Thunder and Acid: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read online

  Lana didn’t look furious, or afraid. She looked… offended, maybe? Caleb reached out for her. “We’re not leaving right away—“

  His daughter jerked backward, away from his touch, her face twisting with anger that made her next words come out ragged and harsh. “So, what, then?” Her eyes welled with sudden tears. “Everything we went through meant nothing? We made a mistake? I let Jessup get killed and it’s just Whoops, we’re in the wrong place?”

  Elizabeth’s hand tightened on Caleb’s arm, her nails digging into his skin. “Lana—what?”

  Caleb’s heart broke. That’s what he’d seen on her face a moment before, then. Guilt.

  “Honey, you didn’t let Jessup die. That wasn’t your fault, you must believe that. It was dangerous out there—those men that attacked us… they killed Jessup, baby girl.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she growled, and wiped her eyes as she took another step toward the door. “I’m not a baby. Or a girl; I’m a grown woman and I… I know what happened.”

  “Of course you aren’t,” Caleb said, and started to reach for her again. “Lana, please, let’s just—“

  But she threw her hands up and took another step back before turning and stalking away. Caleb moved to follow, but Elizabeth’s grip on him tightened again and she pulled him back. “Caleb, don’t. She needs space.”

  “She needs someone to explain that what happened to Jessup wasn’t her fault,” he replied as he tried to gently remove his wife’s hand from his arm. “I’ve seen that kind of survivor’s guilt before, I know what it looks like, I can bring her around.”

  “And what,” Elizabeth demanded with equal gentleness. “You’ll fix it for her?”

  His jaw clenched as fresh guilt twisted in his gut, made worse by the sense of helplessness that clawed at his heart. He relaxed under Liz’s grip, and she eased up on him before she put a hand to his cheek, her eyes misty and soft.

  “I’m worried about her too. But right now, she’s processing something awful. Or maybe not processing it. Either way, it’s not something you can just step in and fix, Caleb. She didn’t get a fishing line tangled, or set a tent up wrong, or even break a leg. Just take a minute to think about what you’d even say.”

  Again, Liz was right. That was exactly what he wanted—to go to Lana, tell her it wasn’t her fault, and make her believe it. As if that would somehow override whatever trauma was in her now, telling her lies and changing her, changing how she saw herself and the world.

  That wasn’t something he could fix. There was no bolt to tighten, nothing to untangle. Nothing he could just step in and reassure her about—that he was there, that she was his daughter, his little girl, and that daddy was there for her to keep her safe.

  She wasn’t safe. And it was possible, now, that he couldn’t keep her safe. Just like he couldn’t keep Elizabeth safe. Not now, not in this. Not when the predictable order of the world before the disaster had been thrown into chaos.

  The thought of that terrified him. I can’t keep them safe.

  His eyes burned, but he refused to let the thought consume him. Maybe he couldn’t personally, physically, always keep them both safe. But he could at least work on making sure there were fewer threats.

  “You’re right,” he said softly, and bent his neck to kiss Liz, soaking up the brief reassurance that she was there, that he still had her; that he hadn’t lost anything truly valuable to him yet. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  She looked up at him. “Then what do we do?” she asked, searching his eyes. “I’ve known men like General Thomas. He’s got his hands on a little power, made his little kingdom here, and he’s not going to let it go. We’re only safe as long as we’re willing to play along, follow his rules, his orders. He’ll test you, Caleb. He’ll test all of us, that’s what this kind of man does.”

  Caleb knew the type as well, but not the same way Elizabeth did. He didn’t have her history. She was right, though; he could feel it in his gut. If General Thomas had any reason at all to suspect Caleb or his family didn’t belong in his New United States, he’d test them, push them to the limits of their loyalty.

  When he did, would Caleb fail? Even if it meant putting his family in danger? Could he ‘play along’ if it meant becoming someone who didn’t even deserve them?

  If it meant he could be sure they were safe, probably. If it meant that Elizabeth looked at him and saw the kinds of monsters Caleb had tried so hard to save her from…

  No.

  “I’m not sure yet.” He smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear, gratified at the way her eyes relaxed and she leaned against his fingers. He wasn’t a monster yet, at least. Not to her.

  “But I will figure it out. In the meantime, keep your head down.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. His time was up. “Look, I have to do my maintenance round outside. After, I’ll find Lana and make sure she understands and… give her the chance to open up, if she’s ready.”

  At that, Elizabeth withdrew. “You should. She’s more likely to talk to you than me.”

  She didn’t mean to stab him, but he felt the words cut into him all the same. “No, I didn’t mean… I’m sorry, Liz, I just meant that I know where she’ll be and…”

  If he kept talking, he would almost certainly make it worse and he was late. The last thing he needed was to call attention to himself by failing to keep his duty schedule. “I have to go. I’ll see you tonight. Remember what I said, please—keep out of harm’s way for now. I promise, I’ll figure it out, I’ll…”

  He let his words die. I’ll fix this, he was going to say. Elizabeth glanced up at him with a sad smile, and he suspected that she’d heard the unspoken words anyway. She gave him a nod. “I’ll see you tonight,” she agreed. “I love you, Caleb.”

