Free Dead Zone by Robison Wells Page A

I remember standing up and saying we’d join—we did it together—but why did we do it? Do you remember?”
    He honestly didn’t. Maybe it was a surge of patriotism. Maybe he was thinking that they needed to protect their homes and families. They’d been shown pictures of everything the terrorists had destroyed—the collapsed bridges and the burned malls and the fallen skyscrapers. But was that why they had joined? In his heart, Jack wondered if he had done it to stay close to Aubrey. And he wondered if she had joined because she had nowhere else to go. Her father had sold her out when the army had begun searching for scattered teens during the initial roundup. Jack doubted if she’d ever go back to him.
    “Ugh,” Aubrey said, and then laughed. “Sorry I’m so depressing. Maybe you’re sleeping and not hearing any of this and I’m just talking to myself. As if I didn’t already feel like a dork.”
    She started walking again and Jack imagined he was walking beside her, holding her hand.
    “Josi is doing better. A medic came and checked her out. Did you know they have medics who are assigned especially to the lambdas? They act like they have it figured out, although I don’t believe it. Do you know what advice he gave her? To keep her eyes closed whenever she could, to sleep a lot, and to avoid stressful situations. Seriously. We’re going to the front lines in an hour and she’s supposed to avoid stressful situations.
    “Anyway, you probably need to sleep and not listen to me. I should be sleeping, but I figure I can do that in the van on the way.”
    She paused for a long time, not walking or talking. Just standing still. “I can’t believe it’s starting again,” Aubrey finally said. “We’re going to see people die again, Jack. We might die. You might die.”
    Jack closed his eyes and wished he could say something to her. Something comforting and soothing. Something to make everything better. But there was nothing. She was right.
    She might die.
    “I’m going to get in out of the cold. Sleep good, Jack.”
     
    Jack drove the van, with Nick sitting in the passenger seat. They were on the interstate headed through the mountains. The clock on the dash read 3:15 a.m., and they hoped to hit a roadblock sometime around five.
    There were thousands of cars on the other side of the median, all fleeing from the invasion, but the westbound lanes were empty. Occasionally they’d hit a roadblock of American forces, and Nick would give them the proper passwords and authorization to get them through.
    None of them were carrying any official papers, and they’d all removed their dog tags and left them with Captain Gillett back at the base. They were spies. If they were found out, they could all be shot according to the rules of war. Jack didn’t know whether that thought gave him any more or less fear than their mission.
    Nick turned the heat up. He was wearing a sweater and jeans. Everyone else had coats—all commandeered from a department store in Yakima.
    “I bet you didn’t know this,” he said, staring out the front window, “but it gets cold as hell in Afghanistan. You always think about it as a desert, but those are some high frigging mountains, and the wind can blow like a son of a bitch.”
    “I’ve never thought about it,” Jack said. He glanced in the mirror. Aubrey’s head was against a window and her eyes were closed. Only Rich and Tabitha looked like they were awake.
    “Neither did I till I was in the middle of it. Fortunately you’re always walking—I spent five months going up and down mountains. Your hands get chapped, but your body stays warm.”
    “And Green Berets don’t get cold,” Jack joked.
    “Damn straight.”
    “How old are you, anyway?”
    Nick laughed. “You’re asking because I look like I just got out of junior high, right? I’m twenty-four. Started out as a grunt in Iraq and did that for four years before I went in for the Green Berets. Coldest decision of my