On-screen, a man with glowing red eyes jumped from a rooftop in a desert village, landing on the burning tank two stories below. The camera feed was hazy, the only clear bit being the news network's name tab on the bottom. The cameraman breathed hard, running away while turning every few seconds to capture the attacker behind him. The man's skin was scorched black like a burnt piece of wood, from the ridge of his hairline to what remained of pants around his waist. A squad of soldiers around the tank opened fire, riddling him with bullets from all sides, but the man roared and jumped from the tank like a mountain lion, swinging wildly at the men around him in a rabid frenzy.

"Russians, on the left." One of the soldiers shouted and dove for cover as a round ricocheted against the metal husk of the tank. Panicked and uttering a string of curses, the cameramen turned to capture the building from which the man had leaped. From around the side, a tank with the Russian flag, flanked on either side by soldiers, rumbled around and opened fire with its cannon. Finding themselves surrounded, the Americans started to fall back right as a building beside them crumbled. The feed cut off with a final frame of the scorched man taking down an American before turning to charge the Russian tank.

"You know that stuff is all fake. My dad said it's all propaganda," Noah's friend said. He smirked and moved the timeline back to highlight one of the frames when the man landed, zooming in on his red eyes. "See, totally fake. CGI."

Noah shoved his friend's hand away and slipped his phone and earbuds back into his backpack. "Shut up, idiot, you'll get us in trouble again."

The teacher stopped her droning lecture and pointed her laser pointer at the two of them. "Do you two have something to share? You better not be on your phones again."

An announcement came over the intercom before Noah could come up with an excuse. With the crackle of static behind his voice, the principal spoke shakily. There was an attack on a navy vessel off the coast near. He paused, his heavy breathing still audible as he forgot to let go of the mic. After a few deep breaths, the principal continued and listed the names of several teachers who needed to come to his office. Noah felt a chill roll down his spine. The last teacher that got called to the office hadn't come back. Finally, the principal declared that the school day would end early for safety, now that the war had touched the homeland, and that all parents were on the way to pick up their children.

The teacher had them line up before leading them to the doors. A group of masked soldiers manned the entry to the school, dividing the flow of children between two lines. As each kid came through, the soldiers knelt and shone a light in their eyes, looking for something they only knew. Noah watched as a 5th-grade girl ahead of him trembled, tears streaming down her cheeks when one of the soldiers approached too closely with a gleaming rifle. Noah wanted to tell the girl it would be alright, but talking in line got you yelled at or pulled aside.

Noah's turn came. Setting his backpack on the scanner tray, he stepped onto the black mat and spread his arms. He felt a surge of discomfort as the soldier's fingers forcibly parted his eyelids, momentarily blinding him with the tiny but harsh light. The smell of latex made him want to sneeze, but he forced the feeling down. Finally, after scrutinizing both sides of his hands, the soldier nodded.

"Alright, next." The soldier passed Noah his pack and pushed him out the door. A biting wind made Noah tuck his chin into his jacket. Outside, children huddled together at the curb, some seeking shelter from the cold like penguins and others trying to quell their panic in the arms of their friends. The 8th graders were the most shaken, oddly enough. They knew more about war than the lower grades, and like prairie dogs looking for hawks, they scanned the horizon for missiles or planes. Meanwhile, the smallest kiddies from the merged elementary school didn't know what to do with themselves. Some cried while waiting for their bus or parents, with the few remaining teachers who had avoided the draft thus far doing their best to keep order.

Noah broke away from his group of 7th graders and knelt next to a crying kindergartener in a bright pink jacket. "It's alright. Your parents will be here soon." He put his hand on her shoulder, and she clung to him, little tears soaking into his jacket. While they waited, Noah slipped her a chocolate bar he had brought with lunch.

Buses arrived first, the smell of diesel filling the air as they idled and students poured in. Behind them, anxious parents leaned on their horns, flipping each other off as if rudeness would help the line move faster. The scene was drowned out momentarily as a squadron of jets roared overhead, half racing toward the coast to the east while the rest went south toward Florida Federation territory. A soldier went from window to window, asking each parent for ID and road passes. "Come on, have them ready for marking." The lady soldier yelled in frustration. A mom started to argue, but a quick flash of the pistol holstered on the soldier's waist shut her up. People weren't allowed to drive anywhere without approved passes. Getting caught without those things branded you as an insurrectionist or saboteur.

"Hey, don't forget this." Noah handed the girl her backpack as she hurried onto her bus. The line of buses rumbled past the checkpoint in the road and disappeared around a bend. Several kids, mostly younger ones, wet themselves as more jets passed overhead. The overwhelmed teachers on the sidewalk gave up trying to console each child and settled for keeping them out of the street.

