Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow

by Anderson, S. M.

  Skirjanek stood and held out his hand. “I have to believe, at some point, it will.”

  Chapter 23

  The graveside service was delayed for three days, waiting for Michelle to heal up enough that she could attend. Carla’s last act had been to get one round off at the woman she’d been trying to kill. She’d almost succeeded. Hit in the leg, Michelle’s femoral artery had been nicked. If it hadn’t been for the gathered crowd of Navy personnel as well as a quick-thinking Russian physician’s assistant on the scene, they’d be burying two people.

  Jason knew Michelle, in a wheelchair with her right leg extended straight out in front of her in an inflatable cast, felt anything but lucky. The Navy personnel and a few of the Russians had assumed the security duties out at the newly constructed observation posts ringing the Potomac settlement, so that everyone from the Tysons contingent could attend. By now, all of them knew the role Daniel had played in freeing them from the hell that had been Tysons under Sheriff Bauman.

  Jason was listening to Reed’s words. The former Navy Seabee probably would have been studying to become a Navy chaplain by now if the world hadn’t died. He was the closest thing they had to a man of the cloth. Surprised to learn that Daniel was Jewish, Reed had panicked. He knew nothing about what was supposed to be done. Two of the Russian scientists, in addition to Dr. Mandel himself, stepped in and put the man at ease. They’d washed Daniel’s body and wrapped him in a shroud, and explained that those close to him should take part in helping to bury the body.

  As Reed was finishing up, Jason glanced at the shovel stuck in the pile of dirt and knew they’d run out of dirt before they’d run out of people who felt they’d been close to Daniel. In a lot of ways, he’d been the glue that had held this group together. Michelle was their spirit animal, but Daniel had been the steady, calming figure who had refused to stop believing that things could and would get better. Rachel stood behind Michelle’s wheelchair with one hand on her shoulder; the other grasped Elsa’s hand. Next to them, Pro looked more like a young man than a teenager. There were none of the tears that had been present a short time ago when he’d helped Pro bury his mother’s and sister’s remains. The kid just stood in rigid silence; his hands balled into fists.

  Jason couldn’t help but think that despite their cleanup efforts, there were hundreds of thousands of bodies, within miles, that would never be buried; millions further out and billions across the planet. Daniel’s burial was different; it was separate and distinct from those who had lived and died before. In contrast to the billions who had died from the virus, even his wife’s death, when the scope, suddenness, and mass trauma of the die-off had been so overwhelming—blame or reasons had become meaningless. Daniel was a loss suffered in the new world, after they’d started over. His death was accountable. Blame could be assessed; justice could be sought.

  Outside of Charlottesville

  “Gypsy One, Tag One—we are in place.” John Bruce was breathing hard. They’d been set up where they thought the convoy of empty trucks was headed. They’d guessed wrong, and had to bust ass along back roads to reposition their ambush. After the frenzied drive, they’d left their vehicles behind a highway repair depot’s pile of road salt, and ran the last quarter of a mile carrying far more gear and weight than the human body was meant to do. He was gassed, and it had been all he could do to get the words out without sucking in another lungful of air.

  Charlottesville was trying to sneak another supply run past them. They’d stopped three forays in as many days, and Skirjanek’s description of today’s quarry made it sound as if the enemy was changing things up. The drone had been grounded and sitting ready when the line of three panel trucks and three pickup trucks loaded with militia had rolled past where Uwasi and Elliot had set up an observation post on the edge of the city.

  The scouts had radioed in and reported the movement, and Poy had launched his bird. Captain Bruce; he was still coming to terms with that title, and his team had already been prepositioned five miles south of the city. Another team led by Pavel was northwest of the city, waiting to pounce as well.

  Pavel’s team had seen the action yesterday. They’d stopped a convoy of trucks, shot up the vehicles, and sent the survivors packing on foot back to the campus. Today, it looked like it was his team’s turn, and there were a lot more of the enemy escorting this convoy. Poy’s best guestimate had been thirty-plus enemy combatants, and that was only if the panel trucks were truly empty.

