by D. J. Molles
Lee looked at Turner’s back as they led him into the center of the room. There was a part of him that understood where Brinly was coming from. And there was another part that wanted blood. Why was everyone else so soft? Why could everyone else spare lives for people that had been their friends in the past, and Lee just found himself pulling the trigger? Was there something wrong with Lee? Was something broken inside of him that wasn’t broken in everyone else?
“Fine,” he said. “I won’t kill him. But you need to wait outside and let me do what I need to do to find my people.”
Brinly’s face looked bitter and conflicted. But then he nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” Then Brinly motioned his Marines to follow him, and he turned and left the same way he’d come in.
“What about the rest of Harper’s group?” Angela asked, worried.
Lee’s stomach clenched when he said the words. “They’re all dead. They were killed.”
Angela closed her eyes, touched her forehead. “Oh, Jesus.”
Marie drew herself up. The emotion had run down her face like water breaking a levy, but it suddenly dried up, just as quick as it had burst from her. She stood up straight. Her wide eyes relaxed. Her lips were tense and tight. “Lee… that’s my sister. I already… I already lost her once. You brought her back to me. And I thank you for that.” Her eyes flicked to his and he could feel the rage in them. He could feel it in himself. “But you cannot let her die. Do you understand that? That is my sister. You will not let her die.”
Angela looked rapidly between the two of them. “Marie, wait a minute.” She stepped in front of Marie, facing Lee, full on. “Think about what you’re going to do. Think about all the people that are outside. What they’re going to think about this.”
Lee laughed, a bitter sound. “You think I give a shit what they think?”
“Remember what we talked about.”
“I do,” Lee said. “I remember every fucking word. I do what needs to be done. That’s it.”
Marie reached up and grabbed Angela’s shoulder. “Angela. You need to step back away from this.” Marie’s voice trembled with anger. “That’s not your sister. It’s mine. My sister. And she is not gonna die. And Harper. He’s my friend. And your friend, too. You walk away from this if you don’t have the stomach for it. But don’t you try to stop Lee from doing what he needs to do.”
Angela and Marie looked at each other for a long, stretching moment. Lee watched Angela’s jaw tensing, clenching, the cords in her neck pressing out against her skin. Finally, she turned back to Lee. She searched his eyes, but she must not have found what she was looking for. She only found exactly what she’d seen in Marie.
“Fine. You’re right.” She withdrew from him. “You do what needs to be done, Lee.”
And then Angela put a comforting arm around Marie and led her from the building.
LaRouche and Clyde stood at the edge of the woods, looking out across I-40. They’d left their car parked among a jumble of other abandoned cars, where it would be camouflaged, and then they’d hiked down south of Newton Grove, where they’d already seen an armed presence. Here on the interstate, LaRouche watched the beat-up red pickup truck pass by for the second time.
“That’s twice in an hour,” LaRouche murmured.
“They patrolling,” Clyde responded.
LaRouche agreed with a nod. “Out of Newton Grove, I’d guess.”
A minute out of sight and a blue car came rolling on, going the opposite way as the truck. This was the second time it had made an appearance as well. LaRouche growled at the sight. “Well this is interesting.”
“How’s that?” Clyde asked, shifting his weight.
LaRouche rubbed his beard, scratched it. “Newton Grove was always quiet. Kept to themselves. Not into the whole patrolling thing. Either they’ve expanded, or they got taken. Either way, might be a good lick for us. If they got enough resources to be putting out patrols like this, then I imagine they have gas and guns. Might be tough to take, though.”
Clyde regarded his partner and raised an eyebrow. “You think we should do it?”
“Well, that’s not really up to me,” LaRouche said with some irritation. “We’re just scouting.”
“Hey, you hear that?” Clyde held up a finger, inclining his head to the roadway.
“What?” LaRouche held very still, listening into the silence.
No, not silent. Something in the distance. The whistling, growling sound of diesel engines in the distance.
