One Man's War

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “It doesn’t bother me, and if it’s alright with you, we’ll just stay here,” Sam stated. He picked up his carbine. “I’m going to take a look around. I won’t be long.”

  “Alright, Mate. I’ll put the Billy on for tea,” he said with a smile in the growing darkness.

  Sam walked out into the darkness, while John busied himself lighting a kerosene lantern, then extracting a sterno stove from his saddlebag and setting it up on one of the diner’s tables.

  He took the battered and blackened coffee pot and prepared what Sam had called ‘cowboy coffee’, which was a liberal handful of coffee grounds tossed into the water to boil.

  After that was done, he produced a can of beef stew, poured the contents into a saucepan, and set it next to the stove. A flash of lightning lit up the dusty interior of the diner, followed shortly after by the rumble of thunder.

  “Yeah, mate,” he mumbled, “it looks like a good night to be indoors, dead bodies or not.”

  The sound of rain reverberated off of the roof of the building, and when it really started to come down loudly, he moved the now brewed coffee off of the single burner and placed the saucepan in its place on the stove.

  He heard a door opening, startling him, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Sam come back into the room carrying something he couldn’t make out in his hand. It wasn’t that he was frightened exactly, just the fact of being alone in the room with all the bodies, seen and unseen, unnerved him a little, and he was happy to see his companion return.

  Sam walked up to the table, and smiling, placed a six pack of beer on the table.

  “It’s warm, but beer is beer,” he said, sitting down opposite John. “What’s for tea?” he asked, feeling a little strange for calling supper ‘tea’.

  “Beef stew, and I’ve got coffee ready.”

  “Sounds good. I scrounged around in the convenience store side, but it looks like they’ve been through here already. The shelves were picked clean of everything. I found the beer hidden behind the counter,” Sam told his partner, reaching for his saddleback and pulling out two metal bowls.

  Another clap of thunder sounded loudly, and John asked “Do you think this storm will make any cyclones?”

  “Do you mean tornadoes? Possibly, it is summer, and we’re in Kansas.”

  “Should we be worried?” John asked.

  “If the wind picks up, then dies suddenly, and it starts hailing, we’ll go look for a walk-in freezer or something. I don’t think this will be anything more than an evening thunderstorm though.”

  “If you say so,” John replied uncertainly.

  When the stew was hot, they poured themselves heaping bowls full and ate in silence, and when they were done eating, Sam pulled off a can of Coors and handed it to John.

  “Here ya’ go. One Colorado Kool-Aid for your after dinner aperitif!”

  “You beauty! Cheers!” John said, popped the top of the can and took a sip, Sam following suit with his own can.

  “So you said it looked like they were through here, too?” John asked.

  “Yeah, they cleaned out the place of anything that could be of use, and made a complete fucking mess too. One of the dipshits took a dump in the corner. They’re definitely not real soldiers, or if they are, they are so far gone from the reservation they’re a lost cause.”

  “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

  “It can cut both ways,” Sam said. “With a professional soldier, I’d know what to expect. These guys are an unknown variable. Loose cannons. They could either run away at the first sign of trouble, or go off half-cocked and filled with testosterone because they’ve got the guns, and shoot up anything that moves. Hajji was sort of like that in the ‘Ghan. On the other hand, them being this sloppy will make it so easy to follow them from a long ways’ away. We won’t ever have to get close to them to get a fairly good idea on where they’re going.”

  “So we just head back, follow them, and see which way they go?”

  “And report back to the Sar’ Major. Simple stuff, and we’re heading back that way anyhow, so we’ll just take a different route than the one I was thinking. No biggie.”

  “You’re the expert,” John said, popping the top of a second beer.

  “I’m just a grunt.”

  “You know more than me. I was a chartered accountant before the world went to shit.”

  “An accountant?” Sam chuckled. “You ride pretty well for an accountant.”

  “I was raised on a cattle station,” John said. “I know a few things about horses. It’s why I wanted to come with you in the first place.”

  “You guys have some really big ones down there. They make even our largest ranches look tiny,” Sam said, sipping his own beer, and then leaned back in his chair.

  “Not everything is bigger in Texas,” John joked.

  “Let’s finish our nice adult beverages, get ourselves some sleep, and do it all again tomorrow.”

  John downed his beer and got another. The two men made small talk for a while longer, listening to the storm pass and fade into the distance. After they were done, they unrolled their sleeping bags, extinguished the lantern, and retired for the night.

  And so it went, for the next four days. They followed Interstate 70 westward, making good time, travelling thirty or so miles a day. They never once saw the convoy during this time, though their trail was unmistakable.

  Shortly after they crossed over the Colorado state line near the town of Burlington, the two men came to the top of a rise in the highway, and Sam saw something that made him yank back hard on the reins and shout, “Whoa!”

  He spun on his mount to face John, who was trailing the herd about fifty yards to the rear, and motioned for him to stop. Sam rode his horse down, herding the buffalo back behind the rise.

  “What is it?” John asked after riding his own mount up to Sam.

  “They’re right over that hill, about a click west.”

