Flashback

Val did sound almost asleep as he answered groggily one last time.

—Nope. Tried it. I told you… I tried all the fucking five-letter words that would’ve meant something to her. It’s just gonna… stay… encrypted. Go… to sleep, Leonard. We gotta get up early to get shot at tomorrow. Let me sleep, for Chrissakes.

I let him sleep.

After about an hour of lying there looking up at the cold desert stars, I sat up silently. My eyes had adapted to the darkness and I could see the phone protruding from his pocket as Val lay there snoring rather more loudly than I’d heard before.

I knew the five-letter word. I was sure of it.

I started to reach for the phone but stopped. If possible, I wanted Val to give me permission to try the word and for us to watch the encrypted pages of Dara’s diary decrypt into readable text in front of us.

If possible. If it wasn’t possible, I’d take the phone away from him soon and read those pages for myself. For some reason I was sure that Dara’s last, secret message to the world was more important than the feelings of a surly sixteen-year-old.

I’ve written this in my own hand-written journal—hiding it away so Val won’t find it—and will go to sleep thinking of my daughter and of why she would have chosen the five-letter word that I am certain is the key to her final message to the world.

1.11 North of Las Vegas, New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15

The tank shell that hit Nick and Sato’s Oshkosh–Land Cruiser was a lucky shot that exploded partially through the osmotic panel of the weapons dome atop the truck, beheaded the gunner Joe in a shaped-charge surge of fiery plasma, incinerated the rest of the ninja mercenary’s body in a microsecond, and instantly flowed down into the vehicle like a supersonic wave of hot lava that vaporized everything inside the truck that it did not set aflame.

Until that second, two and a half hours of the trip had been eventless to the point of boredom.

For the first ten miles down and away from Raton Pass, the two vehicles were technically under the protection of Major Malcolm’s hilltop artillery, but driving at forty-five m.p.h., they soon passed out of that zone.

Nick didn’t notice because he was too busy half paying attention to Sato going through all the evacuation, PEAP, comm, fire, and other details about the truck. Also because he was too busy trying to find a comfortable position. Not only did his oxygen mask, comm earbuds and microphones, all of his personal body armor and helmet, as well as the seat-sarcophagus itself, get in his way, but he’d shoved the big duffel bag holding his personal weapons in the space under his legs and now it was also getting in his way.

When Sato was done with his flight-attendant spiel and Nick paused in his squirming—using the relief tube did help—he paid a little attention to the large monitors that took the place of the broad windshield. Back when travel was easier and New Mexico and Texas were still states, Nick and Dara had come this way over Raton Pass to points south, and it had been one of their favorite state borders. New Mexico had looked different once they’d driven across the state line up on the pass and descended: the high prairie here looked different than its counterpart in southern Colorado, the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range to the west had looked different, and especially the buttes and mesas and extinct volcanoes visible to the southeast said “American Southwest!” more clearly than any landscape in their home state of Colorado.

It all still did, although now there were distinct smoke plumes rising to the south and southwest that gave the sense that not all those cones of former volcanoes ahead of them were quiescent. But Nick could see from the smaller look-down displays that it was burning tanks, vehicles, and abandoned towns or fortifications causing the smoke, not volcanoes.