“Is anything you said last night worth a shred of my time?” he yelled.

  “Almost everything,” Scala said, shaking slightly. “The power stations were all taken out, and that militia leader can’t possibly be a threat anymore, so forget about all that. Your secondaries, and most of mine, are all scratched. But I haven’t confirmed the situation in Longmont. It was a rumor I heard about the warhead.”

  “This is criminal, Scala. It’s treasonous!”

  “I know.”

  “You would have pulled me away from a critical national security mission to help you get to your daughter? What’s between you and Colorado Springs that you need my help to get through? Tell me!” He pressed the gun harder into her neck.

  “There are… lines to get past. Killers that have banded together and are preying on everyone that comes through, stopping travelers at roadblocks and doing terrible things. They’re consolidating weapons and food and fuel. I’ve probed their lines twice, and almost got killed last time.”

  “You just wanted me for firepower? What could two of us do that one couldn’t?”

  “I thought you could help me get through, find a way. They’re spread across all the roads, I couldn’t find a way past. But with the two of us, maybe we could…”

  Carson sensed lies creeping into her voice again, but her fear and emotion betrayed the strands of truth on her pale face. He kept the gun pressed against her as he puzzled it out. The truth hit him like a brick.

  “I was to be your distraction. Your decoy!” The stricken look on her face told him he’d guessed right. “You were going to let me take the heat, let them chase me down, while you made your run.”

  Tears welled up in Scala’s eyes. She tried to protest but he wasn’t listening to it. “That’s cold, agent. Real cold. Mother’s love, huh? Willing to lead a fellow agent to his death just so you could get to your daughter. You’re sick.”

  Scala shook with suppressed sobs. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have kids. I haven’t even seen my daughter in six months, but I can’t help it. It’s too strong.”

  She sat and cried, hands still on the steering wheel, for a few minutes. Carson scanned her for any sign of further insincerity, any giveaway that she was play-acting. But the tears were very real, and the shame and desperation in her eyes were unmistakable.

  He lowered his gun. She continued to cry as he thought through his position, his way forward now that he knew Edith’s secret.

  “So, what exactly do you know about 905T4? For real, this time, please.”

  Edith took a moment to get her voice under control. “Maybe it’s still there, I don’t know. I haven’t checked. My primary really is to deliver a coded message to Colorado Springs. My daughter lives in Eastonville, ten or fifteen miles northeast of the city. My ex is a major in the Air Force down there. I fully intend to continue on to Colorado Springs and deliver my message to the right people, when I can. I just need to go see my daughter first, okay? Everything else I said was true, I swear it.”

  She watched Carson carefully. He tapped the gun thoughtfully on his knee, thinking hard. Finally he spoke.

  “Drive on.”

  Scala leaned forward, resting her head on the wheel. The engine was still idling. “I thought you were going to shoot me,” she murmured.

  “I was. You deserve it. That’s some seriously treasonous behavior.”

  He sat in silence for another minute. “Drive on,” he finally said.

  She looked at him. “You want to keep going south?”

  “Yes. Drive.”

  Fear came back into her eyes as she tried to understand what he was planning now. “What about your objective?”

  “I have to deliver 905T4 to a two-star in Colorado Springs, right? That’s where we’re headed.”

  “But 905T4 is back in Longmont, on the other side of Denver. If it still exists.”

  “We’re closer to Colorado Springs now than to Longmont. If Colorado Springs is abandoned or destroyed, then I know I don’t need to go a hundred and twenty miles in the other direction to get 905T4. And assisting a fellow agent with her primary is a viable use of my time, especially if my other objectives are obsolete.”

  Edith considered this. “You’re… okay with this?”

  “I could throw you out of the truck right now and turn around,” Carson said. “Cross Denver to hunt down 905T4 down, then turn around again and drive back on this same road, past where we’re sitting right now, and all the while my destination is a smoking heap. All that risk, for maybe nothing. But the way things stand now, I first check and make sure the destination is viable. Then I go back and take the risks for 905T4. Makes sense to me.”

