Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  “Excuse me for saying this, Sergeant, but if Chambers is the devil, then what does that make you?”

  Luke nodded at the disembodied skulls and turned to regard Beatty with a satisfied smile, making the other man shiver a bit.

  “Well, now, Private, that remains to be seen.”

  Then his grin dropped, replaced by a troubled expression. “However, we will need to continue this discussion later. I’m afraid Mr. Chambers is about to show us just how low he is willing to go.”

  “You mean the suits in those bags,” Beatty stated plainly. He knew he wasn’t the smartest man in the Army, but he tried to focus on what was going on around him. “That’s for biological weapons and poison gas, right?”

  “And for radiation,” Luke added. “I hope I’m wrong, but this war may be on the verge of getting even worse.”

  Beatty frowned but didn’t hesitate before speaking.

  “You think Chambers would use nukes?”

  “You think he wouldn’t, if he felt like the act would win him this war?”

  “I guess we need to figure out how to wear those suits, right?”

  “Right.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Three hours later, the two hastily-repaired five ton trucks rumbled through flying snow and passed between the broken pieces of the chain-link gate, the big wheels carrying them deeper into the complex of metal-clad warehouses that made up the shipping hub. Three days ago, on their hike into their chosen ambush point, Luke noted the apparently abandoned business as a rally point in passing. Now with evening approaching and a possibly valuable cargo to conceal, he thought the terminal might offer a few hours of sanctuary before the squad completed their roundabout return to their own lines.

  Before risking their crew or the cargo, Luke stashed his charges behind a burned-out car wash down the road. He’d then taken a look, with the goal of ensuring their hiding spot was as empty as it appeared. Cautiously, Luke and Dwayne Silcott scouted the shipping terminal and though they found signs of habitation, including a fire pit gouged out of the asphalt and lined with chunks of the removed substance, it was nothing recent. Dwayne stirred the ashes with a stick, but Luke turned away and busied himself with going through the barrels in the aluminum shed.

  “Hey, Luke, I think these bones are…” Silcott started, then paused.

  “Yeah,” Luke murmured, “I figured. Seen that more times than I would care to say.”

  Moving back from the fire pit, Dwayne released the stick. The wood clattered slightly against the fire-blackened femur bone exposed by the soldier’s digging. Luke didn’t have to check to tell it was human.

  “People could really get that hungry?” Dwayne whispered, but Luke caught the words.

  “People are funny, man,” Luke replied, allowing his voice to carry. “Before the pulse, nobody in their right mind would consider such a thing. Two weeks after, and all bets were off. I guess you guys had it different up in your neighborhood.”

  “We had it happen,” Dwayne admitted glumly while the two soldiers exited the structure and moved on the next one. “Found some sites like this, where neighbors killed neighbors and did what they did, but it was rare. Or so we thought.”

  “Two weeks,” Luke repeated, his voice dropping as they approached the side door of the next sealed building. “I should know, since I was on the menu that day.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Luke confirmed. “Remind me when we get secure and I’ll show you the scar. Now, let’s get this last one checked.”

  In the end, they found nothing else of note and brought the rest of the squad through the gate. The four long, low warehouses arranged around a rectangle, covered too much territory for eight men to secure, so Luke selected the one in back, the most distant from the breached gate, and tasked Cameron and Drew with cutting the chain-link fence and wiring it back into place. Luke didn’t need to explain how this would allow the squad to exit the facility without having to use the gate.

  Once the sliding metal doors were secured and the two trucks shut down, Luke had a guard rotation set and a space set up for their camp between the two five-tons. Using battery-powered LED lanterns to keep the dark at bay, the squad members laid out their sleeping bags and began the laborious process of removing their foot wraps and then the boots underneath.

  “Get out your foot powder and change your socks,” Dwayne reminded, and he saw the rest of the squad digging in their packs to comply. Even in the cold, sweat accumulated in their boots and left their skin damp and vulnerable. Luke followed the corporal’s advice, remembering his grandfather’s laments about nearly losing toes to the jungle rot while on extended patrols in Vietnam.

