Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 18th | 5:29 PM | 29 degrees

Terri sniffed her runny nose and held the button down on her walkie. “Should be done in another hour, maybe two, over.” 

Howell’s voice crackled back to her. “Good. Keep up the pace, weather’s starting to take a turn.”

No shit, she thought. She imagined the mayor kicked back in his principal’s office, nice and warm and protected from the frigid wind she and the others had been dealing with for the last few hours. In reality, she knew he was running around the school like a politician with his head cut off doing his best to get everything ready before the storm hit, but, well, she had to be pissed off at someone and Howell was the easiest target.

She stared down at the radio a few seconds longer, waiting for more instructions but getting nothing but silence. Howell hadn’t finished a single one of his broadcasts with “over,” which came as no real surprise but further fueled her imagined anger toward the man. She reminded herself that he was a mayor, not a radio operator, so she shouldn’t expect him to be an communications expert since he’d never been trained for it.

Unfortunately for both of them, she had been. Their first few messages had been full of confusion and misunderstandings, mostly due to her own muscle-memory use of military prowords and radio jargon filling up her side of the conversation. It was a hard habit to break after years of learning to communicate the “right” way. There might have been a time in her childhood when a walkie-talkie was just a fun toy used to talk to her friends next door, but like most other civilian aspects of her life the Army had stomped that out and replaced it with a much more formal and efficient one. Walkie-talkie? No sir, this is a radio, and radios are for relaying important information in a clear and concise manner.

When the radio remained silent after Howell’s last message, she clipped it back onto her coat with a sigh and turned to look at the Mobil’s progress.

Over the last few hours, she and half a dozen others had been busy getting defenses set up around the gas station. This mostly involved parking a semicircle of vehicles around the pumps to prevent anyone from accessing them from the street, but they had also gutted the gas station’s interior and added the salvaged metal shelves to the makeshift barricade. A few people had even covered the windows with tarps and boards and gotten a crude fireplace going inside to make their breaks from the cold a bit more bearable. 

Now that the place was starting to look like a proper post-apocalyptic shelter, Terri had set her sights on fortifying the roof of the canopy that stood over the Mobil’s three pumps, her attention more on giving the place an offensive advantage by turning it into a rudimentary rifle nest with a clear view of the street.

“This is kinda overkill, don’t . . . don’t you think?” Franklin grunted from the ladder, unsteadily lifting another cinderblock up into Terri’s hands.

“It needs to be.” She grasped the heavy block and awkwardly waddled it over to the street edge of the canopy, placed it on top of the others, and returned as another was passed up the ladder from a line of miserable looking people below. Terri wasn’t as worried about anyone trying to take over the gas station as the mayor was, but who was she to question the orders of an elected official? If the Sun really was gone for good, it would only be a matter of time before someone from another town came looking for fuel. Better to spend a few hours getting ready for them than let them strut in and take it without a fight.

Try telling the others that, though.

With the forecasted blizzard drawing closer by the minute, they were all cold and tired and sporting more than a few busted knuckles from the day’s efforts. The wind was the worst of it all, slicing through clothes and raking icy claws across any skin exposed to the air. Everyone wanted to be done with the work and spend the rest of the watch inside by the fire, but to their dismay Terri kept working. And so they did too, reluctantly though, and not without plenty of annoyed sighs and mutters. 

They’d be grateful of the extra work if someone started shooting at them. Even the older, allegedly wiser men, the ones who rolled their eyes and called her “bitchy” when they thought she couldn’t hear them, even they would be glad to have something to duck behind if they needed it.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, she sang in her head, but an attack on an undefended outpost will kill us all.

Preparation, not military force, was the most important part of solving any problem. How many battles throughout history had been won by outnumbered underdogs with nothing but strategy and careful planning on their side? Terri had always been a history buff and the Army had only strengthened her fascination of the subject, driving her to read dozens of ancient stories of wars won by minds sharper than blades. Those armies overcame the odds because they planned ahead, used the battlefield to their advantage, understood that preparation was a foundation on which success stood tall and victorious, the core weapon that determined whether or not a problem had the opportunity to rear its head in the first place. Military might had its advantages, sure, but it had nothing on a good strategy.

 Or in the words of her least favorite (but, she had to admit, most effective) drill sergeant: Hope for the best but plan for the worst. It had sounded more like a threat than a motto when the man had shouted it at her and the other recruits, but the message had stuck with her.

“That should be enough,” she called down to the people on the ground. She took the last shaking cinderblock out of Franklin’s hands and set it aside as the others returned to their fire.

“Thank God,” he said, resting his forehead against the top rung. “Next time you can haul these up the ladder and I’ll play Lincoln Logs.”

 Terri smiled and extended her hand to help him up. “Deal.”

Franklin pulled himself up and got his first look at the defenses he’d just about killed himself to help build. “Wow.”

Two half-walls of stacked cinderblocks stood against the far edge of the rooftop, both just high enough for someone to crouch behind and be able to see anyone on the street below. Each wall had a few blocks missing from the center, allowing enough space to aim a rifle through, with two boxes of .223 rounds patiently waiting in a neat stack off to the side. All that was missing was a pair of soldiers to call the makeshift pillbox home.

“It’s not perfect, but it should do the job,” Terri said, setting the last block in place and dusting her hands. She nodded to the roof of a slightly taller building to the left. “As long as no one gets up there and starts shooting down on us, anyway.” It would be a difficult shot from that distance and at that angle, but she still didn’t like the thought of not having another wall to protect whoever ended up posted here. If she knew it wouldn’t cause a mutiny by the others, she might have done something about that. 

