Chapter 1- Premature Detonation
“Wolf Team ready?”
“Affirmative,” comes the hushed voice through Clarke’s earpiece.
Clarke focuses the scope of her rifle towards a row of low houses where her Wolves, Octavia Blake and Lincoln Crew, are crouched beside a house that looks like it had recently been on fire.
And given that they were currently in a war zone, it probably had been.
“Nuts and Bolts?” Clarke asks in a low voice, moving to the other side of the street where her tech and demolition team, Monty Green and Jasper Jordan, were crouched by a house with a giant hole in the wall.
“We are a go,” Green answers.
Clarke sweeps the area with her rifle, movement catching her eye. “Wolves, there’s a lost sheep at your eleven, fifteen paces.. ten.. five.. now.” Clarke watches as Lincoln quickly and quietly takes out the lost sheep, pulling the body back so that it’s hidden beside the house. Another sweep and she orders, “all clear. Forward teams advance.”
From her vantage point, she watches as both teams break cover and advance towards a church a block away.
It was the only untouched building in three square blocks, the lights inside shining through the stained glass window and casting rainbows onto the streets outside. Some would probably call it a miracle that the church was the only building unscathed by war, but Clarke knew better.
An unscathed building meant it was protected, and not by a divine force, but a human one.
Her teams advance on the church, climbing the steps quickly and taking places on either side of the door as Jasper places C4 along the hinges and locks. Once done, Clarke’s radio crackles, “ready for entry.”
Clarke grins, “light it up.”
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“You should have seen your face!” Octavia yells, laughing as she slaps Jasper on the back.
“It’s not funny!” He grumbles loudly, but there’s a small smile on his lips, just like there always is when Octavia teases him.
“You’re right,” Monty says with fake concern. “It’s not funny, Blake.” He moves between Jasper and Octavia, puttin an arm around the man’s shoulders. “It’s hilarious! What kind of demolition man forgets to put a detonator in the explosives?”
“Shut up man,” Jasper groans, shrugging off his friend.
At eighteen, Jasper is the youngest of Clarke’s team, and as such, gets the brunt of the teasing. Mainly from Monty, who was a fresh nineteen and never let Jasper forget it. The two of them had become inseparable during boot camp, quickly becoming known as the class clowns who were renowned for their pranks.
But it become clear that the two of them had more to offer after they designed and built a shaving cream bomb in under ten minutes that nearly destroyed the shower block.
After that, they were sent to tech and demo, quickly becoming one of the best teams to pass through in at least five years. They’d graduated top of their class, which came as a surprise to the majority of the people in attendance, and had been sent straight to Clarke who was known for having a.. diverse group.
“You’re lucky this was just a training exercise,” Octavia adds with a smirk. She goes to the cooler that’s along one wall of the long rec tent. Opening it, she pulls out seven popsicles and with a loud bang, closes the cooler before hopping up to sit on the lid. She rips open her snack with her teeth, taking a big bite as she grabs another one.
“Bro, Clarke is going to kick your ass!” Monty cackles, holding up his hands for Octavia to toss him a popsicle.
Octavia tosses him the treat, then one to Jasper. “Don’t worry, J-Man,” Octavia tells him with a rare genuine softness, usually reserved for kids or puppies. “It was your first time. She’ll understand.”
Monty chokes on his popsicle just as Raven Reyes, mechanic extraordinaire, strolls into the tent. Her tan jumpsuit is stained with oil, the top half unzipped, her undershirt a pristine white. Her dog tags jangling as walks towards them.
Octavia throws a popsicle at her head, laughing when Raven yelps but manages to catch it. “Who did Jasper disappoint this time?” Raven asks as she opens the popsicle. She grimaced and grunts, “ew, cherry.”
Another popsicle sails by her head, landing directly in the hands of John Murphy, their resident cockroach. It was a nickname well earned, and despite the name, given with love.
Murphy, never John, was twenty-one and was on his second tour following a four month long hiatus after he was trapped under forty feet of concrete and steel when the apartment building he was clearing had collapsed. Both his legs had been trapped under a large slab of concrete, but he had walked away with minor cuts and bruises once they had dug him out.
“You didn’t hear?” Murphy asks Raven as he opens his popsicle. He makes a face when he sees the dark purple color, handing it to Raven and taking her cherry one. “Jasper got so nervous he couldn’t detonate.”
Octavia cackles at the joke while Monty grins, “I hear they make pills for that now.”
“Isn’t it normally the other way around?” Raven asks with a grin. “I’ve heard of premature.. detonation, but is it normal to not detonate at all?”
“I’ve never had an issue with it,” Murphy smirks.
“Me either,” Monty howls with laughter.
“Same,” Octavia laughs around a bite of popsicle.
Jasper’s face turns beat red from their teasing and he sits down on a folding chair with a heavy sigh, eating his treat quietly.