Noah's mother pulled up and leaned over to give him the usual kiss on the forehead as he climbed into the front seat. Her face was tense as they navigated through the chaotic traffic in the school's lot. She stayed silent the whole drive home and made it a point to shut off the radio when a frantic reporter started discussing the sunken naval ship in the Atlantic, speculating about the presence of a submarine.

When they entered their home, his father sat at the kitchen table with a stern look on his face. His hands rested on a pair of letters with official-looking seals on the table. At his father's side, Ronin sat with his ears perked and eyes focused, sensing his master's tension. Noah froze at the doorway for a moment, the usual warmth of the house replaced by a strange calmness and emptiness. Gone were the smells of his mother's spicy cooking. His father's favorite radio station, usually playing some talk shows in Spanish, was shut off. The clock on the wall seemed to scream, its incessant ticking dominating the silent room. Everything around the home seemed dull and drab today, even with the fireplace casting an amber hue on the interior.

His father beckoned him to the table. "Sit down, son. We need to talk," he said. Every word hit Noah with a weight that stole his breath. Quickly, he peeled off his coat and sat opposite them at the table.

Never one to sugarcoat or mince words, his father spoke bluntly, his booming voice striking with the force of a sledgehammer. He and Noah's mother had been recalled to active duty due to the demand for replacements on the Russian front and were expected to ship out in the coming weeks. Noah stared in disbelief. These were not new concepts to him. Growing up, he'd gotten used to his parents leaving home for their deployments, back when the United States were still united. Both were career soldiers from the same unit, only having retired a year before the war in the east started.

Today was different, however. Noah had seen the videos of men and women in field hospitals mangled and burned and ships cracking in half and sinking beneath the waves. Most of his classmates lost a parent or sibling to the most recent draft as the war entered its third grueling year. 

"I thought you guys were done?" Noah stammered, and anger tinged his words as they tumbled past his lips. Weren't there other people that could take their place? Hadn't they done their time?

"It's not up to us, son," his father said with a slight shake of his head. He sighed. "It's just how things are."

Noah still didn't understand. His face reddened as frustration welled up in his chest. Noah stared at the ground under the table. Tears crested his eyelids, and he dug his nails into his knees, cursing himself silently. This is humiliating, he thought. He'd always been such a crybaby, but he was almost a teenager.

Ronin trotted over and plopped his broad head in Noah's lap, licking his hands where he pressed them against his knees. Ronin was a military working dog and would also be leaving with his father, which drove yet another dagger into his heart.

Noah's mother hugged him tightly, stroking his head. "It's okay, baby. Just be strong for us," she whispered. The faint smell of her shampoo, a sweet mix of lilac and lavender, drifted around him. The floodgates burst, and, as quietly as he could, Noah buried his face in his mother's neck, her long brown hair hiding his face from the world, and sobbed. His father stood and put a hand on Noah's shoulder, giving his son a small peck on the back of the head. His hands were large and calloused, but they were warm. Ronin whined and nudged Noah's hand so it rested between his pointy ears.

They huddled together in silence, savoring this moment of peace.

They spent the following days making arrangements for their departure. For Noah, the school grew increasingly deserted each day as students and teachers chose to stay home. Reports of additional ships sunk in the Atlantic and Pacific and defeats in the campaigns in Europe and the Philippines. One day, his phone flooded with images of planes dive-bombing the ocean, dropping torpedoes and bombs that erupted in brilliant plumes of water when they struck their target. On the domestic front, the following video showed clips of a ground engagement between the Federal Forces and the Floridian Army. His mother took his phone away after that.

Noah sat listlessly in the living room when he wasn't at school as his parents scurried back and forth, placing their packs and uniforms by the door. Before, the military had set his parents' schedule so that one was always home to look after him, but this was a desperate war on all fronts with no such commodities. The letters on the table called for a total mobilization. Noah listened quietly as his parents received phone calls every day, updating them on times and places to be and as they made arrangements to upend their lives.

His father paced around the room in a fit, talking into the phone as calmly as he could despite the anger rising in his tone. "No, Colonel, I can't just– yes, I understand, but –yes, Ma'am, understood." He hung up and squeezed the phone so hard that Noah thought it would crumple like a soda can. Noah perked up briefly when his father told him he would stay with Aunty Melisa in her cabin and wouldn't have to go to school for a while. In the meantime, his mother sat him down in the mornings and helped him work through the study guide the school left him. The contents were dry and mind-numbing, but Noah relished time alone with her.

