Nightfall.
The small town of Oak Hills had changed into a hotbed of commotion. A new train arrived, and this one carried with it an army. Darius read the chapter that Kelvin suggested, the story of David facing off with the army of Philistines. The mighty David led his army to battle and triumphed, retrieving all that the Philistines had stolen from him. This is what Darius knew he had to do. Someone he had to be like David. Maybe easier said than done.
He searched the groups of soldiers for the leaders, but having no experience with military rank, it was difficult to pick them out. Their uniforms of olive green were too similar to his untrained eye. The cooled air smelled of metal, earth, and tense with emotion despite the jests and jokes of several groups of soldiers and the merry camaraderie; one would think these men had just returned from war victorious. The further he walked along the train, the closer he got to the reality of things and at the depot is where he found rows upon rows of guns and ammunition. A line of soldiers waited patiently and quietly for their supplies, each stepping up to the table, one by one, like product on a conveyor belt.
Kelvin was there speaking to several soldiers, bible in hand. Then Kelvin opened the bible and read from it.
To the right of the distribution line, several large groups had gathered, standing perfectly still in a formation of rows, evenly spaced, all looking forward, no one uttering a word. Helmets covered their heads, their uniforms bulky with the weight of assault rifles slung across their chests and bullet-proof vests with bulging pockets and black boots laced up high with the bottom of their pants tucked in. A single man dressed in similar fashion spoke to the groups and Darius thought, there, that must be the leader.
While he waited patiently, listening for the man to finish his announcement, Lydia emerged suddenly at his side like a ghost. He didn’t notice her until she spoke.
“Are you trying to join the army?” She asked inquisitively, leaning against the depot wall. For a moment she looked even younger, like a teenager raised on a farm.
“Yeah. I’m just waiting to talk to someone.” He said, still watching the announcer speak. “I need to get back home. The closer I am, the better I can protect my family. I know now that is what I need to do, and I should have never left.” Remorse flooded him as he spoke, and he suddenly felt like he made one stupid mistake after another, leading up to this moment of regret.
“Hmm.” Lydia replied. “This unit is going to Texas. The plan is to take the capital there and then move up through Georgia. There’s another train coming in about an hour after these guys head out, but they’re destined for California. Nothing coming through here is going to New York, but with war, even if you plan, you just never know.”
He eyed her. “How can I get there? I need to go.”
“Traveling during a war is dangerous. Your best bet is to stay here or join them.” She gestured towards the surrounding army.
He looked around. His options, limited without a brilliantly connected rig driver who could take across state lines. Stay or go? One thing was certain- he couldn’t stay.
To him, Lydia looked so young and fragile with her farmer’s daughter's appearance, but her eyes told the tale of a courageous and capable person willing to risk it all for what she believed in, and it gave him strength.
“To think none of this would have been possible without the nationalist.” She stated matter-of-factly.
“The nationalist? who is that?”
She shrugged. “You asked me that already. Who knows? All I know is that he’s someone with a whole lotta influence and deep pockets. Some say he’s more powerful than Nikolai Kuzman. I don’t know of anyone more powerful than him and that guy came from one of the founding families. Whoever the nationalist is, they took out Kuzman with ease.”
Darius nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, well, you know what they say. Knowledge is power. Just an FYI, the commander is in the train depot. You can probably join up there.”
He nodded and said, “thank you.”
####
The battles had begun. They had made the assassination of Nikolai Kuzman public, right before the Daily Mail and other news outlets went black. As troops stormed the streets of Munich Hill, Nora’s father contemplated the choice to either stay in their home or take shelter somewhere else. The problem was, he didn’t know where to go. Where could they run to where the war was not already there?
The muffled crackle of machine gun fire and sporadic explosions echoed through the house, sometimes shaking the very foundation.. Nora wondered how long it would take for those same sounds to be right outside their doorstep. Frank spoke quietly and calm on the phone to someone in the kitchen while she stood out on the patio listening to the battle play out and wondered who was winning. Darius, where are you?
