Chapter 28
“I fear my best operative’s fearlessness has gotten her killed. She’s been out of communication for nearly a month. What a loss this is.” - Decoded message from ILF handler Hiro Tanaka to ILF leadership
Three Years Ago
Briar
Carson City glows. I knew New America’s Capitol had electricity, but it’s one thing to be aware of it and another thing entirely to see it.
The aura of light around the city is visible before I get close enough to make out any details. I’m used to inky darkness at night. It’s impenetrable on dark, cloudy nights, and magical when the sky is illuminated by the moon and stars.
With every step I take, instinct tells me to turn around and run away. The virus didn’t just kill nearly everyone and rewrite Earth’s story. It also made civilization uncivilized.
I avoided large groups of people for more than ten months after leaving my parents’ house outside Seattle.
There were plenty of homes to raid for food.
I never took everything. Just enough to get me by.
But in cities I’d pass through, staying hidden other than talking to groups of three or fewer people, there was organized looting.
Semitrailers, flatbeds, and pickup trucks were being loaded up with everything people could get their hands on. They went from house to house, store to store, leaving nothing behind.
That mindset—that essentials should be hoarded instead of shared—is part of the reason I’ve lived on my own in the woods for close to a year now.
I’ve seen a lot of evil in the past three years. My friend Ellery was shot and killed while on watch as I packed canned goods into my bag at a house in a small Wyoming town. The gunshot alerted me and I took out the man who murdered her.
But why? We were on a street where no houses had been ransacked. There was more than enough for all of us.
Anarchy brings out the worst in many people. They hurt others simply because they can. But I’ve seen remarkable kindness, too.
A man was having a seizure on a sidewalk overgrown with weeds and vines in Goldendale, Washington, and two men got to him to help before I did.
They sat with him, gave him water, and put a small pillow under his head.
One of them went to find the medication he needed while the other stayed with him, and I stayed, too.
It took three days for the man to return with the medication. He went from pharmacy to pharmacy until he finally found it.
There were two men in Idaho who died with their arms wrapped around each other because neither of them was willing to sacrifice the other to the band of raiders who held them at gunpoint. There were twenty-one of them, and while they laughed over the love those two men had for each other, I wept.
I encountered a woman in rural Idaho who had two young kids with her. They weren’t hers. When she found them hungry, alone, and scared a month after the virus, she started caring for them.
The best and worst of humanity are still out there surviving this hellscape. I just never know which one I’m going to meet, so I stay away.
Until now. The welt on my ass throbs with discomfort as I lie down in tall grass to view the city through my binoculars.
In the past year, I’ve killed and eaten snakes, which I used to be afraid of. I nestle my sleeping bag beneath pine trees and have learned to tolerate the cold that gets bone deep at night. I’ve survived on just berries and edible greens for weeks at a time when I had to.
But it’s a bite on my left ass cheek that’s taking me out. Mae would think it’s hilarious.
I think it’s a spider bite, but I can’t see it to know for sure. It’s warm and has swollen in the past two days, so I think it’s infected.
That’s a problem, and so is my lack of salt. The seasoning that used to be sold cheaply by the carton, that filled shakers on every table in every restaurant, has become my body’s greatest need.
People require a certain amount of salt. Knowing that, I stretched my canned goods out for a long time to make sure I was getting some. When I ran out, I found saltbush in the alkaline Idaho soil and got as much salt from the leaves as I could.
It’s not enough, though. My low-grade headache has intensified in the past week, and I’m tired all the time. I need to venture into Carson City for antibiotics and salt.
I dread having to trade one of my guns or knives for what I need, but I don’t have anything else of value. All the weapons in the world won’t help me if I’m dying from sepsis.
The city is speckled with bright lights. I increase the magnification on my binoculars to see what details I can make out.
Smoke pours from the stacks of a massive building. The streets seem to be maintained rather than overtaken by greenery like in most cities. Vehicles are moving, headlights lit.
There’s a silver dome. A flag mounted on a tall pole next to it has vertical stripes and a single star in the middle.
That must be the former Capitol building.
It’s probably also the current Capitol building, given what I’ve heard about Soren Whitman, the man who declared himself the president of what he calls New America.
Right. New America, same old bullshit—but magnified. I’ve heard mostly white men rule here, and they’re swallowing up people and land to grow their empire.
A couple I met a few months ago told me this place seems like it was before. There’s order. Stocked grocery stores and pharmacies. Neighborhoods with streets where people mow their grass and leave their porch lights on at night.
But being part of it requires subservience to authoritarian rule. It’s especially bad for women. Even men who don’t fit the mold are forced into working twelve hours a day just to have food, clean water, and a bed to sleep in.
I’m hoping to slip in and out of here quickly, with antibiotics, enough salt to last me a very long time, and some food. My weapons are valuable since they were manufactured before the virus. The new ones being made are of much lower quality.
Right before sunrise, I’ll find a safe point to hide and do surveillance for a few days. Two days, probably, because I’m concerned about the infected bite and my headache has become so intense it’s hard to even think.
I don’t think my disguise worked. I traded the knife I use least often for clean clothes and shoes, hoping to pass as someone who lives here. My hair is tamed into a low ponytail and most of the people I’ve passed in Carson City haven’t given me a second glance.
This guy at the pharmacy, though, is looking too closely at my face.
“Five hundred credits,” he says dismissively.
“I need to trade for it.” I look over each of my shoulders before softly telling him, “I have weapons.”
