World of Ashes (53 page)

“
This is all just a bunch of Marne-tastic, garrison
bullshit
. We’re just bullying a bunch of stupid fucking Sand Savages that had frak-all to do with 9/11. Not to mention there is no tangible proof they ever had any WMD’s. These throwbacks from the 7
th
Century still think it’s the 7
th
fucking Century. They think we’re little more than hostile aliens that invaded their tiny, dusty, smelly little world. I mean shit, if someone invaded the US wouldn’t we use any and all means available to us to stop them? Of the A-rab dirt farmers my unit incarcerates we maybe send one in fifteen to Cropper for trial, the ones we let go almost always get released to the capturing unit, or God help them the Iraqi Police. The IP’s are as likely to rob them as they are to shoot them in the desert. I work with a bunch of stupid-as-shit college dodging social rejects pretending to be Oldschool MP’s looking to get into some clichéd fist fight with WWII Nazis on a beach that don’t exist anymore, all the while running around with these ridiculous fucking Velcro Police Patches pretending we have any authority or special purpose in life. MP’s are supposed to set the behavioral standard for the Army. Suffice it to say, if that were a reality there’d be no one in Ft. Leavenworth because
criminal
would just be SOP.

“
I mean, God fucking damnit, Captain. My day has, up unto this point, (which is my personal time by the way,) consisted of me slogging my ass through nine inches of plowed Iraqi shit-mud in a rainy season I didn’t even know existed, because we’re somehow too stupid or lazy to pave the streets here, to a hodgepodge detention facility that is literally made of thick cardboard and razor wire that couldn’t safely detain a determined four year old and babysit sixty some-odd Sand Savage farmers and paranoid-schizophrenics, also known as Iranian Insurgents, who were all guilty of little more than being too stupid to run away from the Americans when we came rolling down the streets! These people, and boy do I use that word loosely, are so stupid they would register below the minimum level of intelligence it takes to inhale air if they were to take a standardized IQ test. To prove my point, and I have a witness to corroborate, I watched a Detainee eat an entire bar of fresh deodorant because, why? I suppose it smelled good. Then he barfed and shat himself for like five hours and didn’t understand why, even though our medic and ‘terp tried explaining it a hundred times. My unit believes the only way to promote is to butt-fuck someone and destroy their career, they cover up for women hating sociopaths who think nothing of abusing young women until they
shoot themselves
… Hell, if my NCO’s are the model by which I should follow, I’d rather be a fucking private the rest of my life… Sir.”

CPT
Binkle ...0_o…

              The conversation was over shortly after that, and unbelievably Ethan never heard anything about it again. Now he sat in a patrol car, burning through gas they had plenty of to fight off the encroaching cold. It was October again, coming up on the third year of the Apocalypse. The town had weathered an entire winter without Texas there to help, and slowly but surely Paula had brought herself to speak again. Six months after his friend had taken a buckshot to the spine and heart and Ethan was experiencing the same burnout he’d felt in Iraq. Samuel was older, he was speaking single words and getting into everything. Serenity asked where her Daddy was still, but that wasn’t going to last. Lee was the apple of that child’s eye now. Ethan didn’t dwell on that part either, whether he should welcome his brother stepping up to fill the void Keith had left or not. Ethan’s mind was a maelstrom of horror, he’d fought despondence and melancholy since the day on the bridge, polite words to describe massive, crushing depression and an overwhelming fantasy of eating his own gun again. The one thing he regretted most was knowing he could not have saved Keith no matter what he did. Keith hadn’t been wearing his second chance vest. There had never been a violent attack that the Cavalrymen or Deputies weren’t already geared up for. Ethan was in the habit of just wearing his around outside the wire, but now Mary made him wear it every day. Why, how, had they overlooked that detail on that one occasion? Were they really that distracted? Worse yet, Ethan hadn’t gotten to shoot any of those bastards. Denial of revenge can be a powerful factor in someone used to being able to get things done themselves. Ethan fantasized about returning to the Mt. Sterling bridge and burning what was left of the corpses, just because he could. Maybe he could make a totem pole out of their skulls too…

