Bob looked back at John, who was climbing into the narrow backseat, smiling but glance firm. “I trust you. We both have to trust each other now.”
Again John did not reply. “Take us to Gaither, Maury,” John said to Maury, who switched the jeep’s engine on and put it in gear.
“Your name Maury?” Bob asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Nice jeep. Original?”
“1942 Wills.”
During the short drive back to Gaither, Bob chatted with Maury about the jeep, its history, and how he always preferred them to Humvees.
As they passed the library on one side and the girls’ dorm on the other side of the road, John could see anxious faces peering out of windows, nearly all still in winter camo, weapons slung on their shoulders. Malady stood in the doorway of the dorm, ready to go. John told Maury to stop.
“Kevin, keep everyone inside, weapons grounded. And for heaven’s sake, no one is to go near where the choppers landed. You got that? Once you feel things are secure with our people, report to me down in Gaither.”
“Yes, sir.” Kevin made the gesture of saluting even as John told Maury to head on to Gaither Hall.
They turned into the rear parking lot of Gaither, slid to a stop, and dismounted. Bob offered his hand to Maury, who reluctantly took it, and thanked him for the ride and brief history lesson about jeeps.
John climbed out of the back of the jeep and led the way inside. The corridor was packed with anxious students and staff, all of them suited up, all of them armed.
John stopped, looking over his shoulder at Bob, who came in behind him, pulling back the hood of his parka. The old general did not hesitate or show fear. He actually smiled, coming up to John’s side.
It was a tense moment.
John took a step forward and held up his hand in a calming gesture. “This is General Scales. He is an old friend from long before the Day. General, these are some of my troops.”
Bob actually stiffened and offered a salute, which some then returned, though many continued to just stand in silence, their hostile gazes obvious.
“Colonel Matherson, my compliments, you have a good-looking command here.”
Good-looking? John tried to not show any reaction. In an earlier age, a world long ago, those standing in the hallway would have been described as a ragtag-looking bunch at best, winter camo made out of bedsheets, most of the young men unshaven, all of them thin, wiry after two and a half years of privation and two deadly campaigns behind them. A few had offered salutes in return, but the rest were wary, eyes cold and obviously expecting that before the day was out it would turn into a fight to the death … and though scared were ready to face it.
“All of you,” John said in a calm voice. “We are in stand-down. I want you to keep your weapons slung and follow proper procedure to ensure chambers are empty. We don’t need an accident. Remember what I told you about how things went out of control at Lexington Green. We don’t want that here because one hothead takes matters into their own hands. Do we understand each other?”
“Sir, are we surrendering without a fight?” one of them cried.
“We are not at war here. The general is here to talk things over.”
“With Apaches as an opening move?” another student shouted angrily.
“All of you listen to me. This is not Fredericks. I know this man. He could have come in here with gunships tearing us apart before we even knew what was hitting us. He’s here to talk. So I want all of you to relax, get back to whatever your assigned duties are, ground your weapons, and for now leave them in Fellowship Hall if you are going outside. No one is to go near the ball field. The troops up there have firm orders to protect those helicopters, and that means shoot first and ask questions later. Your venturing up there could be seen as a hostile approach, and then … Lexington Green again. You all got that?”
There were nods, a few soft “Yes, sir” replies, all of them saluting John while avoiding eye contact with Bob, an obvious gesture to indicate who was still in charge as far as they were concerned, and the group started to disperse.
John opened the door to what had been the president’s office, motioned for Bob to step in, and then closed the door behind him.
“You handled that well, John, thank you.”
“What else was I to do? Order them to shoot you and then storm the field and get slaughtered?”
Bob looked around the room, offering a smile as he took his parka off. “Lord, I do recall this room. Remember I visited this campus years ago.” He paused for a moment. “Mary was buried out of this chapel. Our friend Dan Hunt was president. I sat in here with him after the service for Mary. I remember he was in tears for you that day.”
John offered a chair at the long meeting table and turned away for a moment so emotions wouldn’t show as Bob conjured up the memory of that day. It was Bob who had recommended John for the job at this college, having served with Dan Hunt, the two of them classmates from West Point.
“I don’t see him here,” Bob said softly.
“He didn’t make it—died during the starving time after everything went to hell.”
He looked back at Bob, who was gazing at Dan’s favorite painting, George Washington kneeling in the snow in prayer at Valley Forge.
“The list goes on and on,” Bob said softly, “all those who didn’t make it.”
“I wondered about you across these years, sir,” John replied, “but now you are here.”
“You take inspiration from that painting?” Bob asked. “Is that why you kept it?”
John studied it for a moment. “Only recently started to use this office, just for state council meetings. I felt it was kind of a shrine to a good leader. But yeah, on a day like this, it’s worth studying.”
Bob did not respond to John’s obvious touch of cynicism. “How Washington kept his strength through that winter at Valley Forge is beyond me at times. If he had lost his way, the American Revolution would have truly been lost.”
“That’s worth thinking about now.”
