by Jason Ross
Sage laughed and tossed down the last of his beer. It was getting warm, anyway. The girl had been poking fun at Enterprise High—the only high school over in Wallowa County. Apparently, La Grande had beaten them in football ten years running. To call it a rivalry might be overstating things. Enterprise High pulled from three thousand residents and La Grande pulled from twenty-seven thousand. Raw math was on La Grande’s side.
Talking to the girl—she’d said her name was Aimee—felt like taking a shower after working in the dust. She even smelled like civilization. Sage could listen to her prattle of local gossip for days. When she talked, he forgot about freezing to death up on Blue Mountain. He forgot about killing those men. Sitting with Aimee on her mother’s couch felt like returning, finally, from war.
When he first came back from his recon mission into Wallowa County, Captain Chambers hailed him as a conquering hero, like a special forces soldier embedded in the captain’s department for “high value missions.” Apparently, they’d expected him to get picked up right away and sent directly back. The fact that he’d lasted three days, then returned with information on cattle numbers and general intel, catapulted Sage into the inner circle of the police department. When he reported about his meeting with Commissioner Pete, Captain Chambers leaned over his desk in disbelief.
“That self-righteous sonofabitch had a meeting with you?” Sage nodded, not sure what it meant. “I haven’t been able to get him to talk to me since the meltdown—that stuck-up prick. Cattlemen are all like that.” He sat back abruptly in his chair. “They think they’re the only true cowboys. Unless you have a hundred head or more, you’re not even a man to them.”
After his successful recon mission into Wallowa, the department moved Sage into the town of La Grande, to a room at the Best Western hotel. They took him off the security duty roster. Instead, Sage worked out of the police station, though they hadn’t given him anything specific yet to do. For the time being, he went for coffee and food from the town square, where the ladies ran a soup kitchen. The higher-ups in the department took Sage with them on important calls as a back-up gunman, like when they got reports of theft or trespassing by out-of-towners. They even issued him a Glock 17, nine millimeter sidearm.
The hundreds of rank-and-file officers—really more of a militia—called the captain and his close confidants “The Five.” The Five were all high school buddies, had gone to La Grande High School, and had served in the La Grande police department for a decade or more. Sage became their mascot.
Sage’s acquaintances from the militia started calling him “Number Six.” Sage preferred that to “Stack,” but it made him nervous when they said the “six” thing around one of the actual Five. He wasn’t there to rock the boat. He’d promised his dad that he’d do whatever it took to survive, and serving, heads-down, loyal to the La Grande police department was as close to a sure thing as he’d probably find in America. He was not going to screw it up.
The fringe benefits, as it turned out, were out-of-this-world, and they included Aimee Butterton.
The Five, plus Sage, had taken their Sunday afternoon jaunt over to the town of Elgin, as was their custom. There, they visited the home of Donna Butterton and her daughters. The man of the house had passed away years before Black Autumn in a four-wheeler accident, but he’d left behind a beautiful wife and five gorgeous farmer’s daughters, each with chestnut hair and sparkling green eyes. The youngest, Aimee, was still too old for Sage, but she seemed like she was into him, so he sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Sage had never had much trouble with the ladies. He was a trim, corded-arm teenage stud with a winning smile and a devil-may-care whip of the hair. His good looks and his dad’s mansion bought him entré into any social circle he wanted, back in Utah.
Like every high school boy who won at the game of popularity, Sage knew deep down it was all bullshit. He hadn’t done anything to be esteemed by anyone, and the ladies who flocked to him were seeing what he wanted them to see—decent genes and his dad’s money.
Back then, he wasn’t about to turn his back on a good thing, so he enjoyed rolling around with the hottest chicks; turning and burning through the Instagram Hall of Fame in his hometown of Oakview.
Then, one day, the cleaning lady found weed in the bottom of his dresser drawer. The maid belonged to some kind of uptight religion, so she went to Sage’s dad with his baggie of skank. His dad freaked out, Sage cut loose, screaming obscenities at his old man, and got his ass packed off to the Olympic Peninsula to cool his jets with his grandma and grandpa. That’s when Black Autumn put the smackdown on America and ruined it all.
