World of Ashes (61 page)

             
Allen had been arrested for growing a Schedule One Narcotic, no surprise there, and so had all of his employees and girlfriends. No one had heard from any of them and none of the locals were allowed in the detention facility to visit. Ethan and Lee hadn’t been heard from at all and Sharp’s continued reign of terror only got worse. FOB Alamo had been taken over and subsequently abandoned by the Federal Army, which had failed to see any strategic importance to the hillside fortress. Instead they used it as a dump for broken equipment and posted only a handful of Security Guards so no one could go back. Not that it stopped those who were determined, and the vast majority of the Forward Operating Bases’ small arms went missing the night before they were scheduled for destruction. In response, Colonel Sharp had upped enforcement of the Suspension of Second Amendment
Privileges
, formerly a Civil Liberty and Constitutional Right. The Federal Colonists had long seemed to have abandoned the idea of being armed with anything more than a baseball bat, and were often confused that their wilderness neighbors would still be harboring such dangerous items. Sharp’s men conducted house to house raids to remove all
illegal weapons
. This meant every make and model, even if it was a rare antique. The crackdown included bladed weapons too, such as the Cavalry’s Khukuris. The Cavalrymen, already being watched and on every list imaginable, were able to hide their blades but not themselves. The walls built to keep
Infected Citizens
out
were possibly too effective at keeping those who wished to escape in. Their castle had become their prison.

             
“Has anyone been able to contact the boys?”

             
“Not a word.”

             
Paula looked over at Mary, “Aren’t you scared something might have happened?”

             
“Nope. In fact, the longer we go without hearing from them the better off I think we are…” She took a sip of water from a canteen. “Because when my husband gets back, he’s going to
kill
all of them.” Mary scooped up Samuel and Serenity. “I won’t see our children grow up in a world where they are dependent on the teet and approval of any government that thinks we are the bad guys, that we
need
them for
anything
.”

             
“There’s going to be blood, Mary. People are going to die. Our people.” Paula reached for Serenity, petting the girl’s hair. Keith JR was asleep in the backpack satchel his mother wore.

             
“Keith didn’t die so we could hand everything we’ve worked for over to thugs in purple onezies.” Mary gritted her teeth. “I’m going to enjoy the look in Sharp’s eyes when Ethan cuts his face off.”

              Jimmy, Allen’s little brother and the chubby kid who’d had a foul mouth at the bridge, was much taller and skinnier now. He and two other Scouts had ridden ATVs from town, scavenging fuel when they got low, all the way to Fort Leonard Wood to deliver the news of the Federal Government’s invasion. They brought with them the portable section of the satellite radio General Vierling had given the town the year before. They’d given up hope of reaching the Texans, but it could reach town as well. Lee made contact with Mayor Kenly and some of his officers that had escaped. They talked of beginning the resistance.

Lee’s
first order was to cease resisting. Ethan had drawn up a battle plan that was the polar opposite of the war he’d fought in. Instead of offering armed resistance from the start, the men were to settle down and wait. Set charges, stash guns, and wait. Gather intelligence, find out who’s loyal, and wait some more. Behave as best they could, be cooperative, don’t resist. How long they’d have wait would depend on how quickly the last of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles could be brought back to life. Many were trashed, more were rusted beyond repair, and many more were cannibalized to put just five Bradley’s, three ASVs and two Abrams main battle tanks back in service. This was considered quite an achievement by the mechanics. Champagne found in the abandoned on-post housing christened the first battle ready Armored Personnel Carrier. Ethan had manned one of these in the Army, (the first time.) They were cramped, but powerful. He stenciled a coiled rattlesnake on the nose plate of the truck, DON’T TREAD ON ME on the top and bottom angle.

