Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed

by Molles, D. J.

  The heat only made his confusion more frustrating. They’d shut the buses off—presumably to preserve fuel—and allowed the occupants to open the windows, but it was still a hotbox, baking in the noon sun, and no one knew why they were being held on the buses.

  One by one, agonizingly slow, a Cornerstone operative would lean into the bus and shout “Next!” They’d started at the very front, working their way from left to right, from the first aisle back.

  Sam’s concern about what was happening was overshadowed by his enormous discomfort from stewing in his own juices for five hours. He knew when it was his turn—had been counting the minutes as they oozed by. So when the operative yelled “Next!” Sam came out of his seat with gusto, even though he didn’t know what he was walking into.

  His biggest concern was that he was the last person in his team. Everyone else had already been called off the bus. Sometimes the split between calls for next was only a few minutes. Sometimes it was as long as ten. But the clincher was the fact that no one got back on the bus.

  Wiping sweat from his face and pulling his sodden shirt from where it stuck to his flesh, Sam stamped down the stairs of the bus to be met by the same soldier with the clipboard that had greeted him when he got on.

  “Sameer Balawi?” the soldier said, reading from his clipboard.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The solder keyed his radio, bored and indifferent. “Sending Sameer Balawi.” The soldier released his PTT and then pointed.

  The buses had stopped just inside the south end of Greeley. They now sat in a large, dirt parking area. All along one side were shipping containers that reminded him fleetingly of Camp Ryder. Each of these shipping containers had a number written on a piece of cardboard and taped to the top of the opening. Inside the gloom of each Sam made out two chairs. In each shipping container, one of the chairs was occupied by an individual wearing the black polo shirt of a Cornerstone operative, but no combat gear.

  “Number five,” the soldier said.

  Sam pointed himself to the shipping container with the number five on it, and started walking. A frown creased his brow as his eyes shot down the line of shipping containers. There were ten of them in a row. Each one numbered.

  The facts began to align in his head, and they only deepened his concerns. Ten shipping containers, each with two chairs and a Cornerstone operative. They were being interviewed for something, Sam guessed. But if there were ten shipping containers, and ten interviewers, then that meant that each of these interviews were lasting much longer than five to ten minutes, as he’d assumed.

  How many questions did they really need to ask a bunch of conscripts? How much of an interview could you give a person who was slated to carry a rifle and guard a perimeter or clean a latrine?

  This isn’t a job interview, Sam realized as he stepped up to Shipping Container #5. This is an interrogation.

  He stepped up onto the metal deck of the container. A small, rechargeable camp fan sat next to the Cornerstone operative, blowing its meager breeze across the operative only. The operative was a woman. Sam hadn’t seen many of those in black Cornerstone polos. In fact, this was his first.

  The woman also had a clipboard perched upon one thigh of her crossed legs. She looked up from this. “Sameer Balawi?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Call me sir, not ma’am. Do I look like a ma’am to you?”

  Well, actually, you do. But Sam didn’t push his already faltering luck. “Sorry, sir.”

  The woman flashed him a bright smile. “I’m just hassling you. But do call me sir. I deal with enough misogyny. Please, sit.”

  It was the first time any of the Cornerstone people had bothered to be genuine, or to speak to him like he was anything more than an annoyance. Sam stepped forward and took the chair directly across from the woman, feeling dumbly eager to converse with someone that didn’t treat him like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.

  And he had to guard against that. It was a natural human instinct—you get treated like dirt, and then someone treats you nice, all the sudden the little social animal inside of you blossoms and you want to be that person’s best friend.

  But it was all lies. Manipulation. This woman didn’t actually give a shit about him.

  He sat stiffly in the seat, as though he was afraid to touch the backrest.

  “My name is Gabriella Franks. But let’s just stick with ‘sir’ for now.” She had nice eyes. Not the eyes of a mercenary. Had she always been Cornerstone? Or was she a recent recruit?

