Last Call America- Last Call Before Darkness Falls

by Debra Tash

  The woman had changed in the years since I’d last seen her at the Battle of Boston. Bradley’s blonde hair had grown long. She wore it down in wild tangles. Skin tanned, her arms showed evidence of just how toned she’d become, most likely from wielding that rifle. Her features were no longer soft and gentle, but hardened, her eyes reflecting a deep bitterness.

  A high-pitched alarm sounded. One of the men looked at the small device strapped to his wrist, then his tone was crisp as he yelled, “Incoming!”

  “Move!” Lois ordered as she latched onto my hand. We made a dash for what looked to be an open manhole. She shoved me toward it. “Down!”

  I grabbed the ladder’s rusted rungs. Down I went into the darkness. Lois and the three men followed. The space directly under the open manhole was large enough for all of us to stand erect. On either side was a storm sewer, less than five feet in diameter each way. One of the men had a flash. The beam shot out from the tip of his finger as he pointed it. The light briefly illuminated what looked to be a cave-in. I realized what it was, the spot where the cat had crashed through after the prowler strike.

  He swung the light to the other side, illuminating our only escape route just as an explosion rocked the ground above us. We hurried through the undamaged pipe, hunched over. That beam of light, focused ahead, showed us the way. Our boots splashed in the thin river of water running through the pipe, soaking our footwear. It smelled rancid, and the walls were covered with slime and muck. The stench choked me and made my stomach churn.

  We moved forward, quickly, making several turns, and we went through a broken area in the pipe, squeezing ourselves out. A tunnel, dug through the red earth of Maryland. Sandy in places, clay in others, that tunnel was reinforced with roughly hewn timber and wooden planks. It didn’t look all that stable. Maybe it was the crash, the hurried retreat, I felt so weak, so lightheaded. Thinking I would pass out, I bent over, trying to get the blood to rush to my head.

  “Move!” Bradley snarled.

  I snapped up, straight, nodded, and forced myself to do just that.

  After a long trek, I finally saw a wink of light, a blessed promise of some way out of there. As the tunnel inclined upward, fresh air wafted by with the kiss of a late summer breeze, close, so very close. We made our exit into a densely forested area. The arching canopies of trees allowed splashes of sunshine to dapple the forest floor. I took in a deep breath and let it sink down, delighting in the sweet fragrance of living greenery.

  There was a small encampment, more functional and set up to break down quickly if necessity demanded a hasty retreat. With Bradley’s contingent, there must have been thirty people, maybe a few more, including children.

  “You!” Lois yelled to one of the older boys. He turned toward us. “Take the newbie over to Johnson.”

  “Me?” I asked.

  “Not you. The newbie.” She pointed to one of the three men who’d made it through the tunnel with us. “We salvaged him from DC.”

  The boy motioned for the newbie to follow him. “And bring us something to eat,” Lois dictated.

  The boy stopped, looked over his shoulder, his dirty brow creased.

  “Do it!” Bradley growled. “Now!”

  The young teen rushed away with the newbie close behind.

  Lois motioned for me to follow her. We went to a makeshift lean-to, nothing more than dark fabric draped atop some branches stuck into the ground, and beneath it a bedroll. “My quarters, Mrs. Poole.”

  “It’s Rebecca.”

  Her countenance finally softened, shaded with a certain melancholy. “I remember. Beck for short. My son was still…” She shrugged and shook her head as if setting aside a painful memory.

  The boy came back with a tin of tuna fish. I took it and said, “Thanks.”

  Without a word, he turned heel and ran away.

  “That’s the best we have,” Lois said as she unfurled the bedroll.

  I nodded, acknowledging their gift of hospitality.

  We sat. She popped open the can of tuna and held it to me. “Bon appétit.”

  I scooped out some with my fingers. “Was a great year for tuna.” I savored it and smacked my lips. “Perfect blend of mercury and oil.”

