Lee Harden Series (Book 3): Primal [The Remaining Universe]

by Molles, D. J.

  The man with the sweat rings maintained his eye contact with Angela, and in his expression she didn’t see a man that was trying to trap her, as often happened with her detractors. Rather, she saw a man that was genuinely concerned with how things were shaping up.

  You and me both, Angela had to admit, if only to herself.

  The man pressed on, doggedly speaking over others who wanted their concerns and arguments to be heard. “I mean, if you’re talking about traditional constitutional law, then I have to ask, are you familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act?”

  Angela felt her stomach tighten at the mention of it.

  Honestly, the man echoed some of Angela’s own arguments.

  Arguments that she’d made in private to Carl, and Lee, back when he was still around…

  Lee, where are you now?

  Angela nodded her head. “Yes, sir. I’m familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act. And while the United Eastern States may have some differences from the original United States Constitutional law—out of simple necessity—I can assure you that we are not using the military to uphold domestic laws, or using them against citizens.”

  The man scoffed at this. “But that’s exactly what you’re—”

  “First of all,” Angela interrupted, projecting her voice so that it could be heard over his, but so that she wouldn’t appear to be yelling. “The entire concept of Posse Comitatus enables whoever is in charge of upholding the law—in this case, me—to organize a group of individuals that will help enforce those laws. And there is no one—and I mean no one—who is better qualified for this action than Master Sergeant Gilliard, which is why I have chosen him to act in this capacity.”

  There were some shouts of people trying to be heard, but Angela wasn’t done.

  “Secondly,” she called. “We aren’t dealing with simple common law breakers, such as thieves. The people we’re talking about, the people styling themselves the ‘Lincolnists’—” here she put up dismissive air quotes “—aren’t just dissidents. These are people actively working to sabotage your safety and security. These are people who are actively working with the so-called President Briggs, who wants to come and take you back over for his own personal gain.”

  The crowd had quieted somewhat under the force of Angela’s words.

  “Those of you who’ve been with us since the beginning will remember that Briggs is a tyrant—a dictator—who starves his own people if they disagree with him, and who, if you’ll remember, completely abandoned us four years ago to fight the massive hordes of infected coming out of the northeastern population centers. When he abandoned us, he relinquished any right to govern us, and so we govern ourselves. That’s the whole reason why the United Eastern States even exists.” Angela took a breath. “So I can assure you, once again, that Master Sergeant Gilliard is well within his legal boundaries to carry out his investigation.”

  The man with the sweat rings glowered, but seemed partially mollified.

  “But what have you done with them?” Someone shouted.

  A woman’s voice.

  Angela scanned the crowd and found the speaker. It was a woman she didn’t recognize from Fort Bragg. It was someone from the Butler Safe Zone.

  She stood, holding the hand of a small boy, and with a baby on her hip.

  The sight of that made Angela’s throat catch.

  “I have friends,” the woman proclaimed. “And they’re gone now. Gilliard came and took them in for questioning and they never came back!”

  Angela’s heart pulsed uncomfortably a few times, but she never let the discomfort reach her face. “Ma’am, I can promise you that I personally oversee everything that Master Sergeant Gilliard does, and he has not harmed your friends, whoever they are. However—”

  “Then what happened to them?” the woman demanded.

  “However,” Angela repeated, sterner. “I know for a fact that some of the people—many of the people—that have been investigated have chosen to leave the United Eastern States for their own personal reasons.” The lie felt thick, like gummy mucous in her throat. “If they’ve chosen to do that secretly, and without telling their friends and families…well, I can’t do anything about that.”

  The woman seemed bewildered. “But why haven’t we seen any of them leave?”

  Angela allowed an expression of compassion to come over her features. “I imagine that if I were sabotaging my fellow citizens—putting them in danger—then I wouldn’t care to look them in the eyes either. I imagine they left discreetly. And I cannot speak to where they’ve gone, other than to suspect that perhaps they intend to make the trip to Colorado where they’ll find out for themselves the kind of tyrant they’ve been idealizing this whole time, at the cost of thousands of lives.”

