by Dana Fraser
Easing the barrel of the rifle down and behind him, he turned so that the soldiers in the vehicle could see his relaxed, empty hands. Through the glare on the windscreen, he noted the driver was a lanky black kid barely old enough to shave. Next to him was an older, beefier male, his gaze perceptibly cool despite the distance and glass between him and Cash. The frosty look didn’t bother Cash half as much as the appearance of another male jutting up through the gunner turret, a face splitting grin on his youthful face as his fingers caressed the side of a Ma Deuce — Browning’s .50 caliber machine gun.
Probably old enough to vote but too young to buy his own beer, the kid in the turret was ready to kill someone. He probably had a hard-on just thinking about it.
Cash had run into guys like him in Afghanistan and Iraq. He knew them by the dehumanizing slang they used for both non-combatants and enemy forces. Ali Baba, Haji, Johnny Jihad…
His eyes drifted shut, then sprang open almost immediately at the sound of distant gunfire.
Tensing, he watched the vehicle slow to a stop. All eyes in the Humvee were fixed on him. The gunfire hadn’t been real — at least not there, at that moment.
It was an echo of the past.
From the passenger seat, the vehicle commander rolled the window down, his focus flicking from Cash’s empty hands, to the holstered pistol and then the rifle sling, most of the weapon obscured by Cash’s body and the pack. Cash studied the man in return. He was probably late twenties or early thirties, his skin tanned, his eyes blue. Whatever hair he might have on his head was covered by an Advanced Combat Helmet, the brain bucket firmly strapped to his chin by a black strap. A thin, rectangular patch above his heart read “Mulhern.” The thumb-sized patch centered over his sternum identified his rank as a staff sergeant.
He couldn’t see what the driver or gunner were, but he noted that the only insignia on their right shoulders was a flag. The vehicle commander had the familiar horse head patch of the 1st Cavalry Division below his flag, meaning, unlike the driver and gunner, Mulhern had been in battle.
Cash nodded at the man. “Morning, Sergeant.”
Mulhern stared another full minute, taking a careful measure of Cash, before responding. Cash forced his muscles to stay relaxed, his gaze remaining on the vehicle commander despite the urge to look up at the death happy kid in charge of the .50 Cal.
“What’s your destination?” Mulhern asked, the three words and their clipped delivery just enough to hint at his Southern roots.
“Tennessee.”
A faint grin tried to crawl up the sergeant’s face but was quickly beat down.
“Smoke break,” he growled at the two men then slid out of the Humvee.
He walked about twenty feet past Cash, stopping before he hit the first row of soybeans growing in the field bordering the road. The plants, ready for harvesting, would likely rot with no fuel to power the heavy equipment needed to pull them from the ground and get them to the processing plants or local markets.
Taking the announcement of a smoke break as an invitation to speak, Cash followed after Mulhern. Seeing that the sergeant hadn’t pulled out a cigarette, Cash reached carefully for his breast pocket, removed two cigarettes and handed one to the man before moving even more cautiously to extract a lighter from his pants pocket as the gunner came running over like a puppy let off its leash.
Cash shuddered at the thought of the kid ever being let off his leash for real. The residents of Effingham were almost exclusively white. The kid wasn’t eager to kill terrorists — he was just eager to kill.
Finished lighting Mulhern’s cigarette, he pulled out a third smoke and offered it to the gunner, reading his name and rank at the same time.
Specialist Daniels, two ranks below the sergeant as far as the military was concerned. Cash held an entirely different opinion on where the kid ranked.
Thumbing the lighter, he lit Daniels’ cigarette and then his own. Neither soldier seemed ready to talk, each of them taking long, quiet drags. Trying to break the ice a little more, Cash angled his head toward the Humvee.
“Kid doesn’t smoke?”
“Dad has lung cancer,” the sergeant offered before falling back into silence and another careful study of Cash.
Trying another approach, Cash smiled and poked his chin toward the man’s right shoulder with its 1st Cavalry patch. “That’s, what 2005 or so? Sadr City?”
Thick brown brows lifted before the sergeant nodded. “Was in the Louisiana National Guard back then. You?”
“Spent some time chasing the Taliban around Paktika Province in Afghanistan,” Cash answered. His groin and chest tightened as he pushed away memories of the small teams sent into the area’s rugged hills, of passing through the narrow valleys with their high walls, a lone insurgent looking down for a split second before a bullet from his AK-47 sliced through the guy walking in front of Cash.
He swallowed hard then gave a little nod at the ghosts crowding in on him.
“Kicked around Anbar after that.”
He didn’t need to mention the cities in the Iraqi province that he’d fought in. Fallujah, Ramedi — more Americans had died in Anbar than any other province in that god forsaken country. Now ISIS held sway over the rubble.
Mulhern took another puff before turning a thousand-yard stare toward the road they were all traveling on. “Tennessee is quite a ways from here.”
Cash shrugged and tried not to think of the distance. “Just a quarter thousand miles. I’ve humped longer distances.”
Finally letting a smile crawl up his stern face, the sergeant looked at Cash.
