The Last Full Measure

by Trent Reedy

  * * *

  “Ain’t these supposed to be our off days?” Cal walked into the shop one day in late August.

  I looked up from the piece of metal from bus one that I was beating and grinding into the shape of a snow shovel. When it started to snow, we’d have to shovel trenches so people could move among the buildings, especially out to the latrines. Jaclyn was screwing the wooden handles we’d made from branches onto the shovel blades. “Winter is coming,” she reminded him.

  I laughed. “Thanks, Ned Stark.”

  Cal frowned. “Yeah, I saw that show too. That guy worked all the time. It didn’t turn out so great for him.” He shot a look at the door. Even after the whole summer, he could never quite relax around Jaclyn. “JoBell, Becca, and a bunch of the girls challenged us to mini golf.”

  “Dudes.” Sweeney came rushing into the shop on his cane, bumping into a pile of shovel blades and knocking them to the floor. “Sorry.” He started picking them up. “The girls just dropped the big one. They figured out the kitchen’s making blackberry crisp for dessert next week. They just bet the crisp. If we don’t beat them, we’re out of luck for the dessert from all those million berries we helped pick.”

  “Let me finish this shovel,” I said. “Then I’ll be right with you.”

  “Come on, man,” Sweeney said. “We have to win this one. Just think, double blackberry crisp!”

  “I said I’d be right there.” I spoke a little harsher than I’d meant to.

  Cal looked at me for a moment. “Well, if you —”

  “Why don’t you go with him?” Jaclyn said. “I can do this.”

  “Cal,” Sweeney said. “Go tell the girls to wait a little. We’ll be out there in a minute to win their dessert from them.”

  “Right.” Cal ran off.

  Sweeney tapped the ground with his cane. “Listen, Wright,” he said. “It’s like the end of summer. So we need to take advantage of being outside while we can. The biggest enemy we’ve had to deal with up here is deer trying to get in our garden. You have to relax a little, buddy. What’s the point of finally finding peace if you can’t have a little fun?”

  Jaclyn frowned. “After everything that’s happened, it’s hard to laugh it up playing mini golf, like blackberry crisp is the most important thing in the world.”

  Sweeney fingered the shiny, twisted skin on his cheek. “Everybody’s been working all summer, but you two have hardly stopped. Danny, sometimes you take a canoe out on the lake by yourself, to do what? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  “It’s just good to be alone,” I said. “Peaceful. Quiet. Like the war never happened. Like the world is just me and the sky.”

  “Well, we’re a part of your world too, buddy. I think we’ve earned that after everything we’ve been through.” Sweeney nodded at Jaclyn as he spoke. “People need some recreation once in a while. It’s good for them. Healthy. If you don’t think you can have a good time, at least try to have fun and fake it for your friends.” Sweeney offered me a concerned smile and then hobbled back to the others.

  It was hard for me to think about having fun when I remembered all the terrible things I’d done. But maybe Sweeney was right about Jaclyn. Her pain was no fault of her own. Maybe taking a break would help her out. “Jackie,” I said. “He’s right. I think we need a break. Let’s go whack some golf balls.” I put down my hammer and forced a smile.

  Jaclyn shook her head. “Fine.” She smiled a little. “Say goodbye to your crisp!”

  * * *

  “I know these scavenging missions are kind of a pain —” Becca started to say. It was a little over a week later, and we were moving through the woods.

  “Kind of a pain?” TJ said from a few paces behind me. “I hate these missions. Pale Horse drops us off in the woods, miles from the school. We walk for days, and as soon as our packs lighten up after we eat some of our food, we find a cabin or a shed with some crap we need, and then the load on the way back is twice as heavy.”

  “And I got to hump the radio and extra ammo the whole way,” Cal said.

