Outrider

by Steven John

  “So we’re fuckin’ clean-up duty, huh? Let the army men handle this—you kiddos sit back and watch for runaways?”

  “Not my fight, Kretch. I’m just telling you like I said I would to Hutton.”

  “Appreciate it, Matt,” Haskell muttered through a mouthful of food.

  Matteson walked away with a sidelong glance at Wilton. Both men saw it.

  “Who’s he think he is, talking to me like that?” Kretch snarled, loud enough that the bartender likely heard it.

  Haskell looked up. He swallowed the oatmeal he was chewing and set down his spoon. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Kretch? Huh? That man’s been taking care of us fellahs for years. He gives you a piece of info and you go spouting off? Tells you something The Boss asked him to say and you shit on him? Who the fuck are you? You want to ride into the field in a few hours and get ripped apart by a machine gun? Have you forgotten what happened on that dune not two days back? If some Civil Defense motherfucker wants to cruise in there and fight the fight for us, I’m goddamn thrilled. Don’t you go running your mouth at Matteson, Wil. Grab your rifle and charge on in, if you’re so fuckin’ desperate to show you got a pair.”

  C. J. looked away and grabbed one of the oranges, ripping a great piece of the rind off with his teeth. He spit the peel out onto the table and began working the rest of it off the fruit.

  Kretch was searching for the right comeback. He was taken off guard by the young man’s words, and found himself stammering. Maybe the little shit’s right . . . Matty deserves better, I guess. Wilton almost found himself expressing contrition. Then he slowly raised his eyes; saw a dribble of juice running down Haskell’s chin from the orange slice he was eating. For some reason, those little orange droplets set him off. Kretch slammed both palms flat on the table and leaned forward.

  “Listen real good, kid: you think I’m gonna—”

  “Aw, fuckin’ save it.” Haskell rose suddenly, grabbing the bowl of oatmeal, and returning to the bar. “By the way, you got some shit stuck by your lip.” C. J. sat without looking back. Kretch was silent, fuming.

  Matteson winked at C. J., setting a glass of water down in front of the outrider. “Got some coffee brewing too, if you want a cup.”

  “That’d be good. What time you got?”

  “About eight. Few minutes before.”

  Haskell nodded as Matteson turned away to tend to the coffee pot. “Hey, Matt, you seen Scofield recently? His horse is in her pen but I ain’t seen him around at all.”

  Matteson’s shoulders seemed to tense as he continued preparing the coffee, flipping off the machine and pulling the pot from its hotplate. He filled two mugs and then turned, placing one before Haskell.

  “I haven’t seen him in a good while. But I’m sure he’s OK. He’s Scofield, y’know?”

  22

  The sergeant lowered his field glasses with a sigh, looking up at his CO.

  “Anything?”

  “Sand, sir. Miles of fucking sand. And these huge pillar things and there are some mountains over there . . . and more that way. Sand.”

  The captain smiled bitterly. It was shortly after eight hundred hours and his brigade was holding fast about three miles south of the sunfield’s eastern tip. They were slated to move in at thirteen hundred. But for what? There had been no sign of another human all morning, save two outriders who stopped by his jury-rigged headquarters at dawn.

  “We’ll just keep looking, Sarge. Just keep watch.” The captain turned away from the sunfield and raised his voice, calling out to a group of soldiers milling about several paces away. “And you men! You’re Federal Army soldiers! Get your helmets back on and your gear strapped tight! We didn’t get dressed up for fun, boys!”

  He lowered his voice again and, speaking almost to himself, added: “There’s going to be blood today.” The captain took in a slow breath, then walked toward the shade under a tarp attached to the side of a troop carrier. He was using the makeshift shelter as his command center. There’s definitely going to be blood out here today. He ducked under the black plastic tenting and took a seat in one of the three folding chairs set around a pressboard table covered in maps and charts, all weighed down by rocks, a compass, and his sidearm.

