by John Ringo
As a tourist, goggling was normal, so she took the opportunity to get a good long look at everything while she went up to the station building to wait in line for the restroom. The place hadn't changed much in ten years. The asphalt of the big parking lot had been resurfaced at some point, but not too recently. They hadn't expanded the walls any—it would have just been more perimeter to man in an emergency. Oh, the store was stocked a bit better, and there were a few more children trailing around with the occasional farm wife doing some shopping, but mostly it was the same old general store, feed and seed, and bounty processing center. She bought a glass of apple cider and some gingersnaps and went back out into the parking lot. The single mechanic's bay was taken up with work on a tractor today. Fortunately no one in the convoy seemed to need it. Over by the incinerator the bounty agent was paying off on a few Postie heads. She wrinkled her nose as the shifting wind wafted over the unforgettable stench of ripe, dead Posleen mixed with motor oil and exhaust fumes. She took her snack back towards the van, farther away from the grisly trophies, walking past one of the refrigerator trucks that was offloading a few crates of fish and perishables for the station store and loading some crates of spring greens and assorted poultry and dairy products. A semi was unloading a couple of crates of miscellaneous merchandise but, not being refrigerated, had nothing to take on to fill the space left.
She looked around at the various trucks and buses, and the occasional car, and sighed. It would probably be at least fifteen minutes before they got moving again, and there just wasn't a lot more to see. She pulled out her PDA and spent the rest of the break clicking through the daily news.
* * *
The road to Spartanburg seemed quiet enough, the scenery by the side of the interstate passing from fields and cows near Columbia to dense stands of pine and poplar starting a few yards back from the Roundup zone. The edges of the highway had earned the popular appellation from the tanker truck that came through at the back of the convoy every few months with a sprayer attachment to mist the roadside with the inexpensive herbicide. Federal authorities had decided early on that it was easier, cheaper and safer than lawnmower crews for maintaining a small but adequate free-fire zone back from the road. In the spring, runners from the underbrush reached back quickly to reclaim the tempting open soil and ready sunlight—it looked like another run with the sprayer truck was a bit overdue.
The tender vegetation at the border was especially attractive to the herds of whitetail, who were no doubt accustomed to safe feeding times morning and evening when neither the convoys nor other traffic disturbed their peace. Predation by the occasional feral Posleen kept the herd barely below starvation levels. Healthy deer could usually smell, hear, and outrun a lone Posleen normal. Unfortunately for the deer, this fact failed to stop feral normals from trying. This became clear to the convoy when a yearling buck broke cover right in front of a church van from Nashville, causing it to slam on its brakes and take a bump from the semi behind it that could almost, but not quite, stop in time.
The first indication Cally had that something was wrong was the crunch of metal behind them and the chattering of a machine gun, it sounded like one of the MG-90s on top of the semis. She grabbed the .45 from the glove box while Reefer swore and swerved as the bus in front of them hit the brakes and stopped in the middle of its lane, the van coming to a more gradual stop alongside the bus's driver. All along the length of the convoy, the approximately thirty vehicles that comprised it were pulling to a stop, the drivers and gunners first looking for Posleen, and then, seeing none, checking their detectors and getting on the radios onto channel nineteen for official convoy information.
"Front door, this is truck seventeen." The female voice had a distinctly Texan drawl. "We got one dead Postie, one dead medium passenger vehicle, and some minor vee-hicular injuries back here. Negative on Postie emissions and high grade equipment. Negative crest. Just another feral normal. We're gonna need a EMT and someplace to put 'em, 'cause their van ain't goin' nowhere, come on." Reception was extraordinarily clear for the simple reason that there was so little to compete with it. Oh, there was a little crackle from sunspots and other unavoidable whatnot, but it was a surprisingly cheap method of keeping a convoy together. Besides, it was traditional.
"Ten-four, Seventeen. Johnny, you got your ears on?"
"Ten-four, Front Door. Got my little black bag and I am on the way, come on."
