by Hunt, Jack
Yes, it meant living longer under Yong’s thumb but in contrast to the way the resistance would treat him, it would have been like night and day. He had no qualms about it. He knew they hated him. If they didn’t shoot him, they would treat him like a prisoner of war. As it stood he was a free man, in fact much more than he was before the occupation. He planned to keep it that way.
“But what about Arrington?” Chief Felix Vargas asked.
“Oh, Felix, your stupidity knows no bounds.” Morgan chuckled, filling his glass with more bourbon then digging out a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Lights. Cigarettes were becoming hard to find even for them. “We are killing two birds with one stone,” he said, stepping away from the tablet that had revealed the whereabouts of the resistance’s outpost. “Santiago has reassured me that he will deliver the Hunter, just as we will deliver the resistance now that we have their location. All we need is to sell this to Yong, and then sit back and let the PLA and Santiago do the rest. After that, we are home free, my friend.”
“You mean you are.”
“Oh don’t be such a sourpuss, as long as I remain in this position so do you. We’re a team, Felix, remember?” he said, begrudgingly handing him the glass of bourbon.
“Is that what you call it?” Felix asked. He walked to a window and looked out over the town. It had changed a lot in a month. Erecting those fences, positioning troops at campsites both inside and out of Camdenton had led to a greater sense of safety and security. “Here’s what I don’t understand. You say you have an insider working within the resistance. Why didn’t they just tell you the location?”
“You’re not seeing the bigger picture here, Felix, but that’s okay. That’s why Yong put me in charge and you beneath me.”
Felix whirled around and crossed the room. “You know I’m sick of you speaking to me in a condescending manner. I was chief for far longer than you were mayor, and I will—”
“Shut your mouth!” Morgan bellowed, cutting him off and glaring at him. “Do you think anyone gives a crap about how long you were chief? Huh? Do you think the people of this town give a rat’s ass about that uniform? No. They didn’t before and they definitely don’t now.” After filling his glass he walked in front of him, taking a sip then blowing smoke in his face. “The only thing they care about is getting fed, and waking up tomorrow alive. Let me show you something.” Morgan placed an arm around Felix and walked him over to the window again. “Look. What do you see out there?”
“A shithole under the PLA’s rule.”
“No, no, no. That, my friend, is an empire, it is ours. Do you think that after the PLA have taken the twelve states of the Midwest they are going to stick around in Camdenton?” He waited but got no answer. “No. They will place people in charge who have proven themselves trustworthy and capable. That, my friend, is you and I. Now I know you love the red, white, and blue. Hell, I do too but look at where you are now in comparison to before?”
“I was getting steady pay and a good vacation.”
Morgan squeezed Felix’s neck muscle and laughed. “Oh, Felix, widen your vision. Widen your vision! What you had before was minuscule to what is before you now. We are standing on the precipice of a new tomorrow. A nation under the rule of China and Russia. By the time they get all the chess pieces into place, we will have proven ourselves as good stewards of this town. Hell, maybe even of this county. Imagine that! You could take charge of your own town. Think of all the possibilities. For example, that woman of yours. What do you call her…?” He chuckled. “Your wife. That’s it. How old is she now?”
Felix looked annoyed.
“C’mon, Felix. How old?”
“Fifty-two.”
“Okay, imagine it now.” He spread out a hand in front of him. “You can ditch that old bag, and upgrade to a nice, fresh 25 or 30-year-old.”
Felix glared at him. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
“Oh, pish posh, Felix. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.” He pointed down to some of the younger women hurrying down the streets trying to get home before the curfew. “Hell, if you must, you can have both. I mean who would stop you?”
Felix shrugged his arm off. “You know, Morgan, you are one sick puppy. If I was still chief, I would enjoy locking you up.”
He found that amusing as he wandered back to his seat. “Well, I’m sure you’ll come around to it. Anyway, jokes aside, what I’m trying to say is if we play our cards right now there is no end to what we can have. Those people out there, they will suffer but us, it will be smooth sailing. But!” He wagged a finger at him. “To do that we need to be on the same page about this. General Yong needs to know that we, you and I, came up with this.”
“And Santiago?”
He dismissed him. “Oh, Santiago is a loose end. A means to an end. Once we have the Hunter, and the resistance is gone, there will be no need for a man like that. I certainly wouldn’t like him breathing down our necks. You never know what he might do. No, I will handle him. For now, let’s focus on getting our story straight. We extracted the information on the whereabouts of the resistance from Bernard, we opted to use FLIR technology to locate the resistance and then we arranged for the transportation of the Hunter, hand-delivered, dead to Yong.” He leaned back in his seat, picking a piece of food in his teeth with a paperclip. “So, are we on the same page?”
“I guess.” He nodded.
“You guess?”
“Yes. Okay. Yes!”
“Good.” He glanced at his watch. “Yong should be here shortly, and Santiago will have the Hunter within seventy-two hours from now. Would you like another?” he asked, picking up the almost full bottle of 25-year-old bourbon.
