by Stasia Black
There was a loud chorus of nos in response.
An airman representative also stepped forward and soon, the entire room was with them.
Including a first sergeant who just happened to have the keys to two tanks on base that resided in an EMP proof hanger.
There was a positively jubilant mood as Eric led the men to the hanger. There weren’t just the two tanks, either. There was also a fleet of army vehicles that still worked, all protected from the EMP. Eric ordered the men to load up as much rations and supplies into the vehicles as possible.
He already had a location in mind to create the community he’d pitched to the soldiers and airmen. It was a little town Connie had always loved taking Sophia to on the weekend for Market Days. It had a river that ran through it and once when he was home from deployment they’d spent a long Sunday afternoon splashing around in Jacob’s Well, an amazing natural well from an underground spring.
He couldn’t wait to tell Arnie. Several of the guys he talked to said that yes, there were other soldiers and airmen around, so maybe Arnie had found even more who would join them.
But it wasn’t until he had the trucks all loaded up and the tanks began rolling out that he ran into his best friend.
And all Eric’s joy popped upon seeing him.
Arnie was covered in blood.
“Jesus, what happened?” Eric ran forward, grabbing Arnie’s arms and looking him up and down.
But Arnie was busy looking over Eric’s shoulder. “Holy shit. You found us tanks. Right on, man.”
“Arnie, for fuck’s sake! You’re covered in blood. What the fuck happened?”
Arnie blinked then and wiped at the specks of blood all over his face, which only had the effect of smearing it more.
Eric took a step back when Arnie just shrugged.
“Ran into a little trouble over at the Commissary. Nothing me and my men couldn’t handle. And look, we got a helicopter. Supplies too. And a bunch of guys wanna join up. They’re tired of this bullshit. They see that if they want shit in this life, they gotta take it. It’s gonna be true now more than ever. We just gotta make sure we take it first.”
Eric stumbled back a step but Arnie just kept nodding. “You should’ve seen me, man. I just started talking, and they were all totally with me from word one. The system’s been rigged for years. But now’s our chance. We can finally take what’s rightfully ours. We can be kings.”
“Jesus.” Eric shook his head, then ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus.” It was all he could say. How many men had Arnie just killed? So he could be king?
He realized then that he didn’t know the man standing in front of him at all.
It wasn’t just that they didn’t see eye to eye on some things like Eric had thought. Or that they had different backgrounds growing up. Eric had always cut Arnie some slack if he was a little lax about rules Eric thought were important.
Arnie cheated on girls. Arnie occasionally did coke. Arnie fudged supply records and sold the excess when they were stationed in Syria together.
He’d never had good role models growing up, Eric had always reasoned. He’d been shuttled around from one foster home to another. He never knew his dad and refused to talk about his mom. Jesus Christ, Senior year, Eric found out that Arnie had been sleeping in the janitor’s closet at school because his foster dad had kicked him out of the house, so Eric demanded Arnie come live at his house. They certainly had the space.
Arnie never said it, but Eric got the sense it was the most stable home situation he’d had in a long time. Arnie was the one who got mad if Eric wasn’t on time for what they started to call family dinner. Eric’s mom was a phenomenal cook, he couldn’t deny that. But Arnie seemed to get a kick out of the whole thing. The dining room. The good china mom liked to eat off of because, as his mom always said, well what good was it doing just sitting there in the cabinet?
“How many?” Eric choked out.
“What?” Arnie asked.
“How many men? Did you kill just now?”
Arnie looked at him like he was from a different planet. “Are you serious with this bullshit?”
“Bullshit?” Eric exploded. “These are people’s lives we’re talking about!”
“Yeah and it was either them or me,” Arnie shouted right back, thumping his chest. “Would you rather it was me back there dead?”
“So it was self-defense?” Please. Please just say it was self-defense. “Did they start firing first?”