I don’t like being here. The interior of this store is bright and closed in.
The shelves are lined with products that look wrong.
Medicines in tiny containers without safety packaging.
Bandages sold in small stacks tied together with twine.
I passed a shelf of plain, unlabeled white plastic containers about the size of a two-cup measuring cup, a sign beneath them that just read “lube”.
The man behind the counter tips his head just slightly, indicating that he wants to take me somewhere else. My heart races as I follow him, an inner voice telling me to get out of here.
It would take me too long to get to my gun if I need it, but no one wears visible weapons here.
I take a calming breath. I’m desperate, so if this guy wants to see my tits in exchange for the medicine, I’ll take that deal. I still have limits—he’s not sticking his dick in me.
My body doesn’t even feel sexual anymore.
In the woods, I spend most of my time just meeting my basic needs like food and water.
I get so lonely that I spend a lot of time imagining conversations I’d have with people if I could.
It’s been more than two years since Ellery died, and our occasional hugs were the last human touch I experienced.
The man walks into a small room, flipping a light switch on the wall. Supplies line shelves on the walls and there’s a mop in one corner.
“Come in,” he says, annoyed.
I run a quick risk assessment. If it’s just him, I could overtake him. But he could call others in here, and I don’t like that.
I take a single step through the doorway, stopping.
He sighs through his nose, aggravated. “Either come in and show me what you’ve got, or get out. I’m busy.”
The painful, swollen welt on my back reminds me that I have to do this. I need to get in and out of this city as fast as I can.
I shuffle to the side, never turning my back to him. He closes the door. I pull my dad’s Bren Ten gun from my bag, still expecting him to jump me.
He takes a quick look and it and shakes his head. “Can’t get ammo for that.”
Damn. He’s right. This gun was obsolete before the virus, but Dad had ammo with it in his safe so I took it. Now it’s just a useless hunk of metal.
“What else?” He crouches down to my level, where my bag is, and the movement makes me shift backward.
He scoffs. “Don’t flatter yourself, honey. You smell worse than an entire herd of cattle. I’m not gonna touch you. What else you got in there?”
The COP. It’s useless in a bad situation because it takes so long to reload. I’m digging for it when the guy says, “I’ll take that hunting knife.”
I freeze. He can see the Randall. It was Dad’s most prized hunting knife, and I’d never let go of it. Not for anything.
“No,” I say.
He stands back up. “Look, I don’t mess with guns. It’s too dangerous. Either trade the knife for what you need, or kick rocks.”
My head feels on the verge of exploding. The pain is intense. I just want to get what I need and get out of here, but I still need to get salt.
“Come on,” I plead. “You know that’s not a fair trade.”
He shrugs. “Everyone gets at least ten medical credits a month. What’d you do with yours?”
I huff, exasperated. “Maybe I’m not a law-abiding resident here, but you’re in a back room trying to make a deal, so that makes two of us.”
“The knife’s what I want. Let’s make the trade, or see yourself out.”
I tighten the drawstring on my bag harder than necessary, glaring at him as I stand up.
He’s outside the doorway now, and he could easily trap me in here. I don’t want to get close enough for him to be able to grab my bag, but I have to in order to get out of the room.
I duck my head and hurry out of the building, relieved when humid summer air hits my skin again.
Just the salt, then. I’m hoping that will be easier to secure.
If I can find a beehive in the woods, I can make a honey poultice to apply to the bite.
Vendors were setting up their wares at an outdoor market I passed on my way here.
I’ll go back there for salt and a few food staples, and then it’s back to the forest, where I’m safe.
The sweet scent of freshly baked bread makes my stomach rumble before the market even comes into view. I never imagined something that used to be widely available and inexpensive would become an unattainable luxury.
Same with soap. I know how to make it from things I can find in nature, but it’s a lot of work and I’m just too tired after finding food to put in the extra work. So yeah, I’m sure I do smell really bad.
One of the first vendors I see at the market is selling nuts. There are wood crates filled with walnuts, pistachios, pecans, almonds, and peanuts. I approach because nuts are small and nutrient dense—just what I need.
Someone grabs my upper arm, the hand big and the hold tight.
“Need to see your ID, miss.”
Time slows as I turn to look at him, my stomach dropping with terror. This is worst-case scenario. I want to run, but he has an iron grip on my arm.
“It’s in my bag,” I lie. “Can I ...?”
He lets go of me, but now there are three other guards, and they’re forming a half circle around me, the vendor’s cart at my back.
I can’t even dig through my bag because I’ll risk exposing the weapons inside.
“Stand up,” a male voice says from nearby. “Let me see your face.”
I look up and see the man the voice belongs to, my skin prickling.
He’s tall, and he looks around forty, his light-blond hair thinning. But it’s what he’s wearing that makes my mouth dry.
The olive-green uniform is showier than the fatigues the other guards are wearing. The shoulders of his jacket are wide and squared, and colorful medals adorn his chest.
“Take out whatever’s in your hair,” he orders.
I lower my brows, scared but not wanting to show it. “Why? I just forgot my ID. I can go get it.”
One of the soldiers forcefully spins me around; another one grabs the tie securing my hair and tears it free, ripping out some of my hair with it. I scowl and shove his arm away.
The other soldier takes my upper arm and turns me back around to face the man with the medals.
“She’s a feisty one.” He grins and sticks a toothpick in his mouth. “I’ll take her.”