“It’s my car, Lee.” Ethan was glad it was dark enough to hide the hate swelling in his eyes. Not for his brother, but for what the car meant to him and the people who’d tried to take it away. “After all the things the Army stole from me, my life, my sanity, my money, my every worldly possession destroyed… My fucking Seventeen Year Old ‘GM Junk Heap’ was all I had left… I want it back. It’s all I had, man. I had to hide her off post for months. My CO tried to force me to sell it for $300 to a junk yard… some drunkard in the barracks stole it once, wrecked it into a fire hydrant with me passed out in the back seat… Shit. I don’t know… The car just seems like a part of me that I’m missing.”
“How come you never pursued your commission?” Lee asked. It was a strange question, off topic for sure.
“In this Army or the last one?”
“Both, but mostly the real one I guess.”
“That’s a loaded question. I guess the only thing I can say is I wanted to be enlisted first. Be a ‘Mustanger,’ Green to Gold. No shortcuts.”
“Like the ones I took?” Lee didn’t have to say it, but neither brother liked Senior ROTC cadets that became instant officers after graduation. Officers who got commissions that way were just college age punks who thought they were the New Gentry, most either the same age or younger than the men they were told to lead. College commissioned officers could be as self-entitled as the Imperial Japanese Officers of the Second World War, pretending to be the new Samurai after their Empire obliterated the real ones.
“Hey man,” Ethan patted Lee on the head with his book. “There was only one scholarship available and you were the Cadet CO for a reason. That reason. It only made sense that you got it. You never got to see the side of the Army I did. NCO’s shield the officers from the day to day stuff, and you guys just carry on like the concerns of the commoners are not your concerns.” Ethan took a swig from a bottle of rootbeer he’d bought at the market. It was homemade and fresh. “And so I was a private for the rest of my life. As for your Army… I guess I just can’t see myself doing it again. What is the definition of insanity if not repeating the same process over and over expecting different results?”
Lee seemed satisfied with that answer. “What if they don’t want to fight?”
“Who? The people flooding out of Cheyenne? Man, I hope not. I’d rather this mission be for nothing than not be enough.”
Lee looked at the book his brother was reading. “You think they’ll write about us in the history books? Sullivan, the little town that could.” He joked.
Ethan smiled too. “Yeah. That’d be rich. All the skeletons in our closets. We’d make for pretty poor historical figures.”
“Could we be worse than the Founding Fathers?” Lee thumbed through the book. “Jefferson had Jungle Fever and shot a man on the White House lawn, Washington had slaves and grew pot, Franklin sat around naked in his house and womanized in France… Shit, the list goes on.”
“My favorites were Abraham Lincoln, William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, though probably not for the same reasons everyone else loves them.”
Lee raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t the creative one of the two, and Ethan often came up with fascinating tidbits of historical information that were worth listening to. “And what was so fascinating about them? I know Ulysses S. Grant was a better General than he was a President, but…”
Ethan nodded. “U. S. Grant was not a spectacular president, no. The reason I find him interesting is he was actually a failure before the war. He was drummed out of the Army for drinking, in fact. They let him back in when hostilities with the South broke out and he made himself famous enough to become president of the United States later in life. Sherman saw a chance to strike a devastating blow to his enemy and did so with not so much as an apology. Apparently folks in Georgia are still sore about that and I shouldn’t antagonize them by hanging a poster of General Sherman on my barracks room wall, but whatever. And Albraham Lincoln, well, I think he was assassinated right on time to keep history on the path it stayed on. Had he lived he would have tried to send all the slaves back to Africa, not knowing or caring that they would have had almost no quality of life whatsoever. Not a lot of people know that. Liberia is probably the darkest legacy of the Civil War. Hell, the whole conflict cost Lincoln his life, and I don’t mean the bullet to the head. Keeping America from becoming divided, which would have seen us invaded by the English yet again, cost him his health and any stability he might have had at home. I’ve seen photos of the aging process of Lincoln during the Civil War. It was drastic. He went from looking reasonably normal to looking like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“I wonder how far we’ve aged.”
“I don’t think they quantify human aging with exponents.” Ethan didn’t have anything else to say. He fell asleep soon after. Lee stayed awake, thinking about what was to come. Not in the literal sense of what was tomorrow’s order of operations, but what would become of the town in another year, two years, three.
The convoy left before dawn. The cold was enough to stop most of the scattered living from coming to see what was happening, but a few did. They weren’t hostile, just a couple of men, their wives and a few children. Lee gave them supplies of MREs and medical stuffs and told them of Sullivan’s protection and prosperity. They didn’t seem interested, but were happy to share knowledge of what was ahead. Had they no forewarning of what was ahead the men from Sullivan might have fallen into the same trap, their lives just added to the scores already taken there.
The large modern bridges on the downhill slope across the Big Piney River were almost completely destroyed. A single lane remained and a gang controlled it and several military vehicles, including an M-1 Abrams main battle tank, from the top of the cliffs. With this in mind the convoy pressed on until two miles before the bridges. There was no snow there, as if the recent storms had selectively crisscrossed the interstate. A clear path made travel easier, and hid their tracks from anyone following them, but also made it impossible to see if anyone had been there before them. The warfighters donned armor and pressed on the last mile to the bridges on foot, prepared for combat.
