**The World Has Turned and Left Me Here, Weezer**

It didn't take long to settle into a rhythm of activities to keep Aiden busy during the day. Riley was amazed at how much structure had appeared in the camp during the week she and Aiden were quarantined. With over 3600 people there were plenty of jobs to do and many had taken up the mantle of organizing activities related to their former occupations. She wasn't surprised that people had taken on the janitorial, food service, and laundry jobs. After all, there wasn't much to do to keep each tent clean. But Velasquez had also opened the second floor of the school as an office space and suddenly there was a very poorly equipped medical and dental clinic, two psychiatrists, a banking and accounting room, and several other offices. Someone started a post service and a few former librarians opened the library. There was a schedule of nightly entertainment events and a wide variety of daytime workshops and meetups. A few former teachers were running a camp of sorts to keep kids busy and out of trouble while a couple guys even created a crazy multi-sport team competition to break up the monotony. Now the rows of tents were decorated with team colors and the talk in the mess tent was a bit rowdier than the first few weeks.

This had the effect of freeing up Garth and the other Army personnel to spend more time outside the camp seeking supplies. They didn't talk about her new address or hardly even see much of each other, but she took on the chores of cleaning the tent, making the beds, and doing the laundry without being asked. She figured he ought to at least get something for risking his reputation by letting her stay. When he was out of the camp she found herself extra alert for news of the outside. There had been rioting in Washington when it was revealed that the 4th President since June had committed suicide rather than wait to see if a potential breech in the Whitehouse quarantine would turn out to be fatal. And credible reports said that tensions in the Middle East had erupted into a new world war, although who was left to fight in it, she didn't know.

Although Christine refused to have anything to do with Aiden, Riley was able to resume her duties in the intake tent by leaving him with some older ladies in exchange for holding a daily tumbling class. She was just finishing a class when Emma rushed in. "Did you hear the news the team sent back?"

The comfortable sweat she'd worked up assisting three to six year olds in somersaults and cartwheels turned to a clammy chill in an instant. Garth had been headed for Philly today to check on the conditions there. Doing her best to keep her expression neutral she asked, "No, what happened?"

"Apparently a huge section of the city burned to the ground sometime last week! Liberty square, the bell, everything is gone. I was in the communication office when it came in. They said the city is like a ghost town. Both Camp 8 and Camp 9 were decimated with the flu too, although Camp 12 is OK. They said they saw the smoke and locked down everything out of fear."

"But the team is ok?" Fear twisted her gut like a towel in a wringer.

Her sister's eyes turned bright. "Ohhh, worried about someone? He's supposed to be back by tomorrow. They hung flyers about the safe zones but I guess there were hardly any people left in the city. At least that's what Hector said at lunch." Emma continued with a snort. "Apparently he says it's not a moment too soon. The camps are near capacity and he's going to have to make some decisions about what to do next."

That wasn't very reassuring. Riley had heard the rumor that they were going to shut the gates when they hit the 3800 mark. If people continued to show up at the rates they had been, that would happen in three days. Garth's team better hurry.

But his team wasn't back for two more days. And Velasquez refused to answer any of her questions during that time. Still rumors were spreading that something more than rioting had happened in Philly. She saw the trucks pull up while she was headed for her afternoon shift in the intake tent. Stopping under the cover of the school portico she shaded her eyes and and watched the trucks bump along the grass past the two charter buses the Staties were filling. The second they stopped two men jumped out to open a small section of gates. They were fully equipped with body armor and guns and there were men in the back of each truck maintaining a cover on them as well. She didn't remember them doing that the last time.

Some of the people waiting in line for intake began hurrying across the grass toward the fence. That was also new. Usually they ignored the comings and goings, focusing solely on getting permission to enter. But even yesterday she'd noticed that the people coming in had looked even more desperate than usual. Many of them had walked on account of gas stations running dry and they'd had to give quite a few water before they could get a good blood draw. More and more were choosing to go with the Staties to their supposed downtown quarantine area rather than wait in line as well. She was pretty sure she'd heard someone say that they had been promised food and water if they got on the bus but they had passed because part of their family was already in this camp.

