FNBS

Raven Maddox: In a shocking move, President-elect Allgood has made an impromptu visit to the Eastern Front. Reports indicate that she was seen with troops at an allied forces camp just outside the contamination zone near Tbilisi, Georgia. This visit was neither telegraphed nor expected. With me today is FNBS’s own in-house military analyst, Megan Dresser. Megan, what does all this mean?

Megan Dresser: It is certainly unexpected, Raven. But I think it sends a very important message to the troops mired in the fight against the FEEN advancement. A key tenet of Allgood’s campaign was to bring an end to this war, now stretching into its seventy-seventh year. She’s not going to take a hands-off approach like so many past administrations.

Raven Maddox: It’s hard for the mind to contemplate, that’s for sure. Equally significant is that almost fourteen years ago, then General Allgood oversaw Eastern European Combat Command. She was in charge during The Battle of Tbilisi, in which someone—the U.S. claims it was FEEN, while FEEN says it was the United States—but someone used a tactical nuclear weapon on the city. Over two million people lost their lives.

Megan Dresser: That’s correct. The Day of the Cry, as it’s known, earns its name from an urban legend that millions of people heard a baby crying right before and right after the blast. Or maybe it was just the cries of the dying as they succumbed to radiation fallout. The death toll included one hundred thousand allied troops and fifty thousand FEEN fighters. In the aftermath, FEEN was able to push what was left of the Allied Forces back to what we now call the Eastern Front, thus initiating the slow-burn battle we’ve been fighting ever since.

Raven Maddox: A tragedy of enormous proportions. There’s no doubt she’s going to meet with the troops. Rally the forces and lift spirits. But here’s the question on everyone’s mind. Is Allgood going to meet with General Vladimir Orlov? Can she negotiate a ceasefire? Think of it: a Christmas without bloodshed.

Megan Dresser {Sighs}: Raven, that would truly be a remarkable event. Of course, the general has held fast to the FEEN doctrine that there will be no peace until the Allies leave Eastern Europe. Furthermore, Allgood still must take the oath of office, so I just don’t see that happening.

Raven Maddox: Megan, as always, thank you for your insight. Ladies and gentlemen, whatever your political inclination, as we near the holiday season, let us pray for peace.

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TRANSFER OF POWER – A Soldier’s Ghost Story

The cold, dull fog in the uncertain hour of night cloaked any surrounding lights that might have been seen. The military transport vehicle lurched over the broken road and vibrated on the bed of its stiff springs. The driver turned the wheel sharp to maneuver around a crater in the asphalt.

“Hold tight, ma’am. Road is shit,” he said.

Allgood appreciated the no-nonsense attitude of the special forces. Focus on the task at hand and to hell with the conventions of civilian life. What was his name? Had she already forgotten? No, he hadn’t said. It didn’t matter—she called him “soldier.” That was how it was on the front. She slipped into old routines as easily as she slipped into the olive-green t-shirt and combat boots laced up her shins over the black cargo pants. Familiar. Comfortable.

“Almost to the rendezvous point. Maybe fifteen minutes.” He punched the gas, and the powerful vehicle surged forward.

“Can I ask you a question, soldier?”

“Ask me anything, ma’am.”

“How goes the battle?”

“I guess you’d know better than me.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. You want a war story. You know, I was under your command when they nuked her. Younger and better looking, that’s all.” He took his eyes off the road a moment to flash her a smile. He was a handsome man with dusty blond hair speckled with gray. A seasoned warhorse. Angular features kept lean by a soldier’s regimen. Tapered waist, and arms that looked like he used them.

“You’re not a bad sight now,” she said.

“I won’t tell ‘em you said that.” He drove on. After a few minutes, he said, “Have you heard of the orphans?”

“I’ve heard,” she said. “Soldiers telling ghost stories.”

“I used to think so too. Hell, maybe they are… ghosts.”

He geared down and slowed to a crawl, turning off the pavement onto a gravel road that crunched beneath the tires. “We’ve been trying to hold Highway 60, but goddamn FEEN is tenacious. They keep pushing us back. Mtskheta, Kaspi, Gori—that was a bloody bitch—Kareli, Gomi.” He rattled off the names of Georgian villages. “They say they’re going to push us into the Black Sea and watch us drown.”

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He stopped talking to focus on the road. Naked tree branches reached out of the fog like bones to scrape at the windshield.

“It was in Ubisa last year. Not much of a town—a bar, a few houses scattered about. We dug in around the monastery. Fucking FEEN came at us from the hills there, and we were down in that little valley like sittin’ ducks. But we didn’t back down. Three days of constant bombardment. Then on the fourth day, nothin’. Fifth day, nothin’. We put up a drone, but the trees were thick as wool, and we couldn’t see shit, so we sent out some scouts. Found their camp a few clicks north.” He said no more.

“What was it, soldier?”

“Ah hell, they were dead, all seventy of ‘em. Sittin’ around their cold fires. What killed ‘em, you ask? I did, too. It wasn’t us. Their throats were ripped open. A few were completely decapitated. Guts pulled out like someone was diggin’ for buried treasure. Official reports said it was a local militia. No secret they hate the Allies and FEEN alike, just want us all out of their goddamn country.”