The first sign of life was a malnourished German Shepard that slowly approached them with his tail between his legs. One of the soldiers had been a policeman in another life and spoke to the dog in German when it didn’t respond to English commands. It went right up to him. “He’s a police dog.” The soldier said. “We didn’t teach them English commands so no one else could confuse them.” They kept the dog and a soldier who’d had a mild sprained ankle took him back to the trucks since he wasn’t going to be of much use either. Many animals sought out people in this abandoned world, seeking the love and food they’d known before. It was inspiring to find something as useful as a ‘K9 Officer,’ a fellow survivor of a world abandoned by hope. With any luck this was a sign of better things to come.
The unit closed in on the bridges. They were within three hundred meters when someone spotted the remnants of an outpost hastily made of plywood and tin. It looked the worse for ware and had graffiti all over it. A small fire burned in a 55 gallon drum and a couple of men sitting near the plywood shack in ragged clothing didn’t seem very attentive. Sure enough an Abrams tank, the most powerful tank ever fielded by any standing army, covered in lewd, crude, caveman representations of the female figure sat on a hill like a desecrated grave. From the looks of the stuff built up around it, and the trash on top of it, the tank hadn’t gone anywhere in some time. They couldn’t, however, just assume it was inoperable.
Both men faced away from the approaching Cavalrymen as they silently stalked closer. Finally, when they were close enough to smell the men and their putrid encampment Ethan walked up to them and pulled a large, long barreled 1851 Colt Navy from a shoulder holster under his jacket. He put the barrel inches from one of the men’s heads and pulled the hammer back with a dramatic click clack. Lee rolled his eyes, knowing that sound was the only reason his brother carried th
e antique firearm in the first place. It wasn’t even a cartridge conversion, a classic cap & ball, but nothing sounded half as intimidating.
“Don’t… Move…” Ethan said. The men froze in place, an expired beer can dropped from one of their grubby hands and fizzed on the ground. “My name is Sheriff Ethan J. Cally, and I’ll be the one taking your weapons now.”
“You don’t want to do this, man.” The one Ethan didn’t have a gun barrel pressed against said, “We got a tank too, bro.” The man gestured with a nod to the graffiti decorated pile of rust that had once been a proud war machine.
“Very astute. Eat any good books lately?” The quote from Star Trek went right over the man’s head. Even if this were still the Old World he wouldn’t have gotten it.
“What?” The shabby sentry said in bewilderment as the Cavalry swooped in and silently gagged both men, dragging them away by their feet while Ethan holstered the .44 caliber hand-cannon. Two soldiers were already on top of the tank preparing to drop a grenade in it at the earliest sign of hostility. They reached the hatch and moments later one was inside, and then promptly back out, waving his hand back and forth like he’d stepped in shit. No one had ever bothered to clean the machine, the bodies of the soldiers manning it were probably still inside.
Lee gave the hand signal for What The Fuck? The men shrugged and gave the all clear sign for the tank, mostly because no one wanted to go back inside it. They swept the camp next to the road before spotting a trail that led off into the woods. Trash littered the path, dirty, tattered clothing and other belongings of no value were strewn every which way. Since they were next to a cliff Ethan took the next logical step and peered over the edge. There had to be thirty cars in various states of rusting decay, burned out and smashed, crushed one upon another in a pile like a junkyard. They’d been shoved off the cliff where the East bound bridge was blown.
Lee came up next to his brother as the rest of the troops swept the area. He pulled out his binoculars and looked down. “Ethan, get away from the edge!”
Ethan took the binoculars and looked for himself. “Jesus Christ, no…”
Lee and several other troops had trouble keeping up with Ethan as he ran into the brush, nearly skiing down the steep slope to the overgrown road below. He stumbled toward the wreckage while the others caught up. They were all out of breath because of the frigid air as they caught up to Ethan where he was standing still as stone in the middle of the grass and trash covered road. The wind whipped up and the smell of burned flesh and plastic wafted over them.
“We might as well have carved their tombstones for them, Lee.” Ethan turned and headed back up the hill, a look Ethan had seen before burning bright behind his brother’s eyes. Lee looked at the pile of cars. He felt sick to his stomach as he saw what his brother had spotted from above. The burned, picked clean skeletal remains of the religious zealots they’d kicked out of town for inciting a riot. Lee threw up when he saw the torn in half body of a little boy he’d met once. The boy had been an okay kid, his parents were a completely different story, their rhetoric reminiscent of Westboro Baptist Church’s psychotic dribble. Lee had given him a bicycle helmet that looked like a WWII Army steel pot. They’d found lots of them at a Wal*Mart and given them out to children on Veteran’s Day the year before. This one had sergeant’s stripes Lee had rather poorly painted on himself, just for the boy so his would be special.
