by D. J. Molles
“Did anyone else make it out?” Lee asked, gentler than before. The initial challenges now dealt with, it was time to be more diplomatic.
Menendez shook his head. “I don’t know. We thought we were the only ones that made it out. Until now.”
Lee considered this for a moment. Did that mean that Tex was dead? Had Joaquin simply lied to Lee for the sake of lying? One final piece of misinformation?
“Can I put my hands down?” Lee asked.
Menendez eyed him. Suspicion gave way to resignation. He nodded.
Lee and Abe both unclasped their hands and let them hang at their sides.
The soldiers surrounding them visibly relaxed.
The final barrier now removed, it felt like they were all on the same side again.
“Are you and your boys hungry?” Lee asked.
Menendez managed a grim smirk. “Is it that obvious?”
It pained Lee to do it, but an olive branch needed to be extended. Food was a good way to make friends out of starving soldiers. He nodded to the sacks of supplies at their feet. “We have enough. Help yourselves.”
The soldiers around them looked at the satchels eagerly, but Menendez didn’t make a move just yet. He gestured to the foodstuffs. “Where’d they come from?”
Lee took a cautious step forward, and when no one tensed or seemed ready to intercept him, he continued. He knelt down and opened the old feed sack that Menendez had been poking around in. “We got it from Triprock.”
Menendez stood over Lee as he drew out the salt pork. Lee offered it to Menendez. The sergeant hesitated, but then gave in and took it.
“Triple Rocker Ranch?” Menendez asked, handing the pork off to one of his soldiers that was not so hesitant, and who immediately drew out his knife to begin carving it. “I thought that was held by the cartel.”
“It was. Until last night.” Lee upended the sack and spilled the rest of the contents out. There were some mason jars with home-canned vegetables. Some smoked meats. A large sack of some sort of grain meal.
Menendez’s hesitation finally ceded to his responsibility to feed his men, and he began helping Lee distribute the foodstuffs to the soldiers. “Make sure the boys on watch get some.”
Lee took a seat on the floor, folding his legs, as comfortable as if it were his home and the soldiers around him his guests. Abe followed suit, putting his back to the wall near the east-facing window. Lee gestured to the floor across from him, offering Menendez a seat.
The sergeant sat with a tired huff. “What happened at Triprock?”
Lee took a measured sip of water, then gave the bottle to Menendez who gulped from it eagerly. Then he relayed the basics of what had gone down the previous night. Not entirely sure how much to give away, Lee left out a few important factors, such as their capture of Joaquin Leyva and his subsequent interrogation.
Menendez listened, chewing at a slice of what Lee figured was smoked antelope.
“In any case,” Lee concluded. “Triprock won’t be around much longer.”
“You think the cartel will come back?”
Lee nodded. “I know they will. And whoever decided to stay in Triprock…well…hopefully everyone takes our advice and gets gone.”
Menendez eyed him. “Do you think they will?”
Lee avoided the eye contact.
His thoughts jumped back to Sally and Eric and Catalina. He pictured their faces, staring at him, telling him that they needed his help.
He’d turned his back on them.
I told them to leave, he railed against the small part of himself that seemed to stand in judgment of his actions. I told them. If they didn’t listen, then that’s on them! They’re not my responsibility! I can’t save everyone!
And that was true.
He couldn’t.
But maybe what bothered him was that he hadn’t even tried.
Sometimes it’s not the things we do that cause the most regret.
Sometimes it’s the things we don’t do.
In the end, Lee shrugged in response to Menendez’s question, because that was all he could do. “If they stay, that’s their problem,” Lee said, and he knew he was wrong, but he thought maybe if he kept telling himself that, it would eventually take.
He unclipped his rifle from its sling and laid it beside him. He regarded Menendez for a moment, and then the four soldiers that had taken up seats around the room, sharing a can of this, or a slice of that.
