As Darkness Falls Read online

  “Screw that. I’m not working double the hours for the same pay.”

  Feigning shock, he said, “Wait, you’re getting paid?”

  “If you mean the extra rations we get fed because we’re moving around all the time and burning more calories, then yeah, sure, I get paid.”

  He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Sometimes I miss the good old days at the farm. Remember those?”

  “Liar. You love this.”

  “Guilty as charged.” He put a finger on one nostril and blew snot out the other. Gross. “Maybe you go with Parker until you guys start to get the hang of it.”

  “Sure.” She watched Freddie form his team into a line. “He’ll figure it out.”

  Dylan hummed like he didn’t believe her.

  “He will,” she repeated, mostly to herself. “Gimme a few weeks. I’ll bring him around. You’ll see.”

  2

  “It stinks in here,” said Liam’s eight-year-old daughter, Debbie, pinching her nose.

  Liam sniffed the air. It did stink a little. Well, no, more than a little. A lot, actually, now that he thought about it. Body odor, mostly, with the hint of drywall and mold.

  “Debs,” his wife, Erin, scolded. “Don’t be rude.” Her light Irish accent softened the words. After fifteen years of marriage, it still sent a tingle up Liam’s neck.

  “But it does.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Liam said. “She just has the courage to tell it how it is.”

  Clutching his hand, Debbie navigated around a line of blow-up mattresses. Six months ago, she was too “mature” to hold her daddy’s hand in public. Now, whenever they left the house, she almost never let him go. While he cherished every second, he worried about how well she was coping with so many sudden, dramatic changes to her life.

  She gently kicked a mattress covered in blankets and pillows. “Do people live here?”

  Since the Militia’s founding, Debbie had been asking to see Liam’s new workplace, and today was the day. They were walking through what used to be the Gateway Student Success Center at NAU. At the time of the bombs, this building was under renovation. The main study area, usually filled with tables, chairs, desks, sofas, and cubicles, was thus bereft of furniture, leaving plenty of room for cots and mattresses. A large quad out front provided ample space for the unit to form up and train, and the centralized location meant reserves could quickly deploy anywhere in town.

  “They do,” he said to her. “Some of the troopers lived at the college, so they decided to move in together here instead.”

  “What’s that?” She pointed at a metal barrel off in the corner. Around it lay piping and stacks of firewood.

  “That’ll be our new wood stove for when it gets cold.”

  “Oh.” She peered up at him. God, she was a clone of her mother. The red hair, the freckles, the button nose, the green eyes. Some days Liam wondered where his half of her DNA was hiding. “Why can’t we get one of those instead of going to live with Uncle Mikey?”

  Like most homes in Flagstaff, Liam’s had a gas fireplace that no longer worked. Many older homes had wood-burning fireplaces, but without airtight inserts, they could make rooms colder by sucking warm air out through the flue. By pure chance, Mikey had the proper setup, and he’d graciously invited the Kipling family to stay with him for the winter.

  “Because we can’t build stoves for everyone.” While Liam would have loved to install a barrel stove in his living room and avoid having to spend the next six months with his sometimes-exhausting ex-partner, there simply weren’t enough materials; the city needed hundreds of winter shelters, each of which would require a minimum of one stove. “We have to save them for the people who need them most.”

  “Do I get my own room?”

  “Roxy”—Mikey’s older sister—“and their parents are coming to live with us, so you, me, and your mom will all share one. It’ll be like camping.”

  She pouted, saying, “I hate camping.”

  “Since when? I thought you loved camping. This summer, remember how upset you were when we couldn’t go to Prescott?” They’d gone every August for the past three years, and Debbie always seemed to have fun cooking cheap soy hot dogs over a fire and sleeping in a stuffy tent.

  “She does,” Erin said. “Don’t you, Debs?”

  Debbie stomped her foot on the floor. “No, I hate it. I want to stay at home. Why can’t you just make a fireplace for us?”

  Liam wished the solution were that easy.

  Erin shot him another glance, this one full of concern. Debbie wasn’t simply being stubborn—she was afraid. Afraid of new scenery, afraid of winter, afraid of not having enough to eat. So far, the girl had put on a stronger face than many of the adults in Flagstaff, but with every passing week, cracks were beginning to show in her tough facade.

