Our War Read online

  She had a bug-out bag in easy reach in case she needed to leave in a hurry. Two-liter 7UP bottles and milk jugs filled with water. Bathtub down the hall acting as a reserve water supply, which she refilled during random times water service was available. Coleman stove and half-full propane bottle. Mattress standing on one end against the nearest window.

  Through careful rationing, Aubrey had stretched her last aid package. She measured out some rice and hoped to never have to eat it or beans again after the war ended. She’d grown to hate it along with the garbage building up in the streets, the lack of electricity and water, the snipers and general hopelessness.

  While the rice boiled, she finished a can of tuna and saved the oil for her homemade lamps. Another life hack. Drench some cotton with oil in a coffee mug and light it, and you produced a sputtering yellow light, along with grime that coated everything. Add a little salt to the oil, and it burned longer.

  She finished her meager meal and dragged her mattress into the kitchen. She’d sleep fully clothed, covered in blankets, her breath fogging the cold air. Alone again. Maybe she’d swing by the Peace Office sooner than later and bat her eyelashes at Paul. Aubrey couldn’t afford love—not real love, not during this war—but she often missed the touch of a man. Touch and body heat. Body heat and blissful forgetting.

  There was a time before the shooting started when she was a normal thirty-something reporter who worked and played hard. She’d regarded her job with gratitude and idealism, though it was just that, a job. When the troubles came, one by one her friends disappeared. Her more conservative friends left first, heading for the small towns and farms where they said the real America still existed. Her more liberal friends became increasingly distant when she didn’t mirror their growing radicalism. Others died along the way from fighting or sickness.

  Aubrey had found herself the way she was now, alone with her job, which for her had become a far greater cause than the opposite sides of this conflict. That cause was digging into the war’s open wounds to yank out the truth like bits of shrapnel.

  The power went out and plunged the room into darkness. She heard groaning from other apartments, somebody cursing. Only an hour of electricity today. She struck a match and lit one of her oil lamps to produce a struggling yellow light. She stared at its glow and thought again about Zoey Tapper patting her belly just before the sniper round tore through her skull.

  The girl had wanted to change the world and raise a new life in it. So much hope among so many horrors, struck down by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her hope had died along with her, and her baby too, the hope of the future.

  Aubrey was done crying. She felt a stirring in her chest again, that unsettling feeling of wanting to do something, something important like Gabrielle was trying to do. She’d thought that writing about Zoey’s death would somehow accomplish that. She’d wanted to reach beyond the facts and connect with the reader’s emotions. Put their collective scream into words printed in black and white. Express an even bigger truth about the war.

  But Eckert was right. That wasn’t what the Indy Chronicle was about. And screaming wouldn’t change anything.

  She could do something. She could write her story about the child soldiers. Put a harsh spotlight on it. Stir an international outcry. At one time, America didn’t give a crap what the world thought. Now the world gave aid that kept a huge number of Americans alive another day. Important countries would pressure the warring sides to stop using children as weapons. It would change things. Fewer children would die. Even better, if the militias stopped using children, it might shorten the war.

  All she had to do was convince Gabrielle to let her drive out to the rebel lines. Which might get the UNICEF worker killed too.

  Aubrey winced as she remembered Eckert’s words. What the reporter wants, and how far she’ll go to get it. She hated that she might be rationalizing putting Gabrielle in danger to get a story.

  She inspected her gloomy, cold, grime-coated apartment. So many had lost everything, including their lives. What was her life worth? Why was she alive when so many died?

  In the end, the job was all that Aubrey had. Helping the children, however, might make it all actually mean something. After seeing Zoey Tapper die from a random gunshot, the job wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t enough for anybody unless it changed things for the better.

  Maybe Gabrielle would let her use the car while staying behind. She decided to ask. Explain what she wanted and the risks in the harshest terms possible. But she’d ask.

  Aubrey now had an even bigger cause than the one for which she’d already risked everything.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Wearing his customary cowboy hat, Ralph popped his head up from the trench to track a drone buzzing across the gray sky. Theirs or the enemy’s, Mitch didn’t know. If it stuck around too long, they’d shoot it down.

  “Stay low, Colonel,” he said. “You’re offering a target.”

  Liberty Tree had drawn blood today. Sooner or later, the Indy 300 would come around looking for payback. Gunfire would shatter the silence before the libs disappeared like ghosts back into the ruins, the way they always did.

  The drone flitted away and was gone.

  “No more patrols until the offensive,” Ralph said. “We kicked the hornet’s nest. I want things nice and quiet for a while.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Though I like hearing you bagged one today.”

  “The kid did all right,” Mitch told him. “Popped his cherry.”

  Ralph risked another look at the houses across the street before returning with a wistful sigh. “Maybe I should go out with you sometime. Do my part.”

  “You’re right where the fight needs you, sir.”

  “How’s the kid doing with it?”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  Tough love and training had molded Alex into a fighter. And something new in the militia, a man who fought for neither God nor country but instead merely to belong. Mitch hoped Ralph moved more of the teens like Alex and Jack up to combat status.