“Yeah, I hear it.” LaRouche rose from his position and worked a little closer to the edge of the woods for a better view. He couldn’t quite tell which direction the noise was coming from, but as he got closer, and the sounds drew nearer, he could tell they were coming from the southeast.
“You see anything?” Clyde asked, close behind.
“Mmm…” LaRouche leaned out, still conscious of remaining in cover. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s get back into the woods.”
“What is it? What’d you see?”
“You’ll see in a minute.” LaRouche turned into the woods and pushed himself up the incline back to where they’d been hiding a moment ago. He chose the same spot, but hunkered down farther into the leaves. Clyde followed suit. Only their two heads would be visible from the roadway, peeking out from behind a few tree trunks, but you’d really have to be looking for them.
The noise of the engines grew louder and louder.
The blue car sped past, back toward Newton Grove.
“Is it running away?” Clyde asked.
LaRouche didn’t know, but he didn’t think so. “I think he’s leading them.”
Closely following the blue car came a multitude of green and tan vehicles, one after the other.
“Marines,” Clyde said, his voice tainted with disgust. “What are they hauling?”
LaRouche watched the bigger trucks and the guns they were towing. “Artillery. Lots of artillery.”
“What the hell are they doing this far away from Camp Lejeune?” Clyde shook his head. “They’ve never come this far west before.”
“Coming after us?” LaRouche offered.
“Come on.” Clyde stood up as the last of the Marine vehicles roared by. “Let’s get back to Chalmers. We need to figure out how we’re going to handle this Newton Grove issue.”
Lee gave himself some time to cool down, but not too much time. They didn’t have much to begin with. It wasn’t smart to enter into these types of things with your temper already lost. You could be angry—angry was fine. But your temper needed to be in check.
He looked into the dim interior of the Camp Ryder building where the three Delta operators and Carl stood surrounding a young man in a battered Marine Corps uniform. Corporal Turner was doing a good job trying to seem brave, but even in the vague lighting, Lee could see the man’s breathing was rapid. He could see the sheen of sweat on him. No one, no matter how brave, wanted what was about to happen.
Lee felt sick to his stomach. Queasy. Jumpy. There was a part of him that kept asking, Is this right? Is this the right thing to do? But sometimes it wasn’t about right and wrong. He knew that now. Sometimes you had to look at the bigger picture. No matter how much people hated it, sometimes the ends justified the means.
You are not what you once were.
Fine. I don’t have to be.
How long? It’s been an hour, maybe a little more.
They did this. They forced me into this. They are starting things and they are going to fucking hate how I finish them, but it’s out of my hands. I’m not responsible for this.
Lee approached the young man kneeling on the floor with his hands tied behind his back. He had to look down on the man. Turner craned his neck to look at Lee, but then looked away. Lee rubbed the fingers of one hand together, feeling the grit of dirt caught between them. The rasp of callouses bought by pain and toil.
“What’s your first name?” Lee said, keeping his voice level.
The Marine hesitated. “Luke.”
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“Luke. Why are you doing this?”
Turner took a deep, settling breath. “Because I’m a patriot, Captain. What you’re doing here is against the command of the president. It’s against the United States. In the middle states, they’re rebuilding America. They have a safe zone. Those are the people that I’m loyal to. That is who I fight for. Not for warlords or self-imposed dictators. Not for Colonel Staley. Not for you.”
Lee looked briefly pained. “Corporal Turner, listen to yourself. Think. I used to be a blind patriot, just like yourself. But the thing that we serve isn’t an office, and it’s not a name. Anyone with enough power and guns can come along in this collapsed nation and announce themselves president of the United States of America. Besides the part of your oath where you swore to obey the commander in chief, what was the other thing you were sworn to uphold?”
Corporal Turner knew, but didn’t answer.
“The Constitution,” Lee finished for him. “An idea. A concept. Not whatever person props himself into a leather chair and claims to be runnin’ shit. And when that person comes along and tells you to abandon an entire coastline because it’s ‘not worth the resources,’ what would you do?”
