he’d never been a soldier. His survival to this point was as ridiculous as it was miraculous. It was the stuff of dime-store novels.
As he worked the map bathed in the red glow of Paagal’s tent, those disparate memories flooded back. It was as if he’d awoken from a long sleep and was lucid for the first time in a long time.
“Let’s assume they’ll be attacking from all points.” Battle ran his finger along the map, tracing the multitude of routes available to the advancing troops. “They’ll have men moving from these roads here and here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Paagal said, running her finger along the map next to Battle’s. “They can’t access the floor from any of these points. They’ll have the high ground to provide cover fire and to occupy our people, but they’ll have to funnel their advance into these spots here. They’re the only ways down to the floor.”
Battle nodded. “So where do you want me?”
Lola nudged him with her shoulder. “You mean us. Where does she want us?”
Battle acquiesced. “Us.”
Paagal tapped a point on the map near the southern rim. “I think you’d be best utilized at the entrance here. That’s one of the funnel points. You’re good with a weapon. I’ll need you picking off combatants as they emerge from their descent.”
“Got it.”
Battle and Lola left Paagal in her tent, walking slowly back to their own shelters. Neither said anything at first until Battle broke the ice.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked, his voice dripping with suspicion. “It seems kinda strange.”
Lola looked up at Battle as they stepped in sync. “It was pretty chaotic,” she said. “Everybody was rushing over there. Sawyer didn’t want to be late. I checked in on you and you were asleep. I started to wake you, but Baadal tugged on my arm and told me to hurry up.”
“So you left me?”
“I did try to wake you up, actually,” she said. “I said your name loudly a couple of times. You rolled over. You were wheezing a little bit. I’m sorry, I should have gotten you up.�
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“You should have. I agree.” Battle believed her. Still, he was skeptical of the Dwellers. “I don’t trust them.”
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“Not true,” Battle said. “Maybe it’s not that I don’t trust them. I don’t think their motives are as pure as they’d have us believe.”
“Get over it.” Lola laughed condescendingly. “Nobody’s motives are pure in this world. Everybody’s trying to survive by hook or by crook. For such a skeptic, it’s like you still want to believe in Santa Claus.”
Lola reached over and took Battle’s hand. He allowed it, welcomed it really, and squeezed gently once their fingers were fully intertwined. A jolt of electricity sparked through his body. His chest tightened. He looked over at Lola and smiled. She smiled back and then looked away demurely, as if embarrassed by their connection.
Battle was content to walk quietly, hand in hand, back to their tents. He thought about what Lola had said about motive.
She was right, of course. There was no Santa Claus. He’d died from the Scourge.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OCTOBER 25, 2037, 9:42 PM
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
INTERSTATE 45, SOUTH OF BUFFALO, TEXAS
The headlights cut a narrow, bright path ahead along the cracked asphalt of the highway. Interstate 45, as it used to be known, was the direct north-south link between Houston and Dallas.
Ana planned to take the shortest path north before jogging west. She didn’t have time to avoid the highway in search of more desolate, less traveled paths. This was her best option.
She squinted as she drove, pretending as if she were piloting a rocket ship; the reflective white dashes separating the lanes were like stars speeding past. She imagined she were hurtling through space towards some distant planet, one without violence or disease or guilt.
Penny was awake in the seat next to her, content to suck on the pacifier. Ana knew it wouldn’t be long before the child would be hungry and she would have to stop to feed her.
Ana didn’t want to stop. She wanted to be at the canyon.
It was ice cold in the car. Without a windshield, the wake of air displaced by the car rushed through the cabin. Ana had found a blanket in the trunk that she’d wrapped around Penny, but she herself was cold. Her hands were especially uncomfortable.
She looked down at the speedometer and saw she was pushing the Lexus at forty miles per hour. Though there wasn’t much about cars she could recall, she did remember hearing once that the faster the car moved, the more fuel it consumed. She hoped that by driving fast enough to outpace anyone on horseback, she might save some fuel and arrive at the canyon without problem. It also reduced the wind swirling through the open cabin.
Driving through the darkness, she occasionally caught a gray glimpse of a building or abandoned vehicle along the side of the highway. She was thankful the journey to this point had been in the dark. Ana didn’t need the distraction of what the Scourge had wrought and what it had done to the world as she tried to free herself from what it had done to her and what she had done as a result.
It wasn’t as though Ana had lived a life of leisure before the pneumonia killed her mother, her grandfather, her sister, and the man to whom she was engaged. Every last one of them was a drunk or an addict who couldn’t find their way past the eighth step.
None of them had ever made amends. Even on their respective deathbeds, as the consumption took their breath and their lives, they refused to take responsibility for their actions or their interaction.
The Lexus cut through the dark and Ana was focused on that eighth step. She tried to recall all of the people she had wronged. She couldn’t get past the four people she’d killed that day: her child’s father, a resistance recruiter, and two foul people who she did not like but whom she’d rather not have murdered.
Ana leaned forward in her seat and rubbed her palms on the leather steering wheel, trying to generate some friction and heat for her hands. She looked up above the horizon, the wind whipping through her hair and drying her eyes as she peered into the dark, searching for a star or the moon. She couldn’t find either.
