They say there's nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose. Sergeant Cameron Shipley is that man.
He wants revenge for the death of his brother, and that thirst for revenge extends all the way up to the President of the United States. But some people are silver-tongues, and Cameron is swayed back to trust. Promoted back to Lieutenant, Cameron is issued a new mission and is on the hunt for answers. He must figure out who his allies and enemies are, before he winds up with a knife in his back.
The alien invasion is still a threat, and Cameron is torn between duty and doubt. His newest assignment takes him to the post-apocalyptic Blockade at Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. He’s needed to train recruits, strengthen defenses, and plan a strike against the alien forces.
Love was never part of the plan, but surviving side-by-side with Allison Trudy, Cameron finds himself falling for her. Little do they know they’re walking into a trap: one that might just destroy everything they’ve built. Failure isn’t an option: a dystopian humanity hinges on their success.
The final battle looms, and redemption awaits...for better or worse.
I had had enough.
It was getting stuffy in here.
I had counted off a few days in this stupid cell. My hash marks on the plywood were not hard to etch with my belt buckle, and now I counted six of them. That would put us the date at December 10th. My head still throbbed a bit from the butt of that rifle.
A nurse had come in on my first night here.; thankfully Thankfully, there was mercy to be had, and they attended to my wounded shoulder and cracked collarbone from when I slammed into that berserker in the church hallway. That shoulder had already been hurting from being pinned by the first gorgon in the bathroom with Vera. Anyway, the nurse was formal, and took her time poking and prodding. It My shoulder ‘ “didn’t look too bad,”’ she had said, blandly. It was on the mend, but she regarded me for what I was: a prisoner whom she wasn’t all that interested in treating. She bandaged me up roughly, and then left. I didn’t miss her.
The clock on the wall said 0830. The guard must have pounded on the cell wall, which woke me. Oh well,; I’ll take 0830. No sense getting up early. I didn’t have a job to do right now anyway. I yawned and scratched my butt as I got up and sat up on my bunk, reaching , reachingfor bottled water.
Not that this cell was ironclad or anything: I could probably have escaped easily by now. But there was a solace in knowing that the President was coming here, and I apparently had an appointment with her. So, I’d give her a piece of my mind at least, so: there was no point in trying to break out. In all likelihood, if I was were unsuccessful in disabling that guard, he’d (or she’d) surely gun me down. They The guards rotated every eight hours.
This friggin’ Blockade. Why did I have to get stuck here? Of all the places we could have wound up, why did dad Dad bring Rutty and I me here so many years ago? Ninety miles northeast of us was Mammoth Cave National Park, where the next closest Blockade was, and that would take only a few days to get there on foot. Last I heard, everyone was holed up in there nice and cozy, with gun towers right at the mouth of the cave ready to annihilate any gorgons that dared venture too close. It was a fortress, and I had never been that far, before the invasion or since.
Nothing exciting happened here at all. Well, except for the power outage. That was two days ago now, right around chow time. I swear we’d had an earthquake or something, because I was napping, and it woke me up. I walked to my door, and there weresaw a few scattered personnel running up and down the corridors with flashlights. But they got it the power restored soon enough. The guard wouldn’t tell me what had happened.
I missed my bunk. I missed Ally. And all of this isolation and lack of information made me miss Rutty all the more. Isolation does crazy things to a person.: I was cynical and suspicious before all of thisthis had happened.; now Now, I was almost ready to foam at the mouth while feverishly trying to escape a straitjacket. Prison makes you a bit stir crazy.
Once or twice, I caught the muted thunder of the gun towers, and the alarms even went off one of those times. I bolted up out of my bunk – if you can even call it that – and asked the guard if we were in trouble. He had a com, and reluctantly told me that we were fine, but there was a large host of gorgons heading east in a dense throng. They weren’t very far overhead, and the gun towers dispersed them pretty quickly. Where they were headed, and why they were packed so tightly together, he either didn’t know. Or or wouldn’t tell me. Probably the latter.
Ally had visited fairly regularly early on, but she was only allowed only a few precious minutes to come in and talk, and it was all under the watchful eye of the guard. I wondered if I knew each guard. Their faces were masked. Tall guy this time. Not sure if it he waswas someone I once patrolled with, or just some new fresh meat sent in to keep me honest. He was; possibly blindly allegiant to Stone; and sneering at my very existence from behind that mask.
And Stone? He had checked in every single day on me, offering to talk. I ignored him each time, pretty much. I was so disgusted with him when he showed up the first time that all I could muster was, “why “Why don’t you come a little closer? I think I missed you.” He took my meaning: I missed him when I swung for him the first time, and would like a second chance, thankyouverymuch.
Another time he showed up, I was standing against the wall already staring deadpan at the door.; our Our eyes met, and I had the rich opportunity to serve him up some cold, steely disdain. The final time he showed up, I turned around and mooned him. He didn’t deserve my face, so I gave him the other side. So much for etiquette and order in the ranks.