  He knelt so he and Debbie were at eye level. “Honey, it’ll be okay, I promise.” She crossed her arms defiantly, so he added, “You’re allowed to feel scared. Your mom and I are scared, too. And Uncle Mikey, he’s probably the most scared out of all of us.”

  A smile tugged at her lips. “No he’s not. He says he’s never scared.”

  Typical Mikey. “Well, he’s lying. Next time you see him, you should tell him he’s a big wuss.”

  Now a giggle. She hid it with her hand, but Liam still mentally patted himself on the back and privately complimented his dad skills. “That’s not nice, Dad.”

  At the far end of the room, Dylan Baker, one of the Militia’s three platoon leaders, opened the glass door to Liam’s office.

  “No, it isn’t, but it’ll be funny, and Uncle Mikey’s good at taking a joke.” Liam stood up straight and said to Erin, “Meeting starts in just a few, so I should get going.”

  “Okay, no problem. Thanks for showing her around.”

  “Sorry it took this long, and sorry it’s kind of boring.”

  Erin put a hand on Debbie’s shoulder. “We’re very happy it’s boring. We’ll take that to the alternative any day.”

  Liam gave his daughter a hug, then kissed his wife. “A team’s waiting outside to walk you home.”

  “We’re okay by ourselves,” Erin said. “But I won’t argue with you.”

  Since the CFF incident and the fall of Vincent Grierson, moving about Flagstaff had become quite safe, but when it came to his family, Liam took zero chances. He’d send a whole platoon with them if he could.

  “Good. I’ll see you later.” And then, as he messed up Debbie’s hair, “We still on for paint night?”

  She pretended to cower away from him. “Dad, ugh, you’re so annoying.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  He kissed his wife again and sent them on their way, watching to make sure they met his four troopers at the front door. His heart ached when they went outside. Mostly, he accepted command of the Militia to protect his girls, yet building what amounted to a small infantry company from scratch had proven to be, perhaps predictably, a truly enormous amount of work. As a police officer, he put in ten hours a day, seven days a week. Now it was twelve, if he was lucky. Erin understood, of course; to her, simply having Liam in the same state was a treat. He hoped Debbie understood, too. Tonight, while they worked on their watercolor masterpieces by the light of an LED lantern, he’d explain for the millionth time that everything he did was for her and her future. Then she’d act annoyed and say, I know, Dad, and he’d feel somewhat better about spending so much time away from home.

  Baker sat in one of the two chairs in Liam’s office. “How’s the fam?” he asked.

  “Fam’s good.” Liam took his spot behind the desk. “It was Debbie’s first visit to HQ. She seemed mildly amused at best, bored at worst.”

  “Charlie, Evan, and her dad had the same reaction. They sort of looked around and were like, ‘This is it, eh?’ Not that I really blame them. Also, it stinks in here.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Maybe we should start scheduling baths for the grunts.”r />
  “You joke about that, but it’s not a terrible idea. Remember West Ukraine, when NATO made all those training videos about personal hygiene in the field?” Liam extended his left leg, massaging his quad.

  “Leg bothering you?”

  Liam flexed his hip by bringing his knee toward his chest. “No more than usual. The most advanced prosthetics tech in the world, but none of it can convince my muscles to stop overcompensating.”

  “At least we’ve got the solar panels up and running on the roof so you can charge it.”

  While Liam’s prosthesis, known as the Free Knee, allowed him to walk like normal and even run, its microprocessor and hydraulics systems needed charging every thirty-six to forty-eight hours. Before the EMP, he’d simply plug it in when he lay down for bed. Now keeping it powered required some degree of foresight and planning. “Yes, that is indeed convenient. I also like not having to charge our radios and trucks at the police station or Minute Tire anymore.”

  A knock came from the door. Outside stood his other two platoon leaders: Melanie Morgan, a forty-year-old ex-Navy officer and refugee from Salt Lake City, and Talin Dhaliwal, formerly of the Flagstaff Police Department and, prior to that, the U.S. Marine Corps.

