The day after: An apocalyptic morning (91 page)

              "They'll be okay out there," she told him. "You trained them well."

              "I know," he said with a sigh. "I just feel like a father waiting for his kids to get home from a night out."

              "Shellie and Jack know what they're doing. They'll keep them safe." She paused. "I only wish I could be out there too."

              "Your place is here," Skip said. "Believe me, I would've felt more comfortable with you as part of the airport detail but that same feeling works in reverse. I'm able to relax a little while I'm shuttling between here and Cameron Park knowing that you're here taking care of defense."

              "Do you really think I'm doing a good job?" she asked, pleased by his praise.

              "I really do," he said. "And I'm sorry that I took all your best people for the airport mission."

              "At least I didn't have to staff the guard posts with untrained people," she said. The remaining guards that had been through Skip's training program had all volunteered to pull double duty until the completion of the mission to keep that from happening.

              "That's a sign of respect for their leader," Skip said. "I could never get them to do that when I was in your shoes."

              "That was before we were attacked," Christine reminded him, not about to be complimented that easily. "I think that might have had something to do with it."

              "Maybe a little," Skip allowed. "But don't kid yourself. A lot of it is out of loyalty to you and I. Nobody wants to spend twelve hours in one of those wet, muddy bunkers up on the hill if they don't have to."

              "That is true," she agreed, accepting the compliment this time. "But when are we going to get more people trained up? We have sixteen firm volunteers just waiting for their chance and ten more that are asking for consideration. I know you're busy securing fuel for the chopper and all, but we can't keep putting it on hold forever. We should pencil in a three day period after the airport mission so that the next time we don't have to double staff."

              "An excellent idea," Skip agreed. "In fact, why don't you start running them through it day after tomorrow, after we get everyone home and rested up?"

              "Me?" she asked. "What do you mean me?"

              "I mean that I'm going to be much too busy trying to do maintenance tasks on the helicopter and trying to figure out a way to run the train mission. You've been through my class and you've assisted on it twice. You also have considerable combat experience. I think the time has come for you to take over that aspect of training."

              "I can't do that," she protested, sitting up in the bed. "Skip, I can't teach your class. And they wouldn't listen to me anyway."

              "You can teach it and they will listen to you," he assured her. " Christine, you know how fanatical I am about this training and this town's security. I wouldn't ask you to do it if I didn't think you'd do a good job. And you've already run more people through the basic firearms class than I have. You can do this. You have to do this or it's going to be a while before it gets done."

              They discussed it for a few more minutes and eventually, as he had known she would, she agreed. Soon Skip drifted off to sleep, snoring as he only did when he was exhausted or intoxicated. Christine, on the other hand, with something new to worry about, lay awake for a long time.

              It was just after first light when the men of Acting Captain Bracken's attack company resumed their march towards Garden Hill. They had been on the road for five days now and most of the men were at peak efficiency for the long march. They were accustomed to the mud, rain, and filth after five days of trudging through it and they were well acclimated to the cold and sleeping outside. Unlike on previous marches, Bracken was allowing them to stick to the Interstate as much as they could. With the numbers that they had for this mission he did not fear being on a predictable route as he once had. It seemed unlikely at best that anyone would try to attack them on their transit and walking on the asphalt cut drastically down on their time and fatigue factors since they weren't constantly slugging through thick mud or brush. Of course the many mudfalls and washouts meant that they were forced to take long detours through the heavy woods to go around such things. In all they spent about half their time on the pavement and half in the mud.

              They were on a fairly long stretch of unimpeded Interstate on this morning, just two miles past the conquered town of Colfax. Bracken had high hopes of reaching the pre-attack staging area in three more days.

              "Acting Lieutenant Jimms!" Bracken called to the senior sergeant from his own third platoon. Jimms was acting as platoon commander while Bracken acted as company commander.

              "Yes, sir!" Jimms said smartly, stepping up to him.

              "Third platoon will break trail today," he told him. "Assign a squad to the point and lets move out."

              "Yes, sir," Jimms agreed. He turned to the platoon and selected second squad, headed by Stu, for that duty. Stu gathered his team of convicts together and formed them up. Soon, all one hundred and sixty men were heading down the Interstate following them.

              It was two hours into that morning's march that Turbo, the private on point, spotted movement ahead of them. A figure was just cresting the hill above them, walking directly down the middle of the eastbound lanes. Turbo held up his hand, halting the squad behind him, and dropped to the pavement, his rifle pointing up at the figure. Stu signaled the rest of his squad to spread out to the flanks and then gave the danger signal to the rest of the company over the radio he carried. Bracken and the rest of the men quickly darted off the roadway and into the surrounding brush, for what they knew not why at this point, but reacting just as training dictated.

              Stu scrambled up and slid to the ground next to Turbo, his eyes looking forward and immediately locking onto the lone figure. "Is that the only one?" he asked.

