"From the top. Number. Rank. Unit", he asked.
She sighed. How long had she been here?
"25146771. Lieutenant. North Central Command, 1st Batallion, 3rd Column."
"Most recent sector?"
"7G"
He reached for his charts.
"Northwestern Ohio, Sir. Lima."
A nod. Then, as expected, a hint of sympathy on his hard, chiselled face. She was used to the sentiment now. It was common reaction whenever she mentioned where she'd come from. Lima was infamous for good reason. The heartland of the nation that once was. The heartland of the fight now.
(Even if too many of her commanders had clearly never heard of the place before now and constantly pronounced the town name as one would the capital of Peru).
(Huh. It hit her that she didn't know if there was even a capital of Peru left).
(Shit. Was there even a Peru?)
"Position?"
"Commander, third column, United States Army. Commander-Liaison, Allen County Civilian Volunteer Militia."
"Liaising with?"
"Officer Commanding, Civilian Militia: Colonel Burt Hummel."
"You were involved in the most recent action at Stalingrad?"
"I was, sir." Her tone was grim. There was no other way to be when thinking about that place.
He simply nodded, apparently sharing her reluctance to go over old, blood-soaked ground.
No more questions about life on her particular sector of the front line then. Suited her. What more can be said about a campaign where the chief military tactic is 'run head on, straight at the enemy and fight until you die'?
- db -
So tired. How long had she been here?
She leaned back into the simple wooden office chair, trying in vain to flex the painful knots out of her shoulders and neck. When that didn't work she stood and forced her arms through a few basic stretches she'd learned all the way back in the gym at McKinley, so many lifetimes ago.
(McKinley? That was another thing she had no idea about. There was still a US Army, such as it was. Her tattered uniform was proof of that. But was there any other form of government beyond that? Was there a President to be her Commander-In-Chief? She'd ask someone later maybe. If she remembered. It didn't really matter).
If the officer behind the wide wooden desk was concerned about her actions he showed no indication, so focussed was he on the intel she'd brought with her.
She squinted against the buzzing, flickering glare of the flourescent light strip her fingers brushed against on the low roof and cursed under her breath. It wasn't even the lack of natural light that affected her, if she was honest. (There'd been no such as thing as natural light since they poisoned the clouds and blocked out the sun, after all). It wasn't the poor light quality that killed her soul a little more every day. Inched her closer to jamming her sidearm into her mouth and giving up. It was the damp.
Always wet.
Everything.
Her surroundings. Her kit. Her food. Her useless sleeping bag. Everything.
And she knew the cost of it. She didn't even need her expensive Ivy League almost-completed Psychology Masters degree to make the connection between the hopeless conditions and the regular suicides in her ranks.
It's one thing to feel that moment of righteous outrage. To scream defiance into a changed American sky.
It's one thing to fight back!(TM) It's a little harder for your average Ohioan to fight for their survival when the grand total of that continued existence appears to be made up of cold, damp and dwindling supplies of expired K-Rations, in a world that would never witness Monday Night Football again.
- db -
Damn it. She should be there. Back in Lima. Leading her people. Why was she here?
So tired.
Where was she again? She tried to think.
The room was dry at least. Even if she wasn't.
She'd taken in all she needeed to with regard to her surroundings in a split second as she entered the room. A large Military issue desk with a matching threadbare swivel chair. They sat in front of a simple chalkboard in a small office bunker several stories beneath the earth. Just one of countless many in this vast subterranean complex that gave shabby witness to what they once were.
Western Pennsylvania on the old maps. Sector 5D in new money.
Every item in the room spoke of it's late 1950s origins. The enemy may have changed but she found it reassuring (and depressing) that the seeming paranoia of her grandparents' generation had been proved right. Their fears of and for Humanity had been vindicated. It seemed fitting therefore that our last chance, our last stand was aided now by the tools they had buried down here (and forgotten) so many years ago.
She sat back down in the chair.
Welcome to Pennsylvania.
She thought back to high school and wondered if there was anyone there that may have known the geological significance of the earth under and around this small rural college town that had previously hardly worried a Rand McNally road atlas.
The geology that allowed contruction of an unfeasibly large complex of nuclear bunkers as deep as twenty stories and spreading for miles in every direction.
Could anyone in high school have suspected back then that in the not too distant future this unpreposessing town would play witness to America's last stand.
There were no silos here so at least it hadn't been a target. Then. In the first wave, anyway.
Now it was most certainly a target. But this place was no Poughkeepsie. This complex had proved secure from most forms of large scale attack. Leaving just the small scale raids to endure. The kind of raid that doesn't kill you militarily but eats away at you on a Human level, inch by inch.
