Chapter 3 War Whore
War Whore
A female’s rights to personal autonomy, movement, education, and reproduction are suspended unless expressly granted by a Male Guardian or State Officer.
Isit hand-in-hand with my mother in the backseat of a car while Theo drives across the Appalachians to the river valley on the other side.
The lights are strange—foggy and twinkling like starlight—but I stare at my mother’s face.
Parts are blurry, almost as if I can’t quite see them, can’t remember what they look like even as I stare and stare and stare.
Eventually, Theo leaves the highway and takes a long, dusty road that leads to a church. I stagger into the cool spring air to stare at the unassuming building, trying to ignore the prickling sensation along my skin.
My relationship with religion is complicated. Raised Catholic, I should cross myself like Mom, but I haven’t put much faith in higher powers of late. As I stare at the large cross erected before the Protestant establishment, I wonder what sort of god would allow the current circumstances.
Other cars have crammed into the spaces around us. From within the building, shouts and rumbles bleed through the open doors, leaking between the nascent grass blades and delicate spring blossoms that surround me.
It’s so pretty.
Stay here, part of me whispers.
It already knows what’s about to happen.
It’s better out here, it says.
But Theo leads us to the entrance, and the three of us follow, trusting and docile.
In the sanctuary, hundreds of people yell and snipe.
Theo scans the crowd and meets the eyes of a Black woman standing near the pulpit. “There she is.”
We follow him down the aisle toward her.
“Williams,” Theo says as the woman nods to us. She’s tall, with large, pretty eyes and hair cut short, curls swept to one side. She greets Theo with a handshake, allowing him to kiss her cheek.
“Williams, this is Chris and Diana, and their daughter Sophia. Everyone, this is Nia Williams. My contact.”
He goes on to explain that Nia Williams used to be a representative in California, but I’m no longer listening. I’ve heard it all before—she’s the ringleader of the NAO’s biggest critics, been working on a counter movement.
No, I don’t listen.
This time, I study our Prime Delegate’s face. There’s something trustworthy about it. Perhaps her large eyes or her wide smile.
Looks can deceive, I think, wishing I’d known better than to trust that face.
“We’re calling ourselves the Defiance,” she says, white teeth gleaming. “Max Aota has several dozen regiments headed our way.”
“Who’s Max Aota?” I ask.
“He was a colonel in the US Army,” Williams says. “Now he’s a Defiant. Why don’t y’all take a seat and we’ll get started soon.”
My parents usher me to one of the front pews, and before long, Williams steps forward.
“Thanks for coming,” she calls to the crowd. “You all know why you’re here—or at least have some idea. Our country is at war.”
Murmurs from the crowd greet those words.
“I’m sure you’ve all seen the tragedies. Some of us have lost family, friends. Our leaders have failed us at every level. Commander Haynes’s extreme nationalism, intolerance, and blatant disrespect for our established laws have turned the free world into an autocracy.”
Louder murmurs and sounds of agreement.
“This here is Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Harrison, US Special Forces. He’s been gathering intel for weeks, and what we know is this: Hunters have dispersed throughout the country.
Their sole purpose is to extinguish those defiant to the party, to quell our rebellion.
Haynes’s army is advancing into Canada. He wants that territory for his own.
He’s grasping for too much. His military is mighty, but it’s split.
He cannot handle a war on so many fronts. ”
Gasps and cheers.
“We are facing dangerous times. You are all likely here for different reasons. Either you oppose the radical takeover of our country, or you’re seeking asylum as an at-risk citizen, or maybe you had nowhere else to go. No matter the reason, we have a fight ahead of us, and we need your help.”
The mumblings turn angry.
“I’ve been working with a group of dissidents since the NAO first formed.
We’ve established safe houses and a headquarters west of Louisville.
We are organizing, and we need people like you to join this fight.
This is not the first place I’ve been, and it won’t be the last. The Defiance will recruit across the country to end the oppression of the NAO. ”
“You’re—you’re talking about full-scale war,” says a man in the front row. “Not just riots, but—”
Theo steps forward. “War. Yes. We’ve fought this kind of tyranny and hate before.