Schools finally shut down entirely along the East Coast when the first Russian missile strikes came. The news on TV showed plumes of water and smoke erupting from the ocean as Russian submarines launched their payloads. Thankfully, they were just conventional warheads for now. The anchor on screen said that most had been aimed at important businesses, government buildings, and bases but that some had struck civilian buildings. Looking out the window, Noah thought he could make out plumes of smoke far on the horizon. The shipyard was an hour's drive away, after all. Planes flew all hours of the day and night from that day on.

Time crawled by until the day Noah dreaded arrived. Wet snow flurries drifted in the wind. Noah pulled his beanie taunt on his head, trying to keep the icy wind off his face. Families were scattered on the runway, and tearful goodbyes were all over as people sent off their fathers, mothers, spouses, and siblings. A monstrous gray plane sat behind them, its gaping maw open as soldiers ushered crates and vehicles up the ramp. Warm air drifted around Noah in the moments when the wind calmed down and stopped blowing away the exhaust from the massive idling engines. Aunty Melisa hung back from the crowd, arguing with a random, baby-faced soldier as she smoked beside a no-smoking sign.

Noah's father stood in his full uniform, a large pack slung over his shoulder, with Ronin beside him in a crate. He was departing on the unit's first flight as a frontline soldier, while his mother would follow on the second with the other support troops. The giant German Shepherd whined as he struggled to get comfortable in the crate that was just barely large enough to fit him. Like he had as a child, Noah clung to his father's leg, holding it so tight that his arms ached. Part of him, some childish voice he thought gone, hoped that if he held on, he could keep his father from boarding the plane.

"I don't want you to go." He cried. It had been two years since his father's last deployment, and back then, he had been too young to understand the weight of the word "war." Now, his heart struggled under the gravity of that word. His father was off to some faraway place to kill or be killed.

His father, never one for emotional goodbyes, settled for squeezing his son hard in a bear hug. Under his father's crushing strength and the weight of his gear, Noah couldn't breathe, but he savored the embrace. He felt like his body was ripping apart as his father pulled away.

"Be strong, Noah. Be good for Aunty Melisa, or I'll find out." He spoke with a forced chuckle, trying to mask his sadness. A woman shouted from the plane's ramp that it was time to load up.

His father gave him one last kiss before turning to his mother. The two shared a quick hug, whispering something Noah couldn't hear. Noah took some solace in that they would be with each other on the battlefield. His mother was in communication, so even if they could not fight, they could speak to one another. Noah turned away, blushing as they kissed, and his father grabbed Ronin's crate and fell into the line of soldiers shuffling up the ramp.

Noah, his mother, and Aunty Melisa watched from inside the terminal as the massive plane lumbered down the runway and slowly took off. Even behind the thick glass, the engines' roar was deafening as they strained to move the behemoth. Aunty Melisa hugged her sister as the plane went higher and higher until Noah could barely see the plane's lights. His chest tightened as the aircraft took half his heart away into the dreary sky. From the corner of his eye, Noah noticed another plane rumbling toward the spot the last one left empty.

The wind picked up, so the officer in charge made all goodbyes happen in the terminal for safety. Noah's mother showered him in kisses at the door as men and women filed down the corridor. "Keep up with school and make sure you don't cause any trouble for Aunty, okay, baby?" Noah had just started his growth spurt, but she easily lifted him by the shoulders and locked eyes as if trying to sear his image into her mind. She always said he had his father's piercing brown eyes but that her delicate cheekbones and straight, black hair made up for always looking so serious. Noah wiped snot and tears from his face with his jacket sleeve and tried to smile to give her a good memory. Like his father, his mother refused to cry in front of him, but her eyes glimmered in the fluorescent lighting.

"I promise I'll be good," Noah said, occasional sobs breaking his words. An officer tapped his mother on the shoulder, signaling she had to get going. Gently, his mother kissed him a final time before handing him off to her sister. "I love you, Noah. Take care of him, Melisa," she said, her hands lingering on his body.

Aunty Melisa squeezed his mother's hand and nodded.

Noah tracked the plane's red and green wingtip lights as they climbed into the sky, carrying the other half of his heart away. They, too, vanished, heading in the same direction as his father.

"Enough of that now," Aunty Melisa said, wiping tears from Noah's face. "You'll worry your parents if you keep that up." Holding her hand tight, Noah and his aunt fell in line with the families leaving the terminal.

Aunty Melisa's cabin was hours away from the city. As a precaution, the city had ordered a blackout after sundown, so it was dark as they made their way down the freeway. The streets were empty save for the occasional freight truck and military transports. Neither talked on the drive, and Aunty Melisa turned the radio off.

"Nothing but garbage anyway. Every station left is news or country." She zipped her coat up. The heater in her truck was busted, and their breaths fogged in the air as they traveled down the road. Noah curled into his jacket and rubbed his hands together.

