Dark Victory - eARC (11 page)

He frowns. “Who are you calling?”

“Yeah,” the farmer says. “You need to call your girlfriend or somethin’?”

Looking to the Bell guy and making sure the farmer could hear me, I say, “Person to person call from Sergeant Randy Knox, Second Recon Rangers, to Colonel Malcolm Hunter, base commander, Fort St. Paul.” I write a number on a pad of paper with a stub of a pencil on the counter, slide it over.

That shuts up the farmer and the Bell guy puts a headset on, presses a few switches, and says, “Go over there, to booth two. Just pick up the receiver and you’ll be connected.”

I thank him and the farmer says glumly, “You know, there was a time I had a cell phone that could take pictures, surf the Web, and I could call my brother in London in a matter of seconds. Now, takes me a half-day to schedule a phone call to call my sister in Indiana.”

I say, “Yeah, things are tough all over.”

I go to the booth and leave the door open, and Thor sits down as I lift up the phone receiver. I get a dial tone, hissing with static, and then it rings once and is picked up. “Colonel Hunter’s office, Lieutenant Bouchard speaking, this is an unsecured line.” Usually outside calls go through the main switchboard but one of the few advantages of being related to the battalion commander is knowing his private phone number.

“This is Sergeant Knox,” I say. “I need to talk to the colonel.”

The lieutenant is not impressed. “You know the chain of command, sergeant. Talk to your platoon leader, Lieutenant May.”

“I would, except I’m on mission directly tasked by the Colonel. And if I don’t talk to him within the next sixty seconds, then I’m hanging up and heading back to post to discuss the matter with him, face to face.”

I hear her mutter something about somebody being a brat nephew, and there’s a
click
, a pause, and another
click.
“Colonel Hunter,” a familiar voice comes on.

“Sir, Sergeant Knox, at the Concord rail station. I’ve been contacted by a Specialist Coulson and—”

“Yes, yes, I saw her this morning and presented her with a note to give you. Didn’t she do that?”

“Yes, she did, sir, but I wanted to ensure that—”

“I’ve authorized her to do so. What’s the problem?”

“Sir, you’re asking me to escort the . . .”

“Open line,” he cautions, and I continue, “. . . the gentleman in question, and now you’re asking me to escort two more individuals.”

“Those other individuals are your age or younger. Are you telling me, sergeant, that you can’t handle that?”

“Well, I—”

“And another thing. It appears that a K-9 named Thor is absent without proper authorization. Do you know anything about that?”

Quickly thinking, I whistle and hiss into the receiver. “Sorry, sir, it appears the phone line is breaking up . . . and it looks like the train is coming.”

I hang up and smile down at Thor. “Just can’t stop getting into trouble, now, can we?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Back out into the main hall of the train station, I meet up with Specialist Coulson, who’s standing there with her brother, an irritated expression on her face. “Fine,” I say. “You’re with me.”

“I told you,” she says.

“So you did. Do you have your tickets?”

“I do.”

I look beside her. “Any luggage?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“According to Amtrak, the trip should only take six or seven hours,” she says. “We don’t need luggage.”

“Specialist . . . in a perfect world, the trip should only take six or seven hours. Look around. Are we living in a perfect world?”

She looks up at the clock. “The train should be arriving shortly, sergeant. I don’t think we have time for a philosophical discussion.”

Again, edging that close to insubordination, but I don’t have the energy to fight with her. She was right again, it was almost time for the train. I look around the crowded hall once more and there he is, Mister Ezra Manson, representative to the Governor of New Hampshire, striding our way. He’s carrying a soft light brown leather suitcase in one hand, and a dark leather dispatch case in the other, wearing the same suit from the day before. As he gets closer, I see the dispatch case has a chain running from it, up to his wrist. Gee, just like the old films I’ve seen on movie night.

“Sergeant,” Manson says, coming up to me. “Glad to see you’re on time.” He sees Specialist Coulson and her brother. “Are this boy and girl from your oufit?”

I say, “I don’t know where Specialist Coulson is stationed, and it appears her younger brother is not in the service. Beyond that, they are joining us on the trip to the capitol.”

“Under whose authority?”

“Colonel Hunter’s,” I say.

He glances down at Thor. “Is this . . . dog also coming with us?”

“That dog is my battle buddy,” I reply, “and yes, he is part of our group.”

Manson shakes his head. “Being escorted by a boy and his dog. Not sure if your colonel has a very high regard for you, or a very low regard for me.”

I gently tug Thor’s leash. “Perhaps it’s both, Mister Manson.”

And I’m secretly pleased to see a smile on Serena’s face. She takes her brother’s hand and we walk out to the tracks, quickly passing through a security checkpoint of Amtrak cops and Concord cops.

The train is late, which isn’t a surprise. I join the cluster of passengers and I’m pleased to see the squad of Marines I had seen earlier bunching up, like they were going on our train. That’s good. I felt naked out in the open without back-up and without my M-10, and I’m glad to be traveling with the few and the proud. Manson is talking to a couple of men his age in suits by a wooden bench, and Serena is standing still with her brother by a concrete pillar holding up the overhead wooden roof, and there’s a large framed poster behind them. The poster is in a stylized art deco style, showing drawings of the three different types of Creeper exoskeletons, with lots of red and black. The lettering says:

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Contact your local police force or military unit if you observe the following:

Unexplained wildfires

Burnt bodies

Burnt structures

Nighttime ‘clicking’ sounds

Recently made trails in wilderness areas

Strong odor of cinnamon

Creepers Can Only Win If We Let Them!

