The Remaining: Trust: A Novella (2 page)

Abe hesitated, worked his jaw. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about it.”

Lee shrugged. “They said they
strongly discouraged
it. Didn’t say we couldn’t.”

Abe considered it for a while. Would a discussion with a man he didn’t know really have an effect on his decision? For that matter, had he actually reached a decision? Did he already know what he was going to do?

Maybe.

Abe stretched his back a bit. “Fuck, man…I have no idea.”

Lee laughed. “Yeah. Me neither. Honestly, I can’t really make heads or tails out of what that guy was talking about.”

“Hunting domestic terrorists?” Abe suggested.

Lee bobbled his head, not looking convinced. “What’s up with the ‘life of solitude and secrecy’?”

Abe made a raspberry noise. “What’s up with the damn brain test they gave us?”

Lee shook his head. “That was some weird shit.”

Then they stood in silence for a while, contemplating what was ahead of them, and the silence was not strained but almost familial. The man named Lee heaved a big sigh and stepped backward to avoid an encroaching wave. Abe let the water touch his shoes, waited for it to soak through his socks. Felt the cold sting of it on his toes. Then he stepped back as well and joined Lee in the dry sand.

Abe looked at the other man with some curiosity. “You figured out what you’re gonna do?”

Lee smiled grimly. “Yeah. I guess I have.”

*  *  *

The cold, electronic sound of his watch alarm brought Abe out of his sleep. One of those small noises that snuck its way into dreams and memories and implanted itself there, where it grew and grew out of the background, until your dream self could only focus on that one noise. And then you were awake.

He found himself twisted under cold covers. He always seemed to be tangled up these days. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept peacefully. When he did sleep it was interrupted by twitches and jumps.

His breath fogged the air in front of him. Memories from that long-ago and far-away beach frosted in the chill of the Colorado air, and they shattered and broke apart against his stark reality. They had power, but not for such frivolous things as heat. And certainly not before the sun was on the solar panels. The generators could be used in an emergency, but they sucked up valuable fuel that was needed elsewhere. He’d been told that reopening pipelines and oil refineries was a top priority. But these days everything seemed to be a “top priority,” depending on whom you asked.

He rolled out of his bed, turned on a battery-powered lamp. The light sprang out but fell dead against the walls of the room. Textured walls with homogenous paintings of nonoffensive subject matter hanging on them. He wasn’t sure why he’d kept them on the walls. Perhaps to fool himself into thinking this was still a hotel room, and hotel rooms were temporary. This was all temporary. Things would get better.

Maybe that’s what he was trying to make himself believe.

He walked across the small room to the even smaller bathroom, taking the lamp with him. As he took his morning constitutional piss, he inspected himself in the mirror very deliberately. Very critically. It seemed that every day brought more change to him. The temple of his body slowly collapsing in on itself. Ribs were standing out. Shoulders were sharp. Cheeks hollow.

He scratched at his jet-black beard. Smoothed it out.

Shook himself off, sneering at his image in the mirror.

He had a toothbrush. He had a box of baking soda. He had his two jugs of
personal use
water. There was a sink in the bathroom, but just like he hadn’t flushed the toilet, neither would he run the sink. It was not his day to partake in the marvel of running water. He was on a Tuesday/Saturday rotation.

He took a big mouthful of water from one of his gallon jugs. He swallowed a bit, held the rest in his mouth, and stuck his toothbrush in to wet it. Then he dabbed the toothbrush into the baking soda and brushed away. Toothpaste could still be had, but it came with a price these days.

He dressed in his usual attire—MultiCam pants, brown thermal, brown fleece cap.

He strapped into his rifle. One in the chamber. Safety on.

He supposed it wasn’t truly necessary, as far into the Green Zone as they were. But he preferred it. The security protocols were not perfect and sometimes some starving wretch got through and chased someone down. And there were the regular people to think about as well. Not all of them were of what one might call “upstanding moral character.”

