Empire

Before The Withdrawal

February 20, 2112

Stacy Bekins was sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Harbor Museum. Rain pattered on her thick brown hair, running over her shoulders and down her back to the cold stone beneath her. She watched dully as her shoes darkened with moisture, feeling the water pooling in the soles.

"What are you doing out here?" P.O. Voorhees threw a plastic raincoat over her shoulders. "Stacy? You with me?" She was unresponsive. Voorhees knelt to bring himself eye-to-eye with the girl. She stared through him. She was in shock.

Stacy was a checkout girl at the PX the troops had established inside the museum. The portraits, skeletons and relics once kept there were decades lost; the building had served off and on as an emergency shelter. Major Briggs, the latest man placed in charge of the Harbor's security, had decided the space would be better utilized as a grocery store.

The soldiers were being paid in credit, and they spent it all inside the museum. MREs were often passed up in favor of luxury items like cigarettes, aspirin and underwear. Voorhees had noticed the soldiers getting thinner and thinner inside their fatigues. And they all smoked.

He helped Stacy to her feet — hauled her, really — and took her through the doors to the guard post in the museum entryway. A grunt with glazed eyes watched them from his reclining chair. "She's been out there for an hour," he said.

"You didn't think to say anything? Ask her if she was all right? Get her out of the rain?" Voorhees gave the soldier a dark glare, but the disinterested boy merely looked away.

A woman Voorhees knew as Corporal Elliot strode toward them from the PX. She had a brown paper bag under her arm. The only thing they bagged were personal hygiene items. The young guard also noticed the parcel and smiled slyly.

Elliot kicked the chair out from under him. Chair and grunt slammed into the floor with a sharp crack. "You sit up straight. You're not on vacation." The corporal snapped.

Voorhees gave the guard a sly smile of his own, then turned to Elliot. Stacy hadn't made a sound this entire time; hadn't reacted to the guard's fall. "Something's wrong with this girl." Voorhees told Elliot. She nodded with concern and gestured outside. Her Humvee was across the street.

They hustled Stacy through the rain to the vehicle. Soldiers posted on the sidewalk saluted crisply.

"She works in the PX, doesn't she?" Elliot asked. Voorhees nodded as he eased Stacy into the back seat.

"Stacy, did something happen?" The P.O. looked into her eyes for any glimmer of awareness. It wasn't uncommon for people, especially young people, to have a breakdown or two when faced with the reality outside the city walls. The soldiers had been very, very good, working in conjunction with Voorhees' men to keep the perimeter secure and torch anything that managed to worm its way inside. But the threat of the undead wasn't what made these kids crack, Voorhees knew; it was knowing that they'd never live a free, "normal" life, the life that had existed a century prior. They would grow up always having to look over their shoulders, like early Man did, except that today's humanity wanted more than survival. They wanted their lives to mean something greater.

He forgot all that when he saw the bruising on Stacy's underarms. He reached gently for her arms to get a better look, and she recoiled. Her face became a rictus of abject terror.

"Stacy," he asked softly, "it's all right now. You're safe.

"Did someone attack you?"

Corporal Elliot's jaw was working as she silently observed. She knew where this was going. A burning apprehension was building in her breast.

There had been two sexual assaults reported in the city since the year began. The victims were women, both grabbed in an isolated area of town, both raped from behind while their assailant whispered vile threats. Neither could identify him. But they both thought it was a soldier.

Of course they did.

Was there any proof? A shred of evidence? No. It could just as well be a longtime resident of Jefferson Harbor…but Elliot's pride would only take her so far before her common sense stepped on the brakes.

The soldiers were the ones in control, the soldiers were empowered to protect civilians from the rotters and each other. And soldiers whose psyches were bent and frayed by the horror of modern combat sometimes took out their frustration in unspeakable ways. There wasn't a counselor or chaplain in sight to speak to; prescription meds were out of the question in the field. It was all blood and rain and the endless, fruitless battle against the undead.

Was it really fruitless? The corporal asked herself. Did she believe that they were at a stalemate against the rotters — or worse, that they were losing?

Who could say, really? She only knew what was going on with this unit. The radio propaganda from the north wasn't informative in the least. She knew there was talk among the ranks, again, of a possible withdrawal. Did that constitute a stalemate? Or was it merely surrendering to the dead and retreating?

(They'll follow us you know they will)

Stacy Bekins looked as if she'd already surrendered her sanity.

Voorhees noticed that her jeans were zipped but not buttoned. Her shirt, untucked, had a few stains on the front, but they were faded…

She'd walked back to the museum from the scene of the rape and sat there in the rain, trying to wash her body and mind clean.

"Was it just one man?" Voorhees asked. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She stared past him still, until her lip began to tremble controllably. Then she looked away.

"Stacy," Elliot whispered, "would you feel more comfortable talking alone with me?"

"I need to be here to take her statement." Voorhees muttered. Elliot frowned. "Come on."

"It's nothing personal, Corporal-"

"It's nothing but personal, Patrol Officer." Elliot nodded toward Stacy, the girl's white-knuckled hands clasped in her lap, eyes glued to the window. Voorhees didn't have any female officers.

"I…I'll stand outside." He turned away before Elliot could respond and stepped out of the Hummer.

Back in the rain. Pulling his walkie-talkie from his trench coat, he tuned it to the band reserved exclusively for his officers. Didn't want any of the Army grunts listening in. "Wood, what's your twenty?"

"Sir. Heading south through Midtown Park."

"Good, meet me at the museum entrance. Looks like we've got another two-six-oh. Weisman, you get all that?"

"Yes sir." Mike Weisman was acting as dispatcher back at the PD. He'd have to record the shift's radio traffic by hand. It was a bitch, which was one of the reasons Voorhees often did it himself; that, and he couldn't read the chicken scratch that half of his officers used.