  “They are two miles east of you.” Skirjanek’s voice was calm. “Stop the vehicles and fall back, John. You don’t have enough people to get in a stand-up fight with them.”

  John knew the colonel would be looking over Poy’s shoulder, staring at the drone’s camera feed right now. He glanced back at “his” team. He had ten people, four of them actual Marines. The rest he considered on-the-job trainees. He wished that kind of internal math wasn’t relevant, but he knew that wouldn’t be the case for some time. The volunteers from Northern Virginia were motivated and getting better with every patrol; there was no denying that. They were a long way from the cold-eyed warrior staring back at him.

  “Lucas, I’m going to ask you to fire two Javelins. Target the first two vehicles in line. The rest of us will keep their heads down while you reposition and reload between shots.”

  “As long as I don’t have to carry this thing much further.”

  The Javelin’s CLU weighed thirty-five pounds and was not exactly ergonomically designed to be carried by hand, let alone sprinted with. If Farmer was complaining, the run they had just made from their vehicles would have killed a normal person. In addition to the CLU, the Marine was weighed down with his rifle, ammo, and normal pack that weighed in close to seventy pounds.

  “Take your two mules and go set up.”

  The two new guys behind Farmer each carried a hard-case-enclosed Javelin missile. One of them, Sam Hirai, had a lot of potential but was giving him the stink eye at the moment.

  He smiled back. “It’s a technical term. Remember, your job is to stay hidden until you fire, and for the second guy, stay hidden until Farmer gets to you, and needs your reload. We clear?”

  “Clear.” Hirai nodded. “Where do you want us?”

  The lead vehicle, a Ford F-350 with a bed full of armed-up militia, was driving a lot slower than it needed to be. Skirjanek thought it could be out of caution, or it could be what he feared; these guys were looking for a fight. John didn’t have enough firepower out there to confront them directly—not without destroying the convoy and targeting everyone in it. It was the same problem he had with Charlottesville in general, just on a smaller scale. His gut was telling him that his counterpart in Charlottesville was calling his bluff. You want to stop our movement—you’re going to have to pay a butcher’s bill to do it.

  It was a wager that he didn’t have enough chips to match. “How much do you want to bet those panel trucks are full of more infantry?”

  “Not going to take that bet, sir.” Poy didn’t look up from his laptop controlling the drone.

  He was walking a fine line; trying to drive a wedge between the Charlottesville militia and their leadership, knowing full well his actions had the potential to strengthen Lisa Cooper’s position. They’d learned a lot from the people they’d captured so far and then released; Cooper and this General Stevens were the enemy. His data holdings at The Hole hadn’t told him anything about Stevens, other than the fact there wasn’t a general grade officer with the last name Stevens, and hadn’t been since the 1980s—and that one had been in the Air Force.

  He grabbed up his radio. “Tag One—Gypsy One—hold fire, I repeat, hold fire. Stand down. Do not engage.”

  “Gypsy One, that’s a copy. Do not engage.”

  Bruce switched channels, and shook his head. Farmer was going to be pissed. He and his team would have to carry their weapons back.

  *

  Twenty miles north of Bruce’s position, on a rural two-lane back road confusingly
labeled both Highway 665 AND Millington Road on his map, Pavel was about through with the American system of road nomenclature. A proper road should have a number, period. An important road might be allowed a name, but it should not confuse the issue by having a number as well. And the names! Stalin’s balls, these Americans could even make that confusing—most of the roads had several names. Richmond Road became Long Street close to Charlottesville, and then became Ivy Road west of the city. In some places, it was just Route 250, and in others, it was Route 250 and Route 29 simultaneously.

  He’d given up and requested that Skirjanek direct him using map coordinates. It helped somewhat, but only until one of the other Americans hopelessly confused the issue.

  “Major, one tanker truck, one escort coming up the hill. Three minutes out.”

