He woke up to the feel of the truck slowing down. He yawned and stood up to stretch his back. They were in Washington. It was awful. He was used to seeing people reduced to hair and bones, but there were so many all around him. Fires had consumed much of the city, and as they drove through the poor areas of Washington, not a structure remained. They approached the mall area, where more buildings were standing, but the eight months since the disaster had left their mark. Rats were everywhere and the violent storms had flooded many of the buildings.
Ben could see the Capitol and the White House, both still intact, and a tent city had been established on the vast expanse of the mall. The soldiers’ tents were at one end, and the draftees’ tents were at the other. There were fewer draftees than Ben would have thought, based on the number of tents. They pulled up to a staging area and were told to line up in front of a table, where a sergeant once again took their names and dates of birth. They were then moved to another tent and given pillows, blankets, and a bag of personal items. Ben thought back to the stories Lila told him of her experience at the “citizens” camp. This was similar, except that it was more tightly run. A nice surprise was the lack of fencing around the mall. They weren’t prisoners … sort of. Ben knew that most of the draftees were happy to be there. For those like Ben, it was a different story.
“All you men are in tent 14,” began the sergeant, when he had gathered all of the new draftees together. “You women will be in number 7. For right now, your job will be to collect all of the remains you find and put them in the wagon that will accompany you. At the end of the day, all of the remains will be burned. For now, we’re cleaning up a three block radius of the mall, of the Capitol Building, of the White House, and of the major monuments. That’s a lot of area. And that includes all of the buildings, as well. We don’t have a lot of you—just sixty-seven at the moment—but we hope that number will increase soon.”
“You have a lot of soldiers here,” said Ben. “Are they helping?”
“They have other jobs.” He looked at Ben, then down at his sheet. “You’re Ben Jordan, right? I hope we’re not going to have any trouble with you. I see you gave the captain a hard time. If you behave yourself, you can be part of the rebuilding of America. If you don’t, you won’t like the consequences.”
“You won’t have any trouble from me,” replied Ben, knowing full well that his first act would be to try to escape.
A soldier led them to their tent. It was pretty bare bones, holding eight cots and nothing else. It housed all of the men from the trucks in Ben’s convoy. He threw his blanket down on one of the cots and turned to find three filthy guys about his age standing in a semi-circle around him. He thought they had been in one of the other trucks.
“You’re Ben, right?” asked one of them.
“I am.”
“You don’t recognize us, do you?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“You and your bitch robbed us of our weapons one night. You remember that?”
The three guys on the path to the reverend’s camp that he and Lila had scared away. He remembered.
“You left us defenseless,” said one of the others. “We were just trying to scrounge some food.”
“You were going to rob them of everything they had,” replied Ben. “We could have killed you, but we chose not to.”
“We almost died because of you. We ran across a group of convicts. We had to hide like fucking women.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” said Ben. “They would have killed you if you’d tried to stand up to them. They all had M-16s. You would’ve been dead. That’s twice we saved you.”
“How do you know that about them?”
“Because we hunted them down and killed every last one of them,” answered Ben.
It stopped them for the moment. But only for a moment.
“You don’t have any guns with you now. Wonder how tough you are without your guns and your bitch to back you up.”
He was right. It occurred to Ben that all of his fighting had come from behind the trigger of a gun. At least Lila had used her knife on someone. He had filled out since the trip began, and he had muscles from a winter of chopping wood, but he had never been in a fist fight. He knew they were going to beat him, so his only recourse was to get in the first blows.
He kicked the first guy in the groin. He went down like a rock. He quickly lashed out with the same leg and got the second guy on the side of his knee. He screamed out in pain. However, by then the third one was on top of him, pounding him with his fists. Ben was trapped. Now the first two were helping.
“Break it up in here!” Two soldiers came running into the tent and pulled the three off Ben. “Shit! You’re a mess,” said the soldier. “What happened here?”
“This guy went ape shit and started pounding on us,” said the first one, clutching his groin.
“Not true,” mumbled Ben. He could feel the blood welling up in his mouth.
“Is that what happened?” asked the soldier to the other four draftees. They took one look at the three and all nodded their heads.
The guards pulled Ben up. He had trouble standing.
“We were warned to keep an eye on you. Okay, grab your things. You’re moving to a new tent.” They waited as he slowly followed. One of the three tripped him as he went by, and he sprawled on the grass floor of the tent. They laughed. The guards pulled him up and pushed him out the door.
I had been there less than an hour, and already I was in trouble. Running into those three had ruined my plans. I was going to be the “perfect” worker until I found the right moment to escape. Now, I had already been labeled a troublemaker and was going to the “special” tent. That would make escape a lot harder, and it would take that much longer to get back to Lila.
They brought Ben over to a tent that had two guards out front.
“This is the tent for troublemakers,” said the soldier, and pushed Ben inside.
Three of the eight beds were taken. Ben put his stuff down on an empty one and sat down. His face was really hurting. He felt his teeth. None were missing, but a couple seemed loose.
