Authors: Carrie Vaughn
“An economic market of a billion and a half consumers can’t be wrong, I guess.”
“You know my mom died in the Seattle bombing.”
“Yeah, I know, Evie.” Background static on the connection filled the pause. “You’re not the only one who feels that way. Protests are going on in Seattle and New York. They’re about to turn them into riots. The National Guard’s being called up.”
“Shit.” The architects of history, the generals and game-players, were at it again.
Another pause. Then, “How are we going to spin this in the book?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who the bad guys are anymore, Bruce. We could miss the deadline. Delay the publication, see how this is going to play out. Or we could zap the team to another planet and pretend like none of this is happening.”
“I think I’d like to get zapped along with them. Paula isn’t going to be happy.” Paula was their editor, the one responsible for harnessing their creative energy and packaging it into the final product.
Evie gave a huff. “What good is being the creators of the country’s bestselling comic title if we don’t get any clout? Paula can deal with it.”
“Roger, Captain. You sound like crap, by the way.”
“I fell asleep on the sofa.”
“Right. What was the last thing you wrote before you fell asleep?”
The file was still on-screen, autosaved and everything. She read him back the last few lines. The last few interesting ones, anyway. What she’d produced last night looked abysmal by the light of day.
“Shit,” he said. “Tracker goes rogue. I like it. This could work.”
“It wasn’t really what I intended.”
“Hey, don’t argue. Just run with it.”
“Right.”
“Go take a shower. Get some coffee. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“You, too, Bruce. Hey, Bruce?”
“Yeah?”
“Does it even matter anymore?”
“What do you mean?”
“The comic. Why are we even talking about it? The world’s going to hell, my father’s dying—why am I still sitting down at my laptop?”
She could hear his breathing over the connection. He was tired; he’d been making himself sound cheerfully irate to hide it.
Then he said, “What choice do we have? It’s what we do. Otherwise we’d have to curl up in a ball and go crazy.”
She chuckled. Keep on going. It was all they could do.
“Thanks for calling.”
“I’m just worried about you.”
As she clicked off, her father came into the room, freshly showered, hair still damp, tucking his shirt into his jeans. He grabbed his coat off the chair he’d put it on, like he was actually planning on going somewhere.
“Dad?” She rose and followed him to the kitchen. Mab trotted along with them.
“That was Johnny on the phone. They’ve called up the whole Citizens’ Watch. He’s going to come pick me up.” His car was still out from when he’d collapsed on patrol.
“You can’t go out!” And how dare Johnny give him a ride in his condition.
“Why not?”
“You—you’re sick.” Did she really have to remind him that he’d spent yesterday in bed, doped up on drugs?
“Homeland Security’s instituted a lockdown and curfew. Johnny doesn’t have enough people to patrol. He needs me.”
A security curfew in Hopes Fort was ridiculous—no one ever stayed out late anyway. “Dad—nothing’s going to happen here. Those rules are for places like L.A. and—and Seattle.”
His lips thinned, like he was holding back words, or his temper. She should have said New York, or Chicago, or Atlanta. Anywhere but Seattle. The word was like
saying failure.
Then he said, “It’s the principle of the matter, Evie. I have to do my part. I can’t go to L.A. or Seattle to help. So I do what I can here. Even if it isn’t much. Even if it doesn’t mean anything.”
He’d joined the Watch five years ago, right after Emma died. It was how he coped. Evie had the comic; he had this.
She couldn’t say anything to stop him. She’d cornered herself by bringing up Seattle, and gave up her right to continue arguing.
“Dad—I think you should go to the hospital. After yesterday—I could drive you, just to get checked out—”
“What’s the point? They’ll tell me it’s hopeless. That there’s nothing they can do to save me, but they can give me something for the pain, and they’ll pump me full of morphine and leave me in a bed to fade away. I can die on my own, I don’t need their help.” His hand on the doorknob, Mab sitting nearby and looking earnestly up at him, he said, “Watch over the Storeroom.”
Stifled tears tightened her voice. “I don’t care about that.”
“You will.” He scratched Mab’s ears. “Help Evie watch the Storeroom, girl.”
He closed the door behind him. Through the kitchen window, Evie watched him walk to the end of the driveway just as Johnny drove up in his police sedan. She thought her father
was still limping. With his hands shoved in his coat pockets, his shoulders stiff against the chill air, it was hard to tell.
