Last Call America- Last Call Before Darkness Falls

by Debra Tash

  Christina shook her head. “Keep it for your own little girl.”

  I held it out to her.

  Tina finally took the doll as her deep brown eyes glossed over with tears. “She’ll love it just as much as you did.”

  I kissed my sister and whispered, “God, please keep them safe.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Rib,” she whispered back in my ear. “I’m not Tiny anymore.”

  Our gazes locked. Christina was no longer my baby sister and I was going off to war.

  We were back at Icecap in Vermont. I cherished the small space of time I had traveling to the underground bunker, looking at the maples and sycamores green with life, their leaves chattering whenever the wind blew. The smell earthy, rich, heavenly, and so different from Texas and its famished hills. I got only a few moments under the trees before we descended into the Control Center of the rebellion.

  Icecap had expanded over the three and half years since the war started. It outgrew the nexus my mother and the local militia had built. A section had been added just for the manufacture of ordnance where 3D printers ran continuously. Another area was given over to the development of new weaponry, still another to a war room with state-of-the-art instrumentation, and finally, suitable quarters for the personnel stationed there.

  As I walked along the corridor, the clack of my boots echoed against the concrete flooring, making for the only sound in that long passageway. Maybe this would be the end of all the needless human misery. Just maybe it would be over and we could live free. No one was in the war room when I walked through the door and took my place at the large tact table. It was counter height and made of slick stainless steel. It seemed larger than I remembered from five months ago. I put my hands flat against the cold metal, knowing it would soon be alight with images of a world in bondage.

  A few officers entered, then Jason and David, who had been occupied with inspections that morning. The entry door clicked shut as one of the techs initialized the map. A 3D image of DC flickered to life and soon covered the whole tabletop. My hands slipped off it and came to my sides.

  So much of the capital had fallen into disrepair since I’d last viewed the map. The Washington Monument had splintered along cracks supposedly mended years ago. The peak had broken off; pieces of it were missing, much like the other markers that once were cherished bits of history. Either they were in shambles or outright cannibalized to be used to reinforce buildings. DC had become an armed camp with its perimeter secured and booby-trapped.

  “Shit,” Jason said, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at the map. “You sure Charon’s useless?”

  “They have civvies at every strategic position.”

  The tech enhanced the image. Countless red dots marked individual civilians concentrated around the capitol building, White House, and every important target. The Feds had been using human shields for years. But from what I could see now, it seemed as if they’d emptied the surrounding area and pulled whoever they could lay hands on into the city precinct. If we deployed Charon, civilians would be the bulk of the casualties with the second wave. And to just temporarily disable the defensive weapons without using the bio field wouldn’t give us enough time to get a foothold.

  “Conventional?”

  “The same,” one tactician said. “Missiles. Air strikes. Flying blind with their scramblers functional. Still have a tight shield over the cities. DC and the major centers.”

  “Reports from the underground?” Jason asked.

  “Spotty,” Stewart, the officer in charge of covert actions, answered. “At least eight of our operatives were executed in Southern Florida. More in Michigan. It’s making it increasingly difficult to organize the militias. In Ohio, they’ve been nearly eradicated.”

  “Nearly,” Jason said. “But not completely?”

  “No. We still have contact with units around Dayton and Point Pleasant. A few other holdouts. Mostly everyone’s been driven into the cities and screened.”

  “Still weeding out the chaff,” Jason muttered.

  “We have to launch now. Or lose even more ground,” David advised.

  My husband took in a deep breath. “Then it’s now.”

  “Through here,” David began, using a lighter, a small device that controlled the map image. He switched to a satellite view of the entire region, also in 3D and filling the whole tabletop. “From the Chesapeake.” A red arrow appeared. “That’s the entry point. Past the prowlers they have scouting the coast.”

  “We could pinch their feed,” the tech suggested. “Give them false recon.”

