Desert Blade

As always, to my hero.

Thank you to Dee Carney, who lit a fire under me to write this story. And thanks to Hailey Edwards whose feedback was as valuable as always. This story wouldn’t be here without my wonderful editor, Deb Nemeth, and many thanks to her. And lastly, my thanks to the United States National Guard, both the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard. I have modeled the Guardsmen in this story after those citizen soldiers who help us in times of domestic crises. Of course, any and all differences shown in this story were of my own making. Thank you for your service.

And thank you, readers. You make writing an adventure and the dream that it is.

Derek Covington ducked beneath the Molotov cocktail slicing through the air. It broke, spreading ethanol and fire across a Chicago storefront. The swoosh of heat and cloying sweet fuel burned his throat. He dodged across the street, empty except for the ever-present vines growing in cracks, covered in fungus, crinkling brown and dead.

Black smoke disguising them, looters whooped and swung bats at the windows. The crack and clink of glass faded in the background. Keeping low, he ran for all he was worth. As a Guardsman, he should help the unit called to handle this latest violent outbreak, but he couldn’t. The rioting around his old place had killed hundreds.

He had to reach Hester.

When the riots started and the phones went out, he’d walked out of the barracks and hitched on an Aggie train. A week through land covered with dying vines from boot camp to here. With nobody around to check on her, his foster mother could be dead already.

He skidded around a corner and onto a street straight from a war zone. The summer heat brought the stench of death, blood and desperation.

The place looked the same. Rows of townhouses stacked together. Hester’s florescent purple door swung ajar. He vaulted over the three steps and into the dark, musty-smelling living room. “Hester. You here?”

“That you, Derek?” Shuffling through the door, his plump gray-haired foster mother smiled at him and tugged closed her yellow terrycloth robe. “I was just making breakfast. Come on in and have a cup of coffee while I scramble up some eggs. Just how you like ’em.”

Hiding his knee-weakening relief, he followed her into the four-room railroad-style townhouse. He went straight for the cupboard to pull down two plates, the fragrance of coffee making his mouth water. “I haven’t eaten much the past few days.”

“You best be taking care of yourself. Sit down, sit down. I don’t need you gettin’ in my way.” She motioned him to the small round table with only two chairs. “What? You have a break from basic training already?”

“Haven’t you seen the news? They ordered the evacuation of Georgia…and Tennessee. It’s spread up here, too. I came to get you out.” He shifted in his chair and the weight of it came down all at once. Leaning forward, his elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands. “I just need to sit for a few minutes. Then we have to go.”

She ran her arthritic, gnarled hands through his hair. “Where’m I goin’ to? So the Aggies about ruined everything.”
Aggies,
what people called the scientists and politicians who started this all with their plans to feed everyone with special crops. “There’s no place for someone like me, used up and on her way out.” She patted his shoulder when his head jerked toward her. “No. It’s true. With the world dyin’, the future’s for the young, for the able-bodied to work at saving what’s left. Don’t cry, son.”

Hester handed him a tissue from her pocket and went to the refrigerator. She peered inside. “I forgot. Haven’t had eggs in some time.”

Shaking her head, she clucked in the back of her throat. “Shouldn’t’ve forgotten that.”

“Doesn’t matter, Hester. Whatever you got, we’ll make do. Everything else will just go to waste.”

“Waste not, want not. Here.” Serving him a mishmash of food from her Southern roots and her newfound community in Chicago, she put a plate with cold hushpuppies and pickled green beans in front of him. “I still got plenty of cornmeal. It’s still cheap as dirt. Those puppies won’t taste the same, though. Don’t have all the stuff to make ’em. Not much left in the cupboard exceptin’ those beans we put away a few years back.”

He didn’t complain.

After they’d finished the meager meal, he got up to go to the back room. “Let’s get your clothes. There’s a refugee camp in Mississip’. Shouldn’t take us more than a week or so to get there.”

“No need to move these old bones.”

“Hester…”

A crash in the front room drowned out his plea.

Instincts never forgotten, he lurched toward Hester and pushed her against the wall to put himself between her and whatever, whoever came. But it wasn’t a monster—like that long-gone druggie boyfriend of his mother’s—it was a fucking Molotov, still as ruthless, pitiless and full of murder, but emotionless, spreading fear and death without prejudice.