“You don’t have access to the bunkers, do you?” Lee asked, though it was more an observation than a question.
Menendez shot him a look. “Obviously not.”
Lee had suspected as much—otherwise Menendez and his surviving crew wouldn’t be half-starved. He still felt disappointed. “Then I’m also assuming you’ve had no contact with Tex.”
Menendez paused in his chewing. Then continued, slower. He stared at the bit of jerky left in his hand. Swallowed. “Tex is dead,” he said with finality, then shoved the rest of the jerky in his mouth.
Lee felt his stomach dip. But he kept his expression level. “Did you see him die?”
Menendez sighed. “No.”
“Have you seen his dead body?”
“No.”
“How do you know that he’s dead?” Lee was earnest with this. He was not trying to deny facts. He was just trying to get to the truth.
Menendez wiped his fingers off on his pants. “Suppose I don’t. I just…” he hesitated with his words, and didn’t pick them up again, leaving the silence hanging.
“You figured he would’ve reached out by now,” Lee suggested.
Menendez nodded.
Lee felt marginally better now that Tex’s body hadn’t been confirmed dead. That didn’t mean he was alive. But there was other evidence that pointed to him being out there still.
“If I were to take a guess, Tex wasn’t entirely sure who was in on the trap. I think he knew enough to know that Captain Bellamy from Greeley was the one that set it up, and he may have even known enough that Cornerstone was the one that sprung it. But Tex, for all his bluster, he’s a cautious guy.” Lee stretched his back, feeling the tightness of hard nights and harder days. “If he is still out there, he’s probably waiting for the snakes to reveal themselves before he comes out of hiding.”
“There are no snakes,” Menendez remarked. “Bellamy, of course. Cornerstone, as you pointed out. But none of Tex’s guys were in on it. That I can guarantee you.”
Lee considered telling Menendez that he couldn’t “guarantee” him a damn thing, but chose to keep that tidbit to himself. He had other things on his mind.
“Have you been to the bunker north of Caddo?” Lee asked. “The one we ran the power plant operation out of?”
Menendez looked at Lee’s bottle of water with a certain note of longing, so Lee passed it to him and he took another deep gulp before answering. “Yes.”
Lee leaned forward. “And you didn’t get access, I’m assuming. Or you wouldn’t be starving.”
“No. We didn’t.”
Lee nodded. “Correct me if I’m wrong here. Tex gave me the lowdown on his coalition when we first got here. He told me that he’d changed the bunkers’ security settings to allow anyone with a passcode to access them. That way his outposts could use them for resupply and fallback points without him and his GPS unit having to be there.”
Menendez nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
“So if you weren’t able to access it, then he changed the settings back to default. Closed them off to anyone but himself.”
Menendez shrugged. “That’s possible. But I wasn’t able to get access to that bunker because I was never given the passcode to it. I have the passcode to two other bunkers, but they’re in northern Texas, close to the Oklahoma border.”
“Did you attempt to open the bunker north of Caddo?”
Menendez smirked. “No. You don’t want to enter the wrong passcode.”
Lee smiled back. “The bunkers defend themselves
, that’s for sure.”
Automated Vulcan cannons and grenade launchers made sure of that. Anyone trying to tamper with the system would be reduced to mincemeat.
“How long did you watch the bunker?” Lee asked.
“Not long. Six hours. We had to keep on the move.”
“We’d left wounded there, before the power plant operation.”
“Yeah. Breckenridge had control of the bunker when we left that night.”
“And I’m assuming you saw no sign of him?”
“No.” Menendez took a breath. “No sign of anybody. Up until now.”
“So what brought you over here?” Lee asked. “I’m beginning to think you’ve been tracking me.”
“Nothing quite so sexy,” Menendez admitted. “We had our eye on this house for the same reason I’m assuming you did.”
“La Casa,” Lee intuited.
Menendez nodded. “Small target. Small-ish, anyways. Thought we might get ourselves some food and fuel.”
