A One Shot

Her knuckles are white against the dark rubber handlebars. It’s an effort just to relax her grip as she brings the bike to a stop. She’s hunched over, gun holstered at her waist. It’s grip digs into her side; she straightens to ease the pressure. Leg up, kickstand down. She tilts the bike sideways until it stands stable, plants her left foot on the ground, and swings her other leg over the seat, dismounting.

Hands come up to her face. She pulls off the helmet - a lingering remnant of a time now gone. Her hair is lying flat against her skull - she feels it cling to her scalp with sweat. She runs her fingers through once, twice. The third time she leaves her hand there, resting, pulling on the back of her neck. 

She exhales. Slow, measured. Her eyes have closed, and she doesn’t know when. She stands there, at the edge of camp, like the statue of a sleeping sentinel. Time passes, or perhaps it doesn’t. When she opens her eyes, nothing’s changed. She stands by her bike, on scorched earth beneath a cloudless sky, with nothing but the meagre shade of dead branches to shield her from a burning sun, unmoved.

She’s alone.

She just hopes they’ll accept her explanation why.

****************************************************************************

Camp Sparta is named for one of the most notorious regions of Ancient Greece, famed for its warriors, its toughness, the durability of its people.

It’s also named for the word that best described it, back at the beginning when there was nothing more than a handful of tents pitched on the outskirts of a growing desert: spartan.

The camp hasn’t gotten much grander since. The name’s stuck.

Like Sparta, the Camp has two main leaders. Angie, who tends to handle ‘domestic’ affairs. She’s in charge or pretty much everything that comes with running a camp: food, clothing, accommodation. She’s solid. Dependable. The single most respected person in all of Sparta.

And then there’s the Commander. 

Ex-forces, though he must have been at least seven years into retirement when he first showed up. He calls himself the Commander, because he fancies himself a bit of a military hotshot, and in fairness, he probably does have the most experience, in this jumble of twenty-somethings and families. Everyone else calls him the Commander, because he refuses to give them another name. 

The Commander handles ‘Defense and Ops’, a self-contained remit that is essentially meaningless. There’s Security, of course, that’s a given - perimeter patrols and whatnot. But also scouting missions. Sourcing food and water, and then the less obvious. Petrol, or medical supplies. A pillow, on one memorable occasion. Guns. 

Somehow it's always guns, with the Commander. There aren’t really enough survivors out there to pose a threat, anymore. No Skrits - they lost interest in this little corner of the world almost before they found it. No animals at all, really, since the deadening. And still he insists on searching, hoarding. Guns and ammo.

Amita doesn’t like him much. No one does. But in times of hardship, you rarely have the luxury of working with people you like. So they let him stay. Quirks aside, he serves his purpose. He’s functionally harmless.

He’s also the man about to ground Amita from all future missions if she can’t give him some answers he’ll like.

“And you have no idea what killed Wilson?”

Wilson. Daniel, to his friends. But she wouldn’t consider herself one of those, so Wilson will do.

Wilson had been her partner, on this last Op. A simple scouting mission, low-stakes. Only he hadn’t come back.

Amita isn’t known for great shows of emotion. Still, in times of great stress, surely a little hysteria can be forgiven. 

She sniffs.

“It just.” Break. Breathe. Swallow. “It all happened so fast. I mean, one minute, he’s fine, walking out in front of me, and the next” - she breaks off to give a dry sob - “the next he’s just, just-”

“Alright. Alright, please. Take your time.” The Commander looks vaguely uncomfortable. Good. 

She inhales three times, quickly, loud wheezes that reach increasingly higher pitches. The effort leaves her mildly light-headed.

“Sorry, sir.” Deference is also unusual for her, but she hopes he’ll just put it down to shock. “Sorry. So, one minute he’s fine, and the next he was down. Not so much as a shout, I couldn’t see what hit him.”

“‘What’?” he asks, pointed.

Pause. Collect.