“If you’re heading down U.S. 45, cut a wide track around the airport,” Mulhern warned.
“We ain’t gonna take him in?” Daniels asked, one hand busy feeding the cigarette to his thick lips while the other absently rolled a penny from knuckle to knuckle. “Violating state law—“
“Do I look like a Statie?” Mulhern growled.
Daniels shrugged.
“Cops don’t want to get out and do their own patrol, that’s on them. He doesn’t fit our…” The sergeant’s gaze cut toward the driver, the kid busy eyeballing his side mirror.
“Our profile,” Mulhern finished.
“It’s true then?” Cash asked. “About the Muslims?”
The sergeant confirmed with a nod, but then he said something that blew through Cash like an arctic wind.
“If only that’s all we were worried about.”
Cash’s brain spun the words around, cataloging all the potential implications of Mulhern’s statement.
“Cartels?” he whisper-asked.
Gallows had warned about regular illegals making a break for the border. What most Americans didn’t realize was that the cartels were already entrenched throughout America, especially in the towns along major highways. People had gotten a hint when almost an entire family was slain in Ohio. But other shit had turned the focus away.
First the Orlando nightclub massacre, then the Dallas and Baton Rouge shooting of police officers leaving at least eight cops dead. The constant news feed of tragedy made everyday citizens forget about Ohio and the cartels.
Some of the people Cash encountered on the homesteading sites he visited insisted the CIA was responsible for running the cartels. Cash didn’t know about that, but the government had already rolled over and exposed its collective belly to the big pharmaceutical companies. If the money was good enough, why not get in bed with El Chapo?
“Cartels and more,” Mulhern answered. Jaw ticking, his gaze drifted again to the black private in the driver’s seat. “Let’s just say you should be careful of coming in contact with any person or group that doesn’t look like you.”
“Unless it’s a herd of swimsuit models,” the gunner cracked. “Then call me and we can pound some pu—”
“So long as the only heat they’re packing is between their legs,” Mulhern interrupted with an icy smile before throwing Cash another serious look and a nod at his pack. “Ju
st remember what I said about the airport. Half our unit is there and the rest are running recon. Before we rolled out of the airport this morning, a FEMA truck had already rolled in. More than your guns will be confiscated.”
Heat fanned across Cash’s face. He couldn’t contain the flush of anger, but he kept the look of disgust from surfacing on his face as the government’s past lie was exposed. All the mainstream pundits in both parties had promised that a 2012 executive order by the president didn’t give FEMA the right to redistribute resources after the goods had left the production line and become the property of individuals. Mulhern had just warned him that the opposite was true.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Cash said, tossing the butt of his cigarette into the rich soil and extending his hand toward Mulhern.
They shook and, out of politeness, Cash turned toward the gunner even though the idea of clasping hands with Daniels turned his stomach oily.
The kid took one last drag on the cigarette before he flicked it at the nearest row of soybeans. Still ignoring Cash, he slowly peeled a wrapper off a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, the spiral of paper drifting to the ground. Popping the gum in his mouth, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“Be seeing you on the road, old man.”
Chapter Seven
Navigating a wide berth around the Effingham Memorial Airport without winding up in the crosshairs of a farmer or other local resident was tricky. The land around the airport was mostly open fields, which would leave him in plain view of anyone at the airport with a scope or set of binoculars.
Coming to the railroad tracks, he followed them south, hoping the trees that lined the east side and the tracks’ embankment would shield him from the view of any soldiers. At the same time, no one could get an itchy trigger finger because he was trespassing.
The rough gravel combined with the weight of his pack made the walk treacherous. Worry over being spotted by a soldier, cops or some FEMA lackey made it exhausting.
Damn! He couldn’t believe the government was already confiscating items — and in a little nothing place like Effingham.
The thought made his gut tight as he mulled over the proximity of Fort Campbell to the Dover homestead.
Best not go there, his mind cautioned.
His gut didn’t listen.
There were a lot of things about the Dover location that were great. Most importantly, the land had been in his price range with all the needed features. To live independently, they needed an existing structure to house them, a fresh water source, a means of heating their buildings, and enough land to grow food on. The old farmhouse on a little over fifty acres had its own well, a pond already stocked with bass and channel catfish, and a stream that cut the property neatly in half. Mostly covered in timber with only a few existing pastures, the trees he and Marie had cleared for planting had seen them through two winters with more than a lifetime of wood for their modest needs remaining to be harvested.
But there were flaws, too. No matter how much Cash might indulge in reading articles or novels about some kind of global, or at least nationwide collapse, he hadn’t assigned the scenario an imminent probability. His primary concern had been getting Marie and the kids out of larger cities overrun with the kind of criminals that had killed her husband Greg. He would have preferred several hundred miles between the homestead and any large concentration of males, like the prisons in both Nashville and just over the border in Kentucky or the Army base that straddled the line of both states.
It is what it is. Stop thinking. Stay focused on the now.