There’s another poster nearby, written and printed in the same style. It shows a stylized city, with a thick orange line coming down from the Creeper’s orbital station. The buildings are burning. Underneath, in big black bold letters:

10/10 Never Again!

Maybe so, if the news was right about the Air Force doing their job.

But in my corner of the world, the war was still going on.

Wonder if I should complain to anybody.

I go to Serena and say, “So, what’s your specialty, Coulson?”

“Special Projects,” she says.

“Where are you stationed?”

“Maine,” she says.

“Where in Maine?”

“Sorry, sergeant, I can’t say.”

“OPSEC? Really?”

She nods. “Really.”

I look to her brother. “What do you say, pal? Is your sister telling the truth?”

He stares at me with distaste, like I was getting close to spitting on his shiny suit or something. His sister looks at me with an equally distasteful look and says, “Sorry, sergeant. Buddy can’t talk.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it make any difference?”

“I thought his name was Robert.”

“Buddy is his nickname. And he’s a disabled vet.”

I say, “Sorry to hear that. Creeper attack?”

She shakes her head. “No, it was duty-related.”

“Oh,” I say. “Can you tell me his duty, or is that classified as well?”

She puts a protective hand on his shoulder. “He was in Intel, in the Obs Corps. For two years.”

I stare at the young boy, not believing what I had just heard. To serve six months in the Observation Corps was a standard deployment. A year was stretching it . . .. Two years? I look at his eyes again, see something I hadn’t noted before: they were the eyes of an old man, a man who had suffered and toiled so very much. To be in the Observation Corps means working with a telescope with a motor drive, so you’re watching one piece of night sky for long hours, keeping watch on the stars and the floating debris. The point is to track the killer stealth satellites. Even if they’re invisible to radar or other means of observation, they can still block—or occulate—a star as they move in orbit. What an Observation Corps member does is to keep view on that assigned stretch of the night sky, and call out if he or she sees something pass by a star, making it “wink.” Another observer with an accurate timepiece then notes the time and the name of the star that was occulated, and keyed in with other observers, over the years, the orbits and positions of the killer stealth satellites can be tracked.

It’s exhausting, grueling, mind-numbing work. No wonder Buddy doesn’t talk.

I say, “Can he take care of himself?”

A bit defensively, Serena says, “Yes. He can eat, wash, dress and go to the bathroom. But he doesn’t talk. He listens, but . . . look, here’s the train.”

There’s the mournful howl of a train whistle and I look up the tracks. A steam train is moving along stately, smoke and steam trailing behind, and it passes by and then slowly grinds to a halt. The locomotive is old, of course, and there’s a yellow and blue sign painted on the side: SPONSORED BY WAL-MART, AS TOGETHER WE REBUILD AMERICA. The passenger cars are a different mix, all painted roughly with the blue and white Amtrak color scheme, but underneath the paint job other names are visible: Conway Scenic Railway, Kennebunkport Trolley Museum, New York MTA. Since the war started there was a scramble to get passenger cars from all across the nation, even if it meant raiding train museums and short-line excursion railways for tourists.

As one the group of passengers moves onto the train. Coulson and Buddy are in front of me, and Manson catches up. “So how did those two get to join us, sergeant?”

“Colonel’s orders.”

“Why?”

“Ask him, sir, if you’d like to know more.”

“Doubtful,” he says. I give him a closer look and feel a shock of recognition. His eyes seem almost as tired as young Buddy Coulson’s, and I recall what my uncle had said. It was civilians like him that kept things going, so we weren’t being ruled by kings or warlords. For the briefest of moments I feel glad to be with him.

But I’m sure the feeling wouldn’t last.

A conductor wearing an Amtrak jacket with patches on the elbows directs us to our car, and after putting my assault pack in an overhead bin, and helping Manson with his luggage, we sit down. Manson and Buddy sit on one seat, and Coulson and I sit across from them, Serena putting her large black purse in her lap. Thor sniffs around and rolls and sits down on the wooden floor. Manson frowns and crosses his legs, and Buddy looks down at my dog. For a moment I almost believe he smiles.

We wait some more and I look out the near window. There are only a few people left on the platform, and—

Someone approaches from the inside of the train station, pushing a bicycle at her side.

Corporal Abby Monroe.

She’s looking around at the few people left on the platform, looks to the train.

There’s a thump and a bellow of steam as we start moving out.

Abby keeps looking.

I fumble with the window.

It won’t move.

It’s stuck.

I bang at the window with my fist, and Abby’s head spins about, looking right at me, and I raise my hand.

She raises a hand, smiles.

Then she blows me a kiss.

I’m torn. I want to throw her a kiss back but I know Coulson and Manson are looking at me.

Then it’s too late. The train has left the station, and Abby has faded from view.

I sit back down.