The long journey back to the settlement was filled with awkward silence. Gunnar sat across from Arianna in the rear while some of the militia sat upfront. Arianna had been staring at him without saying anything for the better part of twenty minutes. Finally, she blurted out, “You know, I’m getting a little tired of you following me around.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“You know what you’re doing. Gunnar, if I wanted to harm these people, don’t you think I would have had plenty of time to do it already?”
“According to Tucker you already have.”
She shook her head, a frown forming. “You think I had anything to do with that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know but Tucker was convinced and let’s face it, even your pal Arlo seems to have some trust issues with you.”
She lifted a hand, offering an exasperated expression. “Oh please, everyone has trust issues. We are in the thick of war with an enemy that is using Americans like pawns in a game. Everyone is under the microscope, you included.”
“Me?” He laughed then his smile faded. “Go ahead. Spin it back to me. That’s what you’re good at, right? I imagine if I had stayed around long enough you would have come up with an excuse for why I drove you into the arms of Demar.”
She pursed her lips, clasped her hands together, and looked out at the dark road. “You’re never going to drop that, are you?”
“You haven’t given me a reason to. You turned your back on me, you turned your back on Zhang, all for what? What did you gain, Arianna? Demar is dead, Zhang works for Yong and our marriage is down the drain.”
She studied his face. “I didn’t turn my back on you or Zhang. Zhang left of her own accord as did you.”
“No, that’s where you are wrong. You weren’t an innocent bystander. You played a role in it.”
“Look, I’m not saying I’m innocent. I’ve made my mistakes but at least I own them.”
“And I don’t?”
“You never apologized to Zhang.”
“Apologized? What was there to apologize about?” Gunnar waited a few seconds for a response but then clued in. He stabbed a finger at her. “Oh no, no you don’t. That was an accident,” he said, referring to Chen’s death at the waterfall. “She’s not to blame and neither a
m I.”
“You knew how dangerous it was. She knew too but you moved ahead regardless.”
He stared at her with an incredulous look. “This is how you do it. Isn’t it? You twist it back to me. Anything to keep the light off your own actions.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then what is this?”
“What I’m saying, is shit happens. Things spiral out of control. All we can do is apologize and move on. I’ve apologized for what happened between me and Demar. If you choose to not accept it, that’s on you. And as for Chen, maybe in your mind you did everything that was right that day but to Zhang, she still lost her brother.”
“And we lost a son.”
“We lost more than that,” she replied.
Gunnar sighed and they continued the journey in silence. It was for these reasons and more he’d stepped away from his past career, his marriage, even his relationship with Zhang. All of it only brought up deep-seated pain, pain that had led to him drinking too much. Had it not been for Miles’ mother, he probably would have drunk himself into an early grave. Sitting there, the engine rumbling as the truck navigated along dark trails far from the main roads, he thought back to that day, that knock at the door.
And in a flash he was back there.
Laying on the floor, several empty bottles around him, his long hair in a puddle of puke. He hadn’t shaved for months or had a shower in weeks, and the little he’d eaten amounted to cans of tuna. Hell, he didn’t even know America had been attacked. At first, the knock at the door was soft, it felt part of a dream he was having.
When it didn’t stop, and he saw a face peer through the dirty window, he was in such a drunken state he didn’t even recognize her. “Go away!”
“Open the door, Gunnar. It’s me. Mary.”
“Mary? I don’t know any Mary.”
“Mary Arrington,” she said through the pane of glass.
He waved her off and for a moment it sounded like she’d left.
She hadn’t.
A minute or two later, the door burst open and she then set the sledgehammer against the outside of his cabin and walked in, going first to the windows and pulling back the curtains, letting a flood of sunshine fill his cabin. “God, it stinks in here.”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
She didn’t help him up but instead went into the kitchen and went about putting a pot of coffee on, then she returned with a bowl of water and emptied it over him. He gasped, the shock of cold water almost snapping him out of his drunken state.
“Woman, what the hell are you doing?”
“Stopping you from making a fool out of yourself,” she’d replied, before returning with another bowl of water. This time he put up his hand to stop her only to get a laugh out of her. “All right. Then you better get in that shower.” He staggered to his feet and stumbled toward the bathroom, only stopping at the door for a second. “Mary Arrington? I know you, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she’d replied.
And like that he was back in the truck, back in the present. God, he missed her. Grant had been a lucky man. A woman that could have easily cheated on him but she remained faithful even though he knew she had feelings for him.
As they got closer to the road that led into the forest, the driver slammed the brakes on. “What is it?” Arianna asked from the back.
“Take a look for yourself,” the driver replied.
Unable to see the way ahead because of the cargo bed cover, both of them climbed over the tailgate and came around to see the night sky illuminated with a huge orange hue. The camp was under attack.
11
Branson, Missouri
It was still the dead of night when the Black Hawks banked toward the outskirts of Branson. Tex set the bird down in an open field northwest of Silver Dollar City. It wasn’t a city so to speak but an amusement park full of wild rides, family dining, and the famous Marvel Cave, located just off Route 76.
Arrival was a relief for both Miles and for Lorenzo Hall, their contact, and a collaborator for the PLA. Snow was the first out to greet him as the rotors whipped overhead, the rest followed, rifles at the ready.