  “From air and sea,” someone else piped in. “Scramble from the flattops outside their scoping.”

  “Air, sea, and land across through Salisbury. Part of our forces will come over the Chesapeake. Others sweeping north. While every one of them convergence on DC,” David went on, that red arrow split, then increasing in length and breadth as it became one arrow pointing at the heart of the capital.

  “And if they’re trapped?” I said, pointing. “Maryland. Virginia. If the Feds cut the entry route, our forces have no retreat eastward.”

  David tipped his head to one side as if in thought. “That’s why we have to drain them of resources. Mount whatever insurrections we can muster across their territory.”

  “We have good intel in Pennsylvania,” another advisor said. “And we’ve been supplying the rebels there. Have a fair chance of punching holes in their defenses.”

  “Same with West Virginia,” still another officer spoke up.

  Again, Jason rubbed the back of his neck, a tic he’d developed when under extreme pressure. “The Carolinas?”

  “North Carolina is ready to explode on the Feds,” the same officer in charge of covert actions answered. “South Carolina’s iffy. But we do have people there, and supplies.”

  “Virginia?”

  The man shook his head. “Hard to get a beat there. The Feds have wiped out large numbers of people, those who wouldn’t submit to being rounded up and shipped into the cities. They’ve been systematic. There are still holdouts, like in Ohio, but not that many of them can give us support.”

  “Set it,” Jason ordered. “Tactical at 0800 hours. Twenty-four-hour lead from there.” He waved his hand, then pressed his palm flat against his forehead as if in pain. “Dismissed.” With that, my husband turned and left the room. I waited to go after him, not wanting anyone else to see what I sensed. Something was terribly wrong.

  After a few moments, I made my way down a passage and stepped into our quarters. The door closed behind me.

  “Beck,” my husband said with his back to me. He sat on the edge of our bed, facing the wall, an echoed memory of that time when I found him like this after Lois Bradley’s son had been killed, a casualty of Charon’s power. Jason had been all alone then, locked in a private confrontation with himself.

  Our quarters at Icecap were larger than the small room we were first given after abandoning Hadley, but not by much. It sported a queen-sized bed that took up most of the space, and two foot lockers tucked in separate corners. The walls were painted off-white, and the floors cold, stone-gray concrete. It had a few luxuries—private bath, the rug I managed to find in an abandoned warehouse, thick Persian, done up in a colorful weave of reds and oranges. It had afforded us some warmth through the two long Vermont winters we had shared here. And there was a small refrigerator opposite the bed.

  I sat next to Jason. Head hung, he had his elbows planted on his legs. I waited for him to speak. A weariness seemed to have overtaken him, almost as if some unbearable weight had been placed on his back and now crushed his soul.

  He looked up, staring straight ahead at the wall, his voice hoarse as he said, “Maybe it’ll be over.” He let out a groan and hung his head again.

  “It’s been worse, Jason.”

  “Hell, yeah,” he grunted a
s he got to his feet.

  “Headache?”

  “No. Not yet anyway.” Jason went to the refrigerator. I thought he would get himself a cold beer, something his aides always made certain was kept in supply. Instead, he grabbed the solitary bottle of Scotch perched on top of the refrigerator and poured himself a drink into one of the cups kept on a shelf above it. I could smell the alcohol over the musty scent of that room. Jason downed nearly half the glass before he stopped to take a breath. The last time he’d had hard liquor was when we’d fought our private war in Texas, and then he’d had only a few quick swallows. He never drank hard liquor before battle, certainly not before a major one like the confrontation we would soon face.

  “What is it?” I finally asked.

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, pausing with an arm held to his face, eyes staring blankly for a moment. The lines around them seemed even deeper, almost as if they’d been carved by a knife. Jason set down the glass. “Been thinking, Beck. Been remembering that night before we used Charon to really give the Feds a punch. Talking about the Enola Gay. Making the call. You remember?”

  “Of course I do.” I could never forget that night.