He knew they were just teasing and didn’t mean any harm, but he was still embarrassed. And they were right, he had been nervous, but not because this was his first posting or even because it had been the first training exercise since being here.
No, he’d been nervous because Octavia had been standing across from him, smiling in excitement as he placed the explosives.
It wasn’t a secret that he had a small crush on her. It had started the day they met, two months ago when him and Monty had landed on the base and the first thing they’d seen was a friendly game of basketball between Octavia and Raven.
It had been love at first sight for Jasper and Monty had clocked it immediately.
So had everyone else after their first official team meeting, but nobody had brought it up to him until he tried to make a move and Octavia had politely but firmly told him that she was in a relationship. It hadn’t done anything to dampen his feelings for her, but he respected her and their friendship too much to press the issue again.
The sounds of their laughter filled his head and he wished that Clarke would hurry up and come tell him off so that he could go hide in his bunk for the rest of the night.
But neither Clarke or Lincoln were anywhere to be seen.
“Where are our illustrious leaders?” Murphy asks as if he just realized that their group was two people short.
“No idea,” Octavia shrugs. “But if they don’t hurry up, I’m eating their popsicles.”
“Somehow I don’t think Lincoln would mind,” Raven snorts.
“Shut up!” Octavia hisses, glancing around, but the only people in the tent were them. Her team. Her family. And they’d never betray her or Lincoln. “But you’re right, he wouldn’t.”
Octavia and Lincoln were the worst kept secret on base.
At twenty-two, Lincoln was older than Octavia by two years, second in command to Clarke and was married to the job. Or, he had been married to the job, same as his dad and his grandfather. He had grown up knowing he was going to go career, just like the majority of his family, but the day he met Octavia, all that changed.
He fell in love with something other then the job.
Not that they could legally be open about it. Relationships while deployed were forbidden, punishable with a dishonorable discharge, and neither Octavia nor Lincoln wanted that.
They had tried to fight their feelings, but after a particularly harrowing mission a year ago when Lincoln had almost died, the dam had broken and they stopped fighting it. They still couldn’t be open about it, even if the rumors were running rampant, but their team knew, and they were supported.
Raven and Murphy move to the chairs by Jasper, each taking one and relaxing as much as the hard metal chairs will allow. “Don’t worry,” Raven finally says, her laughter dying down. “Clarke is pretty understanding when it comes to her rookies.”
“Oh!” Octavia exclaims. “Tell him about the time you tried to put NOS in the Abrams!”
Jasper looks at Raven with pure excitement, “you tried to-.”
“Tried?” Raven scoffs, interrupting the man. “There was no try. I don’t try, I do.”
“What you did was blow up a million dollar tank,” Murphy deadpans.
“My logic was sound,” Raven shrugs. “Wasn’t my fault the fuel lines ruptured.”
“You almost got court martialed,” Octavia reminds her. “If it wasn’t for Clarke you’d be in a black site right now.”
“Like a black site could hold me,” Raven scoffs. “I’d be out of there in a day, two tops.”
“It would take you a day to stop shitting your pants,” Murphy laughs.
“You asshole!” Raven yells. “Like you would do any better!”
“Cockroach,” he reminds them.
“That doesn’t-.”
“Officer on deck!”
There’s a flurry of movement as the five of them rush to their feet, turning to face the tent entrance as Clarke and Lincoln walk inside.
Clarke looks around the tent, nodding when she sees that they are alone. “At ease,” she tells them, walking over to the group. Lincoln follows her, taking a position next to Octavia. Not too close, but close enough that it makes her smile softly as she hands him a popsicle.
“Boss?” Octavia asks, offering Clarke the last one.
Clarke shakes her head, “listen up. We have new orders.”
“We shipping the newbie home?” Raven jokes.
“We all are.”
There’s a beat of silence before Murphy asks, “are you serious?”
Clarke nods, “we ship out in an hour. Pack your shit, we’re going home.”
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The flight back to the states is a long one.
Her squad sleeps for the majority of the flight. It’s hard to get a solid eight hours when you’re in a war zone, and in the safety of the plane, they could finally relax enough to pass out.
Clarke did her best to sleep, but like always, her dreams were filled with fire and smoke. With screams. With blood. Dreams that had her jerking awake every few hours in a cold sweat, her jaw clenched so she didn’t scream and wake her squad.
Not that they would have cared. They all knew what she dreamed of; it was the same thing they all dreamed of.
Even with her interrupted sleep, the flight passes quicker than she expected, and when they land at Fort MacArthur in LA, she’s in a surprisingly good mood. There’s a nervous energy in the plane as the hatch opens, sunlight flooding in.
Clarke shoulders her bag, watching her squad do the same and then they all walk into the sunshine together.
—————————
Their convoy moves quickly through the streets of L.A.
