The Greens of Jericho

 Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.  The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise.  No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter Three: “History Redux”

Emily Sullivan longed for a sense of normalcy. Normally around this time of the year, she would be teaching her students about the American Civil War. Normally she’d be feeling a sense of excitement at the thought of summer break happening in a matter of a few months and be making plans for a vacation. Normally she would spend her evenings curled up with Roger or hanging out with Heather.

Normal went out the window a long time ago. School had not been in session since the New Bern War, and even before that, it had been in session only sporadically as the town fought for its survival. There would be no summer vacations this year. Where was there to go? How would she get there? Roger Hammond was banished from Jericho after making a stand for the refugees, or the survivors, as they preferred to be called. And Heather? Emily had been trying not to think about her best friend and what her prolonged absence from Jericho all but proved.

Female friendship was not something Emily had much of during her life. Her friendship with Heather Lisinski had been the exception. Growing up, it was always easier to hang around males; the girls at school always eyed her so suspiciously, gossiped about her endlessly, and looked down on Emily because of her family’s troubles. Heather was different, though. They’d met when Heather accepted a job at the elementary school and became fast friends, falling into a pattern of shopping, giggling, hiking, and the occasional ice cream binge. Heather was supposed to be her maid-of-honor at her wedding to Roger, but her wedding date came and went while Roger was trying to make his way back home following the attacks.

Then there was Jake. Growing up, it was always EmilyandJake, JakeandEmily, their names running together on everyone’s lips. They’d been inseparable for so long, but he left.

Everyone always left her. Her mom, her dad, her brother, Jake, Roger, Heather.

When Jake returned, he brought with him so many memories of the past that she wanted to tuck away: issues with her father, the death of her brother, and she could go on. She tried to excise him from her life, but he was always there turning up like a bad penny, always making it more difficult to forget. He played the role of a hero to a T, and she’d begun to depend on him despite her best efforts to do otherwise.

And then there was Heather. She and Jake had hit it off, much to Emily’s chagrin. The day that Heather approached Emily, referring to Jake and her as a mini Bonnie and Clyde, she’d tried to warn her friend to be careful, that no one was safe around Jake.

Heather could have had any single man in Jericho—and probably a few married ones. Why did it have to be Jake?

And now Emily Sullivan was a hypocrite. The very person she’d warned Heather against was the person she’d once again given her heart. Truthfully, Emily still didn’t feel safe around Jake Green. She felt too much to be safe, too much baggage from their past, but the trust between them was being rebuilt. It had happened so subtly, she didn’t even realize it at first. With Roger gone and Heather in New Bern and crisis after crisis, she and Jake had leaned on one other. And suddenly it was JakeandEmily all over again.

But even that didn’t provide normalcy. Jake would not stay at her house for more than a few minutes. He said it was because she had allowed Dr. Kenchy Duwhalia and Jessica Williams to stay there, and he didn’t want to invade their privacy, but Emily suspected it had more to do with the fact that it was her house with Roger than anything else.

“Ms. Sullivan,” Chet Rawley called to Emily as she walked by. Emily recognized him from Jennings and Rall, the government contractors commissioned to handle the day-to-day operations of rebuilding, whether it was electricity and communications systems, assuring sanitary living conditions, or assisting schools in reopening to further educate the youth. Chet was always a little too perky and, if there was such a thing, too helpful, for Emily’s taste. “I have something for you.”

Emily stopped in her tracks, and then walked to the young man. He handed her a teacher’s edition history textbook, A New America: A Comprehensive History.

“What’s this for?”

“We’ve updated the American history textbooks. Cases of them have been delivered to the school for you to use. School will be going back into session soon, correct?”

“If we can get them to show,” Emily replied. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Chet replied as he retreated.

Emily opened the hardback book, viewing its table of contents. It looked to her like a standard textbook until she looked toward the last few units. “The decline and fall of the first Republic? How weak policies led to the demise of the United States?” she read aloud. Her mouth felt incredibly dry. She couldn’t teach this. She wouldn’t teach this.