  “Well, I’ve made the calls and now I’m wondering about what your mother said to me that morning in the old farmhouse. How her group had analyzed my character. The good and the bad. Pegged and holed me pretty good.”

  “That was her job,” I mumbled, then cleared my throat. “Hers and Andrews.”

  “From me to those DHS agents trained to eliminate the rabble, they sure knew how to pick them.” He reached for the glass again.

  “What are you getting at, Poole?”

  “It’s me, Beck,” he answered, his tone nearly remorseful. He took a place on the bed once more, leaving his drink unfinished atop the refrigerator. “It’s just me.” Again, he balanced his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together. “It’s tallying up all the mistakes I made with those calls. In my life. In this war. Thinking of every turn I took and maybe thinking I should have turned different.”

  “You did your best,” I tried, knowing I was giving him empty reassurance. Something ate at Jason, something deep.

  “Sure.” He shrugged and stared at the blank wall as if he could see beyond it. “If we do make it into DC, it won’t be the first time I’d been there. In high school. Government civics class. How to be a good and productive citizen. I flunked it. Never could keep my mouth shut.”

  I chuckled, then willed myself to keep my own mouth shut now.

  “Yeah, Beck, I haven’t changed much, right?” He shook his head. “Well, I flunked. And that bitch of a teacher threatened to make sure I’d be slotted in the lowest job she could recommend. Track me real low because I was obviously unfit.” He snorted. “Maybe that teacher was right.”

  “I’d say she was dead wrong.”

  “Sure. That’s what you’d say.” He groaned. “My mama thought like you. She scraped together some cash. Hard-won and working herself stupid. We took a trip to DC. Saw the Constitution. Visited the Jefferson Memorial. And every one of those war monuments out on the mall. Even went out to Mount Vernon. And all the while I’m thinking these were better people than me. Thinking it didn’t matter. Not where I was headed, to the lowest job that ornery teacher could get cemented into my record. Didn’t matter at all because I wasn’t nearly half the person as any one of those people remembered in stone.”

  Now I understood what tormented him. It wasn’t worry over the battle. If we won in the end, he would be leading us forward. Repairing a broken nation. Helping a beaten people find purpose. He couldn’t see in that moment that he was the catalyst for a reawakening. That every one of those monuments he saw a long time ago made of stone were dedicated to flawed, imperfect people who had done the right thing when their moment came.

  I leaned up against Jason, my head resting on his shoulder now. Could I really give my husband what he craved, the reassurance that he would continue to find the best in himself when pressed? Words seemed like an empty currency in that moment. He had been asked to find his better self a hundred or more times since that first morning when he’d walked into our diner. And sometimes he’d failed; other times he had surely soared. And there would be more of those moments on which fate pivots, where the highest stakes could be won or lost. I took his hand in mine. He squeezed tight and held fast. That one moment on which all of life would balance would come soon enough.

  CHAPTER 27

  Shoulders hunched, head bent, I scrambled forward and pulled myself up into the sand cat, a small armored vehicle more like an old-style SUV that could be blown to hell and survive. We were falling back from the hotwire surrounding DC. Two months were wasted trying to push across that spit of Maryland dividing the Chesapeake Bay from the gray Atlantic. Two months of igniting insurrections in what we called the captive states. We had losses, great and bitter defeats, executions carried out en masse, extreme brutality from the old regime against anyone caught siding with us. But that regime had frayed around the edges, and Pennsylvania was nearly free. The DHS had been wiped away in huge pockets there. Virginians, fighting hard, were just beginning to break the Feds’ hold on their state. So we had pushed forward, slogging through the abandoned farmlands of Maryland, using scramblers to conceal our advance. Every once in a while our troops were taken down by a tripped explosive. As primitive as they were, those IED’s were as deadly now as they were in the Iraq War years ago. So now we were falling back, taking time to regroup and rearm. The sand cat was accompanied by a small convoy, two other vehicles. Jason wasn’t with us and would be with the last of our forces to retreat from our forward bunker. Fed prowlers, the large drones armed to the hilt, zipped overhead in formation, then fanned out to scout the area. They couldn’t see us, not with our mobile shields disrupting their scans, but every now and then a huge explosion pitted the countryside in the hopes they would take one of us out.