Turner looked up sharply. “You’re making things up now.”
Lee shook his head. “Why do you think Major Darabie and Captain Wright and Captain Tomlin defected? Why do you think these Delta boys and a bunch of the Eighty-Second Airborne defected? Why do you think your own unit hasn’t gone over to President Briggs? ’Cause they’re smart enough to spot a lie when they see one. Briggs isn’t the president of anything but a bunch of desperate people, willing to give their liberties away for some peace of mind. Are you one of those people?”
“I know what I believe,” Turner said flatly.
Lee knelt down so he was at eye level. “You’re going down a road that you can’t turn back from. You’re not going to get the GPS. It’s not going to happen. Remove it from your mind. Those are my friends that are being held hostage. And I’m going to find them, and I’m going to keep them from being executed. And I don’t care who throws themselves on the tracks in front of me—it ain’t gonna stop shit. You’re not gonna stop shit. All you’re gonna do is earn yourself a bad death, fighting for the wrong side.”
Turner closed his eyes. Lee watched the pulse in his neck throbbing rapidly. “Captain Harden. Just give me the GPS and let me go.”
Lee stood up. “Tyler knew I wasn’t going to give you the GPS. He knew this was going to happen to you. But he’s such a goddamn pussy he wouldn’t come fight me himself. So he put you in this position to assuage his own guilt, even though he knew I’d never give the GPS to you. So as this happens, just remember who fed you to the wolves. Maybe that will shed some light on your loyalties.”
Lee looked at Rudy and Mitch. “Strip him down naked.”
Turner didn’t fight, but he didn’t cooperate, either. He stared balefully at Lee, but Lee could feel the fear in his eyes, and he thought that maybe Turner could see the pity in Lee’s. And maybe that scared him more. The two big operators pulled out knives and cut off the clothes they couldn’t pull off of him.
Lee faced him, clenching his fists. “Where are they?”
Naked and trembling, Turner breathed heavily through his nose, making a fierce sound. He shook his head vehemently.
Lee leaned down and seized the man by the back of the head. He grabbed the man’s face with his other hand and yanked his head back so that he was looking up at Lee. His neck and hair were sweaty, despite the chill in the air. Turner grunted, but otherwise refused to open his mouth.
“Well… you know what I want.”
Then Lee hauled him up off of his feet and started dragging him across the floor.
Now Turner did fight, but only by trying to dig his heels in. He bore his teeth and let out an animal growl, but Lee just gave him a hard knee into his kidneys to soften him up. Turner yelped and Lee dragged him again, stumbling bare feet and all. And now Lee’s blood was getting up again. He could feel the anger that had become so familiar to him, like a fully choked engine.
“Don’t try to fight it now!” Lee yelled as he dragged the man across the floor, kicking and screaming. “You know what’s fucking coming! You don’t want it, then you tell me where the fuck my friends are! You fucking tell me!”
Lee dragged the man into the makeshift kitchen.
Turner must have felt the heat coming off the firebox on the opposite wall.
“No! No!”
Lee grabbed Turner’s arm and slung him against the wall, then pinned him there with an elbow up against his face. “You see that? You see that shit? That’s been burning nonstop for months. The only reason that stove ain’t red hot is because it’s cast-iron.”
“No no no, don’t do this…”
“You ever been burned before?”
“Don’t do this, please!”
“Where are they?”
Turner had his eyes clenched shut. His teeth clenched together, spit flying as he screamed wordlessly through them.
Lee looked behind him where Carl and the operators were standing close by, weapons ported, watching. Lee nodded to them. Two of them stepped forward and took Turner by the shoulder while Lee applied downward pressure on his head. There was a moment when a little part of Lee raised its hand in all the chaos and said, Do you really want to do this? But it was too little and much, much too late.
Turner screamed through his teeth.
Lee slammed his face onto the stove and pressed it down.