  She laughed, but it was more a gruff chuckle than anything close to being amused.

  “You all part of the underground?” I asked.

  “Part,” Lois answered, helping herself to the tuna. “Well, my part.” She cocked her head toward the encampment. “My unit. Such as it is.”

  “You been out here since the Battle of Boston?”

  “No. Not even by half. Only six months, maybe a little more.” She tipped up her chin, looking at the tree canopies a moment before continuing. “Lost track. Before then, I was with the resistance until they caged me.”

  I stopped licking my fingers and looked at her, silent. She’d been captured by the enemy.

  Lois shrugged again and helped herself to more tuna. “For over a year. In DC. Toiling away…in bed.” Her toughened features grew even harder, jaw flexing. “That’s what I did to survive. Government-issue slut. Lying on my back and letting them have at it.”

  My mouth went dry. At that moment, I wished I had something to wash down the tuna. “What did you have to do to get them to set you free?”

  “No one gave me a pass-through, if that’s what you’re inferring.”

  No one’s gotten out of DC in years. Unless they had a pass-through from the Feds. And those were given only to insiders, not government-issue sluts.

  Bradley scooped out some more tuna. “You think I’m a Fed plant?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Beck, easy to guess what’s running through your head. You haven’t learned to hide your feelings like I have.”

  I almost laughed at that remark, almost—but I was smart enough to keep myself in check. Her feelings were displayed in every cell of her body.

  “Trust me on this one. If I could, I’d blow every last one of those bastards to hell.” Lois chuckled again, without humor and laced with acid. “No, I got out through the underground. Same as everyone in my unit. Been slipping people past the wire for months. Which, as you can tell by how many we got here, hasn’t been all that often.”

  “I don’t understand. There’s no way in or out of the city unless it’s through the checkpoints. We haven’t been able to punch through their defenses.”

  “When I said ‘underground,’ I meant it.” She raised an eyebrow. “The way in and out is all under the ground.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Lois led me back to the crash site and from there I gave her a coded frequency to raise our nearest base. Within minutes, they dispatched a helo and we were soon airborne. I looked out the window as we raced over fallow farmland and had a fair idea where we were headed. I cocked my head to Lois seated next to me to ask if she’d ever been on a flattop. That hard crust of a woman was chewing her fingernails, biting off slivers and spitting them out.

  “You afraid of something?” I asked.

  “Never flew anywhere.”

  I looked out the window again just as we zipped past the shoreline. We were definitely headed to the USS Liberty, stationed off the coast. As we hovered over the flattop, Bradley pushed back in her seat and tugged on the harness strapping her down.

  “Don’t worry,” I assured her, suppressing a smile. “They hardly ever miss the deck.”

  She swallowed hard.

  After the helo set down, one of the crew swung the door wide. I got out of my seat and waited by the opening for the blades to slow to a stop. The scent of the ocean, the wash of salty air, smelled like heaven after my crawl through that pipe. I spotted my husband, hunched down and minding his head as he made a dash toward the helo. In moments, he had his arms around me, a quick strong hug and a whisper in my ear, “Damn it, Beck, this is why I didn’t w
ant you to leave Texas.”

  I gave him a peck on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “You son of a bitch, you’re going to be thanking God I am here.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. Then his expression changed, eyes widening, mouth slightly agape. I turned to see what he was staring at, and it was Lois Bradley standing behind me.

  “You remember me, Commander?” she asked.

  “I do,” he answered, his voice a rumbling whisper. “Inflicted the first casualty and—”

  I squeezed his hand to stop him.

  “And?” Bradley prodded, an eyebrow arching.

  “And Beck’s neighbor,” he said.

  She dipped her head slightly.

  “Thanks for saving my wife.”

  She dipped her head again.

  “And thank God,” he added as his gaze latched onto me.

  “Yes, thank God, smart ass.” I stepped back and swept my hand toward the woman behind me. “Lois Bradley is going to give you the keys to the city.”

