The North (#wattys2016)

Chapter 2

A message on short wave radio from a place called Sanctuary Base and some possible map coordinates along with the words “all clear”. For all I knew those coordinates could be on the other side of the world. I stared at the hastily scribbled message on my field message pad and rubbed the back of my neck as I wandered down a hallway lit only by tea light candles. We’d made lanterns out of tin cans and the tiny candles threw heavy shadows on the walls, each one shifting and stirring amid the soft ambient glow.

I needed to talk with Pam Cruze because if we couldn’t come up with a way to present news of the broadcast to the team, the shit could hit the fan. We’d managed to cobble together some measure of military discipline but that was all under Sgt. Green’s leadership. The only thing scarier than the prospect of being ripped apart by creeps was to wind up on the receiving end of one of his patented blasts of shit. I’d seen him make Sid Toomey cry without even raising his voice and Sid was a good foot taller than our now deceased section commander.

We’d spent nearly six months hunkered down in the armory; a four-storey brick and sandstone fortress that was built after the First World War. It looked like a throwback to medieval times, a weathered old castle surrounded by glass-encased skyscrapers and million dollar condominiums. But it was a defensible position with four towers, each with a commanding view. All the windows were secured with iron-bars, though the creeps had broken through the main level windows on the north side in a skirmish that cost us ten lives. There was a thick oak door at street level reinforced with a two-foot thick wooden brace. Inside there was the parade square with two fully functional armored personnel carriers, offices and billets on the second floor and a kitchen, not that it was of much use given we’d run out of gas and electricity months ago.

“We can’t stay here forever,” I whispered.

I poked my head inside the room I shared with my kid sister Jo. She was sound asleep on a folding cot buried beneath a pair of thick grey wool blankets. On the wall above was a gun rack - the same kind we’d screwed into the wall above everyone’s cots. It was Sgt. Green’s idea. He’d said that personal weapons are useless if they’re not within arm’s reach and that we’d have to scramble if the alarm went during the silent hours. If that cowbell rang everyone would know that creeps had somehow managed to get inside the armory.

And Jo knew how to use her carbine; I’d made sure of that as early as three weeks past Day Zero. Even at eight-years-old, my sister knew how to double tap when shooting at a creep all the while making sure to count the remaining bullets in her thirty round magazine.

Across the room was the now empty cot where my mother used to sleep. All of her belongings were stuffed into a duffel bag that lay atop the cot and in the darkness its outline could easily be mistaken for a person sleeping. Jo had made that mistake two days after Mom died and I knew that deep down inside, my little sister was still reeling from losing her. We did what we could for Jo up to and including lying about why Mom killed herself. We told Jo that Mom had become infected and that she took her own life. We said nothing about the suicide note she’d left in the breast pocket of the old combat coat she’d been issued.

And there are only so many lies I can tell.

Jo was the only family I had left next to the people still holding out in the armory. We’d all lost family members, we’d all stared death in the face every single day since we bugged out - we all counted on each other. And those times when things looked their bleakest, Jo would lift everyone’s spirits by somehow, miraculously, still managing to resemble the person she used to be. She always helped out, never once complaining. She could still smile even though there was little to smile about anymore. Even though I’d seen her shoot creeps from the north tower of the armory, or when she’d insist on taking part in night sentry duties, Jo still somehow managed to remain an eight-year-old kid. She did chalk drawings on the floor all the while singing in a voice so sweet that even big burly Sid Toomey would get choked up.