Cash nodded at the order. He’d seen too many guys catch a bullet on patrol because they were thinking about problems back home. Most of them had been lucky and survived. The insurgents who had shot at them had, to a man, looked like Swiss cheese at the end, if there was anything left of them to see.
Easing into a sitting position, Cash pulled out a protein bar and uncapped one of his waters. He was halfway through the bottles he had refilled at the truck stop in Effingham. When they were gone, he still had two water bladders, but each was only a day’s worth of hydration.
He would need to find more water before the end of the next day.
Finished eating, he stood and dusted off the small grains too little to capture and eat. With a cluster of three trees nearby, he walked over and urinated against one of them, the widest of the three sheltering his back while he had his hands full.
Canceling out the noise of his own stream, he listened for other sounds. He had heard gunfire twice in the four hours he’d been walking. Real gunfire, not the memory of such. No aircraft had passed overhead, which was both a relief and worrying. Something small and flying low could have been the government performing reconnaissance, not only on the people causing problems but those trying to stay on their own property and protect their family.
Or people like him, just trying to get home.
But the absence of jets in the sky criss-crossing the country was unnerving.
How the hell could everything just stop like that?
Shaking the thought away, he zipped up, climbed on all fours up the embankment that had shielded him from view on the east side of the tracks and pulled out his pair of field binoculars.
He wasn’t sure how far he had traveled already, but he kept a rough estimate running by counting the evenly spaced wooden rail ties. With the void between the ties and the front-to-back distance of each tie on its own, he figured about two feet traveled tie-to-tie. Every twenty-six hundred or so ties was another mile covered. He had counted over ten times a thousand, but he knew the tracks didn’t run parallel with U.S. 45.
Trying not to think about how much the two lines diverged, he slid down his side of the embankment and resumed walking.
He kept following the tracks as they angled west, even when he knew the road he wanted was shifting east at the same time. With the rifle and pistol, he needed to get at least a few miles south of the grade school in case the federal or local government had secured that area, too. Only then would he cut east and locate U.S. 45.
By dusk, he was comfortably past the school and the airport. Dog tired, he found another cluster of trees, one that formed a dense circle. Taking his pack off, he pushed it inside the circle then wiggled his way between two trunks.
There was just enough space inside the copse for him to stretch out to his full length and have some of the pack behind him.
Taking advantage of the last bit of remaining daylight that penetrated the trees, he opened the pack and worked at quickly re-arranging its contents. Removing the two Mylar blankets weighing less than four ounces combined, he spread them on the ground. He placed the radio next to the rifle and plugged in a set of earbuds, but kept one ear unblocked so he could hear if anyone or anything tried to sneak up on him.
It was all static up and down the AM and FM dials. A few minutes remained if Gallows was still broadcasting.
Fixing the dial to Gallows’ channel, Cash resumed shifting the contents of his pack. Certain things needed to stay at the bottom to keep the weight properly distributed and because they wouldn’t result in imminent death if he couldn’t retrieve them immediately. Those items included a spare set of boots, a small aluminum pan, food he wouldn’t need to consume for a few more days and a guide to North American edible plants that he hoped he wouldn’t have to consult. He also layered in a short pry bar and a flat head screw driver, fishing wire and lures, twenty feet of lightweight nylon rope and one of two rolls of duct tape.
Between the bottom layer and everything that needed to be at the top of the pack or distributed among its exterior pockets, he stuffed two pairs of pants, a half dozen pairs of socks and underwear, and three t-shirts, as well as a slightly heavier flannel jacket than the windbreaker he had on. Next came the first aid kit and the tincture of iodine, which he could use for both disinfecting wounds and decontaminating water. On the same layer, he added the Ziploc bag of Vaseline soaked cotton balls,
a tin half full of strike anywhere matches with a char-cloth filling the gap, and a one-liter tumbler with a built in water filter. Stuffed inside the tumbler were his toothbrush and toothpaste.
At the very top, he put in his spare ammo, a night vision monocle and one of the two filled water bladders. The second bladder still hung down the center of his back. He placed that one next to the radio then clipped onto the outside of the pack his three knives — a folding multi-tool knife that included a small blade, a KA-BAR Skeleton knife for both combat and gutting and skinning game, and a Kukri blade in case he wanted to make a shelter or needed to get through dense vegetation.
Rolling the pack so that the knives and the entrenchment tool were pressed against the dirt and nothing hard remained between his head and the soft middle layer of clothing, Cash settled into place and pulled the top Mylar blanket over him as Bobby Joe Gallows came on air.
The news wasn’t good. It would be a long time before it was, Cash believed.
The attacks had moved beyond the large cities and turned far stealthier.
Crops were being set on fire.
So were homes.
Drawing the rifle across his chest, his finger resting alongside the trigger, Cash turned the radio off with his free hand and drifted to sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the distant report of gunfire jerked him awake.
Chapter Eight
On the third day of the lights being out across America, Genevieve Anders walked in darkness down the narrow hall of her rented home. The smell of eggs and pancakes followed her, lending a false sense of security as she quietly opened the door to the bedroom of her nineteen-year-old daughter, Tonya.