Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy) (19 page)

“Sara and I were able to get into the prison camp easily at night.
The barbed wire can be cut and we can sneak in and out as we please. The Lobos in the watchtowers are mostly bored and checked out.”

“So are the colonists just supposed to make a break for it one night?”

“No, that’s exactly it…timing is going to be crucial. If the colonists slip out of the camp too early, the Lobos will be on high alert before the siege even begins. But if they’re too late…”

“…
then we’re back to them being held hostage,” Fi finished.

“
Right.”

“So Sara and I will be undercover, we’ll relay information back to you all, and then what, you’ll let us know when it’s time for the colonists to slip away?”

“That’s what we’re thinking, though some of this will have to be worked out when we get there, of course.”

“And Sara and I, we’ll be the ones who are going to help cover the colonists’ escape.
Right?”

“Yes,” Sean said.

Sara interrupted. “Waaaaaaaiiiit a minute. You mean that you want me to stay out of the actual battle too? I totally agree on Fi’s behalf, but not on mine. You need me there!”

“Sara,” Julius said, “o
nce Diaspora arrives, we’ll have much more real military personnel. The General says at least thirty men, eight of whom were Navy Seals.”

“Hmmmph,” she grunted.
“Well, we’ll see. I’m not really sure what a Navy Seal has on me.”

Julius choked.

Sara glared. “What?”

His eyes darted t
o Fi.

“Trust me, Julius,” Fi smiled.
“There are only two mistakes you can make with Sara. The first is underestimating her…”

“…
and the second is pissing her off,” Asher said, strolling back into their camp with a half- smile.

Fi exhaled, though it was the first moment she noticed that she’d been holding her breath, just a little.
She hated fighting with him. He settled beside her, leaning against the brick wall of the store that served as their protection from the breeze.

Most of the Army had chosen to pile together
along the criss-cross of retail shops and buildings in this little Pennsylvania town. It was a sad testament to the scope of the tragedy that had passed that towns like these…Ghost Towns, she and Sean used to call them…were already fading into the dirt. The bones of buildings remained, but walls and windows were broken and crumbling, with paint peeling and window dressings whipping in sad tatters. And everywhere the creep of Nature was absolute: the tendrils and roots ripping and tearing, reclaiming the Earth for her own canvas.

When they’d first wandered into town Fi had been surprised to find
herself tearing up. It had been a long time since such scenes had moved her. But the little row of shops was what got her, their hand-painted signs hanging by threads and clacking in the night breeze. They were the kinds of stores one could only find in small towns. They housed the odds and ends of the region: traded, hoarded, loved, and recycled through generations of hands. It reminded her of home.

Sh
ifting her focus to more positive thoughts, she leaned against Asher, giving him a glance to ask permission. He put his arm around her and she sighed, relieved, as she melted into his side. He pressed his lips to her head and squeezed her.

The sun still hadn’t set.
The sky was rent, the tug-of-war unfinished between the insistent stars above and the reluctant glow below. It was just a tiny smidge warmer tonight than it had been in weeks, and everyone was in a cheerier mood. Julius rolled back onto his heels and admired his handiwork as flames licked and popped their way up the teepee of firewood he’d assembled. He smiled at her and she was dazzled, as usual.

Of course, now that she knew
Julius better, she knew that he was so much more than a male model trapped in camos. He was tough and smart and fair and loyal and strong. He was everything you’d imagine a soldier to be. She still couldn’t believe that he treated her with respect.

“
I’m not sure what you would’ve done to me, Fi,” he said, winking, “if I hadn’t let you go all those years ago, but I think I made the right choice.”

Ok, s
ort of respect
, she thought, smiling in return
.
But then, teasing among soldiers was respect, wasn’t it?
She grabbed a hunk of dried apple. “Then tell me, Commander, because I have to know. Why
did
you let me and my Family go?”

A
shadow ghosted across Julius’ magnificent face and Fi hesitated. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Some memories were best left alone.

“I would have said something…
would’ve done my job,” Julius began quietly. “When I caught you, I mean. But to be honest, I wasn’t sure what my job was anymore. I always thought my job was to protect Americans, but…”

“But?” Asher prompted.

“But when I caught Fi, I’d just seen something…” he stammered, dragging his hand over his eyes, “…I’d just seen …it was the worst thing I could imagine, and I was in shock.”

The group
stared back at him, their mouths hanging open, the word “shock” hanging in the air like a label above them. They’d never seen Julius look anything but in command. He’d never shown a moment’s doubt, or stress. Half the time that he wasn’t barking orders he was talking trash with someone, cracking “Your momma” jokes and shooting the breeze. This man with his head down, his spine bent beneath an invisible weight…this wasn’t their Commander. Fi bit her lip.

When Julius
finally spoke, he never looked up. “I was suspicious of the whole thing right from the start. There were too many of us, and we were too heavily armed for a peacekeeping mission. I’d been in Sudan, and I knew the difference. When we assembled, it just, I dunno, didn’t seem right. I left my guys to watch our post and snuck down to the processing center just in time to see soliders dragging a woman away. She was hysterical, screaming that we were separating the old and the sick. She kept saying it was Auschwitz.”

Fi sucked in her breath.
Auschwitz
. She’d barely heard the word in her lifetime. Just a few times in class or in movies. It was the synonym for hell, the deepest, darkest nadir of human existence. When we’d singled each other out for
execution en masse.
She shivered and pulled Luke close.

Julius didn’t seem to notice
. He was dead still. “They took her away real quick and told everyone she was panicking, that nothing was wrong, but I’d watched them group people and she was right. They
were
separating the sick and the old from the others. They’d just loaded a group onto a supply truck when I made my decision. I slipped on board, made up something about last minute orders from my Major.” He shook his head.