  Sergeant Kemp was leading our file through the forest. “If First Sergeant Herbokowitz was around to hear you all complaining so much, he’d drop us all and PT us until we went blind,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to say,” Becca said. “These missions aren’t easy, but I still kind of like them. It’s a chance to get out here with the whole original crew, just us. No council. No Craig Rankin telling stupid stories about his old Buick with the underglow lights.”

  “And the cherry bomb glasspack!” JoBell groaned. “I know what you mean. So dumb.”

  “Are you kidding? Those things are awesome,” I said. “I don’t know that I’d want one on a little Buick Regal, but they’re still cool.” I stepped over a large rock on the trail. “Damn, I miss working on cars.”

  “Becca, how are you and your parents getting along?” TJ said after we’d walked in silence for a while.

  “It’s great to be able to be with them again.” Becca held up her M4 and pressed the barrel against her forehead. “But I’m not sure how long I can go on living with them. I’m eighteen now, and it’s September. In a normal world, I’d be moving out to go to college. Where am I going to move at Alice Marshall?”

  “There’s room in my loft of love,” Sweeney said. We’d made a loft for his bus seat bed, with support poles from small pine trees and a loft floor from patched-together lumber and branches. He’d worked for weeks to gather every branch and small tree trunk he could find, walling off his loft all the way to the ceiling.

  “Oh hell no!” Cal said. “My rack is right under there. I don’t want you two messing around up above me.”

  “Hey, at least my love loft is closed in,” Sweeney said. “Danny and the kitten are just right out in the open.”

  JoBell sighed. “The ‘kitten’ is going to rip your face off if you call her that one more time, Eric.”

  “We have never messed around when you guys were in the room,” I said. JoBell tapped me on the back.

  “Dude, are you kidding me?” Cal shouted. “Sometimes you two think we’re asleep, but we’re not asleep!”

  “Oh my gosh,” JoBell whispered.

  “See?” said TJ. “That’s why I’m glad I live next door. All dudes. It stinks and there’s loud snoring, but I’m okay with it.”

  Kemp stopped up in front. “There’s a war going on and any number of psychos could be out in these woods. Can you act like you’re soldiers and not still in high school?”

  We walked in silence for a moment before Sweeney spoke up. “Well, we never did make it to graduation.”

  We all laughed.

  * * *

  A couple hours later, we found a small house with some outbuildings at the end of a dirt lane. The place was quiet. Nothing moved. But we still followed procedure and set up an overwatch position while Kemp radioed to Pale Horse to let the team know we’d found something. After watching the house for about an hour and detecting no movement or sound, we hid our packs in the woods and ran up on the place, rifles at the ready. We went in the back door and cleared every room on the main floor, the upstairs, and the basement. Then we checked out the small horse barn and the two old sheds. Yeah, it might have seemed a little overcautious, but even if we sometimes joked around on the trail, we were way past being stupid on ops like this.

  After the security checks, we all gathered in the dining room. “Do you think it’s abandoned?” JoBell said.

  “It looks like it’s in pretty good shape,” TJ said.

  “We’ll look everything over more carefully now,” Kemp said. “Check for the usual signs.” We all nodded. We didn’t want to be like the Brotherhood, breaking into occupied houses and taking people’s stuff. But the war had messed up everything, and a lot of people had died or fled Idaho and left a lot of useful things behind, so we’d done this a bunch of times. If there was still food here, especially fresh food, then someone probably lived here. If we
found weapons, they were probably coming back, because who would leave without their guns? But if the food and guns were gone, or if there was evidence of people packing up to leave, then we took what we needed.

  “Okay, let’s shake it up,” Kemp said. “Rule number three. Becca and Sweeney, post a guard out front. And, um, Danny and JoBell, cover the back. Me and Cal and TJ will search the house. I don’t have to tell you the nights are getting cold, so keep a lookout for coats, hats, gloves, sweatshirts, and blankets and things.”

  I sighed and my shoulders slumped. Guard duty sucked. And lots of times the guys searching had first dibs on cool things they found. Cal shot me a look like, Sucks to be you, loser!