Lee took a drink from his water bottle again. “How many men do you have?”
“Eight. Including myself.”
Lee considered this as he recapped the bottle. “Well, sergeant, I think we can work something out.”
THIRTEEN
─▬▬▬─
CIVILIAN
Angela sat at her desk in the sheriff’s office.
Directly across from her, Ed and Carl had just taken their seats.
They were waiting on a fourth.
Carl pushed the rolled sleeves of his combat shirt up past his elbows. “First Sergeant Hamrick just reported in.”
Ed adjusted his seat and regarded his neighbor with hesitant curiosity. He was less concerned about military matters. More concerned with his own people. But, almost out of politeness, Ed seemed compelled to ask, “Any good news?”
“No, Ed,” Carl replied. “Not good news.”
Ed nodded, and looked away.
Angela tapped an irritable finger on the desktop. “Go on, then.”
Carl kept a level face, but she saw a small tightening of the tension around his eyes. “Squads hit what looks like a potential colony as they were trying to secure Augusta for a comms relay and route-through. We lost another squad.”
Angela blinked a few times, and Carl seemed to understand what she was thinking before she had to ask it.
“Sam’s fine,” he said. “It was a different squad.”
Angela nodded, surprised at the release she felt in her chest. Sam wasn’t her child, and she wasn’t blind to the fact that he didn’t want to be. It had simply been…unfortunate circumstance that had landed him in her care.
But he didn’t need mothering anymore.
He was, for all intents and purposes, a soldier now.
But, she still worried about him, the same as she worried about Lee. And Julia. And Marie. And all the other people that she knew were out there, putting their lives on the line.
“How long until they can clear the route?” Angela asked. “Have they given any projections?”
It wasn’t supposed to be Carl’s job to be the go-between for First Sergeant Hamrick. He wasn’t supposed to have become the oversight for the Hunter-Killer squads.
But then again, Angela wasn’t supposed to be a leader. And here she was.
Sometimes you fell into your circumstances. Like fate had left a trap for you.
Besides, Carl might’ve had ulterior motives for getting involved in pushing the Hunter-Killer squads to work faster. There was a list of Lincolnists that he needed. And he needed to get to Fort Bragg to get it.
“On the outside,” Carl answered. “Maybe a week.”
Angela drew her thumb and forefinger down across the corners of her mouth. “Week’s a long time. Maybe they should just pass it by.”
“They used a roadblock,” Carl said.
The words hung there.
“The primals?” Angela clarified. “Used a roadblock?”
Carl nodded. “That’s what the squads are reporting.”
“I highly doubt they created a roadblock.”
Carl leaned forward. “It doesn’t matter if they created it, ma’am. It matters that they used it. They knew that it would hem the squads up, and they used it as a trap.”
Angela leaned back, feeling the ever-present anxiety compact her stomach even further. She felt like people kept adding small weights to her stomach. It was gradually getting harder to breathe.
Through this, Ed remained still and quiet. His wizened eyes watching Angela the whole time. And, she felt, judging her.
A figure appeared on the other side of the glass-fronted office, and the door opened.
Angela stood. “Brinly. Please come in.”
Brinly’s large frame filled the doorway. Gone were the sergeant’s stripes from his desert-digital Marine uniform. Replaced by a major’s oak leaves. A drastic and sudden change to be sure. One he’d argued against: “It’s not how these things are done.”
But nothing was done as it once had been.
Despite the fact that there existed other Marine officers, Brinly had been Colonel Staley’s senior enlisted man for the past four years. In fact, he’d been Staley’s right-hand ever since the survivors at Camp Ryder had made contact with the Marines from Camp Lejeune, nearly five years ago now.
It’d been Staley and Brinly that Lee had met the first time.
It’d been Staley and Brinly that had helped them defeat the massive hordes of infected migrating southward from the northern population centers.