This wasn’t history.

Then she recalled what an old history professor taught her in college. History is written by the victors. Textbooks, albeit nonfiction, can only be viewed through that filter, that someone does have a viewpoint to present and that viewpoint is rarely, if ever, unbiased.

Personal experience is like that, too, he’d asserted.

She was so lost in her own thoughts she didn’t even see Jake approach her outside of the Gracie Leigh’s. “Emily!”

She looked up.

“You’ll never believe who I’ve just seen!” Jake Green brushed his lips against hers and pulled away. A broad smile filled his features, a smile Emily hadn’t seen in what felt like an eternity, though in fairness to accuracy, was closer to about a four and a half weeks.

He’d endured so much loss, and it was a simple reminder that life was rarely fair. Jake had always held such a tight rein on his emotions that the memory of him literally crumpling on the porch of Stanley Richmond’s farm house following the death of his father still gave Emily chills. She’d not known what to do except hold him, reassure him. In the time since then, she’d still been unsure how to help him as his mood fluctuated between morose and surly.

Emily’s expertise in all things family related was sorely lacking. Her own father, a despicable human being who betrayed her when their town needed him most, was still out there causing trouble on the outskirts of Jericho. In the last few days, she’d found herself dwelling on her father as much as Jake dwelled on the loss of his. Yet she knew she wasn’t justified. What did her loss amount to? Jonah Prowse once again took care of himself above all else, but why should she have been surprised?

Emily shook the thoughts of self-pity from her mind. With her slender fingers, she touched his face. “What has you so excited?”

Jake’s dark eyes sparkled with excitement. “It’s Heather. She’s alive!”

Emily stood momentarily dumbfounded, the words not immediately sinking in. “That’s…that’s…amazing! But how? Eric told us…”

“Eric told us what he’d been told. He never actually saw her. Hell, he probably doesn’t know even now!”

“You should find him. Tell him.”

“Some good news to temper the bad.” The smile faded from Jake’s features, his eyes narrowing. “Did you know the Army has Constantino under house arrest? Have you heard about this man’s house? They might as well send him to a resort.”

Emily tilted her head, her blonde waves falling across her shoulder. “At least it’s a start, Jake.”

“So he tortures my brother, murders my father, falsely imprisons God know how many people in hell holes, starts a war, and he gets what? Grounded by Uncle Sam?”

“What did Major Beck say?”

“He’s ‘investigating.’”

“Then let him investigate. The truth will come out. You have to believe that.” Even as she said the words, she realized how hollow they sounded. Wasn’t she holding proof in her hands that the truth didn’t always come out, that everyone had some type of agenda? Emily studied his glowering expression. “Go find Eric. Tell him about Heather. It will make you both feel better.”

“You know me so well.”

“I always have.” She pressed her lips to his again, wanting to taste him. She sighed against him and wondered how long the feeling would last.

He began backing away. “You should go see Heather.”

“I’m going to find her right now,” Emily replied as she watched Jake leave. He was always going elsewhere, though this time, she supposed she was to blame for telling him to go find Eric.

“Last I saw her, she was meeting with Major Beck at city hall,” he called over his shoulder.

“Thanks. I’ll catch you later,” Emily replied with a wave before turning toward the Jericho City Hall.

In many ways, Emily was grateful that walking was still the preferred mode of transportation. Even with the presence of a federal government, shortages in gasoline were still a problem, particularly with the Republic of Texas holding the majority of the remaining oil refineries. Some complained because it took longer to get places, and they expected a replenishment of supplies overnight, but at this moment, Emily Sullivan was appreciative for the limited speed.

She walked past the Jennings and Rall tent, which had been set up in front of a building being renovated to house a more permanent J&R structure, exchanged pleasantries with a couple of her former students, and soon found herself outside the brick building emblazoned with the Kansas seal.