  This was information that made sense. His team was set up near the intersection of the north-south-running 810 road and the east-west-running 614. The enemy was trying to get yet another truck out of town via the back roads that networked the area. He had Trey Nathans and the sniper’s .50 caliber rifle on his team, and the Marine had an excellent position to see down the hill and observe the approach of the enemy.

  “Mr. Nathans, target both vehicles, their engines. Disregard enemy combatants.”

  “Affirmative.”

  He nodded to himself. Nathans’s skill as a sniper was a credit to the American Marines, and he had told the man just that before he had delivered, with John Bruce’s enthusiastic permission, some attitude adjustment. He’d waited until he had Nathans alone. He knew the type; Nathans would suffer private admonishment far easier than he would a public shaming. He hadn’t even had to get physical. A cold description of how he wanted to handle the matter of Nathans’s attitude in the standard Russian Army tradition had been enough. The Marine was learning to keep his opinions and random thoughts to himself, at least within range of his hearing.

  “Targets in sight, and in range,” the sniper reported a minute later. “Where do you want them stopped?”

  A moment later, he spotted the lead pickup truck himself, closely followed by what he assumed was an empty tanker truck. “Right there is acceptable, Mr. Nathans.”

  The drivers and four soldiers who had been acting as escort guards stood in front of the steaming radiator of the pickup truck with hands atop their heads. One round from the .50 caliber had penetrated the engine block and brought the vehicle to a standstill twenty yards in front of where the tanker had been stopped.

  “Again?” The truck driver did not look happy.

  “We stopped you yesterday, didn’t we?” Petty Officer Cruz was doing the talking. Skirjanek didn’t want to reveal that they had Russians with them, and provide a potential rallying point for Cooper to use. Pavel had no issue with the reasoning. Had they been in Russia, “the Americans are invading” would have provoked a similar reaction. He sat quietly on the tailgate of one of their own trucks and watched Cruz work.

  “Yeah, but that was a lot closer to town. You can’t expect us to walk from here. It’s close to twenty miles!”

  “It’s just over twelve,” Cruz pointed out and then waved a hand around him. “Hey, nobody says you gotta go back, but wherever you go, your weapons and vehicles stay here.”

  “We’re just trying to go for some fuel for the generators,” the driver countered. He was a tall man of thin build, perhaps fifty years old. “Fuel that runs refrigerators and lights for a lot of women and children.”

  Cruz nodded in understanding. “And assault vehicles, and tanks, not to mention your trucks. How many more of those do you have, by the way?”

  “Enough!”

  “Fine,” Cruz added. “Get going; maybe we’ll see you all again tomorrow. You can fill your water bladders or canteens from our supply.” Crus grinned, as he glanced up at the sky and wiped a sheen of sweat off his own face. “It’s going to be a scorcher.”

  The driver looked around at the rest of his team for a moment and then nodded in acceptance. “Would you let us get our tennis shoes out of the vehicles?”

  “Your what?” Salguero spoke up from the ring of guns around their prisoners.

  The truck driver shook his head in frustration. “I just hiked eight miles yesterday in these boots. Packing tennis shoes seemed like a smart move this morning.”

  Cruz smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “What the hell does that matter?”

  “I’m just being neighborly,” Cruz laughed. “Chances are, we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “Lawton, Ed Lawton.”

  “Well, Mr. Lawton, you can grab your sneakers from your truck. That was good thinking.”

  Pavel cleared his throat, reached into his thigh pocket, and retrieved an MRE pouch while Cruz was watching.

  Cruz smiled back at him and turned to the prisoners. “Look, we don’t have anything against you all. If you’re hungry, we’ve got plenty. Like you said, it’s a long walk.”

  “We ain’t gonna eat with you,” one of the guards almost shouted.

  The driver just regarded Cruz for a moment and then nodded. “The rest of us will, thank you. Bates, you should eat too. I don’t want to listen to you whine for the next twelve miles.”

