“This is important,” she told them, meeting each of their gazes in turn. “As soon as you hear ‘clear out’, you start moving. You follow the blue strings and only those strings, and you follow them exactly, understand?”

  Topher nodded quickly and rested his hand on his little brother’s shoulder. Two of his squad were his youngest siblings. His family had lost the fourth shortly after the impact, during one of the terrible storms that had followed. “How long do we have?”

  Elizabeth swallowed hard. “Five minutes. We’ve timed it out. Even going slow, it takes three to make it from here to the wall. You should hurry, though. And all of you”—she looked around at the younger children—“have to give me and your team leaders a promise right now that you will listen to them when they tell you it’s time to move. Do you promise with all your heart?”

  Variations on ‘Yes, Mrs. Machert’ came from the younger kids, save for one who looked more stressed than his friends. She wished she could take the time to comfort him and talk it through. “It’s Paul, isn’t it?” She bent down and reached for his knee to get his attention. He was squatting, his arms wrapped around his knees.

  Paul gave a tiny nod.

  Elizabeth scooted a bit closer and pointed to Sara. “Paul, can you make me a promise that you’ll listen to Sara when she tells you it’s time to go? It’s really, really important. I need to know that you’ll follow Sara, and your Dad needs to know it, too.”

  Paul’s father had joined the security force. At the moment, he was staying with Sara and her family most of the day, so it had been natural to put him on her squad. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. He hesitated a moment, then gave another small nod. “I promise.”

  “That’s good,” Elizabeth told him. She looked around at the three squads. Who would these children grow up to be? How long would this follow them? Forever, most likely. She shoved the thoughts down.

  “Will you be with us?” Sara asked, tugging Paul close to put an arm around him. “When we get to the first checkpoint, I mean. You’ll meet us there, right?”

  Yes, Elizabeth wanted to say. I’ll move heaven and earth if I have to, and I’ll be there, and you’ll wait for me, and we’ll do this together. I’ll keep you all safe, I promise. You have nothing to worry about. I’d die before I let anything happen to you.

  But she couldn’t say any of that. It had been agreed. There was every chance she wouldn’t be able to meet up with them at the checkpoint where all the various groups of children would converge. It didn’t change the fact that she would do everything in her power to make it there in time and lead them into hiding.

  She would. But the three older children needed to be able to carry out the plan on their own if something went wrong. “I’ll do my best,” she said, even as she saw the anxiety sweep over the faces of Sara and the other teenagers. “But if for any reason I can’t, you three have to follow the plan. Do you understand? It’s the most important thing you can do. You can’t let anything distract you. Nothing. I need you all to tell me that you understand that.”

  “I do,” Sara said. The other two echoed her.

  “Good,” she said quietly. “So. Follow orange to get here. Dig up the radio. Listen closely. You get the ‘clear out’ order. You follow blue out of the field. If you hear four bells, it means stay put. Five is the same as ‘clear out’, and it means you follow blue. Got all that?”

  Obediently, the teenagers and some of the smaller children recited the instructions word-for-word.

  Elizabeth felt the powerful urge to hold on to them all. To keep them together until all of this was over, and shepherd them through. But that wasn’t the reality. She pushed the urge down and nodded toward the first of the blue strings. “Alright. Follow me, and I’ll show you where you go next when it’s time. And remember, when you go… don’t make a sound, stay small, and stay far away from anyone with a gun.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cheyenne Mountain, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 4:00 pm MST

  President Margaret Welcher’s head began to pound. Thinning rations and gnawing stress had done a number on her, made worse by an understaffed cabinet. She rubbed her forehead briefly, aware of the need to appear calm and collected as the ‘oval’ office crowded with men who all took turns voicing their late opinions on the bombing of St. Louis.

  “Already, we’re tracking fallout as far as fifty miles to the north and west of the city,” Wolverton reported. He paced, his tie loose and jacket draped over one of the two sofas in the room. He’d been a smoker before all this and his fingers twitched like they held a cigarette. “We haven’t got a lot of intelligence from the ground, but what little we have says people are more furious than afraid.”

  Norman Wilson sat, one arm draped along the back of the sofa. A visage of quiet fury marred his face. “I’ve had two reports of civilian attacks on our soldiers.”

  Welcher snorted. “What’s new?” She’d already twice resisted the urge to relieve him of his position, but she lacked a way to replace him.

  He sat forward slightly. “What’s new,” he said calmly, “is that these civilians weren’t militia types. Not raiders or bandits or what have you. They were just angry people who’ve heard what happened to St. Louis. Word’s spreading faster than I expected.”

  “The news spreading is what we wanted.” Welcher dismissively flicked her fingers at the air before pinching the bridge of her nose. The headache started to pound behind her eyes. She met Gervais’ questioning look with a slight nod, and he slipped out of the room to, hopefully, find something for it.