Sage had long ago forgiven his dad for overreacting to the weed. He’d learned a lot about how the world really worked while surviving the mobs and the weather. Those days of being a rich prick with a pimped-out truck were ancient history. He missed his mom and dad so bad it made his bones ache.
Sitting on the couch with Aimee Butterton brought back the feel of home—those carefree high school years at the top of his game. She wasn’t the hottest girl he’d been with, but her green, cheerful eyes made up for a lot.
“Where’d you get this beer?” Sage asked just to make conversation. He held up his bottle of Bud.
“The Captain had them brought by yesterday.” She smiled. “Membership has its privileges.” She waved her hand at the living room, but Sage didn’t know what she meant. It seemed like an average living room in an average, rural home. Then he noticed: The Five had all disappeared.
They had been hobnobbing with Mrs. Butterton and the older daughters, but now the house had gone quiet. He heard a titter of laughter somewhere in the back of the sprawling ranch house.
They were all married men—The Five. They’d invited Sage, saying they were “dropping by the Buttertons’” to get an end-of-the-week drink. Rolling back the tape in his mind, each man had gravitated to his own young lady, almost like assigned seating. Captain Chambers drifted off with Mrs. Butterton. She’d met them at the door wearing the hell out of a pair of Levi’s and it hadn’t been long before she and the captain took their leave.
Men in power enjoyed the fruits. It’d probably been that way since mankind built a circle of huts and then asked the biggest man to stand guard. Undoubtedly, the big guy got a bigger share of lovin’.
The Five worked hard and took personal risks to keep Union County from flying off the rails. Sage had seen every one of them in physical confrontations, and he’d seen them kill men in the line of duty. It was a violent world, with dire consequences, and captain’s men were the hard line between order and chaos. They deserved the chance to cut loose every now and again.
Aimee slid over on the couch, took Sage’s beer out of his hand and set it on the glass-topped coffee table. Mr. Butterton, may he rest in peace, must’ve been a fly fisherman, because under the glass a wood-carved brook trout snapped up a blue-winged olive fly in a pretty, little diorama. Sage wondered if Mr. Butterton had carved it himself.
Aimee put her hand on his cheek and kissed him. Combined with the tang of the beer, her mouth tasted like a coconut chocolate bar. Her skin smelled like honeysuckle.
Sage’s head swam. He put his hand on her waist and gripped her soft hip. She deepened the kiss and moaned. Her tongue reached in and traced the top of his mouth, hunting farther, tasting him.
She pulled away and smiled. She had perfect teeth—still some baby fat, even in her early twenties. He reeled a bit, imagining her naked.
She leaned back and tugged his hand, drawing him on top of her on the couch. Sage resisted, and looked around. None of The Five were in the living room or kitchen. He didn’t want to cause problems. His gig with the police department was literally life-or-death for him, and Sage had flirted with death enough. The girl must’ve sensed his apprehension.
“They’re with my sisters. I’m here for you. It’s okay.”
What was the deal here? Sage almost asked her, but thought better of it.
She eased him p
ast the silence. “We’re friends of the police department. We party a little at the end of the week. It’s okay.” Aimee pulled his hand down and set it on her ample breast. Sage let himself go but stopped in the middle of the kiss.
“Is there someplace we can go that’s not so...open?” he asked.
She laughed again, stood up, straightened her blouse over her jeans, and led him by the hand out of the living room and down a hall.
An hour later, Captain Chambers rapped on the door of the bedroom. Sage had already dressed. He and Aimee were chatting about his job with the department. She seemed fascinated with local gossip; who was being robbed, who was making trouble for the department, who was beating their wife. In a county barely over twenty-five thousand people, everyone eventually knew everyone.
“Time to get back to work,” the captain spoke through the door.
“Yes, sir.” Sage wondered if he’d done something wrong.
The Five plus Sage had driven in the same unmarked Chevy Suburban to the Buttertons. Now, Sage understood why they’d left their cruisers and personal cars at the office in La Grande. They couldn’t park five squad cars in front of the Butterton ranch house on Sunday night without generating buzz among the locals.
