Terry smiled. “We are better together. I’m better because we’re together.”
“And you owe me two years’ worth of sex because you’re a dumbass,” Char stated, lifting her chin and then punching Terry in the chest. He reached out to grab her, but she dashed away.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“Bring it in!” Mark called as the platoon members milled about. When they were close to him, he waved for silence.
“We have to win their hearts and minds,” Mark said, trying to make eye contact with as many of them as possible. “We have a mission, sure, and it’s my fault that you weren’t prepared for how they would react. We’re going to go back and we’re going to empathize, understand how they feel. If they don’t want to do anything, then you don’t do anything. In the end, we’re going to load up all the seeds and any available food, no matter how ugly or half-grown, as well as the farmers themselves. We have time. In the interim, we’re going to be there for them, be their friends, and show them all the great things that they’ve done, not the great things that they have.”
Many shuffled uncomfortably. Terry had used the phrase ‘bull in a china shop.’ He didn’t know what a china shop was, but having a bull plowing through anything that wasn’t a wide open field would take its toll. The visual made sense to him and applied to what he’d done by sending the platoon in with the too-strict order to help the farmers pack. They never discussed what to do if the farmers didn’t want to.
“I can’t change yesterday, but I can change what we do today. We’ve already apologized to the good people who run the greenhouses. We’ll apologize again today, and I’ll ask Pepe and Maria if they’ll talk with the others. Outside of that, we’ll be there for them, but we’re not going to push them.”
“I joined the FDG because I thought it was a place where we’d fight our enemies. We’d be out there in the Wastelands kicking ass and taking names!” Boris was loud and boisterous, animated as he talked. It seemed like he was drumming up support for a rebellion.
The FDG was a combat unit, but what were they fighting for? Who was the enemy?
Mark scowled. “That’s enough, Private!”
Boris grumbled and some people near him laughed.
“Now listen up, you fucking ingrates!” Mark yelled angrily. “The colonel and the major are looking for a place where we won’t die in the fires of hell that this place is becoming. He said that we’ll have to help these people cross two thousand miles of this country. What do you think is out there?”
Mark worked his way closer to Boris. The platoon members sensed a fight and parted to give them space.
“The FDG isn’t about fighting just to fight!” Mark bellowed.
“How would you know? I see the colonel never takes your dumb ass along,” Boris sneered, looking for friendly faces to back him up. Too many people nodded.
“Hey,” Mark said conversationally, looking around at the others and holding his hands up as he tried to calm down. “Someone has to stay back and make sure we protect the townsfolk. That someone is me and all of you.” Mark nodded at the people who would meet his gaze.
“When we go out there,” Mark continued, pointing east toward the Wastelands, which weren’t as far away as they used to be. “When we go into that, we need to be a real fighting force so we have the discipline to handle whatever comes our way.”
A grunt from beyond the group signaled Hank’s arrival as he shouldered his way into the outer ring.
Mark turned back and saw Boris watching the bear. With a snap kick to Boris’s groin, Mark attacked. The man went down, holding his injured man-parts. Mark dove to the ground, winding a haymaker as he went. His fist impacted Boris’s head right behind his eye. The private’s head bounced off the ground once, sounding like a dropped melon.
Boris rolled over, out cold.
“Fuck you,” Mark spit. The platoon hadn’t seen what happened. “Anyone thinks they’re smarter than the colonel, step up and take your medicine. We’ll do as he ordered until those orders change, so shut your fucking pie holes and get in formation!”
The unit quickly formed, standing at attention and forcing themselves not to look at the man on the ground. Hank sniffed at Boris before peeing a massive puddle that ran underneath the man. Bear urine had a certain unmistakable stench. Mark ordered the squad leaders to take their people back to the greenhouses where they would apologize and help the farmers to have a good day.
The platoon ran off, as did Hank. He caught up with them and kept trying to play with Blackie, who ran while getting hip-checked by the growing bear cub.
The platoon’s attitude changed during the run. One toxic personality could bring everyone down. Remove that and it was amazing to watch good people flourish.
Mark sat downwind from Boris and waited for him to wake up. It was a good five minutes before the man stirred. He struggled to sit up. Mark helped him, then lined him up, and punched him in the mouth. Boris rolled back to the ground.
He mumbled as he held his hands in front of his face. Mark straddled the man and pulled him half off the ground by his shirt collar.
“Had enough, asswipe?” Mark growled into Boris’s face.
“Yea, yea, now get off,” Boris said, spitting blood.
Mark punched the man’s hands against his face, twice, to make sure he had Boris’s full attention. “The only words I want to hear from you are ‘yes, sir.’ Do you get me?”
Boris tried to push Mark away, but his efforts were feeble. Mark stood up, spun, and kicked Boris in the chest. “I asked if you got me,” Mark repeated himself.
“Yes, sir,” Boris groaned as he lay flat on his back. “I fucking get you!”
“Lesson learned?” Mark asked.
Boris rolled to his side and propped himself up. Mark offered a hand to help him up. Boris started to slap it away, but decided discretion was the better part of valor and grasped the sergeant’s hand.
