Sons of War by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Author:Nicholas Sansbury Smith [Smith, Nicholas Sansbury]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538556900
Published: 2020-04-06T19:45:13+00:00

-15-

A week had passed since Ronaldo and his family returned to their home in Downey, and Ronaldo was up before the sun. The house been ransacked, of course, along with almost every other dwelling in the neighborhood. Only a few of their neighbors had stayed through the chaos.

“We’re alive; that’s all that matters,” Ronaldo had said. It took him a while to convince his wife that they were safer here than in one of the camps, where most residents who hadn’t fled the city were now living.

Elena was taking it better than he had expected, and the kids didn’t seem to mind much. They were just glad to be home and off the roads.

For the past few days, they had worked together to clean things up. Ronaldo had fixed the door, and Dom had boarded up the broken windows. But the boards didn’t keep out the shouts, gunshots, and sirens—the sounds of a city gone mad.

Ronaldo sat in the darkness of the living room on their eighth day home. At five in the morning, he turned on a battery-operated lantern and walked into the bathroom, where his uniform hung on a towel hook.

For a moment, he just stared at it, remembering all the places in the world he had worn it, and the brothers who had fought by his side. Marks, Bettis, and Tooth were out there, and he was going to find them.

But first, he had to report to his new duty station at Downey High School, where, in a few hours, he would receive his first orders. He would also learn whether his new CO had any luck tracking down the Desert Snakes.

Ronaldo quickly got dressed and brought his boots out to the living room, where he sat on the couch and laced them up.

A voice from the dark hallway made him flinch.

“You weren’t going to say goodbye?”

He let out a sigh as Elena stepped into the kitchen. The moonlight illuminated her features, and even in her nightgown, with frizzled hair, she was as beautiful as when they first married. All their arguments were forgotten, and his resentment seemed to vanish in that moment.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he whispered. “Dom is going to watch over you guys while I’m gone. I’m about to wake him up.”

She walked over to the front door and stood between Ronaldo and the exit.

“You promised me we’d be safe if we came back here,” she said.

“And we are safe, especially now that Governor McGehee has declared sovereignty. We’ll make it through this; we just have to be patient. I promise. You just have to trust me.”

“I do trust …” Elena shook her head. “I just can’t believe this is happening. It’s all one big nightmare. Maybe we should go to a refugee camp. At least, they have security.”

“No way,” Ronaldo said. “We’re safer here. Trust me.”

He finished tying his boots and then walked over to her.

She stared at him for a moment, then gave a half smile and rested her head on his chest.

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