  Angela looked up, and out, and for a moment her eyes strayed to the back of the crowd that was gathered around her, seeking answers to things that couldn’t be answered—at least not truthfully. Not if Angela intended to keep these people safe from the dangerous world that surrounded them.

  At the back of the crowd, her eyes met a woman with sharp features and curly brown hair.

  Marie stood, and in her eyes there was a look of understanding. And…absolution.

  After all, it had been Marie that had told her, only a month ago, to let Carl off the leash, and simply deny it to the people.

  Maybe Marie had become the devil on Angela’s shoulder.

  Or maybe Marie was just wiser.

  Angela had rejected the idea when Marie had said it. But times change. And people have to change with them.

  Across the crowd of angry, confused, and accusing faces, Marie gave Angela a small nod. A nod that told her, You’re doing the right thing.

  Angela gave the slightest nod back, then readdressed the crowd.

  “Next question.”

  NINE

  ─▬▬▬─

  HUNTER-KILLER

  Sam still took an enormous amount of shit, mainly from Jones. But it seemed that during the fall of the Fort Bragg Safe Zone, he’d proven his mettle to his squad.

  They didn’t call him “half-boot” anymore, and he no longer had to be the gunner.

  Though Sam was indeed a “half-boot”—one of the many soldiers from Fort Bragg that had not been “real” soldiers back before the world went to shit, and who had gone through an abbreviated form of infantry training—the subject of Jones’s derision had become the new private.

  The second that Sam heard that the new private’s name was Pickell, he knew he was largely off the hook.

  Private Pickell was also a half-boot. Tall and lean, with an angular face. His helmet looked oversized on him, and his OTV looked too small. He was a little on the older side for a half-boot, most of which were between fifteen and twenty. Pickell was probably somewhere in his early thirties, which made him the old man of the group.

  Old Man Pickell was currently in the turret of the Humvee, and when Sam squinted up at him from his new position directly behind the driver—Chris—he saw Pickell’s face scrunched against the wind, his upper teeth visible.

  The Humvee rumbled on, heading northeast on Highway 540, towards Augusta.

  Billings—recently promoted to sergeant—was taking them straight into the thick of it.

  In the front passenger’s seat, Sergeant Billings held an old paper map that seemed to unfurl to take up half the cab. He rustled about on it, frustration clouding his features.

  “Dad, are we lost?” Jones asked from his spot behind Billings.

  Billings ignored him, kept tracing their route with his index finger.

  “Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad.”

  “Don’t give in,” Chris advised from behind the wheel, his shoulders gradually tightening each time Jones said “Dad.”

  Billings tried mightily to focus. But he was already irked by the old map, which was about twenty years old, and some of the roads were named wrong, or were just wrong altogether. Not to mention that most of the road signs had been ripped up, t
orn out, run over, or otherwise destroyed in the four years since there’d been anyone to maintain stuff like that.

  “Dad!” Jones continued. “Dad!”

  Billings shook his head.

  “Pay attention to me!” Jones shrieked.

  In the turret, Pickell had dissolved into fits of laughter.

  Billings took a moment to breathe. “Do you need something, Jones?”

  Jones didn’t respond. He jammed his head against Pickell’s leg, looking upwards and shouting at him as though suddenly enraged: “You shut the fuck up, Pickell!”

  Pickell stopped audibly laughing, but Sam could still see him shaking.

  Jones shook his head and righted himself in his seat, casting an irritated glance at Sam. “Goddamned Kosher-Dill thinks he can laugh with the rest of us. Like he’s real person or something.”

  Sam smiled, but knew better than to join in at this particular point. Jones was in a mood to roast anyone who gave him an opportunity. He could not be trusted. He would lure Sam in and then turn on him.

  “Alright,” Billings raised his voice, still looking at the map. “Settle down, my children. If my incredible navigational prowess is correct—”

  Jones let out a bark of laughter.

  “—Then we’re about five klicks from where Squad Three got into their little fracas.”

