by Jason Ross
She shook her head like he was the dumbest genius she ever met. It was a common refrain between them. Gladys barked a laugh, apparently amused at his dumb jock logic. “Wouldn’t she want both of you to find a home and a family?”
Mat launched into a list of reasons why leaving William with her, when he got the mission under control, was the right thing to do.
In the end, she reluctantly agreed.
Mat left Gladys’ house feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders. He’d settled the question of William. She’d agreed to take him in.
If it weren’t for the fact that she towered over him by six inches, he’d probably make a move on her. He’d never knocked boots with a professional basketball player. In fact, he hadn’t been in the sack with anyone since Caroline. It was probably a personal record since puberty—going without the no-pants-dance for three months. It was like being on deployment.
It wasn’t that Gladys wasn’t hot. He could definitely “get there” with her, but he needed her even temperament and steady wisdom for the job. She’d become Mat’s back-door channel to the gossip tree. She told him stuff nobody else wanted to tell an Army Ranger. If he was the father of the QRF team, she was the mother. So what if mom and dad weren’t pounding the punnani pavement? Mat couldn’t risk screwing up the friendship for sex.
In any case, he thought Carter might be a lesbian, but he really had no reason to think that. He was probably just being a prick. He automatically thought of a woman as gay if she didn’t come on to him within the first seventy-two hours. Mat chuckled at himself.
She was a solid human and he was glad to leave William in her capable hands.
Mat walked from Carter’s house to his appointment with the sheriff. When he came into the cell block below the town hall, Sheriff Morgan had Jared, the rat leader from the ambush, in a chair with his hands zip-tied behind his back. He’d been “simmering” in a jail cell for weeks, and looked a lot better-fed than when Mat first grabbed him.
After the Reedy Grove incident and the B.S. about Memphis refugees being somehow better than St. Louis refugees, it occurred to Mat that they might have a glossy, vague idea of the rats—as though they were one, homogeneous enemy. Like the bands of Afghan goat farmers, there might be more to the rats than he beheld. Maybe they could be turned like a wagon, instead of swatted like flies. Then he’d remembered the prisoner… Jared Loudmouth. Mat had radioed the sheriff and suggested they take another crack at intelligence gathering from the guy. It was the least the fucker could do, given what he’d cost the town.
The town cell block hadn’t been modernized, and it reminded Mat of every jail he’d seen in movies; low-slung, concrete, with slit windows peeking above the ground outside. It was past midnight, and the sheriff had two kerosene lamps lighting the cold, gray room.
“He refuses to give me his last name,” the sheriff’s grin looked ghoulish in the light of the lamp.
Jared, the deposed rat leader spoke with more confidence than the situation warranted. Feeding him three meals a day hadn’t made him any more cooperative.
“Names should be stories that tell you who a person is. I’m writing my story, and making my name. You can’t intimidate me. I studied political philosophy at Penn State. I fought in the streets with Antifa.”
Mat laughed. “Have you been down here communing with the ghost of Nelson Mandela? Have you been writing your prison memoirs on the back of toilet paper?”
The big sheriff leaned his chair back against the wall and smiled. He said, “Sergeant Best, I think maybe the right ear.“
Mat’s gloved fist smashed into the side of Jared‘s head. Cartilage crumpled flat against his skull. Jared’s chair flew sideways to the ground. Mat hauled him upright, and stood behind him again where he couldn’t see the next blow coming. The guy sputtered, cried and coughed.
“Young man,“ said Morgan, “I don’t think it’ll be necessary to torture you.“ Morgan stood up and settled his bulk in a crouch in front of the prisoner. “I don’t know what you think you’ve wandered into, son, but this ain’t a story about a young Che Guevara, hero of the apocalypse. Your ears will never be the same after Sergeant Best is done with you. They’ll look like cauliflowers, and it’s the first thing the ladies will notice from now on.”
“Screw you and screw this town,” Jared seethed
“Left ear please.“
“Wait no! Damnit!” he cried as Mat pivoted and delivered a soul-crushing blow to the other ear.