The first two men out of the trucks were followed by two more who leveled weapons at the people hurrying across the parking lot toward the new opening. She recognized Garth's booming voice immediately. "Fifty foot perimeter people! Fifty feet! Anyone who gets closer than the other side of that driveway is immediately disqualified for entry. Fifty feet! Get closer and you'll earn a load of lead." She shuddered. She was used to seeing him in uniform but with the body armor and weapon in his hands, he looked formidable. Plus she'd never heard him threaten to shoot anyone. She knew he'd seen action in Nangarhar and Laghman provinces. Still it was different seeing it 100 yards away.

She studied him as he and Findley hovered behind the men threading large chains through the fence, his eyes continuously scanned the people milling in the center of the parking lot. His large body was bent over the carbine and she had no doubt that if he wanted to, he could pick out anyone he wanted from the line. By contrast, Findley fidgeted nervously as he scanned the crowd. She reminded herself of all the times she'd seen Garth be kind to people in the camp. And that he was polite and courteous to her mother and sister too. But it was hard to reconcile that person with the man currently barking orders, stopping only to send Specialist Goodwin off, undoubtedly to inform Velasquez that they were back. Another man asked him something and he shook his head, his lips pressed tight, jaw square. She supposed that must be what her dad was like on the job. She certainly never imagined him sitting around his ship doing needlepoint either. He'd always be in the thick of it, advising the younger sailors, staying on top of everything going on. Garth was like that too. Others gravitated toward decisive men like them.

The people who had headed for the fence stopped, and with some confused shouting, turned back toward the tent, where she supposed she ought to be heading too. "Slattery? You gonna join us anytime soon or just keep drooling over the boss?" Chan interrupted her thoughts.

"Yeah, I'm coming." With a sigh she finished putting on her smelly suit. With one last glance she caught Garth looking her way, the dark scowl in his face dropped as he made a quick nod. Seeing that he was fine, she waved before slipping inside to relieve another helper.

Unfortunately she didn't get her chance to ask him what he'd discovered. When she escorted her last family for the evening to the locker rooms she noticed that the trucks were being packed again. Before she'd even made it to get Aiden for dinner she'd heard the new news. Camp 5 wasn't responding to their communication attempts. The teams were headed back out to go see what was going on. The nervous chatter of the mess felt like blaring sirens in her ears and she couldn't stomach her Tabasco flavored sawdust, no matter how hungry she had been before heading in to dinner. As soon as Aiden was happily gobbling up his instant macaroni she asked her sister to keep an eye on him. "I've got something urgent to do."

She jogged back to their tent, not wanting to outright run and scare people but hoping to get there before he left. But when she burst through the flap she found the tent exactly how she'd left it that morning. She dropped the entrance flap in a move that was half irritation that he'd left again without even really saying hi and half worry about how serious it must be if he didn't even stop in the mess tent to see Aiden. She scanned the room for a sign that he'd even been there. A sense of dread gnawed at her gut as she saw he'd left something sitting on the notebook she used for her planning and listmaking. It was the velcro insignia patch from the front of his uniform. She recognized it as his by the frayed threads on the upper left corner. She was surprised to see a bold looping script fill the open page beneath it.

"Dear Betty, Unfortunately I have been sent away with a new rank and new orders before I could even see you. By now you must know about Camp 5 going silent. There's more to it than that. Mueller is dead. I'm taking a small team to find out what has happened and secure the camp if need be. I don't know if it is due to fear of the Red Flu or fear of carrying out my orders but this time I am not sure I will be back. You can consider the contents of the tent yours. You know where the keys to my truck are. There is some cash taped to the bottom of the tray in my toolbox. If you need anything you can rely on Chan. He's a good man and understands how things are with your mother. For Aiden's sake, do not give up hope. It has been an honor to know you Betty. I hope to see you again sometime. Sgt. Hulk."

