There is no such thing as a mercy killing. Only killing.
Rosa gave Marina some of the water and Jorge was comforted to see his daughter sipping it. The sweat on her forehead had dried, and her complexion had returned somewhat to its usual almond color.
“Were there many of the solar storms?” Jorge said. He had little understanding of science, having attended vocational school to learn welding, a craft that hadn’t led to a job back home.
“Hard to tell without any astronomy gear,” the old man said. “O’ course, all that went out with the first big pulse, when the magnetic fields got all scrambled. But if what they were saying is true, then we might have been hit with storms for a solid week, wave after wave of radiation. Might still be going on now, for all we know. It’s not like you can really see them.”
Jorge thought of all the time he’d spent in the fields over the past few weeks and wondered about the invisible rays and currents that might have washed over him. Worse, in his ignorance, he’d exposed this family to danger. He glanced at his daughter huddled in a coarse blanket.
“You were prepared for this disaster?” Jorge asked.
The man waved a hand, still fiddling with the radio. “This, or something else. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Personally, my money was on nuclear war, considering all the idiots in Washington.”
Jorge had heard of survivalists, who were often painted as well-armed crackpots who barricaded themselves in bunkers and dared federal agents to come and get them. But this man didn’t seem angry or confrontational. No, he almost seemed happy that the world had taken a turn for the worse.
“My name is Jorge, and that’s my wife, Rosa, and daughter, Marina.” Jorge opened his palm in case the man wanted to shake hands, but the man kept his attention on the radio.
“You can call me Franklin.”
“This is national park land,” Jorge said cautiously. “I thought no one could live on it.”
“Means the people own it, right?” Franklin said. “I paid taxes. At least for a while, ‘til I wised up and saw every single dime I mailed to the I.R.S. was going into killing us all one way or another. The government was bound to either starve us to death or drop bombs on our heads.”
A low whine issued from the radio’s speakers, and the man fidgeted with the thick copper wires attached to the slender antenna. He plugged in a handset microphone and keyed it with click. “Do you read?” the man asked.
Jorge thought this was odd. If someone was listening on another radio, that person likely wasn’t reading. The man turned the knob, yielding a scruffy burst of static, much like Mr. Wilcox’s TV. He spoke into the microphone several more times before giving up.
“Too much atmospheric interference,” Franklin said.
“Do you think others are out there?”
The man scrunched his bushy eyebrows. “Others like us, you mean?”
Jorge nodded and glanced at Rosa. This man apparently didn’t care that they were Hispanic, only that they weren’t crazed killers. “Like us.”
“Oh, hard to figure,” the man said. “But you can bet bear against cornmeal that the U.S. government got itself a dozen little hidey holes around D.C.”
“The capital,” Jorge said, to assure the man that he knew his U.S. civics lessons.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastards had months of advance warning and took the time to make sure they were safe and living in luxury. Probably got a new bureaucracy running already, figuring out how to tax the hell out of the survivors.”
“Did you hear that on your radio?”
Franklin didn’t answer, concentrating instead on turning the knobs and listening intently to the whining pitch emanating from the speakers. Rosa came over and took Jorge’s hand, squeezing it as they watched their sleeping daughter.
“Her fever is passing,” Rosa said.
“Good,” Jorge said. “We must leave soon.”
“Might not want to be in too big of a hurry,” the man said. “The way I’ve seen them Zapheads acting, you wouldn’t have much of a chance if you ran into a pack of them.”
“We don’t want to trouble you,” Jorge said.
“I got plenty of food and water, and my solar panels, and the wind turbine. This is about as close to modern living as you’re going to get, at least this side of D.C. Plus, I could use a little help around here, to get ready.”
“Ready?” Rosa said. “Ready for what?”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. But I’ve learned to plan for the worse, and then the worser, and then the worst of all. We’re just now barely on the ‘worse.’ The survivors out there will soon be going at each other’s throats once they realize the resources are dwindling. And if anybody figures out I got electricity up here, and a radio, and supplies, they’re all going to want in.”
“Why does your equipment still work?” Jorge asked as the man’s nubby, wrinkled fingers worked the dials.
“Stored it all in a Faraday cage out back,” Franklin said, hooking a thumb to indicate somewhere outside the cabin. “Shielded metal, it protects against electromagnetic currents.”
“Do others have this equipment?”
“Some,” the man said. “The smart ones. But as you probably figured out already, there ain’t a whole lot of smart ones on this planet.”
The radio’s whine turned into a crackle, and then a male voice cut in. It was clipped, British or Australian, and the words faded in and out: “…anyone there?… now is the time for… approximately one in three hundred survived… we are in need of… situation grave…”
The radio signal sharpened into a keening wail, and the man’s urgent voice emerged again from the static. “Situation grave… repeat, situation grave…”
Then it faded, like the ghost of the airwaves, emitting one last message before becoming swallowed by the endless high hiss.
“Situation grave…”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two of The Captain’s goons shoved Rachel into a dark room and slammed the door.
They weren’t gentle about it, either, and she burned her elbow on the carpeting. She guessed she was in a bedroom, although there was no gray square that would suggest a window. She crawled forward cautiously, feeling in front of her with an outstretched hand.
She met something spongy and drew back, horrified that it might be a corpse.
“Took you long enough,” DeVontay said.
She sat up on her knees, peering in the direction of his voice but unable to see him. “Hey, you’re the one playing hero. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. They roughed me up a little, but I think they’re just playing. Got some kind of skinhead thing going on, from what I can tell.”
“Their leader, The Captain—”
“Captain? What the hell? You think this is a Batman movie or something?”
“I had to nickname him,” she said. “Psychologically, that makes him less of a threat. A kind of gallows humor.”
“Yeah, well, gallows humor is all well and good until the noose tightens. Speaking of which, why don’t you untie me?”
She scooted forward until she found the thick wooden bedpost and fumbled around the thick lump of knots against his skin. “These are like the ones they used on me. Might take me a minute to get them loose.”
“I ain’t going anywhere. Did they… hurt you?” he said in a low voice as she tugged.
Rachel guessed from the pause that he meant, “Did they rape you?” but she brushed past it. “The Captain threw a Zaphead at me as some sort of screwed-up test. The guy’s a little brain-fried himself, I think.”