"Ten-four. Seventeen, get the healthies squared away along the line and have Johnny call me back once he's got the bleeders stashed, come on."
"That's a big ten-f—Larry, quit messing with that thing. You can load the head up after we get them church folks on the . . . oops. This thing's still on. Sorry Front Door, over."
"Hey, uh, Marilyn?" Reefer had walked around to the right side of the bus where she was standing with her back against it, looking outward. "Might as well get back in and put that thing in the glove box, man. I mean, like, I know it's pretty bogus to have one of those Postie dudes running out on the road and all, but honest, there's like never been more than one at a time as long as I've been driving."
Cally walked back to the van, looked at the sensor on the dash and climbed back in. She didn't put the pistol back in the glove box, but Reefer just shrugged and popped another piece of gum. Even twenty years ago the convoy would have circled up, instead of remaining sprawled out like a lunch line of gawking kindergartners. Their complacency made the back of her neck itch, but as she watched the negative sensors on the dash and her PDA screen, tied into the roadside sensor net, the combat-chill gradually leached its way back out of her system and time resumed its normal flow.
It seemed longer, of course, but it was actually only about ten minutes later that the convoy got rolling again, one van shorter but with no human fatalities. On the far side of the highway, just inside the tree line, a yearling whitetail buck placidly browsed through the fresh growth.
* * *
Spartanburg's Trading and Bounty Station was very much like Columbia's. The upstate city hadn't been part of Fortress Forward and so the buildings had survived in varying states of destruction and disrepair from Posleen looting and local self-destruct systems. But vacancy during the Posleen occupation and the relatively slow pace of human reclamation had taken its toll on the prewar portions of the city. The station was not, strictly speaking, part of the original prewar city. Instead, one of the least-damaged truck stop and gas station clusters had been repaired, an incinerator and sufficient electrical generation to fuel the station installed, along with the necessary water tower and septic system. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation had walled and manned the resulting facility, along with a few neighboring buildings, hauled in a double-wide to house the staff, and called it a day.
The biggest difference in the routine at Spartanburg was the line at the pay radio as the members of the group from Nashville called friends and family back home.
The station residents were clearly used to their station being the lunch stop on the convoy route. One of the buildings inside the walls was a salvaged prewar short-order grill. Over the years, the sun had faded the plastic around the flat roof of the building to a dingy yellowish-cream. The steel pole that had once carried a lighted sign had been extended and was now home to the station's radio antenna.
The parking lot of the restaurant had been filled with ancient picnic tables of various materials obviously scrounged locally. Perhaps a third were of clearly postwar construction, made of split and roughly sanded pine logs. A handful of teenage girls in jean shorts and T-shirts waited on the tables. Cally's omelet was tough and overpriced, though the waitress was obviously eager to please, refilling her water frequently and offering a smile that was tacit apology for the food.
"If you want something that's actually good to get the taste out of your mouth, try a small jar of pickled peaches from the store over there. One of our neighbors puts them up, and they're actually good. I mean, if you like peaches."
"Thanks, I w
ill." Cally smiled, noticing the girl's wistful glances at her PDA.
"You're a college student ain't . . . aren't you? That must be wonderful." She fielded a dirty look from another girl who was moving a bit faster.
"Yeah, I like it. Where are you planning to apply?"
"It wouldn't do no good." The girl flushed. "They don't take you if you're out of state, unless you've got money."
"I know a lot of out of state students. And there are scholarships."
"You gotta pass tests. I checked." She glared briefly as the other girl moving back by with a stack of empty plates made a rude noise. "I bet none of your out of state friends are bounty farm brats, are they?"
"If you can't pass the tests, read and study until you can."
The girl laughed tonelessly. "Library." She indicated the bounty agent's trailer. "Two shelves of pre-war encyclopedias and a dog-eared copy of Leather Goddesses of Phobos."
"You're kidding." Cally's jaw dropped.
"Nope." She grinned tightly. "Well, unless you count the porno mags under Agent Thomas's bed. I've been that bored. Oop, gotta go. Try the peaches." She shrank a bit from the face of the middle-aged woman looking out the plastic and duct tape "window" of the grill and began rapidly collecting empty dishes and silverware.
