The homes and church and school and fields, the memories they had of moving about and within each… all of it had become a long black scar on the terrain of the Catskill Forest Preserve. The streets and buildings of their memories were gone, replaced by the refuse and boulders and charcoal of annihilation. Even the snow had melted entirely from the heat, and the water and mud and debris remained in steaming piles of scattered destruction under the skeletons of charred trees.
What about the people?
Neither of the men—one very young, and the other middle-aged—could seem to imagine any hope that there would be anyone they knew still alive in the ghastly scene before them. The girl brushed away a tear and emitted an almost imperceptible sob.
How could the destruction be so complete?
How could anyone have made it out of there alive?
Where is my brother? Natasha wondered.
None of the three gave voice to those particular words—or any words at all—but the silence among them amplified the questions. They all knew that life as they once had known it, like the town they had grown up in and called home, would never be the same again. The girl grimaced again in pain and bowed down in silent grief. Unspoken emotion, though voiceless, swirled loudly in the air between them like the wind.
The young one called Lang was the first to speak. It should be noted before going further that this was not his real name. It was merely the identity he had assumed as he stood atop the ridge. In the world of espionage in which he’d been raised, a name was as easy to change as a passport. Easier even. There is a place inside a man where he knows who he really is, but when he searches that place he often finds it nameless, and maybe swept clean to the very corners. What, after all, is in a name? It was merely something he calls himself. The man decided to call himself Lang.
“It must have been the drones,” Lang said. “Exactly what we figured.”
The pilotless, remote-controlled militarized aircraft, five of them, somehow still operative after the EMP attack, had buzzed past the treatment plant like bees early that morning, low to the ground and in formation. Both Lang and the older gentleman at his side, a heavy-set man, 42 years old, who now called himself Peter, had seen them swoop overhead.
They’d heard the buzzing first and took cover in the shed, only to step outside as the drones passed by, to watch their trajectory as they rose smoothly up and over the mountain. Without even speaking, the two men had figured that the appearance of the drones certainly had something to do with the charm school.
After packing and securing all of their gear from the water plant, they’d hustled up the mountain, and, climbing through the snow and trees and brush, they had come to where they now stood. The snow deposited by the blizzard came up to their knees as they stood and looked out over the valley.
Below them, Warwick was a smoking ruin with not one stone left upon another. It looked like something from a war zone and, in fact, that is exactly what it was. Lang thought of the words of Tolstoy, “What a terrible, terrible thing…” The picture brought him in his mind to visions of Borodino, of Moscow as the Russians had left it for Napoleon, or of the 200 days of Stalingrad. Dark black curls of smoke rose here and there from the rubble like souls returning to their maker.
The jagged gash in the earth left behind by the drones’ payloads meant two things to Lang. First, that someone somewhere had known enough to shield their weapons of war from the EMP attack. Someone knew it was coming. Second, it meant that somewhere in the hills of Virginia, or Maryland, or perhaps even in Washington D.C., there was a control room—probably underground—that still operated with full power. That someone had launched and perpetrated the attack on Warwick left no doubt as to its conclusion.
Overkill.
This thought process led Lang to consider something that until then he had not contemplated. Someone obviously thought that Warwick was still a threat. Just that morning he’d been convinced that the town had escaped the worst of the damage, having survived the EMP. He’d even briefly considered returning one final time to make a last ditch effort to find Cole, or to maybe convince some more of the residents to flee.
As he stood on the ridge and looked down on Warwick’s apocalypse, this valley of Megiddo, he shuddered and was glad that the thought had only been a momentary one. The devastation was total. Not even a mouse could have survived this attack.
It wouldn’t do to have them catch us out here in the open, Lang thought. The drones have infrared capability too, and if they were to return, the three of them standing on the rise would be toast in just seconds.
Peter interrupted Lang’s thoughts. “It’s all gone,” he said, without any discernible emotion. “I can’t say I’ll miss it.”
“That was our home, Peter,” Lang replied, sadly. “Not to mention the people… the people. We grew up there,” he continued. “You’re older than me. I’m barely eighteen, but neither one of us has ever been anywhere else. We used to ice skate and play hockey on the pond behind the church there, just up on the ridge.” Lang felt like he needed to choke back a tear as memories overwhelmed him. “We used to have Christmas plays right there in the gym. How can you have no feelings for it at all?”
“It was a town of lies, Lang, and you know it,” Peter growled. “Warwick sent our parents off to Russia, mine these thirty long years ago, and we’ll never see them again. I lived there as an orphan. As an adult I was blessed enough to smuggle a son—my beautiful little Nikolai, and my wife with him—out of Warwick during the confusion.” Now Peter’s voice lowered to almost a whisper, though his anger still owned his words. “Warwick destroyed my life. If my family had not gotten out, this town would have eaten them too. I’ve never seen them again or spoken to them since that day twenty years ago.”
Peter looked at Lang, his eyes flashing fury, “So don’t tell me what to mourn, Lang.”
“I’m not telling you what to mourn, Peter, really I’m not. I’m just saying that the town didn’t do those things. Warwick was what it was, but for most of our lives it was just a home. I know what Warwick was. This place was a tragedy for everyone, but it was home, Peter. Blame the people who did this, the Americans or the Russians, but the people who lived in that town are not to blame.”
They stood for a moment in chilly silence. The cold in the snow began to hurt in their feet, passing through their boots and into their bodies. Lang shook his head, and then his boots, and shifted the straps on his backpack. Peter will calm down soon enough, he thought, but the older man had been in a foul mood all day. He heard the man breathing in the space beside him and noticed him clench his jaw and then release.
“Just don’t tell me what to mourn,” Peter repeated angrily, before turning and retreating the way they had come. Lang took another long look at the ruins of Warwick Village, and then followed Peter back down the hill.
Natasha stood for a moment longer, hoping to catch some glimpse, some vision of movement, there in the hopelessness of the rubble.
CHAPTER 11
5 Days Earlier — Sunday Night
The candle’s flame twisted around the wick and hissed its tiny protest, sending up a small trail of smoke that curled around the motion of waves as the burly man stepped into the hallway and peeked through the peephole in the door. The warmth from the fire in the other room dissipated, trailing away from his body in invisible little traces. The blanket over his shoulders did little to insulate against the cold night air. The blizzard had passed, but it had left behind it the cold of winter and the promise of a harsh season ahead.