Suddenly, Frank made an announcement, and her trail of thoughts came to a screeching halt. “Pack a few changes of clothes, ladies. There’s a shelter about an hour away from here that we should be safe in, but we have to go now.”
“Shelter? What shelter?” Janice asked, unnerved. She had been biting her fingernails all morning, and now they were nothing but raw stubs of chipped red polish. Lily clung to her side, clutching her dolls in one hand and her grandmother’s leg with the other.
“It’s an old nuclear fall out shelter Ricardo just told me about. He’s taking his family there right now.” His phone chimed, and he picked it up and examined the message. “He just sent me the address. Let’s go.”
Nora packed the same backpack she used during her first escape with Darius, but this time it was full of clothes for her and Lily. The situation was surreal, like a dangerous Deja Vu. After finding shelter at her parents, she was now having to leave again to find shelter somewhere else. Lily sobbed quietly, clutching her dolls and they each took turns holding her, attempting to comfort her while gun shots and explosions continued to roar in the distance.
Janice frantically filled a box full of perishables while Frank loaded the car with flashlights, sleeping bags, and pillows. Then Janice went through the house to make sure they locked all the windows and doors while the family got into the car. Watching the house slowly creep out of sight through the back window, Nora hoped locking up was enough to deter thieves while Lily snugged close to her for protection. Nora’s nerves were frenzied, and her body shook in response, but she lightly stroked Lily’s hair and found comfort in holding her daughter.
Darius, where are you?
Not all the army had taken the side of the Uprising and as the surprise attacks played out by the Uprising, the Falconal Faction forces sprang into strategic action like experienced swarms of bees, attacking synchronously against the weaker Uprising militia. If the allied forces didn’t come to the aid of the militia soon, the incoming Faction army would overrun them.
###
“Here.” Loren shoved the assault rifle into Janelle’s hands.
The weight of the weapon was more than Janelle imagined, and the steel was cool to the touch and foreign. Jacob’s eyes widened, and he drew nearer, reaching out to touch the round barrel with eager fingertips. She pulled the rifle away from his hands, closer to her, almost possessively. Yet she did not desire the weapon because what it was capable of frightened her. And yet, there was her sister, unboxing a series of bizarre components and snapping or screwing them into place to create the finished rifle.
“Nah un,” Janelle said, shaking a finger at him, “this ain’t a toy.”
Loren snapped a fully loaded clip into another rifle and said, “here Jacob, this one is for you.” She put the sling around his neck so that the rifle could hang across his body.
“What the hell, Loren?” Janelle snapped, shocked at Loren’s sudden action. “He’s too young for something like that and it’s too dangerous. He’s never shot anything before.”
“Yeah?” Loren squinted her eyes up at her sister as she kneeled down to fit the sling across Jacob, “well you’ve never shot either and he may be too young in your eyes to shoot a rifle, but he definitely isn’t too young to die.”
Jacob stood with quiet enthusiasm mixed with a child’s uncertainty, suddenly propelled into adulthood by powerful steel and a magazine full of lead. He stood there, at the threshold where he was leaving one guarded world behind for another one full of ambivalent insecurity and choices he never had before.
“Look, I can either show him how to protect himself or he can cower behind us and hope that we protect him.” She rose to her feet. “It’s your choice, sis, but I think the more of us with guns, the better.”
Janelle’s heart raced and threatened to beat out of her chest as she watched Loren show Jacob how to set the safety and when to pull the trigger. She guided his hands along the frame and situated the buttstock of the rifle into the cup of his shoulder. She explained that he needed to hold it right or he’ll lose control of it while firing and may even hurt himself. He slipped his index finger over the smooth crescent moon of the trigger, and Loren warned him to never do so until the moment he was ready to shoot.
“Look through here,” she pointed to the front sight of the barrel, “this is where you want to aim, but keep in mind that the farther your target is, the more you have to adjust upward for the distance.”
She huffed, “damn, I wish we had more time. More time to teach you how to shoot, but we have to make do with what we have.”