But with Ally? Most of the time, the guards seemed to leave her and me in peace, and quipped up only when we either embraced or started to whisper to each other. “No whispering; speak up!” they would mutter our way, and we would flash our eyes to them in frustration, before resuming normal volume. But thenThen, her visits grew sparsermore sparse, and the last time I had seen her was the night before last.
Ally smelled so good. I’m sure she was enjoying the fresh showers each day. I missed the smell of that shampoo she had acquired at Harvill Hall: it smelled of lavender back then. I’ll I’lld never forget that scent. Now, back at the Blockade, it was some kind of cheap minty fragrance she must have brought with her from Alpharetta,; but still, it smelled clean and altogether wholesome…and altogether her. I hadn’t been allowed to shower but once, and it was under the irritating watch of the guard, standing there, and surveying me through the whole process. “Mind giving me a little privacy, or are you enjoying the show?” I asked him. No response, no movement. I probably would have gotten further had I not asked with so much snark, but whatever.
But thenThen, he surprised me with a womanly, “Knock it off, soldier.” Son of a gun… or, well, daughter of a gun, I guess; y. You’re a chick, I thought. I felt better after that. I should have guessed it due to her height: a little shorter than me. She also had, and a lither build than the last guard, who was in fact a guy.
In our last visit, Ally had told me that the President would be here in the next day or two: she had been delayed by a mass of gorgons that had been pushed northward toward them, undoubtedly by the DTFs from the cavalry down here. I wondered what that meant for the folks up at Mammoth Cave. Maybe that’s where her last stop was before she intended to visit. And maybe that mass was part of the same throng that had passed overhead previously and tasted the fury of our guns. I had asked Ally, but; she didn’t know.
Thinking of the date reminded me of Preston back at Harvill, when we had told him what day and year it was,. The look of catatonic shock that passed over his face was so telling at the time. They He didn’t expect it to be 2042; they he thought it was ’38 or ’39. I guess you can really lose time when you’re hemmed into a narrow place. Maybe Harvill Hall needed some good plywood and a belt buckle for proper hash marks.
I wondered how Bassett was doing, and whether he was sidling up to Stone, being all buddy-buddy with him in order to glean whatever intel he could, ,or if he was genuinely trying to climb the ranks. Couldn’t be sure. There was certainly no ‘Blockade DN436 newsletter’, and if there was, well, they certainly didn’t deliver one to Cell 2A.
And then I thought of Foxy. Poor Foxy. Liam was his real name. I wondered what his last name was,, and if he was now going by that voluntarily,, or if he was being required to. How was he faring after all we’d been through? Had he been catalogued in the lick n’ prick yet, and was he officially in the system? Was he in training? Was it under Stone? I gritted my teeth and bristled.
Considering everything that had happened, I wouldn’t blame him if he had wisely thrown his hands up and decided to just go on back to Harvill. I probably would have encouraged him to do that very thing, to: get out of this corrupt system while he still could. But I would miss him. He was starting to feel like a little brother after Rutty, … and I just couldn’t shake that.
The past ten days of my life – our lives, actually, including Rutty’s – had been incomprehensible. The mission, Ally, Bassett, the EMP, or DTF, or whatever you wanted to call it, the mission, the bridge, that stunning heron, the refugees at Harvill, the infuriating mission, Rutty’s death, Nevaeh, Amos, Vera, Jesse, my revenge, the church explosion, the tanks, the warship, the memorial, the betrayal, my imprisonment… the President.
All of it: unthinkable,, and some of it unconscionable. And here I was, locked in the brig under armed guard, awaiting some pronunciation of fate by a one-man woman tribunal: the President of the United States, Jean Graham, who was on her way here even now.
I had to pinch myself several times during my incarceration. Pinching myself hard, so as to leave a mark, was a million times better than waking up in the pitch black of the night and finding myself crying out for Rutty. That had happened a few times. One night, one One of the guards had thankfully come to my door and asked if I needed anything and if was I was okay. A little unexpected sympathy goes a long way in here, but all I really needed was, like Rutty, to sleep in heavenly peace.
In one my nightmares, I was inside the belly of a gorgon, and there was Rut: : young and healthy, and; still in one piece. He gave me that smile. But when he held my gaze, something happened. I tingled, …and then I froze. I couldn’t move. And then Then, his mouth unhinged, and he started to devour me whole. I felt every wretched treacherous bite – until I woke up in a cold sweat.
I could really use a shower right now. But I didn’t get one. Probably wouldn’t again until tomorrow night, so I can could be squeaky clean for Madame President.
December was creeping along almost to mid-month when , and here came whenhere came Ally came once again this morning. Just hearing the guard hail someone approaching in the corridor sent a thrill of life down my spine. Something, anything, to purge the monotony.
Ally was quite the delightful purge.
The guard stepped aside and let her in. She ran to me and embraced me.
“Hey! That’ll be enough for that,” said the guard. “Back off!”
Definitely not the sympathetic guard from the other night, I thought.
We flashed a look of contempt at him, separated, and sat down across from each other, but not before I gave her a quick kiss. We held hands: that was something, at least.
