In November

Two men in military uniform led three bound prisoners to a platform inside the town's square. One of the prisoners, a doe-eyed girl in a shift, wept. Her brown hair was tied in a messy bun on the top of head. She was young, no more than fifteen, being led to her death, but the crowd had no sympathy. Onlookers booed and hissed. Some even hurled rotten fruit. This execution carried out by the state and condoned by the people, would temporarily ease fears, but six hangings in as many days only whipped up the bloodthirstiness.

Three more men in military uniform dragged their condemned to their places on the scaffold. The girl, placed in the center, fainted, but one of the guards grabbed and slapped her. Her cry was swallowed by the crowd as their incoherent jeers turned to uniform chanting. "Kill the traitors! Kill the traitors!" The girl's legs gave way again, but the guard caught her, and held her off the ground with one arm, and secured the noose around her neck with the other. When he let her go, it tightened and dangled her just off the scaffold. Now wearing the nooses, the other prisoners protested against their restraints and shouted, but their words still were drowned out. The crowd's frenzy reached its apex. Some were praising their leaders, and others were praising God for deliverance.

The poor girl's lips turned blue and the other prisoners violently kicked and hissed against the tightly bound ropes. Finally, the scaffold opened below them. Their bodies jerked once, and then movement ceased. Except the girl, who was still slowly suffocating. Her movements became more violent as she spun and spun in the air. The crowd became more unwieldy as laughing young men climbed the scaffold to pose with the twisting girl. The guards bodily pushed the men off, but more came. A fight broke out. One guard pushed another man, shirtless and scarred, but he got up and charged. The guard fell backward, and didn't move fast enough before the shirtless man launched himself on top. He pummeled the guard before another grabbed him from behind, but the man's elbow connected to the guard's eye. He continued the pummeling.

A third guard unsecured the shotgun he wore on his back and let off a round. The crowd shrieked and began to scatter, but the shirtless man didn't respond. Finally, the guard aimed at the back of his head, and pulled the trigger. With this shot, the girl finally stopped moving and her head slumped forward.

"We have to get the hell out of this town," Ilan said as he stoked the fire in the potbelly stove. "We need to be reassigned immediately. I can't deal with the unrest here."

Four young people, one man and three women, nodded.

"This town's going to burn," agreed Finch, a thin, blonde-haired man. He sat with the rest on the floor eating a corn porridge from a shared bowl.

"Wehave passes to come and go," said Addy, her dark hair tied tightly in a bun. "We should just leave. We have survived in the woods for months on end."

Ilan drank deeply from his cup of beer. "We have to obey by orders, Addy. If we just leave, we'll be hunted and executed. Besides we're not cowards."

"There was damn near a riot in the town square today," protested Iona. "For once, Addy has a good suggestion. We have specialized skills, so why are being assigned to Little Falls for crowd control." She jumped up. "I can't stand this bullshit much longer. God, we almost got killed today after Dennis shot that man's head off. What the hell was that?"

Ilan turned away from Iona. "You're too hot-headed."

"That girl didn't deserve that," Iona continued, poking Ilan in the back.

"I didn't make that decision."

"You were there. You were in the room."

"I abstained from the vote, but it didn't matter. What the General wants, he gets it. I'd rather protest in a constructive way. In a way, that would protect you and the rest of us."

Iona growled, "Get us reassigned immediately."

Ilan turned about and faced the silent Lynn. She, dark-skinned with thick black hair, hugged herself with her head down. "Lynn, what do you think?"

The others turned their attention to her as she slowly lifted her head. "These are our people. We shouldn't be so quick to abandon them."

"Are you shaming me?"

"Of course not, but..."

"We do a lot of good work for our people."

"Yes, so much so that they wish to thank us by attacking us with clubs," interjected Iona.

Ilan sighed as the group fell silent. "They're pumping in hallucinogenic and alcohol to keep the populace docile, but it seems to be having the opposite effect. The people are more agitated. The drugs are making them more, I don't know, stronger? They seem to have a higher pain threshold."

Finch chimed in, "Ilan, you have to admit that Red leadership is failing. There's not enough food and clean water for everyone. They're blaming the problems on random scapegoats, like the three that were executed today. I don't know if we can continue to support them. Maybe we should just go out on our own."

Addy nodded her head, while Lynn added, "We're the only educated people here in Little Falls with a conscience."

"We have to keep quiet obviously or else," Ilan said, "we'll meet the same fate as the three today. As the leader, I'll do what I can do about reassignment."