Arnie just shook his head. “I cannot believe this fucking bullshit. After all the years we’ve known each other? After all I’ve fucking done for you?” He ran forward and shoved Eric hard in the chest. “You’d be rotting in a fucking prison right now if it wasn’t for me!”
Eric recovered from stumbling backwards right before he fell and stood back up again. His eyes were swollen from crying so much the past few days over Connie and he felt raw all over as he begged, “Just tell me who fired first.”
“Your daughter would be dead if it wasn’t for me!”
“Who shot fir—”
“I DID!” Arnie screamed right in Eric’s face, spittle flying. “I fucking did! I went into that commissary and saw some fuckers with guns guarding the supplies and I ordered all my men to fire. And I pulled out this gun right fucking here,” he whipped out his gun from the back of his pants and pointed it right at Eric’s forehead, “and when they were on the ground, begging for their fucking lives, I ended them. Just like I did to the fuckers who got in the way of my smuggling operations in Syria, and Lebanon, and Poland.”
“Why the fuck do you think I kept getting promoted so much quicker than you? Think.” He banged the barrel of the gun against Eric’s forehead. “I knew how to play the fucking game. Something Eric the boy scout always refused to fucking do.”
Arnie finally pulled the gun back, waving it around them, to the soldiers who’d lined up behind him, along with the one’s who’d grouped behind Eric.
Eric could feel it, the tension between the two groups.
Arnie seemed to revel in it.
“This is the real world, Eric. Wake the fuck up.”
Eric just shook his head and took a step back. His voice was choked as he gave the only response he could. “I loved you like a brother.” He swallowed and stood up straighter. “Let me and my men pass. I’ll go collect my daughter, and then we never have to see each other ever again.”
“Your m—” Arnie scoffed but all the men behind Eric shifted as if they too were standing up straighter, at attention, ready to fight.
Arnie laughed then. A fake, too bright laugh. It was the laugh Arnie gave when he cared too much. Eric hated that he knew that and he hated that he cared—it would be so much easier to hate Arnie if he didn’t still love him so much.
Arnie shoved his gun in the back of his pants. “What the fuck do I care what you do?”
Eric didn’t wait. Love the man as a brother or not, Eric had meant what he’d said. If he had his way, their paths would never cross again.
Like a shifting ocean tide, Eric and his men turned and headed back the way they’d come.
Arnie couldn’t let him go without one last parting shot, though, apparently.
“You will see me again, brother. I promise you that.”
Chapter Thirty-One
DAVID
David pulled into the spacious parking lot of the abandoned outlet mall about ten miles south of Travisville, right off I35.
He breathed in deep at seeing his soldiers encamped all around the mall. So many had already mobilized in the short time since he’d made the last call from the sat phone before it went dead forever. They were a sight for sore eyes, especially after the shitstorm they’d just left behind.
But though they’d lost men—and women, David closed his eyes as he remembered the dead girl in Drea’s arms, and Franco, and Wendall, and Benjamin and Keith and Vernon and Paolo—they’d accomplished their mission objectives.
Arnold Tra
vis was blind to their activities. And so was Thomas ‘Suicide’ Tillerman, the Black Skulls leader and governor of San Antonio who’d be the defacto commander of the Army there now that Travis couldn’t give orders remotely from Fort Worth.
Maybe the odds were still stacked against them, but it meant his plan had a chance. Whereas yesterday they’d faced sure defeat—and the sure capture and probable death of thousands of his men.
He waved to his men as he stepped out of the van and cheers erupted here and there as men recognized him.
He didn’t have a lot of close friends. Or well, any, apart from Jonathan. But he had the respect of his troops, which was far more important.
So he waved and stood up straight and let nothing but confidence show on his features as he walked past his men. Tomorrow, they could mourn those they’d lost. Tomorrow, he could crack open the whisky he had stowed back at the cave and drink long and deep and chant the names of the dead. Seven more to add to the one hundred and eighty-two he already whispered aloud every night before he laid his head down to sleep. One hundred and eighty-nine now. Every night beginning with the name that was carved deepest of all: Kevin. His stupid, beautiful, idiot kid brother.