“Ben? Omigod, it’s you.”
Ben looked up to see Dan and Gordon staring down at him.
Chapter 23
“I can’t believe you’re here,” said Dan. “What happened to you?”
“Most recently? An encounter with three people who are going to regret it,” he answered. His face really hurt, and it was difficult to talk. Gordon came over with a towel to wipe away some of the blood.
As simply as he could, he told them about Lila being pregnant, their new home, and then being yanked away from his life by the soldiers. Dan followed with their story, about being approached by the soldiers to help rebuild Washington. They were at a point in their lives where it seemed to be a good idea. They also liked that there was some sort of real government in place. The thought of rebuilding the country felt like a worthy cause.
“So why are you in the troublemakers’ tent?” asked Ben.
“I’m going out to the bathroom,” Gordon said suddenly, and left the tent. Ben saw a guard accompany him to an area containing about a hundred port-o-potties.
“Did I say something wrong?” asked Ben.
“He just didn’t want to be here when I explained it,” said Dan. “It didn’t work out like we thought. I never liked President Tillman, but I was willing to put my political opposition to him aside if it would help the country come back together. Almost immediately we started hearing stories from the soldiers. Some of them are really good people. It’s easy to lump them all in together, because there certainly are some bad ones, but there are others who actually have a head on their shoulders and some sensitivity. I thought you should know that. They also have a commander they are loyal to, Colonel Jeffries. He seems to be a decent sort.”
He continued. “Anyway, we started to get the idea that this catastrophe wasn’t some terrorist thing or accidental explosion, but tha
t there was some planning behind it. Obviously, the plan didn’t work and we were left with this horror show. But I began to realize that the president had seen this, or something like it, as a possibility, and had made plans.”
“Yeah,” put in Ben. “I realized that same thing in the truck talking to the captain who ‘drafted’—Ben made quotation marks in the air—me.”
“Yeah, well,” continued Dan. “We lost our patriotism pretty fast when we heard that. I’ll tell you what else we heard a bit later. At that point, we were ready to leave, but of course, they wouldn’t let us. We figured we’d make a run for it when the time was right. That time never came. Melissa, Gordon’s wife, was put to work serving food to the workers, which is exactly what she had to do at the camp you saved us from, so I imagine she was having some flashbacks. And then some idiot soldier put his hands on her. Nobody really knows why. He said it was all innocent, but I guess we’ll never know. Her experience at the other camp had a profound negative effect on her. So she freaked and started throwing things and overturned the serving table. It might have been okay and they might have been able to calm her down until she picked up a knife and went after the soldier who touched her. They shot her. Right there, in front of everyone. We hadn’t come back yet from our work, so we didn’t see it, but Gordon arrived back to find his wife dead. He went crazy, and I’m afraid I kind of lost it too. So here we are, troublemakers.”
Gordon came back and stopped in the doorway. Dan nodded to him and he entered the tent. Ben got up and gave him a hug.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Thank you. This whole experience, from the moment of that terrible day, has been hell. To be unable to do anything when my wife was being violated at the other camp, then to not be here for her when they shot her down like a rabid animal, it’s just all too much. And then to find out that our president is probably responsible for the deaths of billions of people, and responsible for my life being hell, I … I … just don’t know.”
He sat down on the bed and began sobbing. Dan and Ben put their arms around him to comfort him.
“What a girl,” came a voice from the other side of the room.
“What?” asked Ben.
“He should learn how to take it like a man. Look at him. Crying like a woman.” The speaker was a man in his forties, a real hard case, with pale, almost yellowish skin that suggested a lot of time behind bars.
Dan held back an angry Gordon.
“Shut up, Jake,” Dan yelled.
Ben stood up and walked over to the pale man.
“Long ago, I reached my limit with assholes like you. I’ve lost count of the people I’ve killed. Every single one of them deserved it. The last batch was a group of a half a dozen convicts just like you.”
“Was that you?” asked Dan. “We kind of figured. The story going up and down the trail was that they found two bodies.” Ben could tell that Dan was trying to add emphasis to the story Ben was telling Jake. It was working. A change had come over the man’s face. It went from bravado to wariness in a matter of seconds.
Ben turned to Dan. “Well, me and Lila.” At the mention of Lila’s name, Jake put it together. The wariness turned to fear. “No one will ever find the other four,” continued Ben. “Not unless they like the deep woods.”
He said to Jake, “So, you have a choice. You can apologize to Gordon, or you can find yourself on my hit list. It’s up to you.”
Jake considered his options. He called over to Gordon. “Hey man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Good choice,” Ben said quietly, as he passed by Jake.
Ben needed that. The beating he had taken by the three hoods in the other tent had shaken his confidence. If he was going to get out of there, he needed all the courage he could muster.
Ben walked over to Dan and Gordon. Looking over his shoulder at Jake, he said to them quietly, “We’ll talk later.”