             
Low on men, Jimmy and his friends were pressed into service. One Cavalryman had committed suicide a few days earlier after finding his mother among the frozen Zims. It was in another overrun staging area he had found when his squad was supposed to be on sleep rotation. Two more had been killed by booby-traps intended to kill an enemy the Army hadn’t understood at the time. Daisy-chained claymore mines were hidden behind armory doors and around the burned out hospital. Those poor boys had died painfully, the troops so spread out on work details neither could be reached in time to save them or even make them comfortable before the end.

Ethan and Lee had taken a truck to the far reaches
of the TRADOC post to look for Ethan’s car when there was little work left they were qualified to do. Neither had taken many breaks, both slipping into their old habits of responsibility as leaders. It was as much to kill time as it was to distract them from their losses. When most of the work had been done for the day and the second Abrams roared back to life, Lee decided they needed some family time. They had little else to do as the final Abrams’ gun was being resurrected, but they didn’t find the car. The lot Ethan had been forced to leave it in, almost at gunpoint and certainly upon threat of incarceration, was still full of cars. Some were missing parts and up on blocks, some were burned others still crammed full of Zims and the skeletal remains of the people they’d devoured.

             
The light began to fade and a brilliant pink and orange Missouri sunset crossed the Ozark sky. Birds were singing in the twilight, the distant echo woodpeckers was so much more pleasant than gunfire. “Are you sure this is the right lot?” Lee asked, losing interest in the wild goose chase. He became more paranoid as the light faded. That was understandable, there was no evidence light effected a zombie’s ability to hunt.

             
“Yes, I’m sure. I parked her between that maroon pedophile van with ‘Free Candy’ spray painted on the side, and this Escalade.” Ethan yanked out his Gerber combat knife and popped out the last of the Cadillac SUV’s illegally tinted windows. The massive rims were gone, someone actually took the time to steal ghetto rims when there were flesh eating cannibals around every corner, but that didn’t surprise the brothers. They’d seen the flatbed filled with flashy, useless bling rims on the side of the road on the way down, the Salvagers inside the semi’s cab had been eaten while driving, their truck and its cargo ramped up the back of an abandoned RV and tipped over. Some people were just fucking stupid. Smashing the windows felt good. “Your windows were illegally tinted…
Sir
.” Ethan tipped his booney hat with the word
Sheriff
embroidered on it as if someone were in the rotted out front seat and they left the lot disappointed and disheartened.

             
Two weeks into the mission, and the day after they did not find Ethan’s car, the medications hadn’t made much difference besides causing a stomach ache when Ethan forgot to eat before taking the pills. But as Doctor Ness had suggested, the third week would be drastically different. Ethan was notoriously hard to wake up, having pulled a gun or a knife on people on numerous occasions, and not always because he just didn’t want to get up. Iraq and the men who’d made that place insufferable haunted him with every close of his eyes. This morning, however, was the second day of the third week and Ethan was wide awake and feeling more rested than he could remember. It was just as dawn was breaking when Ethan climbed from his bed, a time of day he’d almost forgotten existed unless he was on patrol. They’d been sleeping in the General’s mansion, Ethan and Lee sharing a room that had belonged to the man’s older son. From the letters on the bureau who had been away at West Point Military Academy during the Fall. A large pane window, having gone without a good washing in almost two years, blurred the sunrise as Ethan stood silently in front of it. He didn’t know why, but he was compelled to stand and stare at the pink and orange hued glass, his mind absorbing the colors as if they were an addictive drug. He reached out when he heard pattering outside, the soft rain drops even in a cold of winter. The glass was cold to the touch, but the grime clung to his fingers and left four small rays of God’s fiery light warming the skin over his heart. Ethan believed in God, because in his mind it was stupid not to, but that was the logic of a skeptical cynic too afraid to admit nothing existed beyond death. Ethan’s heart fluttered when he connected the dots. This was the moment that God touched him personally. This was a sign meant for no one but him. It said,
Wake Up.