Jared gasped for a full minute, sideways again on the floor, then said, “I thought you weren’t going to torture me.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Son, this isn’t torture. Sergeant, here, learned how to break men in Afghanistan. He knows how to destroy the body and the mind of true believers. Water boarding. Electric shock. Even those fanatical hard cases eventually became babbling babies. So far, I’m in charge of this interview. If I find your attention wandering again, I’ll leave you with Sergeant Best for the real deal. You cost a friend of mine an eye, and Sergeant Best asked me for both of your eyes in trade. You don’t need eyes to talk.”
It was all bullshit, of course. Mat had never interrogated anyone. His army job had been to snatch the bad guys out of their compounds and hand them to legitimate interrogators.
“What do you want me to talk about?” Jared mewled.
Morgan nodded his big head in the lamplight. “If you’re helpful, then we’ll see about getting you a better meal and maybe even a shower.”
“That’s your best offer?” Jared spat.
“It’s the only offer you’re going to get, son. Now you’re going to tell us what’s happening in the refugee camps. We already know plenty, so don’t even think about lying. If we know more about how the camps form and organize, we can save lives—theirs and ours. We just killed two dozen of them this afternoon. It was probably unnecessary. Now, please educate us. Pretty please. With a cherry on top.”
The eastern horizon grayed with the coming dawn as Mat trudged down Center Street on his way home. The nighttime rain had tapered off to a sprinkle. He was exhausted, but the breaking dawn made the streets seem peaceful. The smoldering camps hadn’t yet colored the sky with their columns of daily smoke, ringing the town with peril.
The night patrols confirmed Jared‘s intel—at least the locations of some of the larger camps. A lot of days had passed since Jared had been locked up. Mat needed to act on the intel now, before it became even more stale.
Mat would move on the higher value targets that coming night. He needed to split forces and send one team, probably made up of deputies led by Rickers, to roll up leadership of three camps. Mat could lead the QRF to hit the big one.
The HESCO wouldn’t be done for at least a couple months, even with the whole town working on it every day. Mat was no mathematical genius, but he’d learned: when you drew a circle around a town, that perimeter ended up being fuck-all long. Two times pi “r” equals fuck-all long. That’s what his high school geometry teacher should’ve taught him. That would’ve been good to know.
Even if they cut away the “suburb” neighborhoods, Science Guy estimated it was twelve miles of perimeter, plus another five miles around the Tosh pig farms. To put it in grunt terms: if Mat jogged the perimeter during his morning workout, he’d be dragging ass by the end.
The townspeople were a wonder with heavy equipment, and they seemed to have a ton of raw materials to cobble into a wall, but even with almost every able-bodied man and woman working on it, they could only complete a tenth of a mile a day—about five hundred feet. The wall would be great, but the longer it stretched, the more obvious it became that it wasn’t very useful without men on top and men on patrol both inside and out. Mat would give his left nut for a few dozen crew-served machine guns.
He turned down the last block toward his home, and the sky peaked yellow over his street. He planned to drink a liter of water, grab five hours of sleep, eat lunch, then kit up for the evening raids. They’d go in the witch
ing hour—about nineteen hours from now. The cops and the QRF would have their warning orders waiting for them when they woke up.
Mat stepped inside the door and was greeted by the scent of pancakes and burning plastic.
“Hey Mat. Surprise!“ William called out from the fireplace. A frying pan perched on the coals with the plastic handle slowly melting.
“Just a minute more, and I’ll have breakfast ready,“ William said over his shoulder. “This pan gets really hot.“
Mat flopped onto the couch. Tired as he was, he watched William’s culinary struggles with a smile.
William placed two plates on the coffee table, with matching sets of palm-sized pancakes: one pancake, burned to near inedibility, two dark brown pancakes with centers of uncooked batter, and one nearly perfect golden brown masterpiece. William cheated by giving Mat the best of them. His own were even worse.