“There was blood when I reached him sir. I’m assuming it wasn’t natural.”

He nods, considering. Motions for her to continue. Her next exhale isn’t completely feigned.

“Anyways, yeah. He dropped, so I ran forward which, looking back, was probably stupid when I didn’t know what’d happened. Careless. But I ran forwards and, dead. On sight. Blank eyes, not breathing. No pulse.”

He hums. “Yes. And the blood?”

She slowly calms herself down. Going into Mission Mode, that’s something the Commander will appreciate. “More than there’d be if he just passed out from heatstroke. Less than if he’d died from the loss.” She shrugs.

He seems to accept her answer. Smiles, wryly. “More than nothing, less than something?”

“Quite, sir.”

He nods again, and she knows she’s in the clear. They don’t have the resources to deal with crude and unusual deaths, beyond warning people to take care. No investigation, no follow up. She’s home free.

“The body?”

“Had to leave it, sir. We only took the one bike, and besides, he’s bigger than me. I don’t think I could have even gotten him onto the seat, let alone kept him there the whole trip back.”

“And the intel?”

“Bad, sir.” She purses her lips, smiling internally. “We did a mile’s sweep before we tried on foot. And that got cut short, obviously…” She lets her voice catch on the last word. “But, we saw enough. There’s nothing out there.”

“Hmm…” He looks thoughtful. Contemplating. He looks stern, and serious, and not the slightest bit suspicious.

The Commander dismisses her from the tent, and she walks out with her head high, face dry and eyes completely devoid of red.

****************************************************************************

Amita doesn’t lie.

She doesn’t know exactly when that became part of her philosophy, just that it did. She doesn’t lie. Ever. She’d take responsibility if she ever started a fight at school, and told the six year old who’d asked that she didn’t believe in God, and used to change the subject whenever a kid brought up Santa, back in the old days, because she’s not a monster. But she doesn’t lie. 

It’s not a big deal. She doesn’t make it one. Still, everyone knows.

When everyone knows you never lie it becomes so much easier to hide the truth.

****************************************************************************

Telling Angie is both easier and more difficult. 

It’s easier because Angie doesn’t ask her for details. There’s no debrief, no awkward questions to dance around. A man used to live here and now he won’t, and that’s all she wants to know. A negative one in some population tally they presumably keep somewhere, that’s the only real impact Wilson’s death will have on Angie’s life.

But it’s more difficult too, because she genuinely likes Angie. Angie doesn’t ask her anything beyond a gentle “You okay, hun?”, but Amita wants to confess everything anyway. Angie feels safe, in a way that all too few things are, with her dark eyes softened in sympathy, her furrowed brow and sad smile, and this is not the first time Amita has felt the urge to confide in her the depths of her soul, those secrets she’s never shared, the thoughts that she’ll never give voice. Not lying is not the same as telling truths. Words are guarded all the closer when their verity is sacrosanct.

She hasn’t given in to those urges yet and now is no different. Her mind is a vault. Still, the omission feels like more of a betrayal than any other action she’s executed today.

“Wait,” Angie calls out as she turns to leave. She does.

“Family. Daniel. Do you know if he had anyone..?” She trails off.

“Umm… yes.” Unpracticed, casual. “There’s that kid he showed up here with. Aiden? I’m not quite sure what the relation is, but I know him - he’s with Julie a lot.”

Angie nods, the careful nod of someone who doesn’t recognise the information they’re being presented with any further beyond the dull instinct that they should. Amita keeps going.

“I can, uh, tell him for you, if you like? I was planning on talking to the kid anyway. Felt right.”

Angie nods. “Yes, uh, thank you. That, I think would be helpful.” 

Amita takes that as the closer it is, and leaves with a nod.

****************************************************************************

Aiden, the kid, is already waiting inside when she finally gets back to her tent.

It’s a small, two-person affair, and she says ‘her own tent’ but really she shares. Julie, the runaway she and Ravi had picked up when they’d first started their quest to find other survivors. And Aiden, who she’d let move in two weeks ago, and had been pulling consecutive night shifts to accommodate ever since.

