As she had stumbled from the Liberty Center that day, she had fixated on the shattered glass case around the Liberty Bell, what was left of it splattered with red.
Happy July Fourth, America. Here’s your freedom, drenched in blood.
A black SUV pulled in front of her just before a red light. She didn’t think anything of it until an identical one pulled in behind her. The light turned green, and the SUV in front didn’t move.
She laid into her horn.
The SUV still didn’t move. The one behind her had stopped so close, she couldn’t pull out and go around.
What was this?
Other drivers honked, drove around, flipped the bird.
A door opened on the back SUV. A hulking man in a T-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses walked to her Escort, a gun in a shoulder holster. He didn’t even try to hide that he was packing.
“Oh, God,” Emily said.
She fumbled in her purse for the mace she had taken to carrying since the attack, then thought better of it. She could spray him and run, but she couldn’t spray every person in two SUVs. She stuffed the canister into her pocket.
The man pressed a badge to her window. National Security Agency.
“Get out of the car, ma’am.”
The badge might be real, or not. She shut off her engine and cracked the window.
“Is something wrong?”
“Out of the car, please.”
His gun hung at her eye level, an implicit threat. She opened the door and got out.
“What’s this about?” she asked.
“Someone wants to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“Just come with me, ma’am.”
She went, and tried to not hyperventilate.
The SUV’s back seat was dark behind tinted windows. Emily slid onto the brown leather. A person sat beside her. Emily could make out only a silhouette.
“Hello, Ms. Grant.”
Emily gasped. She knew that voice.
Stay there. Play dead. Don’t move.
It was the Major.
“Buckle up,” the Major said.
Emily’s breath came quicker. Her heart jackhammered. She clicked her seat belt. The Major rapped the glass between the front and back seats, and the SUV moved.
“My car—”
“Will be fine until you get back.”
“I’m going back?”
“That depends on you.”
“You’re not NSA.”
A faint smile. “What makes you say that?”
“Your accent is British.”
“Let’s say I’m on loan.”
The SUV made a right turn. A blur of coffee shops, restaurants, stores, streetlights, trees, and pedestrians passed outside the tinted windows. A clink of metal drew Emily’s gaze to the Major’s lap, where she gripped a gun in a familiar way. As if she had been born holding it.
Emily shivered. “Why am I here?”
Suddenly, the Major was in Emily’s face. One second she had been across the seat; the next she forced Emily back until the door handle jabbed into her spine. The gun pressed into Emily’s side, colder than she had thought possible. Her muscles tensed so hard they hurt. She felt for the mace in her pocket, but who was she kidding? “We eat cornflakes for breakfast,” Craig had said. “She eats bullets.” Then she killed zombies for lunch. In a fight, Emily didn’t stand a chance.
“You’re asking questions,” the Major said.
“How do you know about that?”
“That doesn’t matter. Here’s what does: You need to stop your investigation.”
Or what? Emily almost asked, but she feared the answer had to do with the gun, so she said nothing.
Her investigation had drawn these agents to her. They hadn’t started this. She had. And her decision alone would determine how it ended. That gave her leverage.
Or it might get her killed.
“This is about national security,” the Major said. “I’m not asking you to drop it. I’m ordering you. Do you understand?”
“I hate guns,” Emily said, voice trembling. “The attack. Please.”
The gun pressed harder into her side.
“Understand?”
“On one condition.”
A scowl. “What condition?”
“Tell me what happened on July Fourth. Not for print. Say it’s off the record, if you like. It’s for me alone. I need the truth.”
The Major searched her eyes. Emily met her gaze unflinching, one of the hardest things she had ever done. Finally, the Major nodded.
“I see you do.”
“I’ll drop my investigation, I swear. I won’t print it.”
“I believe you,” she said, as though she knew something about Emily’s ethical code. How much did she know? She must have one hell of an information source. “You have until the SUV stops.”
The Major set the gun on her lap.
Emily dove in.
“Was there a hallucinogen?”
“No.”
Despite herself, Emily smiled, relieved. She wasn’t crazy. “Was there a pathogen in the darts, a bioweapon that turned people into—” She stopped.
“Zombies? Yes, there was.”
Holy crap.
“Was it contagious?”
The Major took a shuddering breath. “Very. Those who were infected were driven to infect others by any means.”
“Like a bite,” she said, thinking of Craig.
“Especially a bite.”
“That’s why you killed them.”
“They were already dead.” Her voice was steady but sad. “It was over the moment the pathogen entered their bodies. Our only option was to eliminate all the carriers right then. Otherwise, the pathogen would have spread, uncontrolled, across the Earth.”
That sank in. The human species would have been wiped out. But it hadn’t been, thanks to this woman and her fellow agents, while Emily had only cowered under Craig’s body and then drowned herself in a bottle of bourbon.
She had been weak.
Her face heated with shame.
“Who are you?” Emily asked. “What’s your name?”