  “Yes, mother,” Drew catcalled, but softly, as he stood just outside the shell of illumination provided by the lanterns. He might be a joker, but Luke noted he didn’t turn his head away from scanning the darkness for threats.

  “Don’t make me turn this car around,” Dwayne growled in mock threat, and Kenzie and Cameron chuckled. Must be a Denton thing, Luke surmised.

  “Well, that was invigorating,” Eddie chimed in, digging into his pack. Pulling out one of the MRE entrée packages, he began preparing one of the food pouches for dinner. Unlike soldiers from years past, Eddie didn’t bother to check what meal he’d selected. Food was too precious to even make a joking protest about the quality. Calories were calories, and everyone danced too close to the edge of starvation to complain.

  “Not much of a firefight, though,” Kenzie pointed out. “Felt like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Good, and that’s just the way I like it,” Luke observed, his voice a bit ragged from shouting orders earlier. “We aren’t here to get in shootouts. That’s stupid. We ain’t gunfighters, and that Wild West shit is make-believe. You all did a fine job today, and I hope our warning can save lives on our side.”

  “You really think somebody on the other side would be dumb enough to use some kind of WMD against us? On top of how screwed-up our world is already?” Abbie asked, and her question silenced the group for nearly a minute before Luke responded.

  “These assholes, they don’t care who they hurt or what the ramifications might be,” he said. “They’ve already made a stab at the chemical weapons stored at Pine Bluff, and who knows what Chambers and his minions have dug up to use against us.”

  “Those suits really protect against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons?” Cameron asked skeptically. “They look like something from a sci-fi movie.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Luke conceded. “My dad bitched about having to train in them, since they are hot, loud, and cumbersome. But they do work against some things, if you can get the seals to work.”

  Luke’s frank assessment seemed to deflate the group. Crap, he thought sourly. This leadership thing was harder than he thought it would be. Thinking about lessons learned at his father’s knee, he knew the time was right to spread a little encouragement. “But I’m sure we can figure out how to use them if we need to, and none of this would be possible, if we hadn’t carried that ambush out so well. Well done, all of you.”

  Looking around, he caught the eye of each man, and woman, seated on the hard concrete of the warehouse floor. He saw a variety of expressions, ranging from Dwayne’s satisfied grin to Eddie Castillo’s thoughtful frown, but he caught a look of apprehension in Abbie’s eyes and filed the reaction away for later.

  “Now, everybody, get some sleep,” Luke ordered wearily, “and we’ll be on our way before dawn.”

  No one seemed put out by the idea, and the seven settled down to eat from their dwindling supply of rations while Luke took a moment to confer with Drew.

  “Let me get two hours, then get me up for the next shift before you grab some food. Abbie relieves me, and she will get Kenzie up after that. Any questions?”

  They’d been using a rotating schedule, so everyone knew who they would relieve and who they needed to wake before turning in for a few hours downtime of their own.r />
  “Got it, Sergeant,” Drew replied, his earlier jovial mood replaced by grim determination. Luke knew from his conversations with Dwayne, all four of the survivors from the Denton camp were experienced guerilla fighters, accustomed to hours of boredom, interrupted by minutes of sheer panic and violence.

  In truth, Luke judged them to be solid fighters, honed by the months of conflict just to stay alive. Luke wondered why the National Guard officers didn’t make more use of the talents available to them and decided too many of them were still stuck in the old-world mindset. Training and classes attended, as well as time in service or rank, seemed more important than skills learned while surviving in the new reality. So what, if none of his men knew how to march on a parade ground, or which ribbons went on their uniforms? None of that mattered anymore, if it ever did.

  With these thoughts, Luke drifted off to a blessed, dreamless sleep. Since being assigned to the scouts, Luke found his sleep to be more relaxed and deeper than ever, since his mom had been murdered, and he wondered briefly at the cause. Surely his mother would have been horrified at her son’s descent into cold-blooded killing and mayhem, but for whatever reason, he managed one hundred twenty minutes of slumber before he felt a familiar nudge against his boot.

