by Jessy Cruise
"I am not required to discuss my rationale with you, Mr. Adams," she'd replied. "The Micker has been voted upon. Do you have anything else you'd like to discuss?"
The only exception to this blackballing was his proposal that coed guard teams would no longer be allowed. That one had been approved only because Jessica knew it would be an unpopular rule which would serve to diminish his popularity which, in those first two days, had been very much like celebrity status. That measure was passed unanimously the first day and implemented the next. It had had very much the effect that Jessica had guessed it would. The first thing to happen was that volunteers for guard duty almost completely dried up, forcing Paul to take the drastic step of assigning people to the job against their will. Several of these recruits had to be threatened with kitchen duty or house arrest before they agreed to the task. In less than twenty-four hours Skip went from most popular citizen to unpleasant, slave-driving boss. He was considered a spoilsport by the many couples that were using guard duty to carry out their affairs. Though he was still the object of intense flirtation by the unattached females of town, the males now regarded him with open hostility. One, Jeff the Mormon, the kid he had smoked a joint with the first night, actually told him to his face: "I wish I wouldn't of voted for you now, dude. You're such a Bogart!"
"I'm not here to be liked," he had replied. "I'm here to keep you alive."
"Well you're doin' a good job of not being liked," was the sour response.
His slave driver reputation was made even worse by the fact that he insisted upon visiting each guard position several times a day, always at random, unpredictable times. Always he found two grumpy men keeping a listless watch or two grumpy women doing the same. The women would at least perk up a bit at his presence, assuming that they were unattached, which most of them were, and the flirtations would begin. He had been offered every conceivable sex act, up to and including a threesome, at the female-manned posts. But at the male-manned posts he sometimes felt himself in danger of being assaulted or even shot. The resentment at his presence would radiate off of them in waves.
"How long you gonna keep coming out here?" he was asked once by Hector, the man who had slipped away that first night, leaving him alone with Missy.
"Until I don't feel I have to anymore," he'd answered simply. "And the way that's looking, it's gonna be a long time."
Fortunately, Skip's experience as a cop had long-since made him accustomed to being the authority figure that no one wanted to see or deal with. The efforts of the Garden Hill men to get under his skin with snide comments, the silent treatment, or glaring looks, were strictly small-time compared to the way the residents of Stockton had tried it. With everyone he kept his voice even and monotone, his commands clear and concise, his criticisms constructive and non-insulting. If he responded to a jibe at all it was with gentle sarcasm. If open hostility was displayed for him, as it had been a few times, locking eyes with the person and maintaining the contact always defused it rather quickly. Skip, like most cops, had long since learned how to project a strong vibe towards such people that warned them that attempting a physical confrontation would be a bad mistake. Though this vibe had not always worked in Stockton (sometimes it was taken as a challenge) it never failed to work its magic in Garden Hill. Skip was feared, that was easy enough for him to see. He did not mind being feared as long as he was feared and respected. As of yet, that second factor had not come into play and he knew of no easy way that he would be able to earn it.
"Look on the bright side," Paul told him now as he smoked his cigarette atop the hill.
"What's the bright side?" he asked, shifting the AK-47 that he'd lugged up the hill to a more comfortable position.
"At least the women still like you. I heard earlier today that Cindy Groton is going to be your squeeze. They seem to be really sure about that one."
Skip smiled a little. Among the women, whether they feared him or not, the main topic of conversation was who he was going to pick as his "official" companion, as if doing so was a town ordinance or something. He had so far shunned all of the advances that had been thrown at him. Christine was keeping him well satisfied in the bedroom department and, at least at this point in his relationship with the townspeople, he felt it important to keep himself out of the games that were played, to seem as aloof as possible to those he was trying to teach to protect themselves. This did not stop the rumors from flying however. On the contrary, it only seemed to encourage them. Whenever he was seen talking to a woman for more than a minute or so the word was passed around that he was "interested" in someone. Before an hour would go by the word would be inflated to "she's the one."
"Which one is she?" he asked Paul.
"She's the brunette with the big bolt-on titties that you were talking to this morning at breakfast."
"The one that asked me to show her how I used to pat women down?"
"That's the one," he agreed, taking a deep drag. "She used to be a part-time massage therapist." He grinned. "Word has it that she has a real special massage she'll show you if you play your cards right."
"I'm sure she does," he said sourly. "But my experience with Missy was eye-opening enough. I'll just let it ride at that for now."
"You must have the willpower of a priest," Paul said. "How do you turn down as much sex as you've been offered these last four days? Even I, who is getting it regularly, find it hard to say no to a lot of them."
"It is hard," he said honestly. "I mean, I have the same urges everyone else does. But it is my belief that sex is going to be the undoing of this place if it is not brought under some kind of control. These people are obsessed with it. They will happily keep screwing each other until the hoards out there come walking through the gates and then they'll ask themselves how it happened. If I'm going to help prevent that from occurring, then I cannot allow myself to become a part of it. If I start going on the same sort of sex binge that everyone else seems to be wrapped up in, pretty soon I'll convince myself that we really don't need to post guards up on the hills or keep them alert. I don't want that to happen."
