Free 299 Days IX: The Restoration by Glen Tate

“brewery” in English as he had before.
    A reply came back on the radio. Jim Q. said, “Boston Harbor says they’ll start sending civil affairs assets and problems here. We’re the official civil affairs operation.” Jim Q. smiled. He was very proud of the people he was with.
    More weird language on the radio. “We should be getting some MREs here on a couple of trucks. One white pick-up and one black one.”
    Ted was way ahead of Grant. “Let the perimeter know,” he told a runner.
    “Tell HQ that I could use a field kitchen and some more food here, too,” Grant said. “We can feed our forces and civilians.” Jim Q. started relaying those messages.
    There were trucks and troops, friendlies, arriving now. There were so many of them that they stopped trying to identify the good guys. Everyone was a good guy. Grant was starting to get the feeling that there weren’t any bad guys around.
    Grant looked at his watch. It was 7:58 a.m. and the sun was finally up.
    “Boom!” The explosion was so loud and deep that it shook everything in the brewery. It was far off, but still. Very powerful. Gunfire erupted in the distance, right in the direction of the capitol. It was a full-on pitched battle with what sounded like hundreds of shooters, not the random pops they’d been hearing all night. It sounded like a major assault. Bravo Company was probably in on it. Grant prayed for his guys. He prayed for all the Patriots, but especially for his guys.
    Grant tried to keep acting normal. He didn’t want his people to get alarmed.
    “What the hell was that?” someone on the fourth floor asked. Everyone was quiet so Jim Q. could hear the radio and tell them.
    Jim Q. shrugged. There were no reports yet.
    The noise of the activity kept going, like the delivery of MREs, but people weren’t talking much. They were listening.
    A few more minutes passed. Everyone was pretending to concentrate on their work but most were really straining their ears for word of what had happened. And what might be happening.
    “Kah-mah-la-malik!” a jubilant voice came on the radio speaking in Jim Q.’s language. He was bursting with joy. “Kah-mah-la-malik!” he kept repeating.
    Grant had no idea what “kah-mah-la-malik” meant, but it must be really good news.
    “Victory!” Jim Q. yelled. “The Limas in the capitol buildings surrendered!”
    Everyone started jumping and yelling. It was the happiest moment of Grant’s life. He felt guilty admitting that. The happiest moment of his life was supposed to be the birth of his children, but this was better. The horror was over. Things would be fixed. Finally. Finally.
    “That quick?” Grant asked Ted. “How the…”
    “Weird shit happens,” Ted answered with a huge smile on his face. “We knew the Limas were weak here, but twenty-four hours? That’s all it took? Wow.”
    “The Limas detonated their ammo storage,” Jim Q. said breathlessly, relaying the reports he was getting from HQ. “That’s what the big explosion was.”
    Grant looked out the windows facing the capitol buildings. There was a big black mushroom cloud rising in the early morning sky. He’d never seen a mushroom cloud. He always had associated them with nuclear explosions, but a large conventional explosion apparently could cause one, too.
    Grant just watched the mushroom cloud. He’d waited years to see that. He’d worked and worried for years. He’d risked his job, then his marriage, then his life for this. And it just happened. A giant cloud of smoke slowly climbing into the air.
    The gunfire was starting to die down. It sounded like some desperate people fired everything they had, some confident people returned fire, and then the desperate people dropped their guns. At least that’s how Grant hoped it was going.
    Suddenly, the lights came on. Whoa. Grant looked at the other brewery buildings, the ones that were supposedly locked. The lights were on in those, too.
    “What the hell?” Grant yelled.
    Just