Light streamed in from the small garret window waking Lynn. The room was freezing as last night's fire was no more than burning embers. She added wood and stoked it until caught. Addy woke too as Lynn uncovered last night's dinner and placed it on the stove to warm it.

"Most families don't even have this much to feed their children for the week," she whispered.

"Addy..." Lynn hated when Addy made her feel guilty about food or water. Yes, she knew that many Red families had food insecurities. She too felt many hunger pangs growing up in the valley. Her sister and she scoured the woods day after day searching for anything to eat from berries, roots, and even grub to eat. She shouldn't feel guilty now that the military were the first to eat, even if their cornmeal were crawling with insects and the bread was stale.

Addy fell silent as she dumped the waste bucket out of the garret window then washed her face from the shared water bucket. Lynn thought that Addy's habits were of the poor. She knew that Addy came into the group as she once cleaned the refuse from the barracks where Iona used to live. Iona and Addy became close quickly. Addy had the mind to learn and was naturally clever and quick-witted. So she learned to read and write, although illegal, from Iona, and Iona learned the ins and outs of the Red leadership from Addy. To Lynn's dismay, Addy still threw waste from the window without regard and wore dirty clothes although there were clean ones at her disposal.

"Wake the others," ordered Lynn. "We're due at the barracks soon. The Captain will be pissed if we're late again."

She nodded.

The five arrived at the barracks, just in time. The barracks located a mile away from their garret overlooked the river, which the Red army controlled. The building was the tallest in the city outside of the towers that ringed the town. It stood six stories tall with most sections rebuilt from the rubble of a time long past. Lynn never lived here unlike the others as she joined them about a year ago after saving Ilan and Iona from an ambush in the woods. She and her sister were checking the traps for food, when an ambush from ten Blue soldiers surrounded them all. Lynn, handy with a shotgun, shot five of them dead, freeing Ilan and Iona. However, the remaining soldiers captured her sister, Charlotte, and took her. Ilan and Iona brought her into the group and eventually into the Red army. Once unaffiliated, she fought for the Reds to rescue her sister.

Soldiers in Red tunics bowed to her as she entered the compound. These soldiers were young, most of the boys so young, their voices still hadn't dropped. Many of their immediate superiors wore patchy mustaches in a vain attempt to appear older. Finch and Ilan, although men, were barely that as Finch just celebrated his twenty-first birthday and Ilan, the oldest was no more than twenty-two. Sadness consumed her to know that even she at nineteen, may not live to her twentieth birthday in the spring. A family of her own and life free of military service were out the question.

They walked to the back of the compound, past the rowdy mess hall, and the courtyard where women were charging at dummies. They passed a succession of classrooms, tactical rooms, and training rooms until they arrived at the leadership suite. A select few had access to this space where the General lived and worked.

Inside, they waited in the reception area on couches lined against the wall. Men and women wearing starched khaki pants and shirt with a red sash lounged about. The highest ranked wore a blood-red beret. Some smiled and nodded gracefully to her as she did the same. Although she didn't have the rank, she garnered respect with her placement in the specialty Tactical and Reconnaissance Team (TRT). There were only four such groups and hers recovered the most critical of information, which led to the fall of several Blue cities along with the recovery of weapon cache in the mountains.

"TRT2!" demanded the husky voice of Captain Zars. The five followed the voice until a small room off the reception area. The room had a musty scent with no window. "Close the door." With the door closed, the noxious air grew worse as the scent of unwashed bodies mingled with the mustiness. There was no room to sit, or even really move as the desk took up most of the room. Although Captain Zars's commanded the successful TRTs, he still kept the smallest and least clean office in the leadership suite. Despite that, he still prided himself in his work and bragged about his position.

"You have been reassigned," the Captain began. "We have a problem with narcotics flowing into Little Falls and the other cities. The population is restless and violent. We have to nip it in the bud before there are riots. I have volunteered you five to find it and find it quickly. We think that the Blues are behind it."

"Where should we look?" asked Ilan. He, the leader of the TRT2, was the only one allowed to speak to the Captain.

"The Blues, dammit!" the Captain's eyes bulged. "You should know where to look,"

Lynn thought that he should know that the drugs were coming from the Reds themselves. Apparently, they had to find a link to any suspect Blue activity and blame it on them. Although livid, she kept her face impassive.

"Yes, Captain. When does this assignment begin?"

"Immediately, I want you five gone by tomorrow morning. This assignment is of upmost importance. We need to know where it's coming from, in what quantity, and how it's coming in. Get us that quickly, so we can get the rest of the guys in there to destroy those damn Blues."