“Dammit, Boris! You’re not the enemy. They’re out there!” Mark pointed.
“They aren’t in this town. We’ll find them on our way wherever the colonel decides we need to go. It really is as simple as that. We’re going to be bored out of our minds for days, but in that five seconds where the colonel needs us to be ready to unleash the fire, we better be ready. And when we bring it, nobody will be able to stand before us. I want to fuck people up in a bad way, but only the enemy, not you, not anyone we’re trying to help. You weren’t here when I was doing that for the mayor. That is no way to live, so we can’t fight and that’s all there is to it.”
Mark clapped the man on the back, and they started to walk away from the barracks on their way to the farms.
“What motivates you, Boris?” Mark murmured to himself.
***
The horses finally dried out after a full night of grazing the hillside under the stars. Gerry saddled them, and the group prepared to leave as the sun was already up.
“Wagons, ho!” Terry called as he always did. He used to do that in the before time, too. It was his way. Char shook her head and spurred her horse forward, heading downhill at a slow walk.
They didn’t know what they’d find when they hit the bottom. Terry expected mud, vast quantities of mud. No one else cared to speculate since they weren’t in the greatest of moods. Ted and Char were unperturbed and maintained enough of a positive outlook to buoy the whole group.
Terry surged ahead, but was quickly passed by the wolf pack. No one flinched, not the horses and not the people. The pack was a part of the group now, as long as Ted was there to tell them what needed to be done.
“Scouting ahead?” Terry called over his shoulder.
“Yup!” Ted replied.
Terry was always a fan of a picket out in front of the main force. They could make first contact so much easier. Although he couldn’t talk personally with his picket, he could talk with the guy who could. It was roundabout, but this was a whole new world. He had three humans, three Werewolves, ten real wolves, and hi
mself.
A long time prior, when he had Vampires in his midst, he’d worked with them for the benefit of all.
His unit was task-organized, a Marine Corps term for building your force based on the mission and not a standard table of organization and equipment, a TO&E. He abhorred staff work, preferring to be in the field where the action happened, but bad staff work left Marines with their asses hanging out.
He had to do it all—plan, train, and execute.
No, that’s wrong, he told himself. I’m not alone.
He waved Char to ride at his side so he could talk with her, as any good commander would do with his XO, his executive officer. Or as Terry committed to doing with his wife, a partnership, but he had a nearly overwhelming desire to protect the one he loved. That was both ingrained on his soul from the Marines and driven home like a hot stake into his heart when he failed Melissa.
And now Char was asking him to step back and share. Sharing didn’t mean going it alone. He should have insisted harder that Melissa and their daughter go too, way back then. If they didn’t agree, then he shouldn’t have gone. He couldn’t go back in time to fix that, but he could fix it now.
“We do everything together,” Terry told Char.
“It’s no fun any other way,” she answered, wondering what he was talking about.
“Here’s what I see for today. If the mud is too bad, we go west and follow the foothills north until we find the Missouri River, which will be in Montana, a ways from here. It’ll be best if we can just follow the interstate until it hits I-94 and then take that all the way into Minneapolis. Yes, following I-25 to I-94 was always my plan. Why reinvent the wheel?”
“What would make you want to change that plan?” Char asked, closing her eyes and trying to recall a topographical map of the area, but nothing was coming to mind.
“A big river heading east. There are a couple on the map, but things have changed,” Terry replied as he leaned out of the saddle to gauge the depth of the mud as they approached the plain. He couldn’t see the wolf pack’s tracks.
Terry continued, “A river would encourage me to head east before we got to the Missouri, which I-94 follows for a great deal of its way. We may have to swing north in North Dakota, continue to follow the Missouri if the Wastelands have crept in. That track from Glendive to Bismarck could be too long and barren. Heaven knows it was back in the day.”
“Sounds good, lover, I mean, Colonel, sir.” Terry never grew tired of watching Char’s eyes sparkle. “We’re on solid ground.”
He looked at her oddly and then realized he’d lost focus. “God damn it!” Most of the mud had washed into channels, filling low spots in the ground. The wolf pack had gone along a small rise that was free and clear. They started loping to eat away the distance.
“Looks like our worst fears have not come true,” Terry said, kicking his horse into a distance-eating run. “Thirty, thirty,” he yelled, hoping the others would hear him. If they didn’t, they’d figure it out soon enough.
***
Billy was exhausted. He was forced into his role as the good-guy mayor by people he respected and cared about.
That didn’t mean he liked it. He was right at the edge of breaking. Felicity was on the verge of kicking him in the balls while he slept. All in all, he was having a crap day.
Billy, Felicity, and Marcie had to get out of the house. They strolled to the power plant, no one talking. The mayor found the engineer near the control room of the plant.
The engineer continued to vent his spleen regarding the need to carry a massive pile of metal halfway across the United States. That was the breaking point.
Billy grabbed the old man and shook him, screaming in the engineer’s face. “That is absolutely the last fucking word you’ll say about this God damn, motherfucking pile of shit! Shut the fuck up!” Billy slammed the engineer against the wall and the man’s eyes shot wide in terror. When Billy let go, the engineer grabbed his chest and started convulsing. Billy’s jaw dropped as he stared.