  “I love you.” He kissed the top of her head before he forced himself to leave. As much as he hated it, Elizabeth knew how to keep her head down. She’d had to do it before.

  Lana, on the other hand, hadn’t. Once upon a time, Caleb had been proud of that.

  Now, it just terrified him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CALEB

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Thursday, June 17th, 4:33 pm EST

  Elizabeth’s words rang in Caleb’s ears throughout his repairs. We’re only safe here if we’re willing to give up who we are.

  Given what they’d seen and heard the last two weeks, he couldn’t deny that she was at least partially right. General Thomas demanded more than just competence from his people, more than just a willingness to follow orders and trust the chain of command. He wanted devotion, loyalty, even zeal for the promise of this New United States.

  And honestly, the ideals he preached were worth investing in. Maybe that was why it had been so easy to overlook the culture that pervaded the base. In a time of crisis, people looked to leaders and clung to hope. Military personnel weren’t immune to their own basic human nature.

  He tightened the final bolt of a reinforcing brace for one of the radio arrays and leaned back on his heels. I’m not even immune to it. I’d give almost anything to live somewhere Liz and Lana could be safe and even thrive.

  But now that Elizabeth had given that price a name, put a dollar sign next to it… was it true? If they gave up who they were—if he set aside his morals and his most basic beliefs—then what would they have left afterward? He wouldn’t be the man that Liz had married, or the father that Lana had looked up to. He’d be someone different. They would be different.

  Lana already was, maybe.

  He gave the array a tug, testing the reinforcement. The rattle was gone, but the wind wasn’t blowing with deadly force like before. Whether the array could stand up to real pressure, he’d just have to find out.

  Not that different from us. He slipped the wrench back into his toolbelt and began the descent. Easy to say we know who we are until there’s real pressure and we’re forced to find out.

  But when the pressure was on, would they all bend the same direction? Elizabeth clearly didn’t believe this was a place they could stay, or something they could be a part of. Caleb was inclined to agree, but still wanted to know more. Lana’s position wasn’t at all clear to him.

  She’d sacrificed to get here. They all had, but Lana lost someone who probably meant more to her than she’d realized. Or maybe it was just the fact that she’d lost someone to violence for the first time.

  She’d been lucky most of her life when it came to grief. Caleb’s parents had died when she was too young to really feel the loss, and Elizabeth’s parents had never been in the picture. Their family had always been small. Lana had never lost a friend or loved one. She hadn’t had to grieve or cope before.

  Military life was enticing when a person was grieving. There was purpose and structure in it. Clear goals, clear rewards, clear consequences, even clear ways to make yourself better. She wanted to be a soldier, to feel competent and safe. She wanted to know that just because she lost someone, it didn’t mean that everything could slip through her fingers any second.

  All of that, Caleb understood. He saw it clearly.

  What he couldn’t see almost at all, was whether his daughter was on the verge of committing to the kind of extremism favored by General Thomas.

  By the time he was back on the ground, his radio clicked twice, and a voice came over. “Staff Sergeant Machert.” Private Vance Kidder’s voice crackled. “Report to General Thomas in the ready room, ASAP. Over.”

  A chill passed through Caleb’s gut. After what Elizabeth overheard, he’d been wondering if Thomas would demand an explanation for Caleb’s perceived sabotage of an operation. Truth be told, he was surprised it had taken this long. He plucked the radio from his belt. “Acknowledged, Private. On route. Over.”

  Kidder didn’t respond and didn’t need to. Caleb put the radio back in place and made his way to the front of the base’s entrance. The two guards stationed there gave him a curt salute when he appeared and one of them swiped a card over the lock pad to let him in.

  Once inside, he didn’t bother to put his equipment away. ASAP ostensibly meant ‘as soon as possible’, but the reality was that it meant ‘right now’ in almost every context he’d encountered on base. Plus, having his kit on might just make for a visual reminder that he wasn’t as expendable here as a lot of the unskilled grunts. If he was right about what the general wanted, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have that reminder on hand.

  He stepped off the elevator down into the base’s guts and then made his way to Thomas’s ready room. As he went, he found himself making more detailed notes than he had before. One guard at the armory, two other men inside doing inventory.

  It was around three in the afternoon. Was inventory always at three? The supply room was manned by the quartermaster and three privates. Was there a shift change there, and if so what time?

  Before, he’d been relieved to have his family behind solid walls and surrounded by armed soldiers. Safe from everything outside. Now, the place didn’t feel safe. It felt like a trap that hadn’t quite sprung. He was already thinking about what would be necessary to get his family out.

  Outside Thomas’s ready room, Sergeant Mackie was seated at a narrow desk. He looked up at Caleb, gave a nod and then tilted his head toward the door as he reached beneath the edge of his desk and pressed something. The door buzzed, and Caleb went through it.

  The general was alone inside. He sat at his desk, paging through some printed report that he closed and laid down when the door closed behind Caleb. Caleb stood at attention, snapping a sharp salute as his eyes took in the wooden crate to one side of the desk. “General, sir. You requested me?”