Aunty Melisa reached over and held his hand. "Get some sleep, kiddo. It's been a rough day." Even as she said that, he felt his head nodding. Soon, he fell asleep to the rhythm of the truck's engine and the pale green glow of the radio.

When he awoke, he was in Aunty Melisa's guest room. He rubbed his eyes and was greeted by the sun rising over the mountains outside his window. The room was barren. His small suitcase sat beside a dresser, the only other piece of furniture apart from the bed. Aunty Melisa hadn't removed his outside clothes, only his shoes, so he changed before going downstairs. Her place was plain compared to his house. The living room consisted of a torn leather couch just large enough for two, a tattered rug, a coffee table with an overflowing ashtray, and a milk crate on which sat an old television with classic rabbit ear antennas.

The smell of eggs and bacon wafted from the small kitchen beside the living room. "Good morning, sleeping beauty," she said as she handed him a plate of food. Noah thanked her and sat down at the two-person table, using a stool as a chair. Aunty Melisa sat across from him and dug into her plate. Her game warden uniform and jacket reeked of cigarettes from across the table. Aunty Melisa's brown hair was shorter than his mother's and done up in a neat ponytail, and her skin was tanned to a caramel hue from her time out in the sun. She was only a few years older than his mother, but her years of smoking gave her a more tired look. Still, those pale blue eyes and the gentle curves of her face offered some soft beauty to her otherwise gruff exterior. She would be quite the catch if she was in the market and stopped smoking like a chimney, his mother used to tell her.

She had an odd charm, like some of his older friends in the grades above him. Aunty Melisa let him binge on junk food and shoot her guns when he visited. She took him horseback riding a few years ago and even asked him to stay a summer with her, but his mother said he was too young. Aunty Melisa quickly became more of a rebellious older sister than an aunt to him growing up, and he was probably the only person she actively enjoyed being around besides his parents.

Noah was barely done with his eggs when she stood up and grabbed her hat and gunbelt from a hook by the door. "Don't wander too far from the cabin. The bears will get ya. There are some snacks in the pantry if you get hungry. Just don't touch my chips. Oh, and don't touch my guns," she said, tussling his hair before leaving for work.

"They still have you working?" Noah was surprised. Fielding a game warden didn't seem like something the state would prioritize. After all, most people had been relocated to jobs that supported the war effort.

"Some pencil pusher forgot to reassign me, but I'm sure as hell not gonna correct them." She laughed and opened the door, letting in the crisp, clean air. "Besides, I never took this job for the pay. Would have done it for free, honestly."

"Well, have a good day, Auntie," he replied. She cursed loudly outside as her truck struggled to turn over before finally coming to life with a sputter on her third try.

After eating and cleaning their dishes, Noah returned to his room and stowed the few possessions he brought in the dresser. Then, Noah sat and tried to work on the thick stack of schoolwork they had given him before the shutdown. He barely made it a page in before his mind wandered, and his thoughts drifted to his parents. A creeping sadness loomed around him as he stared blankly at the page, slowly coiling around his being. The cabin's silence filled with his parents' voices, Ronin's barking, and the engines' roars as they hauled them away. The icy bite in the air seeped deeper into his bones, and everything became distant as if this were all some lifeless dream. He rubbed away the tears building in his eyes before they could spill over.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Remembering what Aunty Melisa and his parents said in the terminal, he shook his head and tapped his cheeks to compose himself. He went outside and wandered around the cabin. His family usually visited in the summer, so the wintery scene made him pause. The sunlight reflecting off the pristine white blinded him as his eyes adjusted. Aunty Melisa's two-story cabin sat perched on a small rise down in a large mountain pass basin. On nearly all sides, mountains rose above them, their snowy peaks touching some low-hanging clouds. A few hundred feet of flat snow separated the cabin from the treeline. A narrow driveway connected the house to the forest road and linked to the service road that led back to the freeway. From somewhere behind the cabin, a large generator purred away, powering the cabin's lights, appliances, and water pump. A wood stove downstairs handled the heating.

Noah's feet crunched in the snow as he carefully descended the slope. The trees were nearly bare of leaves except for some scattered pines. The occasional bird chirped in the branches, and squirrels skittered up the tree trunks at his approach. The creek behind the cabin was frozen but still flowed in a few pockets close to the bank. Noah dipped his hand in the icy water and splashed some on his face to wash away some leftover eye crust from his sleep. He wandered the woods for the rest of the day, his most remarkable discovery being a bald eagle nest hidden in a pine. Noah returned to the cabin when the sun dipped under the mountaintops, draping a shadow over the basin. Aunty Melisa wandered in a bit after sundown. They ate venison steaks with steamed vegetables, and Noah told her of everything he found in the woods. Aunty Melisa nodded as he spoke, only half paying attention but happy that he was enjoying himself.