  Edith nodded but said nothing, guilt weighing on her.

  “This thing is way bigger than we were trained for, has lasted longer,” Carson said. “There are no guarantees anymore. We’re trained to improvise case by case, right? That’s what I’m doing. Now drive.”

  Scala drove.

  Chapter 14: Car Chase

  Carson brooded. It was an alert brood; he still checked the road behind, and scanned the horizons on all sides, and kept an eye on Scala. But he brooded like a grumpy old man.

  He didn’t trust the woman, didn’t like the compromises she’d made, and couldn’t condone her actions. At least he understood her fully now, followed her reasoning. It made sense. A woman with family to think of, however distant, would of course turn to them when the world came crashing down. He resented her accusation that he wouldn’t understand.

  He turned the tape back on, and Simon and Garfunkel kept pace with his thoughts.

  – and the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made –

  A warrior monk. That’s what he was. No family of his own, no close friends. He had remained cloistered and spartan, almost stoic, for a greater cause, a higher allegiance. Unlike his fellow agent.

  But it had all changed now, become a lesser cause and a lower allegiance. Scala was right, at least about that. He’d seen the same things, felt the same things.

  It was hard to care as much as he’d once cared. Professionally, he’d stayed ready. He trained, he prepared, he walked the walk. No one would ever accuse him of slacking on the job. But Scala had put it into words the night before. You started wondering if the thing you were sworn to serve and protect was worthy of service, or protection. America, quite frankly, wasn’t the country it used to be.

  You could make the argument that it didn’t matter how far it had fallen, you didn’t question that, you just did your job and hoped for better days. Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die. It made sense, from a certain perspective, even if you weren’t a British lancer in the valley of death, saber in hand, seeing the Russian guns so far away and charging toward them anyway for queen and country. There was a kind of honor in serving an unworthy master, mainly because nations, like people, could change. America could turn itself around.

  But the darker, clearer view said something quite different. Nations can change, it said, but the odds aren’t good. The longer and faster the slide, the harder it is to turn around. The very will to do so can evaporate. There is no place in the swamp of human history for optimistic thinking, or empathy. Nations come, and nations go. Tears and regrets are misplaced. Who still weeps for Carthage, for Tenochtitlan, for Babylon? Let them go. Let them become little paragraphs in history textbooks that no one ever reads.

  What do I really owe anyone? Carson asked himself. They pissed on the flag, when they weren’t burning it, or reinventing what it stood for. They tore the pillars of the republic down, one by one, explaining loudly why it was necessary, why the founding documents that had once beckoned people from all nations were no longer necessary, had become in fact outdated. What began with admirable statesmanship had become a farce.

  What do I really owe them? Professional pride? Yes, there was that. To do the hard thing even when it was pointless, to fight the war you didn’t believe in simply because that was what a soldier did. To become the anonymous, faceless, opinion-less arm of the state, its defender, its executioner, its final apologist.

  How much labor, how much blood, sweat, and tears, how much treasure, should be expended in a hopeless cause? At what point did you throw in the towel, admitting that any further effort was a destructive waste? It was like having a pet pig, grown so swollen, so glutted with the labor of others and so unwilling to lift so much as a cloven hoof in its own behalf that it became sick. How many times did you call the vet, spending money trying to heal a monster that would only beggar you in the end, that even if healed would continue in its set course until its unavoidable death?

  But they weren’t all gluttonous pigs. There were millions of decent people, bewildered, gullible people. Like Dana Ryan. Like the woman and her kids he’d felt compelled to help outside of Denver—stupid, unprepared, blind. But not evil, not worthy of this fate. They trusted the flag, they trusted the promises in the documents. It still meant something to them. Could you turn your back on them? Could you walk away and let that flag that so many had bled for, had written for, had argued for, fall at last onto the ash heap of history? Even if that was its eventual fate, could you let it go quietly?

  Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  There were no answers. Carson watched the world go by, and told himself once again that he thought too much. Scala, for all her unprofessional behavior and selfishness, in a way had a better and clearer motive than he did. At least her loyalties were simple. Ties of love, of blood. He felt nothing like that for America; it was all abstract. He had to argue himself into its service. Was that a warning sign, or a call to arms?

  Did he even have a mission anymore, or a meaningful place in the world? Was Deep Thaw, that shadowy agency within a department within a government, even around to struggle for? Were new protocols now necessary, or could protocol be dispensed with altogether, like Scala seemed to believe? He had already deviated from protocol several times. He had spent time with Dana, had rescued Donald. He had given his resources to help civilian children. Each time a little worm of guilt had eaten at him, but now the worm was still. Perhaps he had sensed a larger truth all along—that he was now giving his own orders and setting his own protocols.

  He found himself missing Dana’s company, and wondering what she would say. She didn’t carry all the guile, the guilt, the obligations the rest of them did. She was just a simple girl making her way through life. It had been nice to spend even one evening with her, just to remind him that not everyone he encountered represented a kill-or-be-killed confrontation.

  “Company,” said Scala.

  Carson looked ahead. There was a roadblock of sorts, rapidly drawing near. Whoever had constructed it had chosen a good place; a ravine near the highway had ensured the construction of a cement side barrier, closing off any deviation to the left. On the right was a fuel station. A tractor trailer rig had been pushed or towed across the highway, forcing traffic to turn right into the station area. Other vehicles had been arranged in a ragged funnel, forcing south-bound traffic into the trap. And there lurked the predators.

  “Through or around?” Scala asked, slowing the vehicle and letting Carson call the shots now.

  “Through,” Carson said, prepping his AR-15. He was in the mood to see some blood now, to get just a little bit of payback for what had been done to his country. “If we can take out an illegal roadblock and make this route safer for citizens to travel through, it’s part of our job to help. Remember?”

  Scala nodded. “I’ll be a lot more confident going in there with the two of us, and your rifle.”

  The barricade was effective enough, but there were no snipers overlooking the area, no scouts out front. These guys were amateurs and shouldn’t be hard to blow past if they played it right. “Go in slow, make ‘em think we’re easy prey. When I give the signal, mash that pedal down and don’t stop for anything.” He paused, then added, “The signal will probably be my gun firing.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  They rolled forward, following the only course open to them, toward the pumps and service station. Men with guns loitered around, some in parked vehicles, some sitting by the pumps. Some were still sleeping, even though the sky was fully lit now. In the rearview, Carson saw one previously hidden ambusher dropping in behind them from a culvert, cutting off the retreat. Perhaps they weren’t total amateurs after all.

  The Toyota ambled forward. Carson kept his rifle down, out of sight, and readied his Sig. Scala drew her Beretta, a slim, dark deadly piece of hardware, and wedged it under her thigh where it would be mostly out of sight and secure until she needed to grab it.

  The ambushers were a mismatched crew of losers, the worst kind of human trash, enabled and emboldened by disaster to begin openly feeding on their fellow citizens. All were shaggy, unshaven, unwashed, cradling a wide assortment of weapons, from hunting rifles and shotguns to military-grade assault rifles. A few sported machetes and bats. One even had a bandolier of shiny brass ammo strung across his chest like a bandito from The Magnificent Seven.

  They moseyed on over, ten in all, converging on the pickup, lazy and self-assured. It was obvious they had faced no resistance from anyone since beginning their operations. Where was there to go? Vehicles hedged in on every side, allowing only a narrow track, blocked now by grinning shooters. It was a formidable group by numbers, but Carson was still confident they could blast through before most of those guns came into play.