Bob turned his gaze from the painting to John, and there seemed to be a flash of warning. “Let’s get to business, John,” he announced, and he sat down at the far end of the table.
“Formal surrender, is that it, sir? It’s Appomattox, you’re Grant, and I’m Lee?”
“I prefer not to think of it that way. Call it rejoining the Union we both swore an oath to.”
“You mean Bluemont?”
Bob hesitated. “You seem damn hostile to them.”
“I have every reason to be hostile. This community lost over a hundred dead to that tin-pot dictator they sent down here back in the spring. Before we leave, I want you to take a look at our chapel; we’re still repairing it. Those troops out in the hallway, they have every reason to mistrust. They all buried friends, several of them spouses, by the time it was done. How else should we react?”
“Were they students of yours, John?”
“You mean now, or before the Day?”
“You know what I mean.”
John smiled sadly. “Yes. That girl who spoke up asking if we were surrendering.”
“You mean the one who would not salute me but definitely saluted you?”
“That one, yes. She was a Bible studies major. Loved history, good kid from a good family that came up here every month to visit, and all of them would sit in on one of my evening classes. Her family lived in Florida.”
With the mention of Florida, he saw the sudden look in Bob’s eyes.
“Sorry I mentioned that place, sir.”
Bob sighed. “Like I said, I know my Linda is gone. I just pray it was peaceful.”
“Same for that girl. She got married in our chapel across the hall a year ago. Had a baby three months ago. No husband now—he was killed in the attack where Fredericks was holed up at the end.”
“I understand the tough edge to her now,” Bob replied.
“We all have tough edges now, sir. No father fo
r her baby, nightmares as to what happened to the rest of her family. This school is all she knows now.” He hesitated. “She feels she has nothing to lose if she dies fighting to defend it.”
“There is no need anymore to fight, John.”
“Really, sir?” He could not control the sarcasm in his voice, but Bob did not react.
“Damn, I’m cold and thirsty.”
“It’s a dry campus, Bob. At least we try to keep it that way.”
“Coffee, then?” Bob asked hopefully.
“None of that either. All those K-Cups of coffee belong to my friend Forrest—you remember him, the sergeant who left an arm in Afghanistan—but I can roust up some herbal tea.”
“Please, if you don’t mind.”
John nodded, left the office, and leaned over the dutch door that led down to the old business office, which had been converted into the formal administrative office of the town. He shouted down the stairs, Reverend Black opening the door down below, and John passed along the request.
He returned to the president’s office, where Bob had returned to staring at the painting of George Washington.
“Do you think he really prayed like that in the snow of that winter?” Bob asked.
“He was a man of faith, and if ever this country needed faith, it was that winter. So yes, I believe it is real.”
“So do I,” Bob said softly.
The two were silent for a moment, both gazing at the painting.
The historian in John knew that the weather during that first winter at Valley Forge was nowhere near as severe as the one at Morristown, New Jersey, a couple of years later when the army was encamped at Jockey Hollow. Several units—unpaid, unshod, desperate, and hungry—had finally mutinied. Washington had taken the hard choice of executing several of the ringleaders and in a tense standoff was ready to order troops still loyal to the cause to fire, if need be, on the regiments in mutiny. The revolution had indeed hung by the slenderest of threads on that desperate day. Only Washington’s strength of character and leadership had prevented a complete breakdown of the army and the collapse of his years of effort with all disintegrating into chaos and most likely dictatorship or capitulation.
There was a tap on the door, his friend Reverend Black bringing in two steaming mugs of herbal tea. John thanked him, and there was a moment of hesitation.
John made the formal introductions, Bob coming to his feet to shake Black’s hand.
“Everything all right? Everyone standing down?” John asked.
“It’s not good over Asheville. Half a dozen dead and wounded. I spoke on the phone with some officer who said he had just placed our person Dunn there under arrest.”
John looked over at Bob.
“I’ll straighten that out once I’m done here, John.”
“So, are we all under arrest?” John asked coldly.
“I didn’t want any bloodshed,” Bob replied. “I promise to straighten it out.”
“Tell that to the families of the dead,” Black snapped back.
Bob nodded, keeping his composure. “If you’re still on the phone with them, tell the officer there—it’s most likely Major Minecci—that I am safe and secure here, will be up there in two hours, and expect a full report. If fired on, he is not to return fire unless the situation is life threatening. Can you help me with that, Reverend?”
Black looked over at John, who gave a nod of reassurance, and he left.
“You could have given us warning,” John said. “It would have prevented what happened in Asheville.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The way I read things when we last met, I knew I could trust you. But my people who mingled with yours while we were talking? It wasn’t good. Reports back were that your people would fight if we just tried to walk in.”
“Can you blame them after what the last attempt to bring us into the fold of Bluemont turned into?”
“I balanced all and finally felt this was the right approach. It’s tragic that anyone had to die. God knows after what happened in Roanoke, Richmond, and Lynchburg, I know the cost. The only way I felt could work was to show overwhelming force in the first move and count on you being moral and sane in response. It could have been far worse, and you know it.”