It was like suddenly connecting two live wires. Turner gasped and started bucking so violently that Lee thought he might throw all three of them off. His feet started running in place, his hands clenching and unclenching, his torso ripping back and forth, every muscle in his body doing everything that it could to get his face off of that hot metal. And then the air he’d taken into his lungs came out of him in a blasting scream and right along with it came the smell of charred skin and burning hair. Lee just held on; he held on and kept pressing that man’s face down and thinking of Harper and Julia, Harper and Julia…
I will not let them die. I will bring them back alive.
The scream seemed like it wouldn’t end.
Lee realized he was screaming along with Turner.
He yanked the man up from the firebox. Patches of skin were left behind, still smoking and blackening. Lee threw the man down onto the floor where his body curled up like a pill bug and the breath was coming in and out rapidly, hyperventilating with short, sharp little barks of hysterical pain. Turner’s sudden and monumental effort to get away had been so taxing that his legs cramped up and Lee could actually see the muscles binding up under the man’s pale skin. The entire right side of Turner’s face was a mess of wet-looking whiteness and bright, angry red. It was unrecognizable.
Lee steadied himself, swallowing down the sickening feelings. None of the pity that came over him in that moment could be heard. He forced his voice to be as hard and angry as it had been before. “Where the fuck are my friends? Where are they? You wanna lose the other half of your face? Do you?” Lee waited only a half second for a response, before snatching Turner’s arms up. “Fine. We’ll do it again.”
“No!” Turner melted, every muscle in his body going limp. “No don’t… don’t don’t… I’ll tell you…”
Chalmers looked down at a map of North Carolina, finger planted firmly on Newton Grove. The Followers encampment, since removed from the town square farther east, had parked itself in a shopping mall, sprawled out and unprotected and daring the world to make a move against them. There were hundreds of men there, and all of them were armed. They felt confident en masse.
LaRouche knew the truth, though. But he kept it to himself. Armies were not made up of numbers; they were made up of discipline. And the Followers were not particularly disciplined. But he had yet to see them in any real action, aside from the quick sneak attack that the Marines had mounted on their camp, just be
fore the helicopters had razed it. He’d seen large armies routed by a much smaller but well-disciplined force. But maybe he was not giving the Followers enough credit. They were undrilled, but they followed Chalmers with religious zeal, and that might do in a pinch.
Chalmers looked up from the map, seeking eye contact with LaRouche. “And in your professional opinion, where were these artillery pieces going?”
LaRouche didn’t particularly know. All he could offer was process of elimination. “They’re not at Newton Grove, I can assure you that. On the way back, we checked. It was a pretty big convoy, so we should have been able to at least see a few of the vehicles if they were parked at Newton Grove or nearby. But we saw nothing. No Marines. No evidence of the vehicles.”
“So they continued north on I-40.”
“They could have gotten off any number of exits. But the people in Newton Grove were clearly working with the Marines, and they were patrolling I-40 pretty hard. It would be my guess that I-40 was the main corridor the Marines were taking, rather than hopping off onto some surface streets. Which would mean their objective was somewhere northwest of us.”
“Any idea who they’re allied with?”
“I don’t know,” LaRouche said. “I tried to recognize the faces of the people in civilian clothing that were holding Newton Grove, but the few I could get a clear enough look at I didn’t recognize.”
“Is it possible that this all has to do with Camp Ryder?”
LaRouche thought for a moment. “Yes. It’s possible. Camp Ryder takes in a lot of people.”
Chalmers smiled knowingly. “Yes, we know. They’re very lax about who they allow in.” He stood up from his seat. “Clyde. LaRouche. You both have done stellar work. I need more from you, though. I’m going to send you with a small detachment. You’re going to go to Newton Grove, but hold position far enough away that you won’t be noticed. And then I want you, LaRouche, and you, Clyde, to go out ahead of your detachment and watch Newton Grove.”
LaRouche absorbed this.