Breakaway

1

They thought they would want the land back one day after they were victorious. So, they did not use atomics. Instead, they burned it with thermo missiles, sweeping the terrain clean, hoping the meadows and pastures would return.

And with the grasslands, the oak and palm trees too, their leaves and fronds full again. They also wished the vaporized streams and rivers would come back and run down to the sea again. Occupying a once-again verdant landscape would better suit their plans. The number of lives they destroyed in the process did not matter as much.

A unique feature of the geography protected most of it from this destruction. Lowlands and highlands with many hills sloping up high and down at steep angles. The area was part of the Lake Wales Ridge. A long narrow hummock uplifted about three hundred feet above ocean level eons ago when the land was underwater.

The flames from the thermos would burst in the hollows, taking down everything in their path. The blasts would dissipate along the upward slopes, sparing the few orange groves that survived. These faded into the distance, heavy with fruit.

Even with that much fruit, they would be picked clean each year. The oranges, fat and ripe, would help prevent scurvy in the men. The trees sitting in the valleys did not fare as well - forests of grey stumps scarred by the chemical remains of the thermos.

A dust-off flight took him back down south from the zone. The ground below him was a splotchy mosaic. Some of it charred to a crisp. Other sections still lush and green. A madman's chessboard. The helicopter swooped in over the landscape.

Skirting Sugarloaf Mountain, the highest point of the ridge, John Emmett could make out where he, his wife Eliza and daughter Samantha had once lived. They had come to this place from Brooklyn in New York when the divisions up north had become impossible to live with before the final breakaway. Life became untenable for them and they had sought peace here only to have this serenity taken from them in an instant.

Emmett recalled what the land had looked like before when they first lived there. The place they had settled was called Clermont, more small town than city. Sleepy and tranquil, dotted with numerous lakes and streams. A quiet and peaceful place far from the insanity they had left up north. Eliza and Samantha had stayed behind when he was recalled to service when things went awry. They had been happy there.

Leaning into the brisk wind from the chopper door, Orlando shone in the distance. He was happy it still stood. He knew the Russian Federation boomers sailed out from New London in the first days of the war not long after the breakaway. They slid down the coast and around to the Gulf to position themselves offshore.

They had been aiming for the base at Patrick from the Atlantic side or Central Command at MacDill from the Gulf. But their missiles went astray and rained down over the central part of the state. It left Orlando largely untouched.

A few tall structures of its skyline still intact, their windows glinting in the haze. Others were spectral markers where some of their missiles found their mark. Most stood empty, their metal girders twisted and bent in sinuous shapes, a reminder all was not well yet.

They attacked other cities up and down the southern seaboard inland to the treaty borders. Their first surprise strikes were successful but they were responded to in kind from the sub bases in Kings Bay.

It prompted an uneasy truce for the past two years, but the truce was punctuated by occasional raids across the zone. It was a sitzkrieg of sorts, like the early days of the second world war. Ancient history to the younger troops.

But it foreshadowed a welcome respite to those few who remembered it. In the end, they counted five million dead after the first six months, but no one was certain.

The zone started on the northern border of Virginia - a three-hundred-yard swath of barren moonscape. Bordered by a barbed wire wall, the ground was peppered with mines. Periodic white phosphorous explosions lighting up the nights. This happened when refugees attempted to cross over. Bodies would be strewn across the landscape like toppled scarecrows the next morning.

The fields were armed and disarmed from some central command point. Switched on or off to allow for raiding parties to come across. A constant electronic hum would whisper in the nights when they were armed. Troopers would sometimes test them, hurling grenades to see if they would set off a blast. If nothing happened, the mines were inert. A probe was coming.

The wall was dotted with sentry posts. The glint of a rifle scope would be seen with night glasses by the heat they gave off. Some joked they had been erected, more to keep their people in and these towers and the mines served that purpose. The wall ran the length of the zone and zigzagged west along the borders agreed on after the breakaways.

But here, where he was, things were almost normal. The chopper flew over the small village and the abandoned motel where he was billeted. It banked in a swooping left-hand turn, following a series of landing lights. A positive sign as it meant the generators were fueled up and working. The village nearby housed a few inhabitants, old men and women who sat in their doorways watching their cooking fires so they did not go out. Old, tired eyes gazing out, sweltering in the midday heat.

The helicopter dropped to the ground with a clattering whir, kicking up a thick cloud of dirt. He unhooked and clambered out into a small clearing nearby, a staging area where men milled about in hurrying clusters of activity. He stepped off, stooped down underneath the still whirling blades, and ran towards a clump of trees.

He sat down and, using his medic pack as a pillow, leaned against a still living palm. He dug around in his pack for a cigarette and lit it, cupping his hand around the flame of the lighter. Breathing out the smoke in a deep sigh, he reflected on the past few days he spent in the zone.

He was present when a raid was repelled in his sector but there were no casualties for him to treat. His people were untouched but the enemy were all dead. Chechen mercs commanded by Russian Federation officers. At least that was what he gleaned from their uniforms. He was thankful he had not been hit in this attack.

He removed the picture of Eliza and Samantha, his wife and daughter, from the pocket of his shirt. Creased and stained from constant handling. Pressing it to his lips, he mouthed a silent prayer of thanks. It was all he had left of them.

Another soldier sat nearby eating from a small can of beans. He gestured in his direction, offering another can to him, but he waved him off.

"No thanks, friend. I've eaten already." he said.

"How are you doing? What's your name? Are you coming or going?" he asked.

"The name's Emmett, John Emmett. I'm coming back. Been up to the zone. How about you?"

"On my way." the man answered. "Waiting on them to refuel and rearm the bird you came on, then I'm on my way. How was it?"

"Quiet this time but keep your eyes and ears open."

"I'll do that. Not my first time and I'm sure not my last." The man grinned and took another mouthful.

"I heard there was some action but nothing concrete. Too many rumors going back and forth."

"Well, I'm a medic and it wasn't all that busy. From what I could gather, they were using a lot of mercenaries, Belarusian and Chechen mercs. Not their regular army. The mercs ain't all that enthusiastic. I saw a bunch of them marched back of the line."

Emmett snorted in disgust. "They were kids no more than seventeen or eighteen and happy to surrender and not fight. I can't tell if it means they are losing heart or they realize they're being used as cannon fodder by the Federation and are saying the hell with it. What do you do? Where they put you means you get the show or not."

"I'm a mortar man so I'm a target for whatever fun and games these bastards plan!" he smiled. "They put us back of the line but that don't mean they don't come looking for us. They get testy when we bracket them in tight. I was wounded about two months ago, but that didn't give me a ticket home so here I am again."

"Well, it beats the other thing, being wounded, that is. As long as it doesn't do too much damage. You don't want to be zippered up, right?"

They both laughed, the laugh men have when they are aware they are trading in a dangerous game. A nervous, breathy sound.

A whistle blew and the man stood up, shoveling the last spoonful of beans into his mouth. He wiped his face and tossed his pack over his shoulder.

"That's me. Luck and, as you're a medic, I hope I don't see you again. No offense." the man grinned.

He smiled back and answered "I never take that personal. Good luck to you too. Keep your head down and your ass up. That way, if you get shot, it's just a flesh wound."

The man laughed again, a booming laugh, and with a last wave of his hand, he set out for the chopper waiting to take him to whatever fate awaited him.

As he trudged away, long columns of soldiers could be seen moving northeast and headed to Sanford. Their figures were silhouettes in the twilight. Weapons sticking upwards from their shadows and outlined against the darkening sky. It was a mix of blunt shotgun barrels, sleek AR-15s and stumpy...