by James Tarr
A low grumbling made itself known and the shadowy figures all lifted their heads. The sound rose into a growling roar close above them, louder and louder, then began to fade.
“Going up and away,” Ed’s experienced ears told him.
“Afterburners,” someone else agreed.
“And if you’re nineteen,” Early went on as if there’d been no interruption, as Jason tugged down his pants, “I’m wearing little pink panties with a rose on the front.”
“No telling what else you’re lying about.” Ed glanced quickly at Early. Little pink panties? “For all we know Military Intelligence sent you in to infiltrate us.”
The young kid shook his head vigorously. “No, no, I’m telling you the truth. My dad wouldn’t let me come, I’ve been wanting to join up for years, but finally I just left anyway, and—”
“How old are you?” another voice demanded, someone he hadn’t heard before.
“Seventeen,” he said. He looked at the silhouettes around him, then lowered his gaze. “Sixteen,” he mumbled, knowing the time for lying was over. Then he jerked his head up, defiance once again showing. “But I’ve shot at soldiers. I—” He stopped, realizing he’d gone farther than he’d wanted to.
“You what? Hand those over.” Fingers snagged the jeans from his hand.
“I’m just not sure I hit anyone.” As if being forced to strip wasn’t embarrassing enough. And he knew he didn’t hit anything other than the pickup the soldiers were in. They sped away, and he cut cross-country for home. He’d later heard they’d busted down the doors of any house close to where he’d fired the shot, interrogated anybody they found at home and searched the houses for illegal weapons. He’d felt guilty about that, but also exhilarated that he’d actually, finally, done something.
“Yeah.” About what I thought, Ed mused. He glanced again at Early, who seemed to be having trouble keeping his rifle up.
“Skivvies too, junior. Ain’t nothing you got none of us haven’t seen before.” It sounded like Early was talking through gritted teeth.
“Why do you want me to strip?”
“You think I can miss you from here?” Early almost shouted, the end of his rifle quivering. Jason hurriedly tugged down his dirty jockeys, wanting to cover himself but knowing somehow that he shouldn’t.
“We’re looking for bugs, boy, the electronic kind. Tracking devices. You afraid we was gonna start flirtin’ with you? Pull up your package, want to make sure you got nothin’ hidin’ underneath. All right, now turn around and spread your cheeks. Christ, boy, I got more hair in my ears than you got on your whole body.”
“Nothing in the pack,” someone said.
Early let out a deep breath, and lowered his rifle. His shoulders were screaming. “Looks like you’re clean, unless you swallowed it. Turn around already, it ain’t like we want to eyeball your crack.”
Quentin and Bobby finished going through his clothes and shook their heads. Early grabbed Jason’s pants and tossed them at the boy. The flashlights went off in quick succession, and the crowd around him spread out. Jason blinked, blue spots swimming in his vision.
“Welcome to the squad,” Ed said dryly. “Everybody, this is Jason.” Hands clapped him on the shoulders, and there was laughter at the expression on his face.
He didn’t think it was funny at all. Not one damn bit. Even in the darkness it was clear he was furious. One of the dark figures leaned close and spoke quietly. “If you’re here to join the fight, that means you’re here to kill people. Maybe get killed. If getting your feelings hurt is all it takes to make you want to go back home to mommy, you don’t belong here anyway. Go ahead and fuck right off. Or grow a pair.” Then the man, whoever he was, moved away.
Jason blinked. He was still angry at being treated the way he had been, but could he blame them? They didn’t know him. And this was war, they were risking their lives every day. He swallowed his anger and pride and finished getting dressed.
“Did I miss anything while I was gone?” Ed stepped around an overturned desk and peered out one of the windows, trying to blink his night vision back after the bright flashlights. Diagonally across the intersection was a long, low building, still mostly white. Once it had housed cable or phone company offices, he couldn’t remember. The big satellite dishes on the roof were all mangled from explosions or fire, and the fifty-foot antenna lay crumpled across the small parking lot. Nothing moving, even after all the light and noise they’d made confronting the kid. He turned away from the window.