"Yes, Captain."

"Here's the requisition order. Get what you need. Move!"

Lynn immediately returned to the reception area, where Ilan began to bark orders. "Iona come with me to get the needed equipment. The rest of you return to the garret and prep it."

She bowed to him before filing out with the rest. She knew that "to prep" an area was to remove all traces of their existence and was the most important detail. Too many rival Reds rifled through their belongings. It was a given to keep everything hidden and live as simply as possible. This was true on missions and in Little Falls.

Once back, the three worked in silence, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the weapons, counting their foodstuffs, and burning all documents. Iona and Ilan returned with three rucksacks, which they opened and divided on the grounded. "One tent, matches, waterproof gloves and boots," muttered Ilan.

"Not enough food," Iona said. "Just some dried beef, fatback, and a pound of cornmeal."

"We have five pounds cornmeal and lard," offered Lynn.

"There's not enough food to go around," Ilan said. "The harvest is half of what they expected in the spring. There was a blight for the second year. Many people will die this winter."

"How do you know?"

"I overheard the Commander when we were getting our supplies. Also, the Blues overran some of our farms in the valley. I suspect the blight is widespread."

In the evening, Lynn left the garret to visit her parents and her younger brother. They lived in the southwest of the city called the Circle, which was closed off from the rest of the city. They missed their independence in the Valley, but after her sister's kidnapping, they left and with Ilan's help resettled here. The Circle was inhabited by the merchants, the intelligentsia, and the military aristocracy. Here were the nicest homes that received electricity and clean water. They saw none of the poverty that existed just outside of their gates. Even their servants, who hailed from the poor, lived there for many years and had forgotten how desperate much of the fellow denizens lived.

She was welcomed at her parent's brick apartment building, by the maid. She looked severe, with gray hair tied in a bun, but she stood tall and was spry. Lynn guessed she was about fifty, but she could be younger as the environment was harsh and caused people to age so quickly. "Come in Lynn, you're expected." She showed Lynn to her parents' apartment in the back.

Her father answered the door with a wide smile. He was tall, hearty man with darker skin than her. Although he lived in the city for a year, he was still as sinewy as he was in the Valley. He embraced her. "I didn't want this life for you," This was always the first thing out of his mouth whenever he saw her.

Cole, her thirteen year old brother, greeted her. "Hi, Sis. I heard you were going on another mission! Nathan doesn't believe me that your job is to kill Blues. How many?"

"Cole!" called her mother. "Please help me with dinner." He sighed, then reluctantly joined his mother.

"Your mother doesn't like Cole saying that," her father said.

Lynn nodded as she settled onto the couch. She knew her mother's dislike of the factions and the military. Her mother missed the fresh air of the valley and most importantly, the freedom. There were many rules including the restrictions on literature and free speech. Her parents buried most of the books in the ground just south of their home, before moving to Little Falls, but were permitted to bring ten. Most people were illiterate in Little Falls and throughout the region. All of the factions forbade criticisms and education of the masses. She also knew that her mother hated the restrictions on weapons as she was proficient archer and shooter. It did give her relief that Lynn had full access to weapons for protection.

Her mother brought out biscuits, and her brother accompanied her with roasted chicken. "I invited the Rasmussens next door. They'll have beans and green salad."

"This'll be a delicious meal before I have to leave for a mission."

"Another mission," her mother shook her head. "I don't like it."

"Sara," her father warned.

"No John, this is ridiculous. I have to say something. We should return to our real home."

"It's been overrun by the Blues. We're safer here."

"That's what the Reds say. How do we know they're being truthful? Besides one of our daughters is gone, the other is drafted in the military, and our sweet Cole..."

"Is becoming a man and needs to learn how to protect himself. You're coddling him. Books are not going to save him when a man aims a gun in his face."

She collapsed beside Lynn. "There's only so much time left for us."

"I'm going to find Charlotte and we'll all return home. We will be okay."

Sara clasped her daughter's hand. "I love you very much. Please remember everything your father and I taught you." Then a knock came.

Lynn left her parents very late, still very full from dinner. She needed a full night's rest, but it'd be impossible with the impending mission. Under her cloak hid a book that her mother suggested she read, "A Brief History of Rome". Its pages were worn and yellow, but they were all there.