              "So far," Turbo said. "You got binocs? It looks like a bitch from here."

              "Yeah," Stu said. "I'll look in a minute. Let's get under cover for now and report in."

              They scrambled off the road, keeping as low as possible, and into the tree line beside it, their boots sinking into the thick mud. Stu pulled out his portable radio and keyed it up. "This is Covington on point," he said into it. "You there, command?"

              "Command here," Bracken's voice returned. "What do you got, Covington?"

              "A single person walking down the Interstate about four hundred yards in front of us. Looks like a bitch. No one else in sight at this time. I'm gonna take a look through the binocs and get a closer look."

              "Ten-four, Covington," Bracken said. "Keep us informed and report in before you do anything."

              "No shit, fuckface," Stu said to the radio - without keying the transmit button of course. "Ten-four," he said with it keyed. He put it back in his belt and then fished in his pack for the binoculars that all of the squad leaders carried.

              "What would a bitch be doing out here alone?" Turbo asked. "Maybe it's that cunt Marla trying to crawl back to us."

              "Marla's dead and gone," Stu said absently, putting the binoculars to his face. "And if she wasn't, she wouldn't be coming back." He focused until he had a fairly clear view of the approaching figure. It was indeed a woman. She was dressed in a black rain slicker that was splattered with mud and grime. Poking out from around the edges of the hood were filthy strands of long blonde hair. On her back was a tattered and muddy backpack. She was limping along slowly, as if every step was painful, her course not exactly a straight line but meandering back and forth like a drunken sailor. There was no weapon in sight.

              Stu relayed all of this information to Bracken using short, businesslike phrases.

              "Ten-four, Covington," Bracken replied. "Hold in place until she gets closer and then take her into custody so we can see what she's all about. We'll be standing by in the rear."

              "I got something in the rear for you," Stu muttered to the closed microphone. "Ten-four," he said to the open one.

              "What's your name?" Bracken asked her fifteen minutes later, after she had been taken neatly into custody and after second platoon had checked out her back trail and pronounced it clear. She was sitting on a fallen log beside the Interstate, Bracken towering above her, Stu's squad standing around to provide security.

              "Jessica Blakely," she said, her eyes arrogant. "Who are you people?"

              "I'm the one asking the questions here," Bracken said mildly. "I think you'll do well to remember that."

              Jessica snorted a little, as if to say "how dare you address me in that manner".

              "Where did you come from?" Bracken asked her next.

              "Garden Hill," she said. "I was a ruling committee member there."

              "A ruling committee member?" Bracken said in disbelief. "And why are you here now?"

              "A very bad man managed to discredit me before the town. He turned my people against me and had me thrown out of there." She made no mention of the fact that she had tried to kill him first.

              "I see," Bracken said, dismissing this as irrelevant for the moment. "And where exactly were you heading? Were you on your way to Auburn?"

              "I hardly think my desSaration is any of your business," she said snootily.

              Bracken's instinct was to give her a sharp backhand across the face. That was what an Auburn man did when a woman talked back to him. He held off for the moment, trying a different tack. "Listen, Jessica," he said. "We are from Auburn and our town is the only inhabited place west of Garden Hill. Now you can continue to not answer my questions and stay out here to die, or you can tell me what I want to know and perhaps we will consider taking you in. The choice is yours."

              Jessica's eyes looked up at him, considering his words, her mind ticking along. Could these people really be from Auburn? Could they really be important enough in that town to guarantee her admission? She was running extremely low on the supplies those ungrateful pagans in Garden Hill had sent her out with. If she cooperated with this rather dirty and unsavory man who seemed to be in charge of the others, she might just be able to find a safe haven for herself. And if there was a functioning township in Auburn, she would probably be able to worm her way into its command structure with a little bit of work. Worming her way close to those with power was - after all - what she did best. "What do you want to know?" she asked.

              "Tell me about the makeup of Garden Hill," Bracken said, grabbing a seat across from her and lighting a cigarette.

              She started to talk, at first interjecting her personal opinions about various people and lifestyles into the discussion but ceasing this when Bracken interrupted to let her know that he only wanted the facts. She gave the number of men, women, and children in town and explained that Paul and Skip were leading them with major decisions being made by community vote in the absence of a full committee.

              "Paul and Skip?" Bracken asked. "Who are they?"

              "Paul was a fireman at the station outside of town before the comet. I don't know what made us decide to make him a leader, but..."

              "Uh, Jessica," Bracken interrupted. "Just the facts please, remember?"

              She gave him another sour look but headed his words. "Paul is kind of a nerdy guy but I guess he's pretty smart about mechanical things. He's the one that worked out how to get us hot water and how to install cameras outside of our walls."

              "Cameras huh?" Bracken said. "We'll get back to that. What about this Skip you mentioned? What's he all about?"