  “If we’re lost, I vote we eat Pickell first,” Jones called, facing his window.

  “He’s too old,” Sam pointed out, deciding to brave the treacherous tides. “The meat would be too gamey.”

  “Yeah, but it’s briney,” Jones replied. “That keeps the meat tender.”

  “You would want to eat my pickle,” Pickell hazarded.

  Jones and Sam were silent. Not giving Pickell the benefit of even the slightest courtesy laugh.

  “That’s hilarious, Pickell,” Jones finally deadpanned. “Good one. How about you do this: How about you cut your fucking tongue out and never speak again?”

  “We’re not lost,” Billings announced, slapping the map closed in more or less its original condition. “See?” Billings pointed out the passenger’s side, where an ancient and weather-bent sign stooped so low that it was barely visible as they passed.

  The sign proclaimed that they were currently on State Highway 540/4, National Highway 1.

  “Exactly where I said we were,” Billings said, shoving the semi-folded map back onto the dash. “Incredible. Navigational. Prowess.”

  As the last bout of humor petered out, Sam felt the nerves settle into his gut. They weren’t as bad as they used to be—he was growing accustomed to them. They didn’t make him tremble. But he still got…jittery. And his stomach always felt sour.

  It wouldn’t last.

  Things would clarify. Once the shooting started.

  Billings leaned back to project his voice up into the turret. “Bread and Butter, we’re a few klicks out from the objective! Look sharp!”

  “Roger,” Pickell replied.

  Jones shot a look at Sam and rolled his eyes, “Listen to him. ‘Roger.’ What a tool.”

  One thing about Pickell that Sam respected—and maybe it was due to Pickell’s additional years—but the man was pretty unflappable. Even with Jones constantly going at him, Pickell took everything in stride.

  He’s a cool cucumber, Sam thought, and almost burst out laughing.

  He’d have to remember that one for later.

  Laughter was the best medicine. It was how they passed the time. It was their armor. Without it, the fear got stronger. But when you made everything a joke, when you turned everything—even the horrific and the gruesome—into satire, then you took its power away.

  Even now, Sam realized that this was a sort of mental loan system.

  He was borrowing on his mental stability, for peace of mind today.

  But eventually he would pay. Everyone paid in the end.

  Billings grabbed the radio handset from the cradle between him and Chris and transmitted across the series of radio repeaters that had been erected along this route over the past month, giving them the ability to talk to Butler.

  “Alfred, Alfred, this is Squad Four,” he said.

  Butler Command came back after a moment: “Squad Four, Alfred, go ahead.”

  It was a woman’s voice. One of the many people that were now working the interim Tactical Operations Control, coordinating the squads that were clearing the route from Butler to Fort Bragg, and, ultimately, hoping to clear Fort Bragg itself.

  Jones leaned forward in his seat, staring at the radio set. “She sounds hot. Ask her what her name is.”

  Billings shook his head. “Yeah, we’re gonna be arriving at Checkpoint Scarecrow. Nothing further. Out.”

  “Roger,” the woman replied. “Thank you, Squad Four.”

  Billings hung up the receiver and turned a focused gaze back out to their surroundings. “Slow up a bit,” he mumbled to Chris.

  The Humvee began to decelerate.

  Another dilapidated sign to the right of the road welcomed them to the city of Augusta.

  The objective of the last few days had been to punch Highway 1 straight through Augusta. Clear it, and set up radio repeaters, so that convoys wouldn’t need a satellite phone to communicate with Butler.

  Clearing Highway 1 all the way to North Carolina was just one aspect of their larger mission: to retake Fort Bragg. But before that ultimate goal was met, they would have to secure the route, not only so that they could set up a more reliable system of communication between Butler and Fort Bragg, but also so that larger convoys could get through unmolested.

  Sam, his squad, and eleven others, were the tip of the spear.

  Well…ten others now that Squad Three had been wrecked.

  Twenty-four hours prior, Squad Three had hit resistance, right in this area.

  They’d been attacked by primals.

  Two of the squad made it back to Butler.