How long had it taken to build? Twenty years at least, surely.
Everyone in town must have known. Suspected, at least.
Maybe they just worked their shifts, cashed their checks and didn't ask too many questions. A fine American tradition. When your town has one major source of employment, one "factory", you learn to accept its' output, its' very existence without question. She didn't blame them.
Hell, it's not like anyone from Lima, the home of 'Stalingrad' had any right to question,
Did this place have a name? Then? Now?
Not the town. She knew that. California, PA. No coal here, unlike the other counties that make up the Western half of this state. Rural. All farmland until the formalisation of the PA State University system turned a small teacher training school into a modestly sized but prestigious college.
She wondered if the officer in front of her, still poring over the charts and logistics she'd brought with her, enjoyed any sense of irony over that name, given the golden bear insignia he wore on his left arm that indicated his origins in the California (State) National Guard.
He was from LA. She knew that much. He was a legendary figure in the resistance after all.
For all she knew it had been him that created the battle cry she'd heard repeated so many times since she arrived here. Seen painted slapdash on, and carved with pride in, the overbearing rock walls. A defiant promise to our foe that our eventual victory would come through this place.
CALIFORNIA UBER ALLES
Like she had the prayers to a god she no longer believed in, she would keep that cry in her heart, ready to spring to her lips in a moment.
A soldier's heartfelt promise that we would avenge those other bunkers and command posts that had fallen in the last two years as the war had turned against us: Muncie, Glens Falls, Rockville, Poughkeepsie.
Not to mention the burned cities. The billions of dead. We would have our reckoning for those too.
She knew it was a musical reference, older even than her youth. She knew the song. Not really her music, but that of some of her school friends' at least. For the life of her though, she just couldn't remember the name of the band.
He'd know, but she didn't think he'd appreciate the interruption.
So she sat there, a soldier waiting for orders. Just as her grandfather and great-grandfathers had. They'd have enjoyed the irony, she thought, as she patiently waited out an eternal truth of the military. Army 101 in every fighting force that ever existed. The first and last order, always. "Hurry up and wait". She supposed there was some reassurance to be had in that. That even after the fall of man, we hadn't changed all that much.
- db -
So tired. How long had she been here?
She cleared her throat, if only for something to do.
He looked up briefly, before returning to his file.
"Lieutenant, the door to your right..."
She turned, rose and moved the eight or so paces across the solid stone floor and slowly pulled a heavy steel door outward into the room. She stepped into a small but well-stocked storeroom built into the bedrock walls.
"Second aisle to the right. Third shelf up. Help yourself. Bring me some too, please".
She knew he wasn't even looking up from his files.
Stepping into the chill, musty space, she waited a second for her eyes to adjust to the new level of gloom and then moved to her target. She wasn't sure, but she may have yelped with delight when she saw the small packages piled up on the metal shelving. She grabbed a handful and turned back toward the door. Stopping momentarily she grabbed a different small white package, walked back in the main room and sat back down at the desk.
She had a smile on her face as she dropped one of the miraculous, apocalypse-surviving packages in front of the still intensely focussed soldier.
She ripped open the packaging with impatient teeth. As she took the first bite of the golden coloured confection she gave a silent prayer of thanks that sometimes whoary oft-repeated urban myths can be proved true. God bless the Hostess Cupcake Company.
The first Twinkie lasted about three seconds as she wolfed it down eagerly and she gagged a little as the second followed it within moments. She'd wait a while before the other couple of packs followed the first into her growling stomach. She had something else in mind. Something that she'd dreamed of at night in whatever refuge she'd found, as she attempted to roll a smoke out from her damp tobacco and useless papers.
"Do you mind, Sir?"
The briefest look up from his papers. "No, no... help yourself", he said and held out a rough, calloused hand for one too.
She lit two cigarettes together and inhaled deeply. Holding back a rumbling cough she passed one of the burning Lucky Strikes to the officer, before placing the pack and matchbook on the table between them. She knew she shouldn't, the cold and wet does terrible things to her lungs and the pain of pluerisy was a constant in her wheezy, heaving chest now. But fuck it. She wasn't alone in that on the front line. And what did it matter in a world dragged down into hell?
To smoke a dry cigarette in a dry room, far from imminent death. Yeah, she'd take that.
She knew her great-grandfather would be proud. Pop McClelland, the big gentle bear of a man she'd only met a couple of times as a child when he was in his surprisingly spry nineties. A gruff Ohioan who'd left for Europe grumbling about fighting 'other people's wars' and soon had his eyes opened to true horror.