But in the meantime, he sucked in a deep breath and stood up taller, he’d stuff it all into a box and close the lid up tight. Vacuum seal that shit until the present crisis was done.
Eric and Garrett were helping Drea down from the back of the van as Sergeant Miles hurried up to David.
“General Cruz, we’ve got a staging area set up in this corner building here.” He waved them toward a large structure in the corner of the mall.
They walked over the uneven asphalt, Jonathan shouldering the backpack and bag of supplies David had brought up from Mission Control.
The building Sergeant Miles led them to was a big, empty space. All the windows had been broken long ago but it had been swept out and it was clean enough, with a few chairs set out and enough sleeping pallets for all of them to be comfortable. Interesting. Just how many people knew about David’s new… family situation?
Sergeant Miles showed them around. “There’s a bathroom in the back there along with several gallons of water if you want to get washed up. And some rations up here if you’re hungry.”
David thanked and dismissed the sergeant.
Billy nodded and led a still dazed looking Drea through the large open space to the back, no doubt heading for the bathroom. Drea was still covered in blood. It was all over her clothes, her face—it had even stained the front part of her dreadlocks reddish brown. Garrett and Eric hurried to follow them.
Jonathan dropped the bag of supplies David had given him to carry and turned his back on David, pacing away from him. After all their years together, David knew him well enough to know he was upset. At the same time, David was fucking exhausted and didn’t have the energy for Jonathan’s passive aggressive bullshit today of all days.
“You have something to say, say it.”
Jonathan spun back his direction, clearly pissed. “What the hell was that back there? You should have talked to the others before taking out the communication satellites.”
David scoffed. “There wasn’t exactly a lot of time if you recall.”
“I mean yesterday. We never should have gone in like that without telling the others what we were planning.”
“It wasn’t our main objective. It was only if things went FUBAR, which they did.”
Jonathan made a face and shook his head. “That mission was FUBAR from the moment it was conceived. And we went in with no idea what we were walking into, a shit exit strategy, and with extraneous personnel. That girl should never have made it onto that second transport.”
“Agreed on the last point,” David said, taking a step forward and getting in Jonathan’s face. “But this is war. Or did those cushy years in the capitol make you forget what it’s like on the front lines? We don’t always have the luxury of complete intel. We have to act if we want to stay alive. Sacrifices have to be made—”
“Is that what Franco is to you? And Wendall? Just sacrifices that had to be made? For what? So you could take those extra minutes doing fuck knows what downstairs? Gathering a few extra batteries?”
“Watch yourself,” David warned, his tone low and dangerous.
“No,” Jonathan said, stepping toe to toe with David. “Fuck that. I’m tired of biting my tongue. I always looked up to you, so even when I was uncomfortable with your calls, I never said anything. He’s the General, I thought. He knows what he’s doing. But you know what I realize now? You’re just a man and you’re making this shit up as you go.”
“Of course I’m just a man,” David exploded. “Only a little boy would try to make me into some sort of hero. I’m sorry if I didn’t live up to whatever bullshit pedestal you put me up on. Except no, I’m not.” Fuck that. Fuck walking on eggshells around Jonathan. He didn’t want to be treated like a boy anymore? Fine. “That’s not my fucking job. My job is to protect the men under my command and the country I swore an oath to serve.”
David pointed a finger into Jonathan’s chest. “Your fucking job is to obey my commands. But today you disobeyed a direct order. I told you to run. We could have made it around the corner to the landing and the exit before those fuckers rounded the corner. We could have been on our way out of the building but instead you thought you knew better and we ended up foxhole’d in that fucking office.”
Jonathan’s face went cherry red. “So you’re trying to blame Franco’s death on me?”
“I’m saying that when my men don’t obey my orders, I can’t control what happens.”