  One of those two died that morning. He’d lost his arm to a primal. How his buddy even got the rest of him away from the beasts and back to Butler was a mystery at this point in time. None of the dirty details had leaked out to the rest of the squads yet.

  The radio crackled: “Squad Seven to Squad Four.”

  Billings’s mouth tensed. He pressed the PTT without taking the handset from the cradle. “Go ahead, Loudermouth.”

  Billings liked to use that sergeant’s name whenever possible, and to say it with a faint inflection of sarcasm.

  “We’re probably about a klick away from that same spot,” Loudermouth said. “Coming in from the west.”

  “Roger,” Billings replied. When he’d released the PTT, he glanced in the back. “I’ll be damned if Loudermouth gets more CKs than us. You hear me, Pickell?”

  “Loud and clear, Sarge,” Pickell replied.

  Billings looked forward again. “Sam. Jones. Get on it.”

  Sam and Jones both dropped their windows and rested their rifles so that the muzzles pointed out into the world beyond.

  On Sam’s side, everything was a green and tan blur. Fields left fallow for years blew by, with six- and seven-foot-tall pine trees sprouting up all across the waist-high weeds. The forest gradually reclaiming its territory.

  “Houses,” Chris called as he drove.

  Sam glanced up ahead and saw the beginnings of civilization—more than just a farm house here and there, but collections of houses now. Neighborhoods. Suburbs. The inevitable heralds of an approaching city.

  “The five-twenty loop should be coming up here soon,” Billings advised. “If you can get a clear on-ramp, take it.”

  “Roger.”

  They continued forward.

  The sky above them was alternately slate and sunny. Large skeins of flat, gray clouds hung in the sky. They seemed motionless, but they must have been moving because the sun would occasionally hit an empty spot and everything would be bright for a while before turning to dull gray again.

  “Squad Seven, Squad Four,” Loudermout
h transmitted again. “We’re on an overpass. Clear line of sight down I-Five-Twenty. We got eyes on the barricade that Squad Three hit yesterday.”

  Billings made a small huff, then transmitted. “Alright. What do you see, Loudermouth?”

  “Just a line of cars, all the way across the outer loop.”

  “Does it look like someone put it there on purpose, or is it a traffic jam from four years ago?”

  Loudermouth took a moment to respond. “Yeah, it definitely looks like someone set it up to be a barricade. We’re gonna back up and get on the interstate. See if we can’t ram some cars out of the way and clear the path.”

  “Fuck that,” Billings remarked to himself, then transmitted. “Roger. We’ll meet you down there.” He released the PTT. “Asshole’s just trying to get more CKs.”

  Confirmed Kills were the new currency of the Hunter-Killer squads, of which Sam and his squad were now a part. Command had decided to start rewarding their squads, based on how many primals they took out during route clearance, the thinking being that less primals meant a safer route.

  Sam wasn’t entirely sure this was true.

  It sounded good on paper. They weren’t forcing the troops to go out and put themselves in dangerous situations to get a few more CKs. They were just incentivizing taking an extra step to kill them, rather than what had become the norm—a general policy of deliberate avoidance, sometimes causing them to lose entire days, routing themselves around small towns where they’d seen primal movement from a distance.

  But, what command hadn’t taken into account was how competitive a bunch of twenty-somethings could be. Now, the weekly incentives for being the squad with the most Confirmed Kills—usually something simple, like they all got an extra day off, or an extra ration of a more commodity-type item—had become icing on the cake to simple bragging rights.

  To add to that fire, the nodding deference of their fellow survivors, the whispered usage of the phrase “Top Tier” to describe the squads with the most CK’s, and, perhaps most of all, the impression that it made on the opposite sex, were like gasoline to these young men’s egos.

  Sam frowned, thinking of the opposite sex.

  Thinking of Charlie, his…could you say girlfriend? Well, they’d slept together. But that was primarily because she was a Lincolnist and was pumping him for information. She was, as you might expect, not one of the girls who cared much for the Hunter-Killer squads.