She knew from family lore that he'd been a liberator of Dachau. But there were no photos or momentos to record the fact. His memories were his own. She'd known him to be a wall of heavy silence, but not impenetrable. He was loving and warm and always had time for his granddaughters. Defiant to the end, he was still fit and active enough that he never seemed overly affected by his prodigious daily intake of red meat, drink and smoke.
In that godforsaken camp on the outskirts of Munich in 1945 he'd resolved to live the remainder of his life to it's fullest with a ne'er an apology. She thought of him often these days. He was loyal to the brands that were loyal to him throughout the savagery of Europe and later Korea. His drink was Makers Mark Whisky and his smokes were Luckys and nothing else came close.
She wondered if her Pop would be proud of her actions these past four years. Back at the front, in the few precious moments of respite, she'd sometimes pictured them in heaven whenever her inevitable fate caught up with her. Sat in silence at a smoky barroom table, sharing a bottle and a pack of Luckys. (Maybe a girl on their laps each). No conversation necessary or desired. Two old soldiers united by the horrors they'd witnessed (and committed, she thought with a whince). Their silence a bond between them. She found humour that it was still Lucky Strikes (never her brand since she picked up the habit in college) that American soldiers were smoking on the front line of conflicts eighty odd years apart, even if their wars were very different.
The idea comforted her as much as the acrid, welcome smoke bit her throat and filled her lungs.
- db -
Oh, for god's sake. How long had she been here?
She shouldn't be here. She should be back in Lima with her people.
Her back ached against the rigid back of the ancient chair and she could feel the nagging buzz that signalled an attack of the screaming, crying, utter loss of control that took her to the edge of oblivion on a worryingly regular basis. Post traumatic stress minus the post.
The 'yips'.
Not her word. Her Captain's. The girl, the woman, who had been her commander, her leader, her constant for so long. The woman who had been for those short, precious stolen moments in the dark so much more. Her reason to go on. Her reason to be. The woman in who's body she'd found joy and peace, fleeting but total.
Why had she waited so long? Why had she let those tiny moments of humanity go to waste? Why had she not LIVED in those loving, pacifying arms as often as she could before the chance was taken away forever by three tracer bullets to the throat and chest in a pointless, wasteful charge on the fucking south west wall.
The yips were coming.
She felt no shame about it. She was sure the med bays here were full of regular cases. Good soldiers, hard men and women shaken to the core by grief. By the hopeless fucking futility of it all. No shame at all, but she needed to focus on something else fast.
For want to anything better to do she took a moment to really assess her interrogator for the first time.
"Never meet your idols", her mother had bitterly told her 10-year-old self shortly after her parents had travelled all the way to down to Cincinnati to watch Bob Dylan in concert. "Legends have a nasty habit of failing to live up to the hype".
She'd known instantly there was no danger of that with this man. He was a legend all right, but this was a soldier she sat before now.
The roughshod, grubby camouflage fatigues of a US Army that existed only in spirit now. Dirty, damp and clinging to his flesh like a second skin. God knows when they'd last been clean. Just like her uniform. After the fall such concerns really didn't hold much wheight.
Military grade haircut growing shaggy, a few days stubble on a firm set jaw. Insignia of hard-won rank. A faded name on his lapel: Reese, D.
The glowering red flesh of his ID Point. She had one just the same, of course. 'The Genesis Patch'. The knot of bone and gristle at the front base joint of neck, shoulder and chest. The part of the body that couldn't be faked. The checks were painful and unpleasant and she wished they'd find a better way than simply poking a hot knife into flesh. It was particularly hard to see the kids suffer at the checkpoints. How do you explain to a five-year-old the communal need for reassurance that can only be sated by seeing her suffering.
But it was necessary, she knew. Our one last weapon. Our pain. Our blood.
For everything else there are the dogs.
- db -
So tired. How long had she been here?
"The south-West wall. That was you?"
She nodded reluctantly. This was really not something she enjoyed talking about.
"I was 2-I-C, under..." The lump in her throat stopped the sentence in it's tracks.
The Colonel had the decency to look sympathetic, at least.
"Yeah", he sighed. "I met her here, you know. 'The Lion OF Lima'. For the briefing prior to the attack".
God. That stupid name. "We need legends", they said. "Heroes to lift us". So her Commander and friend, her lover and saviour, became the fucking 'Lion Of Lima'.
Whatever. Lions fall to gunfire just as easy as Humans do, apparently.
"She was a good soldier, Lieutenant".
"Yes, Sir. She was".
He picked through an overflowing intray to this right.