Everywhere she looks, Clarke only sees carnage. Crashed cars, smoke billowing from under the hoods. Bodies in the streets, pools of blood around them. Shop windows have been busted out, probably by looters. Homes were on fire, some fire hydrants gushing water but it wasn’t doing anything to prevent the spread of the flames.
“What the hell happened here?” Octavia asks softly, her gaze glued to the city around them.
“Riots probably,” Lincoln answers, his hands firmly on the wheel as he moves their Humvee carefully around crashed and abandoned cars.
“That’s not what General Jaha said,” Raven reminds them.
Their radio crackles as Murphy adds, “are we really supposed to believe that there’s zombies running rampant?”
Clarke glances in the mirror, looking at the second Humvee that carried Murphy, Jasper and Monty.
“Zombies aren’t real,” Raven tells him over the radio. “This has to be.. some code word or something.”
“We all saw the briefing packet,” Octavia tells them, joining the conversation. “They said zombie. Like ‘eat your brains’ zombie.”
“Guess that means Murphy is safe,” Monty jokes, trying to lighten the mood.
Clarke sighs as she listens to them. She wasn’t entirely convinced that it was zombies either. Zombies weren’t real, everyone knew that. But the packet had said zombie. The streets they were driving through did look like a stereotypical zombie movie.
And yet, they still hadn’t seen anyone. Living or.. otherwise aside from the bodies in the streets.
So far, it looked just like any other war zone they’d been in.
Clarke keeps her eyes on the road as they drive, tuning everything out until Lincoln starts to slow down. A sign for El Sereno makes him say, “we’re close, boss. Ten more minutes.”
Clarke nods, tearing her eyes from the road. Grabbing the radio she says, “get ready. ETA ten minutes.”
—————————
“Alicia, come on!” Travis Manawa calls, walking towards a house just as a young woman comes out.
“I heard you,” Alicia Clark says in annoyance. “I had to pee.”
Travis shakes his head but doesn’t say anything as he turns around and heads to his white truck where his ex wife Liza and their son Chris were waiting.
Alicia glances up at the sky as a large helicopter flies overhead, before going to the car where her brother Nick and their mom Madison were waiting. Climbing in, she tosses her bag into the backseat by Nick, who had his head leaned back against the seat.
He was still in the clothes he’d stolen from the hospital after his last near death incident, and Alicia had to fight the disgust that welled up in her.
He was only twenty-four, just two years older than her, but she had spent the majority of her life taking care of him, not the other way around. His heroin habit had made for a pretty rocky childhood, despite how hard their mom tried to shield her from it.
In front of them, Travis leans out of his trucks window, looking back at them. Madison gives him a wave and Travis nods, ducking back into the cab and turning the truck on. He pulls out of the driveway, Madison following close behind.
They circle the block, pulling up to an intersection just as a silver car pulls to a stop in front of their neighbors house.
“Patrick!” Madison yells out the window. Alicia follows her gaze to Patrick Tran, their elderly neighbor. Faintly, Alicia can hear him calling for Susan, his wife. “No, no, no,” Madison mutters as Patrick disappears from sight.
She turns the car sharply towards back towards Patrick’s house, nearly hitting the curb as she stops and jumps out, racing towards where Patrick had vanished into the backyard.
Alicia follows her mom, much to her brothers protest, but she can hear him climb out of the car after her.
“Patrick, don’t touch her!” Madison yells.
Alicia rounds the corner of the house to see Patrick staring in shock at his wife who was shuffling towards him, her hands outstretched and mouth open in a whispering snarl.
Before any of them can move, a group of soldiers rounds the back of the house, a lone shot ringing in Alicia’s ears. She watches as both Patrick and Susan fall to the ground, Patrick crying out in shock as he holds his wife’s body in his arms.
More soldiers appear from behind Alicia, one of them grabbing her arm and pulling her back towards the front of the house along with the rest of her family.
Travis and Madison are ushered to a woman with a clipboard while Alicia was looked over by a woman with a worried crease on her forehead. “Are you alright?” The soldier asks. “Were you bitten? Scratched?” Alicia doesn’t answer, her mind still replaying what just happened. The soldier gives her shoulder a gentle shake, “hey. You’re safe now. But I need you to answer my questions.”
“What?” Alicia mutters, slowly focusing on the softer in front of her.
“Are you injured?” The soldier asks again.
“No,” Alicia answers softly.
“Any bites? Scratches? Have you come into contact with infected blood?”
Alicia shakes her head, “no.”
“Has anybody in your family?” The soldier asks.
“No.”
“Ok,” the soldier nods. “Get inside while we secure the area.”
The soldier turns and walks off, leaving Alicia on the front lawn. For the first time, she notices the mass amounts of soldiers running around, shouting orders and clearing bodies from the street.
She watches Travis talk to another soldier, noticing the way his shoulders were relaxed, like they were safe.
Behind her, the door to the house opens and her mom calls, “Alicia. Come inside.”
With a last look at the soldiers, Alicia turns and follows her mom into the house.