Yet she could not make herself go inside.

You’re being ridiculous, she chastised herself. This is your best friend. You should be beating down the door to see her! For pity’s sake, she was going to stand up for you at your wedding! You’ve worked with her side by side for the last three years. Just take that step.

Yet she could not make herself go inside.

You’re going to have to face her. You’re going to have to tell her sooner rather than later.

And still she did not go inside.

Emily stood for a few moments longer watching people enter and exit the building before tucking the textbook under her arm, burying her hands in her back pockets, and walking away.

Heather studied the man. He was the picture of businesslike efficiency. He spoke only when necessary and, to Heather’s untrained eyes, seemed to be constantly listening, watching, and studying his surroundings. His dark hair was cropped closely to his head; he wore fatigues that appeared amazingly crisp. His white teeth provided a startling contrast to his tanned skin though Heather noted that he did not smile.

“I will be recording our conversation.” His eyes met hers. “With your permission, of course,” he added after a brief pause.

“Of course.” Heather sat in a wooden chair. The few offices in city hall given to Army served as a place to do daily business. The military presence was unnerving for some—Heather included—but others welcomed the symbol that a federal government was up and running. Yet as she studied the flag which had been erected in the corner of the room, she found it mirrored her own sense of incongruity. Its vertical stripes and the decided reduction of stars only served as a reminder that there was no turning back to what had been.

Major Beck circled her, pacing. Now that the debriefing had begun, she wondered if the uneasiness that was beginning to creep in was anything like what criminals felt during interrogations. She watched the major and averted her gaze to look at Lieutenant Hamilton. He sat in a chair and appeared to be taking notes. The affable lieutenant was now all business himself.

“For the record, please state your full name.”

“Heather Rose Lisinski.”

“How well do you know Jake Green?”

Heather’s brows furrowed. What a loaded question—and completely unexpected. Surely Major Beck wasn’t interested in hearing of her unrequited romantic feelings for Jake. There was another reason he was asking. But what was it? “I know him well enough to know that he’s saved this town repeatedly. He’s also a good man.”

“He appeared very happy to see you.”

“Well, coming back from the dead tends to have that effect on people. No offense, Major Beck, but did you call me in here to discuss New Bern or Jake Green?”

“Aren’t they one in the same in some fashion?” Edward Beck raised an eyebrow. It was interesting to him how defensive Ms. Lisinski became where Jake Green was concerned.

Heather sipped from the Styrofoam coffee cup she’d been given minutes before and let the flavor of the brown liquid wash over her. How long had it been since she’d had actual coffee? Who knew that she would ever have considered it a luxury? “I’m not here to discuss Jake. I’m here to discuss my experiences in New Bern so that you can proceed with your investigation. Justice needs to be served.”

“Would killing be involved in your brand of justice?”

Heather swallowed hard, and she felt her face grow hot. “We’ve had enough people die in our country. Don’t you think?”

Beck found her response to be pleasantly surprising. “Why don’t you tell me what happened in New Bern.”

Heather took a deep breath, his pacing setting her on edge and too reminiscent of some even more unpleasant ‘conversations’ to which she had been subjected in New Bern. “I’m going to need you to sit down.”

Major Beck raised an eyebrow, pulled forward a wooden chair, and sat. His body remained rigid, but he was more eye level with Heather. Two soldiers still flanked him. Heather noticed that Jacob Hamilton studiously kept his eyes on his legal pad. Had she committed some terrible faux pas by asking the major to sit?

Her eyes returned to the major, making eye contact. “Winter was coming. In years past, the sense of excitement at the harvest time was palpable. Last year, after the attacks, the shortages, and the influx of refugees, we were filled with dread. The EMP hit us, and we lost our power grid, as well as vital equipment. Our supply of fuel was dwindling. People were dying and still more were going to die.