  We settled into the Command Center, a conference room of sorts that served the Liberty’s officers when they discussed strategy. It was larger than most of the spaces onboard, with better decor, a polished wood floor, and light tan and blue walls. Lining the walls were vid screens and instrumentation, all placed at eye level if one were seated. In the center of the room was a smaller version of the tact table at Icecap. For now, it remained a blank surface as we took our seats around it.

  Bradley settled into a padded swivel chair as my husband leaned on the table, his gaze squarely on her. David was the only other person in the closed room besides me, his face reflecting puzzlement at having been summoned out of a meeting in the ready room.

  “So where are these keys to the city?” Jason asked.

  “Underground,” Bradley answered, her tone cool despite his intense scrutiny.

  “There’s no way underground,” David said. “All the old Metro tunnels have been blown. The storm sewers, too. Sewage is treated onsite. Stormwater held in cisterns.”

  “Not all of the system, General,” she said, addressing David by his rank. “There’s one route that was kept open.”

  “Not possible,” Jason said, sitting back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Everything’s been scanned.”

  “Still there is a way, Commander. Ask your wife.”

  Both Jason and David looked at me. “I know there’s some kind of passage. How far it goes, I’ve no idea.”

  “But I do,” Lois said, speaking directly to Jason. “It runs all the way through the city. Two of my men along with me were escorting a salvage out of DC when your wife almost fell on us.”

  “A prowler strike,” I explained. “It blasted the street and caused a crater right in front of us. We couldn’t stop.”

  “That’s what forced my party above ground,” Lois explained. “We saw someone trying to get out of that crater and thought it may be the enemy. You can see how it turned out.”

  “I can see,” Jason conceded. “And I hope you know how grateful I am. But are you telling me the Feds left an open route? For escape?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where does it terminate?” Jason asked.

  “The capitol building. It’s shielded all the way through the city. That’s why you couldn’t detect it.”

  “How do you get into it?”

  “There are several entry points along the route. You just have to know the right codes to gain access.”

  “And there’s the problem.” Jason leaned forward again. “How would anyone who doesn’t have high-level clearance know them?” For the second time, Lois seemed uncomfortable, and we weren’t taking off in a helo. She looked at the table, chewed her lower lip, and tried clearing her throat, but she remained mute. “You have an answer for me or not?” Jason demanded.

  Another uncomfortable moment, then a timid nod. “I did rank pretty high. But not as an elite. They sought me out. Real good at my work. I whored for them, Commander.” She straightened her back in an attempt to sit tall. “There was one. He was my customer. No one else’s. A senator. Older. Much older than me. He never wanted anything but to talk. He…” She shook her head, eyes glittering with tears. “He just talked. First about his son. A little boy just like mine. He died a long time ago. Then his wife died shortly after that. This man was all alone. Isolated. And in all his loneliness, he confided in me. Confessed. Sorry. He kept saying it. How sorry he was. Told me over the months. Every few days when he would visit the club. And pay. And never touch me. In my room he’d say—‘sorry.’ And finally…on one of those days, he told me about the escape route. And he gave me a dot.”

  She dug into her pants pocket. With her palm up, she lay her hand atop the table and uncurled her fingers. Cradled in it was a small case. She opened it to reveal its contents. “This one, Commander.” Inside was a small black circle, a data dot. “The underground route is on it. Along with codes and access points. He gave it to me so I could get out. ‘Leave DC,’ he said. ‘Be free. That they would all get their ‘well-deserved death sentences.’ Then he gave me a kiss on the forehead. Like a friend. Like a father. He left and I never saw him again. I heard he carried out his own sentence, and took a gun to his head.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. I went to put my hand on her shoulder to offer comfort. Bradley flinched, shooing me away, that small box and the black circle inside it held out as an offering.