"Oh, work was boring. I just went out and counted some deer," she said when he asked about her day. She tossed him a soda from the fridge, an act his mother would scold her for so close to bedtime, and they sat together watching old movies on her puny TV.

They settled into this routine as the days and weeks passed. Aunty Melisa would leave for work on the weekdays after breakfast, and Noah would do some light cleaning and schoolwork and spend the rest of the day in the woods. Occasionally, Noah asked her for help with his schoolwork but quickly found out she was not much for teaching. His ears rang from when Aunty Melisa would shout at him for not understanding a math question. It wasn't malicious yelling, more that she thought that being louder would somehow help the jumbled numbers make sense in his head. At night, he and Aunty Melisa would play card games. Noah never won, no matter what game they played. He was pretty sure she cheated, but he didn't mind. He couldn't imagine how Aunty Melisa spent days alone when no one was around, but she brightened when she came through the door and saw Noah every evening. She looked like his mother in those moments and reminded him that he was loved.

"Why didn't you have kids, Auntie?" Noah asked one night as they sat at the table.

She shrugged and tossed a card onto the pile. Tonight's game was spades. "I can't do the whole mom thing—school, clothes shopping, birthday parties," she shuddered as if an ice cube fell down her back. You kids are kind of gross, you know?"

Noah winced. "What about me?"

She laughed and reached over to jostle his hair. "You get a pass, kid. You're my favorite nephew."

"I didn't know you had others, Auntie." Noah laughed as a card fell out of her sleeve and fluttered onto the floor.

"I guess it's a draw. Now get to bed already." She shooed him off as she pulled a carton of cigarettes from her pocket.

Noah went upstairs and waited for a few hours, long enough to let her think he was asleep. Then, careful not to step on the creaky floorboards, he crept out of his room and sat at the top of the stairs where the light did not reach. She forbade him from using it when she wasn't home, but he'd learned Aunty Melisa would turn on the TV and flip through the news channels at night.

The news of the war, both domestic and abroad, grew grimmer by the day. Every night, a series of pasty-faced news anchors with greasy hair would robotically speak of different campaigns with bold, pompous names. Numbers ticked across the bottom of the screen, growing larger daily as casualties mounted on all sides. Images of jets tearing through the sky and tanks rumbling over barbed wires paraded across the 9-inch screen. Tonight, old men in uniforms sat with the anchors and rambled on about tactics and how to move forward.

"The European theater is a lost cause, and our navy has been torn apart in the Pacific," the retired general said. "We cannot continue to shoulder the burden for our so-called allies when we need to shore up our situation at home."

The other commentator smacked his palms on the table and shouted. "You cannot be suggesting we leave our allies and refugees to fend for themselves. It would be a humanitarian crisis."

"In case you haven't noticed, our country is fighting a war on three fronts. We cannot fight the Chinese and Russians while we deal with these governors at home acting like children. We have a civil war on our hands."

They commented that the official war had entered a phase of attrition with all sides in deadlock. Videos of smoldering ships belching out thick black smoke filled the screen, some hoisting American flags and others the red flags of the Chinese and Russians.

The naval forces of both sides had been reduced to the point of occasional skirmishes on the open ocean, a slugfest they called it. The ticker tape across the base of the screen scrolled with the names of ships sunk. When the tallies for different ground units scrolled along the bottom of the news, Aunty Melisa always leaned close to the screen, nearly on her knees. As she watched, she clenched a picture of her, her sister, and his father as children. They'd grown up together, so she had a sister and best friend to lose in this conflict.

Refusing to call the country's situation what it was, the news cut to coverage of the "Civil Unrest" in the south and west.

In the south, with Florida leading the charge, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas had stopped responding to the federal government and had deployed their National Guards and any federal forces that had defected to a new de-facto border that ran from the Mississippi River straight east to the Atlantic. The governor of Florida, the new leader of the Florida Federation, stood at a podium. "We, and our sister states, are tired of offering up our sons and daughters for a senseless war we should never have been a part of. This administration too easily throws away our lives, our tax dollars, and our dignity. We will not tolerate this incompetence any longer. We will do what we know best for our people, regardless of the federal administration's opinion."

Several small-scale skirmishes had occurred on the new border, but no real ground had changed hands. For the moment, everything was at a tense stalemate.

Out west, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana had expressed their sympathy and formed their own collection of states on the Gulf. Most of the midwest was in a tenuous limbo, not outright supporting the breakaway states but not lending the federal government any real support, politically or militarily. The states on the Pacific coast were another matter entirely. California was burning from forest fires and rampant riots in major cities. Oregon and Washington were dealing with protests between breakaway sympathizers and government loyalists.