At that, Jake hopped off his bunk and came over to Ben. “Look man,” he said. “I’m sorry about the comment. If you’re planning a way to get out of here, I want to help. I want out of here as much as you do. You can count on me. Seriously.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Look at me. I’m an ex-con in the tent for troublemakers. I can’t even take a piss without a guard looking over my shoulder. You think I want to stay here?”
“Why are you here?”
“I punched out some army sergeant. He was hassling me.”
Ben looked at Dan.
“I saw it happen,” said Dan. “It looked legit to me. I don’t think he’s a plant in here.”
“Okay,” sighed Ben. “I guess I’ll have to trust you. Don’t cross me, though.”
“No way. So what’s the plan?”
“How can I have a plan? I don’t even know the routine yet. As anxious as I am to get out of here and back to Lila, I need to have time to figure it all out.” He looked at Dan and Gordon. “What were you planning?”
Dan answered. “Before everything fell apart, we were just hoping to sneak away while working one day. That was before they transferred Melissa to the kitchen. We lost our chance then. Now it’s hard because we have the guards on us all the time.”
A guard stuck his head in the tent and told them that it was supper time. They followed him over to the mess tent. It was a large open tent with dozens of tables. Because there was such a small number of draftees, many of the tables were empty. The soldiers had their own mess tent further down the mall. They got their food and sat at a table designated by the guard, away from the other draftees. Ben saw the three who had beat him. They looked at him and snickered.
Ben said to Dan in a low voice, “So you were going to tell me some other things you found out.”
Dan looked around. The guard was far enough away to have a conversation.
“The whole thing stinks,” he began. “Okay, so this is how I heard it. This thing—the bomb, or whatever—was developed with the full knowledge of the president and his inner circle of whackos. They planned to use it on China. They felt that China was the biggest threat to us. Hell, everybody hated us. Who really knows who the biggest threat was. Anyway, the way it was explained to me was that they were going to shoot it or drop it over China and detonate it. Something like that. I don’t really know the details. They figured that it would take out most of China—electricity and people. If it got a little of Russia too, no big deal. Then they were going to place the blame on some other country—probably Pakistan, or someplace like that—and it would divert the attention and hatred of the world onto another country. Then America would come offering help and President Tillman would be hailed as a savior. Of course, if he had presented it to Congress, he and his crew would have been laughed out of office, so they had to circumvent the legal channels, which they did. The problem was, it was much more powerful than they thought, and for whatever reason, it impacted the entire earth. The guards I talked to have no idea why, and I doubt if the president even does. But he must have suspected it was possible that something could go wrong because he planned for the possibility of disaster. Under his secret orders, the army had been culling out these soldiers for a year. They didn’t know what they were being asked to do, only that it was important.”
“Who exactly is the government right now?” asked Ben.
“To the best of my knowledge,” replied Dan, “it’s just the president. I know he’s got a couple of staff members and three or four secret service agents. From what I hear, he almost didn’t make it to the shelter. Minutes to spare is what I heard. Some of his White House cronies were right behind him and didn’t make it. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Congress, everybody … they are all dead. So it’s really only the president. I guess next in line would be Colonel Jeffries.”
He continued with his story. “So now the word out there is that the president is bummed that more people didn’t survive. He’s hoping that by rebuilding Washington, it will attract whoever is left and
he can have his own little nation again, with him as benevolent dictator. They are trying to figure out how to get power going in the city. For now, they’ve brought in hundreds of gasoline-powered generators.”
“So,” summed up Ben. “In a nutshell, this crazy-ass president destroyed the world and killed my family and everyone else’s families just to look good?”
“Uh, I guess you could say that.”
Ben just stared into space. He knew what he had to do.
There’s an old saying that goes something like: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Maybe it’s not an old saying at all. Maybe that came from a Star Trek movie too. Whatever. The point is, I never understood it. It never made sense to me. Suddenly it did. I didn’t care anymore about the three stooges who beat me up. Somewhere down the line someone else would take care of them. Not me. They weren’t worth my time. President Tillman, on the other hand, was worth my fullest attention. My cold, calculating attention. I was planning to assassinate the President of the United States! Put like that, it seemed almost obscene, but when put in perspective, I was just eliminating another piece of garbage. It was no different from killing Tank and his crew, or even the convicts. I don’t know how many people the convicts killed, but it didn’t come close to the billions of deaths this man was responsible for. I could have just found a way to escape this place and return to Lila, but then I thought of the young couple in Charlottesville. That could’ve been us. And I realized that it could still be us. Once Tillman had control, nobody was safe from whatever plans he had. The country was a festering wound, and I was the maggot who had to clean that wound.
But here was the big question: Suppose I did away with the president? What then? What would the consequences be? Do I put the soldiers into a panic because they are now leaderless, creating mass hysteria and more deaths? Do I take away any hope the survivors might have had for the continuation of their old way of life under an actual government? It was a shitload of responsibility to be put on the shoulders of a kid just a few years out of puberty.
Eden Rising (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 1) Page 20