"I'm with you there," he sighed. "When we first started to organize things here, nobody wanted to do guard duty at all. They convinced themselves that it wasn't necessary. It was only when the first groupings of males and females started to fall apart, when the men started to realize that they could have virtually all the sex they wanted, that it began to be a popular thing to do."
"So they could screw each other," Skip said bitterly.
"Correct."
He shook his head. "The problem we have here is that nobody has been out there. Nobody has seen how desperate things really are. I mean, they can intellectually grasp that most of the world is dead and there isn't any more food to feed anyone and that there are starving people out there, but they can't mentally grasp it. Until you've seen two men with guns stalking you, trying to kill you so that they could have the backpacks you're carrying, you just can't appreciate how real the danger is."
"Especially not these people," Paul added. "None of our women have even been on the wrong side of the tracks before. And our men, they're too locked up in the glory of the sex game. They're like kids at a candy store. Remember that I've been in charge of them longer than you have. I've gone through this same shit."
"I know," he sighed. "And you've done a good job of it too, don't let me give you the idea that you haven't. It's just that this town is going to get a rude awakening at some point if things don't change. It's as inevitable as the tides."
"Now let me get this straight," Jessica said later that afternoon, back in the main office. She was sitting behind her desk, Dale next to her, chewing a wad of gum and looking at Skip and Paul with her patented smirk upon her face. "You want to move the northern and eastern guard positions from their current location and place them on a hill more than a half a mile from town?"
"That is correct," Skip said, keeping his voice as monotone as possible, allowing no emotion to show upon his face.
"And you would like a work detail of ten people to work on this project for the next two days?"
"Or until such time as it is completed," he put in.
She shook her head in bewilderment. "That is the most ridiculous thing that I've heard you suggest so far," she said. "Move the guard posts outside of the wall? Leave the eastern side of town completely undefended? Have you been dipping into the marijuana supply or something?"
"Yeah," Dale said, giving his own version of the smirk. "Some military expert you are." He looked at Paul. "Didn't I tell you from the start he was scamming us? Isn't that the most idiotic thing you've ever heard?"
Paul, taking Skip's lead, kept his face neutral and his voice even as well. "If you went and stood on that hill," he said, "I think you would see where Skip is coming from. From the top of it you can guard the entire north side and prevent anyone from accessing the east side since there's only one way in there. He's convinced me. His plan is sound and I think we should do it."
"Yes," Jessica said, "you seem to agree with most of what he says, don't you? Well, I don't know how Dale feels on this Micker, but I certainly cannot vote to approve such a gross downgrade in our defenses. Our guards belong inside of the wall, where they can do us some good, not a half a mile away on top of a hill."
"Your bridge guard position is almost a mile away," Skip said. "It is well outside of the wall and yet it prevents anybody from entering from the south, doesn't it?"
"That's different," Dale said. "That's a bridge. If people can't get across the bridge, they can't get in from the south."
"And if people can't get through the gap in the cliffs to the east of town, a gap that that hill I'm talking about has a view of, then they can't get in from the east. And they can't approach us from the north because that hill can see them before they even cross the interstate. The most basic military tactic is to occupy high ground surrounding your position. That is common sense."
"I don't think that tactic applies here," Jessica said. "My vote is no."
"My vote is no as well," Dale added. "The guards need to stay inside of the wall."
Skip took a few deep breaths, wanting to give a seething lecture on how their stupidity and pettiness was going to get everyone killed but knowing that such a thing was just what Jessica wanted. Instead, he calmed himself and went on to his next proposal. "I'd like to ask for volunteers to be permanently assigned to the guard force," he said.
"Volunteers?" Jessica said. "Permanently assigned? What for?"
"With a permanent group I can concentrate on training them for specific duties and actions. In a way, they will be professionals at the job. That will increase the overall effectiveness of the force."
"I see," she said thoughtfully. "And just how many of these volunteers do you think you're going to get?"
"Probably not very many at this point in time," he admitted. "But that will change in the future I think. I'd like authorization for thirty such volunteers."
"Thirty?" Jessica barked, laughing.
"As I said, I know I'm not going to get that many at first. But that is how many I would eventually like to have. With thirty I can keep all of the posts manned twenty-four hours a day using the same people all of the time. This would keep Paul from having to assign people the job every day and night. To get these volunteers I will place sign-up sheets on the bulletin board in the gym."
Jessica and Dale looked at each other, clearly amused by his suggestion. "I'll vote yes on this one," Jessica said, shaking her head a little. "You go ahead and ask for your volunteers. Of course..." she snickered, "you'll have to come to us for approval if you want more than thirty."
Dale was snickering as well. "You can have a yes from me too. Hope you don't get overwhelmed with volunteers now."