Cally stared after her for a moment before rummaging in her backpack for a battered paperback copy of Pygmalion and staring at it a moment.
I can always get another prop. She tucked the girl's tip in the inside cover and finished her water, making her way to where the waitress was returning for another load. Her mouth tightened at the reddening print on the girl's face and her hot eyes. She pressed the book into the girl's hand.
"Never give up," she told her firmly, grabbing her chin gently and pulling her face around for eye contact. "Never give up. Not ever. You will make it out."
The teenager paused for a second, looking at the other woman as if she had sudden sneaking suspicion that she was far older than twenty, whatever else she may have been. She smiled grimly and tucked the book into her front pocket where it was bulkier but probably safer, and got back to work.
Cally heard her mutter, "Thanks, ma'am," as she strolled back to the van exactly like a student tourist, trying not to visibly berate herself for breaking cover.
* * *
Outside the walls, Cally grimaced at the profusion of roadside kudzu. "Hell of an abat hazard, isn't it?"
"What? Like, oh, yeah, totally bogus. Happens a bit in some of these places. If it's not good farmland or right next to your house, it's somebody else's problem. It's a lot of work to get in and clear that stuff and if you're doing that, like, you aren't getting bounties or raising your own crops. Until some poor schmuck gets stung by a grat. There's just totally not enough money in the world to get me to bounty farm, man."
As the land and the road got more hilly, first the small trees and undergrowth rose beside the highway like green walls, then the huge granite cut-throughs and drop-offs passed by as they climbed into the Blue Ridge, which rose in front of them in a great green wall, softened by the afternoon haze. With the changing terrain eliminating the need for a Roundup zone, clumps of grass vied for purchase in the rocky soil with brown-eyed Susans and some small purple flower she didn't recognize. Occasionally she caught a dull orange flash of Virginia creeper, or the more brilliant orange splash of what she vaguely remembered were mountain azaleas. Reefer flipped off the air conditioner and opened the windows to let in the cooler, fresher mountain air. She suppressed the urge to wrinkle her nose at the exhaust fumes from the rest of the convoy and pulled her hair back into a quick ponytail to keep the dark curls from flying around her face.
At one of the cut-throughs you could still see the scraps of exotic rubble where they blew the Wall and relaid the road after the Green River Gorge drawbridge came on-line as part of reopening the route to Charleston harbor.
There was no delay at the drawbridge, the lead truck having radioed ahead the time-synchronized codes to signal the attendant. Cally was reassured to see the unusually alert and attentive man obviously watching the convoy and all his sensors as the van clattered across the lowered bridge.
After the first exit past the bridge, they started to pass some local traffic—the occasional ancient pickup truck or SUV from the mountain communities that, after the great postwar RIF of the surviving soldiers, had gone back to living mostly as they had for the past four hundred years. A bit poorer, perhaps, but for a people who had come to love these highlands as their ancestors had loved an earlier home, they had their mountains, and they had their neighbors, and the mild poverty wrapped around them felt more like a comfortably broken-in and familiar set of work clothes than any true hardship. Their mountains weren't for the soft, or the greedy, or the lazy, but they had protected them from a hazard that had gone through softer and richer peoples like a hot knife through butter. This knowledge had cemented the locals' attachment to their mountains from a rough affection to a respectful devotion approaching reverence, so that rural Appalachia had one of the lowest out-migration rates on the planet. While the mountain folk knew there were many places men could live in the modern galaxy, this one was theirs, and they reckoned they'd keep it.
It was early evening but still quite bright when the convoy entered Baldwin Gap, home of the Southeast Asheville Urb. Turning off the Blue Ridge Parkway onto Victory Road, they came into the valley through the dilapidated remains of forty-year-old fortifications, topped with a mishmash of sensor boxes and transmitters probably emplaced and maintained by local farmers who were more interested in protecting their stock than in any bounty. With power, protection, and ample refrigeration, Asheville was cattle country, selling much of its lower grade beef to the local Urbs and shipping the better cuts back down to Charleston for the tourists' surf 'n' turf dinners. Her driver, obviously city-bred, had switched back to closed windows and the AC at the first whiff of rural cow manure—not that she minded.