"And now," the news anchor interrupted the feed of the chaos out west, "a word from our President."

The President of the United States, an area that could only reliably be called everything east of the Mississippi River and north of the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina, appeared at his White House podium. He looked on the brink of collapse. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and he was sweating bullets in front of the cameras.

Noah leaned down, trying to hear the words over the old TV's speakers as best as he could. "My fellow Americans, our great nation finds itself at a crossroads. Our brave men and women bravely hold the line with our allies against foreign tyranny. Still, rather than supporting our forces, several elected officials have taken it upon themselves to act in their selfish interests."

Aunty Melisa took a long drag on her cigarette, nearly burning through half as the President took a breath.

"It is with the deepest regrets that I must inform you that, to support the war effort abroad, I must take action to reclaim key military assets in these states. Among these items are nuclear weapons. To not endanger our positions on the Pacific and European fronts, the draft will expand to include those between the ages of 16 and 50. These forces will be deployed to assist in domestic peacekeeping. As we speak, forces loyal to the US and the Constitution are pushing south toward key assets and bases, as well as west, to ensure that no further unrest arises. I urge those citizens in the southern states who understand the path your governors have taken is not right to seek shelter. For those bearing arms under the banner of rebellion, I suggest you surrender immediately. Any threats to the US or her people will be put down swiftly and decisively. That is all."

Aunty Melisa flipped the channel. Now, an interview with a Pentagon spokesperson filled the screen. At first, the interview was dull and full of cookie-cutter answers to reporter questions. Even the uniformed man on stage looked bored as he spouted off meaningless response after meaningless response. Then, one lady reporter hushed the rabble with one seemingly forbidden question.

"Sir, what do you know of the reported instances of the remaining American overseas units going rogue and refusing to obey orders from their unit commanders?"

The officer's eyes went wide for an instant before he composed himself, but not before the camera caught the flash of fear in his eyes. "We are not at liberty to discuss individual unit operations or statuses. That will be all for tonight, thank you." He shut down the questioning, and the cameras returned to regular news. Reporters asked a CDC worker about the reported instances of erratic behavior and the new eye disease spreading across the country. They were pushed aside by police escorting the doctor along.

The cabin filled with the acrid smell of cigarettes as Aunty Melisa's ashtray overflowed into the early morning hours.

When Noah couldn't take any more watching, he sulked back to his bed and tried to sleep. Nightmares filled his dreams, and on some nights, sleep eluded him completely. He tossed and turned through those cold winter nights, thoughts of his parents racing through his mind. Sometimes, Aunty Melisa would peek into his room and linger for a while, thinking he was asleep. He heard sniffling, but in the morning, she would treat him like always. What she could not hide, however, were the dark bags under her eyes and the occasional nods of her head during small, quick moments in the day.

As winter reached its peak, snow fell in sheets across the basin. Noah's outdoor trips became less frequent as the snow reached up to his waist. Aunty Melisa stayed home more often than not, too. She wasn't getting paid anymore and hadn't heard from her field office or fellow wardens. Only her years of routine kept her leaving the cabin on her rounds every so often, but she never went very far. One morning, when the sky was clear and sunny, and the snow was passable, Aunty Melisa wandered over to him as he worked on his assignments. "Hey, stop being a nerd for a bit. Let's go outside and do something fun."

She handed him a rifle like hers, nearly as long as he was tall, and ushered him out the door before he could say no. He followed close behind her, using her footprints to make trudging through the snow easier. They reached a tall pine, and she helped sling the gun on his back and climb the wooden slats she'd nailed to the trunk and into a hunting blind. Noah's legs were shaky as he ascended with hardly enough space on each slat to pull himself up by his fingertips. About midway up, he froze.

"I don't think I can do this, Auntie." He pinned himself tightly against the tree trunk. He couldn't have been higher than fifteen feet or so. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks, but he thought the wind suddenly picked up. Was the tree swaying in the wind? Was there ice on the handholds?

He started to crane his neck to look down, but Aunty Melisa stopped him with a yell that cut through his thundering pulse. "Stop whining. You're almost there. Just keep moving your feet. I'm not letting you chicken out, so keep it going." Noah felt her boring holes in his back from below. Faced with that look, climbing suddenly became the lesser of two evils. After he shakily hoisted himself into the small blind, Aunty Melisa joined him, practically flying up the tree trunk like a leopard.

While Aunty Melisa was terrible at teaching academics, teaching bushcraft came as naturally to her as breathing. Her instructions were clear, and she spoke calmly even when he was confused. In whispers, she explained the tricks of aiming from different positions and where to aim at various animals. She stressed the fact that regardless of the capacity of his weapon, he only had one shot to take down an animal.