  JoBell took me by the hand and we went out to the little back porch. It was only about six feet square, but it was covered with a little aluminum roof and surrounded by a short brick wall. “At least we’ll have good cover,” JoBell said.

  “I hope we don’t need it.” I sat down on the cement cap of the wall and leaned against one of the posts that held up the roof.

  “How many places have we searched?” she asked. “Twenty, at least. And only once did anything happen.”

  One time we had scared the shit out of a family who was hiding from us in the basement. We apologized and left their house right away. “Yeah, we were damned lucky that old man didn’t shoot us.”

  “Or that we didn’t shoot him.” JoBell nodded. “But most of the time, this goes smoothly.”

  “First Sergeant Herbokowitz always warned us about being complacent.”

  JoBell held up her M1A a little. “I’m never complacent.” She sat down on the wall on the other side of the porch so she could watch the opposite way.

  “Oh, kick ass!” Cal yelled from inside. “Comic books! Spider-Man, Captain America. The … the New Warriors? Point is, comics!”

  “Keep it down, Riccon!” Kemp yelled back.

  “You know, I was talking to Becca the other day,” JoBell said after a long time. “She and Eric are getting serious.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “Sweeney spends a lot of time volunteering to help with the” — I made air quotes with my fingers — “ ‘gardening.’ ”

  JoBell laughed. “He actually does a lot of good work in the garden. But I mean, they’re getting serious. They want to get married.”

  I sat up. “Really?”

  JoBell frowned. “Why do you look so surprised?”

  Was I showing a hint of the old weirdness between me and Becca? If so, I had to cover it up fast. “Just, Sweeney always swore he’d never get married. How did he put it? That getting married was like going to a buffet, but only eating the salad. Every day of your life.”

  JoBell shrugged. “He’s changed. We all have. My point is, they don’t want to upstage us. And you and I have been engaged for a while now.”

  I smiled at her. “I’m glad.”

  “I’m glad too, but I think it’s time we do this.” She smiled back at me, and then checked her sector again. “I don’t know, maybe I was holding out hope for a fancier wedding. But I have that wedding dress we found a couple missions ago. Becca could help me adjust the length. Maybe we could ask Chaplain Carmichael to make it happen? Daddy won’t be there, but if he stays deep in that bunker and we keep safe, we may both make it through the war to have family Thanksgivings and Christmases in the future.”

  “You sure you don’t want to wait until after the war?” I asked. “Until we go home?”

  “You don’t want to marry me?” She asked it playfully, but with a tiny note of concern.

  I got up, walked over to her, and pulled her into a hot kiss. When we finally parted, our lips stayed only inches apart.

  “Naughty boy,” she whispered.

  “This isn’t close to naughty,” I said. “Wait until we get back to —”

  “I meant, you’re not covering your sector, naughty boy.” She laughed and pushed me away, then got serious again. “We were waiting until we were out of the war, but I think we’re out of it now. The Alice Marshall School is our home. All our friends are with us.”

  I thought about it. Most of my old dreams for our future together had burned to ashes, but at the school … The library would make a good room for the ceremony. Sweeney could be my best man. Cal would probably try to give a speech at the reception in the chow hall. Maybe I could shoot a couple turkeys for the meal. How lucky was I to have a girl like this? No matter how much bad stuff had happened, JoBell always kept me going.

  “Okay.” I said. “You’re right. When we get back, you and Becca get that dress all fixed up, and then we’ll get married.” I opened the back door and called into the house. “Hey, you guys! Let me know if you find a tux in there.”

  “Shut up and cover us,” Kemp called back.

  I went back to my side of the porch and looked out at the edge of the property. “It will be great. We’ll finally be …” I spotted a flash of white a few feet back in the woods. “What the hell is that?” I said. There was something down along the ground. I brought my rifle stock up to my cheek and scanned the area.

  “What is it?” JoBell asked.