To get home, she took the main street down to the end past the town center where the gallows cast a permanent scar. Hundreds of people built makeshift shelters here using whatever materials they could find from rubble to old clothes sewn together. Families huddled together while drug addicts lay about unaware of their surroundings. Some men walked directly in her path staring menacingly. She pulled out her machete and tightly grasped it in her right hand. They immediately backed off, and she continued without a word. Nearing home, she cut through the alleyway where she met a women and their children huddling near makeshift fires in metal drums. The military wanted to crack down on this, but rioting would occur with the populace so agitated. Still, it was a dangerous practice as large swaths of the town had burned before especially in the northeast. Lynn stopped by one lady scarred on the right side of her face and revealed the biscuits from dinner. The lady grabbed them and apologetically bowed. She dispersed them to her two sallow-faced children.

Arriving home, she expected everyone to be asleep. Instead, she was met with all four of them awake, and talking low. They each looked up and then to her right hand. She forgotten to sheath her machete. "Just in case," she shrugged.

"I understand that you want to spend time with your parents," began Ilan. "But it's too dangerous for you to be out this late. We don't need a fight now."

"What more can I do?" she answered as she undid her headscarf revealing her bushy dark hair. "Soon we'll all be dead." From underneath her cloak, she dropped the book and unbuckled her weapon holster.

"There's no need in being reckless."

"My parents live in the Circle. It's a long way. Too bad, they don't live close by your favorite whores, so you can keep a better eye on me."

Iona chortled. "Maybe you can find a couple in the Circle, so she can visit her parents more often. Then everyone will be happier."

"Quiet!" he snapped. "I'm your commanding officer. Don't disrespect me again, Private, or you'll be hanging in the city center for contraband." He pointed at the book.

"I apologize, Sergeant," Lynn whispered. "My parents wanted me to give to you." She knew that he appreciated this gesture and perhaps it would disarm him.

"Thanks, I'll read it tonight, but it'll burn in the morning."

Lynn pulled off her tunic and took off her tights to reveal her shift. She was keenly aware of her odor, which she despised. It was too difficult in the city to haul water to the garret warm it, and clean her whole body. Ilan saw it as a waste of resources. She missed the warm springs near her home where she just immersed her whole body in the fresh water. She missed the soap her mother made that smelled of fresh lavender. Finch and Iona could sympathize as they too grew up in the mountains and the southern valley respectively. They rarely discussed their past though. Lynn did know where Iona grew up and she knew that the Reds rounded up her family when she was ten and brought them to work on the collectives just south of Little Falls. Iona showed bravery and an aptitude with fighting, so they forced her into the military. Unlike most other recruits, she could read, write, and knew survival skills, so she found her way into the TRT.

"Do we have enough medical supplies, Finch?" Lynn asked. "My dad gave me clean bandages and cloth."

"I'm glad your dad is so thoughtful," he replied. Finch was tall with a chiseled jaw line, and light eyes. He was quiet and kind, and reluctant to harm, since he felt as the self-appointed doctor of the group that he should help the injured and not cause injuries. It was a valid point, but when threatened, he was deadly with a pistol.

"My mother saved biscuits, but I gave it to Mandy and her daughters."

"You have something else there too." Finch pointed at her neck.

"This key?"

"I know about the key," Finch smiled. "It's the key to your family's basement. You're going to wear that around your neck."

"Cole made it. He found some metal then wrapped it around itself a couple of times. I know it's not the most beautiful thing, but I needed something to hold it."

"It's perfect. You'll carry two items that'll remind you of what you love."

She beamed. "Thank you."

He too smiled. "We'll have to get him out of Little Falls and into the wild."

"My mother would hate that," she chuckled. She played with the key some more, before being inspired to ask a question that she never asked before. "I don't think I know about your parents, Finch?"

A hush fell over the room. "Lynn, no," whispered Addy.

"We don't discuss our past ever," injected Ilan, "unless we want to. Do not ask again."

Ashamed, her head dropped. "I just wanted to know you more," she stammered. "I'm sorry Finch."

Finch hugged her. "Please don't apologize. We're family, always."

"To be honest," Iona began, "we're all on edge and we're all nervous. We never know if we'll make it back to this hole in the wall apartment, but we feel safe here and with each other. I think that we should be able to share ourselves with each other." Lynn noticed that Finch and Iona locked eyes.

"I'm not much for speech-making," Ilan said, "We should just sleep and prepare for our mission. Two weeks top and we'll be back freezing in this tiny room." He extinguished all of the candles in the room and the room fell silent. Soon, snores and deep breathing replaced the silence. Lynn's eyes were closed, but she couldn't fall asleep. The excitement for the next mission mingled with fear. She thought over hundreds over scenarios, but she laid still as she rationalized each scenario.

Her thoughts were interrupted by brisk movement and whispers, then kissing sounds.