“Jake Green, Johnston Green, Dale Turner, and I went to the Black Jack trading post at the old Black Jack fairgrounds. We hoped to trade salt from Gray Anderson’s salt mine for a mechanical governor to get our windmills producing electricity. You see, a mechanical governor uses gears and flyweights inside of a crankcase to sense speed and detect changes in the load. In the case of a wind turbine, it’s the wind that provides the movement. So the governor adjusts the throttle to compensate for those changes, and...”

Major Beck fought the urge to shake his head in amazement. This young woman obviously knew more about mechanical devices than many men. Though certainly, she was getting off topic, to an extent. A gentle nudging would be prudent. “Did you find one?”

“Sorry. I ramble sometimes. We found one, but the man who possessed it,” Heather paused, remembering the manacles and bloody mattresses Dale discovered, ”the man was not one we wanted to do business with. We realized we were going to look elsewhere.”

“Why New Bern?”

“When we were at Black Jack, we came across a childhood friend of mine, Ted Lewis. He was there with some acquaintances from New Bern. They, too, were gearing up for a long, difficult winter and had gone to Black Jack in hopes of staving off starvation. New Bern had an old brake factory, and I believed we could salvage enough workable parts and supplies to get it operational again to produce the wind turbines Jericho needed.”

“So Jericho needed the turbines with no way to produce them, and New Bern needed…”

“Everything.” Heather sighed remembering how changed her hometown was when she arrived. Ravenwood had recently left its mark. Parts of the city were still smoldering. Entire families were homeless, and children descended on the truck in which she arrived begging for scraps of food just as vultures descend on a carcass. “I wanted to get the lights turned back on for Jericho, and if I could help New Bern get their factory back in order, they would have supplies to trade for goods they needed. It was supposed to make things better, not worse.”

Major Beck studied the young woman who sat across from him. Emotions danced across her face. The hope she’d felt, the idealism that one person could make a positive difference was followed by disappointment and something else Beck could not entirely identify. Ms. Lisinski’s features were youthful, but the look in her eyes shown one who had witnessed the worst of humanity. Beck had been seeing more and more of those expressions since the blast half a year earlier.

“The first arrangement we made called for a supply of salt for the wind turbine. I left Jake, Johnston, and Dale without even going back to Jericho. My friend Ted let me stay with him, and I went to work right away with others who had mechanical expertise.

“Working in the factory was fine at first. There were so many terrible things happening outside, but we were insulated in there. Within a day or two, we managed to cannibalize enough working pieces to get two lines open in the factory. We worked out the kinks in our wind turbine design. Everything seemed to fall into place so quickly, and more lines were opened.

“Periodically, Phillip Constantino, the sheriff, came to check on our progress. Shortly after I arrived, he also became ‘mayor,’ but he had more power than any mayor I had ever known. One of the men who worked in the factory with me—his name was Benny Harding—wasn’t a fan of Constantino’s, to say the least.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Benny was a student of history. He saw Constantino’s actions—the unlawful acquisition of private property, the detainment of people without reasonable cause—for what they were. The people had welcomed a dictator, but no one would say anything in protest, except Benny. You would have thought we were suddenly in Castro’s Cuba. I saw Benny every day for over a week, and then one day, he disappeared. When I asked about him, I was told he went to stay with relatives, but the looks on the faces of the men around me suggested otherwise. I later found out that he had been shot to death execution style.”

“What about Constantino? How often would you say you saw him?”

“Once we had the factory lines up and running, he spoke to me about the progress of the turbines every three to four days, but I saw him in the factory each day. Another project was getting started in a different section of the factory.”

“The mortars.”

“Yes.”

“When did you realize mortar rounds were being manufactured?”

Heather swallowed hard. “When it was too late. The first wind turbine was delivered to Jericho. I planned to return with that shipment, but Constantino, Russell, and the others left without telling me. My stay in New Bern was no longer voluntary.”

“So what did you do?”