The kids kept the tent at night, she slept during the day. It worked.

He’s alone. Julie’s probably hanging out with Ravi next door, driven away by the tension radiating off him.

He looks at her, and knows. She says it anyway. “He’s dead.”

The boy nods. Considers. She takes the opportunity to move inside properly and sit down - on Julie’s mat, seeing as Aiden is currently on hers.

She watches him. His face is blank. When he speaks it's a single word, dull and toneless. “How?”

She presses her lips together. “Do you really wanna know? I’ll tell you if you think you need to hear it. But you don’t have to, if you don’t.”

He just stares.

The gun she’s been wearing all day reasserts its presence, cool through thin cotton..

She breathes.

***************************************************************************

It had been surprisingly easy. Mina owed her a favour, and she knew she’d run into a smuggling gang a few days back - one of the handful left. Amita asked her to mention overhearing about their base camp in her debrief - she gave a rough location but not a reason why; Mina trusts her enough not to ask - and thus the stage was set.

Raids are always popular, though they’re few and far between. They’re treasure troves, full of useful supplies, but also full of junk, the kind of priceless artifacts that you could never justify asking someone to bring back for you. Books, card decks. Beer.

The Commander asked for a scouting team, and she’d volunteered herself as soon as she reasonably could. Her last fourteen night patrols had apparently engendered some good will, because he agreed almost at once. He asked her to pick a second, and she’d scanned the camp faux-casually until she landed on “Wilson”.

Wilson, who’d agreed without a thought. Wilson, who didn’t know her, and didn’t know to be suspicious. Wilson, who rode out on the back of her bike and thought nothing of it when she stopped, in the middle of nowhere, and suggested that he walk out in front despite having the rifle.

****************************************************************************

“I shot him.” He isn’t surprised. “One bullet. Straight through the back of his head.”

“Did he do anything?”

She thinks. “He wasn’t doing anything, no.”

Aiden pauses. “Then why?”

She sighs, heavy, and feels it resonate throughout her body. “You know why.”

“Pretend I don’t.”

“What do you want me to say?” Her words don’t grow any louder - she doesn’t like raising her voice, even without the added constraints of secrecy - but they do become crisper, more precise, every letter present and accounted for.

Aiden doesn’t reply.

They sit, in charged silence.

“Look. He hurt you, I took him out. That’s all there is to it.”

He falters. “I didn’t, I never said -”

She cuts him off. “Please. You think I’ll buy that you moved in here ‘cause you were happy there.”

He looks angry now. “I never asked you to do that.”

“Right, and no one asked me to do this either.”

“Then why?”

“‘Cause I wanted him gone. I don’t like people who beat on kids.”

“But I didn’t ask-”

“Are you glad he’s gone?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I mean it. Ignore the how. Just, if you woke up and he was gone, and you knew for a fact that he wasn’t coming back. Would you be glad?”

He’s quiet. His nod is slow, almost ashamed, as if he has reason to fear the judgement of a murderer. His “Yes” just coasts on an exhale, barely audible.

Aiden doesn’t like lying much either.

Amita sits back on her hands.

“So that’s why. This isn’t, I’m not. I don’t want anything from you, that’s not what this is, you don’t owe me or anything, I’m not gonna claim you do. I just -”

She pauses to gather her thoughts. Swallows. Her mouth has gone very dry.

“I mean, put it this way, if you like. We have, very real, limited resources. He went after you, he could go after someone else. I figured his existence was doing more harm than good, and I dealt with it the way I thought would be most effective. We don’t have a prison, or a means of separation, or any form of due process. We do have a hostile environment out there, and very little internal scrutiny. I made it work.”

The tension in the air has almost dissipated. 

At last, Aiden speaks again. Voice quiet, eyes turned down. 

“He’s really gone?”

“I shot him through the head, yes he’s gone.”

