Written in Fire

CHAPTER 4

Luke Hammond woke screaming without making a sound.

The screaming: watching his sons burn alive.

Joshua burning in the sky as his Wyvern came apart around him, jet fuel exploding in a wash of light sucked into his lungs to scorch him from the inside out as he fell, endlessly. Zack burning in his tank, trapped in twisted metal, hair on fire and skin bubbling as thick black polymer smoke choked the world.

Every time he’d closed his eyes for the last two weeks, he watched them die.

The silence: forty years of service beginning on long-range recon patrol in Viet Nam. LRRP, meaning way the hell out of bounds, so at nineteen he’d learned to wake fully aware and in control, because those who woke foggy died.

Wan sunlight beat down from a white Wyoming sky. Ninety-three million miles away, the sun was, and since his sons had died that number somehow seemed to mean something. Not the digits, the distance, the way something that means everything can also be forever out of reach.

“He’s here.”

Luke sat up, leaned against the frame of the pickup bed. December, and chilly, though thankfully not much snow. Snow might have done them in. He’d retired from the army two years ago, but he still did an immediate situational assessment, just like every time he woke, even though until recently the sitrep went something like: 0317 HOURS, AWAKENED BY STRONG NEED TO URINATE.

Today, though—lately, though.

Situation report: The beautiful boys who used to run at you, arms wide, saying, “Up! Up!” are dead. The sun-stained hours pushing them on swings and dabbing hydrogen peroxide on skinned knees did not protect them. The moments they fell asleep in your arms and you, bone-tired and sore, stayed where you were because you knew that this transient sweetness needed to be drunk deep—those moments did not keep them safe. The thousands of times you told them you loved them provided no shelter.

Your sons are dead. Burned alive. They are ninety-three million miles away.

What is left of you is fifty-nine years old. Washboard belly and pincushion feet. You were sleeping in the cold metal bed of your pickup truck, five miles outside Rawlins, Wyoming, a town built for passing through. Surrounded by thousands of similarly wounded men and women, all gathered for a purpose none of you can quite name.

“He’s here.”

Luke pushed the blankets aside and slid out of the truck. To the soldier who’d woken him, he said, “They still coming in?”

“Yes, sir. Faster than ever.”

He nodded. Drew a deep breath, the air cold in his lungs—Josh’s lungs were scorched by a fire that burned at a thousand degrees—and went to meet his old boss.

Major General Samuel Miller, retired, wore the weather-beaten features Luke associated with cowboys, but his eyes had a city-savvy that weighed, measured, and collated the world. He wore fatigues with rank insignia, two stars on center chest, and looked more comfortable in the ACUs than in the slacks-and-polo combo he’d worn the last time they’d been together.

“Luke,” the general said, shaking his hand and then pulling him into a hug. “I’m so sorry. Josh and Zack were good men. Good soldiers.”

“Thank you.”

His old friend studied him. “How are you holding up?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

The general nodded. “Stupid question. I’m sorry.”

“Let me show you around.”

They climbed into his truck, the interior as spotless as the body. He’d once taken pride in such things. Had once thought they mattered. Luke turned up the heat and then started moving, the dry ground crunching beneath his tires. “More than eight thousand people here now, and more arriving every hour.”

The encampment was without order, tents flung up wherever people had stopped. They stood in loose groups, leaning against vehicles and talking, or warming their hands over smoldering campfires. Most had rifles slung over one shoulder or sidearms in hip holsters. They passed a motorcycle club, fifty bikes parked at precise angles, hard men drinking Budweiser beside a growing mountain of crumpled empties. The bikers nodded at Luke, and he nodded back.

“You’ve made the rounds.”

“Yeah. Ever since you said you were coming out. Softening the ground.”

“What are they like?”

“The stories are all different, and exactly the same.”

Luke gave the general a casual tour, letting him take in the whole through its parts:

A militia out of Michigan practicing maneuvers in forest-green camouflage that popped against the brown scrub. The bus they’d arrived on had once been for schoolchildren, but it was now painted with the name THE NEW SONS OF LIBERTY, the letters five feet tall and gripped in the talons of a screaming eagle.

A bonfire burning, a circle of rednecks wasting a week’s worth of wood in one afternoon, Credence Clearwater blaring like this was the mother of all tailgates.

A man field-stripping a Kalashnikov while a woman smoked and watched.

A circle of soldiers, gone AWOL but still in uniform, exchanging a sort of rough laughter Luke recognized. It was the kind that stood in for tears.

General Miller said, “They’re a mess.”

“They are. But more keep coming. All they need is leadership.” He turned the truck around. “Show you something else.”

Five minutes threading through campsites took them to the northern edge of the encampment. Beyond was nothing but rocky desert and gray sky—and, a mile away, a twenty-foot fence topped with concertina wire. The boundary of the New Canaan Holdfast. Twenty-three thousand square miles of land, 24 percent of the state of Wyoming, all owned by Erik Epstein, who had turned it into a sort of abnorm Israel. Luke shut off the engine. “Looks different in person, doesn’t it?”

With the engine off, they could hear the wind, a low, mournful whistle that sounded like it had come from far away. Miller said, “I’m not going to insult you by saying that this won’t bring your sons back. But I need to know if that’s the only reason.”

“Why?”

“It’s reason enough to follow. But I want you to help lead.”

Luke stared out the window. One finger at a time, he cracked the knuckles of his left hand. When he was done, he moved to the right. “Last week, I woke up on my couch. I’d gotten drunk the night before, thought it might help me with the dreams. All that happened was that I had a hangover to deal with too. I’d fallen asleep with the tri-d on, and it was some Sunday morning news program. One of those yappy debate shows. And there was this kid. Nice hair, bright shirt, Rolex. He was talking about how maybe the best thing to do was just let the NCH secede. Give them sovereignty, get on with things.” For a moment he was back there, head cracked in a vise, teeth feeling furry, Zack’s screams ringing in his ears, and this kid on his tri-d. “And this wave of something came over me. It wasn’t anger, or hatred. It was . . . sadness. I felt sad for this kid, so ready to walk away from everything, and then it occurred to me how many others there must be like that. Next thing I knew I was in my truck, and then I was here, staring at that fence. And I wasn’t alone.”

Luke turned to his old boss. “Am I furious? Of course. Do I want revenge? Shit yeah. But it’s more than that. That land out there, past the fence, it’s still America. And I’ve spent my life defending America. I’m not ready to just let Erik Epstein destroy it, no matter how many billions he has or how much of Wyoming he owns.”

For a long moment, General Miller said nothing. Just stared at the desert and the fence with those eyes, those ever-appraising eyes.

Then he said, “Good answer.”