"If you miss your shot, you take your loss and try again later. If you hit the animal in the wrong spot," she paused and jabbed a finger hard into Noah's chest, "it will suffer before it dies somewhere out there. You're my nephew, and I expect you to act right."

After a few hours of chilly boredom, a deer wandered into the clearing below them, pushing its snout into the snow for food. Wordlessly, Aunty Melisa pointed at the deer and nodded. She corrected Noah's aim as he struggled to steady the heavy rifle and put a hand on his shoulder to help him prepare for the recoil. He pulled the trigger and shut his eyes in surprise as the deafening boom and force hit him. The gunshot rang in his ears. The smell of gunpowder stung his nose, and when he opened his eyes again, the deer was on its side.

"Good shot, but keep your eyes open next time. If you shoot with your eyes closed again, I'll staple them open," she said with a crooked grin.

"Hey, Auntie," Noah asked as they climbed down, "don't we need some sort of tag for this?"

Aunty Melisa winked and put a finger to her lips. Next, she taught him how to butcher the meat in the woods. Noah's stomach churned as she made him cut and peel back the animal's skin, then remove its guts. They steamed in a pile nearby, their appearance making him even more queasy. Whenever he fumbled or froze, Aunty Melisa was there with a firm hand on his back, pushing him onward. When it seemed he could handle himself without puking or freezing, she doubled back for her truck and brought it as close to their kill as the trees allowed.

They filled the large coolers in her truck bed as the sun sank beneath the horizon and streams of stars filled the sky. Noah dropped the last morsel of meat in the cooler and collapsed into the passenger seat of her truck, exhausted from stripping and then burying the animal's remains. This became part of their routine as the weeks passed. Aunty Melisa would take him out and teach him about the wilderness. Some nights, they camped out in the forest, sharing a sleeping bag for warmth, and other days, they would hunt deer and small game.

They spent Christmas eating deer steaks and sausages. Aunty Melisa gave him a half-shot of whiskey. The taste was terrible, and Noah nearly vomited, to which she just laughed and smacked him on the back. Around Valentine's Day, Noah reached a point in his schoolbooks where he started to learn about human health. When Aunty Melisa wasn't around, he made it his mission to burn through the fuel in her lighters until hardly any was left. She came home and cursed up a storm, complaining that the lighters must be leaking or defective, and Noah chuckled to himself when she wasn't listening.

The trees slowly began to bear new leaves, and they ran into fawns on their hunting trips. Aunty Melisa was giddy like a child when they spotted their first one, cooing and awing so loud that she scared away the deer. From then on, she took him fishing on their outings.

"Hey, isn't it your birthday soon?" she asked one night over dinner.

"Yeah, in about a week, I think," Noah replied, a piece of steak in his mouth.

Noah came in from wandering in the woods one night, and she greeted him with a party hat and popper when he entered the kitchen. Aunty Melisa was covered in flour and frosting, and on the table sat a misshapen cake. "Happy birthday." She blew one of those silly whistles with a streamer in his face with a goofy grin. She hugged him and spun him around before they sat down to eat. The cake was lumpy, and some parts hadn't been cooked, but Noah didn't care. He shoveled slice after slice into his mouth and followed it with an over-sweetened punch. She just watched with a satisfied look.

As the moon rose over the mountains, her expression slowly turned hard. She stood and fetched a bundle of envelopes from a locked drawer. Noah never saw mail come through, but Aunty Melisa occasionally took the truck into the town at the mouth of the valley. Nothing of importance was in town, and its population could fit on a school bus, so the risk of running into any unrest was minimal. She insisted he stay home on her trips, though, saying that towns were still too dangerous nowadays for a child.

"I got these a few weeks ago. Mail has been a lot less since then. Your mom and dad told me to keep these to myself," she said. She sat back down and folded her hands on the table. But they can't coddle you forever. You're thirteen. You deserve to know what's going on."

Noah stared breathlessly at the plain white envelopes. He looked at her, confused. Was this all right for him to look at? She nodded and slid them closer. Hands trembling, he opened the oldest one from his father dated a few weeks after he left.

The letters were short and lacked much detail. His father remarked about how cold it was where he was stationed on the European front. He said his engineering unit was being kept busy clearing roads of hazards. Ronin had taken a bullet, but the vest had prevented any actual harm. Noah breathed a sigh of relief before continuing. His father couldn't say anything specific about his tasking or places he visited, but he mentioned that the French were useless and 0-3, whatever that meant. He hadn't seen his mother in weeks. She was stationed only a few miles behind the front, but to a frontline soldier that may as well be an ocean away. He said that he was glad that she was okay and away from the bloody mess he was knee deep in day in and day out.