“Through the head?”

“Why? That surprise you?”

He shrugs, which she takes to mean, ‘Yeah, a little’.

“I told you, this wasn’t for, like, vengeance or something. It was pragmatism. Prevention. I wasn’t trying to, I don’t know, serve justice or something. I was just, stopping him, and the best way of stopping him was by not giving him a chance to stop me. So, one bullet. From behind. Straight through the head. Never even saw it coming. He’s gone.”

“Good.” She doesn’t think she was meant to hear that, so she doesn’t comment.

Nothing.

They sit there, for minutes or hours, she can’t be sure. What she is sure of is the way their canvas-filtered light is slowly dimming.

When Julie pushes into the tent Amita pushes herself to her feet. She heads out with a soft “Night”. Julie, who had immediately collapsed face down onto her bedroll, just grunts. She smiles, well versed in ‘Julie’ by now.

Aiden follows her out, which is surprising. She looks down at him, questioning. He won’t meet her gaze.

“What’s up?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing.”

“Sure.” She keeps walking towards the Command tent.

She stops when Aiden starts veering to the left. “Where are you headed?”

“Oh. Back, I thought.”

The confusion must show on her face, because he then clarifies. “Uh, to the tent. My tent. You know, ‘cause Dani- He’s gone, and that’s the reason you were letting me stay, so…”

He trails off. “Unless..?”

“Well, I’m still taking night shifts, aren’t I?” Her answer’s reflex, flippant. She pauses. “But, I mean, yeah. Sure, yeah. If you want to move back and all, cool. Have a bit more space and all. I, guess I’ll see you around.”

He’s quiet. Then,

“Well, I mean, it wouldn’t be that much more space.”

“Yeah.” She fights to keep a smile from breaking out, to keep her voice light.

They start walking again.

“Yeah. Our tent was kinda small. A one man, really.”

“Hmm. Well, you know Mcbell, just across from us? I heard he’s looking to break up with Clara - he’ll need some place to move. And their place is huge.”

He’s smiling too now. She thinks he hears an almost-giggle, but she keeps it to herself. “And Clara will, what, just give up her tent?”

“She will if she knows what’s good for her.” He raises an eyebrow. “No, but, seriously, it’ll just be her and the baby, she won’t need that much space, and she still owes me one - no, I can’t tell you why. I’ll even throw in some free babysitting if she needs convincing.”

“You hate babies.” His eyes are bright.

“But Julie doesn’t. I’ll take over when it can actually talk.”

“‘It.’ Sure, that’ll convince her. And you’d offer to watch the kid anyway.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”

They’re almost at the Command. Aiden turns to leave.

“But, hey, wait.”

He does.

“Think it through properly, ok? I’ll understand. No pressure, either way.”

He nods. 

She turns, and heads into the tent.

****************************************************************************

When Amita finally gets off duty, it’s early morning, she’s been up and running for conservatively thirty-seven hours and she is exhausted. But Julie, and Aiden, are still asleep in their tent, and tiredness makes her soft, apparently, because she can’t quite bring herself to wake them.

Luckily, she remembers Ravi making noises about spending the night with a ‘friend’ just before she’s forced to collapse where she stands and acquaint herself with the dirt.

She goes into his tent, throws herself on his bedroll, and passes out.

Ravi wakes her a few hours later when his wheelchair rams into her body. He raises an eyebrow and doesn’t apologise.

“Kids still asleep?”

She yawns. “They were.” Pushes herself upright. “Both of them.”

He looks at her knowingly. Nods.

She stands up. “Anyway. It’s late, right? I’m gonna go toss one of the brats out.”

“Sure,” he says, wheeling out of her way. He brushes her hand as she leaves, just briefly, catch and release.

“You know, maybe on a global scale everything’s messed up and weird, but all this? Us? I think we’re gonna be ok.”

She pauses, back to him, half out the door. “Yeah. I think we are.”

And Amita doesn’t lie.