  “Where the hell are you, Beck?” my husband yelled.

  I tapped my helmet, hoping to turn down the volume before he broke my eardrums. “Friendly,” I answered. We were just inside that Maryland town with its red brick homes long abandoned, their green shutters dangling by broken hinges.

  “Where?” he barked.

  “Friendly!” I screeched, just before the road blew in front of us.

  More explosions came from behind us as my driver slammed on the brakes. But he couldn’t stop the cat in time. It nosedived into the gaping hole in front of us, deep and wide and created by the blast. The vehicle hit bottom and flipped upside down, crushing the roof. A metallic scent, copper…I knew it all too well by then. The wreck made it difficult to move.

  “Mason!” I yelled into my com. “Mason, you read?”

  I barely managed to turn my head in his direction. The driver’s side had crumpled. Blood, there was too much blood. The man must have died instantly. I broke out of my seat harness and found the passenger side window jammed. No power, no way to manually take it down. Pressing up against the window, I saw there was just enough room. I unlocked the door, lay on my back, and kicked both boot-clad feet against it. The door gave a little, then a little more, until I had just enough room to wriggle out of the cat.

  I stopped midway, my head spinning. I’d had bouts of dizziness lately, twitching rounds of nausea, but this was so much worse. Concussion? Not sure. I sucked in large swallows of air in an attempt to keep down my morning rations. It took a few moments to feel better before I had the wherewithal to make it through the narrow opening and start to claw my way out of the blast crater.

  More explosions overhead. I tried to get the helmet vid online. Dead. Nothing functioning. The com was down and I was cut off. It must have been damaged in the crash. I managed to remove the useless gear and drop it. Using the wrecked cat as a wedge, I hefted myself upward. With my fingers grasping the hole’s ragged edge, I stopped and listened. Nothing but silen
ce up top. Not even the rumble of an engine now. What happened to the convoy? It must have been hit.

  My heart thudded. Was I alone? Out here unprotected? I looked down at the ruined cat. Even with some of it concealed by shadows, I saw there was no way of salvaging anything from the wreck. I waited several moments, listening hard. Jason had been traveling behind us, somewhere close as we retreated from our forward base.

  “Pulling out now is just a small setback,” he’d told me.

  I had closed my eyes and grumbled under my breath, “Sure.”

  Now, I peeled my fingers away from the edge of the hole, intent on waiting it out while being concealed inside the blast crater. I started to lower myself atop the wreckage.

  “Halt!” someone shouted.

  I froze at the sound of clicks, people chambering a round, shotguns, maybe other arms. I looked up and saw a stone-blue sky empty of prowlers, nothing but four silhouettes, all with their weapons pointing at me.

  “Out!” came the order.

  I pushed my way up, landing flat on my stomach, face down when I finally made it to the street.

  “Get on your fucking feet. Hands up,” a woman’s voice demanded.

  I got to my knees and rose slowly, hands held high.

  “Shit!” the woman snapped.

  I blinked several times, not sure if I recognized her at first. “Lois Bradley?”

  “This is Commander Poole’s wife,” my former Farmsworth neighbor told her companions.

  The three men with her looked at Bradley, then back at me. “We thought you were Fed,” one of them said.

  “They’ve been doing random strikes since Poole started advancing on DC,” Lois explained. She pointed her rifle toward the blast crater. “Nothing we have could make a dent like that. Prowler strike.” She pointed. “They hit those two behind you.” I looked at the smoldering wreckage. Unrecognizable. “We couldn’t be sure if they hit one of their own.”