It was the back end of a tank jutting out of a gigantic hole in the middle of the four-lane road. A Toad, he assumed, but he didn’t know anything about tanks. He moved gingerly to the edge of the hole and looked down. The tank was nose down in the hole, its main gun wedged deeply into the damp earth at the bottom of the pit, which had to be ten feet deep. The tank itself was huge; he’d had no idea the machines were so large, he’d assumed they were the size of minivans or something, but the Toad was massive—eight feet tall, seemingly wider than a traffic lane, and as long as two small cars bumper to bumper. Then again, the IMP had been huge too, especially with that big cage welded around it. Unlike most cars whose metalwork seemed just barely strong enough to hold itself together, the Toad was constructed of massive slabs of steel that seemed impenetrable. He couldn’t even imagine facing one of them in battle. And yet… this Toad had been destroyed.
It had been burned, and there was significant damage from explosions. The hatch on the turret was open, and there was a large hole just behind the turret. Was that where the engine was? He wasn’t sure, but that seemed likely, he didn’t see anything else that looked like a likely spot for it. Whatever had been on the other side of the metal cover had been shredded. The Toad had clearly been in the hole a long time. It must have been so severely damaged that the Army had just left it.
The two wide stripes running down the street behind it were pavement, or at least had been before the tank’s treads had chewed it up and spit it out. He could only imagine how heavy the tank was with all that armor. Even though the bottom of the tank treads were flat and maybe six inches front to back, with all that weight pressing down on them they’d chewed into the asphalt like a dull chainsaw.
Jason walked all the way around the vanquished tank, staring at it from every angle. Finally satisfied, he jogged to the far curb. On the north side he moved into the overgrown grass of the neighborhood and quickly disappeared from sight.
Early was the last member of the squad to arrive at Happy Indian, appearing silently in the long grass in front of the small concrete pad that served as a porch as the stars began appearing in the darkening sky. He walked around the side of the house and entered through the door there.
“House still good?” he asked George, meaning the water traps and deliberately soggy mattresses used to defeat thermal cameras.
“Yeah. But Ed didn’t want us all bunched up here, and I don’t know that he’s wrong. Quentin and Jason are right across the street with him. Head over there.”
Early peered out the front windows of the house, which were intact. He looked up and down the street, then headed over.
The house directly across the narrow asphalt street was nearly identical to Happy Indian. Both were two-story cubes, the second floor clad in white siding, the first in red brick, with detached two car garages to the rear. On the north side of both houses were vacant lots where, once, houses had stood, but they’d been torn down long ago. The former residents of the house now known to the dogsoldiers as Happy Indian had claimed the lot next to their house as their own, landscaped the yard, even extended their fence to enclose it. Past the vacant lots was the alley behind the businesses on Joy Road. Or, at least, what had once been an alley.
The alley had been so overgrown for so long it had nearly completely reverted to nature and was almost unrecognizable as having once been a street. Small chunks of heaved and cracked asphalt peeked from between patches of grass, tangled tufts of weed, and were shadowed by bushes and trees leaning over the alley from either side. The residents treated the alley like an extension of their yards and had for years before the war.
An hour after sunset Mark was on watch on the second floor of the house, his SAW set up nearby on a desk, the squad’s binoculars hanging around his neck. There wasn’t a lot to see out of the windows, but they were all thrown wide open, as listening was often as important as seeing. The squads tended to prefer two story structures as safehouses for a number of reasons. The taller buildings gave them better visibility, and the additional floor provided more clutter to confuse a Kestrel’s thermal imager. Also, technically, you could jump out of a second-floor window in an emergency, although just the thought of doing that while wearing forty-plus pounds of gear made Mark think warmly back to the days when filing work comp claims was a thing.
He paused, blinked, and then cocked his head. He moved to one of the windows and took a couple of breaths, then strode to the upstairs hallway and looked down the stairs. Just as he got there, George appeared at the bottom of the stairs on the first floor.
“You smell that?” George asked him quietly.
“Yeah, I was just gonna ask you,” Mark said. Somebody was cooking over a fire. Somewhere close.
“I’ll check it out. Stay here,” George said to Weasel. He found Renny in the front room. “Let’s go meet the neighbors,” he told the newest member of the squad with a jerk of his head. Any activity that close to where the squad wanted to bed down for the night had to be investigated, and he also wanted to see how the man performed. Renny looked at his big rifle leaning against the wall next to his backpack and decided to leave them both there. He followed George out the side door.
George moved a few steps away from the house and stood in the cool night air for a few moments. The smell of cooking meat was stronger outside. He turned his head this way and that, finally determining that the light breeze was coming in from the northwest.
His eyes were mostly adjusted to the dark but the moon wasn’t up yet. AR on its sling across his chest he moved slowly across the lawn of the house. He didn’t want to trip on an unseen obstacle or otherwise injure himself by being in a hurry when he didn’t need to be.
He found the chain link fence bordering the yard by sense more than anything else. It was only waist high and he climbed it carefully and quietly. He moved forward into the next vacant yard, hearing Renny moving over the fence behind him.
Another thirty feet and he saw the flickering orange of flames. George looked around, getting his bearings, and realized the fire had to be deep in the alley on the block just west of Happy Indian. He moved silently across the lawn then veered left so that when he crossed the street he wouldn’t be on a direct line towards the fire.
As he drew close he moved ever slower, not knowing how many people were at the cooking fire or who they were. When he was twenty feet away, a thick row of overgrown bushes between him and the fire, he heard muttering. George stopped and listened. He could hear someone moving around, and occasional mumbled words. Then the man passed between the fire and George, clearly silhouetted for a brief moment. One person. Maybe there were more, but he didn’t think so.
Easing forward, George slid between two bushes, then came out on the far side. He pushed through the branches until he was fully revealed by the firelight. “Evening,” he said quietly, holding his left hand up, palm out
The muttering man was on the far side of the fire and jumped up at George’s words. He spun around, a long knife gleaming in his hand. He’d built a small fire on the ground and over it, supported by several cinder blocks, was a large pot. From the sound it was nearly on the boil. The man was bone skinny, his cheekbones hard corners on his skull. His stained clothes hung off him, and it was hard to tell in the dancing orange light if he had brown skin or was just very dirty. “You!” he said, jabbing the knife at George. “You don’t get none! Mine. My meat! No thieves. Thieves get cut!” He shook the knife at George again.