“Cal?”
Nat’s shoulders were squared, that aura of command pulsating off of her. I felt myself wilt beneath it.
“Listen, Nat, I…”
“Hey! Turn this up!”
I looked up at the edge of panic in Kate’s voice. Christos grabbed the TV remote and keyed the volume higher. A harried-looking man was on the screen. He had his finger to a monitor in his ear and was writing notes furiously.
“Reports are coming in now,” he said. “Some confirmed, some awaiting confirmation, but we’ll tell you what we know for sure right now. After months of stalemate, major elements of the Army of the Glorious Path are pouring over the border into California.”
“Oh God,” Nat said. Her hand moved to take mine.
A map of the country popped up onto the screen with Path states in gold and Fed in blue. The map quickly zeroed in on California, a mass of blue with four sets of golden arrows pointing into it, two coming in from the east and two from the sea.
“Four A.M. Pacific time saw an end to a brutal series of aerial bombardments that began in major strategic areas in the north and south. Following these assaults, mechanized elements pushed into Southern California from Path-controlled Arizona, while in the north an amphibious assault began on Northern California of a magnitude not seen since D-day in World War Two.
“U.S. forces were quickly overwhelmed and we understand that by eleven A.M., regional military commanders and the California governor met with Path general Jonathan Moreland, where they officially surrendered their state.”
On the map behind him, the blue of California switched to Path gold, linking up with other states to completely surround Nevada and Oregon.
“For more on what this means, we go to our senior military analyst, retired general Stanley—”
“Come on,” Nat said. “No way the Army says no to us now.”
She grabbed my hand but I pulled it back. “Nat, wait.”
“What?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but it was like there was a hand around my throat.
“Cal, what’s…”
I met her eyes and saw the realization hit her.
“You were never going to enlist with us,” she said. “Were you?”
I swallowed back a cold lump in my throat. “The MPs were coming for me. You said you wouldn’t help me unless I went with you.”
“I never said that!”
“Nat, two people signing up right now isn’t going to make any difference. You know that!”
“And what will make a difference? Running away to New York and joining their little troupe?”
“Please,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I know what happens to people who try to fight them.”
Nat’s glare hardened. “So do I.”
“Wait.” I reached out for Nat as she turned to go, but she jerked away from me.
“No,” she said, glancing into the living room where Alec and the rest of them milled about the blank TV screen. “Maybe you do belong with them.”
Nat turned her back on me and strode toward the door. Bear heard her footsteps and scurried out of the living room to follow her. Nat threw open the back door, and a blast of sunlight filled the hall. Bear barked out after her but Nat stalked into the light, a black silhouette and then gone. The door slammed shut behind her.
After Nat left, Mitchell, the Fed sergeant who oversaw the house’s security, came in to brief us on the plan.
Their plane would be escorted into a landing at a nearby airport that evening. As soon as he had word that it was on its final approach, he would load all of us into a van and escort us to the airfield. Once we were safely away, he and his men would continue on to Philadelphia to join the forces getting ready to protect the capital.
Alec and the others took their last day in the house as an excuse to empty the place of food. Their party raged throughout the day, sending me down into the dark of a basement room to watch the news on a small TV with Bear in my lap.
What I heard changed from moment to moment as news teams struggled to keep up with a war that was moving almost too fast to be described. Reports of Nevada and Oregon falling were confirmed one moment, only to be retracted the next. There was talk of Path terrorists and hijacked planes and nuclear weapons, of pleas to Europe for assistance that were made and ignored. Late in the afternoon, there was breaking news that President Burke had been assassinated, but that too was disavowed within the hour.
All that was clear was that California was now in Path control and fighting was intense as they tried to push their advantage as far as they could.
The news cycle fell into a loop with ever more scant updates and one talking head after another. They were discussing a massive Midwestern blackout when I finally snapped the TV off for good.
A tense silence sat above me. No music. No movement. The glowing numbers on a digital clock across the room read 8:45. Where was Mitchell?
“Come on, Bear.”
Bear jumped down, staying right by my feet as we climbed up into the house. It was practically trashed. There were holes in the walls and burn marks on the furniture. Bottles and cans stood in piles among thickets of trash. The few scattered lights that were on filled the house with an eerie gloom.
Christos and Diane were passed out under a heavy blanket on the couch, their arms wrapped around each other. I tried to shake them awake, but they groaned and turned away.
I opened the porch door and stepped out into the night. Bear was tentative, sniffing at the empty porch before pressing his body into my calf and following me down to the lake. The fairy lights glistened over the dock and the water, filling the little valley with a white glow.
There was what sounded like a distant roll of thunder somewhere to our south and the ground shook. Bear whimpered, his head down and tail tucked between his legs as we continued on.
Alec was lying on his back at the end of the pier, arms spread wide and his feet in the water. Out on the lake, Reese was drifting on a large inflatable armchair.
“Cal?”
I turned. Kate was sitting cross-legged on the grassy shore, half in and half out of the light. She reached out to Bear, but he eyed her warily and moved behind the cover of my legs.
“Where have you been?” she asked in a sleepy drawl. “We were having fun.”
Even in the low light, I could see that her pupils had gone wide and were fringed in a maze of red.
“Inside,” I said. “Watching the news.”
“Any of it good?” she asked through a strange chuckle.
“The Path is on its way east,” I said. “We need to go. Has Sergeant Mitchell come back to—”
“What do you think it’ll be like if they win?”
“Kate.”
“Christos says it’ll be weird for a while, but sooner or later everything will go back to the way it was before because of, like, market forces, which are an inherently moderating force. Do you think it’ll be like that? Like a wheel? Or do you think it will be like something else?”
I felt a twinge of disgust and said nothing. A hard glimmer came into Kate’s eyes.
“Where’s your friend?”
“She left.”
Kate nodded, then went back to staring at the water. “It wasn’t nice, you know. What she said to us.”
“You should get ready to leave.”
Bear and I left her there, crossing the dock to where Alec lay sleeping. Out on the water Reese’s chair spun in lazy circles. When he saw me, he raised one hand in greeting, then paddled away into the dark.
“Alec,” I said, nudging him in the shoulder. “Alec, it’s Cal. Wake up.”
His eyes opened slowly. In the fairy lights they were shockingly blue with wide black pupils.