Survival (7 page)

Norton nodded and the general
touched a button on the arm of his chair. A bank of video monitors blinked on
and Norton’s mouth fell open at the images they revealed.

“200,000 of them. Maybe more. The
Authority has called in the National Guard. I don’t think it’ll make much of a
difference, though. That,” he said, pointing a finger at the monitors, “is the
beginning of the end of the current way of doing things.”

Norton couldn’t reconcile what he
was seeing. Throngs of civilians marched up and down Portland’s streets. There
were, indeed, many thousands of them, pressed into the parks and streets of a
burning city. The monitors were silent, but a quality of anger seemed to bleed
from the images there.

“If you wanted a revolution…”
General Creen whispered, his back turned as he watched the monitors, “you got
it.”

“And you, General? What will
happen to you?”

The old man turned and offered a
wry smile. “I’ll die. It won’t be long now.” He rummaged in his pocket, pulled
out a canister and threw it to Bryan. Cyanide—a centuries-old manner of
suicide.

“Why did you do that?”

“I’m a symbol of the old ways. I
understand that. The tides have been turning for decades, but what you did
tonight sped things up. There’s no life for me on the other side of what
happened here, Bryan. No place for me in the new world.”

“And your crimes, General? What
of the things you did in your life?”

He sucked in a draught of air and
let it go in a sigh. “Who knows? I did what was asked of me. Did I believe in
it? Sometimes. Early on, mostly.”

“Would you change it? If you
could, would you go back and change it?”

Creen eyed him. “It doesn’t
matter, son. Fact is, I
can’t
change it. We live with our actions. It’s
what we…” he grimaced, “what we do.”

Norton nodded. He stood and
turned his back on the old man and left without sparing him another glance.

When he returned to his friends
in the hallway, one was dead. The other barely breathed.

Bryan choked back a sob, threw
Verlander’s weapon away and sprinted for the stairwell and the promise of help
above ground.

***

It was one of those summer
afternoons in Oregon. The sky was a rich blue, the trees filled with singing
birds. The sun warmed the face of the Earth and their families gathered at a
picnic table in Forest Park.

An impressive banquet stretched
before them—cold cuts and potato salad and fried chicken and fruit and iced tea
and chocolate chip cookies. Bryan sat near his mother and father. Across the
table, Eli was strapped to Maggie’s chest in a sling.

 Fausto played with Carmen on a
blanket while Angie, his wife, fixed them plates of food.

“A toast,” Bryan’s father said.
He wore a look of sincere pride as he regarded his son. “To Fausto Ruiz and
Bryan Norton—a pair of first-rate fathers!”

There was laughter as they
touched cups. Bryan’s smile lingered as he scanned the park. Families basked in
the sunshine, throwing footballs and eating picnics of their own.

The world had changed in the last
nine months. The new government was busy re-building cities toppled by
struggle. The Authority had managed a weak defense before falling in less than
sixty days to a determined populace.

America was changing. The world
was changing.

“Oh, hey now, Buster!” Maggie
said, blotting her shirt with a napkin. “We have a code red over here, Daddy!”
She wore a bemused grimace on her face. There was a wet circle on her t-shirt.

Eli laughed, his toothless mouth
wide in a mischievous grin.

Bryan chuckled. He took his son
in his arms, kissing his temple before putting him down on the blanket to
change his diaper. It was a small thing, but it made his heart swell with
happiness.

Here it was. Here it all was, and
the warmth of the day was inside him and all about him, creating a connection
to his family that was stronger than the tides of the sea.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR

Daniel Powell teaches a variety
of writing courses at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He grew up in
Oregon and now lives with his wife, Jeanne, and his daughter, Lyla, near
Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. His stories have appeared in
Redstone
Science Fiction
,
Leading Edge Magazine
,
Brain Harvest
,
Something
Wicked Magazine
,
Well Told Tales
,
Dead But Dreaming 2
and
Weber: The Contemporary West
.

Visit Daniel’s web journal,
The Byproduct
, for updates on
his work and discussions on speculative storytelling.

These
Strange Worlds
,
his first collection of dark short stories, is now available in trade paperback
and most digital formats.
The Silver Coast and Other Strange Stories
will be released in 2012.