Not everyone fared the Apocalypse well, the loss of their world of gadgets and television. The boy had lived through and adjusted to it all, a young man with a bright future, only to be murdered for what meager supplies they had and unceremoniously pushed off a cliff. His body, and those of his family and church had been eaten by zombies and wild animals while the men above them partied like there was no tomorrow. Just because there probably won’t be a tomorrow doesn’t give one permission to behave like a savage.
“Sorry kid.” He whispered, feeling his blood begin to boil. His men were loyal. They would never say anything, they knew and agreed revenge was the next, and only course of action to be taken. These people were all going to die for what they’d done, no prisoners, no lengthy trial. Not that there was anyone left for Lee to answer to, no judges or juries left to try him for war crimes. Lee felt a sudden empathy for Annakin Skywalker, before he was Darth Vader, when he decided to kill all of the Sand People. If only there were dramatic theme music for this moment.
On top of the hill the Cavalry had captured a third highwayman. This one was a woman, and not much of one. Skinny, strung out, improperly dressed for the weather. She wasn’t even half as cooperative as the two men. Not that it mattered. When Lee made it to the top of the hill he pulled his brother’s 1851 Colt from his holster without so much as asking. Before Ethan knew what was happening Lee shot the woman in the temple with it. She cartwheeled off the cliff, landing with a crash on a windshield below.
Time slowed down for Ethan. He watched the hammer slam down against copper cap, the sizzle of the powder as it ignited, and finally the thunder of the explosion when the ball sailed through the air and blew the majority of the woman’s face out the back of her head. “Find the rest of them. Kill them.”
Finding the rest of the camp turned out to be easier than expected. The killers had been camped out in a row of RVs on the other side of the wood line. The battle was short and bloody, the gang of nearly thirty men and what might have passed for women before they were strung out on meth and heroin were all quickly killed. Like the gang at Mt. Sterling none of them offered to surrender, though some were passed out and offered no resistance. The two prisoners they’d first encountered were brought back to the edge of the cliff as well. Once lined up none of the few living members would shut up, or stop blaming the other. It was pandemonium, a clusterfuck for which none of the Cavalrymen had the time or patience. They had by now all seen the carnage below. Some of those people, though outcasts, were friends and fellow survivors. The things these people had done to others was simply unforgivable.
“SHUT UP!” Lee shouted, pulling the hammer back on the Colt. He leveled the barrel at the two men they’d first encountered. “You. Tell me who the leader is.”
“Him.” The man they now knew as Sam Clark of Cincinnati pointed at a man who more resembled Ted Kaczynski than the suited businessman he’d once probably been. The suit was in tatters, and he hadn’t bothered to repair it. No one there bathed. This was an encampment of thieves and murderers, subhuman creatures who’d given up on the ideals of civilization.
Lee shot the leader without so much as blinking. The other troops shot the rest of the vagrants except the two men they’d first encountered. By their stories and general appearance they were recent additions to the gang. They didn’t yet smell only of meth and urine. The two men stood trembling, remaining the only ones alive as the last body thumped to the frozen wrecks below, joining their victims in death.
“Strip.” Ethan said to the survivors. “You deserve to die along with them. You will never convince me there was a reason for you two to throw in with this lot… Your cooperation is all that spares your lives. I do not have room for prisoners, but I will not allow you to enjoy the loot taken from your victims. Now take off your clothes.” The men did so without hesitation. It was below freezing as the sun began to set, but that wasn’t Ethan’s problem. “See the sunset? Start walking towards it until you can’t see it anymore. So much as look back, or come back, and you’ll die no matter the circumstance.”
No one slept that night. They lit the cars below the cliff on fire one last time and stood a silent vigil as the pile reduced itself to metal shards and unburned bone. The smell was putrid, but no one dared wear a mask. In the dark any half thawed Zim could stumble into a masked man’s blind spot and take a chunk of one’s neck before there was time to could scream.
The next morning some of the men who’d been construction workers rigged a harness to lower themselves below where the bridge met the bluff. They didn’t like what they saw and the survey wa
s over quickly. “It’s a miracle she’s survived two winters. I’d say the Air Force tried to blow it from the air during the panic. That’s why the single lane is still there. See that area down there where all the trees are either stumps or saplings? It’s an impact crater, probably from a JDAM.” One of them said to Ethan as they prepared to move out. “The supports on the remaining lane didn’t take the full force of the impact, but there is some buckling near the base. I saw exposed rebar where the concrete was blown or crumbled away.”
“Will it hold the tanks?”
“If it holds us going across it then it probably will on the way back.” The man shrugged, “No way to tell. If this were in the Days Before we’d never bother repairing a bridge this damaged. It would have been demolished and a new one built instead. I don’t even know if there is a way to truly assess the bridge’s load capacity. It’s probably only holding together because the pavement hasn’t buckled. You can see the West bound lane is listing pretty bad. I wouldn’t even walk across it, personally.” He pointed to some ladders the gang had been using to cross over onto the isolated bridge section, a last refuge against Zims. They’d been using it as a toilet rather than a fallback position with a natural chokepoint.
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