Her hand shook as she read between the lines and her blood boiled. Garth had been promoted so he could deal with Camp 5 independently. All because Velasquez didn't have the stomach to go out there and see to the distasteful job of locking it down himself! Slipping the patch in her pocket she marched from her tent. The Major usually attended the evening events before returning to his office to work into the late night so she headed for the gym. Crossing the open space between the tents and the building she squinted in the muggy twilight fog. The two trucks were gone again.

Sure enough, the Major was sitting in the front row, watching as some elementary aged kids put on a talent show in their pajamas. Her mother, Emma, and Aiden were on either side. She waited until the shopping cart derby finished to dart in front of the bleachers.

"Betty!" Aiden clapped, oblivious to the angry flush she surely must be sporting. "Hey Betty, sit here!" He tried to wiggle off Emma's lap but her sister was more sensitive to her mood and held fast.

"Major, I need to speak to you, outside."

His brows shot up toward his buzzed hairline. "Unless it's an emergency, it can wait until after the show." His dark eyes implored her to sit down. But she wouldn't; this was an emergency of sorts.

"Please, I need to talk to you, about Camp 5, not in public." She hissed.

Her mother leaned around him. "Sit down Riley. You're making a scene!"

Ignoring her mother she pressed on. "Did you send a group to kill Camp 5?" She tried to keep her voice low but a collective gasp sounded around them.

"Riley Louise! You don't know what you are talking about!" Her mother gripped the Major's hand, eyes wide, as she scolded her.

Velasquez stood abruptly. "My office, now!" He ground out.

As they turned to go Aiden reached out to her. "Watch dancing?"

She looked down at his big eyes, turned up to her, so trusting, the very reason she had to know what was going on. Her heart squeezed just a little more than it did usually. Thus far they had cruised along assuming they would stay here until the flu ran its course or someone came up with a vaccine. And then she'd find a relative or something for Aiden and her life would go back to normal. But how could that happen if they stopped playing by the rules of civilized society? What would there be to go back to? She stopped mid stride, crouched down, and wrapped her arms around him. His curly hair smelled of the sun and she closed her eyes, drinking it in.

"Young lady, I expect you to double time it!" Velasquez glared down at her from a few paces away.

She kissed Aiden's cheek. "I'd like to watch the dancing but I have to go make sure the Hulk gets to stay a good guy, ok?

Aiden nodded into her neck. "OK, see you later Betty."

He climbed back up next to Emma and she mouthed a silent "Thank you" to her sister before trailing the Major toward the interior of the school.

As soon as the double doors to the gym closed behind them her mother launched into a tongue lashing. "Your melodramatics in there were uncalled for!"

Her pulse skyrocketed. "Why do you think I asked to talk in private in the first place?"

Her mother whirled to a stop and faced her toe-to-toe. "Don't you take that tone with me. I don't care how high and mighty you think you are now. You are still my daughter and you will talk to me with respect!" Christine's blond ponytail whipped over her shoulder as she turned toward the Major. "You need to apologize to Hector for making trouble and then you need to seriously think about how your actions affect the safety of this camp! This is the second time in two weeks you have gone stirring up trouble. That's unacceptable behavior for a Slattery and I won't tolerate it."

That was the last straw. She'd tried to be compassionate when her mother acted as if Emma and Riley weren't also mourning their brother because she figured there must be nothing worse than losing a person you had carried inside you. To be more vast than losing someone you thought you'd grow old with, a pain that still made her want to scream in anger, it must be of a magnitude she just couldn't understand. And she had accepted that the risks she took in saving Aiden would not be welcomed by everyone in the camp. She hadn't pushed her mother to accept Aiden after her mother had all but kicked her out of their tent. But she would not stand aside and let what might be happening to Camp 5 happen here. If there was anything that could be done, she had to do it. She was bound by her personal ethics, the ethics her parents raised her with, to do something about it.