“Fuck you.” Jonathan shoved him hard in the chest and David locked his jaw as he took a step back.
“Walk away, soldier,” David ground out through his teeth. “You’ll want to walk away right this fucking second.”
Jonathan let out a bitter laugh. “Oh sure. Anyone dares question the omnipotent General David Cruz and they’re immediately dismissed. Disciplined with an inch of their lives.”
“I do what has to get done. What do you think would happen if those men out there didn’t have someone to lead them? Do you think we’d be coordinating an attack tomorrow that would have any chance at succeeding?”
“Oh because we’re all idiotic sheep who would be lost without you? That’s what you’ve wanted me to believe my whole adult life, isn’t it? So I’d never question anything you told me to do. So I’d just fall in line and step. Yes sir, General sir.” He mocked saluting, going ramrod straight in parade stance. “Whatever you say, General, sir.”
David shook his head. Jonathan was so far out of line he was off the fucking map. David had seen what the world looked like when no one stepped in and demanded order. It wasn’t just chaos. It was hell on earth. “Maybe if you weren’t such a—”
“Enough,” Drea’s voice rang out like a whip.
Both David and Jonathan swung their heads to look to the back of the room where Drea strode toward them. David felt his eyes widen in shock at her appearance.
She was in clean clothes and a tight-fitting green tank top and camo pants, but it was her hair he couldn’t stop staring at. The dreadlocks that had hung down her back were gone. Lopped completely off. Instead, a halo of fuzzy blonde hair that just skimmed her shoulders surrounded her.
But nothing about the rest of her demeanor said soft. Far from it.
She stomped toward them, face hard with determination. And when she reached down to the hem of her shirt, there wasn’t an ounce of hesitation as she ripped it up and off over her head. She threw it to the floor like it had personally offended her. She didn’t stop there, either. She grabbed Eric’s good hand and Billy’s arm, yanking them along with her as she headed straight for Jonathan.
“Drea, don’t you think you should—” Eric started but Drea ignored him. When she got to Jonathan, she let go of Billy and Eric and all but leapt on Jonathan. He caught her as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, crashing he
r lips onto his.
She kissed him hard, gyrating her hips in a way that made it clear where she wanted this to lead. And goddamn if David wasn’t hard in seconds. He was exhausted, but he was hard and fuck if he didn’t want everything she was offering.
Though it looked like she might be only offering it to Jonathan, the way she was so focused on him. David let out a deep breath. Fine. He’d go make himself scarce. Space from Jonathan was probably for the best right now anyway.
But right as he turned to go, Drea looked over her shoulder. Or glared, he should say. She glared at him over her shoulder. “Get your ass over here. How about you use all that energy you were wasting on fighting to fuck instead. Fuck out your problems.”
She wiggled down out of Jonathan’s hold only long enough to shove her pants down. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Fuck. That ass of hers was so damn perfect. David was drawn toward it like a magnet.
Before he even realized he’d crossed the six feet between them, his hand was palming her ass. And her hands were on the button of his pants, roughly unbuttoning them, dragging the zipper down, and pulling out his already hard shaft.
“Fuuuuuuck,” he growled. Especially when she dipped her fingers inside herself and then slicked his cock with her own wetness. She repeated the action until he was glistening with her.
Then she spun again, presenting him with her back.
Her ass. Which she wiggled, enticingly at him.
Oh Jesus. His cock pulsed with need.
“Drea,” Eric started again, his tone wary and again Drea ignored him. Instead, she tugged Garrett closer by his beard, teasing his lips with her tongue until he growled and dragged her into a kiss. But David was too distracted by her ass to give it much attention.
He ran his glistening cock down the crack of her ass to the hidden spot, remembering just how fucking good it had felt the last time he’d ventured here. Jesus, the way her body gloved him so perfectly…
“Help them hold me, Garrett,” she whispered when she finally pulled away from him and he nodded drunkenly.