On the road back to La Grande, the men laughed and joked about the Butterton girls.
The night was black as asphalt. The moon wouldn’t be up for another two hours.
“I gotta tell you,” Bill Raff bragged, “That Terra—she’s a damned wildcat. Nothing like a young girl to get an old soldier like me upright and standing at attention. I mean, she gets turned on faster than a light switch. She’s slicker too, right from the first. Zero foreplay. Right to business. More time for more that way, she says.”
The men in the Suburban laughed and Sage laughed with them. Truth was, he’d felt awkward with Aimee. It was far from his first time. He’d lost count of how many by sixteen, but the setup at the Buttertons made him jumpy.
Other than laughing along with their stories of sexual conquest, Sage remained silent. He’d never been in the military, or even worked in a crew of rough men. He’d heard his brother talk like these guys—he was a Marine Corps veteran—but the obscenity and carnality was unfamiliar ground. In a way, it liberated him, to hear men cut loose and speak like men; with no women to hear them, and no shame to fear.
The captain was obviously drunk, but he drove the suburban anyway. He didn’t contribute much to the boasting and joking. Behind the wheel and in-charge of the department, he was above it all. When he finally spoke, the guys switched gears.
“We’re doing pretty good on food,” Chambers began, interrupting one of the men in the middle of regaling the others about how “down to get down” some local girl had been in high school. Captain Chamber’s steady voice made it clear that this was going to be the only staff meeting that really mattered. “But we won’t be good for long. We can’t count on the Professor and his greenhouses to save us this winter. A lot can go wrong with greenhouses—my mom had one for years.”
The men settled down and flipped into business-mode. Bill Raff offered a solution. “We can run more Klingons out of the county. You know—reduce our consumption to match our supply.”
Captain Chambers raised a finger off the steering wheel. “We could, but every time we walk someone to the county line, we piss off more locals. Even a Klingon has a mom and dad, sisters, cousins and brothers. We can force people back into line, but it gets riskier the more we do it.” It seemed clear he’d already made a decision and he wasn’t really looking for suggestions.
“If Wallowa kicks in with their cattle, we’ll have plenty, and there will be enough to jumpstart breeding in the spring. With Wallowa’s cattle, we’re all set. If they horde their cattle like they’re doing now, they’ll get stronger while we get weaker. By spring, we’ll be half-starved rag dolls. They’ll be fat and happy.”
Reggie Fletcher snorted. “Yeah, but Wallowa can’t never take us down. They’re pissant-small. They can barely field a defensive line.”
Sage realized he was talking about high school football, not combat. Everything with these guys seemed to come back to football.
“You need to think bigger,” the captain corrected Reggie. “They won’t have to take down Union County. They only need to take us down.” He made a circle in the air with his finger. “From what Stack here tells me, Pete Lathrop over in Wallowa is telling people we’re un-American, that we don’t follow the Constitution. He sounds like he’s getting ready to stage a mutiny against us, over here in Union.”
“Commissioner Pete’s got a lot of family in Union County. That’s true,” Reggie said, bootlicking his boss.
The captain continued his train of thought. “If they wait until we’re suffering over here, and they’re healthy over there, people will begin to think that maybe Pete Lathrop’s got it right; that we’re un-American for defending our county.”
“That’s easy for them to say,” Bill Raff nearly shouted, “we do all their fighting for them. We sealed off Union County to outsiders, so they ain’t got no problems with trespassers. There’s no way for outsiders to get over the mountains and fuck with their cattle. They should pay us for doing their policing, instead of paying that fat prick Tate. They owe us!” he roared. Bill Raff had been drinking a lot more than just beer, Sage concluded.
“Yup,” Captain Chambers agreed. “they don’t have to invest much in defense because we do it for them. They have it easy, tucked in the back of Wallowa Valley, while we deal with the interstate, cutting across us like a clothesline.”
“They should pay us in cattle,” Kevin Tursdale chimed in.