  Sam looked around for a moment, and spied a farmhouse off to the south. “Over there. We’ll backtrack a bit, and then circle around to the south to avoid being seen. We’ll use the house for cover and check them out.”

  “Hopefully, there will be a pen or something to put the animals into.”

  Sam spurred on his horse, herding the bewildered animals back the way they had just come.

  It took over an hour, but they did exactly what Sam had wanted, coming up behind the farmhouse. There was a paddock by a barn, and they made quick work getting the animals secured. They unsaddled their mounts, and took all of their personal gear and rifles to the rear porch where Sam broke in easily.

  On the second story of the house, Sam found a bedroom at the front that faced the highway about five hundred yards to the north of them. There were two single beds in the room, and by the looks of the decorations, it once was a young girl’s bedroom. Photos of horses, teddy bears, and teen idols that Sam didn’t know the names of were pinned up everywhere.

  He dumped his saddlebag and rucksack onto the bed to his right, and looked out the dirty window. He could barely see out, so he muscled it open, and it screeched on dried and splintered runners. It was so loud that he froze in place, looking out at the stalled convoy, wondering if they’d been heard.

  After a few seconds, his heart stopped trying to beat out of his chest, and he sat down on the bed, taking his carbine and leaning it against the wall next to it.

  “What are they doing?” John asked when he was seated on the bed opposite.

  “I’m not sure,” Sam replied, reaching into his saddlebag for his binoculars. He scanned the length of the parked vehicles a few times, and then dropped them to his lap, leaning back on the bed. “It looks like one of the Hum-Vees broke down and they’re trying to fix it,” he said, handing the binoculars to his companion.

  While John took a look, Sam said, “The lead one has its hood up, and it looks like someone is fucking around under it.”

  “I see it now. Everyone else is just milling a
round,” John said. “So we just sit here and watch them?”

  “That’s about the long and short of it, buddy.”

  “Sounds boring,” John said with a wry smile.

  “Ninety nine percent of soldiering is sheer boredom,” Sam said.

  “What about the other one percent?”

  “That’s pure and utter abstract terror,” Sam said with no emotion, picking up the binoculars again.

  “That’s the part I’m worried about.”

  “As long as we do our job here the right way, they will never know we’re here. I suggest you just sit back, relax, and enjoy that bed. It’s only noon, and this is going to give the horses a decent rest.”

  “Us too,” John said and stretched out on the bed. The moment the man’s head hit the pillow, he was sound asleep.

  After about two hours, Sam’s eyes began to grow heavy, so he woke John up. “My turn for a nap.”

  John sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He took the binoculars from Sam’s outstretched hand, and like John had done earlier, Sam was instantly sound asleep.

  They did this every two hours, and after the sun fell below the Rocky Mountains far off to the west, they kept up the vigil in the darkness. Sam wouldn’t allow the lantern or a fire lest they be spotted, so they sat in the darkness, eating cold MREs and taking turns watching with increasing boredom at the convoy splayed out on the shoulder of the highway before them.

  “It’d be nice if we had some more beer, eh mate?” John opined into the darkness.

  “Yeah, but I want to keep a clear head tonight. It looks like they’ve decided to stay the night. They’ve just lit two fires. That’s stupid. If I were in charge of that fucking unit, I’d have light and noise discipline, fifty percent alert, and have a few LPs set up a few hundred meters out. They’re treating this down there like a goddamn Boy Scout jamboree.”

  “Thankfully you’re not in charge down there. It’s making our job that much easier,” John quipped.

  They could hear the men below them now, laughing and carrying on, becoming louder as the night progressed. Cheers went up, then a few angry yells, and then it sounded like a fight had broken out. More yells and taunts in the darkness, and then the sound of the .50 caliber machine gun rattling off several rounds into the night, red tracers slashing the darkness like hot coals.

  A few more shouts, these sounding more demanding, then the sharp crack of a 9mm pistol firing two rounds, and everything got quiet below for a few moments, then a few more shouts that, even though the two men couldn’t make out the words, sounded to Sam like an officer of NCO barking out orders.

  The two men hidden in the house looked at each other in the darkness, and Sam shrugged. After the shouts below, the men in the convoy settled down, and from the looks of it, most had finally gone to sleep.

  The fires were burning down to a faint red glow, and now Sam could see the glow of a few cigarettes or cigars. Sam shook his head in disgust, while also thanking their lack of discipline.

  When everything seemed to have calmed down along the highway, Sam decided that it was safe enough for them to both get some sleep, and well past midnight, both men fell asleep in the abandoned farmhouse.

  It was early morning when they were both awakened by the sounds of diesel engines starting. Through the open window, they saw the men climbing into the trucks and Hum-Vees, and one by one, each vehicle headed out, continuing west towards Denver.

  “It looks like they gave up on that Hum-Vee,” Sam remarked. John looked closer, and indeed, the lone Hum-Vee was there, hood up, alone except for a few still-smoldering fires along the shoulder of the road.

  “Want to go down for a look?” John asked.

  “We’ll give it a while to give them time to clear the area. Let’s get some coffee brewing, and then we’ll take a look-see.”