             
Lee awoke to the startled gasp his brother let escape, and bore silent witness to the first real emotions Ethan had felt since he’d lost his heart and mind in Iraq so many years before. Tears streamed from his brother’s face, his heart thumped so loudly in his chest Lee swore he could hear it, and slowly Ethan sank to his knees, mesmerized by a moment that was as life and faith affirming for Lee as it was for Ethan.

It was going to be okay.
He
was going to be okay. Every feeling, every emotion, every pain Ethan’s heart had shut off like a switch since that day he rarely spoke of came flooding back. He had no capacity to handle these feelings anymore, and he didn’t try. Lee stayed quiet, pretending to sleep, but silently thanked their Lord Almighty that something, someone, had finally saved his brother from the hell he lived in.

Ethan progressively upped the dosage twice
, each time feeling as if he was reclaiming more and more of himself. Already his experience was analogous to the movie
Limitless
. He felt like his world was becoming real for the first time since he could remember. Small things became fascinating, and Ethan was suddenly overcome with a longing for Wikipedia, the compendium of all human knowledge, just so he could read through it and absorb new information like a spunge. Sure, the knowledge could be corrupted, but that was something only colleges complained about.

They
still only had two men available at any given time for sentry duty, one of which was now always Ethan and whatever book he could scrounge up. Warmer temperatures were bringing out Zims from buildings that hadn’t frozen through. Two years and most were barely mobile, but the tall grass concealed the crawlers until it was almost too late. No one slept much, too paranoid at the idea of becoming the first fresh Zim this season. Someone always got infected in the spring, but they were determined, now that their home was directly threatened by more than mindless ghouls, not to become a casualty unless it meant something. One of the guys found a stash of energy drinks, though expired, they did the trick and the men were able to run almost entirely on caffeine the last few days.

On their way to the gunnery range, which was just the PX parking lot, Ethan’s A
SV stopped rather suddenly in the middle of the road, throwing him out of the reclining passenger’s seat in the rear. Cursing, he climbed behind Jimmy to look through the windshield at the strange sight before them. A zombie that had been a double amputee above the knees was sitting in an electric wheelchair that made him look like a torso stapled to a machine in a horror movie. The Zim’s head straightened and it let out a dusty moan they could actually hear over the ASV’s engine. It could have been on accident, and probably was, but the ghoul’s hand brushed the control stick and the aged batteries sparked to life this one last time. The chair crept forward slowly, methodically, one wheel jammed with rust. The men in the trucks sat in awkward silence, not sure what to do. Certainly they could shoot it, but… Why? At the last second, before the Zim was below the gun’s ability to traverse, the chair hit a stick in its path and the torso toppled forward, landing on his face with the wheels spinning in the air until the batteries finally quit. The men drove around the overturned zombie. I mean, what else was there to do with it?

             
After a quick gunnery trial using expensive luxury cars as targets, Lee became anxious to get the convoy moving. Someone was likely to have heard the explosions. They would have to trek to I-55 and come up behind the town near FOB Alamo in order to avoid taking the same route home, a suicide mission now that the Federals were in the area and actively looking for them. The chances they hadn’t blown the bridges over the Big Piney River, or at least posted sentries, were too low to bother calculating. If there was air support they were fucked no matter the circumstances. The skies were clearer now, but hopefully the Federals wouldn’t see any need to waist precious aviation fuel on an aircraft when they could just rely on satellites.

Jimmy told them of the hybrid
Green Trucks the Federals had brought. They were forcing people to use them instead of their own vehicles, a truck carrying electric taxis had arrived, the Resistance complaining of this over the radio as it was now impossible to move a gasoline powered car in town. They’d all been booted during the night. Lee joked it wasn’t likely the Federals would be able to fuel an attack chopper with biodiesel fermented from Jamba Juice, or whatever it was they claimed their new Green Fuel was. Everyone took a turn making up jokes or telling stories about pretentious Prius and Volt drivers, and other sorts who had to force their way of life on others just to further a Green Agenda that had more to do with Socialism than Conservationism.