  The captain unfastened the straps on his helmet and pulled it off. The tarp fluttered above his head in the morning breeze. He leaned forward in his seat, which pitched down a few inches into the loose sand, to study the paperwork in front of him for the fifth time. He had not relied on paper maps or printed photos or anything of the sort since his basic training days, some two decades ago. But Civil Defense chief Colonel Strayer had marked these coordinates as the absolute closest any power could be used, so once the brigade had arrived at its assigned location, they had “gone back to Civil War days,” as one private had put it.

  There were dozens of trucks, tanks, and half-tracks parked a mile south of this position. The men had carried all their gear, ammunition, and chow to this forward operating post, leaving behind a skeleton crew to man the artillery and communications equipment. All word was to be relayed by runners and flares; all supplies would be moving on men’s backs. Which meant a very long, slow supply chain once the soldiers moved into the field.

  If the intelligence was to be believed—which was dubious based on the total lack of activity visible within the field—as many as one hundred drainers had moved into his area of operation during the small hours of the morning. It would have taken that many men to tend to all the fresh rigs set up, but they must have moved on through . . . if they were here at all the captain thought, brooding over the data in front of him.

  The captain raised his pale blue eyes from the table and looked out across the desert again, wondering which piece of the equation was off. Surely there was a miscalculation: there was no way four different heat-sensing drones and several manned observation flights had been wrong about that many men on the move. And the outriders who had stopped by that morning—brothers, they had said, though they looked nothing alike and were separated by no fewer than ten years—spoke of opening fire on scores of drainers.

  Be nice if I had a fucking radio to use out here. The captain leaned back again, scratching at his clean-shaven face and then placing his helmet back over his buzz-cut gray hair. He had been a military man for all of his adult life. He’d seen action in Egypt, Colombia, and the Arabian Peninsula. He had taught a lecture series on Light Mechanized Infantry Assault at the War College. What the fuck did all of it help now? As far as he could tell, they were up against an army of ghosts in the barren middle of nowhere.

  A commotion outside brought the officer back to the present and he rose, grabbing his pistol off the command center table and holstering it. A runner had just arrived.

  The corporal was out of breath and drenched in sweat despite the morning chill. He leaned over, hands on his knees, chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “Jesus, Captain . . . I . . . man, I didn’t train with Mobile Artillery for . . . eighteen months to . . . fuckin’ sprint around the desert.”

  “A bit of exercise never hurts, son.” The captain clapped the young trooper on the shoulder. White salt stains lined his black fatigues where he had sweat clean through the fabric. “What do you have for me?”

  “It’s from the Civil Defense unit north of us. They sent a piece of paper, sir.” The corporal rose to his full height and pulled off his helmet. The captain opened his mouth to tell the man to put it back on but let the notion go. “A goddamn handwritten piece of paper. What year is this, huh? Here.”

  The captain accepted a crumpled note from the soldier and turned to walk back to his headquarters. “Follow me, corporal,” he called over his shoulder.

  The captain sat, beckoning for the non-com to do the same. He unfolded the paper and scanned it, then placed it in a breast pocket. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I jogged all the
way to CDF squad nine-oh-eight—they’re about three clicks, maybe four north, almost in the field—to get the report you asked for. They’re dug in pretty well; sand bags and all and they have their fifty cals locked and loaded. But they haven’t seen a goddamn person, sir. No sounds, so sightings . . . nothing. The lieutenant there handed me the paper I gave you. He said it came from Civil Defense command by way of one of the horsemen.”

  The captain took a sip of cold coffee from the mug he’d filled hours before. “That’s it?”

  “Yes, sir. There were some tracks, though.”

  “Go on.”

  “Some wide tracks. Like a tank would make, almost. But . . . y’know, there couldn’t be a tank.” The corporal shifted in his seat and wiped sweat from his brow. “Right?”

  “Right. No, there certainly could not be.” He pulled the folded report from his pocket again, whispering to himself: “And I certainly wonder why we’re being ordered to move in earlier.” Then he continued in a louder voice, “Listen, I need you to spread word to all the men—get a few privates to run the lines if you need. We’re going to advance at approximately eleven hundred hours. They’re going to sound horns—like a klaxon or siren, I guess. When that goes, we go. Tell the troops and then report back to me.”