This country was born from the fight for freedom, and now, we will fight again.
The Defiance has commandeered weapons and equipment from the NAO’s military.
Commander Haynes has lost a large portion of his army to us.
” He looks around the crowd, his voice strong and sure.
“We will not lay down and allow this to happen. We will fight for our freedom. We will fight for our country! We will fight for what’s right! ”
As the crowd goes wild, I lean into Mom. “What will we do?”
“We’ll sign our names and go with Theo,” my mother answers. “We’ll fight.”
My gaze trails to the surrounding crowd, and the light around each face grows dreamy.
Don’t do this, a voice whispers.
It will be impossible, it says.
Wake up, it screams.
Consciousness ripped me from the dream.
In my chest, my heart pounded against thick, icy blood as I fought to pull myself away from that familiar panic.
My subconscious mind often revisited the memory of that church, wishing I’d made another decision.
Back then, death wasn’t something I thought about regularly.
Now, it stared me in the face with matte black eyes and a rictus of a smile.
I was haunted by it, wondering when it would come for me.
Perhaps it was time.
Lucas Scott would be my reaper.
Still embroiled in the dream, I battled a profound urge to cry. When I signed my name that day, I didn’t want this war to be my new reality. Nia Williams asked me to lay down my history, my future, my desires, my ideas of the life I had wanted, and follow her into a lost cause.
I think I’d known even then our chances were slim. The Unified States possessed the most expensive and heavily armed military in existence. Who could win against that, even if it was divided? A ragtag army against a world superpower?
Maybe I was just cynical. I’d never been an optimist.
Still, when it was my turn to sign my name, I laid it on the page, girly loops and scrawls to seal my fate. Standing in that church, uncertain and afraid, I signed away my life.
Sophia Elena Reeves.
Of course the dream would surface the day I had to meet Lucas Scott. I forced down a sickening roll of my stomach as I left headquarters for the meeting house on Evanston Avenue.
Theo gave no words of encouragement before I slipped away.
He tried to smile, but it emerged as a grimace.
If the Blood Colonel wanted to kill me on the spot, I would have no self-defense.
Theo knew this, but we’d both learned long ago it was better not to say goodbye.
There were simply too many to say, with too little time to spare.
My feet dragged as the sun sank low into the late March sky.
The chill in the air prickled my skin, but it was nothing compared to the fierce pang of longing that stabbed through me as I reminded myself why I was doing this—for Tekqua.
I’d lost many people, but she was the most recent, and perhaps the most painful.
When she was captured on patrol a couple months ago, she’d taken with her all the interest I had in outlasting this war.
If she hadn’t survived, then I didn’t deserve to.
She’d been more dedicated. Stronger. A soldier to her core.
So what did it matter if I died today?
I marched toward my inevitable demise in a neighborhood that should’ve had people walking their dogs, children playing in the street.
Instead, the lifeless shells of houses served as a reminder of how things used to be.
When I arrived, I studied the home. The porch spoke of happier times, with a swing and a couple chairs by the door.
Large windows across the front warmed the entire facade.
Diaphanous white curtains veiled the interior.
I crept up the stairs, counting as I went.
The warped boards of the porch creaked with each step.
A brass knocker hung on the crimson door, the shape of a lion, but I didn’t use it.
The entry had been left open, cracked wide enough to fit my body through.
I stood at the threshold—deep breath—then slipped inside.
A combined entryway and living room greeted me. Two blue couches bracketed a coffee table with a burning candle in the middle. A wide doorway led to a dining room on one side and the kitchen beyond it.
The space was empty.
So… where was he?
A smooth, deep voice cut through the darkness. “Are you the war whore?”
Nearly choking on my gasp, I spun to face him. He stood in the doorway of a shadowed bedroom on my left, leaning a shoulder on the jamb. The dim light obscured his features. Dark wavy hair softened a sly, angled face, one brow lifted as he gazed at me.