The first thing Cally noticed when they came in sight of the Asheville Urb Vehicle Assembly Zone was the increased number of people manning the wall and their relative inattention to that job. Some wore headphones which, judging from the rhythmic nodding of the wearers' heads were for music rather than information. At one corner of the wall, a female in a guard uniform was chatting up a male in civvies. One of the more alert guards was standing over the entrance gate facing outward. While she looked out, eyes scanning the hills, most of the time, judging from her hand movements she also appeared to have a game of solitaire going on the top edge of the wall.
"I guess they don't get many ferals this close to civilization," she said, slipping her sandals back on and closing up the novel on her PDA as they drove through the gates.
"Huh?"
"Those were just, you know, some pretty bored looking guards. Not that I have much to compare with. We don't have them back home," she said.
"Oh, yeah," he nodded. "They're like, pretty laid back here, you know? I hung out with a couple of guards on one of my trips through. This girl I talked to said it pays pretty well, and they're feds, so they get good bennies." He swallowed hard and added a fresh piece of gum. "It wouldn't be the gig for me, man. I mean, okay, it's not major stressful or anything, but I just couldn't, like, handle being a fed."
"Me neither," she grinned. "So what happens now?"
"Well, like, I gotta wait for this chick from one of the restaurants and, you know, see how much stuff she wants to buy, and put my van down for the convoy out tomorrow. Then I guess, like, food and someplace to crash. Maybe find a party, if, you know, there's one mellow enough that I won't be too fucked up to drive in the morning." He looked sheepish for a minute. "Oh, like, sorry."
"You must come through here a lot. I hate to ask when you've already done so much for me, but could you recommend anywhere to eat and, well, stay that's okay but not too expensive?" she asked, dropping her eyes and scuffing the ground a bit with a foot.
"Oh, like, no problem. I'm, um, meeting a
friend, so I'm gonna be like totally out of the net until morning, no offense. Um . . . the cafeteria is totally bogus, so don't even go there. They sell the food in Asheville Urb Calorie Credits, and they seriously scalp you on the exchange rates. Your best bet is probably the mall food court. The Taco Hell was okay the last time I tried it, but that was like a few months ago when I was majorly low on cash. For rooms, I'd tell a guy to take the no-tell motel outside the walls and leave all his stuff in the van, but if I were you I'd honestly pick up an Urbie dude for a one nighter before I did that 'cause it's not exactly your high-rent district." He frowned, scratching his chin through the beard and looking glum. "Shit. Why don't you hang around until Janet gets here? Maybe she can, like, find you some crash space for the night. Urb hostel prices are, like, well, the bogosity is beyond belief, I kid you not."
"Oh, no, it's all right. I don't want to horn in on your date or anything. I mean, I saved the bus fare up here, and I'd planned to stay overnight. I'll be okay." She put a hand on his arm and smiled reassuringly.
"Aw, hang around anyway. You can meet Janet and we can all walk in together. I can at least keep them from cheating you too bad when you rent your hostel room. Oh, 'scuse me." He left her and walked over to a plump, middle-aged woman with a clipboard and a little red wagon with a bucket half full of water.
Cally went back to Marilyn's romance novel on her PDA while Reefer and the restaurateur dickered and made their trade, leaning against the van as strains of music came drifting through the open window. . . . dog has not been fed in years. It's even worse than it appears but it's all right. Cows giving kerosene, kid can't read at seventeen . . .
After a bit the older woman dragged her wagon back off, bucket sloshing a bit as she went. Reefer stayed in the back, fiddling quite a while with the tanks while the afternoon sun sank to the edge of the mountains. Finally, he sighed and came around to her side, scratching the back of his head with one hand and looking up at the impending sunset.