  If things kept going as they were, he might have to. People in the rear were sick of the war, fighter enrollment was at a standstill, and what the Liberty Tree could pay was hardly worth the paper it was printed on thanks to inflation.

  And the militia’s wealthy donors, who wanted the war to end with the Constitutional Convention, had made it clear funding would be limited from here on out. If the Liberty Tree wanted more money, it had to produce results. Mitch knew these donors, not the president and certainly not the American people, were pulling the strings. They were bankrolling the entire militia network now. They’d been involved from the beginning, starting with the first bold moves that led to the war.

  Teenagers, on the other hand, didn’t expect payment. Mitch wished he had an army of Alex Millers. When the crony capitalist billionaires finally sold them out and cut a deal with their old pals in the Deep State, he’d be able to tell them to go to hell and keep fighting. They’d find out they weren’t using him, he was using them and for a far nobler cause.

  And he’d win. The Three Percenters had it right: Only a tiny fraction of Americans had fought in the revolution to kick out the British and start a new country. Victory didn’t require a huge army, not when they had right on their side.

  Mitch and Ralph squeezed through a break in the foundation wall of a church with a Mexican name. They clicked on flashlights. Upstairs, the worship area stood bare and empty, the pews and altar burned long ago for heat. Three militiamen played cards on the grimy carpet while a fourth—another teenager, barely fourteen and already a hard-ass—manned a machine gun at a window.

  Ralph unfolded a gas station map. He motioned to a street. “That’s the main strategic route. West Walnut.” He pointed out the window. “Right over there.”

  The offensive would step off in stages. First and Third Platoons would push east into Tibbs Court and neighboring alleys while Second Platoo
n would be mechanized and lying in wait. At 1000, they’d mount up and race down Walnut all the way to Belmont. There, they’d spread out toward the river and its vital bridges.

  “We need more vehicles,” Mitch said.

  “They’ll be here, and on time.”

  “Including a bulldozer.”

  “You’ll have that too.”

  “We’d better, or we ain’t going anywhere.”

  A wall of rubble barricaded Walnut. Without the bulldozer, the whole plan was useless. They’d be attacking on foot, which hardly made for a blitzkrieg.

  What Mitch really wanted was one of the Army surplus vehicles the Feds used to sell local governments for policing. A big, fat MRAP armored vehicle, SHERIFF painted on the side, would be perfect. But the counties and towns had their hands full maintaining order and wouldn’t give up anything so valuable.

  He’d go to war with the army he had, not the one he wanted.

  “If we succeed, we’ll be in position to threaten both the city core and the libs’ flank at Brickyard Crossing,” the colonel added. “We do this right, we could change the strategic situation in Indy dramatically.”

  While Mitch had grown cynical about the war, he hadn’t about its ideals, and now he couldn’t help but be swept up in the boldness of the assault and reflect on the life that had prepared him for this great event.

  After fighting for his country in Afghanistan, he’d come home numb to his family, easily provoked to rage, and unable to sleep. He’d treated his PTSD with alcohol, resulting in episodes where he’d get blackout drunk. It was a time of darkness and seething anger. Americans worshipped celebrities while real heroes died in faraway wars most people no longer cared about. Veterans lived under bridges while the government rolled out a red carpet for Muslim refugees. Mitch hardly recognized America anymore. At some point along the way, it had stopped being the great nation where his father had raised him. Snowflakes needing safe spaces, the liberal war on free speech, lazy welfare bums, no jobs with good wages.

  Somewhere in that blur, his daughter, Jill, died from a heart defect, and after that, Abigail left him. He hit rock bottom. The Liberty Tree offered him a lifeline. It explained everything in black and white. He wasn’t going crazy, the world was. The Tree told him he had a part to play in a righteous battle between good and evil. He quit drinking, found counseling for the PTSD, and readied his hands for war.

  For years, he sat in living rooms with other men discussing the coming collapse and dictatorship. The Liberty Tree’s policy was to never start a fight but make sure they could finish it. Still, the government would never act boldly; it would take away their freedoms one at a time. The monster had to be provoked. Some of the guys talked about knocking over banks and assassinating officials and blowing up buildings. They drank beer and trained in the woods. They debated actions and the timing of actions. Otherwise, they did a whole lot of nothing.

  Then President Marsh said he would break the system. Stick it to the fat cats on Wall Street and liberals whose answer to everything was to blame America. Bring the boys home from overseas, tear up trading deals that were bleeding American industry, seal the borders against immigrants stealing American jobs, get rid of government intrusion in people’s lives.

  Mitch knew he didn’t have long to wait anymore. When the Deep State launched its soft coup, he was ready.

  “Hey,” Ralph said. “You still with me?”

  “This is the big one,” Mitch said. “It’s going to change everything.”

  Finally, the decisive battle he’d prayed for. The chance to achieve his purpose and make everything right again. Everything in his life had led up to this.

  The colonel eyed him. “You’re not to go into the core.”

  “I know,” Mitch growled.

  “Guerillas are in our rear wreaking havoc on our supply lines,” the colonel said. “We think we control most of the state, but we don’t. We have to be careful with what assets we have left. We can’t just gamble everything on a roll of the dice. I need to know you understand that.”