  “Yes, sir.” The corporal rose with a groan, still exhausted from his run.

  “And son, put your helmet back on. We’re at war here, you know.”

  The train lumbered to a stop; its third of the morning. Scofield sat still, watching as ancient Candice Wilbee worked her way to her feet. The elderly drainer had spoken fewer than twenty words to the outrider since introducing herself earlier that morning. There were three other men in the cabin, which consisted of a row of benches along each wall and various bins and shelves against the back side of the long car. The windows were covered by sheets of iron and only a few kerosene lanterns flickered above. They swung beneath short chains, casting a dim pall about the space. The scent of the burning fuel permeated the air.

  “This . . . this stop will be a bit different than the earlier ones, I’m afraid, Mr. Scofield,” Wilbee rasped, her voice low. She coughed and shook her head. “Someone bring my damn IV tower down.” With that the old woman shuffled toward the door set near the front of the cabin. Hiking up her crimson skirt and muttering about getting old under her breath.

  Scofield remained sitting for a minute longer, wondering what he’d see when he stepped outside. The first place the drainers had taken him that morning was a ghost town. Empty houses—hundreds of them—and old gas stations and a strip mall full of windowless stores and fading signs; a half-burned church and an elementary school with the roof collapsed and the flagpole toppled.

  The second stop of the morning was nothing but acres of flatland. But it had not always been flat: Wilbee showed the outrider the foundations of dozens of homes, businesses, and what was once a public pool. A town hall. A bank run by three generations of the same family. All bulldozed flat. The roads had been broken apart and trucked away. One could have walked to within a hundred yards of the outskirts of the ruined town and never known it had stood there for over a hundred years.

  Finally Scofield stood, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. He pulled on his hat and walked toward the two drainers who had not followed Candice. Their conversation dropped off as he passed. Scofield hopped down from the train and let his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. Wilbee was inserting an IV needle into a port in her left forearm. The IV tower was in the hand of a young man wearing sunglasses and the distinct beige robe of his cohort.

  There was nothing to see but rolling hills dotted by low scrub and Joshua trees. Scofield knew immediately, then, that whatever they were here to behold was on the other side of the train. As if on cue, Wilbee began to walk toward the front of the locomotive. Scofield followed, taking small measured to steps as he trailed the elderly woman. A pocket of warm, dense air drifted down from the engine as it groaned and huffed. The back of the outrider’s neck grew damp—steam or sweat, he wasn’t sure.

  Then they were rounding the savage black scoop and then he could see it all. In the valley below lay a broken city. Hundreds of buildings, some dozens of stories high. A massive parking garage with sagging concrete beams and endless feet of rebar hanging twisted in the breeze like bones revealed by rotted flesh. Rusting cars and broken train tracks. Overpasses fallen down onto roads grown thick with weeds.

  “Where the hell are we?” Scofield whispered.

  “Only about thirty minutes from downtown Vegas, actually. Maybe a bit more on horseback.” She smiled ruefully. “Never heard of Barrisford, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Then they’ve done well. Your people. Those people who run that place you protect. You see that big building there? The one that used to be all covered in gleaming white paint?” Wilbee pointed a gnarled finger. “That, my friend, is a hospital. Or it was. Still has plenty of its occupants, too. Mayor Dreg simply cut off the power one day. That meant no more water, too, of course, when the pumps all died. No power, no water . . . no warning. No pity. Nothing. Barrisford refused to incorporate itself into the New Las Vegas federation, see, so after some failed backroom dealings, Dreg just . . . killed the city. Killed thousands of its occupants. Not just those left hooked up to respirators and dialysis machines, mind you.”