How to make a pancake. Mat sighed. There were so damn many things to learn in this life. He wondered if William would survive long enough to learn half of them.
“There was still light in the sky last night when I ran over to Mrs. Morgan’s house for pancake batter,” he said, sheepishly. “I didn’t technically go out after dark. Mrs. Morgan gave me the ingredients and told me what to do. I had to serve the burnt ones because there wasn’t enough batter to make more.”
Mat’s eyes felt dehydrated, like his lids would stick closed the next blink. “This is great, little bro, but give the Morgans back the flour from our own rations, or as close as you can.”
“Oh yeah,” William said with a smile. “I was planning on it. I knew that’s what you’d say, so I kept track how much. I just didn’t know if pancake batter and flour were the same thing.”
So much to learn, Mat mused to himself.
The two sat quietly, chewing crispy pancake.
“So, what do you think of Candice?“ William queried. The scene clicked into place in Mat’s head: the boy waking up early, making breakfast, waiting at the door to talk to his guardian; the closest thing he had to a father and best friend. It all made sense now. William was in love with the girl.
“She’s a cutie, little bro.”
William blushed. “Umm... I kissed her.”
Mat slapped him on the back. “Was that your first real kiss?”
“Yeah.” William smiled so big Mat could see burned pancake in his teeth.
“You picked a good one.”
“She’s the one, I think.”
Mat chortled. “Yeah! the one for today. I hear you. There’s lots of fish in the sea, though, Tiger.”
William’s face fell. It was the wrong note to strike.
Damn, Mat scolded himself. You’re not throwing back drinks with the bros. It was a nice kid’s first kiss. William had notions of riding into the sunset with the young, sweet-smelling brunette.
Mat fumbled, attempting to recover. “She’s perfect. She seems smart.” He almost said, she looks like she’ll have a great rack someday, but he caught himself. That would’ve been Level Ten Creepy. Mat was too tired to have this conversation, but he had no choice. The boy wasn’t going to put it down.
William talked around the pancake cinder in his mouth. “With Candice, it’s like I want to keep her safe. I think I love her.”
Mat sighed. He’d felt the same way about Caroline, William’s sister. The world ate her up anyway, no matter that he was a big, bad Army Ranger.
Mat changed the subject. “I saw Gladys Carver last night. What do you think of her?”
“She’s awesome; part schoolteacher, part fighter, like those girl warriors in Black Panther.”
“Do you think you could make this place home? McKenzie, I mean?” Mat asked.
“Sure we can. I like it here,” William said.
“I’ve been working on getting you set up here,” Mat emphasized the word “you.” “You deserve a family and a home. Traveling with me—there’s not a bright future for you in that.“
William’s brow furrowed and tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. “You’re leaving me?”
“Well, not for a while. I’ve got a lot to do on this job. Don’t worry. Gladys Carver agreed to take you in. I’ve fixed it. You won’t have to leave town or leave your new girl.“
William seemed not to hear. “But I’m coming with you, right?”
Mat stuck to his guns—what he always did when things got dodgy. “No. You don’t have to leave. You have a home here. I’ll make it safe, or as safe as I can, before I go. You can stay with Gladys, and here in town with Candice.”
The boy’s eyes stood out like twin silver dollars. The tears glistened on his cheeks. It was no longer the face of an adolescent basking in the glow of his first kiss. This was the look of terror.
“No, please. We’re going to be Army Rangers. You promised.”
“William, I know what I said, but that was before. I can’t stay here. I don’t know how to be a family to you.”
“Why? Just because your girlfriend died?”
Mat’s face flushed. “What would you know about that, kid? One kiss and you’re an expert?”
It was a bush league retort, Mat felt the sinking in his gut already. Regret. But he had to power through this conversation, this mission. He opened his mouth to speak but he stopped short.
He’d seen William’s exact expression in Kabul when a boy’s dad got blown up by an IED—the eyes swimming in loss. The chin quivering. The cheeks so slack that they drooped.
“My big sister was the only mother I had left. I can’t lose you, too.”