“And the unofficial report?” Allgood asked. She’d seen this in her time, how battle-hardened men weary of war and death started to concoct legends. “You’re not convinced, are you?”

His hands squeezed the wheel, eyes forward, looking into the night and soft yellow cataract of the headlights on the fog. “Not convinced cause I was there. Most wanted to pull out, but it was already near dusk, and travel at night, well, that’s askin’ for trouble. So we stayed. But nobody slept. I sure the hell didn’t. Must’ve been around midnight when the mist came in off the river. Couldn’t see shit, worse than tonight, even with the night vision.

“It got quiet, the kind of quiet when you know something’s goin’ down.”

He pulled to a stop in the middle of the road.

“We’re almost to the wall. I need to radio in, so they know not to shoot.” He picked up the CB from the dash. “This is Bird Patrol. I have the package. We’re about to come in.”

There was a moment of static, then a voice in a thick accent, “Greetings, comrade. Come, come, Vee vont blow you to hell, not zis time.”

“Thank you.” He glanced at her. “Friendly bunch.” His hand was on the stick, but before he put the transport into gear, he sat back in his seat. “I’ll only say this cause you’re gonna be the president. But if anyone asks, I’ll deny it. Sometimes stories need to stay dead… or never get started to begin with.”

He shut off the headlamps. All around them, it was dark as oil, and quiet. His face lit blue by the dash lights. He bore a scar down his neck.

“About an hour into the mist, we heard the cry of a baby. Made my heart stop and sent pricklies up and down my body.

“One of the guys put the spotlight on. Didn’t do much against the fog. Like being inside a pearl. Then there she was. She walked right out of the night, naked as the day she was born, holdin’ an infant in her arms. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen. The shout went out for her to stop, but she kept comin’. Must have been half a dozen lasers fixed on her, but no one fired. No man is gonna kill a little girl with a baby. They kept yellin’ for her to stop, but she didn’t—she walked real slow, but she didn’t stop. Then out of the fog another one, a boy, probably the same age as her, naked as the moon, and after a bit another boy, then another girl, then a boy. Christ, nobody’s gonna kill children. The translator was shouting at them. Tryin’ different languages and dialects like he was flippin’ through a book. The girl, she gets up to our first man, the man with the spotlight, and then suddenly their eyes, they call it the shine, you know like a wild animal, lets ‘em see good at night. She moved so fast.” He swallowed a lump in his throat and stared forward into the dark.

“It’s okay, soldier.”

“His name was Jimmy Holden—just a young kid. I heard the gurgling of his blood right before he fell.

“We lost twenty-two men that night. And, as the official report states, we only killed two wild dogs and a mountain cat.” He flicked on the lights, slammed the truck into gear, and drove forward.

“The Orphans of Tbilisi,” said Allgood, but the man said no more.

At the edge of the fog, she could barely make out the building fronts, sometimes with signs in the curling script of Georgia. He crept the transport down the street, their bubble of visibility only a dozen yards, spotlighting the windows, void of glass, dark and hollow.

Before them, a red flashing light materialized. Every time it came on, it lit up a large radiation symbol painted on a black sign. Below it, the skull and crossbones chiseled from stone, icons that would signify death centuries after the paint had faded and this war was just a page in the history books.

The soldier stopped the car. “We’re on the outskirts of the city. Any closer and your liver will cook. The wall is one click dead ahead.”

“Have you ever seen it?” she asked.

“No. And I don’t want to.”

The wall was as mysterious as the orphans. Circling the blast zone, it stood thirty feet high in some places and towered a hundred feet in others. Who built it and for what purpose was only speculation, but the running line from the Pentagon offices of propaganda was that FEEN had used thousands of climate refugees as slave labor. The ones who had not died in its construction had been killed and thrown inside before it was sealed. Others, despite the lack of evidence, speculated it was the work of UFOs. In his video series, The Wall of God, Pastor Tony claimed that the Lord had built it as a sign of his greatness, such as the wall that encircled the Garden of Eden. A recent scientific paper suggested that the nuclear blast itself had created it by fusing the material of buildings, earth, and organic life into a mixture instantly cured in the heat of the explosion.

“They’ll be here in a minute,” he said.

“Thank you, soldier.”

“Honor, ma’am. First president I ever met.”

“Where are you from?”

“Southern California.”

“Surfer, I bet.”

He gave an ironic chuckle. “You bet right. But not for a long time. Sometimes, in my dreams, I’m a boy again, and I can taste the salt water and feel the sun on my skin. Then I wake up.” His body came to attention. He pulled a gun from a holster built into his seat. “They’re here.”

In front of the transport, two men emerged out of the fog and waited in the headlights. One had a bushy, black beard and carried an RPG on his back and a machine gun in his hands. The other, with long hair and the stubble of a beard, had a green bandanna wrapped around his head. He wore a pistol on his side.

She took a breath to steady herself. “Thank you for your service,” she said.

He gave a sharp salute.

She got out, shut the door firmly, and the transport was off into the blurry shadows of a burned-out street.