George glided up silently, peered out the window with his typical lack of expression. “Weasel found fresh piss spots in the back corner,” he murmured. “Rain trap’s been damn near emptied as well. Somebody left here right before we arrived. In a hurry, too, looks like. You got any idea who?” Ed shook his head, considering the information. The bucket into which the tarps on the roof drained was concealed behind ceiling tiles on the second floor. Unless you knew where to look you wouldn’t just stumble across it accidentally.
“Something big’s in the works,” he told the squad’s most veteran man. “Uncle Charlie’s sending us south. Not just us, apparently. I want an ammo and gear check, including water. Briefing’s in ten minutes.”
George, looking thoughtful, went to spread the word.
Jason sat next to a young kid named Bobby who really was nineteen. Once Jason’s night vision came back he could see Bobby had a big sheaf of brown hair and permanent red spots on his cheeks.
“Relax,” he whispered to Jason with an apologetic smile. “It’s nothing personal. We’ve had a run of bad luck lately and they just wanted to make sure. They’re really good, don’t worry. Just do what they tell you and you’ll be fine.”
Jason wasn’t entirely placated but he kept his sharp words to himself. Intellectually he knew he had no right to be angry, but he’d always had a hard time controlling his emotions. However, yelling at guys with guns seemed like a bad idea no matter how mad he was. “How long have you been with them?” he whispered back.
“Six months.”
Sitting on the other side of Jason was Quentin, the squad’s only black member. He looked about thirty, stocky, with a bald head and a shovel-shaped jaw. He studiously ignored Jason, chewing instead on one of Colleen’s biscuits.
Bobby had very quietly pointed out the members of the squad. Ed and Early he’d met. George was another old guy; Bobby said he was second in command. Mark was a big guy, six foot four, but moved very quietly. “This is Q. Quentin,” Bobby said softly, nodding at the man sitting next to him. Quentin glanced over, but didn’t say anything. “And Weasel’s over in the corner.”
“Weasel?”
“Yeah.”
The squad was in a loose circle in the middle of the second floor, all but Mark and Early who were keeping watch. Mark was a dark silhouette near the windows staring out at the street, close enough to hear the discussion. Early was in the back of the building, standing guard on the ground floor. On one knee Ed spread the map out on the floor and twisted on a small penlight with red cellophane taped over the end. The pale red glow illuminated a circle of scuffed boots and fraying shoes, stained and faded clothing, and thin, tired faces behind stubble and scruffy beards. Bobby was the only one of them that didn’t badly need a shave, even though it had been weeks since his face had felt a razor.
“Here we are.” Ed marked it with the penlight’s tiny circle of light. “Today’s Saturday. Next Friday, the fifteenth, we’re supposed to be here.” He ran the light down the map and stopped. Everyone leaned forward.
“What’s there?” Weasel was the one who’d spoken. It was the only name, Jason had been told, that he would respond to. In any case it seemed an apt nickname—hatchet-faced, with oily black hair swept back above a skinny body barely five and a half feet tall, Weasel vibrated with nervous energy. He was somewhere in his twenties, but kept his exact age just as much of a secret as his real name. Everyone understood why. If the government learned you had a relative fight
ing as a guerrilla, your entire family was detained as sympathizers and interrogated. And there’d been too many disappearances, too many ugly violent reprisals, even though the official word was that such things did not, would not, and never had happened. Across the front of his plate carrier, in black magic marker, had been inked LGBTNBBQ.
“Unknown. Anybody ever been through there before?” Heads shook all around.
“I’ve been near there,” Quentin said. “Block or two over. Nothin’ special that I can remember. Those buildings are big and built with a lot of brick. Hard to take down, if that’s the plan, but I don’t think they’re being used for anything. It’s a school, if I remember correctly. Or, at least, used to be.”