  Liam waved them inside. Dhaliwal rushed forward, wrapped Baker in a chokehold from behind, and rustled the poor man’s hat until it came loose. “This guy,” Dhaliwal said. “Always early.”

  Baker glanced at the analog clock on the wall, the one that used to hang in Liam’s office at home. “It’s five after. You’re late.”

  “Huh, how about that?” Dhaliwal plopped himself into the chair beside Baker with a thump, then flipped off the hood of his sweatshirt, revealing a black turban and a bushy beard. The moment the bombs fell, he apparently gave up on trimming it, and now it nearly stretched all the way to his chest. “Sorry about that, Kip. I couldn’t pull Morgan away from her desk. She was drawing out diagrams for something called a pocket mass heater.”

  With all the grace that Dhaliwal lacked, Morgan sat on the cheap two-seater couch along the wall. A slight woman with thick-rimmed glasses, dark hair, and a nose almost too small for her face, she reminded Liam of his high school math teacher, Mrs. England. Morgan hadn’t found that fact particularly amusing.

  “Rocket mass heater,” she corrected. “You see, Commander, while our barrel stove will no doubt prove sufficient for our purposes, the design remains highly inefficient in terms of how it uses fuel. In a rocket mass heater, the byproducts of combustion, such as smoke and soot, are sucked into an insulated tunnel. There, the heat of the system results in further combustion and the release of more energy.”

  “You see what I mean?” Dhaliwal twisted in his seat and asked her, “Why’d you bother joining the Militia if you’re so interested in building a better wood stove? You could’ve been spending all your time doing that.”

  “Duty,” she said plainly.

  The room waited for her to elaborate, but she added nothing more, so Liam interjected with, “There’s your answer, Dhaliwal. I, for one, am thankful to have a former engineering instructor on the team. So, Morgan, continue with the project, so long as it doesn’t interfere with running a platoon.”

  “I will. Thank you, sir.”

  Liam cringed. “And don’t call me ‘sir.’ Neither of these other two boneheads do. ‘Kip’ is fine. Or ‘commander,’ if you feel the need to be especially formal.”

  “Yes . . .” She paused for a moment, and Liam could see the “sir” trying to force its way past her lips. “Commander.”

  “Excellent. Now, as much as I’d love to discuss what I imagine are probably highly stimulating details of wood stove upgrades, we should get down to business here.” From the top drawer of his desk, he took out a pad of paper and a pencil, then passed them to Baker, who in turn handed them to Morgan. She recorded all the meeting minutes, purely because her handwriting was by far the most legible. “So we had First Squad of Baker’s First Platoon out training today. How’d they do?”

  Baker reaffixed his hat. “Not bad. Jansen’s dialed in. I’ve got no worries about her.”

  When Baker had proposed that Jenn take command of a squad in his platoon, Liam doubted she could handle the responsibility. She was young, only twenty, and short-tempered, or so Gary had always told him. But Baker vouched for her, so Liam decided to give her a chance. “Good to hear. I’m sure Mayor Ruiz will be happy about that. What about our friend Freddie Parker?”

  “He’s not the worst,” Baker said. “After a few run-throughs on bounding overwatch, he started to figure it out.”

  “I sense a but coming.”

  “But I don’t understand why he’s here. You’d think if Chief Morrison fought to score him a fire team, he’d be excited about it. He acts like this is a chore.”

  That was definitely odd, but not odd enough to cause Liam much concern just yet. In a real military, recruits would spend about two months in basic training, where they’d be put under intense mental and physical pressure designed to rewire their brains so they thought and behaved like soldiers. The Militia had no such program, so it stood to reason that some troops were having trouble adjusting to the schedule and the expectations. He’d make sure to ask Baker about Parker in a few weeks’ time.

  Dhaliwal groaned out, “You let him get away with too much, Baker.”

  “Oh yeah? And how would you handle the situation?”

  “Hard PT, my man. Physical training.”

  “Are you saying your plan would be to work the kid to death so he quits and cries to his uncle, who then takes back all his weapons and equipment, plus you and the commander?”

