And drank.
CHAPTER TEN
With fall riding chilly winds, Fallon traveled to both emerging bases. When needed, she brought supplies, personnel, drawing from New Hope, Arlington, even what Mick had dubbed The Beach.
With Poe, Kim, and Kilo’s people, she set up Bayview. With Flynn and Starr, Forestville. As October waned, she had bases on three sides of D.C., and plans to cover the fourth.
“Rock Creek Forest.” She showed her father on the map.
“Close, and without the river as a natural boundary. D.C. gets wind you’re moving in there…”
“It has to be a covert operation. It’s forested, mostly uninhabited. Most who escaped D.C. kept going. There’s game, a strong creek, nearby houses. This? Was a school, a good-sized campus, with its buildings largely intact.”
“You’ve scouted?”
“A few times now. Strategically, it’s tailor-made for a scouting base. Here?” She moved her finger over the map. “A small city, deserted, wasted, borders D.C. We’ll leave it for now, but it’ll be useful after.”
“After we take D.C.”
Not if, she thought, not from her father. “Right. Thomas has nearly a hundred and fifty at his camp now, the faerie bower more than sixty, the shifter’s den nearly the same. I’ve asked for who they can spare, and we could put a hundred. A hundred,” she repeated, “skilled at blending into forests, living in and from them in Rock Creek. Nobody moves faster than an elf, and shifters and faeries aren’t far behind.”
“When we’re ready, we attack from all directions.”
“All.” She pulled out her map of D.C. and went over the tactics and timing, the troop movements with him.
Then she drew in a breath. “And with Duncan’s forces, less those who’ll stay back to defend Utah, Troy’s, and forces from New Hope, we hit here.”
Simon stared at her when she jabbed a finger at the map. “Jesus, Fallon, from inside? Pennsylvania Avenue?”
“We flash. Five thousand soldiers.”
He had to sit back. “You can do that? Five thousand?”
She smiled. “It’ll take a lot of tonic for the NMs, but yes, we can do it. Five thousand from inside the lines, another five thousand breaking the lines from all directions.”
“We’d have them outnumbered, when you add in whatever resistance forces are in or around the city.” As he considered, Simon rose to wander the kitchen. “Still, it’s their turf, the structures, the roadways. They’ve got tanks and armored vehicles, and access to some serious weapons. But…”
He stopped. “A coordinated surprise attack? It’s bold, baby. It could work.”
“We need it to work. It’ll take more than ten thousand to take New York, to take the West, to cross oceans. Taking Arlington added to our numbers, our assets. It inspired. Taking D.C., defeating the seat of a government that hunts its own people? Pays bounties on children because they’re different? It strikes a blow to the heart of the enemy.”
“When?”
“We’ve got more to do, but … Even though it took longer than I’d hoped, I’d started to worry it would take longer yet. Arlington changed that. January second.”
Understanding, he nodded. “The day the first died. The day Katie’s father died of the Doom.”
“And the day I was conceived. Magicks began their rise, both the light and the dark. Another symbol, I guess.”
She knew it in her head, her gut, in her blood.
“January second.”
* * *
Duncan held the Samhain ritual—you had to respect rites and traditions—and made it optional. You also had to respect some of the base, and plenty of the NMs on it, didn’t want to get into calling on gods and dead ancestors.
But when he cast the circle, lit the candles, brought food and flowers to the altar, it surprised him how many came out, either to participate or to watch.
He decided they figured, as he did, a band of eighty-three on a base in the desert could use all the power it could get.
So he said the words, called the elements, let the power roll through him, from him. He thought of his grandparents, the father he’d never known, the man who’d stood—too briefly—as a father to him. Of Denzel, who’d been a brother. Of Marly and Len, of all who’d fallen in the fight.
The wind sighed and stirred in that vast space, the voices rose up like the buttes into a sky gone bloodred with the setting sun.
And he felt her, for the first time in weeks felt her in the sigh and stir, heard her in the rise of voices. She, too, would have cast the circle, lit the candles, brought the food and flowers. As he knew his own thoughts, he knew she thought of the father she’d never known, of the lost and the fallen.
So for a moment, almost painfully, he was linked to her, as if he gripped her hand. For that moment, almost painful, they joined in prayer and purpose.
Then she was gone.
Out of habit he patrolled the base after nightfall. The eighty-two with him knew their jobs, but he patrolled because it kept him busy, kept the troops sharp. He had armed sentries on six-hour shifts, had transformed the half-assed PW base into a secure and fortified one, a self-sustaining one with gardens, livestock, wind and solar power, a supply hut, an armory, infirmary, disciplined troops.
Some still green, he thought, but the hours of training, the rotations of scouting, scavenging, cooking, drilling had sharpened them up.
Still, some of them were green, and he’d need every one of them seasoned, well seasoned, by January second.
He’d heard that on the wind. She’d probably send word to him, though she had to have felt him just as tangibly as he had her. But Fallon would send word, one way or the other, and he’d prepare those troops for the onslaught on D.C.
Not yet enough of them, and that worried him. Not all they’d freed had stayed. Most, but not all, and the scouting had only gathered in a handful.
He knew there were more, he’d felt that, too. Watching. Waiting for who knew what.
Restless, edgy, mildly pissed off for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint, he got his bike. He’d ride out a few miles, take a little solo time, let the wind and speed blow away the mood.
He went out through a checkpoint, then opened the bike up on the long, flat road. From the first, he appreciated the sights, scents, sounds of the West. The echoing canyons, the fast rivers with their wild rapids tumbling, the sheer brilliance of the stars. But tonight, he yearned for home, the fields and forests, the roll of hills, his family, his friends. All the familiar.
When he’d worked with Mallick, he’d been able to take an hour or two now and again to flash home. But here, fully in charge, he couldn’t afford the luxury.
The agrodome had just begun—ha-ha—to bear fruit. Coyotes and wildcats meant constant vigilance with the livestock. Scavenging alone could equal a full-time job.
He shouldn’t, he knew, even be out like this, but, God, he needed it.
He needed to kick up the hand-to-hand training. D.C. meant street fighting, of the ugly and bloody. He wondered if he could devise a way to conjure the illusion of streets, buildings, rubble. It would help if he had a clear idea what D.C. looked like. It sure as hell wouldn’t look like the old pictures and DVDs.