  She looked down at the clipboard. “And you are Sameer Balawi. Am I saying that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What is that?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Where’s that name come from? What’s your ethnicity?”

  “My family is from Afghanistan, but I was born in the United States.”

  “Good. So you’re a citizen of the United States.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She scribbled something. Then tapped her pen. “You’re young. Where’s your family?”

  “Dead.”

  Gabriella gave no reaction to this. It was probably a common enough story. “When did they die?”

  “During the outbreak.”

  “Were they infected?”

  “No. They were killed by other people.”

  She met his eyes. Sympathy in hers. It seemed real, but then, so did she. Sam might be young, but he’d learned a lot about people. Lee Harden was right: You can’t trust anyone.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Gabriella said. “Where did your family live before the outbreak?”

  Sam restrained himself from swallowing. His fake backstory didn’t go back that far. He couldn’t tell her that they’d lived in North Carolina—that would set off too many warning bells. The best he could do was go with his already-constructed story.

  “We lived in Oklahoma.”

  “So which FEMA camp did your family evacuate to in Oklahoma?”

  Trick question, and Sam knew it. He dodged it. “We never made it to a FEMA camp. My family got killed before we could start the evacuation. There were people who believed the bacteria was a terrorist attack. And I guess me and my family looked like terrorists.”

  It was partially true. And partially true is always the best lie.

  Gabriella’s expression shaded a bit. Not quite as compassionate as it had been a second before. “Yes, but which FEMA camp were you intending to go to?”

  “I don’t know. I was eleven at the time. If my parents had discussed going to a FEMA camp, they never told me about it.”

  Gabriella appeared to let go of that line of questioning. Sam felt his gut tightening, wondering how much untruth he could get away with. If he kept dodging questions, it was only going to make her more suspicious.

  And he realized, in that instant, what this was all about.

  They’re trying to figure out if I’m from the UES.

  It was only by a monumental effort of tricking his brain—forcing himself to actually visualize and believe in his lies—that he managed to keep his pulse from skyrocketing. He was already pouring sweat, as was every other person that got off the bus, so he supposed he was free to perspire. But he didn’t want his pulse throbbing in his neck.

  “Do you go by Sameer?” Gabriella asked, folding her hands over the clipboard as though it no longer mattered. Just a conversation among friends.

  “My friends call me Sam.”

  “Okay, Sam. You seem like a good dude, and you’ve already been pinned for squad leader.” She gestured to the tag still clipped to his collar. “I’m gonna shoot straight with you.”

  I doubt it.

  He nodded along, playing the rube.

  “You’re aware of the conflict between our President Briggs and the rebels on the east coast?”

  Sam briefly considered denial, if for nothing else than to avoid this line of question
ing. But he and his team—thanks to Jones’s big mouth—had already admitted to knowledge of the UES during their questioning to get into The Tank. Sam needed to assume that Gabriella was aware of this.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve heard about what’s going on.”

  Gabriella smiled again. “Well, it’s not going on anymore. We sent an invasion force out just a week or so ago and wiped the floor with them.”

  She let the words hang there, and Sam could see she was gauging his reaction to this.

  Well, it wasn’t news to Sam. He remained motionless in his seat, his expression carefully neutral. “Oh. I hadn’t heard about that. Good.”

  Gabriella didn’t immediately respond to that. Her eyes searched Sam’s face, and for a brief moment, he thought she was still looking for some sign of emotion in him. But as he held eye contact with her, he saw something else lurking below the surface.

  A hesitation. A reticence. A hope.

  What am I looking at right now?

  Gabriella let out a low sigh. “Yeah. Good.”

  Her words rang hollow in Sam’s ears. And everything went tilt-a-whirl in Sam’s head. Something new sprouted into his consciousness, something about the woman sitting across from him. A new and disruptive possibility.

  She doesn’t like that the UES got wiped out.