  Wilbee turned to face Scofield, staring up directly into the outrider’s eyes. Her glare was hard and even frightening despite wrinkles that pointed to a life of smiles. “It was worse than that. A lot of the residents had already left, enticed by incentives. Cash, property, so on. The rest got the message when the Civil Defense Forces moved in and started evictions. Started torching houses and apartment buildings. The prison? They left that alone. Many, many men had life sentences changed to death. Slow death. This all happened in about a week, Mr. Scofield. And it happened to a lot more places than here at Barrisford. Have you ever heard of Monroe? Grayson City?”

  “No,” Scofield answered quietly.

  “Of course not. Make no mistake, sir. This is not limited to this desert here. This type of ‘consolidation,’—as the bastards like to call it—is happening in Ohio and Montana, across the Gulf states, and beyond. It is coordinated. It is the future as preordained by the few. The mighty few. To this,” Wilbee swept a hand across the vista of a shattered land, “We say ‘no.’”

  The old woman lowered her arm and whispered something to the young drainer beside her. The young man raised Wilbee’s IV tower and the pair walked away from the outrider who stood still, staring ahead with his face a blank mask. His eyes drifted from the hospital with its peeling paint and shattered windows to a block of buildings that once held offices or apartments. A half dozen roads led out of the city, each simply disappearing a few hundred yards into the desert.

  When finally Scofield moved again, pulling off his hat to run a hand through his hair, Candice called out to him.

  “Come over here, Scofield.”

  Scofield fished a lighter out of his pocket to light the cigarette still hanging from his mouth. His hand trembled as he held the flame to the cigarette’s tip. Then the outrider turned and walked the thirty-odd paces to where the drainers stood. “Just a couple more stops to make, then you’ll be free to go.”

  “What?”

  Wilbee nodded. “We’re going to release you. What you do with the freedom is up to you. But again, a few more things to see first. Take a look down at your feet.”

  Scofield looked down. Sand and rocks and dried out grasses—there was nothing remarkable at all to see. He raised his head again, a quizzical look on his face.

  “Now take a look just a few feet over there. See how there’s nothing growing there? Not even dead grass? This soil was turned a few years back. I know how Dreg likes to present himself. This, however, is how he conducts himself.

  “You’re standing on the grave of over five thousand people.”

  23

  Beneath the feet of other men, R
ussell Ascher was very much alive and moving fast. His wide shoulders scraped the sides of the tunnel, sending dust billowing behind him in the pools of greenish light cast by chemical lanterns hung along the ceiling. Dozens of feet overhead, three regiments of Federal soldiers were advancing into the center of the sunfield, ready to begin their sweep when the sirens sounded.

  Why the fuck did they move up the schedule! Ascher raged to himself as he tried to keep up the pace. He had to get to the capacitor bank, still nearly two miles away, before the klaxons sounded and the assault began. It was his duty to connect the wiring of the capacitors to the flux compression generator and then get that massive assembly—a hulking network of wires, pipes, and convection plates that all together was larger than a city bus—tapped to a QV pillar. That would require not only the sprint still ahead of him, not only the frenzied work to ready the equipment, but also climbing up a hundred foot ladder while carrying a massive coil of wire.

  There had been no one else to do the job. Russell had both the technical knowledge and the sheer brawn to accomplish the task; now if only he were a better goddamn runner. His lungs ached but he pressed ahead unflagging, a lone man lumbering along in a dark, narrow tunnel.

  Greg White rode west at a full gallop. It was mid-morning and the sun was still at his back. A quarter mile ahead he could see C. J. Haskell breaking off to head south, down into the field. Behind him he knew a dozen-odd outriders were doing the same. A few hundred yards more and Greg wheeled his horse, the late Moses Smith’s bay, to the left and charged toward the towering QV pillars.

  Haskell reached the field and slowed his mount—a hardly-broken colt he’d pulled from the pen—to a trot. He pulled his rifle from the saddle holster and ratcheted back the bolt, chambering a round. “Slow down, boy,” he called as the colt pulled at its bit, nervously tossing his mane and speeding up without a command.

  “Calm down, goddammit—horse! Christ, I don’t even know your name.”

  Wilbee turned to walk back to the train. She stopped when Scofield asked: “How long ago was this knocked down?”