The Major stared. Her expression softened.
The SUV stopped.
The door opened, letting in fresh air. An agent stood there. Emily blinked at the sudden invasion of sunlight.
“She’s free to go,” the Major said to the agent, then added to Emily, “Remember your promise. I’ll be watching.”
Emily didn’t doubt it.
The SUV had parked behind her Escort. They had gone around the block. As soon as Emily got out, blinking in the bright sun, both SUVs pulled out and drove off down the street. Gone. As though she had dreamed it. Except Emily knew the truth now and couldn’t tell a soul. She slid into her driver’s seat and imagined what devastation the pathogen would have caused had it spread. On this street alone: wrecked cars, broken windows, looting, gunfire, screams, and moans.
Then she imagined herself as one of the agents who had prevented that apocalypse, wrapped in Kevlar, a gun in each hand, picking off the infected with perfect shots like targets in a carnival game.
That just wasn’t her.
A pickup honked.
“Come on, lady, go!”
She wanted to yell back, Shut up, you’re lucky to be alive! Instead she flipped him off, turned on the ignition, and drove. Two blocks later, she made the vow. No more wallowing. No more drink. No more suspensions. She should have died on July Fourth, but she hadn’t. This was another chance to not screw up her life, and she wouldn’t waste it.
Only when she parked outside Mia’s day care did she remember that Major hadn’t said her name.
* * *
A month later, Emily listened to the police scanner in the newsroom while hunting through social media feeds for news. A murder or car wreck. She’d settle for a cat up a tree.
On one of the newsroom’s many televisions, set to CNN on mute, the words BREAKING NEWS and TERRORIST ATTAC
K FOILED blared across the screen in capital letters, bright red. The pretty blond anchor looked solemn as she talked into the camera.
“Hey, John,” Emily yelled. “Turn that up.”
John, who sat next to the TV, thumbed the volume.
“… not giving details on the attack,” the anchor said. “Again, here’s what we know at this time. The intended attack was global in nature, but halted at the last minute by an American strike team…”
Emily listened intently.
She didn’t jump at every car backfire anymore, not since she had learned the truth about the Liberty Center attack. She had feared she would never sleep soundly again, but that night, her insomnia had melted away and she had slept better than in weeks. She’d called her AA sponsor and attended meetings. She spent more time with Mia. She had even started yoga classes three mornings a week. Life got better.
But she still paid attention to any terrorist action anywhere in the world. “It’s an obsession,” Chuck said, and he was right.
No one could blame her, considering.
The CNN anchor put a hand to her earpiece. “We’re getting new information. I’m told the Defense Department is confirming a death. A British agent. This is the first we’ve heard about any nationality besides American involved in the action. The DOD has released a photo and a name.”
The photo flashed on the screen.
She wore a uniform, her hair pulled back.
Smiling. Happy.
Emily had never seen her happy.
She doubled over her trash can and vomited up the coffee and bagel she’d had for breakfast.
“Are you all right?” John asked.
“Fine,” she said.
“Not pregnant, are you?”
“Are you?” she snapped back.
That shut him up. She wiped off her mouth and walked to Chuck’s desk. Today’s tie sported stripes of deep green and silver—Philadelphia Eagles colors. He was typing an email.
“In a minute,” he said.
“It’s important.”
“So is this. We’re trying to find out if there’s any local connection to that.” He pointed at another TV, also tuned to coverage of the attack.
“There is,” Emily said.
He stopped typing. “Go on.”
“The British agent who died was at the Liberty Center. She was in charge of the agents who brought down the attackers.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not having a relapse, are you? Because if this is another one of your delusions—”
Emily bristled. “Every survivor I interviewed talked about her. No one knew her name, but they all described a female British agent that the other agents called Major. That’s her. She was there.”
Chuck swiveled his chair to face her. “She’s the one who saved your life.”
“Yes.”
“Do you need to go home? Take the day off?”
That sounded attractive.
She couldn’t.
“I need to write this story, Chuck.”
“You’re too close to it.”
“That’s why it has to be me. I can’t bear the thought of anyone else doing it. I already have the contacts and interviews from before.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded.
“Then it’s yours. This isn’t the hard news. The wires will have that covered. You write the reaction from local survivors. That woman is a hero, twice over. That’s the story. I want you to do your best to answer one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who is she?”
“The DOD isn’t going to release that information—”
He waved her off. “I don’t care about the DOD. I want to know who she is to the survivors. Think you can do that?”
Oh, yes, she could.
“Absolutely, boss.”
“Then get to it.”
Emily returned to her desk, pulled up her file of survivors’ phone numbers, picked one, and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Tim Weiss?”
“Yes.”
“This is Emily Grant at the Inquirer. Have you seen the news?”
A pause. “I thought I might hear from you.”