“Lorenzo?” Snow asked.
“That would be me.” They shook hands. “I was told there would be more of you.”
“Yeah, well, this is it.”
“All right, we need to move quickly. Follow me.” He turned and headed over to two old trucks. As there were so few of them, less than eighteen, they all crammed into the back of the M35 deuce and a half-ton cargo truck. Miles squinted to stop the dust as the helicopters took off. Tex had told them he would return for the extraction zone once they’d made contact.
Snow was all business from the moment the trucks peeled away heading for the hidden location used by resistance. What Miles came to learn was pockets of survivors had grouped together and were doing the same thing as them, attacking transportation trucks, food supply centers, and then disappearing into the shadows.
While Lorenzo continued answering Snow’s questions concerning Darius, he kept eyeballing Miles as if he wanted to ask him a question but couldn’t because of Snow. Eventually, his need to feed his curiosity got the better of him. “Sorry, Snow,” he said, raising a hand as he looked at Miles. “Are you him?”
Lucius rolled his eyes then diverted his attention outside as the truck rumbled its way down the hilly landscape. Even Miles was getting tired of being asked that question and being looked at like a sideshow freak. “By him you mean?”
“The Hunter?”
It was puzzling. How could anyone this far south have heard of him?
“Actually no, it’s him,” Miles said pointing to Lucius. Lorenzo looked at Lucius who got this wide smile on his face as if he’d won the jackpot, and as if all his childhood dreams had come true at once. The fact was he thrived on the attention, and Miles was sick of it. He’d considered dumping the mask, just so he could blend in with the others. He still couldn’t understand what the fascination was. Sure, he’d accomplished in a short time what few had done, including militia, but did that matter? He certainly didn’t think it was anything to call home about.
“Is that right?” Lorenzo asked.
Before Lucius could bask in the attention, Snow thumbed at Miles.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“How? How would you know?” Lucius asked.
“Well, no offense but you look a lit wet behind the ears,” Lorenzo said, to which the rest of the soldiers in the truck laughed. If there had been enough light inside that truck, Miles was sure he would have seen Lucius’ cheeks flush red. Immediately upon learning the truth he extended a hand to Miles. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Uh… thank you?” he asked in a confused manner. Scarlett who was sitting across from him smirked.
“We heard what you did.”
“From who?”
“Darius.”
“Oh. Right.” He was living east of Camdenton at the time so it would have made sense he would have learned of what was happening in town. “About Darius. Where is he?”
“In Branson.”
“I thought he was attending the Springfield meeting?”
“The meeting was a cover for Operation Green Bird.”
“Green Bird?” Miles asked, confused.
He nodded. “I will explain more when we arrive. It will all make sense. In the meantime, it’s just good to have you here. It will give the people hope.”
“The people?”
“Survivors. There are many.”
After saying that, Lorenzo leaned back and they spent the next fifteen minutes in silence, looking out the back of the truck at the dark road. It didn’t take long to arrive at Silver Dollar City. The amusement park was quiet and empty as they drove through the open gates and wound their way around the street to the parking lot outside Marvel Cave. Lorenzo hopped out and made a whistling sound, from out of the shadows, multiple armed men appeared. They we
ren’t dressed in fatigues but instead just looked like ordinary folk. “All right. Let’s move it. We are working to a strict timeline here,” he said, bringing down the tailgate and ushering them out. As soon as the last one was out, the truck peeled away but instead of leading them toward the building that tourists would use to get into the cave, they were led into the surrounding woodland.
“Where are you taking us?” Scarlett asked.
“Into the cave. We had to board up the tourist entrance to avoid soldiers entering. They’ve been out here a few times and so we can’t take any chances. There is another way in. It’s a little dangerous but it works and is completely hidden.” They hiked for almost twenty minutes before they approached a series of large boulders on a steep slope covered in thick underbrush. At a glance, it looked like any of the surrounding rock land they’d already passed but as they pushed through a thicket of trees and bushes, they found themselves facing a small opening, no higher than four foot by roughly three foot in width. “They call it the letterbox because you’ll have to push through your backpacks and slide in on your belly. I hope you don’t mind tight places as it doesn’t widen for at least twenty-six feet.”
“You have got to be joking!” Lucius said, tossing his backpack down. “I’m not going through there.”
“You claustrophobic, Lucius?” Miles asked, grinning at him.
“No,” he shot back. He grabbed his bag, pushed Miles out of the way, and offered to be one of the first to enter. Miles chuckled.
“What a guy,” Scarlett said. “He has some serious issues.”
“Glad I’m not the only one who noticed.”
Lorenzo entered first so he could shine a light to provide everyone else with a clear way through. One by one they entered the tight space and slid across the cold stone, moving as fast as they could to get out from the enclosure. Once Miles crawled through to the other side he found himself in a cavern that was roughly eight foot high. Sound echoed, even the slightest movement could be heard. Multiple flashlight beams bounced off the walls as they were told to hold on to a thick rope that would lead them down a narrow tunnel.