Robin Goodfellow crouched in the scrub by a fence post and watched the artist at work. The Curandera stood on the side of the highway running east out of town. The wind tangled her graying black hair; she wore a turquoise-and-silver pendant, which she gripped in her hand.
A person could go east from here, and keep going east for a thousand miles without the scenery changing much: flat winter fields covered in dry, bent stalks; a few fence posts strung with barbed wire; and sky, so much wide-open sky, a person could lose himself, wander in circles, and feel so small, he’d disappear from the universe.
The earth in this part of the world only slept. Long ago, when the mountains that made the spine of the continent were built, fires and earthquakes ravaged the land. People forgot what violence was necessary to create the beauty that decorated the postcards. That had happened so long ago, people had no need to remember. They did not care that the land was not still; it only slept.
The Curandera knelt, rubbed her hands together, then pressed them flat to the dirt. She beat the earth, making a slapping noise that carried. Again, and the slap became a thud. Then a groan that vibrated through the ground. Robin stood nervously, feeling the movement of the earth.
What Hera had said of the woman: for generations, the women of her family had been granted the power to speak to the sky, the sun, and the earth. They could feel its moods, sense waters building in the heavens, bring rain with a prayer, heal the sick, kill with a thought, speak to creatures who were not human. She could feel the veins and muscles of the earth, and the joints that moved it.
The ground lurched.
The earthquake started in earnest, and Robin clung to the fence post like it was a plywood raft put to sea. The Curandera remained on her knees, unwavering. Each time she touched the earth, another tremor racked the land, as if her slight arms were epic jackhammers.
A grumbling crack appeared across the highway. Farther along, another split broke through the asphalt. Grinding, tearing, the road came apart, one section rising while another fell, crevices growing between shattered slabs of pavement.
She raised her arms high, and the earthquake stopped.
Dust settled. Dislodged pebbles clattered and came to rest. A thick silence soon covered the world.
The Curandera knelt in a miniature canyon of her own making. For at least a mile, the road was devastated, pieces lying on top of each other, separated by gaps, like a strip of tile that some madman had taken a hammer to.
Robin leaned gasping against the fence post. “Bravo,” he said at last.
She gazed across the wasted land as calmly as she had before the earthquake. “The highway west of town is the same.”
“So the town’s cut off?”
“Mostly. Some people do still remember how to travel on foot.”
“But no one will be driving for quite some time.”
He approached the Curandera and offered her his arm to escort her back to town. She turned her shoulder to him and walked alone.
Nothing ever happened in Hopes Fort. At least nothing interesting. Evie had ardently believed that her entire childhood. She clung to that belief now. Her father would be fine. Johnny would keep an eye on him and bring him home—or better, to
a hospital—the minute he looked ill. Okay, the minute he
acted
ill. He looked plenty ill already.
She slumped back on the sofa. Her laptop stared at her. All she could do was write. Didn’t seem very useful or heroic. The comic’s production schedule seemed less relevant than ever. But what would she do if she didn’t write? When she was starting out, when she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to make a living at it, she used to play that game with herself: What would she do if she failed? Go into advertising? Open a bookstore? She’d thought up a dozen half-assed plans, including marrying a millionaire. Plenty of those hanging around L.A. Dogged persistence won out in the end. But she imagined a dozen alternate time lines, where she led lives that didn’t involve writing.
If she didn’t write, she’d sit here staring at the walls until she went crazy. She couldn’t leave town. And Dad said to watch the Storeroom.
Exhaustion never entered into Tracker’s consideration of her current situation. It simply wasn’t an option. When the bunker of the gulag finally appeared—a mound in the distance on the flat, frozen waste—she dropped to her knees and crawled, offering as low a profile as she could. She kept her gun in her hand. It was just like Basic all over again. Hell, it was almost fun. If only she knew that Jeeves and Matchlock were all right, and Sarge and Talon. She shouldn’t have had to do this alone.
Their information said the agent would be in the first bunker. The rest of the complex was underground, and had caved in years ago, when the last of the political dissidents were released and turned their frustrations on the structure itself.