Ed nodded, staring down at the map. “I’m guessing it’s an RP, but why there?” There were a handful of commonly used rendezvous points throughout the city, but they were located near water, or supply dumps. Plus, the dogsoldiers had dozens of safehouses throughout the city they used. The spot Uncle Charlie had indicated wasn’t near anything. And it seemed somewhat exposed. “It sounded like Uncle Charlie was calling everyone out. Family reunion, he said. Anybody heard any rumblings about this?”
Another chorus of shaking heads. “Gators are supposed to be tearin’ it up down south,” Bobby said excitedly. “Maybe they’re ready to push north!”
Ed sighed. “That’s still a long way down the road, if it ever happens. Even though this is our home, we’re nobody’s priority. We’re fighting in a dark forgotten corner of this war. You know that, Bobby.” He glanced at George, intense as always, who nodded grimly in agreement.
Ed had discussed possible ways down with George, and they’d settled on a route that would avoid most of the known trouble spots. Once they crossed the Ditch, though, any plans they made became mere wishful thinking. Anything could happen in the city, and usually did. What was that famous quote? ‘No plan ever survives contact with the enemy’? Something like that.
With the light he traced their proposed route. Jason looked on excitedly, still a little off-balance, a little pissed, but pumped to have finally made it. He looked around the circle, studying the faces. They all looked so comfortable, so natural in their gear—even Bobby—sporting pistols and knives and spare magazines in addition to the ever-present military rifles they carried so unconcernedly. Jason still felt self-conscious whenever he picked his rifle up, like he was playing a role, even though he’d carried it hunting dozens of times. The squad displayed an easy familiarity with each other that he envied. Even though—post striptease—they’d been polite to him, or at least not antagonistic, he knew he was still the outsider, the unproven element, and he didn’t know how long that might last.
George, the second-in-command, was the scariest one of the bunch. He was maybe forty but had the wrinkles of someone ten years older. Above a compact, wiry body was a face that stared out with absolutely dead eyes. Every time he looked over at him Jason felt like George was measuring him for a casket. While his personal gear showed some serious use—there was a fresh, bright silver scratch in his stubby rifle’s handguard, to go along with the dozens of older scratches—his stuff looked top notch. Bobby’d said George had been fighting since day one, and Jason believed it.
“We’re just gonna dump our wheels?” Weasel looked up from the map.
“Can’t take it into the city,” George spoke up. “Half the streets are too choked to pass, and you know anything rolling is fair game, fuck the rules of engagement.”
“Wait, what?” Jason said.
George looked up sharply at the interruption. “If the Army sees a moving vehicle inside the city limits, outside of the approved travel corridors, they’re just as likely to light it up as not, even if they don’t see any weapons. Just in case.”
“But…aren’t there…don’t people live in the city?”
Ed nodded. “Thousands, still, even after years of fighting, no power, and no water. Some are diehard residents who refuse to leave, others are just crazy, but they’re not involved in the fighting. Army doesn’t care. Ninety percent of the ‘guerrillas’ killed in the city these days are just civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think they feel it’s the only way they can maintain what little control they have over the place, keep everybody on foot.”
“What, that’s not what the government-approved news sources are telling you?” Early said to Jason’s surprised face. “Color me shocked.” He shook his head. “Almost nothing’s rolling on wheels south of the border, not since the government had every automaker shut down every satellite-connected vehicle inside the city limits like they used to do when the cops reported them stolen. OnStar, Ford SYNC, all of them. Which was pretty much every car made in the last twenty years. Cars just stopped dead where they were. And then the government never turned them back on again,. Martial law, all the same excuses. Sad fate of a city, you ask me, that was once known for its cars.”
“There are checkpoints all around the city if you need to drive into or through it,” Mark told him. “The soldiers manning them will take your DNA and scan your fingerprints and while they’re waiting for those results to come back they’ll search your vehicle down to the welds. Maybe steal some of your shit, if you’re bringing in anything they could use. Needless to say, it takes forever, and it’s better just to go the long way around. The only place you see vehicles going through those checkpoints with any regularity is on the south side of the city where the trucks are coming in, bringing supplies to the military and local government, such as it is. And then they’re required to stay in restricted travel corridors. Stray outside those and you’re likely to get turned into slag by a Kestrel.”