Franklin laughed. “If you think Darren Turner is smart enough to plan a strategic sneak attack on us, you clearly don’t know who you’re dealing with. Him and his little band of goons are wannabe soldiers, nothing more. They just play Marine dress up and talk like they’ve killed fifty terrorists a piece, but half of them’ve probably never shot at anything that wasn’t tacked onto the side of a tree. Trust me, if there was ever a person you could underestimate, it’s Darren. We’re talking about the man who had an entire gas station to himself and blew it up within a week.”

“Good point.”

“Besides,” Franklin said, “if you tell me to carry one more cinderblock up that ladder I’m doing a swan dive off the roof.”

“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” she said, sitting on a cinderblock and unclipping the radio from her coat. “Wouldn’t want to lose the only guy here doesn’t get pissed when I ask him to do something.”

“Oh, you piss me off plenty,” he said, peering over the edge of the canopy. “But you’re the only one of us who knows anything about military stuff. You’ve been in the trenches, done the training and all that. I think that makes you the best choice for getting a place ready for battle.” He grinned. “Even if you are a girl.”

Terri laughed but ignored the compliment, unsure if it was even true. The only reason she was in charge of the Mobil’s so-called security was because Howell had said she was and she hadn’t argued. She’d never been in real combat before, had never led a squad through a battlefield or made any tough calls with life or death consequences. Hell, she’d never been deployed to so much as a minor conflict zone. Truth be told, she wasn’t at all qualified to head this ragtag group of guards for the gas station, let alone oversee the construction of its defenses. She was far from a battle hardened strategist, despite all she’d read on the matter. If anything, she was just an IT specialist with a somewhat more brutal orientation. 

But apparently that didn’t matter when the world ended and everyone in the room looked at you. 

“Howell,” she said into the radio, “this is Terri, over.”

“I’m serious about that,” Franklin said, not letting her disregard the praise. “I was taught to always respect a uniform, and my folks never said that just applied to the men wearing one.” He paused. “Of course, they probably never imagined a woman serving in anything other than an apron, but the point still stands. A soldier’s a soldier. I never got why it mattered so much what was in their pants.”

Terri smiled. “The world could use a few more like you, Franklin.” It surprised her to hear that from him, especially after years of hearing other men his age twist themselves into knots over how the fragile female psyche would react under the stresses of battle.

He shrugged. “Just calling it how I see it. I think if you get it in your head that you want to go out and fight for freedom, that’s all you need in order to get on that bus.”

Terri gestured at the cinderblock walls and boxes of ammo that he’d help construct. “In that case, welcome to the Army.”

He laughed, shook his head. “Wrong. I had zero desire to march my ass out here in the cold and help with all this.”

“But you did.”

“Because Howell told me to.”

“Right, just like he told me to.”

“Well, sure, but the difference is I never actually said yes. You pretty much drafted me.”

She pantomimed writing on a notepad. “Follows orders even though he doesn’t want to, check. I don’t know, Franky, sounds like a soldier to me.”

He snorted. “Then you need to get your hearing–“

Howell’s voice squawked through the radio and cut him off. “Sorry, couldn’t talk earlier. How’s it going?”

Terri waited a second, then reminded herself to stop expecting an “over” and raised the walkie to her mouth. “All done here and ready to head back. Over.” She added extra emphasis on the word, knowing it would be pointless.

“Can you get a fire going there, maybe stormproof the place some before the blizzard hits? Without blowing the place up, that is.”

She glanced up at Franklin, who was now staring at the radio like it had just sentenced him to a very slow, very cold death. “Already done it. Why? Are we gonna be spending the night here?”

“I think it’d be best if a few people stayed on watch at all times going forward. At least until we know what’s going on with our Darren problem.”

“Understood,” she said, heart sinking at the thought of riding out the blizzard in the Mobil. “How many of us?”

The radio was silent a moment, then: “Let’s say half of what you’ve got now, as long as they’re good with a gun. Definitely you, Jimmy, and Alan. And Franklin. He still hanging in there?”

Franklin waved to get her attention, violently shook his head, and silently mouthed, “Tell him I fell and died.”

She locked eyes with him and held down the button, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “He’s right here, says he’d be happy to stay out here as long as you need him to.”

Franklin groaned and turned away from her.

Howell laughed. “Yeah, sure he does. Tell him a night out in the cold will make the school feel that much warmer when he gets back.”

“You got it. We’ll keep redecorating and get this place a bit more homey.”

“Good deal. Keep your walkie-talkie close. I’ll check in later. Over.”

Terri stared blankly at the radio, too shocked at finally hearing Howell say the word to even think about how miserable the next few hours would be, or that he technically should have used “out” instead of over. Baby steps.

When she looked up, Franklin stood glaring at her from a few feet away.

“Oh, come on,” she said, clipping it back onto her coat and heading for the ladder. “You know he would’ve made you stay anyway.”

“This is a draft,” he called after her as she descended the rungs and disappeared beneath the ledge. For several seconds he stayed rooted to the spot out of sheer defiance, but after realizing no one was around to witness his act of rebellion, gave in and walked over to the ladder.

Terri grinned up at him from the middle rung, where she’d stopped her descent to wait for him. “That’s a good soldier.”