             
Late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, Ethan would drive out to FOB Alamo and stand on the range for hours, shooting the people shaped targets in the head at fifty meters with every shot. Mary complained he didn’t blah blah blah paying attention, blah blah blah stay in bed at night, blah blah blah typical women’s bitching blah blah blah. At this point nothing anyone said registered on Ethan’s give a shit o’meter. Like the good book
Fight Club
said, “When you have insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. A copy, of a copy, of a copy.” The whole world had become white noise to him. To avoid people’s stares he had shifted his patrol to the industrial side of town. There weren’t many calls there. Everyone was armed either with a gun or a heavy tool. Zombies really weren’t a problem this close to winter, when the first frost was close. Lots of other diseases were, though. At least fifty people had died from exhaustion and dehydration over the summer. They’d be better prepared for this winter, but ill equipped with no power. A lot of people were likely to freeze again, but not as many as the first winter. Logically he knew the people would make it, but it weighed on Ethan that more people he couldn’t save would perish. It occurred to him that his concern for the paper cut-out dolls that populated the world around him might just be an attempt to buy his way into heaven. Ethan had long accepted he would be burning in whatever ring of hell was reserved for those who kept silent when they were needed most. Perhaps if he’d never seen the movie
Constantine
he could claim ignorance.

             
Ethan watched from his patrol car as two teenage boys sawed and stacked logs onto a flatbed truck. A girl roughly the same age behind them with three more, even younger orphaned kids made food and organized stuff they’d bought at the market. The tallest boy stacking wood stopped and took his gloves off as the cool breeze picked up, leaves and sawdust blowing in the wind. He was sweating and dirty, but the girl his age with the swollen belly and the glittering ring on her finger reminded Ethan of a more complicated time when lives were governed by cell phones and Facebook. He wondered to himself if perhaps these kids had known each other before the plague. What had their lives been like? Was anyone they loved from Before still alive? His thoughts drifted to his parents, and inevitably to Nicole. He’d put that girl through hell, the last several months before he was drafted might have seen an end to them anyhow, but now he’d never know. Sometimes he would go to his old house in the boonies and smell the stuffed bear he hid in the closet there. It had her perfume all over it. Vanilla and Warm Sugar. Mary didn’t wear that scent. He didn’t know if he could handle it if she did.

             
“
Patrol Six, MC
.” The car’s radio cracked.

             
“Go ahead.” Ethan answered quickly, not wanting to hear the radio any more than he had to. He was contemplating sleeping again soon.

             
“
Can you respond to North Gate?
”

             
“Switch to Eleven.” Ethan turned his radio to the Supervisor’s private channel. Everyone monitored it, but it was an unofficial way of keeping the radio waves clean and clear on official channels. “Can I say no?”

             
“
I’m afraid not this time. We got a call from the Stanton and Far-Point Outposts about a suspicious black Suburban heading into town at an estimated fifty five miles per hour.
” Rowe had been a lot less useless since Keith died. Perhaps it was because she knew Lee and Ethan were done putting up with bullshit of any flavor, and hers was an extra sour one at times. She might also just miss Keith. Everyone had their own way of coping, they were all just lucky being useless wasn’t hers.

             
“That’s the recommended approach speed. What’s the problem?”

             
“
It’s clean. Sparkling and new. Scouts say they can see government plates.
”

             
“Back to One.” Ethan took a deep breath. This was a tactic Lee had theorized. If the car was clean it was worth looking at. Most of the vehicles within a twenty mile radius of town didn’t have a drop of gas in them if someone wasn’t using them, which meant this SUV wasn’t local. If it didn’t have Sullivan ID markings, and there weren’t any long range missions going on right now, then that was a degree of suspicion worth exploring. Travelers didn’t bother washing cars, at least not if they were right in the head. A crazy man driving a pristine Aston Martin DB5 was known to race up and down what was left of I-70 between St. Louis and Columbia, but no one had seen him in a while. “MC, Patrol Six responding. Break. Areas One, Two and Three patrols respond as well. No lights. Keep the cars out of sight of the Off Ramp. I want to let them into the Sally Port before we take any action. I’ll be the first to approach.” Ethan paused. The radio crackled with affirmative responses.