              Her hatred for Skip was plainly evident in the face she made at the mere mention of his name. "He was a cop before the comet," she said. "He also used to fly helicopters in the army, so he says anyway. He snuck into town one night about two weeks after the comet and managed to sweet-talk his way into being allowed to stay. He had two little bratty kids with him. He just kept picking and picking at everyone until..."

              "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Stu cut in from behind Bracken. "Did you say kids? Do you mean teenagers?" He was being insubordinate but Bracken let it slide.

              "Yes," Jessica spat. " Christine and Jack. He's having relations with the girl and has gotten her pregnant. There has even been rumor of him molesting the boy as well, although when I left, this bitch named Stacy was..."

              "Guns," Stu said, "did they have any guns with them when they came to town?"

              "Well, yes," she said. "They had those army machine guns. They said they took them from some bikers or something. I'll just bet that they..."

              "Like these guns?" Bracken said, holding up the M-16 he carried.

              "Well, yeah... kind of I guess."

              Bracken and Stu shared a look. Now they had a name attached to the man that had killed four of Stu's men (although Bracken could hardly blame him for that, considering what they were doing). "And is he the one who set up the defenses for the town?"

              "Well, not at first," Jessica told them. "Paul came up with the defenses that we had at first. He put the camera on the bridge and put people in houses along the wall to watch for stragglers and drive them off. When Skip came he tried to change all of that. He kept asking us on the committee to let him put guards outside the wall nearly a mile from town in little holes on the hillsides. He kept telling us that we were doing things all wrong. I tried as hard as I could for as long as I could to keep him from changing things, but some people attacked the town one day..."

              "We saw that," Bracken said.

              "You did?" she asked, surprised.

              "We've been watching your town for a while now," he assured her. "So anyway, those people attacked the town. And then... ?"

              "Well, I'm convinced that Skip somehow talked those stragglers into attacking the town just so he could get power away from me. It was probably his plan all along. In fact, I wouldn't put it past him to have..."

              "Jessica," Bracken interrupted with an impatient sigh. "Just the facts please."

              Another sour look. "Well, after that attack was when everything really fell apart. Skip managed to convince everyone in town that it was my fault that the attack happened and Paul managed to get me voted off of the committee. Once I was no longer able to counter him, he started changing everything around. He started wasting our ammunition by having a bunch of people practice shooting. He started taking people off of bath details and laundry details and made them dig bunkers up on the hills. He even made me do that. Me!"

              Bracken and Stu shared a look of dread with each other. "Digging bunkers in the hills?" Bracken asked carefully.

              "Yes," she said. "And then he put me on kitchen detail working under that slut that's..."

              Bracken let her ramble on for a moment this time, hardly hearing her spout about pregnant, child-molesting hussies as he opened up his pack and pulled out a large map of Garden Hill and the surrounding terrain that he had prepared after the last mission. He unfolded it and set it down on her lap. "Show me where these bunkers were dug," he told her, cutting her off in mid-rant.

              "What?"

              He tapped the map with a dirty finger. "Show me," he said. "Where are these bunkers?"

              It took her a few moments to puzzle out the map - cartography was not one of her skills in life - but eventually she was able to point out where the new defenses were located.

              "Son of a bitch," Bracken said, shaking his head in wonder. "What kind of firepower do they put up there?" he asked her.

              "What kind of what?"

              "Guns!" he yelled, making her jump. "What kind of guns do they have in these bunkers? How much ammo?"

              "Well, they have one of the machine guns and one of the rifles," she said at last. "And he's almost completely emptied the ammunition supply so he could put it up there with those guards. I don't know what we would do if we were attacked again and all of those guns were up on the hill instead of in town, but like I said, they don't listen to..."

              "How much ammunition?" Bracken demanded. "How many guns, how much ammo does Garden Hill have in their possession?"

              This was an answer that Jessica knew since she had been in charge of supply inventories during her reign of power. She gave them the last figures that she had calculated. Of course these were figures taken before the battle with the twelve invaders but she didn't think that a significant amount had been fired off during that little skirmish. "We have about ten thousand rounds total. I don't remember the exact categorizations, but we were really heavy on those long bullets for the rifles..."

              "Thirty caliber?" Bracken asked.

              "Uh... I guess," she said. "And we had a lot of the kind that those machine guns that Skip brought fired. He was real excited about that when we showed him our supply room for the first time. We have a lot of bullets for the pistols too. Probably more of that than anything."

              "Christ," Bracken said, lowering his head a little. "And about these people that he had firing up your ammo. What was that all about?"

              "He called it training," she said, spitting that word out. "He tried to get people to do it before that so-called attack on the town, but nobody but that lesbian slut and that homo schoolteacher signed up for it. Afterward, people were just begging him to do it. That's another reason I think that the attack was staged. I mean why else would..."

              "What kind of training did they do?" Bracken wanted to know.