“I went into denial. I tried to rationalize the things happening around me. I, um, stumbled upon a meeting room Constantino and the plant manager used and found a map of Jericho, along with a breakdown of the town’s supplies.” Heather’s heart began to beat quickly, much as it did that night she found the contents of the meeting room. “Still, I talked myself into believing that this information had been gathered for trading purposes. It was only when ten Jericho men returned with Constantino as collateral for a deal brokered between the two towns that I realized what was happening. Even then, it took Eric Green challenging me to take off my rose colored glasses before I would accept it.”

“And the mortars?”

“I traced the steps I’d seen Constantino take and found the mortar shells. I don’t know how I kept from being noticed. Every piece suddenly clicked, and I could no longer deny what was happening. New Bern was preparing for war, and the map was a calling card for the divvying up Constantino planned to do with Jericho.”

“Is this when you sabotaged the factory?” Beck asked shifting slighting in the wooden chair across from her.

Heather raised an eyebrow. “You know about that?”

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “I’ve done my homework.”

“I ran straight to Eric, told him what I’d seen, and we devised a plan. I managed to gain access to the factory late one night under the guise of being a workaholic. The guards knew me at this point, and despite my lack of natural flirting abilities, I did manage to flirt my way into the plant even though strict hours for entrance to the facility had long been established. Once I was inside, Eric created a distraction outside to make it easier for me to maneuver within the corridors, basically pulling the internal security guards to the outside. I disabled as much of the line as I could with as much force as I could.”

“And then you were caught?”

Heather nodded, and then realizing an audio recording was being made, added a vocal affirmation. “Yes, I was caught. Rule #10: Never be afraid to get your hands dirty. That rule applies to fixing cars and sabotaging neighboring cities’ munitions factories.”

Though she spoke so matter-of-factly, Major Beck fought the impulse to smile.

Heather continued, “I went into this knowing that would be the likely outcome. Unfortunately, stealth has never been my strong suit. I was detected soon thereafter by the same guards who remembered my sorry attempts at flirtation. Eric was captured, as well. Constantino started having second thoughts about having ten able bodied Jericho men so close to his pet project. He arranged to have them returned, all in the guise of a good faith offering, minus Eric, of course. And then the party really began.”

Heather closed her eyes. She heard her own screams, remnants of those memories. She saw the blood on her hands, the bloodshed she caused. She could still visualize Constantino’s deputies pounding Eric mercilessly while the warlord looked on in approval. Subconsciously, she rubbed her hands together. Were they still sticky? They felt sticky. And was that copper she smelled?

Suddenly, the tempered glass door to the ‘interrogation’ room swung open, its sound forcing Heather’s eyes open. “Major Beck, you have an incoming call from Colonel Hoffman. It is urgent.”

Beck reached out to the tape recorder and pressed the stop button. “May we continue this at a later time?” He rose, taking the recorder with him. Heather noted that he did not wait for a response from her. Though his words were polite, his tone suggested her lack of a choice in the matter.

Still, she was grateful for the break, even if she did dread the continuation. She’d not yet been home, and she longed to be surrounded by her things once again, to take comfort in her books, the quilt her mother made her the year before she died, to hold her father’s Bible again; she could go on and on with her list.

Maybe then she would be able to start feeling normal again.

The other soldiers exited, leaving only Heather and Lieutenant Hamilton. “I was right about you,” he commented, his easy grin replacing the air of formality he’d taken on in Major Beck’s presence. “You are trouble.”

“You have no idea,” Heather muttered as she stood.

Lieutenant Hamilton leaned against the table. “So you and this Jake guy…are the two of you…?”

“No. No. He’s…he’s just a friend.”

“Good, ‘cause I think you can do a lot better.”

Heather bristled. “You don’t even know him! Jake is…” She stopped herself upon seeing the look of satisfaction on the young man’s face. He was baiting her, and she’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

“Right. Just a friend. I’ll see you around, Ms. Lisinski. Welcome home to Jericho.”