             
Less than a minute later Ethan settled into his position behind a newly constructed brick machinegun nest with ornate but functional barriers between it and the intersections. It was easy to see the off ramp from the gun positions, but from the view of those entering the town the guns were just another stick in a row of trees. It didn’t take long for the SUV, its rims a conspicuous government flat black, to pull into the quarantined area that had been constructed under the bridge. Anyone entering drove up for a preliminary check, if you’re a newcomer you go to a mandatory vehicle search with an amnesty period before the search begins,
for your convenience
of course
,
and then if you weren’t carrying any hard chemical drugs or zombies you got in. Ethan noticed they bypassed the amnesty box as if it didn’t exist and pulled to a stop inside the search area. They dismounted the vehicle and looked as if having their personal space violated was a matter of daily life to them. Deputies went over the car with the same attention to detail Ethan demanded of the men assigned to the Sallyport. They found nothing illegal, which wasn’t surprising. (As a side note, Ethan liked the check the amnesty box after newcomers came in. Usually he found stuff like empty liquor bottles, trash or drugs, but occasionally he found a dildo. Never to be referred to as
your
dildo, but to call it
the dildo
. [Fight Club might be a bad influence on my generation.])

             
Down a flight of questionably rickety stairs from the parking lot Ethan found himself in a cigarette filled trash pit that was someone’s idea of a Command and Control Center for the search bunker. He made his objections to the trash heard, but the slovenly computer nerd behind the controls barely paid him any mind, busying himself painting his new hand-made Bobba Fett armor, which actually looked bite-proof. He was playing a computer game with a smoking hot Elf woman as the character and monitoring the radios with expert accuracy at the same time. No one ever complained about Nate’s performance. His housekeeping, however…

             
Seeing he was going to be ignored Ethan kicked the trash out of his was until he got to the window and could watch the search being conducted. One man, one woman, one black SUV Hybrid with GMC logos on the front and rear. Same as last time. They had nothing but personal survival equipment, personal documents, and a modest stash of two Ruger .22’s, two .22 caliber Taurus revolvers, and a hundred or so rounds for each. In the back of their truck was a professionally made and installed secondary fuel tank and a half used bladder of water. This truck was meant to travel. But to where?

             
“You get a read on the license plate?” Ethan asked.

             
“It’s bogus.” The Nate responded, rolling his eyes at his game. Something stupid had just happened to make him die in the fantasy realm of Nerdia. “We still have access to the old MULES system, and this plate doesn’t, or at least didn’t, exist before the government went dark. It’s in a logical numerical sequence, though. I’d say this is truck number 155, batch or section 37, line Alpha… I could just be guessing though, but what else would flat white Government plates reading 155-37-A mean? It doesn’t spell anything like a personalized plate might.”

             
“It’s so new we don’t have it.” Ethan said under his breath, leaving the pigsty of a room quickly. Deputies were nearly done searching the vehicle, it was going quickly as prepared to be searched as the people were. They didn’t even blink at the invasion of privacy, something many survivors would become combative over no matter how many times they were reassured it was for the town’s protection, not theirs.

             
Sure enough they passed Go and were allowed to travel to the commercial district of town. Their first stop was Winzor’s Burgers in what used to be the Steak ‘N Shake. Ethan sat outside and watched them order before walking inside himself. He nodded to the cashier, who nodded back and added an iced tea to the order. The couple was seated at a table away from others, who were also sitting and watching. With neither apparently looking the part of survivalists Ethan took a seat at the table next to them and turned the chair to face the couple. They wore black utility uniforms, faded and slightly dirty, but still name brand stuff Ethan used to see in Army surplus stores. Expensive to say the least.