"You want me out there?" Weisman asked through static. He'd interviewed the last two victims. Voorhees responded, "No, you stay put. We'll compare notes later on."

"Copy that."

P.O. Wood slipped and stumbled as he rounded the corner of the museum. Voorhees waved him over to the Humvee. "Corporal Elliot's in there trying to calm her nerves. It's Stacy Bekins from the PX, looks like the attack just happened. I want you to go in there and get her work schedule. Find out if she was there today."

Wood nodded and hustled across the street. Elliot propped open the Hummer's passenger door. "Officer?"

He stepped back into the vehicle, out of the harsh weather and into a young girl's relived nightmare.

It was hours later, with the sun parting the storm clouds, when Voorhees headed to the Greeley district of town to make his rounds. The residential area was right beside the eastern wall, and though soldiers frequently patrolled the streets, people still liked to see a familiar face out there. He knocked on the front door of the Stanton house. Their boy was sick with a cold.

"How's he doing?" Voorhees asked when mother Marie opened up. She smiled. "A couple of soldiers brought us some medicine. They paid for it themselves down at the PX. Wasn't that nice?"

"It sure was." He felt a twinge of shame at being unable to provide the same services himself. The Harbor Medical Plaza's pharmacies had been emptied out, mostly by looters, and the rest was now housed in the PD's basement, but supplies were running low.

"Cody's feeling much better," Marie continued. "Once he's fully recovered from that bug, I think…well, we're talking about leaving."

"Where will you go?" Voorhees asked. "Haven't you heard?" She replied excitedly. "It was on the radio this morning. The Senate passed a new bill-"

"Hey there Voorhees." Bill Stanton stepped out from behind the door and gestured for the P.O. to come in. "You want a drink? This Army shit almost tastes like water, you should try it."

"Bill." Marie said scoldingly. Her husband grinned and pulled Voorhees in by his shoulder. "Take a load off for a few minutes."

Twelve-year-old Cody was on the couch in the living room, covered by a blanket. There were a couple of chairs for the adults, and on a table across the room, patriotic hymns played softly on the family radio.

Voorhees took a chair and waved to Cody. "What's this I just heard from your wife?" He called over his shoulder. "About a Senate bill?"

"It's the withdrawal," Bill said with a sort of shrug. "Passed unanimously. It starts in a couple of weeks."

"They want to have everyone out of the badlands by July." Marie said, tucking the blanket in around Cody's legs and feet. "By the badlands, they mean here, and everywhere else outside of the 'New Great Lakes area'."

"So they've redrawn our borders again?" Voorhees smirked and shook his head. Invisible lines that the rotters paid no mind to. He hadn't paid much mind to them either; few people had, in fact, in the beginning. When the Senate started designating areas of the country as "uninhabitable", there had been protests from the cities still standing in those areas. Of course, the cities fell without any federal support. Then, the Senate declared over the airwaves that they'd been right, and more people started listening. And so it went: the government continued erasing and redrawing America's lines, abandoning the East and West Coasts, abandoning the U.S.-Mexico border, abandoning those who had seen their nation helplessly eroding and who had decided that they wouldn't give up their "uninhabitable" communities while they were still breathing.

But this withdrawal, this was something much bigger. As Bill and Marie described it, the government was giving up all but seven states — and even then, to call those complete states was an exaggeration.

(Had Elliot known about any of this when he'd talked to her earlier?…)

"They say they have enough room up there for everybody." Bill sipped lukewarm water from a plastic bottle. "They say we're spread out too much right now for their support to do any good."

"How do they even know how many people there are? Did they take a census?" Voorhees accepted a bottle of water and wrenched the cap off.

"Well, they might not have hard numbers, but what they're saying makes real sense." Bill reached over from his seat to pat Cody's head. "Yeah, this town is done for, but the people in it can still survive. We're talking about massive military convoys escorting us north, protecting us from any rotters that might think it's a travelling smorgasbord. Cities with huge walls, thousands of troops, and all the resources you'd ever need. It'll be safe, relatively comfortable, like the way we used to live here — maybe even better."

"So, our Senators-for-life are making us an offer we can't refuse." Voorhees' smile was bitter. He spat a mouthful of water back into the bottle.

"I love the Harbor, Voorhees, just like you, but I can't put my family's safety on the line for that."

"I get it." The cop replaced the cap on the water bottle. "I really do. But there are other people who won't feel the same way. There are people who don't give a damn about lines on a map or any carrot the government's dangling in front of them. They're going to stay and I have to stay with them."

Bill laughed incredulously. "No you don't!"

"When do they want everyone out again?" Voorhees asked Marie. "When are they cutting us off?"

"July."

"Independence Day." Voorhees rose from his chair. "I need to get back on my rounds."

"We're going to leave with the first convoy." Bill said. He averted his eyes to look at his son, giving Cody a reassuring squeeze of the hand. "It just makes sense."

"You're right." Voorhees said quietly. "But I can't leave people here. That doesn't make sense. I'm a cop."

Bill stared solemnly at him. The man just didn't understand. Later that evening, he and Marie would discuss all the irrational reasons why Voorhees must have insisted on staying. They'd call him suicidal, lonely, afraid. Bill's reasons for evacuating were plain as day, but Voorhees…Voorhees said he was a cop, and that wasn't an answer, not to them. "Yeah." Bill said.

Voorhees left the house and crossed matted dead grass to the sidewalk. He'd probably be hearing from the P.O. Union before long about pulling out. The Union, a lot of spineless bureaucrats who'd forgotten what it felt like to walk a beat. If they called him north, he'd ignore them, he'd lose his job; but he'd still be a P.O. in Jefferson Harbor, just as those who refused to leave their homes were still Americans.

He wondered if any of his officers would stay with him.