by Brian Parker
“You’re right, it’s not,” the commander agreed. “But what does you receiving non-judicial punishment have to do with our unsustainable installation population problem?”
He took a few minutes to explain his theory, and all the while, the captain’s face remained blank. Until he finished, then it changed into a look of sadness, or pity, Jake wasn’t sure which. “Jake, this is all going on in your head. Just like the idea to not kill the infected the other night, it’s simply not the reality that we live in. The division commander isn’t trying to secretly stage a revolt to kill off the refugee population. Do we need you to see the psych before you carry out your punishment?”
“What?” Jake choked on the saliva in his mouth. “No, sir. I’m good to go. I just—” In his periphery, Joe shook his head. “Never mind, sir. It’s just a theory that I don’t have any proof for. And no, I don’t need to see a shrink. I’ll do my time down in the camp, then come back up here and do my job.”
The captain stared at him for a moment, assessing whether he told the truth. Finally, he nodded and said, “Alright. Head down to the motor pool. Sergeant Gallegos has a Humvee waiting to take you to Refugee Camp Number Three.”
“The one where there was already a riot?” Jake asked in disbelief.
“It’s the one we have in the brigade sector. We can’t keep you safe if you aren’t in our area of operations.”
“Yeah…” He trailed off. The uncertainty he’d experienced over whether his fears were real or not had vanished. They were sending him into a camp that had already experienced unrest and a lot of people had died, which automatically created more enemies. He’d learned about insurgencies when he was a cadet at West Point. One of the reasons kinetic counterinsurgency fights almost always failed in the long run was because killing, beating, and arresting insurgents almost always created more enemies in their friends and family. That’s what he was walking into at Camp Three. Twenty thousand dead out of a population of close to four hundred thousand.
The commander wanted them to revolt. Four hundred thousand people ate a lot of food.
“I don’t wanna get up,” Sidney murmured into the soft flesh of Caitlyn’s arm. She was comfortable, and warm, with her face buried in the crook of the soldier’s arm as the woman spooned her from behind.
“I know, but I gotta go to work. So do you.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. It was getting harder these days to wake up, even though she knew that her job in the kitchen was one of the only things keeping her out of the camps. The other was Caitlyn, but she was just a staff sergeant and didn’t have the authority to house and feed a refugee in the barracks.
She wriggled her body forward, reluctantly breaking contact with her friend and the warmth she radiated. It took her a moment to make it off the bed, while behind her, she felt the pressure on the mattress springs release as Caitlyn rolled off the bed to the floor.
Sidney arched her back, standing fully. Gallegos was already gone. “When did Luis leave?”
“Mmm, about two hours ago; maybe only an hour and a half. He had to escort Lieutenant Murphy down to Refugee Camp Three before his platoon’s shift on the wall. Poor bastard has to have the XO as a platoon leader until Murphy gets back.”
“XO?”
“The company executive officer, the number two guy. He was the MGS Platoon leader before Lieutenant Hallewell got here. He’s an asshole.”
“Oh, that sucks.”
“Yeah, well, good for me at least. Since Gallegos is undoubtedly going to be at work for a lot longer than normal, I’m gonna move to the top bunk while he’s on shift to give you the entire bottom bunk. I love ya like a sis, Sidney, but I need more room.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not. Buuut,” Caitlyn drew out the word. “You think you could be gone tonight from like eighteen hundred to twenty hundred?”
“I think I can find something to do.”
“Good. Mamma needs a little alone time with Dickerson. He’s hung like a horse—well, you know, you’ve seen him in the shower.”
Sidney laughed. “I hadn’t really noticed.”
Caitlyn shimmied her camouflaged pants over her hips, sending her ample breasts swaying side to side. “Come on! You’re telling me that with all those hormones raging inside of you, you aren’t horny as hell? I couldn’t stop fucking when I was pregnant with Jocelynn—”
The sergeant stopped suddenly and turned away. “I’m sorry,” Sidney offered, unsure of what else to say.
Caitlyn nodded and took a ragged breath. “It’s okay. It’s been a long time. Isn’t that what they say, that all wounds heal with time?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Her friend pulled a pink sports bra over her head, followed quickly by the olive green undershirt. “Okay, I’m gonna go brush my teeth and put my hair up. You coming?”
“I need a minute to stretch,” Sidney replied. “My back is killing me.”
“It’s these mattresses. They suck.”
Sidney grunted a response, to which Caitlyn said, “Alright, I’ll see you down there.”
“Well, hell,” Sidney said aloud once the soldier was gone. She’d been making moves toward Dickerson, hoping the young soldier would want to hook up so she could relieve her sexual tension. She’d lied to Caitlyn, but she sure as hell needed a release as well—and the idea of having a potential protector was part of her singling him out.
Sidney glanced at the frameless mirror glued to the barracks room wall and lifted her shirt to reveal her swollen stomach. She was seven months along. She had two more to go, then maybe two or three more after that and she was leaving Fort Bliss. Preferably not alone. It was a scary world out there, especially for someone with an infant, and that giant of a man, Dickerson, would have been a good companion, even if he was a little dense.
