They gathered around Carver like he was the cornucopia centerpiece at a Thanksgiving feast, surrounded by the back-up candles and resting upon a shrine of pillows and linens. The smoke drifted in waves around their half-moon arrangement, carrying lavender and pine needle fragrances that mingled with the scent of their sweat and the steam from their meal. He had progressed to sitting cross-legged and allowing the wall to support his weight, much to the protest of Fletcher in particular. He was never one to miss out on an all-nighter and some juicy conversation. Where there was an opportunity for inappropriately timed humor, he was prepared. Della was beginning to see that the best way to deal with both of them was by disregarding them, a tactic that she was aware of but far from proficient at.

            “Why don’t we start from the beginning,” she suggested, tying her shoulder length waves up into a sloppy ponytail and crossing her arms over her chest. Caramel tendrils brushed her cheeks where she had chopped them hastily and unevenly. “I want to know why you came here. Obviously you could afford the help back in Westwood.”

            They shifted in their seats, trying to settle their discomfort by acting as though it were external. Everyone in the room was suddenly aware of their translucency, shielded only by the information they were choosing to omit. Fletcher’s eyes narrowed in her direction, “There is no doctor in Westwood anymore, is that what you want to hear?”

            “Fletcher!” Kayden reprimanded him. Saving Fletcher from his mouth had become synonymous with saving their own asses over the years.

            “What? It’s true,” he shrugged. “He’s dead. We killed him. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had a second chance. Doctor or not, he was a greedy bastard and he deserves to rot right in that hole I dropped him in.”

            Della seemed hardly as shocked as the rest of them. She already knew. The questioning was simply a formality, they wore their flaws like advertisements on their bodies. “I’m sure he does,” she clipped. He was already under her skin and pacing in circles. “So I reckon I was your third round pick then. After you killed that other young man over in the desert, and don’t even bother telling me you didn’t know there was a doctor in the Sun Villages. That’s his seal on your horses. I assume he was a, how did you put it, ‘greedy bastard’ as well?”

            Kayden gave Fletcher a hard thump against his back with an open palm. The classic “shut up” cue. Being forced to outsmart the most infamous woman in the country was never the goal. Neither was insulting her. “We have never murdered a man without reason, I can assure you.”

            “Because your word obviously holds truth, huh?” Della scoffed. “Anyone can find a reason to murder, but not anyone can get away with it. That’s what interests me. Westwood is one of the few regions crawling with ‘Defenders of Dawn’ or whatever comic book name they came up with for themselves.”

            Most people referred to them as the Defense, a nickname that somewhat removed the common misguided idea that the group paraded around playing make-believe and throwing theater punches at their mortal enemies. Their marketing strategy was laughable indeed, but their political strategies were anything but a joke. Westwood had become the only area where the extremist-imposed law groups were more powerful and more brutal than the inhabitants. People were shot down in the streets for even thinking about committing a crime, and the already dwindling population had been halved by similar spur-of-the-moment death sentences. The Defenders of Dawn were harnessing almost every available law enforcement resource, and where there were gaps in the plan there were independently contracted recruits who did the back-alley reconnaissance along with the rest of the dirty work for them. 

            “Well let’s just say we aren’t concerned with them,” Kayden replied. The teal flecks in his hazel eyes glimmered with the uncertainty that his voice never conveyed. He was an impeccable speaker, hinting at the notion that he was an impeccable liar and manipulator as well.

            “Ah, that’s what this is all about. So the stories are true then?” Della cocked her head to the side, sliding further towards the edge of her seat. “And these are the overly ambitious frat boys from the late UC Davis.” She looked the men over again, seeing them for the first time in their new identities, and felt blind for not realizing it before. The air around them practically exuded a fog of mystery, unlike any average person she had met, but she often focused so intently on feeding her perfectionistic tendencies at work that she failed to personify her patients. “I have to say, I’m a little underwhelmed.”

            “Join the club,” Fletcher uttered under his breath.

            “One more comment and you’ll be joining the others on the dirt outside. I will gladly introduce you to a few folks if you think I’m the worst this town has to offer.” Della had developed a fondness for the seating arrangement. Keeping her across from Fletcher allowed her to see every expression on his face when she shut him down. It was the only thing about speaking to him that she actually enjoyed.

