Chapter 63
“Come out slowly,” Charlotte said. “Hands where I can see them.”
The figure behind the Humvee moved carefully, and when he stepped fully into the flashlight beam, Charlotte kept the pistol level but eased her grip.
He was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with the look of someone awake too long.
His uniform was digital-camouflage pants, a tan T-shirt, dark with sweat and something else, and a tactical vest hanging from one shoulder by a single strap.
The bandage on his wrist was improvised, fabric torn from something and wrapped unevenly.
No weapons were visible. His hands were empty and raised to shoulder height, and he stood with his weight shifted to his right leg as if the left had taken damage he was trying not to acknowledge.
“National Guard,” he said. “First Battalion, Charlie Company. Staff Sergeant Rivera.” He delivered it with the flat recitation of someone who had identified himself so many times in the previous hours that the words had taken on the quality of ritual.
Charlotte lowered the pistol but didn’t holster it. “I’m a civilian. Traveling with a child. We found this scene twenty minutes ago.”
Rivera’s eyes moved past her to the tree line where Mason waited, then back to her face. Something in his expression shifted, not softening but recalibrating as the situation changed.
“You’re wearing a hazmat suit,” he said.
“I found it in a fire truck. After the gas.”
He nodded. “The contamination zone. You came from the coast.”
“Yes.”
“Christ.” The word emerged like an exhale. He lowered his hands slowly, and when Charlotte didn’t raise the pistol again, he allowed himself to lean against the Humvee’s burned flank. “How bad is it?”
“Bad. The eastern sector is gone. The gas killed selectively…people only. Everything else lived.”
Rivera absorbed the information without a sound. His face did what military faces often do when they receive catastrophic news. It went very still, and the stillness was the only outward sign of the recalibration happening behind it.
“My unit was moving east to establish a perimeter,” he said.
“We had reports of SNA landing craft putting ashore south of Atlantic City. Command thought we could contain them at the coastline until reinforcements arrived.” He looked at the burned Humvee, at the graves, at the shell casings scattered across the pavement. “Command was wrong.”
“These are SNA bodies?” Charlotte gestured toward the uniforms she had examined.
“Yes. Advance element. Light infantry, probably recon. They hit us at 0400. We were dug in about a mile east of here when their vehicles came through. We held it for three hours. Then they brought in something heavier. I’m not sure what it was—some kind of armored platform we hadn’t seen before—and we started taking casualties. ”
He touched the bandage on his wrist.
“I got separated during the withdrawal and took a round through the forearm. Nothing vital, but it bled like hell until I got it tied off. The rest of the unit fell back toward the rally point. I was supposed to meet them there by 1800. That was…” He looked at the darkening sky. “That was four hours ago.”
Charlotte listened with full attention. The picture forming was clearer and worse than what she had assembled from fragments. The SNA was organized, equipped, and moving with purpose.
“Are there still US forces operating?” she asked. “Actual command structure. Communications.”
Rivera nodded. “Barely. Everything digital is gone. The EMP took down our comms, our vehicles, anything with a circuit newer than the eighties. We’re running on analog.
Handheld radios with a limited range. Paper maps.
Vehicles that were in storage or maintenance when the pulse hit, anything with points instead of electronic ignition.
This was one of the old ones. It still ran, but not anymore. ”
He pushed away from the Humvee and stood on his own strength. The movement cost him, and Charlotte saw the wince he tried to hide.
“American forces are regrouping,” he said.
“What’s left of us. National Guard, some active-duty units that were on training exercises when it happened, and police departments that still have functioning equipment.
We’re establishing checkpoints and evacuation routes and trying to get civilians inland away from the coastal advance. You said you have a child.”
“Yes. Eight years old. He’s waiting back there.”
“You need to get him west. Beyond the mountains, if you can. The SNA is pushing inland along the highway corridors. They want the population centers first. Communications hubs, transportation nodes, anything that gives them control. Rural areas are a lower priority, but they’ll get to them eventually. ”
“What about resistance?” she asked. “Is anyone pushing back?”
“Everyone still breathing is pushing back however they can,” Rivera said.
“It’s not organized. Not yet, but it’s happening.
Farmers with hunting rifles. Police departments are using shotguns and revolvers because their electronic systems are gone.
Civilians who decided that sitting still meant accepting whatever came next.
The people who buried these men made that decision. ”
Charlotte was about to ask about the clinic in Dover when Rivera went perfectly still.
His head turned toward the eastern sky. His body locked in the posture of someone listening to something distant and specific, and Charlotte heard it a moment later.
A low, consistent drone, the sound of engines moving through the air.
Rivera’s hand came up, finger extended, pointing toward the darkness where the sound originated.
“Aircraft,” he said. “Coming from the east.”
Charlotte followed his pointing finger. The sound was still too distant to pinpoint, but it was growing, and its pitch carried the weight of something larger than the civilian craft that had filled the skies before the collapse.
“Military?” she asked.
Rivera listened for a few more seconds, his head tilted, and when he spoke, his voice had changed in a way that made Charlotte’s hand find the pistol again without her deciding to reach for it. “That’s not one of ours,” he said.