“Mr. Ross,” Alena said, stepping through the door in the Homestead office, interrupting Jason while he studied paperwork of some kind.
“Mrs. James, I’m so glad you came by. I saw you stitching up Rodney. How’s he doing?”
“He didn’t like getting fifteen stitches without anesthetic, I can tell you that.”
“Did you offer him some booze, at least, before stitching him up?”
“I did not,” Alena replied.
Jason shrugged. “I’ll bet he thinks twice before he whittles toward himself again. We’re going to have to tear the corner off his Totin’ Chip.”
“Excuse me? Tear up his what?”
“Totin’ Chip. It’s a Boy Scout thing. What can I help you with? How’s our little infirmary?”
“We’re doing fine. I wish we had anesthesia and about a hundred other things, but I’m frankly amazed at what you stockpiled in the first place.”
Jason looked pleased. Stockpiling odd survival stuff had been his passion for years. The slimmest silver lining to this whole, dark mess was that his friends and family were enjoying the fruits of his obsession with stockpiling. A dozen times a day, someone approached Jason with a problem, and most of the time he had the perfect thing, squirreled away for just that moment.
“Narcotics of any kind were much harder to come by, especially if one fancied staying out of jail.” Jason glanced at the paper he had been working on and caught himself. People before things, he reminded himself as he looked up and pulled the folder closed.
Alena didn’t wait for an invitation to get to her point. “I’m sure you’re aware that your guards are shooting at people who’re doing nothing more than passing by, hiking in the mountains.”
“Yes, I’m aware.” Jason heard her out.
“I’d like to strenuously object to the military nature of this compound.” Alena warmed to her protest. “I believe we have a moral obligation to use force only if and when necessary. And I don’t think it’ll become necessary unless we start a war against the world around us. Your men are inclined to start a war.”
Jason didn’t respond right away. In his experience, listening was generally cheap while making pronouncements was generally expensive. Especially, with Nurse Alena, he would err on the side of listening.
To his surprise, Alena waited him out, forcing him to speak first. Jason proceeded cautiously. “Who would you think would be the best person here to make the decision when to employ force and when not to employ force?”
He kicked the hot potato back to Alena, trying to keep her talking. One of Jason’s business habits had been to let his leaders control their “ten acres” without meddling. Jason and the committee could dictate desired outcomes, but then they would step back and allow the leaders on the ground to do their jobs. Micro-managing was like herding goldfish with a chopstick—a fool’s errand. Using influence instead of control might seem weaker to the neophyte, but influence always trumped control in the end, in Jason’s experience. Influence ended the moment a leader used control.
At this point, Jason doubted he could control the military boys, even if he wanted to. Jeff Kirkham had a clear idea of how to run security and, as long as Jason got behind them, they would be friends. Jason had long ago decided that the only thing more stupid than trying to control people was trying to control a bunch of control freaks. Jason listened to Alena, but he had no intention of meddling with Jeff Kirkham and his men, no matter what they were doing. For one thing, Jason was scared shitless by the security threat probably coming their way―one million hungry, angry residents of Salt Lake City, Utah. He would not be screwing with Jeff Kirkham, no matter who complained.
“I suggest that lethal force decisions be made by a committee that represents all the members, not just the military-minded.” Alena had thought this through. She wasn’t leaving him any room to dance around the issue.
Jason steeled himself, forfeiting diplomacy for the moment. “You know this is how it’s done in the military, right? Officers give the orders and men follow them. Any obstruction of that process risks the entire Homestead. We don’t have a lot of soldiers to sacrifice before we get overrun. We can’t afford delays and we can’t afford mistakes.”
Alena hit back ferociously, intelligently. “I know how it works. My husband is in the Army. Soldiers have rules of engagement. Maybe our country has rules of engagement because soldiers can’t be trusted to act without civilian oversight. Civilian oversight sounds like ‘best practice’ to me. Why wouldn’t we do the same?”
She had made a strong point, but it didn’t matter. Jason’s fear of seeing his children dead or starving trumped anything she could throw at him. He saw no alternative but to level with her.
“Alena, I need to admit something to you, something I hope you’ll keep between the two of us.”
She nodded.
“I believe we’re facing a fifty-fifty chance that both of us and our children will be dead this time next month.”
Alena’s eyes widened; it was clearly not what she expected to hear.
“I pray that I’m wrong,” Jason continued, “but look around you. I wasn’t wrong about society collapsing. I prepared for something horrible, and I’m willing to bet you and Robert had conversations about what a whacko I was for setting this up and dedicating so much money to preparing for the Apocalypse.” Her face gave away nothing. “You don’t have to admit it. My next guess, Alena, is that we’re going to see thousands of starving people pounding at our gates and it’s going to be soon. It’ll begin as a trickle, then it’ll become a flood. Word will spread that we have electricity. Someone will see lights up on the hill. Rumors will fly that we have plenty of food and water. People with nowhere to go will come to our gates.” Jason paused for effect. “They’ll be angry, and that anger will be directed at us―you and me and our children.”
“How does that impact my suggestion that we set up reasonable rules of engagement?” Alena was no fool. She knew genuine emotion and conviction when she saw it. But she would never give up a point without a fight.
“I’m telling you all this because I want you to know that I take your feelings on the matter seriously,” Jason said. “I truly do. But I also want you to know that I’m not going to interfere with the men responsible for our security. In fact, I’m going to give them all the support I can. I will not second-guess their judgment.”
The blood rose in Alena’s face. Jason felt the need to follow up with some emotional salve. “When it comes to the infirmary, I likewise respect your judgment.”
Alena had no interest in being appeased. “Thank you for taking the time. I think you are wrong. Dead wrong. And, before this is over, you will have carelessly wasted human life. God save us all from men and their guns.” She did an about-face and plowed out of the office, leaving behind her a wake of fury.
Twenty-year-old Emily Ross did an inventory of her life as she gazed at the muzzle end of her Glock handgun. She tried to think of another moment when she had felt such crippling malaise.
Perhaps she’d been this bored long distance swimming or training to do a half-Ironman with her dad. Counting a thousand strokes in the pool with nothing more to look at than pool tile… that had been pretty boring.
Would anyone ever make music on iTunes again?
She would kill for some Mumford and Sons right now. Like so many things in the Apocalypse, music was forbidden on guard duty. She would get in serious trouble if she didn’t pay absolute attention to the absolute nothing that was going on cross-canyon from her lookout post.