“Downtown’s really the only place you see people driving around,” George told Jason. “They call it the Blue Zone and it stretches from the New Center area to the Army base to the riverfront. Maybe half a mile wide by three miles long, and it’s all commercial buildings, parking garages, government offices, restaurants, the stadiums, although half of everything or more is empty. The New Center area is about the only place in the city where you’ll see actual stores still in business in any number, and almost the only place in the city you’ll see a static Army presence outside of their base. Almost all of the businesses still operating in the city are in the Blue Zone, but a big chunk of the workers there are city employees and government support staff. They live there, and down at the riverfront. The sight of the soldiers makes them feel safe, I’m told. Amazingly enough they have power in the Blue Zone, and running water, and cell phone service. It’s like a separate city inside the city. There are some jersey barriers put down on some of the side streets, limiting traffic, but unlike the Army base the area isn’t restricted. It’s more a psychological separation. Inside the Blue Zone they can pretend there’s not a war on, and that the rest of the city doesn’t look like I Am Legend.” He looked at Jason. “That’s zombies,” he explained.
“I think I saw that movie, actually,” Jason said.
“Anyway,” Ed said loudly, getting back to the briefing, “Uncle Charlie said to come in quiet. A vehicle will only draw attention. We find a spot near the border to hide it, disable it like usual, and hopefully it’ll still be there when we get back, with more or less the same amount of parts and fuel.”
Quentin snorted, indicating what he thought the chances of that happening were.
Weasel was scratching his head. “Boss, near as I can see it it’s ten miles in a straight line, double that if we take a roundabout way in. Why are we leaving in the morning? There’s no way it’ll take us six days to get here. That’s a two-day foot patrol, tops, even if we’re creepin’ along. I could use a rest. We all could.”
“No way? You’re so sure?” George growled. He squinted at the dark-haired man. “How’s the rib?” he asked pointedly.
Weasel frowned, leaned to the side, and made a face. “Could be better.”
Bobby leaned close to Jason and whispered. “He cracked a rib last week. Lucky bastard.”
Bobby murmured. “We hooked up with another squad and ambushed a small Army column, but it turned out they weren’t alone. Killed six, maybe eight of them, but we burned up most of our ammo getting out of there. A Toad nobody saw coming took a wild shot at Weasel’s group through a gap between buildings.”
“A Toad. That’s a tank?”
“Yeah. Weasel got nailed by some flying bricks, that’s how close it was. If the Toad had had an HE round loaded instead of whatever he was using he’d be dead.”
“Wow.” Jason was pretty sure HE meant high explosive, but he didn’t want to ask and sound stupid.
Ed had been staring at the map and straightened up. He looked around the circle at their drawn faces. “You’ve been getting the shit end of the stick from day one. Always outnumbered, always outgunned, thirsty, starving, half the time out of ammo, rarely able to do much more than harass them riding around in their goddamned armor. The only thing that’s kept this little police action anywhere close to fair is that occasionally, eventually, they have to get out from behind that armor. We’ve had more luck than some, but that column we hit last week was the first time in two months we were actually able to do some real damage. And the very next day we lose our wheels. Charlie said he was calling everybody in. He wouldn’t do that unless something big was up. Something we don’t know about.”
“You don’t think it’s the Gators?”
Ed shook his head at Bobby. “No, we’d have heard something. I don’t know what it is. But I have a hunch it’s going to be important. And I’d rather be two days early for the party than two minutes late. And taking a roundabout way through the city is a good way to get a feel for the area, see if the Army’s up to anything, whatever. Either way, I want to be on site a full twenty-four hours early so we can get eyes on that location, know what we’re walking into.”