Peter and Elsie, for their part, were waiting, hoping, and praying that Cole would bring Natasha and Lang out of the cabin, but as they hoped, they became surrounded by the advancing FMA. Unarmed and not able to fight, they were forced by the FMA units to retreat behind their lines. They implored the soldiers to try to save Lang, Natasha, and Cole inside the cabin, but all they got were assurances that “everything that is within our power will be done.”
The FMA tried valorously to hold back the Missouri Guard from taking the cabin. There was a ferocious firefight.
All the while, Ace was off in the distance, doing his best to keep the Guard away from the cabin with his sniper rifle.
Shortly after the FMA was forced to retreat back towards Lancaster County, the cabin was taken by the Missouri Guard.
Ace, out of ammo and unable to do anything else to save the people in the cabin, retreated with the FMA. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. He’d seen what the Missouri Guard had done to his hometown of Scranton. There was something in his memory about the way the smoke had curled up in little wisps over the house that had belonged to Irene Ducillo that made him angriest.
A WEEK LATER
Peter, Elsie, and Ace reluctantly left the FMA camp, and with beleaguered faces and sad countenances they set off on foot towards Amish country. The days of waiting for Natasha, Cole, and Lang to join them had sapped them of their emotional strength, and Peter finally decided that they could wait no longer.
The men of the FMA had been kind and helpful—at least as kind and helpful as they could possibly be under the circumstances—but it had become obvious that FMA leadership wanted the three travelers to either fight with them, or move along. They didn’t have the materials or resources to keep refugees as pets.
All in all, it was time to move on.
The three said goodbye to their friends in the FMA and thanked them earnestly for their help and support. They left descriptions of their missing friends, and silently hoped that the three would be found safe and sound, and that they would rejoin them in the not-too-distant future.
And so, they walked. As they did, they talked about where they were going, and where they’d been. Well, actually, Peter and Elsie talked. Ace rarely said a word. He was a quiet man, and he talked more with his eyes and his actions than his words. He believed that actions spoke louder than words.
“We have to just keep moving,” Peter said, trying to make his voice sound hopeful and authoritative. “If our friends are safe and alive, they’ll know where we’re headed, and we’ll see them again.”
“I know,” Elsie replied. “I just can’t help thinking that we might have all made it out of there safely, if only I’d stayed and helped Natasha move Lang.”
Peter stopped and looked over at Elsie with a stern look. “We’ve talked about this, Elsie, and you know what I’ve said. This is no time for self-recrimination. We’ve all made decisions we now regret. We all could have done things differently. This world is falling apart and it will only get worse and—”
Just as he said those words, there was a sharp flash of light in the air. The ground rumbled violently. Seconds later, an indescribable wave of sound reached them and it shook through them as they walked. The general brightness in the sky seemed to gather in the east.
Instinctively, they all looked eastward, in the direction from which it seemed the noise had come. They were just above the tiny town of Bloomsburg, and they were approaching Interstate 80 from the north, and they had to move a few steps to their southeast to see it. When they did, they grew silent, and the three of them watched the top of it. It was like life and death personified. The mushroom cloud swelled in the distance to the southeast. It grew and expanded above the tree line.
Elsie shifted Lang’s backpack on her back as Peter whispered. He whispered softly, but Ace and Elsie both could hear him…
“Philadelphia.”
Natasha and Cole stood in line to be processed into the Carbondale prison camp. They’d been captured by the Missouri National Guard and a fluke of circumstance had saved their lives. Rather than be executed on the spot, they’d been saved by the fact that there were no living officers on site to make that decision. Cole had told their captors that he’d only just arrived in the cabin at the very end, and that his sister didn’t know how to fire a gun. Subsequently, they’d been arrested, and after they’d been loaded into a horse-drawn wagon full of prisoners bound for Carbondale, the circumstances of their arrests had been forgotten. Now, they were only potential laborers, and no one down the line cared what they’d been doing when they were captured.
“NATASHA JOHNSON!” the clerk shouted over her shoulder as she looked up at Natasha. That was the name she’d been given. No one had identification anymore. For those that did, it wasn’t particularly helpful.
Someone behind the clerk wrote down the name, and then handed the clerk a form that explained where Natasha was to be billeted, and what her new occupation would be. Natasha took the form and stepped to the side to wait for her brother.
“COLE JOHNSON!” the clerk bellowed. Again, she was handed a form that she then handed to Cole. He looked at the form…
Barracks 19W
Garbage Detail
Typical, he thought.
Cole rejoined Natasha, and they had just turned to leave when they both heard another clerk shout from two tables over.
“MIKE BAKER!”
Cole froze. He turned just in time to see Mikail receive his orders from the clerk.
“STEVE TAYLOR!”
Sergei received his billeting as well.
Natasha and Cole stepped out of the tent and stopped to look at one another. They didn’t know exactly what to think about what was happening, but they were both happy to be alive.
Just as the siblings looked down to their orders again, Mikail and Sergei walked up and Mikail smiled sweetly, as if nothing had ever happened between any of them.
“Ahh, look Steve, some Warwick friends. How are you both?”
No answer.
“Where have they assigned you to live, Cole?” Mikail asked, innocently.
“19W,” Cole said flatly.
“Fantastic,” Mikail, replied. “It looks like we three Warwick men will be roommates. It’ll be like home, won’t it, Steve?”
Steve just nodded. His face did not betray his thoughts at all.
The four Warwickians had just turned to walk away when it happened. They did not feel the ground shake or hear the noise from the explosion. Perhaps the geography was different in Carbondale, or perhaps the terrors of the place blocked out some input from the senses. It is impossible to tell for sure, since a person cannot be in two places at one time.
Someone—they could not recall who—shouted and pointed off to the southeast. The four turned as one and looked up into the sky. They watched as the mushroom cloud bloomed outward, just above the horizon.
Mikail Mikailivitch Brekhunov did not smile and he did not laugh. He just turned to his friend Sergei and said…
“Well, now. It seems that our friends have finally arrived.”
An Empty Bed, by C.L. Richter