            “Not all of the rumors are true of course,” Tucker redirected the focus to the original topic. “People share information selectively.”

            “They always do. Though I don’t see how they missed out on the bit about the rebellion being filthy rich and prejudice against healers,” Della brought up. Carver, Kayden, and Tucker shared a brief laugh that tapered to silence as she raised a curious eyebrow. She had forgotten how to understand jokes. Even her own.

            Tucker cleared his throat. “Well, it really isn’t so much a rebellion as it is the four of us just trying to take down their support one level at a time. We do what we can, what we know. The doctors, they were supplying the Defense with the drugs and disease containment units that they used for testing. What they were planning to do with that, we aren’t sure, but this planet has seen enough biological warfare in the past couple of years.”

            “If that ain’t the truth,” she mumbled in agreement.

            People had theorized the fall of the modern world long before it ever came to fruition. Zombies, power hungry extraterrestrials, corrupt politicians, blood thirsty terrorists, and meteor collisions made for entertaining campfire stories, but they could never do justice to the horror that was the Green War.

            It began as a civil movement, funded and marketed by environmentalists and self-proclaimed hippies. They marched for awareness of global warming, species extinction, and ocean pollution, and they promoted the idealistic concept of abolishing animal testing and animal agriculture. They recruited at college campuses and green clubs to begin with, preaching the importance of Earth’s preservation to the future generations, and soon their audience expanded to include more followers and more diversity than they had bargained for. In turn, the circle of attention was broadened to include issues such as religious intolerance, racial discrimination, gender equality, and even abortion.  It was then that they made a fatal yet common underestimation; forgetting how rapidly passion can transform into hatred.

            Violence ensued, contrary to the pillars of the original movement, and it began with the division of the United States into two radically aggressive and oppositional groups: the pro-rituals, who fought for the preservation of their traditional ways, and the pro-revivals, who favored a complete overhaul of the country’s foundation. Rallies broke into mass chaos in the streets, and the death toll began to climb as people were trampled, beaten, and taken out cold. The military had only been able to momentarily intercept the blossoming war in their own country before all branches of defense were deployed to deal with the backlash from other countries that were feeding off of the dark energy. Two more citizens’ armies were cultivated in their wake, and they immediately latched onto each other’s throats in an unrelenting chokehold. They would continue their sordid, gritty, ruthless battle until they were both completely annihilated.

            Della had been midway through her fourth year in the medical program at Louisiana State University when things took a turn for the unsalvageable. When the status officially transitioned from Civil War to World War she had been sitting in the lounge, enjoying a scalding cup of black coffee and a jelly-filled doughnut, and watching the morning news report. She would never forget the jarring sound of the siren or the banner that scrolled across the screen like a red carpet for the hell that was about to be unleashed. She drove home from the clinical that evening and remained locked in her car, dazed and powerless as she witnessed a shooting at the local grocery store and another at the gas station down the road. Those were the humane killings.

Two months into the first year of her residency, nuclear detonations were littering the Eastern hemisphere, demolishing Africa, Europe, parts of Australia, and the vast majority of Asia. It wasn’t long before the surviving countries, torn by their anguish and fueled by their resentment of what had become of the world they were fighting for, released the biological weapons that Tucker was referring to. Anthrax and botulism crept rapidly across the Americas and silently took another chunk out of the terrified and unsuspecting population. Those who hadn’t fallen ill were blamed for the deaths of the fallen and were often publicly humiliated, captured, and tortured, even though the true culprits were never identified. Della knew the other side of the story far too well.

The room was completely quiet, solemn with an unexpected reflection. Every survivor had a story to tell, but few were willing to tell it. Della suspected that these men were plagued by their fair share of tragedy, especially being so involved in the aftermath, but she didn’t care to hear it any more than they cared to share it. Carver was the only one who remained visually unaffected, not by his debilitating sickness, and certainly not by horrors of his past. Over the duration of their brief conversation he had vomited twice and drenched a tissue in fluid from his lungs, yet he carried on eating his dinner and swaying side to side as though he were attending a concert in his head. Who knew, maybe he was.