He made his way to mess. It was just beginning to get noisy. He had his ration card in his pocket—good for his daily allotment of approximately 1,800 calories—but still he bypassed the food that had been prepared for everyone at HQ and grabbed a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Black. No sugar. He knew he should have been hungry, but what he felt was just some greasy emptiness in the pit of himself. He chose to kill it with hot caffeine.

Self-punishment, perhaps.

Well deserved, perhaps.

He made his way to the command center, cup of coffee warming his hand, rifle nudging him in the back as he walked. The command center was one of the large conference rooms in the Hampton Inn and Suites in Greeley, Colorado. The hotel had been converted into their headquarters, and most of the command staff had taken up residence in the rooms, just as Abe had. They were situated on W. 29th Street, which had several other hotels within a block of each other. These had all been repurposed as barracks of sorts. And when they had been filled, they had taken over the Greeley Mall about a quarter mile down the road. In about a fourth of the entire mall, soldiers now slept in the walkways between shops. The rest of the mall had been converted into a sort of “air wing,” and the wide-open parking lot was now cluttered with helicopters and refueling stations.

Their little straight section of W. 29th Street was sometimes referred to as FOB Hampton if one were feeling snarky, but more commonly just The Strip, and it was guarded, just like any military installation. Only military went in and out of that section or had access to anything along it, including the nearby warehouses where all the food and supplies were stored. The civilians in the outlying suburban areas—sometimes packed two or three families to a house—were provided ration cards, though their allotted calories were much less than was afforded to the soldiers. Still, between the rations and some creative scavenging, you could avoid starvation.

The command center was dark, save for a few screens that glowed blue on the faces of a few tired soldiers. One screen showed a map of the Greeley Green Zone. The other showed a map of the entire Green Zone, which stretched out into Fort Morgan, Colorado, and then along the I-76 corridor and into Nebraska, where it stopped at the eastern edge of Lexington.

Abe sipped his coffee, felt it burn in his empty stomach.

Captain Lucas Wright appeared beside him, holding his own cup of coffee and rubbing his face. The Coordinator for what had once been the State of New York, Lucas was an odd-looking little redheaded man, but he was one of the best operators Abe had ever met.

Lucas eyed his superior up and down. Knew the look on Abe’s face and gave a wry smile. “Burning couch day?”

Abe cracked a smile back. It was a reference to one of Abe’s favorite comic strips. A guy named Dilbert, aptly describing how “motivation” feels when it so tragically fails to motivate you. An observation that, rather than feeling “light and energetic,” failed motivation felt more like being pinned under a burning couch. It had since entered into the lexicon of Abe and Lucas’s personal communications. A way to express their misery without de-motivating the others around them. A secret language of sorts.

“Yeah.” Abe nodded tiredly. “Burning couch day.”

Lucas drummed his fingers on his Styrofoam cup. “Well. Let’s get to it, then.”

The two of them crossed to the far corner of the command center, where an area had been sectioned off with cubicle walls. Inside were a long table, several chairs, a projector, a small white screen, and a computer. This was the area specifically reserved for Abe and his Coordinators. They went in and closed the door behind them. It was limited privacy, but they made do.

The cubicle walls were cluttered with images. A collage that paid homage to the call signs of all the Coordinators inside the Greeley Green Zone. All their call signs were references to the states they were assigned to. Abe’s state was Colorado, and his call sign was “Rocky.” For him, there was a picture of Stallone, sweaty and black-eyed after a bout with Apollo Creed. Lucas’s call sign was “Yankee,” and for him there was a New York Yankees bumper sticker taken from a sporting goods store. Captain Tyler Bowden, currently on a supply run to his assigned state of North Dakota, had been given the call sign of “Fargo.” His picture was from the movie poster.

Abe took off his rifle and set it on the table, then took a seat. “Go ahead.”