"And I want you to know she isn't forgotten. Which gate did they bring you in...?"
She had to give it some thought. "North-West, I think, sir".
"Right. That's a shame. If you have time, have someone drive you down to the civilian quarter in the East tunnels."
He slid a small creased photo across the desk to her.
She picked it up and immediately had to fight back tears as she took in the garishly coloured handmade banner that hung over a group of two dozen or so smiling, gap-toothed kindergarteners standing in front of an open heavy steel door that marked the entrance to a poorly lit and rudimentary but obviously heartfelt schoolroom beyond.
The banner that read: 'Tina Cohen-Chang Elementary School, Class of 2024'.
Her head dropped in to her hands.
"She would have liked that, sir".
- db -
A thought clearly crossed his mind. "When did you last eat?"
She waved the sorry remnants of the second pack of twinkies.
He scoffed. "That's not food".
"A few hours ago, sir. The commissary here does a nice line in rabbit jerky".
"I know." A hint of a smile. He could be cute if you took away the weight of command in a war that looked all but lost.
(But then, that went for a lot of people now, she supposed).
"A real meal, I mean".
She had to think.
"Three days, sir. The command structure in Massillon en route to here."
"Oh, well. Could have been worse places. I understand they have some Mexican cooks there. I've been trying to get a couple transferred over here. I'd kill everyone in this place for a decent burrito."
She tried not to smile, but failed.
"Just some fresh veg would be nice, sir".
- db -
Goddammit. How long had she been here?
She lit another cigarette and offered the packet but he refused.
"Okay", he said with authoritative finality.
He put down the last of the paperwork she'd brought and she properly felt the weight of his steely gaze for the first time, bringing her to immediate attention.
She had a very bad feeling about this.
"Tell me about the factory".
She looked confused.
"The JSMC".
Oh.
Shit.
"The Lima Army Tank Plant opened in 1941, operated throughout World War Two and Korea producing Pershing and Patton tanks. Later it became the sole fabrication point for the Mark 1 Abrams Tank. It was the largest employer in town throughout my youth and by the time I was graduating high school the facility covered 8 square city blocks on the edge of downtown, with grey concrete walls seven stories high. Dependent on whether you'd ever worked there, everyone in town referred to the place by one of two names: To the employees it was simply 'The Factory'. To the rest of us it was known as 'Stalingrad'.
His files were forgotten and she could tell he was listening intently. She wouldn't have been offended if he hadn't. She was sure she'd not mentioned anything he was not already aware of, and she was quite frankly, sick of repeating all this.
"In 2013 the JSMC was closed in a congressionally approved mothballing excercise as the workings were shifted from production of the advanced mobile combat vehicles used primarily by the United States Marine Corps to more general assembly of materiel".
She felt a slight shiver at the intensity of his gaze as her story neared its conclusion. This was clearly the bit he was interested in.
She hated this. A big part of her survival mechanism thus far had been to refuse to countenance the enemy at all. The scum who'd killed her family and friends and taken her world were not worthy of her attention, her acknowledgement. Names give value to things: If she'd taken nothing else from seven years of therapy she'd kept a tight hold of that.
Besides it was the family way, wasn't it?
If she didn't talk about these bums, she'd have more to give in wiping the bastards of the face of her burnt, tortured Earth.
Still, this shit was clearly important, so with the bone aching exhaustion that constituted the entirety of her existence at this point, she continued:
"In 2017 the JSMC reopened under the control of a new private entity formed by the merger of General Dynamics Land Systems with an unknown number of military-industrial entities throughout North-western Ohio, South-West Michigan and Eastern Indiana, creating a new large-scale concern that became responsible for almost two-thirds of construction, fabrication and maintenance of materiel across all fields of the US Military. Lima became headquarters of this corporation, with regional satellites in Dayton, Toledo, Fort Wayne and Akron".
She knew the next question with a dread certainty that gripped her heart.
"And what was the name of thi..."
"Colonel Reese... I don't know how this hel..."
"It's helping because the more we know how to take down Stalingrad the better, Lieutenant Fabray. And you are FROM Stalingrad. You were raised in the belly of the beast and our knowledge of anything related to Lima... anything related to THEM... is severely limited".
His eyes burned with an intensity of resolve she hadn't seen in months. Not since Tina before that brave, idiotic, inspiring, futile attack on the factory.
"So please, soldier", he growled. "Indulge me."
She acquiesced with the slightest of nods.
"What was the name of the new corporation that emerged from the JSMC in Lima in the fall of 2017, Quinn?"
She stubbed out her cigarette and looked straight into his eyes.
"Cyberdine Systems".