by Payne, T. L.
“I think it’s Santos, Lieutenant.”
Will abandoned his pile and scrambled toward where the others were gathering. A large steel beam lay across twisted metal sheeting. Protruding from the edge of it was a boot and partial pant leg. Not Isabella’s. A soldier. Will watched as several men struggled to lift the heavy beam. They managed to get it high enough for someone to pull on the boot. He was lodged in tight.
“Shush! I heard something,” one of them said.
Everything quieted. Will heard nothing but his hearing had only improved a little since the earlier blasts. He leaned forward, straining to listen.
“It’s faint, but I definitely hear tapping.”
“Let’s get some more men in here and get this damn beam off them,” Sharp yelled.
Minutes later, two dozen military personnel were working to move the beam. Will crawled closer, looking for any opening. The beam moved a few inches and then a few more, then the piece of sheet metal was pried back. Will gasped. Santos’ body was a grisly sight. No way anyone survived those injuries. Beneath him, Will spotted something pink. As the soldier’s body was lifted, Will thought he saw the object beneath him move. He narrowed his gaze and focused on it then drew in a breath and held it. A wave of joy washed over him, and then fear as he waited to see if it was just the debris shifting beneath Santos. As Santos was removed, first a bloody arm came into view and then a torso, followed by a face. A beautiful face.
“Isabella,” he said sharply. “Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”
Will looked for any sign that she heard him. He started to panic, heart racing, stomach churning.
“Oh, God. No!” He couldn’t lose her now.
Blood trickled from a cut on her forehead. Black dust covered her face. Will burst into tears and scrambled toward her, calling her name over and over. He pushed a female soldier aside and reached for Isabella. Will grabbed her arm, and she cried out. Her eyes popped open.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Where does it hurt?” Will said through his tears.
She smiled through gritted teeth. “Everywhere. My arm,” she whispered.
The one with the burn, he thought. All the dust and dirt in it would make the infection worse.
“Can I get some water? I need water over here,” Will yelled.
The soldiers continued digging around her, pulling sheetrock and metal away to free her legs.
Will felt such a rush of emotions. She was alive. They’d found her. She was going to make it out of there. The miracle of it all wasn’t lost on him. Death hadn’t won this time. They were alive despite all that had been thrown at them.
Someone nudged him in the back with the water bottle, and he reached back and retrieved it. He opened it, poured some in the cap, and slowly trickled it into Isabella’s mouth.
“Try not to move just yet. We need to make sure you don’t have a spinal injury,” Will said.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Mortars.”
“Stephens?”
“We haven’t found her yet.”
Will poured another capful and gave her a drink.
“That soldier saved me. He dove on top of me and pushed me to the ground.” Isabella choked up. Tears glistened in her eyes.
Will didn’t know what to say. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you out of here, and we can get you home.”
“Home? I just want the hell out of this town,” she said.
“I know. Me too.”
She scrunched up her face and cried out as pieces of debris were tugged out from around her. Will leaned forward and put his face near hers.
“I’m sorry. It won’t be very long. Everything is going to be all right. We’re going to make it through this. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered in her ear.
She turned her head slightly and kissed him on the cheek. “Does your sister happen to have hot water at her place?” she asked. “Please tell me I get to take a shower when we get there. I’m sick of smelling BO.”
“Sorry,” Will said, moving back away from her.
“Not you—not just you. I can’t stand the smell of myself. I don’t think I’ve ever sweated this much.”
“Yes. Savanah has hot water. She has a cistern that collects heat from the sun and pumps it through black pipes that run into the house. My grandfather designed it years ago. It works great in the summer.”
“I cannot freaking wait.”
With Isabella’s legs free, four soldiers gently pulled her from her tomb and placed her on a litter. Will held her hand as she was loaded into the back of an old white pickup where medics began assessing her wounds.
Her hand looked broken for sure, but apart from that and a few scrapes on her face, they said she looked good. Will couldn’t believe it. How could someone have a building collapse on them and come away with relatively minor injuries?
“We found Stephens. She’s alive. I need a medic,” someone yelled.
Sharp disappeared back into the building, and a few minutes later, Stephens was carried out on a stretcher.
“Is she all right?” Isabella asked, struggling to sit up to see for herself.
“She might have some broken ribs and a pretty nasty cut on her leg, but I think she’ll recover fine,” the medic said.
Isabella let out a sigh of relief and then turned to Will. “Isn’t that great news?”
Will smiled and nodded.
Isabella’s head swiveled right and then left. “Where’s Betley?”
It hurt Will’s heart to see Isabella’s pained expression as she slowly lowered herself to the ground beside Betley’s lifeless body. Tenderly, she placed her hand on his chest. Her head lowered, and her shoulders shook. It was as if she was letting out the agonizing grief and pain from all the losses she’d experienced over the last week. She lifted his hand to her cheek and rocked.
