Variance - Book 1, Issue #17

Sweetwater Creek State Park

Lithia Springs, Georgia

Day 39 of The Rise

    The basecamp where Higgins or Hodgkins or Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Was had returned holding his severed arm was made up of three separate barracks: the first for families, the second for survivors whose families were lost, and the third for military personnel.  There was a small landing strip on the north end of the base where a Boeing C-17 Globemaster sat parked.  While the runway was only 3,500 feet long, under normal circumstances it was more than enough length for the Globemaster to get off the ground.

    The night the Variants overtook the basecamp at Sweetwater Creek State Park was the night Enrique Valenzuala arrived.  It was also the night the Globemaster made its final takeoff from that narrow, uneven runway.  While the takeoff would be successful, it would not have the luxury of landing.

    The Army had marked off the base camp with temporary wire fencing.  It was the kind that could be constructed in a day and taken down at a moment’s notice.  There were four main lookout points with at least two Corporals stationed at those towers at all times.  Each tower had 360-degree views of the camp, as well as the surrounding park and reserve. 

    The Variants would storm Tower One at a quarter past eleven that evening and kill the two Corporals.  

    Hell would follow shortly after.  

    Enrique arrived to camp by bus, as so many of them had.  He sat in the very back even thought there were only six other passengers.

    When the bus dropped them inside the gate it was half past six in the evening.  The six passengers filed toward the barracks in a single line.  The survivors already at camp watched the new mess of “inmates” file in and Enrique felt a sudden tinge of nostalgic pain.

    When Enrique was thirteen he was caught shoplifting at the local stop-n-shop on the edge of Decora, the town he grew up in.  Decora, Georgia was so small that when Sergeant Matthews asked the storeowner to describe the suspect he simply said, “Well…It was Enrique.”

Enrique’s lack of remorse for the petit crime only agitated the judge presiding over the case, and he ordered him to remain at a juvenile delinquent center for no less than six months.

    He remembered what it was like when he arrived.  Filing in with ten other delinquents, their heads hanging low.  Ain’t so tough now, were they?  The other troubled youths stared at them from their barren, whitewashed cells, gritting their fragile, yellow teeth.  It was a hell unlike anything he had ever seen. 

    Now he was a 29 year old Mexican, having just witnessed some of the foulest shit anybody could ever see, filing off the bus like the naïve thirteen year old he once was.  Hell had returned.

    There were looks of hope in the other survivors’ eyes, anticipating the arrival of lost loved ones.  But there was no such hope to be found.  “My daughter’s still missing, and this dirty wetback gets a pass,” one survivor muttered as Enrique passed him by.  The man’s bludgeoning contempt almost knocked Enrique off his feet.  He dropped his head and made his way to the sleeping quarters.

    Enrique would manage a few hours of rest before the mayhem would begin.