  “Anyways,” Gabriella refocused herself. “All of the bullshit that went into that invasion is neither here nor there.” She seemed to be staring at her clipboard, but not seeing it. She tapped her pen a few more times. “I suppose there’s been bullshit going on since the conception of the United States of America. That’s something you’ll learn firsthand. Doesn’t matter where you go, there’s always bullshit. There’s always things you don’t agree with.” She looked at him. “It’s important that, if you’re going to be a soldier in Greeley, you understand that there’s always going to be things you don’t like going on behind closed doors. Just because you don’t agree with it—just because I don’t agree with the treatment of the United Eastern States and the wholesale killing of civilians that happened during the invasion—doesn’t mean that the government I work for is ‘bad.’ You need to understand that shit like that was going on long before the plague hit, and will continue to go on. That’s just the way it is. Do you understand that, Sam?”

  Sam found himself in vapor lock. His mission here in Greeley suddenly came crashing to the forefront of his brain, obliterating the wonderful acting job he’d done by forcing himself to believe his own fictitious background.

  His mission was to find detractors. To convince people to take up arms when they didn’t agree with how things were being done. And here was Gabriella, a Cornerstone operative, that didn’t agree with how things were done.

  Too easy, a warning klaxon blared in Sam’s mind. Don’t trust anyone.

  But that was the problem. The very nature of his mission was predicated on the fact that, eventually, he was going to have to trust someone. He couldn’t recruit people to fight for a cause if he never revealed that he was a part of it himself.

  You haven’t even made it inside, Sam told himself. This is too early.

  But weren’t they on a short schedule? Wasn’t time slipping out of his hands faster than he had expected when he set out? Lee was on the move towards Greeley. Sam’s mission was on a timeline. He needed to act fast.

  “Sam?” Gabriella broke into his thoughts, frowning. “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said with a twitch. “I was just…” Go gently, cautiously. “…I was surprised to hear you say that.”

  Gabriella straightened, a whiff of something like worry flying across her face. “Well, I—”

  Sam managed an earnest smile. “No, it’s fine, sir. I appreciate your honesty.”

  Gabriella’s expression flashed hopeful, and then immediately went stony. “It’s neither here nor there. My entire point being, as a soldier here, you may see things you don’t agree with. And when you see those things, you’re not going to raise a stink and cause trouble. You’re going to put your head down and do what you’re told. Is that understood?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Gabriella seemed to relax a bit. “Good. We’re all going out on a limb right now. President Briggs is giving you all an opportunity for a better life. We’re trusting you all to do your duty. And you need to trust us, no matter what you see, that we’re trying to do the right thing. We’re trying to preserve the better life that we’re offering you. Unfortunately, in this world, you have to crack a few eggs to make omelets.”

  Sam swallowed, feeling the dangerous opportunity being pulled away from him. “I’m sorry if I’m not supposed to ask this kind of question. But what kind of stuff are you talking about?”

  Gabriella regarded him with a tilted head. “Sam, have you ever killed someone?”

  Sam’s mind went to the ambushes during the assault on Butler. The images, the sensations, the sounds—pulling the trigger, hearing the bang, seeing the body of a soldier jerk and fall.

  “Yes.”

  “And did you want to do it, Sam? Are you a killer at heart?”

  “No.”

  “No. You did what you had to do.” She sniffed. “Sometimes survival is ugly.”

  “What did they do to those people on the east coast?”

  Gabriella sat in silence for a moment. Gradually, she looked down at her clipboard and scribbled something. When she spoke, it was with a dismissive tone. “War. That’s what they did. And any time there’s war, there’s civilian casualties. That’s just par for the course. The sooner you make your peace with that, the better off you’ll be here in Greeley.”

  She finished scrawling whatever note she was writing, then uncrossed her legs. “I’m confirming your recommendation for squad leader, Sam. Don’t make me regret it. Remember what I said.” She folded her hands over the clipboard. “Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Were you always a part of Cornerstone?”