“You know what? This stuff is delicious,” Carver gushed, holding the near empty bowl to his face and obnoxiously slurping the last few drops. “You should really get me a refill, bro.”

He passed the bowl off to Fletcher, who apprehensively accepted it but didn’t make a move to fill the request. “I thought you hated soup.”

“I like everything that hot chicks cook for me,” he retorted, shooting Della a wink.

Tucker snorted. “You haven’t had a hot chick cook for you a day in your life.”

“You’re right,” he flashed another mischievous smile. “We usually skip the dinner.”

“I’m sure they usually don’t want to stay for breakfast either,” Della sent the insult with a grin that mocked his own. She could see him being quite the successful charmer if he weren’t deathly ill and surrounded by women that were more interested in finding a place to lay their heads at night than they were in finding a man to lay there with.

“Hot and feisty,” Carver amended his previous statement. It was received poorly, to say the least, by the object of his flirtation.

“I’d like to remind you that I’m a patient woman,” Della stated calmly. “But I’m not that patient.”

“That makes two of us,” Fletcher glared in her direction. He stood up and made his way to the kitchen before he said anything more incriminating.

“I didn’t realize you were a woman, Fletch,” Carver uttered, quietly enough so that everyone could hear the comment except for its target.

“You know,” Della interrupted their lighthearted laughter, pinning Carver under the weight of her undivided attention. She could tell that her threats did nothing to intimidate him, it was written all over his bloodshot and yellowed eyes. Her words were bouncing right out of his head the moment she spoke them because he was invincible, living off of the high right before the crash. “I see what your little game is. Turning everything into a joke because you’re too much of a coward to see things for what they really are. This world isn’t a playground, and I am not a toy to amuse you as you sit in my house and die.”

Tucker choked down the lump in his throat. Kayden slowly blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. They were far more shocked by her bluntness than Carver, who fought back the urge to roll his eyes. It was impossible to tell whether or not he even believed his own prognosis. “You don’t have to shut everyone out before you even have the chance to know who they are,” he stated. He allowed his head to fall back and closed his eyes. “There are still some good people left in this terrible world.”

Fletcher returned with the second helping, the wrath on his face told Della that he had been listening in on her. They both curled a fist, kneading their nails into their palms to prevent themselves from clawing at each other. He spun his chair backwards on one leg and slammed it down again, straddling the back rest.

“And you think that I am one of those good people?” she asked, disagreement settling into her tone before she even received a response.

“Yes, I do,” he returned without a second thought.

She loathed his optimism. “I’m not.”

“Why else would you help so many people?” he countered.

“I’m only helping myself.” Della heard it all the time. People assuming that she was in the business for the benefit of their well-being. Even at a time where she could appreciate a more morally uplifting aspect of the job, she had still been in it for the money and the intrigue.

“You’re helping me.”

“You’re paying me.”

Carver pressed his lips together tightly. He wasn’t about to back down and Della found it frustrating, even though she knew that it was hypocritical of her to reprimand his stubborness. He sighed and opened his eyes again. His expression oozed a rare sincerity. “It’s not bad to be good.”

Della shook her head slowly, her gaze falling to a fixed point on the ground. Her temper was a heat wave, a hurricane when she lost control of it. “There was a time when I chose to believe that good people existed in spite of the war. There was a time I trusted. And I believed. And I cared about the lies that people fed me as I fed their starving stomachs, and healed their loved ones, and kept them comfortable and safe in my home,” she paused. “But this is not that time. These are unforgiving times. These are selfish times. Caring for ourselves is so dangerous, we forget that everyone else is walking down the same path as well. Everyone needs help. They don’t care how they get it, and they don’t care about what happens to the ones they receive it from.”

She continued once she realized they had nothing to say in return. “I’m just another cog in that wheel. I give people what they want and I take their money to get what I want. And you are all fools if you think you are any better than me. People talk about how you’re changing the world and playing superhero, killing off the bad guys and protecting the innocent.” In an instant, her eyes were on them again, peeling back the layers of their past transgressions. She saw through every man, woman, and child who pretended to be something other than what they were. “You’re nothing more than a couple of outlaws, making a personal statement and then making bank for it.”