  Jason finally took it. “David, pass the order to stand down and call in the techs. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  The afternoon had given way to a long evening. I needed some fresh air and wanted to leave the confines of the Command Center crammed with officers. Forgoing the elevator, I walked up the flight of stairs to stretch my legs and went outside. It was the only place on the flattop with railings, sheets of gun-gray metal. The carrier’s island housed the flag bridge, bridge, and primary flight, and at its bottom, the Command Center. Located on the ship’s starboard side, the island grew out of the deck and was in function and design like a land-based air traffic control tower.

  I leaned against the railing and looked below at the jets secured with down chains. After a few moments, I lifted my gaze and focused on the endless sea. A full moon lay close to the horizon, its light scattered across the water, momentarily igniting the tops of choppy waves with sparks of restless brilliance.

  In the Command Center, the 3D image of DC—the capitol and White House, all the avenues and open spaces, a city recreated in miniature—had filled the length and breadth of the tact table. And now Lois’s information had been added. Along with the decaying buildings and faltering monuments, underground burrows were displayed beneath Washington as blue strands, remnants of the Metro, the old congressional subway between government buildings, along with storm sewers, cannibalized to create an escape route if an order to evacuate was called. Finishing off the hologram’s latest edition were bright red dots marking strategic points of entry along the tunnels.

  I inhaled the rich salty air, squeezing my eyes shut. Every bit of me was so incredibly weary. In that moment, it felt as if I’d been born at war. I looked out again just as another hot flash shot through me. With sweat beading on my forehead, I peeled off my old Harvard sweatshirt. A relic now, it was nearly worn through in places. I tied it around my waist. The thin fabric of my sleeveless cotton blouse gave me some relief, along with the feel of the railings’ cold steel against the flesh of my bare arms. The night was so different out here beyond the shoreline. Lonely, with just the sounds of the ship, thrumming machinery, and the empty sea.

  “Beck.”

  Startled, I clutched the railing.

  “Don’t jump overboard,” Lois said as she slipped beside me, leaning against the railing. Her gaze set on the rising moon, her voice a hushed whisper as she breathed, “Look at that.”

  A breeze blew through her
hair, caused wisps of gold to dance. In that moment, she reminded me of Tina, the way the streetlight streaming through our frosted window caught in my sister’s hair that night before it had all begun, the night before we had drawn a line and said we’d had enough.

  “You remember that last Fourth of July in Farmsworth?” Lois asked, her voice more a faint echo than a soft mummer now.

  “Yes,” I answered. I did. That Fourth of July, we had all celebrated in the town square, with the last of the sparklers and fireworks, that summer before it had all disappeared.

  “We’d just moved to town. My husband and my”—she swallowed—“little boy. It was our first big celebration. Everybody was so friendly.” A faint smile curled her mouth. “Welcoming us to town.”

  “I remember,” I said, my voice dropping nearly as low as hers. My father had just been diagnosed but we’d gone to the town’s square like we’d gone every Fourth of July since we’d moved to Farmsworth. “It was a good day.”

  “The best.” She tipped up her chin, her eyes set on the vault of heaven. “He laughed. Our little boy. I thought the fireworks would scare him.” She slowly lowered her head, dipping it to the side. “He was just a baby. All the noise, all the strangers there, but nothing scared him. Maybe it would have been better if things had. Maybe.”

  “I remember how hot it was that day,” I offered. “How the fireflies were all around us that night, even before they started the show.”

  “You know, there were fireflies the night I told my husband we were expecting. Upstate New York. We lived in the most beautiful place. Long green grass. Flowers in the spring. And in the summer, a lot of fireflies, especially that summer night. We were so happy. We turned up the music and danced on the patio. Had an old homestead overlooking the Adirondacks. No one had been allowed to build there in years. And the Feds eventually ordered us off. The president signed an executive order designating the area part of a national monument. That’s when we moved to Farmsworth.”

  She turned her back to the railing and crossed her arms over her chest. “And you? Suppose you and the commander didn’t get a chance to dance.”