She sighed again and dropped her shirt as she mussed up her hair. It was longer on the top than she used to keep it, but still cut short on the sides. The scene from Silence of the Lambs where Buffalo Bill uttered his famous line, “I’d fuck me,” crept into her mind, making her laugh a little bit.
An hour later, Sidney was at the kitchen, pouring powdered milk into giant mixing bowls to reconstitute it. It was mind-numbing work, menial in every way, but at least it kept her out of the camps and allowed her to have some type of purpose. Life in the camps was measured by the time between meals and little else mattered.
Throughout her shift, she thought about the problems with the base and its inevitable fall. Surely the base leadership knew that they couldn’t feed everyone forever. What was their plan for the long run? Just as she’d spoken to Lieutenant Murphy yesterday, there was no end in sight to the siege.
It all came to her at once. Jake was being used, why else would they send him down there? Before her talk last night, he’d probably planned on wearing his uniform and simply doing his time without trying to hide the fact that he was a soldier being punished. They wanted more riots. Short of kicking people out or allowing an entire camp to become infected, it was the only way to get rid of a large number of people.
“Lieutenant Murphy…”
“What?” Helen, her shift supervisor, asked from where she poured thirty-pound bags of flour into large vats to make bread.
“I— I need to go, Helen.”
“What for? We’ve still got two hours left for breakfast and then we have to start lunch.”
Sidney clutched at her stomach. “I need to go see the doctor. I think something may be wrong with the baby.”
Helen’s eyes shot upward. “Oh my goodness! Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?”
Sidney hated lying to the woman. She’d been extremely nice to her since she arrived and was lenient on tardiness as long as all of the work got done. “No, thank you. I have my roommate’s Jeep.”
“Are you sure?”
Sidney nodded, untying the apron she wore. “Yeah. I know I’m overreacting, but I
just think it’s better if I go get checked. It’s probably gas, no big deal.”
“Okay… You go ahead and take the rest of the day off, sweetie. We’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Go get yourself checked out and then go get some rest.”
Sidney hugged Helen’s shoulders. “Thank you. I really could use a nap.”
“Go on, then,” Helen grunted. “We’ve gotta get these biscuits made for the second breakfast shift.”
Sidney left, hunching over slightly to play up the alleged pain in her stomach. The baby inside her kicked in response to his space being imposed upon. “Oh, stop it,” she chastised, straightening once she was out the back door.
She had to warn Jake about why she thought they decided to punish him by sending him into the refugee camp. Gone was her indignation that the military viewed the refugees’ predicament as a prison. Now she was furious that they were probably planning outright murder.
She couldn’t remember if Gallegos was at the company or at the motor pool to escort Jake to the camp. The company was on the way to the motor pool from where she was now, so that’s where she would stop first.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the NCO in the orderly room asked when she stepped inside.
“I’m looking for Lieutenant Murphy,” she blurted. “I have important news to tell him.”
“Ma’am, he’s—“
“I’ve got it, Sergeant Demers,” someone called from the office in the back corner.
Sidney looked up expectantly, noticing the light blue plaque by the door read “Company Commander”. A short man with close-cropped brown hair came out of the office, angling directly for her.
“Ma’am, Lieutenant Murphy is on a mission,” the man, wearing captain’s bars stated. “He’ll be gone for about a month. Is there something I can do to help you?”
“He’s not on a goddamned mission,” Sidney replied. “He’s been sent down to the refugee camps for punishment.”
His expression hardened slightly. “That’s correct. Who are you?” His eyes roved up and down her body quickly. “Are you his girlfriend?”
“What? No. I’m a friend. He’s in danger. They’re sending him down to the camp to get the refugees riled up again so they can—”
“Oh not this shit again,” the officer groaned. “He’s been gone for two hours, ma’am. You’ll have to wait until his time is up at Camp Three.”
“Camp Three?” Sidney repeated. Any doubt she’d harbored that the military was setting up a mass extermination of refugees evaporated. Refugee Camp Three was a powder keg, ready to explode. The only reason they’d send Jake to that camp was to light the fuse.
“Yeah. Camp Three. That’s the only camp in First Brigade’s AO—ah, area of operations. Jake had the same reaction this morning.” A look of concern passed across the captain’s face. “He was concerned with the camp being a flashpoint for riots too.”
“Look, uh, Captain Massey. I work in the First Brigade dining facility and we’re constantly making things with less than half of the ingredients—and that’s for the soldiers protecting this place. There are four million refugees inside these walls and no way to rapidly replenish the food supply once it’s gone. The base leadership knows that.”
“Why are you here?” he sighed.
“I figured it out this morning and I’m trying to warn him to blend in—more than I already have.”
“You didn’t figure this out until just now?” he asked, eliciting a nod from Sidney. “He already figured it out, then. He told me what he thought General Bhagat and Colonel Albrecht are trying to do.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. I don’t have the authority to overrule the brigade commander, so he was taken to the camp this morning.”
“Son of a bitch.”
The captain raised an eyebrow, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
“You might have just signed the death warrant on millions of people,” Sidney accused, stifling a sob.