Noah picked up one of the more recent letters from a few weeks ago. His father's tone shifted drastically. The once neat handwriting became barely legible scribbles smeared with dirt. He told Aunty Melisa that this was the worst deployment he'd ever had. Sadly, he was one of the only veterans left in his unit. Draftees with only the bare minimum training filled the ranks, each terrified and looking to him for guidance. As much as he tried, though, Noah's father could not keep them all safe. The pen dug deep into the paper as his father wrote that these boys didn't deserve a life like this.

What caught Noah's attention most was what came next. His father talked about strange people they had run into. Some were military, and some were just civilians. He described one man, an enemy scout they ran into a while back, whose skin was coated in what looked like black ashes. Bullets seemed to do nothing to him, and he seemed mindless, and it took "extreme measures" to take him down, his father said.

Noah set the letter down, scared of what his mother's letter might contain, but curiosity drove him to open the envelope.

His mother's letters were a bit milder compared to his father's. She talked about life on the move. Her unit constantly shifted around the rear since setting up a permanent camp was too dangerous. Weevils had turned up in their food stores, but she said that was par for the course. Chew your food and don't look at your plate, she wrote. Her more recent letters took a similar tone to his father's. Her writing stayed consistent, but the contents became odd. She'd been assigned to the night patrol when some of the more junior soldiers in her team were sent to the front. That night, she ran into a thin woman in a field bordering the town to their rear. The woman was emaciated, her clothes tattered to reveal her skeleton under a thin layer of skin. Her eyes looked green, but his mother thought it was some trick of the night vision goggles. The woman asked her for food and took a step toward her. As she came closer, his mother started feeling faint, and her stomach began to roil with pangs of hunger. She said nothing specific about the woman after that in her letter, but she mentioned that she disagreed with the Colonel's response when she reported the incident.

Her latest letter, the last one in the stack, was from last week. In it, she asked her sister about the news back home. Their unit had received reports of cities being barraged by artillery as the federal government squared off against the rebel states. More worryingly, there were rumors in the ranks about a new disease spreading not only back home but in nearly every country. Something that made people act wild. High command was unresponsive when asked for more details. She pleaded with her sister to keep Noah safe and said she loved them both dearly.

Noah neatly returned all the letters to their envelopes and slid them back to his aunt. He felt warmth rise inside him, along with renewed worry. He was relieved to hear his parents were okay, but the contents they wrote made a lump grow in his stomach. Aunty Melisa set the letters aside and pulled a smoke from her pocket, fiddling with the nearly empty lighter.

"Thank you," Noah whispered. She waved a hand at him.

"No problem. I'm sorry I couldn't get you something better."

"No, this was great, really." Noah hung his head as a few tears rolled down his cheek. She gave up on the lighter and set it down, coming over instead and hugging her nephew.

"They'll be alright, kiddo."

They did their best to forget the letters for the next few days, going about as usual. Everything was normal until one night.

The blaring emergency tone playing on the TV downstairs ripped Noah from his sleep.

"Shit." His aunt yelled a string of four letter words. Noah jumped out of bed and went to his perch at the top of the stairs, not caring if she heard him move. Trembling, he watched the scene downstairs. Aunty Melisa was frantically cursing and jabbing at the broken volume button on the TV. Her ashtray lay on its side, ashes scattered on the ground.

Onscreen, the emergency broadcast rainbow lines crossed the top and bottom of the display. After the emergency tone played again, a robotic voice read the text shown.

"All residents are advised to stay indoors and avoid congregations of large groups of people. All persons must adhere to the curfew promulgated by local governance. All persons displaying abnormal behavior must be reported to the following phone line or local law enforcement."

A phone number lingered onscreen for a minute before the message continued.

"Additionally, there have been reports of violence and insurrectionist activity in new areas outside openly rebellious states. Actions of this nature will be met with deadly force by local law enforcement and Guard units. Participants in such actions are to cease or be subject to execution. As the situation develops, more information will be passed on all channels and the following radio station."

A radio station flashed on screen before the emergency tone repeated, and the message played again. After the second loop, the screen went dark before turning to static.

"What the hell does that mean?" Aunty Melisa shouted as she hit the TV. "Abnormal behavior?"

Noah shrunk against the wall as she turned to face his direction. He held his breath and froze as still as he could. Her face softened as she realized he'd seen the whole thing.

"Noah, come here," she said. She brushed some hair out of her face and did her best to compose herself. Reluctantly, Noah rose to his feet and joined her. She knelt to meet his eyes and took his hands in hers.

"Don't worry, kiddo. I'm here, alright? I won't let anything happen, okay?" she said, squeezing his hands.

Noah nodded, trying his best to stop shaking.

"Good, now get some rest. You'll be helping me tomorrow."