  “Don’t know. Cover me.” I jumped over the short wall and started walking out toward the woods, my eyes and rifle still on whatever was out there.

  “Danny!” JoBell hissed. “Rule number one!”

  “It’s not that far,” I said. JoBell could pick off any trouble with that rifle of hers. And if this thing was a person or an animal, it would have done something by now. “It’s probably nothing.”

  I walked out past the first trees. The thing wasn’t moving, so I stopped aiming at it and swept the woods with my M4. That familiar jolt ran through me again — the boredom of standing guard replaced with faster breathing, a rapid heartbeat, and an intense awareness of everything around me.

  I rounded one last tree to get a better look. That’s when I saw the white bones of the rotting bodies.

  I ran back to the house right as Cal came out the back door. “Guys, this is a Brotherhood safe house,” he said.

  “This far out?” JoBell asked. “This close to the school?”

  “How do you know it’s the Brotherhood?” I asked before I could report what I found.

  “I’m so stupid. I should have checked the front door right away.” He shook his head. “When we … When they find a safe house like this —”

  “Or take one,” JoBell said.

  Cal nodded. “They tie something, a necktie or a piece of rope, around both the inside and outside doorknob of the front door. That’s a signal to any of them who come back that it’s safe to crash there. If the tie has been removed, they know there’s trouble.”

  “Cal, what are you doing?” Kemp came out on the back porch. Everyone else was right behind him. “You’re supposed to get on the radio.”

  “Before you do that —” I pointed my rifle at the woods. “I found two bodies. Animals and maggots have gotten to them pretty good, but their clothes were sort of holding them together. Big bullet holes in their skulls.”

  “Probably the people who owned the house.” Kemp sighed. “Okay. We’re moving out. Right now.”

  “We’re not even taking the food?” TJ said. “There’s a whole case of beef jerky in there.”

  Kemp closed the door to the house and started leading us back to where we’d left our packs. “We’re taking nothing. We’ll leave the ties around the doorknobs. If the Brotherhood is operating in the area, we don’t want them to know anyone was here. We don’t want any search parties looking for who robbed them.”

  “But we’re miles from Alice Marshall,” TJ said.

  “Should we at least bury the bodies?” Becca asked. “They deserve more than to be dumped out back.”

  “I’m not taking the chance that the Brotherhood might show up,” Kemp said.

  “He’s right,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before shit goes wrong.”

  We hurried into our packs and Kemp took the handset for t
he ASIP III. “Pale Horse, this is scout. Over.” We were encrypted, so we didn’t have to worry about any Brotherhood on the net who might know what Pale Horse was. Kemp waited a whole minute. “Damn it. They better be paying attention. Let’s move. Wright on point.” I started leading us out the way we’d come. “No, Danny, guide left. We’ll go up that valley over there. Different route just in case someone followed us or was on our trail. I’ll get out the map later and figure out our whole path.” He kept holding the radio handset to his ear. “Damn it!” He keyed the mike. “Pale Horse. Pale Horse, this is scout. Over.” After a moment, Kemp sighed. “Finally.” Then he keyed the mike again. “Pale Horse, this is scout. We’ve located a Brotherhood safe house. Nobody there. We’re taking an alternate route back to your location. Be advised, we may have Brotherhood in the area. How copy? Over.” A moment later. “Roger that. Stand by on this freq. Scout, out.”

  I climbed down a small rocky embankment and led us along what might have been a dry creek bed. Kemp ran up the line to me, pointing to a big rock formation that rose up out of the ground. A large pine grew right next to it. “We’ll halt there,” he said.

  After we reached the pine, we pulled in a tight security perimeter as Kemp went over his paper map of the area. He showed us the basic route. “I want to put as much space between us and this place as quickly as we can. We’re going to move fast. Noise discipline at all times. Be sharp. Questions?”

  “What if we run into Brotherhood guys?” Sweeney asked.