Free Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) by Scott Nicholson Page B

where the aurora had thinned and left most of the forest in shadows. Anything could be out there closing in on the bunker.
    Am I doing the right thing?
    Colleen grabbed his wrist with both hands and dragged him down to the bedroll. “You can figure it out in the morning.”
    “Will you still love me if I can’t order you around?”
    “You never ordered me. I did it all because I wanted to.”
    “You’d be a fool to say anything else.” He felt amazingly light, so accustomed to the burden of command that it was part of his field pack, just more shit to carry. If Colleen had betrayed him, it was among the most merciful acts she could’ve committed.
    As if reading his thoughts, she said, “I didn’t do it, you know.”
    He nodded. “I know.”
    He didn’t want to think about who had sabotaged the radio. He might not like the answer.
    He lost himself in her eyes, his head swimming with a future that now seemed wildly uncertain. Just hours ago, he would’ve sworn his destiny was mapped out, a path marched by millions of soldiers before him. Now, though, he had no anchor connecting him to his past and the iron self-image he’d carefully constructed.
    He wasn’t iron. He was molten, fluid, uncast, and as he wrapped himself in the forge of her embrace, he surrendered to whatever new shape he would become.

 
    CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    Tan Huynh perhaps had some revolutionary blood flowing through his veins.
    His grandfather had been one of Ho Chi Minh’s foot soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army, and a generation before that his great-grandfather fought the French colonialists with the People’s Army. Those men didn’t consider themselves revolutionaries—they were freedom fighters opposing imperialists. It was only after the Huynh family’s immigration to the United States that he was forced to assess the intricacies of his cultural history.
    His father was a visiting professor of philosophy and religion at Georgetown University, where his militaristic genealogy was little more than idle gossip at faculty cocktail parties. Huynh was in the process of learning English in a continuing education class at a local community college while working as a cook in a Chinese restaurant. His dream was to attend Georgetown and pursue a degree in economics. The dream was ripped from his hands on that August day five years ago when the sun rewrote human history into a tragic thriller with darkly comic elements.
    On that day, Huynh was doling mung bean sprouts onto a plate of luo han zai when the screams erupted in the dining room. The room went dark, with the only light coming from the back door, which they left open so the thick smoke could dissipate. His partner at the grill was named Wei, a true Chinese, unlike the other assorted brownish people on the staff who merely satisfied the American demand for cultural appearances. Wei’s eyes widened as if he’d sliced his finger off with a chef’s knife, and then his body went slack and he pitched face-first into the deep-fat fryer.
    Huynh shouted for help and tried to free his friend from the oily vat of egg rolls. When Wei flopped backward onto the floor, flinging hot grease from his hair, his face was puckered with large yellow blisters. By the time Huynh stretched him out on the dirty floor tiles, the man was clearly dead.
    Huynh pushed open the swinging door that led from the kitchen to the serving area and saw two waitresses sprawled prone on the floor. Past the counter loaded with tea pitchers and bowls of crushed ice, the restaurant patrons shrieked and skittered across the room, upending tables and smashing the large aquarium near the cash register. It took Huynh half a minute to realize some of the people were chasing others and that most of the customers were slumped in their booths or collapsed on top of their kung pao chicken and Buddha’s Delight.
    Being in the United States capital, his first thought was “Terrorism.” And terrorism meant that non-whites were the