Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) Read Free Page B

then?”
    “North Korea.” Sunny tucked another helping of fries inside her mouth. “They’re threatening military action, saying the epidemic was a terrorist attack by the US.”
    Sweet Jesus! Why did fools have to think everything was a terrorist attack? Couldn’t Mother Earth just be pissed off at the polluters clinging to her skin? “How in the world do they plan to fight with half their soldiers dead?”
    Sunnie’s brow furrowed. “Half? I thought the Redaction only had a thirty-five percent fatality rate.”
    Doubts bubbled through Mavis’s chest and emerged as humorless chuckles.
    “That’s the official body count.” But the classified satellite photos told a far different story. Asia was on fire, and it showed in the smoke permeating the air from Alaska to Florida and the haze swallowing the Phoenix skyline. “The Dear Leader underreports bad news.”
    Or maybe his thugs had burned so many citizens alive in the cities, they didn’t count them as Influenza casualties. But still... to blame someone else for a world-wide pandemic was new level of insanity for Pyongyang. Swiveling on the bench seat, Mavis drew the straw to her mouth and pulled hard on her shake. Although the TV’s volume remained low, she read the newscaster’s lips. The sweet, cold creamy taste turned to ash on her tongue.
    “Not just military action. If the US doesn’t give into their reparation demands, there’ll be war.”

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    The cot groaned as David Dawson hunched over the acoustic guitar in his lap. His thumb plucked at the string while he adjusted the silver peg heads. For a moment, the repeated notes mingled with the snores of his two sleeping barrack mates before escaping out the tent’s open window and lost themselves in the snap of an unsecured flap.
    David strummed his guitar softly before using his nails to pick out the notes of a lullaby. The music swelled against the canvas of the Tent Expandable Modular PERsonnel barracks. Closing his eyes, he blocked out all thoughts of the TEMPER quarters and lost himself in the melody.
    No more empty spaces in place of unnecessary cots. No more garbage bags for over-ripe corpses. No more refrigerated trucks needing rotting bodies to be unloaded and dumped into dirt pits—mass graves of the forgotten.
    Forgotten.
    His fingers stumbled over G. Before the discordant note faded, he opened his eyes. Hell, he had no one to remember him even before the Redaction took half his unit. More than half. Sixty-three percent to be exact. He had to wear two copper bracelets to have enough room to etch every name.
    God must be a woman to pick and choose so illogically who stayed and who was called home.
    His right hand silently played the rest of the song while his left hung from the guitar’s ribs. Why leave him behind? Gutierrez had a wife and baby daughter. Martin had two orphaned sons. Washington had his bride.
    He had the service.
    And soon even that would be gone.
    Sweat beaded on his lip. Four months of civilian life. One hundred and six days out of the Army, and he’d signed up with the National Guard. He loved those weekends and looked forward to the two-week duty. But it wasn’t enough time in uniform. Not nearly enough to fill the white noise of freedom or the stretch of meaningless down time.
    If it hadn’t been for the Redaction...
    He licked his lips, tasted the fear above the salt. Soon, they’d muster him out again.
    Too soon.
    Removing the pick from the strap, David switched to a Jim Croce song. He rocked to the rhythm, but his heart thudded to a different beat. The thick, full notes weighted with the emptiness of his future. He’d take up fishing in the summer and hunting in the winter.
    And the other two seasons?
    He strummed harder.
    Six cots away, Michelson snorted in his sleep and rolled over. His hand covered his eyes, blocking out the twilight.
    David forced himself to ease up, to tease the notes from the string, instead of bullying them out.