She lay flat on the ground for two hours watching
the concrete hut. No doors opened; no shapes appeared at any windows. She flexed the muscles of her limbs to keep them from cramping. Annoyed, she thought there should have been someone around: guards, a change in duty shifts, something.She wasn’t well camouflaged—her dark fatigues were meant for nighttime operations, and the land here was bright, the overcast sky stinging with light, the ground textured with pools of crusted snow and lichen-covered rock. But there didn’t seem to be anyone around for miles. The bunker was still, silent. Quietly, she approached: a few steps and pause, a few more steps, looking in every direction, over her shoulders, up at the sky. She was used to having someone watch her back.
Soon, she crouched under the window of the bunker. Her gun felt clumsy in her gloved hand. Maybe she wouldn’t need it. Slowly, she rose until she could peer over the sill, into the room.
The room was empty.
But a trapdoor in the floor was open.
She closed her eyes and breathed a curse. Either the spy wasn’t here at all—or their information about the complex was wrong, and she wouldn’t be able to just run in and run back out again.
The door was unlocked. She opened it just enough to slip inside, then swept the room, sighting down her gun.
The place was dusty, decrepit. A broken chair slumped in a corner; scraps and trash littered the floor. A table stood against a far wall. On it was a shortwave radio set. Tracker’s hopes rose for a second, until she saw that it was smashed.
Footprints in the dusty floor led to the stairs under the trapdoor.
If she went down there, she’d be stuck. Only one exit, no light—something wasn’t right here. But if she could learn something to take back to the others and figure out what was really going on, the risk might be worth it.
She started down the stairs.
This tunnel, at least, hadn’t collapsed. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a light became visible ahead, coming from a room. Shadows flickered, as if someone moved in front of a lamp.
Tracker pressed herself to the wall and continued forward. She heard subdued voices speaking English.
“Comrade, thank you. I look forward to a long and profitable relationship.”
“Absolutely.” That voice was American. “You’ll have those weapons shipments, and I trust you’ll use them only on targets designated by our colleague here?”
A third voice, with a clipped accent: “It would be tragic if this war were to fall out of our control.”
Tracker came close enough to the door to lean around and look.
She saw the man in fatigues first. He was facing her, and her eyes widened. It was him, the agent she was supposed to rescue. She recognized him from his dossier photo.
He was shaking hands with a man in a Russian military uniform. The third man wore Chinese insignia on his uniform.
“I can guarantee we’ll have American troops in place by the end of the year. With our peacekeeping efforts, we should be able to keep this thing going for years.”
“And our governments will continue to leave us in control,” said the Chinese officer.
They were making a deal. They wanted a world war. Whatever negotiation was being settled here would keep these men, the old military elite, in power indefinitely. Gods moving their pawns across the world.
Tracker thought of a dozen melodramatic options: stand and challenge them, demand explanation, face them down like she was in some Hollywood spy thriller. Get them to reveal their nefarious plan. Unlikely.
She should just shoot them all before they even knew she was here. But she wondered if there wasn’t some logical explanation for this meeting: the Russians and the Chinese were on the edge of war, the Americans had already picked sides—and the American agent hadn’t said anything about peace.
Then the choice was out of her hands.
“Tracker? You can come out of the dark now.”
The American had spotted her. She didn’t move from her shelter behind the doorframe. The military officers touched their guns, resting in belt holsters. The agent was smiling, though, regarding her as he would a wayward child.
“Where are your friends?” he said. “What good is my trap if I don’t catch you all?”
Goddamn it, she’d walked right into it. She exhaled a silent breath. The unholy trio probably had a back entrance staked out and a way to collapse the tunnel on top of her. She revealed herself, leaning partway around the doorframe.
“Gentlemen,” said the agent to his colleagues. “Meet Tracker, the intelligence expert for the Eagle Eye Commandos.”
The two officers flinched, their eyes widening. Was
her reputation really that scary? Probably not hers personally.The agent turned back to her. “So. Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“They wouldn’t have sent you here by yourself.”
She kept her mouth shut on that one. Instead she asked, “When did you turn traitor?”
“I haven’t,” he said, his smile unwavering.
She winced, her brow furrowing with confusion. He chuckled, just like the villain in a spy film. “I’m here with the full authority of the U.S. government.”
“Planning a war?”
“You don’t think wars just happen, do you?”
“And what do you want with us?” she said, her voice hushed.
“We’ve decided that you’ve become a liability. You and your team are out of control. And what the U.S. can’t control—it destroys.”
She shot him.