  She clasped her hands on the desk to keep them still. “A few civilian riots aren’t all that troubling in light of everything else. Just… reinforce your units, combine them together if you need to, and tell them to respond to events like that with extreme prejudice. These people need to understand that the military isn’t to be defied. We’re under martial law—”

  Wolverton snorted in disgust. That sort of open disdain was becoming a habit for him. “Madam President, even martial law only works with compliance of the people, if not consent. We can’t run around putting down rebellions with force wherever they happen. You’ll end up president of a pile of bones and ash.”

  “Watch your tone with me.” Welcher's voice carried all the calm force of her office she could manage. She didn’t look at him, just stared ahead, stone-faced.

  Her FBI director—for the moment, she decided, since he clearly wasn’t cut out for it—gave her a hard stare that she felt rather than saw. “Apologies, ma’am.”

  Whether he meant it or not was less important than that he said it in front of the other five cabinet members. She gave it a beat before looking at him and nodding slightly, then spread her hands. “Gentlemen,” she glanced at each man, “all of this is temporary. People are hungry, and afraid. And, sure, angry. But if we solve one of those problems, even partially, the other two will solve themselves. People have a short attention span and right now their main focus is survival. If we can feed them, they’ll come around.”

  “We can barely feed ourselves,” Wilson countered.

  “That’s changing soon,” she assured him. “Apex has Springfield well in hand, and we’ve identified six other locations—so far—that are still arable. Once we have Springfield as a resource, we can work on developing those locations. And that’s in addition to the working Apex hubs across the states so far, of which there are nearly thirty at last count.”

  “Right,” Wolverton grunted. “Work camps. That’ll give people a sense of security.”

  Welcher leveled a narrow-eyed look at the man. “They’re industrial communities. Hardly work camps.”

  Wolverton turned to Martin Harstein, one of the newer additions to the cabinet, meant to serve as a combination housing and agriculture director. She’d promoted him from Wolverton’s team when she learned he’d gotten his first master’s degree in agriculture, back before he went into criminal justice.

  Mousy looking and slight, with thin-rimmed, square glasses, he was beginning to gray and bald at the same time. His jaw tightened as Wolverton drew attention to him. “We’ve… been interviewing a defector from Lebanon, Missouri. One of Apex’s main hubs in the region. The largest one that we know of, given that we haven’t gotten a full accounting from Mr. Trusk.”

  The president ignored the implication and waved a hand to hurry the man along. “And this defector has said…?”

  Harstein glanced at Wolverton as if looking for permission. Maybe they’d both have to go. She made a mental note to let Trusk know she was looking for replacements. Some of his ‘Class S’ people were probably overqualified for both positions.

  At last, Harstein continued. “Work camp is the term the defector used,” he explained, his voice flat as if it didn’t make a difference to him one way or another. It sounded forced. “There’s a class system in place, tiered within each class. Everyone in a hub is assigned a work detail. The lower on the scale you rate, the more… physical the labor.”

  He glanced at Wolverton again. “At class C, it’s hauling, sorting, digging. Unskilled labor. Petitions to move up are largely ignored, according to what we know, and processed through an AI system when they are accepted. The system seems to make arbitrary decisions based on labor requirements more so than anything else, but the factors around how class sorting is accomplished are entirely opaque.

  “There’s a direct relationship to hours worked and provided food and water, even medical care. No money, of course, everything is run on a kind of labor credit system. Lower classes only have access to basic supplies and services, and the higher classes get greater access. It… it’s a work camp, Madam President.”

  Welcher sighed. “All of this is coming from a defector,” she clarified. “Someone who didn’t like the system and left. What intel do you have from people who chose to stay?”

  Harstein turned his palms up. “None, Madam President. Trusk has refused requests for inspections.”

  “I’ll see that a request is answered,” she assured him, and looked around at the dour, worried faces in her office.

  Gervais reentered the room during the tense silence. He walked a glass of water to Welcher’s desk and set it down near her, placing two tablets of something she hoped was strong medication on her side of the glass—out of view from the rest of the room. She muttered a thanks and left it there for the moment as Gervais stepped back and picked up his clipboard to continue taking notes where he’d left off before.

  “Look,” she leaned forward on her elbows. “Every citizen currently housed at an Apex hub is a citizen not out there roaming around causing trouble. Not throwing rocks or firing on our people. Those points of stability are critical right now. I’ll see to it that we get access to some of these hubs so that our people can run inspections as we are able. But keep in mind that we’re stretched thin as it is.

  “Each of those hubs represents a territory we aren’t spending resources to stabilize and secure. It’s making the hard work we have ahead of us easier. I’ll remind you that not everyone in the country was all that happy about how it was going before the impact.

  “There are always going to be dissidents, always going to be people who would rather live in anarchy under the guise of ‘total freedom’. When you can show me thousands of deserters who had to fight their way out of Apex hubs everywhere, I’ll be inclined to be more concerned. But one defector with a story about less-than-ideal conditions? What kind of credentials does this person even have?”

  She let the question hang as an official request, but it took a moment for Harstein to catch on. He cleared his throat quietly and tilted his head a bit to one side in concession. “She… doesn’t have any. No high school diploma, no college. She worked in hospitality before this.”

  “Managing a hotel?” Welcher pressed.

  Harstein frowned. “Ah, she cleaned rooms. Janitorial.”