Janelle’s eyes darted down as she murmured, “I just don’t want him to be a moving target.” She shifted the rifle across her forearm. She didn’t know how to hold one either, and the sudden realization that they were now going to fight to survive brought tears to her eyes as she looked at her son. The weight of survival on his shoulders for the first time.
Loren became sincere as she put a hand on Janelle’s shoulder and said, “sis, he’ll be a target no matter what. At least this way he could defend himself.”
Janelle swallowed hard as Loren went through the mechanisms again with Jacob. She could hear her, but the words became muffled by Janelle’s consuming fear. Monica and Lorenzo watched as they both sat quietly on the couch in a daze by their surreal situation. She thought their little minds were trying to understand what was happening. Her heart ached for them. In one reality, they almost lost their mother and now, they may lose her again. They were too young to learn that war was about to change their entire lives, and there was probably nothing Janelle could do to save Loren this time.
“Janelle, help us load a few more magazines. When we move, it’s going to come in handy to change the empty one for a loaded one.” Jacob and Janelle watched how she held an empty magazine and pushed a bullet in. “Load them the same way and every so often give it a little tap so they’re all evenly aligned. It’ll get tougher to load, the more you put in because of the tension in the springs and always try to count how many times you pull the trigger, so you know how many rounds you have left when you shoot.”
The rapid bursts of machine gun fire played out in the distance, a dance of back and forth, and Janelle couldn’t tell who was winning. There was a knock on the door, and Loren jumped up to answer it. Elan marched in like a man on a mission. His eyes were sullen and dark, as if he hadn’t slept, but for once it relieved Janelle to see him standing there. Deep down inside her, she hoped that Elan would make everything all better. It was as if Elan could bandage the wounds in her heart and allow their son to be a boy again, just a little while longer, with a single word.
Jacob looked up from his task, bullet in one hand, magazine in another, “hi dad.” He looked awkward, pushing the bullet into place. He was doing something that he should never have to do.
“Hey son.” He replied.
Janelle looked up at him and their eyes met, but she didn’t see the assurance she wanted to see. In his dark eyes, all she could see was that he worried, too. He had the same fears she had, and there was nothing either of them could do to stop it. He kneeled next to her while Loren, engrossed with loading a magazine, seemed to be absorbed in her own thoughts. Elan placed a hand on Janelle’s shoulder tenderly.
“I’m going to help you and the kids get to a shelter that’s close by. You should be safe there. As a civilian, I doubt the Faction will harm you, but there’s a rumor that the Faction army is on the move and they have bombs.” He removed the sling from around her and she felt the weight of the rifle lift as she watched him place it over himself. “Then I’m going to join the Uprising and fight for our freedom.”
She shook her head in protest, “no, you can’t leave us.” Her words were like a whisper on her trembling lips, and his eyes darted to Loren, who never looked up from her task as if she weren’t even listening to them.
“Janelle I have to. The Gitchie Wolves took a vote just an hour ago, and we agreed to fight with the Uprising. I know we swore never to get involved, but this is different. Everything is different now and we can’t sit on the sidelines, not for this. The battle is coming to our doorstep, and I need you and Jacob to be safe.”
A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek. She quickly wiped it and sniffled a cry away, trying to hold fear at bay. “Tell me you understand, and you’ll do everything you can to protect our son?”
“Dad, I don’t need mom to protect me. I’ll protect her.” Jacob interrupted. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I can do this, dad.”
Elan frowned at his son, but Jacob returned his father’s gaze with a hard expression of determination. Elan opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again, saying nothing. A look of knowing passed over him as he slowly nodded.
“I can do this, dad. I can keep mom safe.”
Elan hung his head and said, “it’s not that I don’t believe you Hania, it’s a different thing to pull the trigger and take a life. War is different, son. I will pray that our ancestors with guide you and give you strength, so when the time comes, you will not fold but will stand up as the warrior you were born to be.”
Jacob rushed to his side and collapsed against Elan, throwing his arms around him, with the last of his childhood fading away.