It was unbearable. Will struggled with his own jumble of emotions. Grief was an all too familiar emotion for him. This time, though, he had someone else to direct his anger at. He wasn’t the one responsible for the loss; the murderous enemy that had invaded his country was. But as much as he wanted to see them pay, he couldn’t get lost down that hole just yet. He had to get to Cayden and get him away from the city. There’d be more of them, Will was sure of it. They wouldn’t stop until the military could get reinforcements and run those bastards straight into the Gulf of Mexico.
Will knelt and slid his arm around Isabella’s shoulders. “We have to go now. I need to find Cayden. We have to get away from Houston—leave now while we still can.”
Isabella’s gaze flicked up and then returned to Betley. “There’s so much death. There’s no going back, is there? Life as we know it is over.”
“We’ll get through this. You’ll get through this.” They’d seemed like such hollow words when he’d heard them two years ago. Will hadn’t believed them then. There had been days recently that he’d doubted them as well, but now he knew that you had to keep going and live day by day.
“What if I don’t want to? If this is all there’s ever going to be, what the hell’s the point?”
“I have to believe that things will get better. Remember how awful things look after a hurricane blows through. But with time and hard work, people can rebuild. That is what we are going to have to do here. We’ll have to rebuild.”
“You have to believe that, you’ve got a kid.”
“I do, but I also know how resilient we are as a people. We’ve been knocked down before. Look what happened with the Civil War and then World War One and World War Two. People held on, and when it was over, they rebuilt.”
“It’s just too hard.”
Will nodded. It was too hard, and if he wasn’t a father, he might be feeling the same way. He didn’t have that luxury. He’d already spent too much time wallowing in his grief and self-loathing and letting his son suffer in the meantime. He wouldn’t fall prey to that again. He wouldn’t let Isabella either i
f he could help it.
“I’m too tired. I’m tired of the violence and suffering. I don’t have it in me to keep going like this.”
“You have to. There’s no other choice.”
“You don’t have a choice, but I do.”
“You won’t be doing it alone,” Will said, reaching out and stroking her hair. “You have Cayden.” He turned her head to face him. He ran a finger down her cheek and lifted her chin. “And me,” he said softly. He kissed her gently on the lips and then pulled her into his arms. He felt her shoulders slump, and then the sobs began again. “We can do this, Izzy.”
She straightened and swatted him on his arm. “Don’t call me that. I hate that nickname. Kevin only told everyone that was my name to annoy me.” The corners of her mouth turned up. “No nicknames, okay?”
“Got it.” Will laughed.
As he stood, Isabella reached over and placed Betley’s hands across his chest. Will had never been sure why people did that to the dead. He’d been told that it was to make them appear to only be sleeping, but who slept like that. They hadn’t had an open casket at Melanie’s funeral and Will had searched for hours and hours to find the right photo to display next to her during the service. He’d finally settled on the one of her and Cayden at the beach that summer. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and she’d worn her big floppy beach hat, but she looked radiant as she stared at Cayden and the Hogwarts sand sculpture they’d built together.
“Are you ready?” Will asked, holding his hand out to her.
Isabella took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. “Thank you,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you for getting me out of that rubble and talking me off the ledge.”
“My pleasure.”
“Let’s go get Cayden,” she said as she released him.
Will wasn’t sure what they’d face after leaving Houston. Without cell phones or the internet, it was difficult to know what the rest of the country was facing. For them, it could be more like the normal aftermath of a storm, at least until their food ran out. Will knew that most people didn’t stock much in their pantries. Many shopped for groceries every few days, expecting the stores to be fully stocked every time they went. The grocery stores themselves had turned to the “just in time” deliveries of goods to supply every day rather than holding too much stock themselves and would all have been cleaned out by now. Somewhere, there had to be massive warehouses filled with undelivered goods. If a person was smart, they’d go there first.
“McNally can drive you over to pick up your son,” Stephens said.
Will nodded.
Stephens held out a hand to him. “Thank you for your help.”
Will looked back over his shoulder at Betley. “It wasn’t enough.”
“What’s going to happen to that colonel and staff sergeant who were working with the Chinese?” Isabella asked.
“They’ll be court-martialed,” Stephens replied.
“What’s that mean?” Isabella asked.
“They will have a military trial and be executed.”
“Hung or shot?” Will asked.
“Shot,” Stephens said, flatly.
“Good,” Isabella replied.
Will opened the door and stepped through then poked his head back inside and asked, “What about that general?”
“General Dempsey will be dealt with, eventually.”
Isabella grabbed Will’s hand. “They're waiting for us.”
“Good luck, Stephens. I hope you succeed. We’re all counting on you to root out all those assholes so we can start to rebuild this country.”
She smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Twenty-Nine
Will
Day Six
Will took in the grounds around the demolished flight museum as the female soldier led him and Isabella to the vehicle. The soldiers had already started collecting the bodies—first their comrades and then the enemy that had mercilessly attacked the base. There were so many of them. When Betley had discussed the possibility of insurgents attacking strategic positions within the city, Will had imagined bands of six or eight, not dozens and dozens. Maybe as many as a hundred or more insurgents lay dead just in that location. That wasn’t accounting for those that the military was battling along the perimeter and out at the checkpoint. For the time being, it looked as if the army had been successful at taking them out.