  General Thomas gave a nod and waved at the space in front of his desk. “I did, Staff Sergeant. At ease.”

  Caleb took the invitation and relaxed, moving to stand opposite the general, hands clasped behind his back, feet spread to shoulder-width as he waited.

  The general nodded to the crate. “These have been kicking around storage. Any chance you’ve worked with them before?”

  Assuming he was being asked to look, Caleb left at-ease and shifted the lid off the crate to look inside. Army-green plastic cases filled the crate, one of them open to display a row of four blocky radio units and a mobile comms box. He knew the model, but it had been out of date when he retired.

  “Secure field comms. I’m familiar, sir, but haven’t worked on them myself.”

  “Familiarity is a good start.” General Thomas nodded at the crate. “Can you secure them properly without a sat connection?”

  Caleb frowned down at the units. The system was simple enough, if he recalled any of the details correctly, but without a satellite uplink, they were fairly short range. It had been a long time since the US military had a need to secure short-wave transmissions. Sat-comms had made the technology just about obsolete.

  “Can I ask the nature of the operation, sir?” Caleb asked, then quickly added, “I can absolutely get the radios secure, but it would be helpful to know what kind of capability you need. I’ll have to hack it together, and I don’t know that I can get you military-grade security quickly, but I could get you something working that your average civilian won’t be able to crack.”

  General Thomas gave a thoughtful nod, but no direct answer. Instead, he said, “Lieutenant Warren voiced a concern recently about some intelligence you provided his unit. Communications between two insurgent groups from three days ago.”

  Although Caleb knew what the general meant, he shook his head. “Forgive me, sir, but you may have to be more specific. I’ve filed about a dozen intelligence reports in the last three days and don’t always know where they end up.”

  “Chatter about two groups coordinating a scouting operation up the mountain,” the general said, his expression still placid, no threat of warning in his tone. “I believe the report suggested there were six civilians in the scout group, unarmed?”

  Caleb did know the report. The group had been using commercial grade radios to call in updates on their position, and he’d come across the communications as part of a routine radio surveillance check.

  Most of those discoveries were essentially coincidence; it was impossible to monitor all frequencies on a constant basis with the equipment available on base. He had to manually check them during surveillance shifts and sometimes between transmissions in the mornings. This was the intelligence Elizabeth had overheard the comment about—that he’d given the lieutenant’s unit bad intel intentionally.

  Caleb knew the answer he gave would determine the consequences for what happened. He trod carefully. “I know the report, sir. Six civilians in all, and they’d relayed concern about being unarmed in the field. Worried mostly about some other group who’d been trouble in the past. If I recall, I reported that they were told to cover their area and then report back the following day. I marked it priority level four.”

  Thomas gave a shallow nod. “You did,” he agreed. “I sent Lieutenant Warren’s unit out to patrol the area, and they encountered the group. There were eight, in reality, and they were not unarmed.”

  Caleb’s surprised reaction was genuine. He hadn’t lied about what he’d heard. Whether the general believed him or not, though, was only half the problem with that. “Sir,” he said carefully, “I can assure you that I relayed an accurate report of what I encountered. If the intelligence was wrong—“

  “Relax, Staff Sergeant. I don’t think you sabotaged your fellow soldiers. I’m more concerned that this group knew there was a possibility they were being overheard.”

  That was Caleb’s concern as well. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  Thomas waved him on. “Speak.”

  “If this group employed an intentional subterfuge tactic based on the assumption that their comms were compromised, the most likely reason is that they know the base is here, and at least suspect that it’s occupied and operational. Or, they didn’t know for certain but needed to find out. If Lieutenant Warren—“

  Caleb caught himself before mentioning the aftermath; he wasn’t supposed to know. He covered his hesitation by clearing his throat. “Pardon me, sir; I was just outside and still have a scratch in my throat. If the lieutenant made contact with this group, it might have confirmed intelligence they were hoping to gather.”

  “He did.” The general leaned back in his chair. “There were no survivors. Which doesn’t mean their fellow insurgents learned nothing, but it does mean they didn’t learn anything specific. But we can’t afford to let this problem go unchecked. Hence, I need the field comms. We need to clear the insurgents, secure this mountain, and establish a border. We have to operate under the assumption of a hostile force.”

  Clear the insurgents. Caleb weighed those words, and the next ones he spoke. Even if it lessened the general’s trust in him, he couldn’t stand by and say nothing. “Sir, are you certain these civilians… you’re talking about killing Americans, sir. There are very likely small groups out there in competition against one another over resources, but if they knew there was leadership here, that there’s a peacekeeping force in place—“

  “I wasn’t asking for your opinion, Staff Sergeant.” He stood, and strode around the end of the desk, eyes searching Caleb’s face. “You and your family were out there when this all came down. You’ve seen what happened, how people fell apart and gave in to their animal natures. Civilization vanished in an instant.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “These people believe they’ve been abandoned, Machert, and they’re not wrong. We’re going to give them back what they lost, but that can only happen once we’ve secured a proper foothold and shown them that we are the guiding force in this region. We must act decisively; show everyone we are not to be trifled with, and that there is still law and order in this country.”