  They went about their morning chores, and when the coffee was brewed, they sat in the bedroom and had their breakfast. When they were done, John said “I’m going to take a look around here in the house; there might be some stuff we can use.”

  “I’ll pack up this shit. Just don’t take forever.”

  Sam went about packing up their scant belongings, carrying everything out to the paddock, taking a few trips, piling everything by the gate. When he was finished, he saw his companion exit the house, carrying a cardboard box.

  “The lady of the house must have been really into canning. Half the basement is filled with this stuff,” he said, setting down the box, pulling out two quart mason jars filled with what looked like apples.

  Sam took one of the offered jars. “I guess,” he said. “Which lends to another question. Where are the people who lived here?”

  “I wondered that myself. There’s no bodies, no car in the drive either. Maybe they were away on holiday when the world turned pear shaped.”

  “Could be,” Sam said. “We’ll find some way of transporting as much of this stuff back with us as we can. First thing’s first, let’s go down to the highway and see what we shall see.”

  The two men took their carbines and started down the hill, walking through waist high grass, over the guard rail, and onto the weedy shoulder.

  The first thing they noticed was more garbage, then several empty beer bottles and hard liquor bottles strewn around. That explained the rowdiness they’d heard last night. There were three campfires, just smoldering embers now, and down the opposite direction both men spotted a large form lying by one. Their curiosity piqued, they walked that way, but they weren’t even halfway to the form when Sam recognized it for what it was, the shape of a human body, splayed out and shirtless by the fire.

  It was a white male, covered in tattoos and a thick beard. It looked as if everything of value had been stripped off his body, leaving only a soiled and torn pair of ACU trousers covering his lower body.

  There was a dried pool of blood spread out, halo-like from the dead man’s head. Sam pointed out to John two neat bullet holes in the man’s body, one exactly mid-chest, between his nipples, the second over his right eye on his forehead, about a centimeter above his bushy eyebrow.

  “That answers any questions about the two pistol shots we heard last night,” Sam said. “Either one would have been fatal.”

  They walked back down the road towards the broken down vehicle, where Sam checked under the hood, while John took a look inside the apparently stripped interior.

  “They have a cracked block. This isn’t going anywhere,” he said loud enough for his companion inside the vehicle to hear. “Did you find anything in there, John?”

  “I found this under the seat in front,” John said, handing a thick brown folder over to Sam.

  He leaned back on the bumper and cocked his patrol cap back on his head, opening it up. He recognized it straightaway as a US Army 201, or personnel file. “This is odd, finding something like this,” he said, and then paged through haphazardly, not really reading what was inside, not until a name jumped out and grabbed him by the throat.

  He paled noticeably. “Fuck me running!”

  “What is it?” John asked.

  Sam held out a piece of paper from inside the folder to John’s face. “It’s a personnel file from the Army. Read the name on the top,” he instructed.

  John squinted in the early morning sunlight, and read: FLANNERY, TIMOTHY X PANG SMG 169 89 0238

  “Holy shit is right!”

  Chapter 13: A Rumor of War

  “So just when were you going to tell me?” Holly asked angrily, face as red as her hair, fire in her eyes.

  “Babe, listen. I was—”

  “No you listen, Sergeant Major! Unless you’ve completely forgotten, I’m part of this group too, and I am an officer in the military. I think I bloody well have a right to know!”

  She was standing at the open screen door to the porch, holding Walter in her arms. Tim, Jimenez, Izzy, and Robyn were all sitting on the porch discussing the report from Sam Didinato, and it was obvious to Tim that she had overh
eard most of what was being discussed.

  Now it was time for some damage control. “Robyn, why don’t you take care of Walter for a few minutes? Holly and I have a few things to talk about,” he said, standing up and motioning for Holly to come with him.

  “Sure, Dad,” Robyn said, gingerly taking the sleeping child from Holly. The other two men looked away as Holly walked over to Tim, who took her arm gently and led her off the porch and across the meadow towards the trees on the far end.

  When they got to the tree line, Holly stopped and spun to face Tim in the darkness.

  “Well?” she demanded, hands on her hips. “You think you’re talking to some daft wee lassie here?”

  “Babe, I was going to tell you tonight. We just got word from Sam this morning about the men on their way here.”

  “You knew for a few weeks they might be coming!”

  “Yes, we did,” Tim assented.

  “Why didn’t you tell me a few weeks ago then?”

  “I didn’t want you to be worried. You had just had the baby, and you needed the rest. I was going to tell you everything when I knew for sure.”

  “That doesn’t make it right, Tim,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  Tim put his arms around her in the darkness and held her tight. He felt like an ass right at this moment, but he still thought he did the right thing by not telling her right away.

  She didn’t say a word for several moments, just held onto him tightly, and sobbed into his chest. She sniffled once, and then said “So now what?”

  “Now we make preparations for when they arrive.”

  “You’re not thinking of fighting them, are you?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  “Tim, there’s only a handful of us! How can we fight back against so many?”

  “We did it before, on Volivoli. And this time you and Robyn will be far away from here, along with Walter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is I want you and Robyn to take Walter and the other women here in the C130 and fly out of here. Down to Luke Air Force Base, and sit it out down there.”