“Anyway,” he
said, “the truck headed about twenty miles out of town and then stopped in the middle of nowhere. The soldiers unloaded all the people and then the Sargent, he started telling them that they’d been separated due to their ‘special medical or nutritional needs.’”

Sean snorted.
“Fucking shit.”

“I know.
What the hell would that have to do with driving these people to the bumfuck, right?” Julius’ gorgeous face twisted, his eyes narrowing to slits. “S’cuse my French. So everyone got nervous. You could hear them whispering and trying to keep the few kids calm. But then the Sargent told them that he, we, the government…
whatever
, didn’t know how much food we even had.”

“Wow,
he told them that?” Fi asked. “I thought the soldiers didn’t tell anyone that. The truth, I mean.”

“I know,” he said.
“Most didn’t, but in this case it didn’t matter. He told them they could go anywhere they wanted, but they couldn’t return to town and they wouldn’t be given any rations. Those were for the healthy. When he said that, all hell broke loose. People started screaming and crying and some of the other soldiers looked just as freaked out as I was, and then…” He stopped. “…Then, it got worse.”

“How could it get worse?” Sara asked
, crawling toward the fire from her usual spot in the shadows.

Julius’ eyes were still locked on the fire.
“A real old man stepped up and he said, ‘I volunteer!’ When the Sargent asked him what for, he said, ‘For a quick death.’”

Fi choked and covered her mouth.
Asher squeezed her against him.

Julius nodded
. “I know. I was so shocked that I didn’t even feel anything at the time, but that memory wakes me up at night feeling like I’m gonna puke. The guy had a little girl with him, his granddaughter. I guess she was sick, or else she wouldn’t have been with the group, but he said he wanted to volunteer to die so that his granddaughter could receive rations.”

Fi’s stomach churned.
Even though her Family had followed their own Food Laws, had accepted this same sort of reality, the thought was unbearable now that she was a mother. If anyone tried to deny Luke what he needed, she’d kill them. Period. No questions asked. Her hand sank to her .22 instinctively.

“It was horrible,” Julius choked.
“The old man, he started begging. Saying to please give some food to his baby, Cheryl. I’ll never forget her name. Cheryl.” He turned away from the fire to look at Fi, his eyes burning like the embers. “Just like I never forgot your face. Even though it was dark and I barely saw you, it was like your face was burned into my brain.”

“What happened to those people?” Fi whispered
. “Did the Sargent shoot the man, like he wanted?”

“No, he…
we
weren’t that kind. We left them in the road. The Sargent was all freaked out, and he just ordered us back into the truck. Goddamned coward. Now I wish I’d stayed with those people and tried to help them, but I was so used to following orders that I did what he said. The people tried to follow us. They cried and screamed, pounding on the truck until we were going too fast for them to catch us. I covered my ears and cried like a baby. I didn’t care who saw me. It only took a minute for me to make up my mind. I decided that no matter what else happened, no matter what my orders, I wasn’t going to hurt a citizen.”

“And
that’s why you let me go,” Fi said, and Julius nodded, tears welling in his eyes.

“Yes
. That’s why I let you go.” He drew his arm across his eyes. “When I saw your Family crawling across the road, I turned away. And when I turned back and caught you, I remember that I just froze. I couldn’t believe how young you were…just a baby, sneaking away with a backpack and a knife like a commando or something.” He took a deep breath and blew it out, a long, cleansing exhale. “And of course, I also had your demand to consider.”

“Her demand?” Asher said softly
. “What demand?”

The corner of Julius’ lip twitched.
“She didn’t tell you?”

Fi and Asher exchanged a confu
sed glance. “Tell him what?” she asked.

For the first time since he began speaking, Julius magnificent smile made an appearance.
“She shook her head ‘no’ at me, Asher. There she was, a little girl, pinned down in the dark by a soldier with an automatic weapon, and what does she do? Does she scream? Does she panic and try to run? No. She looks me dead in the eye and shakes her head ‘no.’”

“You never
told me that,” Asher chided her. “You were such a wanna-be badass.”

She swatted at him, being careful not to dislodge the sleeping Luke.
“I didn’t remember doing that! And what’s with the ‘wanna-be’ stuff? I considered myself to be a full-fledged badass at the time.”

Julius rolled his eyes.
“You two are made for each other, that’s for sure. Not many couples try to outdo each other in the badass department. Anyway, so that’s the story. I saw horrible things and didn’t stop them. Letting your Family go was one of the only things I did those last few days that I was proud of.” His tone had grown somber again.

Fi gestured to Luke.
“You should be proud. Look at what you did. You saved so many lives, not just mine, but all of my Family and their children, and one day, their children’s children. All because you made the decision to follow your heart instead of your orders.”

“I
appreciate that Fi, but it can’t undo the guilt I feel. I’ve spent every day since I abandoned my post later that night trying to make it up to the people we left in the road. I even convinced a few of my men to go AWOL with me and look for them. We searched the nearby roads and forests for days.”

Fi gasped
, remembering how her Family had cowered on the ground while soldiers searched the nearby road.
They were trying to rescue people!
She hadn’t even considered that possibility. What if they’d joined the Family and she’d had big, bad soldiers to help her protect them? Her mind slipped and stuttered, tripping over all the ways that her life could’ve been different if she’d known the soldiers’ purpose that night.

“We never found any of them,” Julius
added. “I’ll never know what happened to Cheryl and her grandfather, though I suspect it was nothing good.” He met Fi’s gaze and smiled weakly. “That’s why after years of protecting as many people as I could, and staying alive myself, I was just about struck dead when I saw your face in that video. My little group had joined a Net in New York. We’d heard about there being food and radios, but when we joined, they also shared the files on the tablet. You know, your book.”