The captain shook his head, backlit by the suburban’s headlights carving the road. “They’re not going to do that so long as Pete Lathrop is the King of Wallowa County. He’s the reason they sealed off the road and he’s the reason they won’t talk to us about trade. He sits on his high throne at the back of the valley, surrounded by fifty-thousand head of cattle and he watches us eat ourselves into oblivion. All he has to do is wait us out, and he wins. No doubt, he plans to take over Union too, and he’ll do it when our people are in a bad way.”
The men fell silent. The road clicked by under the tires and the alcohol-fogged thoughts coalesced like a virus gathering itself for an onslaught. Even a newcomer like Sage could follow the captain’s logic: a lot of people in Union County were already hungry. Not the farmers or the ranchers, but the city people had been on rations for weeks. They stood in bread lines and soup lines or they didn’t eat. It was a hell of a lot better than in Portland, but the kind of people standing in line for food weren’t the kind of people who counted their blessings. They complained, given half a chance. They were fertile minds for revolution. They couldn’t do much, the Klingons, but they could agitate.
“We should hit him while we’re still strong. Hit Commissioner Pete, I mean.”
Reggie said the words, but Captain Chambers had all but put them in his mouth. Sage saw now that the conversation had been a carefully scripted, meandering journey to reach this conclusion: they needed to remove their rival, and they needed to do it soon.
Sage felt a chill go up his spine. He remembered a moment, while he ate his burger in Lostine. He and Commissioner Pete shared a laugh with the lady setting up the tables. Joan, Sage remembered her name. She’d made a comment about how men thought they ruled the world, but women ruled the men. Pete had given Sage a goofy, knowing look that seemed to say, “someday, you’ll understand.”
Sage almost spoke up in the Suburban—almost said something to slow the freight train of indignation that’d overtaken The Five. Then, he remembered the promise he’d made to his father.
He would do everything necessary to survive and make it back home.
Pete Lathrop, over in Wallowa, could tend to his own survival. Truth and justice were not Sage’s job. Keeping a promise to his father trumped all questions of truth and honor.
He’d grown up enough, in the last two
months, to understand he couldn’t right the wrongs of this grated-flesh world. A man couldn’t throw a stick in America without hitting a kid dying of dysentery or an old lady being raped. A tidal wave of defilement had washed over the once-pristine land, and now the most noble pursuit was to breathe another day, eat another meal.
In Sage’s case, he would keep his promise to his father, and keep his damned mouth shut.
15
Mat Best
Creek Camp
Outside McKenzie, Tennessee
* * *
The Creek Camp founders arrived, and Mat asked them for a private audience.
“I have information for you—something that I won’t be telling the other camps. They lack the leadership to take advantage of it, and this opportunity should not go to waste,” Mat said, rolling out his best CIA-inspired performance.
“You have our attention, Sergeant Best,” said a man with unkempt hair and a ragged, handlebar mustache.
Mat fired up the engine on the Bullshit Express. “I first heard this story back when I was at Basic in Fort Knox. I assumed it was one of those army legends that gets repeated one grunt generation to the next, but then I started to see a consistent pattern. I actually did a little research at the base library and I was surprised to find out it was real.”
Mat launched into the story he’d concocted with the help of Deputy Rickers. Mat told of a trail of military depots dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. As the tale went, the U.S. Cavalry positioned supply depots every twenty miles to support army mule trains crossing the Old West to San Francisco. They passed through Tennessee and Fort Knox before venturing out over Indian lands.
The next part would be the pitch; the mule train bit was weird enough to create a hook—to generate intrigue. But he needed to put meat on the bones of the fable.
Mat dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I heard versions where the depots, at one time, held thousands of gallons of whiskey or bars of gold. One guy claimed the depots hid bales of confiscated marijuana.” His audience fidgeted. He was in danger of losing them. “When I mentioned the story to one of the McKenzie deputies who also served in the Army, he said, ‘Those depots are real, and they’re in places nobody would look. Small towns and out-of-the-way side roads. The closest one is thirty miles north of here outside a one-horse town called Sedalia. We should go up there and clear it out,’ the deputy said.”