“You okay?” I asked her, nodding.
“Am I okay?” she retorted. “You’re the one in solitary. How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know…it’s all about opulence and luxury in here, right?” She snickered. “Little to pass the time with in here except imagining what’s going on out there. Have the eggs gotten any better? If they have, I’m breaking outta here right now and heading straight for the mess.”
“No, unfortunately, they still taste like crap.”
“Remember those eggs at Harvill? Man,” I said, licking my lips.
“Yeah, I remember.”
She seemed to have something on her mind, but there was a lull. Of course we remembered. How could we forget our first real meal in God knows how long. Everything about that little kitchen and the food Ruby had prepared for us filled my senses and flooded me with memories. Ruby …and her sister Vera.
Vera. Gone too soon, and not even by a gorgon. Damn you, Amos.
“I’m keeping a watch on Liam. He’s doing well.”
“Good!” I exclaimed. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t know about what happened, Cam. I figured ignorance is bliss, so, I didn’t tell him about the surface-to-air missile or that berserker. Didn’t tell Joe yet either. Anyway, the platoons reached Harvill, and some of the tanks are escorting an APC of refugees back here.”
“How’s he doing? How’s his arm?”
“Fine and fine, by all outward appearances,” she replied. He asks about you after each visit. I think he likes you, Cam,” she grinned. “You’re probably the closest thing to a big brother for him, ya know?”
I did know. And honestly, that’s what I had hoped, naturally, since I lost Rutty. I was glad to hear it. Foxy is a good kid, and he had saved me back there. I was glad to know he was doing well.
“Is Rebecca one of the ones coming here?” I asked.
“Yep,” Ally muttered slowly, biting her lip in anticipation of what she knew would be my next question.
“Does she know about Jesse?”
She nodded momentarily. “Yeah, she does,” she said, heaving a heavy sigh. “Yeah, it sounded like that’s why she decided to come. I don’t think anyone has told her exactly how, but, well, they don’t know about what’s been going on behind the scenes with the military, so I think her natural assumption would be a gorgon anyway.
“Preston, well, he decided to stay there. He’s a natural leader for them and has led them this far. Some of them were too scared to leave, and, frankly, the war isn’t over yet, so, they needed someone to keep things in order. That was Preston, all right. But I think Joe said Ruby was coming along with Rebecca and a few others. Witherspoon too.”
“Wow, Witherspoon, huh? I bet his wife didn’t look too kindly upon that.”
She shook her head. “Probably not.”
Ruby. I wondered if she knew that her sister Vera was dead. I wondered if she knew how she died.
I had to ask Ally: “Have you heard about Nevaeh? Did they pick her up?”
She smiled. “Yeah, they got her, Cam.”
I bowed my head in relief. Whether she was in such close proximity to that damned church and the stained memory of horror surrounding it, or whether it was just that she was all alone out there, I was truly comforted to hear this.
“Yeah, I think…yesterday?” Ally guessed. “No, two days ago now, that’s right. She’s not here yet. They are taking them to the encampment on the other side of the Cumberland or something? Where we boarded that ship. I don’t know why.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why wouldn’t they just bring them all here? It’s still not safe out there. That doesn’t make sense.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I said I don’t know why, and I truly don’t. It does seem weird. I mean, they have tremendous firepower over there where they’re staging, but I know what you mean: nothing beats being under the gun towers.”
I agreed, which is why this was perplexing news. But whatever. She’d be here soon enough, I wagered.
We looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“So, back to my first question: you okay?” I asked her, probing.
She smiled delicately. “Yeah, I guess. I miss you. I hate seeing you in here. It’s messed up. Joe and I are wondering why Stone doesn’t just let you out. I actually asked him to, but Stone thinks you’re” -here she cleared her throat and took on a mocking tone-- “better off spending some time in quiet reflection.” She rolled her eyes.
Quiet reflection. Sure. If that’s what you want to call being locked up and forced to spend my days ruminating over how and why you sent my brother to his death.
I heaved a sigh.
Ally wasn’t finished.
“Cam, I-” she stopped, and looked at me. I tilted my head and raised my brows in confusion. “I know the President is coming here. And I also know you’re still upset. You want answers, and you’re entitled to them,, definitely. But but Stone is one thing. This is the President of the United States. I want you to be careful.”
My jaw set firmly.
“I’m telling you, as one angry soldier to another, please : be careful. When she gets here, you show her the proper respect, okay? Don’t go in all guns blazing. Back off and let her speak. Don’t pursue some kind of personal vendetta with her. It won’t get you what you want.”
Ally stared at me firmly, her eyes locked onto mine.
“Lieutenant Trudy,” I joked, “you’re not telling me to drop this, are you?”
Her expression didn’t change.
“I am. For now, yes, that’s exactly what I think you should do, Cam. She’s not Stone. She’s the President of the United States of America, hon. Say your piece, but show restraint. For your own good.”
My expression, however, did change.
“I hear you,” was all I could say in response.
All’s fair in love and war, I guess. But it was sure getting stuffy in here, and I had had enough.