"Christine! It's OK. I understand that Riley is upset." Velasquez laid a hand on her mother's forearm. His voice softer than she'd ever heard it. "Go and get us all some coffee. I suspect it's going to be a long night."

She expected her mother to argue, but she did exactly as Velasquez had asked, simply shaking her head and swinging back down the hallway the other way. "Fine. Fine. But you behave yourself girl. I'll be back in a few minutes."

As soon as her mother rounded the corner Velasquez resumed his march down the hallway. "Let's get on with it before she gets back then." He held the door to his office and she brushed past, but she ignored his gesture toward a chair.

The second the door shut she launched into her questioning. There was no time to spare. "Did you send Garth and his men to shut down Camp 5? Are they going to cut it off? Take their resources and bring them here? You could be sending them to their deaths! What happens if they get the flu doing the work you are too scared to leave camp to do? What if they die there? Or if they bring it back here? Huh? What will we do then? We need to batten down the hatches here. We can't spare Garth and his men for this!"

She ignored him when he muttered something about know-it-all-teenagers-meddling-in-things-they-don't-understand. "I saw how the team entered the camp without suits on. You need to clamp down on that. That could be how Camps 8 and 9 were infected. If the team goes to Camp 5 and…"

"It wasn't the flu. At least not in Camps 8 and 9. Sergeant Simpson's team is headed to Camp 5 to confirm what I suspect." She met his eyes involuntarily and for the first time realized how haggard he looked. Sure, his uniform was an impeccable as always. He must have shaved for dinner and maybe even run a quick rag over his belt buckle and shoes. But there were deep bags under his eyes and his voice shook a little as he turned and stopped pacing.

Her brain struggled to keep up. Not the flu? "What you suspect? People attacked them for supplies? I can tell they are getting desperate. The people coming in are starv.."

"No. Not ordinary people. But I don't know. It doesn't make sense. What Simpson, what they all reported, it just doesn't make sense." He slumped into a chair. "Riley, I am doing all I can to make sure my men and women, and everyone in here stays safe. Can you just believe me on this?" His voice cracked a little. "I'm not staying here because I'm scared of going out there. I'm staying here because we may have a situation brewing and the one thing I can do better than others is work on a long term plan for us all, all the camps." He dropped into his chair at the end of his appeal and dropped his face into his hands for a moment before turning to stare up at her, unblinking.

Maybe she had jumped to conclusions, just a bit. "I believe you but people in here, we deserve to know what's going on out there." And she desperately wanted to know. What if Garth never came back? Her hands were shaking so she sat in one of the square visitor's chairs and crossed her arms over her chest. "I deserve to know." It was as close as she would come to begging him to tell her.

He leaned forward, his elbows flat against the desk, chin propped on his hands as if he lacked the strength to hold up his head. "Other people, not all of them are strong like your family. Even in your family you have different levels of coping skills. Look at the way your mother handled your brother's death."

"But I can handle it. And if it's all that bad, you need people to help you decide what to do about it." She hoped he bought that. She had no idea if she really could take another round of bad news. But at that point she would have said anything to get him to tell her what was going on.

He stared at her and she stared right back. Finally he relented. "I can't believe I'm taking on a seventeen year old advisor but ok. What I say here does not leave this room. At least until we know more."

At last! She leaned on the desk opposite him, voice low but firm. "I promise. You can trust me on my honor as a Slattery."

"Those State Police guys are involved in something that goes way beyond a state run quarantine area in downtown Baltimore. Philly didn't burn from rioting. There was a battle there, a military conflict. The teams found tanks, artillery units, and possible evidence of mass executions."

She stared at him unblinking. "Who would attack us? Who could? The US hasn't had a foreign artillery bombardment since Orleans in 1918!"

"Didn't know you were such a military history buff."