  She frowned. “Interesting that you know the name.”

  Sam felt heat rising up his neck. “I’ve just heard, that’s all. The black polo shirts. The red triangle. Everyone knows about Cornerstone.”

  “Hm.” Gabriella stared at him with narrowed eyes. “No. I was in the Air Force. But President Briggs is consolidating all military forces into Cornerstone. Yet another thing that, even if you don’t like it, you go along to get along. Do you understand?”

  Sam nodded, feeling a little ray of hope shine down on him. “Yes, sir.”

  Gabriella stood up. “Myself or another operative from Cornerstone will be checking in with you periodically.” She paused, her mouth working as though trying to find the right way to say something. “I’m considered your official case officer. So if you have any questions for me…” hesitation, as though she were extending something to him that went beyond professionalism. “I work in logistics, located inside the old Wal-Mart building downtown.”

  Sam rose from his seat. “Thank you, sir.”

  Gabriella avoided any further eye contact. “You’re dismissed.”

  FIFTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  SCORCHED EARTH

  Abe stood just outside the passenger side of the MATV, a pair of binoculars up to his eyes, his elbows braced in the V created by the door and the frame of the vehicle. Through the binoculars he observed an eerily quiet setting.

  Buildings. One big one, like a hangar of some sort. Probably to house big farming implements. A small school. A collection of houses. They all sat, somewhat gray in the thinly overcast skies. A strong wind was kicking up, and the only movement Abe could see were little dust devils that sprouted up and dissipated shortly after, and the hectic waving of a few acres of immature corn.

  The crinkled map on the dash called this tiny dot MOSQUERO. From all the intel that Abe had received through the grapevine—mainly from Breck and Menendez and a few others from Tex’s old crew—this was supposed to be a settlement, and it was supposed to be loy
al to the New Mexico Coordinator, Captain Tully, though he was MIA—captured or killed by Cornerstone, Abe wasn’t sure which.

  Abe sucked his teeth and lowered the binoculars, peering over the top of them. “I got nothing.”

  Menendez shuffled forward from the door just behind Abe and looked over his shoulder. “What do you mean you got nothing?”

  “I mean I don’t see any movement.”

  “It’s hot out and it’s noon. They could be taking shelter, waiting for it to cool down a bit.”

  Abe didn’t immediately reject this idea, but it didn’t feel right. He raised the binoculars again and surveyed the outskirts of Mosquero. “I got big old garden plots on the east side. Don’t see a damn person working them. No one sitting in the shade. No guards posted.”

  Menendez let out a disconsolate grunt. “Well, what power are those things?”

  “Six.”

  “Aight,” Menendez growled. “Hang on.” He keyed the squad comms. “Pervy, get up here with that fancy gun of yours.”

  Pervy—whose real name was lost on Abe, but who kept a tattered stack of “Barely Legal” magazines and had been caught more than half a dozen times jacking off while on guard duty to “stay awake”—was one of their two snipers. And he did indeed have a fancy gun, with a fancy optic.

  A vehicle door slammed somewhere down the column of vehicles, and Abe heard the footsteps jogging up. He kept his eyes in his binocs, but now scanned the horizon, wondering if there was anything more telling out beyond the surrounding flatness of the New Mexico countryside.

  He found nothing of note. Just a few low hills, lined with scrubby growth.

  Pervy trundled up behind them. “Sergeant?”

  “What’s the power on that thing?” Menendez demanded, referencing the optic on Pervy’s Barret .300 Win-Mag.

  “Goes up to twenty times.”

  “Get eyes on this town up there. Find me some people.”

  “Roger that.”

  Not finding anything worth looking at, and with his binocs offically out-powered, Abe let them hang and stepped back from his perch. Pervy went around to the back of the MATV, lugging his big rifle with him, and clambered up onto the top of the vehicle where he had a better view of the town a mile in the distance.