Lucas reclined a bit in his chair and consulted a manila folder lying in front of him on the table. Inside were a few loose pieces of paper that he perused. “Tyler’s convoy is expected today. Probably around midday. Once Fargo Group gets back, North Dakota is pretty much tapped out. We still have two more bunkers in South Dakota to empty out.”

Abe listened distractedly. He inspected his thumb, the cuticles rough and chewed. Finally, when he realized he had completely lost what Lucas was telling him, he made eye contact with the other man. “Lucas.” Abe leaned forward. “Skip the bullshit.”

Lucas clenched his jaw. Then he closed the manila folder. A long sigh, while staring at his coffee. Then finally, “Sergeant Ramirez made contact with us late last night. He claims to have eyes on but that he’s not in yet.”

Abe frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“He says Lee has a compound. A couple compounds, actually. Kind of like our Green Zone but not as well protected. Ramirez is just trying to find a way in. But he says it shouldn’t be long. Apparently they’re not picky about who they let in.”

Abe tapped the table. Swallowed to fill the hole in his gut. “Because Lee’s doing his fucking job—rescue and rebuild. Doing Project Hometown how it was supposed to be.” He shook his head and glared at Lucas. “And here we sit. Suckling the tit.”

Lucas shifted in his chair, looking uncomfortable.

“What about the others?” Abe said.

“No word from the sniper team. And none from Tomlin.”

“But they’re close.”

“Yeah.” Lucas nodded. “Close.”

A rap at the door turned their heads.

“Come in,” Abe called.

A younger kid of some Latino descent stuck his head in. He wore ACUs with corporal’s stripes. Name of Nunez. “Sir, Colonel Lineberger and the president would like to see you.”

Abe glanced at his watch, his expression sour. “It’s five thirty in the morning. Isn’t it a little early for their brief?”

The corporal hesitated. “Sorry, sir.”

Abe growled, “I’m coming.”

The corporal left, closing the door behind him.

In the silence, Abe and Lucas stared at each other. Without realizing it, Abe had begun to bite at the cuticles of his thumb. Didn’t even register it until he felt a sting of pain and looked down to see a tiny spot of blood welling where he’d been a little too vigorous. He blotted his thumb on his pants and held it under the table like he was embarrassed by it.

Lucas spoke quietly. “We doin’ the right thing here, boss?”

Abe stood up, took another scalding gulp of coffee. “Fuck if I know what that is anymore.”

*  *  *

The president of the United States of America stayed in the “penthouse” suite at the top of the Hampton Inn and Suites of Greeley, Colorado. Less than lavish, but better than most. They didn’t waste any of their power on trivialities like elevators, so it was a hike up four flights of stairs to the door guarded by the two men in black fatigues and tactical vests.

Abe nodded to them.

“Morning, sir,” one of them said.

Abe just mumbled back, “Yeah. Morning.”

They opened the door for him, and Abe stepped through. Inside, there were a few plush chairs surrounding a table. At the head of the table was President Briggs, facing Abe as he walked in. To his right was Colonel Lineberger. To his left was a man Abe thought he recognized but wasn’t quite sure.

Briggs stood from his chair and smiled. He was not particularly stately. Not what you would picture for a senator. He was tall, but his form was lanky. He had a curly head of salt-and-pepper hair that was plentiful for his age, but it seemed just a little too wild for the grooming standards associated with politics. His facial structure was severe, particularly in his nose and cheekbones, where the skin seemed thinly stretched over sharp rock. But for all of those atypical features, Briggs was pleasantly soft-spoken, and he addressed everyone with a familiar tone that made strangers feel like old friends.

“Major Darabie,” he said. “I apologize for the early call, but I wanted to make sure you had a chance to meet Mr. Daniels before we implemented a small change moving forward.”

Abe stepped forward and, as he reached the table, the unknown man stood up and extended his hand. Abe assumed this was the Mr. Daniels that Briggs had spoken of. He hesitated for a brief moment, almost unnoticeable, and then took Daniels’s hand.