  “We don’t know he’d do that,” Dhaliwal said. “Some tough love could inspire him. Like, the other day, Williams and DeJong showed up fifteen minutes late, so I ran them around the quad until they puked. Probably eight klicks. Next morning, they were the first ones here.”

  “Ironic, you punishing your grunts for showing up late.”

  “I told you, it was Morgan’s fault, not mine. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be sketching out pictures at her desk.”

  Morgan wrote furiously, pausing only to shake out her hand.

  “You don’t have to get all this,” Liam said to her. “As a matter of fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

  She scribbled away for another second, probably to finish her sentence. “Yes, certainly, Commander. Whatever you say.”

  “Anyway,” Dhaliwal said. “My point is, that stuff works in the Corps, so it’ll work here. It’s tried and true.”

  “Except this isn’t the Corps,” Liam pointed out. “Or the Army or even the Space Force. We need to treat discipline like this is a workplace, not the military. Our volunteers aren’t on some contract we can enforce. Push them too hard, and they might leave. I assume you’ve noticed, but there isn’t a lineup of prospective replacements stretching out the door. If not for the war, we might’ve had three, maybe four times as many sign up, but most of the residents with Morgan’s sense of duty would’ve already enlisted and are probably in Mexico, Europe, or Asia.”

  Baker swatted Dhaliwal with the back of his hand. “There you have it. The commander has spoken.”

  “Commander,” Morgan began, “is the goal not at some point to emulate the standards of the U.S. forces in terms of our discipline and training?”

  “Sure, eventually, but right now, comparing us to a real military is like comparing my daughter’s watercolors to authentic Picassos. Our manpower comprises a bunch of green, underfed kids with no standardized weapons, and our command structure is basically the start of a bad joke: a wounded war vet, an illegal immigrant from Canada, a rookie cop, and a forty-year-old college teacher walk into a bar.”

  “Forty-one,” Morgan corrected.

  Dhaliwal spun around in his chair. “Forty-one? Since when?”

  “Earlier this month. The ninth.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve sung ‘Happy Birthday.’ I have a great voice.�
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  Liam asked, “You ever think that’s maybe why she kept it a secret, Dhaliwal?”

  “You have no idea what you’re missing,” Dhaliwal said to Morgan, then turned to Liam. “And it’s not nice to make fun of Debbie’s paintings. Watercolor is hard, and I’d know. I paint with my nephew all the time.”

  “I didn’t take you for an artist,” Baker said. “I’m honestly surprised you can draw anything other than crude outlines of male genitalia.”

  “For your information, I’ve upgraded to houses with the little swirls of smoke coming out of the chimney.”

  “Personally, I’m impressed you managed to get an entire picture done,” Liam said. “Figured you’d eat all the paint before you finished.”

  “Come on, Kip. You should know Marines better than that. We prefer crayons to paint.”

  Baker scratched his head and squinted. “Crayons? Am I missing something here?”

  “Quiet, Maple Syrup,” Dhaliwal barked. “You Canucks wouldn’t understand.”

  “Clearly not.”

  “If I may,” Morgan said, once again writing. Liam didn’t bother telling her to stop. “I believe the joke is a common inter-service jab at the United States Marine Corps. It’s meant to insult the average Marine’s intellect.”

  Dhaliwal chortled. “And they say the Marines are the dumb ones.”

  There was another knock at the door. It was Terrence Nielsen, a rat-faced kid no older than nineteen and one of the Militia’s shortwave radio operators. With Internet and cell service down, the only way to communicate over long distances without physical travel was via shortwave radio. Day in and day out, Nielsen listened in on chatter from across the continent, most of which concerned very local events, underscoring how isolated communities had become in the wake of the attacks.

  Liam waved him into the office. “What is it, Nielsen? Hear something interesting? I don’t know if I can handle another report of fields of corn rotting away in Nebraska.” That news had hardly come as a shock; the EMP would have disabled many of the machines needed to harvest, process, and transport crops, not to mention how the breakdown in law and order would have prevented farmers from carrying out the work. But Liam hated thinking about all that food going to waste when he was surviving on 1200 calories per day.