Tucker rested his hands on his knees to keep them from shaking. “I–”

“Don’t start,” she demanded. “You and Kayden here are the only ones left with redeemable qualities.”

“Redeemable qualities such as kissing your ass?” Fletcher commented. Every threat she threw their way, he was prepared to throw back at her.

“Redeemable qualities such as keeping their mouths shut.” She rose from her seat and gripped the handle of her knife with one hand. In a single smooth motion she drew it out, crouched to his level and held it against his throat. “But that’s okay. I’ll shut yours for you.”

Fletcher was unfazed. A mess of long, curly expresso brown hair fell over one eye as he leaned into the blade until it just barely pierced his skin. A thin line of blood seeped into the collar of his shirt. “You can try.”

She opened her mouth but before she could reply, a gunshot followed by a crash sounded in the right half of her house, coming from the front window. The chime of shattered glass echoed hundreds of times as shards rained on the ground. Della retracted the knife and swapped it with the gun, wielding it cautiously as she crossed the room and pressed her back against the separating wall.

“Must be robbers,” she whispered to them. “There’s a few more guns in that lockbox down there,” she tipped her chin in a directional gesture. “I’m sure you know how to use them.”

They nodded in response, sharing a secret smile, and then one by one pulled their own firearms out from the waistbands of their pants. Della raised an eyebrow, impressed by them for the first time that evening. She pushed aside the sheet and stepped through first, followed closely by Kayden, then Tucker, then Fletcher. Carver lagged behind, holding back any coughing that might blow their cover.

“Ah, there they are,” a low voice came from the kitchen. Della whipped around and positioned her aim at the skull of the intruder before she met eyes with him, but as she soon took in his appearance she almost faltered. The man was covered head to toe by a smeared charcoal mask, a pair of leather gloves, and a dark hooded cloak. Behind him there were others in similar costuming. Many, many others.

“Get out of my house,” Della’s lip snarled defensively. “I won’t ask twice.”

“Oh don’t worry, that won’t be necessary,” he replied. The whites of his eyes and his perfectly aligned teeth were stark in contrast to his coverings. She was fixated on the menacing arrangement of his smile. “We’ll just get what we came for and then we’ll be on our way.”

The legion of clones spilled out and surrounded the five of them in a circle. Their heads were bowed but they peered under their shaded eyelids and showed the rings of their irises as their only identifying features. Della wasted no time. She fired the first shot and the others followed behind her as they rotated their arrangement to cover all ground. No one stopped until the bullets were gone. The dizziness settled in and then cleared, and when it did, Della had to check twice to make sure that she had loaded the gun in the first place. There they were, holes torn though the cloth of their outfits, shockwaves still ringing through the air, and they were standing.

Della’s eyes widened, her heart growing heavy in her chest and plummeting down to her stomach. Each breath she drew was thick and dense. She looked to the guys for affirmation and they stared back, searching for answers beyond comprehension. Carver’s weapon fell to the floor as he gasped and broke down into another series of convulsions, and Fletcher kneeled to his aid without removing his shaken glare.

“B-but,” Tucker stammered. “That’s impossible.”

The outer circle condensed in a rapid and forceful manner, closing in on the five of them. Della turned her head each direction, searching for a gap to break her way out, but by the time she realized that none existed she was already pinned face down on the ground as one restrained her kicking feet, one restrained her arms, one stuffed a gag down her throat, and one stuck the biggest needle she had ever seen into her vein. A sideways glance confirmed that the others were planted in the same position, uttering muffled noises and thrashing uselessly against the inhuman strength of their attackers.

The ringleader stepped into the room with them and kneeled on the floor before Della, brushing his index finger from her forehead and along the side of her face until he reached her chin. He tilted her head upwards to look her in the eye, a haunting admiration crinkling in his cheeks as he wordlessly probed her mind and continued to smile. Violation unlike any she had felt before washed over her body, sending a quake down her spine, and it continued to deepen as she felt herself unwillingly falling into unconsciousness. “Goodnight,” he taunted. Then everything blurred to nothing. 

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: The Initiative