Brinly had been the closest to Staley. And the one with the most command experience. Also, he was the one that Angela already knew and trusted.
Command structure being as ad hoc as it was, the existing captains and lieutenants were already accustomed to taking orders from Brinly. Angela figured they could swallow their hurt feelings at being passed over to fill Staley’s spot.
“Madam President,” Brinly said, then nodded to the other two. “Master sergeant. Sheriff.”
Angela cringed at the title, but forced a smile. “How many times are we going to go over this?”
Brinly took a seat at the one remaining chair. He regarded her with intelligent blue-green eyes. “Old habits die hard, Ms. Houston,” he said, in his faint Chicago accent.
Better.
“How are your Marines adjusting?” By which Angela meant the officers that had been passed over.
“They’re adjusting.”
Angela nodded. Brinly had always kept his words sparse. Moreso now since his commission. “Thank you for joining us,” she said with off-handed politeness. She settled into her chair, leaning forward with her elbows on the desk. She considered each of them in turn. They knew what this meeting was about. But they still waited for her to fire the first volley.
She raised her hands and folded them in front of her face. It was not the commanding posture that she would have liked, but in that moment, she didn’t care. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Angela said, her mouth moving just above her hands. “But we’re up against the ropes, gentlemen. We need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
She flicked a finger in Brinly’s direction. “Major Brinly has been down here since Lee’s first contact with this Nuevas Fronteras cartel. Now he’s sitting on our entire contingent of Marines. That’s a resource that needs to be used.”
Next, she looked to Carl. “Carl’s been working hard on his investigations, and is also working with First Sergeant Hamrick to secure the route back to Bragg, and erect communications relays.”
She shifted to Ed. “And Ed’s been working on making contact with some of the other Safe Zones here in the UES, to take the temperature of the political situation, you might say.”
Ed’s moustache betrayed a slight twitch.
Angela took care not to let her breath come out of her in a great, irritable whoosh. She knew what was coming. She dipped her head in Ed’s direction. “Go ahead, Ed. Lay it out.”
D
espite the preamble, Ed still managed to look put on the spot. Or maybe he was just that uncomfortable with being the bearer of bad news. “Well,” he began in his jowly growl. “Charleston is still out of contact. I’ve tried multiple times, over the course of the last week. No success. That makes five weeks, by my reckoning.” His gaze avoided Angela’s. “They’ve been out of contact since Fort Bragg fell. Our Georgia sister, the Moody Safe Zone, is still with us.” Ed’s hands drew together in his lap. The thumbs wrestled with each other. “Florida has…a lot of questions.”
Angela cleared her throat. “Ed’s a very kind man. Let me cut through the crap cake here. Charleston is most likely out of contact because they want nothing to do with us anymore. And Florida is wavering. Two months ago, everything was peachy. The fall of Fort Bragg has shattered everyone’s confidence.” Angela’s jaw worked for a second. “Despite the fact that it was primals that pushed us out, a lot of folks are speculating that it was a Greeley victory. And if we can’t even hold our so-called capital, they think, then the war against Briggs must be unwinnable.”
Carl rubbed a thoughtful finger on the armrest of his chair. “Is it possible that something happened to Charleston? Maybe that’s why they’re out of contact?”
Angela nodded. “Oh yes, that’s possible.” Here, she looked to Brinly with a shrewd squint. “But what did Staley do at Camp Lejeune when Briggs wanted them to abandon North Carolina? Did he get in contact with Briggs and tell him what he was doing?”
Brinly raised one graying eyebrow. “No, ma’am. We just…dropped out of contact.”
“Exactly,” Angela said. “If something bad was going down in Charleston, I believe they would have attempted some sort of communication with us and then dropped off. And then I would be concerned for them. As it stands right now, they were in contact until right after we lost Fort Bragg, and then magically, with no warning, all the sudden they’re off-line. All signs point to them willfully withdrawing from the UES. And Florida is right behind them.”