  *

  “Well done, both of you.” Drew had just finished listening to the reports from Pavel and John. “It appears our efforts are having an effect. Poy was able to track that convoy I called you off of. It circled back to town and unloaded. Those panel trucks had fifteen or twenty soldiers apiece in them.”

  “So, it was a patrol in strength.” Pavel nodded.

  “Perhaps; I think it just as easily could have been a sacrificial lamb. Hoping we’d attack it and kill a bunch of folks. An event Cooper could have used to strengthen the will of her militia.”

  “We are certain they have a militia separate from what they call their guard force?” Pavel asked.

  “Near as we can tell, it looks that way. The guard force is what they’ve managed to train up into standing units under this General Stevens. The militia seems to be just that, and if we believe the snippets we’ve collected, it appears the latter answers more to Cooper than General Stevens. Although the drone has spotted a lot of joint training activity involving both, so any real division between the two forces could very well be wishful thinking on our part.”

  John ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and gave his head a shake. “It’s just a matter of time before they move against us in force. It sounds like they know where we are.”

  Pavel nodded in agreement. “The men we captured today were quite clear that they knew we were camped at Zion Crossroads.”

  “What are they waiting for?” John sounded tired. They were all tired. Maintaining the constant patrols and roadblocks with their limited numbers was far more taxing than preparing for the stand-up fight that he knew both his subordinates were anxious for. He was, too, if he was being honest with himself.

  Drew shook his head as he stared down at the map spread out in front of him. “I wish I knew.” He was sure of one thing; they would see them coming. They’d prepared and practiced moving out on short notice. Let them come. They would move, set up at the fallback location, and continue harassing them. He wasn’t going to stand and fight over a meaningless freeway exit. What were they waiting for?

  Chapter 24

  “Lisa, there’s no coming back from this, whether it works or not. You need to be clear on that.”

  She turned to him after glancing around to make certain she wasn’t going to be overheard. “You said you agreed as well.”

  They were standing outside their vehicle in the parking lot fronting the football stadium. Their guards—her guards, Stevens corrected himself, had established a cordon around them, thirty feet away.

  “I do.” And God help him, at this juncture, he did. She’d left him no choice. Her actions had created an enemy when there didn’t have to be one. “The risks are real. Dead men have nothing to lose.”

  “Relax, Dr
. Nance says the risks to us didn’t present themselves. It didn’t mutate.”

  “I meant them.” He shook his head, doing a good job of controlling his anger. “If they figure out we’ve attacked them with a biological agent . . . I can only imagine how I would react if I knew I had a week or so before I died.”

  “It’s not like we are going to tell them.” Lisa waved away his concern, and then her face melted into a malicious grin. “At least not until it’s too late.”

  Why tell them at all? He’d known she was crazy for a long time. Not just in the sack, which he was in no position to complain about, but she truly didn’t seem to be able to see anything that didn’t conform to her image as to how things were.

  Four pickup trucks loaded down with supplies came around the edge of the stadium and stopped anything he was about to say. He could see Josh driving the lead pickup and Dr. Vance sitting across the cab from him. Part of him had been surprised that the doctor had agreed to formulate the virus into something that had been sprayed onto every piece of equipment in the beds of the trucks. In addition to being sprayed on the clothing, tents, and backpacks that they’d soon be handing out, Josh had even reported they’d added it to the water they’d be handing out.

  He could only assume Dr. Vance was in the same boat as he was and had read her situation correctly. Her “assigned” minder was very much Lisa’s animal. Josh had been an unspoken threat, far more than a volunteer lab assistant.

  “This will work,” Lisa said to him as Josh pulled up. “It was a good idea when you proposed it; it’s still a good idea. It’s going to save lives.”

  When he’d proposed it! Christ, all he’d mentioned was “it was their dumb luck that the virus had burned itself out.” The rest had been her idea. He knew correcting the record was pointless. More than that of any person he’d ever met, Lisa Cooper’s view of the past was as flexible, as it was justified.