Shonna yelled for Merrit and ran to the stricken man. He’d fallen and was out cold. She jammed a finger against the side of his neck. “No pulse,” she stated clinically and started doing CPR. The old man’s chest cracked as his bones gave way under the vigorous compressions.
Merrit joined her, checking the man’s pulse and breathing. Finally, he shook his head and she stopped. Shonna looked at Billy. In the old world, Billy would have been arrested and charged with manslaughter. But this was the new world where everyone would concede that the engineer’s time had come. He couldn’t live without his friend the mechanic.
Billy pulled on his hair, livid. He stormed to the pile and picked up the largest wrench he could find and he beat on an old valve that was laying there. He beat on it until shards of metal shot in all direction. Whether it was the valve or wrench that gave first, no one cared.
Billy had made his point. None of the pile would leave New Boulder.
They wouldn’t get their restaurant and electricity would stop flowing down the lines.
The mayor threw the wrench down and walked off, slower with each step. Felicity waited for him by the door where she shielded the baby’s eyes from what had gone on inside. He stopped when he reached the doorway and looked at them both. There was fire in Felicity’s eyes.
“I fucking hate you, Billy Spires,” she snarled and stormed away.
“You should,” he answered as he stood there, unsure of what to do, unsure if he could tolerate being with himself. He finally decided to leave and stumbled toward the mountains that stood as a continuous beacon overlooking the town of New Boulder.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The horses caught up with the wolf pack, and together the group ran, ten wolves and seven horses.
Timmons seemed to be in better spirits as he became more accustomed to riding with one good hand. He’d been quiet and Terry thought that was a bad thing, but Char assured him in the Were world, when a beta accepted his place, his duty was to follow the orders of the alpha. She’d told him that his job was to watch and be aware, letting Terry and Char know of anything untoward or out of place.
That was what he was doing, and it didn’t take extra conversation.
They kept what looked like the interstate within sight as they ran all day, stopping once to finish the remainder of their smoked black bear. After that, they had only scraps. The horses had nothing if they didn’t get out of the scrub of the Wastelands.
The ruins of a city rose nearby. Terry waved the group in that direction. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Sheridan.” No one doubted that Terry knew where he was and that the city was what he said it would be. He remembered every map he ever looked at and in nauseating detail. He readily matched mountains and rivers as they passed.
“What does Sheridan mean to us?” Char asked as they slowed to a walk while Ted rode after the wolf pack to tell them to head toward the city.
Terry stuck out his tongue and wiggled it at his wife. She raised one brow and pinched the other eye shut, giving him the classic stink eye.
“The Tongue River,” he said, snickering. “It’s on the other side of town and flows into the Missouri. I hope to hell it’s there, because that would tell me the Missouri is flowing as well.”
“We can hope,” Char said, using Terry’s least favorite word against him even though he used it too often himself.
Ted rode through a little of the mud which was already hardening under the heat of a late September sun. “What day is it, Ted?” Terry asked to be sure.
“Thursday, October second,” Ted replied without hesitation.
Terry turned back to Char. “Will it ever cool down?” Terry asked.
Char shrugged. She only knew that today was hot and getting hotter. The humidity was oppressive, something they didn’t usually deal with in the waste. The mud was turning into solid ground. Soon, they’d be able to ride on it without sinking.
Terry wasn’t sure that was any better, in case the
mud covered up something that they needed to see. It would also kill any grass that had been unlucky enough to get trapped beneath.
They rode on. The green of numerous trees brought a smile to Terry’s face. He spurred his horse to quicken its pace and it responded. Soon, they were all running toward the splash of green.
Sheridan had been built at the confluence of a number of tributaries. Streams flowed freely into town from the mountains to the west while the buildings had blocked the worst of the dust storms coming from the east. The eastern side of the town was buried while the western side flourished. They followed the high ground across roads and into the ruins of a city built in what had been the Wild West.
Even in its dilapidated state, the theme was prevalent. Antlers, sun-bleached wood, and old style porches looked at them from a world that had been. It was like walking back into the turn of the twentieth century, before the automobile.
The group would pass through a number of reservations on their way to Minnesota. He wondered if they’d survived.
“It is what it is,” he said, the fateful saying of the forlorn, of those who had stopped fighting.
“What is?” Char asked, wondering where Terry’s mind had gone.
“Native Americans. I was wondering if we’d find any as we passed through the old tribal lands.” Terry looked around as he sized up the city. “Grazing?”
“Wait one, sir!” Gerry called as he galloped ahead toward a large stand of trees. He returned after a couple minutes.
“This way,” he called and waved the others forward. The wolf pack ran warily between the buildings, sniffing and watching. Ted was a little anxious, too.
They followed Gerry to what looked like an old park. The grass was green and full with a stream running down the middle of it. They turned their horses loose to graze. The water ran clear. The wolf pack waded in and immediately started running and jumping after the abundance of fish.
Nomad Omnibus 01_A Kurtherian Gambit Series Page 53