While they laughed about this Paul added his yes vote to the tally and it became official. Skip Adams, security leader, was now authorized to raise a group of volunteers to help guard the town of Garden Hill. Though Jessica and Dale thought it quite a funny joke - Skip thinking people were going to sign up to be permanently assigned to guard detail - they had no idea that they had just impulsively voted to establish a professional armed forces for their town. In other words, Garden Hill had just added the ability to create an army to its constitution.
One small victory that Skip had managed to win over the last four days had been the inclusion of Jack and Christine on guard details. As he had predicted, Paul had been able to convince Jessica in a private meeting that packing guns and watching over the safety of the town were where the two kids' talents were best utilized. As such, both of them were Skip's prime volunteers. Each post was manned with two guards that worked six-hour watches, which meant that there were four crew changes each day. Christine and Jack typically worked double shifts in order to keep themselves busy and to reduce the number of people that Paul had to actually assign. Jack preferred the night watches since it allowed him to sleep most of the daylight hours away. Christine, on the other hand, preferred the day watches since it allowed her to sleep with Skip every night.
At dinner that night, when Skip gave a short, impassioned plea for volunteers (a plea that was received somewhat listlessly by the audience) Christine was working her second straight shift on the east side, awaiting her relief. By the time she made it to the dining hall and ate the plate of stroganoff that had been set aside for her, Skip had already gone off to take care of other duties. When she made her way to the small house that they shared, well after darkness had covered the land, he was still out. She lit the two oil lamps that they had been provided (Paul had rigged them so they could burn gasoline by adding a small amount of motor oil to the fuel) and waited for him alone.
He came in about an hour later, stomping mud out of his boots and shaking excess water from his rain slicker before removing them in the entryway. He had had a long day that had involved much tromping around from one part of town to another and his muscles ached dully.
"Hi, Chris," he said, leaning down to give her a kiss on the lips. She allowed the contact but did not contribute to the display of affection in any way. She had a determined expression on her face. He looked at her, puzzled. "What's the Micker?"
"Where have you been?" she asked, a clear note of accusation in her voice.
He looked at her carefully, already sensing that something was in the air. "I was out at the bridge," he told her, quite honestly. "I rigged up some trip-wires on the catwalk exit so that if someone comes up that way like I did, it'll at least make some noise. I also checked on the western position on my way back."
"You weren't out visiting someone?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Visiting someone?"
"One of the women maybe?" she said. "One of those sluts who are trying to get you into bed with them?"
He sighed a little. He had known that at some point this conversation was going to occur. This was, after all, a small town with a small town mentality. "No, Chris," he said, sitting next to her on the couch. "I wasn't out visiting anyone. I was out trying to take care of a few things. I wouldn't lie to you."
"Who was at the guard posts?" she asked, her voice on the verge of hysteria. "Was Cindy Groton out there? I heard that you and she are fucking each other!"
"Jesus," he said, turning towards her. "Chris, I don't even know Cindy Groton other than the fact that I talked to her for a few minutes at breakfast this morning. She's not even on the guard detail."
"Everyone says you're fucking her," she said. "They say that she's going to be the one you pick to be your woman."
"They're just rumors," he said. "I've already got my woman."
"A woman that you won't tell anyone about!"
"We've been over this, Chris," he said, trying to calm her. "We need to give it a little more time before we let people know about us. They're still locked up in pre-comet morality here. You know that as well as I do."
"Pre-comet morality?" she nearly shrieked. "Every time I leave this house I ge
t women coming up to me and asking questions about you. Is it true he's doing this girl? Is it true he's thinking about hooking up with that girl? Out on watch it's all my partner will talk about! I've been asked a hundred times to put in a good word to you about someone. I've been told a hundred times how good of a big sister someone would make for me! I've seen them get into fights over you, Skip! They hit each other and pull each other's hair while they're arguing about who has a chance with you and who doesn't! And it's not just you; they do that over every man in town, even that dweeb Jeff. These women fight over a nineteen-year-old! Does that sound like pre-comet morality to you? Did they used to do shit like that before?"
"No," he said. "I'm sure they didn't. Their morality does tend to be ruled by self-interest and abandoned for the same thing."
"So if they can give up the morality when it comes to keeping their hands off of other people's men, why can't they give it up about you sleeping with me?"
"Because it's not in their self-interest to do that," he told her. " Christine, I am not sleeping with any of these women, okay? I'm not meeting up with them in secret and I'm not looking for someone to replace you with."
"What about Missy?" she said, glaring at him. "I heard you fucked her your first night here. Everyone seems to be real sure about that rumor."
His hesitation gave him away.
"You did, didn't you?" she said.
"Yes," he said slowly. "She caught me off guard that first night. It just kind of happened."
The look of pain on her face was almost more than he could bear. Her lips started to quiver and a tear rolled down her face.
" Christine," he said, sliding closer to her, intending to put his arms around her.
"Get away from me," she told him. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me again!"
"Chris, listen..."
"I said stay away from me!"
He stayed away from her. She refused to talk to him any more that evening. That night, at bedtime, she slept in the bed that had been placed in her bedroom for the first time.