Mat’s stomach churned with ice. He couldn’t face this right now. This talk had gotten out of hand. He was too tired, and the mission was spinning out of control. The big mission—protecting the town—had become like trying to rub off beach sand with hands covered in sunscreen. Every move made a bigger mess.
Mat flanked the threat. “I want you to start sleeping at Gladys‘ house when I am out on night maneuvers.”
“That’s most nights,” William barked.
“It’ll be good for you. And safer.” Get used to it.
William wore the same eyes that day in the clinic when his sister died. But this time, the kid’s eyes went hard.
He’d seen this a lot on deployment in the Middle East. Arabs were a romantic people, and they ran around in the flush of romance over every-damned-thing. Love, food, friendship, religion. But, if you hit them hard enough, the romance compressed to flint; dense, dumb and razor-sharp.
Mat stood, carried his dish to the bucket on the kitchen counter, and went to get his four and a half hours of sleep. He forgot his water again.
The unresolved conflict with William felt like a threat, and no matter which direction Mat pointed his rifle, this one came from his six.
Town Jail
McKenzie, Tennessee
* * *
Sheriff Morgan conducted the interrogations of two of the three rat leaders.
The snatch and grabs had gone easy enough—no casualties and nothing more than minor scuffles. Unlike Afghans, who bunkered inside walled compounds to prevent incursions, the rats lived like bags blown by a storm. Mat’s assault teams marched into the camps, guns out, shuffled through the tents, and took HVTs into custody. No fuss. No muss.
One of the men fingered by Jared turned out to be little more than a bully with violent tendencies. So far, that’d landed him temporarily atop the hierarchy of his camp.
“I’m not too worried about that one,” Sheriff Morgan told Mat. “I think we can take a page from the old cop playbook with a strip and dump.”
“What’s that?”
The sheriff smiled. “Guys like this tend to make enemies out of followers. They survive through brute force. When I started in law enforcement in the 80s in Louisville, his type led local gangs. If we couldn’t get enough for a conviction, we’d hold them for two days, strip them naked, and dump them in their territory. One of their lieutenants always went for a shot at the title; sure as the Tin Man has
a sheet metal dong.”
“And the second guy? The men in his tent could almost be considered a security detail; four armed dudes watching over their primary.”
“Cordell is his name.”
Mat nodded.
“He’s too dangerous to release,” the sheriff agreed. “He’s got the making of a post-apocalyptic warlord. We’ll keep in him here, and may he rot in peace.”
“You got room for about 6,000 more in those cells?”
“I don’t think any of the refugees would complain about three hots and a cot. For now, shooting at ‘em or poking them with your greased javelins is the best idea we got. Do you want to join me for the conversation with this last guy?”
Mat nodded. This last guy defied post-apocalyptic stereotypes.
Dr. Abraham Hauser had given them his name straightaway, despite being restrained in flex-cuffs. He even spoke to them with the old kind of respect toward law enforcement.
Mat recalled Jared’s description of Hauser: “You don’t have to worry about that sheep Hauser and his crew,” Jared had said. “They’ve got a snowball's chance in hell of mounting an attack on your town. He’s got them building utopia in the forest. He wouldn’t let any of his people participate in the run on your convoy. He told them they wouldn’t be welcome back if they went with me.”
Tonight, Mat sat across from Hauser, at a picnic table in the atrium of McKenzie city hall. In front of each man was a half a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of room temperature tea. Sheriff Morgan had asked Mat to take lead on this interrogation. Morgan sat in a folding chair off to the side, watching.
Mat ate his sandwich, sipped his tea, and looked for an opening.
Finally Hauser spoke. “I don’t believe I’ve committed any crimes, officers. I have family back at the camp.”
Mat replied. “I’m not a police officer.” He had declined Morgan’s offer to deputize him. It felt too much like agreeing to a permanent thing. “You’re not under arrest. My name is Mat Best. I’m in charge of town security. We’re trying to figure out how much of a threat you and your camp pose.”