Fire roared in the front room, the only way out. Damn shotgun-designed death trap, the apartment was hemmed in on each side by other apartments. No windows. Front and back doors only. Except Hester had boarded up the back door to keep the drugged-up neighbors out.

The sweet scent of ethanol rolled in on black smoke.

“Grab the blankets off the bed. We need to wet them.” His throat burned and eyes watered. They had to get out of here. The ethanol spread fast and hot. Everything flammable in the front would’ve caught.

Hester limped ahead of him into the bedroom and toward the bathroom. She coughed. The sounds of her wheezing constricted his already-tight chest. He grabbed her old quilt off the bed and ran after her. She’d started the water in the tub. With a douse, the quilt sucked up water, growing heavy.

Every second here was magnified tenfold against them. Hester obeyed meekly when he covered them both with the quilt. Her bent frame trembled beside him. Wrapping his arm around her, he hugged her. Her head tucked to his chest—she seemed so small now—he crouched and ran.

Heat and steam seared his skin. Hester stumbled. He half dragged, half carried her. Their feet clambered down the steps.

Light and the noise of a crowd broke through the claustrophobic sound of harsh breathing beneath the smoldering blanket. They would make it.

He skidded down the steps and steadied Hester. Fresh air blew through the bottom of the covering. They’d made it.

Hester’s hand trembled and he squeezed. “You okay, Hester?”

She squeezed back and tugged on the quilt. “Can’t see a thing with this—”

A roar blasted through him. He flew. His breath left when he hit the ground.

Agony gripped him, long moments of sharp pains stabbing through his head, and he could finally pull in a smoke-tainted breath.

He groaned and tried to roll but couldn’t.

Noise rushed in. Sirens wailed.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” someone screamed from nearby.

“The pigs are coming.”

Good.

As his nerves stopped screaming and his surroundings filtered in, he could only lie there and hurt.

Hester.

He moved his legs, twisting his hips. With a searing white-hot pain, he rolled. Something was definitely wrong with his arm. It throbbed, but he couldn’t find it.

On his knees, he struggled and fell back down. Hitting the ground again, he didn’t have the strength to move.

The quilt tugged to fly away but he clutched at it, keeping it in a death grip.

A soldier in fatigues bent over him, gas mask in place. Derek’s blurry image reflected back, face grimed with soot, black hair plastered to his face, stubble darkening his clenched jaw. Horror and pain stared at him through his own familiar hazel eyes.

“You are a mess. Be surprised you live the night.” The soldier got to his feet and stepped over him.

“Wait.”

“No time for a looter, man. Sorry.”

“Not a looter. I’m like you.”

The man kept going.

“Help!” Derek yelled, his strength failing so quickly he couldn’t lift a hand to reach out.

Another uniformed soldier passed without looking down.

“I’m Guardsman. Serial Number…” He shouted his number, over and over as he struggled to rise.

Something wrenched his arm, hard, like a band tightening, and strong hands hefted him as he screamed with the tearing that ripped through him. On his feet with the quilt still tangled in his fist, all the aches battering at him, the rawness of his left arm overtook it all, the pain making him nauseous. Dropping the quilt, he tried to cradle the injury, to take off the pressure, but he couldn’t find it.

“My arm,” he croaked.

“Take it easy, soldier. Let me get you to the medic.” A gas-masked uniform on his right put an arm about his waist and took some of his weight, stepping on the well-loved quilt and spreading grime on the painstakingly crafted heirloom.

“Hester. I need to find her.”

“There’s nobody else alive here. We have to get out before something else blows.”

The heat of fires and the crackling of burning vines accented the emotionless reply. The mask made the man’s voice tinny, like he was no longer human, and his strength was too much for Derek to pull away.

“Have to find her.” The words had barely left his mouth when he saw her, crumpled in a heap where she must have landed, only an arm’s reach away. The angle of her leg, and the complete stillness told him, but he still had to know.

He pointed.

He must have said something, done something, for the soldier helped him kneel over her and check her signs. Hester was gone. At his request, the soldier quickly retrieved the quilt and threw it over his foster mother’s body.

The ache of his arm was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. The burn of fire seeped inside him, burning hotter than hell.

He blacked out.