  “Was she doing janitorial work in Lebanon?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Something like that, yes.”

  Welcher spread her hands as if that were all that needed saying. “Then I’m not sure what the problem is,” she told them all. “Trusk has a system that places people where they can be the most effective. If this woman, this defector of yours, was unhappy with her position, that sounds like she was probably unhappy with it before all of this, too.

  “I wouldn’t place much weight on her inexpert evaluation of conditions that are austere by necessity but not that far off from the life she had before—except that now, she’s guaranteed food, housing, and medical care in exchange for labor. How is she substantially worse off?”

  No one said a word.

  Welcher huffed. “If anything, her situation is improved. Before, we had people working minimum wage who couldn’t afford rent, couldn’t get medical care, and subsisted on… cereal and ramen noodles.”

  She spread her hands. “You tell me. What’s better for the people? Guarantees that if they work, they get everything they need, if not everything they want, which none of us do right now—or being out there on their own, scraping by and starving while nature itself does everything it can to kill them?”

  Not a single man voiced an opinion. They looked uncomfortable, sure, but these were uncomfortable times.

  “Any other business, then?” she asked coolly.

  Murmurs of ‘No, Madam President’ and ‘No, nothing else’ were a welcomed end to the meeting. She dismissed them, and only when they were gone picked up the pain relievers her chief of staff had provided. She downed them and the half-glass of water, which had the faintly bitter taste of recycling to it, then pulled the cabinet’s briefing reports to her from the far side of the desk to start paging through them.

  “Aaron,” she muttered, opening the first folder from Wolverton, “get me on a call with Trusk. I want to arrange an inspection of one of the hubs personally.”

  “Of course, Madam President.” Her chief of staff moved toward the door.

  She looked up from the report. “Make sure it’s a call with Trusk. Not with Rena McAllister. Insist on it, please.”

  He paused just long enough to give a nod. “Of course, ma’am.”

  After he closed the door behind him, Welcher reached up and massaged the spot between her brows, trying to drive back the ache. A defector from Lebanon… she’d have to see about having the woman turned out. Maybe there had been handouts available once upon a time, but there was nothing left to hand out at this point. If she didn’t want to work, she could see how she fared on her own.

  The characterization was troubling, but she took her own advice and tried not to give it much weight. Trusk was entirely capable of lying to her; she had no illusions about that. But not about something this significant, this important to the future stability of the nation. Without that stability, his own wealth was at risk.

  And if there was anything she could trust a billionaire to look out for, it was their own bottom line. For the moment, they wanted similar outcomes.

  All the same…

  She mashed the intercom button on her phone. “And Aaron?”

  “Yes, Ma’am?” Gervais’ voice came back.

  “Get me an update on Springfield,” she growled. “Don’t take no for an answer.”

  “Absolutely, ma’am.”

  She doubted Trusk would lie to her about that. About something that couldn’t possibly be hidden. But the sooner she had good news for her people, the sooner they’d fall in line.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Apex Headquarters, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 8:00 pm MST

  “ETA to insertion?” Trusk watched a grainy thermal satellite video on his tablet.

  From a few feet away, one hand covering the earpiece feeding her live information, Rena relayed the request and waited a moment. “Five minutes, sir. No encounters so far. The unit doesn’t anticipate resistance, and TARA gives around a ninety percent success rating. Everything’s on schedule.”

  He didn’t bother to comment or answer. On his tablet, faint orange shapes moved slowly around Springfield’s perimeter in near total darkness. Battalion units stood by around ten miles away along each route leading into the settlement. Not only was it on schedule, but a day ahead at TARA’s tactical suggestion after the loss of potentially sensitive intelligence.

  All that was left was to wait for the infiltration unit to alert the battalions, and in a matter of hours, Springfield would be part of the Apex network.

  “Sir?” Rena asked delicately.

  He glanced up from the tablet, frowning slightly at the urgency in her voice. “Hm?”

  She had come closer to him, one hand over her earpiece still. “I’ve got a call here from Aaron Gervais. He’s insistent that the president wants a call. With you, specifically. He says she prefers not to go through me.”

  For several seconds, Trusk considered having her tell Welcher’s Chief of Staff he was simply too busy to speak with her, and could she call back in about a week’s time? But there were limits to how far he should push the woman. Especially after she’d nuked a town.

  The woman needed reassurances, he imagined. If it got her off his back for another twenty-four hours, it was well worth a phone call. He sighed and put his own earpiece in. “Patch her through.”

  Rena gave a curt nod and stepped away, murmuring instructions to whoever was on the other end of her line. A few seconds later, there was a faint click in his ear and he put on the most gregarious voice he could. “Mister Gervais,” he greeted the man, “you’ve got Alan Trusk. I understand the president wants a word?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my call. Let me transfer you over.”

  “Certainly,” Trusk agreed.

  What followed was the petty sort of power play that small-minded people like Welcher always liked to play. The line was silent for nearly five minutes. He imagined her at her desk, watching the line on her phone blink and counting down silently until she figured he was suitably reminded of her station and busy schedule.