  Mitch glimpsed the ghosts haunting the colonel. The man had gone into Indy with a hundred men and barely made it out with sixty. It wasn’t just the war or the cause or even his goddamn donors he worried about. It was his honor and his drive to go on playing a leading part in something that gave him meaning.

  “I understand completely,” he said.

  Held up by a fight at a gas station and then Sergeant Shook’s idiocy on the road, Mitch had missed the final pell-mell drive into Indy and attack on city hall. Which in his mind was part of the problem. Ralph had gone for broke with only half his strength. The colonel hadn’t been bold, he’d been rash, and they’d all paid for it. Now he was overcompensating.

  When Mitch went into the core, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  Ralph eyed him. “Any questions? Ideas? You know I trust your judgment.”

  “The plan is solid. Getting through the street barricades is the hardest part. Make sure that damn dozer shows up.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  “When we launch our attack, tell the other militias what we’re doing. Keep it under your hat until then. Don’t even tell the donors.”

  Ralph extended his hand. “You’re the bedrock of this company, Mitch. We can’t do it without you. I mean it.”

  They shook. Mitch returned to his squad. The boys were laughing around a Coleman stove set up in a dugout.

  “Where’s the kid?” he said.

  Donnie grinned. “He’s throwing up. One too many Old Styles.”

  “I didn’t ask how he’s doing. I asked you where he is.”

  The soldier pointed. “Over there, Sar’.”

  Mitch walked along the trench and found the kid retching into a bucket. “How you feeling, boy?”

  “I’m not feeling anything at the moment, Sergeant.”

  “You did good today. You should be proud.”

  Alex spat. “Thanks.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “I’ve never seen you drink,” the kid slurred.

  “I mean I shot four people while I was in the ’Stan.”

  “Oh.”

  “My first was during an ambush near Bazbek. As we neared the village, its lights went out. We knew we were in for some shit. The Taliban fired at us from concealed positions. I turned around, and there was this kid flanking us with an RPG. He was about your age.”

  Alex pushed the bucket away and sat panting with his back against the trench’s frozen earth wall. “What did you do?”

  “I shot him without even thinking about it. At the time, he was just a target.”

  “Jeez. Yeah. It was the same for me.”

  “I didn’t feel a damn thing until it was over,” Mitch said. “Then I felt like Superman. Then I felt like shit. After that, nothing again. You know why?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “Because I got a good look at what him and his Islamoterrorist buddies had done to my company. Men who were the best friends I ever had. What I did to that kid wasn’t on me. It was on him. And he had it coming for what they did.”

  The kid nodded. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  “Take some time with it. Then man up. We need you on the line tomorrow. Whatever is happening here is bigger than you. Remember that.”

  “I’ll be good to go.”

  “I know you will. You’ll find your way. All you young ones will.” Mitch gazed into the twilight. “You know, I had a little girl once.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “No sons, though.”

  He’d like to have a family again. Maybe someday, after the war.

  He left the kid with his bucket and walked back to where the rest of the squad huddled around their Coleman stove.

  “How’s he doing?” Donnie asked him.

  Mitch handed him two packs of Camels from his side pocket for use as trade. “When he sobers up a little, get him cleaned up and some food in him. Then take him to the hook
er shack. If he’s old enough to kill, he’s old enough to get laid.”

  The kid had earned it. Let him have some fun.

  In three days, there was a good chance they’d all be dead.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sunlight gleamed on the icy road. The Free Women marched in a straggling column, hauling their weapons and supplies.

  Hannah trudged at Maria’s side at the rear of the pack of girls. Backpacks bulging with linens, they leaned against the wind blowing across the White River.

  The move had made Hannah so nervous she hadn’t been able to eat her breakfast. A bugout. The word conjured a vision of people scrambling for their lives. She didn’t know anything about Haughville other than there might be fighting.

  As for bugging out, she knew it all too well.

  The militia rolled through the neighborhood in a rumbling parade. Dad called them evangelical paramilitaries. He stayed home from work. Each night at dinner, he told Mom about new city council laws. Gays and abortions outlawed, doctors arrested. Pharmacies no longer allowed to sell female birth control. A massive bonfire at the public library.

  Hannah didn’t understand what was going on and why, though bullying she understood. The newcomers were picking on people just for being who they were. They were telling everybody how to live.

  At school, Ms. Sykes refused to teach religion and got fired. The new teacher told his class they were going to learn the Bible so they could gain a stronger relationship with Jesus Christ. He slapped a student who said she didn’t believe in God and told her to either start believing or find a new place to live. Hannah had always enjoyed school, but she went home shaking that day and didn’t want to go back.

  Somebody tagged Husani Farouk’s parents’ house with MUSLIMS OUT and FUCK ISLAM. The next morning, his family moved away. Later, people Hannah had never seen before looted what was left.

  Dad grew even more worried. He paced the house checking the door locks, watching the news, sometimes staring into space. Hannah often caught him studying her with a heartbreaking look in his eyes, as if he wanted to protect her but didn’t know how or from what.