  The small crowd parted, letting someone through. Obviously the big chief. Large man, huge gut, stained shirt, doughy cheeks covered with blond stubble. Tats on the arms. A shotgun and a big, unfriendly grin.

  “Welcome, welcome!” he called to the truck’s occupants. “Get out and let’s get acquainted.”

  He drew even with Scala as the truck slowed, almost coming to a stop but not quite. Both windows were rolled down, not for conversation but for the free play of bullets at close quarters. On Carson’s side, another beefy dude, similarly bearded and stained, grinned in anticipation. He wore a bulletproof vest, marked clearly in white block letters with “SWAT.” Obviously very confident in his bulletproof status, he had not bothered to aim his weapon yet.

  On Scala’s side, Big leaned in, all yellow teeth. “Ooh, you’re pretty! I think it’s my turn for--”

  Scala’s pistol came out in a smooth, quick movement, and she shot him once in the face. The man reeled away from the truck and collapsed on the pavement.

  Carson brought up his rifle and put a good portion of his magazine into Beefy; the first few rounds smacked the armored belly (largest target) to stun, and the rest mauled the groin and upper legs (unarmored). Beefy staggered backwards and sat down hard, with a sound like a sack of rotting apples, blood gushing outwards in a widening puddle. There was a confused look on his face, but Carson wasn’t around to study it. Even as he fired, Scala gunned the engine, and the truck responded eagerly, leaping forward.

  Scala cranked the wheel hard and the Toyota lurched towards an island of fuel pumps neatly labeled 1 and 2. She cranked it again and they whizzed past, barely missing the steel barriers protecting the pumps from unsafe drivers such as she. Ambushers dived for safety.

  It had all happened way too fast for the bad guys to process. The ambushers couldn’t seem to fathom who just opened fire, and how it was possible that someone dared do so without regard for their superior numbers. Belated gunfire erupted from all sides. The ambushers were firing wildly, desperately, expending copious amounts of ammunition, hardly any of which made contact with the quickly receding truck. One lucky stray pinged into the fender, but that all Carson noticed.

  Watching out the rear, he briefly wondered if anyone had ever put up resistance before. The ambushers seemed completely off-guard. In any case, they were poor shots, adrenaline and fear combining to send their gun barrels rising upwards after the first few rounds. The real casualty of the whole thing was the roof of the fuel pump area, which buckled and heaved as hundreds of bullets tore into it, sending shattered glass and bits of sheet metal cascading down in a crystalline shower, hammering the idiots beneath.

  Then they were clear, racing across the cement tarmac towards the highway again. Safe from return fire at this distance, Carson leaned out the window and sent the rest of his magazine behind them. Despite the speed at which they were traveling, he managed to walk his rounds across one of the shooters, and saw the man, wearing a ratty leather jacket, slam backwards against the pumps as the burst caught him.

  Scala screeched back onto the highway and put the pedal down hard. The Toyota roared in response, barreling down the asphalt. Carson watched the fuel station rapidly fade into the background. He was just about to sit back down and pat himself on the back for a job well done, ridding the world of a few scumbags. Then he saw the vehicles swerve out from the roadblock onto the highway.

  “Problems,” he yelled.

  “What? What kind of problems?” Scala yelled back.

  “They’ve got a car and a truck, running pretty well from what I can see.”

  “I guess I’m not the only one who found a working vehicle,” Scala said. “It won’t take much to overtake us. I can’t push this old truck much harder. If it dies, we do too.”

  “Got a plan? Because I don’t.” He was now beginning to realize how foolish he had been to let his desire to “get some” dictate his actions.

  But Scala merely grinned dangerously. “Let them catch up. We’ll give them some more of what they got at the station.”

  Carson wasn’t sure he liked the odds, but they certainly couldn’t turn around, and the little truck wouldn’t do very well off-road, not at speed. There were fewer cars on the highway this far out of the city, and Scala was able to keep the truck cruising at almost sixty, only swerving occasionally to miss a snarl of junk.