It didn’t take a military expert to tell that this was considerably more intense than a ragtag insurgency. This was an invasion though they hadn’t seemed all that well-armed to Will. From what he could tell, they had a few RPGs and some mortars, as well as rifles. But an invading force would bring much more sophisticated weaponry, wouldn’t they?
The Humvee was already running when they reached it. Behind the wheel was a kid who looked not much older than Cayden. He stepped out and opened the door for Will and Isabella. “Do you have any water?” Isabella asked.
As the soldier reached in to retrieve his canteen, Lieutenant Sharp approached them. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” he said.
“Thank me?” Will asked.
“You fought hard. Betley said if you two hadn’t stepped up and helped, we’d have never retrieved the flash drive.”
“I hope it was worth it,” Isabella said.
“I believe it will be.”
“Are you going to be able to stop them?”
Sharp smiled. He looked as if he’d aged ten years. His uniform shirt was stained with blood and his hands were cut up like Will’s. “We were successful today. It may take time, but we’ll track them all down and secure this city, the state, and then the nation.”
“What about the traitors?” Will asked.
A surprised look crossed Sharp’s face, and then a smile returned. “We have them in custody. Someone will deal with General Dempsey in due course.” He patted Will on the shoulder and extended his hand. “You two take care out there.” Will shook his hand and stepped aside to allow Isabella to say goodbye. Instead, she walked around the back of the Humvee and climbed inside. Will was about to get in himself but stopped and turned.
“Hey. I never got my weapons and gear back. The soldiers that brought us here took it from me.”
Sharp glanced from Will to the female soldier. “Have someone get his gear.”
“Thanks,” Will said as he closed the vehicle’s door.
Sharp pounded on the side of the Humvee. “Take this man to get his boy.”
As the Humvee weaved and swerved around debris and vehicles, heading south across the base toward the Johnson Space Center, Will grew more and more nervous about what they might find there. Stephens had assured him that Cayden was safe there, but until he laid eyes on his son, his stomach would remain in knots.
Pulling into the NASA complex, Will was reminded that he had never ceased to be amazed at the hub of human spaceflight. He’d been there numerous times and was still in awe every time he visited. Seeing the famous Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo 17 space capsules, along with the Skylab, where astronauts used to train to go into space, always brought him a sense of astonishment at what mankind had accomplished. Could they somehow come back, even from this? What if the technology was dead forever?
The Humvee weaved through the complex and pulled up to the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, home of the International Space Station modules, where astronauts prepared themselves for their missions on the space station. Usually, he would be excited to tour the facility again, but this time all he wanted was to see his son’s face and hold him in his arms. He’d never felt so helpless in all his life as when Stephens had separated them when they arrived at the base and now, finally, the long hours waiting to make sure he was okay were about to come to an end.
Practically as soon as the wheels of the Humvee stopped rolling, Will jumped from the vehicle and ran toward the door. He was greeted by a soldier with his hand out to halt him, but Will wouldn’t be denied. He heard Isabella call his nam
e, but he didn’t turn. He had one singular mission, and he was getting to his son.
“Step aside and let him in. He’s the boy's father,” the female soldier said.
Will didn’t wait. He shoved the man and pushed past him calling Cayden’s name.
Will ran through the building, frantic to find him. Finally, Cayden stepped out of the Skylab Trainer, and a huge grin spread across his face. “Dad. You’ve got to see this.”
Will ran to him, wrapped his arms around him, and lifted him off his feet. Nothing mattered but that moment. Hope returned. Hope that somehow—someway they could overcome, adapt, and begin a new life.
Will placed him back on the floor and put his hand on Cayden’s shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you,” he said, wiping tears from his face. “I love you, son. I’m so sorry. I haven’t been there for you. I’m sorry for—”
“It’s okay. I love you too.”
Will somehow managed to choke back the years’ worth of tears that threatened to burst to the surface, feeling a weight lift at hearing those words. From that moment on, he was determined to be a better father, to not avoid the hard discussions, and be there for his son both physically and emotionally.
Cayden stepped back and examined him. “You have blood on you—again.”
“I’m fine,” Will said.
“Isabella?” Will could hear the fear in his voice.
“I’m fine too,” she said as she approached.
Cayden sidestepped Will and ran to her. He threw his arms around her and immediately began telling her all about his tour of the Space Center.
As he watched them, Will was overtaken with gratitude. He was so relieved that Stephens had separated them and sent Cayden there safely away from the base. He hadn’t had to witness all the carnage and see what had befallen Betley. He was alive and well. They were together now, and that was what mattered.
Cayden pulled a chunk of drywall from Isabella’s hair and held it out.
“Boy, do I have a story to tell you. Later, though. I’m starving. How about we go back to my place and warm some soup over the grill.”