In the end, I decided the best way for me to protect my son was to make sure none of the monsters outside our gate would ever get in to hurt him. Giving him an extra kiss on the cheek, I held Tyler as close as I could, feeling his soft skin against my own.
Deanna was kind enough to give me my moment, but she eventually waved slightly, signaling that it was time to go. With a deep breath, I gave him up. She took him with a gentle bounce, and then told him that she had his medicine for him. After asking Olivia to make sure to take care of Tyler for me, and watching her eyes glow at the idea of helping out, Kyle and I followed Richards into the hall.
Minutes later, we entered the bunkroom, which was lined with bunk beds and small closets. It’s where most people slept at Avalon, and I remember thinking that I was damn lucky not to be stuck in there.
As I followed Richards down a line of bunks, I didn’t like the strange look on his face. Like he wanted to smile, but was too afraid to. I couldn’t quite read it.
“You know whose bunk this is?” he asked as we stopped.
Looking to the neatly folded, military-style covers, with a three-inch fold at the top, I did. I knew exactly whose bunk it was.
“It’s Rodgers’s bunk,” I replied, just barely under my breath.
“You’re right.” He paused for a moment. “Do me a favor, and look in that bag under the bed. We discovered it just minutes before you arrived.”
Cocking my head, I shot him a look that asked, “Really” as he nodded his head yes.
“It’s right under there. The green duffle bag.”
Kneeling down on all fours, I reached down to grab the cotton handle of the worn, unassuming bag, and slid it out from underneath the darkness of the bed.
“Go ahead, open it,” Kyle prompted.
Reaching my right hand down, I started sliding the zipper as Richards explained that a little boy had discovered it while they were prepping the room for the battle. At first, his mother had started to scold him, telling him to stop touching everything, as little boys have a tendency to do.
“That’s when I saw what it was,” Richards finished, as I pulled the bag open.
With my eyes going wide, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was all there. Every last bit of the medicine from the med center. Every last canister of the meds Tyler needed. They didn’t go up in flames.
“Do you see the note?” Richards asked, as I sat there on my knees speechless.
Shaking my head no, I dug my hand into the bag and swished it around, before finding a neatly sealed envelope with the name “John” written in black pen across the outside.
Richards shrugged. “I didn’t feel right opening it.”
Sliding my finger through the paper edge, I ripped the top open and pulled a yellow piece of folded paper out. Cautiously unfolding it, I could see one short but concise note.
I may be a bastard, but I’m not the kind of bastard that would kill a kid.–Rodgers
Handing the note up to Kyle, I waited for him to read it.
“I don’t know what to think,” I finally said as his eyes lifted from the page.
“I guess we think that he’s not a total dick,” Kyle replied, with a scowl growing across his face as he realized that he spoke about Rodgers as if he was still alive.
Pausing, my mind shot to the look of horror in Rodgers’ eyes as I pulled the trigger.
Speaking more to myself, I said, “Yeah, I guess he wasn’t…”
I’ll never really know what was going through his mind, the mind of a man who teetered on the edge of sanity. A man who just might have had a last-minute sense of regret before he led us to what should have been certain torture, death… or worse. In the end, there must have been some tiny bit of humanity left in that scrambled brain. Too bad, dead men aren’t able to speak beyond a grumbled moan.
Sometimes when I’m alone, captured in my own memories, I think back to that green duffle bag and Rodgers’s note. I always ponder the same question: Why?
After a short silence that nearly filled the entire bunkroom, Kyle finally pushed his shoulders out and said, “Let’s get topside, men. We have a war to win.”
He was right. It was time to prepare for battle.
Chapter 28
Only children believe that what they do in battle is who they are as men.
I was standing in a filthy mud, the kind that would never completely come out of my fresh body armor. Well, fresh to me anyway. It had a cracked bullet hole in the right chest plate, no doubt from the last guy who had worn it. I could only hope that I’d have more luck than he did.
The sky had erupted with a pounding rainstorm before we had returned, making the Yard look and feel like the sludge one would find in a pigsty, as everybody frantically darted back and forth within the protection of the outside walls. Digging the tip of my boot into the filth, I looked up, listening intently to the wind blowing. Dark clouds slowly crept by, seemingly interested in being witness to the battle brewing below.
Moving my right hand across my belt to make sure the hammer was firmly in place, I momentarily thought about Tyler, buried deep underground with the rest of the inhabitants who were unable to fight. I knew that he would be safe with Deanna and Claire, who were hunkered down in my living quarters. With a thick steel blast door, it would be the best place for them to wait this out.
Watching the people assisting each other around the Yard reminded of what we were doing here; more importantly, why we were ready to fight. Protecting a way of life that the rest of the world had long since forgotten. It would be what was worth fighting for… ultimately worth killing for.
On that day, I knew I’d have to honor that promise I’d made to my wife. It was the promise to keep my son safe in a world of shit, and I knew I’d be doing it with blood. Shaking the cold sweat from my body, I shuddered at the thought of what that really meant.
Many of us wouldn’t make it, that much was clear. Mostly made up of the lucky, not the brave, our small group of sixty-three men and women who were able to fight, weren’t ready for the firestorm that was about to hit. Of course, we had planned for an attack: constant drilling, constant preparation. However, nothing could have prepared us for what was coming. The odds were too well stacked against us.
We knew this wasn’t simply our second chance to keep Gordon from running Avalon. It would be our last. There wasn’t a person standing at Jarvis’s side who didn’t understand that. In a boxing match, the most dangerous type of person is the one who is backed into the corner ropes. Seemingly, at their weakest, that person knows they have nothing to lose. They are willing to try anything, willing to do whatever it takes to get out of that spot.
Avalon was our corner.
With mud sloshing up over his feet as he walked up next to me, Kyle kicked his boot into the air.
“They could have picked a better day to pull this shit, huh? I’ve got mud all over my new boots.”
Knowing that he was trying to crack a joke to calm me down, I flashed a pathetic smile and replied, “Yeah, very inconsiderate of them.”
Kyle had been here before. He’d faced off against enemy forces while in the Army, and he’d lived to see another day. I hadn’t ever been in a battle the size of this, and couldn’t stop my knees from shaking.
Looking along the top of the concrete walls, Kyle appeared to be inspecting the men stationed at the recently built crenellations lining the entire perimeter. There was a look in his face that told me he seemed pleased with the fact that he had pushed all of us to finish them, despite the blazing summer heat a few months back.