She turned and rushed as quickly away from Able Company as she could.
15
* * *
SURVIVOR CAMP #3, EL PASO, TEXAS
OCTOBER 12TH
“Get out of here!” a fat man grumbled. How he’d managed to remain so obese for more than six months of reduced rations was beyond Jake. “Ain’t no empty bunks and ain’t no extra floor space.”
The lieutenant waved. “Sorry, folks. I was just trying to find a permanent place to lay my head.”
That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. “Why’s that?” the fat man asked, sitting up straighter on his bunk. Jake noticed the man held the upper receiver of a disassembled AR-15 and must have been cleaning it. Several other men eyed him suspiciously. Their weapons were fully assembled and looked ready to rock.
“I just traveled down from the DFW. I tried to hold out on my own, but I ran out of food, so I made the decision to come to El Paso where the Internet said this refugee survival camp was. Of course, that was before it went out a few months ago. Back then, all those FEMA camps still existed. I didn’t know things were so shitty here or else I’d have just stayed out there.” He threw his head in the direction of the walls.
The man grunted and hunched back down. “Try over in Section ZB. That area that got hit hard when them fuckin’ soldiers murdered everyone. They may have some space on the floor.”
Jake nodded his thanks and backed out of the tent, allowing the flap to trail across his shoulder as he left, not wanting to turn his back on the crowd inside. These men were not people to be trusted, but they had given him a good idea to try the area that had seen a drop in population recently. What could it hurt?
He’d spent the last two days and nights on the move, finally settling against the side of a tent on the first night and then up against the cold metal of the wall last night. The mood in the camp was entirely transparent. They were unhappy with the status quo and were ready to do something about it. Without even trying to eavesdrop, he’d heard multiple people talking about the lack of proper nutrition and that the soldiers were fed better than they were. This place was ready to explode and placing him here made it seem like that was exactly what the general wanted.
He ducked his head, keeping his face relatively hidden as he passed a squad of soldiers patrolling the muddy walkway between the camp sections. That’s all he needed was to be spotted and recognized. At least when he’d been dropped off, Sergeant Gallegos had gone through the motions of pretending to tell him where things were in the camps so he wasn’t outed right away.
When the group passed, he lifted his head and trudged through the mud. Every sucking step splatted the brown fluid onto his pants legs and coated the waterproof boots he wore, sending a foul odor into the air. What made it even more disgusting was Jake’s knowledge that it hadn’t rained in over a week. He was walking through runoff from the latrines.
Sector ZB was near one of the many burn pits. The pits were really just a series of side-by-side large metal dumpsters that sent their foul black smoke into the air almost constantly as members of the Civilian Division poured diesel fuel into the various containers to burn whatever was on the menu. The sweet, yet acrid, smell on the air told him they were burning shit right now. Given the size of the flames, he guessed they were burning at least a week’s worth of it.
“Ugh,” Jake said, pulling his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth.
“You’ll get used to it soon enough, Jake,” a voice said from nearby.
He spun, allowing the fabric over his mouth to drop slightly. A petite Latina woman sat on a folding camp chair beside the entrance to a sleeping tent. “Carmen?” he coughed.
She stood and sauntered toward him, but then stopped and turned quickly. He watched in confusion as she grabbed her camp chair, collapsing it and putting it on her shoulder, before turning back to him. She walked to where he stood in the path.
“What are you doing here, Lieutenant? And why are you in civilian clothes, gro
wing a beard,” she asked, reaching out to scratch at his stubble.
He pulled his head back in annoyance. Carmen was the woman they’d found inside the Sam’s Club in Midland. He hadn’t been able to keep his promise to her about keeping her and her kids out of the refugee camp and she’d been pissed. Now, fate had brought them back together and she was probably going to expose him as an Army officer to the hundreds of people milling around.
Jake attempted to change the direction of the conversation. “Why’d you pick up your chair?”
“Because everything gets stolen here,” she hissed. “Someone even stole my baby’s teddy bear. Can you believe that?”
“I—”
“Of course you can. But you don’t care, do you?”
“I—”
“Big, bad Officer Jake. Steals people’s food supplies. Forces them to leave their homes. Breaks his promises. You don’t—”
He clamped a hand over her mouth and pressed his opposite hand against the back of her head to bring her close. She squealed in fright and wriggled to get away from him. “Would you shut up?” he hissed, looking around wildly to see what the other refugees would do.
Some watched disinterestedly, while others turned away. Nobody offered the woman assistance. They’d likely seen women assaulted hundreds of times since their internment at the camp began. Their indifference struck him as if he’d been punched. These people had no hope.
“I need you to be quiet,” he said. “Can you do that?”
She nodded and he eased the pressure of his hand, keeping it in place if she tried to continue her tirade against him.
“Fine,” she grunted. He cautiously moved is hands away. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve gotten reports that another riot is imminent,” he lied, thinking quickly on his feet. “I was sent in here to determine the threat level to the other refugees and to the base personnel. If morale is as bad as the informant said it is, then we may have a major problem and a lot of people could get hurt.”