She shook her head. "I'm not but Garth is obsessed with World War I. Insists military engineers are the reason we're not all speaking German now. You do know how good he is, right?" She meant good in the sense of work ethic and dedication but surely Velasquez understood how good he was as a man too.

"Yeah, in any other circumstances I'd be pressing him to think about OCS. It may be an accident that he's in the Army, but it's a damn good fit."

An accident? She wondered what that meant but dismissed it for another time. "So do you have any idea who is attacking us?"

"Yeah, Yeah I do." He turned his computer screen toward her and began clicking through a file of images. Among the craters and broken buildings there recognizable landmarks. She saw an upturned trailer with a Howitzer type gun and noted with a sinking realization that what looked like charred logs lying against a building was actually human remains. He flipped to another picture, of a row of bodies, all face down. A bright blue keystone clearly visible on the shoulders of their BDUs. In another image the door of a Maryland State Patrol car half covered the body of a man in full riot gear. On and on the pictures went. After downtown Philly they moved on to Camp 8, which had been located at the airport. The fence line had been demolished by armored vehicles and trucks had left deep ruts. There was an eerie lack of bodies. The same for Camp 9.

"I don't understand." She couldn't muster up more than a horrified whisper.

The wounded look in his eyes made so much more sense now. "I don't either." He rasped. "That's why I sent them to Camp 5. We need to figure out what the hell is going on before the same thing happens again. Why would the Pennsylvania National Guard and the Maryland State Patrol be battling? They should be on the same side!" He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it over to her. It was an accounting of the camp numbers as of the day before. She skimmed past the twelve columns to where Garth's bold handwriting added to the columns of numbers below two of them. "We had over five thousand people in those two camps but Simpson's team found fewer than 200 bodies in each. And the people's belongings were missing too. Of the twelve camps we started with six weeks ago, only three are still operating."

Shit! She set the paper down, ducking her head as shame prompted a deep prickle to blossom at the roots of her hair. She knew without a doubt that her cheeks were flaming red. "I didn't know. I didn't know there were so many other camps, so many other people under your command. Or that things were going so badly. I'm sorry for being so judgmental." It had always been one of her worst traits.

He slipped the paper back into a folder. "How could you have known? You shouldn't have to know any of this. At your age you should be enjoying being a kid. Heck, so should Garth. I have been part of a small group pushing to raise the age of enlistment to 21 instead of 18 for years." He ran a hand over his face. "But neither of you are typical kids either I suppose. That's why I'm willing to tell you anything at all."

She heard a noise in the main office. "Does my mother know?"

"Sort of. Now that she's gotten her feet back under her, she's stronger than you give her credit for." As if on cue there was a knock on the door. "Come in Christine."

She slid into the room, two mugs in her hand. "I got stopped by no fewer than six different people wanting to know what the heck Riley was talking about." She narrowed her eyes on Riley even as she passed over a mug. "You better have apologized young lady." And like that Riley went from feeling almost like a peer to being relegated to child mode again.

"It's ok Chrissy. I think we've come to an understanding. Riley was worried about Simpson, and rightfully so. Things are dangerous out there. But I've assured her he is a professional. I think we'll keep the teenage hysterics to an acceptable level from now on."

Her mother nodded and crossed her hands over her chest, awaiting a confirmation. With a sigh Riley set the coffee on the edge of the desk. It was sweet and light, not the way she liked it anyway. "Yes Sir."

Velasquez looked at the clock over the door. "Very well. I imagine it is close to young Aiden's bedtime by now. I promise I will update you as soon as I hear anything about Sargent Simpson's well being. Until then, thank you for your work in the camp." He dismissed her by gesturing to her mother to come around the desk. "Now Christine, we need to discuss procuring more suits somehow. What ideas have you come up with?"

He may have convinced her that he wasn't as much of a lazy coward as she had though before, but it was still hard to stomach watching her mother fawn over a new man. She walked out of the office without so much as a backwards glance. The time had come to begin making her own survival plans.