“So my next question, Bob. Why this?”
“I already told you that before. I’ve been tasked with establishing a reunified state east of the Appalachians from central Virginia down to the old border of Florida.”
“Why not Florida as well while you’re at it?” Again, he could see the flash of pain in Bob’s eyes at the mere mention of that place.
“We’ve written off Florida. I remember some years ago—I think I read it in American Heritage or some magazine like that—until DDT and air-conditioning came along, except for the coastal regions, the state was relatively empty. Well, it most certainly turned into that after the Day with tens of millions living there, a high percentage of them elderly and dependent on that air-conditioning, modern sanitation, a reliable supply of medications, modern hospitals, a freezer full of steaks, cold margaritas out on the screened-in lanai every evening, and of course mosquito control. Word is the few left down there again face malaria, cholera, Nile Valley, you name it.”
He paused, obviously not appreciating having to dwell on what for him was personal history as well. “Remember, Central Command for our operations in the Middle East was based in the Tampa, Saint Pete area. Within two months, they collapsed, the survivors, the lucky survivors, evacuated by our navy. From Miami to Jacksonville—on the other coast Fort Myers to Pensacola—disintegrated into a sinkhole of anarchy, looting, murder, and then disease and starvation. There are some pockets of survivors along the coast, living again by what they can harvest from the sea as long as pirates don’t get them first. The navy tried to control the waters around there for a while and clean out the pirates but finally gave up. Florida, like I said, is a write-off.”
It was obvious to John that he wanted to leave that subject behind.
“Florida’s gone, but you were ordered to take this place, is that it?”
“I’d prefer not to use the term take, John. Call it unite, reunite. Bring you back in under a central federated government.”
“But after Fredericks, suppose we don’t want to join?”
“John, you have no choice. To be blunt, it is unite or die.”
John chuckled at that and shook his head. “I seem to remember that was on our flags during the revolution against an overbearing authority four thousand miles away.”
“You’re taking it the wrong way, my friend.”
“Bob, who actually are you serving? I mean, really serving? Bluemont, or the oath you swore to the Constitution?”
Bob fell silent, and there was a look of anger in his eyes.
“My trust for Bluemont? It’s about as far as I can spit into a hurricane,” John interjected.
“My God, John. So you are going to take that decision upon yourself. You don’t trust them, so go to hell and leave us alone, and that’s it?”
John offered no reply.
“I have my orders. I hope you can trust me to see them through and avoid a senseless conflict that you know you cannot win.”
He wanted to retort with a conjuring of memories about military ethics classes, the tragic, horrific example of the German army in the 1930s, when the oath of allegiance was one day switched from defending the state to accepting without hesitation all orders from the führer.
“So what are your orders regarding here, what we have come to call the State of Carolina?”
“A bit aggrandizing, that name, isn’t it? State of Carolina. Last time I checked a map, your state here controls what, five thousand square miles? What about Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh? For that matter, there is a garrison in Greenville-Spartanburg put there by Bluemont, and they have a corridor of control all the way down to Charleston.”
“It’s a start,” John offered, “and if left alone will continue to expand in an orderl
y way. Groups like the Posse either move out or, if need be, we take them out. We were doing okay with local folks reaching out to the next community and inviting them to join in. Unite or die? Maybe it is unite and live.”
“John, there are a hundred enclaves like yours that are making ‘a start,’ as you put it, from here clear up to Maine. But then what? We devolve into a hundred feudal-like states that eventually balkanize the way Europe did after Rome collapsed? You and your friends have done a masterful job of restoring order, civilization, and—from what I could observe—even bringing some technology back online. But reunite everything? Do you have any idea what some other so-called states have devolved into? You most likely know about Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York, even D.C.”
“I’ve heard some stories.”
“You haven’t seen it; I have. D.C. is of course gone, a write-off, same as Florida. There are some whack jobs running what they call a kingdom not a hundred and fifty miles from here that are told to worship their leader as the son of God, and if you don’t go along, you are crucified.”
“So why not go after them first?” John offered.
“Weak argument, John. Bait-and-switch logic. It is precisely places like here, where things are being restored, that old values still hold, that we need in our fold before I can take out places like that.”
“So we are back in the fold, is that it?”
Bob nodded, finally sipping his tea and grimacing slightly. “Damn, this is awful stuff, John.”
“Sorry, but that is what we live on.”
“Don’t take it as a bribe, but once we get this settled, I’ve got a convoy coming in with two hundred thousand MREs. Remember each of them has a packet of coffee. Do you still smoke?”
John shook his head.
“Why, I remember you as being really addicted.”
“I promised Jennifer before she died.”
Bob lowered his head. “Sorry.” John could tell the emotions were genuine. “We can talk later about all that we lost.”
“And your specific orders.”
Bob looked back up at him and sighed, obviously not happy about what he had to say next. “I’m ordered to place you under arrest and transport you in an expedient manner to Bluemont to stand trial for murder, the execution of prisoners, and treason.”
The Final Day Page 19