“Mamamama,” Penny babbled. “Mamamama.”
Anna pulled her hand from the wheel, popped the pacifier back into Penny’s eager mouth, and placed her hand gently on Penny’s leg. She squeezed it and rubbed it with her thumb.
“Mama is right here, baby,” she said.
Ana looked over at Penny and reassured her daughter they would stop soon to eat. She wondered, as she soaked in the beauty of her child, what the fractured world might hold for her. Ana couldn’t imagine it would be good. Her smile melted and she looked back at the road.
It was already too late.
Directly in front of the car, dead center in the pale yellow fan of the headlights, was a large coyote. Its eyes reflected the light as it stood frozen in the center of the highway. It had a dead animal in its mouth.
Ana pressed firmly on the brake. The tires screeched in protest against the highway. Her right arm snapped outward to protect Penny, who was already sliding forward in her seat, her little body straining against her seat belt. Ana tried swerving to the right to miss the animal. She failed. She hit it as if she were aiming for it.
The impact brought with it a sickening crunch as the front of the Lexus pulverized the scavenger. Its mangy carcass was tossed onto the hood of the car, and for a split second Ana was sure it was headed directly through the open windshield. Instead, the limp rag doll bounced over the windshield, hit the roof, and slid off the trunk.
Penny was crying as the car came to a shuddering stop. Ana immediately noticed wisps of smoke coming from underneath the hood of the car. A rush of adrenaline flooded her body and she began trembling. Her pulse quickened and her chest felt heavy. She tried taking a deep breath and found herself unable to inhale.
She unbuckled Penny and pulled the baby to her chest. Ana rocked, whispering into her daughter’s ear and calming her. Once Penny was quiet, all Ana could hear was the low hum of the engine. The smoke from under the hood had dissipated, but there was a large dent in the hood from the coyote.
She held Penny with one arm and used the other to open her door. She climbed out of the Lexus and walked around to the front of the car.
The signature Lexus emblem was missing and the front grille was a mess, barely resembling the mean, sleek black grate that had decorated the front of the sedan. It was decorated with pieces of the animal, tufts of grayish hair stuck in clumps in the plastic.
The hood was concave at the point of impact. The car looked like it belonged in a junkyard. Ana held Penny and shielded the child’s eyes as she moved into the headlights. Looking at them, they were brighter than they’d seemed to be as she drove. The engine still humming softly, she walked around the passenger side of the car and to the rear. She wanted to see the animal.
Ana stepped deliberately toward the coyote. It was only twenty-five yards or so behind the car. As she got closer, she could hear its high-pitched whimper. Somehow it had survived the collision, if only for a few minutes.
She circled the animal at some distance, afraid to get too close. Its eyes were open, its body mangled. Its torso, or what was left of it, rose and fell with difficulty. The dead rabbit it had been carrying was lying beside its mouth.
The coyote’s whimper drew Penny’s attention, and Ana spun to keep the child’s eyes from the dying beast and walked back toward the car. Short of putting a bullet in the animal, there was nothing she could do to ease its suffering. It was merely another living being cut down while trying to survive in a post-Scourge world, a scavenger looking for scraps where it could find them.
Ana reached the Lexus, opened the rear driver’s side door, and leaned into the backseat. She placed Penny upright on the passenger’s side, thinking it would be warmer, and likely safer, if her child were in the backseat of the car.
The child was buckled in and Ana was closing the door when she heard a rustling n
oise and the sound of soft voices spoken above a whisper. She shut the door with her backside and saw a man and a woman standing on the edge of the road.
The man had a long gun perched on his shoulder. The woman was aiming hers at Ana. She whispered something into his ear, keeping her gun leveled. The man snickered. Ana couldn’t hear them above the purr of the car.
It was dark enough that Ana couldn’t make out their features or their clothing, but she could see enough to know they wore desperation. The man’s jaw moved up and down as if he was chewing on something.
Ana inched along the side of the car. She kept her eyes on the couple and started to open the front door.
“Ah, ah, ah,” said the woman. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Ana left her hand on the door handle. “What do you want?”
“We want your car,” said the woman, “and whatever you got inside.”
“You can’t have it,” Ana said defiantly. “You’d leave me stranded here.”
The woman stepped forward. “We’re not asking your permission,” she snarled. “We’re telling you that we’re taking your car.”
“And whatever you got inside,” added the man.
When the woman got closer and stood on the edge of the glow from the car’s headlights, Ana could see she was missing an eye. There was no patch. There was a scarred hole where the eye used to be. Her lips were worm thin and most of her front teeth were missing.
She was wearing a soiled, ribbed white tank top and baggy cargo shorts. Her legs were a canvas of wounds and bruises. Her feet were bare.
“The car’s not going anywhere,” Ana said. “It got damaged when I hit the coyote. I don’t think it’ll drive.”
The woman cackled, sending a chill along the back of Ana’s neck. “You think we’re stupid? You just said us taking your car would leave you stranded. Now you’re saying you’re already stranded.”
Ana struggled to say something that might dissuade the carjackers. She came up with nothing.