Emily worked the story hard, well into the afternoon. This was her zone, what she did best. She left out what the Major had told her. That promise she would never break. Instead, she wove in her memories with the other survivors’ stories. Their hero was dead. No one could bring her back. But Emily could bring her to life on the page, help people to know her as more than a name and photograph, and make certain she finally received the recognition she deserved.
* * *
Details on the attack leaked over the next few days. The Extinction Wave. Cyrus Jakoby. And the woman who stopped them.
The influence of Emily’s article in setting the public conversation was huge and immediate. Media across the United States and as far away as Russia and Australia picked up the story. Emily did interviews with CNN, BBC. Some of her co-workers joked about her sudden fame, but in every interview, Emily deflected attention from herself. She wasn’t the hero, and she made sure everyone knew it.
The world needed real heroes.
Now more than ever.
The funeral was six days later in Baltimore. The procession past the coffin took hours. Thousands of people came, but only a few hundred attended the private service. Those seats went to the president and First Lady, members of Congress, heads of state, ambassadors.
Because of her article, Emily received the honor of an invitation—not as a reporter but as a mourner. That was the deal. She couldn’t write about the funeral because no press was allowed.
She sat in the back and cried.
In this chapel were the people who kept the world safe. They asked for no recognition, but they had Emily’s total respect. She had never fired a gun. She couldn’t stop a terrorist attack. But she could bring sense to the nonsensical. Her tools were phones and computers, and her bullets were words. Her work wasn’t flashy, but it was just as important, in its own way.
It was enough.
Emily walked past the coffin, which was closed. She appreciated that. She didn’t want her last memories to be of a body. She brushed her fingertips over the American and British flags draped over the top and moved away.
Three blocks from the chapel, in a green, leafy park, an impromptu memorial had sprung up, the kind where people left flowers and Hallmark cards. Someone had donated a pink teddy bear. The fur was matted and one eye was missing, perhaps a child’s cherished friend and the biggest way that child could say thank you.
Traffic roared in the distance. A squirrel chattered and scurried up a tree while a young woman in military blues walked up, set down a single red rose, snapped a salute, and walked away.
Emily knelt by the memorial, took a folded paper from her pants pocket, and laid it beside the teddy bear. She didn’t have to unfold the paper to know what she had written.
“The first time, you saved my life. The second time, you saved my sanity. The third time, you saved the world. Thank you, Major Grace Courtland.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Campbell-Hicks’s work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nature: Futures, Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera for a New Age, and many other anthologies and magazines. She is a journalist who was on the Pulitzer Prize–winning staff of the Denver Post and lives in Colorado with her husband, her two children, and her dog. Visit her blog at www.jennifercampbellhicks.blogspot.com.
PSYCH EVAL
BY LARRY CORREIA
“Why am I being interrogated?” she snapped as soon as Rudy walked through the door.
“Relax. It’s just an interview.”
“Then why does the sign say INTERROGATION ROOM?”
Rudy pulled out a chair and sat down across the metal table from one of the survivors of Bowie Team. She was obviously suspicious and frightened, but his goal w
as to help, not make this adversarial. Lieutenant Carver had been through enough already. Rudy’s plan was to be his normal, good-humored self, and help this brave soldier through the aftermath of her ordeal.
Unless Mr. Church’s suspicion was right, and she was a murderous traitor, because then her fate was out of his hands.
“This room is what the army had available on short notice. Believe me, I’d much rather be having this conversation in a nice office.” As usual, he wanted to make his patient feel safe and comfortable. Only it was summer in Texas, the building’s air conditioner was dying, and it was muggy enough in these stuffy, windowless rooms that sweat rings were already forming on his shirt. So comfort was out, but Rudy could still try to make her feel safe.
“We’ve not spoken before, Lieutenant Carver. I’m Dr. Sanchez. You can call me Rudy.”
“The Department of Military Sciences’ number one shrink. I know who you are, so I know why you’re here. But I’m not crazy.”
“Nobody said you were.”
“I’m not a liar. I know what I saw. I gave my report.”
She was clearly agitated. Rudy had read her file on the way over. The DMS mission was so sensitive that every team member’s background had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Her record wasn’t just clean, it was spotless. Her service record was exemplary. Carver’s previous psych evaluation had made her sound as a rock, solid under pressure, but the poor young woman in front of him today had been reduced to an emotional wreck.
He’d watched her through the one-way glass before coming in. She’d spent the whole time staring off into space and occasionally muttering something incomprehensible to herself. Now that there was another person for her to focus on, she was demonstrating bad tremors in her hands. Her eyes kept flicking nervously from side to side. By all accounts Carver had been fine before leaving on this mission, but she’d developed several severe nervous tics in the last forty-eight hours.
“I’ve read your report, Lieutenant. Do you mind if I call you Olivia?” She didn’t respond, so he went with it. “Believe me, Olivia, I’m on your side. After some of the things I’ve heard from other teams over the years, I never assume anybody in this outfit is lying, regardless of what they say they ran into.”