* * *

Screams woke Derek. He tried to cover his ears, but his arms wouldn’t work. He shook his head and tried to tell the man to shut up. But the ringing in his head and scratchiness of his throat told true—the screams were from him. His head rolled, side to side, but everything was black.

“Quiet now.” A soft admonishment undercut his cries, silencing him. The voice sang a low song he couldn’t quite place.

The cotton taste in his mouth burned. A straw was thrust between his lips.

“Drink this. It’ll soothe your throat. Not much, though.” She sounded young, kind. “Let me check the bandages on your eyes.”

A delicate touch brushed against his hair, releasing the stench of smoke and reminding him why he was here. With Hester gone, he was alone now, but it didn’t matter. America was dying. It had been for the past decade. No future for men like him except in the Guard. No hope for family, to belong, but the world was in its last throes. He wouldn’t be alone for long.

“I’m Dr. Lidia Sullivan. The surgeon will be here soon and I’ll be assisting. Not enough nurses left to coddle you, but we’ll get you patched up.” The soothing humor in her voice settled him a bit, and she ran a hand down his chest, bared to her touch. “We’re in the middle of evacuating. There’re only a few of us left.”

“Where are my clothes?” His rough croak didn’t sound like him at all.

“Everything is here next to you. They’ve been aired out best we could manage. Besides the two of us doctors, it’s only you and a handful of Guardsmen left. We’ll be putting you on the train soon as you’re stabilized and heading to a facility in Kansas. In Leavenworth.”

He couldn’t get on that train. Not yet. He couldn’t leave Hester in the middle of the forsaken, doomed streets of Chicago.

“My eyes.”

“They’ll be fine. I cleaned them with saline to take care of the soot. They just need a rest.”

“Why can’t I move my arms?”

“Because you’re missing one.” A deep baritone broke into the stillness that had nearly lulled him into forgetting that the world was nothing but hell, a hell that’d come so fast, so unexpected. “We had to restrain you so you wouldn’t cause yourself more injury.”

“What are you talking about?” He wasn’t missing an arm. They both hurt like hell. The man had to be drunk, but the hand on his chest stilled, curled into a fist and disappeared. Somehow, that action spoke volumes, more than the spiel coming from the man who turned out to be a military doctor rattling off his resume, his expertise in prosthetics.

Derek sought past the pain and knew his arm was gone. “You have some robot arm? You want to put it on me?” He thought the man said that was his special project, but he couldn’t make sense out of anything.

“No. Haven’t you been listening? It’s a state-of-the-art prosthetic replacement. Not some damn robot. We don’t have much time. I’ve arranged to delay my departure, but we can’t dilly dally. Don’t have much food left for the team if I don’t get started right away.”

The restraint on his right arm came free. He ground his teeth, willing his hand to stay put and not seek out the empty spot on his left where an arm should be.

“Dr. Sullivan, could you help the man sign the papers? Though, there’s really no need for following the book anymore. Not since DC became a ghost town.”

“Dr. Kelso, we should wait—”

“This will be my last operation. We won’t have the facilities to maintain this kind of research after we leave. Shouldn’t this man have the opportunity to have as normal a life as possible?”

“But…” The younger doctor sounded unsure, and that made Derek unsure.

“He’ll need all his strength to survive what’s coming. We all will.”

“What’s the use?” Derek whispered.

The hand returned to his chest for a light touch before withdrawing.

“You’re right. He’ll need to be strong.” The rustle of clothing and the scent of vanilla surrounded him before she gently lifted his hand and put a pen in his fingers. “Sign your name here.”

A pressure beneath his hand made him laugh. Nobody bothered to ask permission for anything anymore. Not since the future crop—the edible, fast-growing and renewable Tasho Vine—had gotten out of control and covered the earth, and the experimental fungus Tasho Killer had eradicated nearly everything in its path. People fell to hunger and riots. Desperation sent those who could to the remaining pockets of civilization where a few food crops remained.

It was amazing how infrastructure and technology didn’t mean much when there was nothing to eat. Amazing how a man would kill another for a sack of flour.

“Good. Let’s get started. Shouldn’t take more than a few extra days.”

“We’ll miss the train.” The doctor—Lidia she’d said her first name was—sighed close to his ear. He shivered. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you during your recovery, and as soon as we can get you on your feet, we’re leaving.”

A prick on his left shoulder sent cascades of pain through him.