  “I’m up,” he muttered, rolling to a sitting position and noting only one lantern still lit.

  “You got this, Sergeant?”

  “Yeah, Drew, I’m awake,” Luke continued, matching deeds to words as he absently pulled his boots on and slung his rifle across his chest. He was aware of the twinges in his chest when the magazine carrier flexed and the armor shifted beneath, but by now, Luke was accustomed to the little pieces of discomfort that went with sleeping in full kit, as the British might say. Taking a sip from his canteen, not being able to reach his Camelbak tube at the moment, Luke stood on sore legs and paced around the perimeter of the temporary camp while stretching his protesting muscles.

  Drew ate quickly and within fifteen minutes, the young man slipped into his bag and drifted off into a dreamless sleep. He’d done a hard day’s work and needed the rest to recharge for the next day, and the next challenge.

  For Luke, the time passed slowly and he walked an irregular circuit around their trucks, alternating between checking for threats to their immediate well-being and worried over more long-term dangers. Luke couldn’t make the snow fall any faster, but he hoped for a solid cover to continue concealing their tracks. Being pursued by the Committee forces might offer Luke another chance at staging a successful ambush, but he would prefer being able to pull back to their lines and regroup.

  Luke also noticed Abbie’s disturbed sleep while he walked. Luke felt pleased by her performance at the ambush earlier, and by extension, his decision to seek her out for his team. Like the rest of the men, she carried a load of anger around inside, and the young sergeant saw her as a kindred spirit of sorts. He just hoped she managed to do a better job than he was of dealing with the emotional fallout when that molten fury was unleashed.

  With this in mind, Luke showed no surprise when his sniper joined him a few minutes later as he made his rounds. His ears noted when she’d rolled out of her sleeping bag and pulled on her boots. She’d remained silent for nearly five minutes, but when she spoke, her words were not what Luke expected.

  “Does it make you feel better, when you take their heads?”

  Luke stopped in mid-stride, turning to regard Abbie.

  “No, not really. I don’t do it for fun, Abbie,” Luke replied in an even tone. “Think of it as psychological warfare. I do it, so they fear me. The first time…”

  “Wait, you’ve done this more than once?”

  Luke shook his head, and looked away, peering into the distance before he spoke again.

  “No, I tried, though. It was in Oklahoma, and I saw these shitbags shoot my girl. I thought she was dead, and I’ll admit, I went a little overboard. Anyway, after it was over, I was going to mount the heads of my dead enemies on a fence. As a warning, to keep everyone else away.”

  “Jeez, Luke, you don’t mess around. What happened?”

  Luke gave a shake of his head, like he was clearing away the memory.

  “I got careless. Took a round in the belly. One minute I’m searching for a machete to get to work, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in the recovery room after surgery. Then I found out Amy was still alive, and boy did I feel like a jackass.”

  “You told me before, back on the way to the camp, not to let myself enjoy the killing. But when I shot those men, part of me was happy to be doing it.”

  “Were you thinking about your parents when you pulled the trigger?”

  “I was,” Abbie confessed, her head bent.

  “Good,” Luke replied, and Abbie jerked as if she’d been shocked.

  “What?” Luke asked innocently. “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t feel some sense of revenge, Abbie. Just don’t chase the feeling. I think of my mom every time I pull the trigger these days. And Rachel.” He added that last bit almost to himself, but Abbie heard.

  “Who was Rachel? Was she family, too?”

  Luke turned away and resumed his walk around the campsite. Abbie saw the fresh pain on teenager’s face and she almost returned to her sleeping bag, but something compelled her to match pace with her sergeant. Even though she was nine years his senior, Abbie realized she didn’t feel like she’d been speaking to a teenager.

  “Rachel was a little girl,” Luke finally replied, his voice nearly inaudible. “We didn’t know her age, exactly, but best estimates put her at about three years old. She’d already lost her family before the mother of one of my traveling companions sort of adopted her. Connie took her in, but then Connie was murdered by the first wave of Commie stormtroopers to hit our house. I don’t know how much Rachel understood at that age, but that little girl didn’t stop crying for weeks. Then my mother started getting close to the child, and Rachel eventually started calling her Momma.”

  Abbie swallowed convulsively at the story so far, not missing Luke’s use of the past tense.

  “I think I might have killed Rachel’s parents,” Luke continued, and he saw Abbie jerk at the news. He continued, explaining, “that attack I told you about, where I was going to mount those skulls as a warning, well, my friends found Rachel the next day, wandering the streets. She was asking for her momma.”

  “And so, you felt remorse for what happened?” Abbie asked delicately, but Luke gave her a cold look that stop her footsteps.

  “Fuck, no. You try to kill me, I’m going to kill you right back,” he growled. “Those attackers, they’d already slaughtered their own neighbors who had been providing them with food. No, I didn’t feel guilt or remorse then, and I don’t now. However, that little girl was blameless, and she was just so pitiful, it broke my heart a little bit. Seeing her finally happy made me happy too.”

  “And then your mother died,” she finally added, sensing Luke had more to say. The teen nodded, and when he spoke again, Abbie heard the hate and hurt, and other unidentifiable emotions in his voice.

  “And my mother was murdered, along with my best friend’s mom, and a bunch of other innocent people. My friend Alex, he was badly burned, trying to get them out of the house. Rachel died in that house too. My grandfather’s home.”

  “So, now you’re here to exact your revenge, then?”

  “I’m here to do what I can to end this war,” Luke replied. “I needed to get away and help get this job done here. Back home, all I could do was hunt for the drone assassins, and after a bit, I felt I was losing my control. I’d already lost my mother, my uncle, and my grandfather, and I saw myself pushing away the only ones I had left.”

  Glancing over at his sniper, Luke saw in the limited light when the older woman bit her lip.

  “Jeez, I was supposed to be offering you some kind of counseling,” Luke said by way of apology, “not dumping my mess on you. I’m four kinds of fucked up, Abbie, but you don’t have to follow my exampl
e to do your job here.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Abbie replied, her voice going softer as she spoke. “I was just remembering a quote I read once in one of my college classes. I remember it was attributed to Gandhi, but then saw he was quoting someone else. I don’t recall the source, but it is appropriate. ‘I cried because I had no shoes’…”

  “‘Then I met a man who had no feet’,” Luke responded, finishing the quote.

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” Abbie agreed. “We all think we’ve cornered the market on heartbreak, but there’s always something worse waiting just around the bend. I’m sorry for your losses, Luke, and I hope someday…”

  The words died on Abbie’s lips as the two noticed the light growing brighter in the room, but the light seemed to be coming from the west, and sunrise was still hours away. The light coming in through the skylights grew in intensity, like a flashbulb that never stopped. For the duo on guard, the result was akin to a being in the room with a flashbang detonating, but without the sound.

  “Get down!” Luke barked, breaking the silence. He had his eyes firmly shut now, but the damage was done.

  “What is that?” Abbie demanded.

  “That’s why they were bringing in these suits,” Luke murmured, and he hurried over to the other members of their squad, operating by feel more than sight.

  “That was the flash, but we should be receiving the shockwave soon.”

  “What?!” Abbie cried, but Luke ignored her questions for the moment, and her own quick wit rapidly began filling in the blanks.

  “Wake up! Wake Up! Everybody get under the trucks!” Luke bellowed, and Abbie soon joined in, repeating the commands.

  Abbie broke into a run and skidded, flopping under one of the big trucks, where she crashed into Eddie.

  “What’s going on?” Eddie asked, still groggy.

  